"Wiseacre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... because they knew that Lady Agnes Martling had long cared for him, and was most happily endowed with wealth and good looks also. When he left for Canada they were inwardly glad (they imagined that something might occur to end the engagement)—all except Richard, the wiseacre of the family, the book- man, the drone, who preferred living at Greyhope, their Hertfordshire home, the year through, to spending half the time in Cavendish Square. Richard was very fond of Frank, admiring him immensely for ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... would have men to have a privilege to change their wives, or to repudiate them, deserves to be hissed at rather than confuted; for nothing can tend more to usher in all confusion and beggary throughout the world: therefore that wiseacre deserves," &c. [Footnote: Howell's Familiar Letters Book IV, Letter 7, addressed "To Sir Edward Spencer, knight," (pp 453-457 of edit. 1754.) The letter is dated "Lond. 24 Jan.," no year given; but the dates are worthless, being afterthoughts, when the Letters ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... much object, though they preferred to remain as they were; but his proposal to break up the Mir astonished and bewildered them. They regarded it as a sea-captain might regard the proposal of a scientific wiseacre to knock a hole in the ship's bottom in order to make her sail faster. Though they did not say much, he was intelligent enough to see that they would offer a strenuous passive resistance, and as he did not wish to act tyrannically, he let the matter drop. Thus a second benevolent scheme was shipwrecked. ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... Carpaccio knows, and what I know, also, are precisely the things which your wiseacre apothecaries, and their apprentices, and too often your wiseacre rectors and vicars, and their apprentices, tell you that you can't know, because 'eye hath not seen nor ear heard them,' the things which God hath prepared ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... for plundered millions; and I ask what reparation or atonement they can expect to obtain in hours of future dalliance, after they shall have made a tender of their person to this great deflowerer of the virginity of republics. We have, by our own wise (I will not say wiseacre) measures, so increased the trade and wealth of Montreal and Quebec, that at last we begin to cast a wistful eye at Canada. Having done so much toward its improvement, by the exercise of "our restrictive ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... you little wiseacre. You can touch me on the elbow and then put your finger on your lip, and I will understand, and I will do the same ...
— Little Maid Marian • Amy E. Blanchard
... before him till there was but one great personality left who could talk to him as a father would to his wayward son. It was Bismarck, he who dragged Prussia from the depths and gave her the ideal for a world power. The cool calculating wiseacre said, 'Steady, lad,' so—he ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... rapidity!" said the cynic, half-choked with gall; "if the cancer or the pox were in your throat, I should not be thus tormented with your tongue; and yet a magpie shall speak infinitely more to the purpose. Don't you know, Mr. Wiseacre, that my case does not fall within the province of philosophy? Had I been curtailed of all my members, racked by the gout and gravel, deprived of liberty, robbed of an only child, or visited with the death of a dear friend like you, philosophy might have ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... philosopher, who had neither native talent, nor its substitute education, but who had been struck out of a printer's devil by the rap of a composing-stick, as Minerva is reported to have been struck, full-grown, out of Jupiter's head by the hammer of Vulcan, it is probable that the wiseacre might have discovered that It was an inexcusable interference with the rights of the colonists, to enact that no one should carry letters for hire, but those connected with the regular post-office. But, no such person existing, the public mind ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... an English Liberal wiseacre asserts, in the Report of the Children's Employment Commission, that these courts are the masterpiece of municipal architecture, because, like a multitude of little parks, they improve ventilation, the circulation of air! ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... instead of grumbling at that, his one grievance was that the regiment was not getting to the front. Heat and frost, hurricane and dust-storm—nothing came amiss. And he described himself as stronger than ever, and poured scorn on the medical wiseacre who had ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... with Mr. Wiseacre that he had never been humbugged in his life. He took the newspapers and read them regularly, and thus got an inkling of the new and strange things that were ever transpiring, or said to be transpiring, in the world. But to all he cried "humbug!" "imposture!" ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... "And pray, Miss Wiseacre," asked another, "how came you to know so much more than any one else? Who told you that ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... work there, was all right, and ready for her to begin her task there; and all that can be proved, of course. But the same idea that occurred to you just now, that Paolina might not have liked to see me driving with La Bianca, has suggested itself to some other wiseacre,—I beg your pardon, Manutoli,—and it seems that an absurd notion—a notion the monstrous absurdity of which is a matter of amazement to me—has been engendered that my poor Paolina may have been the perpetrator of the crime. The idea! If they only knew her! But the Commissary ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... accounts of Mr. Molyneux, which has occupied the correspondents of the periodical press for some days, and has even been adverted to in New York journals claiming the title of metropolitan, came to a fit end at the Capitol yesterday. The wiseacre owls who started it did not see fit to put in an appearance before the committee. Mr. Molyneux himself sent to the Chairman a most interesting volume of manuscript, which is, indeed, a valuable historical memorial of times that tried men's souls. ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... immensely popular play, five merry side-splitting acts which kept the stage for a century, was produced in 1682 at Dorset Garden. Ravenscroft has no less than three cuckolds in his Dramatis Personae: Doodle, Dashwell, and Wiseacre. The intrigues and counter-intrigues are innumerable. At the end the cuckolds all jeer ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn |
