"Facetious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which gives an impression of a subtler weight and power than the merely physical. This peculiarity impresses us in the portraits of such men as Daniel Webster and others of the old jurists. The manner of the man was easy, good-natured, perhaps a little facetious, but these qualities were worn rather as garments than exhibited as characteristics. He could afford them, not because he had fewer difficulties to overcome or battles to fight than another, but because his strength was so sufficient ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... the 6th of October 1854. Mr Robertson maintained an extensive correspondence with the humbler bards, and succeeded in recovering many interesting lyrics, which would otherwise have perished. He was also reputed as the publisher of the facetious collection of anecdotes which appeared under the title of the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the facetious Linton will no doubt make one of your party, I have got by heart for his amusement a reasonable number of Border ballads, most of them a little longer than Chevy Chase, which I intend to throw in at intervals, just by way of securing my share in the conversation. {p.201} As for you, as I ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... squire, or some one else, would have attempted a facetious reply to Mr. Watson; but just then a tall, gaunt, grey-haired, grizzly-bearded man stepped upon the piazza, and saluted the little gathering with an awkward wave of the hand. The not unkindly expression ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... not know that I had left my head, as well as my heart behind," said he, with a sickly effort to be facetious; "thank you, God bless ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... devils—my facetious devil—and he made me laugh. "By all means," said he, "let us get together a few eager poets, and establish a Society for the Propagation of Lunacy. Let us break down these conventions and confound the eyes of the fat and greasy citizens, and win freedom ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... 'im up immediate!" nodded Mr. Brimberly, rising. "Mr. Jenkins is a true hartist, equally facetious and soulful, sir!" ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... I go to Lady Delacour's to look for a wife? Do you think I'm an idiot? Do you think I could be taken in by one of the Stanhope school?" he said to the facetious friends who rallied him on his attachment. "Do you think I don't see as plainly as any of you that Belinda Portman is a composition of art ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... This facetious epigram was duly relished, and the sage was turning his toasted side from the fire to present the other, when the clatter of a horse coming up the hillside sent the group scouring toward their guns, stacked near ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... the Bishop of Rochester[96] or on Cochleus?[97] They attack you personally and provoke you with insults, while my Diatribe[98] was a courteous disputation. And what has all this to do with the subject—all this facetious abuse, these slanderous lies, charging me with atheism, Epicureanism, scepticism in articles of the Christian profession, blasphemy, and what not—besides many other points on which I[99] am silent? I take these charges the less hardly, because in all this there is nothing to ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... is nothing of your history," answered Roland Graeme, began to be much interested in the congenial vivacity of this facetious young gentlewoman,—" tale ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... comfortable inns ready for his Excellency at the end of the day's march?—'There's some sort of inns, I suppose,' says Mr. Danvers, 'not so comfortable as we have in England: we can't expect that.'—'No, you can't expect that,' says Mr. Franklin, who seems a very shrewd and facetious person. He drinks his water, and seems to laugh at the Englishmen, though I doubt whether it is fair for a water-drinker to sit by and spy out the weaknesses of gentlemen over ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fellow of infinite jest and of most excellent fancy; but I must confess that I find his high spirits very much evaporated. His humor expended itself, for the greater part, in practical pleasantries—like that practiced on the minion Sambo—but these diversions, however facetious to the parties concerned, lack magnetism for outsiders. I discover nothing about him so amusing as the fact that he lived in a tan-colored little tenement, which was neither clapboarded nor shingled, and finally got an epidermis from the ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the Medical Student from facetious pens was reached to us over the Atlantic by friendly booksellers some years ago; and we should have had by this time "the Physiology of the young Attorney." He is a good subject for dissection; there's plenty of venous humor in his composition; and ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... turned his attention to the petrol tank, into which he put his measuring iron to see how much it contained, while the facetious chauffeur stood by. ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... B.C.L. This reprint of a very rare tract will no doubt be prized by the numerous advocates for the re-assembling of Convocation, who must feel indebted to Mr. Fraser for the care and learning with which he has executed his editorial task.—A Collection of Curious, Interesting, and Facetious Epitaphs, Monumental Inscriptions, &c., by Joseph Simpson. We think the editor would have some difficulty in authenticating many of the epitaphs in his collection, which seems to have been formed upon no settled principle.—The Physiology of Temperance and Total Abstinence, being ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various
... newspapers indeed! Perhaps, Captain, you'd not think it too much throuble to come down; Miss Feemy of course has promised Mary to be there,"—and Pat attempted a facetious grin. ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... Cavaliers on the same subject. He had served the cure before the breaking out of the rebellion, and was in high favour with Sir Geoffrey, not merely on account of his sound orthodoxy and deep learning, but his exquisite skill in playing at bowls, and his facetious conversation over a pipe and tankard of October. For these latter accomplishments, the Doctor had the honour to be recorded by old Century White amongst the roll of lewd, incompetent, profligate clergymen ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... as to the sixth point must be considered as almost wholly facetious. He seems to be unaware of the fact that concrete is relatively very strong in pure shear. Large numbers of tests seem to demonstrate that, where it is possible to arrange the reinforcing members so as to carry largely all tensile stresses developed ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... the comic tones of which, though he did not understand the language, made Waverley laugh more than once. [This ancient Gaelic ditty is still well known, both in the Highlands and in Ireland. It was translated into English, and published, if I mistake not, under the auspices of the facetious Tom D'Urfey, by the title ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... sat before the fire. Flint disappeared. She tried hard to analyze the situation. It was unthinkable that Mr. Flint had deliberately planned this piece of foolishness. He must have had some idea of work when he had telephoned her; perhaps he still had. It was his way of being facetious, she argued, this fine pretense that it was all to be a pleasant lark, or it may have been his idea of hospitality. Of course he had been drinking, but she took comfort in the thought that there must be instinctive standards in a man like Flint that even ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... leading to the upper storeys, nor boards to any of the floors. Rafters and beams had been hewn down; doors and windows with their frames had been torn out. On some of the walls rude drawings had been scrawled in paint or red chalk, with facetious inscriptions and obscene jokes; but from most of them the whitewash had fallen, leaving bare the rough masonry. It was a depressing picture of desolation. One could almost imagine that the smell of burning still ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... [28-*] A facetious gourmand suggests that the old story of "lighting a candle to the devil," probably arose from this adage—and was an offering presented to his infernal majesty by some epicure who was in want of ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... much the same at home—that is, his methods and their efficacy were the same. In private life he was an easy, rough, facetious companion, excessively free in his talk, excessively candid in the expression of his desires, and with a reserve of stinging repartee which must have been more blessed to give than to receive. Terrible storms of rage possessed him at times, ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... said a muffled voice. It was Mr Seymour. Most of his face was concealed in a large handkerchief, but by the look of his eyes, which appeared above, he did not seem pleased. He took in the situation at a glance. Fires in the house were not rarities. One facetious sportsman had once made a rule of setting the senior day-room chimney on fire every term. He had since left (by ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... and there was a towel upon his breast, pinned behind his neck. He had just a second to pop the basin under the table, and to whisk the towel violently from under his chin, drying that feature with merciless violence; when the officious Judy Carrol, Grand Chamberlain in Jerome's absence, with the facetious grin of a good-natured lady about to make two people happy, introduced the bewitching Magnolia, and her meek little ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... into Mrs. Crewe's carriage, and not till then would this facetious Mrs. Wells quit the shop. And she walked in sight, dodging us, and playing antics of a tragic sort of gesture, till we drove out of her power to keep up with us. What a strange ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... the rheumatis'," returned the facetious master, "for, look you here, my worthy sir, and you, my dear young lady,"—this was a sort of parental familiarity the honest Jack fancied he had a right to take with all his unmarried female passengers, in virtue of his office, and of his being a bachelor drawing hard upon sixty;—"look ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... the Pontificale Romanum, which the Cardinal Wiseman must have taken to the Pope when he received the Pallium as Archbishop of Westminster, notoriously contained a clause enjoining the duty of persecution. This clause, a facetious Englishman said, ought to be translated, "I will persecute and pitch into all heretics to the utmost of my power"; and every one knew that the Pope of Rome looked upon the English as the greatest heretics in ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... Atwater, Mrs. Sanders, Mrs. Mary Long Alderson and Miss May Murphy. As Representative Binnard was the strongest opponent he was delegated by the members to present Miss Rankin with a corsage bouquet of violets. He made a flowery speech and attempted to turn the meeting into a facetious affair but when Miss Rankin spoke his purpose was defeated and she received much applause. The bill was, however, reported out of the committee without recommendation and neither House ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... w'ere you goin'?" he inquired, with a facetious grin. "Cum 'ere, I want ter talk ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... Eve all over the world, but especially where the English language is spoken. No sooner does the first facetious star wink upon this Eve, than all the English-speaking millions of this Boston-crowned earth begin casting off their hatreds, meannesses, uncharities, and Carlyleisms, as a garment, and, in a beautiful spirit of no objections to anybody, ...
— Punchinello Vol. 1, No. 21, August 20, 1870 • Various
... heart! a red cabbage couldn't exceed it in size, and, like that, it seemed naturally predestined to be everlastingly in a pickle! Still it was a heart! You were welcomed to his venison when he had it—his present saveloy was equally at your service. He must have been remarkably attached to facetious elderly poultry of the masculine gender, as his invariable salute to the tenants of his "heart's core" was, "How are you, my jolly old cock?" Coats became threadbare, and defunct trousers vanished; waistcoats were never replaced; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 21, 1841 • Various
... try some o' that on my old mare," remarked a facetious-minded rustic, below, and a ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... whereby, together with his after-part of learning and dexterity, he was promoted to be Keeper of the Great Seal, and being of kin to the Treasurer Burleigh, and {61} also the help of his hand to bring him to the Queen's great favour, for he was abundantly facetious, which took much with the Queen, when it suited with the season, as he was well able to judge of the times; he had a very quaint saying, and he used it often to good purpose, "that he loved the jest well, but not the loss of his friend;" and that, though he knew that "VERUS QUISQUE ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... there were troubles in plenty at home. Huguenots and Catholics were at each other's throats; the wars of the Fronde convulsed the land; and it was not till the very end of the sixteenth century that the country settled down to peace within its own borders. Some facetious chronicler has remarked that the three chief causes of early warfare were Christianity, herrings, and cloves. There is much golden truth in that nugget. For if one could take from human history all the strife that has been due either to bigotry or ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... with fantastic ideas of monuments; for instance, a sun-dial;—a large, wide carved stone chair, with some such motto as "Rest and Think," and others, facetious ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... fall from the woolsack, pert juniors used to lay bets as to the number of times he could fire off a favorite old pun in the course of a sitting in the Court of Chancery, and that wily leaders habitually strove to catch his favor by giving him opportunities for facetious interruptions during their arguments. If such traditions be truthful, it is no matter for surprise that Erskine's court-jokes have come down to us with so many variations. For instance, it is recorded with much circumstantiality that on circuit, accosting a junior ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... jealous, Anomaly, such—bear witness—is an author's mind. O, theme of many topics! chaos of ill-sorted fancies! Let us come now to the jealousies, the real or imaginary wrongs of authorship: hereafter treat we this at lengthier; "for the time present"—I quote the facetious Lord Coke, when writing on that highly exhilerating topic, the common-law—"hereof let this little taste suffice." Is it not a wrong to be taken for a mere book-merchant, a mercenary purveyor of learning ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... for the first time, or by the cutting of his hair after a prolonged neglect of the barber. It inspired him with a wish to avoid his kind, and especially his sisters, Maggie and Clara. Clara might make some facetious remark. Edwin could never forget the Red Indian glee with which Clara had danced round him when for the first time—and quite unprepared for the exquisite shock—she had seen him in long trousers. There was also his father. He ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... times, in the Literary Journal; I see you in Blackwood, fighting, and reaping a harvest of beautiful black eyes from the fists of Professor John Wilson. I see you in songs, in ballads, in calendars. I see you in the postern of time long elapsed. I see you in the looking-glass of my own facetious and song-recalling memory—but I should wish to see you in the real, visible, palpable, smellable beauty of your own person, standing before me in my own house, at my own fireside, in all the halo of your ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... stood toward each other. We had rather an awkward moment when we left the boat and entered our travelling-carriage; for I need scarcely say that both the boatmen and the grinning vetturino took me for the bridegroom whose place I temporarily occupied, and they were pleased to be facetious in a manner which was very embarrassing to me, but which I could not very well check. Moreover, I felt compelled so far to sustain my assumed character as to be specially generous in the manner of a buona mano to those ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... Park with the facetious B, all on a summer's day, just at that period when it was the fashion to rail against the beautiful statue, erected by the ladies of England, in honour of ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... come out much in daylight, and they had been here some time before they found themselves both out for an airing together. "Halloa," reflected the hairy-nosed wombat, "here is my neighbour. I'll chaff him!" and he straightway set to work to invent some facetious observation. In an hour or so an idea struck him, and, advancing to the partition bars, he said to the common wombat, "Here, I say—you're common!" and laughed uproariously. The common wombat felt the sting of the remark and determined upon a crushing repartee. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... these cheeky brutes. Fancy that two-year-old pig clattering his tusks at me, planted there in the path with his mane on end!—You know it mortifies me, Kathleen—it certainly does. One of these fine days some facetious pig will send me shinning up a tree!" He grew madder at the speculative indignity. "By ginger! I'm going to have a shooting party before the snow flies," he muttered, walking forward between Kathleen and his sister. "Keep your eyes ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... run into a crab, roll it over in the water, and when it was lying bottom upward, like a floating cask, he could move his ship to a distance, and make a target of it. So desirous was this brave and somewhat facetious captain to try his new plan upon a crab, that he forebore to fire upon the two vessels of that class which were approaching him. Some of his guns were so mounted that their muzzles could be greatly ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton
... could buy her a damned thing out of it; then there's something else, Means—" the Colonel's face would take on an expression of mingled seriousness and humor—"Means," he would conclude, in a hoarse, facetious whisper, "I bought those stocks when I was first married; thought I'd got to pitch in and provide for my family, and in order to save enough money to get them I ran in debt for a new uniform and some cavalry boots and a pony, and damned if I know if ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... something of her imperiousness, and yielded herself to his guidance with a delicious return to woman's weakness in the face of practical material details. To Bradley this seemed vastly significant and his spirits rose. He grew quite facetious ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... as the "new British battle-cry" is another source of amusement. Whenever artillery or rifle fire sweeps over their trenches some facetious Tommy is sure to shout, "Are we downhearted?" and is met with a resounding "No!" and laughter all along ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... were standing round him with napkins in their hands. On a chair near him was placed his coat, on which was to be seen a new shoulder-knot, his hat with a new lace, and the famous sword which had furnished Ravanne with the facetious ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... Old World with the new birth of freedom in America. In September he began Don Juan. His own account of the inception of his last and greatest work is characteristic but misleading. He says (September 9) that his new poem is to be in the style of Beppo, and is "meant to be a little quietly facetious about everything." A year later (August 12, 1819), he says that he neither has nor had a plan—but that "he had or has materials." By materials he means books, such as Dalzell's Shipwrecks and Disasters by Sea, or de Castelnau's ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... immediately gave out that Don Juan would certainly be canonized; he appointed a day for the celebration of the apotheosis in his convent, which thenceforward, he said, should be called the convent of San Juan of Lucar. At these words a sufficiently facetious grimace passed over the features of ...
— The Elixir of Life • Honore de Balzac
... aunt in Warsaw, who refused to give him a penny of ready money and had caused him to be turned from her doors by her servants when he had last visited her, on the ground that he had joined the Russian Orthodox Church without her consent. The facetious young villain had indeed declared that she had sent him the puppet as a piece of scathing irony, illustrative of his character as she conceived it. But though such an illustration would have been apt beyond question, yet it seemed improbable that the aunt would have chosen such a ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... is some more," added his father, giving him several coppers to add to his spending money; "make wise investments, Ben, for your reputation depends upon it"; and the latter facetious remark was made in a way that indicated his love ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... Hunt, as we observed in a former number, aspires to be the hierophant. Our readers will recollect the pleasant recipes for harmonious and sublime poetry which he gave us in his preface to Rimini, and the still more facetious instances of his harmony and sublimity in the verses themselves; and they will recollect above all the contempt of Pope, Johnson, and such like poetasters and pseudo-critics, which so forcibly contrasted itself with Mr. ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... inglenook at Bide-a-Wee Cottage, and I was reading her a Scotch letter which Francesca and I had concocted the evening before. I proposed sending the document to certain chosen spirits in our own country, who were pleased to be facetious concerning our devotion to Scotland. It contained, in sooth, little that was new, and still less that was true, for we were confined to a very small vocabulary which we were obliged to supplement now and then by a dip into Burns ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... which we allude was the source of much facetious pleasantry with the young brethren. One of the infernal spirits had one evening declared that 'before morning they would have the deacon and Lupier.' 'Deacon' was an epithet applied to myself, as a token of ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... revolting than platitude when it tries to be simple and amiable, instead of hiding its repulsive nature under the veil of art. This occasions the incredible trivialities loved by the Germans under the name of simple and facetious songs, and which give them endless amusement round a well-garnished table. Under the pretext of good humor and of sentiment people tolerate these poverties: but this good humor and this sentiment ought to be carefully proscribed. The Muses of the Pleisse, in particular, are singularly ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... increasing with each passage. Their enforced abstention of late made them more than usually susceptible. Their faces were flushed, and their eyes began to be a little bloodshot. They continually forgot that the girl could not speak English, and their facetious remarks to each other were in reality for her benefit. A rough respect for her ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... Friendly, who was himself half dead, pulled five guineas out of his pocket, which the great man took, and said he would be so generous to give him ten minutes; on which one observed that many a gentleman had bought ten minutes with a woman dearer, and many other facetious remarks were made, unnecessary to be here related. Heartfree was now suffered to retire into a room with his wife, the commander informing him at his entrance that he must be expeditious, for that the rest of the good company would be ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... would be useless to pursue their point, the gentlemen withdrew. Scrooge resumed his labors with an improved opinion of himself, and in a more facetious temper than ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... them," said the facetious boy as he rose and got hold of his crush hat, "that you are meditating a leap on to the stage ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... the worship of material luxury and wealth, which constitutes so large a portion of the "spirit" of our age, make somewhat for effeminacy and unmanliness? Is not the exclusively sympathetic and facetious way in which most children are brought up to-day—so different from the education of a hundred years ago, especially in evangelical circles—in danger, in spite of its many advantages, of developing a certain trashiness of fibre? Are there not ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... of the same effects. The heroine usually lives in the country with her father, and the lover, a plundered heir, is re-established in his rights and triumphs over his rivals. There are always a mendicant philosopher, a morose nobleman, pure young girls, facetious retainers, and interminable dialogues, stupid prudishness, and an ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... He followed one droll story with another; brought his powers of mimicry into play, and kept the company in a roar. Tea was offered and accepted; an hour went off in the most sociable manner imaginable, at the end of which Glover bowed himself and his companion out of the house with many facetious last words, leaving the host and his company to compare notes, and to find out what an impudent ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... or Conversation, written in a lively and facetious strain, owed its origin to the mistakes of a foreigner who gave the literal designation of the Bas-Bleu to a party of friends who had been ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... the irrational spelling can be set on one side. The learner attacks and masters the essential language. Then afterwards he can, if he likes, go on to the orthodox spelling, which is then no harder for him to read and master than it is for an Englishman of ordinary education to read the facetious orthography of Artemus Ward or of the Westminster Gazette "orfis boy." The learner does one thing at a time instead of attempting, as he would otherwise have to do, two things—and they are both difficult and different and ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... an end," said the Mayor, "and that which we call a pudding hath two.—Your worship will forgive me for being facetious. Where was I?—Oh, I jumped out of bed, and put on my red plush breeches, with the blue nether stocks, for I always make a point of being dressed suitably to my dignity, night and day, summer or winter, Colonel Everard; and I took the Constable along with me, in case the alarm should be raised ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... explain that Colonel Osborne had gone off, apparently, to Cockchaffington, and that he,—Bozzle,—had himself visited Nuncombe Putney. "The hawk hasn't been nigh the dovecot as yet," said Mr. Bozzle in his letter, meaning to be both mysterious and facetious. ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... rebuke," agreed the rector. "Though I think Westby was attempting to be facetious rather than insolent; I have never seen anything to indicate that he was a malicious boy.—What was it ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... ask a solemn question; there is a serious and also a facetious explanation of both these names; the serious explanation is not to be had from me, but there is no objection to your hearing the facetious one; for the Gods too love a joke. Dionusos is simply didous oinon (giver ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... Then Meddy will tune up agin, an' mighty nigh cry her eyes out. He warn't even graced with a death-bed ter breathe his last; Meddy air partic'lar afflicted that he hed ter die afoot." Old Kettison glanced about the circle, consciously facetious, his heavily grooved face distended in ...
— Wolf's Head - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... which made him excellent company, though it kept one in a state of alert disquiet. He would say things with that particular twist to them which made one look up, startled, wondering whether his remark was really intended to be facetious or obscurely sinister. Thanks to this ambiguity he had gained quite a reputation in Fleet Street. You can imagine, therefore, that I was flattered when he singled me out; I listened to all his remarks with a respect I was too proud to betray; ...
— The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • V. Sackville West
... unpretending way often produces unexpected entertainment for the contemplative man. Some such experiment was the following, where everything was a surprise because little was expected. The epicurean tourist will be facetious on the loss of sleep and comfort, money, etc.; but to a person in good health and spirits these are but ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... and frijoles were brought down to them by the facetious turnkey, who was accompanied as ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... are not jesting, Richard," said Bertha, who did not like the facetious language with which he clothed ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... of special significance, because it was one which Professor Brierly disliked. He never did it himself and Jimmy had heard him reprove Matthews for doing it. The newspaper man caught Matthews' glance. Jack was going to make a facetious remark, when the old man murmured as ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... go to the Huron tract, whose fine lake, noble forests, and productive soil, have made it a source of wealth to many a settler. The climate too, was mild, and I had heard a great deal about it from my gifted and facetious friend Dr. Dunlop, whose services in exploring that part of their possessions were not only useful but inestimable to the Company, and, in ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... and so on, the signs all being closely watched by the spectators, who applaud, giggle, chuckle or laugh uproariously by turns, as the case may be. Such a dance is a questioning bee, a collision of wits on the part of two really facetious Indians. ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... a lapse of the pen (from the great similarity of the two words, and the total absence of error from the former pages of the literary leviathan) that I should have passed it over as in the text, had I not perceived in the Edinburgh Review much facetious exultation on all such detections, particularly a recent one, where words and syllables are subjects of disquisition and transposition; and the above-mentioned parallel passage in my own case irresistibly propelled ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... that great supper was over, everything had been eaten; the enormous roast goose had dwindled to a very skeleton. Mr. Sieppe had reduced the calf's head to a mere skull; a row of empty champagne bottles—"dead soldiers," as the facetious waiter had called them—lined the mantelpiece. Nothing of the stewed prunes remained but the juice, which was given to Owgooste and the twins. The platters were as clean as if they had been washed; crumbs ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... of three days the facchino-doctor-brigadier was ready. I was also ready, with a stenographer. We were in a room called the Rope-Walk. This is a formidably long room, as is indicated by its facetious name, and is a good place for reviews. At 9:30 the F.-D.-B. took his place near me and gave the word of command; the drums began to rumble and thunder, the head of the forces appeared at an upper door, and the "march-past" was on. Down they filed, a blaze ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... usual marriage pleasantries, facetious compliments and chaff, in which to my surprise (the solemnity of the service being still upon me) the Bishop permitted ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... was delivered in 1861, in defence of the Marquis Le Guillois, a nobleman of facetious humor, who edited a comic newspaper called Le Hanneton. He was seized with unexpected nervousness as he began, but before he had stammered out a dozen sentences he was stopped by the presiding ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... Stuart, and his nephew, in London; in which you seemed to prefer a Scottish gentleman for a tutor, to those of your own nation, and still more than to those of France? Don't you remember it, dear Sir? And how much those gentlemen were pleased with your facetious freedom with their country, and said, you made them amends for that, in your preference to their learned and travelled youth? If you have forgot it, I will here transcribe it from my records, as I call my book of memorandums; for every time I am pleased ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... usual anything connected with woman's rights or woman suffrage. The New York Home Journal called it "plucky, keen, and wide awake, although some of its ways are not at all to our taste." Theodore Tilton in the Congregationalist paper, The Independent, commented in his usual facetious style, which pinned him down neither to praise nor unfriendliness, but Susan was grateful to read, "The Revolution from the start will arouse, thrill, edify, amuse, vex, and non-plus its friends. But it will command attention: it will conquer a hearing." Newspapers were ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... a characteristic expression of humorous drollery, that compensated for the vulgarity of his subjects. He sometimes painted interiors, domestic assemblies, conversations, mountebanks, etc., which he generally accompanied with some facetious trait of wit or humor, admirably rendered. Some of his works of this description are little inferior to the charming productions of Gabriel Metzu. His compositions are ingenious and interesting, his design is correct and spirited, his coloring chaste and clear, and his pencil ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... at another moment there was a request to 'keep back' from the front, and then the butt-end of a musket was either dropped upon Mr. Pickwick's toe, to remind him of the demand, or thrust into his chest, to insure its being complied with. Then some facetious gentlemen on the left, after pressing sideways in a body, and squeezing Mr. Snodgrass into the very last extreme of human torture, would request to know 'vere he vos a shovin' to'; and when Mr. Winkle had done expressing his excessive indignation at witnessing this unprovoked ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... and of himself. The incident did no good to the already bickering relations between Borrow and the Rev. A. Brandram, the Secretary. Evidently Borrow's character jarred upon Brandram, who took revenge by a tone of facetious cavil and several criticisms upon Borrow's ways, upon his confident masculine tone, for example, his "passionate" prayer, and his confession of superstitious obedience to an ominous dream. Brandram even took the trouble to remind Borrow that when ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... of laughter at the singular notion of his companion. Croustillac colored with annoyance and said, "Zounds! you are very facetious, my friend." ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... driving, eating and drinking, walking and talking, with magnates of every age, sex and condition. "At first it perfectly appalled me, Amey love," she wrote in her strange, facetious way, "none but the upper, upper cream of humanity wherever I went. Of course it is taken for granted that I am worthy of the great privileges extended to me. Everything is so intensely exclusive in this Christian country. People whose hands are soiled with the ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... soft drinks the Fall of Rome carried other stimuli in the shape of comic gentlemen—such beings, as, more or less depressed in their own proper environment, on excursions suddenly see themselves in their true light, irresistibly facetious. These funny gentlemen, mostly husbands, seated themselves near to large groups of indulgent women and kept up an exquisite banter directed at each other's personal defects, or upon the idiosyncrasies of any bachelor or spinster near. These funny gentlemen kept alluding to the excursion as ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... respect, the bread which is before thee or myself? Without awaiting a reply, he made, it is said, a well-understood signal with his hand; and the unintending offender was beheaded on the spot." I may add that the hero of the story is said to have been the celebrated "Daftardar" whose facetious cruelties have still a wide fame in the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... see Mr. Welborn," Mrs. Carter replied gravely to Landy's facetious banter, "but I don't know how to get back to where that gas engine is chuffing. Welborn will have to come out here to Maddy, for the hoodlums over at Grand Lake have burnt his feet and tortured him until mind and ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... which was certainly printed at Basil, apud Andream Cratandrum. The topmost woodcut, dated 1519, is here misplaced; for it should be at the bottom of the page, in which position it appears when employed to grace the title of the facetious Responsio of Simon Hess to Luther. The second copy is in Gothic letter, and has typographical ornaments very similar to those used at Leipsic in the same year. A peculiar colophon is added in the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 40, Saturday, August 3, 1850 - A Medium Of Inter-Communication For Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, • Various
... author's expressions are coarse, vulgar, and unpoetical; such as parrying, pushing by, spitting abhorrence, &c. The greatest part of Mr. Cowper's didactics is in the same strain. He attempts indeed sometimes to be lively, facetious, and satirical; but is seldom more successful in this, than in the serious and pathetic. In his poem on Conversation there are two or three faint attempts at humour; in one of them he ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... the largest share of the mitten. Never a day passed without a caress from it. There were times when the loss of so much cuticle kept him awake at night, and often the half-healed surface was raked raw afresh by the facetious Mr. Bunster. Mauki continued his patient wait, secure in the knowledge that sooner or later his time would come. And he knew just what he was going to do, down to the smallest detail, when ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... common sense did not reject as fustian on the one hand, or weary, flat, and stale triticism on the other. I felt as if my understanding were no longer my own, but was alternately under the dominion of Aldeborontiphoscophornio, and that of his facetious friend Rigdum-Funnidos. How did I envy at that moment our friend Jack Oliver, who produces with such happy complacence his fardel of small talk, and who, as he never doubts his own powers of affording amusement, passes them ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... a mock reverence, and scarcely able to suppress a chuckle at the solemn looks of his master, "what facetious dream hath been playing its mad pranks about thy sacred pillow? Never saw I kingly face ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... pace up and down the long room, heavy with the faces of those who mourn, with a laugh too ready, too facetious in ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... at five to-morrow, my Lady Papua," said the facetious bishop; "will that suit his lordship and the affairs of State? he! he! he!" And the good prelate laughed at the fun. How pleasantly young men and women of fifty or thereabouts can joke and flirt and poke their fun about, laughing ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... the nose (he was in the very act of tossing up a bouquet to a young lady in a first-floor window) with a precision that was much applauded by the bystanders. As this victorious Greek was exchanging a facetious remark with a stout gentleman in a doorway— one-half black and one-half white, as if he had been peeled up the middle—who had offered him his congratulations on this achievement, he received an orange from a housetop, full on his left ear, and was much surprised, ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... day, and the boundaries of the parish, instead of beating houses or stones. But this would not have harmonized well with the excellent Hooker's practice on this day, when he "always dropped some loving and facetious observations, to be remembered against the next year, especially by the boys and young people." Amongst Dorsetshire customs, it seems that, in perambulating a manor or parish, a boy is tossed into a stream, if that be the boundary; if a hedge, a sapling from it is ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... we'd been feeding him long enough. He'd cost us more time and trouble and money and grub than we'd got by selling him on the Chilcoot—especially grub. So Steve and I tied him down in the cabin and pulled our freight. We camped that night at the mouth of Indian River, and Steve and I were pretty facetious over having shaken him. Steve was a funny fellow, and I was just sitting up in the blankets and laughing when a tornado hit camp. The way that Spot walked into those dogs and gave them what-for was hair-raising. Now how did he get loose? It's up to you. I haven't ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... They lampooned all things human and divine; the whip and the gallows liberally applied availed naught to check the popular licence. Every prohibitory edict became a dead letter. In such a season the Jews might well tremble, made over to the facetious Christian; always excellent whetstones for wit, they afforded peculiar diversion in Carnival times. On the first day a deputation of the chief Jews, including the three gonfaloniers and the rabbis, headed the senatorial cortege, and, attired in a parti-colored costume of red and yellow, marched ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... set, the 'Lion' (Captain Burd), a dogger of six guns, and a long-boat cruised constantly in the neighbourhood. Captain Burd is described as 'a facetious and intelligent man,' and a brave officer, but his intelligence and courage were no match for Middleton. In August 1693 a French frigate of twelve guns sailed under the Bass and landed supplies. But the Cavaliers were so few that they had to borrow ten French sailors ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... past all enduring. Here is a tour, travelled, written, published, sold, and, for anything we know, reviewed by one and the same individual! We cannot submit patiently to this monstrous monopoly.' No. 31 was the shop of Vernor and Hood, booksellers. The latter was father of the facetious Tom Hood, who was born here in 1798. Spon, of 15, Queen Street, Cheapside, was issuing, half a century ago, his 'City of London Old Book Circulars,' which often contained excellent books at very ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... began, flashing his white smile from one to the other of them, and with a strong veer to the facetious, "are we indebted for the honor of this visit? Are those the unspoken ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... The facetious postman, Yverdon, went in at the gate of my old garden; the bell rang as he pushed it, ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... "The Holy," a town some three marches (60 miles) N. East of Cairo; thus showing the honour done to our unheroic hero. There is also a Slihlyah quarter or suburb of Damascus famous for its cemetery of holy men, but the facetious Cits change the name to Zlliniyahcausing to stray; in allusion to its Kurdish population. Baron von Hammer reads "le faubourg Adelieh" built by Al-Malik Al-Adil and founded a chronological argument on a ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... unflinching uprightness and are quick to detect the least deviation from it. They prefer to be taken seriously on their own ground; things in general are so incomprehensible that it only makes matters worse to be approached with playful methods and facetious invitations into the unknown, for who can tell what educational ambush for their improvement may be concealed behind these demonstrations. They give their confidence more readily to grave and quiet people who do not show too rapturous delight in their performances, or surprise at their opinions, ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... enough. The man did not answer her directly, but soon found that she meant no harm to him. He told her that such misrepresentations were quite possible, and that they embodied a form of humour which was getting more and more into vogue among certain facetious ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... detachment and complexity of mind and soul that the plays reveal. The notices of his talk and character are few and unenlightening, and testify to a certain easy brilliance of wit, but no more. Before he is thirty he is spoken of as both "upright" and "facetious"—a ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... essential to this kind of humour, and here again Cervantes has suffered at the hands of his interpreters. Nothing, unless indeed the coarse buffoonery of Phillips, could be more out of place in an attempt to represent Cervantes, than a flippant, would-be facetious style, like that of Motteux's version for example, or the sprightly, jaunty air, French translators sometimes adopt. It is the grave matter-of-factness of the narrative, and the apparent unconsciousness of the author that he is saying anything ludicrous, anything but the merest commonplace, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... her friend was facetious. "Well, it just happened so, and it didn't matter, since, on my asking you, don't you know? to choose your time, you had taken, as suiting you best, this comparatively ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... began, so abruptly that Mrs. March started with a violent shudder, "this is February fourteenth. Did any ancient person of your acquaintance lose his head to-day?" He turned a facetious glance that changed in an instant to surprise. His mother had straightened up with bitter indignation, but she softened to an agony of reproach as ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... dear, facetious man. Now that's just the thing to have captivated a jury. I don't believe Walter will ever be so clever as you are. Yet he can take Cynthia to Paris, and abroad, and everywhere. I only hope all this indulgence won't develope the faults in Cynthia's character. It's a week since we heard from her, ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... if the originall fault had beene my fault, because myselfe have seene his [i.e. Shakespeare's] demeanour no lesse civill than he [is] exelent in the qualitie he professes, besides divers of worship have reported his uprightnes of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... not seriously impair the strength and beauty of his Christian manhood. It rather served to bring them into fuller relief, and even to render more striking those bright natural traits—the sportive humor, the ready mother wit, the facetious pleasantry, the keen sense of the ridiculous, and the wondrous story-telling gift—which made him a most delightful companion to young and old, to the wise and the unlettered alike. It served, moreover, to impart peculiar tenderness to his pastoral intercourse, especially ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... Charlie, giving Kinch a facetious poke, "just the thing, isn't it, Kinch—it will get her accustomed to these matters. You remember what you told me this morning, eh, old boy?" he concluded, archly. Kinch tried to blush, but being very dark-complexioned, his efforts in that direction ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... and the wits grew facetious at the expense of the Mystery. Jokes on the subject appeared even ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... lips—peaches, melons, shiny currants, inviting strawberries, and crowning pineapples—all worthy the pencil of a Lance—glorious as the painting of nature, mockingly tempted us to seize the fairy prizes—reminding us of an anecdote of Swift. The facetious dean, with several friends, was invited to walk the rounds, and admire the delicious fruit bending the countless trees to the earth in the orchard of an "old acquaintance," who kindly pointed out to his most admiring guests the charming sweets by which they were surrounded; but, "sour ...
— The Royal Guide to Wax Flower Modelling • Emma Peachey
... to be facetious," returned O'Sullivan sourly. "But I would ask you to remember that you are not yet out of the woods, Mr. Montagu. My Lord seems satisfied, but here are some more of us waiting a ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... the front page stiffened her to scandalized attention. Straight across the tops of two columns it ran, a facetious caption: ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... remarkable for never making a voyage without a tempest. He was known to the sailors by the facetious name of 'Foul-weather ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... and otherwise soothed its ruffled spirit, as only a loving heart knows how. A bad memory seemed to be that kitten's chief blessing. A horror of any kind was no sooner past than it was straightway forgotten, and the facetious animal would advance with arched back and glaring eyes in defiance of an incursive hen, or twirl in mad hopeless career after ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... was prepared entirely by Mr. NICHOLAS TRÜBNER. I am not aware that he had any assistance in writing it. I mention this because I have never met with any person who was so equally familiar with obscure and obsolete old German facetious literature (as the text indicates), and at the same time with Americanisms. I should say that in all of the later ballads, or at least in fully one half of all in the book, the author was indebted to him ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... supporter of the cultivation of the body. Indeed, the necessary dependence of the sanity of the one on the good keeping of the other, was one of his favourite theories, and one which, this day, he was supporting with pleasant and facetious reasoning. His Lordship was delighted with his new friend, and still more delighted with his new friend's theory. The Marquess himself was, indeed, quite of the same opinion as Mr. Grey; for he never made a speech without previously ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... of my logic for once has led us into a facetious alley. One might indeed keep in this key, and write an agreeable little Utopia, that like the holy families of the mediaeval artists (or Michael Angelo's Last Judgement) should compliment one's friends in various degrees. Or one might embark upon a speculative ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... when his uniform fell to pieces he waited for the next victory to supply himself with a new outfit. He was enough of a philosopher to know that it is better to meet misery with a smile than with a scowl. Mark Tapley had many prototypes in the Confederate ranks, and the men were never more facetious than when things were at their worst. "The very intensity of their sufferings became a source of merriment. Instead of growling and deserting, they laughed at their own bare feet, ragged clothes, and pinched faces; and weak, hungry, cold, wet and dirty, with no hope of reward ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... instructions. The hour which brought to me the humiliating conviction, that I was a person of no consequence; that the world could go on very well without me; that my merry companions would not be one jot less facetious, though I was absent from their jovial parties, was after all not the most miserable of ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie |
