"Pun" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... far evinced any symptom of the poodle mania, so akin to the singular malady which reduced poor Titania to the abject adoration of ass-headed Bottom. Therefore any repugnance (this is purely an ex post facto pun) on my part cannot be attributed to jealousy. I feel that I cannot be too thankful not to be numbered among the unhappy husbands indicated by the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... months, and not re-appointed to the same ship. Brahe afterwards made a proper submission for the fault he had committed, at his own court. His conduct reminds us of Sir Henry Wotton's definition of an ambassador—that he is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country. A pun upon the ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... fantastic expression, you should "cosset on your heaving brisket" for its splendid success as a survivor of its primogenitors. Look at the pinnacle of political success to which the McKinley bill has brought Bill McKinley (excuse the paltry little pun) and sound money (saving your presence) brought Grover Cleveland, and then contemplate the ignominy and obscurity has brought George and free silver has brought Bryan. Evidently George isn't a mouse to McKinley, while Bryan is but a brindle pup compared to the great and only Grover. ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... spoke before it is put into its place, in the nave of the wheel at least? We often hear the observation, "Then I put in my spoke," &c. in the relation of an animated discussion. May I venture to suggest a pun on the preterite of the verb ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... good-sized hotel," said the Don. "Then," he continued, "there's Bedford ditto again—septennel would do for that; then comes Northampton—they don't want no law there at all." (I leave the obvious pun to anyone who likes to make it). "Then Okeham again—did you ever hear of anyone who came from Okeham? ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... who writ this wretched pun," says Mr D., "would have picked your pocket:" which he proceeds to shew not only bad in itself, but doubly so on so solemn an occasion. And yet, in that excellent play of Liberty Asserted, we find something very much resembling a pun in the mouth of a mistress, who is parting with the ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... China. To appreciate this witticism, one may refer to the New York directory of 1789, which describes John Slidell, the father of the Slidell of whom we are speaking, as "soap boiler and chandler, 104 Broadway." Miss Fairlie's pun seems to me to be quite equal to that of Rufus Choate, who, when a certain Baptist minister described himself as "a candle of the Lord," remarked, "Then you are a dipped, but I hope not a wick-ed candle." It is said that upon ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... talking of our faults. Let me turn to the more pleasing task of discussing those of the English. In the first place, and as a minor matter of form, I think that English humour suffers from the tolerance afforded to the pun. For some reason English people find puns funny. We don't. Here and there, no doubt, a pun may be made that for some exceptional reason becomes a matter of genuine wit. But the great mass of the English puns that disfigure the Press every week are mere pointless verbalisms that to the American ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... for a pun?" Beatrice blinked her big eyes at him. "If you're quite through with the train-robbers, perhaps you will ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... and, for the first time since his last contract but one, a smile played lightly about the corners of his mouth. He took another drink and, shaking his head slightly as he put the glass down, smiled again with the air of a man who has been reproached for making a pun. ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... account differs from the version formerly received, which intimates that the epitaphs were written before Goldsmith arrived: whereas the pun, "the late Dr. Goldsmith" appears to have suggested the writing of the epitaphs. In the "Retaliation", Goldsmith has not spared the characters and failings of his associates, but has drawn them with satire, at once pungent and good-humoured. Garrick is smartly ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... I be allowed a pun, To help me through with just this one? I've tried to read Young's Thoughts of Night, But never ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... suppose you do know Howe," answered Horne, with a smile, which indicated that he enjoyed even a sickly pun. "I should think you had known him to ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... heroic look had meant, and her respect for it was great. Its intention had not been to suggest inclusion of George and Kathryn in her pun, it had only with pure justice put it to her to ask herself what her own personal decision in such ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... said she, with a charming smile. I explained the pun, and made her laugh. I told her amusing stories, and let her know the effect that her beauty had produced on me, and that I hoped time would soften her heart to me. The acquaintance was made, and thenceforth I never went ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... their assonance. He inclines to the opinion that o had commonly the long sound, as in tone, and supposes both words to have been pronounced like own. But was absolute identity in sound ever necessary to a pun, especially in those simpler and happier days? Puttenham, in his "English Poesy," gives as a specimen of the art in those days a play upon the words lubber and lover, appreciable now only by Ethiopian minstrels, but interesting as showing that the tendency of b and v to run together ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... 'un, mister. I was just makin' a stawt. I gev fifty-five pound fer it, an' three pun ten to 'ave it done up. But there! What's the use of talkin'? I'm orf 'ome, I ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... poems for other hours. Some day when you wish a bit of fun with your children you will find humorous poems in many of the books. One is in Volume IV, on page 57. Nearly every stanza contains a "joke": a pun, if you please, usually. Perhaps you and your children will find them all easily, and perhaps you will not. In the last stanza is the "joke" proper, the thing for which the rhymes were written. It is an old joke, surely ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... this habit of "verbal curiosity" and condensation which seduced Milton into punning. Some of his puns are very bad. There is a modern idea that a pun is a thing to laugh at. Milton's puns, like Shakespeare's, give no smallest countenance to this theory. Sometimes he plays with what is merely a chance identity of sound, as where ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... thanks, dear friend, for your courageous battling; I on my side will endeavour not to let us have to acquiesce with too overpowering a modesty! [An untranslatable pun on the ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... along the road an' wait for me," he said with a sudden ferocity which made the woman start. "Off with ye now. I'll come up with ye: unless this gentleman 'ud make it a matter of a five-pun' note." ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... "That was almost a pun. But I'm afraid I'm a bit selfish in my joy about Acton. Since he's a certainty, I can devote all my mighty mind to rackets. I don't think there is a better pair in the place than ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... the world Teresa's full name. Cascales y Muoz has since thrown more light upon this episode. But these gentlemen have done nothing more than to tell an open secret. Escosura, long ago, all but betrayed it in the following pun: "Tendamos el velo de olvido sobre esa lamentable flaqueza de un gran corazn," he says, referring to the affair with Teresa, "y recordemos, de paso, que el sol mismo, ese astro de luz soberano, tan sublimemente cantado ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... has been suggested that the names of our heroes have given rise to the proverbial saying: "A miss (Amis) is as good as a mile (Amile)," but notwithstanding the high authority from which the suggestion emanates, it is little more than a pun. ...
— Old French Romances • William Morris
... makin' Loads of mince and pun'kin pies? Don't you smell those goodies cookin'? Can't you see 'em? Where's your eyes? Tell that rooster there that's crowin', Cute folks now are keepin' mum; They don't show how fat they 're growin' When ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... shaft took immensely, as proved by the loud guffaws and low chuckles that echoed through the beautiful forest whose branches shaded us from the August sun. His reputation as a wit of the first water was firmly established, and every pun and jest thereafter succeeding was crowned by the halo of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... call it," said the poppy, In a tone of sleepy fun, "Flowers raised by crewel culture— Only, please, excuse the pun." "Oh, don't joke on such a subject," Said an innocent, rather low, While from sev'ral other quarters ...
— Harper's Young People, June 1, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... "evidently a good clerk, and perhaps a first-rate scholar. One of the very best Greek scholars of the age does all his manuscript in printing hand, when he wishes it to be legible. And a capital plan it is—without meaning any pun. I can read this like a ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... all the bears," said Iglesias, "I will go lay me down in their lair in the barn. If you find me cheek-by-jowl with Ursa Major when you come back, make a pun ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... excitement in the city, where they were accustomed to the most pompous funerals. All who discharged the customary offices on such occasions rose against the innovation. But the stout patrician found imitators in all classes; and, though such ceremonies were derisively called ox-burials,[Footnote: A pun upon the name of Ochsenstein.— Trans.] they came into fashion, to the advantage of many of the more poorly provided families; while funeral parades were less and less in vogue. I bring forward this circumstance, because it presents one of the earlier symptoms of that tendency ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... have but just got it. I'm not going home." (He lived eight miles off, near Axe.) "I've got to go to a Church meeting at Red Cow, and I'm sleeping there. John's Ernest is calling here for me presently. I don't fancy driving over them moors with near a thousand pun in my pocket—and colliers out on strike—not at my age, missis! If you don't know what Red Cow is, I reckon I do. It's your money. Put it in a drawer and say nowt, and I'll fetch it to-morrow. What'll happen ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... to the dialogue, looked aghast, and evinced a strong inclination to ask a question, but was checked by a look from his wife. Mr. Wisbottle laughed, and said Tomkins had made a pun; and Tomkins laughed too, and said ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... and scratched a section of wire bare. He laughed to himself as he slipped the little microphone out of his left ear. Now he was half deaf as well as half lame—he was literally giving himself to this cause. He would have to remember the pun to tell Alec Diger later, if there was a later. Alec had a ...
— The Velvet Glove • Harry Harrison
... seriousness. Flippancy is a flower whose roots are often underground in the subconsciousness. Many a man talks sense when he thinks he is talking nonsense; touches on a conflict of ideas as if it were only a contradiction of language, or really makes a parallel when he means only to make a pun. Some of the Punch jokes of the best period are examples of this; and that quoted above is a very strong example of it. The cabman meant what he said; but he said a great deal more than he meant. His utterance contained fine philosophical doctrines and distinctions of which he was not perhaps ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... taste rejected Overtop's pun, but not himself, and she was about to say that she should put him on the list for her next conversazione, when another awkward interruption ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... old Pink is the pink of propriety, no doubt about that!" said the rascal, laughing heartily at his heartless pun. ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... terminations of the stanzas rendered the thing transparent to the audience during the delivery, as was quite manifest from the general movement of their risibles. But Wheelwright was himself as ignorant of the pun as the faculty were, until both were enlightened the following week, when the real author caused it to be published in the Cistula Literaria—an interesting journal, edited by a committee of the junior class—with a capital ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... knowing her pun, "a thousand times," and she turned without further explanation to the gentleman: "When I tell Mr. Maxwell of this he will suffer as he ought, and that's saying a great deal, for not coming with me to-day. To ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... in a single word: Mr. Mix started, and gripped the receiver more tightly. "Nothing!... Why, I don't quite get you on that.... It's an open and shut proposition—No, I most certainly am not trying to make a pun; I'm calling you up in my official capacity. That's the most flagrant, barefaced attempt to evade a law—Why, an idiot could see it! It's to drive the crowd into the Orpheum during the ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... said Timon; but Apemantus stayed a while longer and told him he had a passion for extremes, which was true. Apemantus even made a pun, but there was no good laughter to ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... Proclamation that the gentry should reside at their mansions in the country Proculus Prologue spoken by a woman Protest, affected use of the word (See Dyce's Shakespeare Glossary.) Puckfist Puerelis Puisne Puisnes of the Inne Pumpion Pun[to] reversos ( back-handed strokes in fencing) Push Putt a girdle round about the ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... at length was done, When the clock struck the hour for retiring; And we heard the spiteful squib and pun The girls ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... Poppleton to stare at me—oh, her eyes I Thereupon, her husband began his dread performance. The patience, the heroic patience, of that dear, good fellow! I have known him explain, and re-explain, for a quarter of an hour, and invariably without success. It might be a mere pun; Mrs. Poppleton no more understood the nature of a pun than of the binomial theorem. But worse was when the jest involved some allusion. When I heard Poppleton begin to elucidate, to expound, the perspiration already on his forehead, I looked at him with imploring anguish. Why would ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... smiling at Moran's pun. He was not a bad chap, and had he not been to a great extent under Duncan's influence he might have been a ...
— True to Himself • Edward Stratemeyer
... understand that I was christened Margaret. Being a floral family, they call me Daisy. A dreadful American man once told me that my aunt was a Bluebell and that I was a Harebell—with two l's and an e—because my hair is so thick. I warn you, so that you may avoid making such a bad pun." ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... perchance become quite mouldy, or will he bring them out as an oeuvre posthume [posthumous work]? I am tired of doing silent homage to this noble mode of proceedings, and intend next time to help the publisher out of all his perplexities [Untranslatable pun on "Verleger" and "Verlegenheiten."] by putting the manuscripts back ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... Wornum, an' the pore chile'd done been buried too long to talk about before her ma heern tell of it, an' then she drapped like a clap er thunder had hit 'er. Airter so long a time, Mingo thar he taken it 'pun hisse'f to tell 'er, an' she flopped right down in 'er tracks, an' Mingo he holp 'er into the house, an', bless your life, when he come to he'p 'er out'n it, she was a changed 'oman. 'Twa'n't long 'fore she taken a notion to come to my house, an' one mornin' when I was a-washin' ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... he sketched a huge mouth about to swallow a bull. This, done with a fine show of color, became the sign of the tavern. Martin never tired of explaining the pun to those who asked. Even before the guest-rooms were finished, travelers began arriving, drawn by the fame of Martin's savory and succulent dishes. Pilgrims, merchants, knights, squires, showmen, soldiers, minstrels, scholars, sea-captains—they ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... had heard this statement he had howled with laughter. Now, however, knowing that she could not see the fallacy, he did not try to argue the point. The Amphibs were, in their way, as hidebound—no pun ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... who agrees with me entirely as to Mr. Burke's. fertility of wit, said, that this was 'dignifying a pun.' He also observed, that he has often heard Burke say, in the course of an evening, ten good things, each of which would have served a noted wit (whom he named) to live upon for a twelvemonth. I find, since the former edition, that ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... said the Subadar-Major, 'you and I grow too old to care for the Kahar-ki-nautch—the Bearer's dance.' He named one of the sauciest of the old-time nautches, and smiled at his own pun. Then he turned to his nephew. 'When I was a lad and came back to my village on leave, I waited the convenient hour, and, the elders giving permission, I spoke of what ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... Puck! Thou hast been to Philadelphia, where all the streets rhyme, and every corner is a pun upon the next. May the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... even a pun might be a serious thing: witness the play in the last stanza on the words son and sun—not a mere pun, for the Son of the Father is the Sun of Righteousness: he ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... work, Jim, an' little pay," said the newcomer. "Why, I've walked twenty mile good, an' only realised two pun' ten. If it don't improve, I'll take to ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... up to the time of day, and he'll soon be as wide-awake as any on 'em. This morning he brought me a pocket-book, and in it eigh—ty pound flimsies. As he is a young hand, I encouraged him by giving him three pun' ten for the lot—it's runnin' a risk, but I done it. As it is, I shall have to send 'em all over to 'Amburg. Howsomever, he's got to take one pund in home made: bein' out of it myself, I have brought him ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... had here evidently ventured upon a pun; how far it has succeeded I will leave others to say. The lovely creature was, however, entirely ignorant of my calling; and whatever impression such a description would leave on the reader's mind, it made none on mine, though in the second verse I ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 356, Saturday, February 14, 1829 • Various
... laughing, "and if I don't give our war whoop you may be sure this is not me—I am still on the Robinson ranch—there, that was an unpremeditated pun; I mean the old Robinson Crusoe and I forgot that he was great-grandfather to ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose
... laughed the old gentleman. "Didn't mean it for a pun, I hope? Never could endure puns! So you came down yesterday, young gentleman, did you? And where may you ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... ship's keel in the sea. News of the greatest importance kept the attention of the world of commerce on the alert; and when commercial interests are at stake, Moses might appear with his two luminous horns, and his coming would scarcely receive the honors of a pun, the gentlemen whose business it is to write the Market ...
— Melmoth Reconciled • Honore de Balzac
... which in the social circle will in spite of all due gravity awaken a harmless smile, and Shenstone solemnly thanked God that his name was not liable to a pun. There are some names which excite horror, such as Mr. Stabback; others contempt, as Mr. Twopenny; and others of vulgar or absurd signification, subject too often to the insolence of domestic witlings, which occasions irritation even in the minds of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... conversation when he came in, and he talked his full share till called upon; yet he ran his jokes and his verses upon us all in the easiest manner, saying something characteristic of every body, or avoiding it with a pun; and he introduced so agreeably a piece of village scandal upon which the party had been rallying Campbell, that the poet, though not unjealous of his dignity, was, perhaps, the most pleased of us all. Theodore afterward sat down to the pianoforte, and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... a sharp 'un, that's what you are. So look here: the day I'm married I'll pay your wages, and I'll give you a fi'-pun note to buy yourself a new bonnet and gown. Now go up and say I'm waiting to see Miss Richmond on ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... first that made a pun at all— Who when a joke occurred to him, however poor and mean, Was absolutely certain that it never had been done at all— How popular at dinners must that humourist have been! Oh, the days when some step-father for a query ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Ahitophili Veritatis Lacrymae (July 4th, 1625), but though this work was a violent satire upon the Jesuits, Morisot survived his book thirty-six years, the Jesuits revenging themselves with nothing worse than an epitaph, containing a bad pun, to the effect that their enemy, after a life not spent in wisdom, preferred to die ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... lines have occurred in vol. i. 238, where I have noted the punning "Sabr" patience or aloes. I quote Torrens: the Templar, however, utterly abolishes the pun in the last ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... the peculiar condition of his daughter in relation to the globe on which she dwelt and requested them to consult together as to what might be the cause and probable cure of her infirmity. The king laid stress upon the word, but failed to discover his own pun. The queen laughed; but Hum-Drum and Kopy-Keck heard with humility and retired in silence. Their consultation consisted chiefly in propounding and supporting, for the thousandth time, each his favorite theories. For the condition of the princess ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... before the Warren stables, as we shall neither see lights nor hear noises, if it isn't the blowing of our own noses. That's what I say, and I've said it many a time; but there's nobody 'ull ventur a ten-pun' note on their ghos'es as they make so ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... There is a pun in the fourth line which suggests more than even a free translation can express. War['e] means "I," or "mine," or "one's own," etc., according to circumstances; and war['e] m['e] (written separately) might be rendered "its own eyes." But war['e]m['e] (one word) means a crack, rent, split, ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... I think this is an excellent, though unintentional, pun. "Pudor" is Spanish for "shame," but this meaning makes the sentence difficult to read (at best), although it does convey the intent. I think that the word intended is "powder," but left the original ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... was the agreed sign of sorrow and personal contrition, which was not to be introduced into the public worship on the great day and the solemn seasons of the Church's joy and thanksgiving? If so, Baxter's appeal to this usage is a gross sophism, a mere pun. ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... much as to say, the tough old knight hath a habit of swearing," said the keeper, grinning at a pun, which has been repeated since his time; "but who can help it? it comes of use and wont. Were you now, in your bodily self, to light suddenly on a Maypole, with all the blithe morris-dancers prancing around it to the merry pipe ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... have been preserved, but one is given which shows that she occasionally indulged in a pun. Some one, speaking of a certain bishop who was rather lax in his observance of Lent, said he believed he would eat a horse on Ash-Wednesday. "Very suitable diet," remarked her ladyship, "if it were ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... very forcibly and pleasingly. M. Langles admires and speaks our language. "Your charming Wilkie (says he) pleases me more and more. Why does he not visit us? He will at least find here some good proofs of my respect for his talents." Of course he could not mean to pun. I was then told to admire his impression of Woollett's Battle of La Hogue; and indeed I must allow that it is one of the very best which I have seen. He who possesses that, need not distress himself about any of the impressions ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... French leave, the b—y sans culotte" returned the captain, putting himself in a better humor with his own pun. "But did you ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... to him his plan of conquest—by taking town after town and fortress after fortress, and gradually plucking away all the supports before he attempted the capital. He expressed his resolution in a memorable pun or play upon the name of Granada, which signifies a pomegranate. "I will pick out the seeds of this pomegranate one by one," said the ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... Dutocq, "it was a bargain with a long time limit. It can't be said that la Peyrade has lost much time in getting installed—forgive the pun—at the Thuilleries. The scamp has made his way pretty fast, you ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... a week to office-boys. That's five 'pun' in your money, I believe. But, meanwhile, now that I'm in London, I have some business with Mr. Peebleby." Mitchell produced an American silver dollar and forced it into the boy's hand, whereupon the latter blinked in a dazed manner, then hazarded the opinion that ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... they put his bust up," laughed Reg, dodging the portmanteau that was flung at him for his atrocious pun. ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... because he was cold or in penitence for the pun, he walked over to the windows to pull down the shades. But before he did so he looked out into the night, his breath making a frosty vapor on the pane. Below him the Square gleamed in white patches under the arc-lamps, and across these white patches ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... funny is grown old-fashioned," said Cutter. "Fifty or sixty years ago, a hundred years ago, when a man wanted to be very bitingly sarcastic, he would compose a criticism upon his enemy which was only a long string of abominable puns; each pun was printed in italics. That was ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... or pun, bad, good, or indifferent, was let slip, however much taking it up might interrupt ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... mean, The first but a rebus, the last but a dean. A dean's but a parson: and what is a rebus? A thing never known to the Muses or Phoebus. The corruption of verse; for, when all is done, It is but a paraphrase made on a pun. But a genius like hers no subject can stifle, It shows and discovers itself through a trifle. By reading this trifle, I quickly began To find her a great wit, but the dean a small man. Rich ladies will furnish their garrets with stuff, Which others ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... who look upon the Lake of Lucerne as one more task ticked off from their memorandum book, and count up the list of summits visible from the Goernergrat without being penetrated with any keen sense of sublimity. And there are mountaineers who are capable of making a pun on the top of Mont Blanc—and capable of nothing more. Still I venture to deny that even punning is incompatible with poetry, or that those who make the pun can have no deeper feeling in their bosoms which they are perhaps too shamefaced ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... become more numerous and more complex. Like them, too, it is altogether removed from utility in the struggle for life, and appears sporadically in a very small percentage of the population; the majority being, as is well known, totally unable to say a witty thing or make a pun ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... (I speak, of course, merely from personal feeling, and with deference to those better able to form an opinion upon the subject;) but it is impossible to hear the unharmonious crash which proceeds from the orchestra of the opera, without immediately recollecting the celebrated pun of Rosseau: "Pour l'Academie de musique, certainement il fait le plus du bruit du monde." On the other hand, it is amongst the peasantry alone that you now find the ancient music of France. Those airs which are so deeply associated with all the glory and gallantry of the old monarchy; ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... to walk like a woman in the State of Louisiana,"—as near as the pun can be translated. The company laughed. Jean Thompson looked at his wife, whose applause he prized, and she answered by an asseverative toss of the head, leaning back and contriving, with some effort, to get her arms ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... but you will have pity on the ignorance of one who is so new to the profession. As I have intimated, I am no more than an unworthy barrister, in the service of his Majesty, expressly sent from home on a particular errand. It it were not a pitiful pun, I might add, I am ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... by the horns, pretending or thinking that genuine feeling can be worthily carried in a pun. So that in his impassioned 'hymn to God the Father', deploring his own sinfulness, ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... particular now-a-days chunks o' cabbages, and scarcity, and pun'kin, and that all the sass ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... outworn, would be tasked and worn little longer. The lamp of a life that had burnt too fiercely was flickering to its close. "If we are not taken off with the sword," he writes on February 5th, "we are like to march off with an ague in this mud basket; and, to conclude with a very bad pun, better martially than marsh-ally. The dykes of Holland when broken down are the deserts of Arabia, in comparison with Mesolonghi." In April, when it was too late, Stanhope wrote from Salona, in Phocis, imploring ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... words; it was the truth they conveyed, pun-gently as it was expressed. But you shall not drive me off upon that, and so escape the expression of my deep gratitude, my—' he was on the verge now; he would not speak in the haste of his hot passion; he would weigh each word. He would; and his will ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... most perfect pun within my knowledge," remarked Stevenson. "A lady, travelling by coach, had a pet dog, which annoyed her fellow-passengers till one of them remonstrated. 'I'm surprised that you don't like my dog,' says the lady; 'he's a real Peruvian.' 'We don't object to your Peruvian dog,' ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... natural; first because the snow-storm was even dangerously deep, and secondly because it was Sunday. And at the very word Sunday he bit his lip; the word was henceforth for hire like some indecent pun. Under the white fog of snow high up in the heaven the whole atmosphere of the city was turned to a very queer kind of green twilight, as of men under the sea. The sealed and sullen sunset behind the dark dome of St. Paul's had in it smoky and sinister colours—colours of sickly green, dead red or ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... proceed from a metaphysics constructed of concepts. Let us recollect exactly what a psychical phenomenon is. Let us banish the will-o'-the-wisps, replace them by a precise instance, and return to the visual perception we took as an example a little while back: without intending a pun, "revenons a nos moutons." These sheep which I see in the plain are as material, as real, as the cerebral movement which accompanies my perception. How, then, is it possible that this cerebral movement, a primary material fact, should engender this secondary material fact, this collection ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... explained Harry, "a grizzly bear you know. Dad says he's the biggest he's ever seen and he seems to bear—excuse the pun, please—he seems to bear a charmed life. All the boys on the ranch are crazy to get a shot at him, but they've never ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... kill the Admiral next time he makes a pun, I do not know that just now I need such a service. By to-morrow, though, or the next day, I may think of one. Until then"—she held out her hand—"wait patiently, and be ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Bellaria ea maxime sunt mellita, quae mellita non sunt, pemmasin entra et pepsei societas infida." In this piece we see the fondness for punning, which even in his eightieth year had not left him. The last pun is not at first obvious; the meaning is that the nicest sweetmeats are those which are not too sweet, for made dishes are hostile to digestion; or, as we may say, paraphrasing his diction, "Delicacies are conducive to delicacy." ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... acknowledging that his own reign had received both benefit and glory from it. The people of Alcala punningly said, the church of Toledo had never had a bishop of greater edification than Ximenes; and Erasmus, in a letter to his friend Vergara, perpetrates a Greek pun on the classic name of Alcala, intimating the highest opinion of the state of science there. The reclining statue of Ximenes, beautifully carved in alabaster, now ornaments his sepulchre in the College of ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... was invariably a badge or device forming a pun upon a man's surname. It probably originated in the canting heraldry of earlier days. A large number of rebuses ending in "ton" are based upon a tun or barrel; such are the lup on a ton of Robert Lupton, Provost of Eton 1504, which appears in ...
— A Short Account of King's College Chapel • Walter Poole Littlechild
... they should injure themselves. Even when a jest misses fire completely, so that it is no jest at all, but only a jocular intention, they laugh just as heartily. Leave out the point of your story, get the word wrong on the duplicity of which the pun that was to excite hilarity depended, and they still honor your abortive attempt with the most ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Dinner) it is not merely that men make fools of themselves. When Dickens described Mr. Chuckster, Dickens was, strictly speaking, making a fool of himself; for he was making a fool out of himself. And every kind of real lark, from acting a charade to making a pun, does consist in restraining one's nine hundred and ninety-nine serious selves and letting the fool loose. The dullness of the millionaire joke is much deeper. It is not silly at all; it is solely stupid. ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... wi' the upbringing an' edication of un. I mean him to be brought up to a power o' knowledge, for theer's nothin' like it. Doan't you think I be gwaine to shirk doin' the right thing by un', Miller, 'cause it aint so. If 'twas my last fi'-pun' note was called up for larnin' him, ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... is here an untranslatable pun in the original; niemiec, the Polish word for German, is derived from ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... been easily foreseen. In 1819 he returned to England: the cause may be indicated by his very famous pun, when, the Governor of the Cape having expressed a hope that he was not returning because of ill health, he was "sorry to say they think there is something wrong in the chest." He was found guilty of owing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... said Bumpus, with a broad grin—"Hallo! why, here's a spear that must ha' bin dropt by one o' them savages. That's a piece o' good luck anyhow, as the man said when he fund the fi' pun' note. Now, then, keep an eye on them gals, lad, and I'll be back as soon as ever I can; though I does feel rather stiffish. My old timbers ain't used to such deep ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... well for the writer of the above-mentioned leaderette had he referred to the ninth of ELIA's Popular Fallacies, and been thereby reminded how "a pun is a pistol let off at the ear; and not a feather to tickle the intellect." The Baron is prepared to admit that the lesson to be learned from this delightful Essay of CHARLES LAMB's is, that a pun once let off, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Jan. 9, 1892 • Various
... pun thee into shivers] Pun is in the midland counties the vulgar and colloquial ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... Stuart, and the nonchalance "under difficulties" of "Milord What-then" in Voltaire's Princess of Babylon, where the noble traveller is discovered philosophically reading the news-paper in his carriage after it was overturned. English beauty, ever since the days of Pope Gregory, with his pun about Angles and Angels, has been greatly admired in the south of Europe—not a little, perhaps, on account of the general fairness of its complexion. I once heard a fair-faced English gentleman, who would have been thought rather effeminate looking at home, called ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... creature who goes about making puns. A mere step above comes the epigram, the isolated epigram framed and glazed. Then such impressionist art as Crichton's pictures, mere puns in paint. What they mean is nothing, they arrest a quiet decent-minded man like myself with the same spasmodic disgust as a pun in literature—the subject is a transparent excuse; they are mere indecent and unedifying exhibitions of himself. He thinks it is something superlative to do everything in a startling way. He cannot even sign his name without being offensive. ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... the human maze. But the words were an echo to wake memory. Rugged, harsh, and fine the face of McGuire Ellis rose before Hal. He heard the rough voice, with its undertone of affection beneath the jocularity of the rather feeble pun, and it called him back like a trumpet summons to the loyalty which he had promised to the men of the "Clarion." He slipped the half-torn paper ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the average boy, his insensibility to, or carelessness of, the pain of others and of inferior creatures is exemplified by the treatment which the "Pun-nul" (March fly) receives. That an insect which occasions so much exasperation and pain should receive small mercy at the hands of a vexed and sportful boy is not extraordinary, and so he provides himself with entertainment and takes vengeance simultaneously. ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... modest, and, perhaps, the handsomest man in our corps; but you have not got a single rupee. You ask me for Julia, and you do not possess even an anna!"—(Here the old rogue grinned, as if he had made a capital pun).—"No, no," said he, waxing good-natured; "Gagy, my boy, it is nonsense! Julia, love, retire with your mamma; this silly young gentleman will remain and ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... understand what you're talking about!" he says. "But I fancy it's a pun of some sort! Very well, then, ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... was here that the pasquinades were published, by affixing them to a pedestal at the corner of the Palazzo Braschi. And one of Pasquino's bitterest jests was directed against Olimpia Maldachini. Her name was cut in two, to make a good Latin pun: 'Olim pia, nunc impia,' 'once pious, now impious,' or 'Olimpia, now impious,' as one chose to join or separate the syllables. Whole books have been filled with the short and pithy imaginary conversations between Marforio, the statue of a river god which ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... history by saying, I went to a North Country school, where I was noted for my aptness in learning; and my skill at 'prisoner's base,'—upon my word I purposed no pun! I was intended for the Church. Wishing, betimes, to instruct myself in its ceremonies, I persuaded my schoolmaster's maidservant to assist me towards promoting a christening. My father did not like this premature love for ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... people say, and he would never have done that on purpose. I assured him that I knew he had said it accidentally, but it stopped us talking about Ward, because, when you hate puns, it is most discomforting to make one suddenly. I made a pun once—I can still remember it, because if I had performed this feat intentionally I should have deserved all I got. What I did get was a dig in the ribs from Collier and the remark, "You are a wag," and then I had ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... glass; I could see no more, for I envied the dog. The nurse carried me back to bed and gave me morphia. That day I looked no more. For me the Divine Comedy was far from ended. The divine humorist has even descended to a pun. Talk of Mahomet's coffin. I lie between the two Champs-Elysees, the one where warm life palpitates, and that other, where the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... incessant jester; and the revolt against gloomy religion made him turn his wit, whenever he could, in the direction of a defence of happier and humaner views. In the long great roll that includes Homer and Shakespeare, he was the last great man who really employed the pun. His puns were not all good (nor were Shakespeare's), but the best of them were a strong and fresh form of art. The pun is said to be a thing of two meanings; but with Hood there were three meanings, for there was also the abstract ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... Tholomyes, with the accent of a man who had recovered his empire, "Come to yourselves. This pun which has fallen from the skies must not be received with too much stupor. Everything which falls in that way is not necessarily worthy of enthusiasm and respect. The pun is the dung of the mind which soars. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... I can trust you, Tom, and my ve'y good friend, youh fatheh, to watch out for Ardea's little fo'tune," was the way he put it. "I haven't so ve'y much longeh to stay in Paradise," he went on, with a silent little chuckle for the grim pun, "and what I've got goes to her, as a matteh of cou'se." Then he added a word that set Tom to thinking hard. "I had planned to give her a little suhprise on her wedding-day: suppose you have the lawyehs ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... but, unfortunately for what merit it really possesses, many of its assailants have so far disregarded the just principles of taste and criticism, as to go laboriously out of their way to be profanely witty on its defects. Song and satire, raillery and ridicule, pun and pasquinade, and even the coarseness of caricature, have thus been let off at this specimen of NASH-ional architecture; whilst their authors have wittingly kept out any redeeming graces which could be found in its ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various
... an eager listener to their folk lore and fireside stories. When later, during a residence of nearly four years among the people, my eyes were opened to behold the wondrous fertility of invention, the wealth of literary, historic and classic allusion, of pun, myth and riddle, of heroic, wonder, and legendary lore in Japanese art, I at once set myself to find the source of the ideas expressed in bronze and porcelain, on lacquered cabinets, fans, and even crape paper napkins ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... weskit," which had then haunted her, till she found him playing with Gorgon in the road; and from that to her bewilderment twenty-four hours later, when he had called the dog Zola. She had reproved the enormity of the syncopated pun, but Dick had insisted that Zola fitted an animal whose expression was ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... pun here cannot be kept. The word (in Greek), Paean, resembles (that for) to strike; hence the word, as recalling the blows and wounds of the war, seems of ill ...
— Peace • Aristophanes
... This pun had been repeated, and had reached Louis XIV, so that the chevalier presently heard, directly enough this time, that the king desired him to travel for some years. He knew the danger of neglecting—such intimations, and since he thought the country after all preferable to the Bastille, he left Paris, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... of corroboration of Marco's story, but giving a different form to the pun, has been found by Mr. W.F. Mayers, of the Diplomatic Department in China, in a Chinese compilation dating from the latter part of the 14th century. Under the heading, "A Kiang-nan Prophecy," this book states that prior to the fall of the Sung a prediction ran through Kiang-nan: "If Kiang-nan ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... alluded to, if not actually named, in "1st Henry IV.," act ii, sc. 4, when Falstaff says: "If reasons were as plentiful as Blackberries, I would give no man a reason upon compulsion, I——" "It seems that a pun underlies this, the association of reasons with Blackberries springing out of the fact that reasons ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... of his "Hear hims!" proud, too, of his vote, And lost virginity of oratory, Proud of his learning (just enough to quote), He revelled in his Ciceronian glory: With memory excellent to get by rote, With wit to hatch a pun or tell a story, Graced with some merit, and with more effrontery,[mq] "His country's pride," he came down ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... my execrable pun. Steele leaned against the counter, his gray glance studying the man I ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... much to say that his heart is not in his theme—that he stands detached from it—still, his sympathies are indubitably subordinated to the effort, the successful effort, to bring off a neat point, to make a pun in the right place, to be striking, antithetical, epigrammatic. His verses have the finish, in their way, of Pope's couplet and Ovid's pentameter. His best known and most praised work appeals, primarily, to ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... under the weight of a stamp and an approaching peace. A sheet of blank paper that must have this new imprimatur clapped upon it before it is qualified to communicate anything to the public, will make its way but very heavily.... A facetious friend, who loves a pun, calls this present mortality among authors 'the fall of the leaf.' I remember upon Mr. Baxter's death there was published a sheet of very good sayings, inscribed: 'The last words of Mr. Baxter.' The title sold so great a number of these papers, that, about a week after these, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... George Moore, thinks that Legrand is frankly a symbolist. We side with Mauclair in not trying to pin this etcher down to any particular formula. He is anything he happens to will at the moment, symbolist, poet, and also shockingly frank at times. Take the plate with a pun for a title, Le paing quotidien ("paing" is slang for "poing," a blow from the fist, and may also mean the daily bread). A masculine brute is with clinched fist about to give his unfortunate partner her daily drubbing. ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... Arabic seems here to contain a pun, the consonantic outline of "Tasht""basin" being the same as of "tashshat"she was ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... good-natured things, and I would put my name to 'em chearfully, if I could as honestly. I complimented them in a Newspaper, with an abatement for those puns you laud so. They are generally an excess. A Pun is a thing of too much consequence to be thrown in as a make-weight. You shall read one of the addresses over, and miss the puns, and it shall be quite as good and better than when you discover 'em. A Pun is a Noble Thing per se: O never lug it in as an accessory. A Pun is a sole object ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... smiling over at his chum, and ready for his pun, even under such circumstances, "my head is feeling a 'trifle heavy,' but I'm game to ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... 'when I left th' Five Towns fifty-two years sin' to go weaving i' Derbyshire wi' my mother's brother, tay were ten shilling a pun'. Us had it when us were sick—which wasna' often. We worked too hard for be sick. Hafe past five i' th' morning till eight of a night, and then Saturday afternoon walk ten mile to Glossop with a week's work on ye' back, and home again wi' ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... poorly. I have been to a funeral, where I made a pun, to the consternation of the rest of the mourners. And we had wine. I can't describe to you the howl which the widow set up at proper intervals. Dash [1] could; for it was not unlike ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb |
