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More "Laughable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... somehow, vaguely impelled to action, yet for the life of him, he admitted after a moment, he could see no single direction in which action with regard to his wife would not savor of the indiscreet, if not of the ridiculous. The attitude of an aggrieved husband had always showed to him as something laughable, and an explosion of jealousy had never appeared more vulgar than it did while he sat patiently conjecturing if such a domestic cyclone might be counted upon to shake Connie to her senses. In the end he gave it up as a farce which he felt it would be beyond the power of his gravity ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... of all the ladies,—began, by the queen's pleasure, boldly to speak as follows: "I also, I will not keep silence of a biting reproof given by an honest layman to a covetous monk with a speech no less laughable than commendable. ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... very much more interested in matter than in form, and it is for this very reason that it is behindhand in any high degree of culture. It is most laughable the way the public reveals its liking for matter in poetic works; it carefully investigates the real events or personal circumstances of the poet's life which served to give the motif of his works; nay, finally, it finds these ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... no disgrace to be confounded with my company; for I may as well declare at once I found their manners as gentle and becoming as those of any other class. I do not mean that my friends could have sat down without embarrassment and laughable disaster at the table of a duke. That does not imply an inferiority of breeding, but a difference of usage. Thus I flatter myself that I conducted myself well among my fellow-passengers; yet my most ambitious hope is not to have avoided faults, but to have committed as few ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Fairfield—could anything be more absurdly afflicting? To be a seamstress at Madame Michaud's—the odious idea of it! Poor Bessie, what a blessing to her was her gift of humor, her gift for seeing the laughable side of things and people, and especially the laughable side ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... reaching distance took advantage of the fact to pay them a visit. Mrs. Anson and I spent the day in driving about the city visiting Phoenix Park and other places of interest, and that evening we attended the "Gaiety Theater," where a laughable comedy called "Arabian Nights" was ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... in this respect, we were ushered into the audience chamber without much delay. The President received us kindly, as he does all who approach him. He was already apprised of the fair, and spoke of it with much interest, and with a desire to attend it. He gave us a most laughable account of his visit to the Philadelphia Fair, when, as he expressed it, 'for two miles it was all people, where it wasn't houses,' and where 'he actually feared he should be pulled from the carriage windows.' ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... he had dosed them round and they had taken his prescriptions, with really laughable humility, more like charity schoolchildren than blood-guilty mutineers and pirates—"well, that's done for today. And now I should wish to have a ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... trade with the neighbouring states. A peculiar race of people is found here, the Soumali—tall, gaunt-looking fellows, with a mass of moppy hair dyed a brilliant red. This head-gear, surmounting a small black face, is laughable in the extreme. Plenty of ostrich feathers may be obtained of the Arabian Jews; and though, of course, you pay sailors' prices for them, yet even then the sums given are not nearly so much as would be charged in England for a far ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... face. While doing so, she turned herself towards P'ing Erh and gave her a cynical smile. "You've come just one step too late," she remarked. "You weren't in time to see something laughable! Even sister Wu, an old hand at business though she be, failed to look up clearly an old custom and came to play her tricks on us. But when we plied her with questions, she luckily had the face to admit that it had slipped from her memory. 'Do you,' I insinuated, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Disciplined a Bad Grizzly. The most ridiculous and laughable performance ever put up with a wild grizzly bear as an actor was staged by Col. C. J.("Buffalo") Jones when he was superintendent of the wild animals of the Yellowstone Park. He marked down for punishment a particularly troublesome grizzly that had often raided ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... himself by not "striking" soon enough. Of course the whole thing was so long ago that both of them could look back on it without any bitterness or ill nature. In fact it amused them. Kernin said it was the most laughable thing he ever saw in his life to see poor old Jack—that's Morse's name—shoving away with the landing net wrong side up. And Morse said he'd never forget seeing poor old Kernin yanking his line first this way and then that and not knowing where to try to haul it. ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... who had been the worst ruffian in the village used to take a turn at the preaching. His remarks would have been very laughable to outsiders, but as he was a man of strong character and genuine feeling, his hearers took him ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... pen of Thackeray was brought to bear on the same subject, and the great humorist of this generation employed his talents worthily in illustrating the genius of a past age. "'Humphrey Clinker,'" says he, "is, I do believe, the most laughable story that has ever been written since the goodly art of novel-writing began." This is strong praise, though but of a single book; yet it falls short of the general estimate that Walter Scott formed of the capacity of our author. "We readily grant to Smollett," he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... rest satisfied, or rather unsatisfied, with this answer. But the mystery was more and more inexplicable. Either some laughable mistake or some deep-laid villany was intended. Sir John dared not pursue the subject to this extremity. He felt assured of her purity and honour. Her manners, so confiding and unsuspicious, showed ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... unwise or inexpedient," why should friend or foe of the Negro consider less than 3000 college bred men and women out of an entire population of nearly 10,000,000, "unwise or inexpedient?" It would be laughable if it were not so pitiful to think of the hue and cry about too much learning for the Negro. The trouble with the race is not too much learning but not enough. A little learning is surely a dangerous thing. Short cuts are too many and do not really ...
— The Educated Negro and His Mission - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 8 • W. S. Scarborough
... leaving the wretched provinces of the empire a prey to war and pillage. And if the assurances of friendship, of confidence, and of affection between Austria and Venice are but recalled to mind, the contrast was indeed laughable when the emperor was pleased to allow that loyal city to be ceded to him. The best friend was in this case the cloth from which the ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... beautiful dancers, when I chasten the little God somewhat! He will cry, certainly, and weep—but he is laughable even when weeping! ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Homburg and Wisbaden. There is a very salutary law in every land where gambling is permitted, that no inhabitant of that land be allowed to play at the public table, and if any one is caught red-handed, he is usually imprisoned, and his winnings, if any, confiscated. We can call to mind a laughable instance of this at Wisbaden. Two old peasants, who had probably come for a day's pleasure and to see the sights, managed to find their way into the Kursaal, and stood all entranced before the roulette-table. One of them, imagining it a right royal way of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... moonlight a tiny man dressed in green, with a tall, pointed hat, and very, very long tips to his shoes, tying his shoestring with his foot on a stubble stalk. He had the most wizened of faces, and when he got angry with his shoe, he pulled so wry a grimace that it was quite laughable. At last he stood up, stepping carefully over the stubble, went up to the first haycock, and drawing out a hollow grass stalk blew upon it till his cheeks were puffed like footballs. And yet there was no sound, ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... awaited him. Lescaut and Manon were in an agony of fear during my recital, especially while I was drawing his portrait to the life: but his own vanity prevented him from recognising it, and I did it so well that he was the first to pronounce it extremely laughable. You will allow that I had reason for ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... high-class outline pictures the artists have caught the true spirit of Lincoln's humor, and while showing the laughable side of many incidents in his career, they are true to life in the scenes and ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... of the game. They talk at cross-purposes, as they wander in and out of the garden terrace; they plan out their lives, and life comes and surprises them by the way. Then they speak straight out of their hearts, sometimes crudely, sometimes with a naivete which seems laughable; and they act on sudden impulses, accepting the consequences when they come. They live an artificial life, knowing lies to be lies, and choosing them; they are civilised, they try to do their duty by society; only, at every moment, some ugly gap opens in the earth, right in their path, and they ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... actions of their opponents; while the intermediate party, composed of officials and others who paid court to the higher powers, kept the nobles informed of all that was done and said in the Liberal camp, and much of it was abundantly laughable. Du Croisier's adherents smarted under a sense of inferiority, which increased their ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... at the faces of the villagers; black countenances drawn into all the contortions of fright, but the contortions of their bodies were more laughable still, as they came forward like naughty children, driven by the soldiers, putting their hands out behind to evade ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... populous a lamp-post was out of the question. As he hesitated on the kerb, he reflected that a pan of charcoal would have been more convenient after all; but the coil of rope in the doorway of a shop had lured his fancy, and now it would be laughable ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... hose-pipes are disconnected, rolled up, and hung up, to be ready at any moment if required. There are plenty of amusements on board, such as single-stick, glove-boxing, wrestling, etc. But the game of the "Man in the Chair," is one of the most laughable. A piece of board, 12 inches by 18 inches, in which a strong rope is inserted in a hole in each corner and knotted on the underside, the four ropes are carried upwards and made fast to the forestay, and the "chair" has to be 6 feet from the deck. There are perhaps thirty ...
— The Stoker's Catechism • W. J. Connor
... around these greater works, swarms the innumerable legion of satirical fabliaux and laughable tales. They, too, cross the sea, slight, imperceptible, wandering, thus continuing those migrations so difficult to trace, the laws of which learned men of all nations have vainly sought to discover. They follow all roads; nothing stops them. Pass the mountains and you ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... festooning as near Naples, over the other trees, in a manner more picturesque than useful. The straw hats of the Nissardes, also resembling an inverted wicker corn basket, gave quite a new and laughable character to the human apex. Such little novelties as this, which would excite no more attention in a professed book of costumes, than a view into an old fancy clothes shop, are nevertheless recollected ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... says Benvenuto, "oceurrit mihi res jocosa,"[A]—"In confirmation of this statement, a laughable matter occurs to me"; and he goes on to relate a story about the famous astrologer Pietro di Abano. But our translator is not content without making him stultify himself, and renders the words we have quoted, "A maggiore conferma referiro un fatto a me accaduto"; that is, he makes Benvenuto ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... strange fellows in her time: Some that will evermore peep through their eyes, And laugh like parrots at a bag-piper; And other of such vinegar aspect That they'll not show their teeth in way of smile Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable. ...
— The Merchant of Venice • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... the overhanging rock he looked so like Grim it was laughable. He was a caricature of our man, with all the refinement and humor subtly changed into irritable anger. He looked as if he would scream if you touched him, and no wonder; for the back of the poor fellow's neck, half hidden by the folds of his ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... believe that we are even of more importance in Baton Rouge than we thought we were. It is laughable to hear the things a certain set of people, who know they can't visit us, say about the whole family.... When father was alive, they dared not talk about us aloud, beyond calling us the "Proud Morgans" and the "Aristocracy of Baton Rouge".... But now father ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... pleasant. The soil is a species of clay, hard as a flint when the weather is dry, but running into a slippery paste as soon as moistened. It is, therefore, very fatiguing, especially in wet weather, when the soldiers slip about, in a very laughable manner to look at, but very distressing to themselves. I travelled either on horseback or in one of the waggons, as it happened. I was too well known, and I hope I may add, too well liked, not to be as well provided for as possible. It is ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... think so," said Lucile, dryly, in response to Jessie's question. "If I look the way I feel I must be a very laughable object!" ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... HILLCRIST] Ye know—it's laughable. Ye make me pay nine thousand five hundred for a bit o' land not worth four, and ye think I'm not to get back on ye. I'm goin' on with as little consideration as if ye were a ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... themselves. Adhering to this maxim I took the helm, laid down the course, and steered for Shanghai, while John kept a close watch on the stars. At times he would work lunars in his head, as did the Macedonians. Laughable as it may seem, John was just credulous enough to think that savages in these out-of-the-way parts of the world were honored with a north star, and amused himself with speculations on its identity. As luck will now and then favor the unfortunate, so we, after a voyage in which were any amount of ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... and Japan are now involved in this battle for "freedom and culture," which means fighting against Germany, against the world which has given birth to Goethe, to Kant and to Karl Marx! It would be laughable were the ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... young Risler wrote Sidonie a farewell letter, at once laughable and touching, wherein, mingling the most technical details with the most heartrending adieux, the unhappy engineer declared that he was about to set sail, with a broken heart, on the transport Sahib, "a sailing-ship and steamship combined, with engines of fifteen-hundred-horse ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... a laughable incident is said to have happened to him. For as he was walking to Antiocheia, he saw near the gates on the outside a number of men arranged on each side of the road, among whom young men by themselves in cloaks and boys on the other side stood in orderly wise, ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... throne, and they have nothing to do with man-made theories, as they call education. Their preaching is a sort of canting reiteration of the text and what few Scripture verses they chance to know and some hackneyed expressions. They are great on arguing, and it would be laughable if it was not so pitiful to hear the profound questions they discuss. Last season one of these preachers nearly broke up one of our mission Sunday-Schools, which we could attend only each alternate Sabbath. In the passage that ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 01, January, 1884 • Various
... that my business requires me to go to the chateau des Aigues," repeated the old man, with an air of laughable self-importance. ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... as to moral qualities than persons so situated would make; God's ordinances are not to be so mocked, and such violations of his laws are severely visited upon offenders against them. It would be laughable, if it were not too melancholy, to see beings bound by the holiest ties, who ought to be the sharers in the most sacred duties—united, perhaps, but in one aim, and that to secure from a world which cares not for them, a few atoms more of external observance and attention: to this noble ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... great Egyptian traditions which inspired Solon, Herodotus and Plato. Here, the Greek mythologists, the magicians of Roman Africa, the Indian mystics, all the treasures, in a word, for the lack of which contemporary dissertations are poor laughable things. Believe me, he is well avenged, the little universitarian whom they took for a madman, whom they defied. I have lived, I live, I shall live in a perpetual burst of laughter at their false and garbled erudition. And when I shall ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... seemed—and still seems to the Northern mind—useless, absurd, and ridiculous. It appears to us as groundless and almost as laughable as the frantic and impotent rage of the Chinaman who has lost his sacred queue by the hand of the Christian spoiler. To the Northern mind the cause is entirely incommensurate with the anger displayed. One is ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... despatched to me unordered, from the office of the paper in an office wrapper. You know that English papers may not now be sent abroad to neutral countries except direct from the publishing offices of the newspapers themselves. It is a precaution of the censorship, childish and laughable, for what is easier than to imitate official wrappers? I guessed at once, when I saw this unordered copy of Punch, that the wrapper was a faked one, and that it had come to me bearing orders from my superiors. ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... swung half right into the veld. Up came the artillery and opened fire on a cluster of ant-sized figures four thousand yards ahead beneath the shoulder of a kopje. Had the thing not contained the very germ of tragedy it would have been laughable to see the way those figures scattered over the red veld. It was De Wet's commandos caught napping. Just before the shell fire our burghers had gone out ahead hell-for-leather on either flank. The whole column then advanced. After two hours' ...
— With Botha in the Field • Eric Moore Ritchie
... with such a rush of persons. But, in order to sacrifice in some degree to the genius of the mob, persons expressly appointed went behind the procession, loosened the cloth from the bridge, wound it up like a flag, and threw it into the air. This gave rise to no disaster, but to a laughable mishap; for the cloth unrolled itself in the air, and, as it fell, covered a larger or smaller number of persons. Those now who took hold of the ends and drew them towards them, pulled all those in the middle ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... act of disrespect. The master of ceremonies was in consternation, and exclaimed with a look of horror to General Damuriez, "My dear sir, he has not even buckles in his shoes!" "Mercy upon us!" exclaimed the old general, with the most laughable expression of affected gravity, "we shall then all ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... quite to disguise the fact that his love for her was something of a condescension; she would fly in the face of the unwritten law of the pompous house on the dunes and mingle with what Hosack had called the crowd from the hotel. It was all laughable and petty, but it was what she wanted to do. It was all in the spirit of "Who Cares?" that she had caught at again. Why worry as to what Mrs. Hosack might say or Palgrave might feel? Wasn't she as free as the air to follow her whims without a soul to make a claim upon her or to hold ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... dealt hard blows without the smallest ceremony, he should have been awkward and unready, or that the air of dignity and authority which he had acquired in his former post, and of which he had not divested himself, should have made his helplessness laughable and pitiable. Nevertheless, during many months, his power seemed to stand firm. He was a favourite with the King, whom he resembled in narrowness of mind, and to whom he was more obsequious than Pitt had ever ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of damage suits for fright and delay, laughable stories of the mistakes of the volunteer crew of the Noa-Noa; discussions of the price of copra, mingled with the chants of the native feasters and ribald tales. The Tiare girls, all color and sparkle, ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... understand," said Father Brown, shaking his head. "The shape of this house is quaint—it is even laughable. But there is nothing ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... imitated this sublime piece of pleasantry; for, by a curious intermixture of all which the mind can experience from such a fiction, pleasant it is in the midst of its sublimity,—laughable with satirical archness, as well as grand and terrible in the climax. The transformation in Spenser is from a jealous man into Jealousy. His wife has gone to live with the Satyrs, and a villain has stolen his money. The husband, in order to persuade his wife to return, steals into the ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... (boast) 884; triumph; hold jubilee &c (celebrate) 883; make merry &c (sport) 840. laugh, raise laughter &c (amuse) 840. Adj. rejoicing &c v.; jubilant, exultant, triumphant; flushed, elated, pleased, delighted, tickled pink. amused &c 840; cheerful &c 836. laughable &c (ludicrous) 853. Int. hurrah!, Huzza!, aha!^, hail!, tolderolloll!^, Heaven be praised!, io triumphe!^, tant mieux! [Fr.], so much the better. Phr. the heart leaping with joy; ce n'est pas etre bien aise que de rire [Fr.]; Laughter holding both ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... laughable. The grand old hymn refused its cadences to this instrument of a tune-loving bourgeoise. It seemed to stand aloof and unconquered. This is a hymn for the swelling notes of an organ or for the great harmonies ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... generally deemed not sufficiently interesting, so much noise is made, and such bursts of laughter are raised, that the member who is speaking can scarcely distinguish his own words. This must needs be a distressing situation; and it seems then to be particularly laughable, when the Speaker in his chair, like a tutor in a school, again and again endeavours to restore order, which he does by calling out "To order, to order," apparently often without much attention being ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... seat than it overturned, and stretched him, black coat and all, across a wide concavity in the floor nearly filled up with white ashes produced from mountain turf. In a moment he was completely white on one side, and exhibited a most laughable appearance; his hat, too, was scorched and nearly burned on the turf coals. Squire Johnston laughed heartily, so did the other schoolmaster, whilst the Englishman completely lost his temper—swearing that such another uncivilized establishment ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... alacrity. They had no desire to prolong the interview. It had not panned out to suit them. Jane's concise explanation of the gown incident had practically turned a serious offense into a laughable blunder. Mrs. Weatherbee undoubtedly believed Jane. After listening to her, she had not asked either Norma or Judith a single question. Instead, she had closed the discussion with a curtness that was not reassuring to ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... a mirth-provoking elephant to others had there been others present to see it, but to Jerry's eager imagination there was nothing laughable about it. The green wrapper hung most loosely about Danny's small, slim figure, great folds almost touching the ground, while the brown trunk and the blue, beaver-like tail waggled and wiggled about until they met between the front and hind ...
— The Circus Comes to Town • Lebbeus Mitchell
... knowing, and put a chain about my neck. Finally, when I was about four months old, they sent me to a friend in San Francisco. I shall never forget how people looked at me and laughed when I stood on my hind legs, as if there was anything laughable in that! But they gave me sugar and other good things, ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... air of one who spied or followed. Whether he remained because they remained was hard to say, for the scene was amusing and many Arabs watched it; but he showed no sign of restlessness, and it began to seem laughable to Nevill that, if he waited for them, they would be forced to wait for him. Eventually they made a pretence of eating supper. The caid was at the buffet with an Arab acquaintance. The Englishmen lingered so long, that in the end he ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... that here in America we should condescend toward our fiction! How ridiculous in a country even yet so weak and poor and crude in the arts, which has contributed so little to the world's store of all that makes fine living for the mind! What a laughable parallel of the cock and the gem he found and left upon the dung- heap, if we could be proved not to be proud of American fiction! For if the novel and the short story should be left out of America's slender contribution ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... beginning to be restless. At first it was only a tremor; but soon Christophe was left without a doubt; they were laughing. The musicians of the orchestra had given the signal; some of them did not conceal their hilarity. The audience, certain then that the music was laughable, rocked with laughter. This merriment became general; it increased at the return of a very rhythmical motif which the double-basses accentuated in a burlesque fashion. Only the Kapellmeister went on through the ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... should be amused Frank did his best to enliven the meal. He described to her as well as he could all that he remembered of the latest fashions in England, told her the plots of the newest plays at the London theatres, repeated a few laughable stories to make her smile and provoked Raymond, who had a dry humour of his own, to a contest of wit. Between them the two subalterns brightened up what had threatened to be a dull evening. Mrs. Norton laughed gaily and helped ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... excited that he could scarcely hold the binocular firmly enough to look through it, and it was really laughable—to his companions—to hear his "Ach's" and "Pish's" of impatience as he vainly strove to steady his trembling hands and get another good look at the herd of hitherto believed extinct monsters, which were quietly ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... formed the most complete contrast to their tragedy. Not only were the characters and situations of individuals worked up into a comic picture of real life, but the whole frame of society, the constitution, nature, and the gods, were all fantastically painted in the most ridiculous and laughable colours. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... Yuba Bill, nor the experience and coolness of Bracy Tibbetts, the courteous express messenger, both of whom have since confessed to have been more than astonished at the Christian and lamb-like submission of the insiders. Amusing stories of some laughable yet sickening incidents of the occasion—such as grown men kneeling in the road, and offering to strip themselves completely, if their lives were only spared; of one of the passengers hiding under the seat, and only being dislodged by pulling his coat-tails; of incredible sums promised, and even ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... she said, and slipped her hand into his arm. "Come down into the garden: I like it in the twilight—and that pile of stones over there will not weigh upon our eyes; the trees hide it. Come, my Ange: tell me all your news, serious and laughable. I am glad you were helping your uncle; but I do not like you to be ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... 'Tis laughable, old Gerard said, And smiling as he spoke; That Mag should call his fav'rite maid, And well enjoy'd ...
— The Maid and the Magpie - An Interesting Tale Founded on Facts • Charles Moreton
... saying," answered Rose, nodding gaily, and trying hard not to flinch under the trying reception of her precious piece of information, "is that, by the funniest chance, I made the acquaintance of a friend of yours at St. Ebbe's. And the laughable coincidence of our meeting and happening to speak to each other, and then of my finding out that he knew all about you, is going to be a very good thing for poor dear Mrs. Jennings," Rose hastened to add, taking the first word in self-defence. "He is coming with his sister to board ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... to the pursuit of this stylish pastime. Indeed, in many of our larger metropolises, the popular enthusiasm has reached such heights that free "public" courses have been provided for the citizens with, I may say, somewhat laughable results, as witness the fact that I myself have often seen persons playing on these "public" courses in ordinary shirts and ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... struggling to procure a passenger. The bewildered stranger is puzzled which to choose; and when he has made up his mind, he finds it no easy matter to jostle through the countless rival conveyances which completely surround him. He is also sure to make some laughable mistake in entering the palanquin. It requires a certain tact to steady the vehicle as you throw yourself into it, or it is apt to turn over, like a tailor's swinging cot. Another ridiculous error which a stranger is liable to, is his endeavouring to seat ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... into the cabin, where a formal reconciliation took place, to the great satisfaction of the latter, who had found out that to be out of favour with us was attended with the serious consequence of being also out of pocket. It was laughable to observe the pains he now took to impress on the minds of every person he saw that he was no longer a tigliktoke, by which name he had lately been distinguished; for he seemed to think that my receiving him again into favour was a ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... be found. We returned to our hotel disappointed. The prince spoke not a word to me the whole way; he walked apart by himself, and appeared to be greatly agitated, which he afterwards confessed to me was the case. Having reached home, he began at length to speak: "Is it not laughable," said he, "that a madman should have the power thus to disturb a man's tranquillity by two or three words?" We wished each other a goodnight; and, as soon as I was in my own apartment, I noted down in my pocket-book the day and the hour when this ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... he was disappointed by her answer. Then he knew that he loved it, for its utter naturalness, its laughable naivete. It seemed, too, to set him right in his own eyes, to sweep away a creeping feeling that had been beginning to trouble him. He was playing with a child. That was all. There was no harm in it. And when he had kissed her ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... for any one to imagine that he might rob with safety, because he saw Macheath reprieved upon the stage. But if Johnson had wished to be convinced, he might very easily have discovered that highwaymen and housebreakers did frequent the theatre, and that nothing was more probable than that a laughable representation of successful villany should induce the young and the already vicious to imitate it. Besides, there is the weighty authority of Sir John Fielding, the chief magistrate of Bow Street, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... this, it had been a tremendous surprise to the young physician, returning from post-graduate work in Germany a few years later, to find that what had once been considered a sort of laughable weakness in him was called strength of character now; that what had been a clumsy boy's inarticulateness was more charitably construed into the silence of a clever man who will not waste his words; and that mothers whose ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... more tender, wise and beautiful states of thought and being. Tennyson, in a famous letter published some time ago, mentioned that he had at different times experienced such a mood; the idea of death was laughable; it was not thought, but a state; "the clearest of the clearest, the surest of the surest." It would be easy to ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... strength. This is well manifested by a proclamation which, signed by Jose Reyes, Celestins Dominguez and Genara Cautino, was issued to the people of Guayama on May 20, 1898. As one of the curiosities of the war, it can only be compared to the celebrated and laughable manifesto which Captain-General Augustin issued at Manila just before the ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... thing of the kind aloud in his presence. The rum had operated so cheerily upon his followers in the yard, that fat and lean, old and young, all commenced dancing, and continued performing the most laughable antics, till they were no longer able to stand. It amused the travellers infinitely to observe these creatures, with their old solemn placid-looking chief at their head, staggering out at the door way; they ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... all, and more than all. I was still fiddle-faddling with the girth strap, the better to impose upon my Indian horse-guards, when suddenly there arose a yelling hubbub of laughter in the camp behind. I turned to look and beheld a thing laughable enough, no doubt, and yet it broke no bubble of mirth in me. Half-way from the nearest forest fringe to the great fire a man, white of skin, and clothed only in a pair of trooper boots, was running swiftly for cover ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... somnambulism hide, epidermis bird, ornithology fleshly, carnal bird, aviary hearer, auditor bee, apiary snake, serpent bending, flexible heap, aggregation wrinkle, corrugation laugh, cachinnation slow, dilatory laughable, risible lime, calcimine fear, trepidation coal, lignite live, exist man, anthropology bridal, nuptial winter, hibernate wed, marry gap, hiatus husband/wife, spouse right, ethical shore, littoral showy, ostentatious forswear, perjure spelling, orthography steal, peculate ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... believed to enlarge them; in order to extend them, she wandered off into abstractions and hyperboles. She seemed to see certain objects only through a fog, which augmented their importance in her eyes; and then her expression became so inflated that the pomposity of it would have been laughable if one had not known her to ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... not reciprocated; and he was more attacked than ever, though for some months he had published nothing. In the autumn of 1917 the anger against him had risen to an unheard-of height. The disproportion was really laughable between this rage and the feeble words of one man, but it was so all over the world. A dozen or so weak pacifists, alone, surrounded, without means of being heard through any paper of standing, spoke honestly but not loudly, and this let loose a perfect frenzy ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... dozen times, he retired without uttering another sentence. We have heard since, that Sir Thomas is become an orator, he having made several brilliant speeches in Parliament. It may be so; but his debut at Wells was most laughable. Mr. Goodford, one of the Ilchester Bastile Visiting Magistrates, next came forward, to disclaim any participation in calling the meeting: he had, he said, certainly signed the requisition, but he ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... and General Scott and the butcher the other. The women, after retiring early, gave the signal, "All right," when the men took possession of the second bed. After some pretty fast traveling the next morning, General Scott reached his destination. While he was relating this laughable experience to us some years later, I inquired whether he had enjoyed a comfortable rest. "No," was his emphatic response, "the butcher snored the whole night." During this visit to Richmond, General Scott was invited by ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... his disguise, and comes forth tricked up with false hair and the dress of a Bacchanal; but still with some misgivings at the thought of going thus attired through the streets of Thebes, and with many laughable readjustments of the unwonted articles of clothing. And with the woman's dress, his madness is closing faster round him; just before, in the palace, terrified at the noise of the earthquake, he had drawn sword upon a mere fantastic appearance, and pierced only the empty ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... thinking that knowledge is power and so test for knowledge, thinking, futilely, that we are testing for power. We judge of a teacher's efficacy by some marks that examiners inscribe upon a bit of paper, "a thing laughable to gods and men." She may be proficient in languages, sciences, and arts and still not be good for the children by reason of the absence of spiritual qualities. None the less, we admit her to the school as teacher when we would decline ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... draw a comparison between the two people, I almost invariably cast the balance against ourselves." And he writes at another time:—"I received several private letters and printed notices of Our Old Home from England. It is laughable to see the innocent wonder with which they regard my criticisms, accounting for them by jaundice, insanity, jealousy, hatred, on my part, and never admitting the least suspicion that there may be a particle of truth in them. The monstrosity ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... So the news spread abroad, and Gunther puffed his cheeks over it. A six-foot-two man, a monstrous leisurely merchant, who rose not to the lord of a castle and town, who did not wait for his lordship's humour, but found laughable matter in his own; who was taller than the Archduke and thought his Grace a dull dog; who made a Danae of his landlord! Was this man Jove? Who could think the Archduke a dull dog except an Emperor, or, perhaps, a great king? A king: stay now. There were wandering kings abroad. How if Richard ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... tells a plain tale better than you. I will enumerate some woful blemishes, some of 'em sad deviations from that simplicity which was your aim. "Hailed who might be near" (the "canvas-coverture moving," by the by, is laughable); "a woman and six children" (by the way, why not nine children? It would have been just half as pathetic again); "statues of sleep they seemed;" "frost-mangled wretch;" "green putridity;" "hailed him immortal" (rather ludicrous ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... a whistle, so faint that it seemed little more than the echo of one; but Phil heard, and instantly his head was poked out between his curtains. Stuart held me up and grinned. Immediately Phil held up Matches and grinned. After a funny pantomime by which, with many laughable gestures, each boy made the other understand that he intended to allow his pet freedom all night, they drew in ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... fortunes. But although the standard Roman plays were constantly represented, dramatic literature had become extinct. The entertainments, which had now taken the place of comedy and tragedy, were termed mimes. These were laughable imitations of manners and persons, combining the features of comedy and farce, for comedy represents the characters of a class, farce those of individuals. Their essence was that of the modern pantomime, and their coarseness, ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... had no military qualities whatever, and failed to acquire any during his entire service. He never could learn the drill, except the most simple company movements. He was also very illiterate, and could barely write his name. And his commands on drill were generally laughable. For instance, in giving the command of right or left wheel, he would supplement it by saying, "Swing around, boys, just like a gate." Such directions would mortify us exceedingly, and caused the men of the other ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... keystone and crowning summit of all Friedrich Wilhelm's endeavors; to which he devoted himself, as only the best Spartan could have done. Of which there will be other opportunities to speak in detail. For it was a thing world-notable; world-laughable, as was then thought; the extremely serious fruit of which did at length also become ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... said she, without a moment's hesitation, 'if there is one thing more than another that I do want, it's a silk handkercher for my head—a real Bandana.' The request was characteristic. Of the tales we heard one or two were curious, one positively laughable, and one related to a deed of blood. Mr. Smith, going into a tent, found an aged Gipsy woman, to whom he told the object of his visiting the Gipsies, and what he hoped to accomplish for the children, and she forwith handed him a money gift. On more ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... 33. It is laughable to see them waken another who is sleeping like a stone, when they come up without making any noise and touching him very lightly with the point of the finger, will call him for two hours, until the sleeper finishes his sleep and awakens. The same thing is done when ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... to me to be laughing at a different old thing every time. But when they weren't laughing they were scowling, over some new attack upon life—and when they did that they were laughable. At least so they were to me. Not that I minded attacking things, I had done plenty of that myself in Paris. But how different we had been back there. We, too, had thrown old creeds to the winds, but with how much more finesse and art. And there had been a large remoteness about it. ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... could have been more patient, more attentive, or more ingenious, than this common sailor. He had put off his shoes, so as to walk more softly; and he came and went on tiptoe, his face full of care and anxiety, preparing draughts, and handling with his huge bony hands, with laughable, but almost touching precautions, the small phials out of which he had to give a spoonful to his patient at ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... It was laughable—the look of indignant astonishment with which the widow regarded her housekeeper, as in the simple honesty of her ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... Napoleon, with his thin legs thrust into enormous boots, saluted by his friend's children, on his first appearance in uniform, with the nickname of Le Chat Botte? It is hard to say which was the more laughable: the spare and bony figure of the cadet, sitting bolt upright like a graven image in a tight uniform, with his eyes glued to the ceiling of his barrack-room, or the young man, with gaunt features, round shoulders, and uncombed hair, who wandered ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... panegyrist, who never laughs, but does sometimes make his readers laugh, when they see his very unbecoming, mocking grimaces against the "old masters"—not that it can be fairly asserted that it is a laughable book. It has much conceit, and but little merriment; there is nothing really funny after you have got over, (vide page 6,) that he "looks with contempt on Claude, Salvator, and Gaspar Poussin." This contempt, however, being too limited for the "graduate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... denouncing all others. One Cuban, of large fortune and small reputation, being implicated in these matters, brought General Concha a list of all his confederates, which Concha burned before his face, unread. Piteous, laughable spectacle! Better be monkeys than such men; yet such work does Absolutism in government and religion make of the noble human creature! God preserve us ever ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... the stage. It amused Carlo; he knew when his mother was really angry with persons she tried to shield from the anger of others; and her not seeing the wrong on his side in his behaviour to his betrothed was laughable. Nevertheless she had divined the case more correctly than he: the lover was hurt. After what he had endured, he supposed, with all his forgiveness, that he had an illimitable claim upon his bride's patience. He told his another to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... dear; it is all very lamentable and laughable, but we must submit till the world learns better. There are often excellent young persons among the 'grasshoppers,' and if you cared to look you might find a pleasant friend here and there," said Mr. Yule, leaning a little toward his son's view of ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... once more of Miss Willard, no one enjoyed a really laughable thing more than she did, but I never felt like being a foolish trifler in her presence. Her outlook was so far above mine that I always felt not rebuked, but ashamed of ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... Sunday, there was a great horse fair. We looked with interest at the gay Tyroleans, with the cock-feathers in their pointed hats, singing and yodeling in the streets with their sweethearts on their arms. Every now and then they let fall some sarcastic comment on our accoutrements, which were indeed laughable enough to these people, who had never seen anything beyond their own chalets, and for whom an excursion from their mountains to a fair in the nearest town is a journey. It was noon when we stopped at Traunstein, and from there to ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... his journeys, their master had always directed and guided them and told them exactly what he wished them to do. But now they had to distribute the toys according to their own judgment, and they did not understand children as well as did old Santa. So it is no wonder they made some laughable errors. ...
— A Kidnapped Santa Claus • L. Frank Baum
... realize it in the interior, though to me the exterior outline and architecture were always soft and beautiful. Unfortunately, one is greatly pestered outside by a voracious band of touts, miscalled guides, some of them mere uneducated-looking, parrot-like roughs, and whom it is laughable to suppose could have any pretensions to refined knowledge and art history—irreverent monsters who have no sympathy with, or appreciation of, anything, except what you may have ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... count screwed his chubby features into a laughable mask of gravity. "Now one remembers quite well. He passed as a collector of objets d'art, especially of fine paintings, in Paris, for years before the War—this Monsieur Michael Lanyard. Then he disappeared. ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... been discovered in his study, engaged in the deepest meditation on a grammatical crux; and had received the news of his arrest with a blank horror and amazement very laughable in the eyes of Sir Piers. Master Aristoteles was pounding rhubarb with his sleeves turned up, and required some convincing that he was not wanted professionally. Father Warner was no where to be found. The three priests were spared fetters ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... a lane of water to visit us, and, approaching the boats within twenty yards, was killed by Lieutenant Ross. The scene which followed was laughable, even to us who participated in it. Before the animal had done biting the snow, one of the men was alongside of him with an open knife; and, being asked what he was about to do, replied that he was about cut out ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... you were an officer in your American army at home. To be a corporal must seem laughable to you. And yet, the stripe is more than just a mere stripe. ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... without any other emotion, such as pity, love, reverence. For sublime ideas are mixed with admiration, beautiful ones with love, new ones with surprise; and these exertions of our ideas prevent the action of laughter from being necessary to relieve the painful pleasure above described. Whence laughable wit consists of frivolous ideas, without connections of any consequence, such as puns on words, or on phrases, incongruous junctions of ideas; on which account laughter is so ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... me laughable in another way. I can't see what right you have to interfere," she breaks out suddenly, standing before him, wilful but lovely. "What are you to me, or I to you, that you should ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... markets would begin to feel the pinch. And Lloyd's—poor old Lloyd's—what a demented state it would be in! I could imagine the London evening papers and the howling in Fleet Street. We saw the result of our actions, for it was quite laughable to see the torpedo-boats buzzing like angry wasps out of Sheerness in the evening. They were darting in every direction across the estuary, and the aeroplanes and hydroplanes were like flights of crows, black dots against ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... diplomacy as these envoys were, and laughable as they appeared to contemporary historians, they received nevertheless the marechal's consent to the ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... base-ball ground is well filled on these pleasant afternoons. The games of foot-ball, base-ball and cricket are played at the same time. It is quite laughable for an outsider to witness the consternation of the players of the two more scientific games when the mob engaged in the other sport ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... rising early, and talking fustian. He was a sort of miniature Brummagem Johnson. Except his preface to Bellendenus, you might burn all he has written. His 'Life of Fox' is beneath contempt. His letters are simply laughable, especially his characters of contemporaries. He, however, was an amiable and good-natured man, and had sufficient humanity to regard dissent as an impediment to his recognition of intellectual or moral worth. Parr was an arrogant old ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... he would say cheerfully, when he had broken down for the twentieth time, "play on and I'll catch you up." He had thus a series of trysting places in every page or two, which might have been very laughable to an indifferent spectator, but which aggravated the Mays, father and son, to an intolerable extent. They were the two who suffered. As for Horace Northcote, who was not a great talker, it was a not disagreeable shield for his ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... frequent intervals with his chaste Shakesperean quips and retorts." Lastly, he was to wind them up by appearing in his favorite character of Mr. William Button, of Tooley Street, in "the highly novel and laughable Hippo Comedietta of The Tailor's ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... one of the most frightful mistakes ever made by a political party. That little word "only" was a millstone around the neck of the entire campaign. The third mistake was Hancock's definition of the tariff. It was exceedingly unfortunate, exceedingly laughable, and came just in the nick of time. The fourth mistake was the speech of Wade Hampton, I mean the speech that the Republican papers claim he made. Of course I do not know, personally, whether it was made ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... occurred, you know where the most educated and the least educated people are. Schopenhauer says that the intelligent man finds everything funny, the logical man nothing; and according to Erdmann (in ber die Dummheit), the distressing or laughable characteristics of an object, shows not its nature, but the nature of the observer. It would seem that the criminalist might save himself much work by observing the laughter of his subjects. The embarrassed, foolish snickering ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... advised her to do so, saying that she was looking very ill, and he feared she would certainly get into bad health if she did not. In fact, he even said that he feared she would die if she did not go to the country for a few weeks. Now, all this would be laughable, as being the eccentricity of a half-cracked fellow, if it were not that he exhibits such a desperate anxiety that his advice should be followed, and even begged of the poor lady, with tears in his eyes, to go to visit her friends. What d'ye think ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... of life in a girl's college that has ever been written. It is bright, whimsical and entertaining, lifelike, laughable and thoroughly human. ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... ranged themselves along the wall behind the table. Mr Evans then began by causing a little boy about four years old to recite a long comical piece of prose in English. Having been well drilled for weeks beforehand, he did it in the most laughable style. Then came forward four little girls, who kept up an animated philosophical discussion as to the difference of the days in the moon and on the earth. Then a bigger boy made a long speech in the Seauteaux ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... us as a possibility before we can think of exorcising it. No man can know his brother simply as a spectator. Dear blunderers, I am one of you. I wince at the fact, but I am not ignorant of it, that I too am laughable on unsuspected occasions; nay, in the very tempest and whirlwind of my anger, I include myself under my own indignation. If the human race has a bad reputation, I perceive that I cannot escape being compromised. And thus while ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... tales that we have ever read. The gradual augmentation of the spook's power is one of the most preposterous, the most laughable histories in the whole literature of spoofing. Lieut. Jones has given us a wonderful book—even a ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... distresses; with something vague and yet precise, like a dream partially remembered. Here and there is the creation of a mood and moment, almost like Coleridge's in the Ancient Mariner; but these flicker and go out. The style would be laughable in its simplicity if there were not in it some almost awing touch of innocence; some hint of that divine goodness which, in Lamb, needed the relief and savour of the later freakishness to sharpen it out of insipidity. There is already ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... quite as much as the English, love comic shepherd scenes with plenty of eating and drinking and brawling. A traditional figure is the shepherd Rifflart, always a laughable type. In the strictly mediaeval plays the shepherds are true French rustics, but with the progress of the Renaissance classical elements creep into the pastoral scenes; in a mystery printed in 1507 Orpheus with the Nymphs and Oreads is introduced. As might be expected, ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... family will laugh over this deliriously humorous novel, that pictures the sunny side of small-town life, and contains love-making, a dash of mystery, an epidemic of spook-chasing—and laughable, ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... 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 manner of enchantresses amiable or ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... said Adele, "if—" She leaned forward in anxiety. She had come to the real necessity of Helene Vauquier's plan. "If we abandon as quite laughable the cupboard door and the string across it; if, in a word, mademoiselle consents that we tie her hand and foot and fasten her securely in a chair. Such restraints are usual in the experiments of which I have read. Was there not a medium called Mlle. Cook who was secured in this ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... as though it were a sudden clap of thunder. But it was worse. It was laughable, yes, but oh, ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... no sentiment," challenged Reddy. Whereupon the divine power of song was at once swallowed up in a fresh burst of argument as futile as it was laughable. It was ended by tactful Anne, who was always supremely useful when called upon to arbitrate such important matters. The relative merits of "Golden Summer" having been successfully decided and laid to rest, Nora again lifted ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... examine the suspicious headgear, and it passed from hand to hand before it was returned to my father in a more or less damaged condition, Even then a good many men were not satisfied respecting our nationality, but during that incident of the hat—a laughable one to me nowadays, though everything looked very ugly when it occurred—there had been time for the men's angry passions to cool, to a considerable extent at all events; and after that serio-comical interlude, they were much less eager to inflict ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... he leaped from episode and place to episode and place, relating his experiences seemingly not because they were his, but for the sake of their bizarreness and uniqueness, for the unusual incident or the laughable situation. He had gone through South American revolutions, been a Rough Rider in Cuba, a scout in South Africa, a war correspondent in the Russo-Japanese war. He had mushed dogs in the Klondike, washed gold from the sands of Nome, and edited a newspaper ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... He rowed and swam and fished and tramped with fully as much enthusiasm as did Jimmy himself, and with almost as much vigor. Around the camp fire at night he quite rivaled Jamie with his story-telling of adventures, both laughable and thrilling, that had befallen him in ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... painters, while he did not really conciliate 'the quality.' The former scorned him, his fine clothes, splendid furniture, and black servants—the more satirical holding him up to ridicule in the shop windows, by laughable caricatures, such as 'The Macaroni Miniature Painter; or, Billy Dimple sitting for his picture:' the latter came to his feasts, drank his wines, won his money from him at hazard, stimulated his extravagance to the utmost, while they made mouths at him behind ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... to come, With buttons and hooks, and medical books, And rotary engines, and rum, Large cases with labels, occasional tables, Hair tonic and fiddles and 'phones; And the Glugs, while copncealing their joy in the dealing, Paid promptly in nothing but stones. Why, it was screamingly Laughable, seemingly—- Asking ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... that in some of the inland countries of Africa, scarcely any work is done by the natives except to the sound of music; and Cruikshank, speaking of the coast negroes, says it is laughable to observe the effect of their rude music on all classes, old and young, men, women, and children. "However employed, whether passing quietly through the street, carrying water from the pond, or assisting in some grave procession, no sooner do they hear the rapid beats of a distant ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... to be saluted as the son of Jupiter, not from motives of pride but of policy, as he showed by his answer to the invective of Hermolaus: "It is almost laughable," said he, that Hermolaus asked me to contradict Jupiter, by whose oracle I am recognized. (33) Am I responsible for the answers of the gods? (34) It offered me the name of son; acquiescence was by no means foreign to my present designs. (35) Would that the Indians ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part IV] • Benedict de Spinoza
... glimpse of a shrimp on the bottom, or a red shadow as the animal darted past, and only the swiftest coordination of mind and body won the prize. Whereas Raiere and even Matatini secured most of those they struck at, I made many laughable failures. I missed the still body through the deceptive shadows of the water, or failed to strike home because of the lightning-like movements of ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... African cannot avoid being comic. He is the grotesque element in our civilization. He will be droll even under the severest punishment. His contortions of body, his grimaces, his ejaculations of "O Lor'! O Massa!" as the paddle or the lash strikes his flesh, are laughable in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... almost laughable to see how nearly all the sciences and arts of modern times grow from the scattered seeds which have been wafted towards us from antiquity, and how Christianity seems to us here to be merely the evil chill of a long night, a night ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... wife, and render to her those services which the English tyrant exacts from his consort. One may often hear an American matron commiserate a friend who has married in Europe, while the daughters declare in chorus that they will never follow the example. Laughable as all this may seem to English women, it is perfectly true that the theory as well as the practice of conjugal life is not the same in America as in England. There are overbearing husbands in America, but they ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... was not there; but that dinner was ordered to be kept back, as he was every moment expected.' Thus directed, 'Father Arthur's' apology for delay was a humorous and detailed account of his expedient—the evening flew quickly away on the wings of eloquence and wit, and the laughable incident was long ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... doctrine, or he does not visit his people enough, or there is "a row" about the singing, or about a change in the hymn-books, or about repairing the church, or buying an organ, or something or other, and straightway sides are taken, and the wills of both parties get roused. It is sometimes laughable—it would always be, only that it is too sad—to see how quickly both parties grow pious, as they grow perverse. It would seem, as the strife waxes hot, that the glory of God was never so much in their hearts as now. ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... else's gain—the farmer would never have done it if it hadn't been to his advantage. If you 're an altruist, that should comfort you. And you must n't mind Marietta,—you must n't mind her laughter. Marietta is a Latin. The Latin conception of what is laughable differs by the whole span of heaven from the Teuton. You and I ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... chorus, squealing in some strange falsetto, produced very much the effect of our orchestra; in another, the dancers, leaping like jumping-jacks, with arms extended, passed through and through each other's ranks with extraordinary speed, neatness, and humour. A more laughable effect I never saw; in any European theatre it would have brought the house down, and the island audience roared with laughter and applause. This filled up the measure for the rival company, and they forgot ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to see his Cardinals crawl up out of the subway why doesn't he give Matson a chance? The youngster can pitch good ball, and the line of twirling that has been handed out by the Cardinals thus far this season would be laughable, ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... there was the one especially irritating instance when, finding herself hard put, she had been obliged to turn squarely in her tracks and hurry back in the direction from which she came. This would have been laughable to Kenneth but for the distressing fact that it was even more laughable to others. Several men and women, witnessing the manoeuvre, had sniggered gleefully,—one of the men going so far as to slap his leg and roar: "Well, by ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... Ollapodiana will be remembered with admiration and pleasure, by readers in every section of the United States. Their rich variety of subject; their alternate humor and pathos; the one natural, quiet, and irresistibly laughable; the other warm from the heart, and touching in its tenderness and beauty; won for them the cordial and unanimous praise of the press throughout the Union, and frequent laudatory notices from the English journals. ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... but no merchant under the sun.' So the news spread abroad, and Gunther puffed his cheeks over it. A six-foot-two man, a monstrous leisurely merchant, who rose not to the lord of a castle and town, who did not wait for his lordship's humour, but found laughable matter in his own; who was taller than the Archduke and thought his Grace a dull dog; who made a Danae of his landlord! Was this man Jove? Who could think the Archduke a dull dog except an Emperor, or, perhaps, a great king? A king: stay now. There were wandering ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... immense favourite in the settlement, for his good-humour knew no bounds. No one ever saw him frown. Even when fighting with the savages, as he was sometimes compelled to do in self-defence, he went at them with a sort of jovial rage that was almost laughable. Inconsiderate recklessness was one of his chief characteristics, so that his comrades were rather afraid of him on the war-trail or in the hunt, where caution, and frequently soundless motion, were essential to success or safety. But when Henri ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... Macheath reprieved upon the stage. But if Johnson had wished to be convinced, he might very easily have discovered that highwaymen and housebreakers did frequent the theatre, and that nothing was more probable than that a laughable representation of successful villany should induce the young and the already vicious to imitate it. Besides, there is the weighty authority of Sir John Fielding, the chief magistrate of Bow Street, who asserted positively, and proved his assertion by the records ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... extravagance. The fanciful swings away from the real or the ordinary lightly and pleasantly, the fantastic extravagantly, the grotesque ridiculously. A fanciful arrangement of objects is commonly pleasing, a fantastic arrangement is striking, a grotesque arrangement is laughable. A fanciful theory or suggestion may be clearly recognized as such; a visionary scheme is erroneously supposed to have a basis in fact. Compare ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... How does the express clerk generally take it? Anything done with the mail car? UNDER WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES WILL A TRAIN ROBBER SHOOT A PASSENGER OR A TRAIN MAN—suppose a man refuses to throw up his hands? Queer articles found on passengers (a chance here for some imaginative work)—queer and laughable incidents of any kind. Refer whenever apropos to actual hold-ups and facts concerning them of interest. What could two or three brave and determined passengers do if they were to try? Why don't they try? How long does it take to do the business. Does the train man ever stand in with the hold-up? ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... was what made the mistake in names so laughable. Fairbain gave me your message, but as coming from Christie. I was, of course, greatly surprised, yet responded. The lady very promptly denied having sent for me, but as I was anxious to interview her myself, we managed to drift into conversation, and I must have passed a half hour ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... of unquestioned sanity. But the conduct of his public life goes to prove that his wits were diseased. His behavior in the House, when it was not intolerably tedious, was characterized by a grotesque buffoonery which men looked upon as laughable {194} or pitiable according to their tempers, but which they had not yet learned to look upon as dangerous. When he denounced the King as a Papist, when he declared that the time would come when George Gordon would be able to dictate to the Crown and Parliament, when he occasionally ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... pay for his picture, but the lady and her husband obstinately refused. Hereupon he transformed her into a Danae, receiving the shower of gold, adding other figures, such as a turkey cock representing the eagle of Jove, which rendered the whole work as laughable as it was uncomplimentary to its subject. It was exhibited in one of the expositions in the time of the empire, and no picture was ever ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... with a portentous solemnity against which Lagardere protested, laughing louder than before. "On the contrary, it is more laughable than ever. A secret marriage. A romance. Perhaps I shall have to soothe a widow when I hoped to ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... truth which we have agreed upon as the great central fact of human life is the golden thread that runs through all religions. When we make it the paramount fact in our lives we will find that minor differences, narrow prejudices, and all these laughable absurdities will so fall away by virtue of their very insignificance, that a Jew can worship equally as well in a Catholic cathedral, a Catholic in a Jewish synagogue, a Buddhist in a Christian church, a Christian in a Buddhist temple. ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... a bandicoot, in one of the bath-rooms, and, shutting him in for a while, I closed the doors of a very large room adjoining, which was quite empty, and then turned my friend in with a small black-and-tan terrier. The scrimmage that ensued was most laughable, as both rat and dog kept slipping and sliding all over the place. At last the former was pinned in a corner, where he made a most determined stand, and left several marks before he died. They seldom ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... great joy, an unclouded sun rose upon the prairie. We presented rather a laughable appearance, for the cold and clammy buckskin, saturated with water, clung fast to our limbs; the light wind and warm sunshine soon dried them again, and then we were all incased in armor of intolerable rigidity. Roaming all day over the prairie and shooting two ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... A laughable story, on this subject, is told of Shah Abbas, who having got drunk at the house of one of his favorites, and intending to go into the apartment of his wives, was stopped by the door-keeper, who bluntly told him, "Not a man, sir, besides my master, shall put a mustachio here, so long as I am porter." ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... this helped to spoil a locomotive engineer, but went to make a great master of the new motive power. "Steam is half an Englishman," said Emerson. The temptation is strong to say that workaday electricity is half an American. Edison's own account of the incident is very laughable: "The engine was one of a number leased to the Grand Trunk by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy. It had bright brass bands all over, the woodwork beautifully painted, and everything highly polished, which was the custom ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... said, and judging from that natural tendency of his mind to look at even serious things on the ridiculous, laughable side, would it be correct to infer that Lord Byron was always gay, and never melancholy? Those maintaining such an opinion, would have to bear too many contradictions. Physiology, psychology, and history, would together protest against such ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... in this world that it is simply laughable and nothing else. Birds nowadays have become so unaccountable: they sit late on their eggs, and there are some, I declare, that have not hatched them by ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... example of how a balloon may be made to take a fresh lease of life is supplied by a voyage of M. Testu about this date, which must find brief mention in these pages. In one aspect it is laughable, in another it is sublime. From every point of view it ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... hastened her steps to a run. What were they doing to Axel? She was going to his house, alone. People would talk. Who cared? And when she had heard all that could be told her there, she was going to Axel himself. People would talk. Who cared? The laughable indifference of slander, when big issues of life and death were at stake! All the tongues of all the world should not frighten her away from Axel. Her eyes had a new look in them. For the first time she was wide awake, was facing life as it is without dreams, facing its absolute cruelty and pitilessness. ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... "but permit me to say I see nothing laughable in it. However," he added, turning to Porthos, "I should not regret dying, sir, were I sure that by doing so I might still ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... seemed to want to drag him to the tree where I had seen him tied, but to this Jimmy objected strongly. The way in which he butted at his captors, and kicked out like a grasshopper, would have been most laughable had I not been anxious, for I felt sure that it would result in his hurting some one, and being rewarded with a blow on the head or a ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... Laughable incidents either from history or illustrations from any source, must not be forgotten, for if the speech be more than a few minutes long they ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... the same time more ridiculous and more awful, more laughable and more taunting, than that little fan in those huge hands. It seemed like a make-believe sceptre in the hands of such an old, hideous, and bony giantess! A like effect was produced by the showy percale handkerchief adorning her face by the side of that cut-water ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... look into it, though, as the accompanying photograph shows, it is sometimes found on rocks near the ground. The young hawks have a way of their own of defending themselves from any climbing creature, and to investigators of the nest the results are disastrously disagreeable as well as laughable. As the intruder climbs near, the baby birds put their heads over the sides of the nest and empty their stomachs upon him. This is vouched for by a well-known writer who claims to have gone ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... till all at once, as it were out of the intensity of the consciousness of individuality, individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being, and this not a confused state but the clearest, the surest of the surest, utterly beyond words-where death was an almost laughable impossibility-the loss of personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction, but the only true life." He wrote further: "It is no nebulous ecstasy, but a state of transcendent wonder, associated with ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... came, and they said many mitigating things across the body with the bandaged jaws and the sly grin, and they reminded each other of this and that queer thing which he had done, for his memory was crusted over with stories of wild, laughable things, and other things which were ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... Then every thing conspired to make it peculiarly difficult to each to play his part. Schmeie Tinkeles, the unfortunate little Jew who spoke such execrable German, and whom Fink always found especial pleasure in badgering and beating down, made his appearance in the office, and, as usual, a laughable scene ensued. All the clerks watched Fink, and chimed in with him, but Anton had to behave as though Tinkeles were a hundred miles away. Then Mr. Schroeter gave him a commission, which obliged him to ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... woman's heart; the less welcome when it is disillusionment with self as much as with another. Her great dedication—her scheme of life! She had been going to—what?—save Fiorsen from himself! It was laughable. She had only lost herself. Already she felt in prison, and by a child would be all the more bound. To some women, the knowledge that a thing must be brings assuagement of the nerves. Gyp was the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... horse was there, and I found my saddle in one of the rooms of the building, hidden under a blanket. I entered the corral through the back door of the house, caught and saddled my horse, and then led him out to the street. This was a very laughable manner of leave-taking. The house was cut up into a labyrinth of small rooms, just large enough for a horse to turn around in, and the doors were low and narrow. As I could not find the outer door, I led my horse successively into every room in ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... the boys met and vanquished the savage hostility of Josh Owen and Dan Jaggers; they remember the desperate battle, in the ocean's depths, with the crazy boatswain's mate. They recall the dashing, laughable prank that Captain Jack played on one of the big battleships of the Naval maneuvers fleet, and remember the pretty romance, in which the submarine boys aided greatly, through which Mr. Farnum secured beautiful Grace Desmond as his bride. Our readers who have pored ...
— The Submarine Boys' Trial Trip - "Making Good" as Young Experts • Victor G. Durham
... the better men, are dead, and I, the least of them all, remain, having even outlived the cause. What praise shall I take for this? None—from all decent fellows of the earth, none at all. It is merely laughable that I should be left, the monument of a sacred loyalty greater than the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and how they rise! How high they were, and how they tumble! O vanity of vanities! O laughable, ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... outline pictures the artists have caught the true spirit of Lincoln's humor, and while showing the laughable side of many incidents in his career, they are true to life in the ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... the medical corps had ever tried, knowingly, to impose on the vulgar, to hide the uncertainty of their knowledge, the weakness of their theories, the vagueness of their conceptions, under an obscure and pedantic jargon, the immortal and laughable sarcasms of Moliere would not have been more than an act of strict justice. In all cases every thing has its day; now, towards the end of the eighteenth century, the most delicate, the most thorny points of doctrine were discussed with an entire good ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... "Horse Fair" and other similar pictures, which have brought her much into the company of men, she has found it wise to dress in male costume. A laughable incident is related of this mode of dress. One day when she returned from the country, she found a messenger awaiting to announce to her the sudden illness of one of her young friends. Rosa did not wait to change her male attire, but hastened to the bedside of the young lady. In a few ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... score of thick white roots that worked, as I looked, like the limbs of a crab. In a twinkling that parti-coloured gentleman vegetable near me was off to the stem upon which grew his lady love; running and scrambling, dragging the finery of his tasselled petals behind, it was laughable to watch his eagerness. He got a grip of the tree and up he went, "hand over hand," root over root. I had just time to note others of his species had dropped here and there upon the ground, and were hurrying with frantic haste to the ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... did not really conciliate 'the quality.' The former scorned him, his fine clothes, splendid furniture, and black servants—the more satirical holding him up to ridicule in the shop windows, by laughable caricatures, such as 'The Macaroni Miniature Painter; or, Billy Dimple sitting for his picture:' the latter came to his feasts, drank his wines, won his money from him at hazard, stimulated his extravagance to the utmost, while they made mouths at him behind his back, and condemned ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... order of our stories we must begin with "Don Quixote." Its author wrote it under great difficulties and distress; but one would never think so, as it is full of laughable doings. When you read our selections you must not think that Don Quixote was merely a silly old man, for indeed he was a very noble gentleman and tried with all his might to do what he believed to be his duty, and in no act of his life was there ever a stain of dishonor or of meanness. ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... the audience chamber without much delay. The President received us kindly, as he does all who approach him. He was already apprised of the fair, and spoke of it with much interest, and with a desire to attend it. He gave us a most laughable account of his visit to the Philadelphia Fair, when, as he expressed it, 'for two miles it was all people, where it wasn't houses,' and where 'he actually feared he should be pulled from the carriage windows.' We notified him that he must be prepared for a still greater crowd in Chicago, as ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... can you use slang in the presence of ladies?" and she assumed the characteristic "tough" walk, which had always been one of Clip's most laughable capers. ...
— The Motor Girls on a Tour • Margaret Penrose
... crumpled fragments, both in proof and manuscript. Behind a mangy old writing-table in this apartment sat a figure with a stump of a pen in its mouth and a great pair of scissors in its right hand, clipping and slicing at a file of Rowdy Journals; and it was such a laughable figure that Martin had some difficulty in preserving his gravity, though conscious of the close observation ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... curious to find that such a ghastly relic as a dead hand should have been preserved in many a country house, and used as a talisman, to which we find an amusing and laughable ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... merriment as it would be for a flower to keep its head determinately turned from the sun. In their darkest days Annie had managed to make her mother laugh; her little face was a sunbeam, her very naughtinesses were of a laughable character. ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... this was mostly her own. It is not a laughable sight to see the comfortable fractions of Christian communities everywhere striving, with sincere, pious, well-meant, criminal benevolence, to make their poor brethren contented with the ditch. Nor does it become so to ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... and wonder if I should hear 'em wailing out, if I lay cold and drowned at th' bottom o' th' canal, there—why, man, I cannot laugh at aught. It seems to make me sad that there is any as can make game on what they've never knowed; as can make such laughable pictures on men, whose very hearts within 'em are so raw and sore as ours were and ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... I came on deck, my old friend Oscar greeted me with his usual joyous bark, and with the sagacity peculiar to his species, proceeded to shew me all the damage done to the vessel during the night. It was laughable to watch the motions of the poor brute, as he ran from place to place, stopping before, or jumping upon, every fractured portion of the deck, and barking out his indignation at the ruinous condition in which he found his marine home. Oscar had made eleven voyages in the Anne, and had twice saved ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... head; they are seldom known either to strike or kick one another. It is not uncommon for one of them to cut off his hair and to grease his ears immediately before the contest begins. This, however, is done privately; and it is sometimes truly laughable to see one of the parties strutting about with an air of great importance, and calling out: 'Where is he? Why does he not come out?' when the other will bolt out with a clean-shorn head and greased ears, rush on his antagonist, seize him by the hair, and, though perhaps a much ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... But compared with the worst of a Congreve or a Wycherley, compared with the worst of our own contemporary plays and musical comedies, the worst of Plautus, now because of its being too revolting, now because of its being too laughable, is innocuous. His moral land is one of black and white, mostly black, without many of those really dangerous half-lights and shadows in which too many of our present day playwrights virtuously invite us to skulk and ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... master-poet? You will find none here. Perhaps I was one once. But most of us are poets of one sort or another when we love. Do you not understand? To-day I do not love you any more than I do Hecuba. Is it not strange that I should tell you this and not be moved at all? Is it not laughable that we should stand here at the last, two feet apart as things physical go, and be as profoundly severed as if an ocean tumbled ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... joints of dignity, And, though alone for error meant, Sing through the air irreverent. I blame her not, the young athlete Who plants her woman's tiny feet, And dares the chances of debate Where bearded men might hesitate, Who, deeply earnest, seeing well The ludicrous and laughable, Mingling in eloquent excess Her anger and her tenderness, And, chiding with a half-caress, Strives, less for her own sex than ours, With principalities and powers, And points us upward to the clear Sunned ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... as he was every moment expected.' Thus directed, 'Father Arthur's' apology for delay was a humorous and detailed account of his expedient—the evening flew quickly away on the wings of eloquence and wit, and the laughable incident was ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... his black face pale, dripping with perspiration and saying he was sick. What was most amusing was to see him hooking his legs one in front of the other on his way over, but I dare say I was equally laughable to anyone on terra firma. He told me afterwards "water all go down, and I go up and get sick and giddy." Another two miles over a low ridge and I got to Mozufferabad and put up at the Barahduree provided by the Maharajah ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... melancholy which oppressed me, I could not help smiling at the playful imagination of Agnes: She had perfectly preserved Dame Cunegonda's resemblance, but had so much exaggerated every fault, and rendered every feature so irresistibly laughable, that I could easily conceive ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... composed by persons in the spiritual condition. We have many good farces; and an unending source of material for amusing plays is found in the relationship between the spirit world and earth, and the eccentric conditions growing out of that relationship. For instance, there is a laughable comedy being enacted at my theatre, depicting the adventures of a pious merchant, who, after the toils and cares of life, becomes a ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... itself in his face, and, when she had finished, his eyes wrinkled up and he laughed a peculiar, laughable ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... is well filled on these pleasant afternoons. The games of foot-ball, base-ball and cricket are played at the same time. It is quite laughable for an outsider to witness the consternation of the players of the two more scientific games when the mob engaged in the other sport comes ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... Saint-Evremond, the witty Sarrazin, and the learned but arrogant Voiture. Here he read his skits and parodies, here travestied Virgil, made epigrams on Richelieu, and poured out his indelicate but always laughable witticisms. But his indulgences were not confined to intrigues; he also drank deep, and there was not a pleasure within his reach which he ever thought of denying himself. He laughed at religion, thought morality a nuisance, and resolved ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... overflowing mirth soon ended, there were a number of smiles on the faces of the warriors for a long time afterward, doubtless caused by the remembrance of the laughable performance earlier ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... their merry laughter. How pleasant the hours! Time flew on swiftest wings. They had a nice supper,—sandwiches, tongue, ham, cakes, custards, floating-islands, apples, and nuts. After supper they had stories, serious and laughable, about ghosts and witches, till the clock in the dining-room held up both of its hands and pointed to the figure twelve, as if in amazement at their late staying. "Twelve o'clock! Why, how short the evening has been!" said they, ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... totally unknown, even to a single family in London, with a few pounds in one pocket and a brace of tragedies in the other, supposing that the one will set him up before the others are exhausted," which, he admits, "is not a very novel, but a very laughable, delusion." ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... an ass of himself by not "striking" soon enough. Of course the whole thing was so long ago that both of them could look back on it without any bitterness or ill nature. In fact it amused them. Kernin said it was the most laughable thing he ever saw in his life to see poor old Jack—that's Morse's name—shoving away with the landing net wrong side up. And Morse said he'd never forget seeing poor old Kernin yanking his line first this way and then ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... kept up an absurd show of superior strength. This is well manifested by a proclamation which, signed by Jose Reyes, Celestins Dominguez and Genara Cautino, was issued to the people of Guayama on May 20, 1898. As one of the curiosities of the war, it can only be compared to the celebrated and laughable manifesto which Captain-General Augustin issued at Manila just before the appearance of Admiral ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... raged between two famous scholars from a very laughable but accidental Erratum, and threatened serious consequences to one of the parties. Flavigny wrote two letters, criticising rather freely a polyglot Bible edited by Abraham Ecchellensis. As this learned editor had sometimes censured the labours of a friend ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... of bursting out into laughter, beyond the limits of decorum, and of doing so without reasonable cause, merely from an inclination to laugh. Never laugh at the misfortunes of others, although they seem in some sort laughable ...
— George Washington's Rules of Civility - Traced to their Sources and Restored by Moncure D. Conway • Moncure D. Conway
... to fasten on the political actions of their opponents; while the intermediate party, composed of officials and others who paid court to the higher powers, kept the nobles informed of all that was done and said in the Liberal camp, and much of it was abundantly laughable. Du Croisier's adherents smarted under a sense of inferiority, which increased their ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... and an extraordinary combination of rags and tatters, held together in some mysterious way, hung about the thin, fragile little figure. It was indeed Chiquita herself, and with her, Agostino—the ingenious rascal, whose laughable exploit with his scarecrow brigands has been already recorded—who, tired of following a profession that yielded no profits, had set out on foot for Paris—where all men of talent could find employment ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... its intention to become manifold—a plurality proved by the text 'May I be many, may I grow forth' (Ch. Up. VI, 2, 3). Nor can our opponent urge against this that, owing to the denial of plurality contained in other passages this last text refers to something not real; for it is an altogether laughable assertion that Scripture should at first teach the doctrine, difficult to comprehend, that plurality as suggested by Perception and the other means of Knowledge belongs to Brahman also, and should afterwards negative this ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... language!" The individuals of the navy of England, have pretty correct ideas of us; but the soldiery of England have betrayed their ignorance in a manner that is astonishing, and some times truly laughable, even among their officers, who have taken prisoners. To this ignorance of free and happy America, and to the very generally diffused blessings of a respectable education, which we all enjoy, is to be attributed the base treatment we have experienced in some periods ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... Miss Phoebe," he would say cheerfully, when he had broken down for the twentieth time, "play on and I'll catch you up." He had thus a series of trysting places in every page or two, which might have been very laughable to an indifferent spectator, but which aggravated the Mays, father and son, to an intolerable extent. They were the two who suffered. As for Horace Northcote, who was not a great talker, it was a not disagreeable shield for his silent ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... standing joke between them. Mahony could recall the incident as clearly as though it had happened yesterday: how the sturdy little apple-cheeked English boy, with the comical English accent, had suddenly bobbed up at his side on the way home from school, and in that laughable sing-song of his, without modulation or emphasis, had offered to "swop" ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... vinegar aspect That they'll not show their teeth in way of smile, Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable." ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... who were obliged to reject the ridiculous legends which invested the whole of their Pantheon, together with the fabulous adjudgers of future punishments, could not but dismiss the punishments, which were, in fact, as laughable, and as obviously the fictions of human ingenuity, as their dispensers. In short, the civilized part of the world in those days lay in this dreadful condition; their intellect had far outgrown their religion; the disproportions between ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... commonly termed a news-monger, appears from the following laughable story, told by the late Mr. George Hardinge, the ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... Feeling just enough to feel there is something—but not a big enough feeling to go to that something, knowing just enough to know I'm being cheated, but without either the courage or the knowledge to do anything about it—I'm surely a pitiable and laughable object. Come, Worth," she ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... Heaven knows what peril there might have been in the beauty and grace of the pretty muletress but for the spectacle of her fat aunt, who, I must confess, could only burlesque some of her niece's airiest movements, and whose hard-bought buoyancy was at once pathetic and laughable. She earned her share of the spoils certainly, and she seemed glad when the dance was over, and went contentedly ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... only suppressed because of the place in which they are. They ask: 'Is this the maiden who was so wise, so strong—who scorned us—scorned US, indeed!—and was not able to baffle the serpent in his very first approaches?' Ha! ha! How they laugh! Well, indeed, they may. It is very laughable, Margaret—not less laughable and amusing than strange!—that YOU should have fallen!—so easily, so blindly—and not even to suspect what every one else was sure of! O Margaret! Margaret! can it be true? Who will believe in your wit now, your genius, your beauty? Smutched and ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... come in at all, or will he just snooze his little head off all day? One wonders what to say to the plant manager, Mr. Stump. How do you tell him that twenty men are standing idle on Sub-Assembly Line 3-A because, through a laughable oversight, there is no one to put in a wrist-pin? How do you explain it so he will ...
— All Day Wednesday • Richard Olin
... character. I am, in your opinion, a Lara, a Manfred, a Lord Ruthven; then, just as I am arriving at the climax, you defeat your own end, and seek to make an ordinary man of me. You bring me down to your own level, and demand explanations! Indeed, M. Beauchamp, it is quite laughable." ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... While doing so, she turned herself towards P'ing Erh and gave her a cynical smile. "You've come just one step too late," she remarked. "You weren't in time to see something laughable! Even sister Wu, an old hand at business though she be, failed to look up clearly an old custom and came to play her tricks on us. But when we plied her with questions, she luckily had the face to admit that it had slipped ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... of art is commonly dismissed as the grotesque. We have never been able to understand why it should be humiliating to be laughable, since it is giving an elevated artistic pleasure to others. If a gentleman who saw us in the street were suddenly to burst into tears at the mere thought of our existence, it might be considered disquieting and uncomplimentary; but laughter is not uncomplimentary. ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... Countess de Fiesque sent me a coach, and a mattress, and a little linen. As I was in so sorry a condition, I went to seek help at the Chateau Neuf, where Monsieur and Madame were lodged; but Madame had not her clothes any more than myself. Nothing could be more laughable than this disorder. I lodged in a large room, well painted and gilded, with but little fire, which is not agreeable in the month of January. My mattress was laid upon the floor, and my sister, who had no bed, slept with me. Judge if I were agreeably situated for a ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... feelings were not reciprocated; and he was more attacked than ever, though for some months he had published nothing. In the autumn of 1917 the anger against him had risen to an unheard-of height. The disproportion was really laughable between this rage and the feeble words of one man, but it was so all over the world. A dozen or so weak pacifists, alone, surrounded, without means of being heard through any paper of standing, spoke honestly but not loudly, and this let loose a perfect frenzy of insults and ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... first he is brought into contact with the other. Two or three times I have known men try to follow hounds on stock-saddles, which are about as ill-suited for the purpose as they well can be; while it is even more laughable to see some young fellow from the East or from England who thinks he knows entirely too much about horses to be taught by barbarians, attempt in his turn to do cow-work with his ordinary riding or hunting rig. It must be said, however, that in all probability cowboys would learn ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... pity, love, reverence. For sublime ideas are mixed with admiration, beautiful ones with love, new ones with surprise; and these exertions of our ideas prevent the action of laughter from being necessary to relieve the painful pleasure above described. Whence laughable wit consists of frivolous ideas, without connections of any consequence, such as puns on words, or on phrases, incongruous junctions of ideas; on which account laughter is ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... You are a very lovely girl, though you don't seem to know it; and he is a madman; and he fell in love with you." Helen uttered an ejaculation of great surprise. The general resumed: "He can only have seen you at a distance, or you would recognize him; but (really it is laughable) he saw you somehow, though you did not see him, and— Well, his insanity hurt himself, and did not hurt you. You remember how he suspected burglars, and watched night after night under your window. That was out of love for you. ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... about infinity; in its presence the sense of finite humility can never wholly banish the rebellious suspicion that we are being deluded. Our mathematical imagination is put on the rack by an attempted conception that has all the anguish of a nightmare and probably, could we but awake, all its laughable absurdity. But the obsession of this dream is an intellectual puzzle, not an aesthetic delight. It is not essential to our admiration. Before the days of Kepler the heavens declared the glory of God; and we needed no calculation of stellar distances, no fancies ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... variously to win him out of his morbid wrestling to mental and spiritual health. A live book this, and to be commended very warmly. But there are one or two difficulties. Those grotesqueries of the tramp and the fantastically laughable adventures of Wriford in his company—do they mingle quite smoothly with the painfully realistic manifestations of poor Wriford's state? Can so dreadful a theme ride off successfully on so bizarre a steed? And then again, was not the whole agony of the man on the physical and mental, not the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various
... species of clay, hard as a flint when the weather is dry, but running into a slippery paste as soon as moistened. It is, therefore, very fatiguing, especially in wet weather, when the soldiers slip about, in a very laughable manner to look at, but very distressing to themselves. I travelled either on horseback or in one of the waggons, as it happened. I was too well known, and I hope I may add, too well liked, not to be as well provided for as possible. It is remarkable how soon a Frenchman will make himself comfortable, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... silence, and by my leaving the house you might know that it was my intention to respect you for the future. Did you come to hear me say this? If so, you are satisfied. But you will not be offended if I laugh at your excuses, for after what you have said I cannot help thinking them very laughable." ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Bracy Tibbetts, the courteous express messenger, both of whom have since confessed to have been more than astonished at the Christian and lamb-like submission of the insiders. Amusing stories of some laughable yet sickening incidents of the occasion—such as grown men kneeling in the road, and offering to strip themselves completely, if their lives were only spared; of one of the passengers hiding under the seat, and only being dislodged by pulling his coat-tails; of incredible sums promised, ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... had dosed them round, and they had taken his prescriptions, with really laughable humility, more like charity school-children than blood-guilty mutineers and pirates, "well, that's done for to-day. And now I should wish to have a ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cannot tell very well why—except that he seems to be sore and out of humour. His satire is mere peevishness and spleen, or something worse—personal antipathy and rancour. We are in quite as much pain for the writer, as for the object of his resentment. His address to Peter Pindar is laughable from its outrageousness. He denounces him as a wretch hateful to God and man, for some of the most harmless and amusing trifles that ever were written—and the very good- humour and pleasantry of ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... of the drama to which they devoted themselves had produced, in these ladies, some effects doubtless more interesting than profitable to observe. One of them, whose unhappiness it was to take the part of soubrette in the Laughable Commedietta preceding the burlesque, was so ill at ease in drapery, so full of awkward jerks and twitches, that she seemed quite another being when she came on later as a radiant young gentleman ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... man who laughs at everything except jokes. He is perfectly entitled to laugh at anything, so long as he realises, in a reverent and religious spirit, that he himself is laughable. I was a foreigner in America; and I can truly claim that the sense of my own laughable position never left me. But when the native and the foreigner have finished with seeing the fun of each other in things that are meant to be serious, they both approach the far more delicate ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... only a tremor; but soon Christophe was left without a doubt; they were laughing. The musicians of the orchestra had given the signal; some of them did not conceal their hilarity. The audience, certain then that the music was laughable, rocked with laughter. This merriment became general; it increased at the return of a very rhythmical motif which the double-basses accentuated in a burlesque fashion. Only the Kapellmeister went on through ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... entrance to the wharf, and the stare of bewildered astonishment with which the 'fares' resign themselves and their luggage into the hands of the porters, who seize all the packages at once as a matter of course, and run away with them, heaven knows where, is laughable in the extreme. A Margate boat lies alongside the wharf, the Gravesend boat (which starts first) lies alongside that again; and as a temporary communication is formed between the two, by means of a plank and hand-rail, the natural confusion of the scene is ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... three old men to sing through to the end without a break-down the song which to us is so sacred, "Rock of Ages, cleft for me." Only one man succeeded, the others going through a course of quavers and breaks which was exceedingly laughable, but absolutely irreverent. The lack of reverence which has sometimes characterized the social side of the Christmas services in Japan has been the source of frequent regret to the missionaries. In a social ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... whole of the garden-scene at Shallow's country-seat, and just before in the exquisite dialogue between him and Silence on the death of old Double, have no parallel anywhere else. In one point of view, they are laughable in the extreme; in another they are equally affecting, if it is affecting to shew what a little thing is human life, what a poor ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... which should reveal the carefully guarded secret of Grant's Cabinet. To the end of his life, he wondered at the suddenness of the revolution which actually, within five minutes, changed his intended future into an absurdity so laughable as to make him ashamed of it. He was to hear a long list of Cabinet announcements not much weaker or more futile than that of Grant, and none of them made him blush, while Grant's nominations had the ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... lips that could not hide where once had been a tongue. He passed his hand along the shroud and lightly touched the ugly hump where the spine had been pressed and snapped, and the slanted shoulders and the twisted hips and legs. "Thou wast so laughable to all the court," he cried. "Thy bones were so comically broken. And now, another must be made for the court's delight, just so comical as thou. Aye, aye," and he sighed heavily, "Jesu have pity on the child's face of some young ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... as laughable. But Ormsby knew that the truth must out sooner or later, and it was necessary that he should be ready. The police were on the alert—reluctantly alert, for they respected the rector. The banker, however, was a ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... Georges; the first reading had only three auditors, the second not one; so Thackeray went away. Bellew is uncertain; sometimes having empty benches, sometimes overflowing ones, according to the programme, whether serious or laughable. Tom Hood gave a lecture on Humour, which was so dull that the audience left him. Miss Glyn Dallas often reads 'Cleopatra,' magnificently too, to empty benches. Sims Reeves draws a vast audience, but sometimes at the last moment refuses to sing ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... cynics, my dear Clara, oh, certainly, certainly: you are right. They are laughable, contemptible. But understand me. I mean, we cannot feel, or if we feel we cannot so intensely feel, our oneness, except by dividing ourselves from ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the bottom of any ocean, that's for sure," somebody said. It was one of those feeble jokes at which everybody laughs because nothing else is laughable ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... naturally apt to make an exhibition of his incompetence. "Let a non-professional man, however acute," writes Lord Campbell again, "presume to talk law, or to draw illustrations from legal science in discussing other subjects, and he will speedily fall into laughable absurdity." ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... all, was this new oath? It only differed from that taken by the Legion of Honour, under the Consulate, in putting the defence of the Emperor before that of the laws of the Republic; and this was not merely a form. It was, besides, sufficiently laughable and somewhat audacious, to make them swear to support equality at the moment so many titles and monarchical distinctions ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... with laughter. The gins showed such curiosity about Lizzie's pipe, that she handed it round and made them each take a puff. Their expressions, when the pungent smoke caused them either to sneeze, cough, or choke, were most laughable; and I have no doubt that it is still a matter of wonder to them, and a fruitful source of debate over the camp-fires, what pleasure the white man can find in filling his mouth with smoke, apparently ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... of mail when Uncle Jeb, looking strange and laughable in his civilized clothes, as Barnard called them, arrived on Saturday morning. The bus, which brought him up from Catskill, brought also the advance guard of the scout army that would shortly over-run ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... ferocious of cynicisms even if he had been a cynic—which he was not. The Campaigner, Mrs. Clapp, the landlady in "Vanity Fair," Mrs. Baynes, and all the rest of the deplorable bevy rest like nightmares upon our memory. Dickens always made the shrew laughable, so that we can hardly spare pity for the poor Snagsbys and Raddles and Crupps, or any of her victims in that wonderful gallery; but Thackeray's, Trollope's, Charles Reade's, Mrs. Oliphant's, and even Miss Broughton's shrews are always odious, and they all ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... her head, but Mercedes, elated at the opportunity of singing the praises of her idol, regaled them with a laughable description of Tabitha's mishap. This led to other boarding school reminiscences,—the christening of the vessel, when Cassandra took her memorable plunge into the ocean; the night of the opera and their experiences with the runaway ostriches; the voice of the mysterious ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... he could command, and obeyed Mademoiselle La Blache's summons, building all sorts of castles in the air as he arranged his toilet and while he was climbing the staircase. His affected airs were so laughable, she told him in a mock-heroic manner what she wished of him, and probably with something of that paternal talent which had shaken so many opera-houses with applause:—"I have sent for you to teach me the song I hear you sing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... chuckling to itself under water. With reason, too; for above water was such a prolonged and ludicrous stare of amazement from at least three pairs of eyes as might satisfy the most immoderate appetite for the laughable. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... sporting matters. Hence his consternation when Miss Grosvenor approached him. At first he was nonplussed, and next thing, taking it as a joke on my part, was highly amused. Miss Grosvenor, on her side, thought he was joking, with the result that there was the liveliest and most laughable ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... over the volume I am rather surprised to find that whenever I draw a comparison between the two people, I almost invariably cast the balance against ourselves." And he writes at another time:—"I received several private letters and printed notices of Our Old Home from England. It is laughable to see the innocent wonder with which they regard my criticisms, accounting for them by jaundice, insanity, jealousy, hatred, on my part, and never admitting the least suspicion that there may be a particle of truth in them. The monstrosity ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... Amongst laughable occurrences that enlivened the committee rooms during the gauge contest, was a scene occasioned by a parliamentary counsel putting in as evidence, before the committee on the Southampton and Manchester line, a printed picture of troubles consequent on a break of ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... 'Laughable, ridiculous, comical, and absurd, as I always thought and believed Lieutenant Puddock to be, I yet believe the asking such a question of me to be a stretch of absurdity, from which his breeding, for he is a gentleman, will restrain ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... scene, and think what you would say of it, if written by another."—[H.] "I would say, read 'The Miracle' ['A Tale from Boccace'] in Hobhouse's poems, and 'January and May,' and 'Paulo Purganti,' and 'Hans Carvel,' and 'Joconde.' These are laughable: it is the serious—Little's poems and Lalla Rookh—that affect seriously. Now Lust is a serious passion, and cannot be excited by the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... of these strange bipeds. Their thoughts are as jelly,—their reasoning powers in embryo,—their intellectual faculties barely perceptible. Yet they are interesting, viewed in the same light and considered on the same scale as fish or insects merely. As men and women of course they are misnomers,—laughable impossibilities. Well, well!—in the space of two or three thousand years, the protoplasm may start into form out of the void, and the fibres of a conscious Intellectuality may sprout,— but it will ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... the most laughable blunders, at some of which Miss Davis herself had to smile. Even Phyllis had to give way on one occasion, and in the midst of a chorus of laughter Hetty stood making a piteous face, pretending not to know what ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... effects? All our sentiments are without doubt in a sense revealed to us by others. How many, as Rochefoucauld says, would be ignorant of love if they had never read novels! How many in the same way would never have discovered by themselves the laughable side of people and things. Yet even the feelings which one experiences by contagion one can experience only of one's own accord, in one's own way, and according to one's disposition. This fact alone of their contagion proves ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... It was well known that Captain Kearney had nothing but his pay, and that it was the hopes of prize-money to support his family, which had induced him to stay out so long in the West Indies. It was laughable; yet I could not laugh: there was a melancholy feeling at such a specimen ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... business go through. Once for all, whatever happens to you, I'll carry on. I'll do everything exactly as if you were there. You can rest easy. But—— Oh, how can you think such a thing? I never in all my life saw any one less likely to go under. You're not the type, sir. It's—it's laughable." The words came tumbling out of an honest heart. "I saw men go mad in France, but they were hardly your sort. Perhaps you're too much alone. Will you let me live with ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... and objects of desire, and the greatest happiness of the greatest number, is but a poor employment for a grown man, it certainly hurts the health less than hard drinking, and the fortune less than high play; it is not much more laughable than phrenology, and is immeasurably ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... so," said Lucile, dryly, in response to Jessie's question. "If I look the way I feel I must be a very laughable object!" ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... the commander was pale, M. Dupin was livid. Both sides were afraid. M. Dupin was afraid of the colonel; the colonel assuredly was not afraid of M. Dupin, but behind this laughable and miserable figure he saw a terrible phantom rise up—his crime, and he trembled. In Homer there is a scene where Nemesis appears ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... modern ideas, common to many of these Comedies, but it is especially marked in this particular instance. The final part might almost be a separate play, under the title perhaps of 'The dicast turned gentleman,' and relates various ridiculous mistakes and laughable blunders committed by Philocleon, who, having given up his attendance on the law-courts, has set up for playing a part ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... the day's work has not proved profitable. Few of us gathered any eggs; one who was more successful, and had secured enough to make it extremely difficult for him to scale the rocks, slipped, fell on his face, and scrambled all his store. His plight was laughable, but he was scarcely in the mood to relish it, as he washed his sack and blouse in cold water, while ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... addition of two more Gentlemen to-night. A Doctor Harrington—a handsome man, I think—and an elderly Gentleman, Captain Grigg; the most laughable creature I ever saw. They tell me I shall be highly diverted at the minuet he dances; and we intend to ...
— Journal of a Young Lady of Virginia, 1782 • Lucinda Lee Orr
... Johanna Elizabetha—a brand new dignity, complained this Oberhofmarshall of a sham court. He made himself mighty disagreeable to his sister, varying his behaviour by outbursts of despair and noisy self-pity, which would have been laughable had they not been so loud, violent, and disturbing. Wilhelmine informed him of her plan, and after many expressions of disapproval, when she had made it clear to him that it would be entirely to his advantage if she succeeded ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... the young man, gently, in a voice free from resentment. "I warned you that my story was laughable; I, better than any one, know how absurd, how nonsensical it is. Yes, the whole thing is perfectly grotesque. But believe me when I tell you that it was no fun in reality. It seems a humorous situation and it remains humorous by the force of circumstances; but it is also horrible. ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... addition to those quaint and laughable tales which have made the author of 'Uncle Remus' loved and fancied wherever the ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind
... upon him with the first words he read. By the end of the perusal his brain was whirling. It was incredible, astounding. He stared out into the sunshine. Surely he was dreaming. It must be a joke of sorts, a laughable hoax. Yet there was no hint of joking in the concise communication, in the small clerkly handwriting, in the business-like letter-paper, a letter-paper headed by the name of a most respectable firm ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... to an encore the trainer directed its attention to the boy who chanced to be the sole occupant of the box in which he sat. With a spring the huge anthropoid leaped from the stage to the boy's side; but if the trainer had looked for a laughable scene of fright he was mistaken. A broad smile lighted the boy's features as he laid his hand upon the shaggy arm of his visitor. The ape, grasping the boy by either shoulder, peered long and earnestly into his face, ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... that had overcome him one festal evening in a sugar refiner's chateau. This chateau had been erected for the refiner, and its palatial proportions and royal splendor had been paid for by a single material—sugar. It was with something quite different, with a little laughable folly, a little delicate nudity—it was with this shameful trifle, which is so powerful as to move the universe, that she alone, without workmen, without the inventions of engineers, had shaken Paris to its foundations and had built up a fortune on ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... Is this hypothesis so laughable merely because it is the oldest? Because the human understanding, before the sophistries of the Schools had dissipated and debilitated it, lighted upon ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... gentleman!" But Angela did not smile. A thing would have had to be very funny to strike her as laughable just then. ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... kind are the interests that oppose betterment of the worker's hard lot in New York, that dictated the appointment by Tammany of a commission composed of builders to revise its code of tenement laws, and that sneered at the "laughable results of the Gilder Tenement House Commission." Those results made for the health and happiness and safety of a million and a half of souls, and were accounted, on every humane ground, the longest step forward that had been taken by this community. For the old absentee landlord, ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
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