"Humorously" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... what you tell her to, of course. You'd better tell her you want to dine with Mrs. Fairford," Mrs. Heeny added humorously, as she gathered her waterproof together and stooped for ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... you out with a trowel to do that," said Mrs. Belgrove humorously. "But why does Garvington want ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... purpose, and turned into the lee of the Isle of May. 'It was proposed that the whole party should meet in her and pass the night; but she rolled from side to side in so extraordinary a manner, that even the most seahardy fled. It was humorously observed of this vessel that she was in danger of making a round turn and appearing with her keel uppermost; and that she would even turn a half-penny if laid upon deck.' By two o'clock on the morning of the 15th July this purgatorial vessel ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... heavy brows lifted into a straight line over his high nose. A grimly ironical smile drew up the corners of his mouth. He made a gesture of resignation. His humorously twinkling eyes met the consternation in Miss Beaver's but he appeared pleased and unmoved at the prospect of the dog's remaining with the boy. He rose from his comfortable chair, drew a deep breath, again touched the admonitory ...
— Old Mr. Wiley • Fanny Greye La Spina
... again—but, still blindfolded, he vaulted the wire fence and ran round to the refectory door which served as the home at rounders, all of us following; and there he danced a surprising dance of his own invention, that he called "La Paladine," the most humorously graceful and grotesque exhibition I ever saw; and then, taking a ball out of his pocket, he shouted: "A l'amandier!" and threw the ball. Straight and swift it flew, and hit the almond-tree, which was quite ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... Strangely enough for one who was an intimate friend of Boswell, he was no admirer of Johnson (whose name, by a curious coincidence, was a part of his own), and a strong Whig and water-drinker, 'a bill which,' says Bozzy humorously, 'was ever one which meets with a determined resistance and opposition in my lower house.' As the friend of Gray and of Mason, he must have been possessed of some share of ability, yet over his moral character the ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... finger tips, but a fine leader of men, born to command. I should think there is a big strain of Tartar blood in his make-up, but he is altogether the sort of man one would prefer to meet as friend rather than foe. We discussed the possibility of an offensive in the direction of Perm, from where I humorously suggested we might be able to rescue the forces of General Poole, which had gone into winter quarters somewhere in the direction of Archangel. We returned to Ekaterinburg, and without stopping, proceeded towards the Lisvin front to ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... seemed aware of no one but themselves in their ecstasy at being reunited. Racing had been restarted; up and down the gutters newsboys ran shouting the winners. London was a Tommy on leave, insubordinately, humorously, contagiously happy. ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... by which the life of these words may be lengthened and by which, possibly, they may regain a current and colloquial use. They can be still used humorously and as it were in quotation marks; words like pelf, maiden, lad, damsel, and many others are sometimes used in this way, which at any rate keeps them from falling into the limbo of silence. Whether any of them have by this means ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 3 (1920) - A Few Practical Suggestions • Society for Pure English
... indeed run almost humorously mad! Yet it was characteristic of the man that the breaking of his self-imposed bonds never occurred to him. Made in ignorance, unwitnessed though his vow might be, it remained inviolable. He never, even in this most heated hour ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... opened a bit wider, then drooped humorously. "Oh, all right," he murmured, as though thoroughly enlightened rather than being rather more in the dark than before. In the name of Irish he found it expedient to take another modest drink, and then excused ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... at the moment, spite of the rain, very vividly in my mind Washington Irving's graceful account of his visit to Abbotsford while this house was yet building, and the picture which he has given of Walter Scott sitting before his door, humorously descanting on various fragments of sculpture, which lay scattered about, and which he intended to immortalize by incorporating into ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... one of his humorously scientific poems. During the two short weeks that the first Atlantic cable transmitted its signals, his fame spread over the land, for the moment obscuring by its brilliancy that of Thomson, Field, and all others who had taken part ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... been an expensive process. Even Horace Greeley had received but a fraction more on his Great American Conflict. Bliss especially suggested and emphasized a "humorous work—that is to say, a work humorously inclined." He added that they had two arrangements for paying authors: outright purchase, and royalty. He invited a meeting in New ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... of the first water. The heroine is a woman's woman, and the hero is a man's man.... The spirit of 'Katherine Day' is very gallant, very humorously tender. The lightest passages, like the gravest, are sane and true."—Louise Imogen Guiney in ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... a pasteboard partition between, who killed my sleep. My bedfellows are Cough and Cramp: we sleep three in a bed. Don't come yet to this house of pest and age." This is in 1833. At the end of that year (in December) he writes (once more humorously) to Rogers, expressing, amongst other things, his love for that fine artist, Stothard: "I met the dear old man, and it was sublime to see him sit, deaf, and enjoy all that was going on mirthful with the company. ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... shown us that soldiers are wobblers in that area. The rank and file are chosen from the common people, and one would not be surprised to find, should trouble take place fairly soon, while they are still raw to their business, the soldiers turn to those who could give them most. It has been humorously remarked that in case of disturbances the first thing the Chinese Tommy would do would be to shoot the officers for treating him so badly and for drilling him so ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... was very happy; she stood there in the September sunshine leaning on her hoe and gazing half shyly, half humorously down the river where a string of American mules was ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... long silence. My cousin stood up, yawning, and sauntered away toward the door. "Shall I send Ev'leen Ann out to get the pitcher and glasses?" he asked in an accent which he evidently thought very humorously significant. ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... indiscreet. Balmerino asked who this person was, and being told, exclaimed, "Oh! Mr. Murray, I am extremely glad to see you. I have been with several of your relations, the poor lady, your mother, was of great use to us at Perth."[365] An admirable and well-merited rebuke. He afterwards declared humorously that one of his reasons for not pleading guilty was, "that so many fine ladies might not be disappointed ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... knew enough about guns to be able to tell 'em apart, I might buy one," he said half-humorously. And then: "You must've been having a mighty particular customer—to get so many ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... of aristocracy—it must be observed, lest it should have been insufficiently implied—was almost humorously dissociated in the minds of the young Mesuriers from any recorded family distinctions. In so far as it was conscious, it was defiantly independent of genealogy. Had the Mesuriers possessed a coat-of-arms, James Mesurier ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... ye are!" The Irishman's long upper lip twitched humorously. "Well, treat her gintly then, me bhoy! You're wise to be smoking. Less chance of infection. I'll keep you company." He produced a couple of thin black cigars, ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... which he describes very humorously, is that of the Coronation of the Virgin, now in the "Belle Arti" ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... sadly and yet humorously, pausing a moment on the curbstone before crossing the wet and icy street. Then as she went on and a coachman pulled up his horses almost upon their haunches to let her pass, she took up the thread of her reflections ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... would call its encroachments, gradual and irresistible as those of a glacier, have been an ear-witness to the forebodings of wise and good and timid men, and have lived to see those forebodings belied by the course of events, which is apt to show itself humorously careless of the reputation of prophets. I recollect hearing a sagacious old gentleman say in 1840 that the doing away with the property qualification for suffrage twenty years before had been the ruin of the State of Massachusetts; ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... causes and effects which altogether belong to a higher class of reading than that of mere amusement. All this, too, is done in a simple, graceful, and flowing style, always amusive, and sometimes humorously illustrative—advantages which our philosophical writers do not generally exhibit, but which are more or less evident in every page ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various
... possession of the mere externals of literature, by sheer style. It may seek to please by description of scenery, or by dissection of motive. It may be empty of action and filled with philosophy. It may be humorously perverse in its license of digression,—as it was in Sterne's hands, for example. It may be all things to all men: it is a very chameleon-weathercock. And it is too varied, too negligent, too lax, to spur its writer to his utmost effort, to that stern wrestle with technic ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... he did love it, and he was jealous for it; no one should lay a hand on it to rearrange what he had once arranged. His sisters knew this; the middle-aged servant knew it; even his father, with a curt laugh, would humorously acquiesce in the theory of the sacredness of Edwin's bedroom. As for Edwin, he saw nothing extraordinary in his attitude concerning his bedroom; and he could not understand, and he somewhat resented, ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... of wisdom to watch a rising batch of bread," Levi returned humorously. "When you can't get pudding—or when the pudding fails—look to bread and make ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... herself in by a miracle between the priests. It would take a yet greater miracle to unpack them again. The driver looked round with a smile—he had admitted us into the omnibus and released us—and, pointing to the roof with his whip, humorously exclaimed: "Complet!" ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... personalities invaded my privacy. Diaz, smiling humorously, was followed by a man ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... known abroad. The visitor must have viewed with some degree of curiosity the effective arrangement of mirrors in the dressing-room, whereby the owner of the mansion surveyed himself front, rear, head and foot, as he made his toilet, perhaps reflecting humorously upon the dismay of his manager, Mr. Walker, upon being advised as to the necessity of wearing a white vest to a party: "But, Mr. Daniel, suppose a man hasn't got a white vest and is too poor these ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... Ulick Sullivan answered humorously. "Just that, my darling. It's John Sullivan come back from Sweden. And, as I've told him, I'm not sure that all at Morristown will be as glad to see him as I am." At which Uncle Ulick went off into a peal ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... how to laugh after those eleven months of hard training, and they found a joke in grisly things which do not appeal humorously to sensitive men. ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... embraced the larger aspect of the problem—there was nothing she desired or prayed for more than the friendship and presence of Corliss at the Loring hacienda. Corliss drew his own inference from this, which was a pleasant one. He felt that he had a friend at court, yet explained humorously that sheep and cattle were not by nature fitted to occupy the same territory. He was alive to sentiment, but more keen than ever to maintain his position unalterably so far as business was concerned. The Senora liked him none ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... adventure tape," she said humorously, "the loudspeaker would now announce that the ship had established itself in an orbit around the strange, uncharted planet first sighted three days ago, and that volunteers were wanted ...
— Sand Doom • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... is a word or sentence which may be read backwards as well as forwards, letter by letter, while preserving the same meaning; for example, the words "Anna,'' "noon,'' "tenet,'' or the sentence with which Adam is humorously supposed to have greeted ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... I know it!" she humorously retorted. "I made it for you, and it suits you. Not my style at all. I'll just get out my box of bits. You'll see something that'll ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... the tacit enmity that wrong on one side and meek unreproach on the other breeds. The rancor that manifested itself in Boone's treatment of the Misses Perley was not imitated by them. They never alluded to their affluent neighbor, never suffered gossip concerning the Boones in what Olympia humorously called the "Orphic adytum," the "tabby-shop," as Wesley named the Perley parlors. Young Dick, however, had none of the scruples that kept his aunts silent. One dreadful day, when he had been nagged to fisticuffs with Wesley, whose ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... with these concluding pictures, the decorations and accessories of which are to the full as minute and effective as those of the one that precede them. The furniture of the bagnio, with its portrait of Moll Flanders humorously continued by the sturdy legs of a Jewish soldier in the tapestry Judgment of Solomon behind, the half-burned candle flaring in the draught of the open door and window, the reflection of the lantern on the ceiling and the shadow of the tongs ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... Tractate on Education. Milton's Tractate on Education, addressed to his friend, Samuel Hartlib, was published in 1644. The quotation above is from that work. This paragraph of Lamb's essay was afterwards humorously expanded in his "Letter to an Old Gentleman whose Education has ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... somewhat hoggish. But he has no suspicion of this himself, and honestly regards his commercial prosperity as the inevitable and socially wholesome triumph of the ability, industry, shrewdness and experience in business of a man who in private is easygoing, affectionate and humorously convivial to a fault. Corporeally, he is a podgy man, with a square, clean shaven face and a square beard under his chin; dust colored, with a patch of grey in the centre, and small watery blue eyes with a plaintively sentimental ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... for my services," he broke in, humorously winking his old eyes. "You are to be my law partner, ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... Stevenson, written to his friends in England, have a vast value in this way—they reveal the man—reveal him in his strength and his weakness—his ready gift in pleasing and adapting himself to those with whom he corresponded, and his great power at once of adapting himself to his circumstances and of humorously rising superior to them. When he was ill and almost penniless in San Francisco, he could give Mr Colvin this account of his ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... She humorously writes: "Singers without power and velocity are like horses without tails. For velocity, practice figures of five, six, seven and eight notes, first slowly, then faster and faster, up ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... understood," said a burly man, who carried his head humorously and obstinately a little on one side—I think he was Ben Jonson—"It hath ever been understood, consule Jacobo, under our King James and her late Majesty, that such good and hearty customs were fallen sick, and like to pass from the world. This grey ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... from his pipe he prepares to turn in, murmuring to himself, half sadly, half humorously, "I have been young, and now I am old; yet have I never seen the true woodsman forsaken, or his seed begging bread—or anything else, so to speak—unless it might be a little tobacco or a nip of whisky." And he creeps into his blanket-bag, ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... Rosy," "London Bridge is Falling Down," "Hide the Thimble," and other such infantile entertainments proved exceedingly mirth-provoking. The big babies were continually crying over fancied woes, and sometimes even the historic characters grew humorously quarrelsome. ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... me, whose Portrait hangs in my house in company with those of Thackeray and this Man (the three greatest men I have known), I thought that both Tennyson and Thackeray were inferior to him in respect of Thinking of Themselves. When Tennyson was telling me of how The Quarterly abused him (humorously too), and desirous of knowing why one did not care for his later works, etc., I thought that if he had lived an active Life, as Scott and Shakespeare; or even ridden, shot, drunk, and played the Devil, as Byron, he would have done much more, and talked about it much less. 'You know,' said Scott ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... throat was thick and his voice was husky. Mrs. Pincher was at the door of the clergy-house, crying openly and wiping her eyes. "Ain't there lepers enough in London, sir, without goin' to the ends of the earth for 'em?" He laughed and made an effort to answer her humorously, but for some reason both words ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... represent kings and queens, are set in the midst of a fabulous pomp and glitter, and wear crowns incrusted with large and impossible stones. Framing the illustrations are border-fancies of sunflowers and golden cocks and wondrous springtime birds, fashioned boisterously and humorously in the manner of Russian peasant art. Indeed, the book is executed so charmingly that the parents find it as amusing as do ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... at this long distance of time, raises a smile. When I had come to town, having taken a house, etc., with a young and pretty wife, Dickens looked on encouragingly; but at times shaking his head humorously, as the too sanguine plans were broached: "Ah, the little victims play," he would quote. Early in the venture he good-naturedly came to dine en famille with his amiable and interesting sister-in-law. He was in a delightful mood, and seemed to be ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... flowing brown hair tied with a blue riband, and her beauty remarkable for a quite childish, almost babyish, touch of saucy discontent, comically conscious of itself. (There is not the least artistic merit in this picture, which is a mere daub; but it is clear that the painter has made it humorously- -one might almost say, revengefully—like ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... say no more, and humorously pretended an anxiety for me should I give way to silly praise of him because of a personal admiration for ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... "See, even in his epistles of condolence," they cry, "the omnipresent moi of Hugo must appear, to overshadow everything else!" One indignant writer declares the poet to be a mere walking personal pronoun. Another humorously pities those still extant contemporaries of 1830 who, after having for forty years dedicated their songs and romances and dramas to Hugo, now learn from the selfsame maw which has greedily gulped their praises that they themselves do not exist, never did exist. One man of genius slyly writes: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... are full of satire of her companions, of the perception of their weaknesses and inconsistencies. She never embraces or rejects them so completely as Terry does, for she sees them more clearly; therefore she sees them more humorously, understands them better. Her letters teem with "psychological gossip," so to speak, in which some of her companions seem portrayed with relative truth. One she wrote me, while I was seeing something in London, of an anarchist named Nicoll, who was a ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... hardly be blamed for even the wildest superstitions, when a cool-headed and enlightened modern like myself was so wrought upon by the fictions of his brain. I philosophized for some time, however, before I got the better of my repugnance to that doorway. I humorously assured myself that, at the worst, this incomprehensible beast was securely anchored to his fountain; and that if anything terrible were at the other side of the door which I was going to open, ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Francisco must seem so limited after London," she had wound up; and the way he had considered it, a little humorously, down his long nose, made her doubt the interest of cities to be ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... as finely drawn as those in A Marked Man or Fidelis, or The Three Miss Kings. The latter story in some details puts a greater strain upon the credulity than any of the other novels, yet so well conceived and absolutely natural are the characters of the three girls, and so humorously and pictorially presented the chief incidents in their development, that the dubious points of the plot become almost insignificant. The qualities of the novel as a whole are similar to those which ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... acquainted with his Royal line, had no personal knowledge of the present Emperor, and his reign was peaceful. Miss Josephine Sleary, in her celebrated graceful Equestrian Tyrolean Flower Act, was then announced by a new clown (who humorously said Cauliflower Act), and Mr. ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... but manly self-possession we shall not go far wrong in connecting what seems another very distinctly marked feature of Chaucer's inner nature. He seems to have arrived at a clear recognition of the truth with which Goethe humorously comforted Eckermann in the shape of the proverbial saying, "Care has been taken that the trees shall not grow into the sky." Chaucer's, there is every reason to believe, was a contented faith, as far removed from self-torturing unrest as from childish credulity. ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... our hair in that style, didn't we?" he continued humorously. "And yet the thunderbolts spared us. And that classy thing in ties! By jove! Persis, you'll have to make me a present of this for old times' sake. This pretty picture of smiling innocence gets on my nerves. I shall feel easier when it has been ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... considerably diminish not only Senhor Bonaventura's handsome balance at the Bank of Brazil, but would impoverish certain ministers, permanent and temporary, who looked to their dear Pinto for periodical contributions to what was humorously ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... with some theatre people. The only thing I could do, having been raised in enervating luxury, was ballroom dancing, so I ball-room danced. I got a job at a place in Broadway called 'The Flower Garden' as what is humorously called an 'instructress,' as if anybody could 'instruct' the men who came there. One was lucky if one saved one's life and wasn't quashed ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... complete in aught Who is not humorously prone; A man without a merry thought Can hardly ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... there be that in the negro which exempts him from the inflicted sourness of the morbid or cynical mind, how, in his most prepossessing aspects, must he appear to a benevolent one? When at ease with respect to exterior things, Captain Delano's nature was not only benign, but familiarly and humorously so. At home, he had often taken rare satisfaction in sitting in his door, watching some free man of color at his work or play. If on a voyage he chanced to have a black sailor, invariably he was on chatty and half-gamesome terms with him. In fact, like most ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... gown, the high-piled coils of black hair, and the twinkling buckled feet. She had a lively bright face, a little pale, with a high forehead, and black arched brows and dancing eyes, and a little scarlet mouth that twitched humorously now and then after speaking. She rustled up, flicking her handkerchief, and exclaiming against the heat. Isabel was presented to her; she sat down on a settle Mr. James drew forward for her, with the handkerchief still whisking ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... give you those three years of your life back," he went on, "but fortunately we can make some sort of amends in other ways. I have no doubt that the moment the Prime Minister is fully acquainted with the circumstances he will arrange for what we humorously call a 'free pardon'; that is to say, the Law will very graciously forgive you for having been unjustly sent to prison. As for the rest—" he shrugged his shoulders—"well, I don't imagine you will be precisely the loser for not having sold your secret to ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... a frank enough admission that the poet was fond of good cheer; and the effect of his "little abstinence" on his corporeal appearance is humorously described in the Prologue to the Tale of Sir Thopas, where the Host compliments Chaucer on being as well shapen in the waist ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... old fellow they call the Doctor, that helps him," threw in the Captain humorously, allowing his attention to get entangled in the conversation, and treating them to one ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... in whom Mr. Glover is interested, an old army pensioner. Beyond the fact that he hasn't the use of his right arm, and limps with his left leg, and that he likes beer and cheese, he seems an admirable watch dog," said Lydia humorously. ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... moment I stood a little puzzled by this curious request, not knowing exactly how to take it, whether humorously or in earnest. But concentrating all his crow's feet into one scowl, Captain Peleg ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... rather his advisers, rewarded this zeal but ill. At one of the committee meetings Balzac was prevented from attending by a three days' confinement in a dirty lock-up at Sevres, the cause being the old one which had partly driven him from Paris—his unwillingness to go, as he humorously put it, into the vineyards of his village, and, dressed in uniform, to see that truants from Paris were not eating ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... the two-act in the chapters on those forms, there is now no need for considering "writing" at all save for a single hint. Yet even this one suggestion deals less with the formal "writing" element than with the "feel" of the material. It is stated rather humorously by Thomas J. Gray, who has written many successful one-act musical comedies, varying in style from "Gus Edwards' School Boys and Girls" to "The Vaudeville Revue of 1915"—a musical travesty on prevailing ideas—and the books of a few long musical successes, from comedy scenes ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... one of the happiest parodies in the language. Never was the forensic jargon and treatment so humorously set forth—and this because of the perfect sincerity and earnestness with which it was done. There is none of the far-fetched, impossible exaggeration—the form of burlesque which Theodore Hook or Albert Smith might have attempted. It ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... fun of her in whispers with their fair visitors. She perceived this, and without being embarrassed, took them up so sharply, that they were silenced, and looked down. But this was not all: after the collation she began to talk so freely and yet so humorously about them that they were frightened, and went and made their excuses, and very frankly asked for quarter. Madame de Gesvres was good enough to grant them this, but said it was only on condition that they learned how to behave. Never ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... significance in them, or that moral causes had anything to do with them, and held that the explanation of them was to be sought for in the simple working of natural laws and forces. Shakespeare deals humorously with these views in All's Well that Ends ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... Mountenay, with a smile, "is a million pounds a ton. Or an acre, or a gallon, or however you prefer to buy it," he added humorously. ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... Garth, who exposed the apothecaries of London to reprobation and ridicule in his satirical poem "The Dispensary," also humorously alludes ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... a painful thought to me to-night, that he could wake up glorious once, this man in the elbow-chair by the fire, who is humorously known at the club as a "confirmed spinster." I remember him well when his years told four and twenty; on my soul the proudest subaltern of my acquaintance, and with the most reason to be proud. There was nothing he might not do in the future, having already done the biggest thing, this ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... Geraldine," protested Anthony, frowning humorously, "do have another cocktail. I annoy him. If I smoke a cigarette he comes into the room sniffing. He's a prig, a bore, and something of a hypocrite. I probably wouldn't be telling you this if I hadn't had a few drinks, but ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... life about her? Assuredly, to a very marked degree. Wildness? That was it!—a wildness, subtly blended with refinement, that found expression in every quick look; as if someone had put a fawn there from the forest and it was trying, half humorously, half confidently, to keep itself from running away in fright. It was this glory of wildness that she typified which made my ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... could never be taught by a French dancing-master, whose art made him at once shudder and laugh. HORACE, by his own confession, was a very awkward rider, and the poet could not always secure a seat on his mule: METASTASIO humorously complains of his gun; the poetical sportsman could only frighten the hares and partridges; the, truth was, as an ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... the patron saint of children and of thieves,—the latter even Shakespeare calls "St. Nicholas's clerks." And with robbers and the generality of evil-doers the child, dead or alive, is much of a fetich. Anstey's Burglar Bill is humorously exaggerated, but there is a good deal of superstition about childhood lingering in the mind of the lawbreaker. Strack (361) has discussed at considerable length the child (dead) as fetich among ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... we were alone together, he made a target of me. I never had supposed him humorously vindictive; he was, and his apparently innocent mistakes almost turned my ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... the "Courier" the attainments of several statesmen who were willing to sacrifice their private interests for the high seat at the state capitol. The pettiness and sordidness of most of the politicians he met struck him humorously, but the tone of his articles was ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... slow, winning, troubled smile, thrust the hair back from his clear eyes, and bent his lean athlete's frame again to the labour. He soon discovered that this work demanded speed as well as accuracy. "And I need a ten-acre lot to turn around in," he told himself half humorously. "I'm a regular ice-wagon." ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... could and should be done. Some one said that it was a hundred horse-power mouth. It admitted no trifling. When it spoke seriously, it spoke finally. But his eyes, with their merry twinkle, showed that he could also speak humorously. He was indeed a famous story-teller, fond of all sorts of riddles and jests, and remembering all of them he heard. He used often to point his arguments with an anecdote, always a fresh one. Believing with Lamb that a man should enjoy his own stories, he would ...
— James B. Eads • Louis How
... at any rate, Bones. And Strawberry is doing pretty good hustling right now, considering the heavy condition of our weight, in the way of game. My folks will think I'm something on the shoot, I guess," remarked Frank, humorously. ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... mountain side, which one might fancy had been blazed by a zigzag flash of lightning. As it requires four hours to wriggle down this path, and an equal amount of time to wriggle up, I spent the greater part of a day on what a comrade humorously styled the "quarter-deck of a mule." A square, legitimate seat in the saddle was usually impossible, so steep was the incline; and hence, when going down, I braced my feet and lay back on the haunches of the beast, and, in coming up, had to lean forward and clutch the ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... pursued humorously, "the fact that your country floats on a sea of oil, has some of the richest forest land in the world, is blessed with some of the greatest mineral deposits anywhere and millions of acres of unbelievably fertile land has nothing ...
— Combat • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... literary influence upon him either in this preparatory time or later in life; but something of Scott is to be found permanently in his creative work,—in the figure-grouping, the high speeches, the oddities of character humorously treated, and especially in the use of set scenes individually elaborated to give the high lights and to advance the story. But Scott's method was at first inadequately applied, nor is there any sign that the young author yet appreciated the artistic capabilities of ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... He had wondered humorously if he were fallen in love, but, although he retained little faith in the activities of the heart after youth, he was beginning seriously to consider the expedience of marrying Concha Arguello. He had not intended to marry again, ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... was gleaming humorously, and Simon Rattar might have been thought the kind of tough customer who would have been amused by the joke. He seemed, however, to be affected unpleasantly ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... reason Ilya Simonov was the newly appointed agency head was to push Moskvich sales among the Czechs. He thought, half humorously, half sourly, to himself, even under the Party we have competition and pressure for higher sales. What was it that some American economist had called them? a ...
— Freedom • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... everybody. It explains the still lingering popular suspicion of the "academic" type of man. But we are likely to forget that back of all that easy versatility and reckless variety of effort there was some sound and patient and constructive thinking. Lincoln used to describe himself humorously, slightingly, as a "mast-fed" lawyer, one who had picked up in the woods the scattered acorns of legal lore. It was a true enough description, but after all, there were very few college-bred lawyers in the Eighth Illinois Circuit or ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... Italians, for whom she ever felt a great affection, that she was bitter on the subject. And it is the only subject on which I ever knew her to feel in any degree bitterly. Many of her verses written during her latter years are fiercely denunciatory or humorously satirical of the Italian priesthood, and especially of the Pontifical Government. I wish that my space permitted me to give further specimens of them here. But I must content myself with giving one line, which haunts my ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... well known that jackdaws are accomplished thieves, and their evil fame in this respect has been humorously pictured in the story of "The Jackdaw of Rheims," in the "Ingoldsby Legends." It seems, however, that other birds besides jackdaws may be occasional robbers, and may cause much mischief. Not long ago, a gentleman on going to his letter-box discovered that a letter containing a cheque for ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... than formerly. It was fanned by her coolness, and was in a fair way to become an idee fixe, for he was not material enough to live without some dream, some ideal, and Bertha found him amusing. There always had been a certain mental sympathy between them; in a sense (superficially and humorously), they saw life very much from the same standpoint. With the instinctive tact of the real lover of women he carefully concealed from her the secret that made his home life miserable, instead of merely tedious. It was, simply, that Mary was morbidly, madly jealous ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... the matter, however, that interests us most here. The ode opens half-humorously with an address to the little book he was sending to Rous. It is described as a pretty little book enough, with two sets of contents and a double arrangement of paging to match, neatly but simply bound (fronde licet gemina, munditieque nitens non operosa), and ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... had been passing in review the curious little interruptions which had attended his walk, and had wondered humorously what would happen next. Two women, meeting him, and seeing a smile on his lips, had said to each other, "There goes a happy man." If they had encountered him now, they might have reversed their opinion. They would have seen a man thinking of something once dear to him, in the far ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... not go nearly as far as he did in the matter of spiritualism I had deep sympathy with his main attitude in regard to things psychological. It was this fact, perhaps, which made him say to me, half humorously but half in earnest, when he knew that he was leaving the office to die, as I also knew it, "Remember, Strachey, if you ever write anything about me in The Spectator, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... most reluctant to speak of Unkulunkulu; at last she said, 'Ah, it is he in fact who is the Creator, who is in heaven, of whom the ancients spoke.' Then the old woman began to babble humorously of how the white men made all things. Again, Unkulunkulu is said to have been created by Utilexo. Utilexo was invisible, Unkulunkulu was visible, and so got credit not really his due.[42] When the heaven is said to be the Chief's (the chief being a living Zulu) 'they ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... to stop travellers in the bush, used of bushrangers. The quotation, 1888, shows the method of transference. It then means generally, to stop. Like the similar verb, to stick up (q.v.), it is often used humorously of a demand ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... Dutch visitor to London in 1596 of the stage of the Swan Theatre in Zur Kenntniss der altenglischen Buhne von Karl Theodor Gaedertz. Mit der ersten authentischen innern Ansicht der Schwans Theater in London, Bremen, 1888). Sir Philip Sidney humorously described the spectator's difficulties in an Elizabethan playhouse, where, owing to the absence of stage scenery, he had to imagine the bare boards to present in rapid succession a garden, a rocky coast, ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... to us; but he is a clever writer, and a humorist, with no little dramatic power. His personages are studies from nature, and have individuality and life; albeit they reveal a somewhat narrow horizon of observation. He uses largely, but always humorously, the western style of exaggeration; as, for example, when he makes one of his reformers tell a steamboat captain that if he will stop drinking whiskey, he will make a reputation, and "be as famous as the Red River raft ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... by quoting humorously from the Proverbs: "Where no council is, the people fall, but in a multitude ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey
... of food raised their spirits a trifle and Mr. Appel was able to say humorously as, with his table knife, he scalped his agate-ware plate loose ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... did not settle down in the house at all. But he was comforted by a welcome and unexpected visitor. As he was going one afternoon for the letters—they were delivered at the door, but it took longer to get them at the office—some one humorously threw a cloak over his head, and when he disengaged himself he saw his very dear friend Spiridione Tesi of the custom-house at Chiasso, whom he had not met for two years. What joy! what salutations! so ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... so—work that benefits themselves and harms other people. Employers—or rather Exploiters of Labour; Thieves, Swindlers, Pickpockets; profit seeking share-holders; burglars; Bishops; Financiers; Capitalists, and those persons humorously called "Ministers" of religion. If you remember that the word "minister" means "servant" you will be able to ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... sending up buckets full of silt-like gruel. The lawyer watched operations for a few minutes, then he asked for the owners' boring plan. When he had examined this he grunted twice, twitched his lower lip humorously, and said: 'I'll put you out of this. If the owners wanted a deep-water lighthouse they should have specified one—not a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... several churches. In the cathedral we had the honour of seeing at High Mass his most Christian Majesty, Monsieur and the Comte de Blacas, Vicomte de Chateaubriand and others, composing the Court of notre Pere de Gand, as Louis XVIII is humorously termed by the French, from his having fixed his head-quarters here. A great many French officers who have followed his fortunes are also here, but they seem principally to belong to the Gardes du Corps. A number of military ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... mahogany, yet somehow retaining a youthful look. He was not unprepossessing in a bold, daring way; a fellow who would seek adventure, and meet danger with a laugh. He turned as she looked at him, and grinned back at her, pointing humorously to a ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... the beauty that surrounds us every minute of every day. The question, to my mind, is whether we do not do ourselves harm in the long-run by losing ourselves in frantic admiration for any human performance. The Psalmist expressed this feeling very cogently and humorously when he said that the Creator did not delight in any man's legs. The question is not whether it is not a natural temptation to limit our dreams of ultimate possibilities by the standard of human effort, but whether ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... dish-rag and a moderately bulky person. The moonshi bashi, as becomes an individual of lesser rank and superior mental attainments, is not quite so helpless as his official superior, but on retiring he humorously reposes his feet on the pillow and his head on nothing but the bare floor of the tent, and stubbornly refuses to permit Abdullah to alter either his pillow or his position. The phenomenal young man and myself likewise seek ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... Skinner Street thought that now was a convenient season. Accordingly he left London, and travelled by coach to Lynmouth, where he found that the Shelleys had flitted a few days previously without giving any notice. This fruitless journey of the poet's Mentor is humorously described by Hogg, as well as one undertaken by himself in the following year to Dublin with a similar result. The Shelleys were now established at Tan-yr-allt, near Tremadoc, in North Wales, on an estate belonging to Mr. W.A. Madocks, M.P. for Boston. This gentleman had reclaimed a considerable ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... despairing shrug the manager rose and went out, and Helen, turning an amused face to Douglass, asked, humorously: "Isn't he the typical manager?—in the clouds to-day, stuck in the mud to-morrow. Sometimes he is excruciatingly funny, and then he disgusts me. They're almost all alike. If business should be unexpectedly good to-night he would be a man transformed. ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... were in those days particularly noticeable in the head of Coventry Patmore: the vast convex brows, arched with vision; the bright, shrewd, bluish-grey eyes, the outer fold of one eyelid permanently and humorously drooping; and the wilful, sensuous mouth. These three seemed ever at war among themselves; they spoke three different tongues; they proclaimed a man of dreams, a canny man of business, a man of vehement determination. It was the harmony of these in apparently ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... applied to other uses. The earliest surviving jeux are of Arras, the work of ADAM DE LA HALLE. In the Jeu d'Adam or de la Feuillee (c. 1262) satirical studies of real life mingle strangely with fairy fantasy; the poet himself, lamenting his griefs of wedlock, his father, his friends are humorously introduced; the fool and the physician play their laughable parts; and the three fay ladies, for whom the citizens have prepared a banquet under la feuillee, grant or refuse the wishes of the mortal folk in the traditional ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... Stephen's in Coleman St., commenting on Edward's Gangraena, humorously says: "I marvaile how Mr. Edwards having (it seems) an authorized power to make errors and heresies at what rate and of what materialles he pleaseth, and hopes to live upon the trade, could stay his pen at so small a number as 180, ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... particular friends, till one day he finds that he is sixty-five years of age, that he has lost so much time in consulting first cousins and particular friends that he has no time to follow their advice." This is good sense, though humorously put. Promptitude is a quality that should be assiduously cultivated. Like punctuality, it becomes a most valuable habit. "Procrastination," it is said, "is the thief of time," and "hell is paved with good intentions." These proverbs are full ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... think no gre't shakes o' me, do you, Cunnel?" said Demming, looking at Talboys half humorously, yet with a shade of something else in his expression. "You poke fun at me all the time. Well, pleases you, an' don' hurt me, I reckon. Mahnin', Bishop; mahnin', Cunnel. I'll be at th' deppo." He waved his hand and shambled away. Both ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... produced a book that will delight not only ornithologists, but all who have the good fortune to light on this humorously instructive volume." ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... attention they deserved, but had not instantly won in all quarters. Theophile Gautier writes playfully of this piece: "The success of Francois le Champi has given all our vaudeville writers an appetite for rusticity. Only let this go on a little, and we shall be inundated by what has humorously been called the 'ruro-drama.' Morvan hats and Berrichon head-dresses will invade the scenes, and no language ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... saluted the composer with a flourish of the music held in his other hand. "Hail you second Beethoven!" he exclaimed. Suddenly he observed my presence and hushed his demonstrations, giving me a courteous, and humorously penitent salutation. ...
— A Day with Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy • George Sampson |
