"Entertaining" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... life to the rich brother, and the poor brother wanted to make a speech, congratulating him on his name-day. But the rich brother scarcely thanked him, because he was so busy entertaining the rich merchants and their plump, laughing wives. He was pressing food on his guests, now this, now that, and calling to the servants to keep their glasses filled and their plates full of all the ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... ladies a little disappointed that they are not wives instead of maids, easily acquire. Trite as this vein of sentiment was, poor Evelyn thought it beautiful and most feeling. Then, Caroline was clever, entertaining, cordial, with all that superficial superiority that a girl of twenty-three who knows London readily exercises over a country girl of seventeen. On the other hand, Caroline was kind and affectionate towards her. The clergyman's daughter ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... herself, who was the forwardest in testifying her delight, confessed inadvertently that she left a physician by her bedside; and the gentleman who died of honor very liberally cursed both his folly and his fencing. While we were entertaining ourselves with these matters, on a sudden a most offensive smell began to invade our nostrils. This very much resembled the savor which travelers in summer perceive at their approach to that beautiful village of the Hague, arising from those delicious canals which, as they ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... extraordinary cleverness and was a weaver of spells, so that in a sense she could temporarily disguise her personality. Whilst at one moment she was a repellent, half-animal creature, at another she was a fascinating woman of the world versed in strange lores and a most entertaining companion. What object underlay her diverse activities? Assuming that she was concerned in the murder of Sir Marcus Coverly, the purpose of her visit to my cottage was not far to seek; she had come to recover incriminating evidence and had been aided, it seemed, ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... readers most sincerely for the hearty expressions of approval and delight which we have received; and we promise them that the new volume of Young People shall continue to bring them weekly an entertaining and instructive variety of stories and papers by the most popular writers, good puzzles of all kinds, directions for making various articles useful to boys and girls, and a very full and interesting Post-office Box. We are confident that before the end of the second volume we ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... 5 o'clock. This includes the men's dinner-hour and the washing of the kitchen. They eat and smoke when I am there, and loll on the little bench. They are Belgians and I am English, and one is always being warned that the English can't be too careful! We are entertaining 40,000 Belgians in England, but it ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... will be found equally entertaining as a means of studying the peculiar traits of the native of Tokyo which are characterised by their quick temper, dashing spirit, generosity and by their readiness to resist even the lordly personage if convinced of their own justness, or to ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... to the setting some things in order in my dining-room; and by and by comes my wife home and Mrs. Pierce with her, so I lost most of this afternoon with them, and in the evening abroad with them, our long tour by coach, to Hackney, so to Kingsland, and then to Islington, there entertaining them by candlelight very well, and so home with her, set her down, and ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... the trading post to treat the Indians with great politeness. Sometimes great chiefs came to the fort and then the soldiers and traders acted as though they were entertaining ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott
... back in the drawing-room at the Wood House. Indeed, he was in high good-humour, and told his best stories, quite convulsing Mr. Carlyon with his comic ones; indeed, he made himself so agreeable and entertaining—he so threw himself into the spirit of their informal picnic—that Elizabeth's bright eyes rested on his dark face more than once with marked approval. And when they went out into the front garden to wait for the dog-cart, Mr. Carlyon said to her confidentially, "Your friend improves ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... accustomed to be the first and only object of Mr. L——'s thoughts, that I cannot bear to see him think of any thing else. Yes, things I can bear; but not persons—female persons; and there is one person here, who is so much more agreeable and entertaining than I am, that she engrosses very naturally almost all his attention. I am not envious, I am sure; for I could once admire all Lady Olivia's talents and accomplishments, and no one could be more charmed than I was, with her fascinating manners and irresistible powers ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... horse, and Tad, mounting the stubborn little animal, treated the party to as entertaining a bit of horsemanship as they ever had witnessed. After Tad had finished with the pony the animal, thoroughly subdued, made no further objections to the discharge of weapons ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin
... of Eyes-in-the-hands, impressed and bewildered. Dormant awe for the Unmentionable One was awakened in every one of them. Zalu Zako felt that his doom was upon him; that the Unmentionable One was about to call him to his duty, which invoked fear for the sacrilege he had committed in entertaining such radical thoughts in the immediate past. But in Bakahenzie was a streak of suspicion; how was it that Marufa was thus chosen as the divine messenger? Yet perhaps the veritable god was, or gods were, speaking! ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... and from much which has already passed, it might erroneously be inferred that Young Dick was a mean and money-grubbing soul. On the contrary, he was at that instant entertaining secret thoughts and plans so utterly regardless and disdainful of his twenty millions as to place him on a par with a drunken sailor sowing the beach ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... neighboring district, and, with the tastes of a landholding and slaveholding family, had erected around his furnace a considerable town, his own residence as proprietor conspicuous in the midst. There he spent a large part of the time, and not always in the company of his family, entertaining friends from the distant cities, enjoying the luxuries of terrapin, duck, and wines, and, as rumor said in the forest, all the pleasures of a Russian or German nobleman on ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... of the President's questionnaire was a report submitted to Congress in the fall of 1803, which contained much interesting information and some entertaining misinformation. The statistical matter we may put to one side, as contemporary readers doubtless did; certain impressions are worth recording. New Orleans, the first and immediate object of negotiations, ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... January, Thomas, pleading indisposition, left work at twelve. He had a cold and a headache, and felt more miserable than at any time since his school-days. As he rode home in an omnibus Mr. and Mrs. Warbeck were entertaining friends at the wedding-breakfast, and Thomas knew it. For an hour or two in the afternoon he sat patiently under his landlady's talk, but a fit of nervous exasperation at length drove him forth, and he did not return till supper-time. Just as he sat down to a basin of gruel, Mrs. Batty ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... began, "I told you the other day what an unexpected and welcome comfort and help you have been to me. You evidently inherit" (Mrs. Holt coughed slightly) "the art of entertaining and pleasing, and I need not warn you, my dear, against the dangers of such a gift. Your aunt has evidently brought you up with strictness and religious care. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... circulated, the party grew gay and sociable. Levy was really an entertaining fellow; had all the gossip of the town at his fingers' ends; and possessed, moreover, that pleasant art of saying ill-natured things of the absent, which those present always enjoy. By degrees, too, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Natural Questions, that the ancients were so curious in the newness of their fish, that that semed not new enough that was not put alive into the guest's hand; and he says, that to that end they did usually keep them living in glass bottles in their dining-rooms, and they did glory much in their entertaining of friends, to have that fish taken from under their table alive that was instantly to be fed upon; and he says, they took great pleasure to see their Mullets change to several colours when they were dying. But enough of this; ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... of married life, and attractive picture of wedded bliss * * * an entertaining story or a man's redemption through a woman's love * * * no one who knows anything of marriage or parenthood can read this story with eyes that are always dry * * * goes straight to the heart of everyone who knows the meaning ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... can indulge a train of careless, vagabond thought, and not be severely smitten in conscience, you are far from being in touch with God. The spiritual depression and awful benumbing stupidity, the disrelish for prayer and reading the Bible, is often the result of entertaining empty, fruitless meditations. The Scriptures tell us what are wholesome subjects for thought, and what are not. "The thought of foolishness is sin." Prov. 24:9. "I hate vain thoughts." ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... turn the soldier down. You may, For aught you know, or others say, Be entertaining, unawares, An angel; and, if not, who cares? For, be he good, bad, weak or strong, 'Mid summer's sun or winter's storm, You call on him to right your wrong, Altho ...
— Rhymes of the Rookies • W. E. Christian
... lectures to her husband were mild, entertaining, and instructive to what Job Sykes received from Mrs. Sykes. Mrs. Caudle, I think, always addressed her beloved in the evening within curtains, when he was in such a condition of mind and body as rendered him impervious to the entrance of her loving words; so that he would even ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... kind to it. The story of the young author's recent and romantic death, of his gallantry, his handsome features displayed in newspapers everywhere, all these helped toward the generous welcome accorded the little volume. If the verses were not inspired—why, they were at least entertaining and pleasant. And youth, high-hearted youth sang on every page. So the reviewers were kind and forbearing to the poems themselves, and, for the sake of the dead soldier-poet, were often enthusiastic. The book sold, for a volume of poems it sold ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... fruits —things which had been strangers in that house lately; but Marget made no exclamations, and now even looked unsurprised, which was Satan's influence, of course. Satan talked right along, and was entertaining, and made the time pass pleasantly and cheerfully; and although he told a good many lies, it was no harm in him, for he was only an angel and did not know any better. They do not know right from wrong; I knew ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... moral principle, was a man of highly respectable abilities, of pleasing manners, and was an entertaining companion. Lord Bute, who was in power, was the warm friend of Dr. Franklin. He therefore caused his son William to be appointed governor of New Jersey. It is positively asserted that Franklin did not solicit the favor. Indeed it was not a very desirable ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... noon next day, when two elderly men of affairs came to fetch his guests away. They entered the room while he was entertaining the baby with a whistled selection from his repertoire of flute music, and he broke off short as they regarded him from the doorway. The Jewess looked up alertly as ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... entertaining Royalties and Cabinet Ministers in heavy succession, and his daughter understood. There was an element of insubordination in her father, which she ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... long striven not to seek to revenge themselves upon these powerless captives, that they had at last truly forgotten they were enemies; and these handsome, entertaining, captivating, gallant gentlemen were no longer looked upon even as prisoners, but as strangers and travellers, and therefore they should receive the honors of the city. [Footnote: Sulzer writes: "The prisoners of war are treated here as if they were ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... for the stage, that they can only be properly seized by a great actor, and fully understood by a very acute audience. Not only has he delineated many kinds of folly; he has also contrived to exhibit mere stupidity in a most diverting and entertaining manner.' Vol. ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... of other peoples. But the question whether it be one in historical origin or in universal mythopoetic fancy, and this latter be the only common origin, must remain in almost every case unanswered[28]. This is by far not so entertaining, nor so picturesque a solution as is the explanation of a common historical basis for any two legends, with its inspiring 'open sesame' to the door of the locked past. But which is truer? Which accords more ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... to the great delight of all his companions, nailed down, by invitation given and accepted, and they looked forward to the accomplishment of his promise, with the eagerness which the prospect of some entertaining novelty never fails to produce ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... not entirely above suspicion and his name is indissolubly connected with some very nefarious Indian transactions; but fortunately they have not to be recounted here. At the very time when he was offering unanswerable arguments against the propositions of Lane and Pomeroy, he was entertaining something similar to those propositions in his own mind. A special agent, Augustus Wattles, who had been sufficiently familiar and mixed-up with the free state and pro-slavery controversy to be called upon to ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... glance took in the well-filled lunch basket. At once he became brilliantly entertaining. In a few minutes he had Shiloh enraptured at the wood-lore he told her,—even Bull Run and Seven Days, Atlanta and Appomattox were listening in amazement, so interesting becomes nature's story when ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... spotted trees, he would probably have been heard at his camp, and would have been spared the worst scare he ever had in his life. The negligence was scarcely his fault, however; for Cyrus Garst, who had never before undertaken the responsibility of entertaining a pair of inexperienced boys in woodland quarters, had not, at this early stage of the trip, arranged with his comrades to fire a certain number of shots to signify "Help wanted!" if one of them should stray, or otherwise get into trouble. The idea now cropped up in Dol's perplexed ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... time to get all the information I want from the old man. He has the papers and he is quite willing to explain everything, but we spend the larger part of every day in entertaining the old lady and ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... was the lady's name, proved an excellent travelling companion. She was not only a splendid conversationalist, but also she knew how to procure warm tea from the porter. Soon she and Nancy were quite at ease with each other, Nancy contributing her share at the entertaining, with her homely gossip of the Monk Road and its people. The baby was her chief solace, however, and its mother only had it during the midnight hours, so constant a nurse was she. And the atom itself was tractable beyond ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... as a boy's story-teller stands in the very foremost rank. With plenty of scope to work upon he has produced a strong story at once instructive and entertaining."—Glasgow Herald. ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... ideas of resistance, muscular contractility, direction, extension, place, and motion, of which he says our apparently simple idea, weight, is compounded. Does he mean, then, that we cannot entertain the idea of yellowness without entertaining at the same time all the other ideas necessary for composing the idea of gold, and entertaining, too, that idea in addition to all the rest? Does he mean that a train of thought cannot commence with place without terminating with weight? Of course ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... Scofield became almost jealous of each of them for cheating him out of so much of the society of both. He might have become quite jealous had it not been for the fact that while the mothers were entertaining each other, he was left to entertain the children, who, of course, were soon almost constantly together, and were not long in becoming as familiar and affectionate as ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... Wissant did her duty, entertaining his friends and relations on such occasions as was incumbent on her, and showing herself a devoted and careful mother to the twin daughters who formed the only vital link between her husband and herself. But inwardly? Inwardly they two ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... a good ghost story, and in the volume before us the author has many an entertaining one to ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... notion of cousin Philip coming into their household in the character of an amusing or entertaining person, till she nearly made her mother angry at her ridicule of the good steady young fellow, to whom Bell looked up as the pattern of all that early manhood should be. But the moment Sylvia saw she had been giving her mother pain, she left off her wilful little jokes, and kissed her, ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Kornicker, somewhat faded in appearance since we last saw him, but still wearing an air of dashing pretension. He stood at the door, shaking his head, winking to himself, and fumbling in his pocket, evidently in a state of great mental perplexity, probably from his entertaining doubts as to what would be the character of his reception; or from his being equally uncertain as to the best mode of opening the conversation. Nor was he at all relieved by Rust, who without moving, fastened his eye upon him with a cold, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... take such pains to efface any mark they may find left by white men, entertaining thoughts like those of Morgiana in the 'Arabian Nights' tale of the Forty Thieves, that it would be most imprudent to trust to a single mark. A relief party should therefore be provided with a branding-iron and moveable letters, and with paints, and they should ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... which he had often remembered with so much pleasure when alone in Tennis; but the time to devote himself to her fully and completely had not yet come, for what manifold and powerful impressions, how much that was elevating, delightful, and entertaining ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... other. At last Arabella got fuller command of her voice. When she had related that her father's positive wish, furthered by the doctor's special injunction to obey it scrupulously, was that they were not to go to him in London, and not to breathe a word of his illness, but to remain at Brookfield entertaining friends, Adela stamped her foot, saying that it was more than human nature ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Nature have given to the world a series of recollections so entertaining, so vigorous, and so instinct with life as these delightful reminiscences. The author takes the reader with him in the rambles in which he spent the happiest hours of his boyhood, a humble observer of the myriad forms of life in field and ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... not otherwise interested in the study of provincialisms will find Mr. Bartlett's book an entertaining one. The passages he quotes in illustration are sometimes strangely comic. Here is one: "To SAVE. To make sure, i.e., to kill game, or an enemy, whether man or beast. To get conveys the same meaning.... ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... of Crusoes, Alexander Selkirk, as I am aware, commences his entertaining history with his birth and parentage, and as I am also a Crusoe, although a very minor adventurer, I may as well follow the precedent and declare ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... found that once plentiful homestead sorely ruined and deteriorated by years of thriftless dissipation; and Isabella Linton, already metamorphosed into a wan and listless slattern, broken-spirited and pale. As a pleasant means of entertaining his wife and her old servant, Heathcliff discoursed on his love for Catharine and on his conviction that she could not really care ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... sound of a melodious female voice speaking English fell on my ears. I looked around. A girl was bending over a book, and entertaining her father and mother by reading something of special interest and beauty. I listened and recognised some of my own sentences rendered into the speech of Shakespeare. These three were learning to feel the charms of the Lorelei legend as I had felt ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... very little Capacity, or Inclination, to argue upon this Subject; and being a little indolent withal, I shall take the Liberty of entertaining to Day with a Story, that lies ready at my elbow; and which I declare before-hand, has no significant Meaning in it, that I know of: If the Sagacity of my Readers can make more of it than my self, in God's Name, let them please themselves ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... which the king of the Franks was about to invade, and particularly to describe the extraordinary defences and interior conditions with which it is credited by the gossipy old Monk of St. Gall, the most entertaining, though hardly the most credible, writer of that period. All authors admit that the country of the Avars was defended by an ingenious and singular system of fortifications. The account we propose to give, the Monk of St. Gall declares that he wrote down from the ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... be spared to make HARPER'S YOUNG PEOPLE the most entertaining, instructive, high-toned, and popular weekly paper for the youthful ...
— Harper's Young People, December 16, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... says 'I told you so!' with an air, as if after a double somersault in the circus ring; grows wistful, even tender, with emotions always genuine ... always ... as becomes the harlequin-philosopher, entertaining." ...
— Contemporary American Literature - Bibliographies and Study Outlines • John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert
... with pain?' asked Roderick. 'Why should the great realm of the waters and the seas present us with nothing but those terrors which you have accustomed yourself to find there? Why not rather look on such creatures as strange, entertaining, and ludicrous mummers, and on the whole region in the light of a great masked ball-room? But your whims go still further; for as you love roses with a kind of idolatry, there are many flowers for which you have a no less vehement hatred: yet ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... a new novel, Antonio Foscarini, said to be entertaining, and to contain a good picture of Venetian life in ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... shocked by the dreadful death of her grandmother whom she adored, but she displayed unexpected strength of character and controlled her grief so that she might be able to look after the guests whom she was now entertaining for the first time as mistress of the house. The Baronne de Vibray had failed in her attempt to persuade Therese to come with her to Querelles to sleep. Therese was determined in her refusal to leave the chateau and what she termed her "post ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... The distinction he drew between Theocritus and the earlier Greek singers in the "Defence of Poetry", his severe strictures on "The Two Noble Kinsmen" in a letter to Mary (August 20, 1818) and his phrase about Ariosto, "who is entertaining and graceful, and SOMETIMES a poet," illustrate the application of critical canons wholly at variance with the "art ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... "Entertaining these sentiments, it only remains for me to say that I will cheerfully cooeperate with Congress in any measure that may be necessary for the protection of the civil rights of the freedmen, as well as those of all other classes of persons throughout the United States, by judicial ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... these are, certes, entertaining facts, Like Shakespeare's stealing deer, Lord Bacon's bribes; Like Titus' youth, and Caesar's earliest acts;[208] Like Burns (whom Doctor Currie well describes);[209] Like Cromwell's pranks;[210]—but although Truth exacts These amiable descriptions from the scribes, As most essential to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... other stories continuing their adventures and experiences, or other books quite as entertaining ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on Grandpa's Farm • Laura Lee Hope
... Sam Houston, Davy Crockett, Colonel Bowie, and other Texan heroes in connection with the entertaining story of the fortunes of two brothers, Dan and Ralph Radbury. The fall of the Alamo is ...
— For the Liberty of Texas • Edward Stratemeyer
... these books is manliness. The stories are wonderfully entertaining, and they are at the same time sound and wholesome. No boy will willingly lay down an unfinished ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... is talking of dropping the publication of the University sermon. It is possible, however, that the mere threat may have the effect of making the sermons more entertaining. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 4, 1914 • Various
... station just in time to catch the up-going train. "We stay at an hotel to-night," I said to Heasy, "I positively won't turn up at the D's again." We got to town in time for lunch, and then went to see the Happy Day, at Daly's (very well named we thought), where Heasy's brother was entertaining a party. He had seen us off, "positively for the last time," at 7.30 that morning. We saw him in the distance, and in the interval we instructed the programme girl to take round a slip of paper on which we printed:—"If you will come round to Stalls ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... Erasmus the scoffing jest that what had begun as a tragedy ended as a comedy, it {124} crowned his career, symbolizing the return from medieval asceticism to modern joy in living. Dwelling in the fine old friary, entertaining with lavish prodigality many poor relatives, famous strangers, and students, notwithstanding unremitting toil and not a little bodily suffering, he expanded in his whole nature, mellowing in the warmth of a happy fireside climate. ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... egotistical, ignorant editor who was trying to keep up appearances against such heavy odds, touched the best and deepest that was in Hinton, and lifted him out of himself. Gradually he began to take the lead in the conversation. With great tact he relieved Mr. Opp of the necessity of entertaining, and gave him a chance to eat his dinner. He told stories so simple that even Miss Kippy loosened her hold on her brother's ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... of satire in which there is not a particle of bad blood,' it seems fair to conclude that in the Gentlemanly Interest all is considered fair, and that to accuse a man of writing criticisms on his own works is to be 'witty and entertaining,' and likewise 'careless, familiar, and sparkling' to the genteelest purpose possible in this genteelest ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... condition which the affairs of this Province may now permanently take, I perceive, that the period is arrived for entertaining enlarged views and scope of system, necessary to supersede some very disadvantageous circumstances which should be gradually corrected, and to raise the Province to that consideration, value and importance, which it will soon assume, ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... or "What a shame!" Mr. Oover said in a tone of quiet authority that compelled Greddon's ear "Duke, I hope I am not incognisant of the laws that govern the relations of guest and host. But, Duke, I aver deliberately that the founder of this fine old club; at which you are so splendidly entertaining me to-night, was an unmitigated scoundrel. I say he ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... away always afflicted, but, never disheartened." Madame de Montespan, piqued to see that the king no longer thought of anybody but Madame de Maintenon, "said to him one day at Marly," writes Dangeau, "that she has a favor to ask of him, which was to let her have the duty of entertaining the second-carriage people and of amusing the antechamber." It required more than seven years of wrath and humiliation to make her resolve upon quitting the court, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... general, and the husbands of the ladies, were rescued by Akbar Khan. They were held for a time by the son of Dost Mahomed in a sort of captivity; where some of them had leisure to write narratives of their adventures, while others, with an inconsistence common and entertaining in melodramatic pieces, amused themselves with fun ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... the enthusiastic, often inspired amateur, approaching each new part with the zest of a brief but brilliant enthusiasm. I suppose no popular favourite ever had his name associated with more good stories and wit, original and vicarious. Despite some entertaining extracts from his commonplace book I doubt if this side of him is quite worthily represented; at least nothing here quoted beats Lady TREE'S own mot for a mendacious newspaper poster—Canard a la Press. Possibly we are still to look for a more official volume of reference; meantime ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, October 6, 1920 • Various
... said Adams, with a grave look, while hospitably entertaining his visitor that afternoon, "we are increasing at a great rate, and although they may perhaps take me home and swing me up to the yard-arm, I think it better to run the risk o' that than to leave all these poor young things here unprotected. Why, just think what might ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... believe you'd find it enormously entertaining to hunt up your gate the next day and ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... one might have thought quite astonishing, John Clark rose somehow from under the mass of little heads, and, with his arms still around them, still talking, still cajoling, still entertaining and still caressing, he managed to bear the whole curly, chattering flock to the door where, with renewed kisses and squeezes and questions, they were all finally induced to release their hold and run squeaking and frisking off ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page
... entertaining host, and the boys were led on to talk about themselves during most of the meal. Especially were their hosts interested in the story of the discovery of the Lost Claim, which the boys had found on their trip in ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin
... crowded over the Common, the County Club was in debt for L70. The story of the paying of the debt and the revival of the club has the real ring. The club met and were in despair; they could not hope, with such a debt, to play matches. The Bishop of Tasmania, in his entertaining little History of Kennington, tells (in ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... to children, without affectation or condescension, as if they too were grown-ups. My parents were always entertaining people, and it was assumed without comment that I too was host no less than they. Twice a day I had to be in evidence: at tea time, face and hands shining clean, hair carefully brushed, my small body covered with crisp white duck, black silk stockings, on my legs, and patent leather ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... epoch of general rejoicing arrives, he is credited with another year himself. So is everybody else. New Year's day is a common birthday for the community, a sort of impersonal anniversary for his whole world." Now this is a very entertaining conceit, but it will hardly pass muster as a serious argument with one who has any real understanding of Japanese ideas on the subject. The simple fact is that the Japanese does not ordinarily tell you how old the child ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... of which the hall-doors opened so readily, of which the obsequious servants, as you passed up the comfortable stair, sounded your name from landing to landing, until it reached the apartment where jolly old Dives welcomed his friends! What a number of them he had; and what a noble way of entertaining them. How witty people used to be here who were morose when they got out of the door; and how courteous and friendly men who slandered and hated each other everywhere else! He was pompous, but with such a cook what would one not swallow? he was rather dull, perhaps, but would not such ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... coast of Egypt, they kept the vessel in deep water till sunset, and then entered the harbour of Alexandria in the dark. The centurion, on landing, met with a freedman of the emperor, from whom he learned that the prefect was then at supper, entertaining a large company of friends. The freedman led the cohort quietly into the palace, into the very room where Flaccus was sitting at table; and the first tidings that he heard of his government being disapproved of in Rome was his finding himself a prisoner in his ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... felt as sincere a regard for this beautiful, amiable girl as his nature was capable of entertaining. In rank and fortune she was more than his equal, and left to himself, he would willingly have married her. Before he learned that his project of a marriage in the Colony was scouted at Court he had already offered his love to Caroline de St. Castin, and won easily the gentle heart that ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... permission to print the entire Bible; and here I will hint that in these countries, until the inhabitants become Christian, it would be expedient to drop the Old Testament altogether, for if the Old accompany the New the latter will be little read, as the former is so infinitely more entertaining to the carnal man. Mr. Wilby in his [last] letter informs me that 30 Bibles have been sold in Lisbon within a short time, but that the demand for Testaments has not amounted to half that number. My best respects ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... attention to his regular tasks, but read, or rather devoured, all the books he could lay his hands on, and began to display his unrivalled conversational powers, being often seen "lounging about the college gates, with a circle of young students around him, whom he was entertaining with wit, keeping from their studies, and sometimes rousing to rebellion against the college discipline." He was, at this time, so miserably poor, that his shoes were worn to tatters, and his feet appeared through them, to the scandal of the Christ-Church men, when he ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... that I must be a very honest fellow for writing down those fancies,—which every one else seems afraid to whisper. I shall at least come in for my share of the odium in entertaining such fancies: indeed I shall expect the charge of entertaining them exclusively, and shall scarce expect to find a single fellow-confessor, unless it be some pure and innocent-thoughted girl, who will say peccavi to—here and ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... remained true to the Covenant. Her position, however, involved her in many a dilemma. The wedlock that promised to be a blessed union proved to be a galling yoke. The husband was placed in power by the king, and granted the title of duke. On one occasion, when entertaining Archbishop Sharp, the two grew merry over their plan to put certain Covenanters to death. The tender-hearted woman, sitting with them at the table, was greatly distressed, yet she wisely concealed ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... years later, when a very old woman, Mrs. Sherwood wrote a third part of the Fairchild Family, in which she was helped by her daughter, Mrs. Kelly. But this third part is less entertaining and interesting than the two which went before it, and is also not entirely Mrs. Sherwood's own work; so you will ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... of the most entertaining autobiographies, carefully edited, and with preliminary Critical and Biographical Essays. Little-Classic size. 8 vols. ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 1: Curiosities of the Old Lottery • Henry M. Brooks
... especially so in Carter Hall's stories of Moore and his patron, Lord Lansdowne. Moore, at this time, was in ill-health and shut up from the world. I need not attempt to quote the conversation. Irving had been somewhat intimate with Moore in former days, and found him doubtless an entertaining and lively companion,—but his replies to Hall about the "patronage" of my Lord Lansdowne, etc., indicated pretty clearly that he had no sympathy with the small traits and parasitical tendencies of Moore's character. If there was anything specially ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... the world set forth in big headlines, that Jurgis could spell out slowly, with the children to help him at the long words. There was battle and murder and sudden death—it was marvelous how they ever heard about so many entertaining and thrilling happenings; the stories must be all true, for surely no man could have made such things up, and besides, there were pictures of them all, as real as life. One of these papers was as good as a circus, and nearly as good as a spree—certainly a most wonderful treat for a workingman, who ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... blood. Other authors have wandered still further afield. Some finding Mosul idioms in the Recueil, propose "Middlegates" for its birth-place and Mr. W. G. P. Palgrave boldly says "The original of this entertaining work appears to have been composed in Baghdad about the eleventh century; another less popular but very spirited version is probably of Tunisian authorship ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... Everlasting Why, he knows, if he be a sound philosopher—and a sound philosopher is he who is not led into the grievous error of taking his philosophy seriously—that the question is but the starting point of the entertaining game of Speculation. ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... thought it the psychological moment to spring a request he had been entertaining in his heart for some time. "Will you let me take Pepper to camp? Lots of the boys have dogs but none of them are as smart ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... of perfection amongst those who aspire after virtue, because many behave as if they placed it barely in multiplying exercises of piety and good works. This costs little to self-love, which it rather feeds by entertaining a secret vanity, or self-complacency, in those who are not very careful in watching over their hearts. It is a common thing to see persons who have passed forty or fifty years in the constant practice of penance and all religious exercises, and the use of the most holy sacraments, still subject ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... and walking, one idea only in my mind now; could I detain her till dark? Dolly, who was very pretty indeed, amused herself with me for hours, playing hot and cold, snubbing me one minute, encouraging me with her eyed another. Hour after hour went and she found this game so entertaining that she accompanied me to the park behind the Botanical Gardens, and it was not until it was too late for me to catch a train home that she gave herself to me. In fact, we stayed out the whole of that warm summer night. As the hours went by she told me of her home in ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the uniform if I could possibly have helped it, but that brute Scarsby was as vindictive as a red Indian and as obstinate as a swine. His wife could do nothing with him at first. She came to me with tears and said she'd have to give up the idea of entertaining the king at her party if his coming depended on Scarsby's withdrawing his action against Madame Ypsilante. I told her to have another try and promised her he'd come in uniform if she succeeded. That induced her to tackle her husband again. I don't know how ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... The air was warm and fragrant, the prospect of dinner, with its eagerly attendant Tony, rather stirred her, and the mirror had everything delightful to say. Like all women of forty, Isabelle liked the night, tempered lights and becoming settings, and the dignity of formal entertaining. Last but not least, she had a new toy to-night, a great black fan of uncurled wild ostrich plumes whose tumbled beauty she waved about her slowly as Harriet came in, watching the effect in the ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... handsome, his person fine and graceful, his conversation lively and entertaining, politeness adding charms to an excellent understanding. His behaviour, I have been told, was particularly engaging, his temper amiable, though somewhat too warm, and he had all his grandmother's generosity, without any ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... specification, "Guilty, except as to receiving, entertaining, harboring, and concealing Samuel Arnold and Michael O'Laughlin, and except as to combining, confederating, and conspiring with Edward Spangler; of this, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... in London. Oddly enough, although a prolific writer, it is to another person— to Mr James Boswell, who first met him in 1763— that he owes his greatest and most lasting fame. A much larger number of persons read Boswell's Life of Johnson— one of the most entertaining books in all literature— than Johnson's own works. Between the years 1779 and 1781 appeared his last and ablest work, The Lives of the Poets, which were written as prefaces to a collective edition ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... seem so, sir. I have to thank you for a most delightful evening, sir. Your conversation has been both instructive and entertaining. However, sir, the hour is now late, and I should ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... called on Dr. Mather Byles, then living in retirement, who, though a Congregational divine, was yet a sturdy loyalist during the Revolution, and had a son who entered the ministry of the Church of England and was proscribed and banished for entertaining the political views of his father. Dr. Byles was a noted wit, and so ready with his puns and sarcasms that seldom did anyone try to match him in this line without coming off the worse for the conflict. When Seabury paid him the ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... agreeable young barristers are absent, attending those parties, and paying their respects to Mr. Kewsy's excellent claret, or Mr. Justice Ermine's accomplished daughters; the uninvited are partaking of the economic joint, and the modest half-pint of wine at the Club, entertaining themselves and the rest of the company in the Club-room, with Circuit jokes and points of wit and law. Nobody is in chambers at all, except poor Mr. Cockle, who is ill, and whose laundress is making him ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... this flat-footed defiance of Stone and his crowd, Bobby went to the theater with Jack Starlett and Jack's sister and mother. As they seated themselves he bowed gravely across the auditorium to Agnes and Aunt Constance Elliston, who, with Uncle Dan, were entertaining a young woman relative from Savannah. He did not know how the others accepted his greeting; he only saw Agnes, and she smiled quite placidly at him, which was far worse than if she had tilted her head. Through two dreary, interminable ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... full that evening, and the platform was prettily and appropriately decorated with flags and plants in pots. There was a sprinkling of local gentry on the front benches, and Miss Todd, who had returned after the holidays, and was entertaining some visitors at the Abbey, brought her whole house-party. The villagers had turned up in full force, thoroughly prepared to enjoy themselves. The Fleming family sat at the end of the second row, and watched as the ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil |
