"Quip" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with seven-league boots. So he not only kept up with us easily, but oftentimes made a detour through the fields and over the wild country on either side, as a questing dog does, ever returning to us with some quaint vagrant fancy or quip of childish simplicity. ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... Wordsworth had said that he did not see much difficulty in writing like Shakespeare, if he had a mind to try it. "Clearly," Lamb continued, "nothing is wanted but the mind." Then there is the famous quip that runs back to Tudor times, although it has been attributed to various later celebrities, including Doctor Johnson: A concert singer was executing a number lurid with vocal pyrotechnics. An admirer remarked that the ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... Republic (not the New Republic) or by Samuel Butler in his Notebooks. Contribs come valiantly to hand with a barrowful of letters every day—("The ravings fed him" as Don captioned some contrib's quip about Simeon Stylites living on a column); but nevertheless the direct and alternating current must be turned on six times a week. His jocular exposal of the colyumist's trade secret compares it to the ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... love of wit and laughter. To joke and quip seemed to him beneath the dignity of men. It is, rather, the safety-valve of a highly intelligent people—the outlet for their ironic perceptions of life. The most amusing songs of the war that I have heard were given by the poilus ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... early dawn he doth peg in His noble work and brave; And eke from cark and wordly sin He seeketh soles to save; And all day long, with quip and song, Thus stitcheth he the way Our feet may know the right from wrong, Nor ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... believe it, this coquettish quip, whether the speaker herself had any idea of it or not, actually touched and with the touching cured a preposterous ache of something like jealousy which I had been vaguely conscious of ever since Mrs. Leete had told me of Edith Bartlett's marriage. Even while I had been holding Edith ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... on my tongue to spring Some poisoned quip that I thought clever; Then something happened and the sting Unuttered went, ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... vain for the Rabbi of the little western isle to contend by quip or reason against the popular frenzy. England, indeed, was a hotbed of Christian enthusiasts awaiting the Jewish Millennium, the downfall of the Pope and Anti-Christ, and Jews ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... three women and their partners, a rollicking Virginia reel was soon in progress. Men and women danced in moccasins, and the place was soon a-roar, Burning Daylight the centre of it and the animating spark, with quip and jest and rough merriment rousing them out of the slough of despond in ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... un vendredi, bien gre et bien quipe de tout. Ledoux aurait voulu peut-tre des mts un peu plus solides; cependant, tant qu'il commanda le btiment, il n'eut point s'en plaindre. Sa traverse fut heureuse et rapide jusqu' la cte d'Afrique. Il mouilla dans la rivire de Joale[1] (je crois) dans un moment o ...
— Quatre contes de Prosper Mrime • F. C. L. Van Steenderen
... when the twangling ended, skipt again; And being asked, 'Why skipt ye not, Sir Fool?' Made answer, 'I had liefer twenty years Skip to the broken music of my brains Than any broken music thou canst make.' Then Tristram, waiting for the quip to come, 'Good now, what music have I broken, fool?' And little Dagonet, skipping, 'Arthur, the King's; For when thou playest that air with Queen Isolt, Thou makest broken music with thy bride, Her daintier namesake down in Brittany— And so thou ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... the town's foppish young gallants, and who now occupied a prominent front seat, had widely announced the fact that he was present for the express purpose of "showing the mind-reader up." At him accordingly the first quip was directed. ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... him off. Then Worry began to shadow David by day, to share his pillow at night. If Fisher, like so many others, should fail—! But with an effort he concealed the unbidden guest from Shirley. With her he was always cheery, ready with quip and laugh, teasing her over her devotion to that red-faced bit of humanity, hight Davy Junior. And in truth, the sight of her, still weak and fragile but happy in the possession of her baby, would give him a fresh courage. Things couldn't happen to hurt her, he assured himself. For her, for ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... customarily sedate and elderish, and then, almost without perceptible change, for swift moments oddly youthful; with a wide mouth, which would suddenly twist up at its right corner as though from some unholy quip of humor, and whose as sudden straightening into a solemn line would show that the unseemly humor had been exorcised. In manner he was bland, ornate, gestureish, ample; giving the sense that in nothing less commodious than a church could he loose his person and his powers to ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... had delivered himself of a quip that set my teeth on edge, I said to him, appealingly: "Why should you be ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... connected with ennui. This comes early, and if a girl of that age is herself drawn into the circle of the events in question, we are never safe from extreme exaggeration. The merest larceny becomes a small robbery; a bare insult, a remarkable attack; a foolish quip, an interesting seduction; and a stupid, boyish conversation, an important conspiracy. Such causes of mistakes are well-known to all judges; at the same time they are again and again ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... "Now, maid Mary, that quip was more like me than thee, and I'll have none of it. 'T is for thee to carry the honey-bag to mollify the stings my naughty tongue must aye inflict. I would I were not ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... of quips and anecdotes. Probably the most famous coffee quip is that of Mme. de Sevigne, who, as already told in chapter XI, was wrongfully credited with saying, "Racine and coffee will pass." It was Voltaire in his preface to Irene who thus accused the amiable letter-writer; and she, being dead, ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... high and laughter filled the chamber, the mirth of some having its source in a neighbour's quip, that of others having no source at all save in ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... that dingy old cutlass will never do for a drawing-room. As well a miller's dusty cap to cover those glorious borrowed curls of thine; we must get thee one shaped in the mode." This quip ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... true, the ever-earnest, he would not recover from the wound that frail one had so carelessly inflicted. He would be a changed man, with hair prematurely graying at the temples, like Gordon Dane's, hiding his hurt under a mask of light cynicism to all but persons of superior insight. The heartless quip, the mad jest on his lips! And years afterward, a deeply serious and very beautiful woman would divine his sorrow and win him back to his ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... thirty,—a high-spirited, brave, generous and impulsive officer. His family played some considerable part in the life of the time and they were always suspected of Jacobite leanings. Murray's brother, Lord Elibank, was a leader among the Scottish wits of his day. Dr. Johnson's famous quip against the Scots when he defined oatmeal as a food in England for horses and in Scotland for men was met by Elibank's neat retort: "And where will you find such horses and such men?" Another brother, Alexander, ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... rather dubious smile over the quip. This much he felt that he could afford, since those same courts served his personal ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... though mademoiselle had suddenly grown talkative, and was full of a saucy French wit, I fear I must have seemed very stupid to her, for all the while I was trying to keep up my share of repartee and quip I was listening, listening. Mademoiselle noticed at last ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... were toward the fore—first out. They spread off to one side with jest and quip, with flash of bottle and slap on shoulder. The populace thinned a bit from the steps.... And then suddenly as a pistol shot Cleve Whitmore's voice ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... take the edge off this quip quarrelsome that the following amusing lines were addressed in the next month to his nieces, giving them particulars about animal and vegetables foods in Russia. "The country," he said, "has no ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... you looking so glum, Dr. Christobal?" she demanded. "Has the captain's quip given you a shock, or is it that you ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... to his mouth, puffing gravely, saying little, thinking much, quick at appreciating a joke, slow at making one, with an eye full of humour, and its lid and corresponding corner of his mouth quickly responsive to any quip or crank that might let fly. Eclectic in his humour as in his art, disposed to condemn any cartoon suggestion not thoroughly thought out as "damn bad," he was in the weekly assembly at the Table like the 'cello in the orchestra—not ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... with quip and jest when Grace, hearing a crackling of under brush, looked back along the path they had ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake • Laura Lee Hope |
