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More "Jocularity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and hangers-on of the criminal courts would have described him as a highbrow and as a holier-than-thou; perhaps he might in a moment of jocularity have even so described himself—for he had his human—perhaps I should have said, his weaker—side. Surely he seemed human enough when he kissed Eleanor good-by at the door of their country place on the Sound the morning he had been subpoenaed to serve as a juryman in Part Five of the General ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... merry, fair master," said the youth, who was not much pleased with his new acquaintance's jocularity, "I must go dry myself, instead of standing dripping here, ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... never more at home than when squeezing all the human traits and humour out of a given situation, which was subsidiary to the plot, yet in atmosphere complete in itself. The Hunter's drawing-room just after the funeral, in "The Climbers;" the church scene in "The Moth and the Flame," which for jocularity and small points is the equal of Langdon Mitchell's wedding scene in "The New York Idea," though not so sharply incisive in its satire; the deck on board ship in "The Stubbornness of Geraldine" (so beautifully burlesqued by Weber ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The Moth and the Flame • Clyde Fitch
... pil'd, as thou art pil'd, for a French velvet?] The jest about the pile of a French velvet alludes to the loss of hair in the French disease, a very frequent topick of our authour's jocularity. Lucio finding that the gentleman understands the distemper so well, and mentions it so feelingly, promises to remember to drink his health, but to forget to drink after him. It was the opinion of ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... Coleridge's zeal on these questions was by far the most conspicuous, as will appear by some of his Sonnets, and particularly by his Poem of "Fire, Famine, and Slaughter;" though written some considerable time after. When he read this Poem to me, it was with so much jocularity as to convince me that, without bitterness, it was designed as a ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... was not a man or woman, especially the men, who did not do all in his or her power to make her forget her troubles. No one ever alluded to Mosquito Bend in her presence, and, instead, assumed a rough, cheerful jocularity, which sat as awkwardly on the majority as it well could. For most of them were illiterate, hard-living folk, rendered desperately serious ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... in Francis Heathcote's condition in the days which followed was, so the doctor and nurses declared, phenomenal. Robert Gale ceased to tug at his beard in angry perplexity, and melted into something which might almost have been called jocularity, as he watched the man gaining in health and strength. "Splendid! Splendid!" he would say, rubbing his hands together in satisfaction. "Go on as you are going, and you'll see the last of ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... Darton, wishing his friend joy of Sally in a slightly hollow tone of jocularity, bade him good-bye. Johns promised to write particulars, and ascended, and was lost in the shade of the house and tree. A rectangle of light appeared when Johns was admitted, and all was ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... contemplated each other with visages of sevenfold blankness. They next unanimously directed their gaze towards their preceptor, hoping to detect some symptom of jocularity upon his venerable features. Nothing could be descried thereon but the most imperturbable solemnity, or, if perchance anything like an expression of irony lurked beneath this, it was not such irony as they wished to see. Lastly, they scanned the phials, ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... came in he would give the student advice about his work, or ask Amelia when she was going to call in his assistance to get married—which was his idea of jocularity, and, I must admit, also, that of Amelia. Indeed, we were wonderfully glad to see him, and he brightened many ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... called Lazzi, are certain actions by which the performer breaks into the scene, to paint to the eye his emotions of panic or jocularity; but as such gestures are foreign to the business going on, the nicety of the art consists in not interrupting the scene, and connecting the Lazzi with it; thus ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... extremely susceptible of street affronts; the jeers and taunts of the populace; the low-bred triumph they display over the casual trip, or splashed stocking, of a gentleman. Yet can I endure the jocularity of a young sweep with something more than forgiveness.—In the last winter but one, pacing along Cheapside with my accustomed precipitation when I walk westward, a treacherous slide brought me upon my back in an instant. I scrambled up with pain and shame enough—yet outwardly ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... talking-machine till its disk turned without a trace of the mechanism. A new record—it had cost a dollar and a half and was by a celebrated violinist—was fixed, and a halftone semi-permanent needle selected. Lizzie was to start this after the first storm of knocking, or any preliminary jocularity of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... English Parliament, and was therefore, in the estimation of good Cavaliers, a traitor, if possible, of a worse description than those who had sate in the High Court of Justice. He often talked with a noisy jocularity of the days when he was a canter and a rebel. He was now the chief instrument employed by the court in the work of forcing episcopacy on his reluctant countrymen; nor did he in that cause shrink from the unsparing use of the sword, the halter, and the boot. Yet those who knew ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... are too modest. You can ASK me anything, Mr. George." (There is an ogreish kind of jocularity ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... may prove all right!' continued the lawyer, with certainly the worst-inspired jocularity in the world. 'I know nothing by him! He may be a swell mobsman for me with his aliases. You must put your memory on the rack, Major, and when ye've remembered when and where ye met him, be sure ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... do, and plenty to get, I suppose?' said Serjeant Buzfuz, with jocularity. 'Oh, quite enough to get, Sir, as the soldier said ven they ordered him three hundred and fifty lashes,' ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... BIRMINGHAM. Its title suggests unbridled jocularity—and it is in fact full of inimitable fun; but there is a basis of solid thought and sympathy to all the mirth. While replenishing the common stock of Irish stories, Mr Birmingham adjusts our conception of the race. Mr Kerr's sixteen illustrations ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... be on hand. I'm used to rising early for a canter. I'll take it with a cab horse this time. That will be all the difference." And with this attempt at jocularity, Mr. Evringham shook hands once more and departed, swallowing his ill-humor as best he could. Any instincts of the family man which might once have reigned in him had long since been inhibited. This episode was a cruel invasion upon ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... meet Sir Henry, without an embarrassment of manner; and even in his intercourse with Thompson, his former jocularity seemed to have ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... Captain came up with me, I was standing at the top of the Mont Noir, wiping Benedictine from my breeches and puttees. I made an attempt at jocularity. "I shall have to speak to Parkes about this engine," I said. "The controls don't work properly, and she ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... Henchard, throwing himself into a mood of jocularity. "Up and down! I'm used to it. What's the odds ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... the Queen of Sheba?" I exclaimed testily to cover my annoyance that my aunt had effected her descent in my absence. "Well, she was expected; the house is hers; what do you want me to do about it?" I ended with affected jocularity. ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... extent to which littleness might be carried; and it would have been too vapid for the toleration of any palate, had it not been so sour. As I sat regardless before this repast, in abstracted grief, I underwent the first of the thousand practical jokes that were hereafter to familiarise me with manual jocularity. My right-hand neighbour, jerking me by the elbow, exclaimed, "Hollo, you sir, there's Jenkins, on the other side of you, cribbing your bread." I turned towards the supposed culprit, and discovered that my informant had fibbed, but the informed against told me to look round ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... to the ruinous precincts? Would not the owl have shrieked and the cricket cried in my very title-page? and could it have been possible for me, with a moderate attention to decorum, to introduce any scene more lively than might be produced by the jocularity of a clownish but faithful valet, or the garrulous narrative of the heroine's fille-de-chambre, when rehearsing the stories of blood and horror which she had heard in the servants' hall? Again, had ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... the very man! The rest of ye too drunk— meaning no offence; and, for me,—well, for me, you see there's Sally to be reckoned with." He laughed aloud at this simple jocularity. "Hanmer!" ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... in Paris in those days of early August, on a visit to her uncle's cousin and dearest friend, Mme. de Plougastel. And although nothing could now be plainer than the seething unrest that heralded the explosion to come, yet the air of gaiety, indeed of jocularity, prevailing at Court—whither madame and mademoiselle went almost daily—reassured them. M. de Plougastel had come and gone again, back to Coblenz on that secret business that kept him now almost constantly absent from his wife. But whilst ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... "... My readers will hardly have begun to laugh before they will be called upon to correct that levity, and peruse me with a more serious air." He informed Newton at the same time: "Thinking myself in a measure obliged to tickle, if I meant to please, I therefore affected a jocularity I did not feel." He also told Newton: "I am merry that I may decoy people into my company." On the other hand, Cowper did not write John Gilpin which is certainly his masterpiece, in the mood of a man using wit as a decoy. He wrote ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... the two sisters assumed an air of indifference. It was Malignon who made his appearance, dressed with greater care than ever, and having a somewhat serious look. He shook hands; but eschewed his customary jocularity, thus returning, in a ceremonious manner, to this house where for some time he had ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... time I had learned all the moods of this man and knew that when he assumed that air of cold, saturnine jocularity it was safe to look for the uncovering of some vaporized trickery. My enthusiasm ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... at all events, should not suspect the grave revelations that had been made, although they had been sufficient to have paralyzed one of less courage and resolution than himself, he outwits his companions by banter, treating the apparition with intentional and grotesque disrespect and jocularity at a moment when an irresolute mind would have ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... even suspected rebels were every day immolated as if convicted on the clearest evidence; and Lieutenant H——'s pastime of hanging on his own back persons whose physiognomies he thought characteristic of rebellion was (I am ashamed to say) the subject of jocularity instead of punishment. What in other times he would himself have died for, as a murderer, was laughed at as the manifestation of loyalty: never yet was martial law so abused, or its enormities so hushed up as in Ireland. Being a military officer, the lieutenant conceived he had a right to do ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 559, July 28, 1832 • Various
... eminence[1321] being mentioned, Johnson said, 'Why, Sir, he is a man of good parts, but being originally poor, he has got a love of mean company and low jocularity; a very bad thing, Sir. To laugh is good, as to talk is good. But you ought no more to think it enough if you laugh, than you are to think it enough if you talk. You may laugh in as many ways as you talk; and surely every way of talking that is practised ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... court will allow you a handsome income. So you must cheer up, in spite of the infliction of a large fortune," added Mr. Newton, with unwonted jocularity. ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... This jocularity was in strange contrast to the sombre indifference with which the king of the forest looked down on the speaker. Rounders infringed on the rules laid down by Brinton in giving bits of meat to the beast whenever an opportunity presented itself; ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... did not betray the smallest symptom of power either to appreciate or to indulge in jocularity at that moment. But feeling that it was useless to appeal to the former experience of the boatswain, he changed his ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... the article for big planters. I am happy to see the calm and serene faces of three of my friends of the clergy present; will they not take an interest for a fellow-worker in a righteous cause?" The vender smiles, seems inclined to jocularity, to which the gentlemen in black are unwilling to submit. They have not been moving among dealers, and examining a piece of property here and there, with any sinecure motive. They view the vender's remarks ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... affections. And—look you!—this misery passes along the world under the mask of easy indifference, and wears a smiling face, and submits to be rallied by the wit, and assumes itself the air of vulgar jocularity. Oh, this penury that goes well clad, and is warmly housed, and makes a mock of its own anguish—I'd rather die on the wheel, or be starved ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... Mr. Skimpole, receiving this new light with a most agreeable jocularity of surprise. "But every man's not obliged to be solvent? I am not. I never was. See, my dear Miss Summerson," he took a handful of loose silver and halfpence from his pocket, "there's so much money. I have not an idea how much. I ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... "And when a great many of you have been crowded out of the Dimension and invaded the earth you will do so and so—" something preposterous and ironical. She coldly dissented, and at once the irony appeared as gross as the jocularity of a commercial traveller. Sometimes she signified: "Yes, that is what we shall do;" signified it without speaking—by some gesture perhaps, I hardly know what. There was something impressive—something almost regal—in this manner of hers; it was rather ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... triumph and derision. The last of them proved to be their commander, the identical giant joker already mentioned. He was not cast in the stern poetical mold of fashionable Indian heroism, but on the contrary, was grievously given to vulgar jocularity. As he passed Mr. Stuart and his companions, he checked his horse, raised himself in his saddle, and clapping his hand on the most insulting part of his body, uttered some jeering words, which, fortunately for their delicacy, they could ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... Hobhouse, as well as others; and, when the minister retired, he began to rally his Lordship on the subject. But Byron really fancied that he had acquitted himself with grace and dignity, and took the jocularity of his friend amiss—a little banter ensued—the poet became petulant, and Mr Hobhouse walked on; while Byron, on account of his lameness, and the roughness of the pavement, took hold of my arm, appealing to ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... to an extravagant height; they felt as though they had just effected their escape from some terrible doom, and they were irresistibly impelled to shake hands with each other, to exchange congratulations, and to talk all together, laughing uproariously at even the feeblest attempt at jocularity. ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... a short, swarthy member of the gang, with a countenance too astute to be pleasing, instantly started forth to obey) the gypsy stretched himself at full length by the youth's side, and began reminding him, with some jocularity and at some length, of his promise to ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... His jocularity did not shake my faith in the seriousness of journalism. I had not done laughing when I opened another letter written in a fine, crabbed hand like the scratching of a diamond on a window-pane, and as I slowly deciphered its contents I could hardly believe what I read. It was from Samuel Bowles ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... to smile at her forced jocularity; but the hunted expression saddened his eyes again. To these children, brought up animal-like in the midst of misery and hate, their world revolved round their stomachs, too often empty. But this new trouble—the ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... the English, in which languages her ladyship wrote indifferently, and upon the blunders of which the critic pounced with delightful mischief. The critic was no other than Pen: he jumped and danced round about his subject with the greatest jocularity and high spirits: he showed up the noble lady's faults with admirable mock gravity and decorum. There was not a word in the article which was not polite and gentlemanlike; and the unfortunate subject of ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... additional vigor. Among all the inquisitors, the name of Peter Titelmann was now pre-eminent. He executed his infamous functions throughout Flanders, Douay, and Tournay, the most thriving and populous portions of the Netherlands, with a swiftness, precision, and even with a jocularity which hardly seemed human. There was a kind of grim humor about the man. The woman who, according to Lear's fool, was wont to thrust her live eels into the hot paste, "rapping them o' the coxcombs with a stick and crying ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... not recognize it. The person who employed the method was of philosophical non- combativeness. The New York phrase was that "He jollied a man along." Immense schemes had been carried through in that way. Men in London, in England, were not sufficiently light of touch in their jocularity. He wondered if perhaps this young fellow, with his ready laugh and rather loose-jointed, casual way of carrying himself, was of this ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... hand of a policeman, stopped his engine. The situation, horribly humiliating for Lucas and also for George, provided pleasure for half the chauffeurs and drivers in Piccadilly Circus, and was the origin of much jocularity of a kind then fairly new. Lucas cursed the innocent engine, and George leapt down to wield the crank. But the engine, apparently resenting curses, refused to start again. No, it would not start. Lucas leapt down too. "Get out of the way," he muttered savagely to George, and scowled at the bonnet ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... that COMINES the historian, when residing at the court of the Count de Charolois, afterwards Duke of Burgundy, one day returning from hunting, with inconsiderate jocularity sat down before the Count, and ordered the prince to pull off his boots. The Count would not affect greatness, and having executed his commission, in return for the princely amusement, the Count dashed the boot on Comines' nose, which bled; and from that time, he was mortified at ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... canvas hood the inscription, in large black letters, "Off to California!" on the other "Root, Hog, or Die," but neither of them awoke in the minds of the children the faintest idea of playfulness or jocularity. Perhaps it was difficult to connect the serious men, who occasionally walked beside them and seemed to grow more taciturn and depressed as the day wore on, with this ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... attempted blandishment, reproof, jocularity, and the style of the Lord High Warden, and I had almost to pinch the Hawley Boy to make him keep quiet. She grunted at the end of each sentence and, in the end, he went away swearing to himself, quite like a man in a novel. He looked more objectionable than ever. I laughed. ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... He did not,—he succumbed then and there and utterly to his love for Victorine; and the next morning when breakfast was ready he electrified Victor Dubois by saying, with a not wholly successful attempt at jocularity,— ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... company, however, was jovial, friendly, social, witty, and companionable. At first he was delighted with his new assistant. As time went on, however, the young man's solemnity, his taciturnity, and the quiet, dignified way in which he permitted all attempts at sociability and jocularity to pass over his head, as it were, unnoticed, began to ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... the Southern seas the passengers plucked up courage, and one morning at breakfast Luke perceived a tall, heavy-shouldered man nodding vigorously, and wiping his mouth with a napkin, which he subsequently waved with friendly jocularity. ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... cigarette-case and said with hearty jocularity: "Thank you, Error—thank you. But why didn't you bring it to me, Terebus? Then you'd have earned that kiss I'm going ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... his own dignity, could not always forbear to show it, by playing a little upon his admirer; but he was in no danger of retort; his jests were endured without resistance or resentment. But the sneer of jocularity was not the worst. Steele, whose imprudence of generosity, or vanity of profusion, kept him always incurably necessitous, upon some pressing exigence, in an evil hour, borrowed a hundred pounds of his friend probably without much purpose of repayment; but Addison, ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... sublime and the ridiculous are here blended without the step between. Milton descends even to abuse the publisher, Vlac, who had officially signed his name to Morus's preface. The mixture of fanatical choler and grotesque jocularity, in which he rolls forth his charges of incontinence against Morus, and of petty knavery against Vlac, is only saved from being unseemly by being ridiculous. The comedy is complete when we remember that Morus had not written the Clamor, nor Vlac the preface. Milton's ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... to petulance, till at last none can bear any longer the presence of the rest. They retire to vent their indignation in safer places, where they are heard with attention; their importance is restored, they recover their good humour, and gladden the night with wit and jocularity. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... Kingdom was Coming, accompanied by the Day of Jubilee. Philander left his spool-thread and tape, rushed into the street, and by his Long-Tail Blue, sed, "Let me kiss him for his Mother." Then, with patriotic jocularity, he inquired, "How is your High Daddy in the Morning?" to which Pomp of Cudjo's Cave replied, "That poor Old Slave has gone to rest, we ne'er shall see him more! But U.S.G. is the man for me, or Any other Man." Then ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne
... obscenity from the English theatre and ended by banning so fiercely Puritanical a play as "Mrs. Warren's Profession" because it admitted the existence of brothel-keeping as a business and by shutting up such innocent merriment as "The Mikado" because its jocularity might offend the (at the ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... acquainted with the manners and customs of the ladies and gentlemen of the corps dramatique "at the wing." Otherwise than as a sign of dramatic destitution, the piece called "Behind the Scenes" is highly amusing. Mr. Wild's acting displays that happy medium between jocularity and earnest, which is the perfection of burlesque. Mrs. Selby plays the "leading lady" without the smallest effort, and invites the first tragedian to her treat of oysters and beer with considerable empressement, though supposed to be labouring at the time ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... Suffering Creek, and, by an arrangement with Minky, so as not to spoil trade, drank from a bottle of colored water when the necessity for refreshment arose. But just now his manner suggested that he had drunk quite as much whisky as the strangers. His spirits rose with theirs, and his jocularity and levity matched theirs, step by step, as they went ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... to better things than the old Trovatore at any rate, Aunt Georgie?" I queried, with a well meant effort at jocularity. ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... started, dried his eyes very hastily with the sleeve of his gown, and endeavouring to recover his usual tone of indifference and jocularity, answered, but with a voice more tremulous than usual, "I might weel hae judged, Monkbarns, it was you, or the like o' you, was coming in to disturb mefor it's ae great advantage o' prisons and courts o' justice, that ye may greet your een out an ye like, and nane o' the folk that's ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... idea, too!" said Tag-rag, with good-humored jocularity. "If I felt a true friendship for you as plain Titmouse, it's so likely I should have cut you just when—ahem! My dear sir! It was I that thought you wouldn't have come into my house! ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... the misery the old dotard endured, every time his wife entered our apartment, constantly fidgetting at her elbow, and scrutinizing, suspiciously, every look that passed between her and her guests. His fears served us for a jest, however, and produced a vein of jocularity, that reconciled us to our earthen flooring, upon which some of our party were doomed to seek ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... is commonly known by the term jocular and comick, is nothing but a turn of expression, an airy phantom, that must be caught at a particular point. As we lose this point, we lose the jocularity, and find nothing but dulness in its place. A lucky sally, which has filled a company with laughter, will have no effect in print, because it is shown single, and separate from the circumstance which gave it force. Many satirical jests, found in ancient books, have had ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... saw them, and came forward, throwing into his face the kind of jocularity deemed appropriate in Talbothays and its vicinity on the re-appearance of the newly-married. Then Mrs Crick emerged from the house, and several others of their old acquaintance, though Marian and Retty did not seem to ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... intent. They startled as some one drew a strained breath. In the dusty light from the hall they looked unreal, they felt disembodied. Mrs. Gunch squeaked, and they jumped with unnatural jocularity, but at Frink's hiss they sank into subdued awe. Suddenly, incredibly, they heard a knocking. They stared at Frink's half-revealed hands and found them lying still. They wriggled, and pretended ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... his beaten enemies were resolute enough, accepting defeat with grim carelessness, or with sphinx-like indifference, or even with airy jocularity. But for the most part their alert, eager deference, their tame subservience, the abject humility and debasement of their bent shoulders drove Jadwin to the verge of self-control. He grew to detest the business; he regretted ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... in the AVALANCHE, over the signature of "The Lady Clare," without feeling the tear of sensibility tremble on his eyelids, or the glow of virtuous indignation mantle his cheek, at the low brutality and pitiable jocularity of THE DUTCH FLAT INTELLIGENCER, which the next week had suggested the exotic character of the cypress, and its entire absence from Fiddletown, as a reasonable ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... chiffonne, with slightly turned-up nose, large laughing brown eyes, a dazzling set of teeth, and a tempestuously frizzled mop of powdered hair. When I managed to get a side-look at her quietly, without being giggled at or driven half mad by unintelligible incitements to a jocularity I could not feel, it struck me that, if we once found a common term of communication we should become good friends. But for the moment that modus vivendi seemed unattainable. She had not recovered from the first excitement ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... see you again," said Mr. Gorby, with heavy jocularity, "and in a way you won't like, as you'll be called as a witness," he added, mentally. "Did I understand you to say, Mrs. Sampson," he went on, "that Mr. Fitzgerald would ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... to have heard before in the Arena chapel or at the end of a Bach fugue. It is the comment of sophisticated refinement that can neither sit still nor launch out into rapturous, but ill-bred, ecstasies, of the weakling who takes refuge in slang or jocularity for fear of becoming natural and being thought ridiculous. Miss Coleridge stood for Kensington and Culture, so she smiled and shrugged her shoulders at Medea, and called the Bacchae "Hallelujah Lasses." She and Kensington admired Greek literature and art, of ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... your father, I suppose," said Mr. Carr, with an attempt at jocularity that did not, however, disguise an irritated suspiciousness. "He really seems to have supplanted ME as he has poor Kearney in ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... poor sinner, Dona Maria," he addressed her feebly, with valiant jocularity. "The days ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... with a really good story of a choleric old gentleman who challenged him once for poaching on his grounds, but who was gradually talked over till he asked him to dinner. If our friend has been a wit in his youth, the propensity to jocularity still survives; but the jests are generally such as you meet with in the very earliest editions of Mr Joseph Miller, though, for the sake of variety, they are often ascribed to the late facetious Mr Joseph ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... me until to-morrow to consider of it, and defer the garnishing of the walls a day later," said Mr. Carlyle, a serious tone peeping out in the midst of his jocularity. ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... to his jocularity. Gaston Isbel's eyes narrowed to a slit in his furrowed face and he kept them fastened upon Greaves's store. Blue, likewise, had a somber cast of countenance, not, perhaps, any darker nor grimmer than those of his comrades, ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... (biting sarcasms, sly ironies, strong metaphors, lofty hyperboles, paronomasies, oxymorons, and the like, frequently used by the best speakers, and not seldom even by sacred writers) do lie very near upon the confines of jocularity, and are not easily differenced from those sallies of wit wherein the lepid way doth consist: so that were this wholly culpable, it would be matter of scruple whether one hath committed a fault or no when he meant only to play ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... teeth giving him an air of genial cordiality at first sight which was fully confirmed by further acquaintance. So long as the world went well with him, Mathew seemed to enjoy life thoroughly, and even its rubs he bore with an easy jocularity that showed what a stout heart he could oppose to Fortune. A long minority had provided him with a considerable sum on his coming of age, but he spent it freely, and when it was exhausted, continued to live on at the same rate as ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... man from ever hearing the sound of his own voice outside the secluded walls of his own home—or should. It ought also to bar the simply witty man; for what is more jarring than a misplaced wit or an ill-timed jocularity? ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... the middle watch on that eventful night, and just after he had struck four bells, and the wheel had been relieved, he was inexpressibly scandalised by hearing above the howling of the gale loud sounds of singing and jocularity on ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... to the occasion, and was by no means inclined to throw up the sponge. He went down to the City, and delivered not merely a vigorous, but vivacious speech, and in the course of it he said, with a jocularity which was worthy of Lord Palmerston himself: 'If a gentleman were disposed to part with his butler, his coachman, or his gamekeeper, or if a merchant were disposed to part with an old servant, a warehouseman, a clerk, or even a porter, he would say to him, "John—(laughter)—I think ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... followed the vice-admiral into the after-cabin, where the latter seated himself on a small sofa, while the others took chairs, in respectful attitudes near him, no familiarity or jocularity on the part of a naval superior ever lessening the distance between him and those who hold subordinate commissions—a fact that legislators would do well to remember, when graduating rank in a service. As soon ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... any Countess of Urach—or even Duchess of Wirtemberg, save from courtesy or worldly wisdom. Stafforth, the adventurer, had an ugly sneer on his countenance, and was evidently embarrassed, so took refuge in the frequent attitude of the vulgar when ill at ease—a noisy jocularity. ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... was silent. Helm was exasperatingly good tempered, and his jocularity was irresistible. While he was yet speaking a guard came up followed by Jean, the hunchback, and saluting ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... he replied, with a heroic attempt at jocularity, "you will understand now that it was not altogether a cold hard heart that prompted me to decline your request for a renewal of the mortgage this morning. I couldn't afford to. I had agreed to gamble one million dollars that you were thoroughly and effectually dead—I couldn't see one chance ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... very uncommon instance," said Constance, still unable to look up, and speaking without any of her usual attempt at jocularity. ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... my only child—eh, what did I say?" here he stopped hastily with a blank, frightened look—then repeated, "Yes, you, my only child, will be properly introduced to the world. Why, you will be quite an heiress, my girl," continued he, with an excited jocularity that frightened Olive. "And the world always courts such; who knows but that you may marry ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... sedulous. A cloud on her face dimmed instantly his beaming looks; on an early visit to their maniap' my wife saw he had cause to be wary. Nan Tok' had a friend with him, a giddy young thing, of his own age and sex; and they had worked themselves into that stage of jocularity when consequences are too often disregarded. Nei Takauti mentioned her own name. Instantly Nan Tok' held up two fingers, his friend did likewise, both in an ecstasy of slyness. It was plain the lady had two names; and from the nature of their merriment, and the wrath that gathered ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Rangely retorted, with a faint tinge of annoyance visible, despite his air of jocularity. "Arthur Fenton says a broad man is one who can appreciate his own wife. If Mr. Staggchase ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... lank, half-dressed figure of the lieutenant in command. Neither he nor his men were absolutely uncourteous, when they once recognized that I was not a Confederate spy, or a professional blockade-runner; but they were exultant, of course, and disposed to indulge in a rough jocularity, during the necessary inspection of ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... the common people, who looked upon him as a patriot, and there he made it his chief study to secure their affections, often going unlooked for to spend the day and night with his tenants there, and banishing reserve, he indulged in a peculiar strain of jocularity perfectly suited to his audience. His conversation, composed of ludicrous fancies and blandishments, was often intermingled with sound practical advice and displays of good sense. The following curious account of his table deportment, ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... the subject of the Certina factory admitted of no jocularity. She took him under advisement with a ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... unaccountable depression that possessed Philpot deprived him of all his usual jocularity and filled him with melancholy thoughts. He had travelled up and down this hill a great many times before under similar circumstances and he said to himself that if he had half a quid now for every time he had pushed a cart up this road, he ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... foot upon her brother's unseemly jocularity. "Unfortunately," said Miss Sapphira, speaking with cold civility, "Mr. Jefferson had to come clear to town before he could recapture the horse. We were giving him a lift, and had no idea—no idea that we should find—should come upon—We are ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... no person, and it is almost more appropriate to the colloquial jocularity of the great Lexicographer's bombast than if the enunciation had been more strictly according to rule. Besides, the correctness of the expression, even as it stand, is capable of defence. Let the third and fourth ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.15 • Various
... Hebraic spirit and genius, rebellious to or transcending the usual limitations of Hebraism; with Marcus Aurelius as an example of that non-Christian morality and religiosity which also had so strong an attraction for him. There is no trace in either essay of the disquieting and almost dismaying jocularity which was later to invade his discussion of such things: we are still far from Bottles; the three Lord Shaftesburys relieve us by not even threatening to appear. And accordingly the two essays add in no small degree, though somewhat after the fashion of an appendix or belated episode, to the ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... Lily so long that the sweets were being handed when she caught a phrase on her other side, where Miss Corby, the comic woman of the company, was bantering Jack Stepney on his approaching engagement. Miss Corby's role was jocularity: she always entered ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... was in Paris in those days of early August, on a visit to her uncle's cousin and dearest friend, Mme. de Plougastel. And although nothing could now be plainer than the seething unrest that heralded the explosion to come, yet the air of gaiety, indeed of jocularity, prevailing at Court—whither madame and mademoiselle went almost daily—reassured them. M. de Plougastel had come and gone again, back to Coblenz on that secret business that kept him now almost constantly absent from his wife. But whilst with her he had ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... I'm used to rising early for a canter. I'll take it with a cab horse this time. That will be all the difference." And with this attempt at jocularity, Mr. Evringham shook hands once more and departed, swallowing his ill-humor as best he could. Any instincts of the family man which might once have reigned in him had long since been inhibited. This episode was a cruel ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... devil with horns, no doubt," ejaculated Cowdray, sitting down in triumphant jocularity. "It was the ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... Sterry," he said, assuming an affected jocularity which deceived no one, "I'll own you've played it on me mighty fine. But you can't stand there all night with your Winchester p'inted at me, and bime-by I'll git tired; can't we fix the ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... excelled in many parts of genteel comedy; such as lord Townly, Young Belville, &c. &c. The Bastard in King John, was another fine character of his, which Garrick attempted in vain—having neither sufficiency of figure, or heroic jocularity. To that may be added Sir Callaghan O'Brallaghan, in Macklin's farce of Love-a-la-Mode; a part in which he gave such specimens of the gallant simplicity and integrity of the Irish gentleman, as were sufficient to ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... odd idea, too!" said Tag-rag, with good-humored jocularity. "If I felt a true friendship for you as plain Titmouse, it's so likely I should have cut you just when—ahem! My dear sir! It was I that thought you wouldn't have come into my house! ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... replied, with a heroic attempt at jocularity, "you will understand now that it was not altogether a cold hard heart that prompted me to decline your request for a renewal of the mortgage this morning. I couldn't afford to. I had agreed to gamble one million dollars that you were thoroughly and effectually dead—I couldn't ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... own state-room that George Wentworth's jocularity came out at its best. He would grasp John Kenyon by the shoulder and shake that solemn man, over whose face a grim smile generally appeared when he noticed the ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... nothing but obey when a woman commands, Miss Nelson," he declared, with a weak attempt at jocularity. "I'm sure it's dreadful stuff she's going to make me swallow. Still, I'm glad ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... strongly for a "dress-suit" as a fitting recognition of his seventeenth birthday anniversary, but he had been denied by his father with a jocularity more crushing than rigor. Since then—in particular since the arrival of Miss Pratt—Mr. Baxter's temper had been growing steadily more and more even. That is, as affected by William's social activities, it was uniformly bad. Nevertheless, after heavy brooding, William decided to make one ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... and tried her, and condemned her, and, as nearly as might be, put her to death. I, with my ten hundred thousand sins—all of them as black as Erebus—found her not pure enough for me! It ought to make one die of laughter. Diane," he went on, in another tone—a tone of ghastly jocularity—"didn't it amuse you, knowing yourself to be what you are—knowing what you had done for Mrs. Eveleth—knowing the things Bienville has just said of you—didn't it amuse you to see me sitting ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... derision (which I have in Coroll. I. stated to be bad) and laughter I recognize a great difference. For laughter, as also jocularity, is merely pleasure; therefore, so long as it be not excessive, it is in itself good (IV:xli.). Assuredly nothing forbids man to enjoy himself, save grim and gloomy superstition. For why is it more lawful to satiate one's hunger and thirst than to drive away ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... grave revelations that had been made, although they had been sufficient to have paralyzed one of less courage and resolution than himself, he outwits his companions by banter, treating the apparition with intentional and grotesque disrespect and jocularity at a moment when an irresolute mind would have been ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... way of introducing that disagreeable question which no commentator on Sterne can possibly shirk, but which every admirer of Sterne must approach with reluctance. There is, of course, a sense in which Sterne's humour—if, indeed, we may bestow that name on the form of jocularity to which I refer—is the very reverse of pure and delicate: a sense in which it is impure and indelicate in the highest degree. On this it is necessary, however briefly, to touch; and to the weighty and many-counted indictment which may be framed against Sterne on this head there is, of course, ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... my furniture"—Anstice's jocularity was savage—"perhaps you'll be good enough to clear out. I won't pretend I'm anxious for more of your ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... Despite his jocularity he was deeply moved. As the situation grew clearer to him he saw that this girl was about to change the whole current of his careless life; her unexpected firmness, her gentle, womanly determination at this crisis was very ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... of Hebraism; with Marcus Aurelius as an example of that non-Christian morality and religiosity which also had so strong an attraction for him. There is no trace in either essay of the disquieting and almost dismaying jocularity which was later to invade his discussion of such things: we are still far from Bottles; the three Lord Shaftesburys relieve us by not even threatening to appear. And accordingly the two essays add in no small ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... the court will allow you a handsome income. So you must cheer up, in spite of the infliction of a large fortune," added Mr. Newton, with unwonted jocularity. ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... eyes very hastily with the sleeve of his gown, and endeavouring to recover his usual tone of indifference and jocularity, answered, but with a voice more tremulous than usual, "I might weel hae judged, Monkbarns, it was you, or the like o' you, was coming in to disturb mefor it's ae great advantage o' prisons and courts o' justice, that ye may greet your een out an ye like, and nane o' the folk that's concerned ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... who are anxious to get acquainted with the manners and customs of the ladies and gentlemen of the corps dramatique "at the wing." Otherwise than as a sign of dramatic destitution, the piece called "Behind the Scenes" is highly amusing. Mr. Wild's acting displays that happy medium between jocularity and earnest, which is the perfection of burlesque. Mrs. Selby plays the "leading lady" without the smallest effort, and invites the first tragedian to her treat of oysters and beer with considerable empressement, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... am quite serious," said Jeffreys, on whom the apparent jocularity of his last remark had suddenly dawned; "I had no intention of being rude, or treating your question as ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... arrangement with Minky, so as not to spoil trade, drank from a bottle of colored water when the necessity for refreshment arose. But just now his manner suggested that he had drunk quite as much whisky as the strangers. His spirits rose with theirs, and his jocularity and levity matched theirs, step by step, ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... a September day would be so long? Or that the old clock in the hall would go so ridiculously slow? There was a quiet jocularity in the motion of its long pendulum, as if it were laughing bitterly that anyone could be in a hurry. "Ha! ha! ha!" ticked ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... as will appear by some of his Sonnets, and particularly by his Poem of "Fire, Famine, and Slaughter;" though written some considerable time after. When he read this Poem to me, it was with so much jocularity as to convince me that, without bitterness, it was designed ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... no heed to this jocularity, or even to Mrs. Jasher, to whom he had been so lately engaged. All his soul was in the mummy case, and as soon as he recovered his breath, he loudly proclaimed his joy at this miraculous recovery of the ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... of the fool, and the page that follows him, was prepared by some introductory dialogue, in which the audience was informed that they were the fool and page of Phrynia, Timandra, or some other courtesan, upon the knowledge of which depends the greater part of the ensuing jocularity. ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... irreverent Mr. Pepper had warmed his hands sufficiently to be able to transfer them from the fire, he lifted the right palm, and with an indecent jocularity of spirits, accosted the ci-devant ornament of "The Asinaeum" with a sounding slap on his back, or some ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was a clever, hearing-all sort of a neighbour, said my sermon was greatly thought of, and that I had surprised everybody; but I was fearful there was something of jocularity at the bottom of this, for she was a flaunty woman, and liked well to give a good-humoured gibe or jeer. However, his grace the Commissioner was very thankful for the discourse, and complimented me on what he called my apostolical earnestness; but he was a courteous man, and I could not trust ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... as thou art pil'd, for a French velvet?] The jest about the pile of a French velvet alludes to the loss of hair in the French disease, a very frequent topick of our authour's jocularity. Lucio finding that the gentleman understands the distemper so well, and mentions it so feelingly, promises to remember to drink his health, but to forget to drink after him. It was the opinion of Shakespeare's time, ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... it. The person who employed the method was of philosophical non- combativeness. The New York phrase was that "He jollied a man along." Immense schemes had been carried through in that way. Men in London, in England, were not sufficiently light of touch in their jocularity. He wondered if perhaps this young fellow, with his ready laugh and rather loose-jointed, casual way of carrying himself, was of this dangerous ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and Wycherly followed the vice-admiral into the after-cabin, where the latter seated himself on a small sofa, while the others took chairs, in respectful attitudes near him, no familiarity or jocularity on the part of a naval superior ever lessening the distance between him and those who hold subordinate commissions—a fact that legislators would do well to remember, when graduating rank in a service. As soon as all were placed, Sir ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... welcome," replied Houseman, with that tone of coarse, yet flippant jocularity, which afforded to the mien and manner of Aram a still stronger contrast ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... reluctance. The day before (it should be explained) an addition had been made to his family in the person of a lodger. Michael Finsbury had acted sponsor in the business, and guaranteed the weekly bill; on the other hand, no doubt with a spice of his prevailing jocularity, he had drawn a depressing portrait of the lodger's character. Mr Pitman had been led to understand his guest was not good company; he had approached the gentleman with fear, and had rejoiced to find himself the entertainer of an ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... to get, I suppose?' said Serjeant Buzfuz, with jocularity. 'Oh, quite enough to get, Sir, as the soldier said ven they ordered him three hundred and fifty lashes,' ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... condition in the days which followed was, so the doctor and nurses declared, phenomenal. Robert Gale ceased to tug at his beard in angry perplexity, and melted into something which might almost have been called jocularity, as he watched the man gaining in health and strength. "Splendid! Splendid!" he would say, rubbing his hands together in satisfaction. "Go on as you are going, and you'll see the last of ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... in the shadow of a new headstone the old one lay prostrate, with its marvelous inscription illegible by accumulation of leaves and soil. In point of literary merit the new was inferior to the old— was even repulsive in its terse and savage jocularity: ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... lecturing or solemn discoursing, but, on the contrary, was full of colloquial spirit and pleasantry. He had a certain quiet and grave humour, which ran through most of his conversation, and a vein of temperate jocularity, which gave infinite zest and effect to the condensed and inexhaustible information which formed its main staple and characteristic. There was a little air of affected testiness, and a tone of pretended rebuke and contradiction, with which he ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... deserved eminence[1321] being mentioned, Johnson said, 'Why, Sir, he is a man of good parts, but being originally poor, he has got a love of mean company and low jocularity; a very bad thing, Sir. To laugh is good, as to talk is good. But you ought no more to think it enough if you laugh, than you are to think it enough if you talk. You may laugh in as many ways as you talk; and surely every way of talking that ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... military service, indulge their readiness of speech and impromptu dramatic talent. [1] During rather more than two centuries this custom continued, the performance consisting of detached scenes without any particular connection, but full of jocularity, and employing a fixed set of characters. The language used may have been the Oscan, but, considering the fact that a knowledge of that dialect was not universal at Rome, [2] it was more probably the popular or plebeian Latin ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... Ulster Volunteers had successfully landed a cargo of guns that were purchased in Germany. The Volunteers had seized the coastguard stations at Larne and at Donaghadee and Bangor, overawing the police, and there had been much jocularity. It was all done in excellent taste. Had it not been for the death of a coastguard through heart failure, there would have been nothing to mar the ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... Bulows, and was an addition to my reserves that furnished us with many a jest. As Bulow had to complete the preparations for his concert, I drove out alone with Cosima on the promenade, as before, in a fine carriage. This time all our jocularity died away into silence. We gazed speechless into each other's eyes; an intense longing for an avowal of the truth mastered us and led to a confession—which needed no words—of the boundless unhappiness which oppressed us. The experience brought relief to us both, and the profound tranquillity ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... face, a minois chiffonne, with slightly turned-up nose, large laughing brown eyes, a dazzling set of teeth, and a tempestuously frizzled mop of powdered hair. When I managed to get a side-look at her quietly, without being giggled at or driven half mad by unintelligible incitements to a jocularity I could not feel, it struck me that, if we once found a common term of communication we should become good friends. But for the moment that modus vivendi seemed unattainable. She had not recovered from the first excitement of her capture of me. She was still showing ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... each other with visages of sevenfold blankness. They next unanimously directed their gaze towards their preceptor, hoping to detect some symptom of jocularity upon his venerable features. Nothing could be descried thereon but the most imperturbable solemnity, or, if perchance anything like an expression of irony lurked beneath this, it was not such irony as they wished to see. Lastly, they scanned the phials, trusting ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... Babylon was a-Fallin', and when it was apparent to all well-ordered minds that the Kingdom was Coming, accompanied by the Day of Jubilee. Philander left his spool-thread and tape, rushed into the street, and by his Long-Tail Blue, sed, "Let me kiss him for his Mother." Then, with patriotic jocularity, he inquired, "How is your High Daddy in the Morning?" to which Pomp of Cudjo's Cave replied, "That poor Old Slave has gone to rest, we ne'er shall see him more! But U.S.G. is the man for me, or Any other Man." Then ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne
... the other hand, bony and distressingly red in the wrong places, suffered from a realisation of her own defects that she endeavoured to conceal by an assumption of the wildest high spirits. This jocularity, of course, became at times rather painful, but as she was possessed of much money and a kind ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... Jack, then?" he asked, with a dreadful feigning of jocularity. "But you are not a painter. You require no model, living or dead." He burst again ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... gusto a little soliloquy on cider delivered by another friend of ours, as we both stood in a decent ordinary on Fulton Street, going through all the motions of jocularity and cheer. Cider (he said) is our refuge and strength. Cider, he insisted, drawing from his pocket a clipping much tarnished with age, is a drink for men of reason and genteel nurture; a drink for such as desire to drink pleasantly, amiably, healthily, and with perseverance ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... and directs our emotions. A certain difference in this respect can be traced in the higher and lower classes of the population. This, and the difference in reasoning power, have led to the observation that "the last thing in which a cultivated man can have community with the vulgar is in jocularity." ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... fancy. Before they can feel respect for a work it must present a certain appearance of labour and effort. Among a giddy and light-minded people, they have appropriated to themselves the post of honour of pedantry: they confound the levity of jocularity, which is quite compatible with profundity in art, with the levity of shallowness, which (as a natural gift or natural defect,) is so frequent among ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... of Charles the First to the English Parliament, and was therefore, in the estimation of good Cavaliers, a traitor, if possible, of a worse description than those who had sate in the High Court of Justice. He often talked with a noisy jocularity of the days when he was a canter and a rebel. He was now the chief instrument employed by the court in the work of forcing episcopacy on his reluctant countrymen; nor did he in that cause shrink from the unsparing use of the sword, the halter, and the boot. Yet those who knew him knew ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that "this couple of rabbits, the favourites, as they were called, occasioned much jocularity on their first importation." Some of the jocularity was aroused by their appearance. The style of beauty, or what passed for beauty, in each country was markedly different. Hear Lady Mary Wortley Montagu writing ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... his lip and was silent. Helm was exasperatingly good tempered, and his jocularity was irresistible. While he was yet speaking a guard came up followed by Jean, the hunchback, and saluting ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... Master attempted blandishment, reproof, jocularity, and the style of the Lord High Warden, and I had almost to pinch the Hawley Boy to make him keep quiet. She grunted at the end of each sentence and, in the end, he went away swearing to himself, quite like a ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... few green-room phrases superadded. Now, artists in the theatrical profession are wont to express themselves with some vigor; Gaudissart borrowed sufficient racy green-room talk to blend with his commercial traveler's lively jocularity, and passed for a wit. He was thinking at that moment of selling his license and "going into another line," as he said. He thought of being chairman of a railway company, of becoming a responsible person and an administrator, and finally of marrying Mlle. ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... more remarks, and Darton, wishing his friend joy of Sally in a slightly hollow tone of jocularity, bade him good-bye. Johns promised to write particulars, and ascended, and was lost in the shade of the house and tree. A rectangle of light appeared when Johns was admitted, and all was ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... the occasion, and was by no means inclined to throw up the sponge. He went down to the City, and delivered not merely a vigorous, but vivacious speech, and in the course of it he said, with a jocularity which was worthy of Lord Palmerston himself: 'If a gentleman were disposed to part with his butler, his coachman, or his gamekeeper, or if a merchant were disposed to part with an old servant, a warehouseman, a clerk, or even a porter, he would say to him, ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... church of Mr. Whiting, of Lynn, a somewhat jocose Puritan,—if jocularity in a Puritan is not too anomalous an attribute to have ever existed. We can be sure that there was neither sleeping nor jesting allusion to such an irreverence in Mr. Mather's, Mr. Welde's, or Mr. Cotton's meetings. In many rigidly severe towns, as in Portsmouth ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... refused to give it to a conjurer to play the egg trick in, "not from respect for his own hat, but for the conjurer's eggs." The future President did not fail to signalize his first appearance as an administrator by a sally of the jocularity which was always struggling with melancholy in his mind. A gentleman of the place, whose education had been defective, was in the habit of calling two or three times a day at the post-office, and ostentatiously inquiring for letters. At last ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... farce of his predecessors for something more worthy of the refined intelligence of his clever audience. Yet it must be acknowledged that much even of his wit is the mere filth-throwing of a naughty boy; or at best the underbred jocularity of the "funny column," the topical song, or the minstrel show. There are puns on the names of notable personages; a grotesque, fantastic, punning fauna, flora, and geography of Greece; a constant succession of surprises effected by the sudden substitution of low or incongruous terms ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... his jocularity. Gaston Isbel's eyes narrowed to a slit in his furrowed face and he kept them fastened upon Greaves's store. Blue, likewise, had a somber cast of countenance, not, perhaps, any darker nor grimmer than those of his comrades, but more representative ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... laughingly said that his friend over the way was too mysterious a personage to have his name announced in so giddy a scene as the present; but that on the morrow he would furnish me with all the information which I could desire. There was, I thought, in his affected jocularity a real awkwardness which appeared to me unaccountable, and consequently increased my curiosity; its gratification, however, I was obliged to defer. At length, wearied with witnessing amusements in which I could not sympathise, I left the room, and did not see O'Connor until ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... he did not betray the smallest symptom of power either to appreciate or to indulge in jocularity at that moment. But feeling that it was useless to appeal to the former experience of the boatswain, he changed his ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... execution; even suspected rebels were every day immolated as if convicted on the clearest evidence; and Lieutenant H——'s pastime of hanging on his own back persons whose physiognomies he thought characteristic of rebellion was (I am ashamed to say) the subject of jocularity instead of punishment. What in other times he would himself have died for, as a murderer, was laughed at as the manifestation of loyalty: never yet was martial law so abused, or its enormities so hushed up as ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 559, July 28, 1832 • Various
... well over. I could go on practising when I came back to England; and in the meantime——I suppose you would have to take me abroad, Nan: I could not well take you," he said with a grim sort of jocularity, which she could not help seeing was painful to him. "If it did you good, as Burrows thinks it would, I should be quite prepared to give up ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... regret to have to say that it was a mass of the most frightful incendiarism, delivered with an occasional air of jocularity and dry humour that made my flesh creep. Amidst the persistent attacks on property he did not spare other sacred things. He even made an attack on my position, stating (wrongly) the amount of my moderate stipend. ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris
... wait no longer, Miss Hathaway," Joe shouted, and, suiting the action to the word, turned around and started down hill. Mr. Ball, half way up the gravelled walk, turned back to smile at Joe with feeble jocularity. ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... Bruce's nomination, with a splendid list of lesser candidates, and upon a most progressive platform. Westville gasped again. Then recovering from its amazement, it was inclined to take this nomination as a joke. But Bruce soon checked their jocularity. That he was fighting for an apparently defunct cause seemed to make no difference to him. Perhaps Old Hosie had spoken more wisely than he had intended when he had once sarcastically remarked that Bruce was "a cross between a bulldog and Don Quixote." Certainly the qualities of both strains ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... him water, a turkeycock, and bread to eat. Powhatan professed great content with Smith, but desired to see his father, Captain Newport. He inquired also with a merry countenance after the piece of ordnance that Smith had promised to send him, and Smith, with equal jocularity, replied that he had offered the men four demi-culverins, which they found too heavy to carry. This night they quartered with Powhatan, and were liberally feasted, and entertained with singing, dancing, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... workshops, and every sort of disagreeable places and employments? Very true, we answer; and why should not numbers of them be collected in groups by the road-side, in readiness to find in whatever passes there occasions for gross jocularity; practising some impertinence, or uttering some jeering scurrility, at the expense of persons going by; shouting with laughter at the success of the annoyance, or to make it successful; and all this blended with language of profaneness ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... has to take the chair at a meeting which perambulates the streets. Lord Mayor's Day on the 9th—opportunity for letting off "the Mayor the merrier," "L10,000 a Mayor's Nest-egg," &c, &c. Jests about the fog not now popular—the infliction is too serious for jocularity! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., January 3, 1891. • Various
... was a beaut! Only Worth Gilbert, standing there giving the proceeding respectability by careful attention and a grave face, brought me down to asking with mild jocularity, ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... note on Godwin's conversational powers in his extreme old age, which assures us that he was "well worth hearing," even amid the brilliance of Lamb, Hunt, and Hazlitt, and could display "a grim jocularity of sarcasm." ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... term corrupted from the old Tuscan Lacci, which signifies a knot, or something which connects. These pleasantries called Lazzi are certain actions by which the performer breaks into the scene, to paint to the eye his emotions of panic or jocularity; but as such gestures are foreign to the business going on, the nicety of the art consists in not interrupting the scene, and connecting the Lazzi with it; thus to tie the whole together." Lazzi, then, seems a kind of mimicry and gesture, corresponding with the passing ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... English, in which languages her ladyship wrote indifferently, and upon the blunders of which the critic pounced with delightful mischief. The critic was no other than Pen: he jumped and danced round about his subject with the greatest jocularity and high spirits: he showed up the noble lady's faults with admirable mock gravity and decorum. There was not a word in the article which was not polite and gentlemanlike; and the unfortunate subject of the criticism was scarified and laughed at during ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... eloquent, but with no trace of the empty rhetoric which so often does duty for that quality; full of a high seriousness, but with no suspicion of pedantry; lightened by an occasional epigram or flashes of caustic humour, but with none of the small jocularity in which it is such a temptation to a lecturer to indulge. As one listened to him one felt that comparative anatomy was indeed worthy of the devotion of a life, and that to solve a morphological problem was ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... at her forced jocularity; but the hunted expression saddened his eyes again. To these children, brought up animal-like in the midst of misery and hate, their world revolved round their stomachs, too often empty. But this new trouble—the terror of Flea's going with Lem—had made a man of Flukey, and bread ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... burlesque, humor, playfulness, waggishness, drollery, jest, pleasantry, witticism. facetiousness, jocularity, raillery, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... best affections. And—look you!—this misery passes along the world under the mask of easy indifference, and wears a smiling face, and submits to be rallied by the wit, and assumes itself the air of vulgar jocularity. Oh, this penury that goes well clad, and is warmly housed, and makes a mock of its own anguish—I'd rather die on the wheel, or be starved ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... who ran the errands, anxiously sedulous. A cloud on her face dimmed instantly his beaming looks; on an early visit to their maniap' my wife saw he had cause to be wary. Nan Tok' had a friend with him, a giddy young thing, of his own age and sex; and they had worked themselves into that stage of jocularity when consequences are too often disregarded. Nei Takauti mentioned her own name. Instantly Nan Tok' held up two fingers, his friend did likewise, both in an ecstasy of slyness. It was plain the lady had two names; and from the nature of their ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mortal man if he had resisted it. He did not,—he succumbed then and there and utterly to his love for Victorine; and the next morning when breakfast was ready he electrified Victor Dubois by saying, with a not wholly successful attempt at jocularity,— ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... cheer, good humor, spirits; high spirits, animal spirits, flow of spirits; glee, high glee, light heart; sunshine of the mind, sunshine of the breast; gaiete de coeur [Fr.], bon naturel [Fr.]. liveliness &c adj.; life, alacrity, vivacity, animation, allegresse^; jocundity, joviality, jollity; levity; jocularity &c (wit) 842. mirth, merriment, hilarity, exhilaration; laughter &c 838; merrymaking &c (amusement) 840; heyday, rejoicing &c 838; marriage bell. nepenthe, Euphrosyne^, sweet forgetfulness. optimism &c (hopefulness) 858; self complacency; hedonics^, hedonism. V. be cheerful &c adj.; have the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... connection to recall the story which has been told regarding the origin of the word "sirloin." It is said that this steak found such favor with some epicurean king of olden times that he, in a spirit of jocularity and good humor, bestowed upon it the honor of knighthood, to the great delight of his assembled court, and as "Sir Loin" it was thereafter known. It is a pity to spoil so good a story, but the fact ...
— The Community Cook Book • Anonymous
... least sufficient evidence that he was much given to making jokes, and some of them which have come down to us would imply that a Roman audience was not very critical on this point. There is an air of gravity about all courts of justice which probably makes a very faint amount of jocularity hailed as a relief. Even in an English law-court, a joke from the bar, much more from the bench, does not need to be of any remarkable brilliancy in order to be secure of raising a laugh; and we may fairly suppose that the ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... Coleridge's pages, we seem to have heard before in the Arena chapel or at the end of a Bach fugue. It is the comment of sophisticated refinement that can neither sit still nor launch out into rapturous, but ill-bred, ecstasies, of the weakling who takes refuge in slang or jocularity for fear of becoming natural and being thought ridiculous. Miss Coleridge stood for Kensington and Culture, so she smiled and shrugged her shoulders at Medea, and called the Bacchae "Hallelujah Lasses." She and Kensington ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... be carried; and it would have been too vapid for the toleration of any palate, had it not been so sour. As I sat regardless before this repast, in abstracted grief, I underwent the first of the thousand practical jokes that were hereafter to familiarise me with manual jocularity. My right-hand neighbour, jerking me by the elbow, exclaimed, "Hollo, you sir, there's Jenkins, on the other side of you, cribbing your bread." I turned towards the supposed culprit, and discovered that my informant had fibbed, but the informed against told me to look ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... enthusiastic in our welcome or obstinate in our refusal. We shall be bored but concessive. I confess that there are some things in the prospect of this imitation which haunt me like a nightmare. The British soldier, whom the German knows to be second to none, is distinguished for the levity and jocularity of his bearing in the face of danger. What will happen when the German soldier attempts to imitate that? We shall be delivered from the German peril as when Israel came out of Egypt, and the mountains skipped ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... rolled, collapsed, and tumbled over, and I discovered to my burning shame and fear, that as to that last stage it was not he, but I. I have sat under Boanerges when he has specifically addressed himself to us—us, the infants—and at this present writing I hear his lumbering jocularity (which never amused us, though we basely pretended that it did), and I behold his big round face, and I look up the inside of his outstretched coat- sleeve as if it were a telescope with the stopper on, and I hate him with an unwholesome ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... you. Let me tell you a secret. I am not as bilious as I look. If you like, I will cut my hair. There is more innocent fun within me than a casual spectator would imagine. You have never seen me frolicsome. Be a good girl — a very good girl — and one day you shall. If you are fond of touch-and-go jocularity — this ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... hunched over, intent. They startled as some one drew a strained breath. In the dusty light from the hall they looked unreal, they felt disembodied. Mrs. Gunch squeaked, and they jumped with unnatural jocularity, but at Frink's hiss they sank into subdued awe. Suddenly, incredibly, they heard a knocking. They stared at Frink's half-revealed hands and found them lying still. They wriggled, and pretended not ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... for the genius of criticism to seem to have been sitting under his frown, Dr. Middleton rejoined with sober jocularity: "No, sir, it will not pass; and your uncertainty in regard to the run of the line would only be extended were the line centipedal. Our recommendation is, that you erase it before the arrival of the ferule. This ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and rubbed his hands together with that forced jocularity which had made his companion turn ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... it was? You thought it was the police, I suppose?" said Pinto with heavy jocularity, and to his amazement he saw the ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... themselves, and from amongst them the panic-stricken eyes made a dumb appeal to the griffins and crowns of his dark green hangings, for they were afraid to turn to the King. Henry retained his heavy look of jocularity: he jumped at ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... may laugh and joke at the idea of Protestant bailiffs ravishing Catholic ladies, under the 9th clause of the Sunset Bill; but if some better remedy be not applied to the distractions of Ireland than the jocularity of Mr. Canning, they will soon put an end to his pension, and to the pension of those "near and dear relatives," for whose eating, drinking, washing, and clothing, every man in the United Kingdoms now pays his two-pence or three-pence ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... The same misplaced jocularity must be accountable for an enigmatical inscription at St. Andrew's, Worcester, on the tomb of a man who died in 1780, aged ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... painted as the blackest of crimes. The sublime and the ridiculous are here blended without the step between. Milton descends even to abuse the publisher, Vlac, who had officially signed his name to Morus's preface. The mixture of fanatical choler and grotesque jocularity, in which he rolls forth his charges of incontinence against Morus, and of petty knavery against Vlac, is only saved from being unseemly by being ridiculous. The comedy is complete when we remember that Morus had ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... the family shook down together, became less afraid of Ethel, and did not think it so needful to snub her either by his dignity or jocularity; though she still knew that she was only on terms of sufferance, and had been, more than once, made to repent of unguarded observations. He was admirable; and the school was so rapidly improving that Norman had put his father into ecstasies ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
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