"Jackass" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a poor starved jackass, that had been sheltering himself under the lee of the hedge, and now, as we all but trampled him, heaved himself out of the shadow with a bray of terror. The sound, bursting upon us at close quarters, ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... defeated at Marengo [Footnote: The battle of Marengo was fought on the 14th of June, 1800.]—so surely defeated that General Melas issued orders for the pursuit of the enemy, and rode to Alessandria to take his supper in the most comfortable manner. That fellow Melas is a jackass, who only scented the roast meat which he was going to have for supper, but not General Desaix, who arrived with his troops in time to snatch victory from our grasp, and to inflict a most terrible defeat upon our triumphant army. All ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... went ambling by, which solved the riddle of his strange behaviour. Iskender caught a scowl of disapproval from the Sitt Carulin, a glance of agonised appeal from the Sitt Hilda, and then a malicious grin from old Costantin, as he ran by on foot, prodding with his staff the hindmost jackass, on which the Sitt Jane sat up with face averted. The three ladies were clad in white with mushroom hats and fluttering face-veils. Their bodies bulged now here, now there, like sacks of grain, obedient to the ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... village-green, While the late lamented tenderfoot upon the plain is spread With a sanguinary circle on the summit of his head; Where the cactuses (or cacti) lift their lances in the sun, And incautious jackass-rabbits come to sorrow as they run, Lived a colony of settlers—old Missouri was the State Where they formerly resided ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... tickled him, that he commenced to laugh, and, finding it inconvenient to do so on his legs, he sat down to indulge his humour freely. A laughing jackass perched on the fence at the side of the road heard Mr Villiers' hilarity, and, being of a convivial turn of mind itself, went off into fits of laughter also. On hearing this echo Mr Villiers tried to get up, in order to punish the man who mocked him, but, though his ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... rumors concerning the hooded lady, the owl, and Master B.: with others, still more filmy, which had floated about during our occupation, relative to some ridiculous old ghost of the female gender who went up and down, carrying the ghost of a round table; and also to an impalpable Jackass, whom nobody was ever able to catch. Some of these ideas I really believe our people below had communicated to one another in some diseased way, without conveying them in words. We then gravely called one another to witness, that we were not there to be deceived, or to deceive—which we considered ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... moment to less serious matters. I never shall see a donkey without gratefully thinking of a Prussian. If anyone happens to fall out with his jackass, let me recommend him, instead of beating it, to slay and eat it. Donkey is now all the fashion. When one is asked to dinner, as an inducement one is told that there will be donkey. The flesh of this obstinate, but weak-minded ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... every neighbouring cottager Stupidly yawned upon the other: No jackass brayed; no little cur 755 Cocked up his ears;—no man would stir ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... transcribe them. The man at the cottage was a great bore with his anecdotes. I hate the rascal. His life consists in fuzy, fuzzy, fuzziest. He drinks glasses, five for the quarter, and twelve for the hour; he is a mahogany-faced old jackass who knew Burns: he ought to have been kicked for having spoken to him. He calls himself 'a curious old bitch', but he is a flat old dog. I should like to employ Caliph Vathek to kick him. Oh, the flummery of a birthplace! ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... turn Doctor, my honey,—d'ye see? Marrowbones, cherrystones, Bundle'em jig. You'll get high in practice, and pocket a fee: Since many a jackass (all parties agree) For physic is famous, though silly as thee; Who art an ambling, scambling, Braying-sweet, turn-up feet, Mane-cropt, tail lopt, High-bred, ...
— Deborah Dent and Her Donkey and Madam Fig's Gala - Two Humorous Tales • Unknown
... has heard of the Irishman crossing the brook. 'Sure, Paddy, if ye carry me, don't I carry the barrel of whiskey, an' isn't that fair and aiquil?' It is differently told in one of the old Latin jest books, where a certain Piero, pitying his weary jackass, which bore a heavy plough, took the latter on his own shoulders, and mounting the donkey, said: 'Nune procedere poteris, non enim tu sed ego aratrum fero,'—'Now you may go along, for not you but I now bear the plough.' Not a few of the jokes given to modern Irishmen originated centuries ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... privilege of man to exert his voice during his repast, and to indulge also in those specially human cachinnations which no lower creature, except that disreputable Australian biped known as the 'laughing jackass,' presumes to imitate; and to these vocal exercises of the feasters respond the endless ring and tinkle of knife and fork on china plate, and the ministering angels in white chokers behind the chairs, those murmured solicitations which hum round and ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... a horse uncourteous, Who only had his harness on his back; And the poor jackass staggered 'Neath the load of vegetable and a pack; He begged the horse to help him, If he could— But not a single bit, The other would. "I ask," said the poor beast, "A little pity— Help me at least, To reach the city." The horse refused, And got his due, For the ass died. ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... sweet and touching. I never heard the name of the song—whether it was "I'm sitting on the stile, Mary," or "A watcher, pale and weary"—but if it was the latter, I am not surprised that it should have overcome even a jackass. At any rate, the music so moved the soul of Mr. Donkey that he could no longer restrain himself, but entering the open door he stepped into the parlor, approached the lady, and with a voice faltering from the excess of his emotion, he joined in ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... old man, getting really excited; "a jackass of a fellow as ain't fit to hold a candle to our Archie? Never you fear, Molly, there'll nothing come of that; I'd sooner see her in her ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... three or four times Smith has called. If he comes to-morrow tell him I will see him when I return. Bolt the doors and don't leave it to that jackass, Wilkins." ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... you mean by it?" demanded Bones wrathfully. "Haven't I given you a good uniform, you blithering jackass? What the deuce do you mean by opening the door, in front of people, too, dressed ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... Turner against me more than anything else that could have happened. The attorney, who was much exasperated at the conduct of the Judge, said to me as we met the coroner, "Never mind what the Judge does; he is an old fool." I replied, "Yes, he is an old jackass." This was said in an ordinary conversational tone; but a man by the name of Captain Powers, with whom Turner boarded, happened to overhear it, and running to the court-house, and opening the door, he hallooed out, "Judge Turner! oh, Judge Turner! Judge ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... cannot get, without speaking through one's nose; I don't like the eternal fuss and jabber about books without nature, and revolutions without fruit; I have no sympathy with tales that turn on a dead jackass, nor with constitutions that give the ballot to the representatives, and withhold the suffrage from the people; neither have I much faith in that enthusiasm for the beaux arts, which shows its produce in execrable music, detestable pictures, abominable ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... like lightning, speedily rendering further pursuit hopeless. The pinch in the ear and the touch with the heel were the secret signs by which Jabal had been used to urge his mare to her utmost speed. Jabal's companions were amazed and indignant at his strange conduct. "O thou father of a jackass!" they cried, "thou hast helped the thief to rob thee of thy jewel." But he silenced their upbraidings by saying: "I would rather lose her than sully her reputation. Would you have me suffer it to be said among the tribes that another mare had proved fleeter than mine? I have at least ...
— The Arabian Art of Taming and Training Wild and Vicious Horses • P. R. Kincaid
... on unprotected wagons and cattle. The absence of dragoons prevented a dispersion of these banditti. Some companies of infantry were, indeed, mounted on mules, and sent to pursue them, but these only excited their derision. The Mormons nicknamed them "jackass cavalry." Their only exploit was the capture of a Mormon major and his adjutant, on whose person were found orders issued by D.H. Wells, the Commanding General of the Nauvoo Legion, to the various detachments of marauders, directing them to burn the whole country before the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... sport?" said Joe, genially. "You are Weisenheimer on figures, all right. How many square pounds of baled hay do you think a jackass could eat if he stopped brayin' long enough to keep still a minute and ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... you see there.... Do you know what Charles said the other evening when he found his father on that chair, crippled like that, and unable to speak? Why, he shouted to him that he'd been a stupid jackass all his life, working himself to death for those bourgeois, who now wouldn't bring him so much as a glass of water. Then, as he none the less has a good heart, he began to cry ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... hit off as if he had been all his life a sailor. Any but so extraordinary an observer would have described a steamer in a storm as he would have described a sailing-ship in a storm. But any description of the latter would be as inapplicable to my friend's account of the other as the ways of a jackass to those of a mad bull. In the letter from which it was taken, however, there were some things addressed to myself alone: "For two or three hours we gave it up as a lost thing; and with many thoughts of you, and the children, and those others who are dearest to us, waited quietly for ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... been killed?" exclaimed the cowboy. "Everythin' square? Why, when he said that Johnnie was cheatin' and acted like such a jackass? And then in the saloon he fairly walked up to git hurt?" With these arguments the cowboy browbeat the Easterner and reduced ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... said he done it pretty well; "only," he says, "you mustn't bellow out ROMEO! that way, like a bull—you must say it soft and sick and languishy, so—R-o-o-meo! that is the idea; for Juliet's a dear sweet mere child of a girl, you know, and she doesn't bray like a jackass." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... society. The stewards have neglected to serve soup to some negro, who at every meal has edged himself higher up the table, and whose conversation consists of whispering into the ear of a black neighbour, with an occasional guffaw like that of the 'laughing jackass.' ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... acquaintance, an he might, with them both, or at least with one of them, and succeeded in making friends with Bruno. The latter, perceiving, after he had been with him a few times, that the physician was a very jackass, began to give himself the finest time in the world with him and to be hugely diverted with his extraordinary humours, whilst Master Simone in like manner took a marvellous ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... a naturalist, are you? Then, sir, I ask you, as a naturalist, do you not know it to be a fact in natural history that one jackass always brays as soon ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... ingenious and mistaken explanations have been given of this supposedly female 'she.' The schoolboy 'howler' on the subject is well known: 'All ships are "she" except mail boats and men-of-war.' Had this schoolboy known a very little more he might {91} have added jackass brigs to his list of male exceptions. The real explanation may possibly be that the English still spoken at sea is, in some ways, centuries older than the English spoken on land, and that the nautical 'she' comes down ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... such a confounded jackass!" said Mr Sidsby, without giving a local habitation or a name to the personal ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... wading-birds were stalking about; one of these, the Curiaca (Ibis melanopis), flew up with a low cackling noise, and was soon joined by a unicorn bird (Palamedea cornuta), which I startled up from amidst the bushes, whose harsh screams, resembling the bray of a jackass, but shriller, disturbed unpleasantly the solitude of the place. Amongst the willow bushes were flocks of a handsome bird belonging to the Icteridae or troupial family, adorned with a rich plumage of black and saffron-yellow. ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... over heels in love with the young lady," he confessed. "Don't think I am a confounded jackass. I am not in the habit of doing such things. I'm twenty-seven and I have never gone out of my way to meet a girl yet. This is something—different. I want to find out about ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... There are fifteen miles to be disposed of before dark, and darkness will be upon us in a couple of hours. I can continue my soliloquising as I canter through the bush; there will be no one to disturb me or ridicule me, unless, indeed, the bird named the laughing jackass should make the woods echo with his idiotic chuckle, or the parrots should ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... your talk, sir, in private life—I had not, as one might say, imbibed it—for nothink. The General, sir—your lamented uncle—had a flow: he would, if allowed, and meaning no disrespect, talk the hind leg off a jackass; but I found him lacking in 'umour. Now you, Mr. George, 'ave 'umour. You 'ave not your uncle's flow, sir—the Lord forbid! But in give-and-take, as one might say, you are igstreamly droll. On many occasions, sir, when you were extra sparkling I do assure ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... charged back again, completin' their earned iv desthruction. At th' las' account th' brave sojers was climbin' threes an' tillygraft poles, an' a rig'mint iv mules was kickin' th' pink silk linin' out iv th' officers' quarthers. Th' gallant mules was led be a most courageous jackass, an' 'tis undhersthud that me frind Mack will appint him a brigadier-gin-ral jus' as soon as he can find out who his father is. 'Tis too bad he'll have no childher to perpituate th' fame iv him. He wint through th' camp at th' head iv his throops iv mules without castin' a shoe. ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... such a brassy age I could not move a thistle; The very sparrows in the hedge Scarce answer to my whistle; Or at the most, when three-parts-sick With strumming and with scraping, A jackass heehaws from the rick, ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... if that's what you mean," Dunk sneered. "I decline to bring myself down to your level. One doesn't expect anything from a jackass but a bray, you know—and one doesn't feel compelled to bray because the jackass does." He smiled that supercilious smile which Weary had hated of old, and which, he knew, was well used to covering much treachery and ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... turn into a toad. But, unfortunately for her, she had dropped her magic wand outside of the cage, as she fell in, and the little demon, seeing this, merely laughed in her face, and running to the wand, picked it up, and ordered her to turn into a jackass, which she immediately did, and began to bray horribly. The little wretch was so delighted with this feat, that he turned about a dozen somersaults, and then, for the amusement of the Giant and his friends, he changed the old sorceress successively into a lion, a pig, an old hen, a turtle, ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... official history, Astier-Rehu and Schwanthaler, whom a singular fatality had brought face to face on the summit of the Rigi, after thirty years of insults and of rending each other to shreds in explanatory notes referring to "Schwanthaler, jackass," ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... merely to give them a word in their ear that mercy to the thief is injustice to the honest man. For my part I have galloped over my ten parishes these four days, until this moment that I am just alighted, or rather, that my poor jackass-skeleton of a horse has let me down; for the miserable devil has been on his knees half a score of times within the last twenty miles, telling me in his own way, 'Behold, am not I thy faithful jade of a horse, on which thou hast ridden ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... by bestriding the animal, sitting far back upon its hips. Before the coming of the Spaniards there were no beasts of burden in Mexico; everything that required transportation was moved by human muscles. It was not until the eighteenth century that the jackass was introduced; cattle, sheep, horses, and hogs long ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... was taken by a young man of the town. The Democratic orator took advantage of the absence of his opponent to describe the discussion of the night before, and to give a portrait of his adversary. He was represented as a cross between a baboon and a jackass, who would be a natural curiosity for Barnum. "I intend," said the orator, "to put him in a cage and exhibit him about the deestrict." This political hit called forth great applause. All his arguments were of this pointed ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... himself it's a sign that he is going mad? Once more, it's a lie! A man would go mad in this awful solitude if he didn't hear some one speaking. Snow, snow, snow, and rock and mountain; and ugh! how cold! Pull up, donkey! jackass! idiot! or ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... Don Gaspar de Luna, Don Diego Pinto, the commander of a guarda-costa of eighteen guns, that lay in the offing, and which, to the most unpractised eye, bore about the same resemblance to an English or American man of war of the same class, as an old, worn-out jackass does to a handsome, high spirited, well groomed race-horse. The rest of the group was made up of young officers "of no mark or likelihood," and with whom we have nothing to do, with the exception of Don Gregorio ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... far, Close by where Caesar's gardens are." "I've nothing in the world to do, And what's a paltry mile or two? I like it, so I'll follow you!" Down dropped my ears on hearing this, Just like a vicious jackass's, That's loaded heavier than he likes; But off anew my torment strikes. "If well I know myself, you'll end With making of me more a friend Than Viscus, ay, or Varius; for Of verses who can run off more, Or run them off at such a pace? Who dance with such distinguished grace? ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... millionaires of Virginia City. Anyhow the rumor spread like a prairie fire, and men came rushing in from Georgetown, Placerville, Last Chance, Kentucky Flat, Michigan Bluff, Hayden Hill, Dutch Flat, Baker Divide, Yankee Jim, Mayflower, Paradise, Yuba, Deadwood, Jackass Gulch and all the other camps whose locators and residents had not been as fortunate financially as ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... while I am with the Maharanee and her women, and at night, the great silent Indian night when all the palace is asleep and there is heard nothing but the sounds of the jungle, the cry of the hyena and the bray of the laughing jackass, I shall ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... thinking, that all should win an easy or a cruel end, and it's the will of God that all should rear up lengthy families for the nurture of the earth. What's a single man, I ask you, eating a bit in one house and drinking a sup in another, and he with no place of his own, like an old braying jackass strayed upon the rocks? (To Christy.) It's many would be in dread to bring your like into their house for to end them, maybe, with a sudden end; but I'm a decent man of Ireland, and I liefer face the grave untimely and I seeing a ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge
... don't quite believe in it. That is to say, I believe in it right enough when I look at you or listen to McCunn, but as soon as my eyes are off you I begin to doubt again. I'm gettin' old and I've a stake in the country, and I daresay I'm gettin' a bit of a prig—anyway I don't want to make a jackass of myself. Besides, there's this foul weather and this beastly house to ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... the jester; "'twas mine own ass I sought, and if I have fallen on thine, I will but ride him to York House and then restore him. So ho! good jackass," crossing his ankles on the poor fellow's chest so that he ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... or of longer age.' I've been on the 'unt for the 'Daura' iver since I was twenty, an' I've arskt ivery 'yerber I've ivir met for the 'Secta Croa,' an' all I've 'ad sed to me is 'Go 'long wi' ye for a loony jackass! There aint no sich thing.' But jackass or no, I'm of a mind to think there is such things as both the 'Daura' an' the 'Secta Croa,' if I on'y knew the English of 'em. An' s'posin' ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... "Born jackass!" interrupted IDA. "I believe that everybody who comes to Newport make fools of themselves about me; but you are certainly the Champion ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 19, August 6, 1870 • Various
... that timber for an investment if I offered it cheap enough," Donald explained. "Besides, I owed you a poke. You wanted to be certain you hadn't reared a jackass instead of a man, so you gave me a hundred thousand dollars and stood by to see what I'd do with it—didn't you, old Scotty?" Hector nodded a trifle guiltily. "Andrew Daney wrote me you swore by all your Highland clan that the man who sold you that red cedar was ripe ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... said: "Yes, sir; the Mother Lode dips up in a bit of a circle with no beginning and no end, in the western foothills of the Sierra Mountains. Down about Melones, and Sonora, and Angel's Camp it goes, and through Table Mountain, and under Jackass Hill. It comes north, and north, past Coloma, and Auburn, to Nevada City and ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... the General afresh. "WHAT a donkey the old man must be! To think of his saying to you: 'You go and fit yourself out with three hundred souls, and I'll cap them with my own lot'! My word! What a jackass!" ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... L. of Florence, overhearing.] Oh! that's your idea, is it? Wal, stranger, I don't know what they're going to do with me, but wherever they do put me, I hope it will be out of the reach of a jackass. I'm a real hoss, I am, and I get kinder riley ...
— Our American Cousin • Tom Taylor
... makes matters worse and worse!" he exclaimed, presently. "If that were true, Nina—just supposing that were the true state of the case—why, I should be fighting a duel over a woman I don't care twopence about, and with a young jackass whom I could kick across the street! That is what I ought to have done!—why didn't I throw him down-stairs? But the mischief of it is that the thing is now inevitable; I can't back out? I declare I never was in such a quandary in my ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... Jack, I'm a jackass half the time. I can't get away from the glamour of the footlights. I'm no Johnny; you know that. No hanging round stage-entrances and buying wine and diamonds. I might be reckless enough to buy a bunch of roses, when I'm not ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... say, 'Well done!' an' I don't say you'd be wrong. But jest you stop an' ax hes motives, an' you'll find 'taint religion. Lor' bless 'ee, sir, a bull's got no more use for religion than a toad for side-pockets. 'Tes obstinacy—that's what 'tes. You tells me a jackass es obstinate. Well, an' that's true in a way; and so's a hog. Ef you wants quiet contrariness, a jackass or a hog'll both sit out a bull; an' tho' you may cuss the pair till you sweats like a fuz'-bush ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and fro like the trunk of an enraged elephant. Hockheimer glared like a Bengal tiger about to spring upon its prey. Steinberg growled like a Baltic bear. In Markbrunnen Vivian recognised the wild boar he had himself often hunted. Grafenberg brayed like a jackass, and Geisenheim chattered like an ape. But all was forgotten and unnoticed when Vivian heard the fell and frantic shouts of the laughing hyaena, the Margrave of Rudesheimer! Vivian, in despair, dashed the horn of Oberon to his mouth. One pull, ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... place where he could get a bath. He was directed to go down the Babuino, and at such a number he would find the establishment. Forgetting the number before he was three steps from the hotel, he inquired of a man who was driving a she-jackass to be milked, where the bath was. As he spoke very little Italian, he had to make up by signs what he wanted in words. The man, probably believing he wanted a church, and that his motions signified being sprinkled with water, pointed ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... health—that nothing ailed him, except the result of over-eating and the want of open-air exercise; and I am sure that I can testify to the strength of his legs and the soundness of his lungs; for he kicks like a jackass, and roars like ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... rest o' that bunch o' people this minute. But I was bound to have my fling, and sow my wild oats and now I can have the pleasure of harvestin' my crop. It ought to be thistles, for if ever there was a jackass that same was ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... his part, in order to gratify these favoured guests, made great havoc among the feathered race. He returned after a short ramble with a variety of game, among which were a crow, a kite, and a laughing jackass (alcedo gigantea,) a species of king's-fisher, a singular bird, found in every part of Australia. Its cry, which resembles a chorus of wild spirits, is apt to startle the traveller who may be in jeopardy, as if laughing and mocking at his misfortune. ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... general mass of open-eyed inquisitives. Another attempt to again enlist his services only results in alienating his sympathies still further: he has been grossly taken in by my assumption of intelligence. Having discovered in me a jackass incapable of the Fat-shan pronunciation of Sam-shue, he retires on his dignity from further interest in ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... in the road, there came along a very large countryman, mounted on a very small jackass; he was sitting side-saddle fashion, one leg crossed over the other, the lower leg nearly touching the ground; one hand held a pipe to his mouth, while the other held an olive branch, by no means an emblem of peace to the jackass, who twitched one long ear and then the other, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... School-Master, dryly, "that a little rampant jackass would make a good crest for ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... book of a goose. There is not an idea in it beyond what might germinate in the brain of a washerwoman.' He then proceeds to call the author by such elegant names as 'lickspittle,' 'beggarly skittler,' jackass, ninny, haberdasher, 'fifty-fifth rate scribbler of gripe-visited sonnets,' and 'namby-pamby writer in twaddling albums kept by the mustachioed widows or bony matrons ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... we will," says the landlord, "and if I don't stick you into a bill of costs 'in the morning,' rot me. You'll have a nice time," he continued, "out carousing till daylight; lucky I've got his wallet in the fire-proof, the jackass would be robbed before he got back, and ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... practice of the one, and the agency of the other. For Sturk had, in his own belief, a genius for business of every sort. Everybody on whom his insolent glance fell, who had any sort of business to do, did it wrong, and was a 'precious disciple,' or a 'goose,' or a 'born jackass,' and excited his scoffing chuckle. And little Mrs. Sturk, frightened and admiring, used to say, while he grinned and muttered, and tittered into the fire, with his great shoulders buried in his balloon-backed chair, his heels over the fender and his hands ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... existence, but now the deed came naturally enough. He poured his glass and even echoed the other remarks of 'Here's how.' When the fiery liquor arrived in his stomachical regions he realized with perfect clarity that it was without doubt some newly invented substitute for whisky; perhaps that jackass-brandy which he had heard of. His emotion was twofold: he was glad that Helen was at the hotel and he was determined not to ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... ironmaster, the clergyman, and the Methodist preacher, the very cabmen and railway porters, policemen, and no doubt the crossing-sweepers—to use an expressive Americanism, all the whole "jing-bang"—could teach the ignorant jackass of a farmer. ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... he said, "you are rather a pusillanimous jackass. A man of your convictions to shy at a shadow! Fie, sir, fie! What if the room were empty? The place was full enough of traps to permit of Captain ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... intruder. Every magpie, minah, and wattle-bird within a mile joins in the clamour. They dart at the hawk as he flies from tree to tree. When he alights on a limb they give him no peace; they flap their wings in his face, and call him the worst of names. Even the Derwent Jackass, the hypocrite with the shining black coat and piercing whistle, joins in the public outcry, and his character is worse than that of the hawk himself, for he has been caught in the act of kidnapping and devouring the unfledged young of his nearest neighbour. The distracted hawk has at length ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... such singing birds in Australia, as there are here. Though there is a robin red-breast there, he does not sing as sweetly as he does here. But there are laughing birds in Australia. There is a bird called the "laughing jackass." He laughs very loud three times a day. He begins in the morning;—suddenly a hoarse loud laugh is heard,—then another, then another,—till a whole troop of birds seem laughing all together, and go on laughing for a few minutes;—and then they are all quiet again. Such a noise must ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... "jackass" to make a long story short. He had a company of soldiers at Fort Zara for the purpose of escorting the mail from one station to another. Once on my way East with a coach full of passengers, a snow storm began to rage, at about four o'clock in the afternoon, soon after I had left ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... on his eyebrows in heavy discontent. "It's mighty rough, jest ez a feller reckons he's got quit of her and her jackass bo', to hev her prancin' back inter school agin, and rigged out like ez if she'd been to a ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... observed that Hans, who was seated near to me under the stomach of a jackass, was engaged in sniffing at the sides and bottom of the barge, as a dog might do, and asked ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... man into protectin' her; or lay public blame on him for not doin' it. Other times, in real danger, womenfolks, our kind of womenfolks, anyhow, they pitch right in and help. It takes a man to make a jackass outta himself at the ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... hunger, rags, dirt—but in the thoroughfares of Naples these things are all mixed together. Naked boys of nine years and the fancy-dressed children of luxury; shreds and tatters, and brilliant uniforms; jackass-carts and state-carriages; beggars, Princes and Bishops, jostle each other in every street. At six o'clock every evening, all Naples turns out to drive on the 'Riviere di Chiaja', (whatever that may mean;) and for two hours one may stand there and see ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... dark already, and in the nebulous middle-distance a laughing jackass was indulging in his evening peal. Cairns jerked his head in the direction of the unearthly cackle. "Lots of 'em down here in Vic, I believe," said he, and at length turned his attention to the bound man. "You see, I wanted to land him alive ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... man was right. "If the dome gives them a perfect cover, why let me make a jackass of myself, Mother?" he ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... for blacklegs an' scabs, Mitchell," said Barcoo-Rot, who took Mitchell seriously (and who would have taken a laughing jackass seriously). "Why, you'd find a white spot on a squatter. I wouldn't be surprised if you ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... door and then said, "heard a gentleman say as how there was only one jackass in Eastborough and he ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... between and to the west a rough scrub country, desolating beyond words, and where even edible snakes would be scarce; spots of dead-finish, gidya, and brigalow-bush to north and east, and in the trees by the billabong the cry of the cockatoo and the laughing-jackass. It was lonely, but surely it was safe. Yes, perhaps ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... I like, though,' he went on, 'I should say, Unless he marries Miss Lois Cayley (who is a deal too good for him) the estate shall revert to Kynaston's eldest son, a confounded jackass. I do not usually indulge in intemperate language; but I desire to assure you, with the utmost calmness, that Kynaston's eldest son, Lord Southminster, ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... into the company," raged Violet. "Burlingham didn't want to take him. He looked the fool and jackass he is. Why didn't you warn us he was a rotten ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... Lord is usually on the side of the heaviest battalions—a fact which Napoleon emphasized. The practice of fencing in a nation with a few wild-eyed prophets, or sending a single soldier forth with a hair-trigger hoodoo and the jawbone of a defunct jackass to drive great armies into the earth, gradually fell into disuse—curses and blessings became ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... side that life even in captivity was preferable; while Jim and I, no doubt still under the poignant influence of the last lion's heroic race and end, inclined to freedom or death. We compromised on the reasonable fact that as yet we had shown only a jackass ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... obstinate as the old jackass. She'll have little enough to live upon, and we shall soon arrange things with her somehow. Is it credible that human beings can be so senseless? For years now, their means have been growing less and less, just because the snobbish idiot would ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... to quit," he muttered. "I'd be a blooming jackass to waste any more time here. I'll have to work it naturally, though, or Lynch ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... taking a walk. Just as we were drifting in that suffocating stillness past a great cannon that stood just within a raised portcullis, with nothing between me and it but the moat, a most uncommon jackass in there split the world with his bray, and I fell out of the saddle. Sir Bertrand grabbed me as I went, which was well, for if I had gone to the ground in my armor I could not have gotten up again by myself. The English warders ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... an Army Commission And told it to build us a Trail, But all that Sam gave was permission— He didn't come thru with the kale. Now a trail in Alaska costs money And when Dick tries to get a bill thru Some jackass from Maine reads the figures And "moves the amount cut ...
— Rhymes of a Roughneck • Pat O'Cotter
... there is an owl or two. These are heard occasionally, but not seen. Often at night one hears a solemn cry of "More pork! more pork! more pork!" I have heard people talk, too, of a laughing jackass (not the Australian bird of that name), but no one has ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... incongruities is compelled to regard Swift's description of Lilliputia and Sydney Smith's account of Australia as poor attempts at fun. For, leaving out of view the pigmies of the former place, whose like we know is never found in Congress, what is there in that Australian bird with the voice of a jackass to excite the feeblest interest in the mind of a man who has listened to the debates on Kansas? or what marvel is an amphibian with the bill of a duck to him who has gazed aghast at the intricate anatomy of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... contains twenty ducks, six drakes, three ganders, two dead dogs, four drowned kittens, and twelve geese. Of course the green's cropt very close, and does famous for bowling when the little village boys play at cricket; Only some horse, or pig, or cow, or great jackass, is sure to come and stand right before the wicket. There's fifty-five private houses, let alone barns and workshops, and pigsties, and poultry huts, and such-like sheds, With plenty of public-houses—two Foxes, one Green Man, three Bunch of Grapes, one ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... standing close before me erect and determined. When thus opposed he continually rolled his head from side to side, in a very odd manner, as if the power of distinct vision lay only in the anterior and basal part of each eye. This bird is commonly called the jackass penguin, from its habit, while on shore, of throwing its head backwards, and making a loud strange noise, very like the braying of an ass; but while at sea, and undisturbed, its note is very deep and solemn, and is often heard in the night-time. ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... good evening, you stupid jackass! Do you suppose I have travelled five and twenty miles for the pleasure of wishing you good evening? ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... letters: the painter hears with his own ears the expressions of contempt for his talent, and the hisses of the audience go straight to the ears of the actor, whereas the author has the comfort of going to his grave without a suspicion that you have cried out at every page: "The fool, the animal, the jackass!" and have at length flung his book into a corner. There is nothing to prevent the worst author, as he sits alone in his library, and reads himself over and over again, from congratulating himself on being the originator of a host of rare ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... The jackass brayed; And all his passionate dream was in that sound Which, to the stables round And other tenements, told of packs that weighed On his brown haunches; also that, alas! His true heart sighed for Jenny, that fair ass Who backward still and forward paced ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... over and over to again encumber the crowded earth. In the vicissitudes of life before long the merchant would pass for a reincorporation of his soul, and probably, because of his sins as an oppressor of the poor, come back as a turtle or a jackass; certainly not as a revered cow—he was too unholy. In the gradation of humans he was but a merchant of the caste of the third dimension in the great quartette of castes. It would not be like killing a Brahmin, a sin in the sight of ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... rough-looking lot of men that night who occupied it, in the depth of a black pine forest with the glaring light of a huge fire illuminating the recesses of the overhanging trees and dense underwood, increasing the darkness beyond, with the ominous cry of the mawpawk and laughing jackass only breaking the dead stillness. We were soon rolled in our blankets around the fire, and slept like men who had earned ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... part of the work and give all the light was needed, we done ours—which was coming out from among the mesquite bushes and saying good-morning polite to Boston, up on the roof of the 'dobe, and then taking the hobbles off old man Gutierrez's jackass so it could walk ...
— Santa Fe's Partner - Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town • Thomas A. Janvier
... fine of $25 is hereafter to be levied upon each jackass in human form who shoots birds on Sunday. It is to be hoped that the little bills may thus be saved from holiday havoc by persons who object to ...
— Punchinello Vol. II., No. 30, October 22, 1870 • Various
... hastily. "I'm sorry. Forgive me, will you? Of course you're dead right and I've been talking like a jackass. I'll behave, honest I will.... But what ARE we going to do? I won't give you up, you know, no matter if every spirit control in—in wherever they come ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... where that jackass has gone for a doctor?" exclaimed the baronet after a while. "Did you see ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... which was a very beautiful new one, named by Mr. Gould, Halcyon fulgidus. It was found always in thickets, away from water, and seemed to feed on snails and insects picked up from the ground after the manner of the great Laughing Jackass of Australia. The beautiful little violet and orange species (Ceyx rufidorsa) is found in similar situations, and darts rapidly along like a flame of fire. Here also I first met with the pretty Australian Bee-eater (Merops ornatus). This elegant little bird sits on twigs ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... of Hawaii. The sun makes some very fair efforts at shining upon and around those islands lying thousands of miles out in the Pacific Ocean. He was doing his best on this particular morning, and under his influence, so brightening everything, two little boys and a little jackass were having a good time near a long, low, rakish, but far from piratical-looking house upon the hillside already mentioned. One of the boys was white, one of the boys was brown, and the little jackass was gray. The name of the white boy was William ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... of the country has revolved around the figure of a worthless old grafter in a tattered gray shirt. Every question is settled when some moth-eaten ne'er-do-well lets out what is known as a 'rebel yell.' The most polished and profound speech conceivable is answered when a jackass mounts the platform and brays out something about the gallant boys in gray. The cry for progress, for material advancement, for moral and social betterment, is stifled, that everybody may have breath to shout for a flapping trouser's ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... foot to stand upon, nor yet how to sit down on the oaken settle when a seat was offered him, nor, last of all, when nor how to take his departure when he had once sat down. And as to the identity of that jackass, ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... the age, attired in velvet to his feet, and superbly ornamented with rings and chains of gold and precious stones. He carried his silver harp in his hand, and was mounted on a beautiful white jackass with his face towards the tail, that he might behold and be inspired by the charms of the peerless Chaoukeun, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... and down, down, down, down he went over a golden scale: pitched afresh, and dropped down another; and then up, up, up, over the range of both. Then he flung back his shaggy head and laughed. "In all my father's realm there are no such bells as these!" It was the laughing jackass. "Who gave you your name?" "My godfathers and my godmothers in my baptism." Well, his will have that to answer for, however safely for the rest he may have eschewed the world, the flesh, and the devil. Poor bird, to be set to sing to us under such a burden:—of ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... nought. But, in this horrid place, I find No chance or windfall of the kind:— Or if, indeed, I do, The cruel blows I rue.' Anon it came to pass He was a collier's ass. Still more complaint. 'What now?' said Fate, Quite out of patience. 'If on this jackass I must wait, What will become of kings and nations? Has none but he aught here to tease him? Have I no business but to please him?' And Fate had cause;—for all are so. Unsatisfied while here below Our present lot is aye the worst. Our foolish prayers the skies infest. Were Jove to grant all we ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... his account the sous he gives away to the Montreuil beggars; and, at Nampont, gets out of the chaise and whimpers over that famous dead donkey, for which any sentimentalist may cry who will. It is agreeably and skilfully done—that dead jackass; like M. de Soubise's cook, on the campaign, Sterne dresses it, and serves it up quite tender and with a very piquante sauce. But tears, and fine feelings, and a white pocket-handkerchief, and a funeral sermon, and horses and feathers, and a procession of ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... get awful tired of being a jackass? Sometimes I want to kiss you, and sometimes I feel as if I had to kick you. I 'll compromise with you now by letting you bring me some more beer. This got all stale while your sister was here. I saw she did n't like it, and so I would n't drink ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... two good-sized milk-cans that he had, and they bounced about on the little burro's pack, giving him as much amazement as a jackass can feel. ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... "Blackwood," however, was outdone in this rowdy style of reviewing by "Fraser's Magazine." From that periodical we learn that Cooper was "a passable scribbler of passable novels," a "bilious braggart," a "liar," a "full jackass," "a man of consummate and inbred vulgarity," "a bore of the first magnitude in society," who went about fishing for (p. 175) introductions. "But this," it concluded, speaking of his England, "was his last kick, and we shall not disturb his dying moments." ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... "wonderful words" before. For all their wonderfulness, ghosts are seldom original. Mrs. Booth-Tucker reminds us of the gushing lady novelist, who describes her hero as divinely handsome and miraculously clever, but when she opens his mouth, makes him talk like a jackass. ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... sure, they kep' him too long altogether. I know, ma'am, young Rafferty and the rest had his shanty pulled down before the polis come up next day; but they thought they'd git somethin' out of him. The little jackass ought to ha' held his tongue. It was a pity, bedad. Hard lines it is on a man to be losin' his life, you may say, along wid his temper, just be raison of a ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... remarkable progress. In the course of ten weeks he could read slowly, and he knew most of the short words in his primer and second reader by sight. Longer words he would not try to pronounce, but called them, each and all, "jackass" as fast ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... to the Canon of St Paul's and tell him from me that he is a burro, which meaneth Jackass, and that I wish he would mind his own business, which he might easily do by attending a little more to the accommodation of the ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... as yet no cavalry in the force. A few infantry companies were mounted on mules and sent in pursuit of the guerillas, but the Saints merely laughed at them, terming them jackass cavalry. ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... on one occasion staked the entire Bretton estate on a game of chance. She lost; and her opponent, being apparently as sporting as herself, dared her to win it back by riding through Bretton Park and village astride on a jackass with her face to the tail The idea of the haughty and pompous lady undertaking such a penance must have seemed actually incredible, but Madame Beaumont was not readily daunted. To the unbounded surprise of her fellow-gamester she accomplished the feat and thus reinstated herself in all her ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... it will be recalled, based his study of human physiognomy in part upon the resemblance of the nose, eyes, mouth, and ears, and general shape of the head to the features of such animals as the lion, jackass, dog, and swine. We may well believe, therefore, that when the Babylonians refer to a child with a lion's or a dog's ear, they had in mind merely a resemblance, but did not mean that the child actually had the ear of a lion ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... are, hey? What did the commissary say to you? Alfred, pay attention; now you are going to poke yourself against my prince of lodgers. Who has stolen your eyes? Pardon, M. Rudolph; that beggar Cabrion stupefies him more and more— he certainly will make him turn to a jackass, my poor love! ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... and, swift as a rattlesnake's stroke, covered him with his revolver. "Wait right where you are," he said, and the man became rigid. "I came here as peaceable as any man," Mose went on, "but I don't intend to be ridden out of town by a jackass like you." ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland |
