"Facetious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... proposed war-tax on automobile-owners. "Making war-taxes," he said, "isn't pleasant work. It puts one in the position of the facetious minister at Ocean Grove who took a little girl on ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... publication. It was not much bigger than a number of the old 'Penny Magazine,' containing a single short leader on some current topic, without any pretensions to excellence; some driblets of news spread out in large type; half a column of foreign intelligence, with a column of facetious paragraphs under the heading of "The Cuckoo;" while the rest of each number consisted of advertisements. Notwithstanding the comparative innocence of the contents of the early numbers of the paper, certain passages which appeared in it on two occasions subjected ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... the Hyde-like change comes another, and I feel positively facetious. "Why I know your ring of course, the same as I know your handwriting on a telegram. What ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... steward took facetious occasions, when he had drunk five quarts of his daily allowance, to shift his and Kwaque's bunks about. And invariably Ah Moy shifted, though Daughtry failed to notice that he never shifted into a bunk which Kwaque had occupied. ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... by Mr. NICHOLAS TRÜBNER. I am not aware that he had any assistance in writing it. I mention this because I have never met with any person who was so equally familiar with obscure and obsolete old German facetious literature (as the text indicates), and at the same time with Americanisms. I should say that in all of the later ballads, or at least in fully one half of all in the book, the author was indebted to him for ideas, suggestions, and emendations, and that the ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... murmured. He would have liked to be genially facetious, but his mouth was dried up. He could not ask any ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... the part of a magician. With that idea, when I left the house of the ridiculous antiquarian, I proceeded to the public library, where, with the assistance of a dictionary, I wrote the following specimen of facetious erudition: ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Mr Gibney saluted the Chinaman in a facetious attempt to talk the latter's language. "Hello, there, John Chinaman. How's your liver? Captain he allee same get tired; he no waitee. Wha's mallah, John. Too long time you no come. You heap ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... would be useless to pursue their point, the gentlemen withdrew. Scrooge resumed his labours with an improved opinion of himself, and in a more facetious temper ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... jerkins were quickly supplemented by "boots, gum, thigh," and the British soldier came to assume the appearance of a Yarmouth fisherman. Runners, etc., arriving at company H.Q., would first demand from the harbour master permission to navigate their course through the troubled waters, while facetious notices indicated times when pleasure boats could be taken out. This amphibious warfare was extremely unpleasant, and it further delayed the work on the new defensive positions. Captain Jimmy Baker and Lt. Jack Morten, whilst on a midnight prowl in No Man's Land almost ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... the apothecary was peremptory and facetious. 'He had expected that he should soon see him after his papa's return!' And with a 'soon be over,' he set him down, and Albinia bravely stood a desperate wringing of her hand at the tug of war. She was glad she had come, for the boy suffered ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... were in charge of the party," Hoskins retorted quickly. And Lieutenant Mackinson, unable to determine whether the remark was a facetious evasion of responsibility or an indirect compliment to himself, on the ground that no act of his would be questioned, pursued ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... of parodies on popular melodies, as, "Believe me, if all Jarley's Wax-Work so rare," "I saw thy show in youthful prime," "Over the water to Jarley." While others were composed with a view to the lighter and more facetious spirits, as a parody on the favorite air of "If ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... Hunt, as we observed in a former number, aspires to be the hierophant. Our readers will recollect the pleasant recipes for harmonious and sublime poetry which he gave us in his preface to Rimini, and the still more facetious instances of his harmony and sublimity in the verses themselves; and they will recollect above all the contempt of Pope, Johnson, and such like poetasters and pseudo-critics, which so forcibly contrasted itself with ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... the rheumatis'," returned the facetious master, "for, look you here, my worthy sir, and you, my dear young lady,"—this was a sort of parental familiarity the honest Jack fancied he had a right to take with all his unmarried female passengers, in virtue of his office, and of his being a bachelor drawing hard upon sixty;—"look ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... many friends at college, and none at all at the university. He had no time to make any; and besides, there was a certain facetious senior who had caught him hurrying through the corridors one day, ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... bread. The savage mixes simple flour and water into balls of paste, which he throws into boiling water, and which come out solid, glutinous masses, of which his common saying is, "Man eat dis, he no die,"—which a facetious traveler who was obliged to subsist on it interpreted to mean, "Dis no kill you, nothing will." In short, it requires the stomach of a wild animal or of a savage to digest this primitive form of bread, and of course more or less attention in all civilized ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... me afteh you, seh," he now explained, in his civil Southern voice; and he handed me a letter from my host. Had I not witnessed his facetious performances with Uncle Hughey, I should have judged him wholly ungifted with such powers. There was nothing external about him but what seemed the signs of a nature as grave as you could meet. But I had witnessed; and therefore supposing that I knew him in spite of his appearance, ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... his own contributions to these affairs was the intellectual "ferocity," in the weight and content of his criticism. Most of the eminent men who consented to take part came to play a game for the sake of the Hospitals, and because they rarely unbent like that in public they were wholly facetious and trivial. To Chesterton there was no difficulty or incongruity in combining the fun of acting with the fun of genuine intellectual discussion. When he prosecuted the Headmasters of leading public schools for Destroying Freedom of Thought I came down in a lift with them afterwards and found ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... enimy. He was a man very well bredd, and of excellent partes, and a gracefull speaker upon any subjecte, havinge a good proportion of learninge, and a ready witt to apply it, and inlarge upon it, of a pleasant and facetious humour and a disposition affable, generous, and magnificent; he was master of a greate fortune from his auncestors, and had a greate addition by his wife (another daughter and heyre of the Earle of Shrewsbury) which he injoyed duringe his life, shee outlivinge him, but ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... of three days the facchino-doctor-brigadier was ready. I was also ready, with a stenographer. We were in a room called the Rope-Walk. This is a formidably long room, as is indicated by its facetious name, and is a good place for reviews. At 9:30 the F.-D.-B. took his place near me and gave the word of command; the drums began to rumble and thunder, the head of the forces appeared at an upper door, and the "march-past" was on. Down they filed, a blaze of variegated color, each squad gaudy ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... remarkable for never making a voyage without a tempest. He was known to the sailors by the facetious name of 'Foul-weather Jack' ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... his facetious head, Over his shoulder, with a Bacchant air, Presented the o'erflowing cup, and said, 'Talking 's dry work, I have no time to spare.' A second hiccup'd, 'Our old master 's dead, You 'd better ask our mistress who 's ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... interrupted by occasional fits of coughing; he was ill bien malade, could not get up, begged the stranger to be seated, asked questions about the countries he had visited, made him tell his adventures, those of gallantry particularly, and was himself most facetious, and most profanely witty. The Hungarian delighted, and far more at ease than he had imagined possible, casting a glance on the papers, ventured to inquire what new work? "Ah, nothing!"—le faible Enfant de ma Vieillesse—a tragedy. "May I ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various
... and Catholics were at each other's throats; the wars of the Fronde convulsed the land; and it was not till the very end of the sixteenth century that the country settled down to peace within its own borders. Some facetious chronicler has remarked that the three chief causes of early warfare were Christianity, herrings, and cloves. There is much golden truth in that nugget. For if one could take from human history all the strife that has been due either to bigotry or ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... is most ill-timed, Miss Ashby. This is by no means a facetious occasion, please understand. I do not lightly tolerate the infringement of my rules, as you will learn to your cost. If, as you state, you are ignorant of the contents of this letter you may now read it aloud ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... sire, are as insolent as they would like to be thought facetious; but whomever they may be, if your majesty prefers to listen to them, I have nothing further to say. In such a case, that which we have fixed to take place to-morrow must be ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... is by no means deficient in humor, a fact of which the Skazkas offer abundant evidence. But it is not easy to find stories which can be quoted at full length as illustrations of that humor. The jokes which form the themes of the Russian facetious tales are for the most part common to all Europe. And a similar assertion may be made with regard to the stories of most lands. An unfamiliar joke is but rarely to be discovered in the lower strata of fiction. He who has read the folk-tales of one country only, is apt ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... gathers up the threads anew, and skims the highest points of each of them. But they are not to be regarded as the stages of an idea, rising above one another to a climax. They are fanciful, partly facetious performances, 'yet also having a certain measure of seriousness,' which the successive speakers dedicate to the god. All of them are rhetorical and poetical rather than dialectical, but glimpses of truth appear in them. When Eryximachus says that the principles of music ...
— Symposium • Plato
... as literal as her friend was facetious. "Well, it just happened so, and it didn't matter, since, on my asking you, don't you know? to choose your time, you had taken, as suiting you best, this ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... of exerting. Many causes have combined to bring about the happy state of things under which we now live. Amongst these, the exertions of individuals hold the first rank; of whom the veteran Liston, the late lamented Mr. John Reeve, the facetious Keeley, and the inimitable Buckstone, are deserving of our highest commendation. And more especially is praise due to the talented author of the Pickwick Papers, whose genius has convulsed the sides of thousands, has revolutionized the republic of letters (making, ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... novelty," Major Guthrie Brimston put in, clasping his hands on his breast, twiddling his thumbs, and setting his head on one side, the "business" with which he usually accompanied one of his facetious sallies. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... to be facetious, to have his last grim laugh at life, but his lips made only incoherent sounds. The thought came to him that the emetic had failed, and that nothing remained but the drug store. He looked toward the door and drew himself to his feet. There he saved himself ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... whitebait!), and quiet begins to enter your soul. Your wife smiles for the first time these ten days; you pass by plantations of ship-masts, and forests of steam-chimneys; the sailors are singing on board the ships, the bargees salute you with oaths, grins, and phrases facetious and familiar; the man on the paddle-box roars, "Ease her, stop her!" which mysterious words a shrill voice from below repeats, and pipes out, "Ease her, stop her!" in echo; the deck is crowded with groups of figures, and the sun shines ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Park with the facetious B, all on a summer's day, just at that period when it was the fashion to rail against the beautiful statue, erected by the ladies of England, in honour of ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... but now he had changed all that, and he only kept one female cook, who could just manage to make a comfortable and snug little dish or two for his lordship's own self, occasionally assisted by the Rev. Mr. Sprout. Formerly, his lordship had been disposed to be lively, and oftentimes facetious; but now he was prodigiously grave, and almost sulky. Formerly, his lordship never went to church; now he went twice every Sunday, and said Amen as loud as the clerk, and with much more solemnity, for the clerk did not ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 360 - Vol. XIII. No. 360, Saturday, March 14, 1829 • Various
... supernatural horror, that they tripped and stumbled over stumps and branches innumerable in their double-quick march. Neither would confess to the other, however, that he was afraid. They even attempted to pass a few facetious remarks as they hurried along, but it would not do, so they relapsed into silence till they came to the hollow beside the powder-magazine. Here the doctor's foot happening to slip, he suddenly grasped Wilson by the shoulder to support himself—a movement which, being unexpected, made his friend ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... Ariosto carefully studied the Tuscan dialect, if not visited Florence itself; and the consequence was, that his greater genius so obscured the popularity of his predecessor, that a remarkable process, unique in the history of letters, appears to have been thought necessary to restore its perusal. The facetious Berni, a Tuscan wit full of genius, without omitting any particulars of consequence, or adding a single story except of himself, re-cast the whole poem of Boiardo, altering the diction of almost every stanza, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... learned to love competitive examination; but I became, and am, very fond of Sir Charles Trevelyan. Sir Stafford Northcote, who is now Chancellor of the Exchequer, was then leagued with his friend Sir Charles, and he too appears in The Three Clerks under the feebly facetious name ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... that people collect at a beautiful spot, and bring pies and chickens and all sorts of things to eat, and spread them out on a table-cloth on the grass; and sit round it on the ground, and talk merrily, and laugh; and that some facetious old gentleman makes a funny speech; and songs are sung; and that here in Scotland there is a bag-piper; and that people get up and dance, and the young ladies have their sketch-books, and when tired of dancing make sketches and ramble about among the rocks. ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... if I were in the mood to be facetious, I might employ your American vernacular and ask that you tell me something I don't know! Come to the point, ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... people. The thing to be, with the one person who knew, was easy and natural—to make the reference rather than be seeming to avoid it, to avoid it rather than be seeming to make it, and to keep it, in any case, familiar, facetious even, rather than pedantic and portentous. Some such consideration as the latter was doubtless in his mind for instance when he wrote pleasantly to Miss Bartram that perhaps the great thing he had so long felt as in the lap of the gods was no more than this circumstance, which ...
— The Beast in the Jungle • Henry James
... in the manner above explained; but it also comprises innumerable sayings or aphorisms of celebrated Rabbis, together with narratives of the most varied character—legends regarding Biblical personages, moral tales, fables, parables, and facetious stories. Of the rabbinical legends, many are extremely puerile and absurd, and may rank with the extravagant and incredible monkish legends of mediaeval times; some, however, are characterised by a richness of humour which one would hardly expect to ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... men's. Here the imprisoned ladies communicated with their male friends as gaily as if each were not foredoomed. The Faubourg St. Germain was transferred to the Conciergerie. The toilets were the freshest and the manners most well-bred in Paris. The guillotine was the subject of facetious remarks up to the very hour of parting for the mockery of the trial below, and at evening vows of love were breathed between the bars. La Tour found a crowd on both sides enjoying the cramped promenade. Amid this crowd was a "sheep"—one of those ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... though it struck me with admiration, yet made me feel strangely ill at ease; for, even if it had not been inspired by good-will towards me, I could never have brought myself to understand that it might be something very different from real goodness. It bore so little resemblance to the facetious braggadocio of the Mauprats, that it seemed to me like an entirely new language, which I understood but ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... say so," said Gubblum, with many shakes of his big head. Let any facetious young gentleman who supposed that it was possible to make sport of him, understand once for all that it might be as well to throw a ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... Assembly, were replaced and popularly displaced by the sophists and intriguers of the Gironde and the Constituent; how, in the Convention and the hall of the Jacobins, the coarser men of the whole movement—the Dantons, the Robespierres, the Marats, the facetious as ferocious Bareres, the stupid Anacharsis Clootzes—trampled under foot, or finished with the guillotine, the phraseurs and meneurs of the Gironde, your orators of set speech, glittering abstractions, and hair-splitting definitions; the Brissots, Vergniauds, Condorcets, and Rolands, who could ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... Dibdin was there. He was very facetious and quaint: when he found himself by my side, he instantly started off, crying to me; "Brobdignagian; We Lilliputians must not stand by you! You would make a soldier for the King of Prussia! Look at that tall lady there, that Miss ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 554, Saturday, June 30, 1832 • Various
... Furst kissed his finger-tips to a large hanging photograph of the girl in question, and was facetious on the subject of dark, ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... newspapers made a great "sensation" of the fire, and the full particulars were copied in journals throughout the country. A facetious reporter; Mr. Nathan D. Urner, of the Tribune, wrote the following amusing account, which appeared in that journal, July 14, 1865, and was very generally quoted from and copied by provincial papers, many of whose readers accepted every line of the ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... reality Dalton does not "represent them" thus; he says "they are represented;" that is, he gives his information at second-hand, without naming his authority, who, to judge by some of his remarks, was apparently a facetious globe-trotter. It is of course possible that these young folks are much attached to each other. Even sheep are "miserable if separated only for an hour;" they bleat pathetically and are disconsolate, though ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... attention to my attempt to be facetious, if indeed she heard the remark at all. She seemed to be deep in a brown study, and several times I caught her watching me narrowly from the corner of her eye. I was already beginning to have some misgivings as ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... facetious lawyer conversing on the subject of the transmigration of souls, the judge said, "If you and I were turned into a horse and an ass, which of them would you prefer to be?"—"The ass, to be sure," replied the lawyer.—"Why?"—"Because," replied the lawyer, "I have heard of an ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... grinning at the effect of his work. Because wit is an exquisite product of high powers, we are not therefore forced to admit the sadly confused inference of the monotonous jester that he is establishing his superiority over every less facetious person, and over every topic on which he is ignorant or insensible, by being uneasy until he has distorted it in the small cracked mirror which he carries about with him as a joking apparatus. Some high authority is ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... as much trouble to start as he had experienced for over twenty years with the late Lord Nelson, his defunct quadruped. Seeing Hicks abstract a Louisville Slugger from the bat-bag, the students roared facetious remarks at ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... important bearing, and which in its turn serves to illustrate these principles further. It has been suggested that male and female labor can be regarded as a strong case of Joint Supply, and the suggestion is not merely facetious. The essential point, that the proportions of available male and female labor are fairly constant (not that they may not alter with time and circumstances, but that they are essentially independent of the conditions of demand) holds true not only of a country as a whole, but hardly less of ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... to some, perhaps; but, an he should come to my mistress with tobacco (this gentleman knows) she'd reply upon him, i'faith. O, by this bright sun, she has the most acute, ready, and facetious wit that — tut, there's no spirit able to stand her. You can report it, signior, ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... cessation of the intimacy between "C" and "N" was a theme of much surprise and bantering comments along the line, especially from "Em." But these facetious remarks gradually became fewer as the wonder subsided. One day, nearly two weeks after the "collapse," Nattie was surprised to hear the old familiar "B m—B m—B m—X n." Wondering if he had grown tired ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... has suffered at the hands of his interpreters. Nothing, unless indeed the coarse buffoonery of Phillips, could be more out of place in an attempt to represent Cervantes, than a flippant, would-be facetious style, like that of Motteux's version for example, or the sprightly, jaunty air, French translators sometimes adopt. It is the grave matter-of-factness of the narrative, and the apparent unconsciousness of the author that he is saying anything ludicrous, anything but the merest commonplace, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... checked at sight of the gridiron, which Ferret brandished with uncommon dexterity; a circumstance from whence the company were, upon reflection, induced to believe, that before he plunged into the sea of politics, he had occasionally figured in the character of that facetious droll, who accompanies your itinerant physicians, under the familiar appellation of Merry-Andrew, or Jack-Pudding, and on a wooden stage entertains the populace with a solo on the saltbox, or a sonata ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... asked Dorsenne, addressing Alba Steno, and without replying any more to the action, so involuntarily insulting, of the Baron than he had to his sly malice or to the Prince's facetious offer. Madame Steno's absence had again inspired him with an apprehension which the young girl ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... told that his father would like to see him. He had finished the Scotsman and begun a conversation with his betrothed in a gently facetious vein, but it took him not a moment to adjust his features to the rigidity of an urn, and save for the faint squeaking of his boots, he ascended the stairs with noiseless solemnity. He found Mr. Walkingshaw propped up on pillows and breathing heavily. The demeanor of both ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... a moment and beckoned to me. Now was the time! I braced myself up to the ordeal, and not heeding the facetious dig in the ribs which the clerk gave me in passing, I put on my best face, and entered the ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... the pent-up feelings of the Philosophers—not that they particularly resented Flitwick's facetious allusions to myself—but in my capacity as President of the Club they felt called ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... Venus and her son, Cupid, should I return to her anon And cease to brandish iamb-lines accurst, 5 The writ selected erst of bards the worst She to the limping Godhead would devote With slowly-burning wood of illest note. This was the vilest which my girl could find With vow facetious to the Gods assigned. 10 Now, O Creation of the azure sea, Holy Idalium, Urian havenry Haunting, Ancona, Cnidos' reedy site, Amathus, Golgos, and the tavern hight Durrachium—thine Adrian abode— 15 The vow accepting, recognize the vowed As not unworthy and unhandsome naught. But do ye meanwhile ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... inconsistent with the general gravity of his demeanour; at another moment there was a request to 'keep back' from the front, and then the butt-end of a musket was either dropped upon Mr. Pickwick's toe, to remind him of the demand, or thrust into his chest, to insure its being complied with. Then some facetious gentlemen on the left, after pressing sideways in a body, and squeezing Mr. Snodgrass into the very last extreme of human torture, would request to know 'vere he vos a shovin' to'; and when Mr. Winkle had done expressing his excessive indignation at witnessing this unprovoked ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... a writer, who, though then little known, might, without impeachment of modesty, lay claim to every mark of respect; and inquiry proved, beyond a doubt, that the calls of justice had been little attended to by others, as well as the facetious YORICK. WOOD observed, more than a century ago, that several authors had unmercifully stolen matter from BURTON without any acknowledgment. The time, however, at length arrived, when the merits of the Anatomy of Melancholy were to receive their due ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... festivities of the ale-house, which he treated with a characteristic expression of humorous drollery, that compensated for the vulgarity of his subjects. He sometimes painted interiors, domestic assemblies, conversations, mountebanks, etc., which he generally accompanied with some facetious trait of wit or humor, admirably rendered. Some of his works of this description are little inferior to the charming productions of Gabriel Metzu. His compositions are ingenious and interesting, his design is correct and spirited, his coloring chaste and clear, and his pencil free and decided. He ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... are a facetious gentleman!' said he. 'You must have your way, I see. We are not three miles from Bedford by ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Caleb, "your honour is pleased to be facetious; natheless, I might presume to say it was a convenient fashion, and used, as I have heard, in an honourable and thriving family. But touching your present dinner, I judged that this being St. Magdalen's [Margaret's] ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... mighty nigh cry her eyes out. He warn't even graced with a death-bed ter breathe his last; Meddy air partic'lar afflicted that he hed ter die afoot." Old Kettison glanced about the circle, consciously facetious, his heavily grooved face distended in ...
— Wolf's Head - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... fat, funny, facetious Ted, did slide down a hill and take most of the hill with her? or if Nettie Brocton climbing a tree for dogwood berries attempted to fly by the merest accident? She had no choice but to drop into an ugly hole otherwise, so she ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... his own; on which account he is much less curious as to what he sees about him than his companion Too-gee, who has the happy art of insinuating himself into every person's esteem. Except at times, when he is lamenting the absence of his family and friends, he is cheerful, often facetious, and very intelligent. And were it not for the different disposition of Hoo-doo, the most favourable opinion might be formed of the New Zealanders in general. It is not, however, meant to be said, that if Too-gee were not present, an ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... manner, acquainting some stranger or ignorant old woman with the particulars of his fate, who, though perhaps unacquainted with all the parties, is directed by a phantom to lay the facts before a magistrate. In this respect we must certainly allow that ghosts have, as we are informed by the facetious Captain Grose, forms and customs peculiar ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... on the authorities of Paris. Female citizens were solemnly warned against the obnoxious ringlets, and were left to choose between their head-dresses and their heads. Barere's delight at the success of this facetious fiction was quite extravagant: he could not tell the story without going into such convulsions of laughter as made his hearers hope that he was about to choke. There was something peculiarly tickling and ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... beeing dead,—that I did not I am as sory as if the originall fault had beene my fault, because myself have seene his demeanor no lesse civill, than he exelent in the qualitie he professes;—besides divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing, that aprooves ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... was favored with an extract from some old statute or canon, never repealed, forbidding a clergyman to be a member of a corporation, and was reminded that he had insured his life in the —— Office, which had a royal charter. He was facetious, was Joseph: he described himself in his circulars as "personally known to Sir Peter Laurie[84] and all other aldermen"; which was nearly true, {43} as he had been before most of them on charges of false pretence; ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... Mr. Brimberly. "Oh, very facetious, sir, very facetious indeed!" and he laughed, ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... common sense arrived at this facetious conclusion, he became aware of a lady, dressed entirely in black, who was observing him with marked attention. 'Am I right in supposing you to be Mr. Francis Westwick?' the lady asked, at the moment when ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... rode with his fellows for a mile or two, and called them unseemly names in a facetious tone; and the men of the Wishbone answered his taunts with shrill yells of derision when he swung out of the trail and jogged away to the south, and finally passed out of sight in the haze which still hung ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... that I may have spoken a little too sharply. Anyway, faithful Selina interceded for her friend. "Oh, dear sir, don't be hard on Elizabeth! She always means well." Mrs. Tenbruggen, as facetious as ever, made a grateful return for a small compliment. She chucked Miss Jillgall under the chin, with the air of an amorous old gentleman expressing his approval of a pretty servant-girl. It was impossible ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... anything connected with woman's rights or woman suffrage. The New York Home Journal called it "plucky, keen, and wide awake, although some of its ways are not at all to our taste." Theodore Tilton in the Congregationalist paper, The Independent, commented in his usual facetious style, which pinned him down neither to praise nor unfriendliness, but Susan was grateful to read, "The Revolution from the start will arouse, thrill, edify, amuse, vex, and non-plus its friends. But it will command attention: it will conquer a hearing." Newspapers were generally friendly. ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... while he opened Mary V's letter and read it, scowling and biting his lips. Mary V, it would seem, had read all that the papers had to say, and was considerably upset by the facetious tone ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... a good-natured, facetious mood, I asked him why it was that in all his dramatic plays of forty years composition he had never placed on the boards a great Irish character, although he had created Egyptian, Grecian, Italian, French, German, Danish, Scotch ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... it; it came, warm and bright. At an early hour the doctor came and asked me where I had been last night. I told him. He did not believe me, and sent to my friend's house to ascertain the facts. He came in the afternoon to assure me he was satisfied that I had spoken the truth. He seemed to be in a facetious mood, and I expected some jeers were coming. "I suppose you need some recreation," said he, "but I am surprised at your being there, among those negroes. It was not the place for you. Are you allowed to visit ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... situation. "But you men should know how to get out of scrapes just that much better. Certainly there are few men on Earth who would not be willing to back such a group of men—or any one of you, for that matter! I'll back your trip!" His words became more facetious. "I know that Arcot and you, Bob, can handle a gun fairly well, I don't know so much about Wade and Fuller. What experience have ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... joining in the laugh that followed Jack's facetious remark. "The joke's on me, all right! If I hadn't painted that figure 'three' in the name, we would have been on our way to England by this time! Oh, well," the boy added, "we'll get to England before long, anyhow, so I ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... you, younker," said he slowly. "Gin ye be sae ill at ease 'at ye maun tak' leeberties for the sake o' bein' facetious, ye can jist gang doon the stair ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... facetious, count. Dost think of no virtue but thy maid's? And art thou sure she will not fall back from her promise ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... recollect that some twenty years ago—or to be exact nineteen years ago—there was a student in my classes who was very brilliant, very brilliant indeed. His name as I recall it was Wilder. So proficient was he in his Greek that some of the students facetiously called him Socrates, and some still more facetious even termed him Soc. I am sure, Mr. Phelps, you have been in college a sufficient length of time to apprehend the frolicsome nature of some ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... hear a sinister and shocking rumour Touching the native tendency to chaff. If you should meet with specimens of humour See that our soldiers get the final laugh; Fling the facetious corpses in the fountains So as the red blood overflows the brink; Keep on until the blue Alsatian mountains Turn ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 14, 1914 • Various
... blandly. He had satisfied himself that his client was good pay and he did not intend to take offense. "It pleases you to be facetious, Mr. Gordon. But we all know that what this country needs—what such a valley as the Rio Chama ought to have—is up to date American development. People and conditions are in a primitive state. When men like you get possession of the Moreno and similar tracts New Mexico ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... common, a protecting twin on either side of Mrs. Dangerfield; and Captain Baster, in the strong facetious vein, enlivened the walk with his delightful humor. The gallant officer was the very climax of the florid, a stout, high-colored, black-eyed, glossy-haired young man of twenty-eight, with a large tip-tilted nose, neatly rounded off in a little knob forever shiny. The son of the famous pickle ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... crystal, sky with as fixed a blue as if it could not think a cloud; guides congratulate us, "Qu'il fait tres beau!" We pass the lanes of the village, our heads almost on a level with the flat stone-laden roofs; our mules, with their long rolling pace, like the waves of the sea, give to their riders a facetious wag of the body that is quite striking. Now the village is passed, and see, a road banded with green ribands of turf. S.'s mule and guide pass on, and head the party. G. rides another mule. C. and W. leap along trying their alpenstocks; stopping once in a while to admire the ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... well what they really meant; that they said this only to get possession of their commodities. They replied to me: "You have spoken the truth. They are women, and want to make war only upon our beavers." They went on talking still farther in a facetious mood, and in regard to the manner and order of going ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... assisting him to carry out his idea; and in further conversation with her, it was settled that she should follow the example of her sister Helen (who was "engaged" to the Rev. Josiah Meek, now the rector of a Worcestershire parish), and consider herself as "engaged" to Mr. Bouncer. Which facetious idea of the little gentleman's was rendered the more amusing from its being accepted ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... distinctive line between savage and civilized bread. The savage mixes simple flour and water into balls of paste, which he throws into boiling water, and which come out solid, glutinous masses, of which his common saying is, "Man eat dis, he no die,"—which a facetious traveller who was obliged to subsist on it interpreted to mean, "Dis no kill you, nothing will." In short, it requires the stomach of a wild animal or of a savage to digest this primitive form of bread, and of course more or less attention in all civilized modes of bread-making is given to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... his temper with difficulty] You are pleased to be facetious. I pretend to nothing more than any honorable English gentleman claims as his birthright [he ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... agreed upon a facetious signal of their own. The castle stood upon a ridge of hills which could be seen fifty miles away, and on the ridge the bride promised to build a church. If the child that was to be born proved to be a boy, the church would be builded with a tower; ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... boundaries of the parish, instead of beating houses or stones. But this would not have harmonized well with the excellent Hooker's practice on this day, when he "always dropped some loving and facetious observations, to be remembered against the next year, especially by the boys and young people." Amongst Dorsetshire customs, it seems that, in perambulating a manor or parish, a boy is tossed into a stream, if that be the boundary; if a hedge, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... worthy successor of Giotto in the Florentine school, was Buffalmacco, whose name has been immortalized by Boccaccio in his Decameron, as a man of most facetious character. He executed many works in fresco and distemper, but they have mostly perished. He chiefly excelled in Crucifixions and Ascensions. He was born, according to Vasari, in 1262, and died in 1340, aged 78; but Baldinucci says that he lived later than 1358. His name is mentioned in the old ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... then apologized. His next words were facetious, but his tone was ugly; "Where do you ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... politics, Doctor, and attend to your practice," this by way of accompaniment from Mrs. Nesbit. The Doctor was in a playful and facetious ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... of Rome,' with any starling in your Knight's ward," answered the constable, with a facetious air, checked, however, by the due respect to the supreme presence ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... think those two last ones would do," she said, "because it is not to be a facetious book. But your first one is rather a good title," she added, looking at Irais and drawing out her note-book. "I think I'll ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... tables, clubs, etc.—"little jokes" of which every point in his discourse continually reminded him, though his hearers could not always perceive the association of ideas. This gentleman was very facetious over family jars, which reminded him of a "little joke," which he told; he was also very witty upon the subject of matrimonial disputes in particular, which reminded him of another "little joke," ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... Montezuma, with the difference, as Humboldt informs us, that then they used vessels of clay, and now they use copper caldrons. The solitary-looking baths are ornamented with odd-looking heads of cats or monkeys, which grin down upon you with a mixture of the sinister and facetious ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... spoke directly to Stephen O'Mara, who half turned his head at the first heavily facetious syllable. "So you did get my message, eh? I rather thought that it wouldn't reach you, up-river, until to-day." An ample smile embraced the tall figure in riverman's garb and his own daughter's crimson countenance—a most meaningful smile of roguery. "Well, from what I've ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... place inter darkness! That saved them moonshiners and raiders from killin' each other. It saved a deal o' bloodshed—ez sure ez shootin 'Twar mighty smart in ye. But"—suddenly bethinking himself of sundry unfilial gibes at Uncle Nehemiah and the facetious account of his plight—"Lee-yander, ye mustn't be so turr'ble bad, sonny; ye ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... said of liquor, whether it be in its favour or not; it usually brings out all there is of the facetious in a man, rendering him conversable and pleasant; for the time being, at least. This was apt to be peculiarly the case with the Rev. Mr. Whittle and his deacons. In their ordinary intercourse with their fellow-creatures, ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... with Sir George Stuart, and his nephew, in London; in which you seemed to prefer a Scottish gentleman for a tutor, to those of your own nation, and still more than to those of France? Don't you remember it, dear Sir? And how much those gentlemen were pleased with your facetious freedom with their country, and said, you made them amends for that, in your preference to their learned and travelled youth? If you have forgot it, I will here transcribe it from my records, ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... Stolen Horse. Elias Hicks and the Schism in the Society of Friends. Pecuniary difficulties. Death of his Wife. Death of his son Isaac. Journey to Maryland, and Testimony against Slavery. His marriage with Hannah Attmore. Removes to New-York. Matthew Carey's facetious Letter of Introduction. Anecdotes of his visit to England and Ireland. Anecdote of the Diseased Horse. Visit to William Penn's Grave. The Storm at Sea. Profane Language rebuked. The Clergyman and his Books. His Book-store in New-York. The Mob in Pearl-Street. Judge Chinn's ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... said he gravely, "for the purpose of requesting you not to speak during the coming interview. I am to do the talking; you the listening. Neither are you to be surprised at anything I may do or say. I am in a facetious mood"—he did not look so—"and may take it into my head to address you by another name than your own. If I do, don't mind it. Above all, don't talk: remember that." And without waiting to meet my look of doubtful astonishment, he ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... we were condemned, and of which the ventilation was very indifferent, the conditions became nauseating. To make matters worse the vile prison food precipitated an epidemic of acute diarrhoea and sickness, so that the atmosphere within the limited space became so unbearable as to provoke the facetious Cockney to declare that "'e could cut it with a knife," while he expressed his resolve "to ask th' gaoler for a nail to drive into it" to serve as a peg for his clothes! But it was no laughing matter, and ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... with the reports of the sentences given by my excellent friend the recorder of New York. He is said to be one of the soundest lawyers in the Union, and a very worthy man; but I trust say, that as recorder, he does not add to the dignity of the bench by his facetious remarks, and the peculiar lenity he occasionally shows to the culprits. ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... the rector. "Though I think Westby was attempting to be facetious rather than insolent; I have never seen anything to indicate that he was a malicious boy.—What was it that ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier |
