"Jocular" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... jocular solemnity). Ah, but it is not to be the garden. We are going farther afield. We have an adventure for to-night. Get thick shoes and a wrap, Mrs. Dearth; all ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... made, Kulbash Pasha not only laughed heartily at the mock-thunder of the Englishman, but at the energy with which a small official always opens fire, and in the jocularity of his Turkish nature—for they are jocular, these children of the Koran—he told the whole ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... contained no news of importance at all. It was written in a jocular strain, affecting to make light of her captivity. She asked whether she might have leave to visit Mrs. Tusher, or to walk beyond the court and the garden-wall. She gave news of the peacocks, and a fawn she had there. She ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sinecure; for this was the favourite stall with the purchasers of better style, since the articles were, in general, tasteful, and fairly worth the moderate price set on them. At Miss Cleveland's counter there was much noisy laughter— many jocular cheats—tricks for gaining money, and refusals to give change; and it seemed to be very popular with the Stoneborough people, and to carry on a brisk trade. The only languor was in Lady Leonora's quarter—the articles were too costly, and hung on hand; nor were the ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... and had been succeeded (such is the decay of human greatness!) by an old woman whose name was reported to be Tamaroo—which seemed an impossibility. Indeed it appeared in the fullness of time that the jocular boarders had appropriated the word from an English ballad, in which it is supposed to express the bold and fiery nature of a certain hackney coachman; and that it was bestowed upon Mr Bailey's successor by reason of her having nothing fiery about her, except an occasional attack ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... a rather indifferent young painter, who in 1819 boarded at the Vauquer pension. A tutor at college and a Museum attache; very jocular; given to personal witticisms, which were often ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... produce, samples of bean or corn, or a whiplash or balls for horses. In fine, he was a good old country gentleman, and a better man of business than his more solemn brother, at whom he laughed in his jocular way; and said rightly that a gentleman must get up very early to get ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... stone-arched tunnel, ushered by a lame innkeeper; and Burley, chancing to turn his head and glance back through the shadowy stone passage, caught a glimpse in the outer sunshine of the girl whose dark eyes had inspired him with jocular eloquence as he rode on his mule under ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... tall, powerfully built man, of an aspect far from jocular, leaned slightly out of the door, peering in the direction where the three tow-headed urchins waited. Then he glanced within at a leather strap, as if he appreciated the appropriateness of an intimate relation between these objects. But there was no time for pleasure now. ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Plumet soon called again, tricked out from head to foot in the latest fashion. She was a little flurried on entering a room full of jocular clerks. Escorted by Massinot, both of them with their eyes fixed on the ground, she reached my office. I closed the door ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... from the livery stable and accompanied by Pinkey driving two pack-horses ahead of him, Wallie left the Prouty House shortly after noon, followed by comments of a jocular nature from ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... sixteenth century, Sir Nicholas Bacon, who resembled Sir Thomas More in the gentleness of his happiest speeches, could also on occasion exhibit an unnecessary coarseness in his jocular retorts. A circuit story is told of him in which a convicted felon named Hog appealed for remission of his sentence on the ground that he was related to his lordship. "Nay, my friend," replied the judge, "you and I cannot be kindred except you be hanged, for hog is not bacon until it be well ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... reproche. He had a profound faith in his genius for tragedy, but those who liked him best could not help thinking that his plump cheeks, round, little light eyes, his lisp, and a certain lack-a-daisical, though solemn expression of surprise, which Nature, in one of her jocular moods, seemed to have fixed upon his countenance, were against his shining in that walk of the drama. He was blessed, too, with a pleasant belief in his acceptance with the fair sex, but had a real one with his comrades, who ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Bolton's bank what had been borrowed on the estate. For there had passed between them many communications respecting Folking. The extravagances of the son became almost the delight of the father, when the father had become certain of the son's reform. There had been even jocular reference to Davis, and a complete understanding as to the amount of money to be given to the nephew in compensation for the blighted hopes as to ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... nervous and restless withal, often low-spirited, downcast as to heart and eyes. Yet he would at times suddenly break through these broodings, become gay, talkative, jocular, chiefly ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... Average Jones. "This Ackroyd person seems to be a merry little jester. Well, I'm feeling rather jocular, myself, this morning. How does one collect black beetles, I wonder? When in doubt, inquire of ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... of whose invented existence he wrote at least a bookful of startling and funny adventures; Francis Wilson's legs; Sol Smith Russell's Yankee yarns; Billy Crane's droll stories; Modjeska's spicy witticisms—these and other jocular pufferies, quoted and read everywhere with relish for years—were among his hobby-horse performances begun at that time (1881) and continued long after he had settled down in the must ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... A jocular, jibing account. Then Alten gave it up. He had about decided to plead guilty in the Magistrate's Court to disorderly conduct and all the rest of it! That was preferable to being judged a ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... recognized by all to be ominous, but some relief from the feeling of foreboding was experienced when Judge Gregorowski after taking his seat was observed to smile several times and to make some jocular remark to one of the officials of the Court. The faces of the officials however damped any hopes that were built ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... his new forage-cap, briefly said, "I beg your pardon; take my place," and, swinging outward, transferred himself to the rear of the recruit car, thereby causing the corporal to recoil upon a grinning squad of embryo troopers who were shouting jocular farewell to the natives, and getting much in the way of train-hands who were busy straightening out ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... their heads, most of them declared their willingness to go. Four horses were speedily harnessed, a child's sledge belonging to the landlord produced, a wheel and some levers placed thereon, and then the little caravan set off in the direction of the bridge, pursued by the jocular approbation of the soldiers, and accompanied by some of the officers, who showed as much interest in the expedition as comported ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... afternoon, riding on a little pony, and wearing a magnificent beard of twenty years' growth, which an Oriental might well have envied, the more remarkable in an age when shaving was so generally practised.—A jocular epitaph was composed on "Mary Van Butchell," of which these lines may serve ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... some of the jocular persons who make weddings more dreadful than they need to be came forward and touched Dick on the arm. "Come along, old fellow," he said; "no skulking, it's too late to draw back. The bridegroom's carriage ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... being educated in this country; and yet, at the same time, the tone of the people is less scholarly than one might expect. A lady, a few days since, described to me her daughter as being always "on the go," which I take to be a jocular way of saying that the young lady was very fond of paying visits. Another person, the wife of a United States senator, informed me that if I should go to Washington in January, I should be quite "in the swim." I inquired the meaning ...
— The Point of View • Henry James
... but trying to be jocular) Whut you trying to rush me up so fast?... Look at Will Cody here (Pointing to little man on porch) he been promising to bring his already wife down for two months ... and nair one of ...
— The Mule-Bone: - A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts • Zora Hurston and Langston Hughes
... is current at the national capital that Mr. Evarts, when Secretary of State, on one occasion, in a jocular crowd of his friends, was desired to condense into prose these immortal verses. Urgently solicited, Mr. Evarts ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... snug place too," said the lieutenant. "Good sandy bottom for running the lugger ashore. Nice game must have been carried on here. Come, Captain Duncan," he continued in a jocular tone, "you knew of this place ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... been the radio-helio operator of the ill-fated Planetara. He was a perfect match for Venza, for all the millions of miles that separated their native lands. Venza, too was small and slim, her manner as readily jocular as his. ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... of the "Clarion" was being quietly but persistently beset by another sermonizer, less cocksure of text than the Sweet Singer of Policy, but more subtle in influence. This was Miss Esme Elliot. Already, the half-jocular partnership undertaken at the outset of their acquaintance had developed into a real, if somewhat indeterminate connection. Esme found her new acquaintance interesting both for himself and for his career. Her set in general considered the ripening friendship merely "another of Esme's flirtations," ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... pleased with your "Spider," "your old freemason," as you call him. The three first stanzas are delicious; they seem to me a compound of Burns and Old Quarles, those kind of home-strokes, where more is felt than strikes the ear; a terseness, a jocular pathos, which makes one feel in laughter. The measure, too, is novel and pleasing. I could almost wonder Rob. Burns in his lifetime never stumbled upon it. The fourth stanza is less striking, as being less original. The fifth falls off. It has ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... clothes to get up with; and the clerks had whispered to one another that it must be his wedding day, and ought to end in a half-holiday all round, and be chalked thenceforth on the calendar; but instead of being joyful and jocular, like a man who feels a saving Providence over him, the lawyer was as dismal, and unsettled and splenetic, as a prophet on the brink of wedlock. But the very last thing that he ever dreamed of doubting was his power to turn this old soldier ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... to-morrow, or, rather, Monday, when he returned to London he would be able to report that the heart of Polpier was sound and fired with a resolve to serve our common country. Mr Boult proceeded to make the Vicar writhe in his seat by a jocular appeal to "the young ladies in the audience" not to walk-out with any young man until he had clothed himself in khaki. He wound up with one of his most effective perorations, boldly enlisting John Bright and the Angel of Death; and ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... he contradicted, falling back into the half-jocular vein. "You're a pretty good spender, yourself, Madgie. If you didn't have plenty of money to eat and drink and wear ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... to begin my letter with an apology, but I feel that one is due for the very unsatisfactory manner in which, on a former occasion, I answered your grave inquiries about the pirates who thrive on the plunder of Maga. The jocular vein which I incontinently struck and perseveringly followed up, led me very wide of your mark, and I was obliged to leave you quite unsatisfied on another point, about which, for one who is not an author, you seem to be singularly excited. To waive my astonishment at ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... and the beef-steak followed, Mr. Scrake seemed to relax, and to forget that his hat hung over his head, commemorative of the recent retirement of Mrs. Scrake from this 'wale of tears,' and became quite jocular on the subject of the fair sex, congratulating Kornicker upon his looks; calling him a lucky dog, and telling him that if he were him, he'd 'make up to some charming young woman with a fortune, and be off with her.' He then went into a detail of his own ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... he stared into Wilton's face with a look half dogged, half jocular; but in the end, ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... was naturally expressed. The jocular remarks of the foreman, the actions of the wrangler, were instantly recalled to the surrounding group, while the negligence which caused the accident was politely suppressed. The stranger, innocently unaware of any mistake on his part, ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... student in common parlance will express his destitution or poverty by saying, "I have not a bowel." The use of the word with this signification has arisen, probably, from a jocular reference ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... also came home, of course the poor man was totally wrecked. It turned out that the dictionary he had used (Arnold's, we think,)—a work of a hundred years back, and, from mere ignorance, giving slang translations from Tom Brown, L'Estrange, and other jocular writers—had put down the verb sterben (to die) with the following worshipful series of equivalents—1. To kick the bucket; 2. To cut one's stick; 3. To go to kingdom come; ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... the poet-by-stealth, and he hurried across the street with hungry alacrity. The poem-maker was tall and loose-jointed, and the breadth of his shoulders and long muscular limbs decidedly suggested success at the anvil or field furrow. He made a jocular pass at placing his arm around the uncompromising waist-line of his portly wife, and when warded off by an only half-impatient shove he contented himself by winding one of her white apron strings around one of his long fingers ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... have the stress on the antepenultima, which they shorten, as in 'secular' or keep short as in 'jocular', 'familiar', but of ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... my daughter," said Lord Marshmoreton. A few moments before, Billie would undoubtedly have replied to such a statement with some jocular remark expressing disbelief that the earl could have a daughter old enough to be married. But now she felt oddly serious and ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... of the rubato in Chopin cannot be more readily realized than by his concession that he could never play a Viennese waltz properly, and by the fact that sometimes, when he was in a jocular mood, he would play one of his mazurkas in strict, metronomic time, to the great amusement of those who had ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... Papirius Cursor, who at that time was dictator, ordered the lictor to get ready his axe; and when the praetor, having discarded all hope of being able to clear himself, seemed utterly stupefied at the order, he commanded the lictor to cut down a shrub close by; and having in this jocular manner reproved him, he let him go: without himself incurring any disrespect by so doing, since all knew him for a man who, by his own unassisted vigour, had brought long and dangerous wars to a happy termination; and had been the only man reckoned able to resist Alexander the Great ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... began in the tone of jocular familiarity which he considered confidential—"tell me—the whole thing is just a joke of yours to amuse us all, is it not? You do not really believe that you are a count, any more than I really believe that you ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... if people are careful," said Grace, gazing out of the corner of her eye at three very loud and offensively jocular young men, their straw hats tilted at the back of their heads, who had also been arrested by the notice on the basket. They were flashily dressed, with race-tout written all over them, and their keen, impudent, tallowy faces filled her ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne
... boyish curiosity. Wedged in between two silent men on the front seat, one of whom seemed a farmer, and the other, by his black attire, a professional man, Clarence was finally attracted by a black-mantled, dark-haired, bonnetless woman on the back seat, whose attention seemed to be monopolized by the jocular gallantries of her companions and the two men before her in the middle seat. From her position he could see little more than her dark eyes, which occasionally seemed to meet his frank curiosity in an amused sort of way, but he was chiefly struck by the pretty foreign sound of her ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... body, clumsy with pain, burst into fragile legs with absurdly large feet and funny writhing toes; its little stiff arms made abrupt cruel equal angles with the road. About its stunted loins clung a ponderous and jocular fragment of drapery. On one terribly brittle shoulder the droll lump of its neckless head ridiculously lived. There was in this complete silent doll a gruesome truth of instinct, a success of uncanny poignancy, an unearthly ferocity ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... on her, and her heart beat faster. It was a look that came into Dingan's face whenever Breaking Rock crossed his path, or when one or two other names were mentioned in his presence, for they were names of men who had spoken of Mitiahwe lightly, and had attempted to be jocular about her. ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... Those succulent bivalves may help us and the truffles of Perigord, tubers dislodged through mister omnivorous porker, were unsurpassed in cases of nervous debility or viragitis. Though they stink yet they sting. (He wags his head with cackling raillery) Jocular. With my eyeglass in my ocular. (He ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... complex trophy of Moreau's horrible skill,—a bear, tainted with dog and ox, and one of the most elaborately made of all his creatures. It treated Montgomery with a strange tenderness and devotion. Sometimes he would notice it, pat it, call it half-mocking, half-jocular names, and so make it caper with extraordinary delight; sometimes he would ill-treat it, especially after he had been at the whiskey, kicking it, beating it, pelting it with stones or lighted fusees. But whether he treated ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... caligrapher, and one accustomed to write a great deal. This certainly was his reputation. The numberless memoirs, petitions, and letters which flew from his pen gave even rise to jokes and bywords. Francesillo de Zuniga, Charles V.'s jester, in one of his jocular epistles exclaims: "I hope to God that Gutierrez will always have all the paper he wants, for he writes more than Ptolemy and than Columbus, the ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... Rome hunting after Benefices, and that oftentimes with the Hazard of the Corruption of their Morals, and the Loss of their Money. The Clergy are admonished to divert themselves with reading of good Books, rather than with a Concubine. Jocular Discourse ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... comic, good-natured "It means nothing" was there to be held up to those calling the one repeating it to task. The parody on "Reign, Master Jesus, Reign!" when heard by the Master meant only a good natured jocular appeal to him for plenty of meat and bread, but with the Negro it was a scathing indictment of a Christian earthly master who muzzled those who produced the food. "He Paid Me Seven" is a mock at the white man for failing to practice his own religion but the clown mask is there ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... apparent cordiality, and entered into a long discourse with them, promising them the assistance of himself and order, and received from them a profusion of thanks. After a time Murtagh, observing, in a jocular tone, that consulting was dull work, proposed a game of cards, and the leaders, though somewhat surprised, assenting, he went to a closet, and taking out a pack of cards, laid it upon the table; it was a strange dirty pack, and exhibited every ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... fell upon the hard rocks beneath his chamber window and was injured fatally. Frischlin was considered one of the best Latin poets of post- classical times; but his genius was marred by his immoderate and bitter temper, which caused him to imagine that the gentle banter and jocular remarks of his acquaintances were insults to be repaid by angry invective and bitter sarcasm, ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... his cart, and clambered over the fence. Something in Custer's manner warned him that any allusions of a jocular nature would prove highly distasteful to his son, and he followed silently as Custer led the ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... excelsis. Stout, important matrons wearing the dresses they had for afternoon calls at home in the towns moved slowly along in small groups, with a solid man or so in attendance who smoked his pipe or cigar and said little, but that little rather jocular. Girls tripped by, either pale with the heat, or flushed, or protected from extremes of temperature by a heavy layer of powder: and flappers with pert faces and fluffy hair swung gaily along, always with a generous display of fat ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... "upon this theme, in his most delightful manner, in another letter to Dr. Priestley." In this letter he says in his usual jocular strain, that the more he studies the moral part of nature the more he is disgusted; that he finds men very badly constructed; that they are more prone to do evil than to do good; that they take ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... the action when the stage was empty, by sympathising and enthusiastic odes. But it is, moreover, consistent with the essence of the Old Comedy, where not merely the subject, but the whole manner of treating it was sportive and jocular. The unlimited dominion of mirth and fun manifests itself even in this, that the dramatic form itself is not seriously adhered to, and that its laws are often suspended; just as in a droll disguise the masquerader sometimes ventures to lay aside the mask. The practice of throwing ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... in a jocular mood and wishes to tease me, he asks me whether I have forgotten the time when I was possessed of a spirit of reform and registered a solemn vow in high heaven to buy no more books. Teasing, says Victor Hugo, is the malice of good men; Judge Methuen means no evil when he recalls that weakness—the ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... being able to see the world as it is, since everybody approaches him in pleasing costume, struck the final jarring note and destroyed the complete understanding between father and daughter. A half jocular joint letter from the king and his entourage, in which the signatories expressed in exaggerated terms their longing for her presence at court, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... greeted his jocular announcement, and that evening all the Sunk-haze male population assembled round the stove in the post-office to discuss the matter. When the evening was yet young, a red-faced, red-whiskered man, snow-shoes on his back and fresh from the up-country trail, ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... spies out every detail of my daily life; of decent birth and richer than Croesus, but inflamed with a peevish penuriousness which no amount of plain speaking on my part will correct. Never a day passes that she does not permit herself some jocular observation anent my spendthrift habits. The following is an example of our ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... talked to them calmly in his usual quiet, jocular manner, and told the Afghans how, by behaving in this fashion, while under his protection, they were doing him harm in the eyes of the Persians in whose country they were guests, and that if they had any claim they must apply to him and not take the ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... laugh at his friend's sudden change of manner, but there was something in the young surgeon's character—perhaps its deep earnestness—that rendered it impossible, at least for his friends, to be jocular when he was disposed to be serious. Fred ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... not this prevalence of love in his poetry account for Tennyson's lack of humor? In his conversation, as his son tells us, he was even jocular, loving both to hear and to tell a humorous incident, and his laughter rang out over a good jest, a thing of which we would have next to no intimation in his poetry; for save in "Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue" and "The Northern Farmer," and possibly in "Amphion," his verse contains scarcely ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... as a nation are proverbial for their travelling propensities; they are to be found not only in every part of the British Isles, but in almost every known and unknown part of the wide world. It was a jocular saying then in vogue that if ever the North Pole were discovered, a Scotsman would be found there sitting on the top! Sir Walter Scott was by no means behind his fellow countrymen in his love of travel, and like ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... dinner, and don't be so foolish,' he said, trying to be jocular, as he lifted the cover from ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... less rebuke than yourself—the whole rebuke, indeed, consisting in a little laughing, at what is called wanton tricks. Yes, Asmodeus, I admit that your power is very great; though I cannot help reminding you," he added, with a jocular though truly infernal grin, "that you were all but starved, above there, during the last dear years. As for you, my son Belphegor, lousy prince of Sloth, nobody has afforded us more pleasure than yourself, so very great is your authority amongst gentle and simple, even down to the beggar. Nevertheless, ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... richest burghers without hesitation; he took possession of the sacred elbow chair, which time out of mind had been the seat of sovereignty of the illustrious Ramm Rapelye. Nay, he even went so far in one of his rough jocular moods, as to slap that mighty burgher on the back, drink his toddy and wink in his face, a thing scarcely to be believed. From this time Ramm Rapelye appeared no more at the inn; his example was followed by several ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... from Henry Carson, this Mr. Schwirtz, but he had a mechanical city smartness in his manner and a jocular energy which ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... long, vertical lines, whose lips are rather thin, whose forehead is rather narrow and somewhat retreating, and whose back-head is only moderately developed or even deficient, is not a man to slap on the back. He will resent any familiarity or any jocular attempt to draw him down on a plane of equality with his employees. If such a man is also fine-textured, he is very sensitive and must be treated with deference and respect. If he has a short upper lip, he is amenable to flattery, but the flattery must be delicate ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... the sauces. Amidst the general merriment Vigee Le Brun suggested that they should dress for the fantastic affair in Greek costume, and arrange the tables and seats after the antique fashion. So the jocular business went apace. It was a merry party of Athenians that sat down to the feast—"Pindar" Le Brun wearing laurels in his ridiculous hair, and a purple mantle round about him; the Marquis de Cubieres tricked out with a guitar ...
— Vigee Le Brun • Haldane MacFall
... of making cartoons—living, jocular cartoons—of their wearers. It would hardly seem necessary to call attention to the fact that a man of huge dimensions should not wear a short coat, such as shown in sketch No. 91, yet his type is too frequently seen attired in this style. ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... letter again, you will probably have discovered what was the meaning of my jocular complaint—"You answer me much too pathetically and seriously." You must have seen by the exact terms of my letter, somewhat loosely worded though it was, that by your answer I meant the manner in which you speak of my conduct towards ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... or what was certainly an excellent counterfeit of it—though Sanderson was in no jocular mood, for at that moment he felt himself being drawn further and further into the meshes of the trap he had laid for himself—and she smiled trustfully at him, drawing a deep sigh of satisfaction and laying her head ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... Progress Backwards. He proved that the marvels of the Foxes, of Home, and the other mediums, were the old marvels of Neoplatonism. But he draws no conclusion except that spiritualism is retrogressive. His book is wonderfully ill-printed, and, though he had some curious reading, his style was cumbrous, jocular, and verbose. It may, therefore, be worth while, in the light of anthropological research, to show how very closely human nature has repeated its ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... important fragment clearly belongs to Book II., and is a jocular application of the Carneadean probabile, as may be seen from the ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... under the guise of apologetics for the famous Smectymnuus, into a fierce and indecent controversy with Bishop Hall, containing some of the worst examples of the author's deplorable inability to be jocular. Then comes the divorce series, which, with all its varied learning, is chiefly comic, owing to Milton's unfortunate blindness to the fact that he was trying to make a public question out of private ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... sombrero as he dashed up, and was apparently about to make some jocular remark, but he stopped short at the sight of Peggy's pale, ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... could be fairly asked, consistently with any respect for the English Church, for such sweeping and paradoxical contradictions, by her own servants, of her claims and title. Mr. Ward's manner also, which, while it was serious enough in his writings, was easy and even jocular in social intercourse, left the impression, in reality a most unfair impression, that he was playing and amusing himself with these ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... preceded the master up the stairs and into the room where Miss de Barral was found arrayed in a holland pinafore (also of the right kind for the pursuit of the art) and smilingly expectant. The water-colour lesson enlivened by the jocular conversation of the kindly, humorous, old man was always great fun; and she felt she would be compensated for the tiresome ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... wit:— I never missed a train Because I didn't run for it; I never knew it rain That my umbrella wasn't lent,— Or, when in my possession, The sun but wore, to all intent, A jocular expression. ...
— Riley Songs of Home • James Whitcomb Riley
... that Peter believed in all sorts of crazy things, and when Mr Benson put this jocular question to him several people turned to see how he ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... instalment of the manuscript on which he had bestowed the labour of nearly twenty years. The heightened mood he experienced on the completion of his memorable task may well have persisted to the hour of his arrival in London. Some reflection of that feeling perhaps underlay the jocular announcement of his letter from the Adelphi to Lord Sheffield, wherein he wrote: "INTELLIGENCE EXTRAORDINARY. This day (August the seventh) the celebrated E. G. arrived with a numerous retinue (one servant). We hear that he has brought over from Laussanne the remainder ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... whole milk or from milk from which only a given amount of cream has been removed, while in other instances the minimum amount of butter fat which full cream cheese may contain is prescribed. The wide variation in the amount of butter fat carried by cream has caused much jocular comment and some serious discussion ...
— The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know • Thomas Forsyth Hunt
... Perhaps, however, Ivan's jocular remark had more significance in it than his wife cared to admit, for during the first years of their married life they had seen very little of each other. A few days after the marriage, when according to our notions ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... his strongest argument, or his boldest proposal, to the last, and invariably remembered it at the door (after previously taking his leave), as if it was a purely accidental consideration which had that instant occurred to him. Jocular friends, acquainted by previous experience with this form of proceeding, had given it the name of "Pedgift's postscript." There were few people in Thorpe Ambrose who did not know what it meant when the lawyer suddenly ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... interview with Mr. Lincoln, I also explained to him my extreme desire to serve in a subordinate capacity, and in no event to be left in a superior command. He promised me this with promptness, making the jocular remark that his chief trouble was to find places for the too many generals who wanted to be at the head of ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... all this morning?" said Captain Wragge, in his easy jocular way. "And how's the wind? Nor'-west and by west, is it? Very good. Who ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... the holidays in this way, and every morning checked a day off in exactly the same manner. She did it gloomily until she came to ten, but when she got into two figures she became more hopeful, and, as the time advanced, even jocular. ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... number of fresh casualties which are expected. One morning you awake to find that a tag has been prepared, containing the entire medical history of your injury. The stretcher-bearers come in with grins on their faces, your tag is tied to the top button of your pyjamas, jocular appointments are made by the fellows you leave behind—many of whom you know are dying—to meet you in London, and you are carried out. The train is thoroughly equipped with doctors and nurses; the lying cases travel in little white bunks. No one who ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... mildly jocular. Hannah's face did not move. She had just touched her nephew with her cold wasted hand. Now she beckoned to him to sit down at her right. He did so, and then for the first time he could believe that Hannah, the old Hannah, was there beside them. For as she slowly studied his dress, the Inverness ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... explained the first mate in an off-hand tone of bravado, which he tried to give a jocular ring to, but could not very successfully. "This youngster Haldane here swears he saw a full-rigged ship on our lee quarter awhile ago, flying a signal of distress; but neither Mr Spokeshave, who was on the watch, nor myself, could make ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... successively visited. Newman had once spent a morning, in the course of business, at Mr. Babcock's birthplace, and, for reasons too recondite to unfold, his visit there always assumed in his mind a jocular cast. To carry out his joke, which certainly seems poor so long as it is not explained, he used often to address his companion as "Dorchester." Fellow-travelers very soon grow intimate but it is highly improbable that at home these extremely ...
— The American • Henry James
... be exercised, and as Mr. Bowley was going that very moment—would like nothing better than a walk—they went together, Clara and kind little Bowley—Bowley who had rooms in the Albany, Bowley who wrote letters to the "Times" in a jocular vein about foreign hotels and the Aurora Borealis—Bowley who liked young people and walked down Piccadilly with his right arm resting on the ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... Religion: a lower invaded a higher element. But reverse the hypothesis. Conceive that Zeus, or Baiame, was originally, not a Father and guardian, but a lewd and tricky ghost of a medicine-man, a dancer of indecent dances, a wooer of other men's wives, a shape-shifter, a burlesque droll, a more jocular bugbear, like Twanyirika. By what means did he come to be accredited later with his loftiest attributes, and with regard for the tribal ethics, which, in practice, he daily broke and despised? Students who argue ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... pilots swooped down upon them to learn the particulars. As usual they were inclined to be jocular, and greeted the limping Beverly with a volley of questions, as well as remarks concerning that "luck" ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... cried, clapping me on the back. "Pope" was my pseudonym at the University, conferred in a jocular moment by Ballard himself on account of a fancied resemblance to Urban the Eighth. "Just the man! Wonder why I didn't think of you before!" And while I wondered what he was coming at, "How would, you like to make a neat five ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... looked at the jocular Warren Jarvis, who published his third wink, this time in the direction ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... with jocular scoff unto Joseph Carnaby, thus accosting him, whom his shirt, being made stiffer than usual for the occasion, ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... the crew, finding itself short of provisions had come up to the section house and had requested Mrs. McDonald to prepare for them a meal. While they were dining, one of the brakemen caused Mrs. McDonald to fall into a dead faint when he in a rough but jocular way remarked to her: "I bet you, Mrs. McDonald, that your Joe and Jim are having the time of their lives down in Minneapolis, as I haven't seen them around the reservation since the night I found them hoboing my train into Grand Forks, although our train has passed through here many ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... spoke at once: Mr. Russell with an air of jocular ferocity, Miss Vickers in a voice that trembled with passion, and Mr. Tasker speaking as a man with a grievance. Despite the confusion, Mr. Vickers soon learned that it was a case of "two's company and three's none," and that Mr. Russell, after turning a deaf ear to hints to ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... amiable. Rogues they are, of course, for small dishonesties are the breath in the nostrils of common carriers by land or water, everywhere; but the trickery of the gondoliers is so good-natured and simple that it can hardly offend. A very ordinary jocular sagacity defeats their profoundest purposes of swindling, and no one enjoys their exposure half so much as themselves, while a faint prospect of future employment purifies them of every trait of dishonesty. I had only one troublesome experience with them, and that was in the case of ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... crack a judicial jest, Witnesses, jurors, suitors smile, They quite understand I do my best, A wearisome action to beguile: "Silks" and "Juniors" seem to force, A jeering laugh as a matter of course. Ah me! who would be, A jocular Judge ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 5, 1892 • Various
... but showed no desire to revert to the topic upon which they had been conversing, when she had thought fit to ask her that jocular question which Phyllis had said ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... Comforts of Life" were written in prison; "The Miseries" (by Jas. Beresford) necessarily in a drawing-room. The works of authors are often in contrast with themselves; melancholy authors are the most jocular, and the most humorous the ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... seems to assign him a conventional station somewhat above that of his equals in navy rank—the Chaplain, Surgeon, and Professor. Moreover, he is frequently to be seen in close conversation with the Commodore, who, in the Neversink, was more than once known to be slightly jocular with our Purser. Upon several occasions, also, he was called into the Commodore's cabin, and remained closeted there for several minutes together. Nor do I remember that there ever happened a cabinet meeting of the ward-room barons, the Lieutenants, in ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... ma?" she demanded rather than asked, in the slangy and jocular tone she employed. "I guess she'll be thanking her stars she's got rid of you;" at which Laura smiled uncertainly, not being sure whether Cousin Grace spoke in jest ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... building at Hollywood and Highland. The grass closed about its base like a false foundation and surged on to new conquests, leaving the monolith bare and forlorn in its new surroundings. At first the weed satisfied itself with jocular and teasing ventures up the smooth sides; then, as though rasped by the skyscraper's quiescence, it forced its way into the narrow space between the steel sash, filling the lower floor and bursting out again in a riot of whirling tendrils. Up the sides it climbed ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... and heard, not far away, the measured beating of breakers as they charged at the foot of our cliff, when the wind, plucking the latch from my grasp, slammed the lattice and went yelling around the corner of the house like a jocular demon. I began to dress, thinking, as I had often thought before, that the place had a kind of fantastic kinship with the sea; every timber in it seemed to strain and creak to the repeated onsets of the storm, like those of any ship. The house stood steady enough, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... was not the smile he had given the fat plutocrat in the automobile, nor yet the jocular radiance he had displayed to old Etienne. It was such a smile as the man had never smiled before—and he realized it. He did not want to smile. He wanted to weep. But he brought that smile from tender depths in his soul—depths ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... have come in, and are herded near. They are of all ages from sixty to fifteen, dressed in all varieties of rough plain clothes, with some ominous exceptions in the shape of a khaki tunic, a service overcoat, etc. Some seemed depressed, some jocular, the boys quite careless. All were lusty and well fed. Close by were their ponies, tiny little rats of things, dead-tired and very thin. Their saddles were mostly very old, with canvas or leather saddle-bags, containing cups, etc. I saw also one or two horses with our regimental brands on them. ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... conveying the solemn, and, as it were, official protest and warning of Our Square. Of course I did it at the worst possible moment. It was early one morning, when Mayme, on her bench, was looking a little hollow-eyed and disillusioned. I essayed the light and jocular ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... these topics is so large that it is impossible to attempt a resume of it here, but you will find a very useful bibliography in the fourth volume of the 'Cambridge History of English Literature,' pages 514 to 536. Carew Hazlitt's 'Fugitive Tracts' (1875) and 'Studies in Jocular Literature' (1890) are both useful; and Mr. G. F. Black has recently (1909) printed a bibliography of Gipsies. Witchcraft, sometimes classed under this heading, shall be dealt with when ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... skiddy journey to East End the two men—professional policeman and amateur criminologist—did not talk much. A few comments regarding the sudden advent of fiercest winter; a remark, forcedly jocular, from the chief, that murderers might be considerate enough to pick better weather for the practice of their profession—and that was all. Thus far they knew nothing about the case, and they were both too ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... good qualities these men might possess in the way of hewing timber and bush-life, they were sadly deficient in the matters of morality and temperance. But Jack was a man of tact and good temper, and played his cards well. He jested with the jocular, sympathised with the homesick, doctored the ailing in a rough and ready fashion peculiarly his own, and avoided the quarrelsome. Thus he became a ...
— Fort Desolation - Red Indians and Fur Traders of Rupert's Land • R.M. Ballantyne
... Jocular opinions of the passers-by were being freely exchanged back and forth; he paid no heed to them. The scoop dropped from his hand and clattered upon the floor; he let it lay. Silent and troubled, unaware of the demands of an insistent customer, he ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... of a refreshment-room, I fortified myself with some biscuits and soda-water; and in another minute, for the first time in my life, I beheld a play. But the play did not fascinate me. It was the middle of some jocular after piece; roars of laughter resounded round me. I could detect nothing to laugh at, and sending my keen eyes into every corner, I perceived at last, in the uppermost tier, one face as saturnine as my own.—Eureka! ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... phenomena of the "materialisation" of spirits, some ten years before, and had bent the fierce light of the scientific method upon him. To Olive it appeared that Mr. Burrage and Mr. Gracie had ceased to be jocular; but that did not make them any less cynical. Henry Burrage said to Verena, as she was going, that he hoped she would think seriously of his mother's invitation; and she replied that she didn't know whether she should have much time in the ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... her. He was very quiet; not at all the jovial young man of the picnic properly following the boarding-house-district rule that males should be jocular and show their appreciation of the ladies by "kidding them." And he spoke with a quiet graciousness that was almost courtly, with a note of weariness and spiritual experience such as seldom comes into the boarding-houses, to slay joy and bring ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis |
