"John Bull" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stand there in that daft fashion, or the Canucks will imagine you are one of the irresponsibles who lately arrived in New York from Europe, and that the cute Yankees have quietly shipped you over to John Bull's domains." ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... dust off my feet. Adieu, John Bull! Insula inhospitabilis, as you were truly called 1800 ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... England!" he exclaimed, as soon as he got on board. "John Bull don't beat Brother Jonathan yet. Let them talk of their lords and their ladies; there is not a gentleman in Boston that is not quite as noble-looking as the one that I saw, and a great deal more knowing, I can tell you. We saw a splendid ...
— Hurrah for New England! - The Virginia Boy's Vacation • Louisa C. Tuthill
... of America, you would think that he would pluck out his eyes and give them for a gift if need be. Well, a few years ago, Chicago was bitterly scourged with a fire. The need and distress thus caused appealed to the nations of the earth for help. The response was grand and glorious. Even hateful old John Bull did well. But what did Ireland do? Take two of her leading cities as an example; one in the North, the other in the South. Belfast in the North, of the Tribe of Dan; Dublin in the South, of the Phoenicians. Belfast ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... dramatists than these I have mentioned who have had one or more plays produced at the Abbey Theatre. Some of these, like Mr. Bernard Shaw, are Irishmen abroad that have gained the ear of the world and do a play for Dublin out of a sense of duty It was thus that "John Bull's Other Island" came into being, but that play, being considered "beyond the scope" of the National Theatre Society, was not produced at the Abbey, but at the Court Theatre, London, November 1, 1904. When "The ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... of a hearty, good-natured, and yet determined Englishman, and both his form and face betoken the John Bull as much as any member of the House. His morals are of a high order, his honesty proverbial, his courage undoubted, his social character amiable, and calculated to make him welcome to every circle. It is said, that although opposed in the extreme to the political ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... to administer a corrective dose to the nation, Robespierre was found; a most foul and nauseous dose indeed, and swallowed eagerly by the patient, greatly to the latter's ultimate advantage: thus, when it became necessary to kick John Bull out of America, Mr. Washington stepped forward, and performed that job to satisfaction: thus, when the Earl of Aldborough was unwell, Professor Holloway appeared with his pills, and cured his lordship, as per advertisement, &c. &c.. Numberless instances might be adduced to show that ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "Recollections" will remember that in one chapter I said I should have something further to say of my esteemed friend the late Mr Barber Hopkinson. As is well known, Mr Hopkinson was of a merrily genial disposition—a veritable type of the real John Bull, and where his company was, there was no dearth of quaint, good-humoured talk. As a sportsman, he was known far ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... Bah! What odds to me? I have higher stakes to play for. But according to old Twemlow's description, she must be the daughter of that old bear Darling, with whom I shall have to pick a bone some day. Ha! How amusing is that battery to me! How little John Bull knows the nature of French troops! To-morrow we are to have a grand practice-day; and I hope they won't shoot me in my new lodgings. Nothing is impossible to such an idiot as Stubbard. What a set of imbeciles ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... it. It remains a fine question whether his extravagant idealisation and justification of Henry V.—which, though it gives so little pause to some of our English critics, entitled M. Guizot to call him a mere John Bull in his ideas of international politics—it remains disputable whether this was exactly an expression of his own thought. It is notable that he never again strikes the note of blatant patriotism. And the poets of that time, further, seem to have had their tongues very much in their cheeks ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... thoughts in charity with the glad prose of Jeremy Taylor, and wept over Bowles's Sonnets, and studied Cowper's blank verse, and betook himself to Thomson's Castle of Indolence, and sported with the wits of Charles the Second's days and of Queen Anne, and relished Swift's style and that of the John Bull (Arbuthnot's we mean, not Mr. Croker's), and dallied with the British Essayists and Novelists, and knew all qualities of more modern writers with a learned spirit, Johnson, and Goldsmith, and Junius, and Burke, and Godwin, and the ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... neatness. So we went to the Royal Hotel, where we probably fared just as badly at much more expense, and where there was a particularly gruff and crabbed old waiter, who, I suppose, thought himself free to display his surliness because we arrived at the hotel on foot. For my part, I love to see John Bull show himself. I must go again and again and again to Chester, for I suppose there is not a more curious ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a jolly party of tradesmen engaged at high-jinks. These were the manners and pleasures of Hogarth, of his time very likely, of men not very refined, but honest and merry. It is a brave London citizen, with John Bull habits, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... more military air, and were better set up, than their fellow-soldiers of the North. The French citizen, in fact, acquires a more soldierly appearance, and takes greater pains to fit himself for these holiday doings, than either John Bull or brother Jonathan. A great number of ladies also graced the hall of assembly with their presence, and were, as on all public occasions, privileged persons. "Place aux dames" rendered the possibility of one of the masculine ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... STANHOPE, as far as it runs, For JOHN BULL, at last, looks like getting his guns. But though you talk big on the strength of the four With which you've just managed to arm Singapore, We would like you to state precisely how long 'Twill take you to get the next batch ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 29, 1890 • Various
... little. It was at Boulogne I saw your father—a most uncommon likeness you are of him, by Jove! mouth—nose—eyes—hair turned off your brow just like his—a little in the foreign style. John Bull doesn't do much of that. But your father was very ill when I saw him. Lord, lord! hands you might see through. You were a small youngster then. ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... it was a frightful blow to the tribe of Spenlows. Not so much on account of the pecuniary loss. In that respect the blow was considerably tempered to the shorn lambs by a compensation all too liberal—for John Bull is unsurpassed as a respecter of vested interests—and the proctors were compensated on the basis of their incomes for the last five years, their returns proving in some instances curiously at variance with the amounts on which they had paid income-tax. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... destroy his power in order to get the ground open for the {97} arrangement of the treaty. Swift set himself to this task with a malignity equal to his genius. Arbuthnot, hardly inferior as a satirist to Swift, wrote a "History of John Bull," to hold up Marlborough and Marlborough's wife to ridicule and to hatred. He depicted the great soldier as a low and roguish attorney, who was deluding his clients into the carrying on of a long and costly lawsuit for the mere ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... the pretext. Such a sentiment as this from Mill—on "Liberty"—gives the required opening: "Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with Barbarians, provided the end be their improvement"; or this from Shaw's preface to the Home Rule edition of "John Bull's Other Island": "I am prepared to Steam-roll Tibet if Tibet persist in refusing me my international rights." Now, it is within our right to enforce a principle within our own territory, but to force it on other people, called for the occasion "barbarians," is quite another thing. Shaw may get ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... company at Cranbrook. His salary was fifteen shillings a week, and in a representation of "The Honeymoon" he appeared as Jaques, Lampedo, and Lopez, accomplishing the task with the assistance of several wigs and cloaks. In "John Bull" he played Dan, John Burr, and Sir Francis Rochdale; another actor doubling the parts of Peregrine and Tom Shuffleton, while the manager's wife represented Mrs. Brulgruddery and Frank Rochdale, attiring ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... occasionally, in a vainglorious mood, they make ducks and drakes of their guineas, pay other nations to box about for their pleasure, give their kings a handsome douceur into the bargain; and, therefore, John Bull must work to get the money for such expenditure. By day and by night he must tax his brain to discover new machines, and he sits and reckons in the sweat of his brow, and runs and rushes, without much looking around, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... fierce passions and hatreds, and a boundless command of a loose, careless, but bold and energetic diction; add to this, a constant tone of self-assertion, and rugged independence. He was emphatically a John Bull, sublimated. He rushed into the poetic arena more like a pugilist than a poet, laying about him on all sides, giving and taking strong blows, and approving himself, in the phrase of "the fancy," game to the backbone. His faults, besides those incident to most satirists,—such as undue ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... the countenances of many of his listeners. Years ago Mr. BALFOUR told the Irish Nationalists that Great Britain was not to be bored into acceptance of Home Rule; but I am beginning to doubt now whether he was right. If the Government get the Bill through it will be due more to John Bull's weariness of the eternal Irish Question than to any enthusiastic belief in the merits of this particular scheme. Hardly anyone off the Treasury Bench had a good word to say for it, but fortunately for its chances their criticisms ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... only thing that annoys the honest mob is that old Louis will not cut throats and lop off heads, and that Wellington will not blow up bridges and monuments, and plunder palaces and galleries. As to Bonaparte, they have disposed of him in a thousand ways; every fat-sided John Bull has him dished up in a way to please his own palate, excepting that as yet they have not observed the first direction in the famous receipt to cook a turbot,—'First catchy our turbot.'" Then comes a postscript: "The bells are ringing, ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... honourable gentlemen descended—or, as they thought, ascended—to the most vehement invective, and such was at times the torrent of personal abuse which parties heaped on one another, while good-natured John Bull looked on and smiled at his rulers, that, as in the United States of to-day, a debate was often the prelude to a duel. Pitt and Fox, Tierney, Adam, Fullarton, Lord George Germain, Lord Shelburne, and Governor Johnstone, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... Republic has had the same, and indeed it was possible that there were a number present who might not cherish any very passionate regard for the wealthy, complaisant, self-contained somewhat slow-going old gentleman, John Bull. But here in Canada, we were all Canadians! First, last and all the time, Canadians (great applause). Whatever might be said of other countries, their wealth, their power, their glory, Canada was good enough for him (more applause, followed by a further elaboration of Canada's ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... friends. By some he was called 'a country gentleman of the true school,' by some 'a fine old country gentleman,' by some 'a sporting gentleman,' by some 'a thorough-bred Englishman,' by some 'a genuine John Bull;' but they all agreed in one respect, and that was, that it was a pity there were not more like him, and that because there were not, the country was going to rack and ruin every day. He was in the commission ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... doggedly. He had a good deal of John Bull in him, and did not fancy being taken possession of in that sort of way; and thought, moreover, that Mr. Sponge had not behaved very well in the matter of ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... the story is conceived and executed in an admirable manner: a work which, when once taken up, it is difficult to put down.' —JOHN BULL. ...
— The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] - Introduction and Publisher's Advertising • William Shakespeare
... Mr. Arbuton's mustache was flaxen; and his dress was not worn with that scrupulosity with which the Bostonian bore his clothes; there was a touch of slovenliness in him that scarcely consorted with the alert, ex-military air of some of his movements. "Good-looking young John Bull," he thought concerning Mr. Arbuton, and then thought no more about him, being no more self-judged before the supposed Englishman than he would have been before so much Frenchman or Spaniard. Mr. Arbuton, on the other hand, if he had met an Englishman so well ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... in other words, the squire of the old school, is the eldest born of John Bull; he is the "very moral of him;" as like him as pea to pea. He has a tolerable share of his good qualities; and as for his prejudices—oh, they are his meat and drink, and the very clothes he wears. He ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... winter of 1860. I remember feeling somewhat nervous lest he should take me for a foreigner on account of my name, and rather unnecessarily went out of my way to assure him that I was rather more English than John Bull himself. It didn't matter in the least; I have no doubt he saw through it all: he was kindness and courtesy itself; and I experienced to the full that emotion so delightful to a young hero-worshipper in meeting face to face a world-wide celebrity whom he has long worshipped at a ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... out the cardinal—we might say the only distinction between Atheism and Agnosticism. The Agnostic is a timid Atheist, and the Atheist a courageous Agnostic. John Bull is infuriated by the red cloak of Atheism, so the Agnostic dons a brown cloak with a red lining. Now and then a sudden breeze exposes a bit of the fatal red, but the garment is promptly adjusted, and Bull forgets ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... countrymen,—who, true once again to their conservative instincts, will look with a certain regard upon a nation which can show those elements of solidity and "respectability," a tremendous past war, and a heavy national debt, with augmented authority in the central government. John Bull's ill-humor against the "Yankees" has been in vigorous exercise these four years, and has assumed fair latitude for growling itself out: it has been palpably wrong in some of its inferences; for the bubble of Democracy has not burst, nor the Republic been split up into two or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... said that the first thing he knew, Tibe had jumped into his cab, and he had no idea where he came from, as he'd been reading in a guide-book; but the strangest thing was, he felt certain Tibe had belonged to him when a puppy; only his dog wasn't named Tibe, but John Bull—Bully for short, and he sold him to an American, because it turned out his wife didn't like bulldogs in the house, she thought them ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... such typical characters as John Bull and Brother Jonathan as representing actual Englishmen or Americans, we put ourselves in the way of contradiction. They are not good likenesses. An English writer says: "As the English, a particularly quick-witted race, tinged with the colors ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... land and in every age has produced imperishable monuments of the ardent human soul. The tribe of Oxford is the tribe from whose heart sprang the Psalms of David; Homer and Sophocles, Plato and Virgil, Dante and Goethe are all of the same divine company. It may be said that John Bull, the sturdy angel of England, turns his back slightingly upon such influences; that he regards Oxford as an incidental ornament of his person, like a seal that jingles at his fob. But all generous and delicate spirits do her a secret homage, ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... contrary, as Mrs. Gamp would say, Nature may be in her dealings, the English race out in this great continent are much the same as in the old country—John Bull, Paddy, and Sandy, all being of a conservative turn of mind, and with strong opinions as to the keeping up of old customs. Therefore, on a hot Christmas day, with the sun one hundred odd in the shade, Australian revellers sit down ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... rough but good-natured man on the whole, had two or three little peculiarities. In the first place, he piqued himself on a sort of John Bull independence; was a bit of a Radical (a strange anomaly in an admiral)—which was owing, perhaps, to two or three young lords having been put over his head in the earlier part of his career; and he made it a point with his nephew (of ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book IV • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the peace. Goodbye for the present. We shall convey the joint compliments of John Bull and Uncle Sam to the peoples of the planets when ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... consequently, proves that government is a beast; and as difficult things sometimes explain each other, we now see the origin of keeping wild beasts in the Tower; for they certainly can be of no other use than to show the origin of the government. They are in the place of a constitution. O John Bull, what honours thou hast lost by not being a wild beast. Thou mightest, on Mr. Burke's system, have been in ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... great toe, which had been severely bitten by a vampire in the night. And here let me say, that the popular disbelief of vampire stories is only owing to English ignorance, and disinclination to believe any of the many quaint things which John Bull has not seen, because he does not care to see them. If he comes to those parts, he must be careful not to leave his feet or hands out of bed without mosquito curtains; if he has good horses, he ought not to leave them exposed at night without wire-gauze round ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... perfectly understood here, and Jonathan amuses himself whenever he meets them, by imposing upon their credulity the most absurd stories which he can invent, which they swallow whole, go home with their eyes sticking out of their heads with wonder, and print all they have heard for the benefit of John Bull's calves. ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... great talk of an invasion by the French. The ministers, having granted large subsidies, and having imposed new taxes, found it necessary to frighten John Bull with the idea of being invaded. Great alarm was therefore excited throughout the country; volunteer corps and troops of yeomanry were raising all over the island. Provisions had by this time increased in price, every article of common ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... the accent of John Bull. That's the only thing of John Bull you have about you. For the sake of my ears I must give you ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... are sore beset. Party spirit has no mercy; indignant Freedom seldom shows forbearance in her hour of revolt. I wish you could see the aged gentleman trudging down Cornhill with his umbrella and carpet-bag, in good earnest; he would be safe in England: John Bull might laugh at him but he would do ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... French chasse-marees, Germans, Russians and Greeks were there; and each vessel was characterised by some nautical peculiarity. Of course the greater number were our own English vessels, as plainly to be pronounced British as ever was John Bull in the midst of Frenchmen ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... piece of country at the diggings. White Horse Gully obtained its name from a white horse whose hoofs, whilst the animal in a rage was plunging here and there, flung up the surface ground and disclosed the treasures beneath. In this gully was found the famous "John Bull Nugget," lately exhibited in London. The party to whom it belonged consisted of three poor sailors; the one who actually discovered it had only been a fortnight at the diggings. The nugget weighed forty-five pounds, and was only a few inches beneath the surface. It ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... gentleman, a scholar, and, though last not least, as genial a diner and winer as ever put American legs under a British peer's mahogany. There was a time when he was for avenging British outrage by whipping John Bull out of his boots, but now, clad in a dress-coat of unexceptionable cut, he deprecates the idea of international breaches. As a diplomatist he could scarcely show more indifference to the Alabama claim, if the claim itself were All a Bam. He roars for recompense more ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... train for London, where we arrived at midnight. Two weeks in that vast Babel,—then, ho! for Paris! Twelve hours by rail and steamer carried us out of John Bull's dominions into the brilliant metropolis of his French neighbor. Joseph accompanied us, and wrote letters home, filled with gossip which I knew, or hoped, would make Margaret writhe. I had not found it so easy to forget her as I had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... amusement. Every season has its novelty, whether the opera of a great foreign composer, or the lectures of a literary lion; besides endless panoramas, dioramas, cosmoramas, and cycloramas, which bring home to John Bull the wonders of the habitable globe, and annihilate time and space for his delectation. We see the Paris of the Huguenots to the sound of Meyerbeer's blood-stirring trumpets; or gain companionship with Hogarth, Fielding, or Smollett as we listen to Thackeray; or, after paying our shilling ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... delicacy—that America is by comparison more pro-Ally than pro-British. The fact is, the American is on the side of right and justice in this War, and earnestly desires to see the Allied cause prevail; but he has a sub-conscious aversion to seeing slow-witted, self-satisfied John Bull collect yet another scalp. American relations with France, too, have always been of the most cordial nature; while America's very existence as a separate nation to-day is the fruit of a ...
— Getting Together • Ian Hay
... overwhelming passion either for the body of Christian or the soul which she imagined it to contain; but she was always a gracious figure and her voice was gentle. Perhaps Mr. LORAINE owed most to his scenic artists, Messrs. DULAC and JOHN BULL, who gave of their best. There was attraction too in the very names of Arras and Bapaume, as well as in the thought of the part that our Cyrano of to-day has played against a ruder foe than the Spaniard. And was I wrong in tracing a hint of other experiences gained at the front, when ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various
... to note, and to suggest to students in ethnology, the Query, how it comes to pass that John Bull has a peculiar propensity to call things by his own name, his familiar appellative ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 179. Saturday, April 2, 1853. • Various
... House, some time since. One Thomas Johns, a blue-nose Nova-Scotian—a man of "some pumpkins" and "persimmons" at home, doubtless, put up for a few days at the Tremont, and about the same time one John Thomas, a genuine son of John Bull, just over in one of the steamers, took up his quarters at the same ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... of his learning vain, Beholds the fop with deep disdain: The fop, with spirit as discerning, Looks down upon the man of learning. The Spanish Don—a solemn strutter— Despises Gallic airs and flutter: Whilst the Gaul ridicules the Don, And John Bull looks with like disdain On manners both of France and Spain: They hold, indeed, a deed tripartite To see each other in a tart light. 'Tis thus the bard is scorned by those Who only deal in learned prose: Whilst bards ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... "What's that John Bull a-saying?" asked a brawny fellow, placing himself in front of the irate vestryman. "Look here, old fellow," he continued, "if you want to save a whole bone in your body, you had better slope, and never dare to talk again about ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... army because he had presided over a visitors' chateau and entertained Royalties, Members of Parliament, Mrs. Humphry Ward, miners, Japanese, Russian revolutionaries, Portuguese ministers, Harry Lauder, Swedes, Danes, Norwegians, clergymen, Montenegrins, and the Editor of John Bull, at the government's expense—and I am bound to say he deserved them all, being a man of infinite tact, many languages, and a devastating sense of humor. There was always a Charlie Chaplin film between ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... in a heap together.' 'Well, I don't know,' said I, 'but somehow or another, I guess you'd have found preaching the best speculation in the long run; them 'ere Unitarians pay better than Uncle Sam.' (We call," said the Clockmaker, "the American public Uncle Sam, as you call the British John Bull.) ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... betters, and above all that suicidal iniquity of strikes, seem in these latter days to have generally demoralised a race of citizens of whose virtues our commonwealth once was proud. No wonder that John Bull had to go to Germany ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... outright. "For once I've pierced the disguise of your extremely courteous cosmopolitanism, and behold! there's John Bull underneath, rampantly sure that nobody can be a really justified ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... cent. discount. I long ago told the queen, I did not think Mr. Pitt would go to parliament, and ask money of the country, in the present moment; that, if England saw every exertion made, in this country, to save themselves, John Bull was never backward in supporting his friends in distress. Good God, my lord, can the emperor submit ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... BOURBAKI dined with me yesterday. American fare. Gopher soup; rattlesnake hash; squirrel saute; fricasseed opossum; pumpkin pie. That's your sort! Blue coat and brass buttons. White Marseilles waistcoat. France saved by Marseilles waistcoat. Organize earthquake to swallow London. JOHN BULL trembles. Tours trembles. Italy trembles. Leaning tower of Pisa changes base and slopes other way. Tired of France. Change base and slope other way. PUNCHINELLO for the throne of Spain! Down with AOSTA! Down with effete monarchies! Down with ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... Paris, 19th July, 1840, she writes:—"You shew much hospitality towards your royal guests. But I assure you it will not in this instance be taken as an homage to superior merit—words which I have heard frequently applied here to John Bull's frenzy about Soult, and to the hospitality of the English towards the Duc de N[emours], When I told him how much I should like to be in his place (i.e., about to go to England), he protested that he would change places with no one, 'quand il s'agissait d'aller ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... people thrust suddenly out of trains, happy lovers shot, vitrioled and so forth by rivals. I got my first glimpse of the life of pleasure in foully drawn pictures of "police raids" on this and that. Interspersed with these sheets were others in which Sloper, the urban John Bull, had his fling with gin bottle and obese umbrella, or the kindly empty faces of the Royal Family appeared and reappeared, visiting this, opening that, getting married, getting offspring, lying in state, doing everything but anything, a wonderful, good-meaning, ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... "taken in," but it is a miracle that he is not invariably drawn as a portrait-painter. A bird tied to the muzzle of a gun—an enemy who has written a book—an Indian prince under the protection of Giovanni Bulletto (Tuscan for John Bull),—is not more close upon demolition, one would think, than the heart of a lady delivered over to a painter's eyes, posed, draped, and lighted with the one object of studying her beauty. If there be any magnetism in isolated attention, any in steadfast ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... pleasure, take from them their wives, castrate their sons, prostitute their daughters, throw the aged to the sharks,—and finally will be forced to serve themselves in the same way, unless they prefer to tax themselves for the support of their servants. In such a condition is Great Britain to-day. John Bull—caring little for liberty, equality, or dignity—prefers to serve and beg. But you, ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... the pantomime who put on about six suits, one after another, growing gradually larger, though no taller or fatter—just thick. All these in the hall were meaty, not one with that lean look of the pictures of "Uncle Sam," but more like our "John Bull," only not portly and complacent as he is, but just thick all over, at about the three coat stage; thick noses, thick hair, thick arms, thick legs, and nearly invariably clean-shaven and keen looking. The Senator said they were the ordinary business people and might any of them rise ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... bread, too." It is human perversity to want a great deal of bread when bread becomes scarce; even war bread, which, by the way, is better than white. But the rest of the luncheon, when it came, proved that John Bull was under no necessity of stinting himself. Save for wheat and sugar; he is not in want. Everywhere in London you are confronted by signs of an incomprehensible prosperity; everywhere, indeed, in Great Britain. There can be no doubt about that of the wage-earners—nothing ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... not except even John Bull's favourite yew peacocks and dragons, at least when they decorate the garden of ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... deluded themselves before the war into believing would prove all a sham before the first blast of frightfulness. They told themselves that, a war once actually begun, the imperturbable pipe-smoking John Bull would be transformed into a cowering craven. More complete confusion of this false belief is nowhere to be found than in these "Fragments." It ranks as a colossal German defeat that successive bloodthirsty assaults upon us by ...
— Fragments From France • Captain Bruce Bairnsfather
... more storms than he could count, and had witnessed more strange sights than he could remember. He was tough, and sturdy, and grizzled, and broad, and square, and massive—a first-rate specimen of a John Bull, and according to himself, "always kept his weather-eye open." This remark of his was apt to create confusion in the minds of his hearers; for John meant the expression to be understood figuratively, while, in point of fact, ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... his coat of blue and silver, his buff waistcoat and corded moleskin small clothes, his silver buckles and broad silver thumb-ring, his gold snuff-mull and the cowries clashing at his fob, was considered the type of the real Scottish countryman. He was really infinitely like the later caricatures of John Bull than anything counted distinctively Scottish—that is, ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... Skeffington must claim our praise, For skirtless coats and skeletons of plays Renowned alike; whose genius ne'er confines Her flight to garnish Greenwood's gay designs, Nor sleeps with 'sleeping beauties' but anon In five facetious acts comes thundering on, While poor John Bull, bewildered with the scene, Stares, wondering what the devil it can mean; But as some hands applaud—a venal few— Rather than sleep, ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... of corn, that when Mr. Cobbett once read an account to an American farmer, of a young English lord lying dangerously ill from having swallowed an ear of corn; the man started up and exclaimed, a whole ear of corn! no wonder that poor John Bull is in such a miserable state, when his lords have got ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 383, August 1, 1829 • Various
... these benches, for I have no chairs—you may be fatigued—will you have a bowl of milk? I live upon milk and Indian corn—I never drink spirit or wine, and yet I am a tolerable example of English health." And, indeed, he was a most ample specimen of the genuine John Bull. His nearly oval face, and florid countenance, with strong gray piercing eyes and head thickly covered with white hair, closely trimmed; his huge frame, of some two hundred and seventy pounds weight, corresponding abdominal development, and well-proportioned ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... the same hours. On those days, you may perambulate in the different rooms of this magnificent establishment; on the other days, walking is here prohibited, in order that students may not be interrupted. However, JOHN BULL seems to pay little regard to this prohibition. Englishmen are frequently seen stalking about the rooms at the forbidden time, as if they meant to shew that they disdained the rules of ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... Fraser speaks rapturously of his wondrous mind and of his intellect, but where is posterity to look for evidences of either? Certainly not in Sir William's book, which shows us a wearied wit and nothing more. Carlyle once asked, 'How long will John Bull permit this absurd monkey'—meaning Mr. Disraeli—'to dance upon his stomach?' The question was coarsely put, but there is nothing in Sir William's book to make one wonder it should have been asked. Mr. Disraeli ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... our communication with Spain is at an end, I can now only expect to hear from my own dear Emma by the very slow mode of Admiralty vessels, and it is now more than two months since the John Bull sailed. ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol II. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... was, when John Bull little difference spied 'Twixt the foe at his feet or the friend at his side; When he found, such his humor in fighting and eating, His foe, like beefsteak, ...
— A Poetical Cook-Book • Maria J. Moss
... "authorized" announcement, in the John Bull newspaper, sets this question at rest. It is declared that her ladyship is not the writer of the ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... about it; it was a real, good, earnest John Bull knock-down thump; it put me in mind of Portsmouth ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... miss John Bull, the sea, 'The Times' in the morning, and, besides, some dozens of fellow-creatures. The learned class has greatly sunk in Germany, more than I supposed; all behindhand.... Nothing appears of any importance; the most wretched trifles are ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... first to great expense; and yet facts which you can neither see nor handle, but must accept and pay hundreds of thousands of pounds for, on the mere word of a doctor or inspector who gets his living thereby. Poor John Bull! To expect that you would accept such a gospel cheerfully was ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... their deep, healthy bloom, which an American taste is apt to deem fitter for a milkmaid than for a lady; the moustached gentlemen with frogged surtouts and a military air; the nursemaids and chubby children, but no chubbier than our own, and scampering on slenderer legs; the sturdy figure of John Bull in all varieties and of all ages, but ever with the stamp of authenticity somewhere ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... sea-rights, of feats of seamanship, of luck and ill luck, and here and there a little politics of the old-fashioned, elementary sort. They boasted themselves and their country not a little, and criticised everybody else, and John Bull especially, very severely often, but almost always very acutely, too. They would play euchre and smoke cigars from nine o'clock till eleven, and would then go to bed and sleep till the breakfast-bell. Altogether, ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... has my hearty thanks for his good and true witnessing. And now that our old advice is indorsed by John Bull himself, you will believe and come. Nothing can be better. As soon as the lectures are over, let the trunks be packed. Only my wife and my blessed sister dear—Elizabeth Hoar, betrothed in better times to my brother Charles,—my wife and this lovely nun do say that Mrs. Carlyle must come hither ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... fairness, somebody said to me to-day, "But you are not quite English, are you?" And I swore by the nine gods of my ancestry that I was nothing else. But the look is in us: my father had a foreign air, but made up for it by so violent a patriotism that Uncle N. used to call him "John Bull ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... "Mrs. John Bull takes girls in pantaloons quite calmly and approvingly, now that she has learned that if there are enough of them, dad and the boys will pay no more attention to them in trousers than they would pay ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... "He's a true John Bull. Now, Miss Sallie, you shall have a chance without waiting to draw. I'll harrrow up your feelings first by asking if you don't think you are something of a flirt," said Laurie, as Jo nodded to Fred as a sign ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... black with reproach upon him. Then turning to the ladies: "That shows how he misunderstands me. Just because I had a witty mother,—just because I 'm not a stolid, phlegmatic ox of a John Bull,—just because I 'm sensitive and impressionable,—he calls me flighty. But you know better, don't you? You, with all your fine feminine instincts and perceptions, you know that I 'm really as ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... perhaps, say so many murders, so many suicides, so many misdirected letters (and men of letters), but not so many geniuses. In this one thing old Mother Nature will be whimsical and womanish. This is a gift that John Bull, or Johnny Crapaud, or Brother Jonathan does not find in his stocking every Christmas. Crude imagination is common enough,—every hypochondriac has a more than Shakspearian allowance of it; fancy is cheap, or nobody would dream; eloquence ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... hard did I work to obtain your praise! All that the combined force of vanity and hatred could inspire I performed, and with success. You have but little curiosity, I presume, to know how many hogsheads of port went down the throat of John Bull, or how many hecatombs were offered up to the genius of English liberty. My hatred to Mrs. Luttridge was, of course, called love of my country. Lady Delacour was deified by all true patriots; and, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... possible! Mackinaw and Chicago both gone, already! John Bull must have been at work among the savages a long time, to get them into ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... families, who have by far the hardest place in the house, and are worse paid, and truly verify the old adage, "the more work, the less wages." If there is any thing right, the cook has the praise—when there is any thing wrong, as surely the kitchen maid has the blame. Be it known, then, to honest JOHN BULL, that this humble domestic is expected by the cook to take the entire management of all ROASTS, BOILS, FISH, and VEGETABLES; i. e. the principal part of ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... of the cause of the affray had gone abroad. It was said that one of the Duke of Buckingham's companions had insulted a stranger gentleman from the country, and that the stranger had cudgelled him soundly. A favourite, or the companion of a favourite, is always odious to John Bull, who has, besides, a partiality to those disputants who proceed, as lawyers term it, par wye du fait, and both prejudices were in Nigel's favour. The officers, therefore, who came to apprehend him, could learn from the spectators no particulars ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... of what is told be true, it exhibited the most singular sagacity. Not having seen it myself, I can only give the general report. But, beyond all question, it has been the wonder of London for years, and however willing John Bull may be to be deluded, there is no instance of his being deluded long. This bird's chief faculty was singing, seldom a parrot faculty, but its ear was so perfect, that it acquired tunes with great rapidity, and retained them ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... peculiar prejudices of John Bull, which somewhat impugns his wisdom; but it must be attended to, as John is very ready to pay for his caprice; therefore those who provide for him have no right to complain, ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... the office there was Mr. Repton, a kindly old gentleman, wearing large spectacles, and in general appearance one of those genial types from which our caricaturists have constructed the national figure of John Bull. It was a pleasure to be in the presence of so honest a man, and in spite of George's extreme nervousness he felt a certain security in such company. Moreover, Mr. Repton smiled paternally at him before putting to him the few questions which the occasion demanded. He held George's ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... into light from a dark corner a very unjust account of it, and neglects, though lying upon the high road, a very pleasing one. Both are from English pens. Grafton, a chronicler but little read, being a stiff-necked John Bull, thought fit to say, that no wonder Joanna should be a virgin, since her "foule face" was a satisfactory solution of that particular merit. Holinshead, on the other hand, a chronicler somewhat later, every way more important, and universally read, has given a very pleasing testimony ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... wet with British blood and paved with British gold. The noblest things in Egypt are British; the vilest are the products of aliens who have dodged justice and cleanness through the vagaries of "The Capitulations" (an international treaty which makes John Bull pay for the privilege of entertaining alien murderers, white slavers, forgers, assassins, corrupt financiers, and legal twisters). But it is a land worth holding, not so much for any riches it may possess, but for the Suez Canal, which links us ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... excessively stimulating climate. An old-fashioned sea-captain put it all into a sentence when he said that he could drink a bottle of wine with his dinner in Liverpool and only a half a bottle in New York. Explain the cause as we may, the fact seems to be that the body of John Bull changes, in the United States, into the ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... words, its supply is unequal to the demand. The heavy Britishers have awakened to the fact, since 1851, that, of all condiments and delicacies, cranberry-sauce and cranberry-pie are best in their way; and John Bull takes many a barrel clean out of our market now. It so happened that in the Pines of New Jersey cranberries superior to those of Cape Cod have grown unheeded for centuries,—grew red and purple and white and pink when Columbus was unthought of, as well as when Washington ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... John Bull, however, is not a blood-thirsty person, so that those who could not better themselves, had only to submit to a simple transfer of personal property to ensure his protection. We, consequently, made many prisoners at the bridge, ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... country, can keep cool, while reflecting on these things? Is it not almost enough to make a Christian swear? No my friends we will not swear about it; but I entreat you to keep your eyes upon that old rascal, John Bull. He needs watching, and his Northern allies in the United States, are as ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... when the muffin-bell tinkles, causing the lovely drop-scene—that combined the grandeur of the pretty Parthenon with the sublimity of Virginia Water—to vanish into its own intensely blue sky; disclosing the "Harlequin House that Jack built," and Mr. John Bull's huge paste-board thick head, snoring like thunder, in a "property" summer-house—an elephantine blue-bottle on his proboscis, and a sleeping bull-dog, the size of an Alderney steer, at his feet;—here Master Brown, with a grin, calls the house ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... far off; therefore, when evening fell, I again commended myself to Heaven, and lay down, utterly exhausted. In the morning, as soon as I woke, I made towards the nearest of the cleared lands which I had seen the day before; and that afternoon I reached the house of John Bull, an old acquaintance. I knocked at the door, and his wife, who opened it, seeing me in such a frightful condition, flew from me like ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... out of reach, was a back volume of Punch, of which periodical, as a landed proprietor, he had an almost professional knowledge. In leisure moments it was one of his chief recreations to peruse lovingly those aged pictures, and at the image of John Bull he never failed to think: 'Fancy making an Englishman out ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... "I'm John Bull to the core—eh? No damned Boers for me—eh? Ha, ha, wipe 'em out, gentlemen, wipe 'em out: old England's all right as long as we've got gentlemen like you to defend us—eh?" (He took us for ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... homely language he could scarcely be surpassed even by the author of the Drapier's Letters. He had enlisted as a soldier, and had afterwards drifted to America. There he had become conspicuous as a typical John Bull. Sturdy and pugnacious in the highest degree, he had taken the English side in American politics when the great question was whether the new power should be bullied by France or by England. He had denounced his precursor, Paine, in language savouring too much, ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... honest, heavy epiciers, fathers of families, playing with them in the Tuileries, or, as to-night, bearing them stoutly on their shoulders, through many long hours, in order that the little ones too may have their share of the fun. John Bull, I fear, is more selfish: he does not take Mrs. Bull to the public-house; but leaves her, for the most part, to take care ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Might once have perturbed British Valour and Beauty. But now Father NEPTUNE, "At Home," calmly grips His trident, and smiles with most friendly benignity. We welcome French Sailors, and shout for French ships, Without an abatement of patriot dignity. To see any friend of JOHN BULL NEP's delighted. He holds out his paws, And will drink to the Cause Of Peace on the Ocean ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 22, 1891 • Various
... it must be understood, even by those who most violently disagree with me, that these strictures are passed, not upon Blackmore's novel, but upon the spirit of the age which made John Ridd the hero of such a novel, the spirit which in the dress of "John Bull" has insistently presented our less attractive qualities to the outside world as the true Englishman, and which has been, by the outside world, adopted and disliked; while such admirable traits as sincerity, disinterestedness, ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... in long coils of Red Tape, She's the butt for each Jeremy Diddler's coarse jape, Every filthy Paul Pry's ghoulish giggle. JOHN BULL, my fine fellow, wake up, and determine To stamp out the lives of the venomous vermin Who round your home-hearth writhe ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... seriously as I took a cartoon in a New York evening paper of pro-German tendencies on the day that I had sailed from New York, which showed John Bull standing idly by and urging France on to sacrifices in the defense of Verdun. It was as easy for an American to be indignant at one as for an Englishman at the other, but a little unworthy of the intelligence of either. I was too convinced that ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... Peninsular War, roused the wrath of the Tories. The Quarterly Review was started by Canning and Scott, and the Edinburgh, in return, took a more decidedly Whig colour. The Radicals now showed themselves behind the Whigs. Cobbett, who had been the most vigorous of John Bull Anti-Jacobins, was driven by his hatred of the tax-gatherer and the misery of the agricultural labourers into the opposite camp, and his Register became the most effective organ of Radicalism. Demands for reform began again to make themselves heard in parliament. Sir Francis Burdett, ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... full way of speaking, which is particularly agreeable, after our slip-shod American gabble. The two ladies wear funny velvet fur-trimmed hoods; are done up, like compact bundles, in tar tan shawls; and look as if bent on seeing everything thoroughly. The devotion of one elderly John Bull to his red-nosed spouse was really beautiful to behold. She was plain and cross, and fussy and stupid, but J. B., Esq., read no papers when she was awake, turned no cold shoulder when she wished to sleep, and cheerfully said, "Yes, me dear," to every ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... man of letters, whom Thackeray introduced in attendance at the death-bed of Francis Esmond. "He had a very notable share in the immortal History of John Bull, and the inimitable and praiseworthy Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus.... Arbuthnot's style is distinguished from that of his contemporaries, even by a greater degree of terseness and conciseness. He leaves out every superfluous word; is sparing of connecting particles, and introductory ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... Borrow's drawing of places and persons is, he always contrives to throw in touches which somehow give the whole the air of being rather a vision than a fact. Never was such a John-a-Dreams as this solid, pugilistic John Bull. Part of this literary effect of his is due to his quaint habit of avoiding, where he can, the mention of proper names. The description, for instance, of Old Sarum and Salisbury itself in Lavengro is sufficient to identify ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... of his countrymen, the Boeotians, to the profusion of animal food which they consumed, and even now, our lovely, soup drinking, coffee sipping friends on the continent, attribute the saturnine, melancholy, and bearish dispositions of John Bull, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 358 - Vol. XIII, No. 358., Saturday, February 28, 1829 • Various
... especially commented on their abstemious habits in contrast, as the paper stated 'with our beer-drinking English professional cricketers.' In fact, the visit of the baseball players has opened old John Bull's eyes to the fact that we are not as neglectful of athletic sports as he thought we were, for one thing, and in our American baseball representatives we presented a corps of fielders the equal of which in brilliancy of play England has ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... that they will be left secure in their poverty and their fastnesses, there, according to their proverb, "to listen to the wind upon the hill till the waters abate." But they will be disappointed; they have been too often troublesome to be so repeatedly passed over, and this time John Bull has been too heartily frightened to recover his good humour for some time. The Hanoverian ministers always deserved to be hanged for rascals; but now, if they get the power in their hands,—as, sooner or later, they must, since there is ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... mere trifle compared with the sums which Britain lavishes whenever Britons are in need of deliverance if they happen to be imprisoned abroad. The King of Ashantee had captive some British subjects—not even of English birth—in 1869. John Bull despatched General Wolseley with the pick of the British army, who smashed Koffee Kalkallee, liberated the captives, and burnt Coomassie, and never winced when the bill came in for 750,000. But that ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... occasion, before he published a volume, when we were together in a tavern in a country-town, a tavern thronged with farmers on market-days. The poet had some prospectuses in his pocket. Suddenly a great John Bull would come bumping in like a cockchafer, and call for his pint. 'Just you watch,' the poet would say, and away he crossed over to his victim. 'Good morning, Mr. Oats!' 'Why, good morning, sir. How-d'ye-do; I hardly know'd thee.' Then presently the voice ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... were thought to be fabulous animals; and the ill-treated Le Vaillant was supposed to have invented them, in spite of the description which the Romans left of them. He was a little poetical in his style of writing, which John Bull is not fond of when facts are narrated, so John Bull begged to doubt his assertions. He lived, however, to see his veracity established, which the kind old man, a year or two before his death, assured me was a great happiness to him. Lord Caledon ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee |
