"Quip" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... doth peg in His noble work and brave; And eke from cark and wordly sin He seeketh soles to save; And all day long, with quip and song, Thus stitcheth he the way Our feet may know the right from wrong, Nor ever ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... love of wit and laughter. To joke and quip seemed to him beneath the dignity of men. It is, rather, the safety-valve of a highly intelligent people—the outlet for their ironic perceptions of life. The most amusing songs of the war that I have heard were given by the poilus on a little ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... the work of Erasmus—his Greek edition of the New Testament and his Praise of Folly—has already been mentioned. In a series of satirical dialogues—the Adages and the Colloquies—he displayed a brilliant intellect and a sparkling wit. With quip and jest he made light of the ignorance and credulity of many clergymen, especially of the monks. He laughed at every one, himself included. "Literary people," said he, "resemble the great figured tapestries of ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... necessary are often overshadowed by the skilful juxtaposition that shifts them where they are but dimly seen, while other things stand forth in a strong light and are thus looked upon as all important. So the merry quip and jest at the Latin and Greek studied by the Negro bring far more than a passing laugh—they really bring discredit upon the whole higher training where none is actually intended. It causes the old friends ...
— The Educated Negro and His Mission - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 8 • W. S. Scarborough
... strife, and yet what boisterous peace! Ho! ho! It is thy fancy's finger-tip That dints the dimple now, and kinks the lip That scarce may sing in all this glad increase Of merriment! So, pray thee, do not cease To cheer me thus, for underneath the quip Of thy droll sorcery the wrangling fret Of all distress is still. No syllable Of sorrow vexeth me, no tear drops wet My teeming lids, save those that leap to tell Thee thou'st a guest that overweepeth yet Only because thou ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... nothing but satisfaction; it obviously involved increased claims to popularity among his parishioners, and consequently magnified powers of usefulness, and it made life so much more a joy and a thing to be thankful for. Often, in the midst of the exchange of merry quip and whimsical suggestion, bright blossoms on that tree of strength and knowledge which he felt expanding now with a mighty outward pushing in all directions, he would lapse into deep gravity, and ponder with a swelling heart the vast unspeakable marvel of his blessedness, in being ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... Melpomene once stalked austere. Now to cause laughter to echo from those lavish jungles and frowning crags where formerly rang the cries of pirates' victims; to lay aside pike and cutlass and attack with quip and jollity; to draw one saving titter of mirth from the rusty casque of Romance—this were pleasant to do in the shade of the lemon-trees on that coast that is curved ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... the instruments of his humane and benevolent calling, and has a pretty wit. Thus he tells us that his villa at Balham is named "Tusculum," and that, in view of the fact that three generations of Pullars have been dentists, his family can be said to be of "old extraction." This pleasant quip I seem to have heard before; but, with all deductions, there are many signs here of a strong sagacious mind, that brings to bear on all the jars of daily life the priceless emollient of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 23, 1917 • Various
... ancestors were all of them born in bed, so no doubt that's why I have such a natural feeling for bed, and don't want to get up in the mornings!" piped Dulcie, who never could resist a quip at Everard. "I don't despise Old England, but Sicily's the land for me, and I'm going back to Montalesso some day. Aunt Nita says so! Lilias can please herself, but, as soon as Mr. Bowden lets me leave school, I shall say 'Ta-ta! I'm off to the land ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... manufactured it used to be of a pale yellowish tint, but now it is made in white. Nevertheless its quality has not been materially improved. As Mr. Croyden manufactures only the finer grades of chinas it is a favorite quip of ours ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... Mary, that quip was more like me than thee, and I'll have none of it. 'T is for thee to carry the honey-bag to mollify the stings my naughty tongue must aye inflict. I would I were not ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... face bowing and beaming with all that courtesy which hath less loyalty in it than the backward scrape of the clown's heel—'great honour,' says he, 'from the King's self to the King's son.' Did you hear the young King's quip? ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... a clear ripple of joyousness, at some passing quip between our host and sharp-tongued Lady Berenicia, both of whom employed pretty liberally their Irish knack of saying witty, biting things. The sound came strangely to my ears, as if it were some other ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... excitement, Lilolilo, at the rail, who must say last farewells and quip last jokes to many, looked squarely down at me. On his head he wore my ilima lei, which I had made for him and placed there. And into the canoes, to the favoured ones, they on the yacht began tossing their many leis. I had no expectancy of hope . . ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... of a curious timidity, feeling a kind of awesomeness about every form in the room, he stepped softly to the bureau, applied its key, and following carefully the directions the earl had given him, for the lock was Italian, with more than one quip and crank and wanton wile about it, succeeded in opening it. He had no difficulty in finding its secret place, nor the packet concealed in it; but just as he laid his hands on it, he was aware of a swift passage along the floor without, past the door of the room, ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... steadfast way (so says her son Sir Richard) but that "Repentance was the best ship in which we could sail to the harbor of heaven;" and she would hear that Queen Elizabeth, complaining of the name for an unlucky one, had re-christened her The Dainty, not without some by-quip, perhaps, at the character of her most dainty captain, Richard Hawkins, the complete seaman and Euphuist afloat, of whom, perhaps, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... gall and bitters— You may think it is a pipe To erect a Tower of Titters With a lot of lines o' type, To be whimsical and wheezy, Full of {quip and quirk and quiz. {quibbles queer and quaint. Do you fancy that is easy? Well—it ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... reader believe it, this coquettish quip, whether the speaker herself had any idea of it or not, actually touched and with the touching cured a preposterous ache of something like jealousy which I had been vaguely conscious of ever since Mrs. Leete had told me of Edith Bartlett's marriage. Even while I had been holding ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... Haymarket.—As the plot turns upon the doings of the Society of Friends, you may extract a jest by saying "that many of the characters trembled with anxiety before its production—in fact, were quakers!" The name of the Manager of the Haymarket has frequently been the subject of a quip, if not a crank; still it may yet serve as a peg for slyly observing that, "At the fall of the Curtain, TREE, naturally enough, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... ago I was an abandoned humorist. Now I was a philosopher, full of serenity and ease. I had found a refuge from humor, from the hot chase of the shy quip, from the degrading pursuit of the panting joke, from the restless ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... evening a certain John Peters, one of the town's foppish young gallants, and who now occupied a prominent front seat, had widely announced the fact that he was present for the express purpose of "showing the mind-reader up." At him accordingly the first quip ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... have derived from such limited, though authentic information as to its powers over gentlemen who made debts without the intention of paying them, as he may have received at frequent unsolicited interviews with a sergeant or a bum-bailiff, has this passage in his "Quip for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... from him might be enough to blow away the frail object of his attack. Ultimately he would be forced to retire, perhaps in the face of a serene smile, beaten and angered that he had been able to make so little impression. And many the delicious remark and delightful quip afterward ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... donc un vendredi, bien gre et bien quipe de tout. Ledoux aurait voulu peut-tre des mts un peu plus solides; cependant, tant qu'il commanda le btiment, il n'eut point s'en plaindre. Sa traverse fut heureuse et rapide jusqu' la cte d'Afrique. Il mouilla dans ...
— Quatre contes de Prosper Mrime • F. C. L. Van Steenderen
... she ever was homesick. At least, no one ever suspected such a possibility, for she had a smile and a quip for all, and her laughter was the gayest in the station. She ran out now, half-dressed, from her bedroom, waving a towel at ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... fast as if they had been shod with seven-league boots. So he not only kept up with us easily, but oftentimes made a detour through the fields and over the wild country on either side, as a questing dog does, ever returning to us with some quaint vagrant fancy or quip of ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... off. Then Worry began to shadow David by day, to share his pillow at night. If Fisher, like so many others, should fail—! But with an effort he concealed the unbidden guest from Shirley. With her he was always cheery, ready with quip and laugh, teasing her over her devotion to that red-faced bit of humanity, hight Davy Junior. And in truth, the sight of her, still weak and fragile but happy in the possession of her baby, would give him a fresh courage. Things couldn't happen ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... she had better not see this joke, if the contemptible quip could be so called. It was very impertinent, and she had no retort ready. She revenged herself by declaring her sitting at an end, and inviting herself and her aunt ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... pastime, passetemps[Fr], sport; labor of love; pleasure &c. 827. relaxation; leisure &c. 685. fun, frolic, merriment, jollity; joviality, jovialness[obs3]; heyday; laughter &c. 838; jocosity, jocoseness[obs3]; drollery, buffoonery, tomfoolery; mummery, pleasantry; wit &c. 842; quip, quirk. [verbal expressions of amusement: list] giggle, titter, snigger, snicker, crow, cheer, chuckle, shout; horse laugh, , belly laugh, hearty laugh; guffaw; burst of laughter, fit of laughter, shout of laughter, roar of laughter, peal of laughter; cachinnation[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... wound that frail one had so carelessly inflicted. He would be a changed man, with hair prematurely graying at the temples, like Gordon Dane's, hiding his hurt under a mask of light cynicism to all but persons of superior insight. The heartless quip, the mad jest on his lips! And years afterward, a deeply serious and very beautiful woman would divine his sorrow and win him back ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... poorly-trained servant. A grinning nurse-maid is the worst of all. I may be super-sensitive and crotchety about such things, but I can see no excuse for keeping a servant—especially a nurse-maid—who laughs at everything that's said by her superiors, even though the quip may be no more side-splitting than a ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... Heck breaks through the bars and dashes into the scene of refinement with merry quip and jest to the confusion of his relatives and the ill-concealed amusement ...
— You Should Worry Says John Henry • George V. Hobart
... merely such notes as he might have written had we both been living within the four-mile radius; usually notes about books which he needed, always brightened with a quip and some original application of slang. Occasionally there were rhymes. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... king through the filth and the clutter, (Sweet to meet upon the street, why did you glance me by?) But he caught the quaint Italian quip she flung him from the gutter; (What can there be to cry about that I should ...
— A Few Figs from Thistles • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... with quip and jest when Grace, hearing a crackling of under brush, looked back along the path they had come. She ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake • Laura Lee Hope
... puffing at a cigarette given him by the bearers, and attempts to raise himself on his elbow that he may gaze at the curious scenes taking place around him. Others just stagger along, their pinched faces showing signs of suppressed pain, yet all have a quip or a jest on their lips as they smoke the inevitable cigarette. The sight is truly a wonderful one! The courage and calm that these wounded display in the midst of their sufferings is beyond words, but they are "Greatheart's all." Reinforcements are passing all this time on their way up ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... pieces, he would say: "Where do you see a waggon with three wheels? Who builds a three-cornered hut?" Lastly, should any one take four pieces, he would cap them with a fifth, and add thereto the punning quip, "Na piat opiat [45]". After devouring at least twelve steaks of sturgeon, Chichikov ventured to think to himself, "My host cannot possibly add to THEM," but found that he was mistaken, for, without a word, Pietukh heaped upon his plate an enormous portion ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... your crises. Again, as now with George, the driver becomes temporarily idiot—stands us oafishly silent, or perhaps jerks out some stupid words; remembers when too late the quip that would have fetched the laugh, the thrust that would have sped the wound. He is an ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... force has always been fair game for the students, a position "he" (to use the long-standing quip) did not always appreciate. Gatherings of students in the streets were at one time looked upon with great disfavor, while the daily "rushes" at the old post-office, before the days of carrier delivery, were particularly prolific sources of trouble. The office before 1882 was especially ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... and the monk's hearty laugh angered Stephen into muttering, "We are no fools," but Father Shoveller only laughed the more, saying, "Fair and softly, my son, ye'll never pick up the gold if ye cannot brook a kindly quip. Have you friends or ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... "My quip. The shooting star was a Burgundian arrow a cloth-yard long which came winging its way over the walls at noon and made itself at home in my garden. Here is what the ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... are wise, do everything you can to make him prefer your house and your table to any other; for where he is, the successful party is also. What he says is of no matter, it is the twist he gives to it, the intonation, the personality he puts into his quip or retort or observation that delights his hearers, and in his case the ordinary ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... or was it a toy balloon?" Chief Hadfield was not a man to disappoint his audience, and the laugh that thanked him for this quip set Sandy twirling and chewing more ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... in his reprint of "Greene's Groatsworth of Wit," has given the only passage from "The Quip for an Upstart Courtier," which at all alludes to Harvey's father. He says with great justice, "there seems nothing in it sufficiently offensive to account for the violence of Harvey's anger." The Rev. A. Dyce, so well known from his varied researches in our dramatic literature, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... "At any rate I didn't add the facts correctly." From somewhere deep in his memory an old quip came floating to the surface: "An executive is a man who picks brains—others' brains." By that definition Alexander was an executive of the first class. ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... I think this quip would leave us cold. The "Isles of Greece" seem rather tawdry too; but on the "Address to the Ocean," or on "The Dying Gladiator," "time has writ ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... too frequent a spectacle in scientific circles to behold a careful wording of public controversy, a gentle, apologetic phraseology, a correspondence never going beyond the "retort courteous," or "quip modest," while there exists an under-current of the bitterest personal jealousy, the outward philosopher being strangely at variance with the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... positively known to have been recorded in his lifetime relates that Burbage, when playing Richard III, agreed with a lady in the audience to visit her after the performance; Shakespeare, overhearing the conversation, anticipated the actor's visit, and met Burbage on his arrival with the quip that 'William the Conqueror was before Richard the ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... turned in his saddle and put up his hand as if to beckon Stefano. I was regaling him with one of the choicest of Messer Sacchetti's paradoxes, gurgling, myself, at the humour of the thing I told. I paid no heed to the sign. I continued to expound my quip, as though we had the night before us in which to make its elusive humour clear. But out of the tail of my eye I watched my good friend Stefano, and I saw his right hand steal round to the region of his back where I knew his dagger to be slung. ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... were toward the fore—first out. They spread off to one side with jest and quip, with flash of bottle and slap on shoulder. The populace thinned a bit from the steps.... And then suddenly as a pistol shot Cleve Whitmore's voice rang ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... experiences have made him the good apostle he is. I remember how well he turned off the argument against himself as to the miracle of the marriage-feast in Cana of Galilee: "Yes, certainly, drink as much wine made of water as you can." It was a witty quip, but is no reply to that miracle of hospitality. Apropos,—I do not know whether or not the following anecdote can be fathered on Mr. Gough, but it is too good to be lost, especially as it bears upon the fate of a poor old friend of mine in past days who was fatally a ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Jest, quip and lively saying shortened his route to the doorway of the Circuit Court, and he insisted on Chrysler's passing to his quarters upstairs. The court-room was stocked with dusty benches and tables, on and about which a small but noisy company were postured. One reckless fellow ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... a constraint upon the company this evening. Robin spoke of his ride, of things which he had seen upon it, of a wood that should be thinned next year; and Anthony made a quip or two such as he was accustomed to make; but the master sat silent for the most part, speaking to the lads once or twice for civility's sake, but no more. And presently silences began to fall, that were very unusual things in Mr. Anthony's company, for he had a quick and a ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... applied the touch of rouge to her cheeks, by which she had hidden, for several years, the slow ravages of decay; set her lips in a final smile; and with the air of a coquette uttered to the priest, who extended to her the last rites of religion, this laughing quip (mot d'elegance): "Attendez-moi, monsieur le cure, nous partirons ensemble" ("Wait a moment, monsieur, and ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... bow-legged. There is a vast space between the knees of these buccaneers of Panama, but when you look more closely it is hard to decide whether those pirate knees are really sprung, or whether it is the posture of the figures that suggests the old quip about the pig in the alley. The sculptor has at least given to the figures a curious effect of bandy legs. The feet are set wide apart, the space between and behind the legs is deeply hollowed out, and the rope which hangs from the ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... Evelyn delighted in, with clipped trees, and shaven lawns, and stone satyrs, and dark, shadowing yews, and a sun-dial, with a Latin motto sculptured on it, standing at the farther end. Lamb was the slave of quip and whimsey; he stuttered out puns to the detriment of all serious and improving conversation, and twice or so in the year he was overtaken in liquor. Well, in spite of these things, perhaps on account of these things, ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... not yet digest that quip of the mule?" said Richard. "Wash it down with a brimming flagon, man, or thou wilt choke upon it. Why, so—well pulled!—and now I will tell thee, thou art a soldier as well as I, and we must brook each ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... Leander, the latter being conferred for no more classical reason than his father's association with a famous boating club, but the fact supplied Furneaux with material for many a quip. These things Theydon learnt later. At present he was giving all his attention to Winter, who led the way into a dainty furnished bedroom. The electric lights were governed by two switches. A pair of lamps occupied the usual place in front of a dressing table; ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... weltschmerz connected with ennui. This comes early, and if a girl of that age is herself drawn into the circle of the events in question, we are never safe from extreme exaggeration. The merest larceny becomes a small robbery; a bare insult, a remarkable attack; a foolish quip, an interesting seduction; and a stupid, boyish conversation, an important conspiracy. Such causes of mistakes are well-known to all judges; at the same time they are again and again permitted ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden |
