"Humorist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not many. Most of them seemed to think there was deep wisdom in his answer to be dug for meditatively, as no doubt there was. Then a man on the edge of the crowd a long way off from me, who wore the air of a humorist, asked him ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... are in our reserve billets, and not sorry either. The enemy threw a shell in beside us this morning as I was getting up, to show that he had not forgotten us! It must have come 5 miles at least. He is a humorist, too, of a grim sort, for 3 days ago he bombarded the little town (French) of Estaires with French shells. I suppose some gun he had captured from them. Anyhow, his ammunition is certainly, as a rule, not as good as the stuff he was using. Have ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... own stamp on the face of a humorist. The long pointed nose of Cervantes is indicative of immeasurable fun, and there have been many similar noses on the faces of less distinguished wits. Doctor Holmes ridiculed phrenology as an attempt to estimate the money in a ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... give us everything that was coming to us. His tent was right at the head of the street; he wanted us to come to him at any time for any question; it was his business (and again no twinkle) to make our minds as well as our bodies comfortable. Thus I get the impression that he is something of a humorist, yet also that his chief trait is aggressiveness. I cannot tell you why, for all was spoken with a quiet voice, even with a certain gentleness that disguises what I am sure is the basic character of the man. Knudsen felt ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... a very arduous course of education; he has a flexible mind, capable of much expansion, and convertible towards far loftier studies and activities than those of his early life; and if he came to Washington a backwoods humorist, he has already transformed himself into as good a statesman (to speak moderately) as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... they did. So on they went, most of the time in gales of merriment, as some house or modest little shop suggested some character or happening in the books of the great writer and humorist. ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... men, gifted with a keen though little suspected sense of humor, and no little judgment in estimating motive and character. He actually enjoyed the first call made by Miss Perkins, suggested her coming again on the morrow, and summoned his chief surgeon and his provost marshal, another keen humorist, to be present at the interview. It has been asserted that this triumvirate went so far as to encourage the lady to even wilder flights of assertion. We have her own word for it that then and there she was promised as offices three big rooms ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... for instance, at H. B.'s slim vapory figures, they have struck us as excellent LIKENESSES of men and women, but no more: the bodies want spirit, action, and individuality. George Cruikshank, as a humorist, has quite as much genius, but he does not know the art of "effect" so well as Monsieur Daumier; and, if we might venture to give a word of advice to another humorous designer, whose works are extensively circulated—the illustrator ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a Positivist, who sneers at the Clergyman; there are a Squire and his wife from Rutlandshire: she is next the Radical Candidate for the Isle of Dogs. They do not seem to get on well together. GRIGSBY and the humorist of the future are chaffing each other across the table: nobody understands them; I don't know whether they are quarrelling or not. Miss JONES, the authoress of Melancholy Moods (in a Greek dress, with a pince-nez: a woman should ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 23, 1892 • Various
... a quarter of a mile of the gate, and I had just settled to my thorough dissatisfaction that the old footman must be a humorist, and had diverted himself by making a kind of April-fool out of season of me, when, through the trees, which at that spot stretched their huge branches across the road so as to form a complete arch, I fancied I perceived the flutter of a woman's ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... humorist, was so taken with the quaint charm of L.M. Montgomery's tremendously popular novel that upon reading it for the first time he said: "In 'Anne of Green Gables' you will find the dearest and most moving and delightful girl since the immortal ...
— Why the Chimes Rang: A Play in One Act • Elizabeth Apthorp McFadden
... had not shown up. It was before the days of taxis, so Dillingham was sent after him in a hansom. After going to the wrong address, he finally located the humorist in Chelsea. He found Mark Twain sitting in his dressing-gown, smoking a Pittsburg stogie and reading ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... Divorce Court reminds me of a curious application for the postponement of a trial made by George Brown, who was as good a humorist ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... indeed, and the cause of much literary villainy. The truly great writer is more likely to write in the hope of expressing the hearts of others than his own. And there are other desires, too, most legitimate, that he may feel. An English humorist said recently in the preface to his book: "I wrote these stories to satisfy an inward craving—not for artistic expression, but for food and drink." But I cannot conscientiously advise any man to turn to ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... prolific Danish humorist, died this year, seventy-two years of age. After his death Baggesen's writings ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... intensely sympathetic man. His brain and feelings were as a "lens," and he received impressions immediately. No man could see him without liking him at once. His manner was straightforward and genial, and had in it the dignity of a gentleman, tempered, as it were, by the fun of the humorist. When you heard him talk you wanted to make much of him, not because he was "Artemus Ward," but because he was himself, for no one less resembled "Artemus Ward" than his author and creator, Charles Farrar Browne. But a few weeks ago it was remarked to me that authors were ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... order, and he had in him a vein of genius of no ordinary kind. He died in 1635, but his poems were not published till 1647. They are of various merit, and treat of various subjects. In his 'Journey to France,' you see the humorist, who, on one occasion, when the country people were flocking to be confirmed, cried, 'Bear off there, or I'll confirm ye with my staff.' In his lines to his son Vincent, we see, notwithstanding all his foibles, the good man; and in his 'Farewell to the ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... been classed as a humorist. This he was, and of a type peculiar to himself, but he was not content with merely having amused or entertained the people, he aspired to arouse public sentiment in the interest of certain reforms. He was a hater of ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... glory, and hypocrisy, is invaluable; that a good laugh can come only from a warm heart; that the man in motley is often wiser than the judge in ermine or the priest in lawn. These qualities are goodly in literature. We all love the kindly humorist from Chaucer to Holmes, inclusive. How genial and gentle they are, as they sit with us around the fireside, chucking us under the chins, and slyly poking us in the ribs; and in the field how nobly they have charged upon humbugs and shams. They have been true knights, ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... They had worked for that corporation. They had been obliged to herd with roughscuff from the city employment agencies, unskilled men who were all the time coming and going and were mostly underfoot when they were on the job. One humorist averred that the Three C's had three complete sets of crews—one working, one coming in, and one ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... he told her. The blackmailing humorist, Tiburcio, had paid him a visit at his dungeon window during the night. Being chief witness for the prosecution, Tiburcio ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... like a man taken for the first time to be shown to his future wife's relations. They are very pleasant. They try to put him at his ease. But he knows instinctively they are disappointed with him. I remember, when a very young man, attending a party at which a famous American humorist was the chief guest. I was standing close behind a lady who ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... This philosophical humorist was the steward of Edward Vere, Earl of Oxford, in the reign of Elizabeth. This peer was a person of elegant accomplishments; and Lord Orford, in his "Noble Authors," has given a higher character of him than perhaps he may deserve. He was of the highest rank, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... his mother, "but it has plenty of comfort and convenience about, it. The plan was his own, and he contrived to make it, notwithstanding its ludicrous shape, one of the most agreeable residences in the country. He is a blunt humorist, who drinks a good deal, and instead of feeling offence at his manner, which is rather rough, you will please him best by answering him exactly in his ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... "liers" instead of "sitters" I can't think, as there was not much wrong with them. A propos I remember asking one night when an ambulance train came in in the dark, "Are you liers or sitters in here?" and one humorist scratched his head and replied, "I don't rightly know, Sister, I've told a few in my time!" To return to our long convoy journeys: once we had deposited our patients it was not unnaturally the desire of this "dismounted cavalry" unit to try the speed ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... he pleased to have, in consideration of the company he brought together, to hear his wonderful talk, his wit, and his dreams, he was helpless in the snare. We must remember that he was a fine scholar, as well as a dreamer and a humorist; and there was no order of intellect, from the sage to the peasant, which could resist the charm of his discourse. He had taken his degree with high distinction at Oxford; and yet the old Westmoreland ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... now be resumed as usual in the trenches.' The enemy, meanwhile, appeared to be well acquainted with our plans, for voices were heard calling out, 'Come on, Bucks, come on, Berks!' 'The Royal Berks will lead the attack,' while a humorist shouted from the fort at Gommecourt, 'Run away, English; go away home.' The enemy had indeed good reason to be confident in the strength of these positions, which twice next year were to defy capture after the most elaborate preparation. The turmoil of the last few days was now succeeded ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... resemblance between the books and the writers, widely different as they are. There is the same geniality, the same tender pathos, the same lambent humor, the same delicate observation of details, the same overpowering instinct of literary art. But Geoffrey Crayon is a humorist, while the Pilgrim beyond the Sea is a poet. The one looks at the broad aspects of English life with the shrewd, twinkling eye of a man of the world; the other haunts the valley of the Loire, the German street, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... red lips curved generously over superb teeth; the cheeks were glowing, as were the eyes, the crimson below them deepening to splendor the velvet in the iris. The one severe line in the face, the thin, straight nose, ended in wide nostrils in the quivering, mobile nostrils of the humorist. The swell of the gourmand's paunch beneath the soutane was proof that the cure was a true Norman he had not passed a lifetime in these fertile gardens forgetful of the fact that the fine art of good living is the one indulgence ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... known as a humorist and a charming storyteller, but he has also written serious and tender works. His life of Washington is a tribute of loving reverence to the great American for whom he was named. As a boy, Irving was of a rather mischievous turn, a trait which perhaps helped to make him the "first American ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... is terrible!" exclaimed the cadaverous humorist. "Ever this indigenous Pius IX—fulminating, fulminating, fulminating!—Too much inferno. The cure does half his burning for Beelzebub! We are served ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... had the good sense to obey. He "hardened" the funny-bone of either arm against the punching bag to the tune of jeering laughter from the rest of the squad. That was Coach Luce's way of dealing with the too-funny amateur humorist. ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... literary interest. Brandstatter is the painter of the customs and manners of the Galician Hasidim, whom he rallies with kindliness that yet has a keen edge, and with perfect artistic taste. Almost he is the only humorist of the time. His style is classic without going to extremes. He often makes use of the Talmudic jargon peculiar to Rabbinical scholars, whom he has the skill to transfer to his canvas down to their ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... sympathy nor disapprobation, but simply as a fact which is there. Such a writer is a realist, and such was Fielding. Once more, it is possible to draw vice in order to extract amusement from it. Such a man is a coarse humorist, and such was Smollett. Lastly, it is possible to draw vice in order to show sympathy with it. Such a man is a wicked man, and there were many among the writers of the Restoration. But of all reasons that exist for treating this side of life, Richardson's were the best, and nowhere do ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... most convincing array of statistics proving the benefits of equal suffrage. Ex-Governor John W. Hoyt of Wyoming came to the platform and corroborated these statements, paying a fine tribute to the political influence of women. He was followed by Mrs. Lida A. Meriwether (Tenn.), whose reputation as a humorist was fully sustained in her clever portrayal of Dreams that Go by Contraries. Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt (N. Y.) gave a brilliant address on The ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... Liability Anglicised Utopia An English Girl A Manager's Perplexities Out Of Sorts How It's Done A Classical Revival The Practical Joker The National Anthem Her Terms The Independent Bee The Disconcerted Tenor The Played-Out Humorist ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... termagant, and taming her into a meek and manageable wife. And truly none was so fit to set about this herculean labor as Petruchio, whose spirit was as high as Katharine's, and he was a witty and most happy-tempered humorist, and withal so wise, and of such a true judgment, that he well knew how to feign a passionate and furious deportment when his spirits were so calm that himself could have laughed merrily at his own angry feigning, for his natural temper was careless ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Noyes Westcott his true place in American letters—placing him as a humorist next to Mark Twain, as a master of dialect above Lowell, as a descriptive writer equal to Bret Harte, and, on the whole, as a novelist on a par with the best of those who live and have their being in the heart of hearts of American readers. ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... Wimbledon, these things have a way of dropping out as time goes on.' 'Just like the teeth,' said I. He thought over this for a while, and then laughed—oh, he laughed quite a lot—and declared I was a humorist. He hadn't heard anything so quick, not for a long while. 'Mr. Collingwood,' he said, 'I'm a lonely man with it all. I don't mind owning to you that I've taken up these here politics partly for distraction. It used to be different ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... inveigle him into going over a ferry to "see a man." As we pass up the slip on the other side, I shall draw out my flask, impromptu-like, with the invitation, "Mark, my dear fellow, won't you take something?" He will decline, of course, or else he isn't the humorist I take him for. I shall then consider it my duty to urge him. Fixing my eye steadily upon him, so he can understand that I am terribly in earnest, I shall proceed to apostrophize that genial victim ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... protection, she had endeavored to make me serviceable in the warehouse; and finding I understood arithmetic tolerably well, she proposed his teaching me to keep the books; a proposition that was but indifferently received by this humorist, who might, perhaps, be fearful of being supplanted. As this failed, my whole employ, besides what engraving I had to do, was to transcribe some bills and accounts, to write several books over fair, and translate commercial letters from Italian ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... in a purely literary sense, this ambiguous hovering between two meanings, this oscillation between the ironical and the serious, is always amusing, and sometimes delightful. Some simple-minded people are revolted, even in literature, by the ironical method; and tell the humorist, with an air of moral disapproval, that they never know whether he is in jest or in earnest. To such matter-of-fact persons Disraeli's novels must be a standing offence; for it is his most characteristic peculiarity that the passage from one phase to the other ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... crinolines, with a small dog. I closed the glass; I could see no more, for I envied the dog. The nurse carried me back to bed and gave me morphia. That day I looked no more. For me the Divine Comedy was far from ended. The divine humorist has even descended to a pun. Talk of Mahomet's coffin. I lie between the two Champs-Elysees, the one where warm life palpitates, and that other, where the pale ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... troo humorist,' says Texas Thompson, as Colonel Sterett pauses in them recitals of his to reach the bottle; 'I looks on that last witticism of ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... The absurdity next struck her; and with the absurdity flashed into her mind the conviction that this was not the doing of a vampire; for of all creatures under the moon, he could not be expected to be a humorist. A wild hope sprang up in her mind that Karl was not dead. Of this she soon ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... protruding his sensibility, trying to play upon you as upon an instrument; more concerned that you should acknowledge his power than have any depth of feeling." Thackeray, whose opinion is just quoted, calls him "a great jester, not a great humorist." He had lived a careless, self-indulgent life, and was no honor to his profession. His death was like a retribution. In a mean lodging, with no friends but his bookseller, he died suddenly from hemorrhage. His funeral was hasty, and only attended by two persons; his burial was in an obscure graveyard; ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... rejoiced considerably that night. The air was dark with flying cushions, and darker still, occasionally, when the usual humorist turned the gas out. Milton was out, for he had gone to the dinner which followed the Ripton match, and the man in command of the house in his absence was Mill. And the senior day-room had no respect ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... necessity of the Norman Conquest. He had, at all events, a just and high estimate of the merits of my brilliant colleague. "Heu quanto minus est cum reliquis versari quam tui meminisse!" But Roosevelt was not himself a humorist, and his writings give little evidence of his possession of the faculty. Lincoln, now, was one of the foremost American humorists. But Roosevelt was too strenuous for the practice of humor, which implies a certain relaxation of mind: a detachment from the object of immediate ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... original humorist in Kulanche County," said the lady, with no longer a purring note in her voice. She boomed the announcement. Sandy, drooping above her, painfully wore the affectation of counting each stitch of the flashing needles. "And practical ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... the Italian masks has always found a more unfavourable reception in England than in France. The fool or clown in Shakspeare's comedies is far more of an ironical humorist than a mimical buffoon. Intrigue in real life is foreign to the Northern nations, both from the virtues and the defects of their character; they have too much openness of disposition, and too little acuteness and nicety of understanding. It is remarkable that, with greater violence ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... as a "philosopher, psychologist, and humorist." It was partly because Patrick delighted in long words, and partly to excuse himself for being full of the sour cream of an inhuman curiosity. His curiosity, however, did not extend itself to science and belles lettres; it concerned itself wholly with the affairs of other ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... None but a 'humorist' would have announced the decease of a cat in such mingled terms and tones of jest and earnest as the following:—'Alas! Grosvenor,' writes Southey to his friend Mr Bedford (1823), 'this day poor ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... Vervain. If I could make such jokes as that priest was, I should set up for a humorist at once. He had the touch of pathos that they say all true pieces of humor ought to have," he went on instinctively addressing himself to Miss Vervain, who did not repulse him. "He made me melancholy; and his face haunts me. I should like to paint him. Priests are generally ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... Pickwick, and, after him, for a soothing and pleasant companion, give me WASHINGTON IRVING. When I'm in another sort of humour, bring me THACKERAY. For rollicking Irish life, give me LEVER. But as to youth-about-town life of the present day, I do not know of any second-class humorist who approaches within measurable distance of the author of The Pottleton Legacy, in the past." So far the Baron. And now ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various
... it began to struggle. An awful puppet, with a gibbet chain for a string. Some humorist of night must have seized the string and been playing with the mummy. It turned and leapt as if it would fain dislocate itself; the birds, frightened, flew off. It was like an explosion of all those unclean creatures. Then they returned, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... or thirty years, the foremost humorist of our language has, from time to time, casually touched on the removal of natural and acquired dirt by means of bathing; but however lightly and racily this subject might leave his pen, it has been degraded into repulsiveness by the clumsy handling of imitators. Some things look ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... town humorist no attention. He hurried to the counter and leaned across it, asking his ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... Again: "The comedies of Congreve contain probably more wit than was ever before embodied upon the stage; each word was a jest, and yet so characteristic that the repartee of the servant is distinguished from that of the master; the jest of the cox-comb from that of the humorist or fine gentleman of the piece." Lesser writers of the time are also sympathetically characterized,—Shadwell, for instance, whom he thought to be commonly underestimated.[152] The heroic play Scott discussed vivaciously in more than one connection, for, as we should expect, his sense of humor ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... admirable art. The nurse's name was Mercy, but, as Dickens remarks, she showed none to him. Though Dickens shrank timorously in childhood from her frightful stories, he himself, like the fat boy in Pickwick, sometimes "wants to make our flesh creep." It seems, indeed, an odd trait of the humorist that he can at will wholly discard his gaiety, and, like the Pied Piper, pipe to another measure. W.W. Jacobs, besides his humorous sailor yarns, has given us The Monkey's Paw; and Barry Pain's gruesome stories, Told ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... with his peculiar wrong, To hear but of the oppression of the strong, Or those absurd deceits (I think with you 240 In some respects, you know) which carry through The excellent impostors of this earth When they outface detection—he had worth, Poor fellow! but a humorist in his way'— 'Alas, what drove him mad?' 'I cannot say: 245 A lady came with him from France, and when She left him and returned, he wandered then About yon lonely isles of desert sand Till he grew wild—he had no cash or land Remaining,—the police had brought him here— 250 Some fancy ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... do a "star turn." "Romeo" sang an impassioned love song, with his hand on his heart, while "Juliette" plucked at her apron and appeared doubtful of the truth of his protestations. Then the "funny man" had his innings. He sat in a chair with a shoe in his hand and tried to smack the head of a humorist who knelt in front but always managed neatly to avoid his blows, the whole being punctuated by vigorous exclamations in Italian, and much energetic music from ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... met that with the same happy, imperturbable expression. He had quite as much reason as I, if not more, for joining our gloom-party. He, too, was waiting sentence. For six days his wild, untamed spirit had been cabined in these walls; but he had been born a humorist, and even in bonds he sought to play the clown. He went through contortions, pitched coins against himself, and staggered around the room with a soda-water bottle at his lips, imitating a drunkard. But ours was a tough house even for his irrepressible ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... steadily, slackening for a moment, and then shooting ahead, as if the propelling power were the subject of strange perturbation. The roguish boys, and the men too, and, chief of them, that practical humorist of a conductor, observing this, screamed, "Boo! boo! boo I boo!" all the louder. Tiffles knew that the critical time had come, and philosophically laughed at the ruin of his last grand project, as he had laughed at the ruin ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... before any vice can fasten on a man, body, mind, or moral nature must be debilitated. The mosses and fungi gather on sickly trees, not thriving ones; and the odious parasites which fasten on the human frame choose that which is already enfeebled. Mr. Walker, the hygeian humorist, declared that he had such a healthy skin it was impossible for any impurity to stick to it, and maintained that it was an absurdity to wash a face which was of necessity always clean. I don't know how much fancy there was in this; but there is no fancy in saying that the lassitude of tired-out ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... aspects of their career shall have been forgotten, and only its romance be left. And nothing short of genius will be required to refine the rude proportions of Ned Kelly into something like the gentlemanly exterior of the dashing captain, the smooth gallant, the humorist, philosopher, and quick-change artist ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... years we have a new humorist—at one time a Jack Downing, then a Doesticks, then again a Phoenix-Derby. Last on the list we have 'Artemus Ward,' as set forth in letters to the Cleveland Plaindealer and Vanity Fair, purporting ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... grinning carriers, who bore each case on their shoulders, coffin-wise, and proceeded to the museum at a slow, funereal walk; and when I was out of sight, though not out of earshot, I heard the leading carrier, who seemed to be somewhat of a humorist, softly whistling the ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... of official barber to the camp was assigned to an Englishman named L——, who I think might be accurately described as our official humorist. Armed with this weapon, and although absolutely ignorant of the new calling thrust upon him, delighted to secure some change to the monotonous round of toil, L—— entered upon his work with commendable zest. But he construed the duty into a form of amusement, and played sorry tricks with the heads ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... time he had done nothing but gaze at the Duchess of Scerni with the ecstatic look of a bonze in presence of the divinity. His broad flat face, which might have come straight out of a page of O-kou-sai, the great classical humorist, gleamed red among the chains of flowers like a ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... tradition of farce, drollery and joke was Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910), known as "Mark Twain," born in Missouri, who raised it to an extraordinary height of success and won world-wide reputation as a great and original humorist. His works, however, include a broader compass of fiction, greater humanity and reality, and ally him to the masters of humorous creation. Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908) of Georgia introduced a new variety in Nights with ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the "respectable,"—against big-wigs of every size and shape. But the critics who attacked him for this negative pole of his intellectual character overlooked the positive one. He had kindness and sympathy enough; but he always gave them first to those who wanted them most. And as humorist and satirist he had a natural tendency to attack power,—to play Pasquin against the world's Pope. In fact, his radicalism was that of a humorist. He never adopted the utilitarian, or, as it was called, "philosophical," radicalism which was so fashionable ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... published and have proved very interesting. They give such an inside picture of savage life, with its nastiness, its alternate gluttony and starving, and its ferocity, as it would be hard to find elsewhere, drawn in such English as the wildest humorist would ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... having learned that Cultoquhey was in the habit of mentioning his Grace's family in such uncomplimentary terms, invited the humorist to Dunkeld, for the purpose of giving him a hint to desist from the reference. After dinner, the Duke asked his guest what were the precise terms in which he was in the habit of alluding to his powerful neighbours. Cultoquhey repeated his liturgy without a moment's hesitation. ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... knotted staff is the symbol of AEsculapius. A humorist of the present day has suggested that the knots on the staff indicate the numerous "knotty" questions which a doctor is asked to solve! Tradition states that when AEsculapius was in the house of his patient, Glaucus, and deep in thought, a serpent coiled itself around his staff. ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... their consolations, and even Dona Ignacia Arguello was less gastronomic than Father Landaeta. Rezanov, whose epicurianism had survived a year of dried fish and the coarse luxuries of his managers, suddenly saw all life in the light of the humorist, and told so many amusing versions of his adventures in the wilderness, and even of his misadventure with Japan, that the priests choked over their wine, and Langsdorff, who had not a grain of humor, swelled with pride in his chance relationship to a man who seemed able to manipulate ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... to treat the occupant of Suite A as a humorist or a lunatic, but finally he observed, ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... and run by a company which maintains a series of waterfalls, glaciers and artificial crevasses. The same theme reappears, though transposed in quite another key, in the Novel Notes of the English humorist, Jerome K. Jerome. An elderly Lady Bountiful, who does not want her deeds of charity to take up too much of her time, provides homes within easy hail of her mansion for the conversion of atheists who have been specially manufactured for her, so to speak, and for a number of honest folk who have ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... full of his vagaries here; says the most offensive things, but in such a high-bred, supercilious, if not gentlemanly way, that people cannot make up their minds about him, nor whether to cut him dead or acknowledge him for a genius and a humorist. Sir Robert Inglis says, publicly, that Mr. Randolph "on these boards" claimed for Virginia the first attempt at abolition. "And I am disposed to believe the gentleman correct," adds Sir Robert, "because of his opportunities for knowledge." Whatever related to the United States ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... Every reader of American periodicals came to recognize the photographs of that thick shock of hair, those heavy eyebrows, the gallant drooping little figure, the striking clothes, the inevitable cigar: all these things seemed to go with the part of professional humorist, to be like the caressing drawl of Mark's voice. The force of advertisement could no further go. But at bottom he was far other than a mere maker of boisterous jokes for people with frontier preferences in humor. He was a passionate, chivalric lover of things fair and good, although ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... minded, goes down to destruction in a sea of blood, Auberon Quin confesses to Wayne that this whole story, so full of human tragedy and hopes and fears, had been merely the outcome of a joke. To him all life was a joke, to Wayne an epic; and this antagonism between the humorist and the fanatic has created the whole wild story. Wayne ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... three memorable weeks in Mark Twain's life. Artemus Ward was in the height of his fame, and he encouraged his new-found brother-humorist and prophesied great things of him. Clemens, on his side, measured himself by this man who had achieved fame, and perhaps with good reason concluded that Ward's estimate was correct, that he too could win ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Boswell through the medium of the keys. "It's in exactly the same position as that of a humorist who has to print explanatory diagrams with all of his jokes. The administration papers were hot over the situation. The king can do no wrong idea was worked for all it was worth, but beyond this they drew pathetic pictures of the result of all these deplorable tendencies. What was Hades ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... faint-heartedness were in the house; that Caleb's scanty hairs were turning greyer and more grey before her sightless face. The Blind Girl never knew they had a master, cold, exacting, and uninterested—never knew that Tackleton was Tackleton, in short; but lived in the belief of an eccentric humorist, who loved to have his jest with them, and who, while he was the Guardian Angel of their lives, disdained to hear one word ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... to be the ablest pen in America, was not always asked to write the great documents of the Revolution. He would have put a joke into the Declaration of Independence, if it had fallen to him to write it. At this time he was a humorist of fifty years standing, and had become fixed in the habit of illustrating great truths by grotesque and familiar similes. His jokes, the circulating medium of Congress, were as helpful to the cause, as Jay's conscience ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... mysterious communion with my sergeant-major, a wonderful cockney humorist, who possessed the truth on all points. As far as Fusilier Bluff was concerned, said he, the attack was an effort to reach and destroy the terrible whizz-bang gun. It was believed that the gun's location was in a nullah where its dump of ammunition was inaccessible to our artillery. ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... Resurrection rig—This subject, though a grave one, has been treated by many with a degree of comicality calculated to excite considerable risibility. A late well known humorist has ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... sensibility shrank. Would he see anything in his wife but a common spy on his army; would he see anything in him but the weak victim, like many others, of a scheming woman? Stories current in camp and Congress of the way that this grim humorist had, with an apposite anecdote or a rugged illustration, brushed away the most delicate sentiment or the subtlest poetry, even as he had exposed the sham of Puritanic morality or of Epicurean ethics. Brant had even solicited an audience, but had retired awkwardly, and with his confidence unspoken, ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... inference from a dark passage in Miss Sheridan's Preface which states that, 'of the three Comic Annuals which started at the same time, the Comic Offering alone remains.' The two defuncts therein referred to are the 'Falstaff' and 'The Humorist,' which I understand have ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 573, October 27, 1832 • Various
... doctrine of "interest" in education. The very name "interest" suggests to many that this must be some plan for sugar-coating education, or perhaps for giving children only what they like. And this is quite the opposite of the traditional view which is expressed by the humorist who said, "It does not matter much what you teach a boy, so long as he doesn't like it." But the idea of interest in modern psychology does not mean letting the child have his own way, any more than discipline means doing only what is ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... in our town," continued Jotham, "it is a county paper, and its editor and publisher lives in a distant village, so that, unacquainted with the Simpkins family, he supposed Timotheus to be a would-be humorist, little dreaming that he was offending a genius, by seeing fun ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... the stupidest of all their efforts. The national character is not so flimsy a thing; it has gone through good and evil fortune for hundreds of years without turning a hair. You can make a soldier, and a good soldier, of a humorist; but you cannot militarize him. He remains ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... remain a learned man on his Pegasus, however: he also remains a humorist, a serious fantastic. Humour and passion pursue each other through the labyrinth of his being, as we find in those two beautiful poems, The Relic and The Funeral, addressed to the lady who had given him a bracelet of her hair. ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... do at all, you know." The absurdity of the objection must have struck the humorist comically; but as he wanted the volume republished, he good-naturedly saved the proverbial valor of the British soldier by ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... anything like it!" exclaimed the man X, who was the humorist of the party. "We want food and cannot get it, and there el senhor strolls a few yards away from us and a huge fish jumps almost into his arms in order to ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... in Rosalind's phrase, "clapped him on the shoulder," the little god left him "heart-whole." Being, as it is, the source of the deepest and strongest emotions, love presents many aspects for the humorist, and perhaps to no one more than to him who has felt it intensely. Horace may or may not have sounded the depths of the passion in his own person; but, in any case, a fellow-feeling for the lover's pleasures and pains served to infuse a tone ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... writing now, and with a better perspective, I should have said not less but a good deal more in its praise. The humorous passages in "The English Constitution" are in their way perfect, and, what is more, they are really original. They owe nothing to any previous humorist. They stand somewhere between the heartiness of Sydney Smith and the dainty fastidiousness of Matthew Arnold, and yet imitate neither. They have a quality, indeed, which is entirely their own and is entirely delightful. One of the things which is so charming about them ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... my dear Mrs. Prue," I continue, and my wife looks up, with pleased pride, from her work, as if I were such an irresistible humorist, "you will allow me to believe that the depth may be calm, although the surface is dancing. If you tell me that Aurelia is but a giddy girl, I shall believe that you think so. But I shall know, all the while, ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... themselves by casting humorously defiant eyes at the long low Ditch Reservoir, which peeped over the green wall of the ridge, six hundred feet above them; at times they even simulated an exaggerated terror of it, and one recognized humorist declaimed a grotesque appeal to its forbearance, with delightful local allusions. Others pretended to discover near a woodman's hut, among the belt of pines at the top of the descending trail, the peeping figure of the ridiculous and ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... ending her sentences with a melancholy cooing and an unintelligible murmur of agreement. It was undoubtedly sincere and sympathetic, but at times inappropriate and distressing. It had lost her the friendship of the one humorist of Tasajara, whose best jokes she had received with such heartfelt commiseration and such pained appreciation of the evident labor involved as ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... humorist Hugo Mallin in this group; no nimble fancy to send heresy skating over thin ice; but there was Herbert Stransky, with deep-set eyes, slightly squinting inward, and a heavy jaw, an enormous man who was the best shot in the company when he cared to be. He had listened in silence to the others, ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... well worthy of being read for their own sakes, I would assign a prominent place to the present volume. Much of the story element in it is admirable, and, further, it shows M. Zola as a genuine satirist and humorist. The Rougons' yellow drawing-room and its habitues, and many of the scenes between Pierre Rougon and his wife Felicite, are worthy of the pen of Douglas Jerrold. The whole account, indeed, of the ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... professional men, whose tongue, save in telling a story, knew not the vernacular, and yet in its pitch and accent inevitably betrayed their birthplace. Precise in speech and dress, uncommonly skilful, a mild humorist, and old in the world's wisdom, he had gone down the evening way of life with ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... most difficult habits to acquire, needing strong resolution and infinite pains; and reading for mere reading's sake, instead of for the sake of the good we gain from reading, is one of the worst and commonest and most unwholesome habits we have. And so our inimitable humorist has made delightful fun of the solid books,—which no gentleman's library should be without,—the Humes, Gibbons, Adam Smiths, which, he says, are not books at all, and prefers some "kindhearted play-book," or at times the Town and County Magazine. Poor Lamb has not a little ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... his eyes and went over to ring for tea. He did not know very much more about the case of the humorist than when he first sat down to listen; but he realized that no amount of words from his Swedish friend would help to reveal the real facts. A personal interview with the author himself ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... she said, "but even his most enthusiastic partisans could hardly characterise him as a humorist." ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... buncombe, dude, Mugwump, gerrymander, and joy-ride illustrate for English the fact that words of a certain kind meet a more hospitable reception in the spoken language than they do in literature. The writer of comedy or farce, the humorist, and the man in the street do not feel the constraint which the canons of good usage put on the serious writer. They coin new words or use old words in a new way or use new constructions without much hesitation. The extraordinary material progress of the modern ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... of rhetoric, no eloquent passages; he is not a wit, a humorist or a clown; yet, so great a vein of pleasantry and good nature pervades what he says, gliding over a deep current of practical argument, he keeps his hearers in a smiling good mood with their mouths open ready to swallow all he says. His sense of the ludicrous is ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... Perhaps in the quickness of their mutual attraction Frenchman recognised Frenchman. But Ainger was the French Huguenot and du Maurier the French sceptic. Both had mercurial perceptions, and exercised them on much the same objects. Both were wits and humorists, but Ainger was more of a wit than a humorist, and du Maurier was more of a humorist than a wit. Both were men of fancy rather than of imagination, men of sentiment rather than of passion. Both, too, were fantastics; both loved what was beautiful and graceful rather than ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... vigilance which belongs to her sex, and is often misapplied, but not so very often as cynics say. Even the honest friendship between him and the remarkable woman he calls his "viragos" gives him many a pleasant hour. He is still a humorist, though cured of his fling at the fair sex. His last tolerable hit was at the monosyllabic names of the immortal composers his wife had disinterred in his library. Says he to parson Denison, hot from Oxford, "They remind me of the Oxford ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... hah!" he let out at the top of his voice. "Good! you're a born humorist, friend Middlebrook!" He pushed the claret nearer. "Fill your glass again! Hand it over to the authorities? Why, that would merit a full-page cartoon in the next number of Punch. Good, good! but," he went on, suddenly becoming grave again, ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... lavish hand, but few of his benefactions, comparatively, were known. The newspapers have made much of his throwing a hawser to Mark Twain and towing the Humorist off a financial sand-bar. Also, we have heard how he gave Helen Keller to the world; for without the help of H. H. Rogers that wonderful woman would still be like unto the eyeless fish in the Mammoth Cave. As it is, her soul radiates an inward light and science stands uncovered. But there were very ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... antiquary, devoted to the study and accumulation of old coins and medals, etc. He is sarcastic, irritable, and a woman-hater; but kind-hearted, faithful to his friends, and a humorist.—Sir W. Scott, The ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... the most popular man in the house-party, the humorist of the dinner-table, and an expert in practical jokes, of which many were being played, one half the party being pitted against the other half, as is so often ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... that it would be better, if necessary, to imitate the Boers and shoot down regiments of British soldiers than to be false to the Empire of which "it is our proudest boast that we are citizens." The editor—such was the conclusion I arrived at—must be a humorist of ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... hissing there was at one of my entertainments at Leicester," said the humorist-caricaturist looking across at me with twinkling eyes. "A terrible hissing! I showed Mr. Gladstone on the sheet. Immediately it burst forth like a suddenly alarmed steam-engine. The audience rose ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Obviously a widow, she had a poor, loose-hung, trailing little body, which no nourishment could plump or fortify. Her visage was habitually doleful, but contracted itself at moments into a grin of quaint drollery, which betrayed her for something of a humorist. ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... courteous boy, neatest boy, best-built boy, brightest boy, favorite in games; neatest in tent; best all-round camper; boy who talks least about himself; the one with the best table manners; the quietest boy, most generous boy, handsomest boy, best-natured boy and the camp humorist. ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... its comedies as well as its tragedies, and the leading comedian was Thomas Corwin, a Representative from Ohio, who was a type of early Western culture and a born humorist. He was a middle-sized, somewhat stout man, with pleasing manners, a fine head, sparkling hazel eyes, and a complexion so dark that on several occasions—as he used to narrate with great glee—he was supposed to be of African descent. "There is no need of my working," said he, ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... that our genial humorist came near the serious reality of a duel he was the party challenged. The cause of the misunderstanding that promised to result so tragically was a magazine article in which the doctor caricatured a peculiar kind of Virginia Editor. The ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... necessary for "Boston" to call upon the young actress herself and secure her personal participation. To her he unfolded a plan, the successful carrying out of which he felt would secure his fame to posterity as a practical humorist. The "California Pet's" black eyes sparkled approvingly and mischievously. She only stipulated that she should see the man first,—a concession to her feminine weakness which years of dancing Juba and wearing trousers and boots had not wholly eradicated from her ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... subdivisions, if we attempt to classify, must be almost as numerous as the representatives themselves. In Hoelderlin we have the ardent Hellenic idealist; Lenau gives expression to all the pathos of Weltschmerz, Heine is its satirist, the misanthrope, while in Raabe we even have a pessimistic humorist. ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... had set his lumpish foot on the pedal that deadens the nerves of animal sensibility.[50] He did not grow as those poets do in whom the artistic sense is predominant. One of the most delightful fancies of the Genevese humorist, Toepffer, is the poet Albert, who, having had his portrait drawn by a highly idealizing hand, does his best afterwards to look like it. Many of Wordsworth's later poems seem like rather unsuccessful efforts to resemble his former self. They would never, as Sir John Harington says ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... "is called in Russian podkeedovate, or tossing-up, and is considered a mark of great respect. General Mouravieff told me, after our return, that he had had podkeedovate performed upon him in the same room." The General must be something of a humorist. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... enormous proportions to those engaged in them that such a modest thing as the literary product seems insignificant in comparison; and hence it is that the man of action always holds in slight esteem the man of thought, and especially the expresser of feeling and emotion, the poet and the humorist. It is only when we look back over the ages, when civilizations have passed or changed, over the rivalries of States, the ambitions and enmities of men, the shining deeds and the base deeds that make up history, that we are enabled to see what ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... moving on in its solemn and stately way, Ranald had been enduring agony at the hands of Peter Ruagh sitting just behind him. Peter, whose huge, clumsy body was a fitting tabernacle for the soul within, labored under the impression that he was a humorist, and indulged a habit of ponderous joking, trying enough to most people, but to one of Ranald's temperament exasperating to a high degree. His theme was Ranald's rescue of Maimie, and the pauses of the singing he filled ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... know a violinist who would say, "If I were not a genius, I could not play so well with such little practice." The poor fellow did not know how poor a fiddler he really was. Well did Strickland Gillilan, America's great poet-humorist, say, "Egotism is the opiate that Nature administers to deaden the pains ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... the "whips and scorns," the disdain and bitter retaliation, natural to the union of a beautiful and accomplished, though vain and haughty woman, with a very eccentric, irritable, and bombastic humorist. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... began to loom figures of his own, moving along a path which was also his own. This was the history of his adaptation of The Natural Son from Goldoni. We can only be sure that nothing became blithe in its passage through his mind. He was too much of a preacher to be an effective humorist. ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... literature, much hinges upon the definition of humor, and there is the same distinction in each art between wit—light and playful, and humor—broad, serious, and, at times, even grim. A genuine humorist is always a deep thinker, one who sees all sides of human nature—the great traits and the petty ones. The poet Lowell has defined humor as consisting in the contrast of two ideas, and in a Beethoven scherzo the gay and the pathetic are so intermingled that we are in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... time to time the only possible phrases for the case, that I mean the Victorian Englishman to appear as a blockhead, which means an unconscious buffoon. To all this there is a final answer: that he was also a conscious buffoon—and a successful one. He was a humorist; and one of the best humorists in Europe. That which Goethe had never taught the Germans, Byron did manage to teach the English—the duty of not taking him seriously. The strong and shrewd Victorian humour appears in every slash of the pencil of Charles Keene; ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... the Muse whose word he must sing whether it find listeners or not. Homer built his legendary structure to live in, not to play in; with all his sportiveness, he is a deeply earnest man; if his Zeus sometimes takes on a comic mask, it is because Providence is a humorist. Homer, when he mythologizes, is thinking, thinking as profoundly as the philosopher, and both are seeking to utter to men the same fundamental thought. The reader is to think after the poet, if not in the immediate mythical form, then in ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... remarkable reply that the prime-minister refused his offer to call lest he should succeed in convincing him, and Mendizabal did not wish to be convinced. This seemed to show that the Mendizabal was something of a philosopher and a little of a humorist. ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... granted, a new range of qualities comes in sight. By humour I do not mean a taste for irresponsible merriment; for though humour is not a necessarily melancholy thing, in this imperfect world the humorist sighs as often as he smiles. What I mean by it is a keen perception of the rich incongruities and absurdities of life, its undue solemnity, its guileless pretentiousness. To be true humour, it must not be at all a cynical thing—as soon as it ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Mexican side of the Rio Grande. Much has been written on this animal, the propeller of the trappers of the West, but this famous book remains the most comprehensive on facts and the amplest in conception. The author was humorist ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... who retained a flannel shirt and high boots was not a late-coming mountaineer, but a well-known English baronet on his travels; how the man who told a somewhat florid and emphatic anecdote was a popular Eastern clergyman; how the one querulous, discontented face in a laughing group was the famous humorist who had just convulsed it; and how a pale, handsome young fellow, who ate and drank sparingly and disregarded the coquettish advances of the prettiest Diva with the cold abstraction of a student, was a notorious roue and ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... Seckertary," said Erastus Winch, beaming broadly upon the minister, as if the mere mention of the fact promoted jollity. "That's it, Brother Gorringe,—take your seat at Brother Ware's desk. Mind the Dominie's pen don't play tricks on you, an' start off writin' out sermons instid of figgers." The humorist turned to Theron as the lawyer walked over to the desk at the window. "I allus have to caution him about that," he remarked with great joviality. "An' do YOU look out afterwards, Brother Ware, or else you'll catch that pen o' ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... rhymed loose version of a passage in the Vera Historia of Lucian. The humorist was unable to resist the temptation to introduce passages of mockery, which are here omitted. Part of his description of the Isles of the Blest has a close and singular resemblance to the New Jerusalem of the Apocalypse. The clear River of Life ...
— Rhymes a la Mode • Andrew Lang
... waltzed were something appalling, you felt that the minuet was a frolic in comparison; it would have been a fitting measure to tread round the grave of a premiere danseuse, or at the funeral of a professional humorist. And the graces she put on, the languor of the eyes, the contemptuous curl of the lips, the exquisite turn of the hand, the dainty arching of the foot! You felt there could be no questioning her right to the tyranny of ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... begun its winter session, and, as a military humorist put it, trench warfare is becoming a constant drain. The problem of parapet mending has been reduced to arithmetical form a la Colenso, as follows: "If two inches of rain per diem brings down one quarter of a ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... till they started a Pennsylvania line of steamers for him, and so smuggled him past Manhattan Island and into the Quaker City direct. Captured as he is to-night, I will not abuse his modesty by eulogy, yet this much I venture to say, and it is the eulogy the true humorist and the true man of letters will most highly prize. He deserves all the grateful honor we can pay him because he has made substantial additions to the sum of human enjoyment in the world. I give you the health of Mr. Leland, and with it our best wishes ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... education has been good. He has traveled in post chaises miles without number. He is fond of seeing much of the world. He eats of every good dish, especially apple pie. He drinks Old Hock. He has a very fine temper. He is somewhat of a humorist and a little tinctured with pride. He has a good manly countenance, and he owns himself to be amorous. He has infinite vivacity, yet is observed at times to have a melancholy cast. He is rather fat than lean, rather short than tall, rather ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... presently, for she was a bit of a humorist, "he looks very dirty and pale, doesn't he? I suppose the poor thing has been hiding in the ant-bear holes with nothing to eat. I am told that up in the Drakensberg yonder the ant-bear holes are full of Englishmen. ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... there were the usual inefficient racks of brown wood, in which it is more easy to hang a large-sized umbrella than the common tooth-brush of commerce. Upon the uninviting mattresses were carefully folded together those blankets which a great modern humorist has aptly compared to cold buckwheat cakes. The question of towels was left entirely to the imagination. The glass decanters were filled with a transparent liquid faintly tinged with brown, but from which an odor less faint, but not more pleasing, ...
— The Upper Berth • Francis Marion Crawford
... This pleasant planet, arched with blue, When every prospect charms and cheers, And all the world is fair to view— Who does not envy (have not you?) That mortal, by Thalia kissed, Who plies, in plumes of cockatoo, The blithesome trade of humorist? ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... as Goldsmith and Dr. Johnson. Lowell was a fine poet, a humorist and man of the world. He wrote easily and lived easily. He was the companion of wealthy and distinguished men. He acquired prosperity, as it were, by natural inclination. Next to the King of Prussia he was the most fortunate ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... Roses of Tonia Round The Circle The Rubber Plant's Story Out of Nazareth Confessions of a Humorist The Sparrows in Madison Square Hearts and Hands The Cactus The Detective Detector The Dog and the Playlet A Little Talk About ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... "Naw," said another youthful humorist. "They don't let Clarence out without the dawg. That's to keep Clarence from gettin' kidnapped. Nobody would wanter kidnap him if they had ter ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... sort of thing you need not squander fifteen cents on your favorite magazine. The modest sum of one cent will make you the possessor of a Pink 'Un. There you will find the season's games handled in masterly fashion by a six-best-seller artist, an expert mathematician, and an original-slang humorist. No mere short story dub may hope to compete ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... conditions, and that each side should pay its own losses. Mr. Wade said that his language might bear the construction that the English consul, Mr. Harry Parkes, should pay all the cost himself. If Commissioner Yeh was a humorist he chose a bad time for indulging his proclivities, and, a sufficient force being available, orders were at once given to attack Canton. On December 15 Honan was occupied, and ten days were passed ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... twinkled as he gave this precise approximation; but Barney, who had brought the humorist in, whispered to the captain to let him have a moment's speech with the man before he was sent away. The captain nodded, ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... Tipperary," ending with "And we shan't get there". And they all went on firing steadily. The officers pointed out that such an opportunity for high-class, fancy shooting might never occur again; the Germans dropped line after line; the Tipperary humorist asked, "What price Sidney Street?" And the few machine guns did their best. But everybody knew it was of no use. The dead grey bodies lay in companies and battalions, as others came on and on and ...
— The Angels of Mons • Arthur Machen
... life was rudely cut short by the loss of his fortune and he was forced to earn his living by literature and journalism. Under various pseudonyms he soon gained a reputation as a satirist and humorist, his first success being The Great Hoggarty Diamond. Then years of work for PUNCH and other papers followed before he won enduring fame by Vanity Fair, which he styled "a ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... and describing that intangible quirk. No type has the sensitiveness essential to this in any such degree as the Thoracic. Individuals of other types sometimes possess a keen sense of humor. This trait is not confined to the Thoracic. But it is a significant fact that almost every humorist of note has had this type as the first or ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... marriage. And cf. Life and Habit, ch. ii., where, after quoting from a journal an extract about Lycurgus, Butler proceeds: "Yet this truly comic paper does not probably know that it is comic, any more than the kleptomaniac knows that he steals, or than John Milton knew that he was a humorist when he wrote a hymn upon the Circumcision and spent his honeymoon in composing a ...
— The Samuel Butler Collection - at Saint John's College Cambridge • Henry Festing Jones
... and, leading the way in, ordered refreshment for two, exchanging a pleasant wink with the proprietor as that humorist drew the lad's half-pint in a ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... to become a part of New England. It was chiefly New Englanders who had peopled it, and it was with New England that for many a year its whole social and commercial intercourse was carried on. It was no accident that Nova Scotia later produced the first Yankee humorist, "Sam Slick." ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... familiar style of the humorist is almost universal in its availability. It is the style of conversation, to a great extent—-at least of the best conversation,—-of letter-writing, of essay-writing, and, in large part, of fiction. But there are moments when a different and more, hard and artificial style ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... humorist of a high order," he said warmly. "It's the huge joke of the thing that is making people like it. Let me see, the publisher is advertising a quotation from some paper that has called it the funniest book ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... O antique humorist, quaint-mouthed Sancho Panza! with you, I say, "Blessings on the man who invented sleep!" Sleep, pleasant sleep!—that little airy nothing on the eyelids!—that little spell of thought which comes from no place and ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... have been such a fool. For he knew his ignorance; but the rest were ignorant without knowing it. This was his own way of telling the story; and you can never be sure how much camouflage was in it;—and yet, too, he was a giant humorist. Anyhow, he did show men their ignorance; and you all know his solemn way of doing it. He drew them on with sly questionings to see what idiots they were; and then drew them on with more sly questionings to perceive at least a few ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... without a qualm or two, which I should be a liar to deny, I went and stood nearer to them. Nearly all their clothes had fallen away, hanging but in shreds here and there. That the hat had so jauntily kept its place was one of those grim touches Death, that terrible humorist, loves to add to his jests. The cards, which had apparently just been dealt, had suffered scarcely from decay—only a little dirt had sifted down upon them, as it had into the rum glasses that stood too at each man's side. And, as I looked at the skeleton ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... nothing so disappointing to a humorist as to lead up to an interruption, and then find he is not interrupted. Mr. Chamberlain seldom fails to bring off his little unsuspected repartee, and it is his mastery of this art that make his speeches sparkle with diamond brilliancy, but then ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... deliver ourselves from them by passing, in literature, into the company of an author who wrote before their time, and yet is familiarly modern. To read Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, then, is to go behind the New Humorist—into a time before he was, or his Humour. Obviously we go in like manner behind many another, but the funny writer of the magazines is suggested because in reference to him our act has a special significance. We connect him with Dr. Holmes by a reluctant ancestry, by an impertinent descent. It may ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell |
