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More "Witty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... produced in my bosom the intended effect, he seemed to chuckle in secret over the sting he had inflicted, and was characteristically disregardful of the public applause which the success of his witty endeavours might have so easily elicited. That the school, indeed, did not feel his design, perceive its accomplishment, and participate in his sneer, was, for many anxious months, a riddle I could not resolve. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... exceedingly droll to us from the turn of expression, and especially from its being the opening of the piece. Generally speaking, with respect to the ludicrous, Corneille lived in a state of great innocence; since his time the world has become a great deal more witty. Hence, after making all allowances for what he cannot justly be blamed for, what, namely, arises merely from his language having become obsolete, we shall still find an ample field remaining for our ridicule. Among the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... with Nature goes on apace. The painters have long been talking of selecting, then of rejecting, or even, with Mr. Whistler, of supplanting. And then Mr. Oscar Wilde, in the witty and delicate series of inversions which he headed 'The Decay of Lying,' declared war with all the irresponsibility naturally attending an act so serious. He seems to affirm that Nature is less proportionate to man than is architecture; that ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... propriety and decorum, since from time immemorial genius has reckoned such escapades among its prerogatives. Wieland indulged this impulse when he sought to assimilate himself to the daring, extraordinary Aristophanes, and when he was able to translate his jests, as audacious as they were witty, though he toned them down with his own ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... or censured. We do not require to go far through his alphabet to see how futile the burnings and condemnations have been in their effect on the giants of literature. The first name of all is that of Abelard, and so going on we pick up the witty scamp Aretin, then pass on to D'Aubigne the great warrior and historian, Bayle, Beaumarchais, Boulanger, Catullus, Charron, Condillac, Crebillon, and so on, down to ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... brocade morning gowns were in him a sort of propriety at this season of his youth. It was a pleasure to persons of colder temperament to sun themselves in the warmth of his bright looks and generous humour. His laughter cheered one like wine. I do not know that he was very witty; but he was pleasant. He was prone to blush; the history of a generous trait moistened his eyes instantly. He was instinctively fond of children and of the other sex from one year old to eighty. Coming from the Derby once and being stopped on the road in a lock of carriages during which the people ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... 15, 1881, speaking of a letter just received from her, says: "Thirty years ago Mrs. Rose was in her prime—an excellent lecturer, liberal, eloquent, witty, and we must add, decidedly handsome—'the Rose that all were praising.' Her portrait, life-size and very natural, hangs in Investigator Hall, and her intelligent-looking and expressive countenance, and black glossy curls, denote intellect and beauty. As an anti-slavery lecturer, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... and confident, with hair powdered and tied in a queue." He stooped slightly, and did not move with the grace or ease one would have expected from so experienced a soldier, but he had "great authority of manner," and was uniformly "courtly, witty and charming." During one of those legal battles in which he had only one rival (Hamilton) it was reported of him that "Burr conducted the trial with the dignity and impartiality of an angel but with ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... the appearance of the American girl in books written about the United States, that of Charles I.'s head in Mr. Dick's memorial might perhaps be almost called casual. All down the literary ladder, from the weighty tomes of a Professor Bryce to the witty persiflage of a Max O'Rell, we find a considerable part of every rung occupied by the skirts appropriated to the gentler sex; and—what is, perhaps, stranger still—she holds her own even in books written by women. It need not be asserted that all the references to her are ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... similar sound, was at once the wit, the spendthrift and the humanitarian of the Fischelowitz manufactory, possessing a number of good qualities in such abundant measure as to make him a total failure in everything except the cutting of tobacco. Like many witty, generous and kind-hearted persons in a much higher rank of existence, he was cursed with a total want of tact. On the present occasion, having sliced through an unusually long package of leaves and having encountered an exceptional number of obstacles in doing so, he thought ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... even terrible to those who had never seen anything of the kind before, though the old sailors regarded it quite as a matter of course. Peaks had never been known to be so jolly and excited since he came on board. He was full of jokes and witty sayings; he seemed to be in his element now, and all his powers of body and mind were in ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... away!" Innes would declare, with his bright air of saying something witty; and immediately interrupt the general laughter which he had provoked much more by his air than his words, "Mind you, it's all very well laughing, but I'm not very well pleased. Poor Archie is a good fellow, an excellent fellow, a fellow I always liked. ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... however, depended largely upon the person who explained its pictures. If he were witty, and knew how to tell the good story of which each one was certain to remind him, all went well, and the fame of that panorama spread far and wide. If, on the other hand, he was prosy, and offered only dry explanations of his pictures, ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... finely moulded, the temples were ivory tinted and soft; and mettle and spirit, unquenched by age, flashed from the brilliant eyes. The Marquis had the Conde nose and the lovable Bourbon mouth, from which, as they used to say of the Comte d'Artois, only witty and urbane words proceed. His cheeks, sloping rather than foolishly rounded to the chin, were in keeping with his spare frame, thin legs, and plump hands. The strangulation cravat at his throat was of the kind which every marquis wears in all the portraits which adorn eighteenth century literature; ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... couch in a thrice-raised Turkish bath temperature, he lamented that he "could not catch cold" even in a state of nature or next to it. He no longer wondered at Sydney Smith's wish to sit in his bones, and thought that expression would have acquired additional force if the witty divine had added "packed ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... Bacchanalian song? Witty, certainly, but the recollection of the scores a little ghastly for the occasion, perhaps. You have yourself sung into silence, too, all possible songs of Bacchus, as the god and ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... Women very successfully. There is no Inhabitant of any standing in Covent-Garden, but can tell you a hundred good Humours, where People have come off with little Blood-shed, and yet scowered all the witty Hours of the Night. I know a Gentleman that has several Wounds in the Head by Watch Poles, and has been thrice run through the Body to carry on a good Jest: He is very old for a Man of so much Good-Humour; but to this day he is seldom merry, but he has occasion ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... he do to distribute his hours, Some to the Court, and some to the City, Some to the State, and some to Love's powers, Some to be vain, and some to be witty?"] —The Modern Lampooners, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... them, in different ways, and certainly they have given us some excellent hours in the Campagna, upon picnic excursions—they, and certain of their friends; for instance, M. Ampere, the member of the French Institute, who is witty and agreeable, M. Goltz, the Austrian minister, who is an agreeable man, and Mr. Lyons, the son of Sir Edmund, &c. The talk was almost too brilliant for the sentiment of the scenery, but it harmonized entirely with the mayonnaise and ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... fails.... When he contends, if he gets the better, it is a very little addition to a man of his literary reputation: if he does not get the better, he is miserably vexed." Boswell, nevertheless, admits that Goldsmith was "often very fortunate in his witty contests, even when he entered the lists with Johnson himself," and goes on to tell how Goldsmith, relating the fable of the little fishes who petitioned Jupiter, and perceiving that Johnson was laughing at him, immediately said, "Why, Dr. Johnson, this is not so easy as you ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... make a further effort to finish up the subject till he has finished up his audience as well. An attempt to fully discuss a topic, under such circumstances, is not successful once in a hundred times. The best course is to follow an apt story by some proverb, a popular reference, or a witty turn, and then to close. But no abruptness will be disliked by your hearers half so much, as the utterance of a string of commonplaces, after you have once secured their attention. The richness of the dessert should come at the ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... escalier at Versailles for impertinence, at the time when M. Dumourier was sent there by the Duc d'Acquillon, for knowing more than the minister. I assure you that I found him a most agreeable personage—very gay, very witty, and very much determined to pass his time in the pleasantest manner imaginable. But our companionship was too brief for a perfect union of souls," said he laughing; "for I was liberated within a week, while he was left behind for, I think, the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... Mezrimbi, who had not made his appearance that morning. At last he espied his rich dress, his mantle, his turban and jewelled scymitar, but his face was muffled up in a shawl, and the chief brahmin smiled at the witty conceit of his son, that of having his own beauteous person unmuffled as well as that of the now scarred Acota. And then silence was commanded by a thousand brazen trumpets, and enforced by the discharge of two thousand ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... Natalie now became seriously alarmed; and well she might. His complexion looked ghastly, his limbs shook, and his features bore an expression of indescribable horror and anguish. What could be the meaning of so extraordinary a change in the gay, witty, prosperous De Chaulieu, who, till that morning, seemed not to have a care in the world? For, plead illness as he might, she felt certain, from the expression of his features, that his sufferings were not of the body but of the mind; and, unable to imagine any reason for such extraordinary manifestations, ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... droll, laughable, farcical, witty, jocular, jocose, ludicrous, burlesque, facetious, risible, absurd, waggish, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... of tourists to gape at the "Froggies." Everything was cheap; and most things were nice. Paris really was La ville lumiere. Dull care had been given its marching orders. All that was required of a man was that he should be witty, and of a woman that she should be entertaining. The world of the boulevards—with its cafes and restaurants and theatres—was the accepted rallying point of the authors and poets, the painters and musicians, and the lights twinkling in the theatrical and journalistic firmaments, ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... the streets are paved with granite. So neat and clean And lots of pretty, witty girls, are always to be seen! With the brave old Mi-litia, Our foes to defy! And there they grow the Cabba-ges—Ten feet high! (All together, Gentlemen, please!) Yes, there they grow the Cabbages, there they grow the Cabbages, there they grow ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 15, 1892 • Various
... she went down to dinner, felt quite revived by the sight of him. Here was something to dress for, and something to sing to; and although the young lieutenant's conversation was not a whit above the usual standard of his class, it appeared lively and witty when compared with that of his parents. His small colonial experiences were more interesting than Mrs Dunbar's domestic ones; and his account of a tiger hunt more exciting than his father's history of the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... were of the grave, elderly sort,—Jenny sat in a corner taking notes of the gay scene, while Ethel yawned. But the Mouse got many a crumb of good conversation as she nestled close to Mrs. Homer, drinking in the wise and witty chat that went on between the friends who came to pay their respects to the Professor and his interesting wife. Each night Jenny had new and famous names to add to the list in her journal, and the artless pages were rich in anecdotes, descriptions, and ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... are but stumbling-blocks in council; brilliant in conception, they fail in execution; fanciful designers, they are not "builders of bridges". They are boastful, sparkling, inventive, witty, garrulous, vain and supersensitive, outraging their friends by the extravagance of their schemes; embarrassing their enemies by the subtlety of ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... I talked with a blue-clad French soldier, calm, witty, but determined. He said, "My family comes from the East of France, my great grandfather was killed by the Prussians in 1814, my grandfather was shot in his garden by the Prussians in 1870, my father died of grief, in 1916, because my two sisters in Lille fell into Prussian ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... laughed loudly at this witty speech, and the poor man was about disappearing outside the door, when Col. Malcome prevented his exit by bidding him be seated, and ordering Sylva to drive Fido from the room. Quiet being restored, and Mr. Pimble having ventured to drop tremblingly ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... the king. And it is a strange evidence of the taste for knowledge which the most obviously worthless of the Stuarts shared with his father and grandfather, that Charles the Second was not content with saying witty things about his philosophers, but did wise things with regard to them. For he not only bestowed upon them such attention as he could spare from his poodles and his mistresses, but being in his usual state of impecuniosity, begged for them of the Duke of Ormond; and, that step ...
— On the Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge • Thomas H. Huxley
... They were both excellent classical scholars; they were both ingenious poets; and Campbell does not appear to have surpassed his companion either in his original pieces or his translations; they both exhibited great versatility of talent; they were both playful and witty; and seem to have been possessed of great facilities in sport. During his latter years, when detailing the history of those joyous days, Mr Paul dwelt on them with peculiar delight, and seemed animated with youthful emotion when recalling ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... soup of a sausage-stick. All said they had heard of it, but no one had ever tasted that soup, or knew how to prepare it. A health was proposed to the inventor, who, it was remarked, deserved to be superintendent of the poor. Was not that witty? And the old King of the Mice arose and declared that the one among the young mice who could prepare the soup in question most palatably should be his queen, and he would grant them a year and a day for ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... passed in front of him, he bestowed on her, together with a puff from his cigar, some apostrophe which he considered witty and mirthful, such as, "How ugly you are!—Will you get out of my sight?—You have no teeth!" etc., etc. This gentleman was known as M. Bamatabois. The woman, a melancholy, decorated spectre which went and came through the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the world did Thackeray pick up the materials of that brilliant picture of James VIII., gay, witty, reckless, ready to fling away three crowns for a fine pair of eyes or a neat pair of ankles? His Majesty's enemies brought against him precisely the opposite kind of charges. There is a broad-sheet of 1716, Hue and Cry after the Pretender, which is either by Swift or by ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... Stewart's political creed in those points where at that time it met with most opposition. In 1812 it was, I think, that I saw him for the last time: and by the way, on the day of my parting with him, I had an amusing proof in my own experience of that sort of ubiquity ascribed to him by a witty writer in the London Magazine: I met him and shook hands with him under Somerset-house, telling him that I should leave town that evening for Westmoreland. Thence I went by the very shortest road (i.e. through Moor-street, Soho—for I am learned in many quarters of London) ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... had the same regulations while we were on campaigns. During the second campaign of Vienna, I recollect that the house deputy of Soupe Pierrugues was M. Eugene Pierrugues, frank, gay, witty, and much beloved by us all. An imprudence cost him dear, for in consequence of a heedlessness natural at his age he had his arm broken. We were then at Schoenbrunn. Those who have seen this imperial residence know that splendid avenues extend in front of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the charming novelist, the successful dramatist, and the witty essayist," wrote a popular history of Greece, in two volumes, 8vo, 1774, embracing a period from the earliest date down to the death of Alexander the Great. It is an attractive work, elegantly written, but is ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... puns, sacred and immemorial as the pulpit itself, started a brief programme of entertainment. A broad smile marked the beginning of his lighter mood. His manner seemed to say: 'Now, ladies and gentlemen, if you will give good heed, you shall see I can be witty on occasion.' ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... writer, Lucian, in one of his witty dialogues, refers to an island in the Atlantic, that lies eighty days' sail westward of the Pillars of Hercules—the extreme limit of the ancient world, as has already been seen. Readers of Henry Fielding and admirers of Squire Westers will remember how in the London of the eighteenth ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... handsome and accomplished young literary man had exercised magic in winning his elderly bride! The successful defense of Apuleius before his judges—a most diverting composition, so jaunty and full of witty impertinences that it is evident he knew the hard-headed Roman judges would dismiss the prosecution as a farce—is still extant under the name of 'The Apology; or, Concerning Magic.' This in after days became oddly jumbled with the story of 'The Golden ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Catherine's shelter. Then all the pride in her rushed to the rescue and held that swooning dismay at the heart of her in check. And forthwith she capped Langham's minute account of the scale-method of a famous Berlin pianist by some witty stories of the latest London prodigy, a child-violinist, incredibly gifted, dirty, and greedy, whom she had made friends with in town. The girl's voice rang out sharp and hard under the trees. Where, in fortune's ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... were his. After the train had started he wished he had had time to tell the porter how impossible it was that a man who owned a crate full of hens should fall over it. And then he thought that would have been neither witty nor convincing. He was one of those lucky people who say so little that they rarely have need to regret ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... of a type that prevails in the rural South and West. Unskilled in originating methods of amusing or in witty conceptions, he had hit upon a comical idea and clung to it reverently. It had seemed to Jimmy a very funny thing to have about his person, with which to amuse his friends, a tame horned frog with a red ribbon around its ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... the two daughters, though to the same discipline subjected. Grave was the elder born and thoughtful, even beyond her years, Night upon her tresses, but the star of morning in her heart. Exceeding fair was the younger, and witty, and full of grace, Winning with her sunny ringlets, the notice of all beholders. Different also were their temperaments, one loving like the Violet Shaded turf, where the light falls subdued through sheltering branches, The other, as the Tulip, exulting ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... same place twice, yet, though it fell to him to welcome the Association, it had also fallen to him to respond to this vote of thanks. He had asked Secretary Beard what he would say on this occasion, and was answered, in his witty way, "Tell us Godspeed, and we are glad to get rid of you." Dr. Seaver felt that the local people were the recipients, and the visitors the benefactors in what had been done. The President had inspired them with his spirit; he had not withdrawn his presence, and very late might he return to the ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... the waves are rolling his bleaching bones to and fro on that distant beach. I say that this dismal omen damped the spirit of us all. But nothing in this world can long dishearten the brave; we soon grow lighter, and, marching along in the crowd, blackguard effectively the witty or witless dogs that crack jokes at us and forebode hard ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... so much froth had been blown off. As Thomas Fuller says, there were 'fewer persons, but not fewer men,' after the poltroons had disappeared. The second test, 'a purgatory of water,' as the same wise and witty author calls it, was still more stringent. The dwindled ranks were led down from their camp on the slopes to the fountain and brook which lay in the valley near the Midianites' camp. Gideon alone ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... governments, write "relations," or even to manage "The Great Horse," the Grand Tour, as a form of education, gained upon society, especially at the end of the century, when even the academies were too much of an exertion for the beaux to attend. To dress well and to be witty superseded martial ambitions. Gentlemen could no longer endure the violence of the Great Horse, but were carried about in sedan chairs. To drive through Europe in a coach suited them very well. It was a form of travel which likewise suited country squires' sons; for with the spread of the fashion ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... and if you would be rid of the trouble of him, be not coy, nor witty; two things ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... (Those authors he so oft had named, For learning, wit, and wisdom, famed;) Was struck with love, esteem, and awe, For persons whom he never saw. Suppose Cadenus flourish'd then, He must adore such godlike men. If one short volume could comprise All that was witty, learn'd, and wise, How would it be esteem'd and read, Although the writer long were dead! If such an author were alive, How all would for his friendship strive, And come in crowds to see his face! And this she takes to be her case. Cadenus answers every end, The book, the author, and ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... Mrs. Partington.—Mr. Greene, the witty editor of the Boston (N.E.) Post, is believed to be the original of Mrs. Partington: at least he fathers all her sayings. He began to print them about twelve or ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 55, November 16, 1850 • Various
... and chaunce thou must of force endure, Fortune's fickle stay needs thou must sustaine: To grudge therat it booteth not at all, Before it come the witty wise be sure: By wisedom's lore, and counsell not in vaine, To shun and eke auoyde. The whirling ball, Of fortune's threates, the sage may well rebound By good foresight, before it ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... interesting than conclaves of kings or convocations of bishops. One would like to have been the waiter at the "Mermaid," and to have stood behind Shakspeare's chair. What was that functionary's opinion of his guests? Did he listen and become witty by infection? or did he, when his task was over, retire unconcernedly to chalk up the tavern score? One envies somewhat the damsel who brought Lamb the spirit-case and the hot water. I think of these meetings, and, in lack of companionship, frame for myself imaginary conversations—not ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... call their talk amusing? It's the stupidest stuff I ever did hear. I can't make head or tail of it; nor I don't believe they can. Sounds to me as if they were tryin' amazin' hard to be witty, and ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... book-writing, lecturing, propagandist population of England has been bitten by him; it re-writes and popularises him; it even talks his jargon when it is criticising him. It began by regarding him as a brilliant and witty writer whom no one could take seriously; it now regards him as a serious, and indeed responsible, thinker whose wit is a matter of harmless inspiration, ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... I shall affect plainness and sincerity in my discourse to you, as much as other lovers do perplexity and rapture. Instead of saying 'I shall die for you', I profess I should be glad to lead my life with you. You are as beautiful, as witty, as prudent, and as good-humoured as any woman breathing; but, I must confess to you, I regard all these excellences as you will please to direct them for my happiness or misery. With me, madam, the only lasting ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... versification of the World. She said she did not like the dead calm. She liked the breaking up into verses, like her songs. That is a good thing; it gives the reporter time to take breath and sharpen his pen, and think of some witty thing to say; for life is a hard battle anyway, and if we can laugh and sing a little as we fight the good fight of freedom, it makes it all go easier. "But, children, why did you not send for some of those wicked Democratic papers that abuse all ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... them, and the good people of that great State, misled by its press, its press in turn misled by the speculators, innocently discredited every report of distress, and amused themselves by little sly innuendoes and witty jokes on the ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... at once ascertained that the phenomenon which they were striving to account for,—which was the acknowledged basis and substratum, as it were, of their debates,—had no existence but in the invention of the witty monarch.[3] ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately
... thy whole magnanimity, thy whole generosity, to the living lights of thy sullen region of toil, trimming, and tribulation, of the dulness of dukes and the mountainous fortunes of pinmakers—is exactly L1200 a-year! and this to be divided among the whole generation of the witty and the wise, of the sons and daughters of the muse,—the whole "school of the prophets," the lustres of the poetry and the science of England! L1200 a-year for the only men of their generation who will be remembered for five minutes by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... Paris, to open one's salon and to assemble all the elite of society, presided over by a woman who is refined, polished, imposing as a queen, of illustrious descent, allied to the noblest families, witty, well-informed, and beautiful; there is a power of social domination. To enter into any struggle whatever with a woman in whom so much influence centers is—I tell you this in confidence—an act of insanity. Let there be neither servility, nor ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... of his composite genius were nearly all represented in these volumes. The Fable was a good-natured satire upon his fellow authors, in which he touched up in rollicking rhymed couplets the merits and weaknesses of each, not omitting himself, with witty characterization and acute critical judgment; and it is still read for its delicious humor and sterling criticism. For example, the lines on ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... passed for one of the wonders of Italy. The Duke's guest, the witty and learned Aretino, celebrated it in verse, his friend Cardinal Bembo in prose; Correggio painted the walls of one room, Guilio Romano the ceiling of another. It seemed that magnificence could go no farther, till the seventeenth century ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... caprice, save on the witty writer's part; for men who fast are not saved from bad temper, nor have the kindly necessarily discreet tongues. The Swiss may be brave and honest, and yet dull. Virtue is her own reward, and art her own. Virtue rewards the ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... a witty answer of a young English nobleman who was going to travel thorow France and Italie, whom his friends feared exceedingly that he would change his Religion, because he mocked at Religion. They thought that King James admonition to him might do ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... by the company he keeps, it is equally true that one is known by the stories he tells. Mr. Blaine was one of the best story-tellers I ever met. His was a bright sunny nature with a witty, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... Temple, a very pretty, attractive girl, whom Fred always took to dances, and skated with on the river; her chum Cissie Anderson, a little addicted to slang, though witty, and "fetching," as Sid Wells was heard to admit many a time, even when she had rubbed it into him pretty hard; and last, but not least, that energetic sister of Sid's, Mame Wells, a girl who could play almost any game that boys did, and ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... witty fellow, your grace," said my lord cardinal aloud to the King. "Will your grace be pleased to hear ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson
... of the Stool, who made the speech on Ash Wednesday, when the senior Proctor called him up and exhorted him to be witty but modest withal. Their speeches, especially after the Restoration, tended to be boisterous, and even scurrilous. "26 Martii 1669. Da Hollis, fellow of Clare Hall is to make a publick Recantation in the Bac. Schools for his Tripos speeche." ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... know'st I have been always true to thee, and so will ever be; and I'll say that for thee, thou never deny'dst me yet to kiss and feel, when I'd a Mind to't. And I am glad to find thee art so witty: But thou art nothing but Charms; methinks I see the Lilly and the Rose (as heretofore they did 'twixt York and Lancaster) are once again contending in thy Cheeks; and thy Eyes sparkle like two Diamonds; Come, let me now embrace thee in my Arms; nay never fear, ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... well acquainted with two jovial and witty Irishmen. They were common laborers. One was a hodcarrier, and a strapping fellow. When he arrived at the institution, he was at once placed in the violent ward, though his "violence" consisted of nothing ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... the usual throng of under-graduates, fellows and professors who looked for the usual entertainment. Never was a crowd more deceived. "In preparing once more to preach to this congregation of worldly and witty folk, he had resolved to give them a sermon intended to exhibit Jesus Christ rather than John Cotton. This he did. His hearers were astonished, disgusted. Not a murmur of applause greeted the several stages of his discourse as before. They pulled their shovel ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... irritated at what he called the captive Pope's unreasonable obstinacy, Bonaparte conceived, and somewhat openly expressed, his notion of making France a Protestant country, and changing the religion of 30,000,000 of people by an Imperial decree. One or two of the good sayings of the witty, accomplished, and chivalrous Comte Louis de Narbonne have already been given in the course of these volumes. The following is another ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... pistol for a whole month, as I had sent mine to be mended; and would you believe it, Your Excellency, the first time I began to shoot again, I missed a bottle four times in succession at twenty paces. Our captain, a witty and amusing fellow, happened to be standing by, and he said to me: 'It is evident, my friend, that your hand will not lift itself against the bottle.' No, Your Excellency, you must not neglect to practise, or your hand will soon lose its cunning. The best shot that I ever ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... arriving at the corner of the street, his fluttering heart failed him. The thought of the cousin was a stumbling-block which he could not surmount. He had never met her before; he feared that she might be witty, or sarcastic, or sharp in some way or other, and would certainly make game of him in the presence of Katie. He had observed this cousin narrowly at the singing-class, and had been much impressed with her appearance; but whether this impression was favourable or unfavourable ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... enough to inspire fervor and homage and love in all masculine minds. She was witty and talented. Carmichael said she was one of the most beautiful women in Europe. Later he modified this statement by declaring that she was the most beautiful woman in Europe or elsewhere. Yet, often she went about as one in a waking dream. There was an aloofness which ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... somewhere about fifty of the critics, artists, and literary men of London. A card of invitation, stamped with a facsimile of the well-known autograph of Charles Dickens, and countersigned by the Messrs. Chappell and Company, had, with a witty significance, bidden them to that rendezvous for a "Private Trial of the Murder in Oliver Twist." The occasion, in point of fact, was a sort of experimental rehearsal of the last and most daring of all these vividly dramatic Readings ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... early—gentlemen, both Spaniards and Mexicans. Senor A—-z, decidedly the ugliest man I ever beheld, with a hump on his back, and a smile of most portentous hideosity, yet celebrated for his bonnes fortunes; Senor de G—-a, Ex-Minister of the Treasury, extremely witty and agreeable, and with some celebrity as a dramatic writer; Count C—-a, formerly attached to the bedchamber in Spain, married to a pretty Andalusian, and entirely Mexicanized, his heart where his interests are. He is very gentlemanlike and distinguished-looking, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... entirely at rest"; "Women in love more easily forgive great indiscretions than small infidelities"; "The reason we are not often wholly possessed by a single vice is that we are distracted by several." But is this not ultimately some degrees too witty to be true, and has our system of prescientific psychology the right to open the door to such glittering epigrams which are uttered simply to tickle or to whip the vanity of man? Or what psychologist would believe Lichtenberg when he claims: "All men are equal ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... house, he would ask him, if he designed to do anything that day in order to the accusation, and if Cato said no, he went away, relying on his word. When the cause was pleaded, Cicero, who was then consul and defended Murena, took occasion to be extremely witty and jocose, in reference to Cato, upon the stoic philosophers, and their paradoxes, as they call them, and so excited great laughter among the judges; upon which Cato, smiling, said to the standers ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... entered his office in Springfield ostensibly as a law student; but Mr. Lincoln was then a candidate for the Presidency, and Ellsworth read very little law that autumn. He made some Republican speeches in the country towns about Springfield, bright, witty, and good-natured. But his mind was full of a project which he hoped to accomplish by the aid of Mr. Lincoln—no less than the establishment in the War Department of a bureau of militia, by which the entire militia ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... what Dekker called the 'poetomachia' or war of the theatres as recent critics have named it. This play as a fabric of plot is a very slight affair; but as a satirical picture of the manners of the time, proceeding by means of vivid caricature, couched in witty and brilliant dialogue and sustained by that righteous indignation which must lie at the heart of all true satire—as a realisation, in short, of the classical ideal of comedy—there had been nothing ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... words accented on the last syllable, ending with a single consonant that is preceded by a single vowel, double that consonant when they assume another syllable that begins with a vowel; as, wit, witty; thin, thinnish; ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... Saavedra," was Doughty's idle comment. "He had great store of antiquated sentiments—like those in the chronicles of the paladins. I knew his nephew well—a witty fellow, but visionary. He laughed at the old cavalero, but he was fond of him, and our affections rule us and ruin us. A man should have no loves nor hates if he would get on ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... suitors," said courteous Mr. Engelman. "A most majestic person. Witty and accomplished. Possessed of an enviable little fortune, entirely ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... but that is not all your duty. Your part will be to mix in the life of Seville, and to watch those whom I bid you watch, to drop a word here and a hint there, and in a hundred ways that I shall show you to draw grist to my mill—and to your own. You must be brilliant and witty, or sad and learned, as I wish; you must make the most of your person and your talents, for these go far with my customers. To the hidalgo you must talk of arms, to the lady, of love; but you must ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... on that higher social level. One by one he drew out the poisoned shafts on his way home, talking aloud to himself, scoffing at the fools with whom he had to do, inventing neat answers to their idiotic questions, desperately vexed that the witty responses occurred to him so late in the day. By the time that he reached the Bordeaux road, between the river and the foot of the hill, he thought that he could see Eve and David sitting on a baulk of timber by the river in the moonlight, and went ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... sell those horses, they don't speak German; Brender will take care to mount you some way or other.' Prinoe Lichtenstein immediately put a price on my horses; and they were sold on the spot at three times their worth. The Prince of Orange, who was of this Dinner [slightly crook-backed witty gentleman, English honeymoon well over], said to me in a half-whisper, 'Monsieur, there is nothing like selling horses to ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... flow in upon us from the success of the worthy merchant's speculations. Our father was nearly as bad as ourselves; only that he affected not to be so much in earnest: expressing his bright hopes and sanguine expectations in jests and playful sallies, that always struck me as being exceedingly witty and pleasant. Our mother laughed with delight to see him so hopeful and happy: but still she feared he was setting his heart too much upon the matter; and once I heard her whisper as she left the room, 'God grant he be not disappointed! ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... as we conquer for them our awkwardness and our shyness? Let us pause for a moment, and try to be just. Let us contemplate these social ethics, which call for so much that is, perhaps, artificial and troublesome and contradictory. Society, so long as it is the congregation of the good, the witty, the bright, the intelligent, and the gifted, is the thing most necessary to us all. We are apt to like it and its excitements almost too well, or to hate it, with its excesses and its mistakes, too bitterly. We ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... so merry and witty, religion got a strong hold upon him, and at one time he thought of becoming a monk. But his friends persuaded him to give up that idea, and after a time he decided to marry. He chose his wife in a somewhat quaint manner. Among ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... Dinmont, James Davidson of 'Note o' the Gate,' sleeps sound under a green heap of turf. To trace the Teviotdale dynasty of song further in the female line, Mrs. Cockburn's niece, Mrs. Scott, was that 'guidwife o' Wauchope-house,' who addressed an ode to her 'canty, witty, rhyming ploughman,' Robert Burns, with an invitation to visit her on the Border—an invitation which the poet accepted, and on the way thither, as he relates, chanced upon 'Esther (Easton), a very remarkable ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... to see you like to read French," continued John; "and I can get you some delightful French stories, which are not only pretty and witty, but have nothing in them that tend to pull down one's moral principles. Edmond About's 'Mariages de Paris' and 'Tolla' are charming French things; and, as he says, they might be read aloud by a man between his mother and his sister, without a ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... all hearts, and charm all eyes, Though meek, magnanimous; though witty, wise; Polite, as all her life in Courts had been; Yet good, as she the world had never seen; The noble fire of an exalted mind, With gentle female tenderness combined. Her speech was the melodious voice of love, Her song the warbling of the ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... come out in a most unusual way. He possessed a fund of dry humour which he rarely produced, but when he did produce it, it was of a most satisfactory order. On this particular night it was all on view, greatly to the satisfaction of Ida, who was a witty as well as a clever woman. And so it came to pass that the dinner was a very ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... it is not. The last one was thin, this one is fat; the last one was tall, this one is tiny. The last one was stupid, this one is witty. Some men seek the source of the Nile, I the lace of a bodice. A new love is a voyage of discovery. What is her furniture like? What will she say? What are her opinions of love? But when you have been a woman's lover ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... talk is all very well," said Roger, "and I've no doubt you think yourselves very witty, but let that be as it may. As matters stand now, you've got the upper hand—though I wish you joy of working the ship. However, if you give us the long-boat and a fair allowance of water and bread, ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... that Mme. de Stael was too wise and witty to be acceptable to Napoleon; and many women repeated with unction that the conqueror of Europe was no match for this frowsy little woman. It is, perhaps, worth while to look into the facts, and to decide whether Napoleon was really of so petty a nature as to feel himself inferior to this ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... these general truths, that it is impossible to give rules which will enable you to compose. You might much more easily receive rules to enable you to be witty. If it were possible to be witty by rule, wit would cease to be either admirable or amusing: if it were possible to compose melody by rule, Mozart and Cimarosa need not have been born: if it were possible to compose pictures by rule, Titian and Veronese ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... they with happy gales are gone away, With your propitious presence grace our play; And with a sigh their empty seats survey: Then think, on that bare bench my servant sat; I see him ogle still, and hear him chat; Selling facetious bargains, and propounding That witty recreation, call'd dumfounding. Their loss with patience we will try to bear; And would do more, to see you often here; That our dead stage, revived by your fair eyes, 50 Under ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... he offered to continue him as viceroy of India for life; but on his refusal, Don Francisco de Cotinho, count of Redondo, was appointed his successor. This nobleman, who was no less distinguished for his witty sayings than for his conduct in peace and war, arrived at Goa in the beginning of September 1561. Nothing worth relating happened during his government of India, which lasted two years and five ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... Mr. Sandys. "I have a very strong sense of humour myself, or rather what might be called risibility. No one enjoys a witty story or a laughable incident more than I do. But I keep it in check. The indulgence of humour is a risky thing; not very consistent with the pastoral office. But that is a small point; and what I am leading up to is this, that dear Maud's restlessness, and even morbidity, ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... connections is to be found in the fact that when he, Strachey, went to Venice he took with him a letter of introduction from the poet, Dr. Donne, to the then Ambassador with the Republic, Sir Henry Wotton, also a poet. The letter is witty and trenchant. After noting that Strachey was "sometime secretary to Sir Thomas Gates," he adds, "I do boldly say that the greatest folly he ever committed was to submit himself and parts to so mean a master." The rest of the letter is pleasantly ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... regard to the last war of Paris, it deserves only to be hooted at. Methinks I see a crowd of schoolboys rising up in arms against their master, and afterwards whipped for it. Cardinal de Retz, who was witty and brave (but to no purpose), rebellious without a cause, factious without design, and head of a defenceless party, caballed for caballing sake, and seemed to foment the civil war merely out of diversion. The Parliament did not know what he intended, nor what he did not ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... be in time for dinner. I was, I must confess, anxious to see Miss Trevannion, for she had often occupied my thoughts during the cruise. She met me with great friendliness and welcomed me back. Our dinner was very agreeable, and Philip's sallies were much approved of. He was, indeed, a mirthful, witty lad, full of jest and humour, and with a good presence withal. Mr. Trevannion being called out just as dinner was ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... most commendable!' he said, sheathing his weapon, and laughing softly to himself. 'I love to draw spirit out of the young fellows. I am the steel, d'ye see, which knocks the valour out of your flint. A notable simile, and one in every way worthy of that most witty of mankind, Samuel Butler. This,' he continued, tapping a protuberance which I had remarked over his chest, 'is not a natural deformity, but is a copy of that inestimable "Hudibras," which combines the light touch of Horace with the broader mirth of Catullus. ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... might as well have tried to grasp a bundle of sunbeams or a handful of quicksilver. His report turned out a frightful bungle; the wretched Bond, made clumsy, fatuous, pointless, sodden, when he had meant to show himself as witty and brilliant as possible, was completely crushed. With Joyce going for next to nothing and Bond for worse than nothing, the Art Circuit could hardly be said to shine. It paled, it sickened, it drooped ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... tell you ... only fancy, that witty gentleman, about whom I wrote to you the other day, has made me a declaration of love, and in the most ardent terms. I thought at first he was laughing at me; but he finished up with a formal proposal—what do you think of ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... they gagged upon Collins's use of satire in religious controversy. As we have already seen, there were complex reasons for his choice of technique. He was a naturally witty man who, sometimes out of fear and sometimes out of malice, expressed himself best through circuitous irony. In 1724, when he himself considered his oratorical practice, he argued that his matter determined ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... book is clear and direct, except in those parts where light and humorous narration is required. There it is bad, and seems to have been formed upon the style of the sporting newspapers and the local reporters, with now and then a hint from the witty passages of the circus, as in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... defective sanitary arrangements, which Master Swift had anxiously pointed out to the miller. The plague had begun in the village, and the schoolmaster trembled for Jan. But Master Lake was not to be interfered with, and, when the schoolmaster spoke of poison, thought himself witty as he replied, - ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... your opening paper in the Illuminated. It is very wise, and capital; written with the finest end of that iron pen of yours; witty, much needed, and full of truth. I vow to God that I think the parrots of society are more intolerable and mischievous than its birds of prey. If ever I destroy myself, it will be in the bitterness of hearing those infernal and damnably good old times extolled. Once, in ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... fellow, free-mouthed, quick-tempered, not bad-looking, able to take his own part, witty, sensitive to a slight, ready with life or death for a friend, fond of women, gambled, ate hearty, drank hearty, had known what it was to be flush, grew low-spirited toward the last, sickened, was helped by a contribution, ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... formed in 1773, nine years before his arrival. He became a member in 1785, and his wife in 1803. Not long after his coming, Rev. Mr. Roots, the pastor, died, and the widely known Rev. Samuel Haynes, a devout, able and witty man, became their pastor, and so continued for thirty years, until his dismission in 1818. Timothy Boardman's children were early taken to church, were trained and all came into the church under, the ministry of ...
— Log-book of Timothy Boardman • Samuel W Boardman
... Sitting in thorns is more for protection than penance. See Goldsmith's Animated Nature. It was a generally received opinion that the nightingale, to keep himself awake in the night, sat on a tree of thorn, so that if he nodded he would be pricked in the breast. The learned and witty Dr. Thomas Fuller thus alludes to it:—'I am sure the nightingale which would wake will not be angry with the thorn which pricketh her breast when she noddeth.' How useful would it be if a thorn could be so placed as to prick those who ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... was getting the supper, the travellers both began to talk very sociably with Philemon. The younger, indeed, was extremely loquacious, and made such shrewd and witty remarks, that the good old man continually burst out a-laughing, and pronounced him the merriest fellow whom he had ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... a rich man would have given a third of his income. Dukes and duchesses were fond of him; and certain persons, standing very high in the world, did not think certain parties were perfect without him. He knew how to talk enough, and yet not to talk too much. No one could say of him that he was witty, well-read, or given to much thinking; but he knew just what was wanted at this point of time or at that, and could give it. He could put himself forward, and could keep himself in the background. He could shoot well without wanting ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... no need to make you witty. M. de Mayenne, when you have submitted to the king, as you will one of these days, I shall have as delightful a kinsman as heart of man could wish. You and I will yet drink a loving-cup together. Till that happy hour, I am your good enemy. Fare you ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... very good blood in her veins, too; but commoner as she is, I have never met a peeress who was more than her peer, Mr. George; and if you will come to Fairoaks Castle you shall judge for yourself of her and of my cousin too. They are not so witty as the London women, but they certainly are as well bred. The thoughts of women in the country are turned to other objects than those which occupy your London ladies. In the country a woman has her household and her poor, her long calm days and ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... villainy resulting, but only as the outcome of argument and definition of principle and of that mixture of logic and rhetoric called by the French des mots. Alfieri was not a reasoning mind, he was not an eloquent man; above all, he was not a witty man; his satirical efforts are so many blows upon an opponent's head; they are almost physical brutalities; there is nothing clever or funny about them. In such a society as this Parisian society of the years '87, '88, '89, '90, he must have been at a continual ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... make. On holidays, when dozens of family parties came out by every train from town, he could hardly keep up with the demand for his potato chips. And with a waiting crowd around him our partner was at his best. He was as voluble as he was skilful, and as witty as he was voluble; at least so I guessed from the laughter that frequently drowned his voice. I could not understand his jokes, but if I could get near enough to watch his lips and his smile and his merry eyes, I was happy. That any one could ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... heard her, was fully aware what a good hand she had always been at witty things, and how she, more than any other, had an inexhaustible supply of novel and amusing rules of forfeits, ever stocked in her mind, so her suggestion not only gratified the various inmates of the family seated at the banquet, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... records, "He was very witty and thrifty, and got more by oppressing his tenants than did all the lords in 60 years before him. He was a justice of the peace, and raised a troop in the cause of the Parliament." It must have been in the army that Oliver Cromwell made his acquaintance, and in 1647 began the first proposals ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... a City,—neither large nor small, Its air and situation sweet and pretty; It matters very little—if at all— Whether its denizens are dull or witty, Whether the ladies there are short or tall, Brunettes or blondes, only, there stands a city!— Perhaps 'tis also requisite to minute That there's a Castle, and ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... in the front of the 'bus, just behind the driver, for he had often heard stories of the witty sayings of London 'busmen and he was anxious to hear a 'bus-driver's wit ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... people into the hand of the men of Israel. Were such a proposition presented to our consideration to-day, we can imagine what would be the comments of the Army and Navy departments, of Congress, of the editors of newspapers, of witty paragraphers, and of the man on the street. Possibly the churches themselves might hesitate before giving their support to such a plan of war: "We must take the biblical stories in a figurative sense!" But stout Joshua had seen the angel of the Lord, with his sword drawn, the night before; ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... of great strength and almost photographic intensity, that appeals to the lovers of sensational fiction; wise, witty, yet ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... that; but Francesca don't like America; she's forever saying something witty and sharp about our 'democratic institutions,' as she calls them; and, if you had looked this morning, you'd have seen that she didn't sing The Star-Spangled Banner with the rest of us. Her voice is splendid, and Professor Hale wanted her to lead, as she often does, but ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... taking out his knife, he cut off both his ears; and then, bringing him to the threshold, he chopped off his tail. And having thus effectually dishonoured the poor cur among his neighbours, he tied a string about his neck, and a piece of paper to the string, directed to his master, and with these witty ...
— From London to Land's End - and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman" • Daniel Defoe
... rejected him. Lily was too much occupied in managing her own feelings to divine Osgood's. The imperative necessity of concealment, which all tutored women feel, governed her. She laughed a great deal, though nobody said a witty thing, and kept her eyes going between Mrs. Formica and Barclay with a steadiness which equaled the movements of the wax women in the Broadway shop windows. Mr. Formica and Dr. Black added themselves to ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... important in the conversation. Let us suppose the real John to be old, dull, and ill-looking. But as the Higher Powers have not conferred on men the gift of seeing themselves in the true light, John very possibly conceives himself to be youthful, witty, and fascinating, and talks from the point of view of this ideal. Thomas, again, believes him to be an artful rogue, we will say; therefore he is, so far as Thomas's attitude in the conversation is concerned, an ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Commission in regard to Bills of Credit, in 1720. He removed to Boston in 1722, and became the Attorney General and a member of the Council of Massachusetts. He was by far the most eminent lawyer in New England, and was called "the Pride of the Bar, Light of the Law, and Chief among the Wise, Witty and Eloquent." It was he who prepared the instructions to Lord Mansfield, the counsel for Connecticut in the great case of Clark vs. Tousey, in which was discussed the question whether the Common Law ...
— The Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of New Milford, Conn. June 17th, 1907 • Daniel Davenport
... take her away as his wife. In that sweet May-time, no heart was happier than George Marshall's, and no voice gladder, as it rang out in unrestrained laughter at the droll jokes and facetious comments of his witty friend Fred. ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... good poem was ever hurt by its parody:—the 'Paradise Lost' was not by 'The Splendid Shilling'—'The Last Man' of Campbell was not by 'The Last Man' of Hood—nor the 'Lines on the Burial of Sir John Moore' by their witty, well-known caricature; and if 'The Vision of Judgment' by Southey was laughed into oblivion by Byron's poem with the same title, it was because Southey's original was neither good nor great. Philip's poem, too, is the first of the kind; and surely we should ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... posterity what those authors would be thought if any memory of them or of their writings could endure so long as to another age. But these dull makers of lampoons, as harmless as they have been to me, are yet of dangerous example to the public. Some witty men may perhaps succeed to their designs, and, mixing sense with malice, blast the reputation of the most innocent amongst men, and the ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... are men who are born good just as others are born witty. What I mean is his nature. No simpler, more scrupulously delicate soul had ever lived in such a—a—comfortable envelope. How we used to laugh at Davidson's fine scruples! In short, he's thoroughly humane, and I don't imagine there can be much of any other sort ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... excursions to galleries, villas, and ruins; and when in the Sistine Chapel, on a memorable festival, they heard "the wrong Miserere," she yet found it "very fine, right or wrong, and overcoming in its pathos." M. Goltz, the Austrian Minister, was an acquaintance whom the Brownings found "witty and agreeable," and Mrs. Browning called the city "a palimpsest Rome," with its records written all over ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... at the Court, the witty and clever 'Billy' O'Hea, who, alas! died too early, took advantage of the appropriate sound of the word to apply it to rowdyism in general, and, next time Dalton repeated the phrase, changed the word from ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... arbor, there is plenty of room to move about there, we have had a dozen together in it many a time." She passed in under the arch as she spoke, and the others followed her. There in her own way which was not so very witty or wise, and yet was very charming, she held her little court, and the three men who had been in love with her at the beginning of the hour were still more in love at the end of it. And Elizabeth who watched her with ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 2, Issue 3, December, 1884 • Various
... book; and above his pale, serenely noble face is a little black berretta. Saints attend him, as though attesting to his act of faith. Opposite kneels Ippolita, his wife, the brilliant queen of fashion, the witty leader of society, to whom Bandello dedicated his Novelle, and whom he praised as both incomparably beautiful and singularly learned. Her queenly form is clothed from head to foot in white brocade, slashed and trimmed with gold lace, and on her forehead is a golden ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... . . . and then to sit down and write. And this is called life! How is it nobody has described the agonizing discord in the soul of a writer who has to amuse the crowd when his heart is heavy or to shed tears at the word of command when his heart is light? I must be playful, coldly unconcerned, witty, but what if I am weighed down with misery, what if I am ill, or my child is dying ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... solitude would have been fatal; for to him life consisted in motion, sallies, witty conversations, free and easy parties, the little gay ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... all was the honesty and truth of a womanhood capable of courageous conduct, and despising all forms of meanness. That she was variously regarded was natural. Margaret Shippen said she cared only for dress and the men; and the witty Miss Franks, seeing further, but not all, said that Darthea Peniston was an actress of the minute, who believed her every role to be real. My wise aunt declared that she was several women, and that she did not always keep some of them in ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... of a half-hour in the fashion aforetime recorded—not very wise nor witty talk, if you will, but very pleasant to make. There were many pauses. There was much laughter over nothing in particular. There were any number of sentences ambitiously begun that ended nowhere. Altogether, it was just the sort of talk for ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... for to cry, What you lack? But that were not so witty: His cap and coat are enough to note That he is ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... increased by the winter, at night, amidst storms, and through isolation. The table no longer responded by a few words merely, but by sentences and pages. It was usually grave and magisterial, but at times it would be witty and even comical. Sometimes it had an access of choler. More than once I was insolently reproved for speaking to it irreverently, and I confess to not feeling at ease until I had obtained forgiveness. The table made certain exactions. It chose ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... notice of Chaucer, it should be remarked that no English poet has been more successful in the varied delineation of character, or in fresh and charming pictures of Nature. Witty and humorous, sententious and didactic, solemn and pathetic, he not only pleases the ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... kinds, to become a country gentleman, patriot, reformer, financier, and what not, always good-looking (he had been very handsome), pleasing, intelligent, cultivated, agreeable as a man can be who is not witty and who is rather pompous and slow, after many years of retirement, in the course of which he gave to the world his lucubrations on corn and currency. Time and the hour made him master of a large but encumbered ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... Witty Tom Nash was right enough when he called this kind of stuff, "that drunken, staggering kinde of verse which is all vp hill and downe hill, like the waye betwixt Stamford and Becchfeeld, and goes like a horse ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... through, shaking his wig. "Perhaps ... perhaps"—he whispered to himself, "I'd better leave it to the will of God. They might upset my own. I do not think They'd understand. Jocelyn might, perhaps; And Dick, if only they were left alone. But Rosalind never; nor that nephew of mine, The witty politician. No. No. No. They'd say my mind was wandering, I'm afraid." So, with a frozen face, reluctantly, He tossed his verses into the dying fire, And watched the sparks fly upward. There, at ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... Some of the sonnets were written to a woman, of the kind described in two or three of the plays, viz. a black-haired, black-eyed, white-faced, witty wanton, false to her marriage vows and the cause of similar falseness in Shakespeare himself, and in ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... acquisition to the T. and B. Society: a fine reader, a good declaimer, witty and quick at repartee, the Social Committee of the society soon learned his value, and a smile of welcome greeted him wherever ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... said the witty countess, "is a man who has grown tired of the jars and the cares and responsibilities of the household; out of patience with the family in general. He feels the necessity, inborn in every Russian, for roaming, for getting far away from people, into the country and the forests. So he ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... Gahagan, your ball has been so pleasant, and the supper was despatched so long ago, that myself and the ladies would be very glad of a little breakfast." And Mrs. Van giggled as if she had made a very witty and reasonable speech. "Oh! breakfast, breakfast by all means," said the rest; "we really are dying for a ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... at the lethargy of our correspondence. Let it now be renovated with increase of spirit, so that I may not only subscribe myself your sincere friend, but your witty companion, ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... himself by a witty interview later in the week with an emotional actress, and by a solemn article compiled after an hour's reading in Lafcadio Hearn and the Encyclopedia—on the ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... with having produced in my bosom the intended effect, he seemed to chuckle in secret over the sting he had inflicted, and was characteristically disregardful of the public applause which the success of his witty endeavours might have so easily elicited. That the school, indeed, did not feel his design, perceive its accomplishment, and participate in his sneer, was, for many anxious months, a riddle I could not resolve. Perhaps the gradation ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... pleasant ways Your good opinion of her heart to raise; Her speech was lively, and with ease express'd, And well she judged the tempers she address'd: If some soft stripling had her keenness felt, She knew the way to make his anger melt; Wit was allow'd her, though but few could bring Direct example of a witty thing; 'Twas that gay, pleasant, smart, engaging speech, Her beaux admired, and just within their reach; Not indiscreet, perhaps, but yet more free Than prudish nymphs allow their wit to be. Novels and plays, with poems old and new, Were ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... Guyon. Even now, although, as a late writer has quaintly observed, "no lady brings her distaff to the council-chamber," the influence of the sex on political opinion, in its operation as a social principle, is recognized. A friend of mine, returning from a dinner-party, described the free and witty sarcasm with which a fair Legitimist assailed the Imperial rule; a week afterwards, meeting her at the same table, she related, that, a few days after her imprudent conversation, she received a courteous invitation from the chief of police. "When they were seated alone in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Maltravers twice for a just debt; and no man ever once asked him to fulfil a promise. You felt that, come what would, you might rely upon his word. To him might have been applied the witty eulogium passed by Johnson upon a certain nobleman: "If he had promised you an acorn, and the acorn season failed in England, he would have sent to Norway ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book III • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Galiani, the witty Neapolitan, who had so many good friends in the philosophic circle, anticipated the well-known phrase of a writer of our own day. "The author of the System of Nature," he said, "is the Abbe Terrai of metaphysics: ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... with. Besides, (as I believe swine and some other folks invariably do under the like circumstances,) piggy always tried to run in the wrong direction. To add to Gentleman Bill's annoyance, spectators soon became numerous, and witty suggestions ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... mending a cart or a door. He makes stands with wires to put flowers in for the farmers' parlours, and strings the dry oak-apples on wire, which he twists into baskets, to hold knicknackeries. He is witty, and has his jest for everybody. He can do something of everything—turn his hand any way—a perfect treasure on the farm. In the old days there was another character in most villages; this was the rhymer. He was ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... Orrery, and grand-nephew to Boyle the philosopher, was born at Dr. Whittaker's house at Little Chelsea on the 21st July, 1674. It was his grandfather's marriage with Lady Margaret Howard, daughter of the Earl of Suffolk, that induced the witty Sir John Suckling to write his well-known 'Ballad upon a Wedding,' in which he so ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... make a still greater revolution? He did neither. He forgot all about the storm of things, and delighted us with his story of Mary, the charwoman's daughter, a tale of Dublin life, so, kindly, so humane, so vivid, so wise, so witty, and so true, that it would not be exaggerating to say that natural humanity in Ireland found its first worthy chronicler in ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... has done him good service with the aristocratic patrons of the drama," remarked a lady to a witty friend of ours. "Yes, madam," was the reply, "he seems to have gained by Eaton what his father lost ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... important figures of history return to it after a period of negligence and forgetfulness. In their religious aspect, the women of the sixteenth century differ as a rule, from those of the eighteenth, who, though equally powerful, witty, refined, sensual, frivolous, and scoffing, were far less devout; for "'tis religion which restores the great female sinners of the sixteenth century 'tis religion which saves a society ploughed up by so many elements of dissolution and so many causes of moral and material ruin, rescuing ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... long as a fable or folk tale. They migrate like the birds and make their way into every corner of the world where there are lips to speak and ears to hear. The reasons are, perhaps, because they are generally brief; because they are simple; because they are trenchant and witty; because they are fresh and captivating and have a bite to them like the tang of salt water; because they are strong and vital, and what is thoroughly alive in the ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... pronunciation (rather than of grammar), which is taking great hold in America, is the total omission of the "had" or "have," in such phrases as "You'd better," "we've got to." Mr. Howells's Willis Campbell, a witty and cultivated Bostonian, says, in The Albany Depot, "I guess we better get out of here;" Mr. Ade's Artie, a Chicago clerk, says, "I got a boost in my pay," meaning "I have got:" the locution is very common indeed. It is no more defensible than "swelp ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... after, I could dance away numberless suns, To no weariness let my knees bend. Earth I could brave with laughter, Having such wonderful girls here to friend. O the daring, the gracious, the beautiful ones! Their courage unswerving and witty ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes
... impressive orator; his addresses and proclamations show much emphasis, and the rhetorical artifice is apparent, as it is in all literature of this kind. In his letters he uses a very simple and naturally witty style. He was a great coiner of sentences, many of which can be found in his proclamations and addresses. His political perspicacity was remarkable. He could and did break the conventionalities and the political principles sacred in that epoch, to formulate those which were ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... wise and witty things. Few people will agree with them all, many will get angry with the remorselessness of his logic, but nobody can read the book through carefully without clearing up their own minds on the subject and incidentally acquiring a sounder understanding of what art is ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... nor had Ducrow arisen to shed the light of classic taste and portable gas over the sawdust of the circus; but the whole character of the place was the same, the pieces were the same, the clown's jokes were the same, the riding-masters were equally grand, the comic performers equally witty, the tragedians equally hoarse, and the 'highly-trained chargers' equally spirited. Astley's has altered for the better—we have changed for the worse. Our histrionic taste is gone, and with shame we confess, that we are far more delighted ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... subjected, they retained their places, and endeavoured, by every demonstration of respect and devotion, to gain the good graces of their irritated mistress. In this endeavour one of them only was destined to succeed, and that one, contrary to all expectation, was the beautiful and witty Comtesse du Fargis, whose fascinations soon won the heart of the young Queen, and who was fortunate enough to secure alike her confidence and her esteem; nor was it long ere she profited by her advantage to attempt a reconciliation between Marie de Medicis and her offended daughter-in-law; urged ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... she said. "I'm interested in the theatre. I've read dozens of plays, in French, mostly. I don't think the English comedies are nearly so well done. Of course, the French have only one subject, but they are so much more witty. Have you ever read ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... helped to awaken some very witty attacks on the Rowleians. Malone himself made use of wit in occasional passages, such as his abuse of Milles for relying on Shakespeare's historical accuracy (pp.22-24). The cure for Rowleiomania ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone
... "Miss Sellimer is witty and talented, and from the way she treats me, I know she has a tender heart. And her mother is a perfect wonder of a manager, and never makes mistakes except such as happen to be the fad of the hour. And Mr. Edgerton ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... anyhow." Twenty years ago I crossed the Atlantic, and among our passengers was an Irish judge, who was coming out to Newfoundland as chief justice. He was an exceedingly intelligent and polished gentleman, and extremely witty. The passengers from the New England States and those from the South got into a discussion on the subject of slavery, which lasted three days. The Southerners were finally worsted, and when their arguments were exhausted, they fell back on the old story, by saying: ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... subtleties, with which Hamilton often filled his sheets, did not seem to have the same attraction for De Morgan that he found in battles about the quantification of the Predicate. De Morgan was exquisitely witty, and though his jokes were always appreciated by his correspondent, yet Hamilton seldom ventured on anything of the same kind in reply; indeed his rare attempts at humour only produced results of the most ponderous description. But never were two scientific correspondents more ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... disgrace already floated before her, she longed to hasten to her father, to assert her innocence—when suddenly the manuscript was found under some old books; Clarissa breathed again as if saved from peril of death, and never before had she been as witty, talkative, and captivatingly lovable as in ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... This is witty, but it is not wise. Fortunately, it is not quite true; Abarbanel does little justice to himself in this passage, for elsewhere (in the preface to his Commentary on Kings) he draws a very different picture of his life in his brilliant court days. "My house," he says, "was ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... to be a soldier; and until he was sixty years old the man belonged to the State absolutely. And all those years he ate his black broth at a public mess, seasoned only with fatigue and hunger. A witty Athenian said he did not wonder the Spartans were brave in battle, for death was ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 25, April 29, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... became one of his intimate friends. When that ambiguous figure, Witte, his rival and successor, tried to discredit him, Morier vindicated with warmth the honesty and patriotism of his friend. Baron Jomini of the Foreign Office was of a different kind, witty, volatile, audaciously outspoken, more like a character in Thackeray's novels. Pobedonostsev, the Procurator of the Holy Synod, remained 'somewhat of an enigma'—as we can easily believe when we hear that this bigoted Churchman, the terror of the Jews, had been a friend of Dean Stanley, and was ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... that cometh to the table, and taketh little but manchet and succory pottage. Every new message from the city doth disturb her, and she frowns on all the ladies. I had a sharp message from her, brought by my lord Buckhurst, namely thus. 'Go tell that witty fellow my godson to get home; it is no season now to fool it here,' I liked this as little as she doth my knighthood, so took to my boots, and returned to the plough in bad weather. I must not say much even by this trusty and sure messenger, but the many evil ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... it was good to see me again, as I had hoped she would do. Indeed, after the first minute of greeting, she seemed a trifle cool and distant. We walked for an hour in the pine wood and talked. Betty was brilliant, witty, self-possessed, altogether charming. I thought her perfect and yet my heart ached. What a glorious young thing she was, in that splendid youth of hers! What a prize for some lucky man—confound the obtrusive thought! No doubt we should soon be overrun ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... who was familiarly called by his friends Clark Ingersoll, served in that Congress. He was a very clever man, possessed of considerable talent, and could on occasions deliver a capitally witty speech. I remember a rather ingenious passage from one of his speeches delivered when the controversy between the President and Congress was at its height. He asserted that the country was sorely ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... Judge Gingerford's,—I should say that's about the best thing to do with him," says the witty Stephen. ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Touraine, addressed himself. Be it nevertheless understood, the author has no other desire than to be a good Touranian, and joyfully to chronicle the merry doings of the famous people of this sweet and productive land, more fertile in cuckolds, dandies and witty wags than any other, and which has furnished a good share of men of renown in France, as witness the departed Courier of piquant memory; Verville, author of Moyen de Parvenir, and others equally well known, among whom we will specially mention the Sieur ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... friends, who afterwards became a leper. The king, it was reported, was full of huge threats and savage designs against his despisers, and if the clergy trembled before, they now shook like aspen leaves. The story of Hugh's predicament had got wind. The Hereford Canons wanted to choose the witty Walter Map to be bishop. He was already Archdeacon of Oxford, Canon of Lincoln, and Prebend of Hereford, but alas! he was also a friend of the disfavoured bishop. This fact is worth some emphasis, as it illustrates ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... I repeat—I wonder is life as good fun as it was when I made my first acquaintance with it? My impression is that it is not. I do not presume to say that all the same elements are not as abundant as heretofore. There are young people, and witty people, and, better, there are beautiful people, in abundance. There are great houses as of yore, maintained, perhaps, with even more than bygone splendour: the horses are as good—the dogs as good—the trout-streams as well stocked—the grouse as abundant—foreign ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... income. Dukes and duchesses were fond of him; and certain persons, standing very high in the world, did not think certain parties were perfect without him. He knew how to talk enough, and yet not to talk too much. No one could say of him that he was witty, well-read, or given to much thinking; but he knew just what was wanted at this point of time or at that, and could give it. He could put himself forward, and could keep himself in the background. He could shoot well without ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... Liszt's hostesses. Among those who may be more definitely suspected of being made victims by, or victimising, him is the Comtesse Adele Laprunarede, afterward Duchess de Fleury. She, of course, was, as De Beaufort says, "sparkling, witty, young, beautiful." Her home was lonely and rural; her husband was very old; Liszt, to repeat, was a musician and Hungarian. The old comte was blind enough to invite him to spend the winter months at his chateau. For a whole winter Liszt was kept there in her ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... Italians, French, and Spaniards are masters, is here totally unknown. Dutch conversation is not an exchange of sounds, but a commerce of facts, and nobody makes the least effort to appear learned, eloquent, or witty. In all the time I was at the Hague I remember hearing only one witticism, and that from a deputy, who speaking to me of the alliance of the ancient Batavians with the Romans, said, "We have always been the friends of constituted ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... letter written by that character to one of the other people in the plot. This expedient is employed with extraordinary cleverness by George Meredith in "Evan Harrington." Most of the tale is told externally; but every now and then the clever and witty Countess de Saldar writes a letter in which a leading incident is illuminated from her personal point ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... eagerness to hasten the successful issue. So Paul concealed his plans from Madame Astier, in entire ignorance that she was running a countermine in the same line as his. He acted on his own account with great deliberation. The Princess was attracted by his youth and fashion, his brightness and his witty irony, from which he carefully took the venom. He knew that women, like children and the mob, and all impulsive and untutored beings, hate a tone of sarcasm, which puts them out, and which they perceive by instinct to be hostile to the dreams ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... a little, madam; there's plenty of time!' Pigasov began with annoyance. 'It's not sufficient to say a witty word, with a show of superiority; you must prove, refute. We had wandered from the subject ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... interchange, according to my idea. You haven't said anything witty. What an idea of ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... round-up this yere Jaybird first develops that he regards himse'f witty. It's in the morning as we-alls has saddled up an' lines out to comb the range roundabout for cattle. Thar's a tenderfoot along whose name is Todd, an', as he's canterin' off, Jaybird comes a-curvin' up on his bronco an' reaches over an' ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... was a lawyer of brilliant parts, a good type of the witty, educated Irishman, a leader at the bar of Western Michigan who had no equal before a jury. He had much reputation as an after-dinner speaker, and his polished sentences and keen sallies of wit were greatly enjoyed on ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... specimens of his pointed and witty sayings, which may begin with his answers to Favorinus. The latter had heard that he made fun of his lectures, and in particular of the sentimental verses with which they were garnished, and which Demonax thought contemptible, ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... had time," I said, "I believe I could generally think out a witty answer myself. I do not want to ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain
... occasion with resentment. It was he who had made the witty remark, certainly, but it had been ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... later in the work of Shakespeare. Thus John Lyly (1554?-1606), who is now known chiefly as having developed the pernicious literary style called euphuism,[138] is one of the most influential of the early dramatists. His court comedies are remarkable for their witty dialogue and for being our first plays to aim definitely at unity and artistic finish. Thomas Kyd's Spanish Tragedy (c. 1585) first gives us the drama, or rather the melodrama, of passion, copied by Marlowe and Shakespeare. This was ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... the history of Jack Horner, containing his witty pranks and the tricks he played upon people from his youth to old age, is preserved in the ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... season of profound calm. The uniform and steady pull of the crew, directed in their time by the wild chaunt of the steersman, with whom they ever and anon join in fall chorus—the measured plash of the oars into the calm surface of the water—the joyous laugh and rude, but witty, jest of the more youthful and buoyant of the soldiery, from whom, at such moments, although in presence of their officers, the trammels of restraint are partially removed—all these, added to the inspiriting sight of their gay scarlet uniforms, and the dancing of the sunbeams upon their ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... at some of the sentiments given, and Peck was delighted at every indication of contentment on the part of the blacks. At last it came to Jack's turn to drink, and the master expected something good from him, because he was considered the cleverest and most witty slave on ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... man; and this especially when, like Charles de Vandenesse, the visitor is handsome or clever. And similarly there are not many young men who would fail to base some secret wish on one of the thousand and one ideas which justify the instinct that attracts them to a beautiful, witty, and unhappy woman like the ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... not a little proud of it, for there was not a grey hair to be seen. Although she had lost many of her teeth, her skin was not wrinkled, but had a freshness most remarkable in a person so advanced in years. Her mind was as young as her body; she was very witty and coquettish, and the officers living in the palace were continually in her apartments, preferring her company to that of younger women. Partial to children, she would join in all our sports, and sit down to play "hunt the slipper," with us and our young companions. But with all ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... he never sought fame, and consequently his reputation never equalled his merit. His name, however, still smells sweet, passing sweet, amid the corruption and the frantic fury of his day, and the memory of the witty, genial, and virtuous litterateur ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... nor of her, and which was ridiculed by Peter Pindar in "A Town Eclogue," in which the rivals Bozzy and Piozzi, on Virgil's principle—Alternis dicetis, amant alterna Camaenae—relate in turn anecdotes of Johnson's way of life, his witty sayings, &c., &c. Sir John Hawkins, as judge of the contest, gives neither a prize; tells the lady, "Sam's Life, dear ma'am, will only damn your own;" calls the gentleman "a chattering ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... about," returned Bessie, with good-humored contempt. "Girls are different. I should be just as much interested in Miss Sefton if she were plain. I suppose you mean to be charmed with her conversation, and to find all her remarks witty because she has les ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... all traces of pique or annoyance. She would never let him find her dull or unhappy. Men liked to be amused. She would do her best to entertain him; he would never have a moment's vacancy in her society. She would find sparkling anecdotes, repartees, witty, humorous stories, to amuse him. He liked her singing; she would cultivate it more and more. She would study him, dress for him, live for him, and him alone; she would have no other end, aim, thought, or desire. She would herself be the source of ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... the mad delight that had leapt into his eyes and sparkled there, it will scarcely be requisite to describe more particularly the effect of this precious dinner party upon him. As for the lady, she would not have been woman had she failed to admire the generous sentiments—the witty repartees—the brilliant passages with which the young man's taste and memory enabled him to entertain and charm his lovely hostess. As for his handsome face and manly bearing—but, as we have said already, these have their price and value always. Allcraft senior had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... children, however unconstrained they are with regard to nature. True modesty is as far removed from coarseness as from prudery. Coarseness takes a delight in making the relation of the sexes the subject of ambiguous, witty, shameless talking and jesting, and it is just as blamable as prudery, which externally affects an innocence no longer existing therein. Here is, consequently, the point in which physical education must pass over into ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... entirely alone. We had no means of making any friends. We had no money, and no gifts of any kind. We were neither of us witty nor attractive, but I have often wondered, nevertheless, what it was which prevented us from obtaining acquaintance with persons who thronged to houses in which I could see nothing worth a twopenny omnibus fare. Certain it is, ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... celebrated for its remarkable echo. As we passed between the rocks, a guard, who has a little house built on the road-side, blew a flourish on his bugle, which was instantly answered by a blast from the rocky battlements of Lurlei. The German students have a witty trick with this echo: they call out, "Who is the Burgomaster of Oberwesel?" a town just above. The echo answers with the last syllable "Esel!" which is ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... in the land. He hath played this trick upon us all, to test us. We did not know him, for he hath grown up to manhood while we have been long away from home. But ever he hath had an adventurous and witty mind.' ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... Buttons and Dick were in a remarkably central part of Naples. The landlord was a true Neapolitan; a handsome, gay, witty, noisy, lively, rascally, covetous, ungrateful, deceitful, cunning, good-hearted old scoundrel, who took advantage of his guests in a thousand ways, and never spoke to them without trying to humbug them. He was the father of a pretty daughter who ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... a turn in that direction, and at such times he was as sober and sincere as could be desired. Any one might have lectured him for an hour without doing as much good as that little call and the chat that grew out of it, for, though nothing very wise or witty was said, many things were suggested, and every one knows that persuasive influences are better than any amount of moralizing. Neither Polly nor Will tried to do anything of the sort, and that was the charm of it. Nobody likes ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... Queen, says the noble historian, who was never advised by those, who either understood, or valued her Husband's interest, consulted those about her, and sent Sir William Davenant, an honest man, and a witty, but in all respects unequal to such a trust, with a letter of credit to the King, who knew the person well enough under another character than was likely to give him much credit upon the argument, with which he was entrusted, although the Queen had likewise otherwise ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... have been much more generally consumed in old China (by those who could afford it) than in modern times; and, as we might expect, among the Tartar infected people, horse-flesh in particular. In the second century B.C. the question of eating horse-liver is compared by a witty Emperor with the danger of revolutionary talk. He said: "We may like it, but it is dangerous." (Last year, when in Neu Brandenburg, I came across a man whose brother was a horse-butcher in Pomerania, and, remembering this imperial remark, ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... otherwise, with the real characters to whom his maturer life had introduced him. They were beings of crude imagination, such as glide before a young man's eye and pretend to be actual inhabitants of the earth; the wise and witty with whom he would hereafter hold intercourse; the generous and heroic friends whose devotion would be requited with his own; the beautiful dream-woman who would become the helpmate of his human toils and sorrows and at once the source and partaker of his happiness. ...
— A Select Party (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... nose as the sportsman follows that of his pointer, you will observe that these remarks are excited by the presence of my beloved "Richard Feverel," which lurks in yonder corner. What a great book it is, how wise and how witty! Others of the master's novels may be more characteristic or more profound, but for my own part it is the one which I would always present to the new-comer who had not yet come under the influence. I think that I should put it third after ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hospitality, and how far he appreciated American character. "I was received on Saturday," he wrote from New York on the 4th of October, 1872, "as a member of the Lotus Club—the wits and journalists of New York. It was the strangest scene I ever was present at. They were very clever—very witty at each other's expense, very complimentary to me; and, believe me, they worked the publishers who were present for the profit they were making out of me." He was agreeably surprised by the merchant princes of New York. "There ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... cardinal which has attained the greatest historical notoriety is that associated with the name of Cinq-Mars, the famous favorite of Louis XIII. Brilliant and witty, a true type of the courtiers of the time, this handsome youth so amused and interested the king that, when he was only nineteen years of age, Louis made him master of the wardrobe and grand equerry of France. M. Le Grand he was called, and grand enough ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... little as possible in return, but occasionally a witty reply would turn the laugh against his opponent, who grew disagreeable and really quarrelsome, as the wine ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... beak went instantly out of the record, and wasted a deal of time reading Clara's poetry, and trying to be witty. He raised the question whose book this was. The girl swore that it WAS given her by a lady who was now in Rome. Staines swore he bought it of a certain stationer, and happening to have his passbook in his pocket, produced an entry corresponding ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... Domitian. "At the beginning of his reign," Suetonius tells us "he used to spend hours in seclusion every day, doing nothing but catch flies and stab them with a keenly sharpened stylus. Consequently, when someone once asked whether anyone was in there with Csar, Vibius Crispus made the witty reply: 'Not even a fly.'" And just as most of us are on the side of the fly against Domitian, so are most of us on the side of the fly against the spider. We pity the fly as (if the image is permissible) the ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... the perfect title for a revue. Witty, subtle, neat—probably the great brain of the Revue King has already evolved it, and is ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 14, 1914 • Various
... native subtilty and talent of insinuation which, aptly conspiring with the nature of his office, might truly be said to render his duty his delight:—a feature of his mind which is thus happily delineated by a witty ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... been condemned to the flames, suppressed, or censured. We do not require to go far through his alphabet to see how futile the burnings and condemnations have been in their effect on the giants of literature. The first name of all is that of Abelard, and so going on we pick up the witty scamp Aretin, then pass on to D'Aubigne the great warrior and historian, Bayle, Beaumarchais, Boulanger, Catullus, Charron, Condillac, Crebillon, and so on, down ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... Collection of the Funny and Witty Anecdotes that made Abraham Lincoln Famous as America's ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... in St. James's Street, in a house which has long since been demolished, and thither people resorted to enjoy the idle, witty, and often scandalous gossip of the time. It was as easy to lose your reputation there as your money at Crockford's, and far more difficult to keep it. The only really innocent conversation was when a man ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... for interesting themselves in the concerns of foreign countries. Few of us before steam had shortened distance really knew England. Voltaire had by turns glorified and ridiculed it; De Stael had shown it to us in an agreeable book; the witty letters of Duvergier de Hauranne had revealed the secrets of its electoral system. Your correspondence of 1841 completed the work." He might pertinently have added, "Because you are about the only French newspaper writer who ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... attempt was made by the imperialists to set up a premier gentilhomme of their own in the person of Count Morny, who sought to revive the traditions of De Grammont and of De Montrond. He was brave, he was witty, his physique might be said to realize the ideal of the role, but his morale was founded on the theories of the Bonaparte school. De Grammont tells us how he cheated the greasy cattle-dealer; De Montrond makes us laugh when he relates how in his tour of mediation with Prince Talleyrand he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... to my own certain knowledge. She was a little, brown, thin, almost skinny, woman, with big, rolling, violet-blue eyes, and the sweetest manners in the world. You had only to mention her name at afternoon teas for every woman in the room to rise up, and call her—well—NOT blessed. She was clever, witty, brilliant, and sparkling beyond most of her kind; but possessed of many devils of malice and mischievousness. She could be nice, though, even to her own sex. But that ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... is truly also one of the most entertaining and witty gentlemen that it has been our fortune to run across in many a day, not to mention the more original lady that he has to ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... it will not fit on to any of my larger headings. Do not make fun of your friend's little mishaps, little stupidities, losing her luggage, having said the wrong thing, or having a black on her face when she especially wished to look well! Your remark may be witty, but it does not really amuse the victim. I know it is very good for people to be chaffed, and I do not wish them to lose this wholesome bracing. And yet we have a special clinging to some tactful friends who never let us ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... Dogb. A marvellous witty fellow, I assure you; but I will go about with him.—Come you hither, sirrah; a word in your ear, sir; I say to you, it is thought you are ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... worthy of the arm. It was a small hand, but the fingers were long, tapering and very white, each terminating in a rosy nail. Her face was close to his, and now and then he felt her light breath on his cheek. A thrill ran through his blood. It was very pleasant to sit in the smile of a witty and ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... do get to the sight of my old ever-young green-mantled mother again; but for an hour there, it is a real blessing to me. I have company sometimes, but generally prefer solitude, and a dialogue with the trees and clouds. Alas, the speech of men, especially the witty-speech of men, is oftentimes afflictive to me: "in the wide Earth," I say sometimes with a sigh, "there is none but Emerson that responds to me with a voice wholly human!" All "Literature" too is become I cannot tell you how contemptible to me. On the whole, one's blessedness is ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... admiration; and he was scarcely less surprised by the art with which she had uttered her feelings in verse, than delighted by the assurance which the verses conveyed. He was now certain that in all this world he could not hope to meet, much less to win, a girl more beautiful and witty than this rustic maid before him; and a voice in his heart seemed to cry out urgently, "Take the luck that the gods have put in your way!" In short he was bewitched—bewitched to such a degree that, without further preliminary, ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... you think how witty, how original, how acute you are; but when another does so, you are very apt to think only—What ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... their peculations range from wool to money, I do not see how they can avoid stealing from each other, and consequently, if anywhere, it is amongst jackdaws one should look for the growth of a police force, but there is no such force in existence. The real reason is that they are a witty and thoughtful race who look temperately on what is known as crime and evil—one eats, one steals; it is all in the order of things, and therefore not to be quarrelled with. There is no other view possible to a ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... Huxley as a naturalist, educator, and controversialist was one of the commanding figures of the nineteenth century. To physiology and morphology his researches added much of importance: as an expositor he stood unapproached. As the bold and witty champion of Darwinism he gave natural selection an acceptance much more early and wide than it would otherwise have enjoyed. In 1876 he delivered in America three lectures on Evolution: the third of the series is here ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... domestic brute—the cicisbeo, the priest, the half-witted page—to undergo, in the stupid belief that the power of a philtre increased with its nastiness. This was sad enough when the ladies were neither young, nor beautiful, nor witty. But what of that other astounding fact, that a Witch, who was neither a great lady, nor young, nor fair, but poor, and perhaps a serf, clad only in dirty rags, could still by her malice, by the strange power of her raging lewdness, ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... case: I've a bright intellectual brain - In all London city There's no one so witty - I've thought so again and again. I've a highly intelligent face - My features cannot be denied - But, whatever I try, sir, I fail in - and ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... sometimes feared she did not; and that when her fancy had made a fair picture of the life of a great lady in England, there did often come a dark cloud over it like the shade of some heavy disappointment or sorrow. "Sir Thomas," she said, "was a handsome and witty young man, and had demeaned himself to the satisfaction and good repute of her father and the principal people of the Colony; and his manner towards her had been exceeding delicate and modest, inasmuch as he had presumed nothing upon his family ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... odd position, uniting the menial duties of a useful Church servant to other functions, the decent performance of which was utterly beyond the range of an illiterate man. Many of our readers may be acquainted with the witty satire in which, with a perpetual side glance at the fussy self-importance visible in Bishop Burnet's History, Pope writes 'the Memoirs of P.P., Clerk of this Parish.' With what delightful complacency this diligent representative of his class speaks of taking ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... had gone, the wine circulated freely, and in the merry badinage that followed it must be admitted that Jasper Vermont was the life and soul of the party. He had the newest scandal at his finger-tips, the latest theatrical news; and all was related in a witty manner that kept his listeners in a perpetual ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... priest of Louvain, sang his sweetest and most entrancing strains in the ducal chapel. For her amusement the court jesters laughed and chattered and played their foolish tricks—Diodato, who had followed her from Ferrara, and the witty clown Barone, the petted favourite of Isabella d'Este and Veronica Gambara and a dozen other great ladies. And Messer Galeazzo was ready to risk his life and ruin his best clothes, all for the sake of his duchess. ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... this slight stripling, whom you see before you, where he stood, or overtake him when he fled? They will hardly be able to explain themselves, I fancy, if they get into that witness-box, however clever and witty they may be at the banquet,—nay, even eloquent occasionally, no doubt, over their wine. But the air of a court of justice is somewhat different from that of the banquet-hall; the benches of this court are not like the couches ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... unlucky Carnivals—almost before the strict fast-days were past, when a certain Nicolo Musso opened a theatre outside the Porta del Popolo, where he stated his intention of putting nothing but light impromptu comic sketches on the boards. The advertisement was drawn up in an ingenious and witty style, and consequently the Romans formed a favourable preconception of Musso's enterprise; but independently of this they would in their longing to still their dramatic hunger have greedily snatched at any the poorest pabulum of this description. ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... letters may one trace The generous scorn, the gentle pity, The easy unaffected grace, The wisdom that was always witty; Here, mirrored in a sister soul, One sees the comrade, strong yet tender, Who marched unfaltering to her ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 19, 1917 • Various
... who had heard how the fair lady was watched, one day met the damsel, who was both beautiful and witty, and told her how willing he was to do her a service, that he sighed for her love, and condoled with her evil fortune in being allied to the most jealous wretch there was on the face of the earth, and saying, moreover, that she was the sole person on earth for whom ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... so many testimonies of friendship, the newspapers of Germany have published various articles concerning me, intending to contribute to my honour or ease. They said my eldest daughter is appointed the governess of the young Princess. This has been the joke of some witty correspondent; for my eldest daughter is but fifteen, and stands in need of a governess herself. Perhaps they may suppose me ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... distinguished. He had the eyes of an old eagle; a general air of dignified collectedness; a rare, and a rarely charming, smile, which came out, like a ray of sunshine, in the instinctive pleasure of having said a witty or graceful thing to which one's response had been immediate. When he took me indoors, into that house which was a museum, I noticed the delicacy of his hands, and the tenderness with which he handled his treasures, touching them as ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... circumstance that the hitherto rather drooping nose gradually acquired its later aquiline form. And withal, the youthful Poet, with the growing consciousness of his strength and of his worth, assumed an imposing outward attitude; so that a witty Stuttgart Lady, whose house Schiller often walked past, said of him: "Regiment's Dr. Schiller steps out as if the Duke were ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... delight she had felt when on the opening night of term she had first seen Catherine, but now to the charm and witchery of first impressions of beauty was added the knowledge of Catherine's sweetness and gentleness. Nancy might be a witty Maria, and Josephine a rollicking Sir Toby; Judith had eyes and ears for Viola only, and as the play progressed she envied passionately the Duke who seemed criminally stupid in his misunderstanding of Viola's love. The surprise of the play was Genevieve Singleton's ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... pieces, and the staunch craft, Temperance, safe and sound, sailing away before a fair wind. With perfect self-command, gift of mimicry and dramatic gestures, the lecturer swayed his audience; now bubbling over with witty anecdotes, again exercising his power of graphic portraiture. His elixir vitae—animal spirits—humanized his effort, and, as Sir Robert Peel played upon the House of Commons "as on an old fiddle," so John B. Gough (for it was the versatile comic singer, actor and speaker) sounded the ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... slavery on principle, he cried hands off to any interference by the General Government with the domestic institutions of the States. His speeches read better than most of his contemporaries. They are interesting in their exhibit of a bitter and eccentric individuality, witty, incisive, and expressed in a pungent and familiar style which contrasts refreshingly with the diplomatic language and glittering generalities of most congressional oratory, whose verbiage seems to keep its subject always ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... "the popular poet, the charming novelist, the successful dramatist, and the witty essayist," wrote a popular history of Greece, in two volumes, 8vo, 1774, embracing a period from the earliest date down to the death of Alexander the Great. It is an attractive work, elegantly written, but ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... uncivilised or savages, before they became civilised or tamed? Was not this common-sense view, so strongly insisted on by Fontenelle and Vico in the eighteenth century, carried even to excess by such men as De Brosses (1709-1771)? And have the lessons taught to De Brosses by his witty contemporaries been quite forgotten? Must his followers be told again and again that they ought to begin with a critical examination of the evidence put before them by casual travellers, and that mythology is as little ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... race-horses ready for a run; Seven gold butterflies, flitting overhead; Seven red roses blowing in a garden bed; Seven white lilies, with honey bees inside them; Seven round rainbows with clouds to divide them; Seven pretty little girls with sugar on their lips; Seven witty little boys, whom everybody tips; Seven nice fathers, to call little maids joys; Seven nice mothers, to kiss the little boys; Seven nights running I dreamt it all plain; With bread and jam for supper I could ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... mysteries? In like manner, when one Timotheus on the theatre, singing of the Goddess Diana, called her furious, raging, possessed, mad, Cinesias suddenly interrupted him, May thy daughter, Timotheus, be such a goddess! And witty also was that of Bion ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... must be explained, is quite well known to you. That is a little surprise I have prepared for you. She is 'Thomas Plantagenet,' the gifted authoress of that witty and daring book, "A Soul Untrammelled," and quite an excellent woman in her way,—only it is such a crooked way. Her real name is Milton. She is a widow and a charming one, only ten years older than Jessie, and she is always careful to dedicate her more ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... Instead, he persuaded us all that he was under no obligation whatever to fight. He persuaded Germany that he had not the slightest serious intention of fighting. Sir Owen Seaman wrote in Punch an amusing and witty No-Intervention poem. Sporting Liberals offered any odds that there would be no war for England. And Germany, confident that with Austria's help she could break France with one hand and Russia with the other if ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... of witty Mirth, and pleasant Shifts; done by him in France and other places. Being A Preservative against Melancholy. Gathered by Andrew Board, Doctor of Physick. This may be Reprinted, R. P. London: Printed for W. Thackeray at the Angel in Duck-lane, near ...
— Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg
... in life he pressed to the front. He was the most genial, witty guest at social dinner tables. Strapped to his horse, he hunted foxes in Yorkshire, or tigers in India, and with his brothers made long journeys in other parts of the world. Everywhere his cheerfulness and gaiety gave new ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... named, For learning, wit, and wisdom, famed;) Was struck with love, esteem, and awe, For persons whom he never saw. Suppose Cadenus flourish'd then, He must adore such godlike men. If one short volume could comprise All that was witty, learn'd, and wise, How would it be esteem'd and read, Although the writer long were dead! If such an author were alive, How all would for his friendship strive, And come in crowds to see his face! ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... greeted this wonderfully witty concoction of No. 5's, and the lemon-coloured tea and biscuits were partaken of during the pause ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... than at any other. He recalled with delight the days when they had to go with one or two companions to cut peats for the winter fuel, because Robert was sure to enliven their toil with a rattling fire of witty remarks of men and things, mingled with the expressions of a genial glowing heart, and the whole perfectly free from the taint which he afterwards acquired from his contact with the world. Not even in those volumes which afterwards charmed his country from end to end, ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... is old and the world is gray— Grown prudent and, I guess, more witty. She's cut her wisdom teeth, they say, And doesn't now go in for Pity. Besides, the melancholy cry Was that of one, 'tis now conceded, Whose plight no one beneath the sky Felt half so poignantly as ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... tranquil gaiety, but mischievous and sarcastic; Moliere was naturally considerate, pensive, and melancholy; La Fontaine was often absent-minded, but sometimes exceedingly jovial, delighting with his sallies, his witty naivetes, and his arch simplicity. These meetings, which no doubt had a great influence upon French literature, La Fontaine, in one of his prefaces, thus describes:—"Four friends, whose acquaintance ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... sclanderouslie spokin of the dignitie of the Bischoppes, as to say, "That it behoved a Bischope to be a preachear, or ellis he was but a dume dogg, and fed not the flock, but fed his awin bellye." The man being witty, and mynded of that which was his most assured defence, said, "My Lord, the reaportaris of such thingis ar manifest lyearis." Whareat the Bischope[100] rejosed, and said, "Your ansour pleasses me weall: I never could ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... which is found in my nature. My father of German descent, my mother of Danish—my nom de plume (which was her maiden-name) is Danish—with Protestant ancestors on her side, though she and I were Catholics—my grandmother a sound and witty Parisian, gay, brilliant, lively, with superb physical health and the consequent good spirits—surely these materials could not have produced other than ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... roaming downstairs with the troubled fold in his brow and the difficult, the smothered statement on his lips (his vocabulary was scant and stiff, the vocabulary of pleading explanation, often found too complicated by the witty,) retired once more to his room sometimes indeed for hours, to think it all over again; but had never failed of sobriety or propriety or punctuality or regularity, never failed of one of the virtues his ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... who had been far too tired to think of riding home that night, was not in the least sleepy, and, moreover, she was profoundly interested in what Sir Arnold had to say, while he was much too witty to say anything which should not interest her. He talked of the court, and of the fashions, and of great people whom he knew intimately and whom the Lady Goda longed to know; and from time to time he managed ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... spert-a experienced, expert. spes-o speso (international unit of money, 284). spez-o clearing (financial); elspezi, to disburse, expend, spend; enspezi, to take in, receive (funds). spinac-o spinach. spir-i to breathe; elspiri, to exhale. spite (prep.), in spite of. sprit-a witty. staci-o station (railway, boat, etc.). stamp-i to mark officially, stamp. standard-o standard, flag. stan-o tin (metal). stang-o pole. star-i to stand (239). stat-o state (of being), condition. stel-o star. stenografi-o ...
— A Complete Grammar of Esperanto • Ivy Kellerman
... said, "She ought to act through her father, or husband, or brother, or son." Why ought she? Did you ever frame an argument to show why the girl should use her father to vote for her, and the boy who is younger, and not half so witty, should vote for himself? It does not admit of an argument. If the grandmother, the mother, the wife, and the eldest daughter, are to be voted for by the father, the husband, and the eldest brother, then why are not the children to be voted for in ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... had friends and acquaintances in every office, every hotel lobby, every bar room and restaurant in the down-town section of the city. The chance acquaintance rapidly grew into friendship. The clever, witty Prince made a kind of hero of Sam, admiring his reserve and good sense and boasting of him far and wide through the town. With Prince, Sam occasionally went on mild carouses, and, once, in the midst of thousands of people ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... himself up to an exhausting high- tension, he earned two dollars and a half. His fellow workers favoured him with scowls and black looks, and made remarks, slangily witty and which he did not understand, about sucking up to the boss and pace-making and holding her down, when the rains set in. He was astonished at their malingering on piece-work, generalized about the inherent laziness of the unskilled labourer, and proceeded next day to hammer out three dollars' ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... had seen her again—and every spell she had cast over him on that June night was renewed ten-fold. She was everything he could desire—she was beautiful and sweet and witty, with a charm which only complete independence and indifference can ever give a woman in the eyes of such a man as he. This he did not reason out—thinking himself a very ordinary person—in fact, never thinking ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... movements with the same precision and efficiency that she had used in her houses. Every hour of her day had been filled. Not one moment had been wasted or frittered away. Her dinner parties had been famous, and she had had a spoke in the wheels of politics. Her witty sayings had been passed from mouth to mouth. Her little flirtations with prominent men and the ambitious tyros who had been drawn to her salon had given rise to much gossip. Not by any means a beauty, her pretty face and tiptilted nose, her ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... out he showed no nice regard for the rules of neutrality and helped the colonies in every way possible. It was a French writer who led in these activities. Beaumarchais is known to the world chiefly as the creator of the character of Figaro, which has become the type of the bold, clever, witty, and intriguing rascal, but he played a real part in the American Revolution. We need not inquire too closely into his motives. There was hatred of the English, that "audacious, unbridled, shameless people," and there was, too, the zeal for liberal ideas which made Queen Marie ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... whether the world ever held such another enigma in her sex. Paris looms behind—a tragedy of strange recollections—here she emerges Phoenix-like, subtly developed, a flawless woman, beautiful, self-reliant, witty, a woman with the strange gift of making all others beside her seem plain or vulgar. And then—this sudden thrust. God only knows what I have done, or left undone. Something unpardonable is laid to my charge. Only last night she saw me, and there was horror ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Fernando, naturally witty, soon ingratiated himself into this well occupied clique, and he dosed them with glory to their heart's content. He resolved at once to enter into their humor, and as the wine mounted up to his brain, he gradually found his acquaintance and politics ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... heard of the end of that unfortunate, all my bitterness against her went out of me, and in my heart I set myself to find excuses for her. Witty and cultured in much; in much else she had been as stupid as the dumb beast. She was irreligious as were many because what she saw of religion did not inspire respect in her, and whilst one of her lovers ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... general truths, that it is impossible to give rules which will enable you to compose. You might much more easily receive rules to enable you to be witty. If it were possible to be witty by rule, wit would cease to be either admirable or amusing: if it were possible to compose melody by rule, Mozart and Cimarosa need not have been born: if it were possible to compose pictures by rule, Titian and Veronese would be ordinary ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... Slavonic hearts beat high with hope in their bosoms. They had all the delightful Slavonic zeal, the Slavonic dash, the Slavonic imagination. They were easy to stir, they were swift in action, they were witty in speech, they were mystic and poetic in soul, and, like the Irish of the present day, they revelled in the joy of party politics, and discussed religious questions with the keenest zest. With them religion came first ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... his mind actively to work. He reflected that this coalition of four young, brave, enterprising, and active men ought to have some other object than swaggering walks, fencing lessons, and practical jokes, more or less witty. ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... hard with him. In the mean time the Buyer, who has a voluble Tongue, and imagines herself no Fool, is easily persuaded that she has a very winning way of Talking; and thinking it sufficient, for the sake of Good Breeding, to disown her Merit, and in some witty Repartee retort the Compliment, he makes her swallow very contentedly the substance of every thing he tells her. The upshot is, that with the satisfaction of having bought, as she thinks, according to her expectation, she has paid exactly the same Price as any body else would ...
— The Tricks of the Town: or, Ways and Means of getting Money • John Thomson
... imposing. It was perhaps the great contrast between the unlimited extravagance of the baron and his own frugality, which exerted so great an influence on the king, excited his astonishment, and enlisted his admiration in behalf of this ready, witty, and ever-merry courtier. ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... and noblesse oblige—and, of course but unfortunately, the correct biases and the correct lack of ideas—all those traits which Anthony had taught her to despise, but which, nevertheless, she rather admired. Unlike the majority of his type, she found that he was not a bore. He was handsome, witty in a light way, and when she was with him she felt that because of some quality he possessed—call it stupidity, loyalty, sentimentality, or something not quite as definite as any of the three—he would have done anything in his power ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... are born good just as others are born witty. What I mean is his nature. No simpler, more scrupulously delicate soul had ever lived in such a—a—comfortable envelope. How we used to laugh at Davidson's fine scruples! In short, he's thoroughly humane, and I don't imagine there can be much of any other sort of goodness that counts on this ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... what it is," said Cap, "I'm not witty nor amusing, nor will it pay to sit out in the night air to hear me talk; but, since you wish it, and since you were so good as to guard me through these woods, and since I promised, why, damp as it is, I will even get off ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... often a positive kindness to take advantage of the etiquette which dispenses with introductions at morning calls. Many a witty, talented person has had a stupid bore pursue him upon such an introduction, and even the one necessary conversation following an introduction is a painful effort, owing to the entire ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... infant's waist a line, That fasten'd to his crupper, and then gave The babe back to her, laughing,—"That end's thine— The other stays with me;" "A witty slave!" The master chuckled, and they moved away, She ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... you, real, natural women, in whom wit is only a particular and occasional modification of intellect. They are all, in the first place, affectionate, thinking beings, and moral agents; and then witty, as if by accident, or as the Duchesse de Chaulnes said of herself, "par la grace de Dieu." As to humor, it is carried as far as possible in Mrs. Quickly; in the termagant Catherine; in Maria, in "Twelfth Night;" in Juliet's ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... the world that I know of bears upon it so deep an impress of genius. There are no "politics," in the Irish sense, in it. It would be impossible to infer from its pages how the Editor voted. What fascinates the reader is the shrewd and witty analysis of Irish problems, the high range of vision which exposes the shortcomings and reveals the illimitable possibilities of a regenerated Ireland and the ceaseless and implacable war waged by the Editor upon all pettiness, ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... who heard her, was fully aware what a good hand she had always been at witty things, and how she, more than any other, had an inexhaustible supply of novel and amusing rules of forfeits, ever stocked in her mind, so her suggestion not only gratified the various inmates of the family seated at the banquet, but even filled ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... seemed dancing forward and the tomato vines creeping to meet her. Crossing the meadow she wet her feet in her best shoes. But all this was nothing. That stout Indian Princess displayed suddenly a sense of humor and a witty shrewdness which seemed abnormal. Her stolid eyes twinkled under their heavy brows when Nancy explained, tremblingly, how she had brought the basket back; her mother would not let her buy it ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... live all their lives in the mountains have no adequate conception or perception of the grandeur of the scenery that surrounds them. We never any of us fully understand the things against which we 'rub our eyes,' as a witty Frenchman has put it. It is for that reason, perhaps, that what is going on here in the West does not impress you in the same way in which it impresses me. You men of affairs are just now beginning to do the very greatest work of nation building that has ever been ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... rejoinder is a quick reply to something controversial or calling forth opposition. A retort is a short, sharp reply, such as turns back censure or derision, or as springs from anger. A repartee is an immediate and witty reply, perhaps to a remark of similar character which it is intended to surpass ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... the archdeacon on the gravel before the vicarage, they descended again to grave dullness. Not that Archdeacon Grantly was a dull man, but his frolic humours were of a cumbrous kind, and his wit, when he was witty, did not generally extend itself to his auditors. On the present occasion he was soon making speeches about wounded roofs and walls, which he declared to be in want of some surgeon's art. There was not a partition that he did not tap, nor a ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
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