"Twit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... demused in beer, A maudlin poetess, a rhyming peer, A clerk, foredoomed his father's soul to cross, Who pens a stanza, when he should engross? Is there, who, locked from ink and paper, scrawls With desperate charcoal round his darkened walls? All fly to Twit'nam, and in humble strain Apply to me, to keep them mad or vain. Arthur, whose giddy son neglects the laws, Imputes to me and my damned works the cause; Poor Comus sees his frantic wife elope, And curses wit, and poetry, and Pope. Friend to my life! (which did not you ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... twit In the sun for a bit When his light so bright is shining, O: Or sit and fit My plumes, or knit Straw plaits for the nest's nice lining, O: And she with glee Shows unto me Underneath her wings reclining, O: And I sing that Peg Has an ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... airs from Hades, I could almost fancy the stoker a Mercury, conducting his hermetically sealed convicts down those terrible passages that lead direct to the abominable ferry. I said, "I know nothing of them;" but now I verily believe you mean to twit me with my former experiment in railway knowledge, and have no intention to purchase shares in the La Mancha Company (and I doubt if there be any such) to countenance your Quixotic pleasantry. I did speculate once, it is true, in one—London and Falmouth ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... determination on his little ebony face while his heart was beating with pride and exultation. Here was his great chance to turn the tables on his white companions. No longer would they dare tease him about running from the eel or about his adventure after the crane. He would be able now to twit them all, even the captain, with running away while he, Chris, stood ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... more disgruntled. When practice was over he joined Tom, Roy and Harry—the latter pair having watched proceedings from the stand—and made his way to the gymnasium in a very poor state of mind. Roy, who didn't believe in humouring folks, tried to twit Steve on his "scrapping" with Lacey, but Steve flared up on the instant and Roy was glad to change the subject. After that, Steve was gloomily silent ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... in his purpose, but purpose there should be. He had been twitted more than once at Killaloe with his silence;—for it had been conceived by his fellow-townsmen that he had been sent to Parliament on the special ground of his eloquence. They should twit him no more on his next return. He would speak and would carry the House with him if a human effort ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... out my hair, Or dash my brains out in despair!— Me every scurvy knave may twit, With stinging jest and taunting sneer! Like skulking debtor I must sit, And sweat each casual word to hear! And though I smash'd them one and all,— Yet them I could not liars call. Who comes this way? who's sneaking here? If I mistake not, two ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... easy for you," he said; "you've done everything in life, and have a long row of milestones behind you to show how you've moved on. I have done nothing, only gone back, and have all the milestones in front to show how I've failed. It's easy to twit me when you've got everything you want—position, reputation, fortune, a living faith to keep you up to it. I am nobody, miserably poor, have no friends, and don't believe half we say in church. What am I to do? No one cares a fig about ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... Selle, stirrups and bridle with gold bedight; Six turbands and robes that shall honour show * With that courser the colour of blackest night. So hold me not like the most of mankind, * Who joy the fair ones to twit and flyte." ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... given up reading the Egyptian news, I am so disgusted with the whole business. I saw several pieces of land to let for building purposes about Falmouth, but did not buy. [This was to twit his wife with her constant desire that he should buy a bit of land in the country to settle ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... in exasperation he blurted out, 'I'm sick of being called the accuser of Mr. Lanier. By God, I've defended him! I've hidden worse things than ever I told you yet, and now I'll stand it no longer! You twit me with spying and slandering. Then by all that's holy, you shall say here and now who's the better man. 'T was Lieutenant Lanier himself that leapt from the window this night a week ago—the back upper window ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... to think of all the things I could twit dad about if ever he went after me again. It struck me that I hadn't been a circumstance, so far, to what dad must have been in his youth. At my worst, ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... said Raleigh. "He's getting sensitive about that; and what you need to learn more than anything else is that it isn't manners to twit a man on facts. What's bothering you, Dryden? You look like a man ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... Burney's) first appearance. There was the envious Kenrick and the savage Wolcot; the asp George Steevens and the polecat John Williams. It did not, however, occur to them to search the parish register of Lynn, in order that they might be able to twit a lady with having concealed her age. That truly chivalrous exploit was reserved for a bad writer of our own time, whose spite she had provoked by not furnishing him with materials for a worthless edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson, some sheets of which our readers ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... grasshopper," laughed Hallin. "Healthy wretch! Did Heaven give you that sun-burn only that you might come home from Italy and twit us weaklings? Do you think I want to look as rombustious as you? 'Nothing ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... summer days that you find school most tiresome. The air in the room is hot and drowsy, and outside you can see there is a breeze blowing, for the trees are gently tossing their green boughs as if to twit you with having to work out sums in such glorious weather. And there come to your ears the pleasant sounds of the buzzing of insects and twittering of birds, and the brook splashing over the stones. ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... its fresh fragrant flowers over the dead man's head; the swallow passes again—"twit, twit;" now the men come with hammer and nails, the lid is placed over the dead man, while his head rests on the dumb book—so long cherished, now closed ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... the table, and seated himself in his place. Then, as he quaffed the foaming ale, he flung out taunts and jeers and hard words to all who sat around, but chiefly to Bragi the Wise. Then he turned to Sif, the beautiful wife of Thor, and began to twit her ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... of his own Accord; but the Devil's Heart failed him, and he fled back. You have deceived me, says he, if I had been wise I had not given you that Caution: Many are of Opinion, that what you have once confess'd is immediately struck out of the Devil's Memory, that he can never be able to twit you in the ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... remark in your last letter, in reply to mine of May 18. You twit me with "rounding off my periods." I apologize. You must remember that I earned my bread and salt doing that for years, and habit is strong. I no longer do it with my tongue in my ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... knew that some of these things were barbarisms, but he kept silent so that she would not mock him and twit him with his stammering. She feigned to be whimsical in order to increase her illusion that she was a mother, and she began to dress herself in colors, adorn herself with flowers and ribbons, and to walk through the Escolta in a wrapper. ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... once in my life. Amongst much that is delightfully vague and dreamy, one thing stands out very clear in my own mind at present. I must do something. My loafing days are over. The profession of a gentleman at large, with which you twit me, I hereby renounce. She will back me up in any honest work—she says so. I've confessed the way I wasted the last three years. She said she is glad she did not know me then. Oh my, William, it is all very well for ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... dead, pulling my hat brim down behind to divert the rivulet coursing down the back of my neck, calling to the others in a voice rather cracked from embarrassment. They looked back at me curiously, and Alice began to twit me, standing in the rain, while Tristan desired to know whether we thought we were a pair of goldfish; in his estimation, we might belong to the piscine tribe all right, but not to that decorative branch thereof. To be frank, he ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby
... uttering a word. But, when I had finished, he smiled and said, 'Out on thee, O fool! Thou hast entered my house and sold my kerchief and spent my silver: so, with whom art thou wroth, O pimp?'[FN186] Then he left me and went away to her, whilst I said, 'By Allah, thou art right to twit me as nincompoop and pander!' Then I left his door and went away in sore concern, and I feel its trace in my heart to this very day; for I never had my will of her nor, indeed, ever heard of her more." And amongst other ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... lie, Tom Tracy,' Harold said. 'Mr. Arthur does not take care of us. We do it ourselves, and have for ever so long. He did give us the house, but it ain't for you to twit me of that. Whose house is this, I'd like to know? It isn't yours, nor your father's, and there isn't a thing in it yours. It is ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... good to keep. Holt pulled on his boots and went out to twit such of the enemy as he might meet. It chanced that the first of them was Selfridge, whom he had not seen since his arrival, though he knew the ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... stories; and several modish beauties amused themselves by coquetting with him, one of these being my Lady Betty Tantillion, who would tease and ogle him until he was ready to lose his wits in his elderly delight. One of her favourite tricks was to pout at him and twit him on his adoration of my Lady Dunstanwolde, of whom she was in truth not too fond; though she had learned to keep a civil tongue in her head, since her ladyship was a match for half a dozen such as she, and, when she chose to use her cutting wit, ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... between the mock-bird and the sparrow. The former taunted the latter and insisted on his singing; and "The sparrow cock'd a knowing eye, And made him this most tart reply — 'You steal from all and call it wit, But I prefer my simple "twit".'" But the latter view is espoused by most of the writers mentioned, notably and nobly by Drake, the Haynes, the Laniers, Lee, Meek, and Thompson, the poet-laureate of the mocking-bird, whose poems should be read by every lover of nature and especially ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... the society of women, and at college we used to twit him about it, for he was always eager to meet a new face, trusting that the new one might be the ideal for which ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... I ran upstairs ten minutes since, exercising his canary-birds at their tricks:—"Come out on my little finger, my pret-pret-pretties! Come out, and hop upstairs! One, two, three—and up! Three, two, one—and down! One, two, three—twit-twit-twit-tweet!" The birds burst into their usual ecstasy of singing, and the Count chirruped and whistled at them in return, as if he was a bird himself. My room door is open, and I can hear the shrill singing and whistling at this very moment. If I am ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... answer: "Why twit ye me with that? Who was it sate upon a shield hard by the Waskstone, (1) when Walter of Spain slew so many of his kin? Ye, too, have faults enow of your own ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... is no stain upon his name now. No one can twit him now!" she continued, jubilantly. "There they are at the door! Now then, bring me that dressing-gown. Oh, if I'd only woke up sooner, I would have put on that new dress which Paul brought me, the one he likes so much. He said it made me look ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... allured into a relapse. If a prisoner endeavours to behave himself in gaol and keep aloof from evil contagion, he is bullied by his fellow-prisoners, and even his keepers regard him with suspicion. The one twit him with being a white-livered coward, the other consider him to be either a sneak or a "deep fellow." He is almost sure to fall and identify himself with the ranks of crime. An instance that the writer has personal knowledge of is that of a man, passionate in nature, and moved by the tears ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... young Englishwoman ought to be; and she is charming, fresh, and fascinating even still. But she occasionally talks in a manner which would be a little strong for a barrack-room now; and nothing gives her more genuine delight than to twit her kind, fond old uncle with his wife's infidelities, to make it clear to him that all the world is acquainted with the full particulars of his shame, and to sport with his jealous agonies. Congreve was the first dramatic author who put an English seaman on the stage; and, after his characteristic ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... of your prayers? 'Forgive us our trespasses.' But you, in your pride—you could forgive nothing. And now you dare to twit ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... agen old men marryin' young girls. It ain't natural. A man might marry a girl a few years younger than hisself, but there must be reason in everythink. I was older than me sisters, an' people began to twit me an' say I'd be left on the shelf, but before this, w'en I was sixteen an' Jim Clay twenty, me father broke his leg and was put by. All his trouble was his horses; he fretted an' fretted that they'd be spoilt by a careless driver, an' he had 'em trained ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... I am not," said Van Berg earnestly. "I could not be so mean as to twit you with an accident which you could not help, and with an act which was wholly involuntary on your part. Can we not both let by-gones by by-gones and ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... fond of her youngest son, and through him I had a wholesome and effectual hold of her; for if in any of her tantrums or fits of haughtiness—(this woman was intolerably proud; and repeatedly, at first, in our quarrels, dared to twit me with my own original poverty and low birth),—if, I say, in our disputes she pretended to have the upper hand, to assert her authority against mine, to refuse to sign such papers as I might think necessary for the distribution of our large ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Sheppard. 'A thin, spare frame,' sings the poet of Cartouche. Here, then, neither had the advantage, and if in the shades Cartouche despises the clumsiness and vulgarity of his rival, Sheppard may still remember the glory of Newgate, and twit the Frenchman with the barking of the boxmaker's dog. But genius is the talent of the dead, and the wise, who are not partisans, will not deny to the one or to the other the ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... corner just to see what the dear little fellow looked like, and this very sunbeam threw such a halo around him, you would have thought his feathers had been burnished gold. Then his voice, too, sounded so cheerily, as, with a merry 'Twit-twit-twee,' he disappeared from view, intent ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... his nephew, young Jimmy Sprang, met him on the street and proceeded to twit him about ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... to a garden, where everything looked blooming. Fresh and fragrant roses hung over the little palings. The linden trees were in blossom; while the swallows flew here and there crying, "Twit, twit, twit, my mate is coming;" but it was not the ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various
... don't twit a feller afore folks," said the Captain. "I'm goin' over to Harpswell Neck this blessed minute after the minister to 'tend the funeral,—so we'll ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... and only yielded under pressure. And when he joined them he was in one of his gravest moods, as if he had barricaded himself round with impenetrable reserve. There were two other guests, so Diana did not twit him openly; she only murmured in an aside, for his ear alone, "I'm so sorry it's a party, and we shall feel obliged to be polite. This civilisation ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... evergreen the trees That stand half-flayed and dying, And the dead trees on their knees In dog's-mercury and moss: And the bright twit of the goldfinch drops Down there as ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... man will work his way up from poverty and obscurity by his indomitable energy and perseverance, until he carves his name with scholars and statesmen on the temple of fame, it is the climax of meanness in any one to twit him of his humble origin, and hold him up to ridicule because his parents are poor and unhonored. And so when the gentleman tells us that the theatre was born in a cart, and was originated by those who had neither learning nor character, it is no argument against it, in my view, ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... He is now coquetting a little with the Tories, and especially professes great deference and profound respect for the Duke of Wellington; his sole object in politics, for the moment, is to badger, twit, and torment the Ministry, and in this he cannot contain himself within the bounds of common civility, as he exemplified the other night when he talked of 'Lord John this and Mr. Spring that' (on Thursday night), which, however contemptuous, ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... Two of the girls twit each other about the attentions of a handsome young army officer at a ball the night previous, each covertly aiming to outwit the other. It transpires later that the officer has had a little tiff with another girl to whom he was engaged, and his attentions ...
— Three Hats - A Farcical Comedy in Three Acts • Alfred Debrun
... light! And Work—work—work! When the weather is warm, and bright! While underneath the eaves The brooding swallows cling, As if to show me their sunny backs, And twit me with the spring. ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... never come back here—never. Oh, she was a sweet-spoken cat of a thing—but she had claws. I've been blamed for all the trouble. But if ever I had a chance, I'd tell that minister how she used to twit and taunt me in that sugary way of hers—how she schemed and plotted against me as long as she could. More fool I to care what he thinks either! I wish I were dead. If 'twasn't for the child, I'd go and drown myself at that black spring-hole down there—I'd be well ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Mrs. Pittis, and, indeed, gentlemen, I must turn aside one minute to remark the singularity of this king's body-guard, Coffin and Purse. 'Cash and Mortality,' said the king to me, 'make up, according to your theory, the aim and end of man. So with a couple of cinders you can twit him with his degradation. Sometimes Coffin, sometimes Purse, leaps out into his lap when he is cogitating.' 'Yes,' said I 'that will be extremely humorous. But, so please your majesty, I still have one objection to joining your honorable body.' 'What is that, Phil?' 'I suppose, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... an almost constant warfare of humorous badinage in connection with their several weaknesses. Josh would twit the fat boy on his enormous capacity for stowing "grub" away; and on the other hand, Nick generally came back with sarcastic remarks about "shadows," and "living skeletons," and such ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... hateful hall—a horrid hall! If it were only I, your poor lost Winifred, that was to suffer, oh! how much sooner would I be carried dead into a vault, than alive, and dressed in all the finest silks of India, into that dreadful house you twit me with!—unkind, unkind!" And almost fainting, her head sunk upon his shoulder, and his arm was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... has not disgraced you, Telemachus. I did not miss what I aimed at, and I was not long in stringing my bow. I am still strong, and not as the suitors twit me with being. Now, however, it is time for the Achaeans to prepare supper while there is still daylight, and then otherwise to disport themselves with song and dance which are the ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... conversation with them, varied now and then by a touch of sentiment, which was intended, by chance as it were, to open up to them for a moment the real deeper nature which they might not have suspected him of possessing. They used to twit him about his inclination to stoutness, and he used to joke about it too, and say he had too ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... deep shadow of the underwood a blackbird calls "ching, ching" before he finally settles himself to roost. In the yew the lesser birds are already quiet, sheltered by the evergreen spray; they have also sought the ivy-grown trunks. "Twit, twit," sounds high overhead as one or two belated little creatures, scarcely visible, pass quickly for the cover of the furze on the hill. The short January evening is of but a few minutes' duration; just now it was only dusky, and already ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... youngsters laughed at his notions; one or two even went so far as to accuse him of being a snob and to twit him on having changed the spelling of his name and dropped the first "r" for the sake of a stylishness he pretended to despise. He protested hotly; they stuck to their assertion. He declared his name was Patridge, always had been Patridge, and never could be anything ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... sentiment. With the dialogue which follows, a variation of the closing cadence of the song is sweetly blended by the orchestra. Hansel crowns Gretel Queen of the Woods with the floral wreath, and is doing mock reverence to her when a cuckoo calls from a distance. The children mimic the cry, then playfully twit the bird with allusions to its bad practice of eating the eggs of other birds and neglecting its own offspring. Then they play at cuckoo, eating the strawberries in lieu of eggs, until the basket is empty. They remember the threat ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... "Now Tomasso, though not willing to marry the girl himself, seems to have resented the idea of having anyone else do so, and accordingly seized every opportunity which presented itself to twit Angelo about the matter." ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... except his own, who hangs round a tavern or a butcher's shop, or trots alongside of a team, looking as if he were disgusted with the world, and the world with him. Our inland population, while they tolerate him, speak of him with contempt. Old , of Meredith Bridge, used to twit the sun for not shining on cloudy days, swearing, that, if he hung up his "yallah dog," he would make a better show of daylight. A country fellow, abusing a horse of his neighbor's, vowed, that, "if ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... that my friend need not twit me with being able to develop a mental organism if I felt the need of it, for his own ingenious attack on my position, and indeed every action of his life, was but an example of this ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... memory for other people's sins, but it only avenges its own wrongs. Give the wicked fairy Society a bad dinner, or leave her out of your invitation list for a ball, and she will twit you with the crimes or the misfortunes of a remote ancestor—she will go about talking of your grandfather the leper, or your great aunt who ran away with her footman. But so long as the wicked fairy gets all she wants out of you, she cares not a straw ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... December light, And work—work—work, When the weather is warm and bright While underneath the eaves The brooding swallows cling, As if to show me their sunny backs And twit me ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... that the presence of the other three restrained him. Yet some little of that much she may have seen reflected in his eyes, for all that day she rode pensive, a fond, wistful smile at the corners of her lips. And although to Gonzaga she manifested no resentment, yet did she twit him touching that mistake of his. Sore in his dignity, he liked her playful mockery little yet he liked the words in ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... kept rising from her chair, and laying her needlework aside to re-arrange the pans and kettles on the hearth. This restlessness was so unusual that Taffy, seated in the ingle with a book on his knee, had half raised his head to twit her when he felt a hand laid softly on his hair, and looked up into ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... mine, that time will have come already. The diamonds will be sold. Did you ever see a diamond in my possession? Why do you twit me with diamonds? If I had been a coal-owner, should I have been ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... you are aiming at," replied Barescythe, sharply. "You twit me with praising these books so extravagantly. I grant you that worse trash was never in type, (DAISY is not printed yet, you know,) but will you allow me to ask you ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Ages; and the cause or sense of it beyond guessing. It was some tala pepelo, Uma said, some lie, some calumny; and all she knew of it was that the girls who had been jealous of her luck with Ioane used to twit her with his desertion, and cry out, when they met her alone in the woods, that she would never be married. “They tell me no man he marry me. He ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... applying in the counting-house of Mr. Cunningham.* That once popular expression, or proverb, "are you up to snuff?" arose out of the above circumstance; for the officers of my corps, none of whom, except myself, had ventured on the storming-party, used to twit me about this modest reward for my labors. Never mind! when they want me to storm a fort ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to set down these early adventures of Harry Revel, I meant to dedicate them to my friend Mr. W. F. Collier of Woodtown, Horrabridge: but he died while the story was writing, and now cannot twit me with the pranks I have played among his stories of bygone Plymouth, nor send me his forgiveness—as he would have done. Peace be to him for a lover of Dartmoor ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... regretted his use of the word "shanty." Inhabitants of the Five Towns may allow themselves to twit the historic and excellent Turk's Head, but they do not extend the privilege to strangers. And in justice to the Turk's Head it is to be clearly stated that it did no more to cow and discourage travellers than any other provincial hotel in England. It was a sound and serious ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... twit me with what I said before I knew what your book was made of," said Mrs. Hartley affectionately. "How was I to know that you could write a novel, when you had only told me that you could translate a German philosopher? The two things do not sound ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... was when your mother was that aggravating—I had to find something to twit her with, my child. She was always setting up for a fine lady. [Mimics.] "Let me go, Engstrand; let me be. Remember I was three years in Chamberlain Alving's family at Rosenvold." [Laughs.] Mercy on us! She could never forget ...
— Ghosts • Henrik Ibsen
... might have been watching me from the shore; some boy who was jealous of my prowess as an oarsman— and there were such in our village—and this boy or boys would have seen that I had started for the islet, would easily have divined my reasons for turning back, and would not fail to "twit" me with cowardice. Partly influenced by this thought, and partly because I still had a desire to proceed, I plucked up fresh ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... and adventure—should be written in the first person. At the same time, the writer of this unpretentious story of a summer's tramp cannot but feel that he owes his readers—should he have any an apology for any avoidable egotism. His excuse is that, no twit notwithstanding ding the glamour attaching to the old mining towns, it is almost incredible how little is known of them by the average Californian; for the Eastern tourist there is more excuse, since the foot-hills of the Sierras lie outside the beaten tracks of travel. He has, therefore, ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... burlesque, travesty, travestie[obs3]; farce &c. (drama) 599; caricature. buffoonery &c. (fun) 840; practical joke; horseplay. scorn, contempt &c. 930. V. ridicule[transitive], deride, mock, taunt; snigger; laugh in one's sleeve; tease[ridicule lightly], badinage, banter, rally, chaff, joke, twit, quiz, roast; haze [U.S.]; tehee[obs3]; fleer[obs3]; show up. [i.p.] play upon, play tricks upon; fool to the top of one's bent; laugh at, grin at, smile at; poke fun at. satirize, parody, caricature, burlesque, travesty. turn into ridicule; make ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... glad thereof in the beginning!) that I would have written such things of thee, that, being ashamed, not to say before other folk, but before thine own self, thou shouldst have put out thine own eyes, not to see thyself in the glass; wherefore let not the little rivulet twit the sea with having caused it wax. Of thy love or that thou be mine, I reck not, as I have already said, a jot; be thou e'en his, an thou may, whose thou wast erst and whom, as I once hated, so at this present I love, having regard unto that ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... Tracks. Now it's of no use to lay the blame on the wrong shoulders. You know perfectly well that if you'd have let the drink alone things would never have come to this, and you wouldn't have been living now in such a dirty hole. But I'm not come down here, Jim, to twit you with what's done, and can't be undone now. If you've done wrong, well, there's time to turn over a new leaf and do better; and now's your time. You see what the drink's brought you to; and if you was to ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... further publication, however, was never called for. Punch attempted no reply—inexplicably, one would think, for there must have been something left to say of Hot Cross Bunn. Punch's rivals were not slow to twit him on his defeat, especially the "Puppet Show" and "The Man in the Moon," the latter of which, in a comic report of the proceedings at the "Licensing Committee for Poets," remarked, "Mr. Alfred Bunn was bitterly opposed on personal grounds ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... success. The soil was of the most sterile, intractable rock; those few wind-blown olives were dreadfully diaphanous, and Peter's blouse visible from afar—even from the market-place. Everything got about on Nepenthe. People began to twit her about the progress of those "Russian lessons." It became quite a scandal. Signor Malipizzo was more annoyed than any one else. He hated the whole brood of Russians, and had formed various projects for uprooting the association from the island. His ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... five columns each, which say that I have completely lifted any cloud away from his memory, and that his future fame will shine like a beacon in all ages. Thank God!" St. George Burton was wicked enough to twit her for her spelling, and to say that he found out as many as seventeen words incorrectly spelt in one letter. But she deftly excused herself by saying that she used archaic forms. "Never mind St. George," she writes good-humouredly, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... letters "the poet of good fellowship," more than compensated her for the injury done by his pastor. The Abbe was the Prior of Fontenay, whither Ninon frequently accompanied Madame the Duchess de Bouillon and the Chevalier d'Orleans. The Duchess loved to joke at the expense of the Abbe, and twit him about his wasted talents, which were more adapted to love than to his present situation. It may be that the worthy Abbe, after thinking over seriously what was intended to be a mere pleasantry, concluded that Madame the Duchess was right, and that he possessed some talent in the direction ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... She tried to discourage you, didn't she? All right, Mollie, you just send her back a Roland for an Oliver; give her as good as she sent. Tell her the Chester boys are going to swamp Marshall next Saturday, just to put them in trim for the great game on Thanksgiving morning with poor old Harmony. Twit her with a few reminders of that last baseball game we played, when Chester trailed Harmony's colors in the dust. I guess you can rub it in good and hard, ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... Her generous nature checked her in time. She had been about to twit him with his defeat. She sympathized with his feelings at the thought ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... the mouldful heat was gone? How each dart was faintly fingered, Resting in the end unthrown; Of the Faith thou pawn'dst for Fancies— Substance for a fadeful beam? Doth it taunt with bartered chances— Sterling strength for drowsy dream? Doth it brand thee apathetic? Twit with lost days many a one? Doth it chant in words emphatic "Gone for aye; for ever gone?" Is it that the voice reminds thee Of the wasted moments past? Saith it that the New Year finds ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... that's too bad!" said Polly, filled with righteous indignation. "It's not fair to twit Alan because there are some things ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... dog!" said the constable, as he continued to twit him. "Whence came the saucy wench in the kitchen, landlord? A dimpled ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... idle and unprofitable. Most people laugh if a bald-pate or hump-back jeer and mock at others who are so too: it is quite as ridiculous to jeer and mock if one lies open to retort oneself, as Leo of Byzantium showed in his answer to the hump-back who jeered at him for weakness of eyes, "You twit me with an infirmity natural to man, while you yourself carry your Nemesis on your back."[515] And so do not abuse another as an adulterer, if you yourself are mad after boys: nor as a spendthrift, if you yourself are niggardly. Alcmaeon said to Adrastus, "You are near kinsman to a woman that slew ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... Arthur, "you've put us all under heavy obligations by what you did, and for one I'm not going to forget it, or twit you about the funny noises you manage to coax out of that bone goose-call you made. The end justifies the means, is what I say every time. Now, what's next ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler
... bird was warbling overhead As if to twit me with the word unsaid Which he, more daring, when the sun was high, Trill'd to his mate! He knew the tender "why" Of many a pleading, and he knew, meseems, The very key-note to the lyric dreams Of all true poets when, by love impell'd, They search the ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... ourselves, madam, with which you English are pleased to twit us now and then, always prevents so sad a state of mind. For myself, I have had little to do with love; but I have had still less to do with despair, and intend, by help of Heaven, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... back to Oak Hall, and what happened to him there has already been related in detail in "Dave Porter's Return to School." His enemies could no longer twit him with being a "poorhouse nobody," yet they did all they could to dim his popularity and ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer
... about Mr. Blair and your having hurt your arm playing soccer. What you can have been doing at soccer I can't conceive. I supposed it was a mistake for hockey, or else some kind of a twit. Well, I couldn't see what I could do to help a historical student but I showed Dad the wire and the old dear said he would write ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... never forgive me, Though men make light of my name, Though my sin and my shame outlive me, I shall not outlast my shame. The coward, does he mean to miss me? His right hand shakes like a leaf; Shall I live for my friends to hiss me, Of fools and of knaves the chief? Shall I live for my foes to twit me? He has master'd his nerve again— He is firm, he will surely hit me— Will he reach the heart or the brain? One long look eastward and northward— One prayer—"Our Father which art"— And the cough chimes in with the fourth word, And ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... Do you twit me with days when I had an Ideal, And saw the sear future through spectacles green? Then find me some charm, while I look round and see all These fat friends of forty, shall keep me nineteen; Should we go on pining for chaplets of laurel Who've paid a perruquier ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... semicircle of drawn revolvers. He looked from one man to another, as if puzzled what move to make next. Allen was annoyed by the sheriff's actions, taking it as an insult that he would not kiss his daughter, although he had started to twit the ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... he went away, they became much worse after; for now when the unfortunates came to the door for alms, instead of letting them stand in pace till they were tired, and took themselves off, I would mock them and point at them, and twit them with their sores and other misfortunes, and not unfrequently I would fling scalding water over them, which would send them howling and honing away, till at last there was not an unfortunate but feared to come within a mile of my door. Moreover I ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... lover's fury, and her eyes shone very brightly in the moonlight. "Oh, Dante! Dante!" she said, softly, "if this were indeed so, the world would be an easier world for lovers. If you were to tell my father what you have told me, or if I were to tell my father what I have told you, he would twit us for a pair of silly children, and take good heed that we were kept apart. If you were to ask my father for me, he would deny you, and laugh while he denied; for my father is a proud man, and one that loves wealth and power very greatly, and will not ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... don't. It isn't safe to twit him about it either. To tell the truth, I was pleased when I heard him swear at Sandy; then I knew it was all right, and Sandy can stand it. Macdonald is a bad man to tackle when he's mad. There's nobody in this ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... shades, in spotless peace retir'd, With her the pleasing partner of his heart, The worthy Queensbury yet laments his Gay, And polish'd Cornbury woos the willing Muse Slow let us trace the matchless vale of Thames Fair winding up to where the Muses haunt In Twit nam's bowers, and for their Pope implore The healing god[028], to loyal Hampton's pile, To Clermont's terrass'd height, and Esher's groves; Where in the sweetest solitude, embrac'd By the soft windings of the silent Mole, ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... the child should now dare to twit the head of the family with bad behavior was intolerable to Malka, the more so ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill |
