"Repartee" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to cheer her spirits by a gay reply, and then they kept up between them a lively badinage of repartee, in which old Jenny acquitted herself quite as wittily as ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... breeding will sometimes join in the laugh, which has been raised at his expence by an ill-natured repartee; but if it was very cutting, and one of those shocking sort of truths, which as they can scarcely be pardoned even in private, ought never to be uttered in public, he does not laugh because he is pleased, but because ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... seek. The critic is not only more cultured than the average playgoer, he is more blase. He knows the stock situations, the stage tricks, the farcical misunderstandings, the machine-made pathos, the dull mechanic round of repartee, the innocent infant who intervenes in a divorce suit (like the Queen's Proctor), the misprised mother-in-law, the bearded spinster sighing like a furnace, the ingenuous and slangy young person of fifteen with the well-known ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... "for it I have composed a concerto in seven flats." "You lie!" retorted the bluff monarch, "the Boehm flute has not yet been invented. Away with you, hayseed from Halle." Whereat the mighty Bach softly laughed, being tickled by the regal repartee, and stole home, and there he sat him down and composed a nine-part fugue for Boehm flute and jackpot on the word Potsdam, the manuscript ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... see!" said I, rushing angrily from the room. It was a very weak retort, and I frankly admit that I am ashamed of it, but it was the best I had at hand at the moment. My stock of repartee, like most men's vitality, is at its lowest ebb at four o'clock ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... pour into his ear Your own confiding grief; In vain you claim his sympathy, In vain you ask relief; In vain you try to rouse him by Joke, repartee, or quiz; His sole reply's a burning sigh, And "What a mind it is!" O Lord! it is the greatest bore, Of all the bores I know, To have a friend who's lost his heart ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... no ascetic; I'm as pleasant as can be; You'll always find me ready with a crushing repartee; I've an irritating chuckle, I've a celebrated sneer, I've an entertaining snigger, I've a fascinating leer; To everybody's prejudice I know a thing or two; I can tell a woman's age in half a minute - and I do - But although I try to make myself as pleasant as I can, Yet everybody says I'm ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... long distances, and who prided themselves upon being above every form of fishing lower than spinning, the truly knock-down nature of this blow can only be imagined by those who understand the subject. The captain, who is reckoned one of the worst men in the regiment to venture with in the way of repartee, was so amazed at the damsel's ignorance that he answered never a word, leaving some of her friends in muslin on the garden chairs around to explain the difference between fishing with and without a float—a duty which they appeared to perform ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... said the hostess in the applause which recognized Wetmore's mischievous intent. "I'll not believe anything of the kind." From her this had the effect of repartee, and when she asked with the single-heartedness which Wetmore had praised among her friends as her strongest point, and advised her keeping up as long as she possibly could, "It isn't so, is it, Mr. Ludlow?" the finest wit could not have done ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... how to compliment without flattering; her cordiality warmed like wine, and her ready wit, repartee, and ability to thaw all social ice and lead conversation along any line, were accomplishments which perhaps have never been equaled. The women who "entertain" often only depress; they are so glowing that ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... in rustic repartee with bright-eyed Elviry Prooner, a deep-bosomed Diana, who, next to Dorothy Thornton, was accounted the "comeliest gal ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... cheer their old opponent. Besides securing American gold for his country, he has transferred some American bronze to his complexion. If anything, he appears to have sharpened his natural faculty for skilful evasion and polite repartee by his encounter with Transatlantic journalists. In fact everybody is pleased to see him back except perhaps certain curious members, who find him even more chary of information than his deputy, Lord Robert Cecil. The mystery of Lord Northcliffe's visit to the States has been cleared up. Certain ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... rant by note, and through the gamut rage; In songs and airs express their martial fire, Combat in trills, and in a fugue expire: While, lull'd by sound, and undisturb'd by wit, Calm and serene you indolently sit, And, from the dull fatigue of thinking free, Hear the facetious fiddle's repartee: Our home-spun authors must forsake the field, And Shakspeare to the soft Scarletti yield. 10 To your new taste the poet of this day Was by a friend advised to form his play. Had Valentini, musically coy, Shunn'd Phaedra's arms, and scorn'd the proffer'd ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... an active participant in the affairs of the Teton Sioux. He was noted for his eloquence, which was nearly always conciliatory, yet he could say very sharp things of the duplicity of the whites. He had much ease of manner and was a master of repartee. I recall his saying that if you have got to wear golden slippers to enter the white man's heaven no Indian will ever get there, as the whites have got the Black Hills and with ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... trouble, although his agility in dodging pickets and his skill in making a week's C.B. a veritable holiday are the talk of the regiment. All the officers know him, and many of them who have been victims of his smart repartee fear him more than they care to acknowledge. The subaltern with the eyeglass is a bad route-marcher, and Wankin once remarked in an audible whisper that the officer had learned his company drill with a drove of haltered pack-horses, ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... Bunyan's influence. But Franklin was essentially a journalist. In his swift, terse style, he is most like Defoe, who was the first great English journalist and master of the newspaper narrative. The style of both writers is marked by homely, vigorous expression, satire, burlesque, repartee. Here the comparison must end. Defoe and his contemporaries were authors. Their vocation was writing and their success rests on the imaginative or creative power they displayed. To authorship Franklin laid no claim. He wrote no work of the imagination. He developed only incidentally ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... A shrewd hit, 'pon honor!" cried Wharton, tapping his snuff-box. "I vow to Gad, Ye're undone, Charles. Ye'd better play at repartee with Gascoigne, there. Ye're more of ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... Essie wondered, as she glanced at Faith, whether she had done any "mischief" or no; but she ventured no sort of repartee, being altogether in an uncomfortable and somewhat awed state of mind. She made hurried adieus to Mrs. Derrick, more formal and extremely civil leave-taking of Mr. Linden, parted in a sort of astonished wise with Faith and the diamonds which evidently bewildered her yet, and made what ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... peculiar conditions, but subject to the same rules as conversation by word of mouth, except so far forth as they may be modified by those necessary conditions. You do not take your partner's bright saying home with you and bring a repartee to the next ball, by which time she has forgotten what her bon mot was, and has another, every whit as good, upon her lips; you do not return a lead in whist at the next rubber; you do not postpone the laugh over ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... wrong as far as the Bells were concerned. It is true that after supper Beatrice called Matty to her side, and looked over a photographic album with her, and tried hard to draw her into the gay conversation and to get her to reply to the light repartee which Captain Bertram so deftly employed. But, alas for poor Matty she had no conversational powers; she was only great at interjections, at ceaseless giggling, and at violent and uncontrollable fits of blushing. Even Beatrice felt a sense of repulsion ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... about the streets the rest of the time, until nightfall. She thought that she was hiding her secret so successfully that no one imagined she had one. She talked more than usual at the table, she laughed at the slightest excuse, she joined spiritedly in the repartee at dinner, a time when they nearly always had guests. But keen-eyed Mrs. Blythe saw several things in the course of the week. She noticed her lack of appetite, the long spells of abstraction that came sometimes after her merriest outbursts; ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... I remember now what I did say. I said that much as I enjoyed the pleasant give and take of friendly conversation, dearly as I loved even the irresponsible monologue or the biting repartee, yet still more was I attached to the silent worship of the valse's mazy rhythm. 'BUT,' I went on to say, 'but,' I added, with surprising originality, 'every rule has an exception. YOU are the exception. May I have two dances, and then we'll try ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... lady regarded me with undissembled incredulity, to which I was able to find no better repartee than a profound and I ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fine gentleman," he said; "you have been at Baiae" (Baiae was a fashionable watering-place on the Campanian coast). "Well," said Cicero, "that is better than to have been at the 'matrons' worship.'" And the attack and repartee went on. "You have bought a fine house." (Cicero had spent a large sum of money on a house on the Palatine, and was known to have somewhat crippled his means by doing so.) "With you the buying has been of jurymen." "They gave you no ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... the tape a second time, snorting louder and in shorter gasps than before, and with the biting repartee still assailing their ears, when the man who had disappeared into the hold of the ship came into sight again, carrying a ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... long before he came in sight of them, the shrill yells with which sled load interchanged repartee with sled load; everlastingly there was the monotone of the singers. It was plain that the same spirit of gay adventure was inspiring ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... pride with greater pride, As did the Cynic on some like occasion; Deeming the sage would be much mortified, Or thrown into a philosophic passion, For a spoilt carpet—but the "Attic Bee" Was much consoled by his own repartee.[783] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... robbery. He arrived at Tyburn insolently drunk. He blustered and ranted, until the spectators hissed their disapproval, and he died vehemently shouting that he would act the same murder again in the same case. Unworthy, also, was the last dying repartee of Samuel Shotland, a notorious bully of the Eighteenth Century. Taking off his shoes, he hurled them into the crowd, with a smirk of delight. 'My father and mother often told me,' he cried, 'that I should ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... been longer, but the darkness was coming on fast; still it had been long enough for all to become the best of friends, and when the two officers came on deck it was to find the two crews engaged in a hearty game of repartee, the schooner's men casting jokes down into the boat, and the man-of-war's men hurling ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... ask me, is a rich man—as well as a gentleman," said Strowbridge, with the expression of half-frightened anger of the righteously indignant, who knows that he has not the advantages of cool wit and scathing repartee, and, in consequence, may lose his head. "He inherited his money, and was not forced to go to a new country and become a savage," ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... genuine or more deserved. He had just passed his twenty-seventh year. In the House of Burgesses he had the reputation of being the silent member. He never acquired the art of a debater. He was neither quick at rebuttal nor at repartee, but so surely did his character impress itself on every one that when he spoke the Assembly almost took it for granted that he had said the final word on the subject under discussion. How careful he was to observe the scope and effects of parliamentary ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... such men, but she had just sufficient knowledge of various subjects to provoke a conversation, and enough cleverness to sustain it by "drawing out" the scholar who might be seated at her side. But this was not all. Her conversation sparkled with wit and repartee. "The mind laughed," says her friend Zachary Macaulay, "not the muscles; the countenance sparkled, but it was with an ethereal flame: everything was oxygen gas and intellectual champagne: and the eye, which her sisters called 'diamond,' and which the painters complained they could not put upon ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... sharpens up his own more controversial and political intelligence. There are more things here than anywhere else in Dickens that partake of the nature of pamphleteering, of positive challenge, of sudden repartee, of pugnacious and exasperating query, in a word of everything that belongs to the pure art of controversy as distinct not only from the pure art of fiction but even also from the pure art of satire. I am inclined to think (to put the matter not only shortly but clumsily) that ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... have been delighted with this testimony to her attractions; and would have been ready with a repartee about the loss he would sustain in relinquishing so many perfections for her sake; but now her heart was growing faint with terror, and her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth. Thoughts that would fill pages darted through her brain like lightning—dreadful possibilities, that she had ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... strengthen herself and others in the faith. The so-called 'Promus' is a manuscript set of notes, quotations, formulae, and proverbs. As Mr. Spedding says, there are 'forms of compliment, application, excuse, repartee, etc.' 'The collection is from books which were then in every scholar's hands.' 'The proverbs may all, or nearly all, be found in the common collections.' Mrs. Pott remarks that in 'Promus' are 'several hundreds of notes of which no trace has been discovered in the acknowledged writings of Bacon, ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... seem to have made use of it themselves.'—'Whatever my own conduct may have been, madam,' replied he, 'is not the present question; tho' as I have made no use of advice myself, I should in conscience give it to those that will.'—As I was apprehensive this answer might draw on a repartee, making up by abuse what it wanted in wit, I changed the subject, by seeming to wonder what could keep our son so long at the fair, as it was now almost nightfall.—'Never mind our son,' cried my wife, 'depend upon it he knows what he is about. I'll warrant ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... once and easily into the outward life of the people among whom he is,—while he always reserves within himself a cold, stern individuality; he often is angered when he should be amused, and retorts with resentment when he should reply in repartee. Still, the American is not sombre to the core. He has a kind of grim merriment bestowed somewhere in the recesses of his being. It is quaint and severe, however, and abounding in dry conceits. It inclines ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... considerable minuteness, and his representations have been permitted, until of late years, to pass unchallenged. He has described them as at once passionate and placable, easily moved to anger, and as easily appeased; fond of pleasantry and repartee, and heartily enjoying a laugh; pleased to hear themselves praised, and yet not annoyed by criticism and censure; naturally generous towards those who were poor and in humble circumstances, and humane even towards their enemies; jealous of their liberties, and keeping even their rulers in awe. ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... she said truthfully, beginning to feel that she wasn't figuring to great advantage in this passage of repartee. ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... theatre; he listens in silence, never hisses, and applauds with measure. Does not the spectacle please him? He chews his buyo and goes out quietly, not to trouble those who may like it. He expects in his plays a combat every fifteen seconds, and all the rest of the time repartee between comic personages, or terrifying metamorphoses. The comedy chosen for this fete was "Prince Villardo, or the Nails Drawn from the Cellar of Infamy," comedy ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... unlike his sister, Mrs. Middleton; he was exceedingly attractive; there was no denying the charm that existed in the rapid intelligence, the quick conception, and the ready humour that lit up his eyes and countenance, and sparkled in his repartee. His powers of captivation were as great as hers, but he knew that power, and even used it for an end; while in her it was spontaneous as the bubbling of a stream, as the song of the birds, or as the ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... lady quarrelling with one of her step-daughters, told her she hated to see her face, and that she always considered the day an unlucky one on which she had the misfortune to meet her first in the morning. The girl, inheriting no doubt a share of her father's power of repartee, quickly answered her stepmother, and said, "You have every cause to believe that it is unlucky to meet me, for I was first-foot to my dear father the unfortunate morning on which he left home to ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... that in repartee Saunders scored, then went out to make his way toward the rectory. As he passed the First National Bank he saw the constable talking to ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... never even seen, the penniless orphan of a penniless brother of his father, and who had been sent to sea; so that, after all, his mother was the only natural friend he had. This poor little boy would fly from that mother with a sullen brow, or, perhaps, even with a harsh and cutting repartee; and then he would lock himself up in his room, and weep. But he allowed no witnesses of this weakness. The lad was very proud. If any of the household passed by as he quitted the saloon, and stared for a moment at his pale and agitated face, ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... a general favourite for his pleasantry, the gentleness of his manner, and the smartness of his repartee. He had attained tolerable scholarship, was in the fifth form in 1793, the year in which he left Eton, and wrote good Latin verses, an accomplishment which he partially retained to his last days. From Eton he went to Oriel, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... delirious, is always a Miltonic rage; it is grand, sublime, terrible! Mingled with the scurrilities of the theological brawl are passages of the noblest English ever written. Hartley Coleridge explains the dulness of the wit-combats in Shakspeare and Jonson, on the ground that repartee is the accomplishment of lighter thinkers and a less earnest age. So of Milton's pamphlets it must be said that he was not fencing for pastime, but fighting for all he held most worthy. He had to think only of making his blows tell. When ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... to dinner. The other members of the mess were trooping in, all his juniors, all obviously fond of him and boisterously irreverent of his rank. Dinner under his chairmanship was a sort of school for repartee. It was utterly unlike the usual British mess dinner. If you shut your eyes for a minute you couldn't believe that any one present had ever worn a uniform. I learned afterward that there was quite a little competition to get ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... charm. Yet, like all reserved natures, she often failed to attract strangers at a first meeting. In general conversation she disappointed people, by not shining. Men and women, immeasurably her inferiors, surpassed her in ready wit and brilliant repartee. Her taciturnity in society has been somewhat ungenerously laid to a parti pris. She was one, it is said, who took all and gave nothing. That she was intentionally chary of her passing thoughts and impressions to those around her, is, however, sufficiently disproved by her letters. ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... promote their own interests. He was what we call in America an available candidate. Madame Roland, on the contrary, was animated and brilliant. Her genius was universally admired. Her bold suggestions, her shrewd counsel, her lively repartee, her capability of cutting sarcasm, rarely exercised, her deep and impassioned benevolence, her unvarying cheerfulness, the sincerity and enthusiasm of her philanthropy, and the unrivaled brilliance of her conversational powers, ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... day was none of the finest having elicited a repartee of "quite the contrary," the various knotty points of meteorology were successively discussed and exhausted; and, the ice being thus broken, in the course of conversation it appeared that all four, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... entitled Do We Agree? On both occasions the crowd was enormous and many had to be turned away. All three men were immensely popular figures and all three were at their best debating in a hall of moderate size where swift repartee could be followed by ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... stringent regulations of the postal authorities will not permit us any report of the heart-to-heart talk that followed his departure, other than the baldest summary. It was marked by earnestness, sincerity, even by some petulance, interspersed with frank and spirited repartee. ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... always has at command smiles for satire, simpers for repartee, sniggers for conundrums, titters for puns, and guffaws for jocular anecdotes. By Mr. T.C.'s system, cues for laughter are rendered unnecessary, as, from a long course of practical experience, the moment of cachinnation is always ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... nobleman in The Dancing Girl. ("There is another and a worse wicked nobleman" N. B., O. W.) But this is no fault, and, indeed, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find fault with Mr. TREE'S Lord Illingworth. Mrs. TREE as Mrs. Allonby, is a very charming battledore in the game of repartee-shuttlecock, who with eight other principal characters in the piece, has nothing whatever to do with the plot. To the character of Lady Hunstanton, as written in the Mrs. Nickleby vein, and as played by Miss ROSE LECLERCQ, the success is mainly due; and "for this relief much thanks." It is here ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, May 6, 1893 • Various
... company she sometimes felt depressed, but alone she was cheerful and without a care. At the Pagellas' she was like a child of the house. She had the Spanish love of ceremony and magnificence, the ready repartee of the Parisian, and, like a well- brought-up girl, knew how to preserve the balance between friendliness and mirth. She was not in the least prudish, and she understood everything; but there was a ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... really quite outrageous—the repartee of a conscienceless Parisian designer who took her hint that she wished something that would be entirely novel in the States. Today, after we have all of us, even in the uttermost provinces, been ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... and hereafter. But I talked to other people about it and learned that he was already known as a public character to everyone but his own dear mother. It was these here curls that got him attacked on every hand by young and old, and his natural vigour of mind had built him up a line of repartee that was downright blistering when he had time to stop and recite it all. Even mule skinners would drive blocks out of their way just to hear little Shelley's words when someone called him ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... whom in his better days he chose out and brought around him. We are told that he had marvellous powers of conversation, that he had a ready wit, and a keen insight into the humors and the weaknesses of those with whom he was compelled to associate. We are told that he could compete in repartee with the recognized wits of his time, and that he could shine as a talker even among men whose names still live in history because of their reputations as talkers. Of course it will naturally occur to the mind that the guests of the Prince Regent might be ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... forlasi, malpretendi. Renovate renovigi. Renovation renovigo. Renown famo. Rent (payment) depago, luprezo. Rent dissxiro, dissxirajxo. Renunciation forlaso, eksigxo. Repair ripari. Reparation riparo. Repartee respondajxo. Repast mangxado. Repay repagi. Repeal nuligi. Repealable nuligebla. Repeat ripeti. Repel repeli, repusxi. Repent penti. Repentance pento—ado. Repetition ripetado. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... down to Staten Island. The steamer had come to take the revellers back to the city, and the gang-plank was no sooner lowered than the crowd rushed aboard with happy laughter and gay repartee. Among the first to gain a foothold on the stairway that led to the upper deck were Harry Langdon and Dorothy; and here, face to ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... for anything excepting to push ahead, to elbow our way through the crowd to get the position or the money we desire. Our life is feverish and unnatural. We have no time to develop charm of manner, or elegance of diction. "We are too intense for epigram or repartee. We ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... eighteen months after her marriage, and died two days after giving birth to a son, afterwards Edward VI. She was one of those passive women who make neither friends nor enemies. She indulged in no wit or repartee, like her brilliant but less beautiful predecessor, and she passed her regal life without uttering a sentence or a sentiment which has been ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... novice at repartee. He knew what should follow the entree. On the table was a roast sirloin of pork, garnished with shamrocks. He retorted with this, and drew the appropriate return of a bread pudding in an earthen dish. A hunk of Swiss cheese accurately thrown by her husband struck Mrs. McCaskey below ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... really thought was, that she deserved a slap; but Terry spared the Countess a blush and me the brain fag of a repartee conciliatory alike to parent ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... a rooster-fight," retorted Reeves. In his triumph he was not unwilling to banter repartee with the hateful Hiram. "You fellers with what you call sportin' blood"—he sneered the words—"come along and think nobody else can't do anything right but you. You fetch along cat-meat with feathers on it"—he pointed at the vanquished P.T.—"and expect it to stand any show with a real fighter." ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... servant a dog that he should do this thing?" answered the wit. The story went the rounds, and Mulready once congratulated the clergyman on the repartee. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... noble quality of a man is to be ascribed more to the peculiarity of his mind or to the equanimity of his feelings, depends on the nature of the case, although neither of the two can be entirely wanting. A telling repartee bespeaks rather a ready wit, a ready expedient on sudden danger implies more particularly ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... clever at repartee!' quoth the Prince, and, so saying, he lifted a billet of wood, which chanced to be lying near at hand, and smote the boy on the head so that ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... failed to get the best of whoever tried repartee with him, met more than his match when he ran up against Yankee tact. He was raising money to pay off the debt on ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... impulsive, all his qualities were gifts of nature; hardly any were the fruit acquired by labor and meditation. He had the spirit of the French race, superficial, rapid, spontaneous, and happy in the hazard of repartee, the smile kindly and communicative, the glance open, the hand outstretched, the attitude cordial, an ardent thirst for popularity, great confidence in his relations with others, a constancy in friendship rare upon the throne, true modesty, a restless ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... art of cross-examining a witness, Curran was pre-eminent. A clever repartee is recorded of him in a horse cause. He had asked the jockey's servant his master's age, and the man had retorted, with ready gibe, "I never put my hand into his mouth to try!" The laugh was against the lawyer ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... on her—or rather on the more obnoxious members of her following—by dint of a faculty for light and stinging repartee which would send her, flushed and biting her lip, to have her laugh out in private. But Langham for a long time was defenceless. Many of her friends in his opinion were simply pathological curiosities—their vanity was so frenzied, their sensibilities so morbidly ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... peasant women, in black cloaks and hoods, driving bullock-carts or carts drawn by dogs, six or eight of these inextricably harnessed together and panting for dear life; blue-bloused men in French caps, but bigger and blonder than Frenchmen, and less given to epigrammatic repartee, with mild, blue, beery eyes, a fleur de tete, and a look of health and stolid amiability; sturdy green-coated little soldiers with cock-feathered brigand hats of shiny black, the brim turned up over the right eye and ear that they might the more conveniently ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... a great favourite on the farm, where he played the part of the old jester, and made up for his practical deficiencies by his success in repartee. His hits, I imagine, were those of the flail, which falls quite at random, but nevertheless smashes an insect now and then. They were much quoted at sheep-shearing and haymaking times, but I refrain from recording ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... half-hour, seated in McAllister's kitchen, where the uproarious merriment had drowned all other sounds. Hobbs had become a great favourite with the Highland family, owing to his hearty good humour and ready power of repartee. The sharp Cockney, with the easy-going effrontery peculiar to his race, attempted to amuse the household—namely, Mrs McAllister, Dan, Hugh, and two good-looking and sturdy-limbed servant-girls—by measuring wits with the "canny Scot," as he called the farmer. He ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... definite plan outlined," he answered; "just generalities, with the salt of repartee to season." He pondered over this sudden transition from wrath to mildness. An Englishman? Very ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... girl could catch you in her grip and sweep you along with her. Your mad career generally ended in a crowd and a free fight of confetti. There was one fair masquer, however, to whom Aristide became peculiarly attracted. Her movements were free, her figure dainty and her repartee, below her mask, ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... smelt powerfully of sheep, and had worked hard all day in the blazing sun, but they were never too tired for fun, or at night to dance, after they had bathed and dressed. We all had splendid horses. They reared and pranced; we galloped and jumped every log which came in our path. Jokes, repartee, and nonsense rattled off our tongues. We did not worry about thousands of our fellows—starving and reeking with disease in city slums. We were selfish. We were heedless. We were happy. ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... defence you could have made—if it does not amount to corruption. Mr. Torridon, what is the repartee to that?" ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... (Nineteenth Century, April, 1904): "The geisha is in no sense necessarily a courtesan. She is a woman educated to attract; perfected from her childhood in all the intricacies of Japanese literature; practiced in wit and repartee; inured to the rapid give-and-take of conversation on every topic, human and divine. From her earliest youth she is broken into an inviolable charm of manner incomprehensible to the finest European, yet she ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... fooling, tomfoolery; shenanigan [U.S.], harlequinade &c. 599[obs3]; broad farce, broad humor; fun, espieglerie[Fr]; vis comica[Lat]. jocularity; jocosity, jocoseness[obs3]; facetiousness; waggery, waggishness; whimsicality; comicality &c. 853. banter, badinage, retort, repartee, smartness, ready wit, quid-pro- quo; ridicule &c. 856. jest, joke, jape, jibe; facetiae[Lat], levity, quips and cranks; capital joke; canorae nugae[Lat]; standing jest, standing joke, private joke, conceit, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... children gamboled on the broad marble steps, or seated on soft cushions at their parents' feet, listened to the sparkling wit, repartee and agreeable rattle that broke forth among the gay loungers on the terrace. Occasionally the eyes of the whole party would rest with admiration and pride on the scene enacting before them, and well they might, for on the smooth, soft, ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... this would appear but a brilliant repartee, while, in fact, it was significant as indicative of a sagacious policy. Closing the churches would have given warrant to the charge of interference with the observances of religion. So careful was the General to avoid anything of this nature, that, in every instance where a clergyman ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... those brave old commanders, Who served through all our glorious wars in Flanders. Frank and good-natur'd, of an honest heart, Loving to act the steady friendly part; None led through youth a gayer life than he, Cheerful in converse, smart in repartee; But with old age, its Vices Come along, And in narration he's extremely long; Exact in circumstance, and nice in dates, He each minute particular relates. If you name one of marlbro's ten campaigns, He gives you its whole history for your pains, And Blenheim's field ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... brightens, the host coruscates. The young lady on your right suddenly develops into a charming girl, with becoming appreciation of your pet topics and an astounding aptness for repartee. The Gorgon thaws, and implores Mr. Snapshot, whose jests are popping as briskly as the corks, not to be so dreadfully funny, or he will positively kill her. Belle Breloques can always talk, and now her tongue rattles faster than ever, till the languid one arouses himself like a giant refreshed, ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... Back and Set Down,'" replied Art, for he knew his Village Repartee and was on to all ...
— People You Know • George Ade
... windows, dusting with white powder the coats of the passers-by; clusters of flowers tied with favors of gay-colored ribbon were lavishly flung at the feet of bright-eyed peasant girls, who rejected or accepted them at pleasure, with light words of badinage or playful repartee; clowns danced and tumbled, dogs barked, church bells clanged, and through all the waving width of color and movement crept the miserable, shrinking forms of diseased and loathly beggars whining for a soldo, and clad in rags that barely ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... tact. She's a good housekeeper. She's an ideal mother. She's the most affectionate creature under the sun. Her devotion to her mother and father was beyond words. Her love for her—daughter she's hers, not mine—is perfect. She hasn't any of the graces of the smart society woman. She isn't quick at repartee. She can't join in any rapid-fire conversation. She thinks rather slowly, I imagine. Some of her big thoughts never come to the surface at all, but you can feel that she is thinking and that ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... swill the cap wi' oil—this isn't the Cunard. Ye thought? Ye are not paid to think. Go, sweat that off again! Tck! Tck! It's deeficult to sweer nor tak' The Name in vain! Men, ay an' women, call me stern. Wi' these to oversee Ye'll note I've little time to burn on social repartee. The bairns see what their elders miss; they'll hunt me to an' fro, Till for the sake of—well, a kiss—I tak' 'em down below. That minds me of our Viscount loon—Sir Kenneth's kin—the chap Wi' russia leather tennis-shoon an' spar-decked ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... was so wonderful that no one could go away from a first interview without astonishment and delight. There are those among us, it may be, more brilliant in anecdote or repartee, more eloquent, more profoundly suggestive; but for the outpouring of vast floods of various and delightful information, I believe that he could have had no Anglo-Saxon rival, except Macaulay. And in Mr. Parker's case, at least, there was no alloy of conversational ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... to say it was exactly what she had done; but even in that moment she perceived that such a statement would have been very far from the truth. And her nature was large enough to refrain from the momentary gratification of a bitter repartee. But he was too clever for her; that she did feel, whatever else he might be; and her only chance was to return to the plain questions with which she had started, demanding answers as plain. Rachel led up to them, however, with one or two of which she already ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... her greatest orators, he still seemed so humble in spirit that I felt myself drawn towards him at once. In such a presence the conversation was necessarily restrained. Dismissing, for the time, the freedom of debate, anecdote and repartee, that so often characterize ministerial gatherings, the interchange of thought took on a more serious tone. Only once was there an exception. Referring to the labors of some distinguished man of his acquaintance, one of the leading brethren and prince of story tellers, ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... me a vessel full of satyrion, as she said this, and so cheerfully did she gossip about its virtues that I drank down nearly all of the liquor, and because Ascyltos had but a moment before rejected her advances, she sprinkled the dregs upon his back, without his knowing it.) When this repartee had drawn to a close, Ascyltos exclaimed, "Don't I deserve a drink?" Given away by my laughter, the maid clapped her hands and cried, "I put one by you, young man; did you drink so much all by yourself?" "What's that you say?", Quartilla chimed in. "Did Encolpius drink ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... keels and flats of the Ohio, they were a class unto themselves—"half horse, half alligator," a contemporary styled them. Rough fellows, much given to fighting, and drunkenness, and ribaldry, with a genius for coarse drollery and stinging repartee. The river towns suffered sadly at the hands of this lawless, dissolute element. Each boat carried from thirty to forty boatmen, and a number of such boats frequently traveled in company. After the Indian scare was over, they generally stopped over night in the settlements, and the arrival ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... would prove quickly mortal so that they might not linger in discomfort or pain. Recognizing my kind thought for their true welfare they thanked me for it, though with no enthusiasm. Indudu, however, filled with the spirit of repartee, or rather of "tu quoque", said in his melancholy fashion that if he and I came face to face in war, he would be sure to remember my words and to cut me up in the best style, since he could not bear to think of me languishing on a ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... that Commodus descended, sword in hand, into the arena against a wretched gladiator, armed only with a foil of lead, and after shedding the blood of the helpless victim, struck medals to commemorate the inglorious victory. The triumphs of Frederic in the war of repartee were of much the same kind. How to deal with him was the most puzzling of questions. To appear constrained in his presence was to disobey his commands, and to spoil his amusement. Yet if his associates were enticed by his graciousness to indulge in the familiarity of a cordial intimacy, he was certain ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sea, the limitless, the boundless, the ultimatum—however, this is irrelevant and frivolous. I am serious—and modest, I assure you—when I speak of my gifts. I have, as you know, a pronounced gift at repartee. Who knows what this might have become under proper development? But it has been systematically ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... What bones! What power!'" In his subsequent intercourse with the polite world Quitman acquired a fine tact and measured, dignified ways. At the same time he was a man of excellent parts, a master at repartee, with a keen intellect and a firm will, and in every respect a born leader." (532.) He was the only Lutheran minister who ever received, and perhaps desired [?] [tr. note: sic!] to receive, the degree of D. D. from Harvard University. Quitman, a disciple of Teller and of Semler in Halle, ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... However this position might be found useful to her mistress, it must be admitted that it was a most unfortunate position for a young, thoughtless, and very pretty girl, moreover, who was naturally very lively, very smart in repartee, and ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... must be charming to be brilliant, to be apt at repartee, to scatter bright remarks among a company as a queen scatters largess among the throngs on coronation day, to have a following in society who are like ladies in waiting. Oh, it must be delightful, for a while, to be a ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... him no more: and when John Randolph said "THANK YOU!" to his constituent who kindly remarked that he had the pleasure of PASSING his house, it was wit at the expense of friendship. The whole English school of wits—with Douglas Jerrold, Hood, Sheridan, and Sidney Smith, indulged in repartee. They were PARASITIC wits. And so with the Irish, except that an Irishman is generally so ridiculously absurd in his replies as to only excite ridicule. "Artemus Ward" made you laugh and ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... read." Whereon M. de Puimorin replied: "Qu'il n'avoit que trop su lire, depuis que Chapelain s'etoit avise de faire imprimer." A new horror had been added to the accomplishment of reading since Chapelain had published. This repartee was applauded, and M. de Puimorin tried to turn it into an epigram. He did complete ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... France in 1429, from a small pig-breeding village on the marches of Lorraine, one whose manners were deemed of exquisite grace, propriety, and charm, by all who saw and heard her: of her manners and swift wit and repartee, the official record of her trial bears concordant evidence. Other untaught gifts she possessed, and the historic record is unimpeached as regards that child of ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang |
