"Sense of humor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the wife, affectionately, "I wonder why Mr. Ravenel avoided mentioning that to you. He needn't have feared your sense of humor. Ah! if you only had ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... Cupid as a Link-Boy are companion pieces, painted from the same model,—a mischievous young street boy, whose simulated gravity is irresistibly droll. The artist's keen sense of humor is seen again in that most captivating little rogue, Puck. The saucy elf is perched on a mushroom, resting after a frolic, and apparently ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... girl! No sense of humor!" commented Calder, with a shake of his head and a backward roll of ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... his blood. He laughed as he put his skill and strength in the sweep of his paddle, and for a time the thought that he was an outlaw, and in losing Nada had lost everything in life worth righting for, was not so oppressive. It was the old, joyous laugh, stirred by his sense of humor, and the trick he had played on Cassidy. He could imagine Cassidy back on the shore, his temper redder than his hair as he cursed and tore up the sand in his ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... an expression that cut me, at least, to the quick. "Young gentlemen," he said, "I did not expect you to be so unkind." I longed to explain, but did not find words at the moment, and we went on with our lesson. The fact was that Testa had not the least sense of humor in his composition, and so he could not understand what had happened. A humorous man, acquainted with the nature of boys, would have understood the attack of fou rire, and forgiven it; but then a humorous man would have thought twice before appealing to a set of English boys for sympathy ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... to our knowledge, ever been done in the same way. Mr. Eggleston is a reliable reporter of facts; but he is also an exceedingly keen critic. He writes history without the effort to merge the critic in the historian. His sense of humor is never dormant. He renders some of the dullest passages in colonial annals actually amusing by his witty treatment of them. He finds a laugh for his readers where most of his predecessors have found yawns. And with all this he does not sacrifice the dignity ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... Sue! Joke!" cried Balcome, flapping at Sue with his hat. "If there's one thing I like to see in a woman it's a sense of humor." ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... strong, free spirit, loving honesty and courage—which glowed like a flame behind her beauty. Best of all, perhaps, was a touch of quaintness, a slightly comic twist to her lips, an imperceptible alertness of manner, which revealed to the initiated that she had a sense of humor in ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... of the corners of his eyes. Her latest conversational effort tickled his sense of humor—it was so wholly inadequate. He laughed outright. "That's better; the high spirits will soon be coming back—— Thousands of Braithwaites! My dear Terry, there must be hundreds of thousands." Then in a graver voice, "But though ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... the piano quite contentedly for more than an hour. Some of the musical jokes he indulged in (his sense of humor expressed itself more easily and impudently in musical terms than in any other) were rather over his auditors' heads. Parodies whose originals they failed to recognize, experiments in the whole-tone scale that would have interested disciples of Debussy, but ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... that I should like it beyond all things; and he wrote on the back of his card something which I found, when I got away, to be, "I find this young man worthy." The quaintness, the little stiffness of it, if one pleases to call it so, was amusing to one who was not without his sense of humor, but the kindness filled me to the throat with joy. In fact, I entirely liked Hawthorne. He had been as cordial as so shy a man could show himself; and I perceived, with the repose that nothing else can give, the entire sincerity ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... voluntarily descended. But I wished to spare him; I let him see the uselessness of his mission. He looked at me in silence—the look of hate that can come only from a creature weak as well as wicked. I think it was all his keen sense of humor could do to save him from a melodramatic outbreak. He slipped into his habitual pose, rose and withdrew without another word. All this fright and groveling and treachery for plunder, the loss of which ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... by getting hold of the hose and turning it on some dignified State officials, several army officers, and finally on a soldier on guard who was ordered to charge and take possession of that water battery. Although that little escapade appealed to the President's sense of humor, for he himself liked nothing better than to take generals and pompous officials down "a peg or two," Tad got well spanked for the havoc he wrought ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... and steel engravings "of the period," and will feel free to use modern prints and Chinese porcelains and willow chairs and anything that fits into your home. I can think of no slavery more deadly to one's sense of humor ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... sense of humor; a sense of humor sardonic, it is true, cruel, sometimes grewsome; and yet it is a ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... moment the man and woman of the world took a new view of the situation, looked at one another, and burst out laughing. Both these carried a safety-valve against choler—a trait that takes us into many follies, but keeps us out of others—a sense of humor. The next thing to relieve the situation was the senior's comprehensive vanity. He must recover young Arthur's reverence, which was doubtless dissolving all this time. "Now, Arthur," he whispered, "take a lesson from a gentleman of the old school. ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... "A sense of humor," Jason said. "The only native-born one on Pyrrus. Congratulations, there's ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... had undergone several variations during the course of the mighty professor's harangue. But he had ended by admitting the force of the argument; and the reminiscences of college lecturings aroused by the incident had tickled his sense of humor and quenched his anger. He looked at the professor with a sparkle of laughter ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... time are also sympathetically characterized,—Shadwell, for instance, whom he thought to be commonly underestimated.[152] The heroic play Scott discussed vivaciously in more than one connection, for, as we should expect, his sense of humor found its absurdities tempting.[153] On the rant in the Conquest of Granada he remarked, "Dryden's apology for these extravagances seems to be that Almanzor is in a passion. But although talking nonsense is a common effect of passion, it seems hardly one ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... book, "Odes and Addresses to Great People," was written in conjunction with J.H. Reynolds, his brother-in-law. This was followed by "Whims and Oddities," in prose and verse; "National Tales," and "The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies," a book full of imaginative verse. Hood's rich sense of humor found scope in his "Comic Annual," appearing through ten successive years, and his collection of "Whimsicalities." Among his minor poems, "The Bridge of Sighs" and "The Song of the Shirt" ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... but the gum-drops we used for tips right across the Balkans. In lands whose people have not known the taste of sugar for five years we found that a handful of gum-drops would accomplish more than money. A few men with Father Mullane's resource, tact, and sense of humor would do more than all the diplomats under the roof of the Hotel Crillon to settle international differences and make ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... have a son, uncle, or brother there—or to be going there himself. 'Vin shterben in vin Amerika kaen sich keener nisht araus drehn!' ('From dying and from going to America, there is no escape!')" Miss Frank has a keen sense of humor. How could she love Yiddish were it not so? She cites some of the Yiddishe Gazetten's answers to correspondents. This is funny: "The woman has the right to take her clothes and ornaments away with her when she leaves her husband. But it is a question if she ought ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... always asking me this question, do aviators have imagination? I'm not sure I know what imagination is. It's like this stuff about "sense of humor." Both phrases are pretty bankrupt now. A few years ago when I was running a car I would make believe I was different people, like a king driving through his kingdom, but when I'm warping and banking I don't have time to think about making believe. Of course I do notice sunsets and ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... Subscriber," "Fiat Justitia," "Indignant Reader" and "Veritas" combined. His opinions have carried much weight and directed attention into necessary lines; but perhaps his success as an inspirer of thought lies in the fact that his sense of humor exists only as a trace, as the chemist might say. Men who perceive the ridiculous would never have voiced many of the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... had been a captain of volunteers in a Minnesota regiment. He was a thoroughly interesting talker, and an inimitable story-teller, a man who did not lose his sense of humor when the joke turned on himself. I heard him tell one or ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... cried Lupin, jumping for joy. "You see, baby, what you fall short in is the power of smiling; you're a trifle serious for your age. You're a very likeable boy, you have a charming candor and simplicity—but you have no sense of humor." He placed himself in front of him. "Look here, bet you I make you cry! Do you know how I was able to follow up all your inquiry, how I knew of the letter Massiban wrote you and his appointment to meet you this morning at the Chateau de Velines? Through the prattle ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... income, of the sanitary surroundings, of the work record and diet, but we shall not know the family until we know what gives them pleasure. One visitor says that she never feels acquainted with a poor family until she has had a good laugh with them. A defective sense of humor in the visitor is a great hindrance to successful work: poor people are no fonder of dismal folk than the rest of us. When we come to recreations, friendly visiting not only makes large demands upon what we know, but upon what we are. Our pleasures measure ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... believe that he is unconscious of the humor of his dramatic situations, yet he stoically gives no sign. He even dares the charge, terrible in proportion to its truth, which the most serious of us shrinks from—the lack of a sense of humor. Men would ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... would have pricked Virginia's sense of humor to see Baroness von Lyndal's almost shocked surprise at discovering her to be the daughter of that Lady Mowbray whom she was asked to meet. (Luckily all the letters of introduction had reached their destination, it merely remaining, according to etiquette ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... think so, Mr. Starbuck," Mrs. Mayfield replied. "It has often been denied, but a woman has the true sense of humor, but—" ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... observing that his friends were not looking, began to toss tiny pebbles over. He was chuckling with glee. First he would throw one, peer over to watch the effect, then dodge back. Stacy Brown's sense of humor ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Ozarks • Frank Gee Patchin
... a sense of humor, John; but you was born without it. But, I tell you, it makes me young again. Why, it makes a woman old to feel she can do just as she pleases and not git talked about; and I feel I ain't got one foot in the grave to know that I can still be carryin' on—Oh, I guess, ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... always shabby and pinched-looking, eager, silent, and hard-working. Miss Sherman gave the impression—or would have given it to anyone who cared to study her—of having been intimidated and underfed from birth. She had a keen sense of humor, and, when Susan Brown "got started," as Susan Brown occasionally did, Miss Sherman would laugh so violently, and with such agonized attempts at suppression, that she would almost strangle herself. Nobody guessed that she adored the brilliant Susan, ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... and I suppose it may be said that they aim to keep themselves and their doctrines before the public. In this respect they differ from all the other Communistic societies now existing in this country. That they are not without a sense of humor in these efforts, the following, printed as advertisements in the Circular, ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... or not," said Dapper Pete, "it goes to show what a sucker a guy is—even a smart guy. This ain't no sermon against a life of crime I'm pulling, mind you. I'm too old to do that and my sense of humor is workin' too good. I'm only sayin' what a sucker a guy is—sometimes. ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... that they should be merely a fairy-like manifestation in her own favor. But though she loved to give her imagination rein, the fairy-like quality of these visions was patent to Miss Willis, for she possessed a quiet sense of humor as a sort of east-wind supplementary to the sentimental and poetic properties of her nature. She had a way of poking fun at herself, which, when exercised, sent the elfin figures scattering with a celerity suggestive of the departure of her own pupils at the tinkle of the ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... matter, and his sense of humor conquered. He roared with mirth, which was joined in more sedately by the unknown girl. "That settles it. You couldn't start on your campaign in a better way. You shall be the Lady of Mystery in this story! I will not ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... with a neat little tuft of middle-aged violets, and black ribbons tied under my chin. I know I am wicked to put on that pink gown and hat, but I shall do it. I wonder why it amuses me to be made fun of. Thank fortune, I have a sense of humor. If I did not have that it might have come to the black silk and the bonnet with the tuft of violets, for the Lord knows I have not, after all, so very much compared with what some women have. It troubles me ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... who can get back of her patient's forehead and put her mind there and let it work from the patient's point of view, will learn a saving sense of humor, will be strict without antagonizing, will clear away a lot of mental clouds and help to make permanent ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... Letty had a sense of humor, and it must be confessed that when the scorned and discarded babies were returned to her, and she sat by the kitchen stove trying to plan a second bottle, a second cradle, and see how far the expected baby could divide its modest outfit with the unexpected ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... each step of the climb to success had its sunlight as well as its shadow, its humor as well as its pathos; and it was fortunate both men appreciated this fact for it floated them over many a rough sea. Man can spare almost any other attribute better than his sense of humor. Without this touchstone he is ill equipped to battle with life," ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... feebleness has become so feeble as even to invent a theory, making thinness of voice, weakness of stamina, and general emasculation literary virtues; when intellect can find adequate interest only in the chess-puzzles of a Browning, and the sense of humor can find adequate sustenance only in the table-leaping antics of a Mark Twain, and the conscience can be goaded into remorse only by the sight of actual starvation, it is well to turn to these Russians and learn that one of ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... and protect the Princess from the machinations of Gabriel, that knave of purgatory. Lorry, at last recognizing the hopelessness of his suit, was ready to throw down his arms and abandon the field to superior odds. His presumption in aspiring for the hand of a Princess began to touch his sense of humor, and he laughed, not very merrily, it is true, but long and loudly, at his folly. At first he cursed the world and every one in it, giving up in despair, but later he cursed only himself. Yet, as he despaired and scoffed, he felt within ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... is it; I am here, and with one word I could dispel the illusion," he acquiesced. "But I know myself; I am cursed with a peculiar, sinister sense of humor, and I am afraid I would not say the word. Hence, when the husband enters we are all silent. Then I say, 'I regret to have arrived at such an inopportune moment.' I take my hat and walk out, leaving you, madam, your ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... exclaimed, "Bernadine has scored, indeed! Your friend has a sense of humor which overwhelms me. Imagine it. He has delivered the two heads of our great Society into the hands of one of its cast-off branches! Bernadine ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... same bait which caught you has caught him even more easily. I have a real sense of humor, Doctor, and before I went out of my way to bring you here, my plans were carefully laid. Mr. Carnes is now on his way here from Washington, lured by my voice. He is rushing, he thinks, ...
— The Great Drought • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... many pathetic scenes connected with the work of relief were others that illustrated the saving sense of humor which keeps people from going insane in times of ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... eternal justice. He wished nothing to appear white unless it was white. His logic was severe and faultless. He did not resort to fallacy, and could detect it in his opponent, and expose it with merciless directness. He had an abounding sense of humor, and always employed it in illustration of his argument,—never for the mere sake of provoking merriment. In this respect he had the wonderful aptness of Franklin. He often taught a great truth with the felicitous brevity of an AEsop ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... you know, is absolutely against English law, a warrant being necessary for such procedure. If you have any reason to take me to be a German spy, go right ahead now, or let these rather nonsensical persecutions cease. I have taken this up to now to be rather a good joke, but my sense of humor has its limit." ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... called 'sense of humor' ought to be. Too bad! Pretty creature, too. Cause her lots of trouble, in the days to come," ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... of good stories left in me yet, I assured them. They must remember that I was only twenty-one, after all, and at twenty-one one does not lose the sense of humor. ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... "Faerie Queene" is one— which no well regulated child should be without; but poetry in general is not exactly what we want. Children—healthy children—never have the poetic genius; but they are born mystics, and they have the sense of humor. The best way to speak to them is in prose, and the best kind of prose is the symbolic. The hermetic philosophers of the Middle Ages are probably the authors of some of the best children's stories extant. In these tales, disguised beneath what is apparently the simplest ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... the jeweler, smiling, for he had a sense of humor, "I have a letter here which I wish you to take ...
— Mark Mason's Victory • Horatio Alger
... all too easily the best—and the pistol always too ready. We've been cartooned through the world with a fearsome, half-contemptuous slap on the back. Our living has been made out of luxuries. Agriculturally, socially, politically, we have gone wrong, and but for the American sense of humor the State would be in a just, nation-wide contempt. The Ku-Klux, the burning of toll-gates, the Goebel troubles, and the night rider are all links in the same chain of lawlessness, and but for the first the others might not have been. But ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... admitted he had made an error involving a few murders—and a few thousand years. He was entitled to a sense of humor, though, even ...
— The Ultroom Error • Gerald Allan Sohl
... with glee. The aboriginal sense of humor may not be highly developed, but it is easily aroused. The friends of the outraged brave stamped up and down the dirt floor in spasms of mirth. They clapped him on the back and jabbered ironic inquiries as to his well-being. For the moment, at least, Dud was as popular as a funny clown ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... inferior to that of Glooskap, whom he in every way resembles. Both are benevolent, both make war on wicked sorcerers and evil wild beasts, and both, finally, are much like Gargantua and Pantagruel in their sense of humor. They are sometimes made the heroes of the same adventure in different stories. The true origin of the name, according to Mr. Rand, is as follows: "After a cow moose or caribou has been killed, her calf is sometimes taken out alive, and reared by hand. As may be supposed, the calf is very easily ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... silence. Maria looked at Miss Slome, and, to her utter indignation, the teacher's lips were twitching, and it took a good deal to make Miss Slome laugh, too; she had not much sense of humor. ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... explorer. At last his older sister found the passage in which the little boy had mistaken "foregoing" for "foraging." No wonder that in his mature years he became an advocate of reformed spelling. His sense of humor, which flashed like a mountain brook through all his later intercourse and made it delightful, seems to have begun with his infancy. He used to say his prayers at his mother's knee, and one evening when he was out of sorts with her, he prayed the Lord to bless the Union Cause; knowing ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... and the melodramatic General Boulanger is that Bishop Freppel has moved in the Chamber of Deputies for the legal abolition of private combats. That a bishop should do this is remarkable. If Bishop Freppel possessed any sense of humor, he would leave the task to laymen. His Church did not establish duelling; on the contrary, she censured it; but it was countenanced by her principles, and her protest was unavailing. The judicial combat was an appeal to God, like the ordeal by fire or water, ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... some note in his voice profoundly moved the girl. For the first time her face showed something other than childish good nature and a sense of humor. "I don't like these trees myself," she answered. "They look too ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... sense of humor, and she adored her mother and wished to give her a comfortable old age. Mrs. Cricklander's terms for this unique position were ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... is well educated in the narrow sense of the schoolmaster, but he has no philosophic background; his is the parasitic mind that sucks sustenance from the brains of others and gives nothing in return. He is without the slightest imagination and is devoid of all sense of humor; and without these two, imagination, which is the gift of the poet, and humor, which is the dower of the philosopher, no man ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... clearest cut, the nose the least trifle aquiline, and by a blurred outline the painter had given to the black hair piled high upon the head a suggestion of waviness. The eyebrows were straight, the brown eyes looked at the world with an almost scornful sense of humor, and I marked that there was determination in the chin. Here was a face that could be infinitely haughty or infinitely tender, a mouth of witty—nay, perhaps cutting—repartee of brevity and force. A lady who spoke quickly, moved quickly, or reposed absolutely. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... endurable, but bees terrible in kitchen & around water-hole. Flipped a dollar to settle name of big ledge. Bud won tails, Burro lode. Must cultivate my sense of humor so as to see the joke. Bud agrees to stay & help develop claim. Still very weak, puttered around house all day cleaning & baking bread & stewing fruit which brought bees by millions so we could not eat same till after dark ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... conversation about books and literature was often very fine, but even this could not have given Hawthorne much entertainment. His own library, as he states himself somewhere, was of a miscellaneous character, and contained the works of scarcely any author of repute except Shakespeare. Alcott's sense of humor and keen knowledge of human nature may have been a sort ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... revealed in this selection. What qualities would you attribute to an English audience, judging from this account? Do you know anything about the custom of "heckling" in England? How much was the success of the speech due to Mr. Beecher's sense of humor? Do you imagine that Mr. Beecher was successful in his addresses ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... The girl's sense of humor had vanquished her caution, and for the moment it caused her to forget even the ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... Porcupine, American Horse and other of the principal Cheyennes, and one of the Agency policemen, a fine fellow called Wolf Voice, became my interpreter. Though half-Cheyenne and half-Assiniboin, he spoke English well, and manifested a marked sense of humor. He had served one summer as guide to Frederick Remington, and had some capital stories concerning him. "Remington fat man—too heavy on pony. Him 'fraid Injuns sure catch him," he said with a chuckle. "Him all-time carry ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... man of his habit. She regarded him thoughtfully, and when he returned at one o'clock to dinner, and encountered instead a violent dust-storm which was raging in the house, she noted with pleasure that his sense of humor ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... mendaciunculis aspergendum, sive fingas." Either invent a story, or if you have an old one, add on something so as to make it really funny. Is there a parson, a bishop, an archbishop, who, if he have any sense of humor about him, does not do ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... He seems quite awed with the diabolical cleverness of Dizzy, 'who,' he says, 'is gradually driving all ideas of political honor out of the House, and accustoming it to the most revolting cynicism,' There is no doubt that a sense of humor has always been conspicuously ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... it must be his sense of humor," he continued. "The Bishop loves a joke, and Demming is a droll fellow. He is a sort of grim joke himself, you know, a high-toned gentleman who lives by begging. He brings his bag to the hotels every day. Of course you have heard him talk, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... his spare time as possible with the other passengers of the ship. He was gregarious, a fine conversationalist, and had a nicely-balanced sense of humor. Particularly, he was a favorite of the younger women, since he had reached the age where he could flatter them with his attention without ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova
... myself over and over with a most intense earnestness: "But if I were really dead I shouldn't be able to move." It appears that the first sense to leave a drowning man, and the last to return, is the sense of humor. ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... It was a weak question. Coming from Jeff it sounded foolish. Bud smiled, and his quiet sense of humor ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... comings, either; there are a lot of bad habits waiting to be acquired by a chap with time and money like me. I can't live without booze; I don't know how to earn a living; I'm a corking spendthrift. That's one side. Balanced against that, I possess— let me see—I possess a fair sense of humor. Not a ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... up to and including the new Marvin 990s. Every cabin in the wheel's got TV and hot-and-cold running water plus guaranteed Terran g. One look at our refuel prices would give even a Martian a sense of humor. And meals? Listen, when a man's been spacing it for a few days on those synthetic foods he really laces into Min's ...
— The Love of Frank Nineteen • David Carpenter Knight
... people with their foibles. Sympathy with human nature and an abounding sense of humor are the requisites for "side-stepping ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... hill, we saw women carrying bags of rice. They saw us, too. One passed me safely, but with fear. The others carelessly dropping their burdens, scampered off, afraid of their lives; and when one of my soldiers (whose sense of humor was on a par with my own when as a boy I used to stick butterscotch drops on the bald head of my Sunday School teacher, and bend pins for small boys to sit on and rise from) shouted to them, they dived straight as a die over the hedge into a submerged ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... scanned the faces about her. There was surprise, amusement, but no dissent. The Disagreeable Trustee smiled secretly behind his hand; it appealed to his latent sense of humor. ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... that Bok was unmarried and the editor of a woman's magazine appealed strongly to Field's sense of humor. He knew the editor's opposition to patent medicines, and so he decided to join the two facts in a paragraph, put on the wire at Chicago, to the effect that the editor was engaged to be married to Miss Lavinia Pinkham, the granddaughter of Mrs. Lydia Pinkham, of patent-medicine ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... In-fer-nal young scoundrel!" Cappy murmured to himself. "He has a sense of humor, thank God! Ah, poor old narrow-gauge Skinner! If that fellow ever gets a new or unconventional thought in his stodgy head, it'll kill him overnight. He's hopping mad right now, because he can't say a word in ...
— The Go-Getter • Peter B. Kyne
... obtrudes itself. They become wedded to a purpose, and then that purpose becomes a tyrant allowing no escape, even for a brief pleasure, from its chains. Nothing is right that wastes any time; nothing is good but the best. The sense of humor is conspicuously lacking in this type, for one of the main functions of humor is to season effort and straining ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... been not only confused and bewildered, but chagrined by the exhibition made before the lad and his own warriors, who, had they possessed any sense of humor, would have laughed at the sorry plight of ...
— The Story of Red Feather - A Tale of the American Frontier • Edward S. (Edward Sylvester) Ellis
... found that week after week she became more difficult to please. Other things in which she wished Peabody might be more like Winthrop, obtruded themselves. Little things which she was ashamed to notice, but which rankled; and big things, such as consideration for others, and a sense of humor, and not talking of himself. Since this campaign began, at times she had felt that if Peabody said "I" once again, she must scream. She assured herself she was as yet unworthy of him, that her intelligence ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis
... "I have heard his lordship has a pretty sense of humor, and never fails, when opportunity offers, to ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... head. There was a general air of cheerfulness and content about him and his mouth, that was inclined to twitch at the corners, seemed continually on the point of smiling. In truth, the fairy godmother of Jason had presented him at birth with one of her choicest gifts, a sense of humor, and it had seldom failed him since. Beyond any possible doubt—as he had more than once pointed out to his wife Mary—he owed to this fine characteristic the fact that he had preserved his sanity of mind and body despite the twenty years ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... short, but athletic in build, and with a bright personality. Thyrsis could see at once those fine qualities of idealism and fervor which had attracted Corydon; and to his surprise he found that, in addition to her religious virtues, the Lord had generously added a sense of humor. So Delia Gordon was really a person with whom one could ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... am aware that the traditional hero is always armed, and that Hotchkiss as the low comedian should have had a revolver that missed fire. As a fact, we had nothing of the sort. Hotchkiss carried the fire tongs, but my sense of humor was too strong for me; I declined ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... very dense person, and didn't see my joke at all, but then, it is true, there were thirteen men in line behind me, with the train starting in three minutes, and there is nothing so debilitating to a naturally weak sense of humor as selling tickets behind a grating, so I am not really vexed with him. There! we are quite comfortable, pending the arrival of the babies, the dog, and the fish, and certainly no vender of periodic literature will dare approach us while we keep ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... of our university men at home; several of the older men resembled their well-set-up English cousins. This seemed particularly true of the navy, which has acquired a type—lean, keen, firm-lipped young men, with a sense of humor—entirely different from the German often seen in cafes, with no back to his head, and a neck overflowing his collar. Particularly interesting were those who, called back 'into uniform from responsible positions in civil ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... great sense of humor. Ran rather to silly practical jokes, but still. Can't say I care for that hot-foot and belly-laugh ...
— Accidental Death • Peter Baily
... singular," the Major spoke up, "but it is nevertheless true that the American negro is the only species of the African race that has a sense of humor. There's no humor in the Spanish negro, nor in the English negro, nor in fact in the American negro born north of the Ohio river, but the Southern negro is as full of drollery ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... and the Greek Heracles. He is as much the hero of the tale as is Joseph Andrews in Fielding's classic of that name. His marvellous strength is used as handily for a jest as for some prodigious victory over man or monster. He is drawn for us as a bold, reckless fellow, with a rollicking sense of humor, which, in truth, sits but awkwardly upon the intense devotion to the Cross and its demands with which Moses or some later redactor has seen fit to burden this purely pagan hero. David is very human in spite of his blood-stained club and combative instincts, and ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... no sense of humor. I wouldn't dream of asking her to laugh at my jokes as I do you. She wouldn't see them, and then I shouldn't like to show her the improper ones. They're not suitable for ladies, and the improper ones are the best. I sometimes think you ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... slid reluctantly out into the bitterly cold room, and crept shivering into his clothes. He never quite understood Ford's sense of humor, at such times, but he had learned that it is more comfortable to crawl out of bed than to be kicked out, and that vituperation is a mere waste of time when matched against sheer heartlessness and ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... companion that it is possible to conceive. His manners are as genial and as winning as those of his father and grandfather, both of whom he surpasses in brilliancy of intellect, and in quickness of repartee, as well as in a keen sense of humor. He gives one the impression of possessing a heart full of the most generous impulses,—aye, of a generosity carried even to excess, and this, together with a species of indescribable magnetism which appears to radiate ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... freshly sprained ankle, and the whiteness of Kate's face stamped deeper into Marion's conscience the guilty sense of being to blame for it all. She had started in by teasing Kate over little things, just because Kate was so inquisitive and so lacking in any sense of humor. She could see now that she had antagonized Kate where she should have humored her little whims. It wouldn't have done any harm, Marion reflected penitently, to have confided more in Kate. She used to tell her everything, ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... a certain sense of humor, grim humor though it was, and here and there in his letters there is an admixture of levity with the all-pervading melancholy. An example may be quoted from a letter to Kerner in Weinsberg, dated 1832: "Heute bin ich wieder bei Reinbecks auf ein grosses Spargelessen. Spargel wie ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... struggling unbeliever with rich mud plastered in his eyes have a tendency to evoke keen appreciation from the yellow races, who are supposed to be devoid of a sense of humor. ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... chaperon, then at the artist. He was evidently a gentleman, and she recognized that he was possessed of a keen sense of humor. It would seem rude and ungrateful to run away and leave him just as their luncheon was announced, when he had raced all the way across the meadow to assist in the rescue ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... speculated sometimes upon how civilized man would get through days not spaced by his recurrent meals into three divisions. Those meals are hyphens between his mind and his body, as it were. What sense of humor can view too intensely a creature who must feed himself three times a day? Are we not pleasantly urged out of our heroics and into the normal by breakfast, luncheon and dinner? Deny it as we will, when we do not heed them we are out of touch ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... game and he was one of those blame fools who thought he had a sense of humor, so he gives him a document with a big red seal on it which looks like a doctor's diploma, which says that Thomas Jefferson is allowed to go in and win our five hundred, and the next day the coon shows up smiling and ready, and I knew we had to ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe |
