"Wittily" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... operations, and whoever placed himself in opposition to the accomplishment of this destiny was for every German the object of surprise."] The view is not new; the feeling of surprise at opposition was expressed wittily by a French poet in ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... already, and that wittily, handled the juggle of religion, and withal discover'd with what impudence and ignorance priests pretend to be inspir'd: But are not our wrangling pleaders possest with the same frenzy? who cant it? These wounds I receiv'd ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... the meeting of the States. The paltry convoy of Francis from Orleans to the royal vaults of St. Denis presented so unfavorable a contrast to the pompous ceremonial of his father's interment, that it was wittily said, "that the mortal enemy of the Huguenots had not been able to escape being himself buried like a Huguenot."[973] A bitter taunt aimed at the unfaithfulness and ingratitude of the Guises fell under their own eyes. A slip of ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... tea back and forth among the boarders, but she made pleasure excursions rather than business ones in this way, to speak strictly. She made jokes with various people. She chaffed the young men pleasantly and wittily, as she supposed, and as the rest also supposed, apparently, judging by the applause and laughter which she got by her efforts. Manifestly she was a favorite with most of the young fellows and sweetheart of the rest of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... grave, a good pope unwept and unhonored as few bad popes have ever been. On his tomb the cardinals wrote: "Here lies Adrian VI whose supreme misfortune in life was that he was called upon to rule." A like judgment was expressed more wittily by the people, who erected a monument to Adrian's physician and labeled it, ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... Hipparchia. Some one said wittily,—I think it was Mrs. Howe,—"Man carves his destiny; woman is helped to hers." Women have been kept so long in this state of dependence, that their characters have become dwarfed. The thirst for excitement that drives them restless from one amusement to another, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... yes.... But as for my duties here, inquiries and all such formalities... you mentioned inquiries yourself just now... I assure you these interrogations are sometimes more embarrassing for the interrogator than for the interrogated.... You made the observation yourself just now very aptly and wittily." (Raskolnikov had made no observation of the kind.) "One gets into a muddle! A regular muddle! One keeps harping on the same note, like a drum! There is to be a reform and we shall be called by a different name, at least, he-he-he! And as for our legal tradition, as you so wittily called it, ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... to the conclusion of their task, with the profound impression of the futility of the study of metaphysics, which, full of labour, is yet fruitless as idleness. L'art de s'egarer avec methode—such it has been wittily defined, and such our Teutonic neighbours have been resolved to demonstrate it. Yet, this is not altogether the impression, we think, which such a course of study ought to produce: a better lesson may be drawn from it. There is, after all, a right as well as a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... of exercise besides walking, and these have their good points. Riding is, of course, invaluable, especially in cases of sluggish liver. As it has been wittily observed, the outside of a horse is the best thing for the inside of a man. In the cool months in Australia riding is a real pleasure, but in the hot season it is hardly so agreeable. Then again, rowing is a magnificent ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... Atchievements; and upon this Whimsy immediately pursuing the most romantic Adventures, with great Gravity, Importance, and Self- sufficiency; To heighten your Mirth, the hardy Atchievements to be accomplish'd by this Hero, are wittily contrasted by his own meagre weak Figure, and the desperate Unfierceness of his Steed Rozinante;—The Ridicule appears in the strange Absurdity of the Attempts, upon which the Knight chuses to exercise his Prowess; Its Poignancy ...
— An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Railery, Satire, and Ridicule (1744) • Corbyn Morris
... old hermit of Prague, that never saw pen and ink, very wittily said to a niece of King ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... her blunder, but wittily replied, "Faith, avourneen, maybe he can often see as nately through his ear as you could do wid your eyes open; sure they say he can hear the ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... thank the gods that you are not fettered and your wings clipped. They wish to preserve to you love's delusion, because you are a favorite, and deny you the object adored. Beware of the institution which the French actress, Sophie Arnould, has so wittily called the 'consecration of adultery.' You will agree with me that we have many such little sacraments in our dear Weimar, and I must laugh when I reflect for what purpose those amiable beauties have married, as not one of them love their husbands, but they all possess ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... walking monster that does the great wrong to women is, depend upon it, Eusebius, the "brute of a husband," called, by courtesy, in higher life, "Sir John Brute." Horace says wittily, that Venus puts together discordant persons and minds with a bitter joke, "saevo mittere cum joco;" it begins a jest, and ends a crying evil. We name the thing that should be good, with an ambiguous sound that gives disagreement ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... Conquistadores, hungering for adventure and wealth; later on, by the mixed expeditions, whose expenses are defrayed by merchants in common, and which are often accompanied by armed bands that fight for them; lastly comes the incorporation of great companies that have been wittily dubbed "Conquistadores of ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... page, a trotting footman, and a stiff-drinking coachman, a cook, a clerk, a steward, and a butler, which hath forced an army of tall fellows to the gatehouses," or prisons. Of one of the evil effects of this new fashion of coach-riding this satirist of the town wittily observes, that, as soon as a man was knighted, his lady was lamed for ever, and could not on any account be seen but in a coach. As hitherto our females had been accustomed to robust exercise, on foot or on horseback, they were now forced to substitute a domestic artificial exercise in sawing ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... great geniuses, it is only possible to mention those of secondary talent; but no compunction need be felt at alluding to Segrais, a graceful manufacturer of eclogues, and Benserade, who rhymed delightfully for masquerades and was capable, on occasions, of being wittily but ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... venture to call it a Spanish Grandee, for, in fact, it is but a shallow and dirty stream; and as Quevedo wittily informs us, "Mancanares is reduced, during the summer season, to the melancholy condition of the wicked rich man, who asks for water in the depths of hell." Though so small, this stream in the time of a flood spreads itself ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... and familiar. He used to joke, and sometimes even noisily. He was no longer a haughty potentate, a terrible conqueror, but rather a good husband who was kind to his wife, and a good father who played with his child. He used to tease the companions of Marie Louise wittily, and without malice; he would take an interest in their dresses, and often give them bits of good advice in the gentlest manner. He took as much interest in the minutest details as in the greatest questions. He was indulgent and ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... a noble animal," as a gentleman once wittily observed, when he found himself, for the first time in his life, in a position to make love; and we beg leave to repeat the remark—"the horse is a noble animal," whether we consider him in his usefulness ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 12, 1841 • Various
... among his friends) discoursed the officer with the same freedom as if he had been carrying him to some merry-meeting; and, on observing on his men's coats a badge all full of points, with this device—monstrorum terror,—'the terror of monsters,' he said wittily, pointing to the men, 'Behold there the terror, and here the monster!' meaning himself. 'And if either of the Kings had a hundred thousand of such, they would be fitter to fright their enemies than to hurt any one of them.' ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... more wittily broad than anything which had gone before. The audience was excessively amused by it. It was indeed the triumph of the evening, and nothing could exceed the grace and point of the little speech in which M. Edmond, the manager of the cafe, thanked ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in my judgment produce much mischief in the World, in a Book of great Name, and which is entertain'd and celebrated (at least enough) in the World; a Book which contains in it good learning of all kinds, politely extracted, and very wittily and cunningly disgested, in a very commendable method, and in a vigorous and pleasant Style: which hath prevailed over too many, to swallow many new tenets as maximes without chewing; which manner of diet for the indigestion M'r ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... making it possible for us to laugh at our own bitter discomfiture, and to scoff with startling distinctness at the evils which we passively permit. Just as the French monarchy under Louis the Fourteenth was wittily defined as despotism tempered by epigram, so the United States have been described as a free republic fettered by jokes, and the taunt conveys a half-truth which it is worth ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... good opinion of other men's witty labours, especially of that full and heightened style of Master Chapman; the laboured and understanding works of Mr. Jonson; the no less witty composures of the both wittily excellent Mr. Beaumont and Mr. Fletcher; and lastly (without wrong last to be named), the right happy and copious industry of Shakspeare, Mr. Dekker, ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... the kitchen. He fled by another doorway, but Mr. Jonah, who had not before seen Fred's white complexion, long legs, and pinched delicacy of face, prepared many sarcasms in which these points of appearance were wittily combined ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... was comparing her with others all the time, with men and women—women especially—in whose presence he felt himself as diffident as she did in his. He was thinking of ladies in velvet dresses and diamonds, who could talk wittily of pictures and theatres and books, who could amuse him and distract him. And meanwhile she went about in her old stuff dress, her cotton apron and rolled-up sleeves, cooking and washing and cleaning—for her child and for him. She felt ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... explained to me that for the present season he had rented a corner of the wagon as a book-store, which, as he wittily observed, was a true circulating library, since there were few parts of the country where it had not gone its rounds. I approved of the plan exceedingly, and began to sum up within my mind the many uncommon felicities in the life of a book-pedler, especially when his character resembled that ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... get the miscegenation controversy into Congress. The book, with its indorsements, was brought to the notice of Mr. Cox, of Ohio (commonly called "Sunset Cox;") and he made an earnest speech on the subject. Mr. Washburne replied wittily, reading and commenting on extracts from a work by Cox, in which the latter deplored the existence of the prejudice against the Africans. A few days after, Mr. Kelly, of Pennsylvania, replied very elaborately to Mr. Cox, bringing all ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... the best, attributed it to Richard Brathwait (circ. 1588-1673). The title of the second edition (1716) runs as follows: 'Drunken Barnaby's Four Journeys to the North of England. In Latin and English Verse. Wittily and merrily (tho' near one hundred years ago) composed; found among some old musty books, that had a long time lain by in a corner; and now at last made publick. To ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... the remarkable extrax from this book have been given already (the cream of the Dairy, as I wittily say,) I shall trouble you, nevertheless, with a few; partly because they can't be repeated too often, and because the toan of obsyvation with which they have been genrally received by the press, is not igsackly such ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... wittily said about a dolt who took credit for the merits of his ancestors: "Like the Potato, all that was good about ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... teeth. Father Aldrovand himself grinned in sympathy, and then proceeded to say,—"Come, come, I see how it is. Thou hast studied some small revenge on me for doubting of thy truth; and, in verity, I think thou hast taken it wittily enough. But wherefore didst thou not let me into the secret from the beginning? I promise thee I had foul suspicions ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... another settler in Alexandria. He followed Strato at the head of one of the schools in the museum. He was very successful in bringing up the young men, who needed, he used to say, modesty and the love of praise, as a horse needs bridle and spur. His eloquence was so pleasing that he was wittily called Glycon, or the sweet. Carneades of Cyrene at the same time held a high place among philosophers; but as he had removed to Athens, where he was at the head of a school, and was even sent to Rome as the ambassador of the Athenians, we must not ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... which were tombs decorated with palms, inscriptions, and tears as cold as the stones on which sorrowing hearts had caused to be carved their regrets and coats of arms. Many good words are there engraved in black letters, epigrams reproving the curious, concetti, wittily turned farewells, rendezvous given at which only one side appears, pretentious biographies, glitter, rubbish and tinsel. Here the floriated thyrsus, there a lance-head, farther on Egyptian urns, now and then a ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five. Boys from fourteen to eighteen, and old men from forty-five to sixty, were also pressed into service as junior and senior reserves, the Confederacy thus, as General Butler wittily said, "robbing both the cradle and the grave." Lee's army had been crumbling away beneath the terrible blows dealt it by Grant. He received some re-enforcements during 1864, but in no wise enough to make good ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... eyes are blue," He continued wittily (When he said this it was new— Just come south from Italy); And she let her lids downfall (This was then original) At the marvel of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 25, 1914 • Various
... or file away in a pigeon-hole. The Abbe Sieyes pronounced politics a science which he had finished, and he was ready to turn you out constitutions to order, with no other defect than that they had, as Carlyle wittily says, no feet, and could not go. Many in the last century, and some, perhaps, in the present, for folly as well as wisdom has her heirs, confounded the written instrument with the constitution itself. No constitution ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... I am acquainted with all the details of the adventure at Amiens; that I will have a little romance made of it, wittily turned, with a plan of the garden and portraits of the principal ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... which I unluckily called the WILL to Believe. All the critics, neglecting the essay, pounced upon the title. Psychologically it was impossible, morally it was iniquitous. The "will to deceive," the "will to make-believe," were wittily proposed as ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... passed off his pseudo-hostdom with bravado, talking very wittily about it, the artistic vein was too strong within him to be subdued; he soon gave up the flask and returned to the brush, for in 1509, when his quondam pupil, Francia Bigio, was busy at the Servi, we again find Mariotto's hand in a painting of the Madonna. ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... I advoise you to double the dose. We often hear of two strings to a bow. Daun't you think it would be noicer to have two beaux to your string?" As he thus wittily expressed himself, the gentleman took off his cap, and thrust his fingers through a very curling and comely head of hair; the young lady looked at him with evident coquetry, and said, "How you do run ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of managers set the machinery in motion as far and as fast as the extremely limited pecuniary ability of the society would permit. The membership was not from the rich classes. It was Oliver Johnson who wittily remarked that not more than one or two of the original twelve, "could have put a hundred dollars into the treasury without bankrupting themselves." The remark was true, and was quite as applicable to any ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... out to be fascinating, and was fascinating. There was a subtle charm in his handsome face, in his brilliant smile and glance, in his pleasant voice, in his wittily-told stories, and inexhaustible fund of anecdote and mimicry. Now he was in Ireland, now in France, now in Scotland, now in Yorkshire; and the bad English and the patois and accent of all were imitated to the life. With that face, that voice, that talent for imitation, Lieutenant Stanford, ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... of the year it was announced that Lord Alfred Douglas had gone to Egypt; but this "flight into Egypt," as it was wittily called, was gilded by the fact that a little later he was appointed an honorary attache to Lord Cromer. I regarded his absence as a piece of good fortune, for when he was in London, Oscar had no time to himself, and was seen in public ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... may bend it, the other shall surely break it: and so, instead of some hope, leave an assured desperation, and shameless contempt of all goodness; the furthest point in all mischief, as Xenophon doth most truly and most wittily mark. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... his old schoolfellows, and they regarded him with almost respectful admiration. He talked away very wittily for half an hour; he had been set upon a pedestal, and wished to justify the opinion of his fellow-townsmen; so he stood with his hands thrust into his pockets, and held forth from the height to which he had been raised. ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... One form which his humour took was the professed discovery of the originals in Latin, Greek, or mediaeval French of popular modern poems and songs. Many of these jeux d'esprit were coll. as Reliques of Father Prout. He wittily described himself as "an Irish potato seasoned with Attic salt." Latterly he acted as foreign correspondent to various newspapers, and d. at Paris ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... Riccabocca, turning his eye also towards the window. "True; as Quevedo says, wittily, 'Ever since there has been so great a demand for type, there has been much less lead ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... more than a mere wealthy country squire, breeder of beef and brewer of ale. He was a courtier and traveler; and, if tradition speaks truly, a poet who could praise his mistress's many charms, or wittily resent her caprices, in well-turned verse. He was a patron of art, having brought back ivories and bronzes from Italy, pictures and china from the Low Countries, and enamels from France. He was a student, and collected the many rare and ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... and when I then asked whether he thought it possible for me to make my dramatic compositions pay, as I could not understand how he, without any knowledge of the German language, could rightly appreciate the music, which was so closely allied to the sense of the poetry, he answered wittily that it was precisely my music which afforded him the best guidance to a comprehension of the poem itself. This reply strongly attracted me to the man, and from that time I found great pleasure in keeping up an active correspondence with him. For this reason, when I brought out a ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... the Bank of France has suspended payment. The ruin of the Rothschilds is not true, though they are great losers by these catastrophes. The Provisional Government has very wisely and wittily devised, as a means of raising money, to lay a tax of six hundred francs a year upon everybody who keeps more than one servant! ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... charity which disposed him to continual applications for, and benedictions on those that he met withal; he had an heart full of good wishes and a mouth full of kind blessings for them. And he often made his expressions very wittily agreeable to the circumstances which he saw the persons in. Sometimes when he came into a family, he would call for all the young people in it, that so he might very distinctly lay his holy hands upon every ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... narrated that everyone roared but Arthur, who remained in perfect silence. Margaret had been drinking glass after glass of wine, and no sooner had her husband finished than she capped his story with another. But whereas his was wittily immoral, hers was simply gross. At first the other women could not understand to what she was tending, but when they saw, they looked down awkwardly at their plates. Arbuthnot, Haddo, and the other ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... unpractical. Plato is to him the 'exhaustive generalizer,' beyond whom it is folly to aspire, and by whose stature he measures the nations. Boethius, Rabelais, Erasmus, Bruno, are only brisk young men translating into the vernacular wittily his good things. St. Augustine, Copernicus, Newton, Behmen, Swedenborg also 'say after him.' Emerson either addresses men whose ignorance he greatly exaggerates, or else the ideal men of some centuries hence. His mission is to the Past or the Future, not to the Present. His theories, fine and venerable, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... which made it: "We have absolute reason to know that when the last Coercion Act was in full swing this pure-souled and disinterested patriot (Mr. John F. Taylor) begged for, received, and accepted a very petty Crown Prosecutorship under a Coercion Government. As was wittily said at the time, He sold his principles, not for a mess of pottage, but for the stick that stirred the mess." This is no assertion "upon hearsay"—no publication of a rumour or report. It is an assertion made, not upon belief even, but upon a ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... fully restoring every connection existing under the Constitution between the States and the National Government. Viewed merely as a theory it was perfect. The danger was that in the test of actual practice it might end like so many similar experiments in other countries. An opponent wittily characterized it as Government by diagram, accurately ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... that best circle of society, 'which was composed of all that remained of the ancient men of letters, and of the most valuable of the nobility; not of those who had accepted of places from Buonaparte, nor yet of those emigrants who have been wittily and too justly described as returning to France after the Revolution, sans avoir rien appris, ou rien oublie.' . . . 'We felt,' Maria writes, 'the characteristic charms of Parisian conversation, the polish and ease which in its best days ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... channel of banter or practical joke (giving pain while assuming the aspect of mere fun) rather than into a more serious and determined hostility. But my endeavours on this head were by no means uniformly successful, even when my plans were the most wittily concocted; for my namesake had much about him, in character, of that unassuming and quiet austerity which, while enjoying the poignancy of its own jokes, has no heel of Achilles in itself, and absolutely refuses to be laughed at. I could find, indeed, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... nothing about a St. Petersburg official, but plenty about Kostroma and Saratov ones. A pity you don't read the letters. There are some very fine passages in them. For instance, not long ago a lieutenant writes to a friend describing a ball very wittily.—Splendid! "Dear friend," he says, "I live in the regions of the Empyrean, lots of girls, bands playing, flags flying." He's put a lot of feeling into his description, a whole lot. I've kept the letter on purpose. Would you like ...
— The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol
... pupils is often broken, by what has been wittily called a "panorama on the brain," in which the worries, excitements, dissipations of the day, are incessantly repeated, and they rise late, more wearied ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... making way for it. And the crowd, mistaking it for something else, rushed off to gaze and cheer excitedly at the prisoners within. The postman who sat mounting guard over the netted window at the rear smiled wittily at the popular error which made him for a few brief moments so conspicuous a figure. No doubt the incident gave the newspaper-man some copy, and the van, having contributed its share to the general amusement, ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... rather prudish, quite sarcastic, and somehow he felt that he always made a fool of himself in her presence. Besides, Miss Johnson was marriageable, and much as De Forest loved the sex, he loved his freedom more. His morals were on a par with those of Sheridan's son, who wittily asked his father, just after he had been lecturing him, and advising him to take a wife, "But, father, whose wife shall I take?" Day after day passed wearily to him; Jenkintown without Mrs. Maroney was a dreary waste. He felt that ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... It wets my foot, but prettily It chills my life, but wittily, It is not disconcerted, It is not broken-hearted: Well used, it decketh joy, Adorneth, doubleth joy: Ill used, it will destroy, In perfect time and measure With a face ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... her eyes from the one to the other. "I doubt," she said, "this same poetical Master Tressilian, who is too learned, I warrant me, to remember whose presence he was to appear in, may be one of those of whom Geoffrey Chaucer says wittily, the wisest clerks are not the wisest men. I remember that Varney is a smooth-tongued varlet. I doubt this fair runaway hath had reasons for ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... wittily remarks that if it were a moral precept that a man should never have intercourse more them once in his life with any particular woman, this would correspond far better with the nature of the normal male and would cost him far less will-power than is needed by him in order to live up to the ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... indifferent New York, one felt a certain lilt and go, a touch of nature among the fool's fabric of the melodrama, which set the action far above our steady practitioners in the same art of sinking. And, above all, a sense of parody pierced through words and actions, commenting wittily on the nonsense of romance which so many were so willing to take seriously. She was a live thing, defiantly and gaily conscious of every absurdity with which she indulged the babyish tastes of ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... quartets one reason the viola parts are simple is because the alto players as a rule were technically less skillful. As a general thing they were violinists who had failed—'the refugees of the G clef,' as Edouard Colonne, the eminent conductor, once wittily said. But the reason modern French composers give the viola special attention is because France now is ahead of the other nations in virtuose viola playing. It is practically the only country which may be said to have a 'school' of viola playing. In the Smetana quartet the viola plays a most ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... world was as it was. Nor did he wonder, he said, at our running from studies of those filthy writings loose upon London; it was as natural as dunghill steam. Temple pretended he was forced by the captain's undue severity to defend Venus; he said, I thought rather wittily, 'Sailors ought to have a respect for her, for she was born in the middle of the sea, and she steered straight for land, so she must have had a pretty ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of Urach there were merry doings: dancing, cards, and music. It all seemed gay and secure enough, but there was unrest beneath this outward peace, an anxious feeling in the revellers' hearts. Madame de Ruth chattered wittily; Zollern, gallant and wise, made subtle ironic speeches; Wilhelmine sang, Serenissimus adored, the Sittmanns and the parasites were chorus to this—a chorus a little out of tune at times, ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... are to break the treasury," said Otto; and he sketched to her briefly, wittily, with here and there a touch of pathos, the story of his visit to the farm, of his promise to buy it, and of the refusal with which his demand for money had been met that morning at the council; concluding with a few practical words as to the treasury ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "nonsense" followed, and very delightful nonsense it was, for Cyrilla possessed the happy gift of bright and easy letter-writing. She commented wittily on all the amusing episodes of the boarding-house life for the past month; she described a cat-fight she had witnessed from her window that morning and illustrated it by a pen-and-ink sketch of the belligerent felines; ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... (1801-1857), known as Shepherd Smith, was a socialist and a mystic, with a philosophy that was wittily described as "Oriental pantheism translated into Scotch." He was ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... artists, which is lively, witty, and sometimes rather free, and I felt somewhat disturbed at the idea of entering a house so serious as yours—a house peopled by dignified lawyers and young ladies. But I was so fond of your brother, I found him so full of novelty, so gay, so wittily sarcastic and discerning, under his assumed levity, that not only did I go everywhere with him, but I followed him to the extent of meeting you. And I never cease to thank him for it. Do you remember when I entered the drawing-room where you and your family ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... cessions, modesty itself well governed, are but arts of ostentation. And amongst those arts, there is none better than that which Plinius Secundus speaketh of, which is to be liberal of praise and commendation to others, in that, wherein a man's self hath any perfection. For saith Pliny, very wittily, In commending another, you do yourself right; for he that you commend, is either superior to you in that you commend, or inferior. If he be inferior, if he be to be commended, you much more; if he be superior, if he ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... widow. She had but to show a pretty penitence, and Mr. Waverton proposed to be magnanimous. The prospect much pleased him. He saw himself grandly accepting her; permitting her to be very tender; wittily, but with a touch of magnificence, restraining ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... Very wittily remarked! my dear young lady, for your age.—I take you to be about seventeen, and I see by the compression of your pretty mouth that you consider yourself quite a judge and an authority. Only take care you don't grow up into one of those Giants yourself! ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... as of Mr. Pepys' or any friend he had. And when I talked that I would go about doing something of the Controller's work when I had time, and that I thought the Controller would not take it ill, he wittily replied that there was nothing in the world so hateful as a dog in the manger. Back by coach to the Exchange, there spoke with Sir W. Rider about insuring, and spoke with several other persons about ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... and wittily said (as illustrating the mildness of English and the violence of French developments) that the same Gospel of Rousseau which in France produced the Terror, in England produced Sandford and Merton. But people forget that in literature the English were by no means restrained by Mr. Barlow; ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... said it than she felt herself quite another being. She found she could at once say anything she chose, and say it in the most graceful and brilliant way. She began a lively conversation with Prince Riquet, and chattered so fast and so wittily, that he began to be afraid he had given her so much cleverness as ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... transfer of the capital he went to Rome to speak in favour of the works by which it was proposed to control the inundations of the Tiber, and it was curious to hear it said on all sides that, of course, the Tiber works must be taken in hand as Garibaldi wished it. Pius IX. summed up the situation wittily in the remark: 'Lately we were two here; now we are three.' The old hero invoked the day when bayonets might be turned into pruning-hooks, but he by no means thought that it had arrived, and in the meanwhile ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... nations, and it appears to have spread quite as rapidly among the women as among the men. Many Jews have passed into complete religious indifference—into absolute and often very cynical negation. They have become, as Sheridan wittily said, like the blank page between the Old and the New Testament. Others have taken refuge in a kind of highly rationalised Judaism little different from pure Theism. Some of the most independent, scientific, and trenchant criticism of the Old Testament writings has proceeded from members of ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... DUKE retired from the Chief Secretaryship of Ireland he was offered a Viscounty, but declined the proffered distinction, wittily observing that as he was born a Duke he did not see why he should descend to a lower grade ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919 • Various
... for Pierce, only four were for Scott. Seymour ran 22,000 votes ahead of Hunt.[421] In the Assembly the Democrats numbered eighty-five, the Whigs forty-three. Of the thirty-three congressmen, the Democrats elected twenty-one, the Whigs ten, the Free-soilers and Land Reformers one each. It was wittily said that the Whig party "died of an attempt to swallow the fugitive slave law." The election of Pierce and Seymour surprised none of the Whig leaders. Thurlow Weed, convinced of the hopelessness of Whig success, went off to Europe for six months preceding the campaign. The Tribune talked of ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Pessimism indeed, and recommends Roeckel to solace his captivity, not by conquering the will to live at liberty, but by "the inspiring influences of the Beautiful." The next moment he throws over even Art for Life. "Where life ends," he says, very wittily, "Art begins. In youth we turn to Art, we know not why; and only when we have gone through with Art and come out on the other side, we learn to our cost that we have missed Life itself." His only comfort is that he is beloved. And on the subject of love he lets himself loose in a ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... 'young lady who showed herself to have been bathed in the Britannic fluid, wittily described by a late French writer, by the impossibility she experienced of accommodating herself to the indecorums of the scene. We ladies were to sleep in the bar-room, from which its drinking visitors could be ejected only at a late hour. The outer ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... before thousands of audiences. They are radiant with mirth now, beaming as a child's, and with graceful abandon she throws herself into a chair and begins a ripple of gay talk. The two pretty assistants come in and look at her with loving eyes; we all cluster around while she wittily recounts her recent lecturing experience. As the little lady keeps up her merry talk, I think over these three representative women. The white-haired, comely matron sitting there hand-in-hand with her daughter, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... he wittily feigns, was conducted by Mercury to such a place, where he might see all the world at once; after he had sufficiently viewed, and looked about, Mercury would needs know of him what he had observed: He told ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... world to do battle on foot, but on horseback there were many better. And ever this Malgrin awaited to slay Alisander, and so wounded him wonderly sore, that it was marvel that ever he might stand, for he had bled so much blood; for Alisander fought wildly, and not wittily. And that other was a felonious knight, and awaited him, and smote him sore. And sometime they rushed together with their shields, like two boars or rams, and fell grovelling both to the earth. Now knight, said Malgrin, hold thy hand a while, and tell me what ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... Sympathetic Powder, Professor DE MORGAN wittily argues that it must have been quite efficacious. He says: "The directions were to keep the wound clean and cool, and to take care of diet, rubbing the salve on the knife or sword. If we remember the dreadful notions ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... Athos, and D'Artagnan—how I loved you, and your immortal squires, Planchet, Grimaud, Mousqueton! How well and wittily you spoke the language I adored—better even than good Monsieur Lallemand, the French master at Bluefriars, who could wield the most irregular subjunctives as if they had been mere feathers—trifles light ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... those noblemen who, having finished their training at court, return to live on their estates, and never suspect that they have, at the end of twenty years, grown rusty. Men of this type fail in tact with imperturbable coolness, talk folly wittily, distrust good with extreme shrewdness, and take incredible pains ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... Helen the same liberty of speech against Hecuba, whom she judgeth to be more worthy of punishment than herself for her adultery, because she was the mother of Paris that tempted her thereto. A young man therefore must not be accustomed to think anything of that nature handsomely or wittily spoken, nor to be pleased with such colorable inventions; but rather more to abhor such words as tend to the defence of wanton acts than ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... of the people, of progress, with the rhetoricalities of the modern Arcadians; and he has a poem called "The Ball", which must fairly, as it certainly does wittily, represent one of those anomalous entertainments which rich foreigners give in Italy, and to which all sorts of irregular aliens resort, something of the local aristocracy appearing also in a ghostly and bewildered way. Yet even in this poem ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... This young lady was received by the family with affection, presented to General and Mrs. Washington, and afterward provided with a pass through the lines and sent to her father, accompanied by a letter of which (as she wittily said to a friend) "the bad orthography was amply compensated for by the magnanimity of the man who wrote it." Here is the letter: "Ginrale Putnam's compliments to Major Moncrieffe, has made him a present of a fine daughter, if he don't lick [like] her he must send her back again, and ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... his boots after him in a way that would make a pig laugh. As Lord Granard says, "A pig can whistle, though he has a bad mouth for it," [Footnote: A long argument on genius and education, between Lady Moira and Mr. Edgeworth, had been ended by Lord Granard wittily saying, "A pig may be made to whistle, but he has a bad mouth for it."] I presume that by a parity of reasoning a pig may laugh. But I must ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... had reduced speechmaking after dinner to a minimum. The ladies, as Father de Berey wittily remarked, preferred private confession to public preaching; and long speeches, without inlets for reply, were the eighth mortal sin which ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... deal of curious matter for speculation in the accounts here so wittily given by M. de Bernard: but, perhaps, it is still more curious to think of what he has NOT written, and to judge of his characters, not so much by the words in which he describes them, as by the unconscious testimony that the words all together convey. In the first place, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Ibsen was no joke, and in moments of exasperation he bit, without selection, friend and foe alike. Among other snaps of the pen, he told Bjoernson that if he was not taken seriously as a poet, he should try his "fate as a photographer." Bjoernson, genially and wittily, took this up at once, and begged him to put his photography into the form of a comedy. But the devil, as Ibsen himself said, was throwing his shadow between the friends, and all the benefits and all the affection ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... Shanghais, and Cochin-Chinas, and Guinea hens, and Barbary hens, and speckled hens, and Poland roosters, and bantams, and ducks, and turkeys, but not one goose! "No geese but ourselves," said Mrs. Peterkin, wittily, as they returned to the house. The sight of this procession roused up the village. "A torch-light procession!" cried all the boys of the town; and they gathered round the house, shouting for the flag; and Mr. Peterkin had to invite them in, ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... course, be adduced to mitigate the seeming ferocity or egotism of these passages. It would be indeed strange if Prussia, which Napoleon wittily described as "hatched from a cannon-ball," should be found really resembling Judaea, whose national greeting was "Peace"; whose prophet Ezekiel proclaimed in words of flame and thunder God's judgment upon the great military empires of antiquity; whose mediaeval poet Kalir has left in our ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill
... this, which Archbishop Whately, in a late edition, foreshadows, wittily enough—that if one or two thousand years hence, when the history of the late Emperor Napoleon the Third, his rise and fall, shall come to be subjected to critical analysis by future Philistine historians of New Zealand or ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... villa, you have managed the business carefully and written most wittily. So I think I won't buy. For there is enough salt and ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... of despised love' or the joys of requited affection, did not escape the censure of contemporary criticism. The air soon rang with sarcastic protests from the most respected writers of the day. In early life Gabriel Harvey wittily parodied the mingling of adulation and vituperation in the conventional sonnet-sequence in his 'Amorous Odious Sonnet intituled The Student's Loove or Hatrid.' {106b} Chapman in 1595, in a series of sonnets entitled 'A Coronet for his mistress Philosophy,' appealed ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... him. He may not have been his equal, he was certainly his rival. Nay, on not a few occasions—I am almost ashamed to mention it—he actually defeated him. However this may be, you will certainly find his works full of humour: the plots are full of wittily contrived intrigue, the denouements clear, the characters suited to the situations, the words true to life, the jests never unworthy of true comedy, the serious passages never quite on the level of tragedy. Seductions are rare in his plays; if he introduces love affairs, ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... artless and childlike remains of old German pictures and statuary were exhumed and set up as worthy of imitation; in the other, we have carried out in art, in costume, and in domestic life, so far as possible, what has been wittily and accurately described as "stained-glass attitudes." With all its peculiar vagaries, the English school is essentially a copy of the German, in its return to mediaevalism. The two movements have a further likeness, in that they are found accompanied by a ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner |
