"Comical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... himself, if I remember right, was almost the only officer in civilian clothes; he was a jovial, old, rather stout, plain man, with a wrinkled and dark-yellow face, and, in ways and manners, show'd the least of conventional ceremony or etiquette I ever saw; he laugh'd unrestrainedly at everything comical. (He had a great personal resemblance to Fenimore Cooper, the novelist, of New York.) I remember Gen. Pillow and quite a cluster ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... he can prophesy With a wink OF his eye, Peep with security Into futurity, Sum up your history, Clear up a mystery, Humour proclivity For a nativity. With mirrors so magical, Tetrapods tragical, Bogies spectacular, Answers oracular, Facts astronomical, Solemn or comical, And, if you want it, he Makes a reduction on taking a quantity! Oh! If any one anything lacks, He'll find it all ready in stacks, If he'll only look in On the resident ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... least uneasiness or sign of suffering, that I was aware of, in all that time. By day it slept curled up in its nest. If disturbed, it did not "play possum," that is, did not feign sleep or death, but opened its mouth and grinned up at you in a sort of comical, idiotic way. At night it hobbled about the study, and ate the meat and cake I had placed for it. Sometimes by day it would come out of the corner and eat food under the lounge, eating very much after the manner of a pig, though not so greedily. Indeed, all ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... repeated, with comical dignity, little Berangere, who would have reached about as ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... Enderby, though perfectly civil, was evidently hostile to us, and tried to keep her sister out of our way as much as she could, thickening engagements upon her, at which Viola made all the comical murmurs her Irish blood could prompt, but of course in vain. Eustace's great ambition was to follow her to her parties, and Lady Diana favoured him when she could; but Harold would have nothing to do with such penances. He never missed a chance of seeing Viola come down ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... may, little one." A comical pet name for him to give her, who was anything but small. I could have smiled, remembering the time when John Halifax bowed to the stately and dignified young gentlewoman who stood at Mrs. Tod's door. To think he should ever have come to call Miss Ursula ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... and poetical arithmetic in purple ink. I had the pleasure, before a half hour had passed, of making her commit more than one error in her columns, do violet violence to the neatness of her book, and adorn her thumb-nail with a comical tiny silhouette. My gossip, which had this encouraging and proud effect, was commenced easily upon familiar subjects, such as the old rose-garden and the chickens, but branched imperceptibly into more ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... of the comic, which is shortly to the following effect. Noting first that laughter is purely a human phenomenon, and therefore probably has a social significance, he seeks for this by trying to define what are the essential features of the comical. He reduces the various characteristic features in the main to one, namely, automatism on the part of the comical person or thing. This automatism is of a special kind; especially is it an automatism that is out of place, that occurs at the expense of spontaneity, vitality, and freshness. ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... took part in this comedy dressed and acted as nearly as possible like Alcibiades and Socrates, you can imagine that the play, which was very comical and clever, made the Athenians ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... when he quoted Watts in a comical way to an offending member which brought him to terms. It was at the Eyry. There was a meeting of the Industrial Council. It was necessary to have a quorum to pass certain important votes, and one of the members, being a trifle weary of business, had stepped out ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... le voudrais bien, I wish it had been, it would have been so comical. This was of course practically ...
— Bataille De Dames • Eugene Scribe and Ernest Legouve
... and their 'thieves' Latin' dialect, their filthiness and cunning, ignorance and recklessness, merely as themes for immoral and inhuman laughter. Jonson was by no means the only poet of that day to whom the hordes of profligate and heathen nomads which infested England were only a comical phase of humanity, instead of being, as they would be now, objects of national shame and sorrow, of pity and love, which would call out in the attempt to redeem them the talents and energies of good ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... complication and intricacy have diverted us during the course of the action; if he really smooths them all off by making his fools become rational, or by reforming or punishing his villains, then there is an end at once of everything like a pleasant and comical impression. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... they were tete-a-tete at the little table, and as they sat down Grace said with a comical smile: "Quite a difference between our banquet of last night and ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... the gladness of life and of spring! He lunched in a little wood, with a fallen tree for a throne, and a rippling stream to play him music while he feasted. Then he sauntered leisurely on in the afternoon sunlight, many thoughts busy beneath his comical red thatch. The long hours in the open after his three days indoors made him sleepy at last, and he was glad to discover behind the temporary abode of a railway navvy a little rough wood hut, where, ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... Jonson's career. Despite his many real virtues, if there is one feature more than any other that distinguishes Jonson, it is his arrogance; and to this may be added his self-righteousness, especially under criticism or satire. "Every Man Out of His Humour" is the first of three "comical satires" which Jonson contributed to what Dekker called the 'poetomachia' or war of the theatres as recent critics have named it. This play as a fabric of plot is a very slight affair; but as a satirical picture of the manners of the time, proceeding by means of vivid caricature, couched in ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... for the swaddling-clothes of rank and society which hampered it. My father thought him like Longfellow; but there was an English materialism about Milnes from which the American poet was free. Henry James told me long afterwards a comical tale of how, being left to browse in Mimes's library one afternoon, he strayed into an alcove of pretty and inviting volumes, in sweet bindings, mellowed by age, and was presently terrified by the ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... amazement Mrs. Jameson, shortly after her arrival in Paris, received a letter from Robert Browning to the effect that he and his wife had just come from London, on their way to Italy. "My aunt's surprise was something almost comical," writes Mrs. Macpherson, "so startling and entirely unexpected was the news." And duly married indeed the ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... with the rifle, Neal," said Cyrus. "I'll pick up the jack. Did you ever see anything so absurdly comical as it looks, dodging off on its own hook like a ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... of disgust, very comical and very joyous, but as the good dame was actually coming in search of her ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... comical blunder has been made by the printer, in M. Ter naux-Compans's excellent translation of Xerez, in the account of this expedition. "On trouve sur toute la route beaucoup de porcs, de lamas." (Relation de la Conquete du Perou, p. 157.) The substitution of porcs for parcs might well ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... in size to the violin, and is tuned at the interval of a fifth lower. Its highest string is A, which is the second string of the violin, and its lowest C. Its tone, which sometimes contains a comical suggestion of a boy's voice in mutation, is lacking in incisiveness and brilliancy, but for this it compensates by a wonderful richness and filling quality, and a pathetic and inimitable mournfulness in melancholy music. It blends beautifully with ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Dora was ready to have sacrificed all the veal in the country in honour of Jack's repentance; and the Curate stood outside upon the threshold, looking at the scene with the strangest half-angry, half-comical realisation of the state of mind of the elder brother in the parable. He had himself been rather found fault with, excused, and tolerated, among his relations; but Jack had at once become master of the position, and taken possession of all their sympathies. Mr Wentworth stood gazing at them, ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... became at once the centre of much amiable curiosity. The children had been joined by this time by a young woman and a mild lad who had lost an arm; and this gave me more security. When I let slip my first word or so in French, a little girl nodded her head with a comical grown-up air. 'Ah, you see,' she said, 'he understands well enough now; he was just making believe.' And the little ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... invariably leapt into the water, drank moderately, and then, if the water was too shallow for swimming, sat down in it and then lay down. Sometimes a dog temporarily at liberty would find on his own account a small water hole, and it was comical to see him taking a sitz bath in it. When the sun was hot a dog would sometimes be retained on his cord when not pulling in order that he might trot along in the shade below the kuruma. The dog of the kuruma following mine usually managed when pulling to take advantage of the ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... and perhaps semi-comical but wholly-pathetic thing about the whole matter is this: that though undoubtedly our little planet is part of and has a place in this great sidereal universe, and consequently all our Jacks and Jills are related to all the Jacks and Jills everywhere else, yet each little human heart behaves as it ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... is based the opportunity of this form. Many Action Pictures are indoors, but the abstract theory of the Action Film is based on the out-of-door chase. You remember the first one you saw where the policeman pursues the comical tramp over hill and dale and across the town lots. You remember that other where the cowboy follows the horse thief across the desert, spies him at last and chases him faster, faster, faster, and faster, and finally catches him. If the film was made in the days before the National Board ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... he despises them far too much to be disturbed by what they think of him. But, I say, isn't it desperately comical that one human being can hate and revile another because they think differently about the origin of the universe? Couldn't you roar with laughter when you've thought over it for a moment? "You be damned for your theory of irregular verbs!" is nothing to it.' And he uttered his croak of mirth, ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... the wishin' curl," said she, half apologetically. "You see, suh, he was a comical sort of man, an' a great hand for pertendin' things. I never could pertend. Things is what they is an' pertendin' don't change 'em none. But him an' her was different. That's how come him to pertend the Lord'd put the rainbow's pot o' gold in Louisa's hair with a wish ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... gone down two feet already," said Walter, in a discouraged voice, as he started wielding the paddle again. "I guess there is something wrong with our calculation, Charley." He stopped suddenly and looked up with a comical look of surprise ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... brightly. My late companion had halted not far from where I had left him, and stood glaring back with an air of extreme bewilderment. There was something so comical in the sight that I yelled with laughter as I ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... forehead had struck against the jawbone of a dead buck, and the blood was pouring from it down his hairy face. His companion laughed brutally at the accident, for there are some natures in the world to which the sight of pain is irresistibly comical, but the injured man cursed aloud, trying to staunch the flow with ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... is the spectacle of a crowd of English ladies, each of whom is employed in eyeing the lady next her and asking who she is, and comical as the point of view appears to any one who reflects on the shortness of human life and the littleness of human character, the effect of these feminine weaknesses is one which no one can be sure of escaping. We are afraid that half of the Englishmen ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... round, and stroked his chin and moustache with the most comical expression of doubt ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... six foot three in his stockings, if he was an inch, had just managed to wade through the stream, his nose above the surface, a comical sight, if anybody had had the time to notice it. Looking back, this man saw George disappear, and without hesitation he dashed into the water again. Reaching the spot, he groped about, and then, with both ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead
... child? Why, I never saw any thing less so. It is dreadfully serious. It is even sanguinary; sadder still, abusive and vulgar. What is there comical about coarseness? ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... while it no doubt confirmed his self-confidence by making him insensible both to the comical incongruity into which he was often led by his earlier theory concerning the language of poetry and to the not unnatural ridicule called forth by it, seems to have been indicative of a certain dullness of perception in other directions.[48] We cannot help feeling that the material ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... "I can't. I jest come up to tell my man, there, to go home! Levi is over from West Wallen, and wants to see him. Lord, I didn't know you'd got a party, Miss Keeler!" she continued, glancing with an irresistibly comical expression ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... strange way of showing it," said the doctor, looking round him with a comical expression, "to deprive me of my companion, and leave me as lonely as Simon Stylites on the ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... HELENA. How comical you are! I am angry with you and yet I shall always remember you with pleasure. You are interesting and original. You and I will never meet again, and so I shall tell you—why should I conceal it?—that ...
— Uncle Vanya • Anton Checkov
... side to this apparently comical picture. The common undertone to many of these stories "hot from the lips of a spaceman" is Utopia. On these other worlds there is no illness, they've learned how to cure all diseases. There are no wars, they've learned ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... to come to London, though founded on alleged motives of state, he thinks absurd. "They are beasts for their pains," he says; "it was only depriving me of one day's comfort and happiness, for which they have my hearty prayers." His spleen breaks out in oddly comical ways. "I have a letter from Troubridge, recommending me to wear flannel shirts. Does he care for me? No; but never mind." "Troubridge writes me, that as the weather is set in fine again, he hopes I shall get walks on shore. He is, I suppose, laughing at me; but, ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... this good news, for there was hope of catching them up. I was in dinner jacket and pumps, but I did not wait to make a dash upstairs for hat or coat. I borrowed the blue, gold-handed cap of the concierge, not caring two pence for my comical appearance, which would have sent Gaeta into peals of silver laughter, and out into the rain I went, turning up the collar of ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... Titian and Giorgione, painted the fairy tale of St. George, with quite the most dreadful dragon's walk, a piece of sea sand embedded with bones and half-gnawed limbs, and crawled over by horrid insects, that any one could wish to see; and quite the most comical dragon, particularly when led out for execution among the minarets and cupolas and camels and turbans and symbols of a ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... but a smile. The captain had repented him of his magnanimity before the lights of Honolulu faded out astern. The General began to realize that he had been made a cat's-paw of and, his amour propre being wounded, he had essayed for a day or two majestic dignity of mien that became comical when complicated with the qualms of seasickness. There was even noticeable aversion on part of some of the officers of the Dudes who, having made the journey from "the Bay" to Honolulu with the women ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... was overjoyed to hear this. He gave a spring, and was in a moment astride of his comical steed, holding on by two feathers. The rooster carried him as smoothly and easily as a steamboat; but not quite so fast, for it took twenty-one days' paddling to accomplish the journey; but at last he was landed high and dry on the ...
— The Two Story Mittens and the Little Play Mittens - Being the Fourth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... pale, bleak forehead and long, black hair; Showed me the "Second," and "'Cello," and "Bass," And the "B-Flat," pouting and puffing his face At the little end of the horn he blew Silvery bubbles of music through; And he coined me names of them, each in turn, Some comical name that I laughed to learn, Clean on down to the last and best,— The lively little man, never at rest, Who hides away at the end of the string, And tinkers and plays on everything,— That's "The Little Man ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... Mr. Fishwick understood too; and his face, as the truth dawned on him, was one of the most comical sights ever seen. A nervous, sanguine man, the attorney had been immensely elated by the honour paid to him; he had thought his cause won and his fortune made. The downfall was proportionate: in a second his pomp and ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... grasses had been Dreda's inspiration, and when she had tied them securely into place, run several long black crayon marks from nose to chin, and popped a pair of spectacles over the eyes, behold the demure Susan transformed into so comical an imitation of an old man that the spectators rocked on their seats with merriment. There he stood, "plucking his bonnet and plume," while Dreda simpered in a corner, and Nancy as Lochinvar interviewed Barbara in the character of indignant father. ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... your head awry And your comical twisted smile, You rub your eyes—do you wonder why You've slept such a long, long while? As you lay so still in the cupboard dim, And you heard on the roof the rain, Were you thinking . . . what has become of him? And when will he ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... place for rest-cures; I think it would be wise if I just casually dropped the name of it to Mr Robert, in case. And this last craze seems so terribly infectious. Fancy Mrs Weston dabbling in palmistry! It is too comical, but I hope I did not hurt her feelings by suggesting that Peppino or you wrote the Manual, It is dangerous to make little ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... and the humor with which it is mostly displayed, render these scions of divinity, in their intercourse with the people until the period of preparatory education is completed, the most interesting and comical class, perhaps, to be found in the kingdom. Of these learned priestlings young Denis was undoubtedly a first-rate specimen. His father, a man of no education, was, nevertheless, as profound and unfathomable upon his ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... heavy drapery aside until I had glided into the room. He then drew it briskly across the doorway and followed me to an ebony cabinet before which I had stood to look at a comical crockery pug that lay on one of its tiny shelves. He glanced over my shoulder at my interesting distraction, and was silent for a moment. I could feel his breath upon my hair and ear, then ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... opened, and now we were much besought by the ladies. I had to deny myself with a whole series of comical excuses. Eustace performed his duty after a stiff English fashion—once with his pretty partner of the pranzo, and once again with a fat gondolier. The band played waltzes and polkas, chiefly upon patriotic airs—the Marcia Reale, Garibaldi's ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... make Victorine from le Philosophe sans le savoir? That is beyond me. Your play charmed me and made me weep like an idiot, while the other bored me to death, absolutely bored me to death; I longed to get to the end. What language! the good Tourgueneff and Madame Viardot made saucer-eyes, comical to behold. In your work, what produced the greatest effect is the scene in the last act between Antoine and his daughter. Maubant is too majestic, and the actor who plays Fulgence is inadequate. But everything went very well, and this revival ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... speaking off the scene, was eloquent of deep suffering, concentrated will, and a strange, sombre, formidable character. The sweet, exquisite, icy, infernal joy with which, as Pescara, he told his rival that there should be "music" was almost comical in its effect of terror: it drove the listener across the line of tragical tension and made him hysterical with the grimness of a deadly humour. His swift defiance to Lord Lovell, as Sir Giles, and indeed ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... should ruffle the Nile. While this process was going on, the objects by which I was surrounded assumed a strange and whimsical expression. My pipe, the oars which my boatmen plied, the turban worn by the captain, the water-jars and culinary implements, became in themselves so inexpressibly absurd and comical, that I was provoked into a long fit of laughter. The hallucination died away as gradually as it came, leaving me overcome with a soft and pleasant drowsiness, from which I sank into a deep, ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... stature, had a round, fat face, eyes that bulged from his head like those of a toad, a corpulent body, and a walk about as graceful as the waddling of a duck. His short legs and arms gave him a decidedly comical appearance. ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... these details Allen had not forgotten to listen to Hollis as the latter talked to Dunlavey. Apparently Hollis had about finished his talk, for his voice was singularly soft and even, and Dunlavey's almost comical air of dejection could not have settled over ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... fulfilling scrupulously his duties to his mother and his step-father, he was much addicted to the pleasures so natural to his age and position. One of his greatest pleasures was entertaining his friends at breakfast; which he did very often. This amused me much on account of the comical scenes of which I was often a witness. Besides the young officers of Bonaparte's staff, his most frequent guests, he had also frequently at his table the ventriloquist Thiemet, Dugazon, Dazincourt, and Michau of the Theatre Francais, and a few ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... seriously enjoining obedience, he seated the monkey on his back, securing it there with a cord; and then, putting a second string round the dog's neck that he might lead him, he put a loop of the knot into the comical rider's hand, saying gravely: "Having slain the parent, Mr. Turk, you will please to carry ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... he, stopping ever and anon, as if to laugh the more heartily, "stab my vitals, but you are a comical quiz. I wonder what the women would say, if they saw the dashing Edward Pepper, Esquire, walking arm in arm with thee at Ranelagh or Vauxhall! Nay, man, never be downcast; if I laugh at thee, it is only to make thee look a little merrier thyself. Why, ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Sky-Bird at the stops. He pulled the control wires and made the ailerons swing up and down, which always raised a laugh among the crowds. Another favorite pastime with him was to post himself in front of the reflector of the big searchlight up on the cabin, and make the most comical grimaces at his image on the polished reflector inside, sometimes uttering queer noises as if he were crying, and at other times chattering with the utmost anger at the phantom monkey, mixing these demonstrations ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... "Grass-trees are most comical-looking objects. They have a black bare stem, from one to eight feet high, surmounted by a tuft of half rushes and half grass, out of which, again, grows a long thing exactly like a huge bullrush. A lot of them always grow together, and a ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... his gestures awkward. Light, curly hair covered his head; his nose was long and inquisitive; his eyes, big, blue and good-humored; his mouth, incredibly wide, with shrewd, mobile lips, which habitually smiled. A tuft of yellow beard on the end of his sharp chin, gave his face a comical expression resembling that which caricature bestows on Uncle Sam. His voice was pitched in a high key, and was modified by that nasal twang supposed to indicate Yankee origin; but a habit of giving his declarative sentences an interrogative finish, might ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... when Payson offered his arm to Mrs. Frank Mayo, who rose out of a shadowy corner in a high-throated gown and led us to the dining-room. I caught Sallie's eye as she laid her hand on Frank Mayo's arm, and she gave me a comical look, half imploring, ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... But it said all kinds of things, and many of them sounded very comical. Stop, look at that big poppy over there. You sha'n't get it, you ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... play thar till ye're tired, right on that paper, an' then ye must come into the house, an' let yer ma wash yer face;" and then Jim, realizing the comical side of all this charming dream, laughed till the woods rang again, and Benedict laughed with him. It was a kind of clearing up of the cloud of sentiment that enveloped them both, and they were ready to work. They settled, after a long discussion, upon ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... sure that I call this fair play," said Saltash with a comical twist of the eyebrows. "I didn't expect all these developments in so short ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... him on the steamer and carries home again intact; it is as much a part of his indispensable impedimenta as his hatbox. But Fleabody is excellent; it was probably suggested by Peabody, which may have struck Mr. Trollope as comical (just as Trollope strikes us as comical), or, at least, as not serious. What a capital name Veronica Trollope would be for a hoydenish young woman in a society novel! I fancy that all foreign names are odd to the alien. I remember that the signs above shop-doors ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... was kept quiet as far as possible, but gradually got noised abroad among other regiments of Her Majesty's infantry. Great amusement was caused by the recital, nor for a long period afterwards was the comical "night-attack" at ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... candle-snuffer the piece would lose half its embellishments." But there has always been forthcoming a very abundant supply of stories of this kind, not always to be understood literally, however, concerning the drama under difficulties, and the comical side of the player's indigence, distresses, and quaint artifices to conceal ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... had an extraordinary man here[852].' BOSWELL. 'Foote was a man who never failed in conversation. If he had gone into a stable—' JOHNSON. 'Sir, if he had gone into a stable, the ostler would have said, here has been a comical fellow; but he would not have respected him.' BOSWELL. 'And, Sir, the ostler would have answered him, would have given him as good as he brought, as the common saying is.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir; and Foote would have answered the ostler.—When Burke ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... Shakespear's Merry Wives of Windsor, and brought it on the stage under the title of The Comical Gallant. Prefixed to this, is a large account of Taste in Poetry, and the Causes of its Degeneracy addressed to the Hon. George Granville, Esq; afterwards ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... amusement. Mrs. Jarley and her famous waxworks, Mrs. Jarley, Mrs. Hodgkins herself, was a sight that would move the latent risibilities of the most morose Iago. It would be impossible for me to give the harangue of that queer old lady, the unction, the comical postures would be lost on paper. She was "sui generis" and must be seen to be appreciated. Her wax figures were original and pertinent hits on the live issues of the day. Dr. Tanner created much applause; the new charter 13-15-14 ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... colors and lines should be identical with that of the objects to be represented; in poetry, that the emotional quality of meter and rhythm should be attuned to the incidents and sentiments expressed. Otherwise the effect is ugly or comical. ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... called out in comical accents as they slowly descended the naked marble staircase, ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... (Two Sisters), which cannot be read without touching the inmost heart, while it delights the fancy. Spindler has a humorous novel, whose hero, a travelling clerk or bagman, meets with a variety of amusing adventures. Like many other books of the comical order, it is tedious when taken in large doses. The reader, at first amused, soon lays it down. Caroline von Goehren appears with a series of Novellen, which receive no great commendation. The Ostergabe ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited: Seneca cannot be too heavy nor Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the liberty, ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... government. Dashwood's financial statement had been confused and absurd beyond belief, and had been received by the House with roars of laughter. He had sense enough to be conscious of his unfitness for the high situation which he held, and exclaimed in a comical fit of despair, "What shall I do? The boys will point at me in the street, and cry, 'There goes the worst Chancellor of the Exchequer that ever was!'" George Grenville came to the rescue, and spoke strongly on his favorite theme, the profusion with which the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Robert, or, as he was always called, Bob Clark—an odd-looking boy, with a bullet head, pug nose, comical face, brown ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... extensive agency of the devil was almost universal. Ascetics, saints, bishops, peasants, philosophers, kings, Gregory the Great, Martin Luther, all testified that they had often seen him. The mediaval conception of the devil was sometimes comical, sometimes awful. Grimm says, "He was Jewish, heathenish, Christian, idolatrous, elfish, titanic, spectral, all at once." He was "a soul snatching wolf," a "hell hound," a "whirlwind hammer;" now an infernal "parody of God" with "a mother who mimics ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... said. There seemed to be no end to his fund of stories." Mr. Lamon states: "Lincoln frequently said that he lived by his humor and would have died without it. His manner of telling a story was irresistibly comical, the fun of it dancing in his eyes and playing over every feature. His face changed in an instant; the hard lines faded out of it, and the mirth seemed to diffuse itself all over him like a spontaneous tickle. You could see it coming long before ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... waxed hottest at the dinner-table between his host and hostess, he would drive his hands through his shock of sandy hair, and say, with a comical glance out of his umber eyes, "Don't flirt, my friends. It makes a ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the Church. Though he stole jam right and left his heart was in the right place, for the object of his depredations was always some extra tasty dish for a specially bad blesse. He had the longest of eyelashes, and his expression when caught would be so comical it was impossible to be angry ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... bile rises, they rear like a frightened horse. When the wind blows down a few chimney-pots they are quite ill, and deprive themselves of an evening at the Gymnase or the Porte-Saint-Martin Theatre, "on account of repairs." Hippolyte, who had seen the performance gratis of a comical scene with Monsieur Molineux as concerning certain decorative repairs in his studio, was not surprised to see the dark greasy paint, the oily stains, spots, and other disagreeable accessories that varied the woodwork. And these stigmata of poverty are not altogether ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac
... actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastorical-comical, historical-pastoral, scene indivisible, or poem unlimited: Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light.[49] For the law of writ and the liberty, these are ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... indeed any member of the family, a comical bird? His head is almost square, and what a remarkable eye he has! It is a seeing eye, too, for he does not require light to enable him to detect the food he seeks in the bogs. He has many names to characterize him, such as Bog-sucker, Mud Snipe, Blind ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography [July 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... surprise on the savage face was almost comical, and before Tarzan could unsling his bow the fellow had turned and fled down the path crying out in alarm as though to others ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... her, she turned round and laughed heartily as she saw him coming along, pale, and holding on to his horse's mane as it bounced him up and down. His very appearance of a "beau cavalier" made his awkwardness and timidity all the more comical. ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... monsieur, if I tell my story with a certain flippancy, for, as a matter of fact, it is a frankly comical story and cannot fail to make you laugh. Fate often amuses itself by playing these imbecile tricks, these monstrous farces which seem as though they must have been invented by the brain of a madman or a drunkard. ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... and though the vibration in it was almost imperceptible, it was sufficient to nullify the ridiculousness of Julian's demeanour as a wearer of sackcloth, and to bring a sudden lump into Rachel's throat. The comical absurdity of his bellicose pride because he had accomplished something which he had sworn to accomplish was extinguished by the absolutely painful sincerity of his final words, which seemed somehow to damage the reputation of Louis. Rachel could feel her emotion increasing, but ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... We got a comical guy in the tent. Bill Huggins. Me an hims a pair. Keep everybody laffin all the time. Bill likes things hot about as well as me. Every nite he fills the Sibly stove so full of wood that he has to hammer the last piece in. It gets so hot that it jumps up and down like ...
— Dere Mable - Love Letters Of A Rookie • Edward Streeter
... with awe at fish-bakes and barbecues. He was this uncouth wretch's father,—do you understand? The flabby-faced boy, flogged in the cotton-field for whining after his dad, or hiding away part of his flitch and molasses for months in hopes the old man would come back, was rather a comical object, you would have thought. Very different his, from the feeling with which you left your mother's grave,—though as yet we have not invented names for the emotions of those people. We'll grant ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... a charmingly comical remembrance of the last visit I paid Dr. Channing, at Newport; when, wishing to take me into his garden, and unwilling to keep me waiting while he muffled himself up, according to his necessary usual precautions, he ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... a comical account of the bursting up of the city of Napoleon and the navigation improvement scheme, of Harry's flight and the Colonel's discomfiture. Harry left in such a hurry that he hadn't even time to bid Miss Laura Hawkins good-bye, but he had no doubt that Harry would console himself ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... there will be no further Interruption. [He lights a cigar, giving short laughs as he does so; when it is lighted, bursts into a regular fit of laughing.] I'm beginning now to think the whole thing very funny. That fellow! [Still laughing nervously.] It really is too comical: first came the dispute at dinner with Weinhold—five minutes after that he takes leave—off to the other end of the world; then this affair crops up—and now we'll proceed ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... a sharp, satirical look, as if he intended to recall his namesake in the novel. Smaller than Enjolras, he was endowed with abrupt and comical agility, and in the stead of the puns and slang of the Paris street-Arab, he indulged in the funniest capers, leaps, and attitudes. I am bound to add that, yielding to his street instincts, Gavroche was in the habit of seizing ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... youthful faces of the daughters of Philip Carr, mining superintendent and engineer, looked from the windows with no little anxiety towards their future home in the straggling settlement below, that occasionally came in view at the turns of the long zigzagging road. A slight look of comical disappointment passed between them as they gazed upon the sterile flat, dotted with unsightly excrescences that stood equally for cabins or mounds of stone and gravel. It was so feeble and inconsistent a culmination to the beautiful scenery they had passed through, so hopeless and imbecile ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... "He's a comical old fellow," said Scrooge's nephew, "that's the truth; and not so pleasant as he might be. However, his offences carry their own punishment, and I have nothing to say against him. Who suffers by his ill whims? Himself, always. Here ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... and was the latest thing in quick-fire repeating arms of that time: but there was only one of that class in the train. Had we been seen on muster, standing at "present arms," the array would have been less terrifying than comical. ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... of observation, the feminine softness of heart, the colloquial incorrectness and vivacity of style, the little amusing airs of a half-learned lady, the delightful garrulity, the "dear Doctor Johnson," the "it was so comical," all disappear in Mr. Croker's quotations. The lady ceases to speak in the first person; and her anecdotes, in the process of transfusion, become as flat as Champagne in decanters, or Herodotus in Beloe's version. Sir John Hawkins, it is true, loses nothing; ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a bull.—Ver. 103-4. Clarke translates these lines in this comical strain: 'Achilles was as mad as a bull in the open Circus, when he pushes at the red coat, stuffed, used ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... successfully out of, the prouder they are of her. They adopted her, with grave and formal military ceremonies of their own invention—solemnities is the truer word; solemnities that were so profoundly solemn and earnest, that the spectacle would have been comical if it hadn't been so touching. It was a good show, and as stately and complex as guard-mount and the trooping of the colors; and it had its own special music, composed for the occasion by the bandmaster of the Seventh; and the child was as ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... taking a sudden leap and "header" after some unwary sillack. There were shoals of small cod-fish in the voe, and Loki had no difficulty in filling his most capacious maw. His mode of fishing was certainly comical, but Yaspard was not so interested in the matter as Signy, therefore his eyes were soon roving again to ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... elbows, and spread my great browned hand and red arms before him. He laughed, and said, 'Peggy, you are right; you are a worthy girl and a clever, and in the sight of God are worth ten of me; but when I think of taking you home and presenting you to my mother and sisters as Mrs. Brandon, it is rather comical. As for anything else, you are too good a girl, and I will say no more about it, only I wish you would marry Powell and ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... thereabouts, but neither of us was yet asleep, owing to the fact that Gubin had been telling me some interesting stories concerning the town and its families and inhabitants. However, as soon as he descried the woman looming like a ghost, he leapt to his feet in comical terror, then subsided on to the straw again, contracted his body as though he were in convulsions, and hurriedly made the sign of ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... mean to say that she has told you all about it?" And he turned away from his work, and looked up into our faces with a comical expression, half of ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... could hardly gulp his tears down, it was all the Major could do to keep from laughter. He turned round and shot a comical glance at Mrs. Pendennis, who too felt that the scene was at once ridiculous and sentimental. And so, having nothing to say, she went up and kissed Mr. Pen: as he thought of her tenderness and soft obedience to his wishes, it is very possible ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... disappeared somewhere for a moment, and presently emerged with an old violin, which he began to scrape vigorously. Even his tuning was irresistibly comical; and he had not been playing a lively jig for ten minutes, before two or three couples were on their feet performing the figure. Soon an admiring circle, four deep, collected about the dancers. The sorrows of the exiles were ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... to the house, but stood so long on the doorstep in a brown study, gazing into the tangled green boskage of the cherry orchard, that Theodora finally went and opened the door before he knocked. As she brought him into the sitting-room she made a comical grimace at Anne over ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... who broke the silence once more. "Well," she drawled, coughing genteelly at the same time, "better late than never, as the saying is. I wonder who it is gits up all them comical sayings?" Apparently she had no genuine desire for light upon this mystery, as she continued, immediately: "I have a gen'leman friend that's always gittin' 'em off. 'Well,' he says, 'the best of friends must part,' and, 'Thou strikest me to the heart'—all kinds of cracks like that. ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... was actually face to face with the problem of answering Mary's letter in ten words the youth's hand refused to write, and he stood looking at the yellow slip of paper with an intensity that was comical to the clerk. Plainly this cowboy ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... now a serious problem to solve, and their ideas of its solution were almost comical. Thus, one statesman recommended the organization of a special force recruited from the ranks of vagrants and criminals and stationed permanently in the northern islands, A more practical programme was the formation of a local militia. But neither of these suggestions obtained approval, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... of command Jocko straightened up like a veteran, looked sleepily around, and raising his right paw, saluted in military fashion. The movement pushed the hat back on his head, and gave a swaggering look to the forlorn figure that was irresistibly comical. ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... fierce, and blue. They appeared to emit heat as well as light; for it was a frequent trick of their proprietor's to snatch at his spectacles and wipe the mist from them with a bandana handkerchief. Unglazed, his eyes showed a blank and indiscriminate ferocity which Manvers found exceedingly comical. ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... bough over my head gasping in the sultry air, and holding their wings half-spread for coolness. All birds during the pairing season become more or less sentimental, and murmur soft nothings in a tone very unlike the grinding-organ repetition and loudness of their habitual song. The crow is very comical as a lover, and to hear him trying to soften his croak to the proper Saint Preux(1) standard has something the effect of a Mississippi boatman quoting Tennyson. Yet there are few things to my ear ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... raised the wine-cup, and drank about half of the contents; then she shuddered, and while her pretty face took a comical expression, she turned to her mother, who was seated behind her and held ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... no hypocrisy. The O'Kage Sama now was longing for the rightful substitution. His nest well feathered, he would seek safer quarters with the softer charms of O'Han. On Shu[u]zen's abrupt gesture and refusal he took his departure, almost betraying his own disgruntlement. Comical was his despairing gesture as he took his way to the ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville |
