"Pleasantry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... your bag if you'll carry mine, Gerald," cried Standish facetiously, as my brother-in-law, a trifle offended at the Admiral's last pleasantry, proceeded with much dignity to his ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... must not look for the usual point of Sheridan in this piece, where the hits of pleasantry are performed with the broad end or mace of his wit, there is yet a quick circulation of humor through the dialogue,—and laughter, the great end of farce, is abundantly achieved by it. The moralizing of Doctor Rosy, and the dispute between ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... palefaces were filled with fear," said Charley, quickly, regretting his attempt at pleasantry, "but they found that they had been only children frightened at shadows. They have slain that which made the noises full ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... indulged a vein of pleasantry, one might perceive that they would not use one unnecessary word, nor let an expression escape them that had not some sense worth attending to. For one being asked to go and hear a person who imitated the nightingale to perfection, answered, "I ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... bad, Christy," said the commander, shaking his head. "I promised not to use that word again, and you ought not to twit me for it, for it was only a pleasantry ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... will give thee a macaroon.' In saying this, I pulled out a paper of 'em, which I had just bought, and gave him one;—and, at this moment that I am telling it, my heart smites me that there was more of pleasantry in the conceit of seeing how an ass would eat a macaroon than of benevolence in giving him one, which presided ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... [1]?' The upshot, however, was that he did not go, and I cannot suppose that he had ever any serious intention of doing so. Amid the general gravity of his intercourse with his followers, there gleam out a few instances of quiet pleasantry, when he amused himself by playing with their notions about him. This was probably one of them. As magistrate of Chung-tu he produced a marvellous reformation of the manners of the people in a short time. According to the 'Narratives of the School,' he enacted rules for the nourishing ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... the sport of a lawless majority; and the basest member of the committee, by a malicious word or, a silent vote, might indulge his general spleen or personal animosity. Injury was aggravated by insult, and insult was embittered by pleasantry. Allowances of twenty pounds, or one shilling, were facetiously moved. A vague report that a Director had formerly been concerned in another project, by which some unknown persons had lost their money, was admitted as a proof of his actual guilt. One man was ruined because he ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... Castle Street he was not regarded by Edinburgh society as particularly brilliant in conversation, since he never aspired to lead by learned disquisitions. He told stories well, with great humor and pleasantry, to amuse rather than to instruct. His talk was almost homely. The most noticeable thing about it was common-sense. Lord Cockburn said of him that "his sense was more wonderful than his genius." He did not blaze like Macaulay or Mackintosh at the dinner-table, nor absorb conversation ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... might bask in the shadow of the mighty Goethe. It was shortly after this that he sat in a niche of Goethe's library, musing, sad and solitary, while a gay throng chattered by. Some young women, seeing him there, laughed, and one asked, "Is it alive?" And Goethe, overhearing the pleasantry, rebuked it by saying, "Do not smile at that youth—he will ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... still was our order, wasn't it, Mr. Arnold?" she said, with her little pink smile. "And I'm afraid Miss Howe isn't in time to be of much use to us, is she?" It was the bedside pleasantry that expected no reply, that ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... beauty and wit and vivacity; that turn for pleasantry which is our national inheritance seems natural to her. . . . But her wit deals only with pleasant frivolities; her ideas are the children of her memory rather than of her imagination. French in everything ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... fought with their hands. His bowed head came back then, and the mass of men, catching sight of the mad, glad light that flared in his eyes, rolled back to give them room. He laughed at Harrigan. He was laughing at himself. They heard and marveled at the pleasantry ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... reigned within doors, where a large party of friends were entertained. Every one laughed at his own pleasantry, without attending to that of his neighbours. Loads of bride-cake were distributed. The young ladies were all busy in passing morsels of it through the wedding ring to dream on, and I myself assisted a fine little boarding-school girl in putting up a quantity ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... to have chalked it, like that fellow in the Forty Thieves," Ripton hazarded a pleasantry which met with ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... indulging a vein of pleasantry, sketched a kind of conversation piece, representing a bear, an owl, a monkey, and an ass; and to render it more striking, humorous, and moral, distinguished every figure by some emblem of human life. Bruin was ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... away—to be alone with this great, unbelievable happiness. In realization of his mood, she left him under pretext of ordering the luncheon. On her return she found him exuberant, in a flow of spirits and pleasantry. ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... well-informed in history and biography. Notwithstanding his remarkable frankness and all his oddities, his manners were engaging and polished: his conversation was original, energetic, and lively; he would often indulge in sallies of pleasantry to amuse the Empress, and as he was an excellent mimic, he would take off the uncouth manners and accents of some of the soldiers to the life. He had a dislike to writing, always asserting that a ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... violent effort to command herself, answered Bear's questions, and on the arrival of the punch, drank to us, saying, with a serious look and voice, "Son and son's wife, your health!" On this she grew more friendly, and said in a tone of pleasantry, which beseemed her very well, "Lars Anders, I don't think people can say you have bought the calf in the sack. Your wife does not by any means look in bad case, and has a pair of eyes to buy fish with. Little she is, it is true; but ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... "Pierre et Jean," "Fort comme la Mort," "Notre Coeur." His imagination aims to represent the human being as imprisoned in a situation at once insupportable and inevitable. The spell of this grief and trouble exerts such a power upon the writer that he ends stories commenced in pleasantry with some sinister drama. Let me instance "Saint-Antonin," "A Midnight Revel," "The Little Cask," and "Old Amable." You close the book at the end of these vigorous sketches, and feel how surely they point to constant suffering on the part of him ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... one-eyed man, peering up at me beneath his hand. "Is they whiskers a-peepin' at me over 'is cravat or do my eyes deceive me?" Which pleasantry, called forth another roar of laughter ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... countenance, there breathes something precise and decisive, something alert, wiry, and strong. You can understand, from the look of him, that sense, not so much of humour, as of what is grimmest and driest in pleasantry, which inspired his address before the fight at Camperdown. He had just overtaken the Dutch fleet under Admiral de Winter. "Gentlemen," says he, "you see a severe winter approaching; I have only to advise you ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... enquiry. We'll let you know the result of the trial pretty quickly," and he grinned complacently, in which little pleasantry at my expense the officer of ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... excursion to Greenwich, and on having our friend's company on that voyage, and we induced the Vicomte to forgo his bacon, and be our guest for once. George Warrington chose to indulge in a great deal of ironical pleasantry in the course of the afternoon's excursion. As we went down the river, he pointed out to Florac the very window in the Tower where the captive Duke of Orleans used to sit when he was an inhabitant of that fortress. At Greenwich, which palace ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of that age, the Wildairs and the Lady Lurewells, the Mirabells and the Millaments, congratulated each other on the way in which the gay young gentleman, whose erudition sate so easily upon him, and who wrote with so much pleasantry and good breeding about the Attic dialect and the anapaestic measure, Sicilian talents and Thericlean cups, had bantered the queer prig of a doctor. Nor was the applause of the multitude undeserved. The book ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and daughter of John Wayles, then twenty-three years old. Mr. Wayles was a lawyer of much practice, to which he was introduced more by his great industry, punctuality and practical readiness, than by eminence in the science of his profession. He was a most agreeable companion, full of pleasantry and good humor, and welcomed in every society. He acquired a handsome fortune, and died in May, 1773, leaving three daughters: the portion which came on that event to Mrs. Jefferson, after the debts should be paid, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... said Euphrasia, ignoring this pleasantry, "and you ain't been yourself for some months. I've seen it. I haven't brought you up for nothing. If he's troubling you, don't you worry a mite. He ain't worth it. He eats better ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Shawnees have attempted a little pleasantry after their bloody work, and caged up some poor creature within those logs," thought he. "I'll let him loose if ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... laughed; "he is a fair size, and sits up well in the saddle," a harmless pleasantry which, to judge by his peevish exclamation, Felix did ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... not fathoming his pleasantry. "I had to wait until the tailor finished my new suit. It should have been done last ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... "pleasantry apart, I have a profound respect for men of science who do possess science, but a profound contempt for men ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... letters call for more than one observation; I cannot forbear to make one upon the term which Mr. Cochrane Johnstone employs to describe this transaction—"A HOAX," a mere joke, a matter of pleasantry. Gentlemen, a young, a giddy, an unthinking and careless man, who had no concern in the transaction, and who had never been suspected to have had any, might perhaps, in conversation, make use of that term; but Mr. Cochrane ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... a time I heard Brother Gherard Naeldwijc say in pleasantry that in those times on fast days they would sometimes divide one fig into four or six portions that so the great quantity of the bread they consumed might be seasoned by those fragments. On a time also there come to us, ...
— The Chronicle of the Canons Regular of Mount St. Agnes • Thomas a Kempis
... continue to explain. They never dull your enthusiasm by short phlegmatic or pessimistic replies. And when you are sad they will condone so genuinely with you that you forget your disappointments in the charming pleasantry of their sympathy. But all this continual race for pleasure is destined in the course of time to end ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... the value of the lamp and the interest that Aladdin had to keep it safe, entered into the pleasantry and commanded a slave to take it and make the exchange. The slave obeyed, went out of the hall, and no sooner got to the palace gates than he saw the African magician, called to him, and showing him the old lamp, said, "Give me ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... doubt about it, you are getting a lot better looking as you grow older," observed Charley, with genial pleasantry. ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... idea of its fascinating power. Some of our crew, of reputed good habits, became so bewitched with gaming that they plundered their companions and returned to their cards and wheels of fortune with a serious and anxious ardor, totally void of pleasantry, that seemed to me to border ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... to venture a heavy pleasantry or two which distorted his long nose into a series of white-ridged wrinkles, then he ambled away and disappeared within the abode of that divinity who shapes our ends, the manicure; and Hamil turned once more toward ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... defined figures, and waiting only for the night to evade them. The Beasley house seemed a proper place of operation in beating up the field. Ira's cold reception of the suggestion was duly disposed of by the deputy. "I have the RIGHT, ye know," he said, with a grim pleasantry, "to summon ye as my posse to aid and assist me in carrying out the law; but I ain't the man to be rough on my friends, and I reckon it will do jest as well if I 'requisition' your house." The dreadful recollection that the deputy had the power to detail him and the constable ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... inconvenience yourself!"—and this pleasantry amused them so much that they kept repeating it twenty times a day ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... Scotch Reviewers, he had alluded, with provoking pleasantry, to a meeting which had taken place at Chalk Farm some years before, between Mr Jeffrey, the Edinburgh reviewer, and Mr Moore, without recollecting, indeed without having heard, that Mr Moore had explained, through the newspapers, what was alleged to have been ridiculous in the affair. ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... situation had dawned upon him. A woman among a crowd of rough soldiers! Her brother and protector dying! And all surrounded by hordes of savage enemies who at any moment might kill them! The thought dismissed all pleasantry from his mind. Something must be done, and ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... just returned from a tour in Western Asia sends to the Drawer the following account of a little bit of pleasantry which took place in the gala town ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various
... Folger family, because they were devoutly pious, and as "reliable as the sun, or the earth on its axis." They were unpolished and unceremonial, and he liked them all the more for that. He wrote to his sister in a vein of pleasantry, "They are wonderfully shy. But I admire their honest plainness of speech. About a year ago I invited two of them to dine with me; their answer was that they would if they could not do better. I suppose they did better, for I never saw them afterwards, and so had no opportunity ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... his fault was not so glaring. For it should in fairness be remembered that it was not he who first preached the advent of the millennium. He had only given it a tardy and cold assent, qualified by an occasional sally of keen pleasantry. Down to the last moment, as we saw, he not only was unaware that the Covenant would be inserted in the Peace Treaty, but he was strongly of the opinion, as indeed were M. Pichon and others, that the two instruments were incompatible. He also apparently inclined to ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... the sweetest-blooded, warmest-hearted, happiest, hopefullest creature that ever set Fortune at defiance"; he speaks also of "the buoyancy of his spirits and the inward light of his mind"; and adds,—"There is nothing gloomy or bitter in his ordinary talk, but, rather, a wild, rough, boyish pleasantry, much more like Nature than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... Major," Susan said, briskly, and everybody laughed absently at the well-known pleasantry. They were all accustomed to the absurdity of the Major's question, and far more absorbed just now in watching the roast, which had just come on. Another ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... was tied round the neck of the melancholy stag's head in the dining-room. It graced him like a red and white dinner bib for days before the event, causing the Herr Professor to bow before it and say "good appetite" until we sickened of his pleasantry and left the smiling to be done by the waiter, who was paid to be pleasing ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield
... with an attempt at pleasantry. "The sea will extinguish the volcano, and there will be an ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... the Caliph listened to the strange demand, and being in no humor for having the poor youth's head taken off, but on the contrary, being rather inclined for pleasantry, his Mightiness condescendingly said: "For the great, the wise, or the brave, to request a Princess for wife, is a moderate demand; but what are your claims? To be the possessor of my daughter you must distinguish ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... find a passage referred to in the Index, under the head of "a notable instance of their candour," retracting their insinuations against Lloyd and Colman, and ascribing the poem in a particular vein of pleasantry to Mr. Flexney, the bookseller, and Mr. Griffin, the printer. Candour certainly did not require that they should acknowledge Mr. Churchill, whose name was now inserted in the title-page, as the author, or if author ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... parted, but it was not until I had rejoined my anxious friends with the ambulance that I began to suspect Commandant Cronje of a piece of pleasantry. Major Pollock, it appeared, had interceded on my behalf so effectually that my fate had been decided and my safe return promised long before I had met the Commandant. He afterwards entertained himself ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... Say that my pleasantry was misplaced, say that she was weary and strained beyond her power, say what you will in excuse, I allow it all. Yet it was not reason to fling my last guinea into the sea. A flash of petulance is well enough and may become beauty as summer lightning ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... he has been merely the tool of the Arch-Jester. He has no notion of the sardonic joke his knife was chosen to perpetrate. That naked we should come into the world, and naked we should go out is a time-honoured pleasantry which, as far as the latter part of it is concerned, I did my conscientious best to further; but that we should come into it again naked at the age of eight-and-thirty is a piece of irony too grim for contemplation. Yet am I bound to contemplate it. ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... handsome beau'; but he had the merit or the good fortune to become a doctor of medicine, so that when the crash came he was not empty-handed for the war of life. Charles, at the day-school of Northiam, grew so well acquainted with the rod, that his floggings became matter of pleasantry and reached the ears of Admiral Buckner. Hereupon that tall, rough-voiced, formidable uncle entered with the lad into a covenant: every time that Charles was thrashed he was to pay the Admiral a penny; everyday that he escaped, the process was to be reversed. 'I recollect,' writes ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... less after the period in which the play was written; the women were not. I saw no inconsistency. Their talk seemed to open to one the brilliant world in which they lived; every sentence made one older and wiser, every pleasantry enlarged one's horizon. One could experience excess and satiety without the inconvenience of learning what to do with one's hands in a drawing-room! When the characters all spoke at once and I missed some of the phrases they flashed at each other, ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... upon my honour, that she shall be safe and inviolate; and I hope you don't doubt me, notwithstanding any airs she may have given herself, upon my jocular pleasantry to her, and perhaps a little innocent romping with her, so usual with young folks of the two sexes, when they have been long acquainted, and grown up together; for ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... with so much pleasantry that the general and his secretary became the admiration of all on board. Not a man, from the commander down to the humblest "ordinary," but was eager to pay them homage, minister to their comfort, or afford them amusement. They were thus happily pursuing their voyage when the commander, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... it displays, and for the practical lessons of life and history which it reflects in imaginative form. We have humour and wit, often closely bordering on pathos and tragedy; exploits of war, of love, and of chivalrous adventure, alternate with the cheerful lightness and pleasantry of ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... straightway made answer: "Ah, that rational man who thinks to advise us in sorrow, Knows not how little of power his cold words have in relieving Ever a heart from that woe which a sovereign fate has inflicted. Ye are prosperous and glad; how then should a pleasantry wound you? Yet but the lightest touch is a source of pain to the sick man. Nay, concealment itself, if successful, had profited nothing. Better show now what had later increased to a bitterer anguish, And to an inward consuming despair ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... was that she had been indulging in some clumsy pleasantry, amusing herself one day by inscribing in the sale-book, alongside of the dabs and skate and mackerel sold by auction, the names of some of the best-known ladies and gentlemen of the Court. This bestowal of piscine names upon high dignitaries, these entries of ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... excitement and tight boots; and, at length, being prevailed upon to remove the obnoxious understandings, they were passed round the table to be admired, and eventually returned to their owner, filled with half-and-half, cigar-ashes, broken pipes, bread-crusts, and gin-and-water. This was a jocular pleasantry, which only the hilarious mind of a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... the sound, and expressed his entire belief that it was spiritual. I, however, informed him that it was the moving hair acting on the glass. The explanation was not well received; and X, in a tone of severe pleasantry, demanded whether it was the hair that had moved the table. The promptness of my negative probably satisfied him that my notion ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... smiling a cryptic smile. After they had left it was hinted they were not married at all; the oldest hands had been taken in.... One afternoon I met Dolly, the commercial traveler's wife, and she stopped and spoke to me. I remembered what I had heard and ventured on some pleasantry at which she laughed, and on my proposing that we should go for a walk she consented. She had left the commercial traveler, it came out in conversation, and we went on talking and walking, one idea only in my ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the pleasantry was at its highest, a loud knock was heard at the door. The revelry ceased for a moment. There was the postmaster's boy, bearing a letter with several curious stamps on it. Hanz was overjoyed. He shook the boy's hand, and then scanned over the letter. "God pless mine poor poy, Titus!" ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... bosom seemed to be reflections of the streaming crimson there. She shook her face to the sky, and affected laughter at the symbol. Her companions clapped hands. Farina's eyes yearned to her once, and then he rose and joined in the pleasantry. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the elementary passions of human nature. As a whole, it leaves an impression of hardness, shallowness, and levity. The polite cynicism of Congreve, the ferocious cynicism of Swift, the malice of Pope, the pleasantry of Addison, the early worldliness of Prior and Gay are seldom relieved by any touch of the ideal. The prose of the time was excellent, but the poetry was merely rhymed prose. The recent Queen Anne revival in architecture, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... pacified neither at the hour of death, nor at any other time, nor can they ever build upon certain ground; they are never certain that God is gracious. Thus their doctrine unintermittingly leads to nothing but misery of soul and, finally, to despair. For God's Law is not a matter of pleasantry; it ceaselessly accuses consciences outside of Christ, as Paul says, Rom. 4, 15: The Law worketh wrath. Thus it will happen that if consciences feel the judgment of God, they have no certain comfort and will rush ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... to Bellamy's kitchen—a refreshment-room, where persons who are not Members are admitted on sufferance, as it were—and perceiving two or three gentlemen at supper, who, he was aware, were not Members, and could not, in that place, very well resent his behaviour, he indulged in the pleasantry of sitting with his booted leg on the table at which they were supping! He is generally harmless, though, and ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... just what he said, John," she begged, making no attempt to carry the pleasantry farther, though its possibilities still seemed to flicker about her lip; and Amherst proceeded to recount ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... untutored fancy, and are blind to many faults for the sake of numberless beauties, his poems will afford singular gratification. His observations on human characters are acute and sagacious, and his descriptions are lively and just. Of rustic pleasantry he has a rich fund; and some of his softer scenes are touched with inimitable delicacy. He seems to be a boon companion, and often startles us with a dash of libertinism, which will keep some readers at a distance. Some of his subjects are serious, but those of the humorous kind are the best. ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... at Exeter College, as young gentlemen are received at college; and nowhere else, I hope, for the credit of Christendom. They showed him a hole in the roof, and called it an "Attic;" grim pleasantry! being a puncture in the modern Athens. They inserted him; told him what hour at the top of the morning he must be in chapel; and left him to find out his other ills. His cases were welcomed like Christians, by the whole staircase. These undergraduates abused one another's crockery ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... excited the curiosity of several of the sifters, who had recently joined the "company," the parties alluded to were requested to favor them with the recital; and though the request was made with only a half-concealed irony, still it was all in good-natured pleasantry, and was immediately complied with. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... that whenever their noise disturbed his sleep he sent orders to them to keep silence. In his familiar conversations with the chiefs he plainly told them that he would one day crucify them all. Doubtless they laughed heartily at this pleasantry, as they deemed it, but they were to find it a grim sort ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... nothing much in itself, the usual coinage of the society journalist intelligently anticipating events. It pointed with sleek pleasantry to the fact that the Prince of Schnapps-Wasser, returning to his inheritance after long exile, would find greeting awaiting him from a royal house which had apparently been very anxious to make his acquaintance. Then followed an account of the visit and prolonged sojourn at Bad-as-Bad of the royal ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... artificial and 'conceited' in the collection—the poet plays somewhat enigmatically on his Christian name of 'Will,' and a similar pun has been doubtfully detected in sonnets cxxxiv. and cxlvii. The groundwork of the pleasantry is the identity in form of the proper name with the common noun 'will.' This word connoted in Elizabethan English a generous variety of conceptions, of most of which it has long since been deprived. Then, as now, it was employed in the general psychological sense ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... pleasantry; it was what he had said to her himself a day or two after their engagement. The phrase had amused Audrey at the time and lodged in her memory. She borrowed it now in her hour of need, and laughed, unconscious of ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... at his pleasantry. He was a French-Canadian half-breed and spoke with a strong foreign accent. Ambrose ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... is by its character-drawing and its pathos, I doubt if it would have captivated the world without its humor. This is of the old-fashioned kind, the large humor of Scott, and again of Cervantes, not verbal pleasantry, not the felicities of Lamb, but the humor of character in action, of situations elaborated with great freedom, and with what may be called a hilarious conception. This quality is never wanting in the book, either for the reader's entertainment by the way, or to heighten ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... and some of them twitted him about it. This he took in good part, and was really pleased, nodding his head with direful foreknowledge and mystery, until George Leach, the erstwhile cabin-boy, ventured some rough pleasantry on ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... got the better of by promising substantial proofs on our side, and by refuting those of the opponent. The second, by giving hopes of being brief, and by having recourse to the means prescribed for making the judge attentive. In the latter case, too, some seasonable pleasantry, or anything witty to freshen the mind will have a good effect. It will not be amiss, likewise, to remove any seeming obstruction. As Cicero says of himself, he is not unaware that some will find it strange that he, who for so ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... care for but an old mother; didn't know what he should do, if he lost her. Though so long in this country, he had all the simplicity and childlike light-heartedness which belong to the Old World's people. He laughed at the smallest pleasantry, and showed his great white English teeth; he took a joke without retorting by an impertinence; he had a very limited curiosity about all that was going on; he had small store of information; he lived chiefly in his horses, it seemed to me. His quiet ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... about the book is the picture that it gives of sardonic pleasantry and intellectual and sophisticated virtuosity going quietly on side by side with all the splendours and barbarities of absolute autocracy and summary jurisdiction. It throws a new or unaccustomed light on those days. Not even yet—not even in Bloomsbury, ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... least, this praise, The dearth of information and good sense That it foretells us, always comes to pass. Cataracts of declamation thunder here, There forests of no meaning spread the page In which all comprehension wanders lost; While fields of pleasantry amuse us there, With merry descants on a nation's woes. The rest appears a wilderness of strange But gay confusion; roses for the cheeks And lilies for the brows of faded age, Teeth for the toothless, ringlets for the ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... insinuated their feelings to him on this point at Roland's. Roland himself, authorised by his age and austerity of manners, took upon himself to remind Dumouriez that a public man owes respect to decorum and revolutionary manners. The warrior turned the remonstrance into pleasantry, replied to Roland that he owed his blood to the nation, but neither owed it the sacrifice of his tastes nor his amours; that he understood patriotism as a hero, and not as a puritan. The bitterness of his language left venom behind, and ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... in Tisbina, notwithstanding Mr. Panizzi's pleasantry, to be so willing to take another husband, after having poisoned herself for the first; but she seems intended by the poet to exhibit a character of impulse in contradistinction to permanency of sentiment. She cannot help shewing pity for Prasildo; she cannot help poisoning herself ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... Dan, as he walked on up the street. But the pleasantry made inadequate appeal. Every one was getting more out of the season than he was. Once he drew a dollar from his pocket and started back. But no. What was a dollar to him? He knew where there were more. That wasn't it. He put the money in his pocket ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... at this the doctor was encouraged to try his hand, but, not feeling equal to addressing a pleasantry to the usually august Martian, he turned ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... to understand that one of these officers is the double of the other?" asked the first lieutenant, who seemed to be disposed to take in the situation as a pleasantry of the commander. ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... continued he, 'I believe, if I am rightly informed, there can hardly be said to have been any duties hitherto,' and he gave a sort of half laugh, as though to pass off the accusation in the guise of a pleasantry. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... darned cotton stockings of the same colour, and shoes to answer. His features were not naturally intended to wear a smiling aspect, but he was in general rather given to professional jocosity. His step was elastic, and his face betokened inward pleasantry, as he advanced to Mr. Bumble, and shook ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... the hunger in the eyes of David Cairns, the empty haversack, and noted that he was neither officer nor enlisted man. Bedient had plenty of water, but with a smile he offered the other a pail and pointed to the stream. This was a pleasantry for the eyes of Boss Healy. Cairns appeared presently through the infantry, and around the end of the picket-line—a correspondent serving mule-riders with all the enthusiasm of a pitifully-tightened belt.... The packers were at their pipes and cigarettes and were spreading blanket-rolls, and ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... rage, impotent for the present, but which he prepared to give deadly effect to at the proper time. But, whilst it laughed, Klosterheim also trembled. Some persons, indeed, were of opinion that the answer of The Masque was a mere sportive effusion of malice or pleasantry from the students, who had suffered so much by his annoyances. But the majority, amongst whom was Adorni himself, thought otherwise. Apart even from the reply, or the insult which had provoked it, the general impression was, that The Masque ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... years Aristotle's philosophy. In the year 1607 he took the degree of batchelor of arts, and upon the recommendation of the principal of the college, he entered into the service of William Cavendish, baron Hardwicke, soon afterwards earl of Devonshire[2], by whom being much esteemed for his pleasantry and humour, he was appointed tutor to his son lord William Cavendish, several years younger than Hobbs. Soon after our author travelled with this young nobleman thro' France and Italy, where he made himself master of the different ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... comick scenes he is seldom very successful, when he engages his characters in reciprocations of smartness and contest of sarcasm; their jests are commonly gross, and their pleasantry licentious; neither his gentlemen nor his ladies have much delicacy, nor are sufficiently distinguished from his clowns by any appearance of refined manners. Whether he represented the real conversation of his time is not easy to determine; the reign ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... I can't!" cried Yourii, almost angry now. "Perhaps I'll join you later." Such rough pleasantry on Ivanoff's part was not at all to ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... would vex me from sheer wantonness of heart in order to try my patience? By God, I swear to you that, if you continue these fashions of going on, you will find yourself very much out in your expectations! I see quite well that you have been put up to all this pleasantry in order to make me dismiss a servant whom I cannot do without, and who has served me loyally for five-and-twenty years. By God, I will do nothing of the kind! And I declare to you that if I were reduced to such a necessity as to choose between losing one or the other, I could better do without ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... and her manner, brought blushes to his cheek and flames to his eyes, which amused her all the more; so she went on,—"Oh, don't be afraid! I will pay—two ginger-cakes a lesson." So sensitive was the child's nature, this innocent pleasantry wounded him with such pain, that he fell on the carpet sobbing and with nerves all jangled. How the pangs poverty attracts must have wrung him!—But let us not anticipate the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... writings there is something that grates upon the mind of the most candid reader, in opinions which are not conformable to his own way of thinking; and that the harshness of reasoning is not a little softned and smoothed by the infusions of mirth and pleasantry. ...
— Essay upon Wit • Sir Richard Blackmore
... was just like Philip Crewe, this marrying on probabilities; and it was equally like the rest of them to accept the state of affairs as an excellent joke, and regard the result as an exquisite piece of pleasantry. 'Toinette herself was only another careless, unworldly addition to the family circle, and enjoyed her position as thoroughly as the rest did; and as to Tod, what a delicate satire upon responsibilities Tod was, and how tranquilly he comported himself under a regime which ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... bearded man, with a whimsical edifying patronising tone, a tone that had immense success when he stopped here and there to make his points—to pass his eyes over his listening flock, then fix them quite above it with a meditative look and bring out some ancient pleasantry as if it were a sudden inspiration. He made a cheerful thing, an echo of the platform before the booth of a country fair, even of a visit to the tomb of the pater patriae. It is enshrined in a kind of grotto in the grounds, and ...
— Pandora • Henry James
... suffered to perish. The history of the human character; the interesting memoir, founded no less on the careless proceedings of a private life, than on the formal transactions of a public station; the ingenious pleasantry, the piercing ridicule, the tender, pathetic, or the elevated strain of elocution, have been confined in modern, as well as ancient times, with a few exceptions, to the same latitudes with the fig ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... made) that the Prince of Wales (now his Majesty King Edward VII.) would be the President of the English branch of the League, while ex-President Harrison was to have acted in a similar capacity in America. By a grim pleasantry of Fate, the letter from England conveying final and official information of the approval of the aforesaid Ministers, and arranging for the publication of the first formal overture from the United States (for the movement was to be made to appear to emanate therefrom) arrived in America ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... this coarse pleasantry, she simply adhered to her thesis. "One has taken one's dose and one isn't such a fool as to be deaf to some fresh true note if it happens to turn up. But for abject horrid unredeemed vileness from beginning ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... effects of the 'firewater' and the vicious habits brought in by more civilised men. The Red man is usually proud and reserved; serious, if not gloomy, in his views of life; comparatively indifferent to wit or pleasantry; vain of personal endowments; brave and fond of war, yet extremely cautious and taking no needless risks; fond of gambling and drinking; seemingly indifferent to pain; kind and hospitable to strangers, yet revengeful ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... other feminine scribes." Nevertheless, she thought it prudent to reside for a time upon her estate in Brittany. A copy of a letter by St. Evremond was found, written three years before from the Spanish frontier. It was a sarcastic pleasantry at the expense of Mazarin and the Paix des Pyrenees, St. Evremond was a soldier, a wit, and the leader of fashion; Colbert hated him, and magnified a jeu d'esprit into a State-crime. He was exiled, and spent the rest of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... jester of the Court of Francis, is introduced with some pleasantry, by way of relief to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... estates, degrees, and offices, Were not deriu'd corruptly, and that cleare honour Were purchast by the merrit of the wearer; How many then should couer that stand bare? How many be commanded that command? How much low pleasantry would then be gleaned From the true seede of honor? And how much honor Pickt from the chaffe and ruine of the times, To be new varnisht: Well, but to my choise. Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserues. I will assume desert; giue me a key for this, And ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... to claim his acquaintance, with nods and becks, and wreathed smiles. He had ready compliment for each. And few indeed were there, men or women, for whom Harley L'Estrange had not appropriate attraction. Distinguished reputation as soldier and scholar for the grave; whim and pleasantry for the gay; novelty for the sated; and for the more vulgar natures was he not Lord L'Estrange, unmarried, possessed already of a large independence, and heir to an ancient earldom, and some fifty thousands ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... small volley of French pleasantry; but the effort was obviously a forced one. The pulses of her heart were throbbing with anxiety and fear; and they all began to feel suspense increasing to agony, when at last the whistled tones of ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... during which the harmless inhabitants locked themselves in their houses and clasped their offspring to their bosoms, or gazed terror-stricken from an attic-window upon the classical marauders below, as they indulged in a post-mortem examination of a private dwelling, or the rare pleasantry of roasting a policeman. But dared complain, for public excitement waxed high ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... she said. "I have always, from my childhood, heard this talk that Germany must grow, must get to the sea. I thought it was just talk—a pleasantry!" ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... understood between him and me that you should be taken into partnership if you showed signs of promise. Unquestionably you do. When you have brought the publishing into line with our established departments we will go into the matter and—" he made one of his nearest approaches to pleasantry—"take steps to restore the house of Sabre in some part to its ancient glories ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... a different matter!" said The Chobb, slightly relaxing; "and if the gentleman withdraws it, and replaces the sum correctly, I am the last man in the world to find fault with a harmless pleasantry." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... before a popular audience, and published with very little time for modification. This will be a sufficient apology for the mistakes which may occur, and for whatever may have the appearance of severity, irony, or pleasantry, in the composition. ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... a child, I said; Americans did not mate with children. They smiled as at a pleasantry, and again extolled her charms. Desperately I harked back to the ten commandments in an endeavor to support my refusal by other reasons than distaste or discourtesy, but laughter met my text. "White man does not follow white man's tapus," said my hostess, gently placing my hand in that of ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... that such a figure was not wrought to pleasantry; and that to brave it was no child's play. The dead Arab at my feet was proof of what could be done! So I examined again along the wall; and found here and there chippings as if someone had been tapping with a heavy hammer. ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... of pleasantry, Louis," replied Carrados genially. "But I dare say you are right and perhaps there is still time to atone." In the fewest possible words he outlined the course of his investigations. "And now you know all that is to ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... Joan had lost hers was nothing new; it was rarely the case that both mother and daughter were in an amiable mood together. The former received Agnes with her customary amenities, merely suggesting, with pleasantry of her own kind, that of course 'twould be too heavy a toil for her gracious madamship to carry the water-pails to Horsepool—the spring in West Smithfield which supplied Cow Lane—and that so soon as she could hear tell of a gentlewoman lacking of a service, she would engage her at ten pound by ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... out Don Juan, disgusted with this ill-timed pleasantry, "a proof that there has been a forced entry into the chamber is this broken glass of the window, of which you see some pieces still lying on ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... followed this pleasantry of the king's, then one of the company remarked that not a woman's will, though it might be like steel of the finest temper, nor her muscular power, would serve to change Athelwold's nature or keep him from his friend, but only a ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... legs our friend is speaking, without doubt," said the vicar of St Ewold's, with an attempt at grim pleasantry. ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... I regret that I must tell you of it over a little wire, for it admits of all exemplification. In this high, spacious, elegant apartment, laughter and levee, social pleasantry and refined badinage, had often held their session. Dancing and music had made those mirrors thrill which now reflect a pall, and where the most beautiful women of their day had mingled here with men of brilliant favor, now only a very few, brave enough to look upon death, were ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... inclined to resent this pleasantry, he was too delighted to meet an old friend to say much. And, the truth is, the great city did surprise him. For, even though he had been five years at Brienne school, he was still a country boy, and walked the streets gaping and staring at everything he saw, like ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa
... in which Wyatt received this harmless pleasantry convinced me, at once, that he was mad. At first he stared at me as if he found it impossible to comprehend the witticism of my remark; but as its point seemed slowly to make its way into his brain, his eyes, in the same proportion, seemed protruding ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Grimm's and Andersen's Fairy Tales, much of Defoe and Swift, Goldsmith's Vicar of Wake field, Coleridge's Ancient Mariner (he himself was very fond of that poem), and many other things, and I cannot overestimate the good they did me. His talks to me during our walks gave me, under the guise of pleasantry, not so much specific information concerning things (though that was not wanting), but—character; that is, the questions he put to me, the remarks and comments he made, the stories he told, were all calculated to give me a high idea of human duties and aspirations; to encourage generosity, charity, ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... proper to call them commands, Mr Graham, I conclude you intend to obey them," said Mrs Marshal, with a forced smile and an attempt at pleasantry. ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... up and inquired if they could be of any assistance, but I assured them it was a matter of no consequence—that I had, evidently, been mistaken for another—or it was only a bit of pleasantry from some ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... his own pleasantry. To one of his hearers, at least, it seemed to be passing strange that he was so ready to forget such a vital defect in the steering gear as had manifested its existence a few ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... concerted between this gentleman and Lord Byron that the latter should, on the morning of rehearsal, deliver the verses in a tone as innocent and as free from all point as possible,—reserving his mimicry, in which the whole sting of the pleasantry lay, for the evening of representation. The desired effect was produced;—all the personages of the green-room were satisfied, and even wondered how a suspicion of waggery could have attached itself to so well-bred a production. Their wonder, however, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... the door; then turning back and hesitating, like one who would make an impertinent pleasantry if he dared, he asked what he was to do with the wench Mysie Happer whom the Southron knight had carried off ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... at least the hundredth edition of this amiable pleasantry, but Sidonia found it superb for all that, and thought herself bound to ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... Ornamental. You do not see much of him perhaps; but he is a Presence to be felt, something floating loosely about in wide epicene pantaloons and flying skirts, diffusing as he passes the fragrance of smile and pleasantry and cigarette. The air around him is laden with honeyed murmurs; gracious whispers play about the twitching bewitching corners of his delicious mouth. He calls everything by "soft names in many a mused rhyme." Deficits, Public ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... fortunately filled a hand with which he hoped to pay a part of the war-debt of the South and get a new overcoat in London. Later, however, the United States disavowed this act of Captain Wilkes, and said it was only a bit of pleasantry on his part. ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... and engaged in fixing his gun lock. Hearing a noise in the yard, for which he was unable to account, he slipped to the door, to ascertain from whence it proceeded. The Indians were immediately round it, and there was no chance for his escape. Walking out with an air of the utmost pleasantry, he held forth his hand to the one nearest him, and asked them all to walk in. While in the house he affected great cheerfulness, and by his tale [182] won their confidence and friendship. He told them that he was a King's man and unwilling to live ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... stern soldier-like pleasantry of the old Moorish monarch. He ordered a rich silken vest and a scarlet mantle to be given to the alfaqui, and dismissed him with great courtesy. "Tell His Majesty," said he, "that I kiss his hands for the honor he has done me, and regret that my scanty ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... the street upon a winter's night, is enough to warm all Rochester's heart." The matron receives us politely, and shows us two large books of foolscap size with ruled columns, one of these containing a record of the visitors to the Charity, and the other a list of the recipients thereof. A little pleasantry is caused by one of us entering his name in the wrong book, but this mistake is promptly rectified by the matron, who informs us that we are scarcely objects for relief as "Poor Travellers." She then kindly repeats to us the two legends respecting the origin of the Charity, the ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... pleasantry; I decide nothing," said Madame Merle, but also as in pleasantry. "I believe you've a very good school, but Miss Osmond's friends must remember that she's very ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... against a defenceless sex; it is for them to laugh at the misery of a woman, and a writer of genius, condemned without any form of trial to the most severe punishment short of death. For my part, I saw neither justice nor pleasantry in the exile of Madame de Chevreuse for having had the courage (and courage was not common then even among men) to say that she was not made to be the gaoler of the Queen of Spain. On Napoleon's return ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... Montaigne, with Sir Thomas Browne, with Steele, and with Addison. He unites many of the finest characteristics of these several writers. He has wisdom and wit of the highest order, exquisite humor, a genuine and cordial vein of pleasantry, and the most heart-touching pathos. In the largest acceptation of the word he is a humanist. No one of the great family of authors past or present has shown in matters the most important or the most trivial so delicate and extreme a sense of all that is human. ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... offer of the Hermitage on conditions which left him an entire sentiment of independence of movement and freedom from all sense of pecuniary obligation, he was immediately exposed to a very copious torrent of pleasantry and remonstrance from the highly social circle who met round D'Holbach's dinner-table. They deemed it sheer midsummer madness, or even a sign of secret depravity, to quit their cheerful world for the dismal solitude of woods and fields. "Only the bad man is alone," ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... at the Post Office.—As the Savings' Bank Department has for years been the Cinderella of the Civil Service, this is a subject that will not create much interest; however, you might possibly extract a pleasantry out of the name of the present Postmaster-General in connection with the now-appeased employes. With a little trouble you should be able to say something quite sparkling about what the "officers" hoe ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various
... with songs and epigrams into the bargain. We do not shift our Parliaments with so much gaiety. Money in one hand, and abuse in t'other—those are all the arts we know. Wit and a gamut[1] I don't believe ever signified a Parliament, whatever the glossaries may say; for they never produce pleasantry and harmony. Perhaps you may not taste this Saxon pun, but I know it will make the ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... his pleasantry as he leapt into the saddle. But in a moment his mirth had passed, and his whole expression suddenly hardened as he bent down from ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... a few days! Wait, my friend," cried Tric-Trac, eagerly; "and say!—come back here next Monday! There will be a few of us here—a few friends. And keep your mouth shut tight. Here! Wait. Look here, friend, don't let a little pleasantry stand between comrades. Your fagot-knife against my little flute that sings pa-pa!—that leaves matters ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... whom they wished to wreak their vengeance. A bandit named Teutgaud, notorious in those times for his robberies, assaults, and murders of travellers, had thrown himself headlong into the cause of the commune. The bishop, who knew him, had by way of pleasantry and on account of his evil mien given him the nickname of Isengrin. This was the name which was given in the fables of the day to the wolf, and which corresponded to that of Master Reynard. Teutgaud and his men penetrated into the cellar of the church; they went along tapping ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... dread, rather than hatred, of persons with a large excess of vitality; great feeders, great laughers, great story-tellers, who come sweeping over their company with a huge tidal wave of animal spirits and boisterous merriment. I have pretty good spirits myself, and enjoy a little mild pleasantry, but I am oppressed and extinguished by these great lusty, noisy creatures, and feel as if I were a mute at a funeral when they ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... this, which might have been little more than a good-humored pleasantry, out of the question, there is assuredly no one of all his works on which more of his own early associations have left their image. Of those early associations, as his full-grown tastes were all the progeny, so his genius, in all its happiest efforts, was the "Recording Angel;" and when George ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... that his long letter to his brother philosopher, Hume, shows him to be a frank lunatic. His passion of tears, his suspicion of his friends in the midst of their services, and his incapacity of being set right, all consign him to Monro. Walpole's pleasantry upon him had baseness in its very conception. It was written when the poor man had determined to seek an asylum in England; and is, therefore, justly and generously condemned by D'Alembert. This considered, Hume ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... of the 8th of September, the Russians blew up their magazines, fired the buildings, and evacuated the town. So fell Sebastopol, after a siege of three hundred and forty-five days. It has been considered by the English a bit of very choice pleasantry to allude to our oft-recurring statement, that "the decisive blow had been struck," and that "the backbone of the Rebellion was broken." It may not be impertinent to remind them, that the report, first circulated in France and England in the latter ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... her relatives, whether on the father's or mother's side, and there is a hope of receiving an increase of fortune from them; in case he lived with her in the beginning in habits of agreeable intimacy; and in case she, after she became meretricious, has the skill to soothe the man with engaging pleasantry and pretended civility, to prevent blame being imputed to herself; not to mention other cases, which, as in themselves they are legitimate causes of divorce, are also legitimate causes of concubinage; for the causes of retaining the ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... to pleasantry. Journeying east on one occasion, attended by two of his aids, he asked some young ladies at a hotel where he breakfasted, how they liked the appearance of his young men! One of them promptly replied, 'We cannot judge of the STARS in the presence ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various
... that is a conundrum, pure and simple!" the author protested. "It is a poor parody on the old End-man pleasantry, 'Would you rather be as foolish as you look, or look as foolish as you are?' ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... their understanding. Steps, motions, attitudes, figures, positions, now were substituted to speech; and there resulted from them an expression so natural, images so resembling, a pathos so moving, or a pleasantry so agreeable, that people imagined they heard the actions they saw. The gestures alone supplied the place of the sweetness of the voice, of the energy of speech, and of the ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... nearly lost his life through unwittingly trampling upon the susceptibilities of the people, in the following manner. It appears that the peasantry in the suburbs of Ferrara bore ill-will toward the citizens of that town and called them "asses." This little pleasantry was manifested by the suburbanites in "hee-hawing" at the citizens when fitting opportunity presented itself. Now it happened that Paganini played at a concert, and some of the audience expressed dissatisfaction with the singer, Madame Pallerini, and hissed her. Paganini ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... of the loves of the Heron, who tried in vain to swallow the Cuttlefish bone, which broke into three pieces when he dropped it, was irresistibly ludicrous. Everybody remembers the sensation which the pleasantry made in the Faubourg Saint-Germain; it was the first of a series of similar articles, and was one of the thousand and one causes which provoked the rigorous press legislation of ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac |
