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More "Sense of humour" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Chinese, who are also a cold-blooded race: slow, watchful, inquisitive, acquisitive, and full of the sense of humour. There are fishes in the Great Aquarium whose faces twinkle again ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... showed little gratitude in holding up to ridicule the institution that has done so much for you. Had you not managed to be funny I doubt if you would have been forgiven. But fortunately for you, Mr.—, that is, the gentleman who has just gone—appears to have an immoderate sense of humour. On the strength of that impertinent paper, he has offered ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... makes against a man. Death himself had me by the heels, for this was his last ambuscado, and he must now join personally in the fray. And still I held to my paddle. At last I dragged myself on to my stomach on the trunk, and lay there a breathless sop, with a mingled sense of humour and injustice. A poor figure I must have presented to Burns upon the hill-top with his team. But there was the paddle in my hand. On my tomb, if ever I have one, I mean to get these words inscribed: 'He clung ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Percy's good qualities. She was expansive, affectionate and constant; and she really cared far more about Percy now than she did when she married him. And this, though she was quite aware that he was entirely wanting in several things that she had particularly valued in Nigel (a sense of humour for one), and that he had inherited rather acutely the depressing Kellynch characteristic of taking ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... Denis. I don't trust these very cheerful men, who have a ready laugh and a sense of humour. They laugh to conceal the fact that they cannot crow, and they crack jokes because they cannot break hearts. Give me the broody serious men with fierce ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... Johnson was made Sheriff of the County, a post which gave him a house and permanent position. Though married now, and apparently "settled down," the Sheriff was a sort of hero in Kiota. I had listened to many tales about him, showing desperate determination veined with a sense of humour, and I often regretted that I had reached the place too late to see him in action. I had little or nothing to do in the office. The tedium of the long days was almost unbroken, and Stephen's "Commentaries" had become as monotonous and unattractive ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... wedding we made brave, in a sly way, to rail at Mehronay about his love affair, and he took it good-naturedly. He knew the situation just as it was; his sense of humour allowed him no false view of the matter. One afternoon when the paper was out, George Kirwin, the foreman, and one of the reporters and Mehronay were in the back room leaning against the imposing-stones looking over the paper, when Kirwin said: ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... enough in its way," he said, "but as a safeguard there's no virtue alive that can stand against a sense of humour. An instinct for the ridiculous will keep any man ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... to Flinders' dry sense of humour occurred in reference to a chart of Bass Strait which Baudin had with him. This chart was one which had been drawn from George Bass's sketch by Flinders himself, and incorporated with his own more scientific chart of ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... to bring certain long poems of universal renown within the scope of my principle. What about Paradise Lost? Did any woman, except perhaps GEORGE ELIOT, ever read it throughout unless under scholastic compulsion? I doubt it; her sense of humour would not allow her to. Take, for instance, the following lines, describing the simple ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... moment—when her father hastens the eviction of Louise by throwing a chair at her, very well aimed by Mr. ROBERT RADFORD, who only just missed his mark. I suppose it is hopeless to expect that the makers of "Grand" Opera (whose sense of humour is seldom their strong point) will consent to allow the trivialities of ordinary speech in everyday life ("How do you do?" "Thank you, I am not feeling my best," and so on) to be said—if they must find expression ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... Winterbotham, Sir Edward Fry, Mr. William de Morgan, and others, to whose kindness I am indebted for many reminiscences of Professor Newman as a teacher, tell me that he had many eccentricities which perpetually aroused their sense of humour. Sir Edward Fry tells me that his manner, when he himself was at college in 1848, was "somewhat nervous, perhaps even a little irritable, and he was not exactly popular as a professor. But his lectures were very interesting ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... Dicky Donovan came in a boat, and with him Mustapha Kali under a native guard of four men. The Mudir's sense of humour had been touched, and this sense of humour probably saved the Mudir from trouble, for it played Dicky's game ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... who took himself very seriously. There was an air of pomposity and arrogant importance about him which—considering who and what he was—would have been entertaining to any observer gifted with a sense of humour. ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... not wholly without irony. He was wont to say that any man could make an enemy of him, but no man could keep him as such. Perhaps it was that very volatility of his which made anything of the nature of prolonged enmity an impossibility. He possessed also that maddening sense of humour that laughs at deadly things. A good many people had tried to take him seriously and had failed. He was never serious. As he used to say with his mocking laugh, life was difficult enough without complications of that sort. All he ever asked ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... publication I suppose you do not want to say much about his private character, otherwise his strong sense of humour and love of society might have been added. Also his extreme interest in the progress of the world, and in the happiness of mankind. Also his freedom from all religious bigotry, though these perhaps ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... Barwig's sense of humour, and he burst Into laughter, a laughter perilously near to tears. It never occurred to him to ask Poons what he knew or what he had heard. The fact that what was preying on his mind, his carefully guarded secret, was common property did not strike ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... the air of a man who is satisfied with himself rather than with the world, and the continual exhibition of this species of selfishness is apt to irritate the most simple-minded spectator. Lacking the sense of humour necessary to give him a knowledge of his own relations to his neighbours, he lived under the impression that he was not only one of the most generous of men, but the most popular. He insisted upon his rights. ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... need, I presume, occupation after their hours of work. If any of them answer: "We do not want occupation, we want amusement. Work is very dull, and we want something which will excite our fancy, imagination, sense of humour. We want poetry, fiction, even a good laugh or a game of play"—I shall most fully agree with them. There is often no better medicine for a hard-worked body and mind than a good laugh; and the man who can play most heartily when he has a chance of playing is generally the ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... incurable state of things? Is this method of managing our affairs the only possible electoral method, and is there no remedy for its monstrous clumsiness and inefficiency but to "show a sense of humour," or, in other words, to grin and bear it? Or is it conceivable that there may be a better way to government than any we have yet tried, a method of government that would draw every class into conscious and ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... two generations paying the same court to a female piety more highly strung: Thomas Smith to the mother of Robert Stevenson—Robert Stevenson to the daughter of Thomas Smith. And if for once my grandfather suffered himself to be hurried, by his sense of humour and justice, into that remark about the case of Providence and the Baker, I should be sorry for any of his children who should have stumbled into the same attitude of criticism. In the apocalyptic style of the housekeeper ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... calmer mood Amherst's sense of humour would have preserved him from such a view of his father-in-law's advice; but just then it fell like a spark on his smouldering prejudices. He was clear-sighted enough to recognize the obstacles to legal retaliation; ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... So-and-so has no sense of humour. Lack of this sense is everywhere held to be a horrid disgrace, nullifying any number of delightful qualities. Perhaps the most effective means of disparaging an enemy is to lay stress on his integrity, his erudition, ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... very sure of this, that the sane, healthy, well-balanced nature must have a fund of wholesome laughter in him, and that so far from trying to repress a sense of humour, as an unkind, unworthy, inhuman thing, there is no capacity of human nature which makes life so frank and pleasant a business. There are no companions so delightful as the people for whom one treasures up jests and reminiscences, because one is sure ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and kind words tried to soothe the feelings of the wounded lover. It was only when her vivacity and sense of humour got the better of this sprightly creature (as they would do under most circumstances of life indeed) that she would break out with her satire, but she could soon put on a demure face. "Dearest love," she said, "do you ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... thinking about my return to Egypt. I didn't write to you before, though I wanted to thank you for your visit to Mrs. Chepstow. You can't think how she appreciated it. She was delighted by your brilliant talk and sense of humour, but still more delighted by your cordiality and kindness. Of late she hasn't had very much of the latter commodity, and she was quite bowled over. By Jove, Isaacson, if men realized what a little true kindness means to those who are down on their ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... have been a great laugher. Indeed, he confesses honestly that the sense of humour was very powerful with him—"I am wonderfully taken by anything comic", he writes to one of his friends. He reckons humour also as a useful ally to the orator. "A happy jest or facetious turn is not only pleasant, but also highly useful occasionally;" ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... a sense of humour also, and when Pierre told her what was required of her, she laughed with a quick little gurgle, and showed as handsome a set of teeth as the half-breed's; which said much for her. She promised to do as he wished. So it chanced when Macavoy was at his favourite seat beneath ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... industry would have ceased, but alas! the noise was even more deafening than before. I was still in a state of nerves over the events of the morning. There had been a most distressing lack of poise on my part, and I couldn't help feeling after it was all over that my sense of humour had received a shock from which it was not likely to recover in a long time. There was but little consolation in the reflection that my irritating visitors deserved something in the shape of a rebuff; I could not separate myself from the conviction that my integrity as a gentleman ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... old story[14] that Coke ordered her to be executed in the yellow ruff she had made the fashion and so proudly worn in Court. What did happen, according to Sir Simonds d'Ewes, was that the hangman, a coarse ruffian with a distorted sense of humour, dressed himself in bands and cuffs of yellow colour, but no one heeded his ribaldry; only in after days none of either sex used the yellow starch, and the fashion grew generally to ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... government were directed to the advancement of knowledge and morality. As there is little education at Naples, we find there, at present, more originality of character than of mind. But the remarkable men of this country, it is said, such as the Abbe Galiani, Caraccioli, &c., possessed the highest sense of humour, joined to the most profound reflection,—rare powers of the mind!—an union without which either pedantry or frivolity would hinder us from knowing ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... reception one afternoon. She had a purple dress with lace, and a Queen Victoria sort of bonnet with strings, and little white feathers sticking up in the front; and she had a—" Pixie smiled into space with reminiscent enjoyment—"beautiful sense of humour!" ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... of the first decision of the Government arrived at Delhi, when all at that place were full of the wrong done to the army, a private soldier of the 60th Rifles, inspired by the most exquisite sense of humour as well as of bitter satire, wrote upon the walls of the palace where his regiment was quartered the following appropriate sentence: "Delhi taken and India saved for 36 rupees 10 annas." It is said that the Governor-General demanded the name of this waggish soldier, ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... private correspondence, is true, and is notorious because some of his most intimate letters have been preserved. But it is not peculiar to him. The man who talked in public as he talked in private would have small sense of fitness. The man who talked in private as he talked in public would have small sense of humour. Although Cicero's humour was not brilliant, he had sufficient taste to preserve him from pedantry and from solecisms. His devotion to the Republic was perfectly sincere; and if he changed in his behaviour to Caesar, ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... of speech blunt and harsh. Something of this may, probably, be attributed to the freedom of mountain air and of isolated hill-side life; something be derived from their rough Norse ancestry. They have a quick perception of character, and a keen sense of humour; the dwellers among them must be prepared for certain uncomplimentary, though most likely true, observations, pithily expressed. Their feelings are not easily roused, but their duration is lasting. Hence ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Dalmain by no means came first among her particular chums. He was older than most of them, and yet in some ways younger than any, and his remarkable youthfulness of manner and exuberance of spirits sometimes made him appear foolish to Jane, whose sense of humour was of a more sedate kind. But of the absolute perfection of his outward appearance, there was no question; and Jane looked at him now, much as his own mother might have looked, with honest ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... doing us boys a good turn, wrote a line to our father, telling him in a humorous manner all about this particular wretched back-bitten black bream which he had recognised, and the price he had been asked for it. Then my father, having no sense of humour, gave us, one and all, a sound thrashing for taking money from old Duggan, who thereafter sold our black bream to a hawker man who travelled around in a spring cart, and gave him three shillings each, out of which we got two, and spent ...
— The Colonial Mortuary Bard; "'Reo," The Fisherman; and The Black Bream Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... loved and where you are disliked; and not all the learning and logic of so-called philosophers shall be able to cloud your instinct. You will have a keener appreciation of good and beautiful things—a delightful sense of humour, and invariable cheerfulness; and whatever you do, unless you make some mistake by your own folly, will carry with it its success. And, what is perhaps a greater privilege, you will find that all who are ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... for want of caution in the letters you write. In which particulars, indeed, if my influence had had greater weight with you than a somewhat excessive quickness of disposition, or a certain enjoyment in indulging temper, or a faculty for epigram and a sense of humour, we should certainly have had no cause for dissatisfaction. And don't you suppose that I feel no common vexation when I am told how Vergilius is esteemed, and your neighbour C. Octavius?[288] For if you only excel ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... outside the door I met young Lee, and got the facts out of him. It appears that P. V. Wilson, my aunt's friend's friend's son, entered the fags' room at four-fifteen. At four-fifteen-and-a-half, punctually, Skinner was observed to be trying to rag him. Apparently the great Percy has no sense of humour, for at four-seventeen he got tired of it, and hit Skinner crisply in the right eyeball, blacking the same as per illustration. The subsequent fight raged gorily for five minutes odd, and then Wilson, who seems to be a professional pugilist ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... was that puppet and that orator. I stop and think—shall I describe how I paced up and down the pier, respectfully but emphatically watched by the secretary? And all the melodramatic plots I conceived, the muffled oars and the midnight visits to my Sylvia? My sense of humour forbids it. For a while now I shall take the hint and stay in the background of this story. I shall tell the experiences of Sylvia as Sylvia herself told them to me long afterwards; saying no more about my own fate—save that I swallowed my humiliation and took the ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... these jolter-heads; and no doubt the sense of security that I drank from their dull, gasping faces encouraged me to proceed extremely far. And for my sins, there was one silent little man at table who took my story at the true value. It was from no sense of humour, to which he was quite dead. It was from no particular intelligence, for he had not any. The bond of sympathy, of all things in the world, ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of justice than their human associates, the savages. At least the animals do not make the innocent suffer for the guilty, and give their lives unjustly. Should a soko try to take another's wife he is publicly punished by the tribe. These animals have a great sense of humour and fully enjoy a practical joke. Strangely enough, they never attack women and children, but if any man approaches them with a spear or gun, they try to rush upon him, often at the expense of their own life, and wrest the weapon from ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... was effected by a thunderbolt from heaven, his saving sense of humour and the agitated springs of his sympathy forbade a purely personal application. But twenty years later he might have reflected upon the opportune cause of his departure from St. Croix as one of the ironies of ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... the old school of Englishmen whom we can ill afford to lose. Capacious in mind and body, with a large sense of humour, of strict personal integrity, and a hearty enjoyment of life, it is indeed sad to think of him at the present moment as lying on a bed of languishing, from which it is doubtful whether he will rise more. Very little news leaks out from the sick-chamber. ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... laughable incident in a tragic business. How deeply thankful we ought to be that even the most serious matters have generally a silver lining about them in the shape of a joke, if only people could see it. The sense of humour is a very valuable possession in life, and ought to be cultivated in the Board schools ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... the year 1867, which saw the production of his 'Contrabandista' and 'Cox and Box,' both written to libretti by Sir Frank Burnand, and both showing not merely admirable musicianship and an original vein of melody, but an irresistible sense of humour and a rare faculty for expressing it in music. 'Thespis' (1871) first brought him into partnership with Mr. Gilbert, a partnership which was further cemented by 'Trial by Jury' (1875). It was 'Trial by Jury' that opened the eyes of connoisseurs to the ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... and a bull-terrier—a conventional British type, I suppose, saved, nevertheless, from conventionality by his affection for his three plain sisters, his determination to see things as they were, and his sense of humour, the last of these something quite his own, and always appearing in unexpected places. The bull-terrier, in spite of the notice on the Library door that no dogs were admitted, advanced breathlessly and dribbling with excitement for Miss ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... your noble mouth and to keep your high-bred eyes within their sockets lest you should lose them"; at which words those who were listening broke into a fit of laughter, for one redeeming characteristic among the Abati was that they had a sense of humour. ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... eye, with a voice to cajole the senses as with music of bugles, and an oratory to inspire. Moreover, the destiny which shaped his ends had mercifully denied him that which is a boon to common men but a curse to public men. Jason Mallard was without a sense of humour. He never laughed at others; he never laughed at himself. Certain of our public leaders have before now fallen into the woful error of doing one or both of these things. Wherefore they were forever after called humourists—and ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... her; but she had dainty little features, smooth brown hair of satin sheen, and mild brown eyes, with just a hint of demureness in them now and again. We remembered that Aunt Olivia had written to father that Cecily was a true Ward—she had no sense of humour. We did not know what this meant, but we thought it ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... friend and namesake, while Eve was to be presented to him as a visitor at the cottage named Miss Waboose. I had feared that old Mrs Liston would not enter into my plan, but found that, on the contrary, having a strong sense of humour, she quite enjoyed the notion of it. So did Aunt Temple, but Eve herself felt doubtful of her ability to act out her part. I had no doubt on that point, for she had undertaken it, and well did I know that whatever Eve undertook she could, and ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... phase of the feud code, but not having practised it sufficiently, I overdid the thing by telling some slightly funny anecdotes. Sam laughed at exactly the right place—laughed with his mouth. When I caught sight of his mouth, I wished I had been blessed with enough sense of humour to have ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... free, independent life, suffered horribly from want of space and insufficient and bad food. They could not get over the idea of having to appear twice daily for the roll-call, although there was no escape possible. But their sense of humour did not suffer. ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... belongs to the school of 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" ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... the man. 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,' ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... the engaging spectacle of the biographer of WILKES and the editor of The Edinburgh (the author of The New Republic surely somewhere in the offing) crouching among the headstones with a candle in a hollow turnip will make a certain appeal to those with a sense of humour and proportion ... The others may ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various
... man's was one of the typical island physiognomies—his features energetic and wary in their expression, and half covered with a close, crisp black beard. Pierston fancied that out of his keen dark eyes there glimmered a dry sense of humour at the situation. ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... and reserved; but when he became interested in any matter he talked freely, although always deliberately, and he was always ready to deafen his opinions with much spirit. He had, moreover, a considerable sense of humour. What struck me most about Scott was the great acuteness of his powers of observing natural phenomena, and especially of such as had any bearing on variation, natural selection or hybridity. While most attentive to the ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... were brought in upon cushions, and I began to play. The visitor—who had less sense of humour than Hamid—did not laugh at all. Instead, he took the mouthpiece of his tchibouk slowly from his lips and held it at a little distance, while his mouth and eyes opened wider and wider. Hamid eyed him keenly, with a kind ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... her anxiety and weariness, Isa laughed. The entire train of events since her arrival the day before had appealed to her latent sense of humour. ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... notice. Else why the sombrero and knickerbockers, the flowing locks and eccentric yellow cloak? Nay, I think it may have been in part this very note of undisguised vanity in the man that made it difficult to keep one's eyes off him: it tickled the sense of humour, and challenged the curiosity. What would his state of mind be, who, in the dotage of the Nineteenth Century, went laboriously out of his way to cultivate a fragmentary resemblance to—say a ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... Savile Row could turn them out, yet somehow, by the way he wore them, proclaiming him immediately a man who never gave two thoughts to his dress. If, however, Winthorpe's face was the face of a Puritan, it was the face of a Puritan with a sense of humour—the lines about the mouth were clearly the footprints of smiles. It seemed the face of a sensitive Puritan, as well, and (maugre that high-bridged nose) of a gentle—the light in his clear grey eyes was a kindly and gentle light. After all, Governor Bradford, as ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... meant this is not to be dreamed; but when the true scholar gets thoroughly to work, his logic is remorseless, his art is implacable, and his sense of humour is blighted. In the rose above, Pierre had asserted the exclusive authority of Christ in the New Jerusalem, and his scheme required him to show how the Church rested on the Evangelists below, who in their turn had no visible support except what the Prophets gave them. Yet the artist may ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... tradition without foundation maintains that this figure does not represent the Swineherd at all, but is a play upon the name of Bishop Bloet,—the horn being intended to suggest "Blow it!" It seems hardly possible to credit the mediaeval wit with no keener sense of humour than to perpetrate such ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... for a great deal of rubbish he would have died rather than acknowledge. But it's a craze of the new, fatted Germany. It's a fancy type which could never really exist, any more than the Economic Man of the politicians. Mankind has a sense of humour which stops short of the final absurdity. There never has been, and there never could be a real Superman ... But there ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... my subjects cannot carry your box I command one hundred to do so, and if one hundred of my subjects cannot carry your box I tell fifteen thousand of my subjects to do so." When I tried to picture fifteen thousand Fijians carrying my wretched box, it was altogether too much for my sense of humour, and I burst forth into a hearty roar of laughter, which so incensed the Prince that he shut himself up in his own room during the few remaining days ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... of the chief deficiencies of our author—a deficiency in which perhaps his age and nation participated—was a lack of humour. It is difficult to think that anyone who possessed a keen sense of humour could have written letters so drolly unsuited to the character of Theodoric, their supposed author, as are some which we find in the 'Variae.' For instance, the King had reason to complain that Faustus, the Praetorian Praefect, was dawdling ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... were judged with a catholicity and charity that made us trust him implicity, and I see my sister has the same remembrance. He was naturally of a quiet, easy disposition; not much of a talker, but when he spoke he was always worth listening to. I see also she mentions his sense of humour, when his eyes would light up with a merry twinkle. I never remember hearing him say an unkind word to anyone. It is very pleasant to hear that papa is to be mentioned in connection with Pickwick, and I will gladly ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... entry, a row of them all tipped against the wall, as usual; while the frozen witticisms of past generations were thawed out, and came bubbling with laughter from their lips. Externally, the jollity of aged men has much in common with the mirth of children; the intellect, any more than a deep sense of humour, has little to do with the matter; it is, with both, a gleam that plays upon the surface, and imparts a sunny and cheery aspect alike to the green branch and grey, mouldering trunk. In one case, however, it is real sunshine; in the other, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 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 he wished ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... young man quitted her at her door, she rewarded his civility—"I must thank you for a very pleasant evening." She always felt that she made that too prim; her lips stiffened themselves as she spoke. But the whole affair had always a primness; this was discernible even to Olive's very limited sense of humour. It was not so religious as going to evening-service at King's Chapel; but it was the next thing to it. Of course all girls didn't do it; there were families that viewed such a custom with disfavour. But this ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... patwaris, constables or peons. They are a handsome race, with intelligent faces, unusually fair, with high foreheads, and often grey eyes. They are not, as a rule, above middle height, but they are active and hard-working and by no means deficient in courage and animal spirits, or a sense of humour. They are clannish in the extreme, and to elucidate a criminal case in which no one but Panwars are concerned, and in a Panwar village, is usually a harder task than the average local police officer can tackle. At times they are apt to affect, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... persistent, there was yet in his manner a beautiful simplicity, a gentleness and interest that rarely failed to disarm and win admission where he desired to enter. Added to this equipment were a fine sense of humour, a subtle sympathy, and a passionate tenderness for anyone or anything lonely or neglected or in trouble. So, as only the ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... conveys the urgent necessity of intense speed. He was a handsome old man, with thick grey hair, a white military moustache, bushy dark eyebrows, and in his eyes that humorous twinkle that is so often seen in those men of the last generation who are most devoid of a sense of humour. Sir James was liable to the irritable changes of mood that would nowadays be called neurotic or highly strung, but was in his young days merely put down as bad temper. He had a high estimation of his mental powers, and a poor opinion ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... life abreast of graver competitors. So the settler who built a loaf of station-bread into the earthen wall of his house, alleging that it was the hardest and most durable material he could procure, did not, we may believe, find a sense of humour encumber him in the troubles of a settler's life. For there were troubles. The pastoral provinces were no Dresden-china Arcadia. Nature is very stubborn in the wilderness, even in the happier climes, where she offers, for the most part, ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... 'Dick has some sense of humour, if you haven't. Who gets up in the gray dawn to call on another man's ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... Israel,—to his unique force of character, to his fanatical earnestness, to his relentless tenacity of purpose. In particular, it owes a debt which it can never liquidate to what was at once the cause and the result of his over-seriousness,—to his lack of any sense of humour,—a negative quality which allowed his practical logic to run its course without let or hindrance, and prevented the "brakes" of common-sense from acting when he found himself, in his very zeal for the Law, descending an inclined plane into ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... mental 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 ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... we may characterize as bold, out-spoken, and humorous, in the true sense of humour. In the midst of every difficulty and danger arises that old Norse feeling of making the best of everything, and keeping a good face to the foe. The language and tone are perhaps rather lower than in some other collections, ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... Politics and Literature—for the two were always involved in those days, so that unless you approved a man's party you couldn't allow that he wrote tolerable verse—they can wile away a winter evening very pleasantly. Christopher North had an eye for character, a sense of humour, and knew and loved the country. He was country bred. He is at his best when he combines his loves, as he does in the person of the Shepherd. Keep the Shepherd off (a) girls, (b) nursing mothers, ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... serenity, which Carlyle not only never found but never even sought, the weaknesses of Goethe were of a sort that did not draw the best out of Carlyle. The one civilised element that the German classicists forgot to put into their beautiful balance was a sense of humour. And great poet as Goethe was, there is to the last something faintly fatuous about his half sceptical, half sentimental self-importance; a Lord Chamberlain of teacup politics; an earnest and elderly flirt; a German of the Germans. Now Carlyle had humour; he had it ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... Derby, translated all his instructions into nautical language. For instance: "Right rein—haul the starboard yoke line; gallop—full steam ahead; halt—cast anchor; dismount—abandon ship," and so forth, giving his delicate and fanciful sense of humour full play and evoking roars of laughter from the whole house. It did not take MacTavish long to realise that, no matter what he said, he would never again be taken seriously in that place; he was, in fact, the world's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various
... thief, the illegitimate son of a prostitute, brought up in a doss-house, who, up to the age of 30, had apparently never met with any one whose morality was above that of a policeman, and who had got into a band of thieves when quite young. He was gifted with an extraordinary sense of humour, by means of which he made himself very attractive. He asked Nekhludoff for protection, at the same time making fun of himself, the lawyers, the prison, and laws human ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... Gay far more than the original poaching had done. To be flouted in his own pasture on the subject of his own game by a handsome barbarian, whom he had caught red-handed in the act of stealing, would have appealed irresistibly to his sense of humour, if it had not ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... been hideous, mean, repellent, lacking in style; our very dress makes us grotesque. We are the zanies of sorrow. We are clowns whose hearts are broken. We are specially designed to appeal to the sense of humour. On November 13th, 1895, I was brought down here from London. From two o'clock till half-past two on that day I had to stand on the centre platform of Clapham Junction in convict dress, and handcuffed, for the ...
— De Profundis • Oscar Wilde
... in contact with his confident and deeply religious spirit. A wholesome nature, eminently objective in temper, concentrated with all his force upon his task, of rare dialectical gifts, he had a great sense of humour and occasionally also the faculty of bitterly sarcastic speech. His very figure radiated the delight of conflict as he walked ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... the deck was in charge of Mr Adams, the second mate—a plain, steady-going, matter-of-fact sort of man, with none of that buoyant spirit and keen sense of humour which characterised hid senior shipmate McCarthy, although he was a thorough sailor to the backbone, and believed the human race to be divided into two classes, those who were seamen and those who weren't. The wind now took a more favourable turn, settling itself in the south-east ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... exquisite sense of humour—indeed, it broke out again and again during our talk with him—expressed himself as both amused and perplexed over ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... a girl with a sense of humour. I asked my qualifying class to draw a graph of the attendance at a village kirk. 'And you must explain away any rise ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... flattens himself out for a couple of pages before this prodigy whom he lovingly calls Ariuro, as who should say Raffaelo or Giordano; and now, where in the hearts of men lingers Sir Arthur Duck? For one thing he had a bad name. Our English sense of humour revolts from making a popular hero of a man called Duck. Yet we made one of Drake. But there was something masculine about the latter: ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... have brought her in so many thousands of pounds. I never read her, of course. Life is far too long and lovely for that sort of thing; but a bishop once told me that she was a great artist, and that if she had a sense of gravity, she would rival George Eliot. Dickens had probably no sense of humour. That is why he makes second-rate people die of laughing. Oscar Wilde was utterly mistaken when he wrote the 'Picture of Dorian Gray.' After Dorian's act of cruelty, the picture ought to have grown more sweet, more ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... skies fell. Taken it was; the choir sang the anthem, with a dismal conviction that it fell terribly flat, and Dr. Cooper gave out the concluding hymn and pronounced the benediction with considerably less unction than usual. The Reverend Doctor had a sense of humour and Faith's performance tickled him. Besides, John Meredith was well known in ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Black-and-Tans. The Black-and-Tans, who, like the Most High, are no respecters of persons, called on the judge to descend, using the quaint colloquial formula: "Come down, you Irish bastard; put up your hands." Captain Wedgwood Benn does not unfortunately possess a twentieth-century sense of humour, and he did not see this particular joke. The comedy of a judge's being addressed as an Irish bastard did not strike him. I doubt if half-a-dozen members of the House of Commons realised the beauty of the joke till Sir Hamar Greenwood got up and explained it. "I happen to know the judge," said ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... rate the Doges who reigned during Titian's long life—had no sense of humour, or they could not have permitted this kind of self-glorification in paint. Both here and at the Accademia we shall see picture after picture in which these purse-proud Venetian administrators, suspecting no incongruity or absurdity, are placed, by Titian and Tintoretto, ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... were different from the girls, though they all had charm and an excellent sense of humour. My mother said the difference between her boys and girls came from circulation, and would add, "The Winsloes always had cold feet"; but I think it lay in temper and temperament. They would have been less apprehensive and more serene if they had been brought up to some settled profession; ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... polite letter, pointing out that he was a royalist in London for the same reason which would make him a republican in France. He ended by a calm argument against the proscription of refugees.[264] The Convention, if it read the letter, and had any sense of humour, must have been amused. The war and the Reign of Terror followed. Bentham turned the occasion to account by writing a pamphlet (not then published) exhorting the French to 'emancipate their colonies.' Colonies were an aimless burthen, and to get rid ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... that can creep into some hole in the earth and hide; and remember that a soul is dumb—it has no voice to cry out—it must endure, and endure, and endure. Oh! I'm talking nonsense! Why on earth don't you laugh? You have no sense of humour!" ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... requesting him to procure mandatory letters from the Queen "that so under your auspices I may be quietly admitted a Fellow there." The petition was refused, Burleigh's sense of propriety overcoming his sense of humour, and the petitioner quitted Oxford, leaving his College the legacy of an unpaid bill for battels, and probably already preparing in his brain the revenge, which subsequently took the form of an attack upon his University in Euphues, which he ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... flattered himself that he was a philosopher with a sense of humour, fairly well developed by ten years' wandering about Central Africa, but deep emotions submerge ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... world conquest would have been extremely comical to me, had I not seen ample evidence of the colossal effect of such a faith working in the credulous child-mind of a people so utterly devoid of any saving sense of humour. ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... he a marvel? No, Valentia, don't look so grave, or I shall think you've lost your sense of humour." ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... character, taking measure of both, came to conclusion nothing to be gained by rowing round them. What killed FORSTER, and turned GEORGE TREVELYAN's hair grey, made CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN smile—not an offensive smile, but one of interested amusement. JACKSON's sense of humour not so keen, but his imperturbability even more impregnable. If Irish Member trailed his coat before him, JACKSON would say, "My dear fellow, won't you get cold? Let me help you on ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 26, 1892 • Various
... 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 ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... that the dignitary was no fool. He was, in fact, a very wise man, able to understand most men and women better than they understood themselves. With such understanding, naturally enough, went a rare kindness of heart; the addition to these things of a fine sense of humour argued a certain favouritism on the part of a Providence which bestows upon ninety-and-nine mortals but one virtue apiece, and to the hundredth but two. Monseigneur Forest was, I suppose, a man ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... Solomon's glory was not to typify greater than his. With this end in view, pomp was his pleasure, ceremony was his gratification. Add to these an insatiable vanity that knows not the disintegrating assaults of a sense of humour, and we have a man to be fed on ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... formed at that time gave him an entree to places denied to less-fortunate reporters. I had never known him to do a dishonourable thing—to fight for a cause he thought unjust, to print a fact given to him in confidence, or to make a statement which he knew to be untrue. Moreover, a lively sense of humour made him an admirable companion, and it was this quality, perhaps, which enabled him to receive Goldberger's thrust with a ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... your superlative dignity of mien, that the terror I had felt in anticipation of your visit vanished away. I think the awkward helplessness with which you seemed always to be trying to domesticate yourself to Jack appealed to my sense of humour so keenly that your romantic proportions were suddenly reduced. You were less formidable to deal with as a lover. That is how I came to consent to the walk we took in the forest. Ah me! I should have taken warning ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... —Dante—Petrarch—that sort of thing! It could never fade away in this case, he was sure. How pretty she was, how lovely her mouth was when she smiled! She had no prejudices, apparently; no affectations; how she played and sang that song again when he asked her! With what a delightful sense of humour she had dealt with him, and also with Bruce, at the Mitchells. Ottley must be a little difficult sometimes. She had read and thought; she had the same tastes as he. He wondered if she would have liked that thing in The Academy, on Gardens, ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... am dealing with what I had said it would be well to avoid—anything to do with the future of Chesterton. What is Chesterton's position as a poet to-day? He is, I think, one of the finest of the day; he has a fine sense of humour in poetry; he has great powers of recasting scenes of long-forgotten centuries; he has a fine musical rhythm; but he has not, I think, pathos. I think it is a pity that he does not write epics on events of the day; he might easily find the Poet Laureate's silence an inspiration; he might write ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... those who have hardly any sense of humour are half-offended when others laugh, while they seem to be shut out for not perceiving any cause. Occasionally knowing themselves to be sensible people, they think it evident that their not seeing the joke must be because it is ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... night he came again. I should say he was a bird with a sense of humour. Thinking this might happen, I had, however, taken the precaution to have a few stones ready. I opened the window wide, and fired them one after another into the tree. After I had closed the window, he hopped down nearer, and cawed louder than ever. I think he wanted ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... be surprised if some of the gaiety and exuberance and fun got no less into his manner towards the people whose habit is to shield their eyes with the spectacles of convention. Beardsley had a keen sense of humour that helped him to snatch all the joy there is in the old, time-honoured, youthful game of getting on the nerves of established respectability. Naturally, so Robert Ross, his friend, has said of him, "he possessed what is called an artificial manner"; that is, his manner was called affected, ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... friend told me that he once, in the hearing of Dr. Andrew Bonar, made reference to some things in the life of St. Paul which seemed to him to betray on the part of the apostle a sense of humour. He was not very sure how Dr. Bonar might take such a remark, and at the close he asked if he agreed with him. "Not only," was the reply, "do I agree with you, but I go further: I think there are distinct traces of humour in the sayings and the conduct of our ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... her, which she would not put on by any persuasion until her father fell into a passion of anger. And the sight of him fuming in a short jacket barely covering his loins, and a pair of breeches so tight the seams would scarce hold together, so tickled her sense of humour that she fell into a long fit of laughter, and this ending her sulks she went upstairs with a good grace and returned in her hated petticoat, carrying her fine dress in a bundle. But I never yet knew the time when this sly baggage would not please herself for all ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... hated easily, and he hated for life. It was soon obvious that no cordiality of feeling or of action could exist between him and the plain, stubborn Hollanders. He had the fatal characteristic of loving only the persons who flattered him. With much perception of character, sense of humour, and appreciation of intellect, he recognized the power of the leading men in the nation, and sought to gain them. So long as he hoped success, he was loud in their praises. They were all wise, substantial, well-languaged, big fellows, such as were not to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... content with merely blowing the trumpet for the battle of well-doing; he has given to his precepts the authority of his own brave example. Naturally a grave, believing man, with little or no sense of humour, he has succeeded as well in life as in his printed performances. The spirit that was in him has come forth most eloquently in his actions. Many who have only read his poetry have been tempted to set him down as an ass, or even as a charlatan; ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... undeceive her. So that when Anthony was there Auntie Edie still went about setting a standard of gaiety for other people to live up to; and still she was astonished that they never did, that other people had no sense of humour. ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... suppose my face had fallen (as it does too easily) at his aspersion on my endurance. "Cheer up, my man; that's better," he went on, as I did my best. "But it was no smiling matter out there. No one does smile after the first week; your sense of humour is the first thing the cure eradicates. There was a hunting man at my hotel, getting his weight down to ride a special thoroughbred, and no doubt a cheery dog at home; but, poor devil, he hadn't much chance of good cheer there! Miles ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... she exclaimed, and, with that sense of humour which is the saving grace, the dear woman put her hand to her stays. She was feeling for her heart. She had none. Or any appetite, she presently told a servant who came to say that dinner ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... cordial, for was he not related to the late General Garret Suydam and, therefore, distantly to them all? And these men who took themselves and their lineage so seriously, took Hamil seriously; and he often attempted to appreciate it seriously, but his sense of humour was too strong. They were all good people, kindly and harmless snobs; and when he had made his adieux under the shadow of the white portico, he lingered a moment to observe the obsolete gallantry with which Mr. Classon and Colonel Vetchen wafted ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... that laughter never was so honoured as now; were it not for the paradox one might say, it never was so grave. Everywhere the joke "emerges"—as an "elegant" writer might have it—emerges to catch the attention of the sense of humour; and everywhere the sense of humour wanders, watches, and waits to honour ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... out from the dining-room; her husband with the look on his face that denoted he had been well listened to; Squire Trusham laughing as a man does who has no sense of humour; Gordy having a curly, slightly asphyxiated air; and the boy his pale, brooding look, as though he had lost touch with his surroundings. He wavered towards her, seemed to lose himself, went and sat down by the old governess. Was it because he did not dare to come up to her, or only because he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... ceased laughing, and for a minute, hesitated between indignation and renewed mirth, but at last her sense of humour conquered. ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... doubt that we must eat them or go without bread of any kind; but as we sat tugging at the gluey guttapercha-like substance, Mac's sense of humour revived. "Didn't I tell you I was slap-up at Johnny cakes?" he chuckled, adding with further infinitely more humorous chuckles: "You mightn't think it; but I really am." Then he pointed to Jackeroo, who was watching in bewilderment while ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... without bayonets, taking hasty cover from non-existent shell fire, capturing positions held by no enemy, and enacting the part of a "casualty" without having received a scratch, telephoning without a telephone is a comparatively simple operation. All you require is a ball of string and no sense of humour. Second Lieutenant ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... seriousness of anything on earth. He despised their whole-hearted passion for sports at an age when he was beginning to be interested in less wholesome and far more complex absorptions.... He despised their straight, clean affections and quarrels and their tortuous sense of humour; the affectation that led them to take cold baths instead of hot ones: their shy, rather knightly mental attitude towards their ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... that way so much as the wimmin," he said, and the grin we exchanged was the germ of a friendship that ripened as our acquaintance progressed. I intended to settle down to the enjoyment afforded by my sense of humour. I had preserved it intact as a private personal accomplishment. On the stage, having steered clear of comedy and confined myself to tragedy, it had never been cheapened and made nauseous by sham and machine representations indigenous to the hated footlights, and was an ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... shows the state of your mind. This is what comes of getting entangled with women. You need to have a sense of humour." ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... the newcomer had laid aside her furs Magda's impression qualified itself. Lady Arabella was not in the least of the "small bird" type, but rather suggested a hawk endowed with a grim sense of humour—quick and decisive in movement, with eyes that held an incalculable wisdom and laughed a thought cynically ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... proud of having been asked more than once to assist in the Mission Room at Carisbury, where the Vicar of Christ Church carried on revival work among the somnolent surroundings of a great cathedral. He was without any sense of humour or any refinement of feeling—self-important, full of the dignity of his office, thrifty to meanness, but he acted up to his light, and ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... had a lively sense of humour, but the joke of this was lost on her. Her education had been that getting shot was ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
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