"Jazz" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... among the audiences that were listening to other candidates and waited for the men to express their opinions. I heard one stalwart old fellow declare he was going to vote for Jazz. "Jazz is the fellow we want for City Clerk," I heard him tell his comrades. I had never heard of Jazz in those days: Jazz was decidedly a dark horse. But the man was strong for him and wanted his friends ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... a haze of tobacco smoke and over the noise of a jazz orchestra and the chatter of a dozen similar conversations. Hugh was excited but not really interested. The Nu Deltas invited him to their house every evening, but they were not making a great fuss over him. Perhaps they weren't going to ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... organized manner for ages and the fundamental physical basis of modern music is a thousand years old. Would the primitive savage appreciate the modern symphony orchestra? Even the majority of civilized beings prefer the modern ragtime or jazz to the exquisite art of the symphony. An appreciation of the opera and the symphony is reached by educational methods extending over long periods. An appreciation of the expressiveness of light cannot be expected to be realized by any short-cut. Most persons ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... whistles, cymbals, flageolets, snare drums, and rattles, or other noise-makers. The result is an indescribable hubbub; a garish human kaleidoscope, accompanied by fiendish clamor and unmusical noises which fairly outstrip a dozen jazz bands. It is bedlam let loose, a scene of wild uproar ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... concertinas were being drawn back and forth, and guitars, banjos, mandolins and whatnot were in use—playing all varieties of music, from the classic, like "Lucia," "Poet and Peasant," and "Il Trovatore" to the folksongs and the rollicking "Jazz." Music is indeed the chiefest outlet of the Negro's emotions, and the state of his soul can best be determined by the type ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... been a boa-constrictor, Peter had once been a bear, Peter had once been a rabbit and a giraffe, a turkey and a fox; and now under the spell of this weird music these dead creatures came to life in his soul. So Peter discovered the meaning of "jazz," in all its weirdly named ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... for beauty," drawled Simonoff. "This is the dance of Greek maidens at the sacrificial rites to Demeter. The Grand street thing is a contortion before the obese complacency of the great god Jazz. And Jazz ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... remain in all essential social values "a lady"—still he was aware that the external decorations of a chorus girl could not turn the shining daughter of the St. Johns for an imitation of paste, and, though the nimble Bertha could perform every Jazz motion ever invented, one would never dream of associating her with a circus ring. It was not the things one did that made one appear unrefined, he had concluded at last, but the way that one did them; and Patty Vetch's way was not the prescribed way of his world. Small as she was there was too ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... supposed to talk. Well Al they wasn't no way of keeping him quite and he says "That's all bunk because I been out here before and talked my head off and nothing happened." So I says well if you have got to talk you don't half to yell it. So then he tried to whisper Al but his whisper sounded like a jazz record with a crack in it so he says I'm not yelling I am whispering so I said yes I have heard Hughey Jennings whisper like that out on ...
— The Real Dope • Ring Lardner
... grumpy old gentleman in the crowded restaurant was compelled to sit, much against his will, next to the orchestra. His stare at the leader as the jazz selection came to an end. The annoyed patron snorted, and ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... necessary"—for guide, he became something different every day in his quest after an "Essential Trade." He was in turn a one-man-business, a railway-porter, a coal-miner, a farmer, a NORTHCLIFFE leader-writer, a taxi-baron, a jazz-professor and a non-union barber. At one moment he was single, an orphan alone and unloved; at another he had a drunken wife, ten consumptive young children and several paralytic old parents to support. All to no avail; nobody would ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 26, 1919 • Various
... the more obscure phenomena of religious frenzy such as the ceremonial dances of savages, the "Danse Macabre" of the Middle Ages, the feats of the whirling dervishes, the jumping and shouting of revivalism; also, maybe, the modern jazz.] ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... Wayburn. For two years following he toured the United States and Canada with Dunne and Ryley's musical comedy success, "By the Sad Sea Waves," which he helped write and stage, introducing "ragtime," now known as "Jazz," to America in nearly every city of over 5,000 population. Gertrude Hoffmann was one of his dancing girls in the ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... day, as I drove in my hack, I passed a familiar figure in black; 'Twas irresponsible Lydia, our giggler so jolly, Gone into seclusion to atone for past folly. She lives all alone, without any noise, Without any jazz, and without any boys! She told me with horror and pain in her gaze That Bee had turned actress, in movies (not plays) And that very same week was playing down town With R. Valentino ...
— The 1926 Tatler • Various
... favorite. I learned it off a master-singer, ole Anse Peters, up in God's country whar men are men—en the women are glad of it. But what's led ye off on that wagon track, Jim? Why don't ye git a saxophone en tune in on some jazz? Be modern, like the rest of us fellers. Here you are, slouchin' around without a dressin' jacket er slippers en talkin' 'bout an ole song that's in the discard. Shame on ye! But before ye apologize, meet my ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... the argument is simplified by lopping off the greater part of the premise. For these writers seem to hold that the only important question for the white men of South Africa is, how indefinitely to grow fat on ostrich feathers and diamond mines, and dance jazz dances over the misery and degradation of a whole race of fellow-beings of a different colour from their own. Possibly they believe that moral laws have a special domesticated breed of comfortable concessions for the service of the people ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... like a Sealyhan terrier, but he's got a repertoire like a catalogue of phonograph records. I dare the audience to name anything he can't play right off the bat—songs, opera, Gregorian chants, sonatas, jazz—and if he can't play it, the person that asked for it ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... on the same evening, and he likes to drift from one to the other just as he likes to drift from one partner to another, or not dance at all if he does not want to. A man who writes himself down for the tenth jazz must be eagerly appearing on the stroke of the first bar. Or if he does not engage his partners busily at the opening of the evening, he can not dance at all—he may not want to, but he ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... jazz," said Lane, and a sheathed finger snapped out. There was a loud bang. The 3V screen dissolved into a ...
— Mutineer • Robert J. Shea
... see I was about as convincin' as a jazz band tryin' to imitate the Metropolitan orchestra doin' the overture to "Lucia." If I hadn't finally had sense enough to switch the subject a little, there might have been a poutin' scene and maybe a double case of sulks. But when I got to askin' where she'd collected all ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... listening to the radio—he is fond of good jazz—and driving out in the country. He loves speed. An American friend who some years ago accompanied him on a motor trip from Milan to Venice groaned when the speedometer began hovering around 78. "What's the matter with you?" ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... concert, I am afraid, the nodding character of the relation becomes especially marked. To me the sweetest music in the world is the roar of a fifteen-inch gun on a day when the visibility is good and plentiful. But I do know enough to be able to say that the wild asses who with their jazz-bands "stamp o'er our heads and will not let us sleep" (slightly to amend my old friend FitzGerald) are nothing less than ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... him we're tied up till Larry comes." Barney turned back to Maggie. "I say, sister, how about robing yourself in your raiment of joy and coming with yours truly to a palace of jazz, there to dine and show the populace what real ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... the suburbs where the Bolsheviki wouldn't bother him), and don't leave any forwarding address with the postoffice. But if, as I fear from an examination of your pink-scalloped notepaper with its exhalation of lilac essence, the vortex of modern jazz life has swept you in, the crisis is ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... lot of eyes I had probably spit into all down the years, and how no one had ever told me of it so frankly before. Children are so honest until we teach them to say that they're sorry when they're not, and to listen to stories that bore them and to pretend not to like Jazz when all the time ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... limber young females, Miss Casey is, about as thick as a drink of water, but strong on hair and eyes. She glides in willowy, drapes herself on a chair, pats her home-grown ear-muffs into shape, and unfolds her note book business-like. And inside of two minutes she's doing the Pitman stuff in jazz time, with no call for repeats except when I'd shoot a string of figures at her. I was handin' myself the comfortin' thought, too, that I'd ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... patience and fine craftsmanship in carrying out your idea frequently count for more than the originality or brilliance of the idea itself. Owing to the restlessness of the world situation—wars and rumors of wars, strikes and overtendency towards jazz and slang—there is already, especially in the work of youngsters, too evident an urge to be different; different merely for the sake of ...
— Pictorial Photography in America 1922 • Pictorial Photographers of America
... brought to maturity on very warm sandy soil. Most of them come from Portugal. How the natives can bear to part with them is a mystery. The small high-powered onions, on the other hand, are easily cultivated. The best varieties are Eau de Jazz, Cook's Revenge, Sutton's Saucepan Corroder and Soho Violet. Sow in rows and beat the soil flat with the back of a spade. Your neighbour's spade is as good as any other for this purpose. Goats are said to be very fond of onion tops, but ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 9, 1919 • Various
... big wireless companies have great stations fitted with powerful telephone transmitters and at given hours of the day and night they send out songs by popular singers, dance music by jazz orchestras, fashion talks by and for the ladies, agricultural reports, government weather forecasts and other interesting features. Then by simply shifting the slide on your tuning coil you can often tune-in someone who is sending Morse, that ...
— The Radio Amateur's Hand Book • A. Frederick Collins
... the genuine old tapestries on the walls seem, with their mediaeval calm, to discourage any essay in the riotous. Soft-footed waiters shimmer to and fro over thick, expensive carpets to the music of an orchestra which abstains wholly from the noisy modernity of jazz. To Archie, who during the past few days had been privileged to hear Miss Huskisson rehearsing, the place had a sort of brooding quiet, like the ocean just before the arrival of a cyclone. As Lucille ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... atmosphere of the revival. Yet, though his fellow Christians blamed him for it, they sought it like a drug. He played on their unwilling nerves and they ran to be played on. He was their opera, their jazz. Breath came faster and eyes shone. The likelihood of a hysterical giggle was imminent, and some couples, safely out of range of Tenney's gaze, were "holding hands" and mentally shuddering ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... it. We're out here till breakfast-time. If those blasted servants come back before eight o'clock, I shall be vastly surprised. You won't get Seppings away from a dance till you throw him out. I know him. The jazz'll go to his head, and he'll stand clapping and demanding encores till his hands blister. Damn all dancing butlers! What is Brinkley Court? A respectable English country house or a crimson dancing school? ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... say, won't you stay down-away at the Sausage Farm? It's a scream, it wouldn't seem you could dream such perfect ch-e-arm; You can bet that Jazz'll be beat to a frazzle, And the old Fox Trot'll be a pale green mottle, When they gauge what's the rage of the age at the Sausage Farm. (CRASH! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 29, 1919 • Various
... those who are in the new colleges over there are trained and ready to win India for their Master. To bring them over here for training is not altogether good. There are dangers in this our age of jazz. It is not good to send out very young girls to a far country during the formative years lest a strange language and customs and a new civilization should unfit them to go back to their "Main Street" and adjust themselves. The Indian Colleges are best for the undergraduate Indian girl and are ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren |
