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More "Wit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... one of their ordinary haunts. He sat down at table with them, and they began to drink and indulge themselves in gross jokes, while, like Mirabel in the "Inconstant," their prisoner had the heavy task of receiving their insolence as wit, answering their insults with good-humour, and withholding from them the opportunity which they sought of engaging him in a quarrel, that they might have a pretence for misusing him. He succeeded for some time, but soon became satisfied it was ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... her, Emilia, I'll use that tongue I have: if wit flow from it As boldness from my bosom, let't not be doubted ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... Laval. She called herself a soldier's wife, and was exact and brave accordingly. She was thoughtful of her husband's charge, and when she paused in her efforts for his comfort and content, it was because she had exhausted the means within her reach, but not her wit ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... a well-turned compliment, Monsieur Nigel, because in order to be acceptable it must possess both a modicum of truth and a soupcon of wit. But flattery I detest, for it must needs be insincere. A man of ninety cannot, in the nature of things, have many years of life before him. What are even ten years to one who has already lived nearly a century? This is a solemn moment for both of us, and I want to be sincere with you. You ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... what little there was to tell. Brick's abduction threw light on some things that had been mysteries before. It was Jerry's keen wit that identified Joe Bogle with the missionary on the train. Sparwick took the ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon
... to undue severity of self-discipline; but it did not seriously impair the strength and beauty of his Christian manhood. It rather served to bring them into fuller relief, and even to render more striking those bright natural traits—the sportive humor, the ready mother wit, the facetious pleasantry, the keen sense of the ridiculous, and the wondrous story-telling gift—which made him a most delightful companion to young and old, to the wise and the unlettered alike. It served, moreover, ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... lovely and unfortunate marquise. Desgrais had just the manner of the younger son of a great house: he was as flattering as a courtier, as enterprising as a musketeer. In this first visit he made himself attractive by his wit and his audacity, so much so that more easily than he had dared to hope, he got leave to pay a second call. The second visit was not long delayed: Desgrais presented himself the very next day. Such eagerness was flattering to the marquise, so Desgrais ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... stranger and all that followed until she had driven him into the camp, as she had hoped to be able to do, believing that Janus would be able to capture the man. Had Janus been a more active man and quicker of wit, he undoubtedly would have been able to catch the fellow; however, by the time the guide had collected ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge
... Denmark there is no pleasure without noise. In a political point of view, the difference between the two nations is equally marked. Beyond the Sound, all demonstrations are made with fierce earnestness; on this side of it, satire and wit are the weapons employed. On the one hand shells and heavy artillery, on the other, light and brilliant rockets. The Swedes have much liberty of the press and very little humour; the Danes have a great ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... chance what is to become of the lad. But the slum has stacked the cards against him. There arises in the lawless crowd a leader, who rules with his stronger fists of his readier wit. Around him the gang crystallizes, and what he is it becomes. He may be a thief, like David Meyer, a report of whose doings I have before me. He was just a bully, and, being the biggest in his gang, made the others steal for him and surrender the "swag," ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... bitterness—it is when exhibited in the light of our "peculiar" prejudices. Mind, Godlike, immortal mind, with its burden of deathless thought, its comprehensive and discriminating reason, its brilliant wit, its genial humor, its store-house of thrilling memories—a voice of mingled power and pathos, words burning with the unconsuming fire of genius, virtues gathering in ripened beauty upon a brave heart, and moral integrity preeminent over all else—all this could not make ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... somewhat tired of the sittings—she had at any rate been capricious and tiresome about them; and Montjoie, who was more in earnest about this statue than he had been about any work for years, was at his wit's end, first to control his own temper, and next so to lure or drive his strange sitter as to ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with affected wit and pleasantry, the hardships of his situation, (Carm. xii. in tom. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... the class which is maintained in luxury, parents and children alike, by the collective industry of the workers. By dint of organisation they may be able very soon to exact payment of a more substantial sum—State maintenance, to wit."[837] ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... altruistic benefactors of mankind are such, after all, because they are undeveloped,—their minds are relatively undifferentiated,—hence their fellow-feeling and kindly acts. There is a story of some learned wit who met a half-drunken boor; the latter plunged ahead, remarking, "I never get out of the way of a fool"; to which the quick reply came, "I always do." According to this argument based on self-assertive aggressiveness, the boor was ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... contained the delightes that Wit followeth in his youth by the pleasantnesse of love, & the happinesse he reapeth in age, by the perfectnesse ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... might have answered this complaint, if he thought it deserving of an answer, by requesting Master Mordacks not to be so overquick, but to bide a wee bit longer before he made so sure of the vast superiority of his own wit, for the long heads might prove better than the sharp ones in the end of it. However, the general factor thought that he could not have come to a better place to get all that he wanted out of everybody. ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... Finds friends far stronger than in Force and Pride, And Sympathy and Kindness can be made The potent weapons by which men are swayed. He proved a nation's trust can well be won By loyal work and constant duty done; The wit that winged the wisdom of his word Set forth our glories, till all Europe heard How wide the room our Western World can spare For all who nobly toil ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... case Uertue I doo vtterly dispise, 340 But if they wyst what I were Then of my purpose I should be neuer [the] nere I wyl kepe my tonge leste that I mar My whole intent and wyll. But now I meruayle by this day Where shrewd wit is gone a stray Some crafty touche is in his way I here him, ...
— The Interlude of Wealth and Health • Anonymous
... the genius that invents those wonderful instruments which the eye cannot follow till they are familiarly entertained—and sometimes not even then. If this idea were kept in view, there would be at least some wit, although no truth, in the common theory which attempts to account for the decline of poetry. Neither advancement in science, however, nor ingenuity in mechanics, is in itself, as the theory alleges, hostile to the poetical; ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... adjoining seat was occupied by an Irishwoman, who had been elected by the votes of the laborers on the new Albemarle Extension, in the neighborhood of which she kept a grocery store. Nelly Kirkpatrick was a great, red-haired giant of a woman, very illiterate, but with some native wit, and good-hearted enough, I am told, when she was in her right mind. She always followed the lead of Mr. Gorham (whose name, you see, came before hers in the call), and a look from him was generally sufficient to quiet her when she ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... hand for the sketch, trying to bethink herself as she did so in what least uncivil way she could refuse the present. She took a moment to look at it collecting her thoughts, and as she did so her woman's wit ...
— The Courtship of Susan Bell • Anthony Trollope
... study of emotions and events is gifted with charming imagination and an elegant style. The book abounds in brilliant wit, amiable philosophy, and interesting characterizations. The "woman of the world" reveals herself as a fascinating, if somewhat reckless, creature, who justly holds the sympathies of ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the outlines of its impenetrable forests. But the conquerors who came from Normandy, from Brittany, from Anjou, from all the provinces of France, were of a cheerful temperament; they were happy: everything went well with them. They brought with them the gaiety, the wit, the sunshine of the south, uniting the spirit of the Gascon with the tenacity of the Norman. Noisy and great talkers, when once they became masters of the country, they straightway put an end to the already ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... M'Carthy as he spoke, followed by his companion. The third man stepped a pace or two to the right, and levelling a long double-barrelled pistol, deliberately fired, when McCarthy's first pursuer fell; the second man, however, with that remarkable, quickness of wit which characterizes the Irish, in their outrages as well as in their pastimes, suddenly stooped, and taking the dreadful dagger out of the hands of the wounded man, continued the pursuit bounding after his foe with a spirit of vengeance ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... aware of his perilous fate, Recovered his wit, though a moment too late. "O treacherous Spider! for shame!" said he, "Is it thus you betray a ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... displays, they still do great injustice to his powers, and exhibit little more than the mere Torso of his eloquence, curtailed of all those accessories that lent motion and beauty to its form. The attempts to give the terseness of his wit particularly fail, and are a strong illustration of what he himself once said to Lord * *. That Nobleman, who among his many excellent qualities does not include a very lively sense of humor, having exclaimed, upon hearing some good anecdote ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... of the jest-books, and they are now quite out of fashion. A quarter of a century hence, no doubt, the fortunate possessor of one of these little books will come out with many a new jest, and be esteemed quite an original wit. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Jan. 9, 1892 • Various
... separation from the wife he has wronged. It is necessary for a man to add either cruelty or desertion to his other offence, in order that his wife may obtain from the laws of her country the opportunity of marrying someone else. But the wit of woman has proved equal to the emergency. Nowhere, it may be safely stated, have more tales of purely imaginative atrocity been listened to with greater attention, or with more favourable results, than in the Divorce Court. On an incautious handshake a sprained wrist ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various
... miscellaneous stories written from time to time for the Boy's Own Paper by Talbot Baines Reed. The collection is prefaced by an appreciation of Mr. Reed as boy and man, and it contains some of his best work and his brightest wit. There are seven sketches of life at Parkhurst School; eleven character delineations of "Boys we have known"—such as "The Bully," "The Sneak"; twelve representations of "Boys of English History"; and seven other short stories ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... She had beauty when she was young, and she still had an expressive face and a sweet smile. She was well educated, and always continued to educate herself; she was fond of letters, art, politics, and metaphysics. She delighted in theological controversy, and also delighted in contests of mere wit. But of all her valuable gifts, the most valuable for herself and for the country was the capacity she had for governing her husband. She governed him through his very anxiety not to be governed by his wife. One of George's strongest, and at the same time ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... you're the one woman in a million that I think you are," said Cynthia. "Tell me, isn't your husband at his wit's end to think how to meet the bills for his illness and all and all? And wouldn't you raise your finger to bring all his miserable worries to an end? Just look at the matter from a business point ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... various courses of the stars and actuates the lifelike mass with definite motions. A false zodiac runs through a year of its own and a toy moon waxes and wanes month by month. Now bold invention rejoices to make its own heaven revolve and sets the stars [planets?] in motion by human wit.... ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price
... wife, and her name was Diffidence. So when he was gone to bed, he told his wife what he had done; to-wit, that he had taken a couple of prisoners and cast them into his dungeon, for trespassing on his grounds. Then he asked her also what he had best to do further to them. So she asked him what they were, whence they came, and whither they were bound; and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... take her place in the great social exhibition where the gilded cages are daily opened that the animals may be seen, feeding on the sight of stereotyped toilets and the sound of impoverished tattle. O misery of semi-provincial fashionable life, where wealth is at its wit's end to avoid being tired of an existence which has all the labor of keeping up appearances, without the piquant profligacy which saves it at least from being utterly vapid! How many fashionable women at the end of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... untruthful Bellamy; he was the aggressor, and George the meek in spirit with the soft answer that turneth away wrath. It was intolerable; he hated his father, he hated George. There was no justice in the world, and he had not wit to play rogue with such a one as his cousin. Appearances were always against him; he ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... "There's poorer wit than yours, Dennie, out of the insane asylums. I'll shtow that away in me mind an' fire it off in the Boord the nexht time I make a speech. If I had your brains, lad, I'd a made more out ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... Sergius muttered to himself. 'Who would have thought that, half drunken as he was, he would have had the wit to select a slave worth double the sum which had been staked against him, and one whom I had obtained with such trouble, and for my own purposes? Can it be that he pretended his intoxication the more easily to outwit ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... "My own wit! What, think you I am a fool? Let us see! By my own cunning I have had fashioned this Tarnhelm which makes me invisible to all. Then who shall find me when I sleep?" ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... one by one, one at a time; severally, respectively, each to each; seriatim, in detail, in great detail, in excruciating detail, in mind-numbing detail; bit by bit; pro hac vice[Lat], pro re nata[Lat]. namely, that is to say, for example, id est, exemplia gratia[Lat], e.g., i.e.,videlicet, viz.; to wit. Phr. le style est ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... glasses circled round, and the noisy revelry waxed as loud as ever. The incident of the shot was soon forgotten. Songs were sung, and stories told, and toasts drunk; and with song and sentiment, and toast and story, and the wild excitement of wit and wine, the night waned away. With many of those young hearts, old with hope and burning with ambition, it was the last "Twenty-second" they would ever celebrate. Half of them never ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... we turn to the contemporaneous pages of Stendhal, what do we find? We find a succession of colourless, unemphatic sentences; we find cold reasoning and exact narrative; we find polite irony and dry wit. The spirit of the eighteenth century is everywhere; and if the old gentleman with the perruque and the 'M. de Voltaire' could have taken a glance at his grandson's novels, he would have rapped his snuff-box and approved. It is true that Beyle joined the ranks of the Romantics for a moment ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... again for an hour, and not then if they don't ax me to," said Dennis Riley, generally known as "Dinny," and nothing more. And he, too, joined in watching the "unclane little savage," as he called him, to wit, a handsome, well-grown Zulu lad, whose skin was of a rich brown, and who, like his companion, seemed to be a model of savage health ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... to a pitch which commanded the attention of the other members in the carriage and a hearty laugh followed her jovial wit, to the full relief of ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... one answers.] Alas, how comes it that my very servants have fallen away from me? I shall have to defend myself by mother-wit. ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... volume, than if it had been rigidly devoted to the questions which it professes to treat. His remarks are always lively, pointed, and apposite, betraying a familiar knowledge of the world, and a quick perception of the bearing and character of current events, while their caustic wit is usually attempered with an inexhaustible fountain of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... the special correspondent from Washington of the New York Tribune, and later of the Times. Her letters were racy, full of wit, sentiment, and discriminating criticism, plenty of fun and a little sarcasm, but not so audaciously personal and aggressive as some letter-writers from the capital. They attracted attention and were widely copied, large extracts being made ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... say, on the contrary, that even the present pope, and any pope at all, has greater graces at his disposal; to wit, the Gospel, powers, gifts of healing, etc., as it is written in I. ...
— Martin Luther's 95 Theses • Martin Luther
... visit, for Pluto had the greatest confidence in his discretion. Besides, as her Majesty had not at present the advantage of any female society, it was necessary that she should be amused; and Tiresias, though old, ugly, and blind, was a wit as well as a philosopher, the most distinguished diplomatist of his age, and considered the ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli
... will spend money when a new prime minister is needed!" was the vicomte's comment, his gaze falling on the Chevalier's empty chair. "Do you remember how Mazarin took away Scarron's pension? Scarron asked that it be renewed; and Mazarin refused, bidding the wit to be of good cheer. Scarron replied, 'Monseigneur, I should indeed be in good cheer were I not positive that I ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... bemoaned, is thus commemorated upon his tomb-stone; and to add to the indignity, the memorial is nothing more than the second-hand coat of a French commander! It is a servile translation from a French epitaph, which says Weever, 'was by some English Wit happily imitated and ingeniously applied to the honour of our worthy chieftain.' Yet Weever in a foregoing paragraph thus expresses himself upon the same subject; giving without his own knowledge, in my opinion, an example of the manner in which an epitaph ought to ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... feel its inspiring influence. Still, rather than speculate upon Mr. Canning's political career, we quote Lord Byron's manly eulogium on the illustrious dead: "Canning," said Byron, in his usual energetic manner, "is a genius, almost an universal one, an orator, a wit, a poet, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... bearing the autograph signature of Mary Queen of Scots, to Torquil McLeod of Dunvegan, who had been on the eve, it would seem, of marrying a daughter of Donald of the Isles, gave the Skye chieftain, "to wit" that, as he was of the blood royal of Scotland, he could form no matrimonial alliance without the royal permission,—a permission which, in the case in point, was not to be granted. It served to show that the woman who so ill liked ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... eating mushrooms and such dishes, which his host had had cooked in order not to contravene a recent sumptuary law.[452] The Letters are worth far more as negative evidence of the usual character of dinners than either the invectives (vituperationes) against a Piso or an Antony, or the lively wit of the satirists. Let us return for an instant, in conclusion, to that famous letter, already quoted, in which Cicero describes the entertainment of Caesar at Cumae in December, 45. It contains an expression which ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... and captious critics went away, but came back next day with the startling information that Raphael's pictures were more Pagan than Christian. Pope Leo heard the charge, and then with Lincoln- like wit said that Raphael was doing this on his order, as the desire of the Mother Church was to annex the Pagan art-world, in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... attempted and nearly successful murder of W. W. Smith, the President of the Brome County Temperance Alliance, who for some time has been like a thorn in the side of the Brome County hotel keepers, because, by insisting upon the enforcement of the law, to wit, the Scott Act, he spoiled their profitable liquor trade. The excellent means of communication in the counties of Missisquoi and Brome, by telephone and otherwise, necessitated the greatest care in keeping the purpose of ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... all his ready money, $15,000, in the continental loan, a practical proof of his patriotism, since its repayment was extremely improbable. His influence at the French court was unbounded. He was revered for his wit, his genius, his dignity, and his charming conversation. He became to the American cause in the old world what Washington was in the new. On his return he was elected president of Pennsylvania for three successive years. He gave the whole of his salary, $30,000, ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... and I believe she would be sarcastic and witty if she weren't held down pretty well. I think she's a niece: the relationship leaves her free, as I suppose she feels, to express herself. If you like the type you may have it; but wit in a woman, or even humor, always makes me uncomfortable. The feminine idea of either is a little ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... very carefully and highly wrought scene, occurring just before Eldredge's actual attempt on Middleton's life, in which all the brilliancy of his character—which shall before have gleamed upon the reader—shall come out, with pathos, with wit, with insight, with knowledge of life. Middleton shall be inspired by this, and shall vie with him in exhilaration of spirits; but the ecclesiastic shall look on with singular attention, and some appearance of alarm; and the suspicion of Alice shall likewise be aroused. The old ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... OLIVER WENDELL: The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, a charming series of talks which embody the best of Holmes's wit, wisdom and philosophy. One of those things everybody ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... she was taken in to dinner by a callow youth, who found a fertile subject for his wit, in the follies and excesses of what he called the "new womanhood." It was so delightful, he said, to come to the country, where women were still charming in the good old way. He knew that this new womanhood business ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... had at that time an easy instrument of vengeance, to wit, the parliament; and needed not to give themselves any concern with regard either to the guilt of the persons whom they prosecuted, or the evidence which could be produced against them. A session of parliament being held, it was resolved to proceed against Seymour by bill of attainder; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... notice, will be sold on the first Tuesday in September next, between the usual hours of sale, before the Court House door, in this city, the following property-to wit! ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... intended; but I with warmth entered into literary pursuits; perhaps my heart, not having an object, made me embrace the substitute with more eagerness. But, do not imagine I have always been a die-away swain. No: I have frequented the cheerful haunts of men, and wit!—enchanting wit! has made many moments fly free from care. I am too fond of the elegant arts; and woman—lovely woman! thou hast charmed me, though, perhaps, it would not be easy to find one to whom my reason would allow me ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... at his parsonage in Somersetshire. The London wit told some amusing Irish stories, and his manner of telling them was so good. "One: 'Is your master at home, Paddy?' 'No, your honour.' 'Why, I saw him go in five minutes ago.' 'Faith, your honour, he's not exactly at home; he's only there in the back yard a-shooting rats ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... any little grisette to contemplate. For such prodigals going home there is no fatted calf slain. No fathers see them afar off and run to place the ring upon their fingers. They renounce precarious gayety for persistent slavery. The keen wit of the student is exchanged for the pipe and mug and dull oath of the boor. I wish every such girl back again to so sallow a fate, and pity her when she ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... joyous wit, Here's to thee! Deign to let the bardie sit Near thy knee; Thy open brow, and laughing eye, Vanquishing the hidden sigh, Making care before thee fly, Smiling ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... Dormy was not to uncover his pot of roses till his own time. "That connetable's got no more wit than a square bladed knife," he rattled on. "But gache-a-penn, I'm hungry!" And as he ran he began munching a lump of bread he ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... were at the Emperor's court together, we gave ourselves to learn horsemanship of Gio. Pietro Pugliano; one that, with great commendation, had the place of an esquire in his stable; and he, according to the fertileness of the Italian wit, did not only afford us the demonstration of his practice, but sought to enrich our minds with the contemplation therein, which he thought most precious. But with none, I remember, mine ears were at any time ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... selection covers a wide range of topics, and testifies at once to the good taste and the culture of the editress. Many of the finest passages were conceived and uttered in the rapid inspiration of speaking, and but for her admiring intelligence and care, the eloquence, wit, and wisdom, which are here preserved to us, would have faded into air with the last vibration of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... Fair denotes what is bright, smooth, clear, and without blemish; as, a fair face. The word applies wholly to what is superficial; we can say "fair, yet false." In a specific sense, fair has the sense of blond, as opposed to dark or brunette. One who possesses vivacity, wit, good nature, or other pleasing qualities may be attractive without beauty. Comely denotes an aspect that is smooth, genial, and wholesome, with a certain fulness of contour and pleasing symmetry, tho falling short of the beautiful; as, a comely matron. That is picturesque which ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... avail ourselves of his crazy fanaticism to mislead his wicked cunning;—a child may lead a hog, if it has wit to fasten a cord to the ring in ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... admired that product of a hard-drinking, hard-fighting ancestry, the British boy; and in Alban it seemed to him that he discovered an excellent type. Undoubtedly the lad was both handsome and strong. For his brains, Silas Geary would answer, and he had given evidence of good wit in their brief encounter last night. Gessner drew a step nearer and asked himself again if the detective's reports were true. Was this the friend of vagabonds, the companion of sluts—this clean-limbed, virile fellow with the fair face and the flaxen curls ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... care in managing experiments is such that we cannot avoid getting rich, we will accept the result. (Laughter.) I am glad that in connection with this discussion Mr. Corsan made one epigrammatic remark,—that he was not nervous and could watch a hickory tree grow. I tell you there's a lot of wit in that. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... be observed, that the power of ridicule, which has so much influence in the formation of manner, is much less in France than in England. The French have probably more relish for true wit than any other people; but their perception of humour is certainly not nearly so strong as that of our countrymen. Their ridicule is seldom excited by the awkward attempts of a stranger to speak their language, and as seldom by the inconsistencies which appear to us ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... as delighted the King; who loved, above all things, a combination of wit and beauty, and never for any long time wore the chains of a woman who did not unite sense to more showy attractions. From the effect which the grace and freshness of the girl had on me, I could judge in a degree of the impression made on him; his next words showed ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... And be punished for it: Take heed: for you may so long exercise Your scurrilous wit against authority, The Kingdoms Counsels; and make profane Jests, (Which to you (being an atheist) is nothing) Against Religion, that your great maintainers (Unless they would be thought Co-partners with you) Will leave you to the Law: and then, Septimius, ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... raised and kept alive by that section of the land south of the imaginary line, to wit: that the Negro was ambitious for "racial equality," only is entitled to reference in these pages for the purpose of according it the contempt due it. That the whites of the country have not a complete monopoly of those unpleasing creatures known as "tuft hunters" and ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... wit found an excuse for remaining in Virginia. The word "conveniency" in his orders gave him a loophole.[748] It was evident to all that the King wished him to return without delay, but Berkeley pretended to believe that this word had been inserted ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... a goat. No wit or no kindness which emanated from him could do for his boys what that goat did for the Cadaras. Joe Doane came to throw an awful hate on the government goat. Portagees were only Portagees—yet they had the government goat. Why, there ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... that though this was the daughter of a minister of the gospel, herself a Christian, she had never before heard a lady pray in the presence of gentlemen. She had heard of their doing so; heard them criticised with sharp sarcasm. Some of the criticisms which had sounded full of keenness and wit when she heard them, recurred to her at this time, and some way, with Flossy's low, earnest voice filling her heart, they dwindled into shallowness and coarseness. All the same, their baneful influence was on her, and helped to hold her back from opening her lips, ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... very end of the campaign the anti-suffragists began to advertise extensively in the subway and on the elevated roads in New York City but the firm that controlled this space refused to accept any advertising from the suffragists. Woman's wit, however, was equal to the emergency. For the three days preceding the election one hundred women gave their time to riding on elevated and subway trains holding up large placards on which were printed answers to the "anti" advertisements. The public understood and ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... effort now to climb over the bamboo screen, little thinking that the missing midshipman had boldly climbed up, a little ahead of where they were, mounted to the great bamboo spar that held up the screen, and then with a miserably ineffective weapon, to wit, his pocket-knife, set to work as he sat astride it, and sawn away at the ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... "Ouida," but they cannot appreciate the masterly fictions of Thackeray. I have known very good people who could not, for the life of them, find any humor in Dickens, but who actually enjoyed the strained wit of Mrs. Partington and Bill Nye. Readers who could not get through a volume of Gibbon will read with admiration a so-called History of Napoleon by Abbott. And I fear that you will find many a young lady of to-day, who is content to be ignorant of ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... of five great divisions, to wit: 1. A Colonial exhibition. 2. A General Export exhibition. 3. A Retrospective exhibition of Fine Arts and of Arts applied to the Industries. 4. Special exhibitions. 5. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... fairer and more comely than Narcissus' who saw his own reflection in the fountain beneath the elm, and loved it so much when he saw it that he died—so folk say—because he could not have it. Much beauty had he, and little wit, but Cliges had greater store of both, just as fine gold surpasses copper, and yet more than I can say. His hair seemed like fine gold and his face a fresh-blown rose. His nose was well shaped, and his mouth beautiful, and he was of great stature as Nature best knew how to frame him; for in ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... Godlinesses. In the first volume of the ballads Pepys has written:—'My collection of ballads, begun by Mr. Selden, improv'd by the addition of many pieces elder thereto in time; and the whole continued to the year 1700.' The library also possesses collections of old novels, pieces of wit, chivalry, etc, plays, books on shorthand, tracts on the Popish Plot, liturgical controversies, sea tracts, ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... Infallibility in my Conjectures, yet (as I said last year) they many times come out too True to make a jest of." Then he goes on: "I have read of a story which Thaurus is said to relate of Andreas Vesalius, a great Astrologer who lived in the reign of Henry the VIII.; to wit, that he told Maximilian the Day and Hour of his Death, who, giving credit thereto, ordered a great feast to be made, inviting his Friends, sat and Eat [ate?] with them; and afterwards, having distributed ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... yourself; you've got a head." The master looked at him with an expression which went to Pelle's heart, so that he often felt like bursting into tears. Hitherto Pelle's life had been spent on the straight highway; he did not understand this combination of wit and misery, roguishness and deadly affliction. But he felt something of the presence of the good God, and trembled inwardly; he would have ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... fool, it would, if it became known, make me appear in a most curious light. And what would at best be the result of my refusing the honor offered me? That you would make of me a contemptible helpless puppet, a target for your feminine wit, a booby whom you could tease and taunt as much as you liked, whom you could torment and put on the rack until you had driven him mad. (He has risen from the sofa.) Say yourself, Helen; what choice was left to me? (She stares ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... the trick would be unfair and mean, and lacking the sporting instinct which is the hall-mark of Australians; but the others were rather taken with it, and Palmer Billy, with more force than wit—and more good luck than either—insisted that Walker, as he had conscientious scruples, should come into the room behind them, an arrangement which effectually prevented a warning word being ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... poems, pose as prandial wit, Ma'am, Perorate upon the public platform; Even in the County Council sit, Ma'am, If Law lets you, and your taste takes that form; But take Punch's tip, and do not straddle; Stick ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various
... of the Chinaman surveyed the person without for a long time, so long, in fact, that Johnny began to wonder what sort of person the newcomer could be. Wo Cheng was keen of wit. To many he refused entrance. But he was also a keen trader. All manner of men and women came to him; some for a permanent change of costume, some for a night's exchange only. Peasants, grown suddenly and strangely rich, bearing ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... in the open. He was an excellent professor of anatomy, renowned for his insight and readiness in adapting means to ends in the difficult science where his main work lay. Literature was merely his hobby, and he was wit, critic, philosopher, historian, poet, good in all. Many a brilliant man has come to wreck through being too versatile. "Ne sutor ultra crepidam" is undoubtedly a good motto for the ordinary man, but sticking to ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... man, you probably would not be surprised to make the discovery that I made—to wit: that two girls were in love with him at the same time, for the most ordinary of men have sometimes a powerful attraction for the most superior of girls, and Arthur Beguelin was much above the ordinary, in looks, manners, breeding, and wealth. He was, as I have said, almost rich, ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... the wine is poured, For the last toast the glass raised high, And henceforth round the wintry board, As dumb as fish, we'll sit and sigh, And eat our Puritanic pie, And dream of suppers gone before, With flying wit and words that fly— Say ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... in history. We take off our hats to him. We salute his memory. In his person were combined the chivalry of Knighthood, the fervor of the Crusader, the wit of Gascony, and the courage of ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... Dewar ... displays quite remarkable knowledge and insight as well as a pretty wit.... Mr. Dewar's volume is calculated to give delight to all who are interested in the creatures of God's earth. Its humours will raise many a smile, while its keenness and accuracy of observation should induce many readers to study more closely the ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... war with the spirit of the Crusaders, but the spirit of French wit cannot be repressed even under the most terrifying conditions. So after the news of the superhuman effort made by that national baby, Belgium, in detaining the huge German forces for many days, there was a placard on one of the gates at the station, placed there ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... of a young man to watch, to be actively desirous of meeting with a suitable partner. In doing this, his first consideration should be to seek for such a one as he can make happy; not to look primarily for beauty, fortune, wit, or accomplishments—things all very good in themselves, but by no means constituting the essentials of happiness. If he is influenced by pure and simple motives, he will not find, or expect to find, more than one ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... let us sport Boys, as we sit, Laughter and wit Flashing so free. Life is but short— When we are gone, Let them sing on ...
— Punch, Volume 101, Jubilee Issue, July 18, 1891 • Various
... obliged to rise early, and to ride a long journey on the next day; he expected to have found himself weak and soon fatigued; but on the contrary he performed his journey with unusual ease and alacrity; and frequently laughed, as he rode, at the wit of the preceding evening. In both these cases a degree of pain or pleasure actuated the system; and thus a sensorial power, that of sensation, was superadded to that of irritation, or volition. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... posterity I hate; About posterity were I to prate, Who then the living would amuse? For they Will have diversion, ay, and 'tis their due. A sprightly fellow's presence at your play, Methinks should also count for something too; Whose genial wit the audience still inspires, Knows from their changeful mood no angry feeling; A wider circle he desires, To their heart's depths more surely thus appealing. To work, then! Give a master-piece, my friend; ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... beings he is ordained to a double end, whereof the one is his end as corruptible, the other as incorruptible. That unspeakable Providence therefore foreordered two ends to be pursued by man, to wit, beatitude in this life, which consists in the operation of our own virtue, and is figured by the Terrestrial Paradise, and the beatitude of life eternal, which consists in a fruition of the divine ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... charm. It enables the hearer to follow the mental exertions of the speaker, and thus rivets attention better than many a smooth and sonorous diction which glides along nicely because it has no inner difficulties to overcome. Often Bismarck succeeds in taking hold of his subject with trenchant wit, and in illustrating it with arguments which he boldly takes from every day life.... We must confess that his speeches, if art-less, are yet full of imagery. His cool and clear mind does not despise the charm of warm color, just as his robust constitution is not void of nervous ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... the next link in the chain (to wit) What caused the death of this brood just at this stage of development? I was obliged to stop. Not the least satisfaction could be obtained. All inquiries among the bee-keepers of my acquaintance were met with profound ignorance. They had ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... woman of wit and beauty. Prescott often had remarked it, but never with such a realizing sense. She was young, graceful, and with a face sufficiently supplied with natural roses, and above all keen with intelligence. She ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... the sharpest spur a man can know? What is it that gives a man audacity to attempt and wit to accomplish the impossible?" ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... in the world which allow of no description, and of such things a true Roman carnival is one. You might as well seek to analyze champagne, or expound the mystery of melody, or tell why a woman pleases you. The strange web of colour, beauty, mirth, wit, and folly, is tangled so together that common hands cannot unravel it. To paint a carnival without blotching, to touch it without destroying, is an art given unto few, I almost might say to none, save to our own wondrous word- wizard, who dreamt the "dream of Venice," ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... Clarke's personality is given by a writer in the Sydney Bulletin: 'His wit was keen and polished, his humour delicate and refined, and his powers of description masterly.... His face was a remarkable one—remarkable for its singular beauty. Like Coleridge, the poet, he was "a noticeable man with large grey eyes," and one had but to ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... who walked with you In wantonness, aforetime, and is now Groaning in sulphurous fires!" "Kit, that means hell!" "Yea, sirs, a pamphlet from the pit of hell, Written by Robert Greene before he died. Mark what he styles it—A Groatsworth of Wit Bought with a Million of Repentance!" "Ah, Poor Rob was all his life-time either drunk, Wenching, or penitent, Ben! Poor lad, he died Young. Let me see now, Master Bame, you say Rob Greene wrote this on earth before ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... He was a patrician of the purest blood, had inherited a moderate fortune, and had spent it like other young men of rank, lounging in theatres and amusing himself with dinner-parties. He was a poet, an artist, and a wit, but each and everything with the languor of an amateur. His favorite associates were actresses, and he had neither obtained nor aspired to any higher reputation than that of a cultivated man of fashion. His distinguished ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... think it was their character." That is indeed the heritage they left us; they left us their character. Wealth will not preserve that which they left us; not wealth, not power, not "dalliance nor wit" will preserve it; nothing but that which is of the spirit will preserve ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... "Keep your wit, my dear, for this evening. I should not wonder but you might need it. Fred Mostyn is rather better than I expected. It was a great pleasure to see him. It was like a bit of my own youth back again. When you are a very old woman there are few things ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... Ban and his misfortunes] Now, upon a certain time, King Ban of Benwick fell into great trouble; for there came against him a very powerful enemy, to wit, King Claudas of Scotland. King Claudas brought unto Benwick a huge army of knights and lords, and these sat down before the Castle of Trible with intent to take that ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... that the writer of the Sonnets, who touched life so intensely at one feverish point, should have had the amazing detachment and complexity of mind and soul that the plays reveal. The notices of his talk and character are few and unenlightening, and testify to a certain easy brilliance of wit, but no more. Before he is thirty he is spoken of as both "upright" and "facetious"—a ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... world of letters she saw much of Sydney Smith, who was early a friend of her father's. She actually had the good fortune, while Miss Minnie Senior, to stop at the Combe Florey Rectory, and to discover that the eminent wit took as much trouble to amuse his own family when alone as to set the tables of Mayfair upon a roar. He liked to tease his girl guest by telling her that her father, then a Master in Chancery, did not care a straw for his daughter "Minnie." "De Minimis non curat ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... brigands and their trulls in the Golden Fish. The worst company in Verona, Excellency—the most brazen, the most case-hardened. But the story is the same from their mouths as from the lads'; not a detail is wanting; not one point gives the lie to another. Excellency, I would bow to your wit in any case but this. The affair is inexplicable short ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... premeditated, purpose of getting his feelings up. The ludicrous, however, in any of its shapes, is a phaenomenon with which M. Comte seems to have been totally unacquainted. There is nothing in his writings from which it could be inferred that he knew of the existence of such things as wit and humour. The only writer distinguished for either, of whom he shows any admiration, is Moliere, and him he admires not for his wit but for his wisdom. We notice this without intending any reflection on M. Comte; for a profound conviction raises ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... delight was in wild and daring sallies of sentiment, in the irregular and eccentrick violence of wit. He delighted to tread upon the brink of meaning, where light and darkness begin to mingle; to approach the precipice of absurdity, and hover over the abyss of unideal vacancy. This inclination sometimes produced nonsense, which he ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... o' mother-wit is worth a pound o' clergy," says the Scotch proverb, and the "mother-wit," Muttergeist and Mutterwitz, that instructive common-sense, that saving light that make the genius and even the fool, in the midst of his folly, wise, appear in folk-lore and folk-speech ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... leaving Cambridge, he started on a continental tour with two Eton friends—Lord FitzWilliam and Charles James Fox. A lively letter-writer, his correspondence with his friend George Selwyn, while in Italy, shows him to have been a young man of wit, feeling, and taste. It is curious to notice that, at Rome, he singles out, like his cousin in 'Childe Harold' or 'Manfred', as the most striking objects, the general aspect of the "marbled wilderness", the moonlight ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... the sitters to assume an attitude of preternatural gravity and solemnity. Instead, they should be natural and cheerful, though of course not flippant or trifling, or indulging in an exhibition of the cheap remarks which by so many is mistaken for wit. The sense of humor, however, need not be thrown aside or discarded, for as all investigators know many of the spirit visitors have a very highly developed sense of humor, and sometimes even go so far as to seemingly endeavor to shock some ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... am going to leave you," he whispered, "and your own wit will have to carry you through. I know you will play your part all right, and it will be mine to wait for Christie, and give her some explanation of why Hawley failed to meet her as he promised. It will never do for her to ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... of the manifestations of Daudet's humor. Wit he has also, and satire. And he is doubly fortunate in that he has both humor and the sense-of-humor—the positive and the negative. It is the sense-of-humor, so called, that many humorists are without, ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... "the witching hour of noon" that the broad and splendid artery of commerce, to wit, the Euston Road, became, for the nonce, a scene of unwonted, and ever-increasing excitement. Old Plu[1] had promised, as per Admiral FITZROY'S patent hocus-pocusser, to give us a taste of his quality; and it is unnecessary, in this connection, to observe that the venerable ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... to the historian, because during this period there was an unusually close connection between literature and politics. Literature was forced into the service of party. A large portion of the writings of the era is in the form of political pamphlets, wherein all the resources of wit, satire, and literary skill are exhausted in defending or ridiculing the opposing principles and policies of ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... a youth, possessed of wealth— Had manly beauty and the best of health; In learning he excelled—was quite a wit— And oft indulged in a deep musing fit. Of very warm and truly tender heart, He did his best to act a proper part; Which made him much respected all around— Against him, filled with envy, none were found. His widowed mother, then, might well be proud Of such a son, ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... yard, seated on boxes, barrels, etc., were as many more, equally as well satisfied as those within. The impromptu and "free feed" of freshly-killed beef had been a great success, and now at seven o'clock, what Vale called "the harmony" began—to wit, music from a battered cornet, an asthmatic accordion, and a weird violin. There were, however, plenty of good singing voices in the company, and presently a big, fat-faced American negro, with a rich fruity voice, struck up a well-known mining ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... honour still, much more, they did me, In that they made me one of their own band; So that the sixth was I, 'mid so much wit. ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... your feet, Then the crowd shall be kind that was cruel before, and your solitude sweet That was want to be gloomy aforetime and gray—when the proof that ye live Is no longer the pain of desire, but the will—and the wit—and the vision, to give! ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... Use all His hands, and exercise much craft, By no means for the love of what is worked. 'Tasteth, himself, no finer good i' the world When all goes right, in this safe summertime, And he wants little, hungers, aches not much, 190 Than trying what to do with wit and strength. 'Falls to make something: 'piled yon pile of turfs, And squared and stuck there squares of soft white chalk, And, with a fish-tooth, scratched a moon on each, And set up endwise certain spikes of tree, ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... was so startling, from his own daughter, that Pierson took refuge in an attempt at wit. "I should like notice of that question, Nollie, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... made him an opponent of slavery and consequently a Republican. In 1857 and 1858 he ran for the state senate in Minnesota on the Republican ticket in a hopelessly Democratic county. In 1859 he was nominated for lieutenant governor on the ticket headed by Alexander Ramsey; and his caustic wit, his keenness in debate, and his eloquence made him a valuable asset in the battle-royal between Republicans and Democrats for the possession of Minnesota. As lieutenant governor, Donnelly early showed his sympathy ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... perform the labor of three women. I soon learned to work more skillfully, but I habitually squandered my powers and lavished on trivial details strength that should have been spent more thriftily. The difficulties of each day could be surmounted only by quick wit, ingenuity, versatility; by the sternest exercise of self-control and by a continual outpour of magnetism. My enthusiasm made me reckless, but though I regret that I worked in entire disregard of all laws of health, I do not regret a single ...
— The Girl and the Kingdom - Learning to Teach • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... dislikes—for instance, its horror of the noble and the beautiful—are childish; and so is its way of expressing them. Not by irony and sarcasm, but by jeers and grimaces does Jazz mark its antipathies. Irony and wit are for the grown-ups. Jazz dislikes them as much as it dislikes nobility and beauty. They are the products of the cultivated intellect, and Jazz cannot away with intellect or culture. Niggers can be admired artists without any gifts more ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... got over his chill and fatigue, saw them in their proper proportions. A little adventure in an open boat at sea which had ended without any mishap, was not remarkable, and might even be made to appear ridiculous. So the less said about it, especially to Mary, whose wit ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... ze matter wit' Antoine?" exclaimed the breed uneasily. "What for he look at me so? Make him for to go ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... precarious renown By turning laws and morals upside down, Sticking perpetual pins in Mrs. Grundy, Railing at marriage or the British Sunday, And lavishing your acid ridicule On the foundations of imperial rule;— 'Twas well enough in normal times to sit And watch the workings of your wayward wit, But in these bitter days of storm and stress, When souls are shown in all their nakedness, Your devastating egotism stands out Denuded of the last remaining clout. You own our cause is just, yet can't refrain From libelling those who made its ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 25, 1914 • Various
... strikes the first sombre note in that exquisite woodland idyll, and shows us the depth of feeling that underlies Rosalind's fanciful wit ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... be, betray my lord's fortress to D'Aulnay de Charnisay! Go down stairs, Marguerite Klussman. When I have less matter in hand, I will flog thee! Hast thou no wit at all? To come from a man who broke faith with thee, and offer his faith to me! Bribe me with Penobscot to ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... prudent in centuries gone by, than that they were such blockheads as to have dragged on, the son after the father, for all the thousands of years which have elapsed since man was made, without having had wit enough to discover any better food than ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... mention that I found that denomination, for the first time, in the convention made by Alonso de Ojeda with the Conquistador Diego de Sicuessa, a powerful man, say the historians of his time, because he was a flattering courtier and a wit. In 1508 all the country from the Cabo de la Vela to the Gulf of Uraba, where the Castillo del Oro begins, was called New Andalusia, a name since restricted to the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... Dickens and Thackeray, and Sydney Smith was very fond of the artist; and it is said that when the great wit was asked to sit to Landseer for his portrait, he replied in the words of the haughty Syrian: "Is thy servant a dog that ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... me from my flowry bed? Bot. The Finch, the Sparrow, and the Larke, The plainsong Cuckow gray; Whose note full many a man doth marke, And dares not answere, nay. For indeede, who would set his wit to so foolish a bird? Who would giue a bird the lye, though he cry Cuckow, neuer so? Tyta. I pray thee gentle mortall, sing againe, Mine eare is much enamored of thy note; On the first view to say, to sweare I loue thee. So is mine eye enthralled to thy shape. And thy faire vertues force ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... subjects, whom Heaven entrusted to his care. In a sense not usually assigned to the term, Bushido accepted and corroborated paternal government—paternal also as opposed to the less interested avuncular government (Uncle Sam's, to wit!). The difference between a despotic and a paternal government lies in this, that in the one the people obey reluctantly, while in the other they do so with "that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of heart which kept alive, even ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... beautifully by being and doing all we hope and expect of you, my dear. In the new life you are going to there will be a thousand trials and temptations, and only your own wit and wisdom to rely on. That will be the time to test the principles we have tried to give you, and see how firm they are. Of course, you will make mistakes—we all do; but don't let go of your conscience and drift along blindly. Watch and pray, dear Nat; and while your hand gains ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... and without getting cross and losing temper. To train a dog that takes his thrashing, shakes himself, lays his ears back, and prepares for the next, oblivious of consequences, is not beyond the wit of man, though possibly a gift. But what is to be done in the case of a dog that is terror-stricken, even if the voice is raised? The position forms as fine a period of probation in its way as any that wilful man could desire; and at that the matter ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... unpunished." "Who can deny that?" "But neither will any man deny this," quoth she, "that whatsoever is just, is good, and contrariwise, that whatsoever is unjust, is evil." "Certainly," I answered. "Then the wicked have some good annexed when they are punished, to wit, the punishment itself, which by reason of justice is good, and when they are not punished, they have a further evil, the very impunity which thou hast deservedly granted to be an evil because of its injustice." "I cannot deny it." ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... ever the case, this delightful charity is comprehensive indeed. Mr. Parker's discourse is full of the same beautiful and tolerant maxims. 'Each religious doctrine,' he says, 'has some time stood for a truth ...... Each of these forms of religion (polytheism and fetichism, to wit) did the world service in its day.' No one form of religion is absolutely true; faith may be ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... and indulge the bent of his own genius. There are points, when the most elaborate and polished style, the most enthusiastic lyrics, the most profound thoughts and remote allusions, the smartest coruscations of wit, and the most dazzling flights of a sportive or ethereal fancy, are all in their place, and when the willing audience, even those who cannot entirely comprehend them, follow the whole with a greedy ear, like music in unison with their feelings. Here the poet's great art lies in availing ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... Chaucer, has a sentence which struck my attention when I read it, because it expresses an opinion which I, too, have long held. Mr. Morley says: —'The main current of English literature cannot be disconnected from the lively Celtic wit in which it has one of its sources. The Celts do not form an utterly distinct part of our mixed population. But for early, frequent, and various contact with the race that in its half-barbarous ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... a pity to waste wit and wisdom on an object so unworthy. Obviously, I am past reforming"—his smile had a mocking turn to it now—"even if ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... the old woman been at a heavier discount since 1793. I see no discredit to the founders of the American constitution in the main fact of the rupture. On the contrary it was a great achievement to strike off by the will and wit of man a constitution for two millions of men scattered along a seaboard, which has lasted until they have become more than thirty millions and have covered a whole continent. But the freaks, pranks, and follies, not to say worse, with which the rupture has ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... stall, and had bought a dozen pairs of shoes for his guests, and for himself a dreadful pair of boots, which he had not even the courage to wear for an entire fortnight. This anecdote put them into a good humour. She related others, and that with a renewal of grace, youthfulness, and wit. ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... to love her, for no more winsome little girl was ever put in a book, and her keen wit and unexpected drolleries make ...
— Dorothy Dainty at the Mountains • Amy Brooks
... the balance is artificially redressed when the application of the laws has not the sympathy of those who are subject to them is a common symptom in every country and every age. When all felonies were capital offences in England, the wit of juries, by what Blackstone called "a kind of pious perjury," was engaged in devising means by which those who were legally guilty could escape from the penalty; and if it be true that an unpacked jury would possibly in many instances of political offences in Ireland have a prejudice in favour ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... antithesis of it. She was a brisk, prim-mannered, snub-nosed little thing, who wore her hair brushed down as flat as possible and showed an affection for mannish clothes. She had a level head, a keen and rather biting wit, which had the effect of making her constant acts of kindness always unexpected; and an education which, in her surroundings, seemed almost fantastic. She was a Radcliff Master ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... weighed the minister's sermons, while mentally intent upon the architecture of the church roof. Night after night the lonely face brightened the shadows of the stage-wings, and the delicate ear drank in the folly, the feeling, the wit and wisdom of the play. To such a boyhood the personal contact of his father's nature was all in all. It was quaffing from the fountain-head, not from streams of the imitation of imitation. As the genius of the father ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... glass, the well-known whale-boat sweeping round the ship's stern, and rowing swiftly towards the shore. A deep blush announced that the glass had also informed her who was, in midshipman's language, the "sitter," the person in the stern-sheets, to wit, and she immediately proposed returning to the house. Morton, on landing, informed her that the ship would get under weigh the next morning at day-break, and that it would be most advisable, as the ship could approach no nearer than five miles to the town when beating out of the bay, to go on board ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... was so unmistakable that her quick woman's wit divined the true cause. They had now sauntered some distance away from the part of the tower that might be marked "dangerous," so she grasped Jimmy's ponderous arm, and whispered ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... as possible, let him be accustomed to play about at night. This advice is more important than it would seem. For men, and sometimes for animals, night has naturally its terrors. Rarely do wisdom, or wit, or courage, free us from paying tribute to these terrors. I have seen reasoners, free-thinkers, philosophers, soldiers, who were utterly fearless in broad daylight, tremble like women at the rustle of leaves by night. Such terrors ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... the failure of the French assault upon the town, King Richard would make his own essay. He was not yet wholly recovered of his sickness; but it would have passed the wit of man to devise means by which he could be kept within his pavilion; nor must it be forgotten that such restraint might have done him more of harm than of good. So his physicians, for he had those who regularly waited on him (though I make bold ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... attendance 'sundry gentlewomen and noblemen's sons and daughters, almost of her own age, of the which there were four in special of whom everyone of them bore the same name of Mary, being of four sundry honourable houses, to wit, Fleming, Livingston, Seton, and Beaton of Creich.' The four Maries were still with the Queen in 1564. Hamilton and Carmichael appear in the ballad in place ...
— Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Third Series • Various
... abated through disparity of age, for he had reached the ripe maturity of forty-seven, whilst the bride of his choice had not yet seen half that cycle of summers. To be twenty-four years her senior was, for the husband of a youthful princess so excelling in wit and beauty, certainly a formidable inequality, and so Mdlle. de Bourbon seems to have thought. At the command, however, of her father, who intimated that his determination was inflexible in thus disposing of his ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... employed in accumulating individual wealth, and this in one way, to wit, as agricultural laborers—and this is, perhaps, the most useful purpose to which their labor can be applied. The effect of slavery has not been to counteract the tendency to dispersion, which seems epidemical among ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... body, patient of cold and heat, big head, broad breast, broken voice, temperate in meat, using much exercise, just stature, forma elegantissima, colore sub-rufo, oculis glaucis, sharp wit, very great memory, constancy in adversity [and] in felicity, except at last he yielded, because almost forsaken of all; liberal, imposed few tributes, excellent soldier and fortunate, wise and not unlearned. His vices: mild and promising in adversity, fierce and hard, and a violator of faith ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... aristocrats, and included the middle-class manufacturers and the great bulk of the working class in the industrial districts of Lancashire, Yorkshire and the Midlands, that "no better system (of Parliamentary representation) could be devised by the wit of man" than the unreformed House of Commons, and that he would never bring forward a reform measure himself, and should always feel it his duty to resist such measure when proposed by others, yet, in less than two years after this speech Wellington's ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... Toc," said Adams, eyeing the lad with a twinkling expression, "d'ye know, I have heard it said or writ somewhere, that brevity is the soul of wit. If that sayin's true, an' I've no reason for to suppose that it isn't, I should say that that observation of yours was wit without either soul or body, it's so uncommon short; too witty, in short. Couldn't you manage to add something ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... leave any message?" he repeated; "a moment's common-sense will be of more use than all this indignation. It is of the greatest importance to me to see Rosa Elsworthy. Here's how it is, Gerald," said the Curate, driven to his wit's end; "a word from the girl is all I want to make an end of all this—this disgusting folly—and you see how I am thwarted. Perhaps they will answer you. When did she come?—did she say anything?" he cried, turning sharply upon Sarah, who, frightened by Mr Wentworth's ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... but a wooden doll, Have neither wit nor grace; And very clumsy in my joints And yet ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... Analytics, 'tis thou hast ravish'd me! Bene disserere est finis logices. Is, to dispute well, logic's chiefest end? Affords this art no greater miracle? Then read no more; thou hast attain'd that end: A greater subject fitteth Faustus' wit: Bid Economy farewell, and Galen come: Be a physician, Faustus; heap up gold, And be eterniz'd for some wondrous cure: Summum bonum medicinoe sanitas, The end of physic is our body's health. Why, Faustus, hast thou not attain'd that end? Are not thy bills hung up as monuments, Whereby ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... and servants, endeavored to cheer him. They tried all the arts of eloquence and flattery to dispel his sadness. Talleyrand attempted to amuse him by reciting, with charming medisance and pointed humor, passages from the rich stores of his memoirs, and by relating, with Attic wit, the story of his first love, which had bequeathed to him a lame foot as a remembrancer. Lannes, with the blunt humor of a true soldier, told stories of his campaigns. Duroc smilingly reminded the emperor of many an adventure ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... hope to become a first-class catcher. As before said, he has many chances offered for the employment of judgment and skill; and to make the best use of these he must be possessed of some brains. The ideal catcher not only stops the ball and throws it well, but he is a man of quick wit, he loses no time in deciding upon a play, he is never "rattled" in any emergency, he gives and receives signals, and, in short, plays all the points of his position, and accomplishes much that a player of less ready ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward
... appointed to superintend disembarkation of an attacking force, who holds plenary powers, and generally leads the storming party. His acts when in the heat of action, if he summarily shoot a coward, are unquestioned—poor Falconer, to wit! ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... two dances and then a feeling of panic descended upon them. They were horribly, glaringly conspicuous. Every eye was on them. Every one was whispering at their expense. Dolly had never known the sensation of being a wallflower, and for the first time her natural wit deserted her. At first she had deployed all the instinctive arts of her challenged coquetry. She had openly flaunted her affection for Skippy, smiling into his fascinated eyes, laughing uproariously ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... husband in reality, as faintly shadowed in his productions. Fresh as a young fountain, with childlike, transparent emotions; vivid as the flash of a sword in the sun with sharp wit and penetration; of such an unworn, unworldly observance of all that is enacted and thought under the sun; as free from prejudice and party or sectarian bias as the birds, and therefore wise with a large wisdom that is as impartial as God's winds and sunbeams. His ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... presence of mind. With a firm hand, he lowered the ladder. But his wit was not quick. He should have carried it along the wall and placed it behind the boys. Instead, it descended several yards away. The bear, who appeared to be no fool, lowered his forepaws and trotted slowly toward ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... should give all his substance, yet it is as nothing. And if he should do great penances, yet are they but little. And if he should attain to all knowledge, he is yet far off. And if he should be of great virtue and very fervent devotion, yet is there much wanting; to wit, one thing which is most necessary for him. What is that? That having left all, he leave himself, and go wholly out of himself, and retain nothing of self-love.... I have often said unto thee, and now again I say the same. Forsake ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... say a thousand times that she was pretty; he had laughed himself a thousand times at her quick wit. But he had never dreamed that it would make his heart come up into his throat and suffocate him whenever he thought of her, or that her lightest and simplest words, her most casual and unconscious glance, would burn in his ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... hae a' that cleart oot, an syne begin frae the verra foondation, diggin', an' patchin', an' buttressin', till I got it a' as soun' as a whunstane; an' whan I cam to the tap o' the rock, there the castel sud tak to growin' again; an' grow it sud, till there it stude, as near what it was as the wit an' the han' o' man ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... Chronicle, have completed a Livy in an admirable new translation by Canon Roberts, while Caesar, Tacitus, Thucydides and Herodotus are not forgotten. "You only, O Books," said Richard de Bury, "are liberal and independent; you give to all who ask." The delightful variety, the wisdom and the wit which are at the disposal of Everyman in his own library may well, at times, seem to him a little embarrassing. He may turn to Dick Steele in The Spectator and learn how Cleomira dances, when the elegance of her motion is unimaginable and "her eyes are chastised with ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... is supposed, may bear all lights; and one of those principal lights or natural mediums by which things are to be viewed in order to a thorough recognition is ridicule itself.—SHAFTESBURY: Essay on the Freedom of Wit ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... amiable and unselfish man. He had principle, but he lacked resolution; and the wild, vacillating character of his life is mirrored in his writings, where The Christian Hero stands in singular contrast to the comic personages of his dramas. He was a genial critic. His exuberant wit and humor reproved without wounding; he was not severe enough to be a public censor, nor pedantic enough to be the pedagogue of an age which often needed the lash rather than the gentle reproof, and upon which a merciful clemency lost its end if not ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... Arachne's fate; Be prudent, Chloe, and submit, For you'll most surely meet her hate, Who rival both her art and wit." ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... something that I determined on it, than from any great hope I entertained of its proving of much avail) was to ride over to Hillingford, and consult Freddy Coleman on the subject. Perhaps his clear head and quick wit might enable him to devise some scheme by which, without betraying Harry's confidence, or bringing the slightest imputation on his honour, this duel might be prevented. What else could I do? It was quite clear to me that the note Harry had received ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... but I desire to treat her with scrupulous fairness, and I admit that she had one good thing, to wit, her gutta-percha tooth. In earlier days one of her front teeth, as she told me, had fallen out, but instead of then parting with it, the resourceful child had hammered it in again with a hair-brush, which she ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... and women of spirit and wit furthered all intellectual and social development; but it was the mistresses—those great women of political schemes and moral degeneracy—who were vested with the actual importance, and it must in justice ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... naughty crabs obeyed him, he blames himself for his quiet nature, and swears that he will never trust a crab again. The captain asks him about the pots. Juan tells him that they are all safe, and that the captain must thank him for his wit in solving the problem of how to carry two dozen large pots at the same time. All the robbers are eager to see what Juan's scheme was. When they find out what Juan has done, and see the holes in the bottom of all the pots, they cannot help laughing. ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... wondered, chancing to glance behind me, I saw the fin of a shark standing above the water not twenty paces away, and advancing rapidly towards me. Then terror seized me and gave me strength and the wit of despair. Pulling down the edge of the barrel till the water began to pour into it, I seized it on either side with my hands, and lifting my weight upon them, I doubled my knees. To this hour ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... the Comedie Francaise less successfully by Got, is a second Figaro, with a strong likeness to Balzac himself. He is continually on the stage, and keeps the audience uninterruptedly amused by his wit, good-humour, hearty bursts of laughter, and ceaseless expedients for baffling his creditors. The action of the play is simple and natural, and the dialogue scintillates with bon mots, gaiety, and amusing sallies. The play had been conceived ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... Higd. Hen. Hunt. Matth. West. Wil. Malm.] About the same time also, or rather two yeere before; to wit 1097. neere to Abington, at a towne called Finchamsteed in Berkshire, a well or fountaine flowed with bloud, in maner as before it vsed to flow with water, and this continued for the space of three daies, or (as William ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (2 of 12) - William Rufus • Raphael Holinshed
... when I got there, I had out two jaw teeth and a stump without wincin', as you may say, and the doctor said he'd like me for a subject to pull on all the time. But I told him it would take two to make a bargain on that, I reckoned;" and she laughed heartily at the remembrance of her own wit. ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... gossip and pen pictures of the people he knew. The little drop of malice he injects into his descriptions of the personages he encounters is harmless enough and proves that the young man had considerable wit. Count Gallenberg, the lessee of the famous Karnthnerthor Theatre, was kind to him, and the publisher Haslinger treated him politely. He had brought with him his variations on "La ci darem la mano"; altogether the times seemed propitious ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... came low and awesomely. Rude and uncultured as the man was, he seemed to be strangely affected by this unexpected suggestion. "I haven't the wit to answer that," said he. "How can we tell what she knew. The man who killed her is in jail. He might talk to some purpose. Why don't ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... to expunge that same, unless you please to add, 'by a person of quality, or of wit and honour about town.' Merely say, 'written to be spoken at D[rury] L[ane]'" (Letter to Murray, September 30, 1816, Letters, 1899, iii. 367). The first edition had been issued, and no alteration could be made, but the title-page of a "New Edition," ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... not believe that he would have spoken thus, or produced such a stock of ponderous phrases, crying aloud, as if he were acting a tragedy, 'O Earth and Sun and Virtue,'[n] and the like; or again, invoking 'Wit and Culture, by which things noble and base are discerned apart'—for, of course, you heard him speaking in this way. {128} Scum of the earth! What have you or yours to do with virtue? How should you discern what is noble and what is not? Where and how did you get your qualification ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... to me, Vaughan, that we must trust to our own strong arms and mother-wit to recover the two lads," observed Captain Layton, when they had parted from the ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... own, who was enough to have filled the hands of three or four red, white, and blue ribbon associations. He was a fine subject to work on, this young Harrison Lowder. Few young men have been so much reformed. He had a bright wit and genial manners, but moral endowments had been accidentally omitted in his makeup. Nothing that was pleasant could seem wrong to him. He was a magnificent sinner, with an artistic lightness of touch in wrongdoing, and he took his evil courses with such unfailing ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... call you it? so you would leave battering, 35 I had rather have it a head: an you use these blows long, I must get a sconce for my head, and insconce it too; or else I shall seek my wit in my shoulders. But, I pray, ...
— The Comedy of Errors - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... books by their size, which was the first step towards a cosmos. There was a certain playful naivete about Charley's manner and speech, when he was happy, which gave him an instant advantage with women, and even made the impression of wit where there was only grace. Although he was perfectly capable, however, of engaging to any extent in the badinage which has ever been in place between young men and women since dawning humanity was first aware of a lovely difference, there was always a ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... masculine equality. One day a workman noticed the extreme smallness and dexterity of her hands. "Gee, Bill, you should have been a girl." "How do you know I'm not?" she retorted. In such ways her ready wit and good humor always, disarmed suspicion as to her sex. She shunned no difficulties in her work or in her sports, we are told, and never avoided the severest tests. "She drank, she swore, she courted girls, she worked as hard ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the door, and take in this Beloved. Here I make offer of Him unto you, here I present Him unto you! Lift up your heads, O ye doors, that the king of glory may come in. I present a glorious Conqueror this night, to be your guest. O cast ye open the two foldings of the door of your hearts, to wit, that ye may receive Him; cast ye open the hearty consent of faith and love, that He may take up His abode with you. Oh, what say ye to it? Friends, will ye close with Christ? I obtest you by his own excellency, I obtest ...
— The Life of James Renwick • Thomas Houston
... the servant had received instructions. His lordship has a great reputation for wit, ...
— The Great Adventure • Arnold Bennett
... shall pass the ordeal of any number of separate tribunals, before it shall be determined that they are to have the force of laws. Our American constitutions have provided five of these separate tribunals, to wit, representatives, senate, executive,[2] jury, and judges; and have made it necessary that each enactment shall pass the ordeal of all these separate tribunals, before its authority can be established ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... somebody point out where that awful thing that is iterated and reiterated so much, to wit, NEGRO DOMINATION existed under this showing in the communicipality ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... Rouge shook his head emphatically. "No. I ain' goin' 'long. I w'at you call, learn lesson for fool wit' tamahnawus." ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... greater people than the peasants get drunk. The story of "Semiletka"[41]—a variant of the well known tale of how a woman's wit enables her to guess all riddles, to detect all deceits, and to conquer all difficulties—relates how the heroine was chosen by a Voyvode[42] as his wife, with the stipulation that if she meddled in the affairs of his ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... THE SLEEVE.—A writer in Notes and Queries gives an instance of Curry's wit, introduced after a defeat in a conversational contest with Lady Morgan. "It was the fashion then for ladies to wear very short sleeves; and Lady Morgan, albeit not a young woman, with true provincial exaggeration, wore none—a mere strap over her shoulders. Curry was walking away from her ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... landed long eer an Indian Canoe Came from below with 3 Indians in it, those Indians make verry nice Canoes of Pine. Thin with aporns & Carve on the head imitation of animals & other heads; The Indians above Sacrafise the property of the Deceased to wit horses Canoes, bowls Basquets of which they make great use to hold water boil their meet &c. &c. great many Indians came down from the uppr Village & Sat with us, Smoked, rained all the evenig & blew hard from the West encamped on the ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... manner he spent his time in London, it is none of my business to inquire; thof I know pretty well what kind of lives are led by gemmen of your Inns of Court.—I myself once belonged to Serjeants' Inn, and was perhaps as good a wit and a critic as any Templar of them all. Nay, as for that matter, thof I despise vanity, I can aver with a safe conscience, that I had once the honour to belong to the society called the Town. We were all of us ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... I dare say, if that chap is much about, I shall knock him down if he cheeks me, but we will shake hands on the spot every time, you bet! I a feud! No, Signy, I am not a fool just yet; though if I had stayed much longer on Yelholme, I'd have lost the little wit I now possess." ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... eight brothers, to wit: Marie Theresa Josepha, born 1767, who married Antoine Clement, brother of Frederic Augustus, King of Saxony; Ferdinand, born 1769, who, after having been Grand Duke of Tuscany, became Grand Duke of Wrzburg, ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... Philadelphia in 1774, where he became first a contributor to newspapers and periodicals, and then editor of the "Philadelphia Magazine." By this time the public mind had been prepared by various productions issued from the press, to entertain thoughts of independence. Paine turned his wit to this subject, and in 1776 he brought out his famous pamphlet, called "Common Sense," which contained bolder sentiments than any written by all the other various pamphleteers. His production met with unparalleled success. Copies were distributed throughout the colonies, and "Common ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... and Anna thought he was the village half-wit. Village genius, more likely; the other peasants didn't understand him, and resented his superiority. They went over for a closer look at the wheels, and pushed them. Sonny was almost beside himself. Mom was puzzled, but she ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper
... to do wit' the boy. Go, mine Anna, get the lad a clean shirt, and take it down to ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... Joseph Surface are much more effective together than either of them would be alone. The wholehearted and happy-go-lucky recklessness of the one sets off the smooth and smug dissimulation of the other; the first gives light to the play, and the second shade. Hamlet's wit is sharpened by the garrulous obtuseness of Polonius; the sad world-wisdom of Paula Tanqueray is accentuated by the innocence of Ellean. Similarly, to return to the novel for examples, we need only instance the contrast in mind between ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... wide grin, and would again have bludgeoned the Eurasian with his wit had not the Hawk motioned him to silence. Looking at ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore
... been speaking of another groaning within ourselves, which is the expression of 'the earnest expectation' of 'the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body'; and he says that that longing will be the more patient the more it is full of hope. This, then, is Paul's conception of the normal attitude of a Christian soul; but that attitude is hard ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... Tinah himself gave credit to this whimsical and fabulous account; for though they have credulity sufficient to believe anything, however improbable, they are at the same time so much addicted to that species of wit which we call humbug that it is frequently difficult to discover whether they are in jest or earnest. Their ideas of geography are very simple: they believe the world to be a fixed plane of great extent; and that the sun, moon, and stars are all in motion ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... was recompensed by a great many kicks and cuffs, which ought to have been sufficient to have warned him of the great danger of being a little before his age in wit. ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... to get into my old cell; but when I went to the spot, behold! the prison had vanished; and so I was greatly disappointed, (Laughter.) On going to Washington, I mentioned to President Lincoln, the disappointment I had met with. With a smiling countenance and a ready wit, he replied, "So, Mr. Garrison, the difference between 1830 and 1864 appears to be this: in 1830 you could not get out, and in 1864 you could not get in!" (Great laughter.) This was not only wittily said, but it truthfully indicated the wonderful revolution that ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... select large female souls as Biography or Painting has; and to pick out a selfish, shallow, illiterate creature, with nothing but beauty, and bestow three enormous volumes on her, is to make a perverse selection, beauty being, after all, rarer in women than wit, sense, and goodness. It is as false and ignoble in art, as to marry a pretty face without heart and brains ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... and wit, fully representing the author's varied talents, and vigorously written in the style ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... chorister to aid me in winning those "laughing honours of society." And your supervision is all the more necessary, since, as you said to me, I live in a section where the literary point of view is more sentimental than accurate. This is accounted for, not by a lack of native wit, but by the fact that we have no scholarship or purely intellectual foundations. We are romanticists, but not students in life or art. We make no great distinctions between ideality and reality because with ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... Abenrazin had made covenant with the Cid, so that they were friends, and the Cid had never done hurt in his lands. And when he knew this that he had done with the King of Aragon, he held himself to have been deceived and dealt falsely with; howbeit he dissembled this, and let none of his company wit, till they had gathered in all the corn from about Algezira de Xucar, and carried it to Juballa. When this was done, he bade his men make ready, and he told them not whither they were to go, and he set forward at night toward Albarrazin, and came to the Fountain. Now that land was in peace, and ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... fare you well. [Exeunt three JEWS.] [42] See the simplicity of these base slaves, Who, for the villains have no wit themselves, Think me to be a senseless lump of clay, That will with every water wash to dirt! No, Barabas is born to better chance, And fram'd of finer mould than common men, That measure naught but by the present time. A reaching ...
— The Jew of Malta • Christopher Marlowe
... religious instruction is deliberately excluded? The wisest of us expect far too much from school teaching. One of the most innocent, contented, happy, and, in his sphere, most useful men whom I know, can neither read nor write. Though learning and sharpness of wit must exist somewhere, to protect, and in some points to interpret the Scriptures, yet we are told that the Founder of this religion rejoiced in spirit, that things were hidden from the wise and prudent, and ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... and highest tone of human feeling, is as good as the whole society permits it to be. It is made of the spirit, more than of the talent of men, and is a compound result into which every great force enters as an ingredient, namely virtue, wit, ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... dwelt contemplatively on the girl before him. She was very slim and young, and plainly very nervous. There was no beauty about Ernestine Cardwell, only a certain wild grace peculiarly charming, and a quick wit that some people found too shrewd. When she laughed she was a child. Her laugh was irresistible, and there was magic in her smile, a baffling, elusive magic too transient to be defined. Very sudden and very fleeting was her smile. Rivington saw it ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the wit of the man is to the front. At the battle of Neuve Chapelle, at the beginning of March, a bomb-thrower, rushing through the village, came upon a cellar full of Germans in hiding. Putting his head in at the door, at the risk of his life he cried: 'How many of yer are there in there?' The ...
— With The Immortal Seventh Division • E. J. Kennedy and the Lord Bishop of Winchester
... expressions yet more strong, he made use of; and had Sir Philip had less unalterable politeness, I believe they would have had a vehement quarrel. He maintained his ground, however, with calmness and steadiness, though he had neither argument nor wit at all equal to such ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... and sprightly in appearance, the fair Suzanne was well instructed in sciences and languages. Her wit, beauty and erudition made her a prodigy and an object of universal admiration upon the occasion of her visits to her relations in Lausanne. Soon an intimate connection existed between Edward Gibbon and herself; he frequently accompanied her to stay at her mountain home at Grassy, while at ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... just seventeen years of age, and had promised to her all manner of success for her coming life. Martha Biggs had never, not even then, been pretty; but she had been very faithful. She had not been a favourite with Mr. Furnival, having neither wit nor grace to recommend her, and therefore in the old happy days of Keppel Street she had been kept in the background; but now, in this present time of her adversity, Mrs. Furnival found the benefit of having ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... believed and loved. Nor when we come to examine the favourite amusement of later royalty, do we find that the interludes brought forward in the pauses of the banquets of Henry VIII. have a claim to any refinement upon those old miracle-plays. They have gained in facility and wit; they have lost in poetry. They have lost pathos too, and have gathered grossness. In the comedies which soon appear, there is far more of fun than of art; and although the historical play had existed for some time, and the streams of learning from the ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... settled and gone to work at the place that was afterwards known as Lurvey's Mills; and he soon began to prosper, for he was possessed of keen mother wit and had energy and resolution enough for half a dozen ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... the sight of the total. The tenth of November, you purchased a thimble: some men have skill enough to mend their clothes at their leisure moments. A few days ago I paid a visit to a charming literary man, who writes articles full of life and wit for the newspapers. I opened the door so suddenly, he blushed as he threw a pair of pantaloons into the corner. He had a thimble on his finger. Ah! wretched cits, who refuse to give your daughters in marriage to literary men, you would be full of admiration for them, could you see them mending ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... that they do not exist at all. He sees our virtues are not what they pretend they are; and, on the strength of that, he denies us the possession of virtue altogether. He has learned the first lesson, that no man is wholly good; but he has not even suspected that there is another equally true, to wit, that no man is ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... but a cheap substitute for wit; regardful of criticism, which is often provocative or promotive of improvement, inspired with the dignity of their high calling, and with a fine vision that projects itself into the future, the librarians ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... would not have been very easy to find anything more perfect than these extemporised representations of Nicolo Musso; they overflowed with wit, humour, and genius, and lashed the follies of the day with an unsparing scourge. The audience were quite carried away by the incomparable characterisation which distinguished all the actors, but particularly by the inimitable mimicry of Pasquarello,[4.2] ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... features were remarkably beautiful, and the bloom and clearness of her complexion were such as absolutely to render necessary the old comparison of the rose and the lily to do them justice. To these were added a voluptuous figure, agreeable manners, the graces and vivacity of wit, and the still more enduring attractions of good humor, purity, and benevolence. A female like her could not but be dear to all who enjoyed her intimacy, and a strong friendship sprang up between her and ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... Montrose, we claim to derive from a common ancestor with the celebrated author of "Martinus Scriblerus." Indeed, the first of our name who settled at Saxonholme was one James Arbuthnot, son to a certain nonjuring parson Arbuthnot, who lived and died abroad, and was own brother to that famous wit, physician and courtier whose genius, my father was wont to say, conferred a higher distinction upon our branch of the family than did those Royal Letters-Patent whereby the elder stock was ennobled by His most Gracious Majesty King George the Fourth, on the ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... has blood in her veins. All the same I lover her; and I must go on loving her; and if I can humble her inordinate vanity I will. I'll do a Melancolia that shall be something like a Melancolia 'the Melancolia that transcends all wit.' I'll do it at once, ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... of a rum distillery running a night shift on half time. At any rate this is what I said about Homer, and when I spoke of Pindar,—the dainty grace of his strophes,—and Aristophanes, the delicious sallies of his wit, sally after sally, each sally explained in a note calling it a sally—I managed to suffuse my face with an animation which made ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... a lot of good natured roughneck wit about his size for he only weighed 800 pounds and a couple of surcingles made a belt for him. What he lacked in size he made up in grit and the men secretly respected his gameness. They said he might make a pretty good man if he ever got any growth, and considered it a necessary education ...
— The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan • W.B. Laughead
... not fail us. Here is his definition of humor, ready to hand: humor is "the mental faculty of discovering, expressing, or appreciating ludicrous or absurdly incongruous elements in ideas, situations, happenings, or acts," with the added information that it is distinguished from wit as "less purely intellectual and having more kindly sympathy with human nature, and as often blended with pathos." A friendly rival in lexicography defines the same prized human attribute more lightly as "a facetious ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... and even judges feared him, as well they might, for he never spared them when they were wrong. In the early part of his career, his admiring countrymen loved to call him, "the counsellor," and it was their highest delight to hear him cross-examine a witness. Anecdotes of his wit, humour, and keen penetration whilst so engaged, are very numerous, very amusing, and full of character. As a cross-examiner he had no rival at all; lawyers of his time there were, who might dispute the palm with him for profound knowledge of ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... though I suppose there is more room in the plan begun, than in that now sent, yet there is enough in this for all the three branches of government, and more than enough is not wanted. This contains sixteen rooms; to wit, four on the first floor, for the General Court, Delegates, lobby, and conference. Eight on the second floor, for the Executive, the Senate, and six rooms for committees and juries: and over four of these smaller rooms ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... wish to all Flowers in the garden, meat in the hall, A bin of wine, a spice of wit, A house with lawns enclosing it, A living river by the door, ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Arabella rejoined: "Your wit misleads you, darling. I know what I am about. I decline a wordy contest. To approach to a quarrel, or, say dispute, with one's parent apropos of such a person, is something worse than ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... people congratulated her. Instead of being modest, and a little stupid and retiring, she now answered back badinage with flippant words of her own. Her cleverness was such an established fact that her utter nonsense was received as wit, and she soon had throngs of men and women round her laughing at her words and privately taking note ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... downcast eyes, she had returned to sheer girlishness again, overawed by her mother. The meal had an unusual aspect. Mr. Povey, safe from the dentist's, but having lost two teeth in two days, was being fed on 'slops'—bread and milk, to wit; he sat near the fire. The others had cold pork, half a cold apple-pie, and cheese; but Sophia only pretended to eat; each time she tried to swallow, the tears came into her eyes, and her throat shut itself ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... deliberations in the finest humor with everybody, particularly with that prime favorite, Susan B. Anthony. This lady daily grows upon all present; the woman suffragists love her for her good works, the audience for her brightness and wit, and the multitude of press representatives for her frank, plain, open, business-like way of doing everything connected with the council. Miss Anthony when in repose looks worn with the conflict ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... in forming a Cabinet. They agreed to do so, and one of them, Mr. James Edward Fitzgerald, a Canterbury settler of brilliant abilities, figured as the Colony's first Premier. An Irish gentleman, an orator and a wit, he was about as fitted to cope with the peculiar and delicate imbroglio before him as Murat would have been to conceive and direct one of Napoleon's campaigns. In a few weeks he and his Parliamentary colleagues came to loggerheads with the old officials in the Cabinet, and ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... of the Caliph Haroun Al Raschid, there was at Bagdad a druggist, called Alboussan Ebn Thaher, a very rich, handsome man. He had more wit and politeness than people of his profession ordinarily have. His integrity, sincerity, and jovial humour made him beloved and sought after by all sorts of people. The Caliph, who knew his merit, had entire ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... enough he've a-driven me just wild with it. Men be all of one mould. . . . Mr Nanjivell, you've no great experience o' women. But did 'ee ever know a woman druv to the strikes[1] by another woman? An' did 'ee ever know a woman, not gone in the strikes, that didn' keep some wit at the back of her temper? . . . I was dealin' with Mrs Polsue, don't you make ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... pervasive. In her it took the place of wit. It took the place of culture. It even took the place of vivacity. It was a sort of maid-of-all-work in her personality and never seemed to tire. The odd thing was that it did not seem to tire others. They found it permanently piquant. Men said of ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... Captain Burrows, jumping up and grasping both my hands. 'Of course he was; darn my lubberly wit that I couldn't see that before!' Then he hugged me as if I was a ten-year-old girl, and danced ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... Congregationalists; 4. The Roman Catholics; 5. The Friends; 6. The Baptists; 7. The Presbyterians; 8. The Methodists; to which must be added three sects which up to this time had almost exclusively to do with the German language and the German immigrant population, to wit, 9. The German Reformed; 10. The Lutherans; 11. The Moravians. Some of these, as the Congregationalists and the Baptists, were of so simple and elastic a polity, so self-adaptive to whatever new environment, as to require no effort to adjust themselves. Others, as the Dutch and the ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... firmly that I, with these ships and crews, came from the sky; and in such opinion, they received me at every place where I landed, after they had lost their terror. And this comes not because they are ignorant: on the contrary, they are men of very subtle wit, who navigate all those seas, and who give a marvellously good account of everything, but because they never saw men wearing clothes nor the like of our ships. And as soon as I arrived in the Indies, ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... taste for low society, which is worse than "pressing to death, whipping, or hanging." His father sent him abroad, but he only returned wilder and more desperate than before. It is true, this unhappy youth was not without his good qualities. He had lively wit, good temper, reckless generosity, and manners, which, while he was under restraint, might pass well in society. But all these availed him nothing. He was so well acquainted with the turf, the gaming-table, the cock-pit, and every worse rendezvous of folly and ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... story mentioned is one indicative of Putnam's wit and readiness. The army was now encamped in the forest, in a locality to the eastward of Lake George. While here, the Indians prowled through the woods around it, committing depredations here and there, picking off sentinels, ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... was "the closet companion" of Charles I in the "solitudes" of the end of his life; and by the puritanical allusion to the "vain amatorious poem of Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia" from which, however "full of worth and wit" in its own kind, it was a disgrace to the king to borrow a prayer at so grave an hour. Perhaps as a mark of their approval of Eikonoklastes, the Council of State gave Milton lodgings in Whitehall; and soon afterwards, in January 1650, called ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... have a consecutive statement—God made the heavens and the earth in the beginning, and thus they were finished, and all the host of them. They were not made in six days, but "in the day," to wit, in that period of remote time called "The Beginning." And God made also all the herbs of the field, all vegetation. And he made every plant of the field before it was cultivated in that particular part of the world ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... Wit, next nearest old time to pass, With his diamond oar, and his boat of glass; A feathery dart from his store he drew, And shouted, while far and swift it flew, "O mirth ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... sport, Enjoyed the idle pleasures of the court, Whiling away the time with games of chance, With music and the more voluptuous dance, The hollow paths of vanity pursued, Laughed, jested, swore, drank, danced, and even wooed; No tongue more prone to questionable wit, Nor chaste, when time and place demanded it; His basso voice, both voluble and strong, Excelled in wassail mirth and ribald song; He swore with oaths most impious and unblest; Ate much, drank more, on these lines did his best; Caroused by day, caroused ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... published? I do not agree with the opinion of the Morning Post that "the author of the Protocols must have had the Dialogues of Joly before him." It is possible, but not proven. Indeed, I find it difficult to imagine that anyone embarking on such an elaborate imposture should not have possessed the wit to avoid quoting passages verbatim—without even troubling to arrange them in a different sequence—from a book which might at any moment be produced as evidence against him. For contrary to the assertions of the Times the Dialogues of Joly is by no means a rare book, not only was it to ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... an indulgent employer whose clothes fitted Jeff. Indeed, anybody's clothes fitted Jeff. He had one of those figures which seem to give and take. He was well nourished, gifted conversationally, of a nimble wit, resourceful, apt. Moreover, home-grown watermelons were ripe. The Eighth of August, celebrated in these parts by the race as Emancipation Day, impended. The big revival—the biggest and most tremendously successful ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... Antony, both in Greek and Roman style, have been handed down, I have determined to write a little about the beginning and end of Paul's life; more because the matter has been omitted, than trusting to my own wit. But how he lived during middle life, or what stratagems of Satan he endured, is known ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... his feelings up. The ludicrous, however, in any of its shapes, is a phaenomenon with which M. Comte seems to have been totally unacquainted. There is nothing in his writings from which it could be inferred that he knew of the existence of such things as wit and humour. The only writer distinguished for either, of whom he shows any admiration, is Moliere, and him he admires not for his wit but for his wisdom. We notice this without intending any reflection on M. Comte; for a profound conviction ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... easily I befooled that sergeant! That is how things have to be done, Makarei—one has to keep folk from knowing one's business, yet to make them think that they are the chief persons concerned, and the persons whose wit has put the ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... general miscellaneous lot, her own book, never read by anybody else but me, added to and completed by me after her first reading of it, eight-and-forty printed pages, six-and-ninety columns, Whiting's own work, Beaufort House to wit, thrown off by the steam-ingine, best of paper, beautiful green wrapper, folded like clean linen come home from the clear-starcher's, and so exquisitely stitched that, regarded as a piece of needlework alone, it's better than the sampler of a seamstress ...
— Doctor Marigold • Charles Dickens
... that a man should have more wives than one. Then the young Papirius told the story how his mother had questioned him, and how he had devised this story to escape from her importunity. Thereupon the Senate, judging that all boys might not have the same constancy and wit, and that the State might suffer damage from the revealing of things that had best be kept secret, made this law, that no sons of a senator should thereafter come into the House, save only this young Papirius, but that he should have the right ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... horsed he thanked heartily Sir Tristram, and desired to wit his name; but he would not tell him, but that he was a poor knight adventurous; and so he bare King Arthur fellowship till he met with some of his knights. And within a while he met with Sir Ector de Maris, ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... mere possession of animal spirits, too exuberant to be confined within the established bounds. Every vain jest and unprofitable word was deemed an item in the account of criminality, and whatever wit, or semblance thereof, came into existence, its birthplace was generally the pulpit, and its parent some sour old Genevan divine. The specimens of humor and satire, preserved in the sermons and controversial ...
— Dr. Bullivant - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... over the old roads of four continents with the words of one whose wisdom was not surpassed by his wit, although his wit surpassed most of the wisdom of his contemporaries. "It is of some importance," says Sydney Smith, (it is wrong to add 'the Reverend,' for no one says Mr. William Shakspeare or Mr. John Milton,) ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... 1718, made Duke of Wharton for his fathers vigorous support of the Hanoverian succession. His character was much worse than that of his father, the energetic politician and the man of cultivated taste and ready wit to whom Steele and Addison here dedicated the Fifth ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... yet unseen, beaming across the ages, Brimful of fun And wit and wisdom, baffling all the sages ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... O, Sleep! The certain knot of peace, The baiting place of wit, the balm of woe, The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release, The indifferent judge between the high ...
— Sleep-Book - Some of the Poetry of Slumber • Various
... retort on the tip of my tongue. Fortunately I suppressed it; there is no accomplishment so fatal to success in life as wit, except kindness. ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... had the beauty, the wit, the genius, the dramatic talent, which have constituted the strength of some wonderfully ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... walking softly on, and offered to meddle with nobody, till Friday coming pretty near, calls to him, as if the bear could understand him: "Hark ye, hark ye," says Friday, "me speakee wit you," We followed at a distance; for now being come down to the Gascoigne side of the mountains, we were entered a vast great forest, where the country was plain, and pretty open, though many trees in ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... Crawley's house, but asked her to her own mansion and spoke to her twice in the most public and condescending manner during dinner. The important fact was known all over London that night. People who had been crying fie about Mrs. Crawley were silent. Wenham, the wit and lawyer, Lord Steyne's right-hand man, went about everywhere praising her: some who had hesitated, came forward at once and welcomed her; little Tom Toady, who had warned Southdown about visiting such an abandoned woman, now besought to be introduced to her. In a word, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the Rue Royale, thence I had diverged into the Rue de Louvain—an old and quiet street. I remember that, feeling a little hungry, and not desiring to go back and take my share of the "gouter," now on the refectory-table at Pelet's—to wit, pistolets and water—I stepped into a baker's and refreshed myself on a COUC(?)—it is a Flemish word, I don't know how to spell it—A CORINTHE-ANGLICE, a currant bun—and a cup of coffee; and then I strolled on towards the Porte ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... admitted language taken from purely Japanese sources and could thus be produced without any exercise of special scholarship. Afterwards, by the addition of the hokku, an abbreviation of the already brief renga and haikai, which adapted itself to the capacities of anyone possessing a nimble wit or a sparkling thought, without any preparation of literary study, the range of poetry was still further extended. Matsuo Basho Was the father of the haikai and the hokku, and his mantle descended upon Kikaku, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... passage, erased certain lines from her face and restored the curves to her figure—indeed, it came to be much more than a restoration!—but they could not restore the colour to her hair nor the lightness to her heart. She looked at mankind from a cynical altitude of worldly wisdom; her wit grew keen and swift as d'Artagnan's rapier; her bon-mots had a way of passing into proverbs, or of being stolen by more distinguished contemporaries. She took her revenge upon society as completely as she could, yet without ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... much employed in military labours, and engaged in so many wars, he, however, found some leisure to devote to literature.(840) Several smart repartees of Hannibal, which have been transmitted to us, show that he had a great fund of natural wit; and this he improved by the most polite education that could be bestowed at that time, and in such a republic as Carthage. He spoke Greek tolerably well, and even wrote some books in that language. His preceptor was a Lacedaemonian, named Sosilus, ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... clever of you," his grace commented heartily— "confoundedly. I should never have had the wit to think of it myself, or the courage to do it if I had. Shop-women ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... not kill, and who had mysteriously flown from the top of the peak into their prisoner's waggon, had spread among them. They knew also that it was she who had saved their general from the Makalanga, and those who had heard her admired the wit and courage with which she had pleaded and won her cause. Therefore, as they marched past in their companies, singing a song of abuse and defiance of the Makalanga who peered at them from the top of the wall, they lifted their ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... of the season, and by which she had hoped to conquer one or two of the remaining rungs of the social ladder—her play was rendered impossible; this affair would get into the society papers, with every perversion which wit or malice could supply—she would be made ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... name of Wecameke. Beginning at a marked oak tree which divideth this land from ye land I formerly sold Samuel Precklove and extending easterly up ye said Sound at a point or turning of ye aforesaid Perquimans River and so up ye east side of ye said river to a creek called Awoseake to wit, all ye land between ye aforesaid bounds of Samuel Precklove and the said creek whence to ye head thereof. And thence through ye woods to ye first bounds. To have and to hold ye quiet possession of ye same to him, his heirs forever, with all rights and privileges thereto forever ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson
... one is a tendency from Polytheism to Monotheism; the other from Polytypism to Monotypism of the earliest forms of life-all animal and vegetable forms having at length come to be regarded as differentiations of a single substance-to wit, protoplasm. ...
— God the Known and God the Unknown • Samuel Butler
... humorists attracted as much custom to good Mr. Pfaff's beer-saloon as did his fresh, cool lager; and that young men, and, for the matter of that, men not so young, stole in there to listen to their contests of wit, and to wish and yearn and aspire to be of their goodly company. For the old gentleman little dreamed, as he went on his course up Broadway, that he had seen the first Bohemians of New York, and that these young men would be written about and ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... suppose, call literature; and some people seem to enjoy reading it. Very well: you sit there and write this literature, or whatever it is, and keep your mind fixed on that. I will see to everything else for you. I will provide you with writing materials, and books of wit and humour, and paste and scissors, and everything else that may be necessary to you in your trade; and I will feed you and clothe you and lodge you, and I will take you about to places that you wish to go to; and I will see that you have plenty of tobacco and ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... other hand, any deception on the part of Elias would oblige us to hold that his accomplices were actually the heads of the party opposed to him, Leo, Angelo, and Rufino. Such want of wit would be surprising indeed in a ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... finally got something out of that stuff?" he asked, approaching the table. He might have been commenting on the antics of the village half-wit, from his tone. ...
— Omnilingual • H. Beam Piper
... sense and money, feeble in person, full of self-will, and consorting rather with fools than with the wise; lastly, if we are to believe Guicciardini, who was an Italian, might well have brought a somewhat partial judgment to bear upon the subject, a young man of little wit concerning the actions of men, but carried away by an ardent desire for rule and the acquisition of glory, a desire based far more on his shallow character and impetuosity than on any consciousness of genius: he was an enemy to all fatigue and all ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... up, and with eggs, cakes or Tansies which be pleasant in taste and goode for the Stomache," wrote quaint old Gerarde. That these were popular dainties in the seventeenth century we further know through Pepys, who made a "pretty dinner" for some guests, to wit: "A brace of stewed carps, six roasted chickens, and a jowl of salmon, hot, for the first course; a tansy, and two neat's tongues, and cheese, the second." Cole's "Art of Simpling," published in 1656, ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... (wood merchants), plostrarii (cart-wrights), piscicapi (fishermen), agricolae (husbandmen), muliones (muleteers), culinarii (cooks), fullones (fullers), and others. Advertisements of this sort appear to have been laid hold of as a vehicle for street wit, just as electioneering squibs are perpetrated among ourselves. Thus we find mentioned, as if among the companies, the pilicrepi (ball-players), the seribibi (late topers), the dormientes universi (all the worshipful company of sleepers), and as a climax, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... of compliment rich and stiff as a piece of ancient brocade. A peremptory letter, bearing the autograph signature of Mary Queen of Scots, to Torquil McLeod of Dunvegan, who had been on the eve, it would seem, of marrying a daughter of Donald of the Isles, gave the Skye chieftain, "to wit" that, as he was of the blood royal of Scotland, he could form no matrimonial alliance without the royal permission,—a permission which, in the case in point, was not to be granted. It served to show that the woman who so ill liked ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... is not vertue, wisdom, valour, wit, 1010 Strength, comliness of shape, or amplest merit That womans love can win or long inherit; But what it is, hard is to say, Harder to hit, (Which way soever men refer it) Much like thy riddle, Samson, in ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... mad girl?" said brother Michael. "Has she not beauty, grace, wit, sense, discretion, ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... a Westphalian. Hatred against the junkers and the priests had driven him to this Protestant city of the South, where from the beginning he had acquired the respect of people through his ready wit and speech. Theresa Hoellriegel had lodged in the house in which he opened his shop, and gained her living as a seamstress. He had thought that she had some money, but it had proved to be too little for his ambitious notions. When he discovered ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... of the specialists is the one already alluded to: that the attack on marriage is an attack on property; so that Shelley was something more hateful to a husband than a horse thief: to wit, a wife thief, and something more hateful to a wife than a burglar: namely, one who would steal her husband's house from over her head, and leave her destitute and nameless on the streets. Now, no doubt this ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... went With shining eyes, and a joy in his face, about His needs of living. Clear it was to me He knew of some sweet race in his daily wont Which blest him wonderly. I lived with him, And from him learnt marvels. Yea, for he gave me A wit to see in our earth more than fear. Brother, how shall I tell thee, who hast still Fear-poisoned nerves, that like a priest he brewed My heart keen drink from out the look of earth?— Gast, is it nothing to thee that all in green The wolds go heaping ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... without presenting his compliments to the lovely and unfortunate marquise. Desgrais had just the manner of the younger son of a great house: he was as flattering as a courtier, as enterprising as a musketeer. In this first visit he made himself attractive by his wit and his audacity, so much so that more easily than he had dared to hope, he got leave to pay a second call. The second visit was not long delayed: Desgrais presented himself the very next day. Such eagerness was flattering to the marquise, so Desgrais was received ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... had the wit to see how the problem was to be wrought out further. No. The best things come to us when we have faithfully and well made all the preparation and done our best; but they come in some way that is none of ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... about her friend. Rebecca's wit, spirits, and accomplishments troubled her with a rueful disquiet. They were only a week married, and here was George already suffering ennui, and eager for others' society! She trembled for the future. ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Madame de N., the accomplished and beautiful wife of a triple millionaire of the quartier St. Honore, equally renowned for the charms of her wit, and for the intensity of her passion for the barking pets so dear to Parisian hearts, had taken a violent fancy (shared by half Paris) to a certain tiny gray spaniel, the property of one of the ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... room and locked the door. She's there now. I've tried to get to her. But she won't let me in, won't even answer me. Listen," and she pointed upward. "She's been doing that for hours. I've taken her food. She won't eat or reply. Nothing except, 'Go,' or 'Go away.' I'm at my wit's ends. I seem to be ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... furbished up for the benefit of the Republicans who now control the Third French Republic. However true it may, or may not, have been of the Comte de Provence and the Comte d'Artois, Henri IV., who was certainly a Bourbon of the Bourbons, had a quick wit at learning, and upon occasion also a neat knack of forgetting. He thought Paris well worth a mass, heard ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... your money and all your warrants,' he saith like a clap of thunder; 'gentlemen, have you now the wit to ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... King Arthur there lived in the County of Cornwall, near to the Land's End of England, a wealthy farmer, who had an only son named Jack. Jack was a brisk boy, and of a ready wit: he took great delight in hearing stories of Giants and Fairies, and used to listen eagerly while any old woman told him of the great deeds of the brave Knights ...
— The Story of Jack and the Giants • Anonymous
... outshining the easily outshone belles of Remsen City. She had felt humiliated by having to divide the honors with a brilliantly beautiful and scandalously audacious Chicago girl, a Yvonne Hereford—whose style, in looks, in dress and in wit, was more comfortable to the standard of the best young men of Remsen City—a standard which Miss Hastings, cultivated by foreign travel and social adventure, regarded as distinctly poor, not to say low. Miss Hereford's audacities were especially offensive to Jane. ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... attended largely by the younger members of families long acquainted and associated, are apt to be rather rollicking, not to say "rough and tumble," affairs, where practical jokes and unmerciful "guying" are the characteristic wit, and such smart tricks as bumping an unsuspecting comrade's head against the wall are applauded with shrieks of admiring laughter. The onlookers may be excused for their tacit countenance of the rudeness, since some element of drollery—that might have been wit, under ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... nephew's gallantry at a period of dejection in Britain: for the winter was dreadful; every kind heart that went to bed with cold feet felt acutely for our soldiers on the frozen heights, and thoughts of heroes were as good as warming-pans. Heroes we would have. It happens in war as in wit, that all the birds of wonder fly to a flaring reputation. He that has done one wild thing must necessarily have done the other; so Nevil found himself standing in the thick of a fame that blew rank eulogies on him for acts ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... natural and free from affectation. There are, it is true, passages, though, comparatively speaking, very few, where his poetry exceeds the bounds of true dialogue, where a too soaring imagination, a too luxuriant wit, rendered the complete dramatic forgetfulness of himself impossible. With this exception, the censure originates only in a fanciless way of thinking, to which everything appears unnatural that does not suit its own tame insipidity. Hence, an ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... copious draughts of ale. My father went on steadily with this kind of existence without anything whatever to rescue him from its gradual and fatal degradation. He separated himself entirely from the class he belonged to by birth, lived with men of little culture, though they may have had natural wit, and sacrificed his whole future to mere village conviviality. Thousands of others have followed the same road, but few have sacrificed so much. My father had a constitution such as is not given to one man in ten ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... and seemed naturally inclined to acts of benevolence and generosity. In society he held the foremost rank, and was fitted by birthright, education, and taste for the highest social position. His noble nature, his wit and learning and generous flow of spirits, united to complete a most ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... his hands despairingly. "Ah, what a wag you are, what a wag," he laughed. "To think that that very admirable wit of yours must go the way of ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... had the honor of addressing you were of the 3d and 7th of November. Your several favors, to wit, two of July 27, two of Oct. 24, and one of Nov. 3, have all been delivered within the course of a week past; and I embrace the earliest occasion of returning to Congress my sincere thanks for the new proofs I receive therein of their confidence in me, and of assuring ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... can spare him," Asmund said, "because of the work and the provisioning. Grettir will not do anything. But he has quite wit enough to carry out the duties at the Thing on ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... according to my father's wishes, and his hopes of my future celebrity and fortune were confirmed, during my childhood, by instances of wit and memory, which were not perhaps greater than what could have been found in my little contemporaries, but which appeared to the vanity of parental fondness extraordinary, if not supernatural. My father declared that it would be a sin not to give me a learned education, and he went ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... Hallowe'en, as it is now commonly called, that is, on the thirty-first of October, the day preceding All Saints' or Allhallows' Day. These dates coincide with none of the four great hinges on which the solar year revolves, to wit, the solstices and the equinoxes. Nor do they agree with the principal seasons of the agricultural year, the sowing in spring and the reaping in autumn. For when May Day comes, the seed has long been ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... Senate, for their consideration and advice, the following treaties entered into with several of the Indian tribes, to wit: ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... can have the heart to blame the parties that in the exercise of their vocation make hay while the sun shines? There is one personage, and one alone, who makes it whether or no, summer and winter, to wit, the auctioneer; his commission is assured; on what or from whom he gets it he cares not. He cheerfully leaves the adjustment of ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... would fain have you all list me heedfully. Prithee, take not up, none of you, with men's notions. To wit, that a woman must needs be wed, and that otherwise she is but half a woman, and the like foolery. Nay, verily; for when she is wed she is no more at all a woman, but only the half of a man, and is shorn of all her glory. Wit ye all what marriage truly meaneth? ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... fibres of the heart just as they are growing rigid from over- strained excitement. The imagination is glad to take refuge in the half-comic, half-serious comments of the Fool, just as the mind under the extreme anguish of a surgical operation vents itself in sallies of wit. The character was also a grotesque ornament of the barbarous times, in which alone the tragic ground-work of the story could be laid. In another point of view it is indispensable, inasmuch as while it is ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States containing among other things the following, to-wit: ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... adrift, was a curious microcosm and full of contrasts. A mixture of unabashed blackguardism and cloistered prudery; of double-beds and primness; of humbug and frankness; of liberty and restraint; of lust and license; of brutal horse-play passing for "wit," and of candour marching with cant. The working classes scarcely called their souls their own; women and children mercilessly exploited by smug profiteers; the "Song of the Shirt"; Gradgrind and Boanerges holding high festival; Tom and Jerry (on their last legs) and ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... by sending a younger man. Age has weakened my memory, and I'll be overlooking some o' the saircumstances in a manner that will be unseemly for the occasion. Here is Blodget, a youth of ready wit, and ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... should perhaps best express the depth of their brilliancy. They were dreadful eyes to look at, such as would absolutely deter any man of quiet mind and easy spirit from attempting a passage of arms with such foes. There was talent in them, and the fire of passion and the play of wit, but there was no love. Cruelty was there instead, and courage, a desire of masterhood, cunning, and a wish for mischief. And yet, as eyes, they were very beautiful. The eyelashes were long and perfect, and the long, steady, unabashed gaze with which she ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... in the autumn of life, and several were very young folks, scarcely able to walk, who now count many "daughters and sons of beauty." There was a pretty equal admixture of Irish and English, amongst them several persons of rank; also one or two foreigners; besides much native wit, worth, and beauty, of the highest order, and all most delightfully set off by the graces and nameless enchantments of refined manners, and tasteful as well as useful accomplishments. I have rarely, if ever, seen in any part ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... frys 'em—make believe," said the big girl, who was smiling now. "But I can cook real, an' when we has any money at home, an' me ma buys real sausages, I boils 'em an' we eats 'em wit mustard on." ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Aunt Lu's City Home • Laura Lee Hope
... you for months on end, who is hard up and worldly and therefore calculating, whose job is to amuse people and who will therefore sacrifice her best, perhaps not most useful, friend to an epigram, whose wit is barbed, who has a fine nose for trouble, and who is always in at the death. Mrs. Scattergood was a small blond woman, high voiced, precise in manner, very positive in her statements which she delivered in a drawling tone, humourless, inquisitive about petty affairs, ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... promotion to engine-driver—for now the Reward Claim boasted a small crushing plant—and Spring came, and with it in November the disastrous rush to "Siberia." This name, like most others on the goldfields, may be traced to the wit of ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... him it over and over, and that ale had fuddled his wit, But he stood and laughed at us there, as though his sides would split, Till I could stand it no longer, and whipped off his head at a blow, Being mad that he did not answer, and more at his laughing so, And there on the ground where it fell it went ...
— The Green Helmet and Other Poems • William Butler Yeats
... the mother-wit of this Medium to the test of stitched envelopes, I wrote the following:—'Is Marie St. Clair pleased in having her skull carefully treasured here in my Library? Does it gratify her, as a Spirit, that it is mounted on black marble? Does ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... carried himself as if he were ranged against every one, or perhaps I should rather say that he carried himself as if his single will was above all the wranglers of others, and that it was given to him to do as he pleased, heedless of the feelings of any faction. Had he had but the wit to balance his arrogance, Messer Simone might have been a great man in Florence. As it proved, he was only a ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... rebellious vassal of the Holy Roman Empire, and, above all, because he had robbed her of Silesia; Madame de Pompadour, because when she sent him a message of compliment, he answered, "Je ne la connais pas," forbade his ambassador to visit her, and in his mocking wit spared neither her nor her royal lover. Feminine pique, revenge, or vanity had then at their service the mightiest ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... the oaths to the government against which he was constantly intriguing, forfeited the right to be considered as a man of conscience and honour. In the assembly was Sir John Friend, a nonjuror who had indeed a very slender wit, but who had made a very large fortune by brewing, and who spent it freely in sedition. After dinner,—for the plans of the Jacobites were generally laid over wine, and generally bore some trace of the conviviality ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... it was considered by some as made up of fictions and extravagances, and Vossius assures us that even after the death of Marco Polo he continued to be a subject of ridicule among the light and unthinking, insomuch that he was frequently personated at masquerades by some wit or droll, who, in his feigned character, related all kinds of extravagant fables and adventures. His work, however, excited great attention among thinking men, containing evidently a fund of information concerning vast ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... gunwale and pulling himself aboard, amid chuckles of laughter from the crew. His ducking had not improved his personal appearance, and as he now sat in the bow of the boat dripping water from every point, he formed an object for so much rude wit and coarse merriment, that upon reaching the transport he ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... spirit. Nevertheless she was conscious of a certain pleasure in the bitterness. The bitterness was her own, the pleasure some one else's, so to speak, who was looking on and laughing. She felt an unconquerable impulse to sharpen her wit on Mrs. Jupe's customers, and even to imitate them to their faces. They liked it, so she was ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... her valise and go through it, swiftly. She found nothing, and turned to the wash-stand drawer. The latter was empty, and was instantly closed again, the girl staring about the room, as though at her wit's end. Suddenly she disappeared along the edge of the bed, beyond the radius of the crack in the door. What was it she was doing? Searching the bed, no doubt; seeking something hidden beneath the pillow, ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... constitutes another stage in Ralegh's career. No more fascinating Court favourite, no Leicester, Essex, or mere Hatton, stood now in his way. If even Elizabeth's vivacious temperament may have ceased to require attentions as from a lover, she never grew insensible to wit, grace, versatility, and valour like his. The jealousy he continued to arouse was a tribute to his power. To this time belongs the story, contained in Bacon's Apophthegms, of Lord Oxford's insolence. The malicious Earl had returned, the ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... till the girl gains wit and moves to my house. But have no fear, I go with a sword; and if any man should bar ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... who happened to live next door to her. It is easy to imagine what she thought of the aristocrats who visited her mother-in-law. She was amusing when she joked and made parodies on the women she styled "the old Countesses." She had a great deal of natural wit, a liveliness peculiar to the native of the faubourgs, all the impudence of the street arab, and a veritable talent of mimicry. She was a good housewife, active, industrious and most clever in turning everything to account. With a mere nothing she could improvise a dress or a hat and give ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... you harm? I go to Detroit. I sell furs to ze commandaire for powder and bullets. I travel an' hunt wit' mes amis, ze Indians, but I do not love ze Anglais. When I was a boy, I fight wit' ze great Montcalm at Quebec against Wolfe an' les Anglais. We lose an' ze Bourbon lilies are gone; ze rouge flag of les Anglais take its place. Why should I fight for him who conquers ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... ancestors in hall or cottage assemble round the blazing hearth, and listen to the minstrel's lays, and recite their oft-told tales of adventure and romance. Sometimes they indulge in asking each other riddles, and there exists at the present time an old collection of these early efforts of wit and humour which are not of a very high order. The book is called Demands Joyous, and was printed in A.D. 1511. I may extract the following riddles:—"What is it that never was and never will be? Answer: A mouse's nest in a cat's ear. Why does ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... now state," said Stover, replacing his watch, "for the benefit of any other young, transcendent jokers that may care to display their side-splitting wit, that the chair is quite capable of handling the previous question, or any other question, and that these meetings are going to be orderly proceedings and not one-ring circuses for the benefit of the Kennedy Association of Clowns. ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... you who live at your wit's end, Unto this maxim pray attend, Never despair to find a friend, While flats have bit aboard! For Nell and I now keep a gig, And look so grand, so flash and big, We roll in every knowing rig [14] While we sing fal de ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... with inimitable spirit and mimicry, as want of clerical wit is a direct impeachment of the validity of one's "call" to preach; and when the table is filled, and with outstretched hands the blessing said, our father gets a universal compliment for his carving. There is roast turkey, with rich stuffing, bright cranberry sauce, ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... length was marked by apparent sincerity, and was a calm and argumentative presentation of objections, theoretical and practical, which occurred to him against the extension of the franchise to women. It was replied to by Mrs. Colby, in a running comment, which abounded in womanly wisdom and wit, and incessantly brought down the house. Our restricted space will compel us to forego a report of the discussion at present. On the conclusion of Mrs. Colby's very bright and convincing remarks, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... Chelsea, with well-trimmed gardens sloping down to the Thames; and this was the resort of the most learned and able men, both English and visitors from abroad, who delighted in pacing the shady walks, listening to the wit and wisdom of Sir Thomas, or conversing with the daughters, who had been highly educated, and had much of their father's humor and sprightliness. Even Henry VIII. himself, then one of the most brilliant ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... possessed many more of the poet's letters than are printed—she sometimes read them to friends who could feel their wit, and, like herself, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Tony, but, learning that he had not done so, she gossiped briefly with the barber, discussing the raid on the Metropolitan, the misfortunes that had overtaken their mutual friends, and other topics of interest. She realized from Tony's laughter that she was talking with unusual wit and brilliance. ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... side. I do not wish to convey to my readers the idea that there were men always sullen and disagreeable. Far from it, they were a jolly set of men when in a good humor, and, like all Irishmen, full of wit and humor. After I became known to them their gentle, courteous treatment of me never varied. They were very fond of playing cards, but whenever I appeared upon one of the avenues, every card would disappear. Not one ever failed to salute me, often adding ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... and "Ja, zu enge!" said the other, and they laughed innocently in each other's' faces, with a joy in their recognition of the corridor's narrowness as great as if it had been a stroke of the finest wit. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... d'Abrantes—this Pylades of the poor Orestes—was—a madman!—a poor simpleton, of good family, who was so good-humored and harmless that he was allowed to go at large, and free scope given to his innocent freaks. He, however, possessed a kind of droll, pointed wit, which he sometimes brought to bear most effectively, sparing neither rank nor position. The half-biting, half-droll remarks of this Diogenes of Istria was all that now afforded enjoyment to the broken-down old hero. It was with intense delight that he heard the social grandeur ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... friend, whose shining wit Sets all the room ablaze, Don't think yourself "a happy dog," For all your merry ways; But learn to wear a sober phiz, Be stupid, if you can, It's such a very serious thing ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... the long list of churches and ruins and pictures catalogued upon her efficient tongue, and she and my mother ran together like sisters to see the sights of beauty and reminiscence; neither of them ever tired, and never disappointed. Her voice was richly mellow, like my father's, and her wit was the merry spray of deep waves of thought. The sculptor, Miss Harriet Hosmer, it was easy to note, charmed the romancer. She was cheerfulness itself, touched off with a jaunty cap. Her smile I remember as one of those very precious ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... few months to the times when those little dinners of four had been so pleasant, and when this girl, who was now looking at him like an accusing angel, had matched even Carol herself in the gaiety of her conversation and the careless use she made of her mother-wit, and he tried hard to say something which should in some way cover his retreat, but the words wouldn't come, and so he just opened the ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... married in 1882 and has seven sons and seven daughters. Owns his own home and plenty of other property around the neighborhood. Ninety-six years of age and still feels as spry as a man of fifty, keen of wit, with a memory as good can be expected. This handsome bronze piece of humanity with snow-white beard over his beaming face ended the interview saying, "I am waiting now to hear the call of God to the promise ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... was warm, and in the palm of his it was lost. He felt it tremble. Then the Egyptian came, so the opposite of this little one; so tall, so audacious, with a flattery so cunning, a wit so ready, a beauty so wonderful, a manner so bewitching. He carried the hand to his lips, and gave ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... down, one half a block. Little yaller house wit' green blinds and ornings. Yer could n't miss it. Yer party left dere ten minutes ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Brighton was ready to embark him for Fecamp. George Gunter's own story is, however, that the King rode direct to Brighton. He reached Fecamp on October 16. Two hours after Gunter left Brighton, "soldiers came thither to search for a tall black man, six feet four inches high"—to wit, ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... employed by Caius Julius Caesar at a battle fought in Transalpine Gaul fifty odd years before the advent of the Christian era. It was evident to the critic's youthful mind that the battle ought to have resulted differently, and that if the foes of "the mighty Julius" had had the wit to take advantage of his indiscretion, certain pages of the "Commentaries" might have been conceived in a less boastful spirit. Little Louis Joseph had sketched a rough plan, showing the respective positions of the ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... beginning of a fresh life for John Broom. With many other idle or homeless boys he now haunted the barracks, and ran errands for the soldiers. His fleetness of foot and ready wit made him the favourite. Perhaps, too, his youth and his bright face and eyes pleaded for him, for British soldiers are a ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... faithful friend resolve to get them back for the Anses, who bewail their absence. They journey to Monster-land, win back the lady, who ultimately is to become the hero's wife, and return her to her kindred; but her brother can only be rescued by his father Niord. It is by wit rather than by force that Swipdag ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... play that largely turned upon the changes in an old celibate's menage. But in the main it was a comedy of character, a struggle between youth and crabbed age, in which the younger will and the quicker wit prevailed. As we first see him, James Ollerenshaw is a crusty, browbeating, misogynist, hoarding his wealth, content with a mean habit of life, and convinced that nobody can get the better of him. As we see him at the end he is a tamed man, dependent on female protection against ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 25, 1914 • Various
... in a good many ways by woman's wit. There was no dispute between them, and much as he objected to the ways of the world's people, he had no mind to defraud his small niece out of a considerable fortune that might reasonably come to her. Indeed he began to be a little afraid of Bessy Henry's willfulness. And she might marry and ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... smile, as ever, and congratulate herself on the five hours a day, and tell herself how soon she would reach perfection if there were real necessity for it? Hopeless to comprehend a woman. The senses warred upon the wit; seized by calenture, one saw ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... accordance with the substance of my letter to you of the 8th instant, I propose to receive the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia on the following terms, to wit: Rolls of all the officers and men to be made in duplicate, one copy to be given to an officer to be designated by me, the other to be retained by such officer or officers as you may designate. The officers to give their individual paroles not ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... a man of a great spirit, proud, watchful and of a gross understanding. He whose brow is full of wrinkles, and has as it were a seam coming down the middle of the forehead, so that a man may think he has two foreheads, is one that is of a great spirit, a great wit, void of deceit, and yet of a hard fortune. He who has a full, large forehead, and a little round withal, destitute of hair, or at least that has little on it is bold, malicious, full of choler and apt to transgress beyond all bounds, and yet of a good wit and very apprehensive. He ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... ended, 'say now that you have been jesting; that this is a piece of wit with which you would begin in a suitable way an extraordinary day; this is ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... favouring breeze of the cheap edition. She wrote her sketches at Three Mile Cross, some two miles from Swallowfield, and I refer to them because in the little volume you have faithful scenic pictures of the Loddon country. I have also a personal story to tell, to wit: On returning from one of my visits to Loddon-side I secured through an old friend of Miss Mitford a note in her handwriting, and was not a little impressed and amused on discovering that the envelope in which it was inclosed had been previously used and turned no doubt by the lady ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... 1882, when the elite of American literature gathered at Boston to celebrate her seventieth birthday, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes read a poem in which Mrs. Stowe's share in the emancipation of the colored race was recorded with equal wit and pathos:— ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... night passed thus, and Ginevra began to fear for her father's reason. She challenged him to play backgammon with her, but he scorned the proposal. She begged him to teach her chess, but he scouted the notion of her having wit enough to learn. She offered to read to him, entreated him to let her do something with him, but he repelled her every advance with contempt and surliness, which now and then ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... you please, this plain poor man, Whose only fields are in his wit, Who shapes the world, as best he can, According to God's higher plan, Owns you, and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... narrative he had discussed with Darco. Little by little he got to take Darco's view. It is the view of ninety per cent, of men of the world. A naturally pure mind never learns to love nastiness, but it learns to tolerate it, for the sake of the wit ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... validity of the testaments, save only a poor relation, a nephew, whose name was down for $500. He was indignant with the old lady and loudly declared that he would not put up with it. The next day he employed a briefless lawyer, one that had wit and brass enough and who had his way to make in the world, and ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... is quite a sum, Jason, and I feel guilty that I haven't saved anything for you. But it all went, especially after father got sickly. I've sold a lot of things, Jason, so as to send you the money. I'm most at my wit's end now. Grandma's silver teapot, that kept you three months, and your father's watch, nearly six. That's the way the things have gone. My, how thankful I was ...
— Benefits Forgot - A Story of Lincoln and Mother Love • Honore Willsie
... still sufficient. Nevertheless, he is a woeful wreck to look at; and the doctor looks at him with the greatest respect, and listens to his querulous plaint patiently. For that great dome of silence, his brain, repository of so many state-secrets, is still a redoubtable instrument: its wit and its magician's cunning have not yet lapsed into the dull inane of senile decay. Though fallen from power, after a bad beating at the polls, there is no knowing but that he may rise again, and hold once more in those tired old hands, shiny ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... play of feature or pitch of voice, at once didactic and yet not uncomrade-like, must be counted a very important fact, especially in connection with the period when that voice was first heard. It must be remembered that Shaw emerged as a wit in a sort of secondary age of wits; one of those stale interludes of prematurely old young men, which separate the serious epochs of history. Oscar Wilde was its god; but he was somewhat more mystical, ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... use. The entree which follows the fish should be eaten with the fork only. A mouthful of meat is cut as required; it is never buried in potato or any vegetable and then conveyed to the mouth. Vegetables are no longer served in "birds' bath-tubs," as some wit once called the individual vegetable dishes, but are cooked sufficiently dry to be served on the plate with the meat. All vegetables are eaten with the fork, so also jellies, chutney, etc., served with the ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... more than a golf book. There is interwoven with it a play of mild philosophy and of pointed wit."—Boston Globe. ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... that they should no more see the good, cheery master, whose pleasant smile and kindly word had so often made their labours light. There was many a sad heart, too, we may be sure, in Rome, when the wit who never wounded, the poet who ever charmed, the friend who never failed, was laid in a corner of the Esquiline, close to the tomb of his "dear knight Maecenas." He died on the 27th November B.C. 8, the kindly, lonely man, leaving to Augustus what little he possessed. ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... have granted to him an infinity of virtues, and naturally fine qualities—such as sensitiveness, generosity, frankness, humility, charity, soberness, greatness of soul, force of wit, manly pride, and nobility of sentiment; but, at the same time, they do not sufficiently clear him of the faults which directly exclude the above-mentioned qualities. The moral man does not sufficiently appear in their ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... show that both man and woman are designed for a higher final estate—to-wit, that of matrimony. It seems to be conceded that man is just as well fitted for matrimony as woman herself, and the whole subject is illuminated with certain botanical lore about stamens and pistils, which, however relevant to matrimony, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... Where sense and sensibility were join'd; Love to inspire, to charm, to win each heart, And ev'ry tender sentiment impart; Thy outward form adorn'd with ev'ry grace; With beauty's softest charms thy heav'nly face, Where sweet expression beaming ever proved The index of that soul, by all beloved; Thy wit so keen, thy genius form'd to soar, By fancy wing'd, new science to explore; Thy temper, ever gentle, good, and kind, Where all but guilt an advocate could find: To those who know this character was thine, (And in this truth assenting numbers join) How vain th' attempt to fix a crime ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... as the penalty. And what shall I propose on my part, O men of Athens? Clearly that which is my due. And what is my due? What return shall be made to the man who has never had the wit to be idle during his whole life; but has been careless of what the many care for—wealth, and family interests, and military offices, and speaking in the assembly, and magistracies, and plots, and parties. Reflecting that I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live, ...
— Apology - Also known as "The Death of Socrates" • Plato
... degrading. Advice has been given to householders, that they should follow up the shot at a burglar in the dark by hurling the pistol after it, so that if the bullet misses, the weapon may strike and assure the rascal he has it. The point of her wit is in this fashion supplemented by the rattle of her tongue, and effectively, according to the testimony of her admirers. Her wit is at once, like steam in an engine, the motive force and the warning whistle of her headlong course; and it vanishes like the track of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... taking orders, as I had intended; but I with warmth entered into literary pursuits; perhaps my heart, not having an object, made me embrace the substitute with more eagerness. But, do not imagine I have always been a die-away swain. No: I have frequented the cheerful haunts of men, and wit!—enchanting wit! has made many moments fly free from care. I am too fond of the elegant arts; and woman—lovely woman! thou hast charmed me, though, perhaps, it would not be easy to find one to whom my reason would allow me ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... public man—ever looked for fairness from Goldwin Smith, whose idea of independence seemed to consist of being alternately unjust to each side. Both sayings, however, are extremely clever, and both had sufficient truth about them to give point at once to the author's malevolence and to his wit. ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... soldier under his Brother, full of spirit and talent, but liable to weak health;—was Father of the "Prince Louis Ferdinand," a tragic Failure of something considerable, who went off in Liberalism, wit, in high sentiment, expenditure and debauchery, greatly to the admiration of some persons; and at length rushed desperate upon the Frenoh, and found his quietus (10th October, 1806), four days ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... mother's heart at the thought of what she could foresee! But the warmth of the mother-love lent life to the mother-wit. Having sent her little ones out of sight, and by a sign conveyed to Saddleback her alarm, she swiftly came back to the man, then she crossed before him, thinking, in her half-reasoning way, that the man must be following a foot-scent ...
— Johnny Bear - And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted • E. T. Seton
... have sworn that Beppo was founded on Whistlecraft, as both were on Anthony Hall,[100] who, like Beppo, had more wit ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... too tired and faint with hunger and heavy at heart to take an interest in these things. He turned back toward the gate, and, missing his way a little, came to a great pool of water, walled in wit, white stone, with five porticos around it. In some of these porticos there were a few people lying upon mats. But one of the porches was empty, and here the Boy ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... to states of the mind: he unites the method of Stendhal to that of Balzac. He is always interesting and amusing. He takes himself seriously and persists in regarding the art of writing fiction as a science. He has wit, humor, charm, and lightness of touch, and ardently strives after philosophy and intellectuality—qualities that are rarely found in fiction. It may well be said of M. Bourget that he is innocent of the creation of a single stupid character. The men and women ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the matter might have been adjudged there, England would have been satisfied? Our grievance was, that our mail-packet was stopped on the seas while doing its ordinary beneficent work. And our resolve is, that our mail-packets shall not be so stopped wit impunity. As we were high handed in old days in insisting on this right of search, it certainly behoves us to see that we be just in our modes of proceeding. Would Captain Wilkes have been right, according to the existing law, if he had carried the "Trent" away to New York? If ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... his meretricious exaltation of passion, have lost their magical effect, but his poetical gifts would have commanded homage in any age. The message which he professed to deliver was a false message, but few poets have surpassed him in daring vigour of imagination, in descriptive force, in wit, or in pathos. His style was eminently such as to invite imitation, yet no one has successfully imitated him. Had he been a better man, and had his life been prolonged, he might perhaps have towered above his ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... of small frame, but a large brain and a generous heart. His style of speech was clear, distinct and rapid. He could reason a question with great force, and could fringe the most commonplace subjects with wit and humor. He was a true man, a good Preacher, and ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... have been so stupid? Stupid? It was easy! He had wanted to be stupid! And how could the Mr. Eumenes-or-otherwise have used such obvious giveaway names? It was a measure of their contempt for the humans around them and of their own grim wit. Look at all the double entendres the salesman had given his father, and his father had never suspected. Even the head of the Bureau of Health and Sanity had been terrifyingly ...
— They Twinkled Like Jewels • Philip Jose Farmer
... of England upon conditions and sentiment in the colonies. His examination before the House of Commons in February, 1766, marks perhaps the zenith of his intellectual powers. His wide knowledge, his wonderful poise, his ready wit, his marvelous gift for clear and epigrammatic statement, were never exhibited to better advantage and no doubt hastened the repeal of the Stamp Act. Franklin remained in England nine years longer, but his efforts to reconcile the conflicting claims of Parliament ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... success. While Alexander Garden, to keep his flock from straying after this strange pastor, expatiated on the words of Scripture, "Those that have turned the world upside down are come hither also." Whitfield, with all the force of comic humour and wit for which he was so much distinguished, by way of reply, enlarged on these words, "Alexander the coppersmith hath done me much evil, the Lord reward him according to his works." In short, the pulpit was perverted by both into the mean purposes of spite and malevolence, ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... defects, but you promptly shift the question to one of moral qualities, of practical energy, of subduing your wilderness, and so forth. You have too often absented yourself from the wedding banquet, from the European symposium of wit and philosophy, from the polished and orderly and delightful play and interplay of civilized mind,—and your excuse is the old one: that you are trying your yoke of oxen and cannot come. We charge ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... got you that wit? If I must, I kneel;" and he groaned in mock despair. "And if Monsieur Iberville should come knocking at our door you would ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... law teaches might be stated in five words, to wit: Breed only from the best—but the teaching may be more impressive, and will more likely be heeded, if we understand the extent and ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale
... boy, I knew there was no need of sending for you. I knew you would be here. God bless you. Sit down, sit down. I want to use your ready wit just now for a few minutes. Thank God, I have your clear head and honest heart to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... befool[obs3], bamboozle, flimflam, hornswoggle; trick. impose upon, practice upon, play upon, put upon, palm off on, palm upon, foist upon; snatch a verdict; bluff off, bluff; bunko, four flush*, gum* [U.S.], spoof*, stuff (a ballot box) [U.S.]. circumvent, overreach; outreach, out wit, out maneuver; steal a march upon, give the go-by, to leave in the lurch decoy, waylay, lure, beguile, delude, inveigle; entrap, intrap[obs3], ensnare; nick, springe[obs3]; set a trap, lay a trap, lay a snare for; bait the hook, forelay[obs3], spread ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Mr. Thackeray knows the value of his writings and his time too well to whittle at verses in the Messenger office, and leave his chips on the floor; and that he is too observant of the laws of fair wit to make a falsification and call it a burlesque. The Sorrows of Werther is not so popular as when known here chiefly by a wretched version of a wretched French version, and many who read these stanzas will be satisfied that the {378} last conveys, at worst, a distorted notion ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 234, April 22, 1854 • Various
... perfection has to obtain a being and substantial existence in a complete and perfect world. Reality is not confined to the absolutely necessary; it also embraces the conditionally necessary: every offspring of the brain, every work elaborated by the wit, has an irresistible right of citizenship in this wider acceptation of creation. In the measureless plan of nature no activity was to be left out, no degree of enjoyment was to be wanting in universal happiness. The great Inventive Spirit would not even permit error to be ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... wine, old boy, on cold winter nights! he won't do that, will he?" asked Handy; and laughing at the severity of his own wit, he and his colleagues retired, carrying with them, however, ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... Tyrrell and Paula were Mr. Tyrrell and the son of the house, Mr. John, the Jack Tyrrell of sundry convivial clubs in town. Mr. Tyrrell senior was a high-coloured jovial gentleman of three score, great in finance, practical to the backbone, yet with wit and tact which put him at ease with all manner of men, even with social reformers. These latter amused him vastly; he failed to see that the world needed any reforming whatever, at all events beyond that which is constitutionally provided for in the proceedings of the British Parliament. He had ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... think that they made a shrewd move by having His Imperial Majesty prohibit preaching. But the poor deluded people do not see that, through the written Confession presented to them, more has been preached than otherwise perhaps ten preachers could have done. Is it not keen wisdom and great wit that Magister Eisleben and others must keep silence? But in lieu thereof the Elector of Saxony, together with other princes and lords, arises with the written Confession and preaches freely before His Imperial Majesty and the entire realm, ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... went up to the writing-room to fulfil a part of his destiny. He took the letter out and read it again. A woman of wit and presence; a mighty good dinner companion, or he was no judge of women. He replaced the letter in its blue covering, and then for the first time his eye met the superscription. Like a man entranced he sat there staring. The steward had ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... service the best men of Italy. These things render him victorious and formidable, and to these is yet to be added his perpetual good fortune. He argues," the Florentine envoy proceeds, "with such sound reason that to dispute with him would be a long affair, for his wit and eloquence never fail him" ("dello ingegno e della lingua si vale ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... keep up the kicking part of it," says Molly, with a delicious laugh that ripples through the air and shows her utter enjoyment of her own wit. Not to laugh when Molly laughs, is impossible; so Luttrell joins her, and they both make merry over his vulgarity. In all the world, what is there sweeter than the happy, penetrating, satisfying laughter of ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... complained that her guests were too much for her, Vera would not bring herself to assist immediately, but presently she would appear in the company with a bright face, her eyes gleaming with gaiety, and astonished her aunt by the grace and wit with which she entertained the visitors. This mood would last a whole evening, sometimes a whole day, before she again relapsed into shyness and reserve, so that no one could ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... (have you not observed it?) I am altered of late!—I, that was ever light of heart, the very soul of gayety, brimfull of glee, am now demure as our old tabby—and not half as wise. Tabby had wit enough to keep her paws out of the coals, whereas poor I have—but no matter what. It will never come to pass, I see that. So many reasons for every thing! Such looking forward! Arthur, are not men sometimes too ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... not the spectacles of books to read nature; he looked inwards, and found her there. I cannot say he is every where alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great when some great occasion is presented to him: no man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... for polite literature, by mingling with the sons of sensuality and riot, blasted in the bloom of life? Such was the fate of the late celebrated Duke of Wharton, Wilmot, earl of Rochester, and Villers, duke of Buckingham, three noblemen, as eminently distinguished by their wit, taste, and knowledge, as for their extravagance, revelry, and lawless passions. In such cases, the most charming elocution, the finest fancy, the brightest blaze of genius, and the noblest burst of thoughts, call for louder vengeance, and damn them ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
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