"Humorous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... respecting several passages which are in the Justiniani text, but not in the others, are certainly erroneous. Thus he entirely spoils the dialogue between the Uillac Uma and Piqui Chaqui by omitting the humorous part contained in the Justiniani text; and makes other similar omissions merely because the passages are not in his text. Zegarra gives a useful vocabulary at the end of all the words ...
— Apu Ollantay - A Drama of the Time of the Incas • Sir Clements R. Markham
... It served first as a means of developing literary ability among the students, afterwards as a vehicle for college news, and now there has been added to these purposes the uniting of alumni and undergraduates. Hence we find among college journals dailies, monthlies, and quarterlies, some of them humorous and some with a serious literary purpose. Journalism is not the only method of expressing undergraduate thought. There has been a great revival of intracollegiate and of intercollegiate debating in recent years. Literary societies for debating the great issues preceding the Revolution was ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... affectation of humor that made him feel ludicrous. He always felt ludicrous when he tried to be humorous. ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... to wind up. Baden-Powell himself seems to have descended from the eyrie from which, like a captain on the bridge, he rang bells and telephoned orders, to bring the house down with a comic song and a humorous recitation. The ball went admirably, save that there was an interval to repel an attack which disarranged the programme. Sports were zealously cultivated, and the grimy inhabitants of casemates and trenches were pitted ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... loving messages from "Annie" and told her in the bright, humorous way which was characteristic of Edgar Goodfellow, of many pleasant little incidents of his journey. One of the nights to look back upon and to gloat over in memory was this night by the fireside at Fordham ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... suffered from extremely bad health, and whose chief original works recently—the Journey and the Adventures—had been, the first a tissue of grumbles, the second an outburst of savagery. But though the grumbles recur in Matthew Bramble's mouth, they become merely humorous there: and there is practically no savagery at all. Leghorn, it has been observed more than once, was in a fashion a Land of Beulah: a "season of calm weather" had set in for a rather stormy life just ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... telling entertaining anecdotes till the carriage stopped at the steps at Ardbraccan. This I could hardly credit till I myself heard his Grace burst forth in conversation. The truth of his character gives such value to everything he says, even to his humorous stories. He has two things in his character which I think seldom meet—a strong taste for humour, and strong feelings of indignation. In his eye you may often see alternately the secret laughing expression ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... these facetiae, apart from his literary gift, was one of the most brilliant, capable young fellows of his generation. Whatever he did, he did in the best way, and in the brightest way. But his power of observation and of seeing what might be termed the humorous quiddity of anything, ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... And next, above the chorus of joyous whooping might be heard individual comments, each shrieked out shrilly and each punctuated by a sneeze from Mr. Leary's convulsed frame; or lacking that by a simulated sneeze from one of the revellers—one with a fine humorous flare for mimicry. And these comments were, ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... Tenny at once. There was something about this long, lean, brown-faced foreman of the Rocking-R, with his clear gray eyes and that half-humorous twist to his thin lips, which inspired not only confidence but liking as well. He listened without comment to Buck's story, which included practically everything save the revelation of his own identity; but once or twice, especially at the brief ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... forgotten. Gosh! maybe we'll be grandparents by that time!" The idea seemed to him infinitely humorous, but she winced. "What a memory you have!" he said. "You ought to be in Weston's! They'd never catch you forgetting where some idiot left the ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... "you don't know how dangerous it is to be light and humorous at public meetings or in the House of Commons. A man gets a reputation for that sort of thing, and then he's expected to keep it up; and, anyhow, it gives him no influence, however funny he may be. The other men laugh at him, but ...
— Punch, July 18, 1917 • Various
... me "bulls" and charters and proclamations and manuscripts, mostly eloquent now of the ill-faith of Serbia's neighbours. They were, however, humorous and vivacious and well-fed monks who bore no ill-will against Turk or Austrian or anyone; they were good fellows happily lodged by the Church, and without much care or sorrow of any kind; such a contrast to those outside ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... figure than Tresham, not so much from any lack of skill in his delineation, as from the essential ineffectualness of his nature. Guendolen Tresham, the Beatrice of the play (her lover Austin is certainly no Benedick) is one of the most pleasantly humorous characters in Browning. Her gay, light-hearted talk brightens the sombre action like a gleam of sunlight. And like her prototype, she is a true woman. As Beatrice stands by the calumniated Hero, so Guendolen stands by Mildred, and by her quick woman's heart and wit, her instinct of things, ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... known and greatly admired by the school, even the teachers gave her credit for a knack at humorous sketches rather unusual. She was to be, perhaps, a second John Saxe, possibly an Oliver Wendell Holmes, who could tell? The gift was worth cultivating, particularly as it did not interfere with Kate's soberer ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... but from what he knew of her she would be some character not greatly missed from the cast if she should, as Baird had suggested, dive and forget to come up. He supposed that Baird had meant this to be humorous, the humour typical of a man who could profane a great art with the atrocious Buckeye ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... one of his moods, and this mood passed away. The romantic and the confidential was succeeded by the literary and the scholastic, with a dash of the humorous. ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... story, abounding in stirring incident and in humorous descriptions. A thoroughly healthy tale to place in the hands of a boy. It ought to become popular both as a gift ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... When he came to see me, he said he knew our regiment would see some fighting and he wanted to go with us. I asked him if he could handle horses. He said he could so I put him into the transport to his great joy. A very humorous incident occurred in regard to him, shortly after he had reached the Salisbury Plains. He had overstayed his leave one night, by a few hours, and was promptly taken in charge by the quarter-guard, who put him ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... there might have seemed something humorous in the situation—in its almost farcical complications and misunderstandings. But these two saw none; the issues were too deep, too serious; death was too near ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... of architecture, and brought into fashion artists without capacity or taste. There was not in his kingdom a more discerning judge of painting; but he had no imagination for the higher class of art. He preferred the exquisite and humorous realities of the Dutch painters to the poetic or historic schools of Italy; and, though a studious collector, he gave no great impulse to native talent. In music he had both taste and skill: he encouraged an art which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various
... the doorway, his bold and humorous countenance wearing a look of interest at the unusual influx of life and sound into the street. When the meaning of the disturbance became clear to him he placed a hand beside his mouth and shouted: "Hey! Frank!" in such a robustious voice that ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... find Tobacco rearing its head under the auspices of Paley and Parr. Paley had one of the most orderly minds ever given to man. A vein of shrewd and humorous sarcasm, together with an under-current of quiet selfishness, made him a very pleasant companion. 'I cannot afford to keep a conscience any more than a carriage,' was worthy of Erasmus, perhaps of Robelais. 'Our delight was,' said ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... you to go away with the idea that a waistcoat marked with the name of Bradshaw must of necessity cover a scheming heart. It may, however, be noticed that a good many members of the Bradshaw family possess a keen and rather sinister sense of the humorous, inherited doubtless from their great ancestor, the dry wag who wrote that monument of quiet drollery, Bradshaw's Railway Guide. So with the hero ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... Brodzinski is quoted as saying that in its primitive form the Mazurek is only a kind of Krakowiak, "less lively, less sautillant." At its best it is a dancing anecdote, a story told in a charming variety of steps and gestures. It is intoxicating, rude, humorous, poetic, above all melancholy. When he is happiest he sings his saddest, does the Pole. Hence his predilection for minor modes. The Mazurka is in three-four or three-eight time. Sometimes the accent is dotted, but this ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... but he had no objections to the title, "Mistah Breckenridge," when they felt hurried. This interested every inmate of the Adelaide, and for a few days amazingly amused several, who gave play to their fancy in the use of abbreviations which struck them as humorous. Their jokes lost point, subsequently, when it was discovered that on no occasion did "Mistah Breckenridge" respond to their calls nor meet their demands—whereas his service to all others was swift, expert, phenomenally perfect. Thereafter the jokers forswore indulgence ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... and do anything you want to, Maria and I will get the breakfast." Mrs. White spoke with a kindly, almost humorous inflection. Maria felt that she could go down on her ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... "Always slowly forward, that the Austrian landwehr may be able to follow,"—a well-known humorous song, ridiculing the slowness of ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... happened. I expect the first bids was made just as a josh. I hear that Gopher Development started at ten cents. Then someone sold a block at fifteen. By noon they'd gone to twenty. Durin' luncheon time a sporty bunch in a rathskeller cooked up the bright idea that it would be humorous to sell Gopher short and hammer the price down to five cents. Before three P.M. the gross transactions had ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... its continuation Rosa, is in like vein; a tenderly humorous portrayal of love below stairs, the principal characters being chosen from the class who appear as supers in Pan; subjects or retainers of the all-powerful Trader Mack. It is as if the sub-plots in one of Shakespeare's plays had been taken out for ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... had a humorous sense from this old Katy's twisted peasant english, from the roughness on her tongue of buzzing s's and from the queer ways of her brutish servile humor. Anna could not let old Katy serve at table—old Katy was too coarsely ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein
... chosen. New symbolic designs were made showing the flight of time by seasons and months; others represented the virtues, and even the customs and habits of the people were sometimes introduced. There were also humorous representations, even on sacred edifices. Water-pipes and gutter-spouts were ended with the heads of monsters and curious animals, and even with grotesque faces; in short, the smaller details of the architecture of this period show the vividness ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... into the same. In the execution, he may place earnestness and passion, or jests and levity, according as he takes pleasure in the domain of the will or in that of the understanding. In the former case it is avenging and pathetic satire; in the second case it is sportive, humorous, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Bell," he said presently, in the same steady voice he had used upon the deck. "It is undoubtedly humorous that I should call upon you. I believe that you are allied with the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... projection of simple men and women. Here, in Dryden's phrase, is God's plenty: the morose pathos of Beipst (Before Dawn); the vanity and faithfulness of Friebe (The Reconciliation); the sad fatalism of Hauffe (Drayman Henschel); the instinctive kindliness of the nurse and the humorous fortitude of Mrs. Lehmann (Lonely Lives); the vulgar good nature of Liese Baensch (Michael Kramer); the trivial despair of Pauline and the primitive passion of Mrs. John (The Rats); the massive greatness of old Hilse's rock-like patience and the sudden impassioned protest of Luise (The Weavers); ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... this document he administered a telling fillip in his humorous style to that numerous class who seek to control practical affairs by sentiment, and who now would have had their prattle about the "mother country" outweigh the whole accumulation of her very unmaternal oppression and injustice. Concerning ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... before the receiver at the other end clicked on the hook. What a father this hearty, kindly, humorous Irishman would have made for ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... the fraud and in anger cut short the thread of life of the practical joker. Since then everybody else has died; the door for death to enter into the world was opened by the folly of that silly, though humorous, old man.[95] The natives about the Murray River in Australia used to relate how the first man and woman were forbidden to go near a tree in which a bat lived, lest they should disturb the creature. One day, however, the woman ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... always cheerful, and desirous of promoting mirth by a facetious and humorous conversation; he was never soured by calumny and detraction, nor ever thought it necessary to confute them; "for they are sparks," said he, "which, if you do not blow them, will go out ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... his genius. It was as fit for thought as could be, and equally as unfit for action; and this rendered him melancholy, apprehensive, humorous, and willing to make the best of every thing as it was, both from tenderness of heart and abhorrence of alteration. His understanding was too great to admit an absurdity; his frame was not strong enough ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... brought forth inimitable stories, scraps of old songs and impromptu conversations, the choicest of which were between children, Irishwomen, or cockneys. He was the only man, I believe, who ever knew by heart the famous Irish Court Scenes—naughtiest and most humorous of tales—unpublished, of course, but handed down from generation to generation of the faithful. Most delightful was an interview between his late Majesty George the Fourth and an itinerant showman, which ended up with, 'No, George the Fourth, you shall not have my Rumptifoozle!' ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... right. I advertised as he suggested and learned that there were thousands of novels not in use. They came to us by basketfuls and cartloads. We had novels of all kinds—historical and hysterical, humorous and numerous, but particularly numerous. You would be surprised to learn how many ready-made novels can be had on short notice. It beats quick lunch. And most of them are equally indigestible. I read one or two but I was no judge of novels. Perkins suggested that we draw lots to see ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... fountains of my great deeps were broken up, and I rained laughter for forty days and forty nights during as much as three minutes. By that time I realized it was my fault. I had overdone the thing. I started in to deceive them with elaborate burlesque pathos, in order to magnify the humorous explosion at the end; but I had constructed such a fog of pathos that when I got to the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Greek, not by any process of cold and deliberate imitation, but by a similar natural growth from a broad groundwork provided by Nature herself. It was the passionate and unbridled Dosso Dossi who among painters stood in the closest relation to Ariosto, both in his true vein of romanticism and his humorous eccentricity. ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... and a drawing-room behind. They were closed, because the Dutch (I am already learning) like to draw a firm dividing line between being in the house and in the open air; and I could see through the glass a half-length, life-size portrait of a humorous little brown gentleman, who was, no doubt, Cousin Cornelia's late husband, and Robert's father. Taking this for granted, it's evident that Robert gets his inches and his blond splendor of looks from his mother. ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... resolute encounter. He frowned fiercely, and as his eyes were keen and blue-green, and, backed by a tremendous will, the odds seemed in his favor. But soon his frown relaxed; a smile replaced it—a handsome acknowledgment of defeat, a humorous confession that she was indeed "on to" him. "I like you," he ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... taking in every detail of this girl and her so individual room, the golden-brown hair, thick and wavy, the golden-brown eyes, "like a trout-stream in Connemara," that sparkled and lit and saddened as she talked, the mobile, humorous mouth, the short, straight nose and pointed chin, the straight-up-and-down belted brown frock, the whole toning so perfectly with the room with its polished floor and old Persian rugs, the pale yellow walls (even on the dullest day they seemed to hold ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... first complete set of words to the tune was the Yankee's Return from Camp, which is apparently of the year 1775. The most popular humorous ballad on the whig side was the Battle of the Kegs, founded on a laughable incident of the campaign at Philadelphia. This was written by Francis Hopkinson, a Philadelphian, and one of the signers of the Declaration of ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... kept cats they must be pedigreed Persian cats, and well worth keeping, Johnnie decided. The girl—and she was a girl—had brought into the room an electric vitality, a breeziness hard to describe. Her eyes were humorous and intelligent; her teeth, which she seemed always ready to show in a friendly, generous smile, were strong and white and sparkling. Altogether she was such a vision of healthy, unaffected, and smartly gotten-up young womanhood that O'Reilly could only ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... cried Mr. Yollop delightedly; "you get brighter every minute. Perhaps you have at one time or another conducted a humorous ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... that Mrs. Vokins patted my hand when nobody else was looking, and said: "Oh, my dear Mr. Bob, I wish it had been you! You was always the one I liked the best." For that, in view of every circumstance, was humorous, and hurt as ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... chairs and bunks Ned opened the door and looked out on the passage which ran along in front of the apartment. When he turned back into the room there was a humorous twinkle ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... lively, bustling man, with a roguish twinkle in his eye, and a humorous style of talking. Some Friends, of more quiet temperaments than himself, thought he had more activity than was consistent with dignity. They reminded him that Mary sat still at the feet of Jesus, while Martha was ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... sensations. In that case he generally suffers from the defect of most realists; that of not being realistic enough. He does not really think out his own impressions thoroughly; or he would generally find they are not so disappointing after all. A humorous soldier told me that he came from Derbyshire, and that he did not think much of the Pyramid because it was not so tall as the Peak. I pointed out to him that he was really offering the tallest possible tribute to a work of man in comparing ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... to accuse her, to point fingers at her, to warn her of some awful impending punishment. "Ah! you're the little girl," they seemed to say, "who lost Jeremy's dog and broke Jeremy's heart." She was sure that someone was beneath her bed. That old terror haunted her with an almost humorous persistency every night before she went to sleep, but to-night there was a ghastly certainty and imminence about it that froze her blood. She crouched up against the hanging skirts, gazing at the black line between the floor and the white sheets, expecting at every second to see a protruding black ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... finishing the drying of her tears. She was so far from wishing to be a strong-minded person of either gender, that she did not comprehend that her aunt could wish it for her, or could herself seriously claim to be one. The talk about a professorship was in her estimation the wayward, humorous whim of an eccentric who was fond of solemn joking. Mrs. Stanley, meanwhile, could not see why her utterance should not be taken in earnest, and opened her eyes at ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... all the world over, no other idea than the idea of extravagant improbability or extravagant absurdity in the general mind. If the interview now taking place in Mr. Pedgift's consulting-room had taken place at his dinner-table instead, when wine had opened his mind to humorous influences, it is possible that he might, by this time, have suspected the truth. But, in his business hours, Pedgift Senior was in the habit of investigating men's motives seriously from the business ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... my desire. The nurse, wise in her knowledge of sick "grown-ups," who are, after all, very like children, will find a way to divert my mind from the immediate "I want" to something which I also can be led to want. I may agree that I want more the better feeling an hour from now. Perhaps her humorous picture of the effects of too early freedom on my condition, or of my body's urgent demand for rest, regardless of my mind's wish; perhaps only a joke which diverts me; perchance the "take-for-granted you want to help us out" air; mayhap the story ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... of the last Lord Wolferstan's lawless but not ignoble passion. The writer shows all her old power of presenting the passion of love in each of its Protean phases. Mary Pechell herself is a lovely, gracious figure, whose compelling charm the reader feels from the first. In half-humorous, half-pathetic contrast is the middle-aged romance of Miss Rose Charnwood, touched with the tenderest sentiment, and not belied by the happiness in store both for her and for ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... sparkling piece of political and social satire. Mr Escott besprinkles his pages with biting epigram and humorous innuendo. It is ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... teachers would not go. "He needed no interpreter as he passed from village to village; the frugal long-headed Northumbrians listened willingly to one who was himself a peasant of the Lowlands and who had caught the rough Northumbrian burr. His patience, his humorous good sense, the sweetness of his look, told for him, and not less the vigorous frame which fitted the peasant-preacher for the hard life he ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Carlisle - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. King Eley
... looking at the DETAILS OF FACTS left by those who may be called, if people please, Bonner's victims and their friends, we find very consistently maintained the character of a man, straightforward and hearty, familiar and humorous, sometimes rough, perhaps coarse, naturally hot-tempered, but obviously [by the testimony of his enemies] placable and easily entreated, capable of bearing most patiently intemperate and violent language, much reviling and low ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... friends: he still smiled, though his expression hinted some uneasiness. But the humorous side of the matter ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... do more than mutter confusedly: "I! . . . In a general way. . ." and then gave me up. But he retired in good order, under the cover of a heavily humorous remark that he, too, was getting soft, and that this was his time for taking his little siesta—when he was on shore. "Very bad ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... had a humorous face that betrayed Irish ancestry, which was emphasized by the merest touch of a brogue when he talked. His hair was red and his face freckled, and there was something about him that was extremely likable and made the boys warm to him ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... no impatience in the pleasant look with which Mr. Crisparkle contemplated the pretty old piece of china as it knitted; but there was, certainly, a humorous sense of its not being a piece of china ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... always looked upon the bright side of life, leaving its reverse to those who could not behold the silver lining to the darkling clouds of their moral horizon. We could fill a good-sized volume with anecdotes illustrating the humorous in Mr. Burnett's composition, and his keen appreciation of the grotesque and ludicrous—relating how he has, many a time and oft, "set the table in a roar," by his quaint sayings and the peculiar manner in which they were said; but we ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... little more light. I watched him pretty closely the first mile or so. He had nothing to say until we were a mile out of town. He is a good-looking fellow, Carol,—you remember, of course, because you never forget the boys, especially the good-looking ones. His eyes were clear and slightly humorous, as if he knew a host of funny things if he only chose to tell. Finally in answer to ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... brief and humorous glance. "I always give you the plums if I can, my boy," he said. "I said to him, 'Me and my son, we're partners. Going out with him is just the same as going out with me, and p'raps a bit better, for he's got the better boat.' So he sheered off, and said maybe he'd look ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... talk of many things. In all she showed the same calm candor and tenderness. In all he showed the same humorous quaintness and good sense. Lawrence Newt observed that these interviews were becoming longer and longer, although the affairs to arrange really became fewer. He could not discover that there was any particular reason for it; and yet he became uncomfortable ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... thing in the humorous light which softens for us Americans so many of the hardships of others, "I suppose that man likes to squeeze his brother man when he gets him in his grip. That's ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... There were deep, lingering tones in his voice, and he could strikingly enhance the comic or pathetic effect of a sentence by dwelling here and there upon some syllable. His features were equally susceptible of humorous and of solemn expressions, and his eyes were in form and hue wonderfully adapted to showing great varieties of emotion. Their mournful aspect was extremely earnest and affecting; and when Ken was giving utterance to some mysterious passage ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... it has been said, was very ingenious and humorous, and very witty in his sayings, whereof there is still vivid memory in that city; for besides that which Messer Giovanni Boccaccio wrote about him, Franco Sacchetti, in his three hundred Stories, relates many of them that are very beautiful. Of these I will not ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... satirical blows; and dates are constantly misstated. Mr. Roscoe is the most careful of Pope's editors; but even he is often wrong. For instance, he has taken the trouble to write a note upon Pope's humorous report to Lord Burlington of his Oxford journey on horseback with Lintot; and this note involves a sheer impossibility. The letter is undated, except as to the month; and Mr. Roscoe directs the reader to supply 1714 as the true date, which is a gross anachronism. For a ludicrous ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... these countries, according to ancient Greek models, or taken from poems, legends, or biographies, naturally reflected the characteristics of their respective nationalities: in Italy comedies were chiefly elaborated, with humorous positions and persons. In Spain there flourished the worldly drama, with complicated plots and historical heroes. The peculiarities of the English drama were the coarse incidents of murders, executions, and battles taking place on the stage, and popular, humorous interludes. Neither the Italian ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... first evening, and at another time to place a bunch of winter-violets on his table, with a promise to renew them when they drooped. On these occasions there was something in her smile which showed how conscious she was of the effect she produced, though it must be said that it was rather a humorous than a designing consciousness, and savoured more of pride than ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... them. On returning home we amused our seniors with, as they said, a capital rehearsal. The wit and philosopher of the occasion were called, respectively, Julius and Johnson; so we took their parts and reproduced all the bright, humorous remarks they made. The next morning as we appeared at the breakfast table, Cousin Gerrit Smith, in his deep, rich voice said: "Good-morning, Julius and Johnson," and he kept it up the few days we were in Albany together. One after another our relatives adopted the pseudonyms, ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... produced a high-shouldered young fellow, with a round red face, a short crop of sandy hair, a very broad humorous mouth, a turned-up nose, and a great sleeved waistcoat of purple bars, with mother-of-pearl buttons, that seemed to be growing upon him, and to be in a fair way—if it were not pruned—of covering his head and overunning ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... was an almost constant warfare of humorous badinage in connection with their several weaknesses. Josh would twit the fat boy on his enormous capacity for stowing "grub" away; and on the other hand, Nick generally came back with sarcastic remarks about "shadows," and "living skeletons," ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... however, with his professional eloquence, he talked the old lady into calmness. He was not so foolish as to contradict her. On the contrary, he caressed her hobby. He was humorous and pathetic by turns. He attacked the authors of the revolution, cursed its errors, deplored its crimes, and almost wept over its disastrous results. Commencing with the infamous Marat he eventually ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... this strange exhibition of the dance in full career, at all familiar to our minds, is the prancing of the basket-horses in Mr. Peake's humorous farce ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... verse was offered to an older friend; The humbler prose has fallen to thy share: Nor could I miss the occasion to declare, What spoken in thy presence must offend— That, set aside some few caprices wild, Those humorous clouds that flit o'er brightest days, In all my threadings of this worldly maze, (And I have watched thee almost from a child), Free from self-seeking, envy, low design, I have not found ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... magazine to anything but its own little party-theory. And behold! poor Lancelot found himself of no party whatsoever. He was in a minority of one against the whole world, on all points, right or wrong. He had the unhappiest knack (as all geniuses have) of seeing connections, humorous or awful, between the most seemingly antipodal things; of illustrating every subject from three or four different spheres which it is anathema to mention in the same page. If he wrote a physical-science article, able editors asked him what ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... is a more than half humorous one. It occurs in the description of the "Doctor of Physic," the grave graduate in purple surcoat and blue white-furred hood; nor, by the way, may this portrait itself be altogether without its use as throwing some light on the helplessness of fourteenth-century medical science. For though in all ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... book on the Outer Hebrides is that written by Mr. W. C. Mackenzie. Proceeding in the order of chronology, the author gives a vivid series of historic summaries (enlivened by many a piquant episode and humorous touch) of the Long Island from the earliest times. The wanderings of Prince Charlie, and the condition of the country after Culloden, have never been better told than in Mr. ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... arrangement of elements difficult to combine, yet always showing the instinct of following the control of the dominating form and peculiar lines of the seat itself. There is an instance of one from St. David's Cathedral—apparently a humorous satire—a goose-headed woman offering a cake to a man-headed gull (?), or perhaps they are both geese! I won't pretend to say, but it evidently is intended to suggest cupboard love, and there is a portentously large ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... could not tell about the eyes, but considering her hair and vivid complexion they were, he decided, probably hazel. From his purely scientific or rather artistic investigation of the girl's face, he started suddenly to find that those eyes were viewing him with an unmistakably humorous disdain. But only for a second. Then as though some mental picture had been vaguely limned in her mind, she looked at him again, quickly, this time with a curious expression, as of a person trying to remember, not quite certain whether she should bow. She did n't. Instead, ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... Midsummer Night's Dream. But our greatest bards and sages have often shown a tendency to rant it and roar it like true British sailors; to employ an extravagance that is half conscious and therefore half humorous. Compare, for example, the rants of Shakespeare with the rants of Victor Hugo. A piece of Hugo's eloquence is either a serious triumph or a serious collapse: one feels the poet is offended at a smile. But Shakespeare seems rather proud of talking nonsense: I never can read ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... picture of a boy's heart, full of the lovable, humorous, tragic things which are locked secrets to most older folks. It is a finished, ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... which the great brother would have gathered all the children of Jerusalem. Poems would come to him—little songs and little prayers—spiritual butterflies, with wings whose spots matched; sometimes humorous little parables concerning life and its affairs would come; but the pity was that none of them would stay; never, do what he might, could he remember so as to recall one of them, and had to comfort himself with the thought that nothing true can ever be ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... In a humorous paper written in 1732, entitled, "An Examination of certain Abuses, Corruptions, and Enormities in the city of Dublin," Swift mentions this diversion, which he ludicrously enough applies to the violent persecutions of the political parties of the day. The ceremony was this: A strange ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... him a hearing. Swift aimed and flew higher, but also did not miss the lower mark. No one has ever doubted that Johnson's depreciation of The Conduct of the Allies was half special perversity (for he was always unjust to Swift), half mere humorous paradox. For there was much more of this in the doctor's utterances than his admirers, either in his own day or since, have always recognised, or have sometimes been qualified by Providence to recognise. As for the Drapier's ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... clear-cut and unmistakably English. Jennie saw his closely-cropped auburn head, and, as it raised until it overtopped her own, the girl, terrified as she was, could not but admire the sweeping blonde moustache that overshadowed a smile, half-wistful, half-humorous, which lighted up his handsome face. The ribbon of some order was worn athwart his breast; otherwise he wore court dress, which well ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... Shillito was his second cousin, a Rossiter by birth, and would fain have married Michael herself, only that he was not at that time thinking of marriage, and when his thoughts turned that way—the very day after, as it were—he met Linda Bennet and her thousands a year. But he retained a half humorous liking for ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... have them only remember, that scoffing cometh not of wisdom; so as the best title in true English they get with their merriments, is to be called good fools; for so have our grave forefathers ever termed that humorous kind of jesters. ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... of Mr Vladimir, so well known in the best society by their humorous urbanity, beamed with cynical self-satisfaction, which would have astonished the intelligent women his wit entertained so exquisitely. "Yes," he continued, with a contemptuous smile, "the blowing up of the first meridian is bound to ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... blues and greens with whiteness purged of glare. The beauties as well as the defects of such compositions make us regret that Fra Filippo never found a more congenial sphere for his imagination. As a painter of subjects half-humorous and half-pathetic, or as the illustrator of romantic stories, we fancy that he might have won fame rivalled only by the greatest colourists. One such picture it was granted him to paint, and this is his masterpiece. In ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... is going to see two young miners named Macaulay a few miles away, and was regretfully compelled to decline," and the humorous smile on his face widened, for he knew ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... quietly on. Mark grew a little better. Hester wrote regularly, but the briefest bulletins, to the major, seldom receiving an acknowledgment. The new earl wrote that he had been to the funeral, and described in a would-be humorous way the house and lands to which he had fallen heir. The house might, he said, with unlimited money, be made fit to live in, but what was left of the estate was literally a ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... barrels of clothing solved another problem; for no longer did their contents consist solely of articles of feminine attire. "Biled shirts" poured out of them; socks and breeches, derby hats, coats and negligees; until Aunt Nancy with a humorous twist to her thin lips inquired if there were thirty men in this establishment and ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... person actively engaged in the last canvass who had been connected with the effort of 1871. As vice-president of her judicial district, she spoke at many places, organizing wherever practicable. Her motherly face, and persuasive but humorous argument, made her a favorite at conventions. Coming to Nebraska in its early days, a widow with a large family, she purchased a large farm and devoted herself to its management, to the care and education of her children, and to the direction of the village school, being a member of the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... said. 'Moriturus te saluto!' He sought to kneel, but he could not bend his joints; he smiled with a humorous and rueful countenance at his ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford |
