"Joke" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... up from all that was held influential, respectable and stable when these resolutions were printed, was echoed far and wide. They were looked upon first as a joke, and then, when the Workingmen's Party began to reveal its earnestness and strength, as an insolent challenge to constituted authority, to wealth and superiority, and as ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... who have had the talk now," said Lionel, in his softest tone. He was bent on coaxing three pounds out of his richer friend, and that might require some management. For amongst the wild youngsters in Mr. Vance's profession, there ran many a joke at the skill with which he parried irregular assaults on his purse; and that gentleman, with his nose more than usually in the air, having once observed to such scoffers "that they were quite welcome to any joke at his expense," a wag had exclaimed, "At your ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... countenance, though the name was the cream of the joke. He paused, watching the faces of those who had been ashore a week and were due to ship again when he should give the word. "Oh, you don't want to be scared of her name; her name's ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... not in their line, but in other ways. They enjoy our mistakes hugely—that's only human—but they don't do it in an ill-natured way. Last spring when we sowed clover-seed for millet and didn't recognize it till the crop appeared, it was worth it to see them laugh at the joke, particularly as we didn't mind laughing with them. But I can tell you where we're scoring the biggest success after all, and the one that would pay if half our crops turned out failures. You haven't been out here for a year, ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... that you observed Protagoras bidding us be serious, as the text, 'Man is the measure of all things,' was a solemn one; and he reproached us with making a boy the medium of discourse, and said that the boy's timidity was made to tell against his argument; he also declared that we made a joke of him. ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... of his bed at one o'clock in the morning, to admit them into the house, muttering as he did so, something about "unlucky folks, and the deal of trouble they gave; that they had better give up going to Canada altogether, and hire their old lodgings again; that it was no joke, having his rest broken at his time of life; that he could not afford to keep open house at all hours, for people who were in no ways related ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... at the stores for everything they wanted. Having had some horses stolen, he sternly called on the city authorities to pay him their full value. They did so without a murmur—in Confederate money. He pocketed it with a grim smile, evidently appreciating the joke. He boasted greatly of his humanity and his respect for private property, but if the local papers are to be believed, it must be chronicled to his everlasting disgrace that he seized a great many negroes, who were tied and sent South as slaves. Black children were ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... was a libel on any variety of independence and a joke on hope, but I waited for the ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... adjunction to the world of the Maremma (cf. Elijer Goff, "The Irish Question has for some centuries been enjoyed by the universe and other parts") produces a risible effect and gives the reader to understand that Scalza broaches the question only by way of a joke. The same may be said of the jesting inversion of the word philosophers (phisopholers, Fisofoli) in ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... The latter joke was pure epithet, with no meaning behind it; when Senator James Cannon spoke, either in person or over the TV networks, even his opponents ...
— Hail to the Chief • Gordon Randall Garrett
... then of the coins; or did he have some knowledge of the practical joke that had been played on old ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... in vain to discover any where, in this great valley, a little church, which, if it only offered me a hard bench for a couch, would at any rate afford me a shelter from the sharp night-wind; for it is really no joke to ride for fifteen hours, with nothing to eat but bread and cheese, and then not even to have the pleasant prospect of a hotel a la villa de Londres or de Paris. Alas, my wishes were far more modest. I expected no porter at the gate to give the signal ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... only think of him, poor fellow! How very odd! I believe he was not in joke. He told me a distant connection of his, of another name, whom he never knew till after he heard that the thing happened, who had been transported to New South Wales a matter of sixteen years ago, is to be hanged to-morrow, by way of a secondary punishment, for ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... had lain there, and all the rest of it cankered with rust. Whether this sciencer was some obscure Roger Bacon, and had discovered the use of a volatile anaesthetic centuries ago, or whether he was enjoying a solitary practical joke at the expense of two simpletons, is impossible to say. "It is at your choice to believe either or neither," as Westcote says of the two foregoing stories. "I have offered them to the shrine of your judgment, and what truth soever there is in them, they are not unfit tales for winter ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... much like a joke, that the poor housekeeper of the Rue St. Gilles could not help smiling whilst answering that she had no dressmaker, and that, having no diamonds, she had no possible use for ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... laughed audibly, but he had a quick sense of the comic, and his eye would laugh when his lips were silent. He would say queer, droll, unexpected things which passed for humour; but, save for that gleam in the eye, he could not have said them with more seeming innocence of intentional joke if he had been a monk of La Trappe looking up from the grave he was digging in order to utter ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... be merry, dance, joke, and rejoice, With claret and sherry, theorbo and voice! The changeable world to our joy is unjust, All treasure 's uncertain, Then down with your dust! In frolics dispose your pounds, shillings, and pence, For we shall be nothing a hundred ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... indignation—but on this occasion he would only say in public that he "regretted the necessity" of such action. Evidently he thought it his duty to support a well-intentioned general against a dangerous agitator. The course which after some consideration he took was of the nature of a practical joke, perhaps justified by its success. Vallandigham was indeed released; he was taken to the front and handed over to the Confederates as if he had been an exchanged prisoner of war. In reply to demands from the Democratic organisation in Ohio that Vallandigham might be allowed ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... it's no sich talk ye'll git out uv him, an' niver a laugh nor a joke, nor the bit bowld ways he used to have wid him. An' och, honey! if ye've lost yer purty darlint, it's I've lost me b'y that wor as mooch to me; an' it's I'm the heavy-hearted woman, ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... retorted. "What a marvel you are, Grace dear." Now and then she called her mother "Grace." It was by way of being a small joke between them, but limited to their moments alone. Once old Anthony, her grandfather, had overheard her, and there had been rather a row ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... it always makes a change. I've known her, after being very quiet, and hardly having any thing to say, though in the midst of young company, grow all at once as merry as a cricket, and laugh and joke in a wild sort of way. And again, when she has been in one of her old, pleasant states of mind I have noticed that she all at once drew back into herself; I could trace the cause to only this—the presence of Henry Wallingford. But ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... serious. I wonder how you can joke on such a subject, with all your debts. I'm sure I feel them heavy enough, if you don't. You see Lord Ballindine was refused—I may say he was refused—before we heard about that poor boy's unfortunate death. It was the very morning ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... he composed his chapter upon the Great, and Moliere criticised the courtiers in the very pieces which were acted before the court. But the ruling power in the United States is not to be made game of; the smallest reproach irritates its sensibility, and the slightest joke which has any foundation in truth, renders it indignant; from the style of its language to the more solid virtues of its character, everything must be made the subject of encomium. No writer, whatever be his eminence, can escape from this tribute of adulation to his fellow-citizens. ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... no, child; it's only powder to make a noise and scare 'em. I wouldn't like to be in his place, though; father says you can never trust tigers as you can lions, no matter how tame they are. Sly fellers, like cats, and when they scratch it's no joke, I tell you," answered Ben, with a knowing wag of the head, as the sides of the cage rattled down, and the poor, fierce creatures were seen leaping and snarling as if they resented ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... organorum sexus vinculo sibi adstrictum, amicae suae corpus sursum et deorsum trahentem, mirantes vidimus!—Spanish flies, you exclaim!—as if he had not taken a dose of his own powder; but after the joke is over, we think this is another poser for the advocates of insect intelligence. We found that if either of two insects was destroyed in coition, that state was not interrupted for two or three days. The insects on which are observed this remarkable ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... actuated him when he wrote it. In that paper breathes the sentiment of a patriot, and it stands out in bold contrast with the miserable slang by which he was pursued this morning. It may serve the purposes of a man who little regards the Union to perpetrate a joke on the hazard of its dissolution. It may serve the purpose of a man who never looks to his own heart to find there any impulses of honor, to arraign everybody, the President and the Supreme Court, and to have them impeached and vilified on his mere ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... said the man, forgetting said professional sorrow in his love of a joke, "but for robbery on the highway; and we must search the house for five pounds in British ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... cowardly. He ordered the boy roughly, teased him for his ignorance of manly exercises, tried to cure his helplessness by increasing his difficulties, and viewed his fatigue as affectation or effeminacy. Berenger interfered now and then to guard the poor boy from a horse-jest or practical joke, but he too felt that Aime was a great incumbrance, hopelessly cowardly, fanciful, and petulant; and he was sometimes driven to speak to him with severity, verging on contempt, in hopes of rousing a ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... were presented who were presented of the Oxford deputation. The King went beyond his written speech to the men of Cambridge, and put us in a fright. However, it was good-humoured, and of no great harm—a sort of joke. ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... over this essay of the old Professor; though it hit us pretty hard. The best part of the joke is that the old man himself published a thin volume of poems when he was young, which there is good reason to think he is not very proud of, as they say he buys up all the copies he can find in the shops. No matter what they say, I can't help ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... had been speared, was the butt of all his messmates, and the requests to him to show his wound were constant and all taken in good part; in fact, he seemed to revel in the joke. ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... Mr. Quatermain. That silly old fool was part of my inheritance, so to speak; and the joke of it is that he is himself the worst and most dangerous shot I ever saw. However, on the other hand, he is the best rearer of pheasants in the county, so I put up with him. Come in, now, won't you? Charles will look after ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... Lady Maud imagined this extraordinary document to be a stupid practical joke, invented by some half-fledged cousin to tease her. She had a good many cousins, among whom were several beardless undergraduates and callow subalterns in smart regiments, who would think it no end of fun to scare 'Cousin ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... to make medicine of!128 What if we could turn the trick just as briskly and smartly now, and here in Lithuania give the Muscovites just such another sweating? Hey? What think you, Maciej? If Moscow picks a bone with Bonaparte, then he will make a war that will be no joke: he is the foremost hero in the world, and has armies unnumbered! Hey, what think you, Maciej, our ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... it, I never imagined that this would ever happen. When she said she was coming to live with me, I thought it was a charming joke on her part." ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... could not face. Let Capponi sound the tocsin, and each house would become a fortress, the streets would be barricaded with iron chains, every quarter would pour forth men by hundreds well versed in the arts of civic warfare. Charles gave way, covering with a bad joke the discomfiture he felt: Ah, Ciappon, Ciappon, voi siete un mal Ciappon! The secretaries beat down his terms. All he cared for was to get money.[1] He agreed to content himself with 120,000 florins. A treaty was signed, and in two ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... them monitor my thoughts and still crush Massan," Odal said. "It would have been a good joke ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova
... by, the joke of the 'glass windows' is lost in the translation. The German for illustrious is 'durchlauchtig', that is, ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... whether there is any more reason for refraining from the stork fiction than from the Santa Claus one. When Santa Claus is found out, the whole thing is generally understood as a joke, a pleasant sort of fairy tale. There was nothing hidden behind the fiction. In the other case, if the child chances somewhere to hear the facts stated in a coarse manner, he will be likely to feel instinctively that the new tale is the true one, ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... to joke. But he was as anxious as we were, without knowing why. Babet had had bad dreams. We listened to the account of her nightmare, laughing with our ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... have the character of being somewhat inconsiderate at times, and, as I am clothed in a sober, solemn character, a jest or practical joke might ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... provinces, uncontaminated with railroads or unbelief. There they last several days The stage is the town, the Temple scene takes place in the church, the Judgment at the city hall, and the procession of the Via Crucis moves through all the principal streets. The leading roles are no joke,—carrying fifty kilos of wood over the mud and cobble-stones for half a day. The Judas or Gestas must be paid double for the kicks and cuffs he gets from tender-hearted spectators,—the curses he accepts willingly as a tribute to his dramatic ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... just wait a minute," begged Dozia at the first landing. "This looks a little like a joke but who is the joker? Who got up in that place and rattled these nightly? Also, who let out that wild scream we heard on that first night?" She was talking quickly and in a subdued voice. "We may be breaking the spell by raiding the secret chamber, but suppose ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... know that I want to quarrel with Ottawa's joke, for I am awed by the way it brought it off. Perhaps it brought it off on the Prince also. If so he must have had a shock, and a delightful one. For the taciturnity of Ottawa is a myth. When the Prince ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... was a joke against Lord Cottington that whenever he was seriously ill he declared himself a Roman Catholic, when he was well again he ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... this joke, Laramie?" sang out Van Horn, his humor oozing. "Can't you frisk a few cowboys in less ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... upon the European fighting man's psychology if he found that an army transport had conveyed him to a land where one man's privilege is every man's right! Learning this, it is not a joke to say, but is a statement of the probable fact, that the invading soldiery would not want to fire its first volleys, but would want to file its first papers. They would not ask ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... the big idea?" Barry Houston had lost his reserve now. "I want to be a good fellow—but for the love of Mike let me in on the joke. I can't get it. I don't see anything funny in lying here with a broken arm and having my feet tickled. Of course, I'm grateful to you for picking me up and all that sort of ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... life. Surely he must have known that he looked well in his wig and gown, as with low voice and bent neck, with only half-suppressed laughter, he whispered into the ears of the gentleman who sat next to him some pleasant joke that had just occurred to him. He could do that, though the eyes of all the court were upon him; so great was the man! And then he began with a sweet low voice, almost modest in its tones. For a few moments it might have been thought that some young woman was addressing ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... certainly the biggest joke in the way of an officer that either of the young soldiers had ever seen, it was impossible not to like ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... make myself believe that it was a joke; but, alas! he succeeded in convincing me he meant it seriously. So clearly and completely did he convince me of it, that, instead of being furious with him for such naive cynicism, I was filled with deep pity for him and incidentally for ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... you have so much esprit, you laugh at me," said the Frenchman, who took Mrs. Hilson's protestation as a joke. ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... the new boat. Variety of their work. The regular hunting day. The joke on the Professor. Old age. How old age becomes a habit. The discussion on hunting. Deciding where to go. Conclude to visit the forests to the west. Provisioning for the journey. Reaching the edge of the main forest, accompanied ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... occurred to his memory, and each one brought on a fresh explosion. Even his own proposal to Zillah was remembered. He wondered whether Windham had proposed also, and been rejected. This only was needed to his mind to complete the joke. ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... most horrible beasts have something piquant and engaging about them, and so I suppose it is in the way of things that the land ironclad which opens a new and more dreadful and destructive phase in the human folly of warfare, should appear first as if it were a joke. Never has any such thing so completely masked its wickedness under an appearance of genial silliness. The Tank is a creature to which one naturally flings a pet name; the five or six I was shown wandering, rooting and climbing over obstacles, ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... with you, the next day, for this?"—he was entirely reminiscent. "What I recall is that even if I had condoned—that evening—her deception of me in my folly, I still loathed, for my friend's sake, her practical joke on poor John." ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... him and his friend time to catch up. This, in Morse's time, would have been thought an achievement. Edison seems to regard it as a joke. There was no time for prolonged experiment. It was an emergency, and the idea must necessarily have been supplemented ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... Joe wouldn't. The fact is, he was afraid to. He snarled at Buster Bear and called him a thief and everything bad he could think of. Buster didn't seem to mind. He chuckled as if he thought it all a great joke and repeated his invitation to Little Joe to come and get his fish. But Little Joe just turned his back and went off down the Laughing Brook in ...
— The Adventures of Buster Bear • Thornton W. Burgess
... reasonable explanation of the matter, but try as she would, she was unable to think of anyone with whom she had ever come in contact, capable of threatening her in this terrible way. She had about decided that the whole thing must be some stupidly conceived practical joke, when she saw her mother cross the hall ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... and editor, A.J. McKelway, who on this occasion and others wrote articles in the Independent and the Outlook justifying the proceedings. Said he: "It is difficult to speak of the Red Shirts without a smile. They victimized the Negroes with a huge practical joke.... A dozen men would meet at a crossroad, on horseback, clad in red shirts or calico, flannel or silk, according to the taste of the owner and the enthusiasm of his womankind. They would gallop through the country, and the Negro would quietly make up his ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... swaggering, half servile; begins by a string of apologies for not having called before,—"Mrs. Trebooze so afraid of infection, you see, my lord,"—which is a lie: then blunders out a few fulsome compliments to Scoutbush's courage in staying; then takes heart at a little joke of Scoutbush's, and tries the free and easy style; fingers his lordship's high-priced Hudsons, and gives a broad hint that he would like to smoke one on the spot; which hint is not taken, any more than the bet of ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... a joke about larks and balloons, but decided that it was not a really first-class joke and merely shook an accusatory head at ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... are very literal. They are slaves of habit, doing what they have been taught without variation; dry, prosaic, and matter-of-fact in their remarks; devoid of humor, except of the coarse physical kind which rejoices in a practical joke; taking the world for granted; and possessing in their faithfulness and honesty the single gift by which they are sometimes able to warm us into admiration. But {248} even this faithfulness seems to have a sort of inorganic ring, and to remind us more of the immutable properties of a piece of inanimate ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... replied the other. "Hitherto it was the ruin of a joke that people did not see it. Now it is the sublime victory of a joke that people do not see it. Humour, my friends, is the one sanctity remaining to mankind. It is the one thing you are thoroughly afraid ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... rogue or a fugitive. As he spoke he advanced until he faced Claiborne in the center of the room. Shirley still stood by the window, holding the soiled paper in her hand. She had witnessed the change of men at the end of the room; it had touched her humor; it had been a joke on her brother; but she felt that the night had brought a crisis: she could not continue to shield a man of whom she knew nothing save that he was the object of a curious enmity. Her idle prayer that her own land's commonplace sordidness ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... shout as was set up from one end of the train to the other was never heard before or since of the "Lone Pine Tree State." All of us thought at first, and very naturally, too, that it was only a practical joke being played upon the Captain, and that all would be right in the end. But not so. What became of that uniform forever remained a mystery. If the party who committed the theft had seen or knew the anguish ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... and much good may it do 'em. The old neighbours have been in, making a deal o' fuss over me, but I tells 'em to keep their pity for them that wants it more, and I've one less leg for the rheumaticks to get hold of,' and the old sailor laughed at his own joke like a storm of ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... unfortunate "sea-rovers" in constant activity. It is enervating work being always at one's post, and sleeping with one eye open. They had a hard time to contend with, our ten comrades, and the calm way in which they took everything was extraordinary. They were always in a good humour, and always had a joke ready. It was the duty of the sea party to bring up all the provisions and outfit for the wintering party from the hold, and put them on the ice. Then the land party removed them. This work proceeded very smoothly, and it was rare that one party had to wait for the other. During the first few days ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... is John, but they call him Demi-John, because his father is John too. That's a joke, don't you see?" said Tommy, kindly explaining. Nat did not see, but politely smiled, and ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... my friend, let Mr. Gaston buy him; he can afford it. Do it, Mr. Gaston; it will be both a capital joke and a good action, do it ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a tutor and a man who danced at real, grown-up balls was too great to allow of their exchanging mutual ideas. Katenka, too, seemed grown-up now, and read innumerable novels; so that the idea that she would some day be getting married no longer seemed to me a joke. Yet, though she and Woloda were thus grown-up, they never made friends with one another, but, on the contrary, seemed to cherish a mutual contempt. In general, when Katenka was at home alone, nothing but novels amused her, and they but slightly; but as soon as ever a visitor ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... "even you could not make it rise to-night. Heigho, Ned! coming to kiss good-night? I say, Ned, tell us what mamma has for Amy's stocking. What a good joke it is, to be sure I We all had the impression you were a little girl, you know, and selected our gifts accordingly. Burt actually bought you a doll. Ha! ha! ha! Maggie had planned to have you hang up your stocking with the children, and such a lot ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... our frail raft, now tossed high up on a foaming sea, now sent gliding down into the bottom of the trough with darkness around us, almost starved, and our throats parched by thirst, Brady's love of a joke would still break forth. "Arrah, but it's illegant dancing we're learning out here!" he exclaimed, "though, faith, I would rather it were on the green turf than footing it on the top of the green waves, but we will be safe on shore ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... me of a man I know who was made a G.B.E.; but that's another story, and Joan wouldn't see the joke of it anyhow, though I know she ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... any young man should marry you, Say nothin' about the joke; That iver ye slep' in a sinthry-box, Wrapped ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... which is reviewed in the Allgemeine Litteratur-Zeitung (1794, I, p.416) as a free revision of an old popular tale, "Das lustige und lcherliche Lalenburg." The book is evidently without sentimental tinge, is a merry combination of wit and joke combined with caricature and half-serious tilting against unimportant ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... on his hat and went out, and Miss Rose, watching him from the window, was not without fears that the joke might prove too much for a man of his habit. She regarded him thoughtfully, and when he returned at one o'clock to dinner, and encountered instead a violent dust-storm which was raging in the ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... as he shakes himself free of her). Put a bullet into the poor beast! It is too good for that crew. It shan't be put up for auction, either in joke or in earnest! (Goes to the farther window.) I shall get a ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... way before the heat of the day was at its fullest. Accordingly by six all were in movement. The long night's rest had done them good, still more so the thought that by the end of the day they would be among friends, and they were disposed to laugh and joke over their present situation. All the men had cut themselves heavy cudgels from the stock of firewood, and the fact that they were not as before wholly defenceless was no slight gratification to them. ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... you want to, old thing, but believe me, if it hadn't been for you and an occasional evening playing the violin to Terrill O'Farrell's 'cello, and three or four darling girls that let me forget this beastly joke they call 'respectable life,' I'd 've ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... been considered a joke, but you are a joke no longer. Instead of being looked upon with friendly tolerance and amusement, you are now viewed with distrust, suspicion, and even aversion! How dare you hoard fat when our nation needs it? You don't dare to any longer. ...
— Diet and Health - With Key to the Calories • Lulu Hunt Peters
... delicate. One can talk lightly, but nicely; while buffoonery is just what the lexicographers define it to be: "Amusing others by clownish tricks and by commonplace pleasantries." Gentle dulness ever loved a joke; and the fact that very often humorists, paid so highly in literature to perform, will not play a single conversational trick, is the best proof that they have the good sense to vote their hosts and companions capable of being ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... pig! This is not a joke! The idea! The most religious ceremony of the coast, and as old as the Cabanal itself! You're no gentleman! You must come from Valencia. But I'll teach you manners, if ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... easy, for instance, for Mademoiselle than to return to the life of the circus, whilst her lover—granted that he wished to remain in her company—will obtain some suitable employment in the same circle. There is a suspicion of a joke in the statement, but I am quite serious. The mere consciousness that they have in their possession a vast fortune, which time alone will enable them to realize, will serve as an inducement to undergo the period of hard work which means safety. You remember that the lady's father, Gros ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... devoted surgeon, whom I had left behind as an invalid, but who had mounted his horse and ridden out alone to attend to our wounded, his green sash looking quite in harmony with the early spring verdure of those lovely woods. So came we back in triumph, enjoying the joke all the more because some one else was responsible. We mystified the little community at first, but soon let out the secret, and witticisms abounded for a day or two, the mildest of which was the assertion that the author of the alarm must have been "three ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... "That's a joke," laughed the banker, "in which we'd all like to share, Bob, but it won't do him any harm to ride the rest of the distance home wondering how you managed to ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... married to her papa's curate? I scarcely need say that never was rumour more unfounded. A cold faraway sort of civility are the only terms on which I have ever been with Mr. Nicholls. I could by no means think of mentioning such a rumour to him even as a joke. It would make me the laughing-stock of himself and his fellow curates for half a year to come. They regard me as an old maid, and I regard them, one and all, as highly uninteresting, narrow, and unattractive specimens ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... only case that Gordon had in his own army. More than once his officers were rebellious and troublesome. General Ching, a Chinese general, was jealous of him. Ching one day made his men fire on 150 of Gordon's soldiers, and treated it as a joke when Gordon was angry. At the beginning of the campaign Gordon had promised his men that they should have their pay regularly instead of plundering the places they took. His own pay, and more, had gone to do this and to help ...
— The Story of General Gordon • Jeanie Lang
... and the unreality thereof has been cleared up by Vollmer, as will be duly shown. The squabble of the medieval savants has also given rise to the story that Apicius is but a joke perpetrated upon the world by a medieval savant. This will be refuted also later on. Our book is a genuine Roman. Medieval savants have made plenty of Roman "fakes," for sundry reasons. A most ingenious hoax was the "completion" of the Petronius fragment by a scholar able to hoodwink his learned ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... him that Lord Lyttelton had died the previous night at the very time that he (Mr Andrews) was searching for his midnight visitant, and abusing him roundly for what he considered his ill-timed practical joke. On hearing the news, we are told, Mr Andrews swooned away, and such was its effect on him that, to use his own words, "he was not himself or a ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... failing to find anyone watching him, he took up a pencil lying near-by and scrawled hastily across the top of the packet the word "Suspicious." This he calculated would act as a warning to Mr. Gifford in case there was anything wrong about the package, and pass as a joke with him, and even the sender, if there was not. And satisfied that he had both earned his money and done justice to his own apprehensions, he turned to retrace his steps. As before, the corridors were alive with ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... something like this may be the result: "A boy," "very dark complexion," "long yellow hair," "wearing a black velvet jacket," "with a dark green dress," "five feet high," "about six years old," etc. When the player guessing gives the game up, the joke ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... at once entered the village. The men had already fled; the women were turned out of the houses, and these were immediately set on fire. The tars regarded the whole affair as a glorious joke, and raced from house to house, making a hasty search in each for concealed valuables before setting it on fire. In a short time the whole village was in ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... laughed, as did the young men who followed in their wake, and urged him to go and see this peerless beauty, if it were only for a joke. Accordingly, he told the woman to lead the way. But she said he must mount his mule, for they had to go some distance into the country. He mounted, and, with a single servant, went forth from the gates—the woman preceding—and rode until ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... to leave our poles behind us," Ronald said, "and that will be a comfort. Although my load of fish was not nearly as heavy as yours, still carrying it on one shoulder was no joke, and I shall be heartily glad ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... a moment, as though over some private joke of his own, then at last laid down his pipe and crossed his legs. Oliver leaned back against the wall and Polly curled up on the bench ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... Dalrymple, impressively, to the man, "if you imagine that I would make even a bad joke to amuse you. Bring ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... if I had the chance. I took French leave the other day, and went to the French Gallery, expecting to see sketches in French chalk, or studies in French grey. Nothing of the kind! Mr. WALLIS will have his little joke. The main part of the exhibition is essentially English, and so I found my Parisian accent was entirely thrown away. If it had only been Scotch, I could have said something about the "Scots wha hae wi' WALLIS," but I didn't have even that chance. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 22, 1890 • Various
... of good-natured laughter at Reddy's expense. His red hair was as common a subject of joke as was Hippy's behavior. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... taking his seat, the Dean desired the guests to arrange themselves according to their own ideas of precedence, and fall to. The company were astonished to find the table without a dish or any provisions. The Lord Chancellor, who was present, said, "Mr. Dean, we do not see the joke." "Then I will show it you," answered the Dean, turning up his plate, under which was half-a-crown and a bill of fare from a neighboring tavern. "Here, sir," said he, to his servant, "bring me a plate of goose." The company caught the idea, and each man sent his plate and half-a-crown. ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... Wouldest thou not suffer as an evil-doer, addict not thyself to play with evil, 25 to joke and jest, and mock at men in place and power. Gaal mocked at Abimelech, and said, Who is Abimelech that we should serve him? But he paid for his disdainful language at last (Judg 9). I have heard of an innkeeper here in England, whose sign was ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... no idea of ever being able to do it again, or to perpetrate a similar joke on him, even though I were ever so anxious ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... have your fair chance with the lady, along with the rest of us; and I'll undertake to qualify you on the spot for civilized courtship," continued Zack, pitilessly carrying on his joke. "In the first place, always remember that you mustn't go beyond admiration at a respectful distance, to begin with. At the second interview, you may make amorous faces at close quarters—what you call looking unutterable ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... Tim Ryan, that ain't no joke, neither. Lookit all the girls givin' us the laff. Who are them tall ones that's been rushin' the ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... have formed a favourable opinion of me, Master Quacko," he said, looking at the ape, for even in the dangerous predicament in which he was placed he could not resist a joke. ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... joke wore off Mamise grew as uncomfortable as he. She was beginning to love him more and her job less. But she was determined not to throw away her independence. Pride was her duenna, and a ruthless one. She tried to feed her pride on her ambition ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... Morris, the reader may be informed, had had the tact not to tell her that he sat in her father's study. He had known her but for a few months, and her aunt had known her for fifteen years; and yet he would not have made the mistake of thinking that Catherine would see the joke of the thing. "I am sorry you made him go into father's room," she said, after ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... General Wayne was offered him," continued Brolatsky, "he never haggled over it. He paid the price asked and seemed quite delighted to get it. It was a standing joke in the trade that if you wanted to get even with Mr. Hume for driving a hard bargain with you, all you had to do was to offer him a portrait of General Wayne. I never saw him refuse one. Even if he had dozens of duplicates, which ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... perfectly true. If it had got about that any one was going to invest thirty thousand pounds—or pence—in Wildcat Reefs, the market would certainly have been convulsed. The House would have rocked with laughter. Wildcat Reefs were a standing joke—except to the unfortunate few who still held any of ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... when once you are in the joke of his capricious genius, is very simple, and in his poetry it is simple from the first, so that he was, perhaps, the best author I could have fallen in with if I wanted to go fast rather than far. I found this out later, when I attempted other German authors without the glitter of his ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and are not, after this style. I have known many good and worthy men among them, as well as capital fellows, fond of a joke. Moreover, the Roman Catholic Church did not always take the side ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... coming in, unacquainted with the lecturer's topics, might easily have supposed him to be an actor entertaining his audience with a monologue, after the manner of Matthews or Yates. This disposition, indeed, gave rise to a joke among his pupils of "Abernethy at Home," whenever he lectured upon any special subject. In relating a case, he was seen at times to be quite fatigued with the contortions into which he threw his body and limbs; and the stories he would ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 530, January 21, 1832 • Various
... shut up within himself, like an oyster, and rarely spoke, except in monosyllables; but then it was allowed he seldom said a foolish thing. So invincible was his gravity that he was never known to laugh or even to smile through the whole course of a long and prosperous life. Nay, if a joke were uttered in his presence that set light-minded hearers in a roar, it was observed to throw him into a state of perplexity. Sometimes he would deign to inquire into the matter, and when, after ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... living and weeping child,—that was myself, Hans Christian Andersen. During the first day of my existence my father is said to have sate by the bed and read aloud in Holberg, but I cried all the time. "Wilt thou go to sleep, or listen quietly?" it is reported that my father asked in joke; but I still cried on; and even in the church, when I was taken to be baptized, I cried so loudly that the preacher, who was a passionate man, said, "The young one screams like a cat!" which words my mother never forgot. A ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... was, Tom, and yet a jeweler has to be always on the watch, and that isn't a joke, either, Tom Swift. Swindlers and thieves are always on the alert for a chance to rob a jewelry store, and they ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton
... and of having just emerged successfully from an agitating ordeal. As they stood together they went over the speech to which they had been listening, and the scene which had followed it, in a running stream of talk, laughter, and gossip. Wharton took little part, except to make a joke occasionally at his own expense, but the pleasure on his smiling lip, and in his roving, contented eye was not to be mistaken. The speech he had just delivered had been first thought out as he paced the moonlit ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... cropper down Multiflores Canyon where it is so steep that it leans the other way. I pretty well pulverized myself for a pulverulent, Katy, which is a poor joke." ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... give them the appearance of hazing. However that may be, there seems to be no way to impress upon a plebe the necessity of carrying his "palms to the front," or his "head up." To report him and give him demerits merely causes him to laugh and joke over the number of them that have been recorded ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... in to supper. Here is the money for your chickens—grandpa was only joking; you know he loves to joke. Take the chickens to the hen-house and get something hot to eat in the kitchen before you ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... asks, curiosity getting the better of my good manners. 'Not to pry into private matters any,' says I, 'but this thing is getting personal. I can feel malicious animal magnetism coursin' through every vein and leapin' from crag to crag,' says I. 'A joke's a joke, and I can take a joke as well as any man; but when I'm sick in my bed, and the undertaker comes to my house and looks into my window and says, "Darlin'! I am waitin' for thee!"—that's no joke. And if Stanley ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... "The joke is on me, Mr. Onderdonk," said Dalton. "But we're here on a serious errand. Where is ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... third child and second son. He was a seven months' child, and I have heard that he was so extremely small an infant, that he could not be dressed like other children for some time after his birth, but was obliged to be wrapped in cotton. My father used to say in a joke, that he was wrapped in cotton, and put into a quart mug." The bishop's father had four children, one daughter and three sons. These four had a hundred children between them, thirty-six of whom fell to the lot of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 236, May 6, 1854 • Various
... doubt of it," says Tedcastle, with such flattering warmth that they both break into a merry laugh. Not that there is anything at all in the joke worthy of such a joyous outburst, but because they are both so young ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... north side of the river. I suppose that is a scouting party and they found out our little joke," and George again burst into laughter ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... the words right out'n my mouth! I seed the answeh to it fum the fus; I made a wrong espunction the fus time on'y jess faw a joke! Now, ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... The view here taken is maintained with great ability by the writer of the Review named above. One joke, which he cites as not uncommon in these epics, is the representation of St. Peter streaming with perspiration with the labour of opening and shutting the gates of Paradise (Morg. Mag. 26. 91); and, as a more allowable one, the frequent citation ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... knife back into his shirt, and laughed: "Oh, come, now, Watts, a joke's a joke. I played a joke on Miss Sinclair to ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... and irate Doctor and a baited Spanish bull, goaded by the stab of the gaudy paper-flagged dart in his thick neck, and bewildered by the subsequent explosion of the cracker. He only wanted a tail to lash, she mentally said, and had pigeon-holed the joke for Bingo when ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... drive him nearly mad. All these, and a thousand other pranks, the fast fellows play upon their slow brethren, not in the hackneyed fashion which low people call "gagging," and genteel people "quizzing," but with a seriousness and gravity that heightens all the joke, and makes the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... very shy freshman of the name of Pilkington, and, despite his struggles, made him go down on his knees and apologise in set phrase to Mr. Frampton for his late unjustifiable conduct; whereupon that gentleman, who enjoyed the joke, and entered into it with as much zest as the veriest pickle among them, sternly, and with many grunts, rebuked ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... is that he who dearly loved a joke may joke still, and he who thought he was collecting fine old pictures may still indulge his taste. Delusions! Not impossible or even unlikely. Kant demonstrated once for all our complete enslavement by phenomena and our inability to approach ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... had acted sensibly in the matter he would have spared Jimmy a good deal of unpleasantness, and Jimmy's father and mother much anxiety. But Coote was fond of what he called a 'joke,' and instead of telling the boy that he was going to take him home and give him a bed and some supper, he opened the office-door, put his great red face into the room, and stared hard at Jimmy. Jimmy was already so much upset that very little was required ...
— The Little Clown • Thomas Cobb |
