"Laughable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gratify the wife, and render to her those services which the English tyrant exacts from his consort. One may often hear an American matron commiserate a friend who has married in Europe, while the daughters declare in chorus that they will never follow the example. Laughable as all this may seem to English women, it is perfectly true that the theory as well as the practice of conjugal life is not the same in America as in England. There are overbearing husbands in America, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... yourself, my dear; it is all very lamentable and laughable, but we must submit till the world learns better. There are often excellent young persons among the 'grasshoppers,' and if you cared to look you might find a pleasant friend here and there," said Mr. Yule, leaning a little toward his son's view ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... only twitch away in silence that he made as haughty as he could, but not so haughty that Trannel did not find it laughable, and he laughed in a teasing way that made Breckon more and more serious. He was aware of becoming even solemn with the question of his likeness to Trannel. He was of Trannel's quality, and their difference was a matter of quantity, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of him was as clear as the red and white on her face; and foolish Francis felt in his turn flattered, for he too was fond of himself. There is no more pitiable sight to lovers of their kind, or any more laughable to its haters, than two persons falling into the love rooted in self-love. But possibly they are neither to be pitied nor laughed at; they may be plunging thus into ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... instantly deep in sociology—and in some of its seamiest strata too. While exploring them one would make the odd discovery that, whereas the humour that surrounds and saturates the idea of a wife possessing a maternal relative is inexhaustible, there is nothing laughable about the mother of a husband. A wife can talk of her husband's mother all day and never have the reputation of a wit, whereas her husband has but to mention her mother and he is the rival ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... most laughable things that one sees in the Orient are the Japanese signs translated into English by some Japanese merchant who has picked up a dash of English ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... she was afraid of life. Life!—to have herself caressed by HIM; humbly to devote herself to being humbly doted on; to be the slave of a slave; to swim in a private pond of treacle—ugh! If the thought weren't so cloying and degrading, it would be laughable. ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... upon the people they are necessarily lifted, sobered, broadened. Our women do not vote. What is the result? Not one woman in a thousand has any interest in, and not one in two thousand has any acquaintance with, political affairs. Their ignorance would be laughable were it not sad. Every father, husband, brother, can testify to the impenetrable ignorance of his feminine belongings concerning matters of public moment. It forms the topic of universal comment in male circles. It is not because women are naturally incapable. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... lady returned to her house she informed her husband of what had happened, and begged him to permit her to execute a stratagem that she had formed to punish their insolence, which would not only afford himself and her much laughable amusement, but solid advantage, as doubtless the lovers would each bring with him a handsome present. The husband, who knew he could trust the virtue of his wife, readily consented, and the lady having prepared a ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... compliance with the brutal spirit of the world, on all other subjects he was eminently unworldly, child-like, simple-minded, and upright. He would flatter no man: even when addressing nations, it is almost laughable to see how invariably he prefaces his counsels with such plain truths uttered in a manner so offensive as must have defeated his purpose if it had otherwise any chance of being accomplished. For instance, in addressing America, he begins ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... of those high themes which agitated the schools and universities, as Dante did one hundred years before. He tells us how monks and friars lived, not how they dreamed and speculated. Nor are his sarcasms scorching and bitter, but rather humorous and laughable. He shows himself to be a genial and loving companion, not an austere teacher of disagreeable truths. He is not solemn and intense, like Dante; he does not give wings to his fancy, like Spenser; he has not the divine insight of Shakspeare; ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... commanding the soldiers who had been drawn into the house by the disturbance. The sudden and inexplicable change of conduct on the part of the soldiers petrifies Bartolo; he is literally "astonied," and Figaro makes him the victim of several laughable pranks before he ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... a charge against your majesty that you adjure the great court circles, and the stiff set with which the royal family of France used to martyr itself. They say that by giving up ceremony you are undermining the respect which the people ought to cherish toward royalty. But would it not be laughable to think that the obedience of the people depends upon the number of the hours which a royal family may spend in the society of tedious and wearisome courtiers? No, my queen, do not listen to the ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... "There is a laughable tradition, still generally current in Lancashire, that our knight-making monarch, finding, it is presumed, no undubbed man worthy of the chivalric order, knighted at the banquet in Hoghton Tower, in the warmth of his honour-bestowing liberality, a loin ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... was another alarming pause. Anything was better than that, and she began to talk almost at random, telling of various laughable things which had occurred among her scholars, laughing herself, somewhat shrilly, at the places ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... culture of the vines, festooning as near Naples, over the other trees, in a manner more picturesque than useful. The straw hats of the Nissardes, also resembling an inverted wicker corn basket, gave quite a new and laughable character to the human apex. Such little novelties as this, which would excite no more attention in a professed book of costumes, than a view into an old fancy clothes shop, are nevertheless recollected with interest when seen in travelling, as connected ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... were, and how they rise! How high they were, and how they tumble! O vanity of vanities! O laughable, pathetic jumble! ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with me and Selina, and my aunt? Papa and mamma dine out, but you know I am always your faithful Chesterfield Street." And so on. He has all the domestic accomplishments; he plays on the violoncello: he sings a delicious second, not only in sacred but in secular music. He has a thousand anecdotes, laughable riddles, droll stories (of the utmost correctness, you understand) with which he entertains females of all ages; suiting his conversation to stately matrons, deaf old dowagers (who can hear his clear voice better than the loudest roar of their stupid sons-in-law), mature spinsters, young beauties ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... comrades, the better men, are dead, and I, the least of them all, remain, having even outlived the cause. What praise shall I take for this? None—from all decent fellows of the earth, none at all. It is merely laughable that I should be left, the monument of a sacred loyalty greater than the world ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... idea that Minister Malden should come quietly to the house and so have it done without pomp or pageantry—it is laughable to think how that notion fared at the hands of an aroused village. Flowers there were to be, processions, veils, cakes, rice, boots, all the properties dear to the heart of the Roman mob. In the meantime there was to be a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... conceited enough to think that that is really the only kind worth knowing, when first he is brought into contact with the other. Two or three times I have known men try to follow hounds on stock-saddles, which are about as ill-suited for the purpose as they well can be; while it is even more laughable to see some young fellow from the East or from England who thinks he knows entirely too much about horses to be taught by barbarians, attempt in his turn to do cow-work with his ordinary riding or hunting rig. It must be said, however, that in all probability cowboys would ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... the first words he read. By the end of the perusal his brain was whirling. It was incredible, astounding. He stared out into the sunshine. Surely he was dreaming. It must be a joke of sorts, a laughable hoax. Yet there was no hint of joking in the concise communication, in the small clerkly handwriting, in the business-like letter-paper, a letter-paper headed by the name of a most respectable ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... compositions were all but laughable, that of the Ninth Station, to mention one: Christ lying at full length on His face, and being pulled up by a rope tied to His bound hands; it looked as if He were learning to swim. Still, but for feeble and vulgar incidents, clumsy and ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... in Norway who loved a joke must have laughed to their hearts' content, when the tidings reached them that the son of a cook, followed by seventy ragged and half armed men, had set out to win the throne of the kingdom. Surely a more extraordinary and laughable enterprise was never undertaken, and the most remarkable thing about it was that it succeeded. A few years of desperate adventures and hard fighting raised the cook's son to the throne, and those who had laughed at his temerity were now glad to hail him as their king. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... little too lazy to exert himself; yet when you get him in the field of your glass and see him throw back his head, expand his throat and chest, and open his mandibles as wide as he can, you quickly decide that he is not the apathetic creature his desultory song would lead you to infer. It really is laughable, and almost pathetic, too, to note how much energy he expends in the production of ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... him, perfectly at ease in the presence of the city lady. But, with his characteristic lack of humor, he was unmoved by the laughable spectacle presented by his employer and the baby, and his manner ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... rubbing the frozen parts of the face, and in attempting to warm the hands, in order to be prepared for the next operation. Scarcely was one place cured by constant friction than another was frozen; and though there was nothing pleasant about it, yet it was laughable enough to observe the dexterity which was used in changing the position of the hand from the face to the mitten, and vice versa. One of the men was severely affected, the whole side of his face being nearly ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... the consciousness of individuality, individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being, and this not a confused state but the clearest, the surest of the surest, utterly beyond words—where death was an almost laughable impossibility—the loss of personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction, but the only true life. I am ashamed of my feeble description. Have I not said the state ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... There was something grotesque in their decrepitude. Their toothless mouths, their hooked noses, the meagreness of the active one, and the hanging yellow cheeks of the other (the still one, whose head trembled) would have been laughable if the sight of their dreadful physical degradation had not been appalling to one's eyes, had not gripped one's heart with poignant amazement at the unspeakable misery of age, at the awful persistency of life becoming at last an object ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... settlement, for his good-humour knew no bounds. No one ever saw him frown. Even when fighting with the savages, as he was sometimes compelled to do in self-defence, he went at them with a sort of jovial rage that was almost laughable. Inconsiderate recklessness was one of his chief characteristics, so that his comrades were rather afraid of him on the war-trail or in the hunt, where caution and frequently soundless motion were essential to success or safety. But when Henri had a comrade at his side to check him he ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... motor-cyclist turned up from the nearest brigade to see what had become of me,—the progress of the post is checked over the wire. We arranged matters—but then neither his motor-cycle nor the motor-cycle of the second artillery motor-cyclist would start. It was laughable. Eventually we got the brigade despatch rider started ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... a newspaper in his own palace, which is in the highest degree absurd and laughable. It does not treat of politics or the occurrences of the day, but exclusively of domestic incidents, conversation and relative affairs. It states, for example, "that the sultan's wife, A., owed the ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... of irony. Through a disdainful reaction against the mental condition of the herd they fell back into a kind of egotism, intellectual and artistic egotism, an idealistic sensualism, where the tracked and hunted ego vindicated its rights against human fellowship. Laughable fellowship, which made itself manifest to these adolescents only in the shape of finished murder, one undergone in common! A precocious experience had shriveled their illusions: they had seen how much those same illusions were worth in their elders and how those who did not believe in them paid ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... beaten; kotos and samisens screeched and twanged; geishas (professional women with the accomplishments of dancing, singing, and playing) danced,— accompanied by songs whose jerking discords were most laughable; story-tellers recited tales in a high key, and the running about and splashing close to my room never ceased. Late at night my precarious shoji were accidentally thrown down, revealing a scene ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... might have been in the beauty and grace of the pretty muletress but for the spectacle of her fat aunt, who, I must confess, could only burlesque some of her niece's airiest movements, and whose hard-bought buoyancy was at once pathetic and laughable. She earned her share of the spoils certainly, and she seemed glad when the dance was over, and went contentedly back to ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... most superlative praise, is not ironical at all, but a most serious panegyrist, who never laughs, but does sometimes make his readers laugh, when they see his very unbecoming, mocking grimaces against the "old masters"—not that it can be fairly asserted that it is a laughable book. It has much conceit, and but little merriment; there is nothing really funny after you have got over, (vide page 6,) that he "looks with contempt on Claude, Salvator, and Gaspar Poussin." This contempt, however, being too limited for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... to trouble yourself about this little girl; if I were you I would soon make her obey me. Remember that you are a king, and that it would be laughable to see you trying to please a shepherdess, who ought to be only too glad to be one of your slaves. Keep her in prison, and feed her on bread and water for a little while, and then, if she still says she will not marry ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... Laughable incidents either from history or illustrations from any source, must not be forgotten, for if the speech be more than a few minutes long they are ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... French. The author wrote in the negro dialect, was telegraphic in form, suppressed verbs, affected a teasing phraseology, revelled in the impossible puns of a travelling salesman; then out of this jumble, laughable conceits and sly affectations emerged, and suddenly a cry of keen anguish rang out, like the snapping string of a violoncello. And with all this, in his hard rugged style, bristling with obsolescent words and unexpected neologisms, ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... commander was pale, M. Dupin was livid. Both sides were afraid. M. Dupin was afraid of the colonel; the colonel assuredly was not afraid of M. Dupin, but behind this laughable and miserable figure he saw a terrible phantom rise up—his crime, and he trembled. In Homer there is a scene where ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... you do not speak to him, You come with no attendance, page or maid, To serve you—doth he love you as of old? For, call it lovers' quarrels, yet I know Tho' men may bicker with the things they love, They would not make them laughable in all eyes, Not while they loved them; and your wretched dress, A wretched insult on you, dumbly speaks Your story, that this man loves you no more. Your beauty is no beauty to him now: A common chance—right well I know it—pall'd— For I know men: nor will ye win ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... human blood. He seems to have no heart, and his countenance is like adamant, for it gives no clue to the thoughts which fill his brain. He is certainly a very remarkable character and one worth studying. His early history is laughable. His various descents upon France were too ridiculous for laughter, and they only excited the pity of the world. His private conduct, too, was such as to disgust moral people. There seems to have come over ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... no exaggeration in all this. That was evident Jack's misery was real, and was manifest in his pale face and general change of manner. This accounted for it all. This was the blow that had struck him down. All his other troubles had been laughable compared with this. But from this he could not rally. Nor, for my part, did I know of any consolation that could be offered. Now, for the first time, I saw the true nature of his sentiments toward Louie, and learned from him the sentiments of that poor little thing toward him. ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... was there, and I found my saddle in one of the rooms of the building, hidden under a blanket. I entered the corral through the back door of the house, caught and saddled my horse, and then led him out to the street. This was a very laughable manner of leave-taking. The house was cut up into a labyrinth of small rooms, just large enough for a horse to turn around in, and the doors were low and narrow. As I could not find the outer door, I led my horse successively into every room ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... obeyed to the very letter, as soon as they arrived at close quarters we opened a deadly fire, and very few of them wholly escaped. They managed certainly at first to capture our guns, but they were again recovered by the fire of our three squares; and it was a most laughable sight to see these Guards in their chimney-armour trying to run away after their horses had been shot from under them, being able to make very little progress, and many of them being taken prisoners ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... But, in order to sacrifice in some degree to the genius of the mob, persons expressly appointed went behind the procession, loosened the cloth from the bridge, wound it up like a flag, and threw it into the air. This gave rise to no disaster, but to a laughable mishap; for the cloth unrolled itself in the air, and, as it fell, covered a larger or smaller number of persons. Those now who took hold of the ends and drew them towards them, pulled all those in the middle to the ground, enveloped them ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... will laugh over this deliciously humorous novel, that pictures the sunny side of small-town life, and contains love-making, a dash of mystery, an epidemic of spook-chasing—and laughable, lovable Galusha. ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... then be it. Lady Scott and Anne join in kindest love. I must close my letter, for one of the consequences of our misfortunes is, that we dine every day at half-past four o'clock; which premature hour arises, I suppose, from sorrow being hungry as well as thirsty. One most laughable part of our tragic comedy was, that every friend in the world came formally, just as they do here when a relation dies, thinking that the eclipse of les beaux yeux de ma cassette was perhaps a loss as deserving ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... these occasions a laughable incident occurred, as scores of these bluejackets and marines passed up Esquimalt Road. A squad or more might have been seen walking along, headed by a bluejacket playing a lively tune on a fife or tin whistle. One or ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... the humorous doctor forbear to foster an opinion every way so advantageous to himself; at times, for the sake of the joke, assuming airs of superiority over myself, which, though laughable enough, were ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... comedy, even where it was really comic, was doubtless likewise more comic, the more free it appeared from any fixed aim. Misunderstandings of intention, fruitless struggles of absurd passion, contradictions of temper, and laughable situations there were; but still the form of the representation itself was serious; it proceeded as much according to settled laws, and used as much the same means of art, though to a different purpose, as the regular tragedy itself. ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... past. The heroes of such miscarried mysticism appear as rather extraordinary saints. So, for instance, Count von Zinzendorf's warm love of the Savior has so much of the sensual flavor, with furthermore such decided perversities, that the outpourings of his rapture are positively laughable. Thus the pious man indulges his phantasy with a marked predilection for voluptuousness in the "Seitenhoelchen" (Wound in the Side) in Jesus' body and with an unmistakable identification of this "cleft" ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... Italians and Germans changed all that. Lamoureux was the first to introduce this exotic custom in France. The public was a little surprised at first, but they soon got used to it. In Italy the conductor comes on the stage with the artists to salute the audience. There is nothing more laughable than to see him, as the last note of an opera dies away, jump down from his stand and run like mad to reach ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... were justly proud of, and they supplied the music for our concerts and dances—yes, we did have dances, even though there were no ladies present—half of the fellows tied handkerchiefs on their sleeves and took the ladies' part; their attempts at being ladylike and acting coy were very laughable. The only thing that really marred our pleasure was the lifeboat drill; any hour of the day or night when the signal was given, no matter what we were doing, we must grab our life-belt and make all possible speed to our place at the lifeboats. ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... An almost laughable result of this pious rectitude was a certain order given at the Gobelins. Madame de Maintenon had thrust her leading nose between the doors of the factory and had scented outraged modesty in the reproduction there of the tapestries woven from models of Raphael, Giulio Romano ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... of Wellington and Bonaparte, and was one of the—if not the one—oldest Volunteers present. "Our comrade, Mr George Hattersley," was toasted with musical honours and great cheering by the whole company. During the evening Captain Ferrand gave some very interesting and laughable anecdotes about his military experiences, especially as a Cavalryman during the Plug-drawing and Chartist Riots. He told us that his uncle, Major Ferrand, had commanded the Bingley corps of Volunteers, and Captain Ellis, of Bingley, the Keighley detachment. The time had come ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... have the 'new diplomacy' which is shouting what other people whisper—or keep to themselves—and le gros gourdin—the laughable big stick; it amuses us more than it impresses, I assure you." He regarded the girl closely and she ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... was not laughable. Only he that is lord of the years is obdurate. If a man prayed for life to a furious, merciless Sultan well might the Sultan's slaves laugh. Yet it is not laughable to pray ...
— Plays of Gods and Men • Lord Dunsany
... forced to pretend to be in good spirits, and I found it a hard task. Captain Rudstone, whose identity was known to but the four of us, told a laughable story of one of his experiences in the States. But I observed, to my discomfiture, that he kept a close watch on Flora. She sat opposite to me, joining in the conversation with a ring of merriment that I detected as false, and as much as possible ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... so—he took the fall pretty well—only partly on his head," said Bill Watson, who had stopped his laughable antics to rush over to Joe. ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum
... you think so," said Lucile, dryly, in response to Jessie's question. "If I look the way I feel I must be a very laughable object!" ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... scientist would dare to risk his reputation. Now chemistry is the ne plus ultra of human wisdom, and every man is a fool who does not hold the key to the secret chambers of its hidden treasures! But how long till we shall have a new chemistry that will render the old a bundle of laughable folly? The fact is, by the advancement of human knowledge we demonstrate that our ancestors were a set of fools, and our posterity will doubtless pay us the same compliment! The philosophy of history should teach us to be modest, and ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... Friendly Islands, we were entertained with great civility by Toobou, the chief, who gave us much amusement by a sort of pantomime, in which some prizefighters displayed their feats of arms, and this part of the drama concluded with the presentation of some laughable story which produced among the chiefs and their attendants the most immoderate mirth. This friendly reception was also repeated in the island of Hapaee, where Captain Cook ordered an exhibition of fireworks, and in return the king, Feenou, gave us an ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... Is this hypothesis so laughable merely because it is the oldest? Because the human understanding, before the sophistries of the Schools had dissipated and debilitated it, ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... Napoleon, with his thin legs thrust into enormous boots, saluted by his friend's children, on his first appearance in uniform, with the nickname of Le Chat Botte? It is hard to say which was the more laughable: the spare and bony figure of the cadet, sitting bolt upright like a graven image in a tight uniform, with his eyes glued to the ceiling of his barrack-room, or the young man, with gaunt features, round shoulders, and uncombed hair, who wandered ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... to make use of it as an entirely fictitious intrigue and practical joke in the Play? Is this mock happening such as could be clear by the method of enacting it and one entirely consonant with this Comedy as a farce-mosaic of laughable tricks? (See pp. 120-121, 179-180, also Note on IV. iii. 6). Discuss probabilities. The turn taken in the plot: Show how all combine against Falstaffe; also the place of this intrigue in making material ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... the bottom of any ocean, that's for sure," somebody said. It was one of those feeble jokes at which everybody laughs because nothing else is laughable about the situation. ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... life, creation; if things will progress better when their muscles and their vigour have been taken from them; if, in short, to be incomplete is the best way to be harmonious. Then it is that, with its eyes fixed upon events that are both laughable and redoubtable, and under the influence of that spirit of Christian melancholy and philosophical criticism which we described a moment ago, poetry will take a great step, a decisive step, a step ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... 'However,' says Captain King, 'in justice to the generous and hospitable treatment we found here, I shall beg leave to anticipate the reader's curiosity, by assuring him that our disappointment proved to be more of a laughable than a serious nature; for, in this wretched extremity of the earth, situated beyond every thing that we conceived to be most barbarous and inhospitable, and, as it were, out of the very reach of civilization, ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... face, Archdale fancied that he saw a moist brightness in her eyes. But certainly no tear fell, and when the next moment Katie declared it Elizabeth's turn for a story, she told some trifling anecdote that had in it neither sentiment nor heroism. It was laughable though, and was about to receive its deserts of praise when at Archdale's ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... if our meeting were compared to all the luxury and brilliance of the Cote d'Azur, or Petrograd—it was laughable. "Have we anything to eat?" ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... after he had dosed them round and they had taken his prescriptions, with really laughable humility, more like charity schoolchildren than blood-guilty mutineers and pirates—"well, that's done for today. And now I should wish to have a ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... national rights, they must be content to suffer accordingly—but I meddle not with politics, and with all my heart abhor them. Whatever the gaities of the Carnival may have been formerly, it is scarce possible to conceive a more fantastic, a more picturesque, a more laughable scene than the Strada di Toledo exhibited to-day; the whole city seemed to wear "one universal grin;" and such an incessant fire of sugar-plums (or what seemed such) was carried on, and with such eagerness and mimic fury, that when our carriage came out of the conflict, we all looked as if a ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... there were some sceptics. Andrews, quoting Reginald Scot, says: "The Stories which our facetious author relates of ridiculous Charms which, by the help of credulity, operated Wonders, are extremely laughable. In one of them a poor Woman is commemorated who cured all diseases by muttering a certain form of Words over the party afflicted; for which service she always received one penny and a loaf of bread. At length, terrified by menaces of flames both in this world and the next, she owned ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... the slightest divergence of opinion in the British ranks as to the German infantry fire. "Their shooting is laughable," "they couldn't hit a haystack in an entry," and "asses with the rifle," are how our men dispose of it. The Germans fire recklessly with their rifles planted against their hips, while Tommy Atkins takes cool and steady aim, ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... point at which laughter first occurred, you know where the most educated and the least educated people are. Schopenhauer says that the intelligent man finds everything funny, the logical man nothing; and according to Erdmann (in ber die Dummheit), the distressing or laughable characteristics of an object, shows not its nature, but the nature of the observer. It would seem that the criminalist might save himself much work by observing the laughter of his subjects. The embarrassed, foolish snickering of the badly observing witness; the painful smile of the innocent ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... more and more shadows have mingled, then, Louise, and not till then, can the wife say of the husband, 'He is worthy of love;' then, first, the husband say of the wife, 'She blooms in imperishable beauty.' But, truly, on the day before marriage, such assertions sound laughable ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... for the reception of the president by Governor Hancock and the municipal authorities of Boston, each independently of the other, and without consultation. This produced a disagreeable, but in some respects laughable scene in the ceremonies of the day. Both parties sincerely desired to pay the highest honors to the chief magistrate of the nation, but political considerations separated the governor and the selectmen ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... heavy loss. In their first fight they had faced Lee's best veterans, and defeated them. The old soldiers were inclined to regard it as rather a joke—the lively manner in which the rebs welcomed them to the front. This disposition to see a bright, a laughable side to every thing, may be set down as one of the peculiarities of the Yankee soldier. In victory or defeat, success or disaster, ease or hardship, some one of a group of soldiers could find something from which to extract a jest ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... higher than that heaped brick Man piled to smite the sun. And all around Are devils. One can laugh... but that hunched shape The face one stone, like those Assyrian kings! One sees in carvings, watching men flayed red Horribly laughable in leaps and writhes; That face — utterly evil, clouded round With evil like a smoke — it turns smiles sour! ... And Nero there, the flabby cheeks astrain And sweating agony... long agony... Imperishable, unappeasable ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... still tends to make predatory warfare of the later and more human processes of industry. Because they see life in this way they imagine that skill and practice in the art of fighting, especially in collective fighting, is so valuable in our modern life. This is an archaism which would be laughable if it were not so dangerous in ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... characters were cut out, "they'd none of 'em be missed," and if the play were compressed into one Act, it would contain the essence of all that was worth retaining, and, with a few songs and dances, might make an attractive lever de rideau or "laughable farce to finish," before, or after, a revival ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, May 3, 1890. • Various
... he approached I recognized Sir John Manners. He looked as woebegone as I felt, and I could not help laughing at the pair of us, for I knew that his trouble was akin to mine. The pain of love is ludicrous to all save those who feel it. Even to them it is laughable in others. A love-full heart has no room for that sort of charity which pities ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... to paint the "Horse Fair" and other similar pictures, which have brought her much into the company of men, she has found it wise to dress in male costume. A laughable incident is related of this mode of dress. One day when she returned from the country, she found a messenger awaiting to announce to her the sudden illness of one of her young friends. Rosa did not wait to change her male attire, but hastened to ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... was really so marvellous as to be laughable, and all the girls had declared that they would not have allowed this beastie to appear if Leucha had been expected to be in the school. But Leucha had come back unexpectedly, and her conduct to Hollyhock had so roused the ire of that generally good-natured girl that she ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... safely with his black face pale, dripping with perspiration and saying he was sick. What was most amusing was to see him hooking his legs one in front of the other on his way over, but I dare say I was equally laughable to anyone on terra firma. He told me afterwards "water all go down, and I go up and get sick and giddy." Another two miles over a low ridge and I got to Mozufferabad and put up at the Barahduree provided by the Maharajah for the convenience of English travellers free of charge, ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... France having been commended of all the ladies,—began, by the queen's pleasure, boldly to speak as follows: "I also, I will not keep silence of a biting reproof given by an honest layman to a covetous monk with a speech no less laughable than commendable. ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... mirth and tears, of the tragic and grotesque, of cap and crown, of Socrates and Rabelais, of AEsop and Marcus Aurelius, of all that is gentle and just, humorous and honest, merciful, wise, laughable, lovable and divine, and all consecrated to the use of man; while through all, and over all, an overwhelming sense of obligation, of chivalric loyalty to truth, and upon all the ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... dwindling away. So we emptied our pockets and purses, counted up the contents, and found we had just ten florins, or four dollars apiece. The thought of our situation, away in the heart of Austria, five hundred miles from our Frankfort home, seems irresistibly laughable. By allowing twenty days for the journey, we shall have half a florin a day, to travel on. This is a homoeopathic allowance, indeed, but we have concluded to try it. So now adieu, Vienna! In two hours we shall be ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... that no inhabitant of that land be allowed to play at the public table, and if any one is caught red-handed, he is usually imprisoned, and his winnings, if any, confiscated. We can call to mind a laughable instance of this at Wisbaden. Two old peasants, who had probably come for a day's pleasure and to see the sights, managed to find their way into the Kursaal, and stood all entranced before the roulette-table. One of them, imagining it a right royal way of making money, and much ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... laughing. It was a fact that Amy Drew often saw humor where her chum could not spy anything in the least laughable. With the clerk waiting and these four girls, more than a little unfriendly, ready to make unkind remarks if they but knew ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... told us, with great humor, a laughable incident which had occurred to him at Antwerp. The morning after his arrival at that city from Holland, he started at an early hour to visit the tomb of Rubens in the church of St. Jacques, before his party were up. After wandering about for some time, without ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... has lost her true feelings among the accidents of life. All the wonder was how the gentleman, with his lack of worldly wisdom and agonizing consciousness of ridicule, could have been induced to take a measure at once so prudent and so laughable. But while people talked the wedding-day arrived. The ceremony was to be solemnized according to the Episcopalian forms and in open church, with a degree of publicity that attracted many spectators, who occupied ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... those accustomed only to our rigid economy. The anticipation of an easy victory had caused many to come to the battle as to a joyous feast, and the signs left behind them of the extent to which they had been disappointed in the entertainment, constituted the staple of many laughable stories, which were not without their value because of the lesson they contained as to the uncertainties of war, and the mortification that usually follows vain boasting. Among the articles abandoned by the enemy in his flight were some ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... phrenetic exhibitions. He sometimes raved incoherently, for hours together, against the Squire; often, in the midst of his speeches, he was assailed with epileptic fits, during which he displayed the strangest contortions and most laughable gestures; he threw entirely aside the decent coat he had worn for some time back, and habitually attired himself in the old and threadbare raiment, which he had worn after he and Martin had been so unceremoniously sent to the right-about by Lord Peter, and even ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... can understand the weeping-willow taste among people, who have too little wit or too little Christianity to be cheerful, but it is a wonder to find the luxury of gloom united to the keenest perception of the laughable in such a ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... stories and laughable stories Townsend was in many ways an admirable raconteur. Many people would say that cannot be true. On your own confession he was too much of an exaggerator. I don't agree. Exaggeration is not a fair word for ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... They certainly had many recollections in common, though not all laughable. "I don't think I'm quite so—so earnest as I ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... no longer exist, whoever was well acquainted with the manners, habits, and anecdotes of Paris at the time of the first appearance of Figaro, will always admire in it a combination of keen and pointed satire, easy wit, and laughable incident.-B. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... deliberately introduced by writers at a late period. Thus 'adorable' began as a penman's word. Following 'in['e]xorable' and the like it should have been '['a]dorable'. Actually it was formed by adding -able to 'ad['o]re', like 'laughable'. It is now too stiff in the joints to think of a change, and must continue to figure with the ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... returned to our hotel disappointed. The prince spoke not a word to me the whole way; he walked apart by himself, and appeared to be greatly agitated, which he afterwards confessed to me was the case. Having reached home, he began at length to speak: "Is it not laughable," said he, "that a madman should have the power thus to disturb a man's tranquillity by two or three words?" We wished each other a goodnight; and, as soon as I was in my own apartment, I noted down in my pocket-book the day and the hour when ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... her time; Some that will ever more peep through their eyes, And laugh like parrots at a bagpiper; And others of such vinegar aspect, That they'll not show their teeth in way of smile, Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable." ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... arm's length, looking at me with his face all working with sorrow; and then whipped about, and crying good-bye to me, set off backward by the way that we had come at a sort of jogging run. It might have been laughable to another; but I was in no mind to laugh. I watched him as long as he was in sight; and he never stopped hurrying, nor once looked back. Then it came in upon my mind that this was all his sorrow at ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Gazette.—"Like all real humorists Mr. Leacock steps at once into his proper position.... His touch of humour will make the Anglo-Saxon world his reader.... We cannot recall a more laughable book." ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... like a man standing on his armpits. The capital of the Territory was composed chiefly of roofs and dormer windows, of squatty wooden islands in a boundless sea. The Church of the Immaculate Conception was a laughable tent of masonry, top-heavy with its square tower. As for cultivated fields and the pastures where the cattle grazed, such vanished realities were forgotten. And what was washing over the marble tombs and slate crosses ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the Isle of Dogs, that he has just opened on an entirely new line, an Universal Comic Railroad, and Cosmopolitan Pleasure Van for the transmission of bon mots, puns, witticisms, humorous passengers, and queer figures, to every part of the world. The engines have been constructed on the most laughable principles, and being on the high-pressure principle, the manager has provided a vast number of patent anti-explosive fun-belts, to secure his passengers against the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 24, 1841 • Various
... due to anything in the curriculum or programme of studies. Indeed, to any one accustomed to the best models of a university curriculum as it flourishes in the United States and Canada, the programme of studies is frankly quite laughable. There is less Applied Science in the place than would be found with us in a theological college. Hardly a single professor at Oxford would recognise a dynamo if he met it in broad daylight. The Oxford student learns nothing of chemistry, physics, heat, plumbing, electric wiring, gas-fitting ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... at once, and came running as fast as they could, fluttering their fluffy wings in a laughable way. ...
— The Road to Oz • L. Frank Baum
... up the bar, and catch it as it came down; sift the gold dust through his fingers; look at the funny image of his own face, as reflected in the burnished circumference of the cup, and whisper to himself, "O Midas, rich King Midas, what a happy man art thou!" But it was laughable to see how the image of his face kept grinning at him, out of the polished surface of the cup. It seemed to be aware of his foolish behaviour, and to have a naughty inclination to make ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... Empire, that is to say, the nobility of the sword, with scorn; historic races who had lost the sense of history; the sons of the companions of Charlemagne disdaining the companions of Napoleon. The swords, as we have just remarked, returned the insult; the sword of Fontenoy was laughable and nothing but a scrap of rusty iron; the sword of Marengo was odious and was only a sabre. Former days did not recognize Yesterday. People no longer had the feeling for what was grand. There was some one who called Bonaparte Scapin. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... as shown in the illustration. The sports that here took place were watched from a high tower. The favourite game was to place a Christian in one corner cell and a lion in the diagonally opposite corner and then leave them with all the inner doors open. The consequent effect was sometimes most laughable. On one occasion the man was given a sword. He was no coward, and was as anxious to find the lion as the lion undoubtedly was ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... cut off from the rest of the civilized world, must necessarily be imitative in its character until it has arrived at maturity. This spirit of imitation, to a certain extent an advantage, is, to be sure, often carried to a laughable extent when it loses sight of common sense. People seem to forget the fact that propriety must always be the first step to true elegance. As a proof of it, we see men who appear to have consulted their neighbours' tastes, habits, and means, instead of their own, ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... are fierce at revenge and that sort of a thing!" said Hagan, with a look on his face that was almost laughable. "Here's Felipe—I've been cautioning the boy and holding him in check to keep him ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... cannot speak too highly of this delightful little tale. It abounds in interesting and laughable incidents."—Bristol Times. ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... them exactly what he wished them to do. But now they had to distribute the toys according to their own judgment, and they did not understand children as well as did old Santa. So it is no wonder they made some laughable errors. ...
— A Kidnapped Santa Claus • L. Frank Baum
... chains and the echo of the warden's tread. A dozen times he had exposed the rogue and established his own position, only to find himself the next day wallowing in some new complication more difficult than that from which he had escaped. Ordinarily it would have been laughable, but at this crisis ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... is its own end, and neither inference, nor moral is intended, or where at least the writer would wish it so to appear, there arises what we call drollery. The pure, unmixed, ludicrous or laughable belongs exclusively to the understanding, and must be presented under the form of the senses; it lies within the spheres of the eye and the ear, and hence is allied to the fancy. It does not appertain to the reason or the moral sense, and accordingly is alien to the imagination. I think ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... time. "Sshh! sshh!" he cried, in frantic protest. His face was a brilliant crimson and his embarrassment and confusion were so acute as to be laughable, although Phillips was far from laughing. "Sshh, sshh, Charlie," pleaded Jed. "You— you don't know what you're talkin' about. You're makin' an awful fuss about nothin'. Sshh! Yes, you are, too. I didn't have any notion of tellin' ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... wicked things, and; amongst others, of coining. Charnace was a lad of spirit, who had been page to the King and officer in the body-guard. Having retired to his own house, he often played off many a prank. One of these I will mention, as being full of wit and very laughable. ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon |
