"Comic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... debauchery is admirable, and because the Mississippi is long, therefore every American is God."*3* Notice, again, how well the defect of 'Paradise Lost' is pointed out: "And I forgive Thee, Milton, those thy comic-dreadful wars Where, armed with gross and inconclusive steel, Immortals smite immortals mortalwise And fill all heaven with folly."*4* Few better things have been said of Langland than this, — "That with but a touch Of art hadst sung Piers Plowman to the top Of English songs, whereof 'tis dearest, ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... purpose was entered into between them. This was subsequently carried into effect, and a drama was composed. This drama, still extant in the British Museum, in Lamb's own writing, appears to be a species of comic opera, the scene of which is laid in Gibraltar, but is without a name. I have not seen it, but speak upon ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... having thought of something—of any description whatever—asks them in turn, "What is my thought like?" Not having the faintest idea what the thought is they reply at random. One may say, "Like a dog"; another, "Like a saucepan"; a third, "Like a wet day"; a fourth, "Like a comic opera." After collecting all the answers the player announces what the thought was, and then goes along the row again calling upon the players to explain why it is like the thing named by them. The merit of the game lies in these explanations. Thus, perhaps the thing thought of was a concertina. ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... be imagined, some queer customers came aboard; and some curious scenes took place, both of the sentimental and comic order. ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... errands for her, she gave me something, and that went in the purchase of paper or for old play-books. I was now very happy, and was doubly so because Professor Guldberg had induced Lindgron, the first comic actor at the theatre, to give me instruction. He gave me several parts in Holberg to learn, such as Hendrik, and the Silly Boy, for which I had shown some talent. My desire, however, was to play the Correggio. I obtained permission to learn this piece in my own way, although ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... said the man, touching his cap with a comic expression, which didn't at all tend to enliven the future pupil. "That's the door," he continued, "and you'll have to give him the doctor's note;" and, pointing to a door at the end of ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... times Raphael thought that their attention was wandering. From time to time Brisset, the sole speaker, remarked, "Good! just so!" as Bianchon pointed out the existence of each desperate symptom. Cameristus seemed to be deep in meditation; Maugredie looked like a comic author, studying two queer characters with a view to reproducing them faithfully upon the stage. There was deep, unconcealed distress, and grave compassion in Horace Bianchon's face. He had been a doctor for too short a time to be untouched by suffering and unmoved by a deathbed; he had not ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... Jules Verne. Dickens he knew and loved in every mood. Pickwick like Falstaff was to him a source of perennial delight. He loved and honoured Dickens for his rich and tender humanity, the passion of pity that suffused his soul, the lively play of his comic fancy. Endowed with a keen sense of humour, he read Mark Twain and W. W. Jacobs with gusto. As a relaxation from historical studies he would sometimes devour a bluggy story, and as he read would shout with laughter at its grotesque out-topping of probabilities. He tried his own hand at sensational ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... comic suggestion. "Driven to drink by her mother! Well, it's, at any rate, a new cause for old effects." He paused. It seemed strangely to bring to him some sort of relief. "That would explain ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... no chance. In vain did the Quexes of this frivolous city hope for even a crumb—there was nothing for them. Mr. ASQUITH came into office, held it, and left it without a single concession to Demos's love of personalia. He did not even wear comic collars or white hats or a single eyeglass or any other grotesquely significant thing; and how much poorer are we in consequence and how ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 10, 1917 • Various
... themselves every year upon what would seem to be absurdly inadequate provocation—of the man, for example, who commits suicide because his wife declines to get out his clean underclothes, or the woman who takes poison because she has received a comic valentine? In its religious aspect, why is the tendency to suicide greatest among Protestant Christians and least among Mohammedans and Jews? In its racial aspect, why is the suicide rate of Japan eight times that of Portugal, and the rate of American whites eight or ten times that ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... after attend our little assemblies without first ascertaining that Dr Martineau would not be present!" This she explained by the assertion that Dr Martineau had "horsed" Borrow when he was punished for running away from school at Norwich. It appeared "irresistibly comic" ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... are able to act no longer have any voices; because, as a rule, they either have studied too little, or have studied erroneously. Unless the voice has received a correct and fine culture, the German comic operas lead immediately to destruction of the voice, especially of the sensitive, easily injured German ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... could not sing, to be sure, when he graced the "Beggars' Opera," but the audiences took the will for the deed, applauded his gaiety of action, and quickly pardoned his lyric short-comings. We are equally lenient nowadays to many a comic-opera comedian, so called. Chetwood tells us that Walker was the supposed author of two pieces, "The Quakers' Opera," and a tragedy styled "The Fate of Villainy." The latter, it appears, "he brought to Ireland in the year 1744, and ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... form, a bull-like individual, stood above them. The young knight gazed upon his interlocutor with a comic eye. ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... that occurs to me," replied the other, "is what Flinders said, just before we were ordered off by the robbers. 'Keep round by Bevan's Gully,' he said, in the midst of his serio-comic leave-taking; and again he said, 'Bevan's Gully—sharp!' Of course Paddy, with his jokes and stammering, has been acting a part all through this business, and I am convinced that he has heard something about Bevan's Gully; perhaps an attack on Bevan himself, which ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... Bankside; and his plays are replete with evidences of the influence upon him of the actors whom he had in charge. It is patent, for example, that the same comedian must have created Launce in Two Gentlemen of Verona and Launcelot Gobbo in the Merchant of Venice; the low comic hit of one production was bodily repeated in the next. It is almost as obvious that the parts of Mercutio and Gratiano must have been intrusted to the same performer; both characters seem made to fit the same histrionic ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... night murdered his Uncle EPHRAM in cold blood. A sad warning to all uncles havin' murderers for nephews. When a mere child this HENRY WILKINS was compelled to go to the Sunday-school. He carried no Sunday-school book. The teacher told him to go home and bring one. He went and returned with a comic song- book. ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 2 • Charles Farrar Browne
... chocolate leisurely. "Acrobats expect to be laughed at, and certainly this was a most astonishing tour de force. Seriously, my dear," she added, seeing Margaret's troubled look, "how are we to take our Western cousin, if we do not treat her as a comic monstrosity? Is it possible that she is a Montfort? I shall call her ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... repressing all emotion, the unchangeable coolness of Dagobert never failed him; and, though few were less given to drollery, he was now and then highly comic, by reason of the imperturbable gravity with ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Poutrincourt in the wood near by, who had approached unobserved, with eight armed musketeers to disperse them in case of an attack, they immediately took to flight, and, scattering in all directions, made no further hostile demonstrations. [53] This serio-comic incident did not interfere with the interchange of friendly offices between the two parties, and when the voyagers were about to leave, the savages urged them with great earnestness to remain longer, assuring them that two thousand of their friends would pay them a visit the very next ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... week, the general not allowing it oftener, because he believes indulgence in meat to be criminal in the present straitened condition of the country. His ordinary dinner consists of a head of cabbage, boiled in salt water, and a pone of corn bread. In this connection rather a comic story is told. Having invited a number of gentlemen to dine with him, Gen. Lee, in a fit of extravagance, ordered a sumptuous repast of cabbage and middling. The dinner was served: and, behold, a great pile of ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... to refresh and strengthen them for the return journey. Ron's knowledge of the native dialect was so slight that he fell back upon the more stately phraseology of the early English poets, introducing a strange Scotch term now and again with irresistibly comic effect. ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... explain, if he can, the comic effect of that startling irrelevance; we cannot, but it ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... the second book, you will observe me very satirical." In the second book of The Task, there are some bitter things about the clergy, and in the passage pourtraying a fashionable preacher, there is a touch of satiric vigour, or rather of that power of comic description which was one of the writer's gifts. But of Cowper as a satirist enough has ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... indefatigable good-humour and few thanks. He brought Lancelot his breakfast before hunting, described the run to him when he returned, read him to sleep, told him stories of grizzly bear and buffalo-hunts, made him laugh in spite of himself at extempore comic medleys, kept his tables covered with flowers from the conservatory, warmed his chocolate, and even his bed. Nothing came amiss to him, and he to nothing. Lancelot longed at first every hour to be rid of him, and eyed him about the room as a bulldog does the monkey who rides him. ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... when I began to sing, and when my friends in the audiences decided that I should spend my life so instead of working mair with my twa hands, it's been what I knew of men and women that's been of service to me. When I come upon the idea for a new song 'tis less often a bit of verse or a comic idea I think of first—mair like it's some odd bit of humanity, some man a wee bit different from others. He'll be a bit saft, perhaps, or mean, or generous—I'm not carin', so ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... weeks of melancholy. A fellow theosophist once found him hanging from the window pole, but cut him down in the nick of time. I said to the man who cut him down, 'What did you say to one another?' He said, 'We spent the night telling comic stories and laughing a great deal.' This man, torn between sensuality and visionary ambition, was now the most devout of all, and told me that in the middle of the night he could often hear the ringing of the little 'astral bell' whereby Madame ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... very far advanced. When not one, but many, of these coincidences occur, we are in all probability at the truth. Thus we find in the mythology of the Wabanaki, as in the Edda, the chief evil being indulging in mere wanton, comic mischief, to an extent not to be found in the devil of any other race whatever. Here, in a mythical tale, the same mischief maker steals a snake-girl's hair, and is compelled to replace it. In the Edda, the corresponding ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... critic of his country and countrymen. It seems hardly possible that in this narrow-minded, disagreeable, and essentially vulgar character, Cooper could have fancied he was creating anything but a contemptible boor. The contrast between what is said of him, and what is said by him, almost reaches the comic. We read constantly of his caustic satire; we find little of it in his conversation. His fine face is, according to the author, always expressing contempt and sarcasm; but the examples of these that are shown in his speeches are usually specimens of that forcible-feeble straining to be severe ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... no longer trembled on returning. She loved to loiter in the Tottenham Court Road; her little person assumed an air of importance; if, after practice, some artiste passed her in the street and gave her a smile, she believed that he was waiting for her; a "comic quartet," the Out-of-Tune Musicals, happening to come out of a bar and blow a kiss to her, were there on her account, she thought—four ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... ground. We got wet, scratched, and plastered with mire all over our nether garments. Fyne fell suddenly into a strange cavity—probably a disused lime-kiln. His voice uplifted in grave distress sounded more than usually rich, solemn and profound. This was the comic relief of an absurdly dramatic situation. While hauling him out I permitted myself to laugh aloud at ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... "is jest what the New York publisher sez. 'The 'Merrikan people,' sez he, 'is ashamed o' bein' short and peart and funny; it lacks dignity,' sez he; 'it looks funny,' sez he, 'but it ain't deep-seated nash'nul literature,' sez he. 'Them snips o' funny stories and short dialogues in the comic papers—they make ye laff,' sez he, 'but laffin' isn't no sign o' deep morril purpose,' sez he, 'and it ain't genteel and refined. Abraham Linkin with his pat anecdotes ruined our standin' with dignified nashuns,' ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... you ask me that!" cried Mademoiselle de Verneuil. "But, Francine, tell me," she added throwing herself into a pose that was half serious, half comic, "will it be very hard to ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... of power Oft declaimed to judge and jury; At its bar were earnest pleadings For the erring and the guilty. In its halls were panoramas, Lectures, shows, and exhibitions, All the public entertainments, All the tragic and the comic, All the festivals and music, All the city's merry-making. 'Round and 'round the gorgeous structure, (Gorgeous in that generation,) Stood in rows the public houses, Primitive and unpretending; But their tenants knew no others, They were simple, ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... one, who wouldn't take Mr. Barrymore's word that we'd nothing to declare, but poked and prodded at our hold-alls and bags, and even sniffed as if he suspected us of spirits, tobacco, or onions. He looked so comic as he did this that Maida laughed, which appeared to overwhelm him with remorse, as if an angel had had hysterics. He flushed, bowed, motioned for us to pass on, and we sailed into a wide, ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... will be discarded and "planted," for the favourite costume for the walk-about is that of the previous generation. Having spent the whole day in blissful innocence of clothes, they return in the evening in their gaudy attire, fresh as from a comic garden-party. ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... laughing reply. "Bless my loose ribs! but I wouldn't miss him for anything. He's in a new play called 'Up in a Balloon Boys.' It's great!" and Mr. Damon named a certain comic moving picture star in whose horse-play Mr. Damon took a curious interest. Tom and Ned were glad enough to go, Tom that he might have a chance to do a certain amount of thinking, and Ned because he was still boy ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton
... who pursues his hat is, in some sort, conscious that he plays a comic part, and although there is a pleasing relish on the curb at his discomfort, yet it must not be assumed that all the humor on the street rises from misadventure. Rather, it arises from a general acceptance of the day and a feeling of common partnership in the storm. The policeman in ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... those unseen comedies, played in the secret regions of the consciousness between two beings of whom one will be the dupe of the other, though it keeps on this side of wickedness; one of those dark and comic dramas to which that of Tartuffe is mere child's play,—dramas that do not enter the scenic domain, although they are natural, conceivable, and even justifiable by necessity; dramas which may be characterized as not vice, only ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... Democritus, although it is not verse, still, because it is borne along with some impetuosity and employs the most brilliant illustration that words can give, ought to be considered as poetry rather than the works of the comic poets, in which, except that they are written in verse, there is nothing else which is different from ordinary conversation. Nor is that the principal characteristic of a poet, although he is the more to be praised for aiming at the excellences of an orator, when he is more ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... preposterous; and the respect which these mysteries inspire in the most rude and sylvan characters, and the curiosity with which details of high life are read, betray the universality of the love of cultivated manners. I know that a comic disparity would be felt, if we should enter the acknowledged 'first circles,' and apply these terrific standards of justice, beauty, and benefit, to the individuals actually found there. Monarchs and heroes, sages and lovers, these gallants are not. Fashion ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... of objects? Or must we do violence to usage and so stretch the word "Beauty'' as to make it cover all qualities or aspects of objects which have aesthetic value, including those "modifications of the beautiful'' which we know as the sublime, the comic and the rest? But the wider we try in this way to make the denotation of the term the vaguer grows the connotation. We are thus left equally incapable of saying what the quality is, and in which aspect or attribute of the object it ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... "Plautus, the great comic Latin poet, was once a miller's lad. Machiavelli wrote The Prince at night, and by day was a common working-man like any one else; and more than all, the great Cervantes, who lost an arm at the battle of Lepanto, and helped ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... responded Ferris, jadedly. He was thinking in a thoroughly vanquished mood what a tragico-comic end of the whole business it was that poor Don Ippolito should come to his rescue in this fashion, and as it were offer to succor him in his extremity. He perceived the shamefulness of suffering such help; ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... following his bird before it has risen above the head of his loader. This very clumsy violation of the etiquette of sport proves, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that he has learned to shoot from the comic papers, and that his coat-of-arms can never again be looked upon as anything ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... huge boa of ostrich feathers half covering her thin, bare neck. There was a glint of jewels about her as she moved. The man with the young, weak voice gazed at her admiringly, with a half-pitiful, half-comic air of pride in being seen ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... there is no child and can never be a child, I shall not cease, night nor day, from tending her. It will be a grim business, Gemmell, as you know, and if I am Sentimental Tommy through it all, why grudge me my comic ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... we shall perform here a comic opera, "The Barber of Baghdad," founded on a tale from the "Arabian Nights," words and music by Cornelius. The music is full of wit and humour, and moves with remarkable self-possession in the aristrocratic region of art. I expect ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... the picture that he conjured up of solemnly and with streaming eyes cutting off his enemies' heads—and he had owned to over fifty—as he thought of destitute homes and weeping women and children, seemed decidedly tragi-comic; but the old man was earnest enough, and was quite unconscious of the ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... number of your paper an announcement from Mr. Thomas Hood, that he was in want of a laugher, I beg to offer my services in that comic capacity, and to hand you my card and certificates of my ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... to Dean Swift orthodoxy, and the naive unconsciousness with which they measure and weigh the moral qualities of other nations by the yards of cotton or tons of manufactured iron which they consume for the benefit of Manchester and Sheffield, are certainly as comic as anything in Aristophanes. The madness of the philosopher who deemed himself personally answerable for the obliquity of the ecliptic has more than its match in the sense of responsibility shown by British journalists for the good conduct of the rest of mankind. All other kingdoms, potentates, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... piece of (second-hand) instruction, what contribution does he make to the student's knowledge of the Art of Poetry? He makes no reference to comic poetry at all; apparently he has never heard of the Limerick, and I have the gravest doubts whether he can write one, though that, I admit, is a severe test. I am prepared however to give him a public ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various
... proletariat, of social justice. It was magnificent; his voice, his gestures gripped one's very bowels; the applause nearly brought the house down. I said to myself "What he is doing, I'll do on the stage, and I'll do it better. I, a comic actor, will play tragedy. Great tragedy parts, if they are to produce their true effect, ought to be played by a comedian, but he must have a soul."' The poor fellow actually thought that he had imagined a new form of art. 'You'll ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... symmetrical, but his head was long out of all proportion; for which reason in nearly all his statues he is represented wearing a helmet, as the sculptors did not wish, I suppose, to reproach him with this blemish. The Attic poets called him squill-head, and the comic poet, Kratinus, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... chuckled at the hysteric robins as he would have chuckled at kittens or at a comic movie. He was, to the eye, the perfect office-going executive—a well-fed man in a correct brown soft hat and frameless spectacles, smoking a large cigar, driving a good motor along a semi-suburban parkway. ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... it, thought I. When such a coquette as this fell in his way, and made advances, he would have been more than man if he had receded. Of course, I thought, he must despise and laugh at her all the time he was flattering and gallanting her ladyship. This would have been fair play, and comic; but the comedy should have ended by this time. I am now really afraid it will turn into a tragedy. I, even I! am alarmed. I must prevail upon Leonora to speak to me without reserve. I see her suffer, and I must share her grief. Have not I always done so from the ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... feeling so dissimilar, and this too in a species of writing, the pleasure from which is in part derived from the preparation and previous expectation of the reader. A portion of that awkwardness is felt which hangs upon the introduction of songs in our modern comic operas; and to prevent which the judicious Metastasio (as to whose exquisite taste there can be no hesitation, whatever doubts may be entertained as to his poetic genius) uniformly placed the aria at the end of the scene, at the same time ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... laughter, and has been rewarded by commendation for his services to morality and condemnation for his buffoonery. The majority of Plautine critics have evinced too serious an attitude of mind in dealing with a comic poet. However portentous and profound his scholarship, no one deficient in a sense of humor should venture to approach a comic poet in a spirit of criticism. For criticism ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... said Maxwell, "except as it's stupid, and loves anything that makes it laugh. It loves a comic lover, and in the same way it loves a droll drunkard or ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... scientist and a biologist, a pioneer of the theory of evolution, a physicist and originator of a new theory of colour, a man of affairs, a man of the world and a courtier, a philosopher, a lyrical poet, a tragic, comic, satiric, epic, and didactic poet, a novelist and an historian, he has attempted every form of literature, he has touched upon every chord ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... over again, simply because he has done it once so well? Do we ask Mr. J.L. TOOLE to repeat his author's good jokes—or his own when his author has failed him? No; we applaud to the echo, we laugh till, as Mr. CHEVALIER says, "we thort we should ha' died," but we don't encore the comic jokes, telling situations, or serious soliloquies as rendered by our ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 4, 1892 • Various
... moment, to read all the laws of Nature in the one object or one combination under your eye, is of course comic to those who do not share the philosopher's perception of identity. To him there was no such thing as size. The pond was a small ocean; the Atlantic a large Walden Pond. He referred every minute fact to cosmical laws. Tho he meant to be just, he seemed ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... you every minute," said her aunt, decisively. "But I shall do very well. I have delightful times here by myself. What a ridiculous man it was who said that it was impossible to imagine a woman's laughing at her own comic fancies. I sit and laugh at my own nonsense ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... a talk on one November evening, about three weeks after I had returned to Paris. I had dined at home with Blanquette, and was in the midst of a drawing which I blush to say I was doing for Le Fou Rire, an unprincipled comic paper fortunately long since defunct—(fortunately? Tartuffe that I am. Many a welcome louis did I get from it in those necessitous days)—when she looked up from her sewing and asked when the Master was coming back. The question led to an answer, the answer to an observation, and the observation ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... set his face steadily against comic songs; and Mr Clifford in his inmost heart had an ungratified ambition to sing a certain song, called 'The Three Little Pigs,' with which Mr Wilson in the next parish simply brought down the house on several occasions; though ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... clerks are married to milliners, licensed tobacco dealers, women who have charge of the public lotteries or reading-rooms. Some, like the husband of Madame Colleville, Celestine's rival, play in the orchestra of a theatre; others like du Bruel, write vaudeville, comic operas, melodramas, or act as prompters behind the scenes. We may mention among them Messrs. Planard, Sewrin, etc. Pigault-Lebrun, Piis, Duvicquet, in their day, were in government employ. Monsieur Scribe's head-librarian was a ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... upon whom the small events of life made no impression, thought no more of Miss Wilkeson that evening, but smoked three pipes, told two funny stories, sang one comic song, and then went home, having previously exacted from the three bachelors a promise to call at his rooms and see at least one half of the panorama completed, ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... imperative questions. Where there formerly was movement and life is now lethargy and death. An act of love becomes a transaction long discussed and almost, as it were, settled by notarial seal. But we have in another place shown that we never refuse to seize upon the comic element in a matrimonial crisis, although here we may be permitted to disdain the diversion which the muse of Verville and of Marshall have found in the treachery of feminine manoeuvres, the insulting audacity of their talk, amid the cold-blooded cynicism which they ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... women came down soon after, and announced that Mademoiselle Cormon was much better, and that the doctor had come. She intended to stay in bed, as it was necessary to bleed her. The salon was now full. Mademoiselle Cormon's absence allowed the ladies present to discuss the tragi-comic scene—embellished, extended, historified, embroidered, wreathed, colored, and adorned—which had just taken place, and which, on the morrow, was destined to occupy ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... red houses were springing up, quaintly gabled, much verandahed, pointed, fantastic, brilliant. They made the whole neighbourhood of the Heath look like the Merrie England of a comic opera. Yet they were pretty in their way; many were designed by able architects, and pleased with a balanced sense of proportion and an impression of beauty and fitness. Many, of course, lacked this, were but cheap and clumsy imitations of a prevailing mode, ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... "Oh, it ain't a bit of good," and finally sidling up, to the edge of its perch, and saying in hoarse but confidential whisper, "Give us a drop of whisky, do." Its voice was extraordinarily distinct, and when it sang several snatches of songs the words were capitally given, with the most absurdly comic intonation, all the roulades being executed in perfect tune. I liked its sewing performance so much—to see it hold a little piece of stuff underneath the claw which rested on the perch, and pretend to sew with the other, getting into difficulties with its thread, and ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... wide in German literature, as I think may be found by examining my notes to my translation of Heine's works, and went with Field several times to Frankfort, to attend the theatre, and otherwise amuse ourselves. There I once made the acquaintance of the very famous comic actor Hasselt. He was a grave, almost melancholy man when off the stage, very fond of archaeology ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... the comic element largely prevails and is kept up by the comic figure Kasperle, a buffoon or 'Hanswurst' of the same character as the Italian Pulcinella, the progenitor of our English 'Punch.' As might be expected, ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... new—though I believe that Mr. Potter himself repudiates the notion that there can be anything new in the drama—that it was almost criminal to slight it. Nothing was made of it. It almost escaped attention. Instead, we got a crew of comic opera Scotchmen singing songs, and an absurd picture of Robert Burns, who was injected pell-mell into the "romance." ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... buckets, brought from the different company quarters, and the arriving officers quickly formed the bucket-lines and water dipped up from the icy creek began to fly from hand to hand. Before anything like this was fairly under way, a scene of semi-tragic, semi-comic intensity had been enacted in the presence of a rapidly gathering audience. "It was worth more than the price of admission to hear Blake tell it ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... tore to shreds before the eyes of his compatriots. He persuaded them to accept his vague generalities as a sober statement of philosophic truth, and he aroused a hatred of kingship in America which was comic in expression and disastrous in result. It was due to his influence that plain citizens hymned the glories of "Guillotina, the Tenth Muse," and fell down in worship before a Phrygian cap. It was due to his influence that ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... I tell it in four words. In them one would say that it is set forth. There was in London at that time popular a song, a comic, vulgar song of the 'Alls, 'The Cat Came Back'. You 'ave 'eard it? Yes? I 'eard it myself, and without emotion. It had no sinister warning for me. It did not strike me as omen. Yet, in those four words, ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... could do anything: the slaves were thirsting for an upheaval, and with so elderly an emperor were naturally expecting to see one soon. The evils of the new court were those of the old, and while equally oppressive were not so easily excused. Even Galba's age seemed comic and despicable to a populace that was used to the young Nero and compared the emperors, as such people will, in point of looks and ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... Richey's discovery that Alison was the girl in the case. In quick succession had come our visit to the Carter place, the finding of the rest of the telegram, my seeing Alison there, and the strange interview with Mrs. Conway. The Cresson trip stood out in my memory for its serio-comic horrors and its one real thrill. Then—the discovery by the police of the seal-skin bag and the bit of chain; Hotchkiss producing triumphantly Stuart for Sullivan and his subsequent discomfiture; McKnight at the station with Alison, and later the confession that he was ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... for me to poke no fun at Pete's looks. There's a place where a humarious turn of mind orter stop. Pete's looks was too serious for any man to get comic about. It appeared as if his features had been blowed on to his face by a gale of wind; his whiskers had a horrified expression, like they'd made their escape if they hadn't been fastened on, and he was double-jointed in every point of the compass. When he stood ...
— Mr. Scraggs • Henry Wallace Phillips
... accept an infusion of the comic element in plays of a serious cast, but Shakespeare was an innovator, a Romanticist, and, measured by old standards, his dramas are irregular. The Italians, who followed classic models, for a reason amply explained by the genesis ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... himself, which cost its possessor thirty guineas; a portrait group of the staff up the river, some delicate water-colours by C. H. Bennett, and a fine bit of work by Mr. Furniss of the jubilee dinner of the threepenny comic at the Ship Hotel, Greenwich. Upstairs the children's portraits, and pictures likely to please the youngsters, reappear. The nursery is full of them, though perhaps the most interesting apartment in this part of the house is the principal bedroom. It is full of the ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... imperfect symbols. He appears perfectly satisfied with his work. Like his own 'Village Blacksmith,' he retires every night with the feeling that something has been attempted, and something done.' There is a subtle analysis of the style of that first of comic poets, HOLMES, for which we shall endeavor to find space hereafter. Of the writings of the late lamented WILLIS GAYLORD CLARK, the reviewer remarks, that they 'are all distinguished for a graceful and elegant ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... no monopoly of patriotic enthusiasm and good faith. Englishmen return thanks to Providence for not being born anything but an Englishman, in churches and ale-houses as well as in comic operas. The Frenchman cherishes and proclaims the idea that France is the most civilized modern country and satisfies best the needs of a man of high social intelligence. The Russian, whose political and social estate does not seem enviable to his ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... so deplorably miserable, and at the same time so comic, that it was impossible to avoid smiling, and as he saw this he ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... came when it was necessary to produce some more original idea, to strike a really decisive blow, and so Dowie revealed to a stupefied Chicago that he was the latest incarnation of the prophet Elijah. Then while the serious Press denounced him for blasphemy, and the comic Press launched its most highly poisoned shafts of wit against him, the whole of Sion exulted in clamorous rejoicings. For the prophet knew his Chicago. Credulity gained the upper hand, and the whole city flocked to the tabernacle ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... fixed by nature—can in that part of the world be changed as easily as religion. A Macedonian may be a Greek to-day, a Bulgarian to-morrow, and a Servian next day. We have all heard of the captain in the comic opera who "in spite of all temptations to belong to other nations" remained an Englishman. There would have been nothing comic in this assertion had the redoubtable captain lived in Macedonia. In that ...
— The Balkan Wars: 1912-1913 - Third Edition • Jacob Gould Schurman
... th' heathen an sich, But we've heathen at hooam at require 'em as mich: Just luk at that craad at comes troopin along, Some yellin aght th' chorus o'th' new comic song; Old an young,—men an wimmen,—some bummers, some swells, Turned aght o' some dnnkin an singin room hells;— They seek noa dark corners, they glory i'th' leet, This is Briggate,—their Briggate, ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... yourself, 'by particular desire.' We saw it last night, and oh! if you had but been with us! Young Betty, doing what the mind of man without my help never can conceive, with his legs like padded boot-trees wrapped up in faded yellow drawers, was the hero. The comic man of the company, enveloped in a white sheet, with his head tied with red tape like a brief, and greeted with yells of laughter whenever he appeared, was the venerable priest. A poor toothless old idiot, at whom the very ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... a rapidly-increasing prosperity came upon Jane's young man. One day we learned that Mr. Maynard had given William a book. "'Smiles' 'Elp Yourself,' it's called," said Jane; "but it ain't comic. It tells you how to get on in the world, and some what William read to me ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... Proscenium and Orchestra remain. The stage, or rather the place where it was, is of considerable width, but so very shallow that stage effect, as regards scenery, could not have been much studied, nor indeed did the dramas of the ancients require it. The comic theatre is small, and nearly perfect. It appears to have had a roof or covering. These two theatres are close together. Of the public edifices discovered, the Temple of Isis is one of the most interesting. It is of brick, but coated with a hard and polished stucco. The altars for sacrifice ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... After the more comic manifestations and the chilling of generous enthusiasm come subtler, darker deeds. Everything considered, the title to the universe claimed by White Folk is faulty. It ought, at least, to look plausible. How easy, then, by emphasis and ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... in Jim Cal's thin, querulous tones from the back of the room—the voice of a fat man in trouble; can anyone say why the sorrows of the obese are always comic to the rest of the world? "A body cain't sleep nights ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... Lady Seyton threw her arms round his neck, and kissed his bald old forehead. This, however, I cannot personally vouch for, as my attention was engaged at the moment by the adverse claimant, the Honorable James Kingston, who exhibited one of the most irresistibly comic, wo-begone, lackadaisical aspects it is possible to conceive. He made a hurried and most undignified exit, and was immediately followed by the discomfited "family" solicitors. Chilton was conveyed to a station-house, and the next day was fully committed for trial. ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... decision was made for him—by Clara. It had become one of his chief pleasures to give her lunch in the Aquarium, as she called it, and to laugh with her over her vivid and comic impressions of London, and insensibly he had fallen in love with her, not as was his habit theatrically and superficially, but with an old man's passion for youth. It hurt him, plagued him, tortured him, because ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... aesthetic sensibilities are at such a discount in practical life. They are too easily dissolved in appreciation. They are too much absorbed, for practical efficiency, in the tragic, the whimsical, the beautiful, or the comic aspects of men and affairs. The same sensitivity to the innuendoes and colors of life that enable some of such men to give an exquisite and various portraiture of experience, incapacitates them for action. The practical man must not observe anything irrelevant ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... entertainments were got up to relieve the tedium of unemployed time. The queen learns her part, and appears in the character and costume of a peasant girl. Her genius excites much admiration, and, intoxicated with this new pleasure, she repeats the entertainment, and alike excels in all characters, whether comic or tragic. The number of spectators is gradually increased. Louis is not exactly pleased to see his queen transformed into an actress, even in the presence only of the most intimate friends of the court. Half jocosely, half seriously, amid the rounds of applause with which ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... incidentally, the existence of a sort of comic spirit in these works which relieves the tragedy of the situations. In spite of their dark pessimism, the actors in these little dramas have an appearance of gaiety which deceives. It is by this popular humor that Gorky is the ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... peculiar, sir,' replied Mr Wopples, restoring the bulky packet of tickets to his pocket, 'dealing as it does with the adventures of a youth who hides his father's will in a cruet stand, which is afterwards annexed by a comic bailiff.' ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... the dolorous procession of the outcast. Nor have we here the infernal courtliness of the scene as represented at Chartres, the doubtful consideration of an evil spirit gently driving in a nun; it is brutality in all its horror, the lowest violence; the sometimes comic side of these struggles is not to be seen here. At Bourges the myrmidons of the deep work and hit with a will. A devil with a wild beast's muzzle and a drunkard's face in the middle of his fat stomach, is hammering the skull ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... letter to Mrs. Norris printed in the Boston Bibliophile edition containing some very interesting comic verses on England somewhat in ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... plants, as given by a Charter of Edward the Sixth. Saffron Hill, in Holborn, London, belonged formerly to Ely House, and got its name from the crops of saffron which were grown there: "Occult? Spolia hi Croceo de colle ferebant" (Comic Latin Grammar). ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... assumed the habitual look of servitude—he was no longer a partner, but a mere retainer, with a half-comic resignation in his eyes. ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... passed through the dangers and hardships, with which a journey through the desert is ever accompanied, had opened every heart, and attuned their minds to jest and gayety. Muley, the young and merry merchant, went through a comic dance, and sang songs thereto, which elicited a laugh, even from Zaleukos, the serious Greek. But not content with having raised the spirits of his comrades by dance and merriment, he also gave them, in the best style, the story he had promised, ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... Historical views, in this final section of the Friedrich-Voltaire Correspondence, at first so barren otherwise and of little entertainment, one finds that this too, when once you CAN "read" it (that is to say, when the scene and its details are visible to you), becomes highly dramatic, Shakspearean-comic or more, for this is Nature's self, who far excels even Shakspeare;—and that the inextricably dark condition of these Letters is a real loss to the ingenuous reader, and especially to the student of Friedrich. Among the frequently recurring topics, one that oftenest turns up on Voltaire's side ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Soapers the King On Tuesdays at Tom's does appear, And when he does talk or does sing, To him ne'er a one can come near. For he talks with such ease and such grace, That all charm'd to attention we sit, And he sings with so comic a face That our sides are just ready ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... from the religious purposes which were at the foundation of the Greek drama. It turned upon parodies, in which the adventures of the gods are introduced by way of sport, like the appetite of Hercules, or the cowardice of Bacchus. Then the comic authors entertained spectators by fantastic and gross displays; by the exhibition of buffoons and pantomimes. But the taste of the Athenians was too severe to relish such entertainments, and comedy passed into ridicule of public men and measures, and of the fashions of the day. The people ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... right," he remarked. "Now listen attentively to me. The skipper has one overpowering weakness, and that is a fondness for a comic song. Let him be ever so exasperated, a comic song—a good comic song, mind you—never fails to soothe him. Therefore, if he should happen to-night, by any chance, to refer to your unfortunate lapse of duty yesterday, listen patiently and respectfully to all that he has to say, and when he has ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... Anthology as I saunter in the fields: a pretty collection of Greek aphorisms in verse and prose. The bits of Menander and the comic poets are very acceptable. And this is really all I have looked at all ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... with comic gravity, "it appears that there is—or rather formerly was—a trunk of 'turuma,' which every year at the same time descended the Rio Negro, stopping several days at Manaos, and going on into Para, halting at every port, where the natives ornamented it with little flags. ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... it, child. You've retained from your old life certain conceptions of what's the thing which are—you'll forgive me for saying it—just a little like those of the comic papers. ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... required it towards himself, and really commanded it by his striking propriety of manner. He was, as a dear friend once remarked, a "God-made" gentleman, untainted with the slightest approach to any thing like affectation or coxcombry: indeed he ridiculed the latter with much comic effect: and the words "Dandy Jack," would put him out of conceit with any article of apparel that drew forth the remark. He would answer the taunt with a face of grave rebuke, saying, "Bad Mam, bold Mam; Jack dandy? no; Jack poor boy." He had not, indeed, arrived at ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... There are two tests of his sincerity of faith: first, that he always treats the subject with profound seriousness; secondly, that he always uses it as a practical motive. "I do not think," said Socrates, "that any one who should now hear us, even though he were a comic poet, would say that I am talking idly."16 Again, referring to Homer's description of the judgments in Hades, he says, "I, therefore, Callicles, am persuaded by these accounts, and consider how I may exhibit my soul before the judge in the most healthy condition."17 ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... better class attended; nine-tenths of the people resort to these crude, wayside performances. They look on with seeming indifference; there is never a sign of approval, much less an outburst of applause. They seem to have no place in their souls for the ludicrous, the comic, or the joyous. They were shocked by my smiles and peals of laughter. They have a strange preference for the minor key in music, for the dirge. No wonder when our bands would play lively music that they were ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... Begnis (De Begnis's Christian name was Giuseppe.) acted 'Il Fanatico' in character; being dressed up an extraordinary figure gives a much greater effect to his acting. He kept the whole theatre in roars of laughter. I liked Madame Blasis very much, but nothing will do after Malibran, who sung some comic songs, and [a] person's heart must have been made of stone not to have lost it to her. I lodged very near the Wedgwoods, and lived entirely with them, which was very pleasant, and had you been there it would have been quite perfect. It knocked me up most dreadfully, and I will never ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... make the car roar up the incline that led from the river, but when she turned into the driveway at the house on the hill, she made a motion of comic despair. ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... the historical, or the domestic ballad; from the strains that enliven the harvest-home and festival, to the love- ditties which the country lass warbles, or the comic song with which the rustic sets the village hostel in a roar. In our collection are several pieces exceedingly scarce, and hitherto to be met with only in broadsides and chap-books of the utmost rarity; in addition to which we have given several others never before in print, ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... tragi-comic scenes, tragic enough in effect, between Father and Son; Son now about eighteen,—fit to be getting through Oxford, had he been an English gentleman of private station. It comes from the irrefragable Nicolai; who dates it about this time, uncertain ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... flatter themselves that somebody will say, in M. de Choiseul's drawing-room, 'How passionately M. de ——— loves his sister; he would certainly die if he had the misfortune to lose her.'" Madame related this to her brother, in my presence, adding, that she could not give it in the Duke's comic manner. M. de Marigny said, "I have had the start of them all, without making so much noise; and my dear little sister knows that I loved her tenderly before Madame de Grammont left her convent. The Duc d'Ayen, however, is not very wrong; he has made the most of ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... huge red fists and cheeks, "as broad and as red as a pulpit cushion." On being shown into Flora's little parlour, she stood staring at her with her arms stuck in her sides, and her wide mouth distended from ear to ear, with a grin so truly uncouth and comic, that Mrs. Lyndsay could scarcely restrain her laughter; with a downward jerk of her broad shapeless person, meant for a curtsy, she burst out in a rude ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... to some extent this mood is familiar to all minds endowed with the true speculative genius. The philosopher has always tended to become unfit for practical life; his unfitness, indeed, is one of the comic motives, so to speak, of literature. But a mood which, in the great majority of thinkers, is intermittent, and is easily kept within bounds by the practical needs, the mere physical instincts of life, was in Amiel almost constant, and the natural impulse of the human animal ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to the sufferer during the process of its withdrawal, and grievously lacerating the bowels. Sometimes an enormous radish was substituted for the mullet. According to an epigram quoted by Vossius from the Anthologia, Alcaeus, the comic writer, ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... distributing greetings, as he passed up the hall, to his academic contemporaries and friends. He was a tall, burly man, with a strong black head and black eyes under bushy brows, combined with an infantile mouth and chin, long and happily caricatured in all the comic papers. But in his D.C.L. gown he made a very fine appearance; assembled Oxford was proud of him as one of the most successful of her sons; and his progress toward the dais ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... uncertain phrases, of divine right, of dukes, earls, marquises—of all the pompous establishments of British royalty and nobility—with that contemptuously humorous tolerance of a necessary and somewhat amusing evil which we find in American comic papers. We had a battle royal for about one hour, and I must confess he was a foeman worthy of any man's steel, so long as I was reasonable in my arguments; but when I finally observed that it wouldn't ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... who followed him also told us a sad story of misplaced trust. She also was comic—so the programme assured us. The humorist appears to have no luck. She had lent her lover money to buy the ring, and the licence, and to furnish the flat. He did buy the ring, and he furnished the flat, but it was for another lady. The audience roared. ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... effect of disregarding the reference of pronouns is well illustrated by Burton in the following story of Billy Williams, a comic actor who thus narrates his experience in riding a horse owned by ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... however, an exception to this rule, for the author wrote it for Messrs. Guillaume, the well-known art publishers, who, wishing to popularise an improved style of illustration, offered M. Daudet 150,000 francs (L6,000) to write them a serio-comic story. Tartarin, which obtained an instant popularity, proved the author's versatility, but won him the hatred of the good people of Provence, who have never forgiven him for having made fun of their foibles. On one occasion a bagman, passing through Tarascon, put, by way ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Frenchmen fell in behind them. The same procedure was followed at the next halt and at the next; so that when the Prussians reached the Frenchward end of Vaudere there were twenty-three Prussians and ten Frenchmen in the file. To Fevrier's thinking it was sufficiently comic. There was something ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... many quiet little sacrifices, in order that her daughter might not feel too keenly the difference between her own and her cousin's wardrobe. Sadie emptied what she denominated her finery box, and donated every article in it, delivering comic little lectures to each bit of lace and ribbon, as she smoothed them and patted them, and told them they were going to New York. Julia hemmed pocket handkerchiefs, and pricked her poor little fingers unmercifully and uncomplainingly. ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... sixteen other pages the arrangement was different. There only two fourths of the page were filled by two advertisements; the other two fourths contained funny pictures with a few words below. These pictures were cut from comic papers. All the pictures were of such a kind that they slightly attracted the attention by their amusing content or by the cleverness of the drawing, but never demanded any careful inspection or any delay ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... if I am any judge of age," responded the deacon, deliberately, as he looked the white-headed old minister over with a most comic imitation of seriousness. "Not a day over twenty, on my honor," and the deacon leaned forward toward the parson and gave him a punch with his thumb, as one boy might deliver a punch at another, and then he lay back in his chair and laughed so heartily ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... to music. I played it on the piano, and guessed the playing of it on full orchestras and blaring bands. I chanted it, I sang it-epic, lyric, comic; and, after a weary long while, of course I slept in the midst of it, and knew not that I slept until I awoke at twelve to-day. The last time I had heard the clock strike was six. Six unbroken hours is a capital prize for me ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... come. Polly's in the drawing-room, and she says she's come to see what a high tea is like, and to be introduced to the dear bishop. Muriel West and Major Joicy are with her. They're singing comic songs at the piano." ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... A.D. 671, seems to be associated with a comic tragedy. The Caliph Moawiyah had a fancy to remove Mahomet's pulpit from Medina to his own residence at Damascus. "He said that the walking-stick and pulpit of the Apostle of God should not remain in the hands of the murderers of Othman. Great search was made for ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... DeKoven, who have made countless thousands laugh, are living still, and will very likely continue to do gracious things for the comic-opera-loving public. ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... astonishment: "Must I then kill that brute?" There didn't seem to be any alternative. Between him and Dona Rita I couldn't hesitate. I believe I gave a slight laugh of desperation. The suddenness of this sinister conclusion had in it something comic and unbelievable. It loosened my grip on my mental processes. A Latin tag came into my head about the facile descent into the abyss. I marvelled at its aptness, and also that it should have come to me so pat. ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... looked actually comic: he was staring rudely, with a foolish air of flattery, and breathing in labored gasps—like a coolie who had run miles with a heavy palanquin. Then her mind, hardly reacting from immediate objects, returned to the contemplation of the deeper significance of her presence ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Diderot, he valued the author's laurel so cheaply, as we have seen, that with a gigantic heedlessness and Saturnian weariness of the plaudits or hisses of the audience, while supremely interested in the deeper movements of the tragi-comic drama of the world, he left some of his masterpieces lying unknown in forgotten chests. Again, in the case of the Encyclopaedia, as we have also seen, Turgot as well as less eminent men bargained that their names should not be made public. Wherever a telling blow ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... resenting an imputation which no rational man in his senses could possibly have regarded as of any consequence to the Duke's public or private character. The whole incident seems to us now one more properly belonging to comic opera than to serious political life. We can hardly conceive the possibility of the Marquis of Salisbury insisting on fighting a duel with some hot-headed member of the House of Lords who had chosen to describe him as a conspirator against the Constitution and the Church of England. ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... mean time, your visitors down below are entertained by a selection from operatic or sacred music or comic songs from a phonograph on the parlor table. Or if they want to hear Gladstone debate, or Chauncey Depew joke, or Ingersoll lecture, or no matter what their tastes are, they can be gratified. The phonograph don't care; it will bring to 'em anything ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... he approached it there issued from its gloomy depths a strange rumbling sound which induced him to stop and cock his gun. A curious feeling of serio-comic awe crept over him as the idea of a fiery dragon leaped into his mind! At the same time, the fancy that the immense abyss of darkness might be one of the volcanic vents diminished the comic and increased the serious feeling. Ere long the sound assumed the definite tone of footsteps, ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... deck hands were safely in the rigging, displaying more than ordinary agility in the act. At short intervals, other men, roused from watch below appeared at the fo'c'sle companion-way. To these the situation at first appeared comic, and called forth jeers upon their faint-hearted shipmates. The next moment, on the dog dashing into view, they found a common cause with their fellows and sprang aloft. Ere many minutes had elapsed the entire crew were in the rigging, much ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... of a planet that could have been another proud and majestic sun with a solar system of its own; it ended up, instead, in the comic books ...
— Mars Confidential • Jack Lait
... several dangerous illnesses, but the earliest one had a comic side. In his tour through New England in 1789, so Sullivan states, "owing to some mismanagement in the reception ceremonials at Cambridge, Washington was detained a long time, and the weather being inclement, he took cold. For several days afterward a severe ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... which had hitherto made early morning hateful to her. It was everything to have an actual and practicable duty ready to hand, everything to have a busy present which would crowd out past and future, if only for a few hours. Also, the disaster had its comic side. Through the thin partition she could hear distinctly the complaints of the people ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... he cried. "All men are absurd. Man is the absurd animal. We have parted from primordial motives—lust and hate and hunger and fear, and from all the tragic greatness of uncontrollable fate and we, we've got nothing to replace them. We are comic—comic! Ours is the stage of comedy in life's history, half lit and blinded,—and we fumble. As absurd as a kitten with its poor little head in a bag. There's your soul of man! Mewing. We're all at it, the poets, the teachers. How can anyone hope to escape? Why ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... broke into a little air from a popular comic opera running just then in Washington and to which Captain Stewart had taken his little party ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... volley of abusive epithets nobody could surpass him. One of his droll comic sentences was often worth a speech of an hour in putting down an opponent, or in gaining supporters to his side. At Nisi Prius, he turned his mingled talent for abuse and drollery to great effect. He covered a witness with ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... Marshall, the wife of a Sir Everard Marshall, a comic scientist in perpetual flight from his overwhelming spouse, is one of the sort that finds a new religion every few months and is now in the first fast furious throes of her latest, which is some form ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 29, 1916 • Various |
