"Jest at" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and once again that slight sense of the ludicrous came upon him. Tragedy was in the air; yet, as often happens in real life, it was being pushed to comedy point, and he grudged even the shadow of a jest at this important crisis in his dealings with Miss Clairville, who was now sitting at supper with the new edition ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... though they were laughing, laughing in conjunction with some hidden occult monstrosity; some grey—the bulk of the phantasms that come to me are grey—and glittering monstrosity who was enjoying a rich jest at my expense. Occasionally, to emphasise its presence, this poltergeist has scratched the wall, or thumped, or thrown an invisible missile over my head, or sighed, or groaned, or gurgled, and I have been frightened, horribly, ghastly frightened. Then something has happened—my wife has ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... behaved now as though he had secret reasons for knowing that he was in every way as good a man as Semyonov—a better one, maybe. He laughed, or sometimes simply looked at his companion, or he would reply in his bad halting Russian with some jest at Semyonov's expense. ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... admitted the old man. "It duz look like something a' ther kind took her out o' thar jest at ther right time." ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... Pusey; the whole perhaps exhibiting in a succinct form the stages through which Mary Carvel had passed, or was still passing, in her religious convictions. And here let me say at once that I am very far from intending to jest at those same convictions of Mary Carvel's, and if you smile it is because the picture is true, not because it is ridiculous. She may read what she pleases, but the world would be a better place if there were ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... "Silence, Barnes; you jest at everything, you young men do—you do. Colonel Newcome's affection for his old nurse does him the greatest honour," said the Baronet, who really ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... at all. Not knowing the awful danger they have escaped, through Great Britain having had compulsory vaccination since 1853, they have become lax in their belief in the necessity for the continuance of that precaution. "They jest at scars that never felt a wound." Towns such as Gloucester in England, in which a large number of children have been allowed to grow up unvaccinated, have always been visited sooner or later by a serious outbreak of smallpox. It must be so; the laws of natural ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... of forwardness and marked management, which did not escape the young soldier's rapid eye, on the part of Agnes, that the order of things which had been on the previous evening was reversed; the gay, rattling girl attaching herself perforce to the viscount, not without a sharp and half-sarcastic jest at the expense of her former partner, and the mild heiress falling ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... in silence, stupefied, not supposing that any one could say such things except in jest, and not comprehending how any one could pass a jest at such a time. ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... things, and not imitate those enemies of America who sometimes feign to put on mourning for her, sometimes jest at her distress, and find in the present situation of the disunited States (for thus they style them) an agreeable subject for pleasantry, forgetting that this disunion has a serious cause, which is certainly of importance enough to make itself understood; forgetting, too, that generous struggles ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... are astonished," for Carmichael was blushing furiously; "and I must make our defence, eh, Carnegie? else it will be understood in Free Kirk circles that the manse is mad. We seem, in fact, a pair of old fools, and you can have your jest at us; but there is an excuse even ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... now mean to be serious;—it is time, Since Laughter now-a-days is deemed too serious; A jest at Vice by Virtue's called a crime, And critically held as deleterious: Besides, the sad's a source of the sublime, Although, when long, a little apt to weary us; And therefore shall my lay soar high and solemn, As an old temple ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... two purtier farms in the state Than the couple of which I'm about to relate;— Jinin' each other—belongin' to Brown, And jest at the edge of a flourishin' town. Brown was a man, as I understand, That allus had handled a good 'eal o' land, And was sharp as a tack in drivin' a trade— For that's the way most of his money was made. And all the grounds and the orchards about ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... done lib here," he replied, in answer to a question from some one. "But he am bery busy jest at de present occasioness an' he'll be most extremely discommodated if yo' obtrude yo' presence on him at de conglomeration ob de statutory limitations, which am to say right now. ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... the play he remembered his uncle's criticism of the story he had written for Blackwood's Magazine: that it ought to have had a woman in it! This play was full of love. Romeo, sighing and groaning because his lady will not look kindly upon him, runs from his friends who "jest at scars that never felt a wound" ... and finds Juliet! In The Merchant of Venice, Bassanio and Portia, Lorenzo and Jessica, Gratiano and Nerissa had all made love. Even young Gobbo, in a coarse, philandering way, had made love, too! In all the books ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... jest what I did. I says, says I, 'Jim, whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and jest at this time present, I'm the instrument.' And when the dust got settled down, Jim he druv' home with that ther' piebald, allowin' he wasn't such an all-fired bad hawss after all. But lookee here, Tom-Jeff, this ain't sellin' you the finest saddle-hawss in ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... very mildest of faecetiae sets off into such convulsions of laughter, that one is afraid lest they should injure themselves. Even when a jest misses fire completely, so that it is no jest at all, but only a jocular intention, they laugh just as heartily. Leave out the point of your story, get the word wrong on the duplicity of which the pun that was to excite hilarity depended, and they still honor your abortive attempt ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... be serious;—it is time, Since laughter now-a-days is deem'd too serious. A jest at Vice by Virtue 's call'd a crime, And critically held as deleterious: Besides, the sad 's a source of the sublime, Although when long a little apt to weary us; And therefore shall my lay soar high and solemn, As an old temple dwindled ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... them women," responded the passenger with some spirit. "I see some o' Mis' Peak's cookin' to a farmers' supper once, when I was visitin' Susan Ellen's folks, an' I says 'Deliver me from sech pale-complected baked beans as them!' and she give a kind of a quack. She was settin' jest at my left hand, and couldn't help hearin' of me. I wouldn't have spoken if I had known, but she needn't have let on they was hers an' make everything unpleasant. 'I guess them beans taste just as ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... introduction of the note of insanity into a hitherto normal setting. The harnessing of the horror into which the discovery of insanity reacts is a favourite device of the feeble craftsman, but it is illegitimate. It is absolutely opposed to those elementary canons of good taste which decree that we may not jest at the expense of certain things, either because they are too sacred or not sacred enough. The opposite of a decadent author is not necessarily a writer who attacks decadents. Many decadents have attacked themselves, by committing suicide, for example. The opposite of a ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... although the numbers were about equal; besides, they had got all the plunder and spoil, and a battle would only endanger the success already obtained. So they lay in cover until the last straggler had disappeared in the direction of Aescendune, and then continued their course, with many a jest at the expense of ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... for Dorsetshire. You must be very careful, when you come to town to attend to your parliamentary duties, never to ask your way of people in the streets. They will misdirect you for what the vulgar call "a lark," meaning, in this connection, a jest at your expense. Always go into some respectable shop or apply to a policeman. You will know him by his being dressed in blue, with very dull silver buttons, and by the top of his hat being made of sticking-plaster. ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... that can play at noddy, or rather play upon noddies—you that can set up a jest at primero instead of a rest, laugh at the prologue, that was taken ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... had gone too far, for to jest at the expense of the family pride was an unpardonable offence, so ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... reluctantly that my sunrise evoked no merry jest at all." Dear Jones was an honest man, and would scorn to invent a merry jest on the spur ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... he was. Haply if he had lingered without the sweats of bodily tortures to stay reflectiveness, he, also, in the strangeness of his prostration, might have cast a thought on the irony of the fates felling a man like him by a youngster's hand and for a shallow girl! He might have fathered some jest at life, with rueful relish of the flavour: for such is our manner of commenting on ourselves when we come to shipwreck through unseaworthy pretensions. There was no interval on his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... fashionable songs, talked with familiarity of high play, boasted of his achievements upon drawers and coachmen, was often brought to his lodgings at midnight in a chair, told with negligence and jocularity of bilking a tailor, and now and then let fly a shrewd jest at a sober citizen. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... execrable than ridiculous: or in miserable, which are rather to be pitied than scorned. For what is it to make folks gape at a wretched beggar, or a beggarly clown? or, against law of hospitality, to jest at strangers, because they speak not English so well as we do? what do we learn, sith ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... truth, he felt quite sure of himself at the present time, though all his sensations were more or less new to him. And his mother's sudden and rather eccentric opposition unexpectedly strengthened his determination. He might laugh at what he called her originality, but he could not afford to jest at the prospect of her giving Clare an account of his life. She was quite capable of it, and ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... of bright-colored wild flowers on each side of the road, down to the beautiful lake, acrost it over the long bridge, and then into the long, cool shadows of the bendin' trees that bend over the road on each side, while through the green boughs, jest at our side we could ketch a sight of the blue, peaceful waters, a lyin' calm and beautiful jest by the side of us — on, on, through the long, sheltered pathway, out into the sunshine for a spell, with peaceful ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... of this story, however, is, firstly, that no one, however great he may be, should permit himself to jest at any one beneath him, even if he be only a hedgehog. And, secondly, it teaches, that when a man marries, he should take a wife in his own position, who looks just as he himself looks. So whosoever is a hedgehog ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... or a little more, a prisoner in that house. They treated me very kindly. Aurelia was like an elder sister. Old Sir Travers used to jest at my being a rebel. But I was a prisoner, shut in, watched, kept close. The kindness jarred upon me. It was treating me like a child, when I was no longer a child. I had for some wild weeks been doing things which few men have the chance of doing. Perhaps, if I had confided all that I felt ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... was dense in the street, and their progress was slow, but the man forced a way for her. His face gave evidence that it would be dangerous for anyone to throw a jest at his companion. There was a general inclination to give him the wall as ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... as I have said, that all these many lights and colours could be seen in full play. He would begin no matter how—perhaps with a jest at some absurd adventure of his own, perhaps with the recitation, in his vibrating voice and full Scotch accent, of some snatch of poetry that was haunting him, perhaps with a rhapsody of analytic delight over ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bid me now to strike the lyre, That mute and torn so long has lain; And yet I cannot wake the strain, Nor will the Muse one note inspire! Coldly it shakes in accents dire, As if my soul itself to wring, And when its sound seems but to fling A jest at its own low lament; So in sad isolation pent, My soul can neither feel ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... thought so well, he made some mistakes which hang to this day over his country as bitter curses. For in all his plan and work to advance the mass of men was one supreme lack—lack of any account of the worth and right of the individual man. Lesser examples of this are seen in his grim jest at Westminster Hall—"What use of so many lawyers? I have but two lawyers in Russia, and one of those I mean to hang as soon as I return;" or when at Berlin, having been shown a new gibbet, he ordered ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... a jibe at my deformity? [Tears off PEPE'S cap.] There lies your cap, the emblem that protects Your head from chastisement. Now, Pepe, hark! Of late you've taken to reviling me; Under your motley, you have dared to jest At God's inflictions. Let me tell you, fool, No man e'er lived, to make a second jest At me, ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... low or mean, Will feel, when he hears the march, a touch of the man that he might have been. And fools, when the fiends of war are out and the city skies aflame, Will have something better to talk about than an absent woman's shame, Will have something nobler to do by far than jest at a friend's expense, Or blacken a name in a public bar or over a backyard fence. And this you learn from the libelled past, though its methods were somewhat rude — A nation's born where the shells fall fast, ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... a jest that promised very well at the beginning, only the teller has forgotten the point. Or else,' Vida added, looking at the face of one of the women up there—'or else the mistake was in thinking it a jest at all!' She turned away impatiently and devoted her attention to such scraps of comment as she could overhear in the crowd—or such, rather, ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... my master is in debt to Meshach Milburn, an' he's married Miss Vesty, an' we think we're all gwyn to be sold or made to live with that man that wears the bad man's hat.' Says I: 'Roxy, darling, maybe I kin buy you.' 'Oh, I wish you was my master,' Roxy said. An' jest at that minute, love bein' oncommon strong over me this mornin', I took the first kiss from Roxy's mouth, an' she didn't say nothin' ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... she) will find that though the plan will work much better at some points than the usual plan, at others it will not work at all; and this discovery may provoke him to turn back from the whole conception of children's rights with a jest at the expense of bachelors' and old maids' children. In dealing with children what is needed is not logic but sense. There is no logical reason why young persons should be allowed greater control of their property the day after they are twenty-one than the day before ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... correct. Carlisle drew no inference from it against the honesty of the Quakers, but only in favour of their surprising coolness—that they should be capable of committing a good joke, with an utter insensibility to its being any jest at all. I have reason to believe in the truth of it, because, as I have said, I heard him repeat it without variation at such an interval. The story loses sadly in print, for Carlisle is the best story teller I ever heard. The idea of the discovery of roasting pigs, I also ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... desirable and necessary are often overshadowed by the skilful juxtaposition that shifts them where they are but dimly seen, while other things stand forth in a strong light and are thus looked upon as all important. So the merry quip and jest at the Latin and Greek studied by the Negro bring far more than a passing laugh—they really bring discredit upon the whole higher training where none is actually intended. It causes the old friends of higher learning to pause, and take ...
— The Educated Negro and His Mission - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 8 • W. S. Scarborough
... as the time of the first Punic war, a consul was bold enough to jest at the auspices in public. Superstitions and impostures flourished, the astrology of ancient Chaldea spread, the Oriental ceremonies were introduced with the pomps that accompanied the reception of the ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... when he said that men would draw to the place if we prospered, and it was not so long before the name that had been a jest at first was so no longer. Truly we had hard times at first, for our one ship's boat was all unfitted for the fishing; but the Humber teemed with fish, and there were stake nets to be set that need no boat. None seemed ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... Giovanni noted the mingled deference and contempt with which he was regarded by the crowd. No more trouble was experienced in getting the donkey along the crowded streets. The fool's discordantly-clashing bells opened a way everywhere. The porter at the castle gate grinned and flung a jest at him, but admitted him and those who followed in his ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... in twain, broke in their turn the two halves, and tossed the four pieces over the fence. "Thar, now! It's did." Moving back to Allan's side, he threw himself down upon the grass. "When's this hell-fired fightin' goin' to begin? I don't ask anything better, jest at this minute, than ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... indeed, at the discourse, and at the folly of the merchant, who, I understood afterwards, was a foreigner; and though I thought he had been in jest at first, when he assured me he was not, I was curious to hear the issue, which at first he was loth to go on with, because he knew it would bring about all the rest; but I pressed him to know—so he told me that the merchant carried it to ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... "Do not jest at that which is sacred," said the other sternly. "We are of those who believe in those sacred writings, drawn in Egyptian letters on plates of beaten gold, which were handed unto the holy Joseph Smith at Palmyra. ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... subconscious memory came words learned from the lips of a long-forgotten mother. They were words not meant for little dogs at all, but for sweetheart, wife and bairn. Auld Jock used them cautiously, fearing to be overheard, for the matter was a subject of wonder and rough jest at the farm. He used them when Bobby followed him at the plow-tail or scampered over the heather with him behind the flocks. He used them on the market-day journeyings, and on summer nights, when the sea wind came sweetly from the broad Firth and the two slept, like ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... to say in that amiable way of hisen, "that it probably made it a little harder for him jest at that time, as he wus struck by lightnin' that mornin'." (There ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... wheezie bellows," replied one woman coarsely, adding a rough jest at his breathlessness, whilst the others laughed loudly, adding, each one, another sally ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... memory of the murdered Oliver, now so bravely avenged. In short, it was a feast so jovial that all agreed nothing was wanting to render it perfect but the presence of the bonnet maker himself, whose calamity had occasioned the meeting, and who had usually furnished the standing jest at such festive assemblies. Had his attendance been possible, it was drily observed by Bailie Craigdallie, he would certainly have claimed the success of the day, and vouched himself the avenger ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... Jack who broke his crown," said I; "Wasn't it—Jill?" It seemed a jest at the time. But before long we had made these nicknames a habit, when just we two were together. And the outcome of it all was ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... had she donned the symbol of her office, but she endeavored to act up to it, accepting the sweet with the sour, with ever a jest at discomfort and concealing weariness with a smile. Often the fool wondered at her endurance and her calm courage in the face of peril, for although they met with no misadventures, each day seemed fraught with jeopardy. Perhaps it was fortunate their attire, somewhat travel-stained, ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... themselves the very stuff that some romantic dreams of Venice are made of. However sad the fact, it is undeniable that the stories of the sausage- maker whose broth was flavored with murder, and the baker-boy who suffered guiltlessly, and that savage jest at the expense of the murderess, interest these people more than the high-well-born sorrows of the Foscari, the tragic fate of Carmagnola, or the story of Falier,—which last they know partly, however, ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... came among them that morning, looking so thin, and pale, and old, there was not a boy in all the waiting crowd who had the heart or hardihood to say an unpleasant word to him or to give utterance to a jest at ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... day, that the zeal which supplied the true leverage for some of the greatest social reforms of the time was to be found chiefly amongst the so-called Evangelicals and Methodists. For them Smith has nothing but the heartiest aversion. He is always having a quiet jest at the religious sentiments of Perceval or Wilberforce, and his most prominent articles in the 'Review' were a series of inexcusably bitter attacks upon the Methodists. He is thoroughly alarmed and disgusted by their progress. He thinks them ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... so—till I had come over to see how you be," she said, folding her hands, and regarding Penn with a solemn pucker of solicitude. "I know, 'twas a dreadful thing; but it's some comfort to think it's nothing I'm any ways to blame fur. It's hard enough for me to lose a boarder, jest at this time,—say nothing about a friend that's been jest like one of my own family, and that I've cooked, and washed, and ironed fur, as if he war my ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... through two basement rooms, unlocking and locking doors, until she at length stood in the presence of Nell Darrel. "I ain't here with supper, madam," sneered the woman, as Nell started up and approached her. "You're not to have a mouthful to eat jest at present; that's the compliments your ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... surety you jest at me,' interposed Abdul. 'How can I gain access either to zenana ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... me, Miss Honor, and cease your funning! This is no time to laugh and jest at a warning that comes from the saints themselves! That the masther is in danger of his life I know as well as if I saw the very bullet that was to shoot him. The grave was dug deep and broad—and deep and broad it would need to be, save us!—out ...
— Only an Irish Girl • Mrs. Hungerford
... did," he said at last, stifling his mirth as he beheld the other's threatening frown. "Well, I ain't laffin' at you. It's—it's jest at things." ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... gentleman, we have misconceived the species. Read this history of his early and later battles for right, and you will not find an impurity of word, suggestion, thought. God's lilies are not cleaner. I confess that the knight's love for Dulcinea del Tobosa moves me to tears. I never can smile or jest at him when his heart and lips hold with fealty to an ideal love. His love created her. He found her a clod, but flung her into the sky and made her a star. Is not this love's uniform history? Blinded, not of lust or ambition, but of ideality. Saul met Christ at noon, and was blinded ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... for what reason? I do not care about them and would rather they stayed where they are; for they jest at everything, and if they know I have been ill, they will tease me about it. At least, my dear, let me beg of you to say nothing about it. And there is ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... understand," cried the rector, and forbore to add a good-natured jest at Mr. Denner's embarrassment, ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland |
