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More "Repartee" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and protest, something between a prolonged "Ah!" and "Ugh!" Then with a hoarse intensity of anger came a low heavy booing, "Boo! boo—oo!" a note stupidly expressive of animal savagery. "Toot, toot!" said Lord Redcar's automobile in ridiculous repartee. "Toot, toot!" One heard it whizzing and throbbing as the crowd ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... disappointing to a humorist as to lead up to an interruption, and then find he is not interrupted. Mr. Chamberlain seldom fails to bring off his little unsuspected repartee, and it is his mastery of this art that make his speeches sparkle with diamond brilliancy, but then these are usually serious, and he can afford a few miss-fires. Mr. Goschen, in the Commons, romped through ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... ready tongue for repartee, took advantage of the first opportunity to remark: "Do you know, brother, matrimony is a subject that I always enjoy hearing discussed by such an oracle as yourself. But did it never occur to you what an unjust thing it was of Providence to reveal so much to your ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... mania as a spectacle for so much vulgar shrewdness. It was with no base reservation that he kept up a desultory conversation, in the course of which Signor Giardini's nose not infrequently interposed between two remarks. Whenever Gambara uttered some elegant repartee or some paradoxical aphorism, the cook put his head forward, to glance with pity at the musician and with meaning at the Count, muttering ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... failed to get the best of whoever tried repartee with him, met more than his match when he ran up against Yankee tact. He was raising money to pay off the debt on ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... man the rest of the day. He did not even bandy a repartee with Joe Scott, who, for his part, said to his master only just what was absolutely necessary to the progress of business, but looked at him a good deal out of the corners of his eyes, frequently came to ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... proceeded amid a clatter of dishes and a buzz of conversation, abounding in rough jests and repartee. The boys took their part in frank, good fellowship and were hearty in their praises of the hard riding they had seen that morning. The ranchmen deprecated this as only "part of the day's work," but were pleased none the less ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... of the pair having met at dinner almost on the eve of Danton's arrest, and parting with sombre disquietude on both sides. The interview, with its champagne, its interlocutors, its play of sinister repartee, may possibly have taken place, but the alleged details are plainly apocryphal. After all, 'Religion ist in der Thiere Trieb,' says Wallenstein; 'the very savage drinks not with the victim, into whose breast he means to plunge a sword.' ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... a possible exchange of conjugal repartee I took refuge in conversation with Miss Ruck, who seemed perfectly able to play her part in any colloquy. I learned from this young lady that, with her parents, after visiting the British Islands, she had been spending ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James
... of stupefaction at the old man's readiness in repartee] Look here: what do you mean by gittin into my car and lettin me bring you here if you're not the person I took ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... alone with him. At the big dinners he was of course at a disadvantage, neither speaking nor understanding a word of French. W. acted as interpreter and found that very fatiguing. There is so much repartee and sous-entendu in all French conversation that even foreigners who know the language well find it sometimes difficult to follow everything, and to translate quickly enough to keep one au courant is almost impossible. When they could they ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... in the soil, and carefully separating the iron ore, so Laconian oratory has no rind,[592] but by the removal of all superfluous matter goes home straight to the point like steel. For its sententiousness,[593] and pointed suppleness in repartee, comes from the habit of silence. And we ought to quote such pointed sayings especially to talkative people, such neatness and vigour have they, as, for example, what the Lacedaemonians said to Philip, "[Remember] Dionysius at Corinth."[594] ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... wait at the corner for him to come home, but this had its disadvantages, for there was always a crowd of loafers hanging about Slap Jack's, and now that Nance was too old to stick out her tongue and call names, she found her power of repartee seriously ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... Rochester she thrust it down into the pocket of her voluminous mid-Victorian skirt and sat on it. Instead of languishing and fainting where Rochester could see her, she held her head rather higher than usual, and practised the spirited arts of retort and repartee. And nobody gave her any credit for it. Then Rochester puts the little thing (poor Jane was only eighteen when it happened) to the torture, and, with the last excruciating turn of the thumbscrew, she confesses. That was the enormity that was ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... the words, that cut; but the marquis gave no sign. He was tired physically and felt himself mentally incompetent to play at repartee. Besides, he had already lost too much through his love of this ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... He puts the worst construction upon the language and conduct of others that they will bear: hence he conceives himself grossly insulted, when no ill was designed; and a gentle rebuke, or a good-humored repartee, constitutes an unpardonable offence. He always looks on the dark side of human character, so that a single foible or one glaring fault will eclipse a thousand real excellences. He is always complaining of the degeneracy of the times, and especially of the corruption of the ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... citrons and bananas, cups and calabashes, calumets and tobacco, were passed round; and we were all very merry and mellow indeed. Smacking our lips, chatting, smoking, and sipping. Now a mouthful of citron to season a repartee; now a swallow of wine to wash down a precept; now a fragrant whiff to puff away care. Many things did beguile. From side to side, we turned and grazed, like Juno's white ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... enjoyment in the kitchen. It was a time of high festival, what with me and the egg supper. Merriment and jocularity, a little tide-wave of social excitement, swelled and broke on all sides of me; making a soft ripply play of fun and repartee, difficult to describe, and which touched me as much as it amused. It was very unlike the enjoyment of a set of white people holding the same social and intellectual grade. It was the manifestation of another race, less coarse and animal ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... The repartee was thought wonderful for a boy of nine years old, and Oliver became forthwith the wit and the bright genius of the family. It was thought a pity he should not receive the same advantages with his elder brother Henry, who had been sent ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... hands, And would come to receive his worship's commands. Sure no one will say, but a patron of slander, That this was not pretty well for a Moorlander: And since on such reasons to sup I refused, I nothing did doubt to be holden excused; But my quaint repartee had his worship possess'd With so wonderful good a conceit of the rest, That with mere impatience he hoped in his breeches To see the fine fellow that made such fine speeches: 'Go, sirrah!' quoth ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... the finest part of conversation; but, as it is our usual custom to counterfeit and adulterate whatever is too dear for us, so we have done with this, and turned it all into what is generally called repartee, or being smart; just as when an expensive fashion cometh up, those who are not able to reach it content themselves with some paltry imitation. It now passeth for raillery to run a man down in discourse, ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... as a wit and a writer that Swift is now chiefly famous. Many are the stories told of his readiness in repartee, his bright sallies in conversation, and of his skill in quick and caustic rhyming. It is said that one day, when traveling in the south of Ireland, he stopped to give his horse water at a brook which crossed the road; a gentleman ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... ladies and gentlemen—by the lowly and the distinguished. And though the intensity of the feelings of all was manifest by a mere glimpse round the court, yet any momentary display of eccentricity on the part of a witness, or of petulance or repartee on the part of counsel, would occasion a momentary merriment which, in point of fact, served only as a sort of relief to the strained feelings of the audience, and instantly disappeared. The tombstone part of the case was got through easily; scarcely any attempt being made on the part of Mr. ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... Back and Set Down,'" replied Art, for he knew his Village Repartee and was on to all of last ...
— People You Know • George Ade
... position which he never resigned. Notwithstanding his biting sallies, we may be sure that it was not Jerrold's primary object to make his victims wince. There is no doubt that the "little wine" that so stimulated him to witty and brilliant conversation full of flash and repartee, sometimes turned sour upon his lips, and changed the kindness that was in his heart into a semblance of gall. Mr. Sidney Cooper has gravely set it on record how on leaving the Punch Dinner Jerrold would tie a label with his name and address upon it round his neck, so that, should he in his homeward ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... illustrations, etc. It gives to one a sort of mental illumination, quickening the perceptive faculties, and brightening up the reasoning and judging powers, and finally, giving a sharp edge to the powers of repartee and answer. ...
— The Human Aura - Astral Colors and Thought Forms • Swami Panchadasi
... repartee, replied that howsoever he might have failed in point of elegance or discretion, he was sure he had not been deficient in expressions of respect and devotion for those charms which it was his pride to adore: ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... Lang has neglected to tell me what is the matter with you; so, I'm sorry to say, I am cut off from all the customary consolations. I can't say, "Think how much worse it would be if you had a broken leg!" when you may have the crushing repartee up your sleeve, "But it is my leg that is broken." This is a pity. But there are consolations. You are an Englishman (I believe); you are a man of letters; you have never been made C.B.; you hair was not red; you ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... orator of great power,—fluent and elegant in diction, bright and sparkling in thought, keen and quick in repartee. ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... woman, Mrs. Hamilton may be pardoned if she deemed it as yet a thing that could not be; and she, too, smiled at the playful mischief with which Emmeline would sometimes claim the attention of young Myrvin, engage him in conversation, and then, with good-humoured wit and repartee, disagree in all he said, and compel him to defend his opinions with all ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... gifted personage, having, besides her great talents, conversation the least exigeante of any author-female, at least, whom I have ever seen among the long list I have encountered; simple, full of humour, and exceedingly ready at repartee, and all this without the least ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... 'pon honor!" cried Wharton, tapping his snuff-box. "I vow to Gad, Ye're undone, Charles. Ye'd better play at repartee with Gascoigne, there. Ye're more of ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... nettled at this invidious and unnecessary comparison, and cast about in his mind how he might retort upon Spencer. I do not know that my conjecture is right; but it has always seemed to me that his reason for introducing his repartee to Spencer in the odd place where he did, just after a most eloquent and pathetic peroration, was something as follows—'I have now constructed and arranged my argument, and the thread of it must not be broken by the intervention ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... buffet, upholding or attacking the same ideas that were discussed every year, using the same arguments over works almost exactly similar. Olivier, who usually took a lively share in these disputes, being quick in repartee and clever in disconcerting attacks, besides having a reputation as an ingenious theorist of which he was proud, tried to urge himself to take an active part in the debates, but the things he said interested him no more than those he heard, and he longed to go ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... an ordeal of chaff and banter. She was known by the sobriquet of "Stars and Stripes", or "The Yank", and good-natured fun was poked at her transatlantic accent. She took it good-temperedly, but with a readiness of repartee that ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... precise study of the geisha Mr. R.T. Farrer remarks (Nineteenth Century, April, 1904): "The geisha is in no sense necessarily a courtesan. She is a woman educated to attract; perfected from her childhood in all the intricacies of Japanese literature; practiced in wit and repartee; inured to the rapid give-and-take of conversation on every topic, human and divine. From her earliest youth she is broken into an inviolable charm of manner incomprehensible to the finest European, yet she is almost invariably a blossom of the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... tact. She's a good housekeeper. She's an ideal mother. She's the most affectionate creature under the sun. Her devotion to her mother and father was beyond words. Her love for her—daughter she's hers, not mine—is perfect. She hasn't any of the graces of the smart society woman. She isn't quick at repartee. She can't join in any rapid-fire conversation. She thinks rather slowly, I imagine. Some of her big thoughts never come to the surface at all, but you can feel that she is thinking and ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... and where an insult, simmering in its uncalled-for venom, met him as he limped across the floor of the local dispensary on his way to the bar. There was no time for verbal argument and precedent had established the manner of his reply, and his repartee was as quick as light and most effective. Having resented the epithets he gave his attention to the ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... hands ceased to swell, he complained less and less of the pains about his heart. When, of a morning, he was finished with, and "le grand-pere" was having his hands done, they would engage in lively repartee—oblivious of one's presence. We began to feel that this grey ghost of a youth had been well named, after all, when they called him Prosper, so lyrical would he wax over the constitution and cooking of "bouillabaisse," over the South, and the ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... ostentation, and sarcasms, never allowing himself to use an offensive word, never making people feel their inferiority and dependence, but, on the contrary, encouraging them to express opinions, and even to converse, tolerating in conversation a semblance of equality, smiling at a repartee, playfully telling a story—such was his drawing-room constitution. The drawing-room as well as every human society needs one, and a liberal one; otherwise life dies out. Accordingly, the observance of this constitution in by-gone society is known by the phrase savoir-vivre, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... watches him, as he "sighs like furnace," while Neaera, to the accompaniment of her lyre, sings one of Sappho's most passionate odes—whispers something in the ear of the brilliant vocalist, which visibly provokes a witty repartee, with a special sting in it for Horace himself, at which the little man winces—for have there not been certain love-passages of old between Neaera and himself? The wine circulates freely. Maecenas warms, ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... the professors greeted the nineteen-year-old giant with the words, 'Quanta ossa! Quantum robur! What bones! What power!'" In his subsequent intercourse with the polite world Quitman acquired a fine tact and measured, dignified ways. At the same time he was a man of excellent parts, a master at repartee, with a keen intellect and a firm will, and in every respect a born leader." (532.) He was the only Lutheran minister who ever received, and perhaps desired [?] [tr. note: sic!] to receive, the degree ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... a kind of vicious circle. Both Isaacs and I were far too deeply interested in the question to care for such idle discussion. How could this beautiful but not very intellectual English girl, with her prejudices and her clumsiness at repartee or argument, ever comprehend or handle delicately so difficult a subject? I was disappointed in her. Perhaps this was natural enough, considering that with two such men as we she must be entirely out of her element. She ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... of the time, until nightfall. She thought that she was hiding her secret so successfully that no one imagined she had one. She talked more than usual at the table, she laughed at the slightest excuse, she joined spiritedly in the repartee at dinner, a time when they nearly always had guests. But keen-eyed Mrs. Blythe saw several things in the course of the week. She noticed her lack of appetite, the long spells of abstraction that came sometimes after her merriest outbursts; the deep shadows under her eyes of ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... had just passed his twenty-seventh year. In the House of Burgesses he had the reputation of being the silent member. He never acquired the art of a debater. He was neither quick at rebuttal nor at repartee, but so surely did his character impress itself on every one that when he spoke the Assembly almost took it for granted that he had said the final word on the subject under discussion. How careful he was to observe the scope and effects of parliamentary speaking ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... themselves.'—'Whatever my own conduct may have been, madam,' replied he, 'is not the present question; tho' as I have made no use of advice myself, I should in conscience give it to those that will.'—As I was apprehensive this answer might draw on a repartee, making up by abuse what it wanted in wit, I changed the subject, by seeming to wonder what could keep our son so long at the fair, as it was now almost nightfall.—'Never mind our son,' cried my wife, 'depend upon it he knows what he is about. I'll warrant we'll never see him sell ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... circumstances is always associated with a spirit of strong ridicule and humor. At all events, nothing can exceed the mirth that is always to be found among the parties who frequent such tents. Fun, laughter, jest, banter, attack, and repartee fly about in all directions, and the only sounds heard are those ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... "you have been at Baiae" (Baiae was a fashionable watering-place on the Campanian coast). "Well," said Cicero, "that is better than to have been at the 'matrons' worship.'" And the attack and repartee went on. "You have bought a fine house." (Cicero had spent a large sum of money on a house on the Palatine, and was known to have somewhat crippled his means by doing so.) "With you the buying has been of jurymen." "They gave you no credit though you spoke on oath." "Yes; five-and-twenty gave me ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... Willis was usually the life of the company he happened to be in. His repartee at Mrs. Gales's dinner in Washington is famous. Mrs. Gales wrote on a card to her niece, at the other end of the table: "Don't flirt so with Nat Willis." She was herself talking vivaciously to a Mr. Campbell. ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... des Ursins was informed of this sharp repartee, or whether she despaired already of success, she changed about; and judging that this interregnum in the Palace of Medina-Celi could not last for ever, resolved to assure herself of the King by a Queen who should owe to her such a grand ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... only in the exceptional case of their being cited as authorities for an inference, or as vouchers for a fact. Universally, it may be received as a rule of unlimited application,—that when an anecdote involves a stinging repartee, or collision of ideas, fancifully and brilliantly related to each other by resemblance or contrast, then you may challenge it as false to a certainty. One illustration of which is—that pretty nearly every memorable propos, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... The celebrated Letter to Chesterfield, and the letter in which he tells MacPherson that he will not be 'deterred from detecting what he thinks a cheat by the menaces of a ruffian,' are as good specimens of the smashing repartee as anything in Boswell's reports. Nor, indeed, does his pomposity sink to mere verbiage so often as might be supposed. It is by no means easy to translate his ponderous phrases into simple words without losing some of their ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... under the necessity of laying the matter before our imperial master. 'Had it been any of the other actors,' his highness also says, 'I wouldn't have minded if even one hundred of them had disappeared; but this Ch'i Kuan has always been so ready with pat repartee, so respectful and trustworthy that he has thoroughly won my aged heart, and I could never do without him.' He entreats you, therefore, worthy Sir, to, in your turn, plead with your illustrious scion, and request him to let Ch'i Kuan go back, in order that the feelings, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... not like other men,' said Charlotte, who, at fourteen, had caught much of her brother's power of repartee, and could be quite as provoking, when unrestrained by any one whom she cared ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... into his mental retrospect as an accusation against this unwarrantable tenderness the vision of the Resident's daughter—almost his fiancee. Indeed Elizabeth was the antithesis in physical appeal of the gentle Gulab; the drawing-room perhaps; repartee of Damascus steel fineness; tutored polish, class, cold integrity—these things associated admirably with the unsensuous Elizabeth. Thoughts of her, remembrances, had no place in ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... with you, Patty. I'm not that sort. You know very well I've only a plain, plodding sort of a mind, and I can't keep up with this repartee and persiflage that you carry ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... smile annoyed his companion, but the day was hot and she had no repartee ready. She only murmured as ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... have replied with ingenuousness, 'My life, I have nothing to say.' But, as the repartee did not occur to him, he contented himself with coming in from the balcony and standing at the ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... to represent the general view of the position of Muhammadans in Hindu eyes; they, like the English, are regarded as distinguished foreigners, who, if they consented to be proselytised, would probably in time become Brahmans or at least Rajputs. A repartee of a Mahar to a Brahman abusing him is: The Brahman, 'Jare Maharya' or 'Avaunt, ye Mahar'; the Mahar, 'Kona diushi nein tumchi goburya' or 'Some day I shall carry cowdung cakes for you (at his funeral)'; as in the Maratha Districts the Mahar ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... it. He was willing enough to be flayed, in moderation, by her keen tongue; in fact, he look a secret delight in her unrestrained sallies, but that was different from defiance. He could, and did, submit to any amount of cutting repartee, and felt a sort of pride in her vigour and recklessness, but he had no notion of countenancing open mutiny, even ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... bogfir, their voices, and songs, and loud laughter break upon the stillness of night with a holiday feeling, made ten times more delightful by the surrounding darkness and the hour. When they have not the torches the spinning-wheels are carried by the males, amidst an agreeable din of fun, banter, repartee, and jest, such as scarcely any other rustic amusement with which we are acquainted ever occasions. On arriving at the house where the kemp is to be held, they are placed in the barn or some clean outhouse; but indeed the numbers are usually ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... conspiracy, and sent prisoner to London. He lay a year in prison, and was then brought to trial, and allowed to plead his own cause in the king's presence. The audacity, frank humour, and ready repartee of his great Irish subject seems to have made a favourable impression upon Henry, who must himself have had more sense of humour than English historians give us any impression of. One of the principal charges against the earl was that he had burned the church ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... great favourite on the farm, where he played the part of the old jester, and made up for his practical deficiencies by his success in repartee. His hits, I imagine, were those of the flail, which falls quite at random, but nevertheless smashes an insect now and then. They were much quoted at sheep-shearing and haymaking times, but I refrain from recording them here, lest Tom's ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... perhaps he thought an old man's astonishing garrulity. But if a young and pretty woman talked to him, it was not his great age that he vaunted, nor yet the 'pleasures of memory' - one envied the adroitness of his flattery, and the gracefulness of his repartee. ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... himself volunteered. However that might be, his welcome at Sceaux was sincere. Nor did I wonder at his being a favorite, from the jovial jests and flings he cast at those who crowded round, which set them all a-laughing. His familiarity with the doings of the day, and the quick repartee he used to men of different parties, astonished ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... to progress exists than the reputation for talent which this class acquire on a flimsy basis of superficial brilliance in conversation or a penchant for witty repartee. They are self-opinionated and egoistical, with a conceit and assurance out of all proportion to their abilities. Their mental perspective is distorted and they are conspicuous for their obstinacy. In conversation they are prolix and pretentious, and they often contract religious ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... memory that, at least, my lord," returned Vermont, who never stayed his tongue in the matter of a repartee for lord or commoner. ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... hashed Hadis (tradition), he derives the title of Widad or hedge-priest. His tongue, primed with the satirical sayings of Abn Zayd el Helali, and Humayd ibn Mansur [13], is the terror of men upon whom repartee imposes. His father was a wealthy shipowner in his day; but, cursed with Abdy and another son, the old man has lost all his property, his children have deserted him, and he now depends entirely upon the charity ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... The thunder rolls "in an awful and Ossianly manner"; the sun, "that well-known gilder of eastern turrets," rises in empurpled splendour; the hero utters tremendous imprecations, ejaculates superlatives or frames elaborately poised, Johnsonian periods; the heroine excels in cheap but glittering repartee, wears "spangled muslin," and has "practised tripping, gliding, flitting, and tottering, with great success." Shreds and patches torn with a ruthless, masculine hand from the flimsy tapestry of romance, fitted together in a new and amusing pattern, are exhibited for our ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... difficulty with this dialogue is that the writer attempted to make his characters "smart" and so permitted them to indulge in repartee; but as they were only commonplace people the privilege was too much for them and they merely twaddled. They did succeed in being humorous, but the humor ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... discoverer be himself one of the actors, he shall still have the L50, without letting his name be known or receiving the least trouble by any prosecution. Black Will's cudgel was, after all, a clumsy way of making a repartee. Late in Charles II.'s reign Alderman Backwell entered the wealthy firm; but he was ruined by the iniquitous and arbitrary closing of the Exchequer in 1672, when the needy and unprincipled king pocketed at one swoop more than a million and a half of money, which he soon squandered ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... that night to decorate the streets of Paris with the best blood in France. Seeing that I did not wear the white cross on my arm, he was good enough to give me this red mark on my forehead. But in those days I was quick at repartee, and I gave him a similar mark on a similar place. Then I was knocked down from behind, and when I awoke it was the next day. The dogs had thought me dead. As for the man who gave me this mark, I have not seen him since, but for thirteen years I have prayed hard ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the ladies were very elegant and very graceful, and wonderfully quick at repartee. But what I have chiefly thought has been that they only helped me to admire you." This was not gallantry on Newman's part—an art in which he was quite unversed. It was simply the instinct of the practical man, who had made up his mind what he wanted, and was ...
— The American • Henry James
... the telephone girl, was engaged in animated repartee with that financial genius of the "Mercantile Agency," with whose workings the reader may have a slight familiarity, located on the floor below of ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... they pleased. The crowd heard him in sullen silence for three-quarters of an hour, when their patience gave out, and they began to ply him with questions. He endured their fire of interrogatory for a little while till he lost his own temper. Excited outcry followed angry repartee. Thrust and rejoinder were mingled with cheers and hisses. The mayor, who presided, tried to calm the assemblage, but the passions of the crowd would brook no control. Douglas, of short, sturdy build and imperious and controversial nature, stood his ground courageously, with flushed ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... sometimes before the cheerful blaze of the logs in the fireplace of the parlors, but oftenest of all they flocked into Number Six of McCormick Building, where David was confined to his cot. Always there was laughter in Number Six, merry jesting, ready repartee. So it became the mecca of those, who, even more assiduously than they chased the cure, sought after laughter and joy. In the parlors the guests played cards, but in Number Six, deferring silently to David's calling, they pulled out checkers and parcheesi, ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... Borgne mightily by sitting bolt upright and bidding him bring me a meal of buffalo-tongue or teal. With the stolid repartee of the Indian he grunted back that I had tongue enough; but he brought the stuff with no ill grace. After that he had much ado to keep me off my feet. Finally, I promised by the soul of his grandfather neither to spy nor listen about the doors of the inner cave, and he let me up ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... ask me, is a rich man—as well as a gentleman," said Strowbridge, with the expression of half-frightened anger of the righteously indignant, who knows that he has not the advantages of cool wit and scathing repartee, and, in consequence, may lose his head. "He inherited his money, and was not forced to go to a new country and become a ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... Heroick Verse, The Comick part fit only for a Farse; No Atheism, nor any man we know Abus'd, no repartee, nor splendid show; But very little Bawdy, and less wit, The Devil's in't, crys one, is this Play hit. Faith—may be not, and may be too it will, For Chance sometimes exceeds all rules of skill. As he who Rageing did his Pencil throw, And Painted that by ...
— The Fatal Jealousie (1673) • Henry Nevil Payne
... just as I got to the caustic part, the exigencies of his profession demanded that he should punch six tickets in rapid succession. My repartee was consequently drowned amid a perfect carillon of bells. But meanwhile I had ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 23, 1914 • Various
... an hour after the Nautilas has dropped her pick the tugboat comes out again and flings us our mail. Bosun and donkeyman trudge aft and take the letters for the foc'sle, the mess-room steward deposits a letter in my lap, and I think of my friend. At this moment he is engaged in repartee with the housekeeper as she lays the table for tea. The heavy twilight is settling down over the river outside; lovers are pacing the walk as they return from their Sunday tramp. Possibly, too, that ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... having been, during the last half-hour, seated in McAllister's kitchen, where the uproarious merriment had drowned all other sounds. Hobbs had become a great favourite with the Highland family, owing to his hearty good humour and ready power of repartee. The sharp Cockney, with the easy-going effrontery peculiar to his race, attempted to amuse the household—namely, Mrs McAllister, Dan, Hugh, and two good-looking and sturdy-limbed servant-girls—by measuring wits with the "canny Scot," as he called the farmer. He soon found, ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... to the ethics of publishing my memoirs now, I pass over the obvious repartee that to hear a German speak of ethics borders on the ludicrous and especially the man who openly in the Reichstag announced that necessity knows no law and that the German troops were at that moment deliberately ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... to pay his flippant gibe the honor of repartee, he was disappointed. To be sure, Hobart, admirably erect in his slender grace, was moved to a slight, disdainful smile, but it evidenced scarcely the appreciation that anybody less impervious to criticism than Ridgway ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... but remained silent; she was tired, and not quite inclined for repartee. They had turned into a long, lovely lane, so narrow that no vehicle could have passed them, and the thick hedgerows were full of pink and white briar roses and other wild flowers; on either side lay hop fields. Bessie ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... brigade,"—which was received with much merriment. The men were in excellent humor, ready to bandy words with any one, especially the cavalry, whom they began to divine they were to operate with. This elegant repartee was kept up all along the line. Occasionally, officers exchanged greetings, where friends could make each other out in the dark. A hasty word and shake of the hand (perhaps the last), and our cavalry friend is left still watching the ...
— History of the Second Massachusetts Regiment of Infantry: Beverly Ford. • Daniel Oakey
... would speak to the Silent One, he must say Jim, or wait long for a reply. Also, the Silent One was not always silent, and he was quick to observe the weak points in those around him, and keen at repartee. When it pleased him so to do, he could handle the English language in a way that was perfectly amazing—and not always intelligible to the unschooled. At such times Pink frankly made no attempt to understand him; ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... not like. In this connection he could—and did—use the worst expressions I have ever heard. He was a born cynic, who said his say in 'plain talk,' not 'langwidge.' For all that, he was filled to the neck with humor, and was a past-master in the art of repartee, always in plain talk, remember. Explain it if you can. Bill was roundly hated by many because he had a way of talking straight truth. He had an uncanny knack of seeing behind the human scenery of the Bad Lands, ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... name of Landless, who, though his back was cross-barred, and plaided with the ineffaceable scars of all the floggings accumulated by a reckless tar during a ten years' service in the Navy, yet he perpetually wore a hilarious face, and at joke and repartee was ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... and eligible young Prince: modest, honest, with abundance of sense and spirit; kind too and good, hot temper well kept, temper hot not harsh; quietly holds his own in all circles; good discourse in him, too, and sharp repartee if requisite,—though he stammered somewhat in speaking. Submissive Wilhelmina feels that one might easily have had a worse husband. What glories for you in England! the Queen used to say to her in old times: "He is a Prince, that Frederick, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Murphy rarely got the worst of it in a bout at repartee, he had the true sporting instinct and liked the winner because of his victory. It took a bright person to beat him, but it did happen now and then, and he enjoyed a clash of wits with one who proved his master, though in the long run the youth ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... Spence, or Mrs. Patty Blount to listen reverentially to his morality. Let the conversation kindle into vivacity, and host and guests fall into a friendly rivalry, whetting each other's wits by lively repartee, and airing the little fragments of worldly wisdom which pass muster for profound observation at Court; for a time they talk platitudes, though striking out now and then brilliant flashes, as from the collision of polished rapiers; they diverge, perhaps, into ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... remain away altogether for that day. The great sin of total absence would be better than making an appearance before Mr. Jerningham in his present tell-tale condition. He well knew his own strength and his own weakness. All power of repartee would be gone from him for the day. Mr. Jerningham would domineer over him, and Aeolus, should the violent god be pleased to send for him, would at once annihilate him. So he sneaked home to Gower Street, took a hair of the dog that bit him, and then got the old woman who looked after him to make ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... Athenians has been sketched by Plutarch[29] with considerable minuteness, and his representations have been permitted, until of late years, to pass unchallenged. He has described them as at once passionate and placable, easily moved to anger, and as easily appeased; fond of pleasantry and repartee, and heartily enjoying a laugh; pleased to hear themselves praised, and yet not annoyed by criticism and censure; naturally generous towards those who were poor and in humble circumstances, and humane even towards their enemies; jealous of their liberties, and keeping ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... society is as remarkable as their curiosity is insatiable; and their hospitality to all comers, be their own poverty ever so pinching, has too much merit to be forgotten. Pleased to enjoyment with a joke, or witty repartee, they will repeat it with such expression, that the laugh will be universal. Warm friends and revengeful enemies; they are inviolable in their secrecy, and inevitable in their resentment; with such ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... thinking that, if I were a man," she said, turning toward him playfully, "I would love your Duchess to devotion. Her wit is so original, her repartee so sturdy. Your Majesty's taste in horses—and ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... the prettiest defence you could have made—if it does not amount to corruption. Mr. Torridon, what is the repartee to that?" ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... low growls and snarls as the long, white claws and teeth tore the warm red flesh from the bones. It could hardly have been a pleasant conversation to anyone but themselves, but I suppose they enjoyed it as much as the choicest repartee. In truth they had good reason to be satisfied and contented with themselves and each other, and with what they had just done, for not every flying leap is so successful, and not every duck is as plump and juicy as the two that they were discussing. So they talked on in angry, ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... his ear Your own confiding grief; In vain you claim his sympathy, In vain you ask relief; In vain you try to rouse him by Joke, repartee, or quiz; His sole reply's a burning sigh, And "What a mind it is!" O Lord! it is the greatest bore, Of all the bores I know, To have a friend who's lost his heart ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... ever lost them—though I never had enough to make such a spirit as yours lament their loss." The rest of the ladies had passed out; and, as this repartee went on. Jack led his petulant companion into the large drawing-room, where he instantly recognized the President with Mrs. Wendolph on his arm. He towered above the mass of the dancers, eying the admiring groups ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... a visit from Captain Pakenham, the Admiral's son, this week: I like him. I was particularly pleased with his respectful manner to my father. He has some of his father's quickness of repartee, but with his own manner—no affectation of his father's style. We were talking of a Mrs. ——. "What," said I, "is she alive still? The last time I saw her she seemed as if she had lived that one day longer by ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... before a popular audience. His speech abounded with argumentative appeal and bristled with illustrative anecdote, and, when occasion required, with apt repartee. ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... would have been longer, but the darkness was coming on fast; still it had been long enough for all to become the best of friends, and when the two officers came on deck it was to find the two crews engaged in a hearty game of repartee, the schooner's men casting jokes down into the boat, and the man-of-war's ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... the memory of the Arethusa. The Commissary was not, I think, a practised literary man; no sooner, at least, had he taken pen in hand and embarked on the composition of the PROCES-VERBAL, than he became distinctly more uncivil and began to show a predilection for that simplest of all forms of repartee: "You lie!" Several times the Arethusa let it pass, and then suddenly flared up, refused to accept more insults or to answer further questions, defied the Commissary to do his worst, and promised him, if he ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the important juncture when the annexation of Texas and the Mexican war were agitating the country, he soon took an active part in the discussions. He was particularly distinguished for his aptness in repartee, and for his keen and incisive humor. Politically he belonged to the conservative or Hunker wing of the Democracy. Entering the Senate just as Silas Wright was leaving it to assume the Governor's chair, he joined Secretary Marcy and the influences that moulded Polk's Administration, against ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... to Broadstairs was about two miles, and the walk thither was enlivened by a drunken commentary on the fallacy of human hopes in general on the part of Mr Jones, and a brisk fire of caustic repartee on the part of ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... essentially a journalist. In his swift, terse style, he is most like Defoe, who was the first great English journalist and master of the newspaper narrative. The style of both writers is marked by homely, vigorous expression, satire, burlesque, repartee. Here the comparison must end. Defoe and his contemporaries were authors. Their vocation was writing and their success rests on the imaginative or creative power they displayed. To authorship Franklin laid no ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... catch you in her grip and sweep you along with her. Your mad career generally ended in a crowd and a free fight of confetti. There was one fair masquer, however, to whom Aristide became peculiarly attracted. Her movements were free, her figure dainty and her repartee, below her ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... especially since it is so easy that the greatest part of the difficulty lies in confidence; and he that can but stand fair and give aim to those that are gamesters does not always lose his labour, but many times becomes well esteemed for his generous and bold demeanour, and a lucky repartee hit upon by chance may be the making of a man. This is the only modern way of running at tilt, with which great persons are so delighted to see men encounter one another and break jests, as they did lances heretofore; and he that has the best beaver to his helmet has the greatest advantage; and ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... programme of mortification, and Endymion, hot and then cold, and then both at the same time, bereft of repartee, and wishing the earth would open and Montfort Castle disappear in its convulsed bosom, stole silently away as soon as practicable, and wandered as far as possible from the music and the bursts ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... enthusiastic loyalty of his followers, to rally a dispirited minority, to lead a party attack. His keen and rapid judgment; his perfect command of pure and lucid English; his unfailing readiness in argument, invective, sarcasm, and repartee; his indomitable courage, and the somewhat imperious dignity of his manner, all marked him out for the position which he held. If there was some truth in the common taunt that he was more a party leader than a statesman, it must at least ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... eighteen months after her marriage, and died two days after giving birth to a son, afterwards Edward VI. She was one of those passive women who make neither friends nor enemies. She indulged in no wit or repartee, like her brilliant but less beautiful predecessor, and she passed her regal life without uttering a sentence or a sentiment which has been ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... tempted, nor misunderstand," replied Faith, an undertone of reverence qualifying her girlish repartee. "He knows just ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... Widely read, she was able to converse about books she loved, and possessing a mind that was untrammelled by society notions, it was refreshing to hear her talk. Far removed from the giddy society girl, she was yet full of mirth and pleasantness. Ready witted, she was quick at repartee; and possessing a keen sense of humour, she saw enjoyment in that which to many ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... with greater pride, As did the Cynic on some like occasion; Deeming the sage would be much mortified, Or thrown into a philosophic passion, For a spoilt carpet—but the "Attic Bee" Was much consoled by his own repartee.[783] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... her heart be broken, and perhaps his,—and all would be tragedy. But with tragedy she had no sympathy. The loved one must become her husband. But the pictures she had made to herself of him were not at all like Lord George Germain. He was to be fair, with laughing eyes, quick in repartee, always riding well to hounds. She had longed to hunt herself, but her father had objected. He must be sharp enough sometimes to others, though ever soft to her, with a silken moustache and a dimpled chin, and perhaps twenty-four years old. ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... or the great roots of Christian faith; ending with the latest joke in the town or the West Raw, the last effusion by Affleck, tailor and poet, the last blunder of AEsop the apothecary, and the last repartee of the village fool, with the week's Edinburgh and Glasgow news by their respective carriers; the whole little life, sad and humorous—who had been born, and who was dying or dead, married or about to be, for the past ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... were the descendants of the Inca race. They are said to be cannibals, and from the specimen we saw we should judge them uncommonly sharp. He was averse to telling us any thing about his tribe, but turned our questions with an equivocal repartee and a laugh. The Cashibos, on the Pachitea, is another cannibal tribe. They are light colored and bearded. The dwarfish, filthy Rimos alone of the Ucayali Indians tattoo, though not so perfectly as the Mundurucus, using black and blue colors. The other tribes ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... say about his happiness, about the days passing like hours, the hours like minutes, and about Madame Blumenthal being a "revelation." "She was nothing to-night," he said; "nothing to what she sometimes is in the way of brilliancy—in the way of repartee. If you could only hear her ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James
... much to her taste; quiet peasant women, in black cloaks and hoods, driving bullock-carts or carts drawn by dogs, six or eight of these inextricably harnessed together and panting for dear life; blue-bloused men in French caps, but bigger and blonder than Frenchmen, and less given to epigrammatic repartee, with mild, blue, beery eyes, a fleur de tete, and a look of health and stolid amiability; sturdy green-coated little soldiers with cock-feathered brigand hats of shiny black, the brim turned up over the right eye and ear that they ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... for the situation now upon him, and its accustomed capacity was suddenly paralyzed. Like some huge ship staggered by the sea, it took its punishment with heavy, sullen endurance. Socially he had never, as it were, seen through a ladder; and Jasmine's almost uncanny brilliance of repartee and skill in the delicate contest of the mind had ever been a wonder to him, though less so of late than earlier in their married life. Perhaps this was because his senses were more used to it, more blunted; or was it because something had gone from her—that freshness ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... seemed to be sensible of any thing tending to the ludicrous in his own mode of expressing himself, yet he had considerable relish for humor, and some shrewdness of repartee. One time, as he was walking through a neighboring parish, famous for its profanity, he was stopped by a whole flock of the youthful reprobates ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... The critic is not only more cultured than the average playgoer, he is more blase. He knows the stock situations, the stage tricks, the farcical misunderstandings, the machine-made pathos, the dull mechanic round of repartee, the innocent infant who intervenes in a divorce suit (like the Queen's Proctor), the misprised mother-in-law, the bearded spinster sighing like a furnace, the ingenuous and slangy young person of fifteen with the well-known cheek, and the even more stereotyped personages preserved in Mr. Jerome's ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... found smart repartee, shot forth from back seats, gave me glee, still I aspired to climb the tree, so with restrained temerity I donned a gown of silk, i.e. became a fully-fledged K.C. Then, after able A.J.B. was shunted by his great party and A.B.L. assumed the see, the ...
— Punch, Volume 156, January 22, 1919. • Various
... to have such a husband, and so all the world thought. A graceful, brilliant woman, like Bertha, who smiled on morning callers, made a figure in ball-rooms, and was capable of that light repartee which, from such a woman, is accepted as wit, was secure of carrying off all sympathy from a husband who was sickly, abstracted, and, as some suspected, crack-brained. Even the servants in our house ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... plunging into all sorts of musty old books, with which he muddled his brains; more at ease laughing and chatting with the pipers and maids in the servants' hall, than with the gentry in the drawing-room; always cutting jibes and jokes at Mrs. Barry, at which she (who was rather a slow woman at repartee) would chafe violently: in fact, leading a life of insubordination and scandal. And, to crown all, the young scapegrace took to frequenting the society of the Romish priest of the parish—a threadbare rogue, from some ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... airs express their martial fire, Combat in trills, and in a fugue expire: While, lull'd by sound, and undisturb'd by wit, Calm and serene you indolently sit, And, from the dull fatigue of thinking free, Hear the facetious fiddle's repartee: Our home-spun authors must forsake the field, And Shakspeare to the soft Scarletti yield. 10 To your new taste the poet of this day Was by a friend advised to form his play. Had Valentini, musically coy, Shunn'd Phaedra's arms, and scorn'd the proffer'd joy, It had not moved ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... a little repartee, me and the Cap'n, or whatever he was. But, instead of his bein' soothed by it he gets more strenuous every minute. He had that shack rockin' like ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... now that my mistrust dated from the second paper war with Whistler, wherein to the astonishment of everyone Oscar did not come off victorious. As soon as he met with opposition his power of repartee seemed to desert him and Whistler, using mere rudeness and man-of-the-world sharpness, held the field. Oscar was ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... lips tightly together. Whatever happy retort may have risen to them was forever lost. For an exchange of repartee, the moment did ...
— The Lost House • Richard Harding Davis
... you," she said truthfully, beginning to feel that she wasn't figuring to great advantage in this passage of repartee. ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... Lord Mayor, or any of the Aldermen of Brobdignag, and they attempt to exhibit their skill at repartee, be sure decide the wealthiest to be the wittiest. It will insure you a good dinner ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 360 - Vol. XIII. No. 360, Saturday, March 14, 1829 • Various
... English now, and have nothing far-sought or affected about them: for so it frequently proves that what is laughed at in the beginning, is by all admitted and allowed at the last. For example, to speak of a person being in the 'good graces' of another has nothing in it ridiculous now; the words 'repartee', 'embarrass', 'chagrin', 'grimace', do not sound novel and affected now as they all must plainly have done at the time when Dryden wrote. 'Fougue' and 'fraischeur', which he himself employed—being, it is true, no frequent ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... With the constant bandying of compliment, joke, and repartee, among the merry and self-satisfied lordlings who assumed the right of engrossing the conversation, course after course came and passed in rapid succession, till a sufficient variety of viands and other substantial esculents had been ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... on the platform in bygone days, well remember her matchless powers as a speaker; and how safe we all felt while she had the floor, that neither in manner, sentiment, argument, nor repartee, would she in any way compromise the dignity ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... a worse wicked nobleman" N. B., O. W.) But this is no fault, and, indeed, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find fault with Mr. TREE'S Lord Illingworth. Mrs. TREE as Mrs. Allonby, is a very charming battledore in the game of repartee-shuttlecock, who with eight other principal characters in the piece, has nothing whatever to do with the plot. To the character of Lady Hunstanton, as written in the Mrs. Nickleby vein, and as played by Miss ROSE LECLERCQ, the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, May 6, 1893 • Various
... whirlicote with her younger children and her ladies, and at the halting-places never relaxed the stiff dignity with which she treated every one. Eleanor did indeed accompany her sister, but she had not Jean's quick power of repartee, and she often answered at haphazard, and was not understood when she did reply; nor had she Jean's beauty, so that in the opinion of most of the young nobles she was but a raw, almost dumb, Scotswoman, and was left to herself as much as courtesy permitted, except by the young King of the Isle of ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... stalwart man whose face was full of the serenity that comes from breadth and poise, but whose mind, as she herself knew well enough, was too habituated to the broad treatment of big matters to have any aptitude for repartee and chatter. She liked to disconcert him, and it was usually an easy thing to do. "And I wish, while you have your hand in, you would just come up and nail some ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... end that worries me," smiled Magee. "It's the repartee and wit. I want the mayor to feel at home. Do you know any good stories ascribed to Congressman ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... information he had himself volunteered. However that might be, his welcome at Sceaux was sincere. Nor did I wonder at his being a favorite, from the jovial jests and flings he cast at those who crowded round, which set them all a-laughing. His familiarity with the doings of the day, and the quick repartee he used to men of different parties, astonished ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... Lammle,' said Fascination Fledgeby. Mrs Lammle thought it scarcely as warm as it had been yesterday. 'Perhaps not,' said Fascination Fledgeby, with great quickness of repartee; 'but I expect it ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... the house. Here assembled at night the rollicking boys of the Georgia Bar, who here indulged, without restraint, the convivialities for which they were so celebrated. Humor and wit, in anecdotes and repartee, beguiled the hours; and the few old taverns time has spared, could they speak, might narrate more good things their walls have heard, than have ever found record in the Noctes Ambrosianae of the wits ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... an orator of great power,—fluent and elegant in diction, bright and sparkling in thought, keen and quick in repartee. ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... them nearly every night. W. liked the general very much and found him quite talkative when he was alone with him. At the big dinners he was of course at a disadvantage, neither speaking nor understanding a word of French. W. acted as interpreter and found that very fatiguing. There is so much repartee and sous-entendu in all French conversation that even foreigners who know the language well find it sometimes difficult to follow everything, and to translate quickly enough to keep one au courant is almost impossible. When they could they drifted into ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... who prided themselves upon being above every form of fishing lower than spinning, the truly knock-down nature of this blow can only be imagined by those who understand the subject. The captain, who is reckoned one of the worst men in the regiment to venture with in the way of repartee, was so amazed at the damsel's ignorance that he answered never a word, leaving some of her friends in muslin on the garden chairs around to explain the difference between fishing with and without a float—a duty which they appeared ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... her on the platform in bygone days, well remember her matchless powers as a speaker; and how safe we all felt while she had the floor, that neither in manner, sentiment, argument, nor repartee, would she in any way compromise the dignity ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... down of Giotto's character is that of an independent, high-spirited man, full of invention, full of imagination, and also, by a precious combination, full of shrewdness and common sense; a man genial, given to repartee, and at the same time not deficient in the tact which deprives repartee of its sting. While he was working to King Robert of Naples, the king, who was watching the painter on a very hot day, said, with a shrug, 'If I were you, Giotto, I would leave off work and rest myself this ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... accustomed capacity was suddenly paralyzed. Like some huge ship staggered by the sea, it took its punishment with heavy, sullen endurance. Socially he had never, as it were, seen through a ladder; and Jasmine's almost uncanny brilliance of repartee and skill in the delicate contest of the mind had ever been a wonder to him, though less so of late than earlier in their married life. Perhaps this was because his senses were more used to it, more blunted; or was it because something had gone from her—that ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and immediately the mind of the genius, by contrast, comparison, analogy, inference, and imagination, weaves around it a wealth of possibility: the dull-witted man sees the same, but his mind travels no farther than the actual vision. The quick mind supplies the apt repartee, while the dullard thinks of the appropriate reply next morning—if at all. The disadvantage of the latter mind is that it does not work easily, the danger of the former is that it may work too easily and get out of control. Where the central control does not suffice to keep a strong ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... in England he'd be a hero. Ye marry a woman who swears an' dhrinks an' bets on th' races an' ye quarrel with her. Th' r-rest iv th' play is made up iv hard cracks be all th' char-ack-ters at each others' morals. This is called repartee be th' learned, an' Hogan. Repartee is where I say: 'Ye stole a horse' an' ye say: 'But think iv ye'er wife!' In Ar-rchy r-road 'tis called disordherly conduct. They'se another play on where a man r-runs off with a woman that's no betther thin ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... side—he lived jovially, giving chase to soiled doves as often as to hares, and other royal game. Therefore, the sorry scribblers who have made him out a hypocrite, showed plainly that they knew him not, since he was a good friend, good at repartee, and a jollier fellow than ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... postal authorities will not permit us any report of the heart-to-heart talk that followed his departure, other than the baldest summary. It was marked by earnestness, sincerity, even by some petulance, interspersed with frank and spirited repartee. ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... in America. They act like the barrister who does not see in the counsel for the opposite side a representative of a cause, or an opinion contrary to his own, but a simple nuisance,—an adversary in an oratorical debate; and if he be lucky enough to find a repartee, does not otherwise care to justify his cause. Therefore the study of this essential basis of all Political Economy, the study of the most favourable conditions for giving society the greatest amount of useful products with the least waste of human ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... always returned it to him. And thus the relations of the two men, who should have been friends, the guardian and the ward, were always on a hostile footing, which only the most delicate handling could have healed. ACIS was not happy. When his glass told him he was old, he had no repartee ready, and could only speculate gloomily on the disagreeable fate which had compelled him to take part in a modern novel, and had evidently told him off to pass away into the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various
... moment of stupefaction at the old man's readiness in repartee] Look here: what do you mean by gittin into my car and lettin me bring you here if you're not the person I took ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... the nervous excitement of the moment complimented her highly. Beaumont, anxious to kick down her rival, declared, 'That, to say the least of it, it was a better rendering of the part than Leslie's.' And on hearing this, Bret, whose forte was not repartee, moved away; Mortimer, in his least artificial manner, said that it was not bad for a beginning and that she'd get on if she worked at it. Dubois strutted and spoke learnedly of how the part had been played in France, and he ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... they will true and intrinsic appear. Self-unconscious, and sweetly unable to guess How more lovely by far is the grace you possess, You will wrong your own beauty. The graces of art, You will take for the natural charm of the heart; Studied manners, the brilliant and bold repartee, Will too soon in that fatal comparison be To your fancy more fair than the sweet timid sense Which, in shrinking, betrays its own best eloquence. O then, lady, then, you will feel in your heart The poisonous pain of a fierce jealous dart! ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... too, was the genial and graceful Henry Erskine, the brother of the Lord Chancellor of that name, the pride and the favourite of his profession—the sparkling and ready wit who, thirteen years before the day of Burns, had met the rude manners of Dr. Johnson with a well-known repartee. When the Doctor visited the Parliament House, Erskine was presented to him by Boswell, and was somewhat gruffly received. After having made his bow, Erskine (p. 046) slipped a shilling into Boswell's hand, whispering that it was for the sight of ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... face indicating mental imbecility, or even low mediocrity, is very rarely met in those streets where the greater portion of the Romans seem to work and live. The women are brown, plain, bare-headed, and rather careless of personal appearance, but ready at repartee, self-possessed, energetic, with flashing eyes and countenances often indicating a depth of emotion and character. I do not think such pictures as abound in Rome could have been painted where the women were common-place ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... in a room was stimulating, and made people brighter than their ordinary wont. Of small conversation, conversational pleasantries, and what is called table-talk, he happily knew nothing. He had no sharp wit or repartee, but plenty of genial humor, and could of course tell a story to perfection. His imitations of other orators were highly amusing, especially what he called Webster's Rochester speech: "The public debt; it must be paid; and it shall be paid;—how much is it?" He would go through ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... the merits of the newest White Hope, a shoeshine, some kind of a skin food, and a series of comparisons of the weather we are having this time this month with the weather we were having this time last month. Not all of us are gifted with the power of repartee by which my friend Frisbee turned the edge of the ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... would hardly have given it a place here, only to hint that it has always been the Opinion, that Satan's Name may well be call'd a Noun of Multitude, and that the Devil and his Angels are certainly no inconsiderable Number: It was a smart Repartee that a Venetian Nobleman made to a Priest who rallied him upon his refusing to give something to the Church, which the Priest demanded for the delivering him from Purgatory; when the Priest asking him, if he knew what an innumerable Number of Devils there ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... sorrows, the beloved Lincoln. Bolvar was insulted and slandered as was Lincoln, and if Lincoln was assassinated by a man, Bolvar escaped the weapon of the assassin only to sink under poisonous treachery and ingratitude. It is true that Bolvar was quick-tempered, at times sharp in his repartee; his intellectual aptness had no patience with stupidity, and occasionally his remarks hurt. But when the storm had passed, he was all benevolence, enduring all, forgiving ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... him out of them. He had looked down on no one more than on Mr Marshall, and Agnes had received a share of his contempt, partly because of her father's calling and comparative poverty, partly because she was not pretty, and partly because she showed no power of repartee or spirit in conversation. In Aubrey's eyes she had been "a dull, humdrum thing," only fit to cook and sew, and utterly beneath the notice of any one so elevated and ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... of auxiliaries was headed by the earl of E——t, Dr. Lee, and Mr. N——t. The first possessed a species of eloquence rather plausible than powerful; he spoke with fluency and fire; his spirit was bold and enterprising, his apprehension quick, and his repartee severe. Dr. Lee was a man of extensive erudition and irreproachable morals, particularly versed in the civil law, which he professed, and perfectly well acquainted with the constitution of his country. Mr. N——t was an orator of middling abilities, who harangued upon all subjects ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... 1429, from a small pig-breeding village on the marches of Lorraine, one whose manners were deemed of exquisite grace, propriety, and charm, by all who saw and heard her: of her manners and swift wit and repartee, the official record of her trial bears concordant evidence. Other untaught gifts she possessed, and the historic record is unimpeached as regards that child of genius, ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... dress, but in each of her three new evening frocks she looked bewitching. She was a gay, trig little person, with snapping, dark eyes and an arch expression; a tireless dancer, quick and audacious at repartee; the very ideal of a college belle. The student world had fallen prostrate at her feet, and Tom Whittemore most conspicuously and ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... upon the order of our going; we went. As we left the village, we passed a rocky hay-field, where the Gaelic farmer was gathering the scanty yield of grass. A comely Indian girl was stowing the hay and treading it down on the wagon. The driver hailed the farmer, and they exchanged Gaelic repartee which set all the hay-makers in a roar, and caused the Indian maid to darkly and sweetly beam upon us. We asked the driver what he had said. He had only inquired what the man would take for the load—as it stood! A joke is a ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... in itself, came from an unlucky quarter. A chief of the house of Bedford was the most unfit person in the world to protest against grants by favour of the Crown, Burke was too practised a rhetorician not to see the opening, and his Letter to a Noble Lord is the most splendid repartee in the ...
— Burke • John Morley
... the kitchen. It was a time of high festival, what with me and the egg supper. Merriment and jocularity, a little tide-wave of social excitement, swelled and broke on all sides of me; making a soft ripply play of fun and repartee, difficult to describe, and which touched me as much as it amused. It was very unlike the enjoyment of a set of white people holding the same social and intellectual grade. It was the manifestation of another race, less coarse and animal in their original ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... women, in black cloaks and hoods, driving bullock-carts or carts drawn by dogs, six or eight of these inextricably harnessed together and panting for dear life; blue-bloused men in French caps, but bigger and blonder than Frenchmen, and less given to epigrammatic repartee, with mild, blue, beery eyes, a fleur de tete, and a look of health and stolid amiability; sturdy green-coated little soldiers with cock-feathered brigand hats of shiny black, the brim turned up over the right eye and ear ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... been sketched by Plutarch[29] with considerable minuteness, and his representations have been permitted, until of late years, to pass unchallenged. He has described them as at once passionate and placable, easily moved to anger, and as easily appeased; fond of pleasantry and repartee, and heartily enjoying a laugh; pleased to hear themselves praised, and yet not annoyed by criticism and censure; naturally generous towards those who were poor and in humble circumstances, and humane even towards their enemies; jealous ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... jubilant, like nightingale on bough, with story, and jest, and repartee; and became forthwith the soul of the whole company, and the most charming of all cavaliers. And poor Rose knew that she was the cause of his sudden change of mood, and blamed herself for what she had done, and shuddered and blushed at her own delight, and longed ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... same sternness of principle. Of all European nations, the French is that which least regards truth. The whole spirit of their private memoirs and their anecdotes illustrates this. To point an anecdote or a repartee, there is no extravagance of falsehood that the French will not endure. What nation but the French would have tolerated that monstrous fiction about La Fontaine, by way of illustrating his supposed absence of mind—viz. that, on meeting his own son in a friend's ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... seated in an ice-cream saloon. The conversation was supplied mainly by the girl and Willie, and took the form of a wordy sparring match. Every time she scored a point the girl glanced at Macgregor. He became mildly amused by her repartee, and at last took a cautious ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... this is not far to seek. The critic is not only more cultured than the average playgoer, he is more blase. He knows the stock situations, the stage tricks, the farcical misunderstandings, the machine-made pathos, the dull mechanic round of repartee, the innocent infant who intervenes in a divorce suit (like the Queen's Proctor), the misprised mother-in-law, the bearded spinster sighing like a furnace, the ingenuous and slangy young person of fifteen with the well-known cheek, and the even more stereotyped ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... Catholicism. Parsees and Christianity. Their works of charity. Persian visitors. Religious controversy. Mr Hole's pictures. Hindu family quarrels. Indian repartee. Appreciation of the dignity ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... so to speak, up a tree, And unable to think of a neat repartee, He wisely concluded (as Brian Boru did, On seeing his 'illigant counthry' denuded Of cattle and grain that were swept from the plain By the barbarous hand of the pillaging Dane) To bandy no words with a dominant foe, But to wait for ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... tribunals in England; they are not so soon embarrassed by the brow-beating and examination of the counsel, and sometimes give such replies as turn the sting upon their examiners; having like the Irish a sort of tact for repartee, they are not often to be taken aback; the lower classes in Paris are naturally extremely shrewd and penetrating, they recognise a foreigner instantly, before he speaks, as a friend of mine found to his cost, who although an ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... celebrated for his quickness at repartee, when informed that a young nobleman of his acquaintance (remarkably fond of a fashionable game) had shot an immense number of RED partridges, and also of the BLACK game, which abounded on his estates, replied—'I ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... the keels and flats of the Ohio, they were a class unto themselves—"half horse, half alligator," a contemporary styled them. Rough fellows, much given to fighting, and drunkenness, and ribaldry, with a genius for coarse drollery and stinging repartee. The river towns suffered sadly at the hands of this lawless, dissolute element. Each boat carried from thirty to forty boatmen, and a number of such boats frequently traveled in company. After the Indian scare was over, they generally ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... exchange of conjugal repartee I took refuge in conversation with Miss Ruck, who seemed perfectly able to play her part in any colloquy. I learned from this young lady that, with her parents, after visiting the British Islands, she had been spending a month in Paris, and that she thought she should have died ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James
... men connected with the Turf, from the highest to the humblest; but although I have spent the most agreeable hours amongst them, there is little which, if written, would afford amusement: everything in a story, a repartee, or a joke depends, like a jewel, on its setting. At Lord Falmouth's, my old and esteemed friend, I have spent many jovial and happy hours. He was one of the most amiable of hosts, and of a boundless hospitality; ran many distinguished ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... leave or commandment." "O Saad," asked the king, "whence cometh this man?" And the Amir answered, "O my lord, I know not; but he is a youth fair of favour, lovesome of aspect, accomplished in discourse, goodly of repartee, and valour ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... your days in writing letters back to the land you have willfully deserted. As well have stayed among us and talked—and you talk so much better than you write. "Tut! tut! That is nasty." Of course I do not deny that I shall miss the inspiration of your contradictions—or do you call it repartee? I scorn your arguments, and I hereby swear that you shall not ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich
... sportive element in a courageous nature. Things which are serious to ordinary people, may be but play to the valiant. Hence in old warfare it was not at all rare for the parties to a conflict to exchange repartee or to begin a rhetorical contest. Combat was not solely a matter of brute force; it was, as, well, an ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... to 'is kar-kee" said the hoarse-voiced man. The setter-down of corporals retired within himself, probably to compose some humorous repartee. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various
... heretofore unsuspected talent. Florence was herself anxious for the newspaper's debut, and she made her anxiety so clear to Atwater & Rooter, Owners & Propreitors, every afternoon after school, during the following week, that by Thursday further argument and repartee on their part were felt to be indeed futile; and in order to have a little peace around there, they carried her downstairs. At least, they defined their action as "carrying," and, having deposited her in the yard, they were obliged to stand ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... rather of conspirators than of friends met together for the enjoyment of each other's society. The ladies, and a few of the younger men, did not appear disposed to let the gravity of their elders interfere with their own pleasures. The song and the dance, the pointed epigram and witty repartee, all the varied resourccs which Spaniards know so well how to bring into play, and which render a Spanish tertulia so agreeable, had been in turn resorted to. When the seguidilla—during the continuance of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... the other hand any girl could catch you in her grip and sweep you along with her. Your mad career generally ended in a crowd and a free fight of confetti. There was one fair masquer, however, to whom Aristide became peculiarly attracted. Her movements were free, her figure dainty and her repartee, below her mask, ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... elements appear, however, in other plays than this, with no intention of burlesque; and it seems probable that Shakespeare greatly enjoyed this display of his power as a master in the prevailing fashion of courtly repartee. In this fashion, as well as in the handling of the low-comedy figures, and in other ways, Shakespeare followed in the steps of John Lyly, the author of the novel Euphues and of the seven court comedies written in the decade before Love's Labour's Lost. Shakespeare's play, however, ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... plagiarism; but if I do not insist upon the strictest observance of moral law and order in Christian Scientists, I become responsible, as a teacher, for laxity in discipline and lawlessness in literature. Pope was right in saying, "An honest man's the noblest work of God;" and Ingersoll's repartee has its moral: "An honest God's the ...
— Retrospection and Introspection • Mary Baker Eddy
... partisanship, and to receive popular congratulations with brief and cordial thanks. President Johnson, however, behaved as an ordinary political speaker in a heated canvass, receiving interruptions from the crowd, answering insolent remarks with undignified repartee, and lowering at every step of his progress the dignity which properly appertains to the great office. At Cleveland the meeting resembled occasions not unfamiliar to our people, where the speaker receives from his audience constant and discourteous demonstrations that his words are unwelcome. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... its work, and there is no farther occasion for it. Falsehood flies, and Truth comes limping after it; so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late, the jest is over, and the tale has had its effect: like a man who has thought of a good repartee, when the discourse is changed, or the company parted: or, like a physician who has found out an infallible medicine, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... eastern turrets," rises in empurpled splendour; the hero utters tremendous imprecations, ejaculates superlatives or frames elaborately poised, Johnsonian periods; the heroine excels in cheap but glittering repartee, wears "spangled muslin," and has "practised tripping, gliding, flitting, and tottering, with great success." Shreds and patches torn with a ruthless, masculine hand from the flimsy tapestry of romance, fitted together ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... her, and even became warmly friendly with me for the sake of my Paris watch and my glittering waistcoat buttons, I made many gallant attempts to get on my old easy footing. That was the wonder of it: when my interest in her was at the lukewarm, I could face her repartee with as good as she gave; now that I loved her (to say the word and be done with it), my words must be picked and chosen and my tongue must stammer in a contemptible awkwardness. Nor was she, apparently, quite at ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... about everything, had perfect control over their words, made quick sallies, and were skilled in repartee. ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... calling her as a sort of play upon caravan,—for was she not a whole team in herself? he would say,—he and Clara had many a lively contest of words, and were well matched in their powers of wit and repartee. ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... precedence in private life that belongs to them as a matter of outward ceremony. This pretension they cannot keep up by fair means; for in wit or argument they are not superior to the common run of men. They therefore answer a repartee by a practical joke, which turns the laugh against others, and cannot be retaliated with safety. That is, they avail themselves of the privilege of their situation to take liberties, and degrade those about them, as they can only keep up the ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... in which the plot stands still, while the spectators are entertained with flippant dialogue and repartee, are ridiculed in the scene betwixt Prince Prettyman and Tom Thimble in the Rehearsal; the facetious Mr Bibber being the original of the latter personage. The character of Trice, at least his whimsical humour of drinking, playing at dice by himself, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... but he consoled himself with the thought that the end at which he aimed was good. It seemed ungenerous to meet her simple honesty by such obvious repartee, but he held on to see where ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... so?" said the caliph. "Because," replied the grand vizier, "the longer we live in this world, the more reason we shall have to comfort ourselves with the hopes of dying in good sociable company." The caliph, who loved a repartee, began to laugh at this; and putting his ear to the opening of the door, listened to hear the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... his "Essay concerning Curious and Critical Learning," judiciously surmised its true origin. "I fancy this book was written (as most public compositions in that college are) by a select club. Every one seems to have thrown in a repartee or so in his turn; and the most ingenious Dr. Aldrich (he does not deserve the epithet in its most friendly sense) no doubt at their head, smoked and punned plentifully on this occasion." The arrogance of Aldrich exceeded even that of Bentley. Rymer tells further, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... potatoes, corn, and tomatoes were served—and tasted. Outwardly, through it all, Billy was gayety itself. Inwardly she was burning up with anger and mortification. And because she was all this, there was, apparently, no limit to her laughter and sparkling repartee as she talked with Calderwell, her guest—the guest who, according to her original plans, was to be shown how happy she and Bertram were, what a good wife she made, and how devoted and satisfied Bertram was in ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... a great favourite on the farm, where he played the part of the old jester, and made up for his practical deficiencies by his success in repartee. His hits, I imagine, were those of the flail, which falls quite at random, but nevertheless smashes an insect now and then. They were much quoted at sheep-shearing and haymaking times, but I refrain from recording ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... thought (with justice) that he had something better in him than most wits, and he sacredly cherished high aspirations. To him buffoonery was pollution. He attached to salt something of the sacredness which it bears in the East. He was fuller of repartee than any man in England, and yet was about the last man that would have condescended to be what is called a "diner-out". It is a fact which illustrates his mind, his character, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... myself of every appearance of childish diffidence. I was celebrated round the country for the petulance of my remarks, and the quickness of my replies; and many a scholar, five years older than myself, have I dashed into confusion by the steadiness of my countenance, silenced by my readiness of repartee, and tortured with envy by the address with which I picked up a fan, presented a snuff-box, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... words, from a tracker's point of view, the local wit set the entire company in shrieks of laughter at his quick repartee. ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... forgotten his purse and that upon discovering this he had come back for the supplies of war. They joked him unmercifully, even Daisy,—who was manifestly incredulous about his explanation,—and he accepted their hilarious repartee with the proper amount of ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... through some very beautiful movements of the dance that was entirely unobjectionable. In two minutes she had turned her face, beaming with pleasure, so that Mr. Vandeford could see that all was well with her; and ten minutes later she giggled out loud at the repartee of two ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... made this remark that Derek Underhill first admitted to himself that, intoxicate his senses as she might, there was a possibility that Jill Mariner was not the ideal wife for him. The idea came and went more quickly than breath upon a mirror. It passed, but it had been. There are men who fear repartee in a wife more keenly than a sword. Derek was one of these. Like most men of single outlook, whose dignity is their most precious possession, he winced from ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... plainly to be seen that no one of the people listening there had ever heard a man speak thus to a woman who was not his wife. Whenever they had heard that form of spirited repartee it had come from the lips of a husband. Coleman's rude speech was to their ears a flat announcement of an extraordinary intimacy between Nora Black and the correspondent. Any other interpretation would not have occurred to them. It was so palpable that it greatly ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... But the great charm about him is the expression of infinite fun and mirth that is always upon his face. Never for a moment while he is awake is his face still. Always the same, yet always shifting, with a thousand varying shades of roguish joy. Quick, bright, full of boyish repartee, full of shouts and laughter. And the same incessant life which plays upon his face shows itself in every movement of his limbs. Never for a moment is he still unless he has some work upon his hands. He has his little routine of tasks, regularly assigned, which he goes ...
— By The Sea - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... Ronald wondered what thoughts were running through his companion's simple, artless mind. So he talked to her of her daily life, her work, her pleasures, her friends. As he talked he grew more and more charmed; she had no great amount of intellect, no wit or keen powers of repartee, but the girl's love of nature made her a poetess. She seemed to know all the secrets of the trees and the flowers; no beauty escaped her; the rustle of green leaves, the sighs of the western wind, the solemn hush of the deep-green ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... confusion, but out of the turmoil emerged order. The wranglers, already fed, moved into the darkness to bring up the remuda. Tin cups and plates rattled merrily. Tongues wagged. Bits of repartee, which are the salt of the cowpuncher's life, were flung across the fire from one; to another. Already the death of Tim McGrath was falling into the background of their swift, turbulent lives. After all the cowboy dies young. Tim's soul had wandered out across the great divide only ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... replied with ingenuousness, 'My life, I have nothing to say.' But, as the repartee did not occur to him, he contented himself with coming in from the balcony and standing at the side of ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... her aggravating and somewhat malicious observations. So she firmly resolved not to be so readily entrapped again, and was so bright and cheery during the next hour that Aunt Jane smiled more than once, and at one time actually laughed at her niece's witty repartee. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... through him to promote their own interests. He was what we call in America an available candidate. Madame Roland, on the contrary, was animated and brilliant. Her genius was universally admired. Her bold suggestions, her shrewd counsel, her lively repartee, her capability of cutting sarcasm, rarely exercised, her deep and impassioned benevolence, her unvarying cheerfulness, the sincerity and enthusiasm of her philanthropy, and the unrivaled brilliance of her conversational ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... as stars, her lips a rose, throat, neck and arms gleam in their whiteness as does the satin of her gown. Ah! Lionel, much as we love you, we are happy in the thought that Vaura is your rest. Colonel Haughton notices that his niece often glances at him, and that beneath her gay repartee or brilliant converse, there underlies some powerful excitement which he attributes wholly to the expose of ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... possessed courage to confront mobs, or dictators, as he did also to meet an armed host in his country's service, he was not characterised by that presence of mind in public discussion, so necessary for effective repartee and popular power. He was in religion a Protestant, and a member of the Established Church; but it is obvious, from his various papers in connection with Irish affairs, that he was not a very earnest Protestant, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... moment, whether it was literature, philosophy, art, politics, music, the last play, or the latest word of their friends. The talk was simple, natural, without heat, without aggressive egotism, animated with wit and repartee, glancing upon the surface of many things, and treating all topics, grave or gay, with the lightness of touch, the quick responsiveness that make the ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... his class and period. He must have added to his natural abilities and quickness, rare talents for attaining such knowledge as was possible, knowledge of all woodcraft and of nature, knowledge of musical instruments, and acquaintance with arms. Clean of limb and sure of foot, ready of repartee, fearless and alert, he was, even as a boy, something of what he was to become in maturity, one of the greatest men of his own or any age. Unique in some capacities, versatile and varied in arts and accomplishments, at once vindictive ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... mortals find Nectars divine that can with thee compare, When, having dined, we sip thy essence rare, And feel towards wit and repartee inclined? ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... he could not opine; and it annoyed him keenly, for he was, like most society-men, very punctilious regarding the manners of the particular woman who belonged to him. That she was, in fact, an elegant conversationalist, quick and brilliant at repartee, a fine linguist and an intelligent thinker for a woman, he did ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... —Rare weather.—I now find the answer of Anacharsis, the noble philosopher, very proper. Being asked what ship he reckoned the safest, he replied: That which is in the harbour. He made a yet better repartee, said Pantagruel, when somebody inquiring which is greater, the number of the living or that of the dead, he asked them amongst which of the two they reckoned those that are at sea, ingeniously implying that they are continually ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... yet, when Mrs. Turner saw an opportunity, and with a suggestive glance at his lean legs, sympathetically inquired "if he wasn't afraid he'd lose all his flesh," he was fully able to appreciate the feminine dexterity and malice of the allusion. His quick wit could have suggested a deserved repartee; but even in his misery Blake would say no wounding word to a lady of the regiment. He had good reason to take very little comfort in her, however, as an exponent of the regimental feeling on which the —th had prided itself. Mrs. Turner was ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... at this invidious and unnecessary comparison, and cast about in his mind how he might retort upon Spencer. I do not know that my conjecture is right; but it has always seemed to me that his reason for introducing his repartee to Spencer in the odd place where he did, just after a most eloquent and pathetic peroration, was something as follows—'I have now constructed and arranged my argument, and the thread of it must not be broken by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... adjacent windows, dusting with white powder the coats of the passers-by; clusters of flowers tied with favors of gay-colored ribbon were lavishly flung at the feet of bright-eyed peasant girls, who rejected or accepted them at pleasure, with light words of badinage or playful repartee; clowns danced and tumbled, dogs barked, church bells clanged, and through all the waving width of color and movement crept the miserable, shrinking forms of diseased and loathly beggars whining for a soldo, and clad in rags that barely covered ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... be strong, and robust, and hale, and in spite of his indigence always clean and attractive. Tact and intelligence, and a power of swift repartee, are necessary to him. His conscience must be clear as the sun. He must sleep purely, and wake still more purely. To abuse and insult he must be as insensible as a stone, and he must place all fears and desires beneath his feet. ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... antagonist. "You are a fine gentleman," he said; "you have been at Baiae" (Baiae was a fashionable watering-place on the Campanian coast). "Well," said Cicero, "that is better than to have been at the 'matrons' worship.'" And the attack and repartee went on. "You have bought a fine house." (Cicero had spent a large sum of money on a house on the Palatine, and was known to have somewhat crippled his means by doing so.) "With you the buying has been of jurymen." "They gave you no credit though you spoke on oath." "Yes; five-and-twenty gave ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... inconsiderately asked this stranger what we should find between Wiazma and Moscow, the Russian proudly replied, "Pultowa." This answer bespoke a battle; it pleased the French, who are fond of a smart repartee, and delight to meet with ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... together with an effort. He realised that it would never do to bandy schoolboy repartee with Priscilla. His loss of dignity would be complete. And besides, he was very likely to get the worst of the encounter. He was out of practise. Prefects do ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... ladies, the elder Miss O'Halloran took the chief share in that lively yet intellectual intercourse. Marion only put in a word occasionally; and, though very amiable, still did not show so much cordiality as her sister. But Miss O'Halloran! what wit! what sparkle! what mirth! what fun! what repartee! what culture! what refinement! what an acquaintance with the world! what a knowledge of men and things! what a faultless accent! what indescribable grace of manner! what a generous and yet ladylike humor! what a merry, musical laugh! what quickness of apprehension! ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... the lady quarrelling with one of her step-daughters, told her she hated to see her face, and that she always considered the day an unlucky one on which she had the misfortune to meet her first in the morning. The girl, inheriting no doubt a share of her father's power of repartee, quickly answered her stepmother, and said, "You have every cause to believe that it is unlucky to meet me, for I was first-foot to my dear father the unfortunate morning on which he left home ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... parties and balls. In her aunt's company she sometimes felt depressed, but alone she was cheerful and without a care. At the Pagellas' she was like a child of the house. She had the Spanish love of ceremony and magnificence, the ready repartee of the Parisian, and, like a well- brought-up girl, knew how to preserve the balance between friendliness and mirth. She was not in the least prudish, and she understood everything; but there was a certain ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... pertly, "why, the same as for the summer!" And pleased with her own readiness at repartee, without feeling the ignorance it betrayed, she tript ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... search with impunity, we felt under the necessity of laying the matter before our imperial master. 'Had it been any of the other actors,' his highness also says, 'I wouldn't have minded if even one hundred of them had disappeared; but this Ch'i Kuan has always been so ready with pat repartee, so respectful and trustworthy that he has thoroughly won my aged heart, and I could never do without him.' He entreats you, therefore, worthy Sir, to, in your turn, plead with your illustrious scion, and request him to let Ch'i Kuan go back, in order that the feelings, which prompt ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... that she would like to say it was exactly what she had done; but even in that moment she perceived that such a statement would have been very far from the truth. And her nature was large enough to refrain from the momentary gratification of a bitter repartee. But he was too clever for her; that she did feel, whatever else he might be; and her only chance was to return to the plain questions with which she had started, demanding answers as plain. Rachel led up to them, ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... witticism which I heard from my mother's lips, the author of which was Louisa Fairlie, a daughter of Major James Fairlie, who, during the War of the Revolution, served upon General Steuben's staff. She was, I have understood, a great belle with a power of repartee which bordered upon genius. During the youth of John Slidell he attended a dinner at a prominent New York residence and sat at the table next to Miss Fairlie. In a tactless manner he made a pointedly unpleasant remark bearing upon the ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... of this affair is perhaps worth preserving as an example of Huxley's love of a bantering repartee. In the midst of the correspondence Mr. Powell seems suddenly to have been seized by an uneasy recollection that Huxley had lately received some honour or title, so he next addressed him as "My dear Sir Thomas." The latter, not to be outdone, promptly replied with] ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... morning and evening [12], whence, together with his store of hashed Hadis (tradition), he derives the title of Widad or hedge-priest. His tongue, primed with the satirical sayings of Abn Zayd el Helali, and Humayd ibn Mansur [13], is the terror of men upon whom repartee imposes. His father was a wealthy shipowner in his day; but, cursed with Abdy and another son, the old man has lost all his property, his children have deserted him, and he now depends entirely upon the charity of the Zayla chief. ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... grimly, for he had a sense of humour and could appreciate a repartee even when it hit him hard. Then we stopped talking for the ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... happened shortly after it left my hand. I recall now that the lady sitting between me and Clifford gave it a twirl which sent it spinning over the bare table-top. I don't think she realised the action. She was listening—we all were—to a flow of bright repartee going on below us, and failed to follow the movements of the coin. Otherwise, she would have spoken. But what a marvel that it should have reached that crack in just the ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... at Lavinia's repartee. All knew that Grace Armitage was the vainest of the vain and believed every man who cast his eyes in her direction was in love with her. She went white with anger. But she was slow witted. She had no sarcastic rejoinder ready and if she had it ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... anything excepting to push ahead, to elbow our way through the crowd to get the position or the money we desire. Our life is feverish and unnatural. We have no time to develop charm of manner, or elegance of diction. "We are too intense for epigram or repartee. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... to Heaven it might prove Orpheutic.' Ominous in this case would be the word Orpheutic to the ears of Domitian: for every school-boy knows that this means a wife-revoking voice. But first let me remark that there is such a legitimate word as Orpheutaceam: and in that case the Latin repartee of Lamia would stand thus—Suavem dixisti? Quam vellem et Orpheutaceam. But, perhaps, reader, you fail to recognise in this form our old friend Heu taceo. But here he is to a certainty, in spite of the rat: and in a different form of letters the compositor will show him, up ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... much a villain ready made as the stuff villains are made of," said the Queen, satisfied with her own repartee. ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... on the Styx Coffee and Repartee Mollie and the Unwiseman Worsted Man; A Musical Play for Amateurs The Enchanted Typewriter Ghosts I Have Met Mrs. Raffles Olympian Nights R. Holmes & Co. And ...
— Alice in Blunderland - An Iridescent Dream • John Kendrick Bangs
... there was an attempt on all sides to be gay. Count Mirabel talked a great deal, and Lady Bellair laughed at what he said, and maintained her reputation for repartee. Her ladyship had been for a long time anxious to seize hold of her gay neighbour, and it was evident that he was quite 'a favourite.' Even Ferdinand grew a little more at his ease. He ventured to relieve the duke from some of his labours, and ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... had a sort of old maidish aversion. However this position might be found useful to her mistress, it must be admitted that it was a most unfortunate position for a young, thoughtless, and very pretty girl, moreover, who was naturally very lively, very smart in repartee, and very fond of ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... those who sought her acquaintance, as a particular charm. Yet, like all reserved natures, she often failed to attract strangers at a first meeting. In general conversation she disappointed people, by not shining. Men and women, immeasurably her inferiors, surpassed her in ready wit and brilliant repartee. Her taciturnity in society has been somewhat ungenerously laid to a parti pris. She was one, it is said, who took all and gave nothing. That she was intentionally chary of her passing thoughts and impressions to those around ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... Massa, the day had long gone by when, driving in his own trap to the gate of the Paris barracks after a night spent out on leave through the leniency of General Floury, he set to work to curry his own horse. His keen wit and happy repartee, his good-humored sarcasm, and, above all, the magnetism of a personality that scorned deceit and gave itself for no better or worse than it was, combined to make him a favorite among the devotees of pleasure whom ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... man look to his own ground," said Leonard, with a cleverness of repartee caught from ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... is necessary to one's personal happiness, to exercise control over one's words as well as acts: for there are words that strike even harder than blows; and men may "speak daggers," though they use none. The stinging repartee that rises to the lips, and which, if uttered, might cover an adversary with confusion, how difficult it is to resist saying it! "Heaven, keep us," says Miss Bremer, in her 'Home', "from the destroying power of words! There are ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... his boisterous laugh less explosive, and his rough ways gave place to a clumsy imitation of Samoan good manners. Little by little the uncouth sailor patterned himself on the model of his new friends, and he, whose every second word had been an oath, whose only repartee a blow, now set himself to learn the most ceremonious language in the world, and the only one, perhaps, in ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... the printed information on the subject the London coster wears clothes covered up with pearl buttons and spends his time swapping ready repartee with his Donah or his Dinah. The costers I saw were barren of pearl buttons and silent of speech; and almost invariably they had left their Donahs at home. Similarly these gentlemen habitues of the Cave of the Innocents wore few ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... him get up on the heights. But he would never do it of himself, nor without the management of a more practical mind. If I took things as he does, I should be tempted to say, "You monumental idiot, to fling a rash word at a girl as proud as Lucifer, and then to take her hasty repartee as a final verdict from doomsday book!" Happily there is one person around with sense enough to see that both these moon-struck babes are forgivable, and therefore capable of such bliss as may be found in a world of which the best to be said is that we are in very ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... is all very well," said you, "for a man to laugh who cannot even read." Whereon M. de Puimorin replied: "Qu'il n'avoit que trop su lire, depuis que Chapelain s'etoit avise de faire imprimer." A new horror had been added to the accomplishment of reading since Chapelain had published. This repartee was applauded, and M. de Puimorin tried to turn it into an epigram. He did complete ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... that the day was none of the finest, having elicited a repartee of quite the contrary, the various knotty points of meteorology, which usually form the exordium of an English conversation, were successively discussed and exhausted; and, the ice being thus broken, the colloquy rambled to other ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... education, his father abandoned the profession of teaching for that of a lawyer, and young Brady entered his office as office-boy and student, it being his desire to become an advocate. He was bright, quick-witted, and remarkably apt in his studies. His buoyant spirits and ready repartee often led him into encounters with his elders, who were generally forced to confess that his tongue was too much for them. His father encouraged him to form his own opinions, and to hold them tenaciously until convinced of his error. He made rapid progress in his legal studies, and soon acquired ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... Commissary was not, I think, a practiced literary man; no sooner, at least, had he taken pen in hand and embarked on the composition of the proces-verbal, than he became distinctly more uncivil, and began to show a predilection for that simplest of all forms of repartee: "You lie." Several times the Arethusa let it pass, and then suddenly flared up, refused to accept more insults or to answer further questions, defied the Commissary to do his worst, and promised him, if he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... marvellous clever at repartee!' quoth the Prince, and, so saying, he lifted a billet of wood, which chanced to be lying near at hand, and smote the boy on the ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... old hat formed his characteristic garb, and long, straight yellow locks, and a stupid, open-mouthed expression of face made him look like the traditional Simon. He was a boy of much original wit, and his funny repartee proved him, in ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... the humorous explosion. The sarcastic humor in its highest form reaches satire, where under a disguise powerful institutions or the habit and ways of life of a group are criticized. In polite society people are continually attacking each other in a kind of warfare called repartee, in which the tension is kept just without the bounds of real hostility, while the audience sides with the one whose shaft is the most telling. In the lower ranks this interchange, which is surprisingly frequent, is coarse and insulting. It is supposed to ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... and laced ruffles, though the first was sorely creased, and the other sullied; not to forget the length of his silver-hilted rapier. His wit, or rather humour, bordered on the sarcastic, and intimated a discontented man; and although he showed no displeasure when the provost attempted a repartee, yet it seemed that he permitted it upon mere sufferance, as a fencing-master, engaged with a pupil, will sometimes permit the tyro to hit him, solely by way of encouragement. The laird's own jests, in the meanwhile, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... an acquisition to the T. and B. Society: a fine reader, a good declaimer, witty and quick at repartee, the Social Committee of the society soon learned his value, and a smile of welcome greeted him wherever ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... REPARTEE, n. Prudent insult in retort. Practiced by gentlemen with a constitutional aversion to violence, but a strong disposition to offend. In a war of words, the tactics of the ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... often avenge himself on her—or rather on the more obnoxious members of her following—by dint of a faculty for light and stinging repartee which would send her, flushed and biting her lip, to have her laugh out in private. But Langham for a long time was defenceless. Many of her friends in his opinion were simply pathological curiosities—their vanity was so frenzied, their sensibilities so morbidly developed. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... our house, whose pronunciation seemed an individual exception; but an entire assemblage holding intercourse in dainty Parisian, exquisite as the famous dialect of the Brahmans. There was the graceful compliment, the antithetic description, the witty repartee. One could say the poetical or sententious without being insulted by a stare. Some of the ladies were beautiful, some were not, but they had for the most part a quite ideal degree of grace and many of them a kind ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... are some of the descriptive phrases applied to village belles: "She is perfectly at home on the piano, where her executions have attained international celebrity." ... "She possesses a mine of repartee and the qualities which have long rendered illustive her noble family." ... "Her carriage and disposition are swan-like." ... "Her eyes can express pathetic pathos, but flash forth fiery independence when her country's name is traduced." ... ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... company promoters. It would have been more tactful of the Boers, we thought, to have reserved their ammunition for a more aggressive foe. No great attention, however, was paid to their extravagances, and from anything in the nature of repartee we refrained. There was more serious work in hand; preparations were going on apace to open up an avenue for the Relief Column. The Town Guard were ready; the Light Horse, the Imperial troops, and the ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... breeding will sometimes join in the laugh, which has been raised at his expence by an ill-natured repartee; but if it was very cutting, and one of those shocking sort of truths, which as they can scarcely be pardoned even in private, ought never to be uttered in public, he does not laugh because he is pleased, but ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... to cheer her spirits by a gay reply, and then they kept up between them a lively badinage of repartee, in which old Jenny acquitted herself quite as wittily as ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... seek. The critic is not only more cultured than the average playgoer, he is more blase. He knows the stock situations, the stage tricks, the farcical misunderstandings, the machine-made pathos, the dull mechanic round of repartee, the innocent infant who intervenes in a divorce suit (like the Queen's Proctor), the misprised mother-in-law, the bearded spinster sighing like a furnace, the ingenuous and slangy young person of fifteen with the well-known ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... "for it I have composed a concerto in seven flats." "You lie!" retorted the bluff monarch, "the Boehm flute has not yet been invented. Away with you, hayseed from Halle." Whereat the mighty Bach softly laughed, being tickled by the regal repartee, and stole home, and there he sat him down and composed a nine-part fugue for Boehm flute and jackpot on the word Potsdam, the manuscript ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... see!" said I, rushing angrily from the room. It was a very weak retort, and I frankly admit that I am ashamed of it, but it was the best I had at hand at the moment. My stock of repartee, like most men's vitality, is at its lowest ebb at four o'clock ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... pour into his ear Your own confiding grief; In vain you claim his sympathy, In vain you ask relief; In vain you try to rouse him by Joke, repartee, or quiz; His sole reply's a burning sigh, And "What a mind it is!" O Lord! it is the greatest bore, Of all the bores I know, To have a friend who's lost his heart ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... no ascetic; I'm as pleasant as can be; You'll always find me ready with a crushing repartee; I've an irritating chuckle, I've a celebrated sneer, I've an entertaining snigger, I've a fascinating leer; To everybody's prejudice I know a thing or two; I can tell a woman's age in half a minute - and I do - But although I try to make myself as pleasant as I can, Yet everybody says I'm ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... long distances, and who prided themselves upon being above every form of fishing lower than spinning, the truly knock-down nature of this blow can only be imagined by those who understand the subject. The captain, who is reckoned one of the worst men in the regiment to venture with in the way of repartee, was so amazed at the damsel's ignorance that he answered never a word, leaving some of her friends in muslin on the garden chairs around to explain the difference between fishing with and without a float—a duty which they appeared to perform ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... said the hostess in the applause which recognized Wetmore's mischievous intent. "I'll not believe anything of the kind." From her this had the effect of repartee, and when she asked with the single-heartedness which Wetmore had praised among her friends as her strongest point, and advised her keeping up as long as she possibly could, "It isn't so, is it, Mr. Ludlow?" the finest wit could not have done ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... how to compliment without flattering; her cordiality warmed like wine, and her ready wit, repartee, and ability to thaw all social ice and lead conversation along any line, were accomplishments which perhaps have never been equaled. The women who "entertain" often only depress; they are so glowing that ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... in rustic repartee with bright-eyed Elviry Prooner, a deep-bosomed Diana, who, next to Dorothy Thornton, was accounted the "comeliest gal ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... cheer their old opponent. Besides securing American gold for his country, he has transferred some American bronze to his complexion. If anything, he appears to have sharpened his natural faculty for skilful evasion and polite repartee by his encounter with Transatlantic journalists. In fact everybody is pleased to see him back except perhaps certain curious members, who find him even more chary of information than his deputy, Lord Robert Cecil. The mystery of Lord Northcliffe's visit to the States has been cleared up. Certain ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... rant by note, and through the gamut rage; In songs and airs express their martial fire, Combat in trills, and in a fugue expire: While, lull'd by sound, and undisturb'd by wit, Calm and serene you indolently sit, And, from the dull fatigue of thinking free, Hear the facetious fiddle's repartee: Our home-spun authors must forsake the field, And Shakspeare to the soft Scarletti yield. 10 To your new taste the poet of this day Was by a friend advised to form his play. Had Valentini, musically coy, Shunn'd Phaedra's arms, and scorn'd the proffer'd ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... an active participant in the affairs of the Teton Sioux. He was noted for his eloquence, which was nearly always conciliatory, yet he could say very sharp things of the duplicity of the whites. He had much ease of manner and was a master of repartee. I recall his saying that if you have got to wear golden slippers to enter the white man's heaven no Indian will ever get there, as the whites have got the Black Hills and with ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... trouble, although his agility in dodging pickets and his skill in making a week's C.B. a veritable holiday are the talk of the regiment. All the officers know him, and many of them who have been victims of his smart repartee fear him more than they care to acknowledge. The subaltern with the eyeglass is a bad route-marcher, and Wankin once remarked in an audible whisper that the officer had learned his company drill with a drove of haltered pack-horses, ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... Bunyan's influence. But Franklin was essentially a journalist. In his swift, terse style, he is most like Defoe, who was the first great English journalist and master of the newspaper narrative. The style of both writers is marked by homely, vigorous expression, satire, burlesque, repartee. Here the comparison must end. Defoe and his contemporaries were authors. Their vocation was writing and their success rests on the imaginative or creative power they displayed. To authorship Franklin laid no claim. He wrote no work of the imagination. He developed only incidentally ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... A shrewd hit, 'pon honor!" cried Wharton, tapping his snuff-box. "I vow to Gad, Ye're undone, Charles. Ye'd better play at repartee with Gascoigne, there. Ye're more of ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... Essie wondered, as she glanced at Faith, whether she had done any "mischief" or no; but she ventured no sort of repartee, being altogether in an uncomfortable and somewhat awed state of mind. She made hurried adieus to Mrs. Derrick, more formal and extremely civil leave-taking of Mr. Linden, parted in a sort of astonished wise with Faith and the diamonds which evidently bewildered her yet, and made what ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... peculiar conditions, but subject to the same rules as conversation by word of mouth, except so far forth as they may be modified by those necessary conditions. You do not take your partner's bright saying home with you and bring a repartee to the next ball, by which time she has forgotten what her bon mot was, and has another, every whit as good, upon her lips; you do not return a lead in whist at the next rubber; you do not postpone the laugh over ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... wrong as far as the Bells were concerned. It is true that after supper Beatrice called Matty to her side, and looked over a photographic album with her, and tried hard to draw her into the gay conversation and to get her to reply to the light repartee which Captain Bertram so deftly employed. But, alas for poor Matty she had no conversational powers; she was only great at interjections, at ceaseless giggling, and at violent and uncontrollable fits of blushing. Even Beatrice felt a sense of repulsion ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... about the streets the rest of the time, until nightfall. She thought that she was hiding her secret so successfully that no one imagined she had one. She talked more than usual at the table, she laughed at the slightest excuse, she joined spiritedly in the repartee at dinner, a time when they nearly always had guests. But keen-eyed Mrs. Blythe saw several things in the course of the week. She noticed her lack of appetite, the long spells of abstraction that came sometimes after her merriest outbursts; ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... I remember now what I did say. I said that much as I enjoyed the pleasant give and take of friendly conversation, dearly as I loved even the irresponsible monologue or the biting repartee, yet still more was I attached to the silent worship of the valse's mazy rhythm. 'BUT,' I went on to say, 'but,' I added, with surprising originality, 'every rule has an exception. YOU are the exception. May I have two dances, and then we'll try ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... lady regarded me with undissembled incredulity, to which I was able to find no better repartee than a profound and I ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fine gentleman," he said; "you have been at Baiae" (Baiae was a fashionable watering-place on the Campanian coast). "Well," said Cicero, "that is better than to have been at the 'matrons' worship.'" And the attack and repartee went on. "You have bought a fine house." (Cicero had spent a large sum of money on a house on the Palatine, and was known to have somewhat crippled his means by doing so.) "With you the buying has been of jurymen." "They gave you no ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... the tape a second time, snorting louder and in shorter gasps than before, and with the biting repartee still assailing their ears, when the man who had disappeared into the hold of the ship came into sight again, carrying a ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... long before he came in sight of them, the shrill yells with which sled load interchanged repartee with sled load; everlastingly there was the monotone of the singers. It was plain that the same spirit of gay adventure was inspiring ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... pride with greater pride, As did the Cynic on some like occasion; Deeming the sage would be much mortified, Or thrown into a philosophic passion, For a spoilt carpet—but the "Attic Bee" Was much consoled by his own repartee.[783] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... robbery. He arrived at Tyburn insolently drunk. He blustered and ranted, until the spectators hissed their disapproval, and he died vehemently shouting that he would act the same murder again in the same case. Unworthy, also, was the last dying repartee of Samuel Shotland, a notorious bully of the Eighteenth Century. Taking off his shoes, he hurled them into the crowd, with a smirk of delight. 'My father and mother often told me,' he cried, 'that I should ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... been longer, but the darkness was coming on fast; still it had been long enough for all to become the best of friends, and when the two officers came on deck it was to find the two crews engaged in a hearty game of repartee, the schooner's men casting jokes down into the boat, and the man-of-war's men hurling ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... genuine or more deserved. He had just passed his twenty-seventh year. In the House of Burgesses he had the reputation of being the silent member. He never acquired the art of a debater. He was neither quick at rebuttal nor at repartee, but so surely did his character impress itself on every one that when he spoke the Assembly almost took it for granted that he had said the final word on the subject under discussion. How careful he was to observe the scope and effects of parliamentary ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... such men, but she had just sufficient knowledge of various subjects to provoke a conversation, and enough cleverness to sustain it by "drawing out" the scholar who might be seated at her side. But this was not all. Her conversation sparkled with wit and repartee. "The mind laughed," says her friend Zachary Macaulay, "not the muscles; the countenance sparkled, but it was with an ethereal flame: everything was oxygen gas and intellectual champagne: and the eye, which her sisters called 'diamond,' and which the painters complained they could not put upon ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... sharpens up his own more controversial and political intelligence. There are more things here than anywhere else in Dickens that partake of the nature of pamphleteering, of positive challenge, of sudden repartee, of pugnacious and exasperating query, in a word of everything that belongs to the pure art of controversy as distinct not only from the pure art of fiction but even also from the pure art of satire. I am inclined to think (to put the matter not only shortly but clumsily) that ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... have been delighted with this testimony to her attractions; and would have been ready with a repartee about the loss he would sustain in relinquishing so many perfections for her sake; but now her heart was growing faint with terror, and her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth. Thoughts that would fill pages darted through her brain like lightning—dreadful possibilities, that she had ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... strengthen herself and others in the faith. The so-called 'Promus' is a manuscript set of notes, quotations, formulae, and proverbs. As Mr. Spedding says, there are 'forms of compliment, application, excuse, repartee, etc.' 'The collection is from books which were then in every scholar's hands.' 'The proverbs may all, or nearly all, be found in the common collections.' Mrs. Pott remarks that in 'Promus' are 'several hundreds of notes of which no trace has been discovered in the acknowledged writings of Bacon, ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... seem to have made use of it themselves.'—'Whatever my own conduct may have been, madam,' replied he, 'is not the present question; tho' as I have made no use of advice myself, I should in conscience give it to those that will.'—As I was apprehensive this answer might draw on a repartee, making up by abuse what it wanted in wit, I changed the subject, by seeming to wonder what could keep our son so long at the fair, as it was now almost nightfall.—'Never mind our son,' cried my wife, 'depend upon it he knows what he is about. I'll warrant ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... once and easily into the outward life of the people among whom he is,—while he always reserves within himself a cold, stern individuality; he often is angered when he should be amused, and retorts with resentment when he should reply in repartee. Still, the American is not sombre to the core. He has a kind of grim merriment bestowed somewhere in the recesses of his being. It is quaint and severe, however, and abounding in dry conceits. It inclines ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... considerable minuteness, and his representations have been permitted, until of late years, to pass unchallenged. He has described them as at once passionate and placable, easily moved to anger, and as easily appeased; fond of pleasantry and repartee, and heartily enjoying a laugh; pleased to hear themselves praised, and yet not annoyed by criticism and censure; naturally generous towards those who were poor and in humble circumstances, and humane even towards their enemies; jealous of their liberties, and keeping even their rulers in awe. ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... she said truthfully, beginning to feel that she wasn't figuring to great advantage in this passage of repartee. ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... theatre; he listens in silence, never hisses, and applauds with measure. Does not the spectacle please him? He chews his buyo and goes out quietly, not to trouble those who may like it. He expects in his plays a combat every fifteen seconds, and all the rest of the time repartee between comic personages, or terrifying metamorphoses. The comedy chosen for this fete was "Prince Villardo, or the Nails Drawn from the Cellar of Infamy," comedy ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... unlike his sister, Mrs. Middleton; he was exceedingly attractive; there was no denying the charm that existed in the rapid intelligence, the quick conception, and the ready humour that lit up his eyes and countenance, and sparkled in his repartee. His powers of captivation were as great as hers, but he knew that power, and even used it for an end; while in her it was spontaneous as the bubbling of a stream, as the song of the birds, or as the ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... lady quarrelling with one of her step-daughters, told her she hated to see her face, and that she always considered the day an unlucky one on which she had the misfortune to meet her first in the morning. The girl, inheriting no doubt a share of her father's power of repartee, quickly answered her stepmother, and said, "You have every cause to believe that it is unlucky to meet me, for I was first-foot to my dear father the unfortunate morning on which he left home to ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... that in repartee Saunders scored, then went out to make his way toward the rectory. As he passed the First National Bank he saw the constable talking to ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... never even seen, the penniless orphan of a penniless brother of his father, and who had been sent to sea; so that, after all, his mother was the only natural friend he had. This poor little boy would fly from that mother with a sullen brow, or, perhaps, even with a harsh and cutting repartee; and then he would lock himself up in his room, and weep. But he allowed no witnesses of this weakness. The lad was very proud. If any of the household passed by as he quitted the saloon, and stared for a moment at his pale and agitated face, ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... a general favourite for his pleasantry, the gentleness of his manner, and the smartness of his repartee. He had attained tolerable scholarship, was in the fifth form in 1793, the year in which he left Eton, and wrote good Latin verses, an accomplishment which he partially retained to his last days. From Eton he went to Oriel, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... delirious, is always a Miltonic rage; it is grand, sublime, terrible! Mingled with the scurrilities of the theological brawl are passages of the noblest English ever written. Hartley Coleridge explains the dulness of the wit-combats in Shakspeare and Jonson, on the ground that repartee is the accomplishment of lighter thinkers and a less earnest age. So of Milton's pamphlets it must be said that he was not fencing for pastime, but fighting for all he held most worthy. He had to think only of making his blows tell. When ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... to dinner. The other members of the mess were trooping in, all his juniors, all obviously fond of him and boisterously irreverent of his rank. Dinner under his chairmanship was a sort of school for repartee. It was utterly unlike the usual British mess dinner. If you shut your eyes for a minute you couldn't believe that any one present had ever worn a uniform. I learned afterward that there was quite a little competition to get ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... charm. Yet, like all reserved natures, she often failed to attract strangers at a first meeting. In general conversation she disappointed people, by not shining. Men and women, immeasurably her inferiors, surpassed her in ready wit and brilliant repartee. Her taciturnity in society has been somewhat ungenerously laid to a parti pris. She was one, it is said, who took all and gave nothing. That she was intentionally chary of her passing thoughts and impressions to those around her, is, however, sufficiently disproved by her letters. ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... promote their own interests. He was what we call in America an available candidate. Madame Roland, on the contrary, was animated and brilliant. Her genius was universally admired. Her bold suggestions, her shrewd counsel, her lively repartee, her capability of cutting sarcasm, rarely exercised, her deep and impassioned benevolence, her unvarying cheerfulness, the sincerity and enthusiasm of her philanthropy, and the unrivaled brilliance of her conversational powers, ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... day was none of the finest having elicited a repartee of "quite the contrary," the various knotty points of meteorology were successively discussed and exhausted; and, the ice being thus broken, in the course of conversation it appeared that all four, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... entitled Do We Agree? On both occasions the crowd was enormous and many had to be turned away. All three men were immensely popular figures and all three were at their best debating in a hall of moderate size where swift repartee could be followed by ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... stringent regulations of the postal authorities will not permit us any report of the heart-to-heart talk that followed his departure, other than the baldest summary. It was marked by earnestness, sincerity, even by some petulance, interspersed with frank and spirited repartee. ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... always has at command smiles for satire, simpers for repartee, sniggers for conundrums, titters for puns, and guffaws for jocular anecdotes. By Mr. T.C.'s system, cues for laughter are rendered unnecessary, as, from a long course of practical experience, the moment of cachinnation is always ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... nobleman in The Dancing Girl. ("There is another and a worse wicked nobleman" N. B., O. W.) But this is no fault, and, indeed, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find fault with Mr. TREE'S Lord Illingworth. Mrs. TREE as Mrs. Allonby, is a very charming battledore in the game of repartee-shuttlecock, who with eight other principal characters in the piece, has nothing whatever to do with the plot. To the character of Lady Hunstanton, as written in the Mrs. Nickleby vein, and as played by Miss ROSE LECLERCQ, the success is mainly due; and "for this relief much thanks." It is here ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, May 6, 1893 • Various
... company she sometimes felt depressed, but alone she was cheerful and without a care. At the Pagellas' she was like a child of the house. She had the Spanish love of ceremony and magnificence, the ready repartee of the Parisian, and, like a well- brought-up girl, knew how to preserve the balance between friendliness and mirth. She was not in the least prudish, and she understood everything; but there was a ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... really quite outrageous—the repartee of a conscienceless Parisian designer who took her hint that she wished something that would be entirely novel in the States. Today, after we have all of us, even in the uttermost provinces, been ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... and hereafter. But I talked to other people about it and learned that he was already known as a public character to everyone but his own dear mother. It was these here curls that got him attacked on every hand by young and old, and his natural vigour of mind had built him up a line of repartee that was downright blistering when he had time to stop and recite it all. Even mule skinners would drive blocks out of their way just to hear little Shelley's words when someone called him ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... whom in his better days he chose out and brought around him. We are told that he had marvellous powers of conversation, that he had a ready wit, and a keen insight into the humors and the weaknesses of those with whom he was compelled to associate. We are told that he could compete in repartee with the recognized wits of his time, and that he could shine as a talker even among men whose names still live in history because of their reputations as talkers. Of course it will naturally occur to the mind that the guests of the Prince Regent might be ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... forlasi, malpretendi. Renovate renovigi. Renovation renovigo. Renown famo. Rent (payment) depago, luprezo. Rent dissxiro, dissxirajxo. Renunciation forlaso, eksigxo. Repair ripari. Reparation riparo. Repartee respondajxo. Repast mangxado. Repay repagi. Repeal nuligi. Repealable nuligebla. Repeat ripeti. Repel repeli, repusxi. Repent penti. Repentance pento—ado. Repetition ripetado. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... down to Staten Island. The steamer had come to take the revellers back to the city, and the gang-plank was no sooner lowered than the crowd rushed aboard with happy laughter and gay repartee. Among the first to gain a foothold on the stairway that led to the upper deck were Harry Langdon and Dorothy; and here, face to ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... for anything excepting to push ahead, to elbow our way through the crowd to get the position or the money we desire. Our life is feverish and unnatural. We have no time to develop charm of manner, or elegance of diction. "We are too intense for epigram or repartee. We ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... novice at repartee. He knew what should follow the entree. On the table was a roast sirloin of pork, garnished with shamrocks. He retorted with this, and drew the appropriate return of a bread pudding in an earthen dish. A hunk of Swiss cheese accurately thrown by her husband struck Mrs. McCaskey below ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... really thought was, that she deserved a slap; but Terry spared the Countess a blush and me the brain fag of a repartee conciliatory alike to parent ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... a rooster-fight," retorted Reeves. In his triumph he was not unwilling to banter repartee with the hateful Hiram. "You fellers with what you call sportin' blood"—he sneered the words—"come along and think nobody else can't do anything right but you. You fetch along cat-meat with feathers on it"—he pointed at the vanquished P.T.—"and expect it to stand any show with a real fighter." ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... servant a dog that he should do this thing?" answered the wit. The story went the rounds, and Mulready once congratulated the clergyman on the repartee. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... noble quality of a man is to be ascribed more to the peculiarity of his mind or to the equanimity of his feelings, depends on the nature of the case, although neither of the two can be entirely wanting. A telling repartee bespeaks rather a ready wit, a ready expedient on sudden danger implies more particularly ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... clever at repartee!' quoth the Prince, and, so saying, he lifted a billet of wood, which chanced to be lying near at hand, and smote the boy on the head so that ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... impulsive, all his qualities were gifts of nature; hardly any were the fruit acquired by labor and meditation. He had the spirit of the French race, superficial, rapid, spontaneous, and happy in the hazard of repartee, the smile kindly and communicative, the glance open, the hand outstretched, the attitude cordial, an ardent thirst for popularity, great confidence in his relations with others, a constancy in friendship rare upon the throne, true modesty, a restless ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... art of cross-examining a witness, Curran was pre-eminent. A clever repartee is recorded of him in a horse cause. He had asked the jockey's servant his master's age, and the man had retorted, with ready gibe, "I never put my hand into his mouth to try!" The laugh was against the lawyer ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... on her—or rather on the more obnoxious members of her following—by dint of a faculty for light and stinging repartee which would send her, flushed and biting her lip, to have her laugh out in private. But Langham for a long time was defenceless. Many of her friends in his opinion were simply pathological curiosities—their vanity was so frenzied, their sensibilities so morbidly ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... peasant women, in black cloaks and hoods, driving bullock-carts or carts drawn by dogs, six or eight of these inextricably harnessed together and panting for dear life; blue-bloused men in French caps, but bigger and blonder than Frenchmen, and less given to epigrammatic repartee, with mild, blue, beery eyes, a fleur de tete, and a look of health and stolid amiability; sturdy green-coated little soldiers with cock-feathered brigand hats of shiny black, the brim turned up over the right eye and ear that they might the more conveniently ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... half-hour, seated in McAllister's kitchen, where the uproarious merriment had drowned all other sounds. Hobbs had become a great favourite with the Highland family, owing to his hearty good humour and ready power of repartee. The sharp Cockney, with the easy-going effrontery peculiar to his race, attempted to amuse the household—namely, Mrs McAllister, Dan, Hugh, and two good-looking and sturdy-limbed servant-girls—by measuring wits with the "canny Scot," as he called the farmer. He ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... definite plan outlined," he answered; "just generalities, with the salt of repartee to season." He pondered over this sudden transition from wrath to mildness. An Englishman? Very ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... girl could catch you in her grip and sweep you along with her. Your mad career generally ended in a crowd and a free fight of confetti. There was one fair masquer, however, to whom Aristide became peculiarly attracted. Her movements were free, her figure dainty and her repartee, below her mask, ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... smelt powerfully of sheep, and had worked hard all day in the blazing sun, but they were never too tired for fun, or at night to dance, after they had bathed and dressed. We all had splendid horses. They reared and pranced; we galloped and jumped every log which came in our path. Jokes, repartee, and nonsense rattled off our tongues. We did not worry about thousands of our fellows—starving and reeking with disease in city slums. We were selfish. We were heedless. We were happy. ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... defence you could have made—if it does not amount to corruption. Mr. Torridon, what is the repartee to that?" ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... (Nineteenth Century, April, 1904): "The geisha is in no sense necessarily a courtesan. She is a woman educated to attract; perfected from her childhood in all the intricacies of Japanese literature; practiced in wit and repartee; inured to the rapid give-and-take of conversation on every topic, human and divine. From her earliest youth she is broken into an inviolable charm of manner incomprehensible to the finest European, yet she ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... fooling, tomfoolery; shenanigan [U.S.], harlequinade &c. 599[obs3]; broad farce, broad humor; fun, espieglerie[Fr]; vis comica[Lat]. jocularity; jocosity, jocoseness[obs3]; facetiousness; waggery, waggishness; whimsicality; comicality &c. 853. banter, badinage, retort, repartee, smartness, ready wit, quid-pro- quo; ridicule &c. 856. jest, joke, jape, jibe; facetiae[Lat], levity, quips and cranks; capital joke; canorae nugae[Lat]; standing jest, standing joke, private joke, conceit, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... children gamboled on the broad marble steps, or seated on soft cushions at their parents' feet, listened to the sparkling wit, repartee and agreeable rattle that broke forth among the gay loungers on the terrace. Occasionally the eyes of the whole party would rest with admiration and pride on the scene enacting before them, and well they might, for on the smooth, soft, ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... this would appear but a brilliant repartee, while, in fact, it was significant as indicative of a sagacious policy. Closing the churches would have given warrant to the charge of interference with the observances of religion. So careful was the General to avoid anything of this nature, that, in every instance where a clergyman ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... those brave old commanders, Who served through all our glorious wars in Flanders. Frank and good-natur'd, of an honest heart, Loving to act the steady friendly part; None led through youth a gayer life than he, Cheerful in converse, smart in repartee; But with old age, its Vices Come along, And in narration he's extremely long; Exact in circumstance, and nice in dates, He each minute particular relates. If you name one of marlbro's ten campaigns, He gives you its whole history for your pains, And Blenheim's field ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... brightens, the host coruscates. The young lady on your right suddenly develops into a charming girl, with becoming appreciation of your pet topics and an astounding aptness for repartee. The Gorgon thaws, and implores Mr. Snapshot, whose jests are popping as briskly as the corks, not to be so dreadfully funny, or he will positively kill her. Belle Breloques can always talk, and now her tongue rattles faster than ever, till the languid one arouses himself like a giant refreshed, ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... windows, dusting with white powder the coats of the passers-by; clusters of flowers tied with favors of gay-colored ribbon were lavishly flung at the feet of bright-eyed peasant girls, who rejected or accepted them at pleasure, with light words of badinage or playful repartee; clowns danced and tumbled, dogs barked, church bells clanged, and through all the waving width of color and movement crept the miserable, shrinking forms of diseased and loathly beggars whining for a soldo, and clad in rags that barely ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... swill the cap wi' oil—this isn't the Cunard. Ye thought? Ye are not paid to think. Go, sweat that off again! Tck! Tck! It's deeficult to sweer nor tak' The Name in vain! Men, ay an' women, call me stern. Wi' these to oversee Ye'll note I've little time to burn on social repartee. The bairns see what their elders miss; they'll hunt me to an' fro, Till for the sake of—well, a kiss—I tak' 'em down below. That minds me of our Viscount loon—Sir Kenneth's kin—the chap Wi' russia leather tennis-shoon an' spar-decked ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... was so wonderful that no one could go away from a first interview without astonishment and delight. There are those among us, it may be, more brilliant in anecdote or repartee, more eloquent, more profoundly suggestive; but for the outpouring of vast floods of various and delightful information, I believe that he could have had no Anglo-Saxon rival, except Macaulay. And in Mr. Parker's case, at least, there was no alloy of conversational ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... to say it was exactly what she had done; but even in that moment she perceived that such a statement would have been very far from the truth. And her nature was large enough to refrain from the momentary gratification of a bitter repartee. But he was too clever for her; that she did feel, whatever else he might be; and her only chance was to return to the plain questions with which she had started, demanding answers as plain. Rachel led up to them, however, with one or two of which she already ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... her greatest orators, he still seemed so humble in spirit that I felt myself drawn towards him at once. In such a presence the conversation was necessarily restrained. Dismissing, for the time, the freedom of debate, anecdote and repartee, that so often characterize ministerial gatherings, the interchange of thought took on a more serious tone. Only once was there an exception. Referring to the labors of some distinguished man of his acquaintance, one of the leading brethren and prince of story tellers, ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... me a vessel full of satyrion, as she said this, and so cheerfully did she gossip about its virtues that I drank down nearly all of the liquor, and because Ascyltos had but a moment before rejected her advances, she sprinkled the dregs upon his back, without his knowing it.) When this repartee had drawn to a close, Ascyltos exclaimed, "Don't I deserve a drink?" Given away by my laughter, the maid clapped her hands and cried, "I put one by you, young man; did you drink so much all by yourself?" "What's that you say?", Quartilla chimed in. "Did Encolpius drink ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... keels and flats of the Ohio, they were a class unto themselves—"half horse, half alligator," a contemporary styled them. Rough fellows, much given to fighting, and drunkenness, and ribaldry, with a genius for coarse drollery and stinging repartee. The river towns suffered sadly at the hands of this lawless, dissolute element. Each boat carried from thirty to forty boatmen, and a number of such boats frequently traveled in company. After the Indian scare was over, they generally stopped over night in the settlements, and the arrival ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... would prove quickly mortal so that they might not linger in discomfort or pain. Recognizing my kind thought for their true welfare they thanked me for it, though with no enthusiasm. Indudu, however, filled with the spirit of repartee, or rather of "tu quoque", said in his melancholy fashion that if he and I came face to face in war, he would be sure to remember my words and to cut me up in the best style, since he could not bear to think of me languishing on a ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... that Commodus descended, sword in hand, into the arena against a wretched gladiator, armed only with a foil of lead, and after shedding the blood of the helpless victim, struck medals to commemorate the inglorious victory. The triumphs of Frederic in the war of repartee were of much the same kind. How to deal with him was the most puzzling of questions. To appear constrained in his presence was to disobey his commands, and to spoil his amusement. Yet if his associates were enticed by his graciousness to indulge in the familiarity of a cordial intimacy, he was certain ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sea, the limitless, the boundless, the ultimatum—however, this is irrelevant and frivolous. I am serious—and modest, I assure you—when I speak of my gifts. I have, as you know, a pronounced gift at repartee. Who knows what this might have become under proper development? But it has been systematically ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... What bones! What power!'" In his subsequent intercourse with the polite world Quitman acquired a fine tact and measured, dignified ways. At the same time he was a man of excellent parts, a master at repartee, with a keen intellect and a firm will, and in every respect a born leader." (532.) He was the only Lutheran minister who ever received, and perhaps desired [?] [tr. note: sic!] to receive, the degree of D. D. from Harvard University. Quitman, a disciple of Teller and of Semler in Halle, ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... However this position might be found useful to her mistress, it must be admitted that it was a most unfortunate position for a young, thoughtless, and very pretty girl, moreover, who was naturally very lively, very smart in repartee, and ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... must be charming to be brilliant, to be apt at repartee, to scatter bright remarks among a company as a queen scatters largess among the throngs on coronation day, to have a following in society who are like ladies in waiting. Oh, it must be delightful, for a while, to be a ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... him no more: and when John Randolph said "THANK YOU!" to his constituent who kindly remarked that he had the pleasure of PASSING his house, it was wit at the expense of friendship. The whole English school of wits—with Douglas Jerrold, Hood, Sheridan, and Sidney Smith, indulged in repartee. They were PARASITIC wits. And so with the Irish, except that an Irishman is generally so ridiculously absurd in his replies as to only excite ridicule. "Artemus Ward" made you laugh and ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... read." Whereon M. de Puimorin replied: "Qu'il n'avoit que trop su lire, depuis que Chapelain s'etoit avise de faire imprimer." A new horror had been added to the accomplishment of reading since Chapelain had published. This repartee was applauded, and M. de Puimorin tried to turn it into an epigram. He did complete ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... France in 1429, from a small pig-breeding village on the marches of Lorraine, one whose manners were deemed of exquisite grace, propriety, and charm, by all who saw and heard her: of her manners and swift wit and repartee, the official record of her trial bears concordant evidence. Other untaught gifts she possessed, and the historic record is unimpeached as regards that child of ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
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