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More "Humour" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... appreciated the unconscious humour of Chetwood's assertion about "some husbands" more than Farquhar himself. One trembles to think, by the way what a "mere husband" must have been in the reigns of ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... average height. He had small green eyes like his mother's; his light sandy hair had a natural ripple, and his pale face expressed nothing beyond an assured consciousness of his own superiority. And yet he was not without a certain sense of humour in matters which did not immediately concern himself, though, owing to particular circumstances, it was just ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... step the other way. It has to be, Mary. He is too much in earnest, and too good, and too fit for the place to which he aspires, to miss his object. Come, we'll go in. Mind, you and I are one again, let it go how it may. I will own that I have been vexed for the last two days,—have been in a humour unbecoming your departure to-morrow. I throw all that behind me. You and I ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... him with overmuch meat, thus producing a humour, which Nature tries to get rid of by throwing it out on the surface of the body; the safest place she could fix on for the purpose; hence the folly and danger of giving medicines and applying external applications to drive the eruption ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... to him.] Don't you love me enough to humour me a little—to put up with my vexing ways? I so want to help, to feel I am doing just a little, to make the world kinder. I know you can do it better, but I want so to be "in it." [She laughs.] Let us forget all this. Wake up to-morrow ...
— The Master of Mrs. Chilvers • Jerome K. Jerome
... not escape the quick perception of the Indian; and, along with the good-humour manifest in the stranger's speech, made ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... She deals with a Man in whom consummate Patience is one of the Mysteries of his Trade; and whatever Trouble she creates, she is sure to hear nothing but the most obliging Language; and has always before her a chearful Countenance, where Joy and Respect seem to be blended with Good-Humour, and all together make up an artificial Serenity, more ingaging than untaught Nature is ...
— The Tricks of the Town: or, Ways and Means of getting Money • John Thomson
... Black Hole all night, you do not know how vitiated the atmosphere is. You have to come out into the fresh air to find out that. We look at the errors of others through a microscope; we look at our own through the wrong end of the telescope; and the one set, when we are in a cynical humour, seem bigger than they are; and the other ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... and assisted the poor man, who is called the Governor, to institute a bank, and to print and issue small bills of the value of a few halfpence, in imitation of the notes of the country bankers, but drawn and signed with a reference of humour to the fort, the flag, the hill, and the cannon. These notes, the nobility and gentry, who during the Harrowgate season crowd to visit this remarkable place, take in exchange for their silver, and by these means the governor, who is a man of gentle ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... the "Mermaid," or going with them to the Globe Theatre to see two Warwickshire brothers, Edmund and Will Shakspeare, who are on the boards there,—the latter taking the part of Old Knowell, in Ben Jonson's play of "Every Man in his Humour." His friends say that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... elephant does actually often travel towards the marksman, but much slower than the marksman travels. Mr. Scott probably would not like to contemplate the fact that the elephant, properly speaking, swings round and hits the bullet. To us it appears full of a rich cosmic humour. ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... us at his heels, muttering indignantly, till the humour of the thing struck and doubled him up with laughter at the foot ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... the young lieutenant-governor, with good humour; "but I hope, as I said, that I have made no trouble for this stout boy ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... so stolid and impassive in their general demeanour, are easily moved to laughter, having a quick perception of fun and drollery, and sometimes show themselves capable of much humour, and even of wit. ...
— In The Forest • Catharine Parr Traill
... smiled, but June saw none of his humour—the married people she knew clung till the finger of death unclasped them. She pointed to a bunch of tall tropical-looking plants with great spreading leaves and ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... was not really a bad man, he decided to humour the old woman in her strange plea. Turning to the assistants in the court room he asked which of them would be willing to go in search of the tiger. One of these men, named Li-neng, had been leaning against the wall, half asleep. He ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman
... commenting on his contemporaries and friends. George Ticknor was greatly impressed by the "right-mindedness" of the young Sophia Scott,[486] and we may fairly adopt the word to describe the father whom she so much resembled. There was in him, as Carlyle said, "such a sunny current of true humour and humanity, a free joyful sympathy with so many things; what of fire he had all lying so beautifully latent, as radical latent heat, as fruitful internal warmth of life;—a ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... to be in a good humour. The boys drew back somewhat in awe, and sat down to rest on the stones by the wall. Still Antonino's eyes followed them, though he did not move. Sebastiano looked up at him uneasily from time to time, ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... were in the minority, and the Lower School boys and the 'Remove'—that bodyguard of strong limbs and thick heads which it seemed hopeless to remove any higher—were quite capable of supplying unaided all the noise that might be considered necessary; and, as there was no ill-humour and little roughness in their japes, they were very wisely allowed to let their steam off without interference. It did not last very long, though it died out gradually enough: first the songs and whistles became more isolated and distinct, and the hallooing ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... proportions, as was the reveller of Hap House; but nevertheless, and perhaps not the less, was he pleasant to look on. He was smaller and darker than his cousin; but his eyes were bright and full of good humour. He was clean looking and clean made; pleasant and courteous in all his habits; attached to books in a moderate, easy way, but no bookworm; he had a gentle affection for bindings and title-pages; was fond of pictures, of which it might be probable ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... looked grave, and would not rise to Denise's lighter humour. It almost seemed, indeed, as if she were afraid—she who had never known fear through all the years of pinch and struggle, who had faced a world that had no use for her, that would not buy the poor services she had to sell. For to know the worst is always a relief, and to exchange it for something ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... born with nothing less than genius—genius to observe, to narrate, and to judge. Even had he written as a mere recluse and critic, looking out upon his world from a monk's cell or from the corner of a housetop, the vividness, the tenderness, the sarcasm and the humour would still have been there. But Knox's genius was predominantly practical; and the difference between the transformation which befell him, and that which changed so many other men in his time, was that in Knox's case it ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... manner, as opposed to his matter, he is more the Teuton, for he shows all of the racial patience and pertinacity and all of the racial lack of humour. Writing a novel is as solemn a business to him as trimming a beard is to a German barber. He blasts his way through his interminable stories by something not unlike main strength; his writing, one feels, often takes on ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... unabashed, returned my gaze—a funny little ruffian! On the end of his spinal column he teetered, all four feet in the air, the cock of his head irresistibly suggesting the tilt of a gamin's cap. His tongue hung waggishly out of his mouth, and a sort of loose, dissipated, tough, cynical humour pervaded his person, from the squint of his little eyes to the absurd post of his hind legs. There was less of the immature bear about him than of the miniature bear. I suppose a young wild animal is like a street Arab, in ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... allusions to wild events that had happened long ago in desert places, and to the lives of priests of his old religion, of fanatics, and girls who rode on camels caparisoned in red to the dancing-houses of Sahara cities—all these things cradled her humour at this moment and seemed to plant her, like a mimosa tree, deep down in this sand ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... that there was no such thing in nature as a weed, and that it was his design to let his garden produce what it pleased; so that, you may be sure, it makes a very pleasant show as it now lies. About the same time he took a humour to ramble up and down the country, and would often bring home with him his pockets full of moss and pebbles. This, you may be sure, gave me a heavy heart; though, at the same time, I must needs say, he had the character ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... poison or assassination: her greatest fear, however, was that of being supplanted by a rival. I never saw her in a greater agitation than, one evening, on her return from the drawing-room at Marly. She threw down her cloak and muff, the instant she came in, with an air of ill-humour, and undressed herself in a hurried manner. Having dismissed her other women, she said to me, "I think I never saw anybody so insolent as Madame de Coaslin. I was seated at the same table with her this evening, at a game of brelan, and you cannot imagine what I ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... the world is too proud to be fond of a serious tutor; and when an author is in a passion, the laugh, generally, as in conversation, turns against him. This kind of satire only has any delicacy in it. Of this delicacy Horace is the best master: he appears in good humour while he censures; and therefore his censure has the more weight, as supposed to proceed from judgment, not from passion. Juvenal is ever in a passion; he has little valuable but his eloquence and morality: the last of which I have had in my eye: but rather for emulation, than ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... been above all, democratic, and has reenforced the feeling of good fellowship, of community, of intimacy, of unity. Like the popular games which melt all social groups together by a common joyful interest, and like humour which breaks all social barriers, the love for dancing removes mutual distrust and ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... is in no humour to stand half-hearted work; it will bow its proud head only to the man who pours out sweat; and Bourdaloue's standard of excellence will hold for all time. His answer to the question "What was your best sermon?" is: "The one I took ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... demanded Payment for the Victuals that our Captain and his Men did eat at his House. These things startled Captain Swan, yet how to help himself he knew not. But all this, with other inward troubles, lay hard on our Captain's Spirits, and put him very much out of Humour; for his own Company also were pressing him every Day to be gone, because, now was the heighth of the Easterly Monsoon, the only Wind to carry us farther ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... exercised his profession, though litigation languished in North Dormer and its outlying hamlets; and for once he had had an opportunity that he could not afford to refuse. He spent three days in Nettleton, won his case, and came back in high good-humour. It was a rare mood with him, and manifested itself on this occasion by his talking impressively at the supper-table of the "rousing welcome" his old friends had given him. He wound up confidentially: ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... o' me," returned the boy, relapsing into the mother-tongue, which, except it be spoken in good humour, ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... hollow eyes, the meagre arms covered with a silk shirt, contrasting strangely with the rest of the dress. In all thy privation and poverty, thou didst never forego thy silk shirt. I remember the paradoxes and the aphorisms, if not the exact words, the glamour and the sentiment of a humour that was all thy own. Never didst thou laugh; no, not even when in discussing how silence might be rendered in music, thou didst say, with thy extraordinary Pyrenean accent, "Pour rendre le silence en music il me faudrait trois orchestres militaires." ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... upstairs, and was at last put to bed, Janet assisting; nor did the doctor leave the room till his guest was asleep. Then he went into the drawing-room to Mary. It may easily be conceived that he was hardly in a humour to talk much ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... of musicians mounted on horses or mules surrounded the two-wheeled cart in which sat Hernbeize of Ghent, the treasurer of the orchestra, and his fat wife. The corpulent couple, squeezed closely together, silent and out of humour, had taken no notice of each other or their surrounding since Frau Olympia had presumed to drag her husband by force out of the first wagon, where he was paying a visit to a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... such a subject for a novel! If I were in a tolerable humour I could begin it on the first of November and finish it on the first of December. I would make five signatures of print. And I long to write as I did at Bogimovo—i.e., from morning till night ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... behind; the goodly show of fat flitches and briskets around me and above, and that merry and wise old fellow, glass in hand, with endless store of good stories, pithy sayings, and choice points of humour, by my side; yet with all I sat melancholy and ill at ease. In vain did the rare old man tell me his best marvels; how he once fought with Tom Hughes, a wild Welshman, whom he met in a perilous journey through the forests of Cheshire; how Tom would not let go ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... days as his were in themselves a trial of good humour. Idleness was very pleasant in the holidays, but his was too active a spirit to bear it for long together, especially when it left room for such anticipations as those for which his hopes of a Bush life were exchanged, Yet he treated offers of reading to him as insults, and far less ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... had gone to bed in a high state of indignation were not likely to wake in much better humour, when suddenly aroused in their first nap, to listen to such a message as this. It seemed only one piece of trifling the more. The deputies had offered satisfactory opinions of divines and jurisconsults, as to the two points specified which concerned the Ghent treaty. It was natural, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... heels. And all these people seemed to be diverting themselves hugely, chaffering with the hucksters, watching the antics of trained dogs and monkeys, distributing doles to maimed beggars or having their pockets picked by slippery-looking fellows in black—the whole with such an air of ease and good-humour that one felt the cut-purses to be as much a part of the show as the tumbling acrobats ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... jabbered, would have it. You see, Archie, one great advantage of being Irish—and it's not your fault that you're not, man, I don't blame you—one great advantage is that you can speak all languages with equal ease. Now a Scotchman's tongue is like his sense of humour and his brains—a bit ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... spasmodic touches of humour, even for these jaded men. "One of the Staff plunged into the river and caught some geese, but someone else ate them; a pig ran the gauntlet through the camp—amidst roars of laughter, even from the serious General—of ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... the Stamp Act continued and was enforced, do you imagine that ill-humour will induce the Americans to give as much for worse manufactures of their own, and use them preferably ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... Campanians, who marched to Hamae three miles from Cumae with a view to surprise the Cumaeans, were thoroughly defeated by Gracchus; Hannibal, who had appeared before Cumae to wipe out the stain, was himself worsted in a combat, and when the pitched battle offered by him was declined, retreated in ill humour to Capua. While the Romans in Campania thus not only maintained what they possessed, but also recovered Compulteria and other smaller places, loud complaints were heard from the eastern allies of Hannibal. A Roman ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... day, that they tumbled up against each other at the door, crashing their wicker baskets wildly, and left their purchases upon the counter, and came running back to fetch them, and committed hundreds of the like mistakes, in the best humour possible; while the Grocer and his people were so frank and fresh, that the polished hearts with which they fastened their aprons behind might have been their own, worn outside for general inspection, and for Christmas daws to peck ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... Helier the hermit once chiselled his lofty home. He breathed deep and strong, and the carriage of his body was light, for he had a healthy enjoyment of all physical sensations and all the obvious drolleries of life. A broad sort of humour was written upon every feature; in the full, quizzical eye, in the width of cheek- bone, in the broad mouth, and in the depth of the laugh, which, however, often ended in a sort of chuckle not entirely pleasant. It suggested a selfish enjoyment of the odd ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... is," Richford said, with a certain good humour that caused Beatrice to turn suspicious at once. "You can do a great deal for me if you only will. I am going to leave you a desolate and disconsolate widow. A grass widow, if you like; but you will have your freedom. I am going to leave my country for my country's good; I shall never come ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... in his wrath, was towering over the prostrate prisoner, forgetful of the mock trial, dead even to the humour which he himself had infused into a sufficiently lurid situation, but quite terribly alive to the act of treachery and violence which had brought that situation about. And I must say that Levy looked no less alive to his own enormity; he quailed in his bonds with a guilty fearfulness ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... nice that is! Oh no, that's no matter. And then it will do very well, won't it? Now, if I can only catch Gilbert in a good humour he isn't my cousin he's Marianne's cousin that big boy you saw down-stairs he's so big he won't have anything to say to me, sometimes, but I guess I'll get him to do this. Don't you want to make ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... you."—"Never! that is a strong expression; the French have another Sovereign, and they are commanded both by their duty and their tranquillity to think on him alone." This answer did not please me: the Emperor, thought I to myself, is out of humour because I have not brought him any letters; he mistrusts me: it was not worth while to come so far for the sake of such an ungracious reception.—Napoleon, continuing, "What do they think about me in France?"—"There, your Majesty is universally ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... him the hidden charm of their intercourse lay less in what she said or sang, than in the vibrations of her voice; in the quick response of lips and eyes to her April changes of mood; and more than all in her unfailing spirit of humour, which broke up the monotone of days spent in a long chair as a prism breaks white light into a band of brilliant colours. For Quita's genius was not of the highly specialised order. It did not inhabit ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... tough, dense, outer coat, the sclerotic (sc.), within which is a highly vascular and internally pigmented layer, the choroid, upon which the percipient nervous layer, the retina (r.) rests. The chief chamber of the eye is filled with a transparent jelly, the vitreous humour (v.h.). In front of the eye, the white sclerotic passes into the transparent cornea (c.). The epidermis is continued over the outer face of this as a thin, transparent epithelium. The choroid coat is continued in front by a ring-shaped muscle, the iris (ir.) the coloured portion of the eyes. This ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... mood, and turned them out quite innocent of the idiomatic quaintnesses of the French tongue. But dis aliter visum. The gods always saw wrong-headedly otherwise in the case of Aristide. A weak-minded governess—and in a governess a sense of humour and of novelty is always a sign of a weak mind—played dragon during Aristide's lessons. She appreciated his method, which was colloquial. The colloquial Aristide was jocular. His lessons therefore were a giggling joy from beginning to end. He imparted to his pupils delicious knowledge. ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... put the pennies in, some person standing by with a sense of humour, who knew the letters that people write to the Times and the kind, serious, grave way English people read them. He put the pennies grimly in at one end, then he waited grimly for the letter in the Times to come ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... to return to Milan—these ill-starred troubles being in some degree abated—but I was refused membership by the College of Physicians there, I was unable to settle my lawsuit with the Barbiani, and I found my mother in a very ill humour, so I went back to my village home, having suffered greatly in health during my absence. For what with cruel vexations, and struggles, and cares which I saw impending, and a troublesome cough and pleurisy aggravated by a copious discharge of humour, I was brought into a condition such as few ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... spent his life on horseback in the boundless sultry deserts of Western Africa! The temperature of the place is exceedingly damp and chill. Jugurtha himself, when stripped of his clothes by the executioners, and let down into it from the hole in the roof, exclaimed with grim humour, "By Hercules, how cold your bath is!" A more hideous and heart-breaking dungeon it is impossible to imagine. Not a ray of light can penetrate the profound darkness of this living tomb. Sallust spoke of the appearance of it in his ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... kind of small ratlike quadrupeds. They are distinguished by having upon each flank, under the ordinary skin, a little band of stiff and close hairs, from which an odoriferous humour is distilled. They dig holes in the earth, which they seldom come out of until towards evening; and their food consists of insects and worms. A species that inhabits the Pyrenees, and also the mountains of Russia, are called Desmans, and differ somewhat ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid
... however, he had forgotten his ill-humour and was at the station fully ten minutes before six o'clock. As it happened, only one woman was among the passengers who left the train at ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... Societe, where a boudoir decorum is, or ought always to be, preserved; where sentiment never surges into passion, and where humour never overflows into boisterous merriment."—Frederick Locker's ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 10, 1892 • Various
... had met before, who were mostly her relations, were asked to the wedding, and among the rest her clownish admirer, who, I understood, was her cousin. He was rather sulky at first, but seeing everyone around him in good humour, he came up to me and offered his hand, which I took and shook heartily. The farmhouse not being more than three miles from Chatham, we hired two coaches from that place, and with the addition of two chay-carts belonging to the farmers, we made a numerous (for there were ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... written down as if it were a special revelation, and to insist with equal earnestness on his most trifling as on his most important pieces—on Goody Blake and The Idiot Boy as on The Cuckoo or The Daffodils. The sense of humour is apt to be the first grace which is lost under persecution; and much of Wordsworth's heaviness and stiff exposition of commonplaces is to be traced to a feeling, which he could scarcely avoid, that "all day long he had lifted up his voice ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... jocularities that haven't yet been said; The world has joked incessantly for over fifty centuries, And every joke that's possible has long ago been made. I started as a humourist with lots of mental fizziness, But humour is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse; For my stock-in-trade, my fixtures and the good-will of the business No reasonable offer I am likely to refuse. And if anybody choose He may circulate the news That no reasonable offer I ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... here?' Alas, they are homespuns from the factory, machine-made in uncostly quantities. Obviously, power needs to make use of no such storage. The property of power is to use phrases, whether strange or familiar, as though it created them. But even more than lack of power is lack of humour the cause of all the rankness and the staleness, of all the Anglo-Saxon of commerce, of all the weary 'quaintness'—that quaintness of which one is moved to exclaim with Cassio: 'Hither comes the bauble!' Lack of ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... alone is a conversion. His wife and children are cared for, it is true; but he himself, for a shilling a day, sells to his country his life, his health, his pleasures, and his hopes for the future. To make good measure he throws in cheerfulness, devotion, philosophy, humour, and an unfailing kindness. One man, for instance, sells up three grocery businesses in the heart of Lancashire, an ambition which it has taken him ten years to accomplish. Without a trace of bitterness he divorces himself from the routine of a lifetime, and goes out ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... important qualities for a teacher are a sympathetic understanding of human nature, a keen sense of justice, and a sense of humour. These are great qualities, but the girl who means to teach should notice that they may be both acquired and developed. Any one who gives all her energies and gifts to teaching will find that the work is a strain. The teacher should not allow her work to become set ...
— The Canadian Girl at Work - A Book of Vocational Guidance • Marjory MacMurchy
... of the strife. Life to them was a battle to be ended as soon as possible. That was another point I could not understand, for as I reasoned, life is not a battle except with our own tendency to sag with the downpull of "getting settled." If to petrify is success all one has to do is to humour the lazy side of the mind but if to grow is success, then one must wake up anew every morning and keep awake all day. I saw great businesses become but the ghost of a name because someone thought they could be managed just as they were always managed, ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... same charm as the writings of Charles Lamb. There was the same kind of playfulness, the same lightness of touch, the same tenderness, perhaps the same limitations. On another side of his nature, I have often been reminded of him by the quaint, delicate humour, the superficial intolerance, the deep springs of pity, the peculiar mixture of something pathetic with a sort of gay scorn, entirely remote from contempt, which distinguish the Ellesmere of Sir ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... other shows an equal knowledge of the world, or contains more of those thoughts which are new as well as old, and not of one age only but of all. Nowhere in Plato is there a deeper irony or a greater wealth of humour or imagery, or more dramatic power. Nor in any other of his writings is the attempt made to interweave life and speculation, or to connect politics with philosophy. The Republic is the centre around which the other Dialogues may be grouped; here philosophy reaches the highest point ...
— The Republic • Plato
... in his soft, murmuring purr ("Just the voice a jaguar would talk in, if it could speak and were in a good humour," Gemma said to herself with ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... Thomas Browne was the founder of chemical embryology or, indeed, to contend that he made a great impress upon the progress of embryology is to humour our fancy. As Browne himself reminds us, "a good cause needs not to be patron'd by a passion."[31] His work and interpretations of generation are most important for our purposes as an indication of the rising mood of the times and an emerging awareness of the physiochemical analysis of biological ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... changes of the weather in my principles or opinions. I purpose, therefore, in these historical sketches, at least to watch, and I hope partly to correct myself in this fault of promise breaking, and at whatever sacrifice of my variously fluent or re-fluent humour, to tell in each successive chapter in some measure what the reader justifiably ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... misery around it as easily in an African village as in an English city. Had the cortege submitted to extortion and insult, they felt that their night by the river would have been a precarious one—even if they had been in a humour to sleep in a swamp when a town was at hand. These things gave occasion to them to resort to force. The desperate nature of their whole enterprise in starting for Zanzibar perhaps had accumulated its own stock of determination, ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... expose him. The mechanician nevertheless proceeded gravely to explain and defend his "profession of faith," which was altogether unnecessary. On this Huntington returned to the charge, and directed against the mechanic a fresh volley of Scripture texts and phraseology, not without humour, if profanity be allowable in controversy, as where he says, "Poor man! he makes a good patent lock, but cuts a sad figure with the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven!" "What Mr. Bramah is," says S.S., "In respect to his character or conduct in life, as a man, a tradesman, ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... Irish life is expressed in Irish humour. Two Irish stories commonly related to-day in the south really throw some light on the change of feeling in Ireland. One is that of a Protestant parson in the south who found that the Bishop was about to visit his parish ...
— Home Rule - Second Edition • Harold Spender
... this name I breathe. Perhaps you have imagined that ill-humour or caprice had till now guided my pen; but, could I praise the talent of MOLE as he deserves, you ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... in humour. The Irishman's shillelagh was for years a conspicuous feature of the comic press. And there will instantly come to every one's mind that immortal passage in "Tristram Shandy." Trim is discoursing upon ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... cannot rave in your own manner. If ye will have unintelligible systems, if ye cannot be contented without marvellous doctrines, if the infirmities of your nature require an invisible crutch, adopt such as may best suit with your humour; select those which you may think most calculated to support your tottering frame; if ye can, let your own imagination give birth to them; but do not insist on your neighbours making the same choice with yourself: do not suffer these imaginary ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... an unusually thoughtful humour, and inclined to weigh things in the balance with a doubtfulness as to their value which was new to him. The complete idleness and emptiness of his life in the country had made him meditative. Was it worth living, that monotonous business life of his? Would not the time ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... by one, beneath derisive skies, The victims bare, bewildered heads arise: Tales of the passing of the spirit, graced With humour blinding as the doom it faced: Stark tales of ribaldry that broke aside To tears, by laughter swallowed ere they dried: Tales to which neither grace nor gain accrue, But only (Allah be exalted!) true, And only, as the Seraph showed that night, ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... the wetness oozes about your moccasins from the soggy earth with every step you take; when you look about you and realize that somehow, before you can get a mouthful to banish that before-breakfast ill-humour, you must brave cold water in an attempt to find enough fuel to cook with, then your philosophy and early religious training avail you little. The first ninety-nine times you are forced to do this ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... water: it was cold, but not too cold. Yet in a fortnight's time it would not be pleasant to bathe. However, people had their whims, and he mused on the scheme of the universe which ordained that certain people should have whims, and that others should humour those whims whether they liked it or not. Many people—many of his fellow-workers—talked of the day when the universal levelling would take place and when all men could be equal. Petrushka did not much believe ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... short, or a cheek sunken, I fancy that you do not succeed well in giving the impression of the person,—not so well as when you interpret at once to the heart the essential moral qualities of the face—its humour, gravity, sadness, spirituality. If I should tell you in physical terms how a hand feels, you would be no wiser for my account than a blind man to whom you describe a face in detail. Remember that when a blind man recovers his sight, ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... school-teacher had gone and the southwest room was vacant, she begged to have it in exchange for her own. Sophia hesitated a moment; she eyed the widow sharply. There was something about the large, roseate face worn in firm lines of humour ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... no nearer to the object of his visit, and, perhaps thinking it would be well to humour me, he fetched a horn and tried our Hanyards ale. This gave me a chance of taking stock ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... difficult to know the temper of speaker and audience from a printed report, it is due alike to Dr. R., to the whole Assembly, and the galleries, to say, that he, in reading these resolutions, and throughout his speech, evinced great good-humour and kindness of feeling, which was equally manifested by the Assembly and spectators, repeatedly, while he was ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... passed three or four headlands before the girl halted and waited for her attendant, who came up muttering to herself and grumbling; compliments from Jean and caresses from Hilda restored her good humour, and the work of the evening commenced. "Follow me closely," said the girl; "let your eye be keen and your step firm: the descent is no child's sport." Jean looked at the cliff, fitted for the flight of gull ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... you've heard through common rumour, The Princess Turandot's ferocious humour Has many princes caused to lose their life In seeking to obtain her as a wife. Her beauty is so wonderful, that all As willing victims to her mandate fall; In vain do various painters daily vie To limn her rosy cheek, her flashing eye, Her perfect ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... soon made themselves as comfortable as they could in their new quarters, and suffered patiently the disagreeables of French lodgings. They repaired their boats, often broken by the transit from London, and behaved with good humour in proportion to their good sense. Even the grumblers were satisfied, because they were provided with a new set of grievances; and so things passed off better than was expected by those who knew the real circumstances of the venture. It was the first regatta of the kind, and doubtless ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... of chess. It is the same in conversation. I never know, or, if my sub-consciousness knows, I never remember, who anybody is. I speak to people about scandals with which they are connected. I frankly give my mind about Mr. DULL's poems to Mr. DULL's sister-in-law. I give free play to my humour about the Royal Academy in talk with the wife of an Academician of whom I never heard. I am like Jeanie Deans, at her interview with Queen CAROLINE, when, as the MACALLUM MORE said, she first brought down the Queen, and then Lady SUFFOLK, right and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 23, 1892 • Various
... Tourville had also taken some exceptions at the freedoms of my pen; and Mr. Lovelace, after his way, took upon him to reconcile us; and did it at the expense of all three; and with such an infinite run of humour and raillery, that we had nothing to do but to laugh at what he said, and at one another. I can deal tolerably with him at my pen; but in conversation he has no equal. In short, it was his day. He was glad, he said, to find himself alive; and his two friends, clapping and rubbing their hands ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... different from yourself, could exist in Europe in the nineteenth century. It is said that those who can converse with Irish peasants in their own native tongue, form far higher opinions of their appreciation of the beautiful, and of the elements of humour and pathos in their hearts, than do those who know their thoughts only through the medium of English. I know from my own observation that this is quite the case with the Indians of North America, and it is unquestionably so with the Gipsy. When ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... greatest miracle of all," broke in Emlyn, with grim humour. "Still we thank you from our hearts and will wear the relics if they do not take them from us. Hark! they are calling you. Farewell, and all blessings be on ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... The humour and high spirits of Friendship's Garland were, however, but the gilding of a pill, the artificial sweetening of a nauseous draught. In reality, and joking apart, the book is an indictment at the bar of Geist of the English people as represented ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... a couple of matches and tumbled down-stairs twice before breakfast, so that after that hurried meal Bell tied him to one of the verandah posts, that he might not commit any act vicious enough to keep them at home. As he had a huge pocket full of apricots he was in perfect good-humour, not taking his confinement at all to heart, inasmuch as it commanded a full view of the scene of action. His amiability was further increased, moreover, by the possession of a bright new policeman's whistle, which was carefully tied to his button-hole by a neat little silk cord, ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... eyes there was never the light of love and humour—no amiable jollity. He would come fawning, industriously wagging his hinder parts, like puppies of more favoured degree; but all the while his black eyes were alert, hard, infinitely suspicious and avaricious. Not once, I am sure, did ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... two hours in the house, before it was evident that both parties were on an excellent footing together. The old lady was seen to come from the best—the parlour we mean to say—of the Mermaid, with very unusual symptoms of good humour on her countenance, considering (as Betsy the "maid of all work" whispered to "Jack Ostler,") that her visage had generally a "vinegar cruet" association; though we would not take upon ourselves to assert that brandy had not a greater share in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... humour of the explanation by a laugh, intended to be respectful to the establishment in its control, which spread along their line, and ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... Jasmin composed at this period of his life was that which he entitled Mous Soubenis, or 'My Recollections.' In none of his poems did he display more of the characteristic qualities of his mind, his candour, his pathos, and his humour, than in these verses. He used the rustic dialect, from which he never afterwards departed. He showed that the Gascon was not yet a dead language; and he lifted it to the level of the most serious themes. His ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... number of camels. I gave him great hopes that his request might be complied with, even if he asked for an hundred camels, as I alleged he was entitled to the privilege as being a Mameluke. Then finding him in excellent good humour, I again urged my desire of being concealed in his house; and having entirely gained his confidence, he gave me many instructions for the prosecution of my intended journey, and counselled me to repair to the court of the king of Decham, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... would cast it into the fire and burn it." "Never," comments a modern writer,[684] "had the King spoken a truer word, or described himself more accurately. Few would have thought that, under so careless and splendid an exterior—the very ideal of bluff, open-hearted good-humour and frankness—there lay a watchful and secret eye, that marked what was going on, without appearing to mark it; kept its own counsel until it was time to strike, and then struck, as suddenly and remorselessly as a beast of prey. It was strange to witness so much ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... Credit Household Superstitions Opera Lions Women and Wives The Italian Opera Lampoons True and False Humour Sa Ga Yean Qua Rash Tow's Impressions of London The Vision of Marraton Six Papers on Wit Friendship Chevy-Chase (Two Papers) A Dream of the Painters Spare Time (Two Papers) Censure The English Language The Vision of Mirza Genius Theodosius and Constantia ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... rejoiced thereat that she would have kissed his hand, but he snatched it from her and breathed upon it thrice, whereby we could easily see that he himself was nowise in earnest with his defensio. Soon after he took leave in an ill-humour, after commending her to the care of the Most High, and begged that I would make my farewell as short as might be, seeing that he purposed to return home that very day, the which, alas! I ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... in real life, it is possible—probable, in fact—that we were in no way edified or amused. Not the veriest ghost of a smile, it is likely, flickered across our faces. But reproduced by the subtle humour of the artist, the inherent comedy of the situation stands revealed, and we chuckle. And our enjoyment is the greater for the skill with which the means are concealed by which this magical transformation is effected. We feel that ...
— Frank Reynolds, R.I. • A.E. Johnson
... sarcastically enjoying the scene. Among the audience, however, was another gifted woman, who might far more legitimately have been shocked at the utter wreck of every musical means of expression in the singer—who might have been more naturally forgiven, if some humour of self-glorification had made her severely just—not worse—to an old prima donna;—I mean Madame Viardot.—Then, and not till then, she was hearing Madame Pasta.—But Truth will always answer to the appeal ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... a bad people!" he said over and over again. Then he smiled, with some sense of the humour of ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... the Maid be delivered, or if she sends you sure and certain tidings under her own hand that she wills you to put off this humour, will you then be persuaded, ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... his keys; he did not like being "rubbed down," but he submitted to the process with great good-humour. It was the cosiest old kitchen; the table was the whitest, and the pots and pans the brightest, that could be imagined; and Jane, the cook, groomed him down as though brushing a damp jacket with a dry glass-cloth was the most enjoyable pastime in life. ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... with distinguished economy of means. He dispenses with all superfluous gesture, as does the great French illustrator. Grock is entirely right about clownery. You are either funny or you are not. No amount of study will produce the gift for humour. It is there, or it isn't. Grock's gift for musicianship is a singular combination to find with the rest of his artistry. It goes with the remarkably refined look in his face, however, as he sits upon the back of the seatless chair, ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... the letterpress is not unworthy of the humour and fidelity of the illustrations. The various Weasels, Rabbits, and Foxes, are brought into one little tale; the Wonderful Hare-Hunt into another; the Tea-Party of Kittens, and the Marten and Tabby, ...
— The Comical Creatures from Wurtemberg - Second Edition • Unknown
... plain sailing—and fighting. I have read no more thrilling account of the Battle of Jutland than is to be found here. The author does it so well because he tells his story with great simplicity and without what I believe he would call "windiness." Best of all, he has a nice sense of humour, and would even, I believe, have discovered the funny side of Scapa, if there had been one. "ETIENNE," whose short stories of naval life were amusing, makes a distinct advance in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... I not bid thee be sparing of speech? Hold thy peace and follow me. Thou must know that the young lady, to whom I shall carry thee, loves to have her own way and hates to be crossed, so if thou fall in with her humour, thou shalt come to thy desire of her." And my brother said, "I will not thwart her in aught." Then she went on and he followed her, eager to enjoy what she had promised him, till she brought him to a fine large house, richly furnished and full ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... the patience of Job, and a conscience made of stretching leather to deal with the Kruboy in the African climate, and live. In his better manifestations he reminds me of that charming personality, the Irish peasant, for though he lacks the sparkle, he is full of humour, and is the laziest and the most industrious of mankind. He lies and tells the truth in such a hopelessly uncertain manner that you cannot rely on him for either. He is ungrateful and faithful to the death, honest and thievish, all in one ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... far I will humour you, Mr. Lindsay; though from what I hear, in the Carnatic and Bengal the British officers, civil and military, do not hesitate to accept large sums from ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... him, but nothing would do but that she should get the mysterious paper. At last, to humour him, she dived under the bunk and found an iron camp-oven, and in it a single envelope. Just to see what was exciting him she opened the envelope, and found a crumpled piece of paper which she read over to herself. It was the original certificate ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... stirs the fire with the poker to test the humour of a lover. If the fire blaze brightly, the lover is good-humoured; ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various
... golden-brown hair to frame a face full of varying expression. Her eyes were never for two consecutive hours of the same shade, but were more often blue than grey. People who envied her smile said that she cultivated a sense of humour in order to show her teeth. Perhaps they were right; but there was no doubt that her habit of talking with gesticulation would never have grown upon her unless she had known that her hands were not ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... that human creatures could successfully be paired and bred after the manner of dogs or horses. He no longer holds that view. Not only does he no longer hold that view, but he has written about it in "Mankind in the Making" with such smashing sense and humour, that I find it difficult to believe that anybody else can hold it either. It is true that his chief objection to the proposal is that it is physically impossible, which seems to me a very slight objection, and almost negligible compared with the others. ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... find in England is that you're all wonderfully serious, wonderfully courteous, wonderfully kind"—he bowed to his hostess; "but, you'll excuse my saying so, I don't find enough wit or lightness for my temperament. For humour I have to ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... enjoyment under a pretence of unobservant good-nature. She observed with malice. It is tolerably certain that Miss Mitford was wrong in accepting the description of her in private life as "perpendicular, precise, taciturn, a poker of whom every one is afraid." Miss Austen, one is sure, was a lady of good-humour, as well as a novelist of good-humour; but the good-humour had a flavour. It was the good-humour of the satirist, not of the sentimentalizer. One can imagine Jane Austen herself speaking as Elizabeth ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... man, who referred grandly to "my wife," and then to "the madame," and finally to "my landlady," in a rather elaborate attempt at jocularity, laughed alone at his merriment along this line, and never knew that no one cared for his humour. ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... Mozart's Nozze di Figaro? Here is all the wit that one wants, yet the level is kept high throughout. It is the same in literature. We have absurd, banal pieces, said to be humorous, such as The Glad Eye, which really contain not one-millionth the humour that there is in a noble comedy like Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, or As You Like It, or a Shavian play like John Bull's Other Island. Man is too great a thing ever to be of his nature low and banal. We have in ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... then," said Rosco, thinking it right to humour one who had been more like a brother than a servant to him during his long illness, "stoop down. ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... the lion at first looks at them very calmly, and very often wags his tail as if in a playful humour; but when they approach nearer, he growls, as if to warn them off. Then, as they continue to approach, he gradually draws up his hind-legs under his body, ready for a spring at them as soon as they are within distance, and you ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... extended in such a way that he could nip and slap you with it very painfully. He used this finger constantly to pound and drill his comrades, all being done of course in the height of glee, frolic, and good-humour. This finger, no doubt by the unlawful use to which he put it, at one time developed a painful tumour, to the delight of those who were in the habit of receiving punishment from it. James pulled a long face, and ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... dog into her lap, 'we shall none of us hear a bit of it! But at least it is a comfort that this business is over! You needn't creep under sofas now, there's nobody to tread upon your dainty little paws. What is to be done, Mab, to get out of a savage humour—except thinking how good-natured poor ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with the abrupt ways of the godfather, frowned at him with disapprobation. Nevertheless, thanks to Maurice, who made a point of laughing at everything Adhemar said, they had a gay luncheon, and Adhemar himself, appreciating the consideration shown for his palate, cast aside his ill humour and enjoyed with full indulgence the present hour, the savoury ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... use, Clive?" he asked with a sort of sad humour. "Is it necessary for you, too, to follow the ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... his wit will not arrive suddenly at the dignity of the ancients, let him not yet fall out with it, quarrel, or be over hastily angry; offer to turn it away from study in a humour, but come to it again upon better cogitation; try another time with labour. If then it succeed not, cast not away the quills yet, nor scratch the wainscot, beat not the poor desk, but bring all to ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... Mother, nor Brother, nor Sister, nor Servant, no nor the very Cattel that his Father had, could escape these Curses of his. I say, that even the bruit Beasts when he drove them, or rid upon them, if they pleased not his humour, they must be sure to partake of his curse. {35e} He would wish their Necks broke, their Legs broke, their Guts out, or that the Devil might fetch them, or the like: and no marvel, for he that is so hardy to wish damnation, or other bad curses to himself, or dearest relations; will not ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... little sense of humour, Harold was not as dense as Mildred thought. He saw that her spirits were forced, that she was in ill-health, and required a long rest. So he was not surprised to hear in the morning that she was too tired to come down to breakfast; she had a cup of tea in her room, and when she ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... not sure that Mr. GRANVILLE BARKER'S faithful followers are being quite kindly entreated by him. He happens to have a keen sense of humour and for some little while he has been trying, with a very grave face, to see how much they will swallow. This time, everybody else except the initiated can see the bulge in his cheek ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 18, 1914 • Various
... now to think well, Now I'm in another humour for to drink well, Then fill us up a beer-bowl, boys, that we May drink it, drink it merrily; No knavish spy shall understand, For, if it should be known, 'Tis ten to ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... and he let her argue, urging with pretended indifference that, "That flax's dead ripe now an' if it shatters out on th' ground you kin blame yourself," adding with grim humour, "There's nothin' like th' sound of money t' bring folks t' their senses. It's good as a pinch of pepper under th' nose of ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... speaking of are happily ignorant of such enjoyment of money, for they know no other use of it than that of promoting mirth and good humour; for which end they generously bring their gains into a common stock, whereby they whose gains are small have an equal enjoyment with those whose profits are larger, excepting only that a mark of ignominy is affixed on those who do not contribute ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... See through a wine-glass full of claret; then you see both darkly and brightly. But, gentlemen, if you are all in the humour for reading papers, I will read you the first half of my next Sunday's ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... steeples no longer jangled forth a dissonant peal. The wren, to seek for which used to be the sport dedicated to the holytide, was left unpursued and unslain. Party spirit had come among these simple people, and destroyed their good humour, while it left them their ignorance. Even the races, a sport generally interesting to people of all ranks, were no longer performed, because they were no longer interesting. The gentlemen were divided by feuds hitherto unknown, and each seemed to hold it scorn to be pleased with the same ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... Spilleman, With his humour the kemps must bear; And thither came King Sigfrid Hoon, To his ...
— Grimmer and Kamper - The End of Sivard Snarenswayne and other ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... Commissioner, opened the first Parliament since 1673-74. James secured an Act making the right of succession to the Crown independent of differences of religion; he, of course, was a Catholic. The Test Act was also passed, a thing so self-contradictory in its terms that any man might take it whose sense of humour overcame his sense of honour. Many refused, including a number of the conformist ministers. Argyll took the Test "as far as it is consistent with itself and with the ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... was a strange person. Full of acerbity against everything and every one—especially against women—he was railing from morning to night, sometimes very aptly, sometimes rather stupidly, but always with gusto. His ill-humour almost approached puerility; his laugh, the sound of his voice, his whole being seemed steeped in venom. Darya Mihailovna gave Pigasov a cordial reception; he amused her with his sallies. They were certainly absurd enough. ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... fine, and I'm not in the humour for a cigar, and Froggy is grinning like a hyaena, I never venture to hint that he's ...
— Symbolic Logic • Lewis Carroll
... Distinction was considered as incomplete in its establishment, if it did not possess a certain whimsical Character called a Fool; who was either to afford amusement to his witty Master by the real singularity of his Humour,—or to act as a foil to his foolish Lord by well-timed displays of affected Folly.—These appendages to Greatness have long been laid aside.—Indeed, the present Age, which is remarkable for its refinements, has, in the ...
— The First of April - Or, The Triumphs of Folly: A Poem Dedicated to a Celebrated - Duchess. By the author of The Diaboliad. • William Combe
... they said to each other, "do not be conceited because you have got your best frocks on. You now think well of yourselves, because you fancy you are well dressed; by-and-by, when you get to Lady Noble's, you will find Miss Augusta much finer dressed than yourselves; then you will be out of humour with yourselves for as little reason as you now ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... by Levick, the Surgeon of Campbell's Party. It is almost entirely about Adelie penguins. The author spent the greater part of a summer living, as it were, upon sufferance, in the middle of one of the largest penguin rookeries in the world. He has described the story of their crowded life with a humour with which, perhaps, we hardly credited him, and with a simplicity which many writers of children's stories might envy. If you think your own life hard, and would like to leave it for a short hour I recommend you to beg, borrow or steal this tale, and read and see how the penguins ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... speculated; sometimes dreamily she had endowed him with name and position—with qualities, too—ideal qualities suggested by his air of personal distinction—delightful qualities suggested by his dark, pleasant eyes, and by the slight suspicion of humour lurking so often on the edges ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... Guapo was in no humour for enjoying the conversation of that evening. The crocodile had "choused" him out of his favourite supper. The monkey was literally knocked to "smithereens," and the pieces that still adhered together were daubed all over with mud. It wasn't fit meat—even ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... characteristic was a shrewd common sense, which one of his admirers suggests may have been caught by contagion in his Yorkshire living. In truth it was an innate endowment shared by others of his family. In him it was combined with a strong sense of humour which is carefully kept out of his writing, and which, as I used to fancy, must have been at times a rather awkward endowment. The evangelical party has certain weaknesses to which, so far as I know, my uncle contrived ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... the War Office to enter a strong protest at the outrage of which his brother officer had been the victim. He evidently meant to kick up no end of a row, and he had just got into his stride and was going strong and well, when he suddenly went off into a tempest of giggles. He saw the humour of the situation. He was fully persuaded that we had deliberately arrested his friend so as to get him out of the way while we managed to push the deal through ourselves, and he evidently gave us gratifying credit for being so wide-awake. It was not the slightest use our explaining ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... twinkle of humour which was in the baronet's did not reflect itself in the other's. Grell, too, was wondering whether he was fitted for domestic life. He had a taste for introspection, and was speculating how far the joyous girl who had confided her heart to his keeping ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... to which I call attention is his humour. Nowhere, surely, in the whole field of English literature, Shakespeare excepted, do you come upon a more abundant vein of humour than Carlyle's, though I admit that the quality of the ore is not of the finest. ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... not see the joke any more than Hans had done, but the rest of us appreciated the Mazitu sense of humour very much. ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... will not contend about it. It hath several descriptions, notations, and definitions. [1024]Fracastorius, in his second book of intellect, calls those melancholy, "whom abundance of that same depraved humour of black choler hath so misaffected, that they become mad thence, and dote in most things, or in all, belonging to election, will, or other manifest operations of the understanding." [1025] Melanelius out of Galen, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... was not till 1817 that English gold and silver became current in Ireland, and Irish pennies and halfpennies were struck as late as the reign of George IV. The Scottish coins came to an end more than a century earlier. The name of one of them, however, the "bawbee," has survived in popular humour. Some people say that the name is merely a corruption of "baby," referring to the portrait of Queen Mary as an infant. It seems to me as unlikely a ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... society. Passion predominated above reason, and received its impulse solely from casual circumstances. It was, in fact, accidental, whether it should operate amiably or malignantly; and the felicity of one half of the human species depended upon the precarious and ever vacillating humour of the other. Virtue was scarcely seen upon the earth, except at occasional and often distant visitations, or as she shed a fitful and flickering light into the retreats of systematic philosophy. Woman was at the mercy of every wind—to-day honoured—to-morrow ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... enjoyed relating the incidents of his past life, and, when not preoccupied by affairs of importance, his conversation was full of charm. The foreigners who visited him were always much impressed with his superiority, while his lively humour, his freedom, and that air of good nature he knew so well how to adopt, all captivated his visitors. The expression of his face was exceedingly mobile, and quickly communicated itself to the men who ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... said Genvil; "nor shake your sword my way. I tell thee, Amelot, were my weapon to cross with yours, never flail sent abroad more chaff than I would make splinters of your hatched and gilded toasting-iron. Look you, there are gray- bearded men here that care not to be led about on any boy's humour. For me, I stand little upon that; and I care not whether one boy or another commands me. But I am the Lacy's man for the time; and I am not sure that, in marching to the aid of this Wild Wenlock, we shall do an errand the Lacy will thank ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... rulers require of us. I will not depart from that determination because a strange cause has moved me to lay down mine office some few days sooner than law requires.' He stopped a moment, looking troubled; then he resumed: 'Not my own humour, nor the pride of a vain consistency, holds me back from compliance. I have sought in prayer, and in study, and in discourse with my brethren, for light on this matter; but in my mind is something still ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling
... the strong drinks so amiably retailed by Madam Marx did their work, and the men lay about the floor asleep and breathing heavily. The silence succeeding the noise startled Gregorio from his sullen humour. Madam Marx came and sat beside him, weary as she was with her long labours, and talked volubly. The wine had mounted to his head, and he answered her in rapid sentences, accompanying his words with gesture and grimace. What he talked about he scarcely knew, but the woman laughed, and ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... that you realized that she was a young woman very well able to take care of herself in a difficult world. Her hair was very fair, her eyes brown and very bright, and the contrast was extraordinarily piquant. They were valiant eyes, full of spirit; eyes, also, that saw the humour of things. And her mouth was the mouth of one who laughs easily. Her chin, small like the rest of her, was strong; and in the way she held herself there was a boyish jauntiness. She looked—and ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... in no jesting humour. I tell you that I come from Space, or, since you will not understand what Space means, from the Land of Three Dimensions whence I but lately looked down upon your Plane which you call Space forsooth. From that position of advantage I discerned all ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... all sides of life, for friends, lovers, art, literature, knowledge, humour, politics, and for the little red cloud away there in ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... puts me in a better humour and disposes me to sleep, you know," she would finish, brightly, "that I always read aloud to Fergus in the evening; we were going through a course of Thackeray—we were in the middle of 'Philip on his way through the world' when the accident happened. ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... it unfolded itself, in all its difficulty and urgency, so he seemed, in his mind, to be discovering wondrous ways of dealing with it; these mysterious discoveries seemed to give him confidence, and his confidence was communicated to the patient by means of faint sallies of humour. He was a highly skilled doctor. This fact, however, had no share in his popularity; which was due solely to his rare gift of taking a case very seriously ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... So to humour this fragile woman, and to keep from thinking of her own trouble, Kate told the story of her Leghorn hat and ostrich plume, and many things besides, for she was not her usual terse self with her new friend who had to ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... its happening so. Mr. Woodhouse considered eight persons at dinner together as the utmost that his nerves could bear—and here would be a ninth—and Emma apprehended that it would be a ninth very much out of humour at not being able to come even to Hartfield for forty-eight hours without ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... call yourselves civilized! Do you not discern, in this hideous character, the God, on whom you lavish your incense? Are not the descriptions given you of the divinity, visibly borrowed from the implacable, jealous, revengeful, sanguinary, capricious inconsiderate humour of man, who has not cultivated his reason? O men! You adore only a great savage, whom you regard, however, as a model to imitate, as an amiable master, as a ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... duties of our Callings, Not from any disloyalty or undutifulnesse to the Kings Majestie to whom we heartily wish, and to his posterity after him, a happy Reigne over these Dominions, Nor from any factious disposition or siding with this or that party whatsoever, Nor from any contentious humour about light or small matters, Nor from any favour to or complyance with Sectaries, against whose cursed opinions and ungodly practises, we have heretofore given ample testimony, and are still obliged by Solemn Covenant to endeavour the extirpation of Heresie and Schism; ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... be very careful. If we can get Trevose—well, it's a nice thing, isn't it? But we must be careful. You are no fool, Nick; Naomi has her little weaknesses like other folks; find 'em out and humour 'em. Now you know how things are, and we must be going or we shall be caught by the tide. There'll be ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... jumped with the old man's humour. Not only did he shake hands with me, but he also accorded me the nose salutation. The rubbing of noses is now disused; and when a Maori confers it on a Pakeha it means an extra display of feeling, almost a making brotherhood. ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... little gem of a dwelling, situated in a nice shady place, in the midst of a luxurious garden. Here, too, we dismounted and entered the house, for we knew the host—a most genial fellow, whose honest English face it was always a pleasure to see: it was so full of kindness and good humour. We took a stroll round the garden while the sun was setting, and then turned in for a cup of good tea, which "missus" had got ready ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... the water, as there are no eyelids. The globe in front is somewhat depressed, and is furnished behind with a muscle, which serves to lengthen or flatten it, according to the necessities of the animal. The crystalline humour, which in quadrupeds is flattened, is, in fishes, nearly globular. The organ of smelling in fishes is large, and is endued, at its entry, with a dilating and contracting power, which is employed as the wants of the animal may require. It is mostly by the acuteness of ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... laughter, at least—was perhaps mostly courage. If for no other reason, one would hope for a hereafter—so that Charles II and Heine may have met and compared notes upon dying. Heine was indeed an "unconscionable long time a-dying," but then he died with such brilliant patience, with such good humour, and, in the meanwhile, contrived to write such haunting poetry, such ...
— Old Love Stories Retold • Richard Le Gallienne
... was in a pleasant and expansive humour that evening. The new cook was an unqualified success, and he was conscious of having dined exceedingly well. He sat in a comfortable easy-chair before a blazing wood fire, he had just lit one of his favourite brand of cigarettes, and his wife, whom ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... each authentic and each so different. Beneath Mr. Cobb's fun is a mass of ripe experience and sagacity. However playful he may be on the surface one is aware of an almost Johnsonian universality beneath. It would not be extravagant to call his humour the bloom on the fruit of the tree of knowledge (I am talking now only of the three as I found them in conversation). Don Marquis, while equally serious (and all the best humourists are serious at heart), has a more grotesque fancy and is more of a reformer, or, at any rate, a rebel. His dissatisfaction ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... of the lamented "Bully," I must mention some other incidents in his career which will give a fair illustration of the notoriety he had acquired, and of his keen sense of humour. Long before these two gentlemen (Bully Hayes and Ben Peese) had commenced to exploit the Ellice, Gilbert, Kingsmill, Marshall and Caroline Groups, Bully, then owner of a small, fast-sailing schooner, had made unto himself a name—particularly as a connoisseur ...
— Concerning "Bully" Hayes - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... wonder the men were in a good humour now. For my part, I was horribly cast down. Should the scheme he had now sketched prove feasible, Silver, already doubly a traitor, would not hesitate to adopt it. He had still a foot in either camp, and there was no doubt he would prefer wealth and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and half daddy, As humour inconstantly leans; The man must be patient and steady, That weds with a ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... us, and Mr. Hill jumped out. He was an odd-looking man, with a bald, benevolent forehead, a pair of honest brown eyes, which glared about with a sort of fierce good-humour, white hair, and white thick-set whiskers. Mrs. Hill sat within the carriage, a mild-looking fat little lady, with rosy cheeks and a piping voice, holding hugged in her arms something which looked like a bundle ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... proceeds are fluttered for a moment in the face of the last survivor, who is probably deaf, so that he cannot even hear of his success—and who is certainly dying, so that he might just as well have lost. The peculiar poetry and even humour of the scheme is now apparent, since it is one by which nobody concerned can possibly profit; but its fine, sportsmanlike character endeared ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... intimate and tender feeling. His parables show that He had an open and observant eye for all the life around Him. To every appeal He responded with an insight and delicacy of consideration which betokened that He Himself had sounded the depths of human experience and knew what was in man. Humour, irony, and pathos in turn are revealed ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... any word, she turned about, obscured her face, as not seeming well contented; and in that humour, her husband with divers others, we all left her two or three hours repenting myself to have writ she could speak English. But not long after she began to talke, remembering me well what courtesies she had done: saying, 'You did promise Powhatan what was ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... different beliefs, different habits and customs of life—it carries them into strange and unexpected paths. I am not going to embark you to-night upon these vast controversies, but when we talk about education, are we not getting very near the root of the case? Now to-night we are not in the humour—I am sure you are not, I certainly am not—for philosophising. Somebody is glad of it. I will tell you what I think of—as I have for a good many months past—I think first of the burden of responsibility weighing on the governing men at Calcutta and Simla and ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... from her knees, she obeyed his summons. When she had performed the trifling service he required, she returned to her prayers. Four successive times, for the most insignificant of purposes, she was sent for: each time, with unwearied good humour, she complied, and resumed her devotions without a shadow of discontent or annoyance. On resuming her book the last time that this occurred, great was her astonishment in finding the antiphon, which ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... returned the boy, relapsing into the mother-tongue, which, except it be spoken in good humour, always ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... was not his only admirable characteristic. He had, also, a dependable sense of humour. It came to his relief now—he thought of his host, a chuckle throttling the beginnings of a second sigh deep down in ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... his tongue, but with his eyes—that is with his spectacles—with his ears, with his nose, with his palate, with all his senses and organs. He was a highly upright young man, whose only fault was that his sense of comedy, or of the humour of things, had never been specifically disengaged from his several other senses. He vaguely felt that something should be done about this, and in a general manner proposed to do it, for he was on his way to explore a society abounding in ...
— Pandora • Henry James
... concerned, it has unfortunately led them to suppose that those characteristics which they possess in so eminent a degree are proportionately lacking in the English character, which thereby incurs their contempt. Having been over-complimented on their own humour, they have determined that the Englishman is slow-witted, with no sense of fun—an opinion in itself so lacking in appreciation of its own absurdity as to be self-confounding. Too well assured of their own chivalrousness (a foible ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... American worked harder than any one, and always with unfailing good-humour. There were times when he seemed to be furious, raging out in language especially his own, the vocabulary being wonderful, the names he called astounding in their fluency, novelty, and peculiarity; still the objects of these displays of temper were never his fellow-travellers, ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... aid of his valet, who attended on horseback, he contrived to bring Mr. Sampson safe to an inn in Edinburgh,—for hotels in those days there were none,—without any other accident than arose from his straying twice upon the road. On one occasion he was recovered by Barnes, who understood his humour, when, after engaging in close colloquy with the schoolmaster of Moffat, respecting a disputed quantity in Horace's 7th Ode, Book ll., the dispute led on to another controversy, concerning the exact meaning of the word Malobathro, in that lyric effusion. His second ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... believe that beautiful, sumptuous Nina Childe, with her wit, her humour, her imagination, loved this neutral little fellow; yet she made no secret of doing so. We tried to frame a theory that would account for it. 'It's the maternal instinct,' suggested one. 'It's her chivalry,' ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... would be a very dull or a very curmudgeonly person who should fail to see or refuse to acknowledge "fun" in the history of Hadji or Hadgi Stavros. The mixture of sense, science, stupidity, and unconscious humour[417] in the German narrator; the satire on the toleration of brigandage by government in Greece (it must be confessed that, of all the reductions to the absurd of parliamentary and constitutional arrangements ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... long she would sleep. But, unfortunately, he cannot provide against the disturbing effect of hunger, so he fears she might not sleep above two nights and a day at the most—a result that would not be worth the trouble of the experiment. She takes all his jokes in good-humour, as indeed she takes everything which does not positively interfere with her favourite indulgence. '"Ah, little she'll reck if ye let her sleep on," ought,' says he, 'to be her motto, being applicable to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... or "vers de societe." These titles, like other parts of the nomenclature of the poetic art, are not satisfying. Why "smoothly written verse, where a boudoir decorum is or ought always to be preserved: where sentiment never surges into passion, and where humour never overflows into boisterous merriment" should be conventionally called "society verse," or "occasional verse," is not very clear. To write "society verse" is to be the laureate of the cultured, leisured, pleasure-loving ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... me—leave that to me!" said Melrose with an answering good humour. "Stable and carriage expenses are the deuce. There never was a coachman yet that didn't rob his employer. Well, thank you; I'm glad to have had this talk with you, and now, I go to bed. Beastly cold, I must say, this ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... enormously tall white post with iron rods projecting at the top. This was the target, and it was highly amusing and characteristic to watch these burghers gathered round and firing at the bird or some other object on the top. Now they were all returning carrying their bows, and in high good-humour. A young and rubicund priest was of the party, regarded evidently with affection and pride by his companions; for all that he seemed to say and do was applauded, and greeted with obstreperous Flemish laughter. When an old woman came to offer cakes from her basket for sale, he convulsed his friends ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... breathe. Perhaps you have imagined that ill-humour or caprice had till now guided my pen; but, could I praise the talent of MOLE as he deserves, you would renounce ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... the girl frequently, to hang about her to the amusement of onlookers, to keep alive her passion by look and hint and innuendo, to excite her by advances when he was in the humour, and studiously repulse her when she made any, to act almost as if he were her fiance, and curtly resent it if she ever assumed he was more than an ordinary friend—this line of action he saw no fault ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... so beautiful as she was, which was true in a sense and pleased her very much, for in whatever respects she differed from them, in common with the rest of her sex she loved a compliment. Emboldened by her good humour, he had ventured to suggest that being rested and having restored Little Bonsa, he would be glad to return with her gifts to his own country. Next instant he was sorry, for as soon as she understood his meaning she grew almost white ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... remember thy other beautiful ranchos. Dios de mi alma!" she added with a flash of humour, "I revere San Juan Bautista for your husband's sake, but I weep not that I shall visit you there no more. Every day I think to hear that the shaking earth of that beautiful valley has opened its jaws and ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... in a little thriving posture, when the three unnatural rogues, their own countrymen too, in mere humour, and to insult them, came and bullied them, and told them the island was theirs; that the governor, meaning me, had given them possession of it, and nobody else had any right to it; and, damn them, they should build no houses upon their ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... speech as it deserved, in very courteous terms. This set a pleasanter humour upon all. Yet some restraint abode. Each sat, it seemed, as a man upon his guard. My cousin watched Gambara's every look whenever the latter turned to speak to Giuliana; the Cardinal-legate did the like by him; and Messer Fifanti watched ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... bestow'd By thy own hand, till fresh they shone and glow'd; All this, and more endearing still than all, Thy constant flow of love, that knew no fall, Ne'er roughen'd by those cataracts and breaks, That humour[338-4] interposed too often makes; All this still legible in memory's page, And still to be so to my latest age, Adds joy to duty, makes me glad to pay Such honours to thee as my numbers[338-5] may; Perhaps a frail memorial, but sincere, Not ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... History of Henry Earl of Moreland, the first part of which was published in 1765; and the fifth and last in 1770. The characters of this book, which relates the education of an ideal nobleman by an ideal merchant-prince, are gifted with a "passionate and tearful sensibility," and reflect the real humour and tenderness of the writer. Brooke's religious and philanthropic temper recommended the book to John Wesley, who edited (1780) an abridged edition, and to Charles Kingsley, who published it with a eulogistic notice in 1859. Brooke had a large family, but only two children survived him. His wife's ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... expression of kindliness and humour the chief shook hands with the seaman. Then the captives all descended into the hole, which was not more than four feet deep, after which the Arab shut the trap, covered it as before with a little rubbish, ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... the cloves out of the cracks in the stone flagging—and, of course, he needn't have done this, unless he had an abnormal sense of humour—he handed me the tattered, disreputable-looking copy of 'A Modern Circe,' with a bow that wouldn't have disgraced a Chesterfield, and then went back to his easel, while I fled after Aunt Celia and ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Sir James sarcastically. "Sit down at the end of a day's tramp, when you are tired out, at a comfortable library table, with a light of a shaded lamp, and write me a good long letter? Rubbish, sir! You will neither of you be in the humour for writing right away there in ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... uniformly a demeanour of dignified courtesy and deference. He was very tenacious of his own opinions—confident in the propriety of his view of a case—apparently so, always, for he could assume a confidence though he had it not—and would persevere in his efforts to overcome the adverse humour of judges and juries, to an extent never exceeded; yet withal so blandly, so unassumingly, so mildly, that he never irritated or provoked any one. His temper and self-possession were unequalled, and approached, as nearly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... so winning as an imperishable sense of humour. Vivaciousness, and an infectious gaiety which radiates like the sun and dispels the shadows of depression in a moment—these were Kitty's chief assets. She had danced through childhood like a sunbeam. She had been the ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... produced much sensation. Brougham is now speaking upon the Scotch Appeal Commission Bill, and has been describing the Chancellor as Prime Minister, and constantly denominating Lord Liverpool "My noble coadjutor," "the noble Earl with whom I have the honour to act," &c. &c., with much humour. Sidmouth slunk away without voting. It is most vexatious that the Bill should have been lost, as with common exertion to enter proxies, it might have been carried. You will see the Chancellor denied the possibility of any man who refused the oath of supremacy being a loyal subject! ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... time. In his exile he had played the king with some dignity; he was even believed to have learnt some political wisdom by his six years' residence in England. If he had not character, [203] he had at least some tact and some sense of humour; and if not a profound philosopher, he was at least an accomplished epicurean. He hated the zealotry of his brother, the Count of Artois. He was more inclined to quiz the emigrants than to sacrifice anything on their ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... which is, emphatically, not mine. But to think of him in connection with such a girl as Marjorie Lindon,—preposterous! Why, the man's as dry as a stick,—drier! And cold as an iceberg. Nothing but a politician, absolutely. He a lover!—how I could fancy such a stroke of humour setting all the benches in a roar. Both by education, and by nature, he was incapable of even playing such a part; as for being the thing,—absurd! If you were to sink a shaft from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet, you would find inside him nothing but ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... had been in the sunniest humour throughout; had made his first appearance at Verner's Pride in bursts of laughter, heartily grasping the hands of Lionel, of Sibylla, and boasting of the "fun" he had had in playing the ghost. Captain Cannonby, ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... black clump and a couple of lanterns. The clump was in motion, and the lanterns swung as though carried by men walking. It was a patrol. And though it was merely crossing his line of march he judged it wiser to get out of eyeshot as speedily as he could. He was not in the humour to be challenged, and he was conscious of making a very conspicuous mark upon the snow. Just on his left hand there stood a great hotel, with some turrets and a large porch before the door; it was half ruinous, he remembered, and had long stood empty; ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... for a while gives way to this humour. Whatever may be the danger of Don Valerian and the others, he does not believe his sweetheart much exposed. The little brown-skinned damsel is not in the proscribed list; and the ex-Ranger, strong in the confidence of having her heart, with the promise of her hand, has less ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... very readily encourage any writer or printer, who, at the hazard of his life or fortune, will give them any information: and, while this humour prevails, there never will be wanting some daring adventurer who will write in defence of liberty, and some zealous or avaricious printer who will disperse ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... enchanting! for taste so refin'd Had never appear'd with such splendor combin'd. The Dance was all gaiety, frolic, and glee; The Music transporting! the Supper exquis! The Beaux were all prime, and the flow'r of the nation, The Belles were all style, beauty, grace, fascination: Good humour presided, where pleasure was law, And the guests, more or less, ...
— The Peacock and Parrot, on their Tour to Discover the Author of "The Peacock At Home" • Unknown
... He seemed to have a sense of humour. I felt sure that he, at least, was plumb straight. 'Sure, doc,' I said, 'I'm sorry about the tree, and I guess the new bulbs will be on me. But perhaps you'd like to know what I was doing in your garden?' 'I think the facts do call for an explanation,' he replied. 'Well, ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... a broad strip of embroidered white napery, sparkling crystal and silver, vessels of wine and platters of early fruits. About it sat a very noble company of some half-dozen men and two very resplendent women. One of these was slight and little, very dark and vivacious with eyes full of a malicious humour. The other, of very noble proportions, of a fine, willowy height, with coiled ropes of hair of a colour such as I had never dreamed could be found upon human being. It was ruddy and glowed like metal. Her face and neck—and ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... Then I went on to the rough-edging. This consists in putting a rough edge on starched collars and cuffs with a coarse file. Afterwards I was promoted to the mixing department. This is where the completed articles are packed for delivery. It requires great quickness and a nice sense of humour. For instance, you take up a pair of socks and have to decide instantly whether you will send them both to an elderly unmarried lady, or divide them impartially between two men. Our skill in creating odd socks and stockings was gratefully recognized by the Amalgamated Hosiers' ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... female elegance, female enthusiasm, hemmed her completely in; and her spirit, amid the enclosing folds, was hardly reached by those two great influences, without which no growing life can truly prosper—humour and imagination. The Baroness Lehzen—for she had been raised to that rank in the Hanoverian nobility by George IV before he died—was the real centre of the Princess's world. When Feodora married, when Uncle Leopold went to Belgium, ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... at a table; he was dressed as a monk and had the air of being in a bad humour. Laura went promptly to him and kissed his hand. Caesar bowed, and as the Cardinal did not deign to look at him, remained standing, at ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... know I've been put out of humour By something I hear very nearly each day. In a small town like ours, as you know, every rumour Gets about in a truly remarkable way. It is too much to hope for that women won't prattle, But I candidly tell you, I do feel enraged When I find that a part of their stock tittle-tattle Is that we—how ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. Sep. 12, 1891 • Various
... atmosphere above the earth, and breathed only in a visionary world. He was conversant with nothing else, and this must have been the secret by which he produced compositions so entirely spiritual. He who has daily intercourse with the world, and feels the vulgar human passions, cannot be in a humour to write poems which do not partake of ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... contriv'd it, that any truth doth now seeme distastefull for that very reason, for which errour is entertain'd—Novelty, for let but some upstart heresie be set abroach, and presently there are some out of a curious humour; others, as if they watched an occasion of singularity, will take it up for canonicall, and make it part of their creede and profession; whereas solitary truth cannot any where finde so ready entertainement; but the same Novelty which is esteemed the commendation of errour ...
— The Discovery of a World in the Moone • John Wilkins
... very good humour that night with himself and all the world. He had taken a double first in Mods., in History and Classics, after crowning a brilliant career at Eton with a Balliol Scholarship. He was stroke of his college boat, and ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... once, clouded with the King's displeasure, and it was about this time; which was occasioned by some malicious whisperer, who had told his Majesty that Dr. Donne had put on the general humour of the pulpits, and was become busy in insinuating a fear of the King's inclining to popery, and a dislike of his government; and particularly for the King's then turning the evening lectures into catechising, and expounding ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... circumstances may throw in our path, we may gradually acquire a caseful of most desirable specimens, against which it is out of the question to raise any charge of incompleteness, where incompleteness is the governing aim. Book-buying under these conditions is a humour. We are at liberty to take or leave. Because we conceive a fancy for a work by this or that author, we feel under no obligation to accommodate every scrap which he has printed, or which his friends or followers have penned. The object of our personal selection suffices us; and there perhaps ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... a fortnight ago, I see," he observed. "I wonder whether Simon put this announcement in himself, or whether brother George arranged it in his will? It would be quite like the fellow to have this posthumous wipe at Simon. George had a certain sense of humour—which Simon lacks. And there was certainly no love ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... He is never so fully occupied with old Greek and Latin MSS., but that he will immediately attend to your wants; and, as much as depends upon himself, will satisfy them most completely. Anacreon has left behind some little deposit of good humour and urbanity, which has continued to nourish the heart of his Translator; for M. Gail is yet jocose, and mirth-loving; fond of a lively repartee, whether in conversation or in writing. He may count some ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... whose love of sensation is satisfied by violent incident; and secondly, of those who are especially susceptible to the sentimental appeal. To a third class belong those who take pleasure in the agitations of sex feeling; and to a fourth, those whose sense of humour is tickled by the sallies of the literary clown. The fifth class—a very large one—consists of those who are of a habit of mind to be excited by sensations which can be associated with religion and morality. It ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... ancients from the starved proportions of these days, or the rich and graceful style of the Essayists from the fabrications of little, self-conceited biographers. In short, the whole scene is dashed off in the first style of art; the subject and humour are all over English—true to nature, and so forcible as to seize on the attention of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... No, if humour we count, The original fount Must to HUGO be ceded in freehold, Tho' of equal supplies In more subtle disguise Old GODFREY has far from ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... plough-shares, all of good breed and divided temples and all resembling moving masses of clouds. Indeed, these usually walked behind those monarchs. Besides these, O Bharata, the elephants that Yudhishthira had in his seven Akshauhinis, numbering seventy thousand with humour trickling down their trunks and from their mouths, and resembling (on that account) showering clouds, also followed the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... d'Ayen, and consequently niece of Madame de Tess, the duke's sister. She was married to M. de Lafayette when she was only seventeen years of age. By some cold or mismanagement, and total want of exercise in the prison of Olmtz, some humour has fallen into one of her ankles, that, though it does not make her absolutely lame, causes walking to be so painful and difficult to her that she moves as little as possible, and is always obliged to have a stool for her foot. She now resides with M. de Lafayette and their three children ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... not yet considered in America "good form" to appear blase, even if one is not. Being full of interest and constantly au courant with events, she is always companionable, and is able to talk intelligently of many things. Being gifted with a heaven-sent sense of humour, she is never dull; and what closer bond of social sympathy is there than a sense of humour in common? In conversational fence the thrust and parry of her play is as quick and keen as her touch is true and light, and through it all ripples a sunny Southern gaiety that is as fond of giving pleasure ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... continu'd his Passion for me, with all the earnest and honest Sollicitations imaginable, till some Months before my Mother's Death; who, at that time, was most desirous to see me disposed of in Marriage to another Gentleman, of much better Estate than Mr. Fondlove; but one whose Person and Humour did by no means hit with my Inclinations: And this gave Fondlove the unhappy Advantage over me. For, finding me one Day all alone in my Chamber, and lying on my Bed, in as mournful and wretched a Condition to my then foolish Apprehension, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... de la Fontaine then put her a subtle question and one as nearly approaching humour as was permissible in an ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... always the case, he grew more and more confirmed in his ill humour, so soon as the eye of jealousy began to view everything ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... I met Miss P., all of whose rumours coincided with those I had gathered. She was in exceeding good humour and interested. Leaving her I met Cy——, and we turned together up to the Green. As we proceeded, the sound of firing grew more distinct, but when we reached the Green it died away again. We stood a little below the Shelbourne Hotel, looking at the barricade and into the Park. We could see nothing. ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... taking away with me, ostensibly to take care of them, several valuable pieces of jewelry which he possessed. He seemed almost offended when I refused to do anything of the kind. Then, as I parted from him at the door, not in a very good humour I will acknowledge, he said to me: 'You will think of me very often in the future—more often than you ...
— The Case of the Registered Letter • Augusta Groner
... he walks another mile, then he again resumes his seat or betakes himself to his room and his pen. For he composes, both in Latin and Greek, the most scholarly lyrics. They have a wonderful grace, wonderful sweetness, and wonderful humour, and the chastity of the writer enhances its charm. When he is told that the bathing hour has come—which is the ninth hour in winter and the eighth in summer—he takes a walk naked in the sun, if there is no wind. Then he plays at ball for a long spell, throwing himself heartily ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... unfurled a fan and, with another click, refurled it. "No. I will see him myself. I am quite in the humour." ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... Florence Hofwyl, Lewes's at Holland, society of, Grattan on Holland, Lord, Minister at Florence anecdote of saved my mother's life Lady Homoeopathic cure of erysipelas Household Words, my contributions to Huegel, Baron Hume, Mr., the "Medium," Dickens on Humour, that of George Eliot that of Lewes, different my mother's sense of Hungarian politics, Pulszky on elections Hungarians, Pulszky proud of the Huntingford, Bishop of Hereford his handwriting ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... child's; but her slightly plump chin indicated the age of plenitude. She is, I must confess it, quite an attractive person. She is supple and changeful; her mood is like water itself—and, thank Heaven! I am no navigator. I thought I discerned in her manner a sort of ill-humour, which I attributed presently, by reason of some observations she uttered at random, to the fact that she had met ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... seem to take the trouble to lift their bows up when a wave meets them; and they groans and complains if the wind is too hard for them, just like a human being. When you goes to a new vessel you have got to learn her tricks and her ways and what she will do, and what she won't do, and just to humour her as you would a child. I don't say as I think she is actually alive; but every sailor will tell you that there is something about her that ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... sent to London two persons charged to inculcate moderation, both by admonition and by example. One of them was John Leyburn, an English Dominican, who had been secretary to Cardinal Howard, and who, with some learning and a rich vein of natural humour, was the most cautious, dexterous, and taciturn of men. He had recently been consecrated Bishop of Adrumetum, and named Vicar Apostolic in Great Britain. Ferdinand, Count of Adda, an Italian of no eminent abilities, but of mild temper ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... simultaneously accompany a demonstration in front. Mounted troops had now joined the British forces, and there was every hope that the Dutchmen, once routed, could be pursued and kept on the run. But so far the Boers were unconcerned; they seemed to be in fine fettle, and even indulged in humour at the expense of the British garrison. When the heliographers questioned the enemy, "Are you Boers?" they replied, "Yes." They were then asked, "Where are you going?" and bounced back, "To Maritzburg." "God help you," said we. ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... told you that.' He is moving about now in better humour, and, meeting the loaf in his stride, he cuts a slice from it. He is hardly aware of this, but Mrs. Dowey knows. 'I like the Scotch voice of you, woman. It drummles ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... to add vigour to his stroke, gave his opponent a severe cut. The latter gave no other sign that he was hurt than a contemptuous smile, though blood must have been drawn by the lash. After a short dance, his opponent returned the compliment with equal force. Nothing could exceed the good-humour with which these proceedings were carried on. One of the men was scarcely able to walk, after the punishment; but, in general, after a few lashes they drank paiwari, and returned to the main body of dancers, from ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... bourdonnement in her ears, and Tony had to reply solemnly, "That which you hear is the beating of your heart to the music of your soul," you could hardly expect a man with Mr. EADIE'S sense of humour to throw much conviction into ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 • Various
... of you will doubt that the Indian laughs, and more of you will even doubt whether the red man possesses a sense of humour. A few days ago my Toronto oculist—you see I have been justly rewarded for hovering around civilization—and I were discussing Indians. The doctor quoted his experience with them. Some years before ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... possess that "taste for Art" and that "sense of humour" which some claim for and others deny to it, it (the B.P.) will throng the comfortable and well-lighted Gallery in New Bond Street, where hang some hundreds of specimens of the later work of the most unaffected humorist, and most masterly "Black-and-White" artist of his time. Walk up, Ladies ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... the archdeacon loudly, joyously, and with supreme good humour; 'well, well, well, well; so, after all, we have no further cause ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... the critics of 'Robert the Rhymer, who lived at the lakes,' seem to be of opinion, that his 'humour' is to be classed with such nonentities as the philosopher's stone, pigeon's milk, and other apocryphal myths and unknown quantities. In analysing the character of his intellect, they would assign to the 'humorous' attribute some such place as Van Troil did to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... still lives. It is, moreover, perhaps the best, most accurate picture of character and manners that are quite gone by: in it the meaning and significance of old buildings, old inns, old churches, and old towns are reached, and interpreted in most interesting fashion; the humour, bubbling over, and never forced, and always fresh, is sustained through some six hundred closely-printed pages; all which, in itself, is a marvel and unapproached. It is easy, however, to talk of ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... any real difference to you, and meant all the world to me, I don't see why you shouldn't humour me. I can't begin to tell you how happy I am to have you here. I could shout ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... which there you see With water fill'd, sirs, credit me, The humour was, as I have read, But lovers' tears incrystalled. Which, as they drop by drop do pass From th' upper to the under-glass, Do in a trickling manner tell, By many a watery syllable, That lovers' tears in lifetime shed Do restless run when they ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... and he right well agree, For of this pony there's a rumour, That should he lose his eyes and ears, And should he live a thousand years, He never will be out of humour. ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... little secret," she added, with a charming air of confidence and humour, "there is someone besides me that wants Tabitha back: there is an excellent prospect for her, if she could only turn her thoughts in that direction. You have heard of Horace Wetherell, my second ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... a long one; and, having sat up so late, he felt sleepy. He was, therefore, in no very friendly humour with the wolves— upon whose account he was thus compelled to keep awake. Every now and then, as he saw them sneaking about in the darkness, he could not help muttering an angry ejaculation; and he had made up his mind, as soon as morning came, to empty his gun at one of the pack, by way ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... series. The microscope is able to show only clearly marked stages and the most characteristic types, for evolution runs through its initial stages with a rapidity defying the closest physical observation. If only Nature would slacken her pace in order to humour our incapacity, we should see in an even more striking fashion that she preserves everything she has attained and develops the power of reconstruction ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... his visitor with bright eyes, and a shake of the head. A quick-spoken man this, with a little square mouth, a soft heart, a keen sense of humour. ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... if we are in a vulgar humour, apply to them a certain old proverb about teaching one's grandmother a certain simple operation on the egg of the domestic fowl; but we will no less take shame to ourselves, as sons of Alma Mater, that such nonsense can get even ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... if you had, it might make you fonder of me. I think one needs a sense of humour to be ...
— What Every Woman Knows • James M. Barrie
... particularly busy at the moment, and appeared in the humour for conversation, asking me of his own free will if it were possible that I was "Noel Stanton, ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... the pamphlet, it would have showed more genius, it would have had humour and wit, but have been so full of whims and quips, sins against taste, and defects in earnestness, that it would have failed to create any serious sensation. Here, then, there was something else be sides knowledge, by which knowledge became power. Knowledge must not ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... distinguished authors. There is always room for more of it, however, and, if Mr. VERNON RENDALL disappoints us, it is not merely because the standard has been set unusually high. His style is smooth and assured, and, though somewhat lacking in humour, his touch is light and pleasing. He begins well and interests us in his principal character so that we look forward with zest to the adventures of a personality which is everything that this sort of fiction requires. Here ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 20, 1917 • Various
... kempt, curled, and trimmed with gold and Iewels of inestimable value, wherein consisteth the chiefest grace of the beautie and ornament of the woman. Who is able to deny, but that this naturall humour and passion, borne so sone as we, whiche they call Loue, is not a certayne essence and being, the force and vigor whereof, not able to abide comparison? Is it no small matter, that by the only instinction of loue's force, ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... of a king. But wherever he introduces King James, either in his Donne or his Wotton, you see a subdued version of the King James of The Fortunes of Nigel. The pedantry, the good nature, the touchiness, the humour, the nervousness, are all here. It only needs a touch of the king's broad accent to set before us, as vividly as in Scott, the interviews with Donne, and that singular scene when Wotton, disguised as Octavio Baldi, deposits his long rapier at the door of his majesty's chamber. ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang
... did it will remain a puzzle for ever. There were many other acts which to foreigners and to those born in later times might seem the result of insanity, but which were really the outcome of a peculiar, sardonic, and somewhat primitive sense of humour on his part which appeals powerfully to the men of the plains, the gauchos, among whom Rosas lived from boyhood, when he ran away from his father's house, and by whose aid he eventually rose to ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... back, and at last, worn out and sad, goes off on a pilgrimage to Rome; Helgi and Finnbogi, the Norwegians, who, like our Arctic voyagers in after times, devise all sorts of sports and games to keep the men in humour during the long winter at Hope; and last, but not least, the terrible Freydisa, who when the Norse are seized with a sudden panic at the Esquimaux, and flee from them, as they had three weeks before fled from Thorfinn's bellowing bull, turns, when ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... came to know her aunt better, and got accustomed to her dry manner and rather exact ways, she found her to be a really good companion, not altogether lacking in humour, and having untiring energy in sight-seeing and a keen sympathy with Barbara's delight ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... the city itself, calling it contemptuously "Urbicula"; and he suggests, with a humour that to modern ideas savours of irreverence, that this little city of S. Peter's, "Petropolis," unless S. Peter had the keys, would run away through its ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... within a narrower range, had his own play of humour; and it met Mr. Spragg's with a leap. "It's because I knew he would manage to make cooking-stoves as unremunerative as a profession that I saved him from so glaring a failure by putting ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... response. The notion of referring to Theodore Racksole as a 'New Yorker' appealed to her sense of humour, a sense in which she was not entirely deficient. She knew, of course, and she knew that Jules knew, that this Theodore Racksole must be the unique and only Theodore Racksole, the third richest man in the United States, and ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... puritanical, has been thrown. But the author, who can see no reason why a "man whose blood is warm within" should "sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster," on any occasion, has a large respect for cheerfulness, and has endeavoured to make palatable, by a little genial humour, what would otherwise have been a heavy enumeration of dry facts. Those who don't care for the gay will find in these sketches the grave; those who prefer vivacity to seriousness will meet with what they ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... objectionable, though few young men would probably regard it as much sin to read them. So little did the young man appreciate her objections to this exciting kind of literature that he had actually recommended to his aunt some stories which no amount of humour and cleverness could prevent that pious lady regarding as debasing and absolutely immoral. How Lady Doughty felt under all the circumstances of Roger's love, as compared with his general conduct, will be best shown by ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... a few years the piety of these adventurers began to slacken, and give way to faction and envy, the natural corruptions of all confederacies: however, to this spirit of devotion there succeeded a spirit of honour, which long continued the vein and humour of the times; and the Holy Land became either a school, wherein young princes went to learn the art of war, or a scene wherein they affected to shew their valour, and gain reputation, when they were weary of ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... conversation, and open to conviction if good arguments are brought forward. When he thinks himself right he only wishes to have it proved that he misunderstands the case, to give it up without ill-humour. He is not inclined to be sulky, but I think that he may be rendered a little melancholy if he thinks himself unfairly or unjustly treated, but being together and remaining together, there never can arise, I hope, any occasion for any disagreement even on trifling subjects.... ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... shoulders, let me stick to th' fallow," he said to his exasperated mother. He had too low an opinion of himself. But he went about at his work on the farm gladly enough, glad of the active labour and the smell of the land again, having youth and vigour and humour, and a comic wit, having the will and the power to forget his own shortcomings, finding himself violent with occasional rages, but usually on good terms ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... Mrs. Coleman found her friend, whom she at once informed that Major Maitland and her husband were waiting for her, and that therefore she had not a moment to spare. That little triumph accomplished, she had nothing of importance to say about the tea-meeting, and rejoined her party with great good-humour. She walked between the Major and Zachariah, and at once asked the Major how he "enjoyed the service." The phrase was very unpleasant to ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... threw himself down on the sofa, and was silent. At last the persuasions and endearments of his wife overcame his humour. He told her that McShane was the major of his regiment when he was a private; that he would inevitably recognise him; and that, if nothing else occurred from McShane's knowledge of his former name, at all events, the general supposition of his having been an officer in the army would be contradicted, ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... trow, and half daddy, As humour inconstantly leans; The man must be patient and steady, That weds with a lass in ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... Carizales. There were several Indian huts in the neighbourhood, surrounded with plantations. Our pilot assured us beforehand that we should not hear the cries of the jaguar, which, when not extremely pressed by hunger, withdraws from places where he does not reign unmolested. "Men put him out of humour" (los hombres lo enfadan), say the people in the Missions. A pleasant and simple expression, that ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... stronger stuff than that: he is defeated because that particular evil is, as I have said, defeating its enemies at present. Nor could there be any drama in a contest between the brutal Sladder and a Stage Curate; for the spark that we call humour, by whose light we see much of life, comes as it were of two flints, and not of ...
— Plays of Near & Far • Lord Dunsany
... recognized, in her harsh and wasted countenance, signs of an original nature superior to that of her visitor; on her knitted brow, a sense higher in quality than on his smooth low forehead; on her straight stern lip, less cause for distrust than in the false good-humour which curved his handsome mouth into that smile of the fickle, which, responding to mirth but not to affection, is often lighted and never warmed. It is true that in that set pressure of her lip there might be cruelty, and, still ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... down to the drawing-room at ten to eight. He was in a good humour, and, as he descended the stairs, he smiled to himself and rubbed his large white hands together. In the drawing-room someone was playing softly and ramblingly on the piano. He wondered who it could be. One ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... author's humour, which prompts him to paradoxes and makes him seek to contradict others, has made him draw out exaggerated and odious conclusions and expressions, as if everything happened through an absolute necessity. The Bishop of Derry, on the other hand, has aptly ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... A gleam of humour at this point crosses the grim visage of battle. Picton, on lying down in his bivouac the night before the battle, had adorned his head with a picturesque and highly coloured nightcap. The sudden attack of ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... the master laughed the harder. Then he tried to be more dignified, and the master laughed harder than before. In the end, the master laughed him out of his dignity. His jaws slightly parted, his lips lifted a little, and a quizzical expression that was more love than humour came into his eyes. He ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... the grim knowledge that neither intense happiness nor deep grief suffice to deaden for very long the pinpricks of material discomfort. But the worldly-wise old man possessed a broad tolerance for the frailties of human nature, and his smile held nothing of contempt, but only a whimsical humour touched with ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... reflections on the coming of her younger sister were significant of her mental attitude. "Pixie's no trouble. She's such an easy soul. She fits into corners and fills in the gaps. She'll amuse the boys. It will keep them in good humour to have her to invent new games. She'll keep Geoff company at breakfast when I'm tired. I'll get some of the duty visits over while she's here. She'll talk to the bores, and be so pleased at the sound of her own voice that she'll never notice they don't answer. And she'll cheer me up when ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... go back?" A crime! "Horrible traitor to myself that I was" (her thoughts would go) "to question it a crime just to take up my life again! A crime! Horrible fool that I was to be able, with no sense of humour, to give to so natural a desire an epithet so ludicrous as crime! A crime! A right, ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... was her humour, which was part of her strange wisdom, and was always awake and on the watch. In all her letters, written in exquisite English prose, but with an ardent imagery and a vehement sincerity of emotion which make them, like the poems, indeed almost ...
— The Golden Threshold • Sarojini Naidu
... at last. "I think your lordship is wise enough to understand. The discovery of a sense of humour in ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... hands still on either rail of the staircase, took the top step, gazing the while at his burglar, first in wonder, and then with a capricious abandonment to what he considered the humour of the situation. He thought of Albert Shawn's account of the meeting between Francis Tudor and his visitor in Tudor's flat on the previous night, and some fantastic impulse, due to the strain of Welsh blood in him, caused him to address the man as Tudor ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... spend all the good humour I can command on my wife. I flatter her and take care of her as if she were a bride in her honeymoon. My reward is that I see her thrive; her bad illness is visibly getting better. She is recovering and will, I hope, become a little rational in her old age. Just after ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... that puts thee upon that exercise of thy graces, as will be for thy good hereafter: take heed of tempting of God lest he doubleth this potion unto thee. The child, by eating of raw fruit, stands in need of physic, but the child of a childish humour refuseth to take the potion, what follows but a doubling of the affliction, to wit, frowns, chides, and further threatenings and a forcing of the bitter pills upon him. But let me, to persuade thee to lie down and take thy potion, tell thee, it is of absolute necessity, to wit, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... preserving their dead, are the Egyptian, Arabian, Pisasphaltos, and Lybian. The fifth mummy of peculiar power was made from criminals that had been hanged; "for from such there is a gentle siccation, that expungeth the watery humour, without destroying the oil and spirituall, which is cherished by the heavenly luminaries, and strengthened continually by the affluence and impulses of the celestial spirits; whence it may be properly called by the name of constellated or celestial mummie." The sixth kind of mummy was made ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... good-humour. His mother had rubbed him up the wrong way, as usual, but his good sense told him that it was no use ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... this 'un," answered the other, his good humour quite restored. "This is a young man and tremendous big. I ain't so small myself, but he tops me by a head and shoulders and so he does most hereabouts. Strong, too, with it, there ain't so many would care to stand up against him, I can tell you. Why, they do ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... East Chamber; and Sir Nicholas promised at his request to look in on him again after prayers. When prayers were over, Sir Nicholas went up to his guest's room, and found him awaiting him in a state of evident excitement, very unlike the quiet vivacity and good humour he had shown when with ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... Quixote and to the Pickwick Papers, while E. M. Vogue places its author somewhere between Cervantes and Le Sage. However considerable the influences of Cervantes and Dickens may have been—the first in the matter of structure, the other in background, humour, and detail of characterisation—the predominating and distinguishing quality of the work is undeniably something foreign to both and quite peculiar to itself; something which, for want of a better term, might be called the quality of the Russian ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... the church, in the neighbouring village, came out to us, with an umbrella, and invited us to dinner. Upon our return to our inn, to dress, we were annoyed by a nuisance which had before frequently assailed us. I knew a man, who in a moment of ill humour, vented rather a revengeful wish that the next neighbour of his enemy might have a child, who was fond of a whistle and a drum! A more insufferable nuisance was destined for us; the person who lodged in the next room to mine, was a beginner (and a dull one too) upon the trumpet. ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... that I was in utter ignorance of his infidelity. The champagne was passed freely round the table, till all was one burst of hilarious mirth. A thousand different topics were started, and dismissed only to give way to fresh subjects more piquant than the preceding. The king, in a fit of good humour, began to relate his adventures with madame de Grammont; but here you must pardon me, my friend, for so entirely did his majesty give the reins to his inclination for a plain style of language, that, although excess ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... brother's fierce humour, did not dare to face him after this humiliation, but left him to fume impotently in his sickroom, while he stole away to Jerba, there to work night and day at shipbuilding. Ur[u]j joined him in the following spring—the King of Tunis had probably had enough of him—and ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... Ho, ho! that would drown all our effeminate modern gigglings, the sound of which lingers amongst the memories of my boyhood. "He well deserves it—he well deserves it—the wretch! Ho, ho!"—and he shouted with laughter, and threw himself into all the rough unceremonious humour of the ballad, finishing off by relating his own dire experience of the doings of Cumberland and his dragoons in the north. It seems he entered into the army, and served in the American war. After retiring, I believe he took up his residence in England—Devonshire, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... volume of 'Evenings at Home,' among which the transmigrations of Indur may be quoted as a model of style and delightful matter. One of the best of her jeux d'esprit is the 'Groans of the Tankard,' which was written in early days, with much spirit and real humour. It begins with a classic incantation, ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... mistake. 'Go on in your own way,' he concluded; 'and I hope before long to be with you. My wife has recovered from her delirium—very weak, but quite sane except upon one point—she believes our son to be ill in a hospital in Chicago, and the doctor has bidden us humour her in this hallucination, as it may save her life. He looks now for a gradual recovery, and when she is a little stronger I shall come to you; already she has planned for the journey, and assured me that our boy needs me most. It is sad, inexpressibly so, ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... Gospeller's age was thirty-seven; of his personal appearance we have no trustworthy account. It may safely be asserted that his feelings were strong, his affections warm, his partisanship fervent, and his organ of humour decidedly developed. I picture him lithe and quick, with ready tongue and brilliant eyes; but perhaps I am as much mistaken as Isoult was concerning Alice Wikes. If the mania "de faire son portrait" which was so much the fashion in France in ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... losing my countenance. My first impression was not favourable. In the evening she pleased me more. Her dress was simple and in good taste." The Princess took to the doctor, and, of course, he took to her. A subsequent entry in his Diary is:—"The Princess is in good humour, and then she pleases easily. I thought her dress particularly becoming; dark roses in her hair, a short light blue dress without sleeves, with a low round collar, a white puffed out Russian chemisette, the sleeves of lace. I have never seen her in any dress which was not ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... to bless my rival, perhaps. I am in a humour to suspect everybody.—You loved her once, and thought her an ...
— The Duenna • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... an early morning in July; it must have been among the first of the days that I was allowed out of hospital. London was green and leafy. The tracks of the tramways shone like silver in the sunlight. There was a spirit of release and immense good humour abroad. My course followed the river on the south side, all a-dance with wind and little waves. As I crossed the bridge at Westminster I became aware of an atmosphere of expectation. Subconsciously I must have been noticing it for some time. Along Whitehall the pavements ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... Daudet's humour is on the whole inoffensive, but anti-semitism was rife in certain circles in France. It was the era of the Dreyfus scandal, and he indulges in one or two tasteless gibes at the expense of the Jews, which I have suppressed or at least amended. He also has a passage which ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... Somers became attentive; and Emilie was in hopes that she would recover her temper, and apologize to her mother: but at this moment a servant came to tell Mlle. de Coulanges that la comtesse wished to speak to her immediately. She found her mother in no humour to receive any apology, even if it had been offered: nothing could have hurt Mad. de Coulanges more than the ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... refined vengeance-seekers and poison-Brewers (just lay bare the foundation of Spinoza's ethics and theology!), not to speak of the stupidity of moral indignation, which is the unfailing sign in a philosopher that the sense of philosophical humour has left him. The martyrdom of the philosopher, his "sacrifice for the sake of truth," forces into the light whatever of the agitator and actor lurks in him; and if one has hitherto contemplated him only with artistic curiosity, ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... example of "dry" Scotch humour. A neighbouring city had previously banned The Merchant of Venice from its schools on the ground that the character of Shylock was a libel on the Jewish race. If Jewish children no longer had to pay for school editions of The Merchant of Venice ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... party of Sioux on their way to Fort St Charles on a friendly visit had been fired upon by a party of Chippewas. The Sioux had shouted indignantly, 'Who fire on us?' and the Chippewas, in ambush, had yelled back with grim humour, 'The French.' The Sioux {42} retreated, vowing a terrible vengeance against the treacherous white men. Their opportunity came even sooner than they had expected. A trader named Bourassa, who had left Fort St Charles for ...
— Pathfinders of the Great Plains - A Chronicle of La Verendrye and his Sons • Lawrence J. Burpee
... he'd do his best good-humour to provoke, Fill up his glass, extol some lass, and crack some convent joke; Nor heed the frown or looks cast down of atrabilious friars, Till his gills grew red, and his laughing head look'd a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... was getting exciting and he let her argue, urging with pretended indifference that, "That flax's dead ripe now an' if it shatters out on th' ground you kin blame yourself," adding with grim humour, "There's nothin' like th' sound of money t' bring folks t' their senses. It's good as a pinch of pepper under th' nose ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... always put my aunt into great good-humour, and she promised at the end of it to pay for the new setting of the diamond; desiring me to take it on my arrival in London to the great jeweller, Mr. Polonius, and send her the bill. "The fact is," said she, "that the gold in which the thing is set is worth five guineas at ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... ennobling sense of the word. The record of the years written upon it seemed a masquerade—the face of a clear-eyed girl of fourteen made up to represent her own aunt at a fancy dress party. A face drawn a trifle fine, a little ascetic, but balanced by the humour of the large, shapely mouth, and really beautiful in bone and contour. The beauty of mignonette, and ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... description of the organisation of the "yeast animals" and of the manner in which their functions are performed, is given with a circumstantiality worthy of the author of Gulliver's Travels. As a specimen of the writer's humour, his account of what happens when fermentation comes to an end may suffice. "Sobald naemlich die Thiere keinen Zucker mehr vorfinden, so fressen sie sich gegenseitig selbst auf, was durch eine eigene Manipulation geschieht; alles ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... something more solid with which to experiment. His eye caught sight of an object which at once attracted him. This was a small copy of one of the ancient Egyptian gods—that of Bes, who represented the destructive power of nature. It was so bizarre and mysterious as to commend itself to his mad humour. In lifting it from the cabinet, he was struck by its great weight in proportion to its size. He made accurate examination of it by the aid of some instruments, and came to the conclusion that it was carved from a lump of lodestone. He remembered that he had read somewhere of an ancient Egyptian ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... often put me in an ill-humour: at last I lost all patience, and could no longer restrain myself. I would often have told her what I thought, but that I saw it would really distress the poor Dauphine: I therefore restrained myself, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... that I am in a tiff, Sir Francis. I hope I am not, because what I have to say is too serious for ill-humour." Then she paused. "What I have got to say is of some importance;—of very great importance. Sir Francis Geraldine, I feel that I have to ask ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... two fingers on his sleeve, and said something, interrogatively, to which he replied by a shake of the head. She was asking him, evidently, if he had ever played, and he was saying no. Old players have a fancy that when luck has turned her back on them they can put her into good-humour again by having their stakes placed by a novice. Our young man's physiognomy had seemed to his new acquaintance to express the perfection of inexperience, and, like a practical woman, she had determined to make him serve her turn. Unlike most ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James
... you the whimsical crowd of associations that are apt to beset my mind on mingling among English scenes. I hope they may, in some measure, plead my apology, should I be found harping upon stale and trivial themes, or indulging an over-fondness for any thing antique and obsolete. I know it is the humour, not to say cant of the day, to run riot about old times, old books, old customs, and old buildings; with myself, however, as far as I have caught the contagion, the feeling is genuine. To a man from a young country, all old things ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... touch and keen appreciation of humour, for easy conversational narration, give me," quoth the Baron, "the papers now being published in Household Words (most appropriate place for them), written by MONTAGU WILLIAMS, Q.C. and Magistrate." His paper on Ramsgate, telling how he travelled down, who his companions were, is as thoroughly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 5, 1892 • Various
... after hitting out and about at the Essay for three months he left it much as he found it.(19) He could not get to close quarters with Farmer's scholarship. His bluster compares ill with Farmer's gentler manner, and in some passages the quiet humour has proved too subtle for his animosity. There was more impartiality in the judgment of Johnson: "Dr. Farmer, you have done that which was never done before; that is, you have completely finished a controversy beyond all ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... the mystery of pity for the monkey people; that she could be very terrible in her rage if she let it loose, but that she loved this stupid cousin also. All Skag's faculties were playing at once, for he perceived at the same time this girl would see many things of life in terms of humour and it would be good to travel the roads with her because of this. . . . Apparently she had not seen him, Sanford Hantee, to ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... complete unit was despatched up the line—to an unknown destination. The men received refreshments at various Haltes, and the horses were duly watered and fed, but the journey was, on the whole, long and tedious. On one occasion only was the monotony broken, and that unwittingly, by the humour of one of the officers. In the course of the evening, the train stopped at a small station, and the compartment in which the officers were settled drew up in front of the Buffet. Some one asked where ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... scarcely out of Hagi Hassan's mouth, when Noor ad Deen, catching hold of the fair Persian, pulled her to him, and giving her a box on the ear, "Come hither, impertinence," said he, "and get you home again; for though your ill-humour obliged me to swear I should bring you hither, yet I never intended to sell you: I have business for you to do yet; and it will be time enough to part with you when ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... I don't think Phil took any pains to appear in a better light than usual. It was his habit to be always himself, sincere, gentle, considerate, and never thrusting forward. He had acquired with his growth a playful humour with which to trim his conversation, but which never went to tiresome lengths. This was all the more taking for his quiet manner, which held one where noise and effort failed. But I exerted myself to be mighty gallant, ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... that the handsome, dark young man she admired had a mind of his own, it would be a difficult game to play; and Nelson Smith saw that she thought so. His sense of humour caused him to smile at his own cleverness in producing the impression; and he would have given a good deal for someone to laugh with over her maneuvers to entice him along the road ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... thine own example what kind of men philosophy can make, and cease from foolish trifling. Eating, do good to them that eat with thee; drinking, to them that drink with thee; yield unto all, give way, and bear with them. Thus shalt thou do them good: but vent not upon them thine own evil humour! ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... one, so far as small economies went. Leslie twitted me with neglecting golf, and failing to attend the Inter-'Varsity cricket match. He found economy, like all other things under heaven, and in heaven for that matter, suitable subjects for the exercise of his tireless humour. But I wondered greatly that his incessant banter should jar upon me; that I should catch myself regarding him with a coldly appraising eye. Indeed, it troubled me a good deal; and the more so when ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... and sixteen years ago I knew nothing whatever of the business. The process of education was almost as amusing as expensive; but that fashion of humour is threadbare. In those early days I would have none of your geraniums, hardy perennials, and such common things. Diligently studying the "growers'" catalogues, I looked out, not novelties alone, but curious novelties. Not one of ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... long prayers,' thought Hop-o'-my-Thumb, glancing at him from his warm nest; 'and what a jolly humour ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... damp matches, much time and good humour were consumed ere I succeeded in getting a light, and just as I swung the lantern back into place, the air was pierced by a high-pitched, ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... the other hand I do not want to justify the things we have done. We are two bad people—if there is to be any classification of good and bad at all, we have acted badly, and quite apart from any other considerations we've largely wasted our own very great possibilities. But it is part of a queer humour that underlies all this, that I find myself slipping again and again into a sentimental treatment of our case that is as unpremeditated as it is insincere. When I am a little tired after a morning's writing I find the faint suggestion getting into every other sentence that our blunders ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... which Jasmin composed at this period of his life was that which he entitled Mous Soubenis, or 'My Recollections.' In none of his poems did he display more of the characteristic qualities of his mind, his candour, his pathos, and his humour, than in these verses. He used the rustic dialect, from which he never afterwards departed. He showed that the Gascon was not yet a dead language; and he lifted it to the level of the most serious themes. His verses have all the greater charm because of their artless gaiety, their ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... "I'm tolerably tough myself; and I'll change with the gentleman. The chances are that I shall not be in a very liberal humour when I reach Jaffa with stiff limbs and a sore skin. I have a very good ...
— A Ride Across Palestine • Anthony Trollope
... Scribe and the "soliloquy," and the author avails himself of the recognised dramatic conventions of the day. At the same time, though the characters may be conventional in type, they are, thanks to Bjornson's sense of humour, alive; and the theme of the estrangement and reconciliation of the "newly-married couple" is treated with delicacy and charm. It is true that it is almost unbelievable that the hero could be so stupid as to allow the "confidante" to accompany his young wife when he at last succeeds in wresting ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... fertile, and that if only everyone of Jewish blood would marry a Christian, the country would in course of time be cleared of a race that, she solemnly assured me, is as great a curse to it, and as inferior as the negro in America. But as she was an anti-Semite with a sense of humour she admitted that the remedy was a slow one and difficult to enforce. As a matter of fact, the Jews marry mostly amongst themselves in Germany, and men are still living in Frankfurt and other large cities who have made comfortable fortunes ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... three, for a while round the smouldering fire. Mr. Gulliver's servant scarcely took his eyes from my face. And, a little to my confusion, his first astonishment of me had now passed away, and in its stead had fallen such a gentleness and humour as I should not have supposed possible in his wild countenance. He busied himself over his strips of skin, but if he caught my eye upon his own he would smile out broadly, and nod his great, hairy head at me, till I fancied ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... perfectly informed in every question relating to bacteriology, chemistry, sanitation and medicine and would put the average notable medical officer of health to shame. He was to all of us a perfect marvel. He spoke English and French fluently and had the keenest sense of humour of any member of the congress, constantly enlivening the proceedings by his witty and ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... particulars here in question, a manifest wish thus to rival superiors, to outstrip equals, to dazzle inferiors; it is manifest the great end of life, and of all its possessions, is too little kept in view, and it is to be feared that the gratification of a vain ostentatious humour is the predominant disposition ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... affections remained unpolluted by the seductions of civilization. Nothing was wanting to content them: they were caressed by the English, received heaps of gifts and lived without the slightest fatigue, yet they were not happy. I saw them change humour and become more melancholy hour by hour. The distractions with which I tried to cure their home-sickness tended only to ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... leisurely on, for the King proceeded no faster than would allow the falconers to keep easily up with those on horseback. He was in high good humour, and laughed and jested sometimes with one ambassador, sometimes with the other, and having finished a learned discussion on the manner of fleeing a hawk at the river and on the field, as taught by the great French authorities, Martin, Malopin, and Aime Cassian, with the Marquis de Tremouille, ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... man of a very singular turn of humour, and though, without the abilities, bore some resemblance to the famous dean of St. Patrick's, and perhaps was not so subject to those capricious whims which produced so much uneasiness to all who attended ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... Opportunity upbraided her delinquent brother for not appearing sooner to act as her beau; after which, she permitted him to say a word for himself. That Seneca was in high good-humour, was easily enough to be seen; he even rubbed his hands together in the ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... shewing him upon the Stage, in the first Part of Henry IV, when he made him consent to join with Falstaffe in a Robbery on the Highway, he has taken care not to carry him off the Scene, without an Intimation that he knows them all, and their unyok'd Humour; and that, like the Sun, he will permit them only for a while to obscure and cloud his Brightness; then break thro' the Mist, when he pleases to be himself again; that his Lustre, when wanted, may be the more ...
— Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) • Lewis Theobald
... scene; but he was clever enough to humour the vixen, both from fear of her tongue and from hope of favours as well as ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... Butt for everybody's humour, Gropes the blind his devious way, Guide, nor staff, nor helper has he, To supply the light's lost ray; E'en a poor dog's willing service, Love, and guidance are denied; Till one day his groping finds him By the paralytic's side. There he hears the ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... no humour to stand half-hearted work; it will bow its proud head only to the man who pours out sweat; and Bourdaloue's standard of excellence will hold for all time. His answer to the question "What was your best sermon?" ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... was for many years Master of the Grammar-School at Haigh, near Wigan, he inherited a good constitution and unbended principles of honour and integrity. From the family of his mother, Mary Aspall, he derived the quick, impressible temperament of genius, and the love of humour which so conspicuously marks the Lancashire character. He was the youngest child. His thirst for knowledge was early and strongly manifested. Being once told in childhood not to be so inquisitive, his appeal ever after was, "Inquisitive ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... good-looking; the features were too irregular and the nose was a trifle too long for good looks. Still the impression it gave was pleasant and the steady blue eyes had that twinkle in them which suggests humour. He might have been thirty or thirty-five years of age, and notwithstanding his rough dress that consisted mainly of a pair of trousers held up by a belt to which hung a pistol, and a common flannel shirt, for he wore no coat, I guessed at ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... a dozen young people in the studio. When their new companion joined them, they amused themselves by laughing at him, and playing off practical jokes at his expense, which at first he bore with good-humour. It happened, however, one morning, that on examining his slender purse, he found that its contents had fallen to zero; and this unpleasant circumstance caused him, no doubt, to feel in an irritable state of mind. On reaching the studio, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... where, in the upstanding pinnacles of naked rock, an active imagination sees forms of men and of animals in endless whimsical repetitions, may sometimes have suggested the particular form of the ludicrous which appears in the popular legend. But the natural instinct of humour which saw physical features in a comic light, and threw a playful human interest over the whole face of nature, was a distinctively. Teutonic characteristic." There opens out here an unexplored region for original research. Taking the nature-mystic's mode of experience as ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... across, but can make out nothing. Peep-of-day time is the Boer's favourite hour for a call, and we were all very much on the qui vive when the white line showed along the east. No doubt, however, they all had such heads after their Christmas drink that they were in no humour for such a diversion. At any rate, they let us alone. Very stiff and weary and wet, we crept down the hill soon after daybreak and started on our twenty-mile homeward march. It was 5 P.M. before we reached camp, and we had had nothing to eat all day. I don't know if we were most ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... too feebly on the right side of the woman question. No successful modern dramatist has made this "humour" of the times the subject of his play. An effort was made in 1879, by the executive committee of the New England Association, to secure a woman suffrage play: but it was not successful, and there is yet to be written a counteractive to that popular burlesque, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... my dear sir! Nothing, I assure you, is further from our wishes than fuss of any kind. But unfortunately, the Emperor—the Emperor—I respect and admire him, of course. We all do. But if the Emperor has a fault it is that he's slightly deficient in humour. He does not easily see ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... introduced into the hall of the throne, M. Royer-Collard read the address naturally and suitably, with an emotion which his voice and features betrayed. The King listened to him with becoming dignity and without any air of haughtiness or ill humour; his answer was brief and dry, rather from royal habit than from anger, and, if I am not mistaken, he felt more satisfied with his own firmness than uneasy for the future. Four days before, on the eve of ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... "The humour of Randolph Caldecott's drawings is simply irresistible, no healthy-minded man, woman, or child could ...
— An Elegy on the Glory of Her Sex - Mrs. Mary Blaize • Oliver Goldsmith
... "The precepts of Tusser indeed are so excellent, that few can read them without profit and improvement; he appears to have possessed such a degree of pious resignation to the will of the Supreme, of christian charity, and of good humour, under all his miscarriages, that his character rises high in our esteem, independent of his merits as a writer. The cultivated and liberal mind of Tusser seems to have been ill-suited to his fortune, and to his vocation. A love of hospitality ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... To humour the fellow I took the telescope, as requested, and certainly when I got the brig focused in the lens her image appeared to be more distinct and also perceptibly larger than it had been when I ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... extravagant and have been missed. Yet even if we acknowledged his greater good fortune, it would be impossible for us to go back and become like him. To make the attempt would show no sense of reality and little sense of humour. We must dress in our own clothes, if we do not wish to substitute a masquerade for practical existence. What we can adopt from Greek morals is only the abstract principle of their development; their foundation in all the extant forces of human nature and their ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... thought over the matter, she might have seen that, perhaps, this silence of Pinckney's was the silence of delicacy, not of indifference, but she was not in the humour to hold things up to the light of reason. She had decided to dislike this man and when the Mascarenes came to a decision of this sort they were hard ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... diversities of character. First the mature wisdom and stern integrity of the father; then the exuberant tenderness of the mother. And then one is brave and enthusiastic, another thoughtful, and another tender. One is remarkable for being full of rich humour, another is sad, mournful, even melancholy. Again, besides these, there are diversities of condition in life. First, there is the heir, sustaining the name and honour of the family; then perchance the soldier, in whose career all the anxiety and solicitude of the family is centred; ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... Italian humour is more primitive and uproarious than French, and the Italians seem to present fewer barriers to intimacy, but the proportion of rational discussion is larger in the conversation of the French. Both the French and the Italians combine natural and easy good manners with great ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... help to every one. You would have done well to accept it in the first instance. You may not find her in the same humour again." ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... his seemed utterly extinguished. For once there was no gleam of humour in those dark eyes, as they continued to consider her with that queer stare of scrutiny. And yet, though his gaze was sombre, his thoughts were not. With his cruelly true mental vision which pierced through shams, and his capacity for detached observation—which properly applied ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... was an Irish divine who could well have served as a model for Parson Adams, for in his life he exhibited a vigorous combination of good humour, physical bravery, quixotic gallantry and practical Christianity. The article in the DNB records that 'he studied physic and prescribed for the poor, argued successfully with profligates and sectaries, persuaded lunatics out of their delusions, ...
— Clarissa: Preface, Hints of Prefaces, and Postscript • Samuel Richardson
... spoken for a time, and at last, with the hunger of both pretty well assuaged, Waller began to note the humour of the position, and in a ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... Kamehameha the First, of a man, sprung from a savage race, who effected great things by a display of wholly exceptional gifts. His sayings have become proverbs in native mouths. One of them is worth noting, as a piece of grim humour, a quality rare among the Kafirs. Some of his chief men had been urging him, after he had become powerful, to take vengeance upon certain cannibals who were believed to have killed and eaten his grandparents. Moshesh replied: "I must consider well before I ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... "put in with a dirty finger," and varying with every mood. Gooseberry eyes may disguise more soul, but they get no credit for it. Humour seemed to dance in that soft, blue fire; poetry dreamed in their clear depths; love—but that we have not come to yet; they were more eloquent than her tongue, for she was neither witty nor wise, only rich in the exuberant life of seventeen, ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... in his efforts to "laugh the thing down." One saw him in clubs, a great clumsy presence with the evidences of his midnight oil burning manifest upon his large unwholesome face, explaining to every one he could buttonhole: "These Scientific chaps, you know, haven't a Sense of Humour, you know. That's what it is. This Science—kills it." His jests at Bensington ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... private audience, disclosed the melancholy situation of her sister, and implored the benevolence of her ladyship, who, contrary to expectation, received her very graciously, and consented to indulge Mrs. Pickle's longing. Mr. Pickle began to be out of humour at the expense to which he was exposed by the caprice of his wife, who was herself alarmed at this last accident, and for the future kept her fancy within bounds; insomuch, that without being subject to any more extraordinary trouble, Mrs. ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... spoken till Erica and Frolich were about their cheese-making the next morning. Erica had rather have kept the cattle, but Frolich so earnestly begged that she would let Stiorna do that, as she could not destroy the cattle in her ill-humour, while she might easily spoil the cheese, that Erica put away her knitting, tied on her apron, tucked up her sleeves, and prepared for ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... out his blankets close to Mitchell's camp; he wanted to enjoy some of Mitchell's quiet humour before he went to sleep, but Mitchell wasn't in a philosophical mood. He ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... General Election, and Sir Robert Peel came to power as champion of the Corn Laws. The Whigs had fallen between two stools, for the country was not in a humour to tolerate vacillation. The Melbourne Cabinet had, in truth, in the years which had witnessed its decline and fall, spoken with the voice of Jacob, but stretched forth the hands of Esau. The Radicals shook ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... silvery softness of his abundant hair. And just as the collar of rubies gleamed like fiery eyes upon the Knight's white satin doublet, so from out the pallor of the Prelate's countenance the eyes shone forth, bright with the fires of eternal, youth, the gay joy of life, the twinkling humour of a ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... a plan," she says, "for these things have chanced well and Asmund is in a ripe humour. Eric shall come no more to Middalhof till Gudruda is gone ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... week. She seemed surprised, and we remembered that Irish tenants, though often capable of shedding blood for a good landlord, are generally averse to paying him rent. Mrs. Wogan Odevaine then drove away in high good humour, taking some personal belongings with her, and promising to drink tea with us some time during the week. She kissed Francesca good-bye, told her she was the prettiest creature she had ever seen, and asked if ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... They were further distressed by the knowledge that they were in the very centre of a populous fairy country, and that on every side the elemental hosts might be ranging, ready to fall upon them with the terrors of war or the still more awful scourge of their humour. The path leading to their station was a long one, winding through great alleys of trees, which in some places overhung the road so thickly that even the full moon could not search out that deep blackness. In the daylight these men would have arrested an Archangel and, if necessary, bludgeoned ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... the cattlemen, but still none of them moved forward toward the great horse; and as if he sensed his victory he raised and shook his ugly head and neighed. A mighty laugh answered that challenge; this was a sort of "horse-humour" that great New York could not overlook, and in that mirth even the big grey man, Drew, joined. The laughter stopped with an amazing suddenness making the following silence impressive as when a storm that has ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... historiographer of William III., was a Norfolk man. He is buried in Westminster Abbey. It is said by Noble that he was an honest man. Of course he was. Chalmers accuses him of indecent conversation, or Lord Rochester would not have said that he had more wit and humour than any other poet. I am afraid he confers little honour on his native county. 'Others,' wrote Dryden in one ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... JONSON Whalley's Preface Whalley's Life of Jonson Every Man out of His Humour Poetaster Fall of Sejanus Volpone Epicene The Alchemist Catiline's Conspiracy Bartholomew Fair The Devil is an Ass The Staple of ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... observed, that he became an enemy to the presbyterians, whom he had favoured before. He that changes his party by his humour, is not more virtuous than he that changes it by his interest: he loves himself ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... gone while he walked in the crowds, feeling his remoteness; but he knew at last that he was not of the brotherhood of the zealots; that the very sense of humour by which he saw the fallacies of one zealot prevented him from becoming another. He lacked the zealot's conviction of his unique importance, yet one must be such a zealot to give a message effectively. He began to see that the world could not be lost; that whatever might be vital in his ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... the clumsy bird was almost as familiar to him as the rustle of the reeds in a breeze. The blue heron rose heavily from the backwater, and winged his slow flight high above the trees. Here, indeed, seemed reason for fear; but the great bird was not in the humour for killing voles, and soon passed out of view. Now a kingfisher, then a dipper, sped like an arrow past the near corner of the pool; and the whiz of swift wings—unheard by all except little creatures living in frequent danger, and listening with beating hearts to sounds ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... affectionate. She as wholly preoccupied about her new possessions, and the place she is going to take in the county; she cares for her husband, because he represents her social success, and because he is a creditable and presentable man. But she has no grain of sympathy, perception, humour, or emotion. I began by thinking it was rather a tragedy; my old friend had married for love; he is anything but a fool himself, except for this one serious error, the falling in love with a girl who can give him none of the things ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... or reynes, and driveth forth sand, gravell, and stones out of them, and also hindreth the encrease or breeding of any new, by the concretion, and saudering of gravell, bred of a viscous and clammy humour, or substance. The same it performeth to the bladder, for which it is also very beneficiall, if it chance to have any evill disposition either in the cavity thereof, or in the necke of it, and shutting muscle called Sphincter, ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane
... and other writers were putting new life and elevation into men's ideas of religion, and gilding it with poetry, these bunglers in the Government chose to make the harshness of their creed felt all over the country. Never was nation in a more tractable humour; La France, like a tired woman, was ready to agree to anything; never was mismanagement so clumsy; and La France, like a woman, would have forgiven wrongs more ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... Simon, with more humour than accuracy, "as that was a raither pecooliar lock. How it was kep' red hot all the time without coal and bellows, ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... the platform, as he waddles about, with a face as of the rising sun, radiant with good fun, good humour, good deeds, good news, and good living. His coat was scarlet once; but purple now. His leathers and boots were doubtless clean this morning; but are now afflicted with elephantiasis, being three inches deep in solid mud, which his old groom is scraping ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... banter; but the Swiftian cynicism permeates every line. It is the first of four tracts which form Swift's most important expression of his thoughts on Religion and the Church. Scott well describes it as "one of the most felicitous efforts in our language, to engage wit and humour on the side of religion," and Forster speaks of it as "having also that indefinable subtlety of style which conveys not the writer's knowledge of the subject only, but his ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... and a little more, I hope. To tell you the truth, I followed Miss Thurnbrein here, and I think she'd have done better to have asked for my escort—the escort of the man she's going to marry—before she came here alone at this time of night." Mr. Graveling's ill-humour was explained. He was of the order of those to whom the ability to conceal their feelings is not given, and he was obviously in a temper. Maraton's face remained impassive. The girl, however, stood suddenly erect. There was a vivid spot ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... not Angry at Table whatever happens & if you have reason to be so, Shew it not put on a Chearfull Countenance especially if there be Strangers for good Humour makes one Dish ...
— George Washington's Rules of Civility - Traced to their Sources and Restored by Moncure D. Conway • Moncure D. Conway
... either by their personal charm, by mental qualities, or by the brilliancy of their career. Some amongst the number were more congenial to me than others; such as Francois Arago, the astronomer, inexhaustible in wit and humour, whether he was recounting his adventures when he was in captivity in the Barbary States, or the way he plagued his colleague Ampere, a soldier like himself in the regiment of the "Parrots in mourning," as he dubbed the Institute, ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... crudest sort of American humour and not to be given a moment's serious thought, so I redoubled my efforts to detach him from our honest but noisy friends, and presently had the satisfaction of doing so by pleading that I must be up ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
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