"Humorously" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he describes very humorously, is that of the Coronation of the Virgin, now in the "Belle ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Sergeant Whitehead, who was short, went his sombre way with a gravity that never weakened into a smile; while Dobson, an ex-miner, aged forty-seven, who had deceived the recruiting people most shamelessly and enlisted as under thirty, took life jovially and generally humorously. He was never without his pipe. He enjoyed a large medical practice in the regiment, unofficial and unpaid, and he held strong opinions, observing frequently that he 'didn't hold with' a thing. I remember well the annoyance of Wilson's successor on hearing ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... bee in this respect, that the male seems to have a most rotten time. For one thing he is nearly always about two sizes smaller than the female. Owing to that and to what The Encyclopaedia Britannica humorously describes as "the greater voracity" of the female (there is a lot of quiet fun in The Encyclopaedia Britannica), he is a very brave spider who makes a proposal of marriage. "He makes his advances to his mate at the risk ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... was very happy; she stood there in the September sunshine leaning on her hoe and gazing half shyly, half humorously down the river where a string of American mules ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... he hailed her harshly and asked if the master was on board. Schultz, smart and neat in a spotless white suit, leaned over the taffrail, finding the question somewhat amusing. He looked humorously down into Heemskirk's boat, and answered, in the most amiable modulations of his beautiful voice: "Captain Allen is up at the house, sir." But his expression changed suddenly at the savage growl: "What the devil are you grinning at?" which acknowledged ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... horse a little shaky in coming down the steep hills, and at one little stream the jaded beast came down on his knees in the water. The captain with affected seriousness argued that it was a punishment for travelling on the day of rest, but was effectually silenced by the wag of the party, who humorously remarked, "Ah! if your horse is so weak on Sunday what would have become of him and you on a week day?" London did not afford us any lodgings that tempted us indoors, and we wrapped ourselves in our ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... a massive rock, rising thirty feet in air, its sheer walls scaled only by a rope-ladder the collegians had rigged up on one side. Atop of "Lookout There!" as the campers humorously designated the rock, roosted a youth who possessed the colossal structure of a splinter, and whose cherubic countenance was decorated with a Cheshire cat grin. Quite unaware that his riotous efforts had brought out the wrathful Butch Brewster, the youthful narrator of Chuckwalla Bill's ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... at the piano moved his hands over the keys without producing any sound. There was the ripple of a laugh, and Mrs. Shiffney came carelessly in with Rades, followed by a small, stout man, Mr. Brett, and Max Elliot. When he saw Miss Deans the stout man looked humorously sarcastic. Max Elliot wanted Mrs. Shiffney to come near to the dais, but she refused, and sat down by the door. Rades whispered to her and she laughed again. Max Elliot went close to Millie Deans. She frowned at her accompanist, who began to play, looking ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... kind commemorates a raid made by the Bow Street officers on the numerous gaming establishments of 1822. It is called, Cribbage, Shuffling, Whist, and a Round Game, is divided into six compartments, and is most humorously and admirably treated. The principal performers are the knaves of cards. One of the compartments shows us the knaves on the treadmill, which is marked "Fortune's Wheel;" while in another a knave is undergoing the discipline of the "cat," and calling out at every stroke "E. ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... G. Ellis on May 8th, Burton enquires respecting some engravings in the Museum brought over from Italy by the Duke of Cumberland, and he finished humorously with, "What news of Mr. Blumhardt? And your fellow-sufferer from leather emanations, the Sanskiritist?" [604]—an allusion to the Oriental Room, under which, in those days, was the ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... Madame Sevigne's letters: very pretty they are, but I assert, without the least vanity, that mine will be full as entertaining forty years hence. I advise you, therefore, to put none of them to the use of waste paper." And again, later in the year, she said half-humorously to the same correspondent: "I writ to you some time ago a long letter, which I perceive never came to your hands: very provoking; it was certainly a chef d'oeuvre of a letter, and worthy any of the Sevigne's or Grignan's, crammed with news." That Lady Mary's belief in herself ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... always be sounded except in the following words:—heir, herb, honest, honour, hospital, hostler, hour, humour, and humble, and all their derivatives,—such as humorously, ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... and personal example, and were impelled to point out the fact that he and his patronage were vulgar. It was felt, however, by those who received his benefits, that a proper sense of this inferiority was all that ethics demanded of them. One could still accept Rushbrook's barbaric gifts by humorously recognizing the fact that he didn't know any better, and that it pleased him, as long as they resented any ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... was giving him his breakfast, intending afterwards to have her own meal in the kitchen, but he used language of such strangely attractive ferocity, and glared at her with such a humorously-mad eye that she was compelled to ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... & Cuthering's in his electric brougham and there dropped casually the name of Winkworth. He explained humorously his singular misadventure of the Minnetonka, and was very successful therewith—so successful, indeed, that he actually began to believe in the reality of the adventure himself, and had an irrational impulse to dispatch a wireless ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... indomitable youth and resistless enterprise intoxicated the air. It was the spirit that had made California possible; that had sown a thousand such ventures broadcast through its wilderness; that had enabled the sower to stand half-humorously among his scant or ruined harvests without fear and without repining, and turn his undaunted and ever hopeful face to further fields. What mattered it that Indian Spring had always before its eyes the abandoned trenches and ruined outworks of its earlier pioneers? What mattered it ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... either," said Betty, humorously and simply, and who shall deny that this blankness of mind, when combined with profusion, mother wit, old wives' tales, haphazard ways, moments of astonishing daring, humour, and sentimentality—who shall deny that in these ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... to each other that they had no higher intention. They were hilarious over their failures and they persisted in taking even their successes humorously. At first the "short-stake men" drifted away, but presently they began to drift back again. They liked it at Wander,—liked being mildly and tolerantly controlled by men of their own sort,—men with some vested authority, however, and a reawakened perception of responsibility. Wander ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... slimy white berry, of which birdlime may be made, whence its Latin name of Viscus. It is one of those plants which do not grow In the ground by a root of their own, but fix themselves upon other plants; whence they have been humorously styled parasitical, as being hangers-on, or dependents. It was the mistletoe of the oak that the ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... smooth the situation over by self-belittlement. If he had been the wrong kind of boy, Gerald had been a worse kind. He murmured, "We are different, very," and Miss Pembroke, perhaps suspecting something, asked no more. But she kept to the subject of Mr. Dawes, humorously depreciating her lover and discussing him without reverence. Rickie laughed, but felt uncomfortable. When people were engaged, he felt that they should be outside criticism. Yet here he was criticizing. He could not help ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... masterpieces, and is by a known author. But that book is after all a cycle of adventures with a central figure not unlike the romance cycles, and, since it is popularly supposed to have had its origin in the purpose of humorously satirizing the romances of chivalry, it may be allowed to stand ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... (whom the wags of antiquity have humorously personified as a woman) seem to take a mischievous pleasure in jilting the venerable councillors of New Amsterdam. To add to the confusion, the old factions of Short Pipes and Long Pipes, which had been ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... a race for the coroner, and a place on the jury was the customary reward of the winner. Too much precipitancy in some such cases, resulting in the discovery by Mr. Perkins on arriving at the scene that the corpse was humorously waiting for him to "set up the drinks," had resulted in the establishment by him of a system of fines in the event of similar false alarms; but, as has been said, the coroner had reigned for several years as the wealthiest, the ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... and it became the judge's not altogether painful duty to pass upon him the sentence of the law. Having in due form and with suitable solemnity commended his soul to the divine mercy, he, after a brief pause, assumed his ordinary colloquial tone of voice, and nodding humorously to his old friend, observed—"And noo, Jammie, I think ye'll alloo that I hae ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... rather his advisers, rewarded this zeal but ill. At one of the committee meetings Balzac was prevented from attending by a three days' confinement in a dirty lock-up at Sevres, the cause being the old one which had partly driven him from Paris—his unwillingness to go, as he humorously put it, into the vineyards of his village, and, dressed in uniform, to see that truants from Paris were not eating ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... art. We shall find the dramatization of the chatter of the street and the apparition of types familiar to the farcical comedies and operas bouffes of later days. In the washerwomen of Striggio we are not far from Madame Angot, and some of the personages whom Vecchi humorously treated in his "Amfiparnaso" are treading the stage of to-day. In these madrigal dramas, as we shall see, the attempts to overcome the musical unsuitability of polyphonic music to the purposes of dramatic dialogue ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... College says: "Flunk is the common word when some unfortunate man makes an utter failure in recitation. He fizzles when he stumbles through at last." Another from Union writes: "If you have been lazy, you will probably fizzle." A writer in the Yale Literary Magazine thus humorously defines this word: "Fizzle. To rise with modest reluctance, to hesitate often, to decline finally; generally, to misunderstand the ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... rarest of the books. It was a very thick door, with a projecting frame, and it had been the fancy of some ancestor to cross it with shallow shelves, filled with book-backs only. The harmless trick may be excused by the fact that the titles on the sham backs were either humorously original, or those of books lost beyond hope of recovery. I had a great liking for ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... apparel; the shouts and boisterous choruses from concert rooms; the groups of drunken roisterers that congregated around the doors of saloons or, hilariously charging down the streets, elbowed him against the wall, or humorously insisted on his company, discomposed and frightened him. He had known rude companionship before, but it was serious, practical, and under control. There was something in this vulgar degradation of intellect and power—qualities that Clarence ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... me to say no more, and humorously pretended an anxiety for me should I give way to silly praise of him because of a ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... "James Barnes," which had been built in Boston for a Liverpool firm of ship-owners. He considered this the most serious portion of his official duty,—the necessity of making after-dinner speeches at the Mayor's or other public tables. He writes several pages on the subject in a humorously complainant tone, congratulating himself that on the present occasion he has succeeded admirably, for he has really said nothing, and that is precisely what he intended to do. After-dinner speeches are like soap- bubbles: they are made of ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... forgotten how to laugh after those eleven months of hard training, and they found a joke in grisly things which do not appeal humorously to sensitive men. ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... could discern several balls of smoke, which I immediately recognised as shrapnel shells, or "Archibalds," that had been fired at us by the Germans. They were well below. I looked round at the Captain. He was smiling through his goggles, and humorously jerked his thumb in the direction ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... barbarian, Miss Willis, but I have a request to make. I am in the mood to-night to be unconventional"—the corners of his serious mouth lifted humorously—"to be what I really am," he illuminated, "and to meet you in the same spirit." He paused with a little shrug. "It is a disappointing reversion to the primitive, I must admit." He glanced up whimsically. "May I ask you a ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... were in those days particularly noticeable in the head of Coventry Patmore: the vast convex brows, arched with vision; the bright, shrewd, bluish-grey eyes, the outer fold of one eyelid permanently and humorously drooping; and the wilful, sensuous mouth. These three seemed ever at war among themselves; they spoke three different tongues; they proclaimed a man of dreams, a canny man of business, a man of vehement determination. It was the harmony of ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... and encounters with, the wild Indians; their serenades from the wolves, and all the incidents by which a journey of so large a troop over ground before almost untrodden, would naturally be distinguished, are most graphically and humorously described. We copy the following interesting description of a stampede, or flight of terror, with which great numbers of horses or oxen are sometimes seized, with a humorous sketch of the exploits in this line, of one of ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... makes a sort of seething fuss underneath the acid sociability of academic centres. He had none of the tired omniscience which comes of intellectual breeding in and in. He seemed to be not so much a professor as a practiser of learning. He practised it quietly but heartily and humorously, exactly as if it had been any other business. If he had been a sailor, like his father the Admiral, he would have minded his own business with exactly the same smile and imperceptible gesture. Indeed, he looked much more like a sailor than a professor; his dark square face and ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... very well known that jackdaws are accomplished thieves, and their evil fame in this respect has been humorously pictured in the story of "The Jackdaw of Rheims," in the "Ingoldsby Legends." It seems, however, that other birds besides jackdaws may be occasional robbers, and may cause much mischief. Not long ago, a gentleman on going to his letter-box discovered that a letter containing a cheque for 10 pounds ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... Dinner Party." R.W. Buss. A scene of cockney mortification humorously treated.—An unlucky Londoner and his tawdrily-dressed wife, appeared to have toiled up the hill, with their family of four children, to a friend's cottage, the door of which is opened by an old housekeeper, with "Master's out," while the host himself is peeping over the parlour window-blind ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... that he was an infidel, and that he was—of all things in the world!—an aristocrat. On these charges the campaign was fought. The small matter of what he would do at Washington, or would not do, was brushed aside. Personal politics with a vengeance! The second charge Lincoln humorously and abundantly disproved; the ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... by using the information about yourself and your wife that you have given me, I think I can reconstruct the whole event. Listen now, and you'll hear. [In a dispassionate tone, almost humorously] The husband had gone abroad to study, and she was alone. At first her freedom seemed rather pleasant. Then came a sense of vacancy, for I presume she was pretty empty when she had lived by herself for a fortnight. Then he appeared, and by and by the vacancy was filled ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... done that, quite," he drawled humorously. "She was out of her head, all right, and talking wild, but I laid it to her being sick and scared. She said a man was shot, and that she saw it happen. And right on top of that she said she didn't think ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... merely on probation; still, her treatment of him was so different from what it had been, that he took the courage to build up a hope that he might at last subdue her. To what was passing the Major was humorously alive, and, too keenly tickled to sit still, he walked up and down the room, slyly shaking himself. Mrs. Cranceford asked Gid if he had read the book which she had loaned him, the "Prince of the House of David," and he answered that when at last he had fallen asleep the night ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... Civil War were also the period of Lowell's greatest productiveness in prose. Tethered as he was to the duties of his professorship, and growling humorously over them, he managed nevertheless to put together volume after volume of essays that added greatly to his reputation, both here and in England. For it should be remembered that the honorary degrees of D.C.L. from Oxford and LL.D. from Cambridge were bestowed upon Lowell in 1873 and 1874; ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... the captain's cabin is guv up to no one—unless it be the Queen," replied the barge-master, humorously ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... myself." He paused. "We can't give you those three years of your life back," he went on, "but fortunately we can make some sort of amends in other ways. I have no doubt that the moment the Prime Minister is fully acquainted with the circumstances he will arrange for what we humorously call a 'free pardon'; that is to say, the Law will very graciously forgive you for having been unjustly sent to prison. As for the rest—" he shrugged his shoulders—"well, I don't imagine you will be precisely the loser for not having sold your secret ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... twinkling humorously as he spoke—"Nothing,—unless it is his own perspicuity! Nil admirari is the critic's motto. The modern 'Zabastes' must always be careful to impress his readers in the first place with his personal superiority ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... the economical wife in her was so final that old Batchgrew raised his eyebrows with a grin at Louis, and Louis humorously drew down the corners of his mouth in response. It was as if they had ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... some American poets, says "There is or was a Mr. Dwight who wrote a poem in the shape of an epic; and his baptismal name was Timothy;" and involuntarily we infer the sort of epic that a Timothy must write. Sterne humorously exhorts all godfathers not "to Nicodemus ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... now," remarked Kennedy half humorously, half seriously, "to see the Devil in the ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... Free Joe strikes humorously upon the ear of memory. It is impossible to say why, for he was the humblest, the simplest, and the most serious of all God's living creatures, sadly lacking in all those elements that suggest the humorous. It is certain, moreover, that in 1850 the sober-minded citizens ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... said Barry, regarding the patient humorously. "Come along, Nan! Shall I carry you or will ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... Dan Kerry, junior, was humorously like his father, except that he was larger-boned and promised to grow into a much bigger man. His hair was uncompromisingly red, and grew in such irregular fashion that the comb was not made which could subdue it. He had the wide-open, fighting blue eyes of the Chief Inspector, ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... eyes twinkled humorously. His vagabond life had taught him some worldly wisdom. The sallow and ineffectual man looked confused. His misery was beyond ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... was introduced by EX-GOVERNOR SEYMOUR, and spoke briefly, but humorously and very much to the point, in defense of the practical character of scientific researches. He said that to one accustomed to speak only on the abstract quantities of number and space, this was an unusual occasion, and this an unusual audience; and inquired how he could discuss the abstract forms ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett
... why save on a principle too terrible to name; whereby she saw that neither Lancaster Gate was what New York took it for, nor New York what Lancaster Gate fondly fancied it in coquetting with the plan of a series of American visits. The plan might have been, humorously, on Mrs. Lowder's part, for the improvement of her social position—and it had verily in that direction lights that were perhaps but half a century too prompt; at all of which Kate Croy assisted with the cool controlled facility that went so well, as the others ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... and stood looking admiringly, yet with a glint of amusement lighting his stolid features, at the younger boy, who sat with his knees drawn up humorously inspecting the scratch ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... around town this afternoon I was held up and looked over eleven times. I now pull out all the documents I own and hand out the bunch each time I am stopped. The Garde then, in most cases, treats the matter rather humorously, and the next time I pass lets me go on without going through the whole performance again. In front of the German Legation, however, which we nearly always pass on our way to or from town, we are invariably ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... and off into the city sewers, the men in the caissons were sending up buckets full of silt-like gruel. The lawyer watched operations for a few minutes, then he asked for the owners' boring plan. When he had examined this he grunted twice, twitched his lower lip humorously, and said: 'I'll put you out of this. If the owners wanted a deep-water lighthouse they should have specified ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... beliefs—he would not keep them secret—he did not care for unpopularity in the least. His great aim was to fight—at whatever odds— for whatever he felt by dogged conviction. He was often wrong; but never cowardly, never philandering, never vacillating. "I am anti-everything," as he said humorously of himself. And so he was. He was, in a sense, "anti-everything," and though, sometimes through the training of previous environments, sometimes through other reasons, he was "anti" things that were right and of good report, he was never against ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... grievances. The regent, at first disquieted by the petitioners, was reassured by one of her advisers, who exclaimed, "What, Madam, is your Highness afraid of these beggars (ces gueux)?" Henceforth the chief opponents of Philip's policies in the Netherlands humorously labeled themselves "Beggars" and assumed the emblems of common begging, the wallet and the bowl. The fashion spread quickly, and the "Beggars'" insignia were everywhere to be seen, worn as trinkets, especially in the large towns. In accordance ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... to a sitting posture. A regimental surgeon passing through the room glanced at him humorously, saying: "You've got a pretty snug berth here, son. How does it feel to sleep in a real bed?" And, extinguishing his candle, he went away through the door without waiting ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... speech is one of the happiest parodies in the language. Never was the forensic jargon and treatment so humorously set forth—and this because of the perfect sincerity and earnestness with which it was done. There is none of the far-fetched, impossible exaggeration—the form of burlesque which Theodore Hook or Albert Smith might have attempted. It is, in fact, a real speech, which ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... Vergil, and been recognized by Lucretius, it passed as a literary legacy to Boethius, Dante, and Jean de Meung; it was incorporated by Frezzi in his strange allegorical composition the Quadriregio, and was thrice handled by Chaucer; it was dealt with humorously by Cervantes in Don Quixote, and became the prey of the satirist in the hands of Juvenal, Bertini, and Hall. The association of this ideal world with the simplicity of pastoral life was effected by Vergil, and in this form it was treated with loving minuteness by Tasso in his Aminta and by Browne ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... and his friends when their eyes rested on "a goodly array of alternate herrings and potatoes spread from the top to the bottom," Dundas at the same time inviting his guests to pledge him in a bumper of excellent whiskey. Drinking jocularly to his lordship's health, he humorously said, "It won't do, my lord; it won't do! But, whenever you or your guests will honour my poor hall of Stang Hill Tower with your presence at this hour, I promise you no worse fare than now set before you, ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... in Persia and in China. In England the "militant" suffragists have forced Parliament to deal with their problem seriously, amid much embarrassment. In the United States, the movement, regarded rather humorously at first, became a matter of national weight and seriousness when in 1910 the great State of California enfranchised its women, half a million of them. Woman Suffrage now dominates the Western States of America and is slowly ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... (faulty) analogy with 'decapitate'] vt. Humorously, to cut off the feet of. When one is using some computer-aided typesetting tools, careless placement of text blocks within a page or above a rule can result in chopped-off letter descenders. Such letters are said to ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... the University of Cambridge, Eng., the last of each class of the honors is humorously denominated The Spoon. Thus, the last Wrangler is called the Golden Spoon; the last Senior Optime, the Silver Spoon; and the last Junior Optime, the Wooden Spoon. The Wooden Spoon, however, is par excellence, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... of aristocracy—it must be observed, lest it should have been insufficiently implied—was almost humorously dissociated in the minds of the young Mesuriers from any recorded family distinctions. In so far as it was conscious, it was defiantly independent of genealogy. Had the Mesuriers possessed a coat-of-arms, James Mesurier would probably have kept it locked up as a frivolity ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... away from the only safe place on the planet and plunge you into the most perilous, and then have you say in your revulsion of feeling that you were all against it from the first, and you gave way because you saw I had my heart set on it." He supposed he was treating the matter humorously, but in this sort of banter between husband and wife there is always much more than the joking. March had seen some pretty feminine inconsistencies and trepidations which once charmed him in his wife hardening into traits of middle-age ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... often contested by Mr. John B. West—a conservative barrister of no ordinary talents, whose early end caused much regret. That gentleman was very heavy and clumsy in appearance, and moved very awkwardly. Lord Plunket humorously called him Sow-West, a name that adhered to him most tenaciously. O'Connell was opposed to West on three or four different occasions. It is remarkable that the opening scenes at the Dublin elections ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... ladies having wedged herself in by a miracle between the priests. It would take a yet greater miracle to unpack them again. The driver looked round with a smile—he had admitted us into the omnibus and released us—and, pointing to the roof with his whip, humorously exclaimed: "Complet!" ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... Unionists pointed out, not without some heat and passion, two main difficulties in the path to Home Rule. One was the incompetence of the Irish people for local government. "They are by character incapable of self-rule," was the cry; and we all remember how Mr. Gladstone humorously described this incapacity as a "double dose ...
— Home Rule - Second Edition • Harold Spender
... of the convention in the imperturbable good-nature of the defeated candidate that they elected him a delegate to the Congressional convention charged with the cause of his successful rival. In a letter to Speed, he humorously refers to his situation as that of a rejected suitor who is asked to act as groomsman at the ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... the boy was appointed to the Conqueror, Captain Davie, humorously known as Gentle Johnnie. The Captain had earned this name by his style of discipline, which would have figured well in the pages of Marryat. "Put the prisoner's head in a bag and give him another dozen!" survives as a specimen of his commands; and the men were often punished twice or thrice ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... coral has still to be written. There still exists a widespread opinion that the coral reef and the coral island are the work of an "insect." This fabulous insect, accredited with the genius of Brunel and the patience of Job, has been humorously enough held up before the children of many generations as an example of industry—a thing to be admired, a model to ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... gone to a tiresome and long-drawn-out church service. I had become so fatigued during the service, and so disagreed with some of the things the preacher said, that I was conscious of a mild desire to swear and throw something. I had humorously mentioned this fact after the service, but there was quite an element of truth in the jest. The dream gave me the chance of my life to fulfil this desire, and I seized the opportunity by breaking into a stream of profanity ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... the manager rose and went out, and Helen, turning an amused face to Douglass, asked, humorously: "Isn't he the typical manager?—in the clouds to-day, stuck in the mud to-morrow. Sometimes he is excruciatingly funny, and then he disgusts me. They're almost all alike. If business should be unexpectedly good to-night he would ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... LUCY. [Only half humorously.] But what else is one to do with them? Of course, I've enough money to live on ... so I could take up some woman's profession ... What are ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... and apparent lack of human understanding, the negro loafer to be found around some of our Southern towns and depots may be quoted as a signal and quite amusing example. The hat, as Mr. Sala humorously puts it, resembles an inverted coal scuttle or bucket without handles, and pierced by many holes. It is something like the bonnet of a Brobdingnagian Quakeress, huge and flapped and battered, ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... her eyes dutifully toward her stalwart brother, who humorously put up his stiffened fingers to the stiff brim of his hat; and then she ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... Bay, long ago; and back to New England our exile was called in his soul. For still working, and thinking of home; and thinking of home, and working amid the verdant quietude of this little oasis, one rapt thought begat another, till at last his mind settled intensely, and yet half humorously, upon the image of Old Huckleberry, his mother's favorite old pillion horse; and, ere long, hearing a sudden scraping noise (some hob-shoe without, against the iron pailing), he insanely took it to be Old Huckleberry in his stall, hailing ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... Cottrell himself pronounces the luncheon not only satisfactory, but indicative of much promise as regards dinner later on. The gay crowd breaks into knots and parties all over the decks. Now listening to the ballad some swarth Spaniard trills forth to his guitar, anon laughing at some buffo song humorously rendered by a well-known comedian, while ever and again Beauchamp and his brethren clear a space on the deck, and a valse or two becomes the ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... humorously lamented that she had never been to Simpson's restaurant in the Strand. Now a note arrived from Miss Wilcox, asking her to lunch there. Mr. Cahill was coming, and the three would have such a jolly chat, and perhaps end up at the Hippodrome. Margaret had no strong regard for Evie, and no desire ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... there could be no doubt that she caught her breath. She had overestimated her power of self-command, her talent for dissembling. She had known that it was bound to come; she had imagined that she could meet it lightly, humorously, that she could parry it, and never betray herself. And here she was, catching her breath, whilst her heart trembled and sank and sang within her. She bit her lip, in vexation; she closed her eyes, in ecstasy; she kept her face turned ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... suggested the thin body within them. They had scarcely a point of contact, even with his angles. He was a mere inner tubing to what he wore. A skull cap hid his baldness, a fringe of gray below it suggesting what was not beneath it. His little eyes were like steel, humorously glinting gimlets in the process of boring, the old face wrinkling up around them as pliantly as a dough eraser. In fact, when he laughed his little chin with the tip of beard did curl up like one of those rubber-toy faces ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... humorously, and then went on, speaking always with a feverish eagerness which I find it hard to give you a sense of, for the women here have an intensity quite beyond our experience of ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... castle. One of the Vaudois, using his hands to save himself from falling, let drop a kettle he was carrying, which by its rolling down excited the notice of the sentinel, who at once gave the challenge, "Who goes there?" But as the kettle made no reply, the men passed on, Arnaud humorously relates. After descending the precipitous sides of Mont Guignivert, the Vaudois directed their steps southward towards Salse. It was now two hours after the break of day, and they were cutting steps for themselves in the snow. ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... wobblers in that area. The rank and file are chosen from the common people, and one would not be surprised to find, should trouble take place fairly soon, while they are still raw to their business, the soldiers turn to those who could give them most. It has been humorously remarked that in case of disturbances the first thing the Chinese Tommy would do would be to shoot the officers for treating him so badly and for drilling ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... to encourage her in a few half-suppressed words, took her trembling hand in his great paw, pressed it reassuringly, winked humorously, and then looked about ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... he humorously cries to his enemies, "do not strike a dead man; beware, scribblers, of fathering your pasquinades against authority upon me; for seven years the True-Born Englishman is tied under sureties and penalties not ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... present, and thought of the similar men in the service, in the higher positions, who were absent, and who were no less responsible for the work done, I felt a foreboding that they would never receive any real recognition for their achievement; and, only half humorously, I warned them not to expect any credit, or any satisfaction, except their own knowledge that they had done well a first-class job, for that probably the only attention Congress would ever pay them would be to investigate them. Well, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... with these concluding pictures, the decorations and accessories of which are to the full as minute and effective as those of the one that precede them. The furniture of the bagnio, with its portrait of Moll Flanders humorously continued by the sturdy legs of a Jewish soldier in the tapestry Judgment of Solomon behind, the half-burned candle flaring in the draught of the open door and window, the reflection of the lantern on the ceiling and the shadow of the tongs on the floor, the horror-stricken look on ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... for my services," he broke in, humorously winking his old eyes. "You are to be my ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... bothers me, Manuel," Dade announced humorously, when they three were seated around the pot of frijoles, the earthen pan of smoking carne-seco (which is meat flavored hotly after the Spanish style) and a stack of the tortillas Manuel's fat hands had ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... reason of the delay that happened in a cause, was told that Mr. Serjeant Joy, who was to lead, was absent, but Mr. Hope, the solicitor, had said that he would return immediately. His lordship humorously repeated the well-known lines:— ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... of the makeup. You'll have to wash the makeup off your face. I don't expect you to return the powder to us," grinned the assistant humorously. ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... the taker of furs touched his cheek just below his eye with the tip of his finger, and smiled humorously. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... course, Olympians themselves weren't, if it came to that; not always.) He could never, she had been telling herself since that day when they had had their one talk together, belong to any one. He did not—save himself up for special people. He was just there, the same for everybody, like, she had half humorously observed to her father, a public ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... has, I understand, been of long continuance in Shetland?-Long before my memory. I suppose, as Mr. Walker humorously remarked in his evidence, it has probably prevailed since ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... curiously about him, and commented humorously on the selection of literature, till a patient was ushered out, ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... thirteen fair, shepherded by Lionel Belmont, passed out into the murmurous summer night of the Strand. Cab after cab drove up, and Nina saw that her father, after filling each cab, paid each cabman. In three minutes the dream-like scene was over. Mr. Belmont re-entered the hotel, winked humorously at the occupant of the pagoda, ignored the bureau, and ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... prodded him last night, didn't we?" addressing Stanley. "We went right into his den, and gave him a good baiting, while we smoked his new Abdullah cigarettes," and she smiled gleefully at the remembrance of the stern soldier, in an astonishingly sociable mood for him, humorously parrying her chaff. "You know," she ran on, "he simply hated our coming. I almost wonder he didn't dig impassable trenches across the road, or fortify himself in the Acropolis Hill. Anyone might have thought we were the bears, ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... of vexations is humorously described by Domett, who concludes his letter with this tribute to ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... first water. The heroine is a woman's woman, and the hero is a man's man.... The spirit of 'Katherine Day' is very gallant, very humorously tender. The lightest passages, like the gravest, are sane and true."—Louise Imogen Guiney ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... man from Savannah, Marylyn Wade, and Joe Ewing were lolling and laughing in the doorway. Nancy caught Jim's eye and winked at him humorously. ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... larger aspect of the problem—there was nothing she desired or prayed for more than the friendship and presence of Corliss at the Loring hacienda. Corliss drew his own inference from this, which was a pleasant one. He felt that he had a friend at court, yet explained humorously that sheep and cattle were not by nature fitted to occupy the same territory. He was alive to sentiment, but more keen than ever to maintain his position unalterably so far as business was concerned. The Senora liked him none the less for this. To her ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... high-seasoned, laughing personalities invaded my privacy. Diaz, smiling humorously, was followed by a ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... Our American Colonies" in a manner highly satisfactory to himself and doubtless also to the average reading Briton, who understood constitutional questions best when they were "briefly considered," and when they were humorously expounded in pamphlets that ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... ever been understood," said a burly man, who carried his head humorously and obstinately a little on one side—I think he was Ben Jonson—"It hath ever been understood, consule Jacobo, under our King James and her late Majesty, that such good and hearty customs were fallen sick, and like to pass from the world. This grey beard most surely was ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... at the faces of those inseparable companions by the help of a lamp that gave smell rather than light. Then one would see going up, up, up, and then sinking down, down, down, Pollack, extinct pipe in mouth, humorously observant, bringing his mind slowly to the seventy-seventh decision that the captain was a Card, while the words flowed from the latter in a nimble incessant good. "Dis England eet is not a country aristocratic, no! Eet is a glorified bourgeoisie! ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... Silverpenny will be a suitable wife for the only son of Thomas Goldencalf; though I give thee notice, boy, that thou wilt be cut off with a competency; so keep thy head clear of extravagant castle-building, learn economy in season, and, above all, make no debts.'" Anna laughed as I humorously imitated the well-known intonations of Mr. Speaker Sutton, but a cloud darkened her bright ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Heaven be praised that the cut on the finger of the Archbishop was of no consequence! Good heavens! how dreadfully I was alarmed at first! Cannabich thanks you for your charming letter, and all his family beg their remembrances. He told me you had written very humorously. You must have been in ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... father-in-law's throne owed its bloodless character not a little to the influence of snuff. We read of difficulties in its course, which, fifty years previously, would inevitably have led to bloodshed, being easily, almost humorously surmounted. The plagued nation effected a revolution over its snuff-boxes in ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... the life about her? Assuredly, to a very marked degree. Wildness? That was it!—a wildness, subtly blended with refinement, that found expression in every quick look; as if someone had put a fawn there from the forest and it was trying, half humorously, half confidently, to keep itself from running away in fright. It was this glory of wildness that she typified which made my cheeks grow hot ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... friendliness. The licking flames of dry greasewood burning, with a pungent odor in my nostrils when the wind blew the smoke my way. The far-off hooting of an owl, perched somewhere on a juniper branch watching for mice; and Casey Ryan sitting cross-legged in the sand, squinting humorously at me across ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... misconstrued. My guards are very zealous—very alert," affirmed the adjutant-general, putting as good a face on the matter as was possible. He fully realized that this was no time to mention that exception in favor of Mayor Morrison, or to explain that he had intended to have Captain Sweetsir accept humorously instead of literally the ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... weather,' as it is humorously called, was now drawing to a close, and the young ladies in sailor hats and cambric blouses, who flock to India each autumn for the annual marriage-market, were beginning to resign themselves to a return to England—unless, of course, they had succeeded in 'catching.' So I ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... them. "I got a flicker of his green blanket when he raised up and scowled down at me. He ducked when he saw me turn my head—looked to me like the surly buck that blew in to the ranch the night I came; Jim something-or-other. By the great immortal Jehosaphat!" he swore humorously, "I'd like to tie him up in his dirty blanket and heave him into the river—only it would kill all the ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... Chairman himself, like the Secretary, protected and armed by any personal aptitude for practical proceedings. But solely by the certain degree of respect entertained for his character and acquirements. This respect, sincere and even excessive as it frequently was, contrasted somewhat humorously with the common inattention to questions of order, nor could anything be more noisy than the loyalty of Fordham and Langdon Davies, with the exception of their interruptions. It may then fairly be said that the troubles and discussions ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... humorously if he were fallen in love, but, although he retained little faith in the activities of the heart after youth, he was beginning seriously to consider the expedience of marrying Concha Arguello. He had not intended to ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... the book-hunter's chase. It was his ardent wish that this work, for the fulfilment of which he had been so long preparing, should be, as he playfully expressed it, a monument of apologetic compensation to a class of people he had so humorously maligned, and those who knew him intimately will recognize in the shortcomings of the bibliomaniac the humble confession ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... contributed to Southey's Joan of Arc certain lines of which, many years afterwards, he wrote in this humorously exaggerated but by no means wholly unjust tone of censure:—"I was really astonished (1) at the schoolboy, wretched, allegoric machinery; (2) at the transmogrification of the fanatic Virago into a modern novel-pawing proselyte of the Age of Reason—a Tom Paine ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... Dick and Nancy will be looking out for their mother and me just this way," continued Mr. Crowninshield half humorously. "There will be ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... and manly. After ridiculing Fraser's attempt "to set up a standard of precedency and rank in literature," and humorously proving that an author's works were not to be esteemed in proportion to the length of time elapsing between their production, he turned to the more serious and entirely honest defence that, like Dickens, he was supplying the ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... humorously. "And I am glad you mentioned that. It is one of our mysteries that you will learn later. You have helped me greatly by such a candid unburdening of your mind. For you must know that you and I are to ...
— The King Of Beaver, and Beaver Lights - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... long silence. My cousin stood up, yawning, and sauntered away toward the door. "Shall I send Ev'leen Ann out to get the pitcher and glasses?" he asked in an accent which he evidently thought very humorously significant. ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... It is now determined that whoever knows this melody shall be the victor. The young nobleman sings it and secures the bride. The admission into the guild however he declines. Thereupon Hans Sachs humorously defends the mastersingers and closes with ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... hoggish. But he has no suspicion of this himself, and honestly regards his commercial prosperity as the inevitable and socially wholesome triumph of the ability, industry, shrewdness and experience in business of a man who in private is easygoing, affectionate and humorously convivial to a fault. Corporeally, he is a podgy man, with a square, clean shaven face and a square beard under his chin; dust colored, with a patch of grey in the centre, and small watery blue eyes with a plaintively sentimental expression, which ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... glad you think to-night isn't an average performance," declared her brother humorously. "You're a sweet older sister, Rosemary. The girls couldn't do better than to pattern ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... eyebrows humorously. "Of course I mind. I mind enormously. But that's of no consequence. By the way, I suppose your funny little uncle isn't given ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... is a famous ancient statue of a Trojan priest, Laocooen, and his two sons, struggling in the grip of two monstrous serpents. You have doubtless seen pictures of the group. Dickens's figure gives us a humorously exaggerated picture of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Drayton Manor. 'I have the prospect,' he wrote, 'not only of one but two royal visits, for I must arrange that Queen Adelaide should meet the Queen each with her several suites. If you have any device for making stone walls elastic,' he adds humorously, 'pray give it to me. Did Lord H. new furnish the rooms allotted to H.M.? How many apartments did H.M. require? Did he observe anything especially agreeable to the Queen's wishes, and did Lord H. attempt to keep any order among his mounted ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... interest," he replied in a voice that was friendly and humorously indulgent, as though he spoke to a child. "I find it strange—I have found it strange for many weeks now—that I should think so frequently of you. You are not a man who would naturally be interesting to me. You are an Englishman and I am not interested in Englishmen. You are sentimental, you ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... They seemed aware of no one but themselves in their ecstasy at being reunited. Racing had been restarted; up and down the gutters newsboys ran shouting the winners. London was a Tommy on leave, insubordinately, humorously, contagiously happy. ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... began to read his paper, we are carefully told that Mr. Pickwick "unfolded it, lighted his bedroom candle that it might burn up to the time he had finished." It was Mr. C. Kent who pointed this out to him, when Boz seized the volume and humorously made as though he would hurl it ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... son of Pluto; not hurt at all, thanks to your careful driving," answered the doctor, putting his hands in his pockets and eying the discomfited coachman humorously. ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... Fred Saltus' appearing before the audience and having his humorously thoughtless but nevertheless momentous talk with Angela in which Angela falls in love with him, the interview had been told the audience by Miss Carey, there would have been no playlet. Nearly as important is the prologue of "The Villian Still Pursued ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... forward Mrs. Lidcote found herself humorously wondering whether she were mourning Horace Pursh's divorce in one of his mother's old ...
— Autres Temps... - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... their ignorance, or of useless complaints. Gioviano Pontano ingeniously illustrates the nature of that mysterious something which men call Fortune by a hundred incidents, most of which belonged to his own experience. The subject is treated more humorously by Aeneas Sylvius, in the form of a vision seen in a dream. The aim of Poggio, on the other hand, in a work written in his old age, is to represent the world as a vale of tears, and to fix the happiness of various classes as low as possible. This tone became in future the prevalent ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... smoke, Jewel?" he asked, as he took a cigar from the case. He asked the question humorously, but the reply ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... was written for the Columbian by Jeremy Belknap, who sought to portray humorously in it the history of the country and the ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... in a perfectly Constitutional way, President. As the majority of the House of Representatives, of the Senate, and of the Supreme Court was still left, by this election, on the side of the "rights of the South," (humorously so styled,) and as the President could do little to advance Republican principles with all the other branches of the Government opposed to him, the people naturally imagined that the slaveholders ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various |
