"Amusingly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... supped with Sheridan. He was by nature a spendthrift: you saw it in the roll of his walk. Men who make money rarely saunter; men who save money rarely swagger. But saunter and swagger both united to stamp PRODIGAL on the Bond Street Lounger. And so familiar as he was with his own set, and so amusingly supercilious with the vulgar residue of mortals whose faces were strange to Bond Street! But he is gone. The world, though sadder for his loss, still strives to do its best without him; and our young men, nowadays, attend to model cottages, and incline to Tractarianism. ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... How amusingly Sancho is made to clear up the obscurities thus alluded to by the Bachelor Carrasco—no reader can have forgotten; but there remained enough of similar lacunas, inadvertencies, and mistakes, to exercise ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... particular hare he is coursing. Part of the interest, after the description of the printing office and of old Sechard's swindling of his son, is a doubling, it is true, upon that of La muse du Departement, and is perhaps a little less amusingly done; but it is blended with better matters. Sixte du Chatelet is a considerable addition to Balzac's gallery of the aristocracy in transition—of the Bonaparte parvenus whom perhaps he understood even ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... care to have more light, a more equal distribution of heat, and a more general care for protection and comfort, because these things tend to health and long life. But no beauty. He described to me amusingly the disgust he had experienced in a costly New York dwelling, where he saw carpets nailed down on the floor, "of course with piles of dust beneath, never swept away, and of which I had to breathe;" and with heavy picture-frames hung against the walls, also the receptacles of dust. ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... those men who, like women, can set up the sympathetic flow and make a fellow give himself away without realising what he is doing. So there sat our friend Aaron, amusingly unbosoming himself of all his history and experiences, drawn out by the arch, subtle attentiveness of the handsome Francis. Angus listened, too, with pleased amusedness on his pale, emaciated face, ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... very famous, if not perhaps very felicitous, nickname-classification of "Barbarian-Philistine-Populace" is launched, defended, discussed in a chapter to itself. To do Mr Arnold justice, the three classes are, if not very philosophically defined, very impartially and amusingly rallied, the rallier taking up that part of humble Philistine conscious of his own weaknesses, which, till he made it slightly tiresome by too long a run, was piquant enough. The fourth chapter, "Hebraism and Hellenism," coasts the sands and rocks (on which, as it seems ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... beliefs, simply for the sake of provoking discussion. So earnestly and logically (for he was a good dialectician) would he carry on the discussion that it was difficult to believe that he did not really hold the opinions for which he so pertinaciously contended. Sometimes this habit of mind reacted very amusingly upon himself, as the following will show. The subject fixed one Friday evening for debate in the discussion class was, "Have animals souls?" Though fully accepting the common belief that they have not, Gilmour, purely for the sake of argument, took the ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... day are, indeed, many, but not exactly illuminative. From such writers as Frith, Montague Williams or the Bancrofts, you may gain but little peculiar knowledge. That quaint old chronicler, Lucy, dilates amusingly enough upon the frown of Sir Richard (afterwards Lord) Cross or the tea-rose in the Prime Minister's button-hole. But what can he tell us of the negotiations that led Gladstone back to public life or of the secret ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... did not possess. Though far from devoid of worldly wisdom, and indeed possessed of not a little shrewdness in his dealings with his buyers (often exhibiting that rarest quality of the successful trader, the art of linking one transaction with another), he was sometimes amusingly deficient in what is known as common sense. In later life he used to tell with infinite zest a story of a blunder of earlier years which might easily have led to serious if not fatal results. He had been ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... well, in that case, the king will be humiliated before the whole court; and what a delightful story it will be, too, for him to whom I am really attached, a part of my dowry for my husband, to have the adventure to relate of the king who was so amusingly ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... Kinglake has an amusingly cynical passage on the impossibility of approaching the sacred shrines of the Holy Land in a fittingly reverential mood. Exactly the same difficulty is experienced in approaching the sacred shrines of ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... Europe, but the bogus labels, which described those poisons as "specially adapted for invalids and bottled in Glasgow, Scotland," or even offered 25,000 francs to any who could prove that so-called Greek "Koniak" was not "the pure juice of the grape," were amusingly Levantine. British justice is sweeping away these pitfalls for ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... you!" Miss Blair smiled, frankly pleased. "Not that I'm a bit of an Anglo-maniac," she hastened to affirm, "but, do you know," she leaned toward Danvers in an amusingly confidential way, "I've always felt mortified over my throaty voice—that ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... of Chaucer's poetic temperament ... make him amusingly impatient of epical lengths, abrupt in his transitions, and anxious, with an anxiety usually manifested by readers rather than by writers, to come to the point, 'to the great effect,' as he is wont to call it. 'Men,' he says, 'may overlade a ship or barge, ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... us, or else we should be reduced forthwith to our original dust. The pulsing grasp of his great hands and heavy fingers, soft and springing in their manipulation of one's shoulders as the touch of a wild thing, was amusingly harmless, considering the howls with which his onslaught was evaded as long as our flying legs were loyal to us. My father's gentle laughter and happy-looking lips were a revelation during these bouts. I remember with what awe I once tied the blinding handkerchief round his head, ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... came again, conducting "Luke" and "Rebecca." Luke's garments were amusingly, heroically patched, yet both seniors were thoroughly attractive; not handsome, but reflecting the highest, gentlest rectitude. One of their children had inherited all that was best from both parents, beautifully exalting it; the other all that was poorest in earlier ancestors. ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... and could not bear so much as the sight of a woman. And now you say you are an Essene—you, by Bacchus! you!" and he looked at her with an admiration which, although there was nothing brutal or even rude about it, was amusingly undisguised. ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... more amusingly than he wrote," explained Joan. "Get Boswell's Life of him. Or I'll lend you mine," she added, "if you'll be careful of it. You'll find all the passages marked that are best worth remembering. At least, ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... down on the ground smiling. It gave him a certain pleasure to see such a complete discomfiture; Nicholas was always so amusingly angry when he failed, and ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... of the shrimps had long since amused Lady Martin's large circle of acquaintances; and although no one had ventured to breathe a word before either Owen Rose or his wife, it was hardly surprising that Toni came to be considered rather amusingly unsophisticated; so that the slightest gaucherie into which the unconscious Toni was betrayed during those first weeks of her introduction into the society of the district was eagerly noted and joyfully magnified ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... eastern provinces, however, were given a vote. This gave rise to one of the most artful, yet amusingly simple, electioneering documents on record. In the Haldimand, Ontario, election of 1891 the Conservative candidate, Dr W. H. Montague, afterwards minister of Agriculture, had the following circular distributed on the Indian Reserve, with the ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... lemon-colored kid glove.[22] As the trapper stood there in his grotesque rags and odds and ends of apparel, his gentlemanliness of deportment brought into relief the innate vulgarity of a rich parvenu. Mr. Fodder rattled so amusingly as we drove away that I never realized that my Rocky Mountain life was at an end, not even when I saw "Mountain Jim," with his golden hair yellow in the sunshine, slowly leading the beautiful mare over the snowy Plains back to Estes Park, equipped with the saddle on ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... idea so amusingly eccentric, that, for the first time since a very long period, he burst into a peal of hearty laughter. Morok, pale with rage, rushed towards him with so menacing an air, that Goliath ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... seemed to promise great advantages both to the pupils and to the institute. There was much building and arranging to be accomplished, but means to do so were obtained, and the first pupil described very amusingly the entrance into the new home, the furnishing, the discovery of all the beauties and advantages which we found as an old possession in Keilhau, and the endeavour, so characteristic of Middendorf, to adapt even the less attractive points to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Pourtales, the Marquis and Marquise de Gallifet, the Duc and Duchesse de Mouchy, the Princesse de Sagan, the Marquis de Caux (who afterward married Adelina Patti), the Princesse de Metternich,—indeed, the elite of cosmopolis,—appeared upon the stage, and in clever verse and epigrammatic song amusingly dealt with the gossip of ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... collapsed under the weight of its responsibilities, and there are few things more disconcerting to a sleeping man than suddenly to be enveloped in a mass of cold, clammy canvas. Mr. Jerome, in Three Men in a Boat, speaks amusingly of his efforts at putting up a tent; by the same token, his description as an onlooker of the efforts of sixteen sleepy but infuriated soldiers, indifferently protected by a ground-sheet against the cold blast and the pouring rain, struggling to erect a tent ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... down the rude stiffness of the Tetchy family as this wonderful revolution in my domestic prospects. They became amusingly disposed to sociability, as well as to inquisitiveness. But I was glad to see my mother stiffen up in proportion to their sudden condescension, for she would have nothing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... one might call random and sudden quotation was amusingly hit off by a friend of mine, Fry, son of the late Lord Justice Sir Edward Fry. In a neat little verse after the manner of Beeching's and Mackail's celebrated verses on the Balliol Dons—verse modelled, it may be noted, on the pageant of Kings and Queens in Swinburne's Poems and Ballads, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... amusingly associated with "Old Town," the former San Diego, three miles from the present city. He had offended Jefferson Davis, then Secretary of War, by his irreverent wit, and was punished by exile to this then almost unknown region, which he called "Sandy Ague," chiefly inhabited ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... vehicles and keep an open thoroughfare. Thousands of country peasants poured into the city, the boys of whom were seen in all directions, blowing distressingly through hollow ox-horns. Altogether, the spirit of nonsense which animated the crowd, displayed itself very amusingly. ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... Tyndale's translation and the appearance of the Authorized Version the two parties shifted their ground rather amusingly. More accuses Tyndale of taking liberties with the prevailing English usage, especially when he substitutes congregation for church, and insists that the people understand by church what they ought to understand. "This is true," he says, "of the usual signification of these ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... may then be reduced almost wholly to vowel sounds, and from the lips of some speakers it is really no more consonantal than if it came from the beaks of birds. They do not lisp the soft c or the z, as the Castilians do, but hiss them, and lisp the s instead, as the reader will find amusingly noted in the Sevillian chapters of The Sister of San Sulpice, which are the most charming chapters of that most charming novel. At the stations there were sometimes girls and sometimes boys with water for sale from stone ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... to speak to you. Prince, they tell me you are a man of taste, a man who is well acquainted with those godless Greek and Roman doings. As it is in my mind to celebrate my daughter's wedding with all pomp worthy of my crown—I want to ask you—to consult with my son—as to how most gracefully and amusingly to entertain the Courts of Poland, Saxony, Brunswick and Mecklenburg, who will all be here for an entire week—in a word, how we can win much honor ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... me a great many compliments, he said, from Dr. Warton, of Winchester, where he had lately been quartered with his regiment. He rattled away very amusingly upon the balls and the belles he had seen there, laughing at his own gallantry, and pitying and praising himself alternately for venturing ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... live in each other's presence like a set of players; congregate in courts like the former in the green room; and break their unpremeditated jests, in the intervals of business, with that sort of undress freedom that contrasts amusingly with the solemn and even tragic seriousness with which they appear in turn upon the boards. They have one face for the public, rife with the saws and learned gravity of the profession, and another for themselves, replete with broad mirth, sprightly ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... whose style of speaking the lady took off very amusingly was one who would scarcely object to suffer by the side of Lord Byron—I mean Lamartine, who had visited her in the course of his travels. The peculiarity which attracted her ridicule was an over-refinement of ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... amusingly illustrated at a dinner given by the late Major Conger, American minister to China. Major and Mrs. Conger introduced many innovations into the social life of Peking, and none more important than the dinners and luncheons given to the princes ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... of his music to different temperaments, is an artistic personality to be reckoned with; one not to be ticketed and laid on the shelf. Although a century and more has elapsed since his birth the permanent value of his music is still debated, often amusingly enough, by those who seem unaware that, whatever the theoretical rights of the case, in practice his principles are the reigning ones in modern music. As Berlioz stands as the foremost representative of program music and never ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... say that I quite understand you," I told him, with a sick feeling which I found it hard to keep under. Yet he must have noticed something amusingly tragic in my attitude, for he laughed, though it wasn't without a touch of bitterness. And laughter, under the circumstances, didn't altogether add ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... defeat, he fled with lightning speed. This erudite doctor is well known in England, especially among riflemen. Colonel Saunderson describes him as a wonderful shot at a thousand yards, and thinks he was once one of the Irish Eight at Wimbledon. I met him on the stand on Tuesday, when he amusingly described his adventures on the Continent. "The poor Poles," he said, "wished to take me to their collective bosom, and to fall on my individual neck, the moment they found I was an Irishman. They said we were brothers in misfortune!" Whereat this learned pundit laughed ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... Colonel playfully, "that—as you so often and so amusingly say—is 'Another Story'! Yet I would have overlooked the theft of the opals if they had not substituted two of the Queen's regimental buttons for the eyes of the god. This, while it did not deceive the ignorant priests, ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... sea-side trips is amusingly set forth in one of the most lively and characteristic of his Epistles—the fifteenth of the first book. In this he inquires of a friend what sort of winter weather is to be found at Velia and Salernum; two cities, one on the Adriatic, the other on the Mediterranean seaboard ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... helping him to get a chance to discuss some of the things he had learned from Bemis. But somehow he found himself working beside McCabe, and when the fence had been put up again and they started home, it was Slim who rode beside him, chatting volubly and amusingly, ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... passed a perfectly uneumoirous week among my friends and social acquaintances. I had stood godfather to my sister Agatha's fifth child, taking upon myself obligations which I shall never be able to perform; I had dined amusingly at my sister Jane's; I had shot pheasants at Farfax Glenn's place in Hampshire; and I had paid a long-promised charming country-house visit to ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... accompany him. In this little circumstance, which in England (where the ridiculous is so much better understood than the heroic) excited some sneers at the time, we have one of the many instances that occur amusingly through his life, to confirm the quaint but, as applied to him, true observation, that "the child is father to the man;"—the characteristics of these two periods of life being in him so anomalously transposed, that while the passions and ripened views of the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... forceful leader and at the same time congenial company. Because he was completely sincere and unaffected, his friends felt no self-consciousness in the presence of "the cloth." They in turn could be candid with him. This fact was once amusingly demonstrated when the music at Christ Church was not at its customary high standard, and Mr. Nelson, happening to meet a parishioner who had not been in church for some time, asked her why, and enjoyed a good chuckle over ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... efforts to be concrete they will make their creeds amusingly simian. Consider the simian amorousness of Jupiter, and the brawls on Olympus. Again, in the old Jewish Bible, what tempts the first pair? The Tree of Knowledge, of course. It appealed to the curiosity of their nature, and who could ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... some good covering help wonderfully to keep voices pitched low. I have seen this illustrated almost amusingly in Newark, where frequent visits of large classes were made from the schools to the public library. The tramp of forty or fifty pairs of feet in the marble corridors made such a noise that the legitimate ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... he was taking part. "Now, gentlemen," he said to his officers, "let us do something to-day which the world may talk of hereafter." Collingwood, in reality, was a great man and a great seaman, and in the battle which followed he "fought like an angel," to quote the amusingly inappropriate ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... Mullens and his family were from Dorking in England, it does not occur to her to doubt the correctness of the impression which the recklessness of Baird had created,—that they were of Leyden,—and she hence amusingly suggests that "they must have moved from Leyden to Dorking." These careless utterances of one who is especially bound by his position, both as a writer and as a teacher of morals, to be jealous for the truth, ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... America, Buncombe—speech, aiding and emphasizing, by energetic shakings of the forefinger, such passages as he thought would tell in the gallery above; his voice was loud and clear, his language blunt and fluent, and amusingly replete with "dares and daren't;" "England's in the wrong, and she knows it;" if the original treaty, by which America was to have had the canal exclusively, had been concluded, "America would have had a rod to hold over all the nations." Then came ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... How amusingly does Mr Waterton show his attachment to the extinct Stuarts in his essays. Go where he may, "a Hanover rat" pops up before him. In his charming autobiography appended to the three series of his graphic essays, whether he be in ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... that Mr. Dobson, unable to find the authority for Bull's name, is a little more guarded, when he amusingly writes, in 1897:— ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... advisable in connection with the packing house inspection law to provide for putting a date on the label and for charging the cost of inspection to the packers. All these laws have already justified their enactment. The interstate commerce law, for instance, has rather amusingly falsified the predictions, both of those who asserted that it would ruin the railroads and of those who asserted that it did not go far enough and would accomplish nothing. During the last five months the railroads have shown ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... that this young man should be described. He was the type usually called healthy and "clean-minded." He loved all sports and all kinds of exercise, particularly walking, and he could talk about these out-of-door occupations fairly amusingly. He was fair, blue-eyed, clean-shaven, and healthy-looking, and he believed in the possibility of being a "pal" to a girl,—particularly if she happened to be a ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... interesting account of this movement and of its organ, the widely circulated Sydney Bulletin, with its furiously anti-British views, its Radicalism, its Republicanism, and what not. He shows amusingly how entirely harmless the propaganda really was, and what a healthy effect it actually had in promoting an independence of feeling and national self-respect among Australians, to such a degree that when the South African War broke out, ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... that furthered the whole appearance had risen to the surface, pleasant pretexts, oh certainly pleasant, as pleasant as Amerigo in particular could make them, for associated undertakings, quite for shared adventures, for its always turning out, amusingly, that they wanted to do very much the same thing at the same time and in the same way. Funny all this was, to some extent, in the light of the fact that the father and daughter, for so long, had expressed ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... Amusingly characteristic of Trollope is his treatment of his villains. His attitude toward them betrays no personal uncharitableness or animosity, but the villain has a bad time of it just the same. Trollope places upon him a large, benevolent, ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... whole plot turns on a lost needle, the search for which is pursued with the utmost assiduity: the poverty of the persons of the drama, which this supposes, and the whole of their domestic condition, is very amusingly portrayed, and the part of a cunning beggar especially is drawn with much humour. The coarse comic of this piece bears a resemblance to that of the Avocat Patelin; yet the English play has not, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... fogies and dullards, unable to keep pace with the times, fail to appreciate the charm of such structures in a city. One of the “points” this writer makes is the quality of air enjoyed by tenants, amusingly oblivious of the fact that at least three façades of each tall building will see the day only so long as the proprietors of adjacent land are too poor or too busy to ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... had as many or more if he had been the easiest and gentlest of easy-writing gentlemen. He never seems to have allowed himself to be cramped in his choice of his subjects, and wrote for the editors, of whom he speaks so amusingly, with almost as much freedom of speech as if he had had a private press of his own, and had issued dainty little tractates on Dutch paper to be fought for by bibliophiles. His prejudices, his desultoriness, his occasional ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... as a barbarian. The heroic couplet, which was the last word in poetical expression in the age of Queen Anne, we consider to-day as little more than a mechanical jingle. Last year's fashions in dress, which seemed at the time to have their merits, are this year amusingly grotesque. In our judgment of beauty, therefore, allowance must be made for standards which merely are imposed upon us from without. It is necessary to distinguish between a formula and the reality. As far ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... possibly think me a lunatic for having any such feeling. I was showing the scheme to G., shortly after your first article appeared, on the piece of paper I enclose, and he changed the diagram to a sea-serpent [most amusingly and grotesquely drawn.—F. G.], with the remark, 'If you were a rich man, and I knew I was mentioned in your will, I should destroy that piece of paper, in case it should be brought forward as an evidence of insanity!' I mention this ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... of exclusion has been recognised as a fundamental principle of the law of evidence ever since the time of Charles II. To this he adds a note, with all due gravity: "The rule excluding heresay evidence, or rather the mode in which that rule is frequently misunderstood in Courts of Justice, is amusingly caricatured by Mr. Dickens in his report of the case of Bardell ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... with London. As soon as he was able to leave his bank in New York—in fact, the moment he had retired from business—he had realised his dream and come to live in London. And Harry seemed to him the incarnation of everything delightfully, amusingly English. He had a real hero-worship for Harry, who was so astonishingly clever as well. Van Buren was not a snobbish Anglomaniac, at least his snobbishness was not of the common quality nor about the obvious things; he was a little ashamed of his money, but he did not worship rank and titles; ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... in a previous paper, by means of which a sound thrashing can be administered to an absent foe through the medium of an old coat which is imagined to cover him. The principle involved here is one which is doubtless familiar to most children, and is closely akin to that which Irving so amusingly illustrates in his doughty general who struts through a field of cabbages or corn-stalks, smiting them to earth with his cane, and imagining himself a hero of chivalry conquering single-handed a host of caitiff ruffians. Of like origin are the fancies that the breaking of ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... age, Montaigne was a gay, cheerful, untiring traveller, always eager to be going on, delighted with every place he visited, and yet anxious for constant change of scene and for new experience. To be amusingly and simply selfish is ever part of the charm of Montaigne. He adds to his reader's pleasure in life by the keenness with which he relished his own existence, and savoured every little incident as a man relishes the bouquet of wine. ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... son Theodore's wife and daughter came over from France to spend a month with us. Lisette and Nora, about the same size, played and quarreled most amusingly together. They spent their mornings in the kindergarten school, and the afternoons with their pony, but rainy days I was impressed into their service to dress dolls and tell stories. I had the satisfaction to hear them say that ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... such a pretty little comedy, and you trip away to the study, and archly keep dear WILLIAM in conversation until the Captain is ready to make his appearance. At last, a little impatiently, you give the cue by mentioning that there is a clock-winder in the drawing-room. WILLIAM is amusingly suspicious, and insists on seeing the man. As the scene will be just as funny in the drawing-room, you accompany him thither—but there is no gallant Captain there affecting to wind your charming little Sevres ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various
... sought him as constantly as he had formerly sought them. They offered him a fresh temptation through the different perversions of the fact that had got commonly abroad, but he resisted this temptation, and let the perversions, sometimes annoyingly, sometimes amusingly, but always more and more wildly, wide of the reality, take their course. In his reticence he had the sense of atoning not only to the apparition but to ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... entered their room, called to John's recollection the Italian's account of how he had once bought a tarpaulin hat and a cottonade shirt of the pattern called a "jumper," and had worked as a deck-hand in loading and unloading steam-boats. It was so amusingly sensible to put on the proper badge for the kind of work sought. Richling mused. Many a dollar he might have earned the past summer, had he been ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... zaptieh escorting me thither becomes greatly mystified over the circumstance that I am a Frank and yet am wearing a Mussulman head-band around my helmet (a new one I picked up on the road); this little fact appeals to him as something savoring of an attempt to disguise myself, and he grows amusingly mysterious while whisperingly bringing it to the mudir's notice. The habitual serenity and complacency of the corpulent mudir's mind, however, is not to be unduly disturbed by trifles, and the untutored ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... drop to each other, before surrounding savages, mysterious allusions to feats in ballrooms, which, alas! no longer could be achieved. They signified, and in some degree solaced, their intense disgust at their present position by a haughty and amusingly impassable demeanour, which meant to convey their superiority to all surrounding circumstances. One of their favourite modes of asserting this pre-eminence was wearing the Frank dress, which their father only did officially, and which no female member of their family had ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... always managed in some mysterious way of her own to communicate freely with the inhabitants. In Spanish she only learned si, yet, supplemented with much gay laughter and many expressive gesticulations, that one word went a long way. She writes amusingly of this ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... hats, the silk stockings, the severely trim frocks were still hers, but the old delicious youth, her roses, her limpid gaze, the velvety curve of throat and cheek, these were gone. Billy had been spirited, now she was noisy. She had been amusingly precocious, now she was assuming an innocence, a naivete, that were no longer hers, had never been natural to her at any time. She had always been coolly indifferent to the lives of other men and women. Now she was embittered as to her own destiny, and full of ugly and eager gossip concerning ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... swung at two balls, and missed both, it began to seem that he was destined to strike out. A few seconds later, however, he caught the ball fairly on the trade mark and drove it over the head of Carney, who made an amusingly ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... How amusingly Elly had acquired as only a child could acquire an accent, the exact astringent, controlled brevity of ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... debates, shewed that something worth listening to was being said. And next day they would commiserate with those who had been prevented from coming that evening, and would assure them that the 'little scene' had never been so amusingly done. ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... of that amusingly inconsistent, however well-meant, scene in Coningsby, in which Mr. Lyle is represented as trying to restore 'the independent order of peasantry,' by making them the receivers of public alms at his own gate, as if they had been middle-age serfs or vagabonds, ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... for the Dark Tower is similar to that of the Red Ettin, (cf. Koehler on Gonzenbach, ii. 222). The formula "youngest best," in which the youngest of three brothers succeeds after the others have failed, is one of the most familiar in folk- tales amusingly parodied by Mr. Lang in his Prince Prigio. The taboo against taking food in the underworld occurs in the myth of Proserpine, and is also frequent in folk-tales (Child, i. 322). But the folk-tale parallels to our tale fade into insignificance before its brilliant literary relationships. ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... Nevill's car was an Algerian who looked as if he might have a dash of dark blood in his veins. Beside him sat the Kabyle servant, who, in his picturesque embroidered clothes, with his jaunty fez, appeared amusingly out of place in the smart automobile, which struck the last note of modernity. The chauffeur had a reckless, daring face, with the smile of a mischievous boy; but he steered with caution and skill through the crowded streets where open trams rushed by, filled to overflowing with ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... turned toward her vassal. He wore a quizzical, friendly, and amusingly pathetic look. The bruises of his trip were evident upon ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... more amusingly cheerful than Montaigne, who more amusingly wise, who so well bred and attractive, who knew the world better and took it only as the world? Give me the old volume of Montaigne and a loaf of bread—no Victrola singing to me in the wilderness!—a thermos bottle, ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... others anything like delight at it, well, in that case, the king will be humiliated before the whole court; and what a delightful story it will be, too, for him to whom I am really attached, in fact part of my dowry for my husband, to have the adventure to relate of the monarch who was so amusingly deceived by a ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... benefit. Of these good things we ate almost immoderately, for it was the only warm meal we had made for several days. While preparing it, and after dinner, Lincoln entertained them, and they entertained us for a couple of hours very amusingly." Kindly human companionship was a luxury in that green wilderness, and was readily appreciated and ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... the articles for you for just one-half the price the shop-keeper told you." They hope to sell to Americans for a better price than they ever get from each other. We went to every kind of shop; they are amusingly different from ours. Few things are displayed in the windows or on the shelves, but they are done up in fine parcels and tucked away out of sight. It is the rule to take two or three days to sit at various counters before you attempt to ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... not have been flesh and blood if that shot had not told, especially after the old man's funny catechizing had lured her amusingly away from suspicion. She quivered, and a bright colour stained her cheeks. Nevertheless those peering eyes found no guilt ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... learned through the indiscriminate volubility of his host who, when his feelings had been injured, was amusingly naive for ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... relief, after reading the solemn histories which recall the struggles of Walpole and Chesterfield and their like, to drop in upon this quiet little coterie of homely commonplace people leading calm domestic lives and amusingly unconscious of the political and intellectual storms which were raging outside. Richardson himself was the typical industrious apprentice. He was the son of a London tradesman who had witnessed with due horror the Popish machinations ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... of the town, of the arrival of the governor's wife, "with new! topics of conversation," of an opposition party already formed in the club, of how they were all in a hubbub over the new ideas, and how charmingly this suited him, and so on. He talked for a quarter of an hour and so amusingly that I could not tear myself away. Though I could not endure him, yet I must admit he had the gift of making one listen to him, especially when he was very angry at something. This man was, in my opinion, a regular spy from his ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... charming of all sporting books ever written, Campbell's 'Old Forest Ranger,' there is an amusingly-told bit with reference to this habit of cub-carrying which I am sure my readers will forgive me for extracting. Old Dr. Jock M'Phee had been knocked over by a she-bear, and is relating his ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... sunflowers, even to put a sunflower into every bouquet, would be calling nature something worse than a politician. Mr. Daniel Gregory Mason, whose wholesome influence, by the way, is doing as much perhaps for music in America as American music is, amusingly says: "If indeed the land of Lincoln and Emerson has degenerated until nothing remains of it but a 'jerk and rattle,' then we, at least, are free to repudiate this false patriotism of 'my Country right or wrong,' to insist ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... had not long been a member of this fraternity of fine fellows, ere I discovered that Jack Chase, our captain was—like all prime favorites and oracles among men—a little bit of a dictator; not peremptorily, or annoyingly so, but amusingly intent on egotistically mending our manners and improving our taste, so that we might reflect credit upon ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... of drama, amusingly told, such as when our hero is unwittingly involved in almost blowing the school up! The boys involved off are hauled off to the magistrate by the local village policeman, who, comically, had imagined that a blazer, the top garment worn by schoolboys of that era (and mine) was a kind of lucifer, ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... myself an extreme Pacifist. I am against the man who first takes up the weapon. I carry my pacifism far beyond the ambiguous little group of British and foreign sentimentalists who pretend so amusingly to be socialists in the Labour Leader, whose conception of foreign policy is to give Germany now a peace that would be no more than a breathing time for a fresh outrage upon civilisation, and who would even make heroes of ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... king of France. "We recommend this noble young man," said the letter of Congress, "to the favor of your majesty, because we have seen him wise in council, brave in battle, and patient under the fatigues of war." He was received in France with great distinction, which he amusingly describes: ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... York to conduct the opera for Mr. E. P. Fry, as has already been mentioned, in 1848. After one season as conductor he started in on his career as manager, which lasted twenty-five years, the first five of which are amusingly described in his book "Crotchets and Quavers." More than twenty years later he attempted to continue the story in a musical journal, and gathering the disconnected chapters together, issued them in an unattractive form under the title "Flats and Sharps." The first book is, to some extent, a contribution ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... always paid respect to the Hana no Gosho, as the shogun was called. So close were the relations that for ceremonial purposes at the Bakufu, it was customary to employ Court officials, and witty writers of the time discourse amusingly on the often clumsy efforts made by the courtiers to ape the customs and acquire the dialects of ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... complaisance of collectors of autographs. I know better, however, than most people—being in a position to do so—that in the present work there can be no pretension to any thing approaching to a complete collection of Beethoven's Letters. The master, so fond of writing, though he often rather amusingly accuses himself of being a lazy correspondent, may very probably have sent forth at least double the amount of the letters here given, and there is no doubt whatever that a much larger number are still extant in the originals. The only thing that can be done at this moment, however, is ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... rashness in proposing to buy land of which the legal title was so insecure as to make it a most unsafe investment, and the geographical situation such as to make it unfit for habitation by Northerners. The point of view of his critic is amusingly different from that of the good people who subsequently accused him of buying with the expectation of making ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... the only croaker. Wesley and Theodosia were married, in the golden prime of the Indian summer, and settled down on their snug little farm. Dosia was a beautiful bride, and Wesley's pride in her was amusingly apparent. He thought nothing too good for her, the Heatherton people said. It was a sight to make an old heart young to see him march up the aisle of the church on Sunday in all the glossy splendour of his wedding suit, his curly black head held high and ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... principle that Christians are tied to the O.T. canon, rather amusingly supposes: "Wenn Jemand sich bei den Juden jetzt als Prophet geltend machen und ein Buch schreiben würdem so müsste es nach diesem Grundsatz von den Protestanten als kanonisch wohl anerkannt werden" (Esther und Susanna, Würzburg, 1892, p. ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... Suzanna had gone. A kerosene lamp set upon a center table sent an apologetic light over the shabby furniture. Above the mantel with its velvet cover and statuette of a crying baby, was a picture of Suzanna, a "crayon," Mr. Bartlett amusingly surmised. The small face looked out with a distorted artificial smile quite unknown to the face it sought to represent. Yet Suzanna's aura was visible, Mr. Bartlett thought. That little girl who so simply and ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... The consequence of all this, and other similar indulgences, necessarily was, that some of them complained, for several days after, of the pains usually arising from indigestion; though they all, amusingly enough, attributed this effect to the quality, and not the quantity of meat they had eaten. However, notwithstanding these excesses at first, we were really thankful for this additional supply of meat; for we had observed for some time past, that the men were evidently ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... and rather amusingly illustrated on one occasion during the "Separation Session," at which I was the member for Melbourne, and present at the time. Mr. Henry Moor, the well-known solicitor, and one of the five district members, in replying to the charge urged against us of the unfilial indifference ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... she felt herself? and never did Prince Hohenloe, himself, perform a miracle more cleverly; for she bounced almost as high as the ceiling, and flounced about the room, as well and as actively as ever she did, with a countenance in which shame, anger, and a great portion of natural humour were so amusingly blended, that I was tempted to provoke her still further by a salute. Having thus satisfied the mother that I had been the means of restoring her daughter to her usual state of health, she thought it prudent ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... say he looked extremely handsome and very amusingly like the marble statue with its nose in the air to which I had ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... maintain a current of personal interest in their adventures, or in the selecting from their private experience, he is the most learned; whilst of learned guides he is, in the sense explained, the most amusingly personal. ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... French teachers in London last year by the Board of Education, Mr. Lough, speaking on behalf of the Board, made a sympathetic reference to Esperanto. The incident is amusingly told in Esperanto by M. Boirac, Rector of Dijon University and a noted Esperantist, who was amongst the French professors. Not understanding English, he was growing rather sleepy during a long speech, when the word "Esperanto" gave him a sudden ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... the ghost of a sense of security and/or some hot breakfast, I'd have told myself that she was merely being amusingly coquettish about her bald streak and her hair, that it was natural for a woman to try to preserve some mystery about herself in front of ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... contribution to knowledge. His famous argument, the joy of many an honest breast, is a tissue of fallacies which might be given for exposure to beginners in logic, as an elementary exercise. In announcing his discovery, Hume amusingly displays the self-complacency and the want of humour with which we Scots are ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... but she's troublesome to manage. She is so unusually timid, poor creature, so prone to give way to despair when things look bad, yet so sweetly apt to bound into high spirits when things are looking hopeful,—and withal, so amusingly garrulous!" ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... with a kind of savagery that he could not explain. "Yes. She's young, and she finds even my age spicy. There'd be something quite amusingly piquant for her in marrying a man nearly thirty ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... the droll of the Irish bar, sent an amusingly equivocal invitation to an Irish nobleman of his acquaintance: "I hope, my Lord, if ever you come within a mile of my house, that you'll stay there all night." When he was suffering from an attack of gout, he thus rebuked his shoemaker: "O, ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... gone out somewhere, and would myself introduce the wastrel brother to the tea-table. Mark's absence would not excite any comment, for it would be generally felt—indeed Robert would suggest it—that he had been afraid of meeting his brother. Then Robert would make himself amusingly offensive to the guests, particularly, of course, Miss Norris, until he thought that the joke had ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... rumor, which originated with a Richmond paper." Governor Marcy used to joke Mr. Mason a good deal on the forwardness of the Old Dominion, the mother of Presidents, in urging the claims of her children for Federal office—a propensity which was amusingly illustrated at a private dinner where they were both in attendance. "How strange it is, Mason," said he, "that out of the thousands of fat appointments we have had to make, there is not one that Virginia does not furnish a candidate for, and ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... the evolution of Hebraic thought." Never was any book so full of erudition and ideas so easy to read, a fascinating opus, written by a true sceptic. Following the Baedeker system, adopted so amusingly by Henry T. Finck in his "Songs and Song Writers," this book ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... Rochester and Chatham are amusingly confused, or rather, in defiance of all known regulations. Thus, at the Ball, we find Colonel Bulder as "head of the garrison"—one would think at so important a quarter, where there was a large garrison, a General at least would be in command. Then we may ask the question, why was not Dr. ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... indicated the Circassian grand with a gesture. Then she looked back at him quickly enough to surprise the expression that flickered across his face at the sight of it. A mere cocking of one eyebrow it was, but amusingly expressive. So, too, was the way he walked over toward it, with an air of cautious determination, of readiness for anything, that made Paula want to laugh. He dropped down sidewise on the bench, turned up the lid and dug his ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... conclusion in her own way. Binet, who remained in the room and took notes, recounts with playful humor how the teachers were unavoidably compelled to resort to the much-abused test method, although their attempts at using it were sometimes, from the psychologist's point of view, amusingly clumsy. ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... in her first communication, and engaged her mind now with a simple directness in the study and subjugation of the new human being Heaven had sent into her world. The first unfavourable impression of his punting was soon effaced; he could nickname ducklings very amusingly, create boats out of wooden splinters, and stalk and fly from imaginary tigers in the orchard with a convincing earnestness that was surely beyond the power of any other human being. She conceded at last that he ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... engages a composer to write an opera for the opening of the season, which generally consists of twenty or thirty nights, during which period seldom more than two operas are performed. The first night of one of these seasons is most amusingly described by the biographer of Rossini. "The theatre overflows, the people flock from ten leagues' distance; the curious form an encampment round the theatre in their calashes; all the inns are filled ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... spot, so exquisitely beautiful, where these excavations took place, and the melancholy but enchanting serenity of the end of summer, gave a rare charm to our little dream of adventure. We were, however, most amusingly secret and mysterious in regard to our discovery; we considered it a tribal secret, and we cherished ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... sufferers. He made it a rule to inspect the hospitals himself, and he directed a daily visit by a captain and by the surgeons of the ships from which patients were sent, thus keeping the sick in touch with those they knew, and who had in them a personal interest. An odd provision, amusingly illustrative of the obverse side of the admiral's character, was that the visiting captain should be accompanied by a boatswain's mate, the functionary charged with administering floggings, and, "if they find the patients ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... Just as Mrs S. was concluding her harangue a waggonette drove up, and all the members of the club got into it in readiness for a drive round the town "for the benefit of the Order," as one of them amusingly put it. This Shackleton was among those who entered the conveyance, but no sooner had he taken his seat than his wife went up to him and seized him firmly by the hair of the head, exclaiming, "Come aat, er Ah'll let 'em see whether tha's henpecked er no." She ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... and "friends" for "relations." Some of the words in vogue in the Middle States are survivals of the original Dutch colonists—as "boss," an employer or manager, and "loafer," a vagabond. As to the Western States, it has been amusingly observed that "every prominent person has his own private vocabulary." Like the Emperor Sigismund the Great, who was "above grammar," the Western States folk ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... get a lesson of patience by looking over an endless series of the most variedly hideous costumes or caricatures of costume which Horace was glad to draw, for almost any pecuniary consideration. A series of amusingly naive colored prints, illustrating the adventures of poor La Valliere with Louis XIV., would strengthen the lesson. These were succeeded by lithographs of an endless variety of subjects—the soldier's life in all its phases, the "horse and its rider" in all their ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... adventures and misadventures of a youth fresh from a Western home, who is suddenly dropped into the turmoil of his opening year at a great Eastern college. From the moment that "Mamma left for home" right up to Class Day, the author chronicles minutely and most amusingly the ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... the Irish Celts planted nothing. Neither did they build, except in the simplest and rudest way, improving their architecture from age to age no more than the beaver or the bee. Mr. Prendergast is an able, honest, and frank writer; yet there is something amusingly Celtic in the flourish with which he excuses the style of palaces in which the Irish princes delighted to dwell. 'Unlike England,' he says, 'then covered with castles on the heights, where the French gentlemen secured themselves and their families against the hatred of the churls and villains, ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... between France and Sweden in olden times. This was published in Paris and the French government, tendered him the decoration of the legion of honor which, however, he refused very politely, explaining that he never wore a frock coat! The episode ends amusingly with the publisher, a Swede, receiving the decoration instead. In 1884 the first volume of his famous short stories, called "Marriages" appeared. It was aimed at the cult that had sprung up from Ibsen's "A Doll's ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg
... report the conversation which enlivened the many days' journey down the Ohio and the Mississippi. The doctor chirruped constantly. He knew a little of everything, and talked much of nothing, very amusingly. Often he sang French songs, often played dance tunes on the violin, now and then took an ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... not indicate that they are wholly unused. A lady visiting an institution for the deaf and dumb a few years ago poetically called the pupils the "children of silence." Considering the tremendous volume of noise they are able to keep up with both feet and throat, the title is amusingly inappropriate. A deaf-and-dumb institution is the noisiest place ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... theologian amusingly describes the superstitious person who reads his fortune in the stars. He, it is said, "will be more afraid of the constellation fires than the flames of his next neighbour's house. He will not open a vein till he has asked leave of the planets. He will not commit his seed ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... whether he would rather have Oxford free with all its imperfections, or an Oxford without imperfections but under the control of the government, he would reply, 'Give me Oxford free and independent, with all its anomalies and imperfections.' An excellently worded but amusingly irrelevant passage about Voltaire and Rousseau, and the land that was enlightened by the one and inflamed by the other, brought the curious performance to a solemn close. High fantastic trifling of this sort, though ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... 1740, 12mo.; with several others of less note. The three last quoted answer many singular questions in theology, law, medicine, physics, natural history, popular superstitions, &c., not always very satisfactorily or very intelligently, but still, often amusingly and ingeniously. The British Apollo: containing two thousand Answers to curious Questions in most Arts and Sciences, serious, comical, and humourous, the fourth edition of which I have now before me, indulges in answering such questions as these: "How old was Adam when Eve ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 46, Saturday, September 14, 1850 • Various
... that ingratitude may, in any past abyss of time, have been a virtue, or that it may be such now in Arcturus or the Pleiades. Indeed, a certain eminent writer of the utilitarian school of ethics has amusingly and very instructively shown how radically distinct even in his own mind are the two ideas which he nevertheless endeavours to identify. Mr. John Stuart Mill, in his examination of "Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy," says,[208] if "I ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... books of the present year is Mr. Henry Blackburn's volume, "The Pyrenees;" it is brightly, amusingly, and intelligently ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... more. There is not a heart-beat in the whole grind. As to Willis—he failed egregiously, when he attempted to 'gild refined gold and paint the lily,' as he did in his so-called 'Sacred Poems.' He can spin a yarn pretty well, and coin a new word for a make-shift, amusingly, but save me from the foil-glitter of ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... introduced into London Society showed no puling regret, no backward longings after echoing colleges, lost dons and the scouts that are no more. He was quite at his ease, and displayed none of the high-pitched contempt of Piccadilly that is often so amusingly characteristic of the young gentlemen accustomed ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... there till a month before Balzac's return in May, 1850, when illness necessitated her removal to her daughter's house.[*] The nieces, of whom Balzac was really extremely fond, "sulked" no longer, but wrote letters which their uncle praised highly, and which he answered gaily and amusingly. The shadowy cloud, too, which had prevented the brother and sister from seeing each other clearly, dispersed for ever; and one of Honore's letters to Laure about this time contains the loving words, "As far as you are concerned, every ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... party, himself included, should not fall below the number of the Graces—nor exceed that of the Muses. In the whole economy of his household arrangements, and especially of his dinner parties, there was something peculiar and amusingly opposed to the usual conventional restraints of society; not, however, that there was any neglect of decorum, such as sometimes occurs in houses where there are no ladies to impress a better tone upon the manners. The invariable routine was this: The moment that dinner was ready, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... alternate scoldings and cajolings, her wild hunt for the tickets, which all the while were stuck in her belt, the grandeur of her deportment when the family was at last prepared for the outing, all were most amusingly represented. Doris was really a born actress, and so completely carried her audience with her that the lack of costumes and scenery was not felt in the force of the reality that she managed to throw into her part. Covered with glory, she gave place to her successor, who, while bewailing the hardness ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... of course understand that these facts are not by any means inconsistent with that very sparing use of pronouns so amusingly discussed in Percival Lowell's "Soul of the Far East." In societies where subjection is extreme "there is an avoidance of the use of personal pronouns," though, as Herbert Spencer points out in illustrating this law, it is just among such societies that the most elaborate distinctions in pronominal ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... commonly of bricks and plastering,— whitewashed and painted outside. It is a great consumer of fuel, and radiates but little heat. By dint of constant wooding I contrived to warm mine; but my Italian friends always avoided its vicinity when they came to see me, and most amusingly regarded my determination to be comfortable as part of the eccentricity inseparable ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... by the slang sobriquet of the 'Tub,' an appellation suggested by its clientele. Its opinions are radical, and it is conducted not without a fair share of ability, but, occasionally venturing out of its depth, it has more than once been most successfully and amusingly hoaxed. One of these cases was when a correspondent contributed an extraordinary Greek inscription, which he asserted had been recently discovered. This so-called inscription was in reality nothing but some English doggerel of anything but a ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... paper I proceeded to examine was an identification folder done up in oiled fabric. Thanks to German thoroughness it was amusingly complete. On the first page appeared what I soon discovered to be pedigree for four generations back. The printed form on which all this was minutely filled out made very clear statements from which I determined that my father ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... animated reports and vivid pictures; Gregori Rasputin was stabbed and became the subject of much lively gossip about the Russian Court; and Ulivi, the Italian impostor who claimed he could explode mines by means of an "ultra-red" ray, was exposed and fled with a lady, very amusingly. For a few days all the work at Woolwich Arsenal was held up because a certain Mr. Entwhistle, having refused to erect a machine on a concrete bed laid down by non-unionists, was rather uncivilly dismissed, and the Irish trouble pounded along its tiresome ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... that Lavretzky had ordered a piano to be sent to his country-house from the town: a piano for his—Lemm's—use. Together they went to the Kalitins', and spent the evening, but not so agreeably as on the former occasion. Panshin was there, had a great deal to narrate about his journey, and very amusingly mimicked and illustrated in action the country squires he had seen; Lavretzky laughed, but Lemm did not emerge from his corner, maintained silence, quietly quivered all over like a spider, looked glum and dull, and grew animated only ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... There is ample matter for cogitation in watching the peaceful end of Genzerick, who spends his dying moments in steeling his son's heart against the Christians. The consultation between the physicians, in Act 3, amusingly ridicules the pomposity of by-gone medical professors. Eugenius, the good bishop, is a model of patience and piety; and all respect is due to the Saintly Victoria and her heroic husband. The songs, too, are ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... stream. About a hundred and fifty of the Old Guard ran into a street, of which the further end was barricaded. Mr Grattan, whose account of the affair is a graphic and interesting piece of military narrative, is amusingly cool and naif in referring to this incident. "Mistakes of this kind," he says, "will sometimes occur, and when they do, the result is easily imagined.... In the present instance, every man was put to death; but our soldiers, as soon as they had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... and at the hands of the Ferrarese, into which we were rushing (at the rate of five miles scant an hour), that I was almost minded to stop between the nests of those brigands and pass the rest of my days at Rovigo, where the honest man lived. His talk was amusingly instructive, and went to illustrate the strong municipal spirit which still dominates all Italy, and which is more inimical to an effectual unity among Italians than Pope or Kaiser has ever been. Our honest man of Rovigo was a foreigner at Padua, twenty-five miles north, and a foreigner ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... not a man of a very pleasing appearance, as he was covered with a kind of leprosy; but that did not prevent him having a good appetite, writing, and enjoying all his bodily and intellectual faculties; he talked well and amusingly. He never went into society, as, besides his personal disfigurement, he was tormented with an irresistible and frequent desire of scratching himself, now in one place, and now in another; and as all scratching is accounted an abominable thing in Paris, he preferred to be able to use his fingernails ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... of your Botanic Garden are as surprising as the bulls with brazen feet, and the fire-breathing dragons, which guarded the Hesperian fruit; yet are they not disgusting, nor mischievous: and in the manner you have chained them together in your exhibition, they succeed each other amusingly enough, like prints of the London Cries, wrapped upon rollers, with a glass before them. In this at least they resemble the monsters in Ovid's Metamorphoses; but your similies, ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... these instincts in Corydon was amusingly illustrated by the fact that she always woke up dull and discouraged, and was seldom really herself until afternoon; and that along about ten o'clock at night, when for the sake of her health she should have ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... may be called historical, "The Canavans" (1906) is the best, because it is of the peasantry, I suppose, who change so little with the years, and whom Lady Gregory presents so amusingly and so truly in her modern farce comedy. "Kincora" (1903) takes us all the way back to the eleventh century, deriving its name from Brian's Seat on the Shannon and ending with his death at Clontarf. It is undistinguished ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... nearly the half of it bears, not upon her own case, but upon that of her mother. However, we know what Heine wrote in his wife's album; and there is, after all, one passage that may be held to intimate some tenderness, although even that admits of an amusingly opposite construction. "I think," he says, "I THINK this be the first letter I ever wrote to you." This, if we are to take it literally, may pair off with the "two OR THREE children" whom Montaigne mentions having lost ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... contemporaries, will be patent to all who peruse his pages. The objections that English readers will make to his books are to be traced to no aberrations of his, but to those of the society whose follies he so ably and wittily depicts. He faithfully sketches, and more often amusingly caricatures, the vices, foibles, and failings of French men and women. If those are to be delineated at all—and, with a view to their amendment, surely they may—the task could hardly be executed with a chaster and less offensive pencil. De Bernard paints immorality—it would ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... other hand, my supposed safeguard of drudgery has been cut off at the meter by that amusingly short-sighted old Conspirator, it will be only fair to notify him that his age and experience, even his captivating habits and well-known hospitality, will be treated with scorn, rather than respect, in the paragraphs which he virtually forces me to write; and he is hereby invited to view ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... laboured at his gentle craft all day - "No doubt you mean his Cal-craft," you amusingly will say - But, no—he didn't operate with common bits of string, He was a Public Headsman, which is quite ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... I find this amusingly significant sentence: "Truthfully, indeed, do the Papists boast that the Episcopal Church is training-ground for Rome. The female mind is frequently enticed by display of vestments and music; and, if the Ritualists can pervert the mothers, they know that the next ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz
... adhibuisse notat Pindarus Pyth. Od. iii. Neque ingeniorum fons [Greek: Il. L. to ektamein] omisit." Cf. Celsus, Pref. with the notes of Almeloveen, and lib. vii. praef., where the chirurgical part of ancient medicine is amusingly discussed.] ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer |
