"Hilariously" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... anything but dull! It is a pitiful, heartbreaking world, full of injustice, misunderstandings, false standards, and selfishness, but it is never dull. Neither is it a lost world, for the darkest corners of it are illuminated here and there by heroic deeds and noble aspirations. Men who hilariously sold their vote and influence prior to 1914, who took every sharp turn within the law, and who shamelessly mocked at any ideals of citizenship, were among the first to put on the King's uniform and march out ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... farce is one of the cleanest and most hilariously amusing plays of recent years. It is the story of ambitious but impecunious youth. "Doc" Hampton, without a patient, "Stocksie," a lawyer devoid of clients, and "Chub" Perkins, a financier without capital, are in a bad way. In fact, they are broke and it ...
— The Ghost of Jerry Bundler • W. W. Jacobs and Charles Rock
... agonised and peremptory 'there, there, there,' moved out of hearing in dignified disgust, to the general's high entertainment, who enjoyed her assaults upon innocent Puddock, and indeed took her attacks upon himself, when executed with moderation, hilariously enough—a misplaced good-humour which never failed to fire Aunt Becky's ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... message summoned Molly Merriweather to the hospital. In extreme agitation she dressed quickly, telling Mrs. King she would return very soon. Never had she been so hilariously happy. Jinnie Grandoken had disappeared, as if she had been sunk in the sea. Molly now held the whip hand over her husband; she could force him to divorce her quietly. It was true of them both now their principal enemies were out of the way. Theo was getting well, and would come ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... him, laughed hilariously, and slapped him lightly on the shoulder: "It is a long time since we met, father. How ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... I guess I was still thinking of him and being sorry for him when I got to Boston. That's why I couldn't be so crazy and hilariously glad when the folks met me, I suspect. Some way, all of a sudden, I found myself wishing he ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter
... just as well, but things used to be livelier. That serenade was just before Isabel was married—and don't you fret, Miss Lucy: your father remembers it well enough!" The old gentleman burst into laughter, and shook his finger at Eugene across the table. "The fact is," the Major went on hilariously, "I believe if Eugene hadn't broken that bass fiddle and given himself away, Isabel would never have taken Wilbur! I shouldn't be surprised if that was about all the reason that Wilbur got her! ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... one dose of it would render a person permanently indifferent to savors, and make him, like Mithridates, poison-proof. Nevertheless, people go to the springs and drink. Then they go to the bowling-alleys and bowl. In the evening, if you are hilariously inclined, you can make the tour of the hotels. In each one you see a large and brilliantly lighted parlor, along the four sides of which are women sitting solemn and stately, in rows three deep, with a man dropped ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... aimlessly down the street and crossed in the direction of hell's half-acre below the Baltimore depot. His uniform was wrinkled, his boots had not been blacked for a week, his linen was dirty, his hair rumpled, his handsome black moustache stained with drink, but he was hilariously conscious that he had two thousand dollars of Joe Hall's ill-gotten money in his pocket. There was a devil-may-care swing to his walk and a look in his eye that no decent woman would care to ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... the middle of a dense bush, and twittering busily, in subdued rehearsal, the whole copious variety of his lay, practising trills and preparing half-imitations, which, at some other time, sitting on the topmost twig, he shall hilariously seem to improvise before all the world. Can it be that he is really in some slight disgrace with Nature, with that demi-mourning garb of his,—and that his feline cry of terror, which makes his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... answered the black, his eyes sparkling and his teeth gleaming hilariously, "who you call 'brack demon,' eh, sah? Who eber hear of brack demon turnin' out at four o'clock in de mornin' to make coffee for young gentermen, eh? And about de grog, Mistah Courtenay; how many glasses do dis one make dat you now owe me, eh, sah? Ansah me dat, ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... he inquired hilariously, out of his dream where the present made the fire on the hearth and the past lent him figures to ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... "Hold on!" said Pyecroft hilariously. "That isn't all! Neither the executors nor the probate judge knew you from Adam, and the Sacramento bar, scenting a good joke, lay low and said nothing. Then the old fool judge said that 'as you appeared to be a lawyer, a ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... worry," she said with a gay imitation of Leslie's inimitable toss of the head, and the two young people laughed so hilariously that the other staid couples already in the dining-room turned in amaze to see who was taking life so happily on a day ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... I laughed outright, laughed hilariously. I recognised the man. The last time I had seen him was when he stepped out of a gas tank on the 18th floor of an office building in Chicago where I was reclining at the time in a dentist chair. He was the little gas demon who walked with ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... nines, there is no doubt about it. Yes, but is her face less homely? Above all, has she style? The answer is in a stout affirmative. Ask Kenneth. He knows. Many a time he has had to go behind a door to roar hilariously at the old lady. He has thought of her as a lark to tell his mates about by and by; but for some reason that he cannot fathom, he knows now that he will never ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... defiant challenge of the athletic butler down stairs, the last weak death rattle in the throat of the coffee pot in the dining room, and the wail of the damned souls who had formerly stopped at this hotel, but who had been rescued at last, and had hilariously gone to perdition, only to come back at night and torment the poor guest by bragging over the superiority of hell as a refuge from the ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... the rain, dived impartially into the first of the crowded saloons, was somewhat hilariously greeted by a score of convivial fellows, found no one who knew of young Glen Kent, and proceeded on ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... maiden's soul, reaching out tendril after tendril as the days made years. The Dick Bowman's were holding biennial receptions to the little angels who came to the house in the Doctor's valise—and welcomed, hilariously welcomed babies they were—welcomed with cigars and free drinks at Riley's saloon by Dick, and in awed silence by Lida, his wife—welcomed even though the parents never knew exactly how the celestial ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... dreamers. The windows of his study looked out on the graveyard but, as he paced up and down the room, reflecting deeply on the immortality of the soul, he was quite unaware that Jerry and Carl were playing leap-frog hilariously over the flat stones in that abode of dead Methodists. Mr. Meredith had occasional acute realizations that his children were not so well looked after, physically or morally, as they had been before his wife died, and he had always a ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... movement he reached the top, threw his arms about the beam, and leaped to the ground beside them. Then he laughed again, hilariously, ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... came into the group, and sat down by Helen's side. A few minutes later Mr. Venning strolled up from the opposite direction. He was a little flushed, and in the mood to answer hilariously whatever ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... it. You know it is a trait in the Douglas family. Our way of entertaining guests is to sit close together and recall happenings, and delightedly remind each other of childish escapades, shouting hilariously, while our guests sit in a bored and puzzled silence. Pleasant family ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... and tossed it into the air hilariously. As it came down he tried to catch it on the toe of his pump, but active as he was he missed, and it rolled along the ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... head with a towel turban and incased her feet in an old pair of shoes. Thus equipped, she fell upon the task of regeneration with fanatic zeal. She became grimy; a smear of soot disfigured her face; her skirt dragged, her shoe-tops flopped, and the heels clattered; but she was hilariously happy. ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... at Syracuse and stated our determination to present Mr. Greeley's name, it was hilariously received as a joke. Efforts were made by friends of Greeley to persuade him not to undertake such an impossible task, but ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... she found the bedroom relatively clean, and, knowing that too much must not be expected at once, she made no comment. That night, as she sat reading at eleven o'clock, a strange sound arose in the back part of the house; it was a man's voice, hilariously mirthful and breaking into rude song. After listening for a few minutes, Miss Rodney rang her bell, ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... journey had been a series of tragedies. Not his own. There were two hundred of them, officers and men, on the boat across the Channel. Blind, maimed, paralysed, in motley garments, they were hilariously happy. Every throb of the turbine engines was a thrust toward ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... tallest and strongest of the fairies rolling along the huge, round, flat cheeses from Friesland! Any one of these was as big as a cart wheel, and would feed a regiment. The fairies trundled the heavy discs along, as if they were playing with hoops. They shouted hilariously, as, with a pine stick, they beat them forward like boys at play. Farm cheese, factory cheese, Alkmaar cheese, and, to crown all, cheese from Limburg—which Klaas never could bear, because of its ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... plain-clothes men!" whispered Satin. "Off with you! Off with you!" A wild stampede took place amid the surging crowd. Skirts streamed out behind and were torn. There were blows and shrieks. A woman fell down. The crowd of bystanders stood hilariously watching this rough police raid while the plain-clothes men rapidly narrowed their circle. Meanwhile Nana had lost Satin. Her legs were failing her, and she would have been taken up for a certainty had not a man caught her by the ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... hilariously for a brief fishing trip with his father before the Eastshore schools should open; and to the delight of his mother and sisters, Doctor Hugh came out to stay till they were ready to go back with him, a matter of ten days or so, for school would be in ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... bring him closer to his companion. He held her books tightly, and his face softened as he looked at her, until it was transfigured by the warmth of his emotion. Then, as they passed the college grounds, where a knot of students greeted Eugenia hilariously, and turned upon the Old Stage Road, he reached out timidly to take the small hand hanging ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... we put a baby, feet fireward. We called in the Obasan (old woman) to play nurse, and on the table near we placed a row of bottles marked "First aid to the hungry." As I closed the door of the emergency nursery, I looked back to see a semi-circle of pink heels waving hilariously. Surely the fire goddess never had lovelier devotees than the Oriental cherubs that lay cooing and kicking before ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... was, swaggering along the walk with some of his mates, hilariously telling them, perhaps, of how he had tolled all the cats of the neighborhood into ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... me as probable that the lady would have even more to say to him. He stepped into the cutter, and, as they pushed off, was hilariously bonneted by Mr. Dalmahoy, by way of parting salute. "Starboard after-braces!" Captain Colenso called to his crew. The yards were trimmed and the Lady Nepean slowly gathered way, while I stood by the bulwarks gazing after my friends and attempting to persuade myself that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the party seemed to resent this dismissal. The women laughed hilariously and called him a darling. There was a smacking exchange of kisses; and the coaches, having been packed at length, started for home to the strains of the cornet and a chorus of cheers. Mr. Jope sprang in beside me, and leaning out of the farther window, waved his neckerchief for ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... he returned, hilariously. "It has been such a pleasure to meet you. Thank you so much for saving my life. It was very good of you indeed. Yes, in the morning. Good-night—good-night." He shook hands with them all again, including Mr. Todd, who was going ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... certain direction, having all the effect of a moral lesson. To a certain extent, however, this building was an imposition. The enthusiastic members of my family, who confidently expected to see its inmates hilariously disporting themselves at its windows in the different stages of inebriation portrayed by the late W. E. Burton, were much disappointed. The Home was reticent of its secrets. The County Hospital, also in range of the bay-window, ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... to be alone and comfortless upon a foggy island, and, hearing, had filled his vast chest with warmth and sunshine, and puffed out his merry cheeks and blown. The great breath sent the blue waves thundering upon the coral beaches of Florida, tore across the forests of palm and set them all waving hilariously, shook the merry orange-trees till they rattled, whistled through the dismal swamps of Georgia, swept, calling and shouting to itself, over the Carolinas, where clouds were hatching in men's minds, ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... to be carried anywhere, or a dead slave to be decently buried; and though one or two other like instances might be set down, touching the set terms, places, and occasions, when sharks do most socially congregate, and most hilariously feast; yet is there no conceivable time or occasion when you will find them in such countless numbers, and in gayer or more jovial spirits, than around a dead sperm whale, moored by night to a whale-ship at sea. If ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... to the door and flung it open. Ruth hesitated at the chair in which she had been about to be seated. Outside she saw bunched several uniformed men. They were hilariously pushing into the cottage, thrusting the ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... the discomfited lovers is spreading in the school, and the quotation of 'Frog went courting, he did ride,' hilariously given is quenching the ardour of many an amorous swain. Possibly a little wholesome humour may after all be more helpful than stern enforcement of rules, and you know if there is one thing more than another we mountain folks lack, it is a sense of humour! So, even on general principles, ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... l'Amour.' A slightly erroneous reading of Lammermoor, for my cousin sometimes made mistakes, and was not much versed in the Italian opera. 'You know it's a play, and I call her L'Amour for shortness;' and she laughed hilariously, and I could not forbear joining; and, winking at me, she ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... friends went deeper and talked husbands, both admiring, both hilariously amused at the masculine absurdities of ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... pointed to the garden and laughed so hilariously? Had he witnessed any of those nocturnal ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... beginning. There was a large private dining-room, elaborately decorated, with a string orchestra concealed in a bower of plants. But there were cocktails even on the side-board at the doorway; and by the time the guests had got to the coffee, every one was hilariously drunk. After each toast they would hurl their glasses over their shoulders. The purpose of a "bachelor dinner," it appeared, was a farewell to the old days and the boon companions; so there were sentimental and comic songs which had been composed for the occasion, ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... late before we separated, for when Ada was going at eleven o'clock, Mr. Skimpole went to the piano and rattled hilariously that the best of all ways to lengthen our days was to steal a few hours from night, my dear! It was past twelve before he took his candle and his radiant face out of the room, and I think he might have kept us there, ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... hilariously-disposed little Gibbs had exploded a cracker in the young man's ear; and Mr. Dowson, blushing to the very edge of his extremely high collar, subsided ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... pinned a bunch of nasturtiums on his coat, and we all stood and hilariously admired him. Bishop called him aside and motioned me to ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... in a speaking-trumpet voice, put the poor child into an agony of blushes, which only incited him to pat her on the cheek, and the rest to laugh hilariously, under the influence ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... general idea of the direction of the hunt, the boys pushed hilariously forward. Before them opened a vast expanse of bottom land, slightly sloping on the right to a distant half-filled lagoon, formed by the main river overflow, on whose tributary they had encamped. The lagoon was partly hidden by straggling timber and "brush," and beyond that again stretched the unlimitable ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... not broadly, not hilariously, only to the exact shade demanded by conversational sympathy. "Then we shall agree ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... Clinch had uttered an exquisite joke instead of a very angry statement, it could not have been more hilariously received. He paused, grew confused, and ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... left the whole of her fortune to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Then she died. The serious parts of the discussion had been of higher merit than the playful—in a men's debate is the reverse more general? —but the meeting broke up hilariously enough, and a dozen happy ladies dispersed ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... crowned Mrs. Charity Givens with a fresh sheet of tanglefoot and Warble hilariously made a foolscap of another for the Rector's bald head. Judge Drinkwater folded Daisy Snow's two little hands together, then wrapped them tightly in fly-paper, and shook with laughter to see her futile attempts to ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... Elliott, don't be so — so uncomf't'ble 'n' p'tic'lar! W't's use of be'ng shnobbish?" he urged, clinging hilariously to his partner, a pigeon-toed ballet girl. But ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... went through the crowd. The sale had been a dull affair, and they were ready for some fun. Someone called out, "Put him up, Jacob." The joke found favour and the call was repeated hilariously. ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the pavements look as if they were covered with snow and even more slippery. The chief spectacular feature of the celebration in Boston, however, was the burning on the Common, on Tuesday night, of twenty-five tons of red fire in one great blaze. Similar and perhaps more hilariously happy scenes took place in New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Atlanta, Chicago, San Francisco,—in every great city and hamlet ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... mercurial nature, one of the sort of citizens which sweet Ireland empties on us by the county, he may sportively flit about among the polls, from ward to ward, of the metropolis, and no man says to him nay; he may even travel hilariously from city to city, with free passes and free drinks—who treats Miss Anthony?—making festive calls, and dropping ballots for cards, and no disturbance comes of it—he is neither fined nor confined. So, it would seem, "a little voting is ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... entered into the spirit of his mood with great gusto, and cheered hilariously. The basket was produced, and at this moment Mrs. Gordon was seen coming across the meadow. "Just in time, mother!" cried Jack, starting ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... Claude's father. He liked to provoke others to uncouth laughter, but he never laughed immoderately himself. In telling stories about him, people often tried to imitate his smooth, senatorial voice, robust but never loud. Even when he was hilariously delighted by anything,—as when poor Mahailey, undressing in the dark on a summer night, sat down on the sticky fly-paper,—he was not boisterous. He was a jolly, easy-going father, indeed, for a boy who ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... at his nose's end at all the decorous and respectable world. Here, for once, orchestral music is really wonderfully rascally and impudent, horns gleeful and windy and insolent, wood-wind puckish and obscene. Here a musical form reels hilariously and cuts capers and dances on bald heads. The variation of "Don Quixote" that describes with wood-wind and tambourine Dulcinea del Toboso is plump and plebeian and good-natured with her very person, is all the more trenchantly vulgar and flat for the preceding suave variation ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... the Editor hilariously, 'these chaps here say you have been travelling into the middle of next week! Tell us all about little Rosebery, will you? What will you take ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... grand philosophical "coup" is a simple and effective one—the turning of everything, complacently and hilariously, upside down. One has the salutary amusement in reading him of visualizing the Universe in the posture of a Gargantuan baby, "prepared" for a sound smacking. Mr. Chesterton himself is the chief actor in this performance and wonderful ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... obsequiousness; the bride all bashfulness and beauty. The "happy pair," I saw by the afternoon newspapers, were to pass the honeymoon at Mr. Harlowe's seat, Fairdown Park. The evening of the marriage-day was anything, I remember, but a pleasant one to me. I reached home by no means hilariously disposed, where I was greeted, by way of revival, with the intelligence that my wife, after listening with great energy to Lady Maldon's description of the wedding festivities for two tremendous hours, had at last been relieved by copious hysteria, and that Mary and Kate were in a fair way—if ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... fast as possible up the mountain side, while the blue dusk closed in about us, and the light died in the purple sky. At first we had talked hilariously, and the little dog had leaped ahead of us with the utmost joy. Latterly, however, a curious oppression came on us; we did not speak or even whistle, while the dog fell behind, following us with hesitation ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... them, in the opposite box, some man from the placers, with his face tanned to a copper color, was hilariously surrounding himself with all the girls he could induce to become his guests, holding a box party of his own. He was leaning over the rail and bellowing so loudly that his voice could be heard above the din: "Hey, down there! You, Tim! Bring ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... Black pitch smeared the seams of the raw lumber. They travelled sideways as well as in any other fashion. And in such crazy craft were thousands of amateur boatmen, sailing serenely along, taking danger with sang-froid, and at night, over their camp-fires, hilariously telling ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... to look you up, Lydia," she said, advancing upon them hilariously, "I thought maybe you weren't feeling well, and then I saw you monopolizing the lion so that everybody was wondering where in the world he was, and you were so wrapped up that you never even noticed ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield |
