"Wit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... than this. This is only a part, one weapon in the fight. Cresswell is always near Julian; you must be near him. Cresswell pursues Julian; you must pursue him, use your woman's wit, use all your experience of men; use your heart. Wake up and throw yourself into this battle, and make yourself worthy of fighting. Only you can tell how. But this is a fact. Our wills, our powers of doing things, ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... to find that the boy could speak the jargon. He smiled: "Nika nem 'Merican Joe." And having imparted the information, plunged into a rabble of jargon that the boy was at his wit's ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... Doctrine. "The pastors of this congregation shall regulate and determine all their teaching and preaching by the rule of the divine Word, the biblical, prophetical and apostolical writings, and according to our Symbolical Books, to wit:—the unaltered Augsburg Confession, delivered to Charles V., Anno 30, the Apology of the same, the Smalcald Articles, and Formula of Concord, together with both Catechisms of Luther throughout, and shall not teach or preach anything contrary to the same, be it privately or ...
— The Organization of the Congregation in the Early Lutheran Churches in America • Beale M. Schmucker
... Patty were very lively young people, and Hetty, afterwards a copious poet, "was gay and sprightly, full of mirth, good-humour, and keen wit. She indulged this disposition so much that it was said to have given great uneasiness to her parents." The servants, Robin Brown, Betty Massy and Nancy Marshall, were recent comers, but were acquitted by Mrs. Wesley of any share in the mischief. The family, ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... there is not sufficient motive power of passionate thought, no typographical aids will make anything of this sort of verse but metrical nonsense—which it nearly always is—even in Cowley, whose brilliant wit and ingenuity are strangely out of harmony with ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... replied, "but with shrewd, ready wit and certain judgment. I cannot imagine myself in a tighter corner than at the bridge, and your device had the effective simplicity of genius. Your plan here was, to be sure, commonplace, but it, too, required caution and ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... him behind him, led him into the dining-room, where a number of friends surrounded the surintendant, placed in the center, and buried in the cushions of a fauteuil. There were assembled all the Epicureans who so lately at Vaux did the honors of the mansion of wit and money of M. Fouquet. Joyous friends, for the most part faithful, they had not fled their protector at the approach of the storm, and, in spite of the threatening heavens, in spite of the trembling earth, they remained there, smiling, ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... that a group of red men are so at their wit's end as were the Pawnees. They stood looking about them, silent and bewildered. Wimmoroo took a sly glance at the tree tops as though he half expected to see the missing Shawanoe ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... wit which now untied the knot twisted about the young man's throat. The Duchess Giovanna has, by some, been credited with the origination of the tactful expedient, but some say Bianca Buonaventuri was its inspiratrix. ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... a sudden trouble had broken down Miss Margaret Shields. For years she had been living, like Dr. Johnson at college, with a sad and hungry heart, trying to "carry it off by her wild talk and her wit." "It was bitterness they mistook for frolic." She had known herself to be a kind of outcast, and she determined to hold her own with the other girls who had homes and went to them in the holidays. Margaret had not gone home for a year. She had learned much, ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... in such melodious tones of contralto music that the listener found himself wishing with all his might to know if the face of its owner could by any possibility match the loveliness of her voice. Dark, he fancied she must be, and young, and strong—of education, of a gay wit, yet of a temper—all this the listener thought he could read in ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... people of Andernach placed a statue of the two baker boys whose quick wit had saved ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett
... centralized in Napoleon's person, even in his absence at such a distance: the whole gamut of administration was run, from state questions of the gravest importance down to the disposition of trivial affairs connected with the opera and its coryphees. As to reviving the finances, the Emperor was at his wit's end, and in a sort of blind helplessness he ordered the state to lend five hundred thousand francs per month to such manufacturers as would keep at work and deposit their wares in a government storehouse as collateral; nor did he disdain such measures as the founding of one or two ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... and teacher persecuted him so sorely that he was obliged to withdraw. Determining to lose no time in waiting for an education, he at once began the work of preaching. Being possessed of strong natural sense, a ready wit, and being thoroughly imbued with the spirit of frontier life, he was just the man to carry the Gospel home to the hearts of the rude pioneers of the great West. His manner was that of a backwoodsman, and he had no ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... fingers are very supple in the joints and turn backwards or outwards from the palm, it is an indication of a quick wit and clever brain; but such persons lack continuity of purpose. They have no "hold," as it ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... for it was she, possessed more discretion than sense, and more sense than wit; she looked calmly upon her patient as upon a stranger and set about her ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... from memory give a list of the more conspicuous members of the present House of Peers whose names are likely to be known to American readers, to wit: the Dukes of Devonshire and Norfolk; the Marquises of Ripon and Landsdowne; Earls Roberts, Rosebery, Elgin, Northbrook, Crewe, Carrington, Cromer, Kimberley, Minto, Halsbury, Spencer; Viscounts, Wolseley, Goschen, Esher, Kitchener of Khartoum, St. Aldwyn (Hicks-Beach), Milner, Cross; the Archbishop ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... and morbid. He had the inevitable pensiveness and gravity of a person who possessed what a friend of his called "the awful power of insight"; but his mood was always cheerful and equal, and his mind peculiarly healthful, and the airy splendor of his wit and humor was the light of his home. He saw too far to be despondent, though his vivid sympathies and shaping imagination often made him sad in behalf of others. He also perceived morbidness, wherever it existed, instantly, as if by the illumination of his own steady cheer; and he had the plastic ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... things connected with the sea. I do not mean to say, for one moment, that they were right in playing off their jokes on Pigeon. I have an especial dislike to practical jokes; and those I have generally seen carried out have been decidedly wrong, and very senseless and stupid, without a particle of wit. ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... a very different person, yet of a type no less profitable to this mixed life of ours. Mrs. Mulholland was the widow of a former scientific professor, of great fame in Oxford for his wit and Liberalism. Whenever there was a contest on between science and clericalism in the good old fighting days, Mulholland's ample figure might have been seen swaying along the road from the Parks to Convocation, his short-sighted eyes blinking ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... conducts us to this palpable truth, that a power to lay and collect taxes must be a power to pass all laws NECESSARY and PROPER for the execution of that power; and what does the unfortunate and culumniated provision in question do more than declare the same truth, to wit, that the national legislature, to whom the power of laying and collecting taxes had been previously given, might, in the execution of that power, pass all laws NECESSARY and PROPER to carry it into ...
— The Federalist Papers
... seeing that death is inevitable, asks for time and begs of the cook whether it was possible to make a will. This granted, he calls out with a loud voice to his parents to save for them the food that was to have been his own in the future, to wit: ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... a cry of joy, then with quick wit, while the two men engaged in a terrific struggle, he darted in search of the lantern, found it, fortunately unbroken, and in a trice was again ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... it been had her spear reached thine heart, The heart that sighs for woman-creatures still! Thou carest not, unmanly-souled, not thou, For valour's glorious path, when once thine eye Lights on a woman! Sorry wretch, where now Is all thy goodly prowess? where thy wit? And where the might that should beseem a king All-stainless? Dost not know what misery This self-same woman-madness wrought for Troy? Nothing there is to men more ruinous Than lust for woman's beauty; ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... your Majesty," he said, "I would humbly crave leave to remove the prisoner from a presence she hath nor wit nor will to reverence. Judicial inquiry, in form appointed, may better determine than my poor judgment whether ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... between his hands. Then he questioned them of their case and their country and the cause of their coming to that stead and they notified to him their native land and their Sovran and the reason of their wandering; to wit, their headlong pursuit of the stallion which had lasted for a term of ten days. Now when the Sultan understood their words and knew and was certified concerning their King and their country, he robed them with honourable robes[FN547] and said to ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... with sudden alacrity; for she had recovered her ready wit, and was prepared to write anything, being now fully resolved the letter should ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... burnished blade and cheeks like purple wine or anemones blood-red: her lips as coral and carnelian shine and the water of her mouth is sweeter than old wine; its taste would quench Hell's fiery pain. Her tongue is moved by wit of high degree and ready repartee: her breast is a seduction to all that see it (glory be to Him who fashioned it and finished it!); and joined thereto are two upper arms smooth and rounded; even as saith of her ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... which you will never reach more nearly than the man who watches a change in the skies or a sunset across the ocean! To you, with boundless wealth, there will be depths of happiness which you will never probe, joys which, if you have the wit to see them at all, will be no more than a ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Buildings. But Oliver, it may be feared, believed in his heart that she went because he was going. And he resolved to bestow his society on her rather than on Ethel and Mrs. Romaine on Sunday. It was decidedly more amusing to waken that still sweet face to animation than to engage in a war of wit with Ethel. ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... between her teeth. "Old man Bailey wouldn't trust me, but Toby wasn't so perticular. He hid this here stockin' under a log, an' bein' afeared that the hogs might come along an' root it up an' carry it away, I jest thought I'd take keer on it for him," added Bud, laughing loudly at his own wit. ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... chap called Biddulph, in the Artillery; they called him Biddy for short, and partly, too, because he kept a racing stable with me in those days, I being called Paddy by every one, because I was Irish—English idea of wit—Paddy and Biddy, you see. ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... was, like La Fayette, a man of rank in his own country, and his personal service to the Revolution was much greater than that of La Fayette. Steuben had served on the staff of Frederick the Great and was distinguished for his wit and his polished manners. There was in him nothing of the needy adventurer. The sale of Hessian and other troops to the British by greedy German princes was met in some circles in Germany by a keen desire to aid the cause of the young republic. Steuben, who held a lucrative post, became convinced, ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... go to him of my own accord designing to acquaint him with the means of deliverance, he will assuredly give orders to slay me, even as he slew those his Wazirs, and my courtesy to him will be the cause of my destruction. Wherefore the folk will think slightly of me and belittle my wit and I shall be of those of whom it is said, 'He whose science excelleth his sense perisheth by his ignorance.'" When the King heard the boy's words, he was assured of his sagacity, and the excellence of his merit was manifest and he was certified that deliverance would ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... character, Lord North was irreproachable; as a debater, he displayed some valuable qualities—patience and endurance, facility of resources on occasions of emergency, great calmness and courage, and a playful wit, which never startled by its brilliancy, but seldom failed of its point. He betrayed no ostentation or vainglory in his position; never offended by any undue exhibition of the powers he wielded; and restricted himself severely to the discharge of his duties as an ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... small wit that contrived this trap. They thought to get my message and seem to deliver it straight, yet deftly twist it from its purpose. You know that one part of my message is but this—to move the Dauphin by argument and reasonings to give me ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... the same I lover her; and I must go on loving her; and if I can humble her inordinate vanity I will. I'll do a Melancolia that shall be something like a Melancolia—"the Melancolia that transcends all wit." I'll do it at ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... has all the charm and surprise of his famous 'Simple Septimus.' It is a novel full of wit and action and life. The characters are all out-of-the-ordinary and splendidly depicted; and the end is an artistic triumph—a fitting climax for a story that's full of charm ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... think I can spare him," Asmund said, "because of the work and the provisioning. Grettir will not do anything. But he has quite wit enough to carry out the duties at the Thing on my behalf ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... 19th, and the fourth Saturday 26th. It is easy to know on what day of the week any day in January falls. Suppose you ask on what week day the 25th of January falls? You know the 26th is Saturday, and hence the 25th must be the day preceding the 26th, to wit, Friday, the 25th. Suppose you ask on what week day the 9th of January falls. You know the 12th is Saturday (the second Saturday). You now count backward thus: 12 is Saturday, 11 must be Friday, ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... noiselessly into the night on deck, fling it unseen overboard. A minute or less. And then all that would have happened would have been the wonder at the utter disappearance of a glass tumbler, a ridiculous riddle in pantry-affairs beyond the wit of anyone on board to solve. The grain of sand against which Powell stumbled in his headlong career was a moment of incredulity as to the truth of his own conviction because it had failed to affect the safe aspect of familiar things. ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... chaungde, and men are growne to more wit, and their minds to aspire after more honourable thoughts: they were dunces in diebus illis, they had not the true use of gentility, and therefore they lived meanely and died obscurely: but now mennes capacities are refined. Time hath set a new edge on gentlemen's humours and they show them as ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... an' she, to hide Her laughen, turn'd her head azide, An' answer'd that she'd rather not, But Nancy mid. An' Nan, so hot As vier, zaid 'twer quite enough Vor Poll to answer vor herzuf: She had a tongue, she zaid, an' wit Enough to use en, when 'twer fit. An' in the dusk, a-riden round Drough Okford, who d'ye think we vound But Sam ageaen, a-gwaein vrom feaeir Astride his broken-winded meaere. An' zoo, a-hetten her, he tried To keep up clwose by ouer zide: But when we come to Hayward-brudge, Our Poll ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... is hurriedly pulling his gas helmet over his head, while Lieutenant Waddell beats a frenzied tocsin upon the instrument provided for the purpose—to wit, an empty eighteen-pounder shell, which, suspended from a bayonet stuck into the parados (or back wall) of the trench, makes a most efficient alarm-gong. The sound is repeated all along the trench, and in ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... ailing member's hand at cards when their orgies convened at the Squire's. John Jennings, being somewhat afflicted with rheumatic gout, was occasionally missing. Then did Abigail Merritt take his place, and play with the sober concentration of a man and the quick wit of a woman. Colonel Jack Lamson, whose partner she was, privately preferred her to John Jennings, whose overtaxed mental powers sometimes failed him in the memory of the cards; but being as intensely loyal to his friends as to his country, he never spoke to that effect. He only, ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... brief, then, my boy, for brevity is the soul of wit—although I am not trying to be witty now; I am simply too worn ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd
... may perish you on the mountain-side, without a priest, bishop, or clerk. Seven years may you be senseless and without wit, going from door to door as an ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... get it! How to get away with it! On what we'd get for that diamond, Tom and I—when his time is up—could live for all our lives and whoop it up besides. We could live in Paris, where great grafters live and grafting pays—where, if you've got wit and fifty thousand dollars, and happen to be a "darn sight prettier," you can just spin the ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... introduces the words: "All bishops of the holy and apostolic Church, and the most reverend archimandrites of the sacred monasteries, following your Holiness, and maintaining that state and unity of God's holy churches which they have from the Apostolic See of your Holiness, changing no wit of that ecclesiastical state which has held and holds now, confess with one consent," &c. And he concludes with the words: "All bishops, therefore, following the doctrine of your Apostolic See, so believe, confess, and preach: for which we have hastened to bring this to the knowledge of ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... honest ship-master, in making his comments on, and in giving his opinion of the handy-work of his own consort. He made Bridget blush more than once, though her enduring tenderness in behalf of Mark induced her to sit out all the captain's wit, rather than shorten a ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... ill-digested notions which he has picked up in his recent studies. Be assured that extensive and accurate knowledge is the slow acquisition of a studious lifetime; that a young man, however pregnant his wit, and prompt his talent, can have mastered but the rudiments of learning, and, in a manner, attained the implements of study. Whatever may have been your past assiduity, you must be sensible that as ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... attachments, and they are still scrupulously exact to their words, and respectful to their kindred; they have been universally celebrated for their quickness of apprehension and penetration, and the vivacity of their wit. Their language is certainly one of the most ancient in the world; but it has many dialects. The Arabs, however, have their vices and defects. They are naturally addicted to war; and so vindictive as scarcely ever to ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction - Vol. X, No. 289., Saturday, December 22, 1827 • Various
... sportsman who once fired off 1,300 cartridges in a day (can this be true?), a splendid festive churchman, who bewitched Vienna, and even the Emperor and Count Kaunitz, by his lavish entertainments, Rohan made himself positively loathed—for his corrupting luxury and his wicked wit—by the austere Empress. She procured Rohan's recall, and so worked on her daughter, Marie Antoinette, the young Queen of France, that the prelate, though Grand Almoner, was socially boycotted by the Court, his letters of piteous appeal to the Queen were not even opened, and ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... him that all this refined simplicity and nobility and wit and personal dignity might possibly be no more than an exquisite artistic polish. The majority of the guests—who were somewhat empty-headed, after all, in spite of their aristocratic bearing—never guessed, ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Irma's wit," he said, in his heart, as he sent the veiled words which would bring her to that quiet hotel on Staten Island, where, among Richmond's leafy bowers, they now defied all possible detection. It had been her own plan. The long weeks ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... to extinguish these flames which had roared so loudly all over the house. They at length prevailed; or, to carry the metaphor one step farther, the fire, having consumed all the fuel which the language affords, to wit, every reproachful term in it, at last went out of its ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... the regency of Anne of Austria. There was a spirit of romance and grace about it, somewhat cumbrous and stately, but outwardly pure and refined, and quite a step out of the gross and open vice of the former reigns. The Duchess de Rambouillet, a lady of great grace and wit, made her house the centre of a brilliant society, which set itself to raise and refine the manners, literature, and language of the time. No word that was considered vulgar or coarse was allowed to pass muster; and though in process of time this censorship ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge
... such a foe must be equipped with other armor and weapons than those furnished by human wit and understanding, by human powers or ability. Your defense is nothing else, says Peter, than faith, which holds and grasps God's Word. And because the believer holds fast to this, the devil can gain ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... between infancy and manhood? and that too, even in so simple a thing as learning the properties of objects? Is it not obvious, on the contrary, that one method must be pursued throughout? And is not Nature perpetually thrusting this method upon us, if we had but the wit to see it, and the humility to adopt it? What can be more manifest than the desire of children for intellectual sympathy? Mark how the infant sitting on your knee thrusts into your face the toy it holds, that you too may look at it. See when it ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... positive vulgarity in the style in which its pleasure-grounds are laid out, Clyffe, near Berwick-on-Tweed, has yet one delightful feature of its own,—to wit, a private bay to which access is obtained by a tunnel seventy or eighty yards long, cut through the soft formation of the cliff from the sloping gardens above. The result is that, if you are a visitor at Clyffe, ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... expresses himself: 'I thank you for the very great entertainment your Life of Johnson gives me. It is a most valuable work. Yours is a new species of biography. Happy for Johnson, that he had so able a recorder of his wit ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... reflection. When the understanding is once stored with these simple ideas, it has the power to repeat, compare, and unite them, even to an almost infinite variety, and so can make at pleasure new complex ideas. But it is not in the power of the most exalted wit, or enlarged understanding, by any quickness or variety of thought, to INVENT or FRAME one new simple idea in the mind, not taken in by the ways before mentioned: nor can any force of the understanding DESTROY those that are there. The dominion of man, in this little world ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... into conversation, the gentleman of the cigarette and I. He was an Englishman from a London newspaper. He was counting on his luck to get him into Calais and his wit to get him out. He told me his name. Just before I left France I heard of a highly philanthropic and talented gentleman of the same name who was unselfishly going through the hospitals as near the front as he could, giving a moving-picture ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the quantity of animal spirits, by the fumes which it sends to the brain, it is easy to comprehend that it cannot but be of great advantage to dull and heavy wits; so that one may particularly apply to them the common proverb, "Wine sets an edge to wit[1]." And the emblem of Adr. Junius, in which he represents Bacchus as a youth with wings on, and with this inscription, "Wine kindles wit[2]," agrees admirably well with these people. But the application of both proverb and emblem is ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... female slaves held the rudder and the ropes. The perfumes burnt upon the vessel filled the banks of the river with their fragrance. The inhabitants cried that Venus had come to revel with Bacchus. Antony accepted her invitation to sup on board her galley, and was completely subjugated. Her wit and vivacity surpassed even her beauty. He followed her to Alexandria, where he forgot every thing in luxurious dalliance and ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... hearing than I brought; but yet, not half enough for common wants. One wants ready pocket-money much oftener than one wants great sums; and to use a very odd expression, I want to hear at sight. I love every-day senses, every-day wit and entertainment; a man who is only good on holydays is good ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... a work on war, entitled "Pallas Armata." The following are some of the shorter pieces: "Magick," "Friendship," "Imprisonment," "Anger," "Revenge," "Duells," "Cruelty," "A Defence of some of the Ceremonies of the English Liturgie—to wit—Bowing at the Name of Jesus, The frequent repetition of the Lord's Prayer and Good Lord deliver us, Of the Doxologie, Of Surplesses, Rotchets, Cannonicall Coats," etc. From what we know of his character ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a talkative man, and, like many such, he dearly loved to be amused and entertained by others who were in any degree attractive to him. The picture of these two dear women adding their wit and charm and dainty way of living to his days grew suddenly very vivid to him; he realized that it was an unconscious counting on their continued interest and hospitality that had made the future so comfortable for ...
— The Courting Of Lady Jane • Josephine Daskam
... sagacity. Such impetuous birds living in large communities, and thus compounding a savour calculated to attract arboreal snakes, would in the course of nature take precautions. The nests in position and design represent the crystallisation of the wit of the bird in antagonism to the wile of ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... a biting jest!" said Prince John. "How like you it, sirs?—Our Saxon subjects rise in spirit and courage; become shrewd in wit, and bold in bearing, in these unsettled times—What say ye, my lords?—By this good light, I hold it best to take our galleys, and return to Normandy ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... half a block. Little yaller house wit' green blinds and ornings. Yer could n't miss it. Yer party left dere ten ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... "And yit is not this the end and chief point of thair malice; for thai, as children of thair father, wha is the autour of all lies, incontinent did spread a most schamfull and horribill sclander, to wit, that thai convenit upon the nycht for no uthir cause but to satisfie the filthie lustis of the flesche." Knox, ubi supra, p. 300. For an unfriendly account of the pretended orgies, see Claude Haton ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... is just the peculiar place where a man of social refinement, of elegant wit, of polite perceptions, can bring his wit, his eloquence, his taste, and his experience of life, most delightfully into play. It is not like the bar, where the better and higher qualities of a man of fashion find no room for exercise. In defending John Jorrocks ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... teaching flows a corollary of great practical importance, to wit: The grace of final perseverance cannot be merited by good works, but it can be obtained by pious and ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... critic not quite ingenuously, is the line to be drawn between local and Imperial affairs? Problems far more perplexed than this have been solved by the wit of man. The line was drawn by O'Connell and Butt, by Parnell and Gladstone. It can be drawn to meet the circumstances of to-day by men of goodwill, after discussion and mutual adjustment. But why not postpone the case of Ireland until a scheme of Home Rule all round either for the United Kingdom ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... travelled many miles to perform the wedding service. Merry were his laugh and jest and wit and playful badinage, for the early Methodist preachers were no stern ascetics or grim anchorites. Like their Master, who graced the marriage feast of Cana of Galilee with His presence, they could rejoice with those that ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... to bed. 'Well,' says I, 'are you thus easy?' 'Ay,' says she, 'I can't help myself; what signifies being sad? If I am hanged, there's an end of me,' says she; and away she turns dancing, and sings as she goes the following piece of Newgate wit —— ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... intervals of leisure, in a little knot of relations and friends, he delighted in quiet conversation, through which occasionally ran an undercurrent of pleasantry, not unmixed with caustic wit. At his table he was the least heard among the company, and so far from being the hero of his own tale, I never heard him voluntarily refer to any of the great actions of ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... well; and at last he left off farming, and gave himself to them altogether. Many a jolly booze he and I have had, I can tell you. Brian was an awful passionate man, and, when the liquor was in, and the wit was out, as savage and as quarrelsome as a bear. At such times there was no one but Ned Layton dared go near him. We once had a pitched battle, in which I was conqueror; and ever arter he yielded a sort of sulky obedience to ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... gamboled on the broad marble steps, or seated on soft cushions at their parents' feet, listened to the sparkling wit, repartee and agreeable rattle that broke forth among the gay loungers on the terrace. Occasionally the eyes of the whole party would rest with admiration and pride on the scene enacting before them, and well they might, for on the smooth, soft, velvet-like sward of the croquet ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... awakened within me a slumbering train of vital thought. It was a new and special revelation, dispelling a painful mystery, against which my youthful understanding had struggled, and struggled in vain, to wit: the white man's power to perpetuate the enslavement of the black man. "Very well," thought I; "knowledge unfits a child to be a slave." I instinctively assented to the proposition; and from that moment I understood the direct pathway from slavery to freedom. This was just ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... street, and the street would be jammed full of people at the hour I was going. Of course there were a good many chances of failure, chiefly so because all the police from top to bottom knew me by sight, and if one of them happened to be one of the half hundred witnesses of my jump he might have wit ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... sensations or IDEAS that seem to be the constant and general occasions of introducing into the mind the different IDEAS of near distance. It is true in most cases that divers other circumstances contribute to frame our IDEA of distance, to wit, the particular number, size, kind, etc., of the things seen. Concerning which, as well as all other the forementioned occasions which suggest distance, I shall only observe they have none of them, in their own nature, any relation or connection with it: nor is it possible ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley
... she could not analyze them; but what they amounted to was that, though it was an unpleasant thing to be bullied by a dyspeptic father, the world manifestly held worse tribulations, which her father's other outstanding quality, besides dyspepsia—wealth, to wit—enabled her to avoid. ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... this sally. The Maggid's wit was relished even when not coming from the pulpit. To the outsider this disparagement of the Dutch nose might have seemed a case of pot calling kettle black. The Maggid poured himself out a glass of rum, under cover of the laughter, and murmuring "Life to you." in Hebrew, gulped ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... and ride to the nearest seaport. The duke is a brave man, and his army is a brave army; but both will be instantly covered with all the obloquy of all the libelers on earth. If you have met him as man with man, you have doubtless been captivated with his manners, his wit, his animation, and his accomplishments. I have known him long and well. But Europe, within a month, will decry him, as a fugitive, a fool, and a dastard. Such is popular wisdom, justice, and knowledge. A pupil of the first warrior of Prussia ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... and braided thereupon All the devices blazoned on the shield, In their own tinct, and added, of her wit, A border fantasy of branch ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... even the damned must at times become aware of what they are, and then surely a terrible though momentary hush must fall upon the forsaken region. Yet those drinking companions would have missed George Galbraith, silent as he was, and but poorly responsive to the wit and humour of the rest; for he was always courteous, always ready to share what he had, never looking beyond the present tumbler—altogether a genial, kindly, honest nature. Sometimes, when two or three of ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... Houston for a week or ten days, stating on his return that he had been to New York, after which there was invariably some new move to get the prisoner away. Time and space prevent giving a detailed account of all the marches and counter-marches that took place in this battle of wit against wit. ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... certain youth, named Fiechus, a scholar of Dubhtachus the bard, and he was docile of disposition, subtle of wit, florid of eloquence, and beauteous of form. And a few years before he espoused a damsel who then had lately deceased, of whom was born unto him one only son. Him walking with his aforementioned tutor did the saint meet, and, the Spirit revealing it unto him, at the moment, even with the ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... courtesan's; a very slight beard on his chin, and a weak growth of hair on his upper lip; with a look half brazen, half shamefaced; with eyes half wistful, half malicious; his pear-shaped face expressing some love of the beautiful, some wit, some cynicism, much personal vanity, vicious inclinations and practices, restlessness, the torture of secret self-reproach, a vague distress, a longing to escape ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... abbey there was a certain lay-brother, dull and slow of wit, with a hindrance in his speech; and one of the monks despised him and scoffed at his defect of nature. This lay-brother had the care of the garden of pot-herbs and fruit-trees, and as he was toiling there one day the Abbot called the uncharitable monk to him, and said: "Come, let us see ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... firstlings of Shakspere's art and of Moliere's; and observe how they reveal these prentice playwrights at work, each seeking to display his cleverness and each satisfied when he had done this. In 'Love's Labor's Lost,' Shakspere is trying to amuse by inventive wit and youthful gaiety and ingenuity of device, just as Moliere in the 'Etourdi' is enjoying his own complicating of comic imbroglios, not yet having anything of importance to say on the stage, but practising against the time when he should want to say something. Neither in the English ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... spoke in German it was without the harsh sputtering and growling, the slovenly slurring and clipping to which she had been accustomed. She could answer only with monosyllables or appreciative looks, though usually she was a great talker and, as she had much common sense and not a little wit, a good talker. But her awe of him, which increased when she learned that he was on the stage, did not prevent her from getting the two main impressions he wished to make upon her—that Mr. Feuerstein was a very grand person indeed, and that he was condescending ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... made a substitute for wit. 2. Alfred was a brave, pious, and patriotic prince. 3. The throne of Philip trembles while Demosthenes speaks. 4. That the whole is equal to the sum of its parts is an axiom. 5. The lion belongs to the cat tribe, but he cannot climb a tree. 6. Pride is a flower that grows ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... to hear all that 'the gentleman' said about 'weled and bint' (boy and girl), and was quite delighted to hear of Maurice's good report at school, he thinks that the 'Abou el welad' (father of the children—you, to wit) will send a sheep to the 'fikee' who teaches him. I have learned a new code of propriety altogether—cela a du bon et du mauvais, like ours. When I said 'my husband' Omar blushed and gently corrected me; when my donkey fell in the streets he cried ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... six-pen'orth, your shillings worth, your five shillings worth at a time, or higher, so you rise to the just rates, and welcome. But, whatever you do, Buy. Censure will not drive a Trade, or make the Jacke go. And though you be a Magistrate of wit, and sit on the Stage at Black-Friers, or the Cock-pit, to arraigne Playes dailie, know, these Playes have had their triall alreadie, and stood out all Appeales ; and do now come forth quitted rather by a Decree of Court, then any ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... been of great use to the world, and his "Evidences of the Christian Religion" not the least so. Dr. Johnson, in delineating his character as a writer, gives the following amiable picture of him:—"He employed wit on the side of virtue and religion. He not only made the proper use of wit himself, but taught it to others; and, from his time, it has been generally subservient to the cause of reason and truth. He has dissipated the prejudice that ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... and extravagances, and Vossius assures us that even after the death of Marco Polo he continued to be a subject of ridicule among the light and unthinking, insomuch that he was frequently personated at masquerades by some wit or droll, who, in his feigned character, related all kinds of extravagant fables and adventures. His work, however, excited great attention among thinking men, containing evidently a fund of information concerning vast and splendid countries, before unknown to the European world. Vossius ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... burning, and destroying all. Kenneth's friends sent John Mackenzie of Tollie to inform him of these wrongs, whereupon he made a speedy return to an affair so urgent, and so suitable to his genius, for as he never offered wrong so he never suffered any. His heat did not overwhelm his wit, for he took a legal procedure, obtained a commission of fire and sword against Glengarry and his complices, which he prosecuted so bravely as in a short time by himself and his brother he soon forced them to retreat from his lands, ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... of bucolic wit and hearty taste, Tristram's face went stern as death; and he bit his lips, while his bride became the color of the red roses on the table in ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... through Liege without presenting his compliments to the lovely and unfortunate marquise. Desgrais had just the manner of the younger son of a great house: he was as flattering as a courtier, as enterprising as a musketeer. In this first visit he made himself attractive by his wit and his audacity, so much so that more easily than he had dared to hope, he got leave to pay a second call. The second visit was not long delayed: Desgrais presented himself the very next day. Such eagerness was flattering ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... 'the great War Governor' of Massachusetts, Dr. Howe, the philanthropist, William Hunt, the painter, with others not unworthy of such company." We may complete the list and add the name of Holmes himself, to whose presence the club owed so much of its wit and wisdom. In such company the guests were tempted to linger long, and if Holmes has described the circle around the table, Lowell has celebrated the late walk at night across the bridge as he and Agassiz returned ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... years, the one mourned the loss of her husband, while the other grew in strength and muscle. The earlier developments of the boy were characteristic, and typical of those in later life. He was very quick, magnetic in his temperament, and full to the brim with wit and humor. Beyond his uncle's farm ran the far-famed Otter Creek, whose waters, in my boyhood, were forbidden me, as inevitably leading the incautious bather to "a life of misery and a premature death." There it was, however, that Stephen earned his earliest triumphs. It is a long pull across ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... from the pseudonymous nymphs of Cetina and Francisco de la Torre: the elegant Amaryllis of the one, the elusive Filis of the other, though destined to be re-incarnated by a tribe of later poets, find no place in these stately numbers. Luis de Leon does not emulate Alcazar's epigrammatic wit, nor Herrera's Petrarchan sweetness, nor Ercilla's tumultuous rhetoric. He has an individuality all his own, the moral purpose of the man is wedded to the poet's art in such wise that he strikes a note ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... me to design some characters which should appear ridiculous not so much through a natural folly (which is incorrigible, and therefore not proper for the stage) as through an affected wit: a wit which, at the same time that it is affected, is also false. As there is some difficulty in the formation of a character of this nature, so there is some hazard which attends the progress of its success upon the stage: for ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... Crow smelleth powder, 'tis said, Like a soldier escheweth the taste of cold lead; No jester, or mime, hath more marvellous wit, For, wherever he lighteth, he maketh a hit! Caw! Caw! the Carrion Crow! Dig! Dig! ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... whose son he was, and, although he was hardly awake and did not understand where he was or how he came there, he began to devour. Then, when his hunger was appeased, being intensely excited as children generally are when their regular habits are interrupted, he exhibited more quick wit, more curiosity, and more shrewdness than usual. He made them tell him where he was, and when he learned that he was in the middle of a forest, ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... the gorge now and moving with an extreme caution abated no wit by her confidence, for wariness is an instinctive trait of the primitive, something which cannot be laid aside even momentarily if one would survive. And so she came to the trail that follows the windings of Kor-ul-lul from its uppermost reaches ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Coniah in xxxvii. 1, while, which is well to be observed, we have in the historical account, chap. lii. 31, Jehoiachin) in a context, such as that under consideration; especially when this phenomenon occurs in a prophet such as Jeremiah, in whom, elsewhere also, many traces of holy wit, and even punning, can be pointed out.—With reference to the calamity which more and more threatened Judah, pious Josiah had given to his sons names, which announced salvation. According to his wish, these names should be as many actual prophecies, and would, indeed, have ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... raised a great army to victual Landresy. Against him the Emperor had no fewer men, but many more, to wit, eighteen thousand Germans, ten thousand Spaniards, six thousand Walloons, ten thousand English, and from thirteen to fourteen thousand horse. I saw the two armies near each other, within cannon-shot; and we thought they could not withdraw without giving battle. There were some foolish ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... a wit," said I, "but you speak like a dunce. We cannot make trees bow at our pleasure; but we can make a tree, which by nature bears sour and uneatable fruit, produce what is sweet and wholesome. This is effected by grafting into a wild tree a small ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... he was practising on people, fully as much as the profits which the practical embodiment of his humor brought to his pocket. My father was a deacon, a man of true piety and eminently respectable. He was engaged in the retail-grocery business,—a business which offers opportunities to a person of wit and of an inventive turn of mind. The butter that he sold was salted invariably by one rule—a rule which he discovered and applied in the cellar of the store himself; and the sugar which he sold, if it was sanded, was always sanded by a method ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... more gratitude than is shown by the class which is maintained in luxury, parents and children alike, by the collective industry of the workers. By dint of organisation they may be able very soon to exact payment of a more substantial sum—State maintenance, to wit."[837] ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... exclaimed, "to hope That the broad ocean in that hole should lie!" "O foolish saint!" exclaimed the boy; "thy scope Is still more hopeless than the toil I ply, Who think'st to comprehend God's nature high In the small compass of thine human wit! Sooner, Augustine, sooner far, shall I Confine the ocean in this tiny pit, Than finite minds ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... determine the value of the true laughter of all men—the English laugh being the purest and truest in the metal that can be minted. And indeed only Heaven can know what the country owes to it, on the lips of such men as Sydney Smith and Thomas Hood. For indeed the true wit of all countries, but especially English wit (because the openest), must always be essentially on the side of truth—for the nature of wit is one with truth. Sentiment may be false—reasoning false—reverence ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... supply all schools with teachers; and thus did they acquire unprecedented dominion over every species of literature, over the minds of all ranks of people, and the education of the youth, without giving any alarm to the world. The lovers of wit and polite literature were caught by Voltaire; the men of science were perverted, and children corrupted in the first rudiments of learning, by D'Alembert and Diderot; stronger appetites were fed by the secret club ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... us could! What would happen if everything depended on me? You remind me, and keep me up to the mark, and help me out of scrapes. I should be at my wit's end without you. Mother consults you about everything, and the girls obey you, and the boys pay more attention to you than they do to anyone ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... maid lament her beauty! Thou hast shown, A thousand times, a wit beyond mine own; Yet is it kind to such a love as mine, To grudge it refuge in ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... their reflections one of the waitresses came to the table at which the two friends sat: Lauriston quicker of wit than Purdie in such matters immediately ordered coffee and sandwiches and until they came, lighted a cigarette and pretended to be at ease, though he was ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... persuaded to forget for a moment, and be drawn from his business cares, you will find him a pleasant entertainer, both in music and conversation, for beneath his seeming austere countenance there lies an urbane streak of humor, piquant with wit and pleasant cynicisms, ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... it appeared, the purveyors of amusement for the reading public were thus furnished with occupation, and some small pecuniary gain, while it exercised the wit of certain anti-Jacobin writers of the day, and raised them into notice. Canning had the faculty of satire to an extraordinary degree, and also that common sense tact, which made his services at times so very useful to his country; his powers seemed in their full ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... strangers will remark on the hopeless, impenetrable stupidity in the daylight faces of many of these very men, the solid mask under which Nature has concealed all this wealth of mother-wit. This very comedian is one to whom one might point, as he hoed lazily in a cotton-field, as a being the light of whose brain had utterly gone out; and this scene seems like coming by night upon some conclave of black beetles, and finding them engaged, with green-room ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... of women's rights confined themselves to the exhibition of short petticoats and long-legged boots, and to the holding of Conventions, and speech-making in concert-rooms, the people were disposed to be amused by them, as they are by the wit of the clown in the circus, or the performances of Punch and Judy on fair days, or the minstrelsy of gentlemen with blackened faces, on banjos, the tambourine, and bones. But the joke is becoming stale. People are getting cloyed with ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage |
