"Jester" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 1483. He was a learned scholar, a physician, and a philosopher. He was called "the great jester of France," by Lord Bacon. Many buffooneries are ascribed to him unjustly, and he was a greater man than certain modern writers make him out ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... started from their seats, and drew their swords. They would have killed the crazy man who insulted their king; but he raised his hand and stopped them, and with his eyes looking into Robert's eyes he said, "Not the king; you shall be the king's jester! You shall wear the cap and bells, and make laughter for my court. You shall be the servant of the servants, and your companion ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... of Fools which deserve mention. These are called Court Fools or Jesters. Until within a comparatively short time ago, every king had his Jester, whose duty it was to furnish mirth and merriment for the royal household. The real Court Fool was in reality a fool by birth, while a Jester was a pretended fool. The former was dressed in "a parti-colored dress, including a cowl, which ended in a cock's-head, and was ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... well as hands; but it is only when discharging our duty that we permit our tongues to dwell on what we have observed. I noted but little of this man's conversation, but from what I heard, it seemed he was not unwilling to play what we call the jester, or jack-pudding, in the conversation, a character which, considering the man's age and physiognomy, is not, I should be tempted to say, natural, but assumed for some purpose ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... the tracts, but I have been interested by them, and I spend the brief hours of leisure which are vouchsafed to me in annotating my editions. And yet, my dear Duke, unfortunate as my situation is, I would not exchange places with my old self, a hired jester at rich men's tables, selling myself for a dinner which I could not digest, nor with that wretched monarch, in whose cause we all suffered, who left his gallant gentleman to die for his cause while he pursued his selfish pleasures. If it were chance that I get out of here, I shall ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... the stage, possessing real beauty and not without depth. His most celebrated drama, in so far as it has aroused direct or indirect imitations, and owing to the type he was the first to suggest, was The Jester of Seville: that is, Don Juan. All European literatures, utilising Don Juan, became tributaries ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... form which we know best are those of old Judge Phoenix—for so the office-jester named him when we first moved in, and we have known him by that name ever since. He is a fat old Irishman, with a clean-shaven face, who stands summer and winter in the side doorway that opens, next to the little grocery opposite, on the alley-way to the rear tenement. Summer and winter he ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... admittance as a horse-boy, was kicked out. There was tumult and excitement in the streets. Giovanni, retreating to a narrow alley to brush mud off his doublet, was aware that a man with keen observant eyes was regarding him from the doorway of a wine-shop. The man wore the cap and bells of a jester, and his fantastic costume was gorgeously colored and ornamented. He was drinking a cup of wine, and when that was finished he poured another for himself and began to sip it slowly. Catching ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... who that is," he muttered. "It's Wamba, son of Witless, the Jester of Ivanhoe. I've been trying to catch him for seventy-two years, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... she said, "but it is a jester's dollar, the fee of a clown. Don't you see, Martin, the whole thing is lowering. I want the man I love and honor to be something finer and higher than a perpetrator ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... illustrate the quarrel of the Mountain and the Squirrel, the steep height should quiver and heave and then give forth its personality in the figure of a vague smoky giant, capable of human argument, but with oak-roots in his hair, and Bun, perhaps, become a jester in ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... this corpse, that bears for winding sheet The Stars and Stripes, he lived to rear anew, Between the mourners at his head and feet, Say, scurrile-jester, ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... in Spanish and partly in English costume. Thus, the huge sleeves were Spanish, but the laced stomacher English. Hobby-horse represented the king and all the knightly order; Maid Marian, the queen; the friar, the clergy generally; the fool, the court jester. The other characters represented a franklin or private gentleman, a churl or farmer, and the lower grades were represented by a clown. The Spanish costume is to show the origin of ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... men. I understand solidarity in retribution, too; but there can be no such solidarity with children. And if it is really true that they must share responsibility for all their fathers' crimes, such a truth is not of this world and is beyond my comprehension. Some jester will say, perhaps, that the child would have grown up and have sinned, but you see he didn't grow up, he was torn to pieces by the dogs, at eight years old. Oh, Alyosha, I am not blaspheming! I understand, of course, what an upheaval of ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Nicholas, with heavy pick. On bar of steel scarce made a dent or nick, "Pick, Nick!" a passing jester cried, in pleasant part. "I wish it were picnic," said he, "with ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... No matter who it was, you would have been justified in giving him the lie. He must have been a jester who wanted to make a fool of you. A thousand souls, indeed! Why, just reckon the taxes on them, and see what there would be left! For these three years that accursed fever has been killing ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... cap, which had a tassel and bells. He wore also a party-coloured waistcoat, huge full breeches of all the colours of the rainbow, hose of yellow, and long shoes with rosettes of vast size. He stood forth a veritable clown or jester of bygone days. ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... gait, like a weary workman, turning his face, as smooth as an apple, with its ball-like nose, from side to side; and when he entered the dining-room, he cast a glance round at the furniture and fixed his eyes on a small picture of Rigoletto, a hunchbacked jester, ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... French ships were taken: thirty thousand Frenchmen were killed, with two of their admirals: the loss of the English was inconsiderable, compared to the greatness and importance of the victory.[*] None of Philip's courtiers, it is said, dared to inform him of the event; till his fool or jester gave him a hint, by which he discovered the loss that ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... the inferiority of everything so clearly. He's awfully lonely, and I must try to see more of him. But it is very difficult. I used to amuse him, and he appointed me, in a way he has, a sort of State Jester—Royal Letters Patent, you know. But then he began to detect the commonness of my mind and taste, and, one by one, all the avenues of communication became closed. If I liked a book which he disliked, and praised it to him, he became inflicted with a kind of mental ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... stinging jest on the lips of the Spartan,—the very same which the modern slaveholder flings with so great gusto against the unfortunate Yankee,—and that was Athenian cupidity. The ancient and the modern jester are alike condemned on their own indictment, since upon cupidity the most petulant, upon cupidity the most voracious in its greedy demands, rested the whole Spartan polity, as does the system of slaveholding in the South. The Spartan, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... jester's lightsome mien, And his spangles and his sheen, All had vanished, when the scene ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... Jester; or, the Pleasantries of Cogia Nasr Eddin Effendi. Translated from the Turkish. Jarrold ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... said, "Yâkob, place yourself under the sword of Hateetah, and go out with him and fight a hundred Shânbah." "Oh, he's an ass," replied Bel-Kasem. Such was their style of ridicule. Bel-Kasem is a well-meaning little fellow, but a sort of fool or jester of the Sheikh's. Khanouhen allows him to say anything and do anything, but laughs at him all the time. Bel-Kasem always brings the Sheikh some pretty present, and Khanouhen throws around him his powerful arm of protection. The slavish ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... fellow was King Marshmallow As ever wore a crown! At every draught of wine he quaffed, And at every joke of his jester he laughed, Laughed till the tears ran down— O, he laughed Ha! Ha! and he laughed Ho! Ho! And every time that he laughed, do you know, The Lords in waiting they ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... Hereupon the Sultan sent to summon the Wazir and bade him betroth the man to a woman of righteous conduct and come of decent folk. Now the Minister had with him an old nurse, and he commanded her to find a match for the Sultan's Jester; whereupon she rose and went out from him and engaged for the man a beautiful woman. And presently the marriage-tie was tied between these twain and he went in unto the bride and she tarried with him ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... that friend of kings have beheld him in prophetic vision from the pillar stone at Cork. And yet though the short cloak and the leather wallet were no more, he was a true gleeman, being alike poet, jester, and newsman of the people. In the morning when he had finished his breakfast, his wife or some neighbour would read the newspaper to him, and read on and on until he interrupted with, "That'll do—I have me meditations"; and from these meditations would come the day's store of jest ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... Johann Frederick stood before them. For it has been already mentioned, that he left the chamber in which the family council was held, by a small private door which led down to this portion of the castle. Here he was looking about for his court-jester, Clas Hinze, to bid him order the carriages to convey him and his suite that very night to Freienwald, and by chance opened this very door which led out to ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... heart swelled within him, for he felt this attempted slaughter of his faithful beast in a degree much deeper than the harsh treatment he had himself received. Having in vain raised his hand to his eyes, he said to Wamba, the jester, who, seeing his master's ill humor, had prudently retreated to the rear, "I pray thee, do me the kindness to wipe my eyes with the skirt of thy mantle; the dust offends me, and these bonds will not let me help myself one ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... eaten to the accompaniment of the same noisy mirth I have already described. Afterward the host conducted the men to his "den," a luxurious paneled library filled with rare prints, and we listened for an hour to the jokes and anecdotes of a semiprofessional jester who took it on himself to act as the life of the party. It was after eleven o'clock when we rejoined the ladies, but the evening apparently had only just begun; the serious business of the day—bridge—was ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... "she saw the air black with her intimate friends," seems to me a thoroughly humorous application of the exaggeration principle. So, too, is the description of a man so terribly thin that he never could tell whether he had the stomach-ache or the lumbago. But the jester who expects you to laugh at the tale of the fish that was so large that the water of the lake subsided two feet when it was drawn ashore simply does not know where humour ends and ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... admiration of "hault courage and strict honour!" "I forgive you, Sir Knight," says the heroine in the Romance, "I forgive you as a Christian." "That means," said Wamba, "that she does not forgive him at all." Mr. Kingsley's word of honour is about as valuable as in the jester's opinion was the Christian charity of Rowena. But here we are brought to a further specimen of Mr. Kingsley's method of disputation, and having duly exhibited it, I ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... sardonic jester who loves best to thwart the dearest desires of men and warp the destiny of nations, became piqued at the peace and the plenty in the land which lay around the bay. Chance, knowing well how best and quickest to let savagery ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... the life of a royal jester beset with great dangers, and the king having once gotten it into his royal head that I was a wizard, it was not long before I again fell into trouble, from which my wit did not a second time in a like ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... people who would venture body and soul for God's Word and the Scriptures, but where a blasphemer can thus openly speak and write, who esteems and treats God's holy words no better than if they were the fabled pratings of some fool or jester at the carnival. Because my Lord Christ and His holy Word, even He who gave His own blood as the purchase-price, is held to be but mockery and fools' wit, I must likewise drop all seriousness, and see whether I, too, have learned how to play the fool and clown. Thou knowest, ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... sound has again the big conclusive phrase that merges into more pranks of the jaunty tune in the biggest revel of all, so that we suspect the jolly jester is the real hero and the majestic figures are, after all, mere background. And yet here follows the most tenderly moving verse, all unexpected, of ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... recorded in letters of gold. The executioner having dismissed the doctor, made every thing ready to tie up the tailor. While the executioner was making ready to hang up the tailor, the sultan of Casgar, wanting the company of his crooked jester, asked where he was. One of his officers answered, The hunch-back, sir, whom you inquire after, got drunk last night, and, contrary to his custom, slipped out of the palace, went a sauntering into the city, and was this morning found dead. A man was brought before the chief ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... so magnificent a coup would create upon the minds of the rest of the Slave Squadron. The Psyche, from her phenomenal lack of speed, and general unsuitability for the service upon which she was employed, had, with her crew, become the butt and laughing-stock of every stupid and scurrilous jester on the coast, and many a time had we been made to writhe under the lash of some more than ordinarily envenomed gibe; but now the laugh was to be on our side; we were going to demonstrate to those shallow, jeering wits the superiority ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... there was, and valour, and fear, And the jest that died in the jester's ear, And preparation, noble to see, Of all-accepting mortality; Tranquil Necessity gracing Force; And the trumpets danc'd with the stirring horse; And lordly voices, here and there, Call'd to war through ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... the Thunderer cries; "go plant Thine edifice, I care not how ill; Take notice, earth. I hereby grant Carte blanche of mortar, stone, and trowel. Go Hermes, Hercules, and Mars, Fraught with these bills on Henry Hase, Drop with yon jester from the stars, And build a church ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various
... disciplinarian. He had arrested with his own hands, pulling him down from the rostrum and committing him to Bocardo prison, an undergraduate who had carried too far the wit of the 'Terrae Filius', the licensed jester of ...
— The Oxford Degree Ceremony • Joseph Wells
... see him dine should encumber the table, and he alone set on and took off the dishes, for the pages neither came near nor spoke a word. Strict silence was observed, none daring to speak unless it was some jester, or the person of whom he asked a question. The sewer was always upon his knees and barefooted, attending him without lifting up his eyes. No man with shoes on was to come into the room upon pain of death. The sewer also gave him drink in a cup of several shapes, sometimes ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... Corporal now (like an experienced jester) withdrew to leave its full effect on the admiration of his master. A little before sunset the two travellers ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... humorist, wag, wit, reparteeist^, epigrammatist, punster; bel esprit, life of the party; wit-snapper, wit-cracker, wit- worm; joker, jester, Joe Miller^, drole de corps^, gaillard^, spark; bon diable [Fr.]; practical joker. buffoon, farceur [Fr.], merry-andrew, mime, tumbler, acrobat, mountebank, charlatan, posturemaster^, harlequin, punch, pulcinella^, scaramouch^, clown; wearer of the cap and bells, wearer ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... which, amongst us, might put some men to the blush. Neither austerity and anger, nor joy and ecstasy is the consequence, but sometimes a modest, dignified, serene smile spreads itself over their face, and seems gently to rebuke the uncouth jester." (J.R. Forster, Observations made During a Voyage Round the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... being attired with dignity, it took the world some centuries to discover that his own conduct and decrees were sufficiently ridiculous for the amusement not only of his court but of all mankind. The jester was commonly called a fool, but the poets and romancers have ever delighted to represent him as a singularly wise and witty person. In the circus of to-day the melancholy ghost of the court fool effects the dejection of ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... courtiers following SHUMAKIM, a hump-backed jester, in blue, green and red, a wreath of poppies around his neck and a flagon in his hand. He walks unsteadily, and stutters in ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... at the end of this chapter, an entertainment was provided for the King and Queen and all the ladies in the great Palais de Justice, with which those rogues, the gay members of the "Basoche," must have been heartily in sympathy. For Brusquet, the Court jester, went into the Advocate's Box, and before the Queen upon the seat of justice, with all her ladies round her, he pleaded several important causes both for the prosecution and for the defence, "et faisait rage d'alleguer ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... has the grotesque element of fiction, with all the fantastic accompaniments of sham splendor thrust into close companionship with the sordid details of poverty; for the actor alone the livery of labor is a harlequin's jerkin lined with tatters, and the jester's cap and bells tied to the beggar's wallet. I have said artist life in England is apt to have such chapters; artist life everywhere, probably. But it is only in England, I think, that the full bitterness of such ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... jester," replied Beatrice, and she spoke so sharply that "I would not marry her," he declared afterwards, "if her estate were ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... of mobilizing the clerical forces to hail James Tissot as an evangelical painter. His Life of Christ is one of the least religious works conceivable, for, in fact, it might be regarded as a hesitating paraphrase of the Life of Jesus as narrated by that cheerful apostate and terrible jester, Renan. ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... which King Robert answered with a sneer, "I am the King, and come to claim my own From an imposter, who usurps my throne!" And suddenly, at these audacious words, Up sprang the angry guests and drew their swords! The Angel answered with unruffled brow, "Nay, not the king, but the king's Jester, thou Henceforth shalt wear the bells and scalloped cape, And for thy counselor shalt lead an ape; Thou shalt obey my servants when they call, And wait upon my henchmen in ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... eyes in Riffrath; and when Barty (after very little pressing by Miss Royce) twanged her guitar and sang little songs—French and English, funny and sentimental—he became, as he had so often become in other scenes, the Rigoletto of the company; and Riffrath was a kingdom in which he might be court jester in ordinary if he chose, whenever he elected to honor it with his gracious ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... less of my fellow officers, all but Mr. Coventry and Pett; but it matters not. Yes, says my Lord, Sir J. Minnes, who is great with the Chancellor; I told him the Chancellor I have thought was declining, and however that the esteem he has among them is nothing but for a jester or a ballad maker; at which my Lord laughs, and asks me whether I believe he ever could do that well. Thence with Mr. Creed up and down to an ordinary, and, the King's Head being full, went to the other over against it, a pretty man that keeps it, and good and much ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... is remembered in similitude, by reference to Yorick, the king's jester, who died when Hamlet and ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... sense upon him that elsewhere it is Eugene and not he who is the jester, and that in these circles where Eugene persists in being speechless, he, Mortimer, is but the double of the friend on whom ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... thou of nothing but ladies?" says Feste the Jester to poor Malvolio. He might have said the same to Horace; for of the Odes in the first three Books one third part is addressed to or concerned with women. How many of the pretty female names which musicalize his love songs, in syllables that breathe of the sweet south and melt ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... down now, for the first queen's jester has gone for him, and has promised to take him to the inn where ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... of them reference to the throne he is soon to ascend, without which they would be the mere jingling of a jester's rattle. ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... trained me to his trade, taught me to sing foul songs and to dance foul dances. I have grinned and whistled through evil days and ways. My wit was gray with iniquities when Hildebrand, the King's minion, saw me one day at a fair in Naples and picked me out for jester to ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... again. He says that all the people said he was not a Christian, for he was not proud ever towards them as Christians are, but a real Sheykh, and that the Bedaween still talk of Sheykh Stanley and of his piety. The old half-witted jester of Luxor has found me out—he has wandered down here to see his eldest son who is serving in the army. He had brought a little boy with him, but is 'afraid for him' here, I don't know why, and has begged me to take the child up to his mother. These licensed ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... and comedy are never far apart. The ludicrous and the sublime, the grotesque and the pathetic, jostle each other on the stage; the jester, with his cap and bells, struts alongside of the hero; the lord mayor's pageant loses itself in the mob around Punch and Judy; the pomp and circumstance of war become mirth-provoking in a militia muster; and the majesty of the law is ridiculous in the mock dignity of a justice's court. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... you financially. He was pretty serious; fearing, as I could not help perceiving, that I should take too light a view of the responsibility and the service (I was always thought too light - the irresponsible jester - you remember. O, QUANTUM MUTATUS AB ILLO!) If I remember rightly, the money was repaid before the end of the week - or, to be more exact and a trifle pedantic, the sennight - but the service has never been forgotten; and I send you back this ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to succeed as a jester, you'll need To consider each person auricular: What is all right for B would quite scandalize C (For C is so very particular); And D may be dull, and E's very thick skull Is as empty of brains as a ladle; While F is F sharp, and will cry with a carp, That he's known your best ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... literature a distinctive character among the nations. But that he is so void of the comic faculty as certain potent authorities allege, we persistently doubt. Mr Macaulay affirms that Southey may be always read with pleasure, except when he tries to be droll; that a more insufferable jester never existed; and that, often as he attempts to be humorous, he in no single occasion has succeeded further than to be quaintly and flippantly dull. Another reviewer warned the author of the Doctor, that there is no greater mistake than that which a grave person falls into, when he fancies ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... probably the result of a confusion with the old legend of the fight between Horus and Set, the rulers of the two kingdoms of Egypt. The possibility also suggests itself that a pun made by some priestly jester may have been the real factor that led to this mingling of two originally separate stories. In the "Destruction of Mankind" the story runs, according to Budge,[195] that Re, referring to his enemies, said: ma-ten set uar er set, "Behold ye them (set) fleeing into the mountain (set)". The ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... in the dregs of the river than she had ever been in the dregs of New York. She shuddered. Then, as so often, the sense of the grotesque thrust in, as out of place as jester in cap and bells at a bier—and she smiled sardonically. "Why," thought she, "in being squeamish about Freddie I'm showing that I'm more respectable than the respectable women. There's hardly one of them that doesn't swallow worse doses with ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... contempt and derision solely by the beauty and purity of the English. We find, we confess, so great a charm in Mr. Southey's style, that, even when be writes nonsense, we generally read it with pleasure except indeed when he tries to be droll. A more insufferable jester never existed. He very often attempts to be humorous, and yet we do not remember a single occasion on which he has succeeded further than to be quaintly and flippantly dull. In one of his works he tells us that Bishop Sprat was very properly so called, inasmuch as he was a very small poet. And ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... saw there that foreigners who are astonished that in the plays of the great Shakespeare a Roman senator plays the buffoon, and that a king appears on the stage drunk, are treated as little-minded. I do not desire to suspect Master Johnson of being a sorry jester, and of being too fond of wine; but I find it somewhat extraordinary that he counts buffoonery and drunkenness among the beauties of the tragic stage: and no less singular is the reason he gives, that the poet disdains accidental distinctions of circumstance and country, like a ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... the facts of the multiplication table to scintillate and glow. The person who lacks imagination is unable to invest with interest and charm even the mountain, the river, the landscape, or the poem. The gossip, the scandal-monger, or the coarse jester proves his lack of imagination and his consequent inability to hold his own in real conversation. We hope, of course, that some of our pupils may become inventors, but this will be impossible unless they possess imagination. A sociologist states the case in this fashion: "Wealth, the ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... markedly prone to quips and whimsical sayings and plays upon words, and aware of a double reputation as a man of erudition and a wit. This latter quality it was that won him advancement at court, and it may have been his too clearly confessed reluctance to play the part of an informal table jester to his king that laid the grounds of that deepening royal resentment that ended only with his execution. But he was also valued by the king for more solid merits, he was needed by the king, and it was more than a table scorned or a ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... sweet Prince, when you are king you must appoint me court jester. Will you, my good Lord? We two are good contrasts: You full of dignity upon a royal throne, a golden crown upon your head, the scepter in your hand, and I dressed in motley with cap and bells. Heigh ho! That will be jolly. And after all we are so ...
— The Buddha - A Drama in Five Acts and Four Interludes • Paul Carus
... fellow toilers, and as they splashed in the basins set out on a long plank near the kitchen, his quips kept them laughing. Two college boys had just arrived to aid in the harvesting. Farmers are not much given to humor and the young fellows were clearly pleased to find a jester on the premises. At the supper table the Governor gave his conversational powers free rein. This was the only life; he had rested all winter so that he might enjoy farm life the more. He subjected the collegians to a rigid examination ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... which well-nigh the whole French fleet was absolutely destroyed. It was by the English archers that the day was won. So complete was the victory that no one dared to tell the ill news to Philip, till his jester called out to him, "What cowards those English are!" "Because," he explained, "they did not dare to leap into the sea as our ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... Paulinus twenty-five myriads because the man, who was a jester, had been led, though involuntarily, to make a joke upon him. Paulinus had said that he actually resembled a man getting angry, for somehow he was always assuming a fierce expression. [Footnote: None of the editors, any more than ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... omitted, Nash supplies in the course of this play. [In 1676 a pamphlet was printed, purporting falsely to be] "A pleasant History of the Life and death of Will Summers; how he came first to be known at court, and by what means he got to be King Henry the Eighth's 'Jester.'" It was reprinted by Harding in 1794, with an engraving from an old portrait, supposed to be Will Summer; but if it be authentic, it does not at all support Armin's description of him, that he was "lean and hollow-eyed." Many of the jests are copied from ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... men under whose patronage and in whose service 'Will the Jester' first showed himself, were men who were secretly endeavouring to make political capital of that new and immense motive power, that not yet available, and not very easily organised political power which was already ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... time every king kept a jester to make jokes and amuse him and his friends at their feasts, and the jester was a privileged person, who could say anything he liked. So now they told the jester of the King of France that he must tell the king the bad news, because he could say what he liked and no one would ...
— Royal Children of English History • E. Nesbit
... "A jester might say this is just like Paradise. You are Eve, and I am the old Other One come to tempt you in the disguise of an inferior animal. I used to be quite up in that scene of Milton's when I was ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... life from immemorial times has been led according to immemorial ways. Even here is something sad and terrible. But the impression is fleeting, and serves only to give a greater acuteness to the enjoyment of the moment. It is like the sadness which you may see in the jester's eyes when a merry company is laughing at his sallies; his lips smile and his jokes are gayer because in the communion of laughter he finds himself more intolerably alone. For Tahiti is smiling and friendly; it is like a lovely woman graciously prodigal of her ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... be heard. When it was over it was announced that Hal Macy had carried off the role of the poor, neglected son, which was in reality the male lead. The Crane was selected for the king, while freckle-faced Daniel Seabrooke was chosen for the jester, greatly to his delight and surprise. There was an emphatic round of applause when Professor Harmon announced that Constance Stevens had been selected to sing the Princess. Ellen Seymour captured the role ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... abhor ... it is because I know there is but one man among them who is not laughing at the enormous folly and credulity of the country, and that he is an ignorant and mischievous bigot. As for the light and frivolous jester, of whom it is your misfortune to think so highly, learn, my dear Abraham, that this political Killigrew, just before the breaking-up of the last administration, was in actual treaty with them for a place; and if they had survived twenty-four hours longer, he would have been now ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... Janus, or the Double-faced, of Danish—or, as some maintained, Jewish—extraction, and the mad Prince L. Contrary to what was customary in those days, the dwarf did nothing to amuse the master or mistress, and was not a jester—quite the opposite; he was always silent, had an ill-tempered and sullen appearance, and scowled and gnashed his teeth directly a question was addressed to him. Alexey Sergeitch called him a philosopher, and positively respected him; at table the dishes were handed to him first, after the guests ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... Burgess's Ghost Extinguisher is altogether American. The field is still comparatively limited, but a number of Americans have done distinctive work in it. The specter now wears motley instead of a shroud, and shakes his jester's bells the while he rattles his bones. I dare any, however grouchy, reader to finish the stories in this volume without having a kindlier ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... habit peculiar to many walkers, which Punch, some years ago, touched upon satirically, but which seems to have survived the jester's ridicule. It is that custom of stopping friends in the street, to whom we have nothing whatever to communicate, but whom we embarrass for no other purpose than simply to show our friendship. Jones meets his friend Smith, whom he has met in nearly the same locality ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... oriel window looks out from this room over the woods and grounds of Haddon, the recess bearing on one of its panels the head of Will Somers, who was Henry VIII.'s jester. The drawing-room, which is over the dining-room, is hung with old tapestry, above which is a frieze of ornamental mouldings. A pretty recessed window also gives from this room a ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... day, for a quarter of an hour, to make me guess what he was doing in the picture of "Napoleon" before it had been exhibited, giving me hint after hint in a rough way. But I could not guess, and he wouldn't tell me!' It is hard after this to censure so amiable a jester as the late Mr. a'Beckett, for burlesquing the strange picture called 'Hurrah for the whaler Erebus—another fish!' in the words proposed to be substituted—'Hallo, there—the oil and ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... air. But here fresh amusements awaited them, and the splendour of Beatrice's wardrobe and the treasures of her camerini filled the Ferrarese visitors with wonder and envy. On the 6th of March, Bernardo Prosperi wrote to tell Isabella that our Madonna had been conducted by the jester Mariolo over Beatrice's "guardaroba," and had seen all the splendid gowns, pelisses, and mantles which had been made for her during the last two years, about eighty-four in all, "besides many more," adds the writer, "which your sister the duchess ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... jester, in whom twenty years ago the country lost an excellent clown without gaining a statesman, was in great ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... the age of Elizabeth, still excite the admiration of every student attached to the early literature of our country. Amongst other frivolous charges brought against him on his trial, it was mentioned that he kept an Italian jester, thought to be a spy, and that he loved to converse with foreigners and conform his behaviour to them. For his personal safety, therefore, it was perhaps unfortunate that a portion of his youth had been passed in a visit to Italy, then the focus of literature and fount of inspiration; ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... own poor fool who entered, for in Carlisle Castle high state was kept, and Lord Scroope had his jester, like any king. ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... hunting; he drank his boon companions under the table; he had as many mistresses as Solomon; he was fond of music and poetry; he collected precious works of art; he had philosophers and poets in his train; he was the greatest jester and wit of his court. His activity was boundless; he learned the antidotes for all poisons; he administered justice in twenty-two languages; and yet he was coarse, tyrannical, cruel, superstitious, and unscrupulous. Such was this extraordinary man who led the great reaction of the Asiatics ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... palace meditated revenge. In the one authentic glimpse which we get of his mode of life, we see him at a banquet, while his nobles and warriors caroused and burst into peals of laughter at the buffooneries of an idiot and a jester. But the Hunnish king sat grave and silent, caressing the cheeks of the boy Ernak, his favorite son, whom the augur pointed out as the heir ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... roads, by me possessed, He shambles forth in cosmic guise; He is the Jester and the Jest, And he ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... friends, how strange and unnatural they seemed. Their most intimate friends would scarcely have recognized them. Margaret was a fat, jolly Falstaff, stuffed out to immense proportions. Edith was entirely disguised as a jester and enjoyed her own quips immensely when she tapped a visitor on the shoulder with her bauble and said, "Good morrow, fair maid, art looking ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... had seemed overwrought, Babbitt who had been the protecting big brother, Paul became clear-eyed and merry, while Babbitt sank into irritability. He uncovered layer on layer of hidden weariness. At first he had played nimble jester to Paul and for him sought amusements; by the end of the week Paul was nurse, and Babbitt accepted favors with the condescension one always ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... that would have been enough to make a clerk go about banging doors and expressing himself emphatically upon many points; but no, Eleseus only grew the steadier for it firmer and more upright; a man indeed. Even Sivert, the jester, could not put him out of countenance. Today the pair of them were lying out on boulders in the river to drink, and Sivert imprudently offered to get some extra fine moss and dry it for tobacco—"unless you'd rather smoke it ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... particularly, their military side. He exhibits their large, showy aspects: battles, processions, hunts, feasts in hall, tourneys,[46] sieges, and the like. The motley mediaeval world swarms in his pages, from the king on his throne down to the jester with his cap and bells. But it was the outside of it that he saw; the noise, bustle, colour, stirring action that delighted him. Into its spiritualities he did not penetrate far; its scholasticisms, strange casuistries, shuddering faiths, grotesque distortions of soul, its religious mysticisms, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... has taken some stiffness with it. Some—indeed a good deal—of the piquancy of the later is not yet apparent; but its absence implies, and is more than compensated by, the concomitant absence of those airs and flings, those interludes as of an academic jester, in cap and gown and liripipe instead of motley, which have been charged, not quite unjustly, on the Arnold that we know best. There is hardly in English a better example of the blending and conciliation of the two modes of argumentative writing referred to in Bishop Kurd's acute observation, ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... lion's feeding time, and the food had evidently been good and satisfying. The music too in the minstrels' gallery had been sweet and pleasant to the ear. The Court jester had for a wonder excelled himself in his strong endeavours to put the King in a good humour, and uttered no less than three samples of his wit which had made the King roar, inasmuch as in the tail of ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... despatch, medically speaking, a dozen young folks in a season. Morality is powerless against a dozen vices which destroy society and which nothing can punish.—Another cup!—Upon my word of honor! man is a jester dancing upon a precipice. They talk to us about the immorality of the Liaisons Dangereuses, and any other book you like with a vulgar reputation; but there exists a book, horrible, filthy, fearful, corrupting, which is always open and will never be shut, the great book of the world; not ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... desire them to go on—I, Will Sommers, jester to the high and mighty King Harry the Eighth!" cried a voice of mock authority behind the knight. "What if Sir Thomas Wyat has undertaken to carry the canopy farther than any of his companions, is that a reason he should be relieved? Of a ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Madame Descoings did the same with her grandson, who was beginning to let fly certain witticisms; and although Philippe, so far, had not understood him, there was always a chance that one of the barbed arrows might piece the colonel's thick skull and put the sharp jester in peril. ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... speedily untied the knots which confined the doctor, and was passing the cord round the neck of the tailor, when the Sultan of Kashgar, who had missed his jester, happened to make inquiry of his officers as to what had ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... STR. JESTER (he throws himself on the ground before the dais and whispers low and tensely to ISEULT). "For they who drink thereof Together, so shall love with every sense Alive, yet senseless—with their every thought, Yet thoughtless, too, in life, in death, ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... 'What an eternal jester is that Pomponius!' said one voice. 'He is going to receive absolution, and he journeys in his chariot of state, as if he were preparing to celebrate his triumph, instead of ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... grown so fond of paradox Perverseness holds us thrall, So what each jester loves the best He mocks the most of all; But as the jest and laugh go round, Each in his neighbor's eyes Reads, while he flouts his heart's desire, The knowledge that ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis |
