"Sense of humour" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been with him that I first made acquaintance; we were both engaged on journalistic work, reporting, you know, on different papers—and we came across each other once or twice in that way. He was a saturnine, queer-tempered fellow, taciturn at times, and at other times possessed by a wry sense of humour which made him excellent company, though it kept one in a state of alert disquiet. He would say things with that particular twist to them which made one look up, startled, wondering whether his remark was ...
— The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • V. Sackville West
... generous womanhood. And if it is largely for her glowing vitality that we love Amelia, we love her none the less in that she is no fool. It was hardly necessary to tell us, as Fielding is careful to do, that her sense of humour was keen, and that her insight into the ridiculous was tempered only by the deeper insight of her heart. Her understanding of her husband is as perfect as her love for him; and that love is far too profound to allow a moment's suggestion of mere placid amiability. ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... began to milk the neglected animal until his bottle was full. It was not in itself a funny proceeding, but there was something about the calmness of both the cow and the man, and something about the queerness of the occasion, that appealed to the sense of humour of the dourest old Puritan of them all. They laughed, they roared, they shouted, in a way that reminded the Subaltern of the ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... real person. That collapse and humorous confession of futility was much of the force in Charles Lamb and in Stevenson. There is nothing of this in Shaw; his wit is never a weakness; therefore it is never a sense of humour. For wit is always connected with the idea that truth is close and clear. Humour, on the other hand, is always connected with the idea that truth is tricky and mystical and easily mistaken. What Charles Lamb said of the Scotchman is far truer of this type of Puritan Irishman; he does not see things ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... manhood when he met the most beautiful girl in the world. She was different from all other women. She had a deeper nature than other people. Smith realized it at once. She could feel and understand things that ordinary people couldn't. She could understand him. She had a great sense of humour and an exquisite appreciation of a joke. He told her the six that he knew one night and she thought them great. Her mere presence made Smith feel as if he had swallowed a sunset: the first time that his finger brushed against hers, he felt a thrill all through him. He presently found that if ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... which shaded her slate-gray eyes had that upward curl which shows an undying sense of humour, and she had been a merry little girl, with flashes of wit which had enchanted Franklin Merriam before she was snatched away to Europe at eleven, never to see him again. Even at school where she had been "dumped" (as Mrs. Merriam's intimate enemies put it), Angela ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... as a man smiles at some secret thought which tickles him or whips the sense of humour in him till, like an ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... and for a minute, hesitated between indignation and renewed mirth, but at last her sense of humour conquered. ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... mostly of an obituary character, pointed several times to his effects, saying, "Requiescat in pace," and then, pointing again to himself, uttered the one pregnant word "Resurgam." This at any rate had the merit of tickling his own sense of humour, if it availed nothing with the railway porters, and if any one remarks that he has read the tale in some ancient "Farmers' Almanack," I shall only retort that it ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... captivated the town with his eloquence. Why he did it will remain a puzzle for ever. There were many other acts which to foreigners and to those born in later times might seem the result of insanity, but which were really the outcome of a peculiar, sardonic, and somewhat primitive sense of humour on his part which appeals powerfully to the men of the plains, the gauchos, among whom Rosas lived from boyhood, when he ran away from his father's house, and by whose aid he eventually ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... twisting of his long beard in which he continuously indulged. He was grave and reserved; but when he became interested in any matter he talked freely, although always deliberately, and he was always ready to deafen his opinions with much spirit. He had, moreover, a considerable sense of humour. What struck me most about Scott was the great acuteness of his powers of observing natural phenomena, and especially of such as had any bearing on variation, natural selection or hybridity. While most attentive to the ordinary ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... prohibition will be adopted there: and this from the simple reason that the Scotch do not drink. I have elsewhere alluded to the extraordinary misapprehension that exists in regard to the Scotch people and their sense of humour. I find a similar popular error in regard to the use of whiskey by the Scotch. Because they manufacture the best whiskey in the world, the Scotch, in popular fancy, are often thought to be addicted to the drinking of it. This is purely a delusion. During the ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... whimsical conclusion to the study of a personality so perplexing and vagarious as Sir John Willison. But he himself, having a high sense of humour, will appreciate its psychological justice as much as he regrets its historical inaccuracy. Sir John has always aimed at being a big Canadian, and he has usually succeeded. He did his share of contribution to right thinking ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... these are qualities which are valued by his late enemies his story of the campaign, My Reminiscences of East Africa (HURST AND BLACKETT), should appeal to a large public, especially as it is written on the whole in a sporting spirit and not without some sense of humour. His descriptions of the natural difficulties of the country and the methods he adopted for handling them are interesting and instructive. But in military matters his story is not altogether convincing; for if his "victories" were as "decisive" as he represents ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... Punch, long rides on a bicycle and an irresistible tendency of ink to the fingers, presumably caused by the terrible duty of writing letters to parents. There may be other ingredients, but these are the chief. I am bound to add that he is a very amiable boy, with a strong sense of humour, and that he associates on very friendly terms with the little girls, his cousins, who form the majority of this household, it being quite understood that, for the time, they become boys while ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 22, 1914 • Various
... possibility and certainty of very frank earthly laughter. If, as Ralph thought, not for the first time in this rough island story, this girl were an angel, surely she was one to whom her Maker had given that rarest gift given to woman— a well-balanced sense of humour. ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... bits his story came out across the liqueur glasses and the early strawberries, Major Clowes laid his head back and roared with laughter. Lawrence was annoyed: he had not found it amusing and he felt that his cousin had a macabre and uncomfortable sense of humour. But Bernard, wiping the tears from his eyes, developed unabashed his idea of a good joke. "Hark to him! Now isn't that Lawrence all over? What! can't you run down for twenty-four hours to a hamlet the size of Chilmark but you must bring your ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... it into an envelope, gumming down the lapel. At a little gas jet intended for the purpose I closed both ends with wax and— singular coincidence!—finding a Chinese coin fastened to a cork lying on the shelf, my sense of humour prompted me to use it as a seal! Finally, to add to the verisimilitude of the affair I borrowed a pen which rested in a bottle of red ink and wrote upon the envelope the number: 30, that day being the ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... British Public possess that "taste for Art" and that "sense of humour" which some claim for and others deny to it, it (the B.P.) will throng the comfortable and well-lighted Gallery in New Bond Street, where hang some hundreds of specimens of the later work of the most unaffected ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... don't think I have ever met), and Sister Bert kept sitting down suddenly on the floor. (But the Prince didn't think this was at all funny, so I expect I must have been right all the time when I have only PRETENDED to laugh. I used to think that perhaps I hadn't a sense of humour.) And then the Prince kissed me again, and my Fairy Godmother came in and kissed us both. Of course we do owe it all to her really, and ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... our examination, for such it was. And as it progressed I was more and more struck by the change in the O'Keefe. All flippancy was gone, rarely did his sense of humour reveal itself in any of his answers. He was like a cautious swordsman, fencing, guarding, studying his opponent; or rather, like a chess-player who keeps sensing some far-reaching purpose in the game: alert, contained, watchful. ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... coming quarter of an hour. Teacher pleased him from the first. She was neither old nor ill-favoured, and she was most evidently nervous. The combination appealed both to his love of power and his peculiar sense of humour. Settling deliberately in the chair of state, ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... impresses one immediately is that of extreme manliness. He has a sense of humour that will save him from many a mishap in his difficult post. He has a wide knowledge of men and affairs and, above all, as the Spaniards would put it, is muy espanol (very Spanish), not only in appearance but in his way of looking at things, a Spaniard of the best type, a Spaniard possessing industry ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... enjoyed sleeping in the tent. If I could only make Max take a little liking to the house—and I could if I just had our things out here from town. But of course he'll never let me. Hasn't he been funny to-night, with his solemn 'hoping we're satisfied'? Oh, if the poor dear only had just a tiny sense of humour!" ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... early Pullman, and the linen closet late German Lloyd, my dear Emily; but the rest of the house is Tudor, and can't be replaced," said Sir Lionel; and I was sure, as he looked down at his sister, of a thing I'd already suspected: that he has a sense of humour. That's a modern improvement with which you wouldn't expect a dragon to be fitted; but I begin to see that this is an elaborate and complicated Dragon. Some people are Pharisees about their sense of humour, and keep harping on ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... foolish, Mr. Quest," the Professor advised. "Don't let me lose confidence in you. Craig would not hurt a fly, and as to abducting your assistant—if my sense of humour were developed upon normal lines—well, I should laugh! What you have really done, you, and that young lady assistant of yours, is to terrify the poor fellow into such a state of nerves that he scarcely knows what he is doing. As a matter of fact, how do you know that that young ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... means! It is mine—mine alone. I have had a scolding for it!—And in your presence I ask my friends' pardon; I have put them in a false position. And, in the next place, I ask for your forgiveness. My sense of humour got the ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... said Benita, who, in spite of the solemnity of the surroundings, could not control her sense of humour, "if you are not careful the ghosts of all these people ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... us boys a good turn, wrote a line to our father, telling him in a humorous manner all about this particular wretched back-bitten black bream which he had recognised, and the price he had been asked for it. Then my father, having no sense of humour, gave us, one and all, a sound thrashing for taking money from old Duggan, who thereafter sold our black bream to a hawker man who travelled around in a spring cart, and gave him three shillings each, out of which we got two, and spent at a ship ...
— The Colonial Mortuary Bard; "'Reo," The Fisherman; and The Black Bream Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... was in the green reception-room at the end of the hall. She wore black velvet and a few diamonds, and looked impressively null. Tiny and Ila arrived almost immediately. They looked, the one an angel with a sense of humour, the other Circean with an eye to the conventions, both as smart as Paris could make them. It was nearly ten o'clock, and there was a rush ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... It was an immense elevation even at so remote a date. David Sanborn married his daughter Hannah Hook, after a formal courtship. The "love" letters to "Honoured Madam" are still preserved. Fortunately the "honoured madam" had inherited the sense of humour. ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... to have a strong sense of humour," remarked Vickers gravely, at which his comrades giggled. Vickers was commonly believed to have none. He never laughed when ...
— Jack of Both Sides - The Story of a School War • Florence Coombe
... made brave, in a sly way, to rail at Mehronay about his love affair, and he took it good-naturedly. He knew the situation just as it was; his sense of humour allowed him no false view of the matter. One afternoon when the paper was out, George Kirwin, the foreman, and one of the reporters and Mehronay were in the back room leaning against the imposing-stones looking over the paper, when Kirwin ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... ulterior object in making a book journeyed over four continents in company with her husband, and picked up en route matter for one of the pleasantest, most humorous, and least pretentious books of travel we have read for many a day. It is admirably illustrated by Mr. A.S. Boyd, whose sense of humour happily matches that of his observant wife, and the reader who can lay aside this picturesque and truly delightful volume without sincere regret must have a ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... sure that Mr. MONTAGU has a sense of humour, and I admired the way in which he concealed its existence when explaining the Indian Government's release of Mrs. BESANT. As he read the VICEROY'S reference to "the tranquillizing effect of Mr. MONTAGU'S approaching visit" the House rippled with laughter; and when he proceeded to say ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 24, 1917 • Various
... to do that? Another thing: people are a little absurd out of their own places. We need to be held in our relationships—against our background—or we are—I don't know—grotesque. Come now, Madeline, where's your sense of humour? Isn't it a little absurd for you to leave home over ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... "Then their sense of humour must have become perverted," she replied. "I think Mr. Ward must have a very bad ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... of thought, was always by his side, a ready, cheerful, courageous, wise, and sympathetic counsellor. It was she who shielded his sensitive spirit from the annoyances and trials of life, answering (for example) the innumerable letters addressed to him from all parts of the world. By her quiet sense of humour, by her selfless devotion, by ‘her faith as clear as the heights of the June-blue heaven,’ she helped him also to the utmost in the hours of his depression ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... mostly superfluous, even to a day which persists in knowing better about everything and everybody than it or they knew about themselves. No one ever recorded his genealogy more minutely, with greater pride, or with a more saving sense of humour than Sir Walter. He was connected, though remotely, with gentle families on both sides. That is to say, his great-grandfather was son of the Laird of Raeburn, who was grandson of Walter Scott of Harden and the 'Flower of Yarrow.' The great-grandson, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... generosity, pride, ardour—all enhanced by woman's more peculiar gifts of gentleness, modesty, tenderness, insight, gravity . . . for Balaustion is like many women in having, for all her gaiety, more sense of happiness than sense of humour. It often comes to me as debatable if this be not the most attractive of deficiencies! Certainly Balaustion persuades us of its power; for in the Apology, her refusal of the Aristophanic Comedy is firm-based upon that imputed lack in women. No man, thus poised, could have convinced ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... happily rare. Such questions obtained no permanent place in his thoughts: they were only the passing expression of an ever-besetting mental restlessness. It is indeed surprising that a writer with artistic instinct and a sense of humour should ever have persuaded himself to enter the fruitless field of religious ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... fate afterwards brought me into personal relations with the latter, whose lectures on the Athenian financial system were the finest and the most instructive I have ever heard. What clearness, what depth of learning, what a subtle sense of humour this splendid old man possessed! I attended his lectures in 1863, and how exquisite were the allusions to the by no means satisfactory political conditions of the times with which he spiced them. I also became sincerely attached ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... clothes, but few, and those few, good. Clothes are supposed to please and satisfy women. You have musical talent, a love of books and flowers, a fine appreciation of beauty, a host of friends, and that one supreme gift of the gods—a sense of humour. In addition to all this, you have a comfortable home and an income of your own that enables you to do practically as you please. Could you ask ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... thought that if you had, it might make you fonder of me. I think one needs a sense of humour to ...
— What Every Woman Knows • James M. Barrie
... like to bring certain long poems of universal renown within the scope of my principle. What about Paradise Lost? Did any woman, except perhaps GEORGE ELIOT, ever read it throughout unless under scholastic compulsion? I doubt it; her sense of humour would not allow her to. Take, for instance, the following lines, describing the simple amusements of our ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... He fixed his eyes on me, and suddenly grinned. You know we'd once had two fights about his saying 'bloody,' I think I told you at the time, a fight and a return match, he couldn't box for nuts, but he stood up like a Briton, and it appealed now to his sense of humour that I should be standing there too dazed to protest at the old offence. 'I thought you was done in,' he said. 'I'm in a mess—a bloody mess, ain't I? Like a stuck pig. Bloody—right enough. Bloody! I didn't know I ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... different. (They both rise from the table. She pulls him to R. one step.) Perhaps it's your sense of humour coming back. ...
— Belinda • A. A. Milne
... come one day," she went on. "Why don't you speak and get it over? Are you waiting to clothe your phrases? Are you afraid of the naked words? I'm not. Let me hear them. Don't be more melodramatic than you can help because, as you know, I am cursed with a sense of humour, but ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... called the merry parson of Gouda. But Margaret, who like most loving women had no more sense of humour than a turtle-dove, took this very ill. "What!" said she to herself, "is there nothing sore at the bottom of his heart that he can go about playing the zany?" She could understand pious resignation and ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... the passions of the lower orders was the people's tribune, Ciceruacchio, who had not put on black cloth clothes, or asked for the ministry of war, or of fine arts, according to the usual wont of successful tribunes. Ciceruacchio had the sense of humour of the genuine Roman popolano, and it never came into his head to make himself ridiculous. His influence had been first acquired by works of charity in the Tiber floods. Being a strong swimmer, he ventured where no one else would go, and ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... time. He was a handsome man and built like a gladiator. But his ways were gentle, and his speech was soft and persuasive. He was companionable, but exceedingly reposeful. Yes, and wholly destitute of the sense of humour. He was full of interest in everything that went on around him, but his serenity was indestructible; nothing disturbed ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... understood directness. Slander was the weapon he used in that secret duel; the countryside was well stocked with stories of Mr. Wilding's many indiscretions. I do not wish to suggest that these were unfounded. Still, the countryside, cajoled by its primitive sense of humour into that alliteration I have mentioned, found that having given this dog its bad name, it was under the obligation of keeping up his reputation. So it exaggerated. Richard, exaggerating those exaggerations in his turn, had some details, as interesting and unsavoury as they were ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... enough, helped her over many a hard place, and quickened her sense of humour into something upon which she might securely lean. He was too young and too much occupied with the obvious to look further, but he felt that Dorothy was troubled, and that it was his duty, as a man and a gentleman, ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... feeling and appreciation of the humorous, abundantly sufficient if unsupported by other examples, to put Thackeray's dicta on the subject of woman's capacity for humour out of court. But George Eliot's sense of humour was different in quality rather than in degree from that which Lewes so abundantly possessed. And it was a curious and interesting study to observe the manifestation of the quality in both of them. It was ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... love's sake—as love seeking for love—we are consoled. Then all is well, all is joyful, all is divine. The more simple, childlike, and unpretentious we can be, the more easily we shall win our way through. Pretentiousness or arrogance in Man can never be anything but ridiculous, and a sense of humour should alone be sufficient to save us from such error. For the same reason it is impossible to regard human ceremonies with any respect or seriousness, for they are not childlike but childish. How often the heart and mind ...
— The Romance of the Soul • Lilian Staveley
... with awe. This, too, if I may venture to say so, is good in its way and place; and it seems rather hard to these luckless writers when people assume that, because they make jokes on a mountain, they are necessarily insensible to its awful sublimities. A sense of humour is not incompatible with imaginative sensibility; and even Wordsworth might have been an equally powerful prophet of nature if he could sometimes have descended from his stilts. In short, a man may worship mountains, and yet have a quiet joke with them when ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... he considered water gruel objectionable, but because he had lost his precious sense of humour, that magician who can transform the dark rye into golden wheat; almighty love, emptying his horn of plenty over his poor home, had vanished. The children had become burdens, and the once beloved wife a secret enemy despised ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... was over for me at Mellor'—dear! dear!—how women like the big words—the emphatic pose. All those little odds and ends of charities—that absurd straw-plaiting scheme! Well, perhaps one could hardly expect her to show a sense of humour just then. But why does nature so often leave it out in these ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... illustrious commentator, it is fair to add that the work could not have been entrusted to a more respectful disciple. Many of our tastes were similar; we had the same desire to seek the truth, the same earnest wish to be exact, perhaps the same sense of humour, and, what is necessary when writing on Marco Polo, certainly the same love for Venice and its history. Not only am I, with the late CHARLES SCHEFER, the founder and the editor of the Recueil de Voyages et de Documents pour servir a l'Histoire de la Geographie depuis le XIII'e jusqu'a la fin ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... a little exceptional. Dick, of course, is quite mad - that's what makes him interesting. Alymer Hermon is a giant with a great cricket reputation, and Harold St. Quintin is a sort of modern Francis Assisi with a sense of humour." ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... antagonistic house, with weak prefects to help him, and a fussy house-master; and he had fought them all for a term, and looked like winning. Jimmy admired his friend with a fervour which nothing on earth would have tempted him to reveal. Like most people with a sense of humour, he had a fear of appearing ridiculous, and he hid his real feelings as completely as he ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... alone with Rod Rockwell, smiled slightly. "Bill ain't got a sense of humour this mornin'," he observed, softly. "He must 'a' ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... committed suicide, this Margot girl wrote to Stephen Knight and implored him to help her. I can quite believe she would. Fancy the daughter of the unsuccessful claimant to his brother's title writing begging letters to a young man like Stephen Knight! It appeals to one's sense of humour." ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... formed a laughable incident in a tragic business. How deeply thankful we ought to be that even the most serious matters have generally a silver lining about them in the shape of a joke, if only people could see it. The sense of humour is a very valuable possession in life, and ought to be cultivated in the Board ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... of the difficulties of a foreign language, you realized that this Cockney sergeant was a man. For one thing he had a sense of humour; he had kept it in the midst of terror and death—kept it standing all night in trenches full of icy-cold water, with icy-cold water pouring down his collar. Also the sergeant had a sense of honour—there ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... strength lies in its serpentine stillness and ancient unforgotten craft, and its weakness in that absence of ideals and in the sudden violence of partizanship which suggest pathological decay. What Greece does is generally subtle and shrewd; what she says is often madness. She has little sense of humour, and takes offence where other nations would laugh. Thus she wins by statecraft and loses by politics. In thought, and in the spoken word, Greece is outmatched for instance by the Slavs; but in silent action and in administrative policy Greece more often excels her neighbours. You will ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... newcomer had laid aside her furs Magda's impression qualified itself. Lady Arabella was not in the least of the "small bird" type, but rather suggested a hawk endowed with a grim sense of humour—quick and decisive in movement, with eyes that held an incalculable wisdom and laughed a thought cynically because they ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... a mystery about it," said Cecily, who had missed the point entirely, and couldn't see why the rest of us were laughing. But Cecily was such a darling that we did not mind her lack of a sense of humour. ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... very poetic bein' sick in 'em, by Jove! for those girls in the nursery," remarked Rags, "especially if they've got a sense of humour." ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... Belgium, her talks with the villagers and the Uhlans; frightened, but resolute to hide all show of fright, she stands up splendidly to them and speaks her mind at the very muzzles of their revolvers; but she never loses her courage, nor does she lose her sense of humour."—Athenaeum. ...
— My Adventures as a Spy • Robert Baden-Powell
... of his contemporaries would have envied him this admirably moyen-age and sonorous designation. But it is certainly cumbrous for a title-page, and its owner—a modest man with a sense of humour—may perhaps have thought that it might be rather more ridiculous than ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... longer could speak to a school friend, a little general servant who came to fetch treacle at the shop, when Pappa Grocer bought a piano! So you see, Mamma, it is in human nature, whether you are English or American, if you haven't a sense of humour. I suppose you have to be up where we are for it all to seem nonsense and not to matter; and, who knows? If there were another grade beyond us we might be just the same, too; but it is trash to talk of equality. Even a Socialist leader thinks himself above the crowd—and is, too, though I should ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... it. For there was to come the noise of a trumpet and a dreadful day of visitation, in which all the daily workers of a dull civilization were to be called out of their houses and their holes like a resurrection of the dead, and left naked under a strange sun with no religion but a sense of humour. And men might know of what nation Shakespeare was, who broke into puns and practical jokes in the darkest passion of his tragedies, if they had only heard those boys in France and Flanders who called out ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... about the same value to either of the contending parties, as that of Kant's noumenon, in the battle of impulses which rages in the breast of man. Metaphysicians, as a rule, are sadly deficient in the sense of humour; or they would surely abstain from advancing propositions which, when stripped of the verbiage in which they are disguised, appear to the profane eye to be bare shams, naked ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... down the pit been disabled by a fall of stone; then as he had been a 'handy man' and used to both horses and flowers the Rector had taken him into his service as groom-gardener. 'Crammed with northern self-sufficiency and a sort of scornful incivility, he has a keen sense of humour and a heart of gold,' said my uncle, as he forewarned me as to the ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... the others were laughing at him, for, to tell the truth, he did look very comical; but, like all simple creatures, he had no sense of humour. He was so proud of his natural garment of yellow hair that he had put on no waistcoat, in order that no one might have a doubt as to where he sprang from. For the same reason, he had kept his collar, with his address on it. A big red velvet coat, heavily braided with ...
— The Blue Bird for Children - The Wonderful Adventures of Tyltyl and Mytyl in Search of Happiness • Georgette Leblanc
... music. He was also given to joking, but the one or two jokes which have been pointed out to me in his music would nowadays be considered in bad taste if people knew what they were meant for. Music has no sense of humour, and simply won't ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman
... struggle with a company of Boxers, for two of these patriots in full regalia—red sashes and rusty swords—lay dead in the long grass. Poor patriots, they owed their quiet graves under a barbarian's lawn to a barbarian's kindness. I wonder if their ghosts have a sense of humour, and if they ever chuckle a little over the trick Fate played on them when ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... have a great deal of geniality and love of fun, I am so slow at picking up the language, that I probably miss much of the irony and finesse that characterises our better kind of humour. The Canadians, who are of British stock, have a better sense of humour; but it is always a dangerous subject to write about, and when I remember the stupid things that evoke the laughter of the London public in our theatres, I feel I had ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith
... said the singer. "The serenade was perhaps ill- judged. These boors have no sense of humour." ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... many such during the last forty or fifty years, have been taken seriously to heart by the Far Eastern races, whether in China or Japan. All the time the Occidental Powers, with a total lack of any sense of humour, have persisted in sending missionaries to these people to inculcate doctrines which are the very antitheses of the practices of European nations to these people whom it is sought to convert. It would be, in my opinion, nothing more than the outcome of eternal justice ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... perfect shriek of laughter. We said it was the funniest thing we had ever heard in all our lives. We said how strange it was that, in the face of things like these, there should be a popular notion that the Germans hadn't any sense of humour. And we asked the Professor why he didn't translate the song into English, so that the common people could understand it, and hear what a real ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... apparatus of alarm-bells and patrolled night and day by a horde of doganieri armed to the teeth—lest some peasant should throw a bundle of onions into the sacred precincts of the town without paying the duty of half a farthing? No nation with any sense of humour would endure this sort of thing. Every one resents the airs of this army of official loafers who infest the land, and would be far better employed themselves in planting onions upon the many miles of Italy which now lie fallow; the results of the system have been shown to be inadequate, ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... oblige ourselves to be shamelessly and persistently clear and truthful and support and respect (I suppose) a perfect horde of professors and writers and artists and ill-groomed difficult people, instead of using our brains in a moderate, sensible manner to play golf and bridge (pretending a sense of humour prevents our doing anything else with them) and generally taking life in a nice, easy, gentlemanly way, confound him! Well, this dome-headed monster of intellect alleges that Mr. Polly ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... uncertain as to his best course of action, the young man remained silent, his eyes on the burly back of the chauffeur, revealed through the front glass. He could only quietly await her explanation of this strange situation. The delay was not a long one. She laughed, nervously perhaps, yet with a sense of humour at the ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... learnt what we had faintly suspected before, that your sporting amateur on the Derby day, albeit a captain, can be - 'if he be,' as Captain Bobadil observes, 'so generously minded' - anything but a man of honour and a gentleman; not sufficiently gratifying his nice sense of humour by the witty scattering of flour and rotten eggs on obtuse civilians, but requiring the further excitement of 'bilking the toll,' and 'Pitching into' Waterloo, and 'cutting him about the head with his whip;' ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... he affected in dirty weather; and as the rum and water now served out to them was little to their liking, they marked their disapproval of the mixture, as well as of the man who invented it, by dubbing it "grog." The sailor was not without his sense of humour. ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... the young Earl to see if he appreciated the savour of the jest. Then he looked away, turning the enjoyment over and over under his own tongue, and muttering: "Ah, well, 'tis not his fault. No man hath a sense of humour before he is forty years of his age—and, for that matter, 'tis all ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... said, carrying quite too large a preponderance of animal fats. Also, I mused upon the extraordinary tolerance she accorded to the sad-faced but too demonstrative Mr. Barker. He had been named, I fancied, by some one with a primitive sense of humour, I mean to say, he might have been facetiously called "Barker" because he actually barked a bit, though adding the "Mister" to it seemed to be rather forcing the poor drollery. At any rate, I was glad to believe I should see little of him in ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... thought. 'I always say just what comes into my head. With some people it would not matter—with Michael, for example. He never misunderstands one's meaning. But poor dear Gage is so literal. Clever as she is, she has no sense of humour.' ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and of kindred temper with her brother, but with distinct qualities of her own; her first volume, called the "Goblin-Market," contains a number of very beautiful short poems; she exhibits, along with a sense of humour, a rare pathos, which, as Professor Saintsbury remarks, often "blends with or passes into the utterance of religious awe, unstained and unweakened by any ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... when he was away from her immediate peaceful influence that the fever, the restlessness, the torments and the desperation (has not old Burton summed up for us the whole situation and all the symptoms in his "Anatomy"?) had to be endured and conquered. These trials now—for even a sense of humour could not make them less than trials—were ended. The tragi-comic labour of walking too much and riding too much, working and smoking too much, thinking and sleeping too little—the whole dreary business, in fact, of stifling any absorbing idea or ruling ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... Bob's sense of humour was tickled. With all his education and his subsequent wide experience and training, he stood in the position of a very awkward subordinate to this mountain boy. The joke of it was that the matter was so entirely his own choice. In the normal relations of industry Bob would have been the boss ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... be delighted," Maggie replied, "but you won't like my aunt. She is a little deaf, and she has no sense of humour. She has come to live with us because Lord Dorminster and I are not really related, although we call ourselves cousins, and I should hate to leave Belgrave Square. You shall take me out to tea to-morrow afternoon instead, ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... which is ridiculous, from the animalcule, with a head too big for its body, up to the comet, with a tail too big for its head. But when it comes to the delightful oddity of his own inside, his sense of humour rather ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... they deal with first principles under the simplest forms. They convey knowledge of the world, shrewd lessons of virtue and vice, of common sense and sense of humour, of the seemly and the absurd, of pleasure and pain, success and failure, in narratives where the plot moves briskly and dramatically from a beginning to an end. They treat, not of the corner of a nursery or a playground, but of ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... observant, like most men who devote their lives to the pursuit of their own interests, and it had not escaped him that Faustina and Gouache were very often to be seen talking together in the world. Had he possessed a sense of humour he might possibly have thought that it would be inexpressibly comical if Gouache should take it into his head to fall in love with the girl; but the Italians are not a humorous people, and the idea did not suggest ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... intruder's face to be scrubbed with the mullet he had brought, a sentence that the imperial minions performed without delay. The intrepid fisherman might have congratulated himself on so mild a punishment for having disturbed a tyrant's repose, had he not been possessed of an unusually strong sense of humour. For at the close of the mullet-scrubbing episode, the foolish fellow remarked by way of a jest to the officer on duty, that he was thankful he had not also offered the emperor a large crab which he had likewise brought in his basket. This imprudent speech was immediately reported to Tiberius, ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... party? what question, what interest, what idea, what need of mankind, is involved in any of these things? Their big, pompous armies, drawn up in great silly rows, their gold lace, their salaams, their hierarchies, seem a pastime for children; there's a sense of humour and of reality over here that laughs at all that. Yes, we are nearer the reality—we are nearer what they will all have to come to. The questions of the future are social questions, which the Bismarcks and Beaconsfields are very much afraid to see settled; ...
— The Point of View • Henry James
... would stand and look up at her window when the light in it was out, picturing the room, the freshness, the delightful girlishness of it, and at this intimacy of thought he would redden in the dark. His sense of humour was in abeyance, and the reality, could he have seen it, would have been a shock to him—the dressing-table a litter of cosmetics and pin-curls; and on the pillow the face of Blanche surrounded by wavers and shiny ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... Anthony had never had the heart to undeceive her. So that when Anthony was there Auntie Edie still went about setting a standard of gaiety for other people to live up to; and still she was astonished that they never did, that other people had no sense of humour. ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... Tie (GRANT RICHARDS), is very serious about the hypocrisies of the virtuous and the injustice of our moral conventions. Other writers before him have been serious about these things, and I do not know that Mr. SHERREN has anything very new to say. I must also confess to thinking that a sense of humour would have assisted him greatly in his task. Nevertheless his readers are certain to sympathise with his beautiful heroine in her dismay at her unfortunate illegitimacy, and she is a good girl with a great regard for the feelings of all her friends, even though she expresses this regard ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 24, 1914 • Various
... home. Nothing was changed, except that Margaret was gentler and seemed more glad to see him than formerly. He wondered how that could be, seeing that he had made himself so very ridiculous; for he was not experienced enough to know that a woman's sense of humour is very different from that of a man she likes, when she herself has been concerned in the circumstances that have made him an object of ridicule to others. Then her face grows grave, her eyes harden, and her head goes up. 'I cannot see that there is anything ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... effectively snuffed out—I was that puppet and that orator. I stop and think—shall I describe how I paced up and down the pier, respectfully but emphatically watched by the secretary? And all the melodramatic plots I conceived, the muffled oars and the midnight visits to my Sylvia? My sense of humour forbids it. For a while now I shall take the hint and stay in the background of this story. I shall tell the experiences of Sylvia as Sylvia herself told them to me long afterwards; saying no more about ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... I have no doubt (for he had a sense of humour), the manner of my address, which nervousness ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... as if it were a special revelation, and to insist with equal earnestness on his most trifling as on his most important pieces—on Goody Blake and The Idiot Boy as on The Cuckoo or The Daffodils. The sense of humour is apt to be the first grace which is lost under persecution; and much of Wordsworth's heaviness and stiff exposition of commonplaces is to be traced to a feeling, which he could scarcely avoid, that "all day long he had lifted up his voice to a ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... play, the more I appreciate my sense of humour. I seldom play a match when I do not get a smile out of some remark from the gallery, while I know that the gallery always enjoys at least one hearty laugh at my expense. I do not begrudge it them, for I know how very peculiar tennis players in general, ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... authors might be more daring and candid than they are with advantage, and write regular criticisms of their own books in their prefaces, for nobody can be so good a critic of himself as the author—if he has a sense of humour. If he has not, the less he says in ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... hundred caresses and kind words tried to soothe the feelings of the wounded lover. It was only when her vivacity and sense of humour got the better of this sprightly creature (as they would do under most circumstances of life indeed) that she would break out with her satire, but she could soon put on a demure face. "Dearest love," she said, "do you suppose I feel nothing?" ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... your sense of humour half a chance you'd be all right. You take yourself too solemnly. You let Palla scare you. That's not the way. The thing to do is to have a jolly time with her, with them all. Accept her as she thinks she is. There's no damage done yet. Time enough ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... no doubt that we must eat them or go without bread of any kind; but as we sat tugging at the gluey guttapercha-like substance, Mac's sense of humour revived. "Didn't I tell you I was slap-up at Johnny cakes?" he chuckled, adding with further infinitely more humorous chuckles: "You mightn't think it; but I really am." Then he pointed to Jackeroo, who was watching in bewilderment while the Maluka hunted for the crispest crust, ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... societies are frail human institutions and that conferences and congresses do not bring about the millennium, you are saved from despair if you keep ever fresh your sense of humour. ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... the cloves out of the cracks in the stone flagging—and, of course, he needn't have done this, unless he had an abnormal sense of humour—he handed me the tattered, disreputable-looking copy of 'A Modern Circe,' with a bow that wouldn't have disgraced a Chesterfield, and then went back to his easel, while I fled after Aunt Celia and ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... must stop. I have said enough to show the fun the author is indulging in. When one hears the work one cannot help admiring the composer's technical knowledge, skill in orchestration, and sense of humour. And one is all the more surprised that he confines himself to the illustration of texts[178] when he is so capable of creating comic and dramatic matter without it. Although Don Quixote is a marvel of skill and a very wonderful ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... returned the Girl with an amused smile, for it was impossible with her keen sense of humour not to see Sonora's attempts to make himself irresistible to her. Nor did she fail to observe that Trinidad, likewise, had spruced himself up a little more than usual, with the same ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... need, I presume, occupation after their hours of work. If any of them answer: "We do not want occupation, we want amusement. Work is very dull, and we want something which will excite our fancy, imagination, sense of humour. We want poetry, fiction, even a good laugh or a game of play"—I shall most fully agree with them. There is often no better medicine for a hard-worked body and mind than a good laugh; and the man who can ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... that a boy—or for that matter, a man—dislikes so much as laughter when he is making a declaration of love. His sense of humour at that time is in eclipse, and even the gentlest turn ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... despaired of ever reaching anywhere. When at last our man did stop, we found Mrs. Gardner's cool, English-looking drawing-room a welcome refuge from the glare and the dust; and she was kindness itself. She made a delightful cicerone, for she has a keen sense of humour and a wide knowledge of ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... the family were different from the girls, though they all had charm and an excellent sense of humour. My mother said the difference between her boys and girls came from circulation, and would add, "The Winsloes always had cold feet"; but I think it lay in temper and temperament. They would have been less apprehensive ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... to know him more thoroughly, and their conversations ceased to be of a formal character, she surprised and sometimes quite puzzled him. The girl was full of fun and had a keen sense of humour, and her playful attacks upon his earnestness, her light way of parrying the problems which Jack, ever on the alert for information, was constantly putting, and the cheerful tone which her talk imparted to the general conversation when she was present, were all wholly new to ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... his tutor, who, when he came riding into the court-yard at Fairoaks on his pony, turned out his toes so absurdly, and left such a gap between his knees and the saddle, that it was impossible for any lad endowed with a sense of humour to respect such an equestrian. He nearly killed Smirke with terror by putting him on his mare, and taking him a ride over a common, where the county fox-hounds (then bunted by that staunch old sportsman, Mr. Hardhead, of Dumplingbeare) happened to meet. Mr. Smirke, on Pen's mare, Rebecca ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... has always seemed as if the one chink through which Scrooge's sympathies are got at and his heart-strings are eventually touched, is discernable in his keen sense of humour from the very outset. It is precisely through this that there seems hope, from the very beginning, of his proving to be made of "penetrable stuff." When, after his monstrous "Out upon merry Christmas!" ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... the footman nearly turned to see if something had happened. "And they say that you Englishmen have no sense of humour. The trouble with you though, old top, is that your joke is so deucedly good that you don't ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... of self-revelation.] I don't know. To keep one's place in the world, I suppose, one's self-respect and a sense of humour. ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... to a huddled house in Chelsea, and my renewed envy of Corvick's possession of a friend who had some light to mingle with his own. He could say things to her that I could never say to him. She had indeed no sense of humour and, with her pretty way of holding her head on one side, was one of those persons whom you want, as the phrase is, to shake, but who have learnt Hungarian by themselves. She conversed perhaps in Hungarian with Corvick; she had remarkably little English for his ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... am—except that I revolt. I have written of it so far as if it were just a joke. But indeed bad and foolish political institutions cannot be a joke. Sooner or later they prove themselves to be tragedy. This war is that. It is yesterday's lazy, tolerant, "sense of humour" wading out now into the lakes of blood it ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... Mulville assured me the girl loved him as such a woman could love and that she suffered as such a woman could suffer. Nevertheless she wanted to see ME. At this I sprang up with a groan. "Oh I'm so sorry!—when?" Small though her sense of humour, I think Adelaide laughed at my sequence. We discussed the day, the nearest it would be convenient I should come out; but before she went I asked my visitor how long she had been acquainted ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... absurd in the old gentleman's appearance and method of address, that Miss Ogilvy, who had a sense of humour, was obliged to turn away to hide her ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... Newcome about the poor suffering master of the house. She faltered and stammered in describing him and what she heard of him; she smiled, I grieve to say, for this unfortunate lady cannot help having a sense of humour; and we could not help laughing outright sometimes at the idea of that discomfited wretch, that overbearing creature overborne in his turn—which laughter Mrs. Laura used to chide as very naughty and unfeeling. When we went into Newcome the ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... tact," said Lady Belstone, shaking her head; "for when Peter saw you were annoyed, and tried to pass it off by telling her the Crewys family had no sense of humour, instead of saying, 'What nonsense!' she said, ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... it. They tell what they think is the truth about their own wickedness, and it isn't the truth at all, because I suppose women don't know how to tell the exact truth; and they can be just as unfair to themselves as they are to others. Besides, haven't you any sense of humour, Mrs. Crozier? It's as good as a play, this. Just think: after five years of desertion, and trouble without end, and it all put right by a little sleight-of-hand. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Mr. Stanmore an hour ago to that effect," answered Simon, with a gravity the more profound that he had some difficulty in repressing a smile. The painter was not without a sense of humour, and this "communication," as he called it, lay crumpled up in his waistcoat-pocket while ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... bit in love with him albeit she realized he was rather lovable. The delight which she had experienced in his society lay in the fact that he was absolutely different from any other man she had met. His simplicity, his utter lack of "swank," his directness, his good nature, and dry sense of humour made him shine luminously in comparison with the worldly, rather artificial young men she had previously met—young men who said and did only those things which time, tradition, and hallowed memory assured them were done by the right sort of people. Shirley had a suspicion that Bryce Cardigan could—and ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... however, one person who, probably from a defective sense of humour, was unable to see any fun in it at all. Aunt Charlotte would have given her very ears for Austin, but her affection was of a somewhat irritable sort, and generally took the form of scolding. She was not a stupid woman by any means, but there was one thing in ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... Fairfax had a keen sense of humour, and as he looked down on the strangely old young darky and took in his answer, the circumstance became too much for his gravity, and his relaxing laugh sent the culprits rolling and tumbling in the sand in an ectasy of relief ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... little too much for my sense of humour, and although sympathising very tenderly with poor Mrs. B., I cannot help bursting into a little roar of laughter. Laughter and fear are deadly enemies, and I can see at once that Mrs. B. is all the better for ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... knew. He suddenly remembered that he had never heard the Ideal laugh. She smiled placidly—he had raved to Freda about that smile—but she did not laugh. Roger began to wonder what an ideal without any sense of humour would be like when translated ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... interesting souvenir which she proposes to keep if possible. During the first days of the war her chateau was occupied by a lot of officers, who got gloriously drunk and smashed up pretty well everything in the drawing-room and dining-room. One of them, with a fine sense of humour, took a piece of hard chalk and wrote on the top of her piano in large letters: Deutschland ueber alles! The crowd left the place in the morning without trying to cover their traces, and Madame B—— came in to put things to rights. The first thing she did was to get a large piece of plate glass ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... back and teased Dr. John about Madame's devotion to him. How he laughed! What fun shone in his eyes as he recalled some of her fine speeches, and repeated them, imitating her voluble delivery! He had an acute sense of humour, and was the finest company in the world—when he could forget ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... worlds would he have admitted that she was deficient in a sense of humour. She had her small hilarities that passed for it. Keenness in that direction would have done violence to the repose and sweetness of her blessed presence. The peace of it remained with him during ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... him, and, later, in many other of the younger generation of the upper classes in Persia, was the happy mixture of the utmost charm of manner with a keen business head, delightful tact and no mean sense of humour. Meftah-es-Sultaneh, for instance, spoke most interestingly for over an hour, and I was agreeably surprised to find what an excellent foreign education students can receive without leaving Persia. It is true ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... picturesque sight he then invariably presented in his full-bottomed, snow-white wig and bright, purple coat. But the good bishop, though extremely stately and impressive of demeanour, was gifted with a keen sense of humour and could enjoy a spice of frivolity when he could indulge in it without detracting from his dignity. In 1807 he was appointed to the Archbishopric of York, and was fond of retailing how a groom belonging to his old friend, Sir James Graham, [24] got news of ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... as Squire Inchly expressed it, "narrer-minded in money matters." He had the air of a man who is satisfied with himself rather than with the world, and the continual exhibition of this species of selfishness is apt to irritate the most simple-minded spectator. Lacking the sense of humour necessary to give him a knowledge of his own relations to his neighbours, he lived under the impression that he was not only one of the most generous of men, but the most popular. He insisted upon his rights. If people made bad bargains when they traded with him—and he allowed ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... bare walls, the stone floor, and shrugged his shoulders. Erlito was none too well lodged then—soldiering had brought him some brief fame, but little else. Then he suddenly smiled. The incongruity of the thing was ridiculous. His sense of humour, by no means a characteristic trait of the man, was touched. The smile lingered upon his lips. He had come to offer a ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... a delicious sense of humour, and her way of describing people and things is most refreshing. With her sympathy, her realism, her wit and ability, it would seem that Miss Benson's ...
— Twenty • Stella Benson
... fire, capturing positions held by no enemy, and enacting the part of a "casualty" without having received a scratch, telephoning without a telephone is a comparatively simple operation. All you require is a ball of string and no sense of humour. Second Lieutenant Waddell ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... liable to take refuge in an over-exalted altruism. It was difficult in so mad a world not to indulge in personal eccentricity—to the neglect of due worship of the great goddess Conventionality. With death in visible form at every street corner, one's sense of humour, let alone one's higher faculties, rebelled against the futility of such worship. So many detestable sights and sounds were perpetually presented to one—not to mention broth of abominable things daily for ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... of Humour in Philosophers can always do more Philosophy. Assisted by a sense of humour: Witness the droll experiment Of this same scientific gent. For he, his frugal breakfast finishing, (The eggs and bacon fast diminishing) Noted how o'er his marmalade A Wasp was buzzing undismayed. General Reflection: We ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 1, 1890 • Various
... Hannah, for the chance of proving that another woman can equal this brilliant feminine Phoenix! Meanwhile her bright eyes and quick sense of humour took note of the toilettes of some of her guests, wives and daughters of notable citizens who had not hurried South at the first mutterings of the storm. The purple satin worn by the Mayoress tickled her no less than the unfeigned horror of ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... English fluently, though shaky on the TH and the W, and it was first hand and not mentally translated. His pronunciation of Far West, two words that were constantly on his lips, was an endless entertainment to Florence, and out of a sense of humour she forebore to correct him. It was typical, indeed, of his ignorance of everything American. Europe was at his fingers' ends; there was not a country in it he was not familiar with; intimately familiar, knowing ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne |
