"Pun" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... much more likely to commit a robbery than Christians, they being all Gentiles—Pagans—Heathen dogs. What do I infer from this? Why, that upon any solution of the case, hardly one worthy saying can be mentioned, hardly one jest, pun, or sarcasm, which has not been the occasion and subject of many falsehoods—as having been au-(and men)-daciously transferred from generation to generation, sworn to in every age as this man's property, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... they aint particular now-a-days chunks o' cabbages, and scarcity, and pun'kin, and that all ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... as we read in the Phaedo,' Nau has him here. In brief, 'the defendants have let a house as habitable, well knowing the same to be infested by spirits'. The Fathers are then cited as witnesses for ghosts. The learned counsel's argument about a vice d'esprit is a pitiable pun. ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... complicatd pun in this line: made by splitting the word after the fashion of punsters. "Zarbu 'l-Nawakisi" the striking of the gongs, and "Zarbu 'l Nawa, Kisi striking the departure signal: decide thou (fem. addressed to the Nafs, soul or ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... The pun was atrocious and, quite properly, failed to win a smile or even a reproof from the morbid young person opposite. "My grandfather," said she in meditation, "began as a clerk in a country store. Oh of course, we have discovered, since he made his money and since Mother ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... unknown origin, signifies some question or statement in which some hidden and fanciful resemblance is involved, the answer often depending upon a pun; an enigma is a dark saying; a paradox is a true statement that at first appears absurd or contradictory; a problem is something thrown out for solution; puzzle (from oppose) referred originally to ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... bull by the horns, pretending or thinking that genuine feeling can be worthily carried in a pun. So that in his impassioned 'hymn to God the Father', deploring his ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... there's a hofficer of the law downstairs and he wants Mr. Tempenny or forty pun', sixteen ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... but felt dubersome, and hurried there fast as I could. I crossed the automobile track where crowded cars wuz runnin' all the while round and round, past the rows of big high headed mettlesome hosses (this is a pun; ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... of this pun, the amiable clergyman retired, unconscious, I presume, of his prosaic effect upon the atmosphere of the region. With this intrusion of the commonplace, I suffered an eclipse of faith as to Evangeline, and was not sorry to have my attention taken up by the river Avon, along the banks ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... another are given opposing effect by contrasting emphasis: "Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more." "My words fly up; my thoughts remain below." When words are used with a double meaning, as in the case of a pun, or with a peculiar implication, or are repeated for some peculiar effect of mere repetition,—when we have, in any form, what is called a play upon words,—a peculiar pointedness is given, wherein the circumflex inflection plays a large part. "Now is it Rome ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... Cicero. He brought forward illustrations from Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Milton, Puritan, writers, Congreve, Cowper, and others, until he concluded with Hood, who he declared had first unfolded to the human mind the possibility of the pun. ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... sex—which was not infrequent in Juvenal and Horace— this man would look at him with a grin and a sly wink. And sometimes Thyrsis would make a casual remark in conversation, and the man would twist it out of its meaning, or make a pun out of it—to find some excuse for his satyr's leer. So at last Thyrsis was moved to say to him—"Don't you ever realize what a state ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... with a broad grin—"Hallo! why, here's a spear, that must ha' been dropped by one o' them savages. That's a piece o' good luck, anyhow, as the man said when he f'und the fi' pun' note. Now, then, keep an eye on them gals, lad, and I'll be back as soon as ever I can; though I does feel rather stiffish. My old timbers ain't used to ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... malice of the people is preserved in the Greek Anthology, (l. ii. c. 5, p. 188, edit. Wechel,) although the application was unknown to the editor Brodaeus. The nameless epigrammatist raises a tolerable pun, by confounding the episcopal salutation of "Peace be to all!" with the genuine or corrupted name of the bishop's concubine: I am ignorant whether the patriarch, who seems to have been a jealous lover, is the Cimon of a preceding epigram, was viewed with envy ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... rest, ere the lips could close The sound of a listener's laughter rose. It was not the scream of a merry boy When harlequin waves his wand of joy; Nor the shout from a serious curate, won By a bending bishop's annual pun; Nor the roar of a Yorkshire clown;—oh, no! It was a gentle laugh, and low; Half uttered, perhaps, perhaps, and stifled half, A good old-gentlemanly laugh; Such as my uncle Peter's are, When he tells you his tales of Dr. Parr. The rider looked to the left and ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... remark that Lord Byron, in the course of these conversations, was incapable of preserving a consistent seriousness. The volatility of his humour was constantly leading him into playfulness, and he never lost an opportunity of making a pun or saying a quaint thing. "Do you know," said he to the doctor, "I am nearly reconciled to St Paul; for he says there is no difference between the Jews and the Greeks, and I am exactly of the same opinion, for the character of ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... makin' Loads of mince and pun'kin pies? Don't you smell those goodies cookin'? Can't you see 'em? Where's your eyes? Tell that rooster there that's crowin', Cute folks now are keepin' mum; They don't show how fat they 're growin' When ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... opinion of him." The classical part of the audience resented the touches of Spanish local colour in the play, the mixture of pleasantries and familiar speeches with the tragic dialogue, and of heroism and savagery in the character of Hernani, and they made all manner of fun of the species of pun—de ta suite, j'en suis—which terminated the first act. "Certain lines were captured and recaptured, like disputed redoubts, by each army with equal obstinacy. On one day the romantics would carry a passage, which the enemy would retake the next day, and from ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... at his chum, and ready for his pun, even under such circumstances, "my head is feeling a 'trifle heavy,' but I'm game to ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... for a pun?" Beatrice blinked her big eyes at him. "If you're quite through with the train-robbers, perhaps you will tell ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... stick to roam to jostle the pun shameless to drive away it is not her fault gradually or little by little he was talking loudly, with his ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... ben bin bon bun. Can cen cin con cun. Dan den din don. dun. Fan fen fin fon fun. Guan guen guin guon gun. Han hen hin hon hun. Jan jen jin jon jun. Lan len lin lon lun. Man me min mon mun. Nan nen nin non. nun. Pan pen pin pon pun. Qua quen quin quon qun. Ran ren rin ron run. San sen sin son su. Tan ten tin ton tun. Uan uen. uin uon. uun. Xan xen xin xon xun. Yan yen yin yon yun. Zan ...
— Doctrina Christiana • Anonymous
... Wolseley motors of one hundred and eighty horse-power each, and with a whole series of vertical and horizontal rudders. She was popularly called the Mayfly—a name which, both in and out of Parliament, suggested to bright wits an ill-omened pun. ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... which he extracts "The Great Light; spirit of light," from Michabo, "beyond a doubt!" In my poor opinion, whatever claims Michabo may have as an unique creator of earth and heaven—"God is Light,"—he owes his mythical aspect as a Hare to something other than an unconscious pun. In any case, according to Dr. Brinton, Michabo, regarded as a creator, is equivalent to Strachey's Ahone. This amount of corroboration, valeat quantum, I may claim, from the Potomac Indians, for the belief in Ahone on the James River. Dr. Brinton ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... and obvious cases of the comic seem to consist of little more than a shock of surprise: a pun is a sort of jack-in-the-box, popping from nowhere into our plodding thoughts. The liveliness of the interruption, and its futility, often please; dulce est desipere in loco; and yet those who must endure the society of inveterate jokers know ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... then it is going begging—grovelling for something which the other party has not got to give; if groundless, is it not a fulfilling of the homely old saw relating to cutting off one's nose to spite one's face? (We disclaim any intent to pun.) In either case it is such a full and whole-souled giving of himself, or herself, away on the part of the patient; while on that of its object—is ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... still explained in an incredible way by Ewald according to the national pun of Genesis x. as derived from Patah, "he who opens or spreads." It is really from Yaphat, "to be shining" the ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... end of the table, he cried out, 'Bring hither that surloin, sirrah, for 'tis worthy a more honourable post, being, as I may say, not sur-loin, but sir-loin, the noblest joint of all;' which ridiculous and desperate pun raised the wisdom and reputation of England's Solomon to the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... which in the social circle will in spite of all due gravity awaken a harmless smile, and Shenstone solemnly thanked God that his name was not liable to a pun. There are some names which excite horror, such as Mr. Stabback; others contempt, as Mr. Twopenny; and others of vulgar or absurd signification, subject too often to the insolence of domestic witlings, which occasions irritation even in the minds of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... The pun is in "Khattiyah" which may mean a writer (feminine) and also a spear, from Khatt Hajar, a tract in the province Al-Bahrayn (Persian Gulf), and Oman, where the best Indian bamboos were landed and fashioned into lances. Imr al-Keys (Mu'allakah ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... neck. A curious, at first rather conventional, artificial-looking sort of beauty, voluptuous yet cold, which, the more it is contemplated, the more it troubles and haunts the mind. Round the lady's neck is a gold chain with little gold lozenges at intervals, on which is engraved the posy or pun (the fashion of French devices is common in those days), "Amour Dure—Dure Amour." The same posy is inscribed in the hollow of the bust, and, thanks to it, I have been able to identify the latter as Medea's portrait. I often examine these tragic portraits, wondering ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... going on in the central senate of the nation. Parliament was passing Bill after Bill for the enclosure by the great landlords of such of the common lands as had survived out of the great communal system of the Middle Ages. It is much more than a pun, it is the prime political irony of our history that the Commons were ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... to his son, "The next time you make up a pun, Go out in the yard And kick yourself hard, And I will begin when ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... having stolen from the treasury, he wrote to a Cabinet official, "and pray, my good sir, what part of the $800.000 have come to your share? As you are high in Office, I hope you did not disgrace yourself in the acceptance of a paltry bribe—a $100.000 perhaps." He once even attempted a pun, by writing, "our enterprise will be ruined, and we shall be stopped at the Laurel Hill this winter; but not to gather laurels, (except of the kind that ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... semblance; affinity, approximation, parallelism; agreement &c 23; analogy, analogicalness^; correspondence, homoiousia^, parity. connaturalness^, connaturality^; brotherhood, family likeness. alliteration, rhyme, pun. repetition &c 104; sameness &c (identity) 13; uniformity &c 16; isogamy^. analogue; the like; match, pendant, fellow companion, pair, mate, twin, double, counterpart, brother, sister; one's second ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... thought to lead up conversation To the subject—it's easily done - Then let off, as an airy creation Of the moment, that masterly pun. Let it off, with a flash like a rocket's; In the midst of a dazzled conclave, Where I sat, with my hands in my pockets, ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... escape detection from the faculty, though not very artfully concealed. But the terminations of the stanzas rendered the thing transparent to the audience during the delivery, as was quite manifest from the general movement of their risibles. But Wheelwright was himself as ignorant of the pun as the faculty were, until both were enlightened the following week, when the real author caused it to be published in the Cistula Literaria—an interesting journal, edited by a committee of the junior class—with a capital "N" and a superfluous ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... she continues, "beyond devoting the gold of your genius to work, which dross, in the person of a dozen predecessors or contemporaries, has produced as well. Pun and parody, satire and invective, quaintness of fancy, and elegance, have each had its representative as successful as you. Your life-work, until this moment, has been the record of a genius increasingly ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... hearty good-natured things, and I would put my name to 'em chearfully, if I could as honestly. I complimented them in a Newspaper, with an abatement for those puns you laud so. They are generally an excess. A Pun is a thing of too much consequence to be thrown in as a make-weight. You shall read one of the addresses over, and miss the puns, and it shall be quite as good and better than when you discover 'em. A Pun is a Noble Thing per se: O never lug it in as an accessory. A Pun is a sole object for reflection ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... treasury is empty," said Sinton, laughing at his pun. "Well, well, we might make it go, boys. I'm not a millionaire, but never mind. How much would ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... inscription (which contained a very singular pun) was erased by the order of Licinius, who claimed some degree of relationship to Philip, (Hist. August. p. 166;) but the tumulus, or mound of earth which formed the sepulchre, still subsisted in the time of Julian. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... error; but you will have pity on the ignorance of one who is so new to the profession. As I have intimated, I am no more than an unworthy barrister, in the service of his Majesty, expressly sent from home on a particular errand. It it were not a pitiful pun, I might add, ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... she was so tired that any cranny would have been welcome. She was even wearier than she had been when she occupied the outdoor apartment under the park bench where she spent her second night in New York. She called that an "aparkment" and liked the pun so well that she longed to tell her husband. But that would have compelled the telling of her real name, and she did not know him well enough for that yet. She found that she did not know him well enough yet for an increasing number of things. She began ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... now with one consent allied To Tragedy, and rarely quits her side; Though mad Almanzor rhymed in Dryden's days, No sing-song hero rants in modern plays;— While modest Comedy her verse foregoes For jest and pun in very middling prose. Not that our Bens or Beaumonts show the worse, Or lose one point because they wrote in verse; But so Thalia pleases to appear,— Poor virgin!—damn'd ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... here to contain a pun, the consonantic outline of "Tasht""basin" being the same as ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... Bliss's stolid perplexity and Dr Lane's comments are very ludicrous. While he is in the middle of this narrative, Bliss himself appears on the scene and relieves his feelings by delivering the only pun he ever made in his life, and observing, in a solemn tone ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... extreme of materialism, the influence of his philosophy—whose different phases there is no occasion to trace out in detail—had already passed its culmination. From his later writings little more has found its way into public notice than the pun, that man is (ist) what he ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... pun. Steele leaned against the counter, his gray glance studying the man I had so ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... where it's settled, likewise the knee jints—savin' of your presence, miss—it's the same; for to go down on my bended knees, miss, it's what I couldn't do, not if you was to give me a thousand-pun note in my blessed hand, and my Easter dooty not bein' able to perform, miss, which it be the first time it ever wor the case; an' it owing to the rheumatiz; otherwise I am better, miss, and ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... in America. Lectures at the University of Pennsylvania. Archbishop Ryan's Latin pun. The Mohonk Conference and President Hayes. Excursion with Andrew Carnegie to Mexico, California, and Oregon. Meetings with Cornell students. Cathedral of Mexico. Our reception by President Porfirio Diaz and his ministers. Beauty of California in spring. Its ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... was not etymologist enough to understand Malcolm's poor pun, and doubtless thought ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... States-General shaking the leading statesmen of the Commonwealth in a mighty sieve through which came tumbling head foremost to perdition the hated Advocate and his abettors. Another showed the Arminians as a row of crest-fallen cocks rained upon by the wrath of the Stadholder—Arminians by a detestable pun being converted into "Arme haenen" or "Poor cocks." One represented the Pope and King of Spain blowing thousands of ducats out of a golden bellows into the lap of the Advocate, who was holding up his official robes to receive them, or whole carriage-loads of Arminians ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... one in the mouth.—Yes, boys," he continued, drawing himself up, "I do mean to hit hard, and let the Principal and the masters see that we are not going to have favouritism here. Indian prince, indeed! Yah! who's he? Why, I could sell him for a ten-pun note, stock and lock and bag and baggage, to Madame Tussaud's. That's about all he's fit for. Dressed up to imitate an English gentleman! Look at him! His clothes don't fit, even if they are made by ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... condescending to explain, 'I offered Helena the handle of a pun, and she took it. What a flash! You know, ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... chipmonastery?" cried Groups. It was a family joke to call the chipmunk's burrow by that name, and though the puppies did not understand the pun they relished ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... prayse ( praise of excellence) Princkocke Proclamation that the gentry should reside at their mansions in the country Proculus Prologue spoken by a woman Protest, affected use of the word (See Dyce's Shakespeare Glossary.) Puckfist Puerelis Puisne Puisnes of the Inne Pumpion Pun[to] reversos ( back-handed strokes in fencing) Push Putt a girdle round ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... much as to say, the tough old knight hath a habit of swearing," said the keeper, grinning at a pun, which has been repeated since his time; "but who can help it? it comes of use and wont. Were you now, in your bodily self, to light suddenly on a Maypole, with all the blithe morris-dancers prancing around ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... sneering. You make a miserable Latin pun, by which you translate Belinda into Campana in die—Bell in day—and when I improve your idea, making ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... drank. I even drank a bit more than I had been accustomed to drink in California prior to the voyage. The people in Hawaii seemed to drink a bit more, on the average, than the people in more temperate latitudes. I do not intend the pun, and can awkwardly revise the statement to "latitudes more remote from the equator;" Yet Hawaii is only sub-tropical. The deeper I got into the tropics, the deeper I found men drank, the deeper ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... Mauclair in not trying to pin this etcher down to any particular formula. He is anything he happens to will at the moment, symbolist, poet, and also shockingly frank at times. Take the plate with a pun for a title, Le paing quotidien ("paing" is slang for "poing," a blow from the fist, and may also mean the daily bread). A masculine brute is with clinched fist about to give his unfortunate partner her daily drubbing. ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... once recognized the favorite Earl in the piazza of Covent Garden, muffled in a large coat, and with a hat and wig drawn down over his brows. His lordship's established type with the mob was a jack boot, a wretched pun on his Christian name and title. A jack boot, generally accompanied by a petticoat, was sometimes fastened on a gallows, and sometimes committed to the flames. Libels on the court, exceeding in audacity and rancor any that had been published for many years, now appeared daily both in prose and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... his 'Hear hims!' proud, too, of his vote And lost virginity of oratory, Proud of his learning (just enough to quote), He revell'd in his Ciceronian glory: With memory excellent to get by rote, With wit to hatch a pun or tell a story, Graced with some merit, and with more effrontery, 'His country's pride,' he came down to ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... time in that affair," said Quincy, conscious, when too late, that he had wasted a pun on an obtuse individual. "Are you ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... all the thrilling tales he told, For all the tunes the fiddle knew, For all the glorious nights of old We boys and he have rollicked through, For laughter all unknown to wealth That roared responsive to a pun, A hale, ripe age and ruddy health ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... my reader has survived this pun, I will now go on to state that it is a common thing in Corea to begin a dinner with sweets, and that another curious custom is for all present to drink out of the same bowl of wine passed round and of course re-filled when empty. The dinner ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... upon the others, as if this medieval pun were both startling and original. It was plain that he wholly and inanely approved of ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... a bully's reputation to maintain; but he never fought when the odds were against him; and he had a congressman's skill in backing out before the water got too hot. On the whole, he rather enjoyed the pun; and he had the condescension to laugh heartily, though somewhat unnaturally, at ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... she be. I don't want none to tell me that, squoire. Tho', squoire, it's better to me nor a ten pun' note to hear you say so. I allays had a leaning to you, squoire; but I'll more nor lean to you, now. I've said all through she was good, and if e'er a man in Bungay said she warn't—; well, I was ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... Shakespeare seldom if ever brings in a person merely for the sake of others. A mixture of conceit and drollery, and hugely wrapped up in self, he is by no means a commonplace buffoon, but stands firm in his sufficiency of original stock. His elaborate nonsense, his grasping at a pun without catching it, yet feeling just as grand as if he did, is both ludicrous and natural. His jokes to be sure are mostly failures; nevertheless they are laughable, because he dreams not but they succeed. The poverty of his ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... a friend just outside Marguerite Audoux's house after my first visit to her. "Tiens," he said, "tu viens de la mansarde de Genie l'ouvriere." And the clever little pun was true. Marguerite Audoux is a genius, and she does not understand what people mean when they ask her "how" she "writes." She opens her weak eyes very wide at the question, laughs as a child laughs ...
— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux
... glory to God on high,' &c., as sung by the angels who hovered over the fields of Bethlehem on the morning of our Saviour's nativity." It is true, indeed, that our modern angels, the waits of 1897, have hovered about, and they may (without a pun) be styled angels (of darkness), not only on account of the watch they keep a nights, but on account of those spirit-uous propensities, for the attainment of which, principally, some have supposed, we are indebted to them for their ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 290 - Volume X. No. 290. Saturday, December 29, 1827. • Various
... too, it is altogether removed from utility in the struggle for life, and appears sporadically in a very small percentage of the population; the majority being, as is well known, totally unable to say a witty thing or make a pun even ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... from the Husks in the best manner you can. Then pun them with a due proportion of Sugar, and a little Orange-flower, or Rose-water. When it is in a fitting uniform paste, make it into round Cakes, about the bigness of your hand, or a little larger, and about a finger ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... the weight of a stamp and an approaching peace. A sheet of blank paper that must have this new imprimatur clapped upon it before it is qualified to communicate anything to the public, will make its way but very heavily.... A facetious friend, who loves a pun, calls this present mortality among authors 'the fall of the leaf.' I remember upon Mr. Baxter's death there was published a sheet of very good sayings, inscribed: 'The last words of Mr. Baxter.' The title sold so great a number of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... subject!" the Queen said, obviously delighted. "What a lovely pun! And how much better because purely unconscious! My, my, Sir Kenneth, I never suspected you of a pointed sense of humor—could you be a descendant of Sir ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... immensely, as proved by the loud guffaws and low chuckles that echoed through the beautiful forest whose branches shaded us from the August sun. His reputation as a wit of the first water was firmly established, and every pun and jest thereafter succeeding was crowned by the halo of this ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... interrupted the Baron; "as Dufresny said, when he married his laundress, because he could not pay her bill. Hewas the author, as you know, of the opera of Lot; at whose representation the great pun was made;—I say the great pun, as we say the great ton of Heidelberg. As one of the performers was singing the line, 'L'amour a vaincu Loth,' (vingt culottes,) a voice from the pit cried out, 'Qu'il ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... leave, the b—y sans culotte" returned the captain, putting himself in a better humor with his own pun. "But did you see ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... a corruption of an English word, fly-boater, one who manages a fly-boat; and he adds,—"Our flibot, a small and very fast craft, draws its origin from the English fly-boat, bateau mouche, bateau volant." But this is only a kind of pun. Perhaps the Dutch named it so, not from its swiftness, but from its resemblance, with its busy oars and darting motions, to a slender-legged fly. There appears to be no ground for saying that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... struck me forcibly, and on reflection I found that I never knew nor heard of one, though I have once or twice heard a woman make a single detached pun, as I have known a hen ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... allowed a pun, To help me through with just this one? I've tried to read Young's Thoughts of Night, But never yet could ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... understand what you're talking about!" he says. "But I fancy it's a pun of some sort! Very well, then, what did ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... estimate of your disposition; but, my dear excitable young friend, I must—ah—give you fair warning that if you feel inclined to be rude at any time, you'd better not be rude here, and if you are bold—ah—you'll get bowled out! Ah—that was an unintentional pun, Leigh, but I don't think you'll find me joking when I have to come to the point. Mind, I never flog a boy under any circumstances, but I've got an equally efficacious way of my own for making my pupils obey me, which never fails, and you'll probably have an early chance ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... At this quite unintentional pun the French painter laughed so much that every one turned and looked at him. He had once painted a famous man in Oxford, and ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... tooth-ache; Julle went shopping, and Miss Grethe was the bride. She was also musical, and was considered witty. Thus she said one evening when the house-door was closed, and groaned dreadfully on its hinges, "See now, we have port wine after dinner." [Translator's Note: A pun which it is impossible to translate. The Danish word Portviin according to sound, may mean either port wine or the creaking of a door.] The brother, the only son of the house, with whom we shall become better ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... the use of breaking your head to save him?" said Mrs. Crowl, with an unconscious pun. "He must be caught." ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... even a pun might be a serious thing: witness the play in the last stanza on the words son and sun—not a mere pun, for the Son of the Father is the Sun of Righteousness: he ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... made a circle round their council-fire. Marjorie Earnshaw, one of the Sixth, had brought her guitar, and struck the strings every now and then as an earnest of the music she intended to bring from it later on. Everybody was in a jolly mood, and inclined to laugh at any pun, however feeble. Mrs. Arnold, always bright and animated, surpassed herself, and waxed so amusing that the circle grew almost hysterical. The Wood-gatherers, whose office it was to mix the cocoa, supplied cup after cup, ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... joke or two, withal, and he can no more subsist without his fun than could a former Mayor of this city. He ventures to allude in this solemn document to the management of the New York and New Haven Railroad Company, as 'the good bishop and his directors;' makes a first rate pun on the names of two citizens; and says to the Aldermen, 'And now we have, like the Arabs, only to 'fold our tents and silently steal away,' congratulating ourselves that this is the only stealing which has been performed by this honorable body.' Mr. Barnum's administration in Bridgeport has ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... old-time pun upon the foreman's name. He got to his feet and approached. "It does me good," he ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... hearty task at length was done, When the clock struck the hour for retiring; And we heard the spiteful squib and pun The girls ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... opinion that it's better t' boy should not go out any more wi' t' dorgs. Let 'em bide at home, I'll take 'em oot when they need it. If Bess takes it into her head to pin a coo there might be trouble, an I doan't want trouble. Her last litter o' pups brought me a ten pun note, and if they had her oop at 'a court and swore her life away as a savage brute, which she ain't no way, it would ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... don't fit you," he said, and looked round the court with a smile. But no one spoke. "It's a pun," he added in a fierce tone, then all ...
— Alice in Wonderland - Retold in Words of One Syllable • J.C. Gorham
... say the pun-question is not clearly settled in your minds? Let me lay down the law upon the subject. Life and language are alike sacred. Homicide and verbicide—that is, violent treatment of a word with fatal results to its legitimate meaning, which is its life—are alike forbidden. Manslaughter, which is ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... her "Four Ages of Man," of what he has seen and known of Puritan affairs, being in somewhat more lively strain. But lively was an adjective to which Mistress Anne had a rooted objection. Her contemporaries indulged in an occasional solemn pun, but the only one in her writings is found in the grim turn on Laud's name, in the "Dialogue" just quoted, in which is also a sombre jest ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... became more and more bitter. The Dominican Father Caccini preached a sermon from the text, "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven?" and this wretched pun upon the great astronomer's name ushered in sharper weapons; for, before Caccini ended, he insisted that "geometry is of the devil," and that "mathematicians should be banished as the authors of all heresies." The ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... missed him," said Mark, who, even upon so serious an occasion, could not resist the temptation to make a pun. ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... I could hear the gurgling of the water as it ran down the neck of the canteen. The man chuckled, "Branch's brigade ort to have a branch; blowed if it ortn't." He was pleased with himself for discovering something like a pun ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... I left th' Five Towns fifty-two years sin' to go weaving i' Derbyshire wi' my mother's brother, tay were ten shilling a pun'. Us had it when us were sick—which wasna' often. We worked too hard for be sick. Hafe past five i' th' morning till eight of a night, and then Saturday afternoon walk ten mile to Glossop with a week's work on ye' back, and home again ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... genius of the particular idiom. In general, there is no alternative but experiment (directed by probabilities) of every tongue known to him who attempts the solution, until the true one be attained. But, with the cipher now before us, all difficulty is removed by the signature. The pun upon the word 'Kidd' is appreciable in no other language than the English. But for this consideration I should have begun my attempts with the Spanish and French, as the tongues in which a secret of this kind would ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... old pun?—Begin beside yourself, and end beside your horse! I am sure he is not strong enough to sit over those rocks. No, you shall stay at home comfortably here; Valencia and I will take care ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... like a true feeler, brings half the entertainment along with him. This brings us to notice Christmas, a Poem, by Edward Moxon, full of ingenuousness and good feeling, in Crabbe-like measure; but, captious reader, suspect not a pun on the poet of England's hearth—for a more unfortunate name than ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 348, December 27, 1828 • Various
... Gresley's eloquence, after various tortuous and unnatural windings, swept in the direction of a pun, as a carriage after following the artificial curves of a deceptive approach nears a villa. Hester had seen the pun coming for half a page, as we see the villa through the trees long before we are allowed to approach it, and she ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... he wrote was one which admired primarily wit; and while it would be too much to say that his heart is not in his theme—that he stands detached from it—still, his sympathies are indubitably subordinated to the effort, the successful effort, to bring off a neat point, to make a pun in the right place, to be striking, antithetical, epigrammatic. His verses have the finish, in their way, of Pope's couplet and Ovid's pentameter. His best known and most praised work appeals, primarily, to the taste and the ear: always, perhaps, to the head rather than to the heart. There is something ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... we have a practical pun now naturalised in our language, in the word "tandem." Are any of your correspondents acquainted with ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 24. Saturday, April 13. 1850 • Various
... curiosity, or who examine and unfold the intricacies of sciences at home, are led by novelty; which not only supplies ornament to beauty or to grandeur, but adds agreeable surprise to the point of the epigram, and to the double meaning of the pun, and is courted ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... among the Romans, a boastful Thraso. But his love degenerates into lewdness; and his jests are insupportably low and illiberal, and fit only for "the dregs of Romulus" to use and to hear; he has furnished examples of every species of true and false wit, even down to a quibble and a pun. Plautus lived in an age when the Romans were but just emerging into politeness; and I cannot forbear thinking, that if he had been reserved for the age of Augustus, he would have produced more perfect plays than even the ...
— Essays on Wit No. 2 • Richard Flecknoe and Joseph Warton
... the ruin of all these puns; the gentlemen will hate me; I must learn to ignore their conundrums until they answer them themselves, and to wait patiently for the pun instead of catching it and laughing before it is half-spoken. Why can't I do as the others do? There was Mr. Van Ingen with his constant stream of them, that I anticipated several times. He said to me, "If I were asked what town in Louisiana I would rather be in this evening, what ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... II.i.42 (42,6) pun thee into shivers] Pun is in the midland counties the vulgar and colloquial word ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... a single word: Mr. Mix started, and gripped the receiver more tightly. "Nothing!... Why, I don't quite get you on that.... It's an open and shut proposition—No, I most certainly am not trying to make a pun; I'm calling you up in my official capacity. That's the most flagrant, barefaced attempt to evade a law—Why, an idiot could see it! It's to drive the crowd into the Orpheum during the week, ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... memorial—slight, but such as the circumstances allowed—of an evening spent with Charles and Mary Lamb, in the winter of 1821-22. The record is of the most unambitious character; it pretends to nothing, as the reader will see, not so much as to a pun, which it really required some singularity of luck to have missed from Charles Lamb, who often continued to fire puns, as minute guns, all through the evening. But the more unpretending this record is, the more appropriate it becomes by that very fact to the memory of him who, amongst all authors, ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... council with himself; "evidently a good clerk, and perhaps a first-rate scholar. One of the very best Greek scholars of the age does all his manuscript in printing hand, when he wishes it to be legible. And a capital plan it is—without meaning any pun. I can read ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... This they friendly will tell, and ne'er make you blush, With a jeering look, taunt, or an O fie! tush! Then straight all your thoughts in black and white put, Not minding the if's, the be's, and the but, 30 Then read it all over, see how it will run, How answers the wit, the retort, and the pun, Your writings may then with old Socrates vie, May on the same shelf with Demosthenes lie, May as Junius be sharp, or as Plato be sage. 35 The pattern or satire to all of the age; But stop—a mad author I mean not to turn, Nor with thirst of applause does my heated ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... A poor pun started another vein. "You must hear some of Miss Cobbe's puns," said Miss Hosmer, and they were so daringly, glaring bad, as to be very good. When lame from a sprain, she was announced by a pompous butler at a reception as "Miss Cobble." "No, Miss Hobble," was her instant correction. She weighed ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... pleasure in demonstrating their failure, nineteen centuries after the contemptuous erasure of him from the calendar, to escape his power. It was reserved for the Philadelphia Commission to bring his reign (not the slightest intention of a pun) to a close. The most delicate silk or gem, and the most delicate wearer of the same, were enabled to pass under roof from San Francisco into the Main Building in Fairmount Park, and with a trifling break of twenty steps at the wharf might do so from the dock at Bremen, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... by the executioner Morisot's Ahitophili Veritatis Lacrymae (July 4th, 1625), but though this work was a violent satire upon the Jesuits, Morisot survived his book thirty-six years, the Jesuits revenging themselves with nothing worse than an epitaph, containing a bad pun, to the effect that their enemy, after a life not spent in wisdom, preferred to die as ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... of the Marchioness de Bouille, said that he had made her rich, and that it was to him she owed her great wealth; and further, that one day having taken her to a pretty country seat which belonged to him, she praised its beauty, saying "c'etait un beau lieu"; he replied by a pun on a man's name, saying that he knew another Baulieu who had enabled him to make a fortune of five hundred thousand crowns. He also said to Jadelon, sieur de la Barbesange, when posting with him from Paris, that the Countess de Saint-Geran had been delivered of a son who ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE COUNTESS DE SAINT-GERAN—1639 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... forcibly and pleasingly. M. Langles admires and speaks our language. "Your charming Wilkie (says he) pleases me more and more. Why does he not visit us? He will at least find here some good proofs of my respect for his talents." Of course he could not mean to pun. I was then told to admire his impression of Woollett's Battle of La Hogue; and indeed I must allow that it is one of the very best which I have seen. He who possesses that, need not distress himself about any of the impressions of the Death of Wolfe; which is also ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the isolated epigram framed and glazed. Then such impressionist art as Crichton's pictures, mere puns in paint. What they mean is nothing, they arrest a quiet decent-minded man like myself with the same spasmodic disgust as a pun in literature—the subject is a transparent excuse; they are mere indecent and unedifying exhibitions of himself. He thinks it is something superlative to do everything in a startling way. He cannot even sign his name without being offensive. He ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... not re-appointed to the same ship. Brahe afterwards made a proper submission for the fault he had committed, at his own court. His conduct reminds us of Sir Henry Wotton's definition of an ambassador—that he is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country. A pun ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... to see a bright, a laughable side to every thing, may be set down as one of the peculiarities of the Yankee soldier. In victory or defeat, success or disaster, ease or hardship, some one of a group of soldiers could find something from which to extract a jest or on which to found a pun. ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... A roar of pun-protesting groans filled the cavern, and as several of the boys arose in attitudes of vengeance, the punster made a dive for the exit and disappeared beyond the blanket portiere. None of the protestors followed. They did not feel like engaging ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis |
