"Humorously" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... given three cheers for "bould Willy Reilly," three more for the Cooleen Bawn, not forgetting the priest, the latter, while returning thanks, had them in convulsions of laughter. "May I never do harm," proceeded his reverence humorously, "but the first Christian duty that every true Catholic ought to learn is to whistle on his fingers. The moment ever your children, boys, are able to give a squall, clap their forefinger and thumb in their mouth, and ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... pause. Mr Mariner shot a swift glance at her in the hope of discovering that she had spoken humorously, but was compelled to decide that she had not. His face under normal conditions always achieved the maximum gloom possible for any face, so he gave no outward sign of the shock which had shattered his mental poise; but he expressed his emotion by walking nearly ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... journey to London. Garrick, evidently meaning to embellish a little, said one day in my hearing, 'we rode and tied.' And the Bishop of Killaloe informed me, that at another time, when Johnson and Garrick were dining together in a pretty large company, Johnson humorously ascertaining the chronology of something, expressed himself thus: 'that was the year when I came to London with two-pence half-penny in my pocket.' Garrick overhearing him, exclaimed, 'eh? what do you say? with two-pence half-penny in your pocket?'—JOHNSON, 'Why yes; when I came with two-pence ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... know whether you are mature or not," said Mills humorously. "But I think you will do. You ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... month's service. He could buy a pound of meat with his month's pay. He could buy a drink of whisky, and have one dollar left over. With four months' pay he could buy a bushel of wheat. General Toombs once humorously declared that a negro pressman worked all day printing money, and then until nine o'clock at night to pay himself off. There was a grain of truth in this humor,—just enough to picture the situation ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... is of interest," he replied in a voice that was friendly and humorously indulgent, as though he spoke to a child. "I find it strange—I have found it strange for many weeks now—that I should think so frequently of you. You are not a man who would naturally be interesting to me. You are an Englishman and I am not interested ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... whom Mr. Glover is interested, an old army pensioner. Beyond the fact that he hasn't the use of his right arm, and limps with his left leg, and that he likes beer and cheese, he seems an admirable watch dog," said Lydia humorously. ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... were submitted had grudges against him. His first works that made a distinctly favorable impression were travel sketches, for Andersen was all his life a great traveler, and knew how to write most charmingly and humorously of all that he saw. His trips to other countries were all treated most delightfully, and every book that appeared increased the author's fame. His visit to Italy, the country which all his life he loved above any other, also resulted in a novel, THE IMPROVISATORE, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... including Mr. Adams, dined with General Sprague. We had not as yet been able to see Mount Tacoma in its glory, as it was constantly shrouded by clouds. In the course of the dinner, Mr. Adams said humorously to Mrs. Sprague that he had some doubts whether there was a Mount Tacoma, that he had come there to see it and looked in the right direction, but could not find it. I saw that this nettled Mrs. Sprague, but she said nothing. In a few moments she left the table and soon came back with a ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... was—of all things in the world!—an aristocrat. On these charges the campaign was fought. The small matter of what he would do at Washington, or would not do, was brushed aside. Personal politics with a vengeance! The second charge Lincoln humorously and abundantly disproved; the first, ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... the preposition air arises the equivoque so humorously turned against Mr James Macpherson by Maccodrum the poet, as related in the Report of the Committee of the Highland Society of Scotland on the authenticity of Osian's Poems, Append. p. 95. Macpherson asked Maccodrum, "Am bheil ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart
... which he describes very humorously, is that of the Coronation of the Virgin, now in the "Belle Arti" ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... the press, I came upon some notes made by Mr. Dakyns on the margin of his Xenophon. These were evidently for his own private use, and are full of scholarly colloquialisms, impromptu words humorously invented for the need of the moment, and individual turns of phrase, such as the references to himself under his initials in small letters, "hgd." Though plainly not intended for publication, the notes are so vivid and illuminating as they stand ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... traveller by the name of Benjamin lived in the twelfth century. Another modern Jewish traveller by the name of Joseph Israel, who died in 1864, adopted the name Benjamin II. Abramovich humorously designates his fictitious travelling ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... nearly as far as he did in the matter of spiritualism I had deep sympathy with his main attitude in regard to things psychological. It was this fact, perhaps, which made him say to me, half humorously but half in earnest, when he knew that he was leaving the office to die, as I also knew it, "Remember, Strachey, if you ever write anything about me in The ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... the main purpose, part of the machinery of the main purpose, is the picture of the children—real children until the moment when they fade away. The traits of childhood are accurately and humorously put in again and again: "Here John smiled, as much as to say, 'That would be foolish indeed.'" "Here little Alice spread her hands." "Here Alice's little right foot played an involuntary movement, till, upon my looking grave, it desisted." "Here John expanded all his eyebrows, and tried to look ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... the chatter of the street and the apparition of types familiar to the farcical comedies and operas bouffes of later days. In the washerwomen of Striggio we are not far from Madame Angot, and some of the personages whom Vecchi humorously treated in his "Amfiparnaso" are treading the stage of to-day. In these madrigal dramas, as we shall see, the attempts to overcome the musical unsuitability of polyphonic music to the purposes of dramatic dialogue led composers further and further from the truth which had stood ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... wherein the love affairs of Chip and Delia Whitman are charmingly and humorously told. Chip's jealousy of Dr. Cecil Grantham, who turns out to be a big, blue eyed young woman is very amusing. A clever, realistic story of ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... a time to take command of the army which had been raised against Antony, Brutus carried Horace in his company with the rank of military tribune. He followed his patron into Asia; one of his early poems humorously describes a scene which he witnessed in the law courts at Clazomenae. (Sat. I, vii, 5.) He was several times in action; served finally at Philippi, sharing the headlong rout which followed on Brutus' death; returned to Rome "humbled and with clipped ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... expressed the convictions of many of her associates by saying, humorously: "No, I don't want to be saved. I'm not lost. I don't know as I care for immortality. Forever is a long time—I might get bored; anyhow, the future must take care ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... Bowring was a natural linguist of the first order. He knew and spoke over a hundred languages, and affirmed that he often dreamed in foreign tongues. His friend Tom Hood humorously referred to his ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... for a flexible kind of cutlass, from Bilbao, where the best Spanish sword-blades were made. Shakspeare humorously describes Falstaff in the buck-basket, like a good bilbo, coiled ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... doubt at all that I'll be pretty well frightened over what I've said and done to-night.... Louis, dear, you simply must take me home this very minute!" She came up to him, placed both hands on his shoulders, kissed him lightly, looked at him for a moment, humorously grave: ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... Southey's Joan of Arc certain lines of which, many years afterwards, he wrote in this humorously exaggerated but by no means wholly unjust tone of censure:—"I was really astonished (1) at the schoolboy, wretched, allegoric machinery; (2) at the transmogrification of the fanatic Virago into a modern novel-pawing proselyte ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... hand, "Scarce of company, welcome trumpery," Mrs Murchison always emphatically declared to be no part of her social philosophy. The upshot was that the Murchisons were confined to a few old friends and looked, as we know, half-humorously, half-ironically, for more brilliant excursions, to Stella ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... eyes twinkling humorously as he spoke—"Nothing,—unless it is his own perspicuity! Nil admirari is the critic's motto. The modern 'Zabastes' must always be careful to impress his readers in the first place with his personal superiority to all men and all things,—and the musical Oracle yonder will no ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... his brows, this time humorously, as at a child's unexpected rebuff, and looked at Pearl, and again he experienced a feeling of surprise, for she was gazing at Hugh with a puzzled frown, which held a faint ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... reeds in a solitary place. A strange black weariness seemed to be crushing down her brows, like the 'unwilling sleep' of a strong narcotic. She would begin a sentence and let it wither away unfinished, and point sadly and almost humorously to her straight black hair, clammy as the feathers of a dead bird lying in the rain. Her hearing was strangely keen. And yet she did not know, was not to know. How was one to talk to her—talk of being well again, and books and country walks, when she had so plainly done with all these things? ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... Mr. Murray, I am extremely glad to see you. I have been with several of your relations, the poor lady, your mother, was of great use to us at Perth."[365] An admirable and well-merited rebuke. He afterwards declared humorously that one of his reasons for not pleading guilty was, "that so many fine ladies might not ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... provoked the Princesses to make fun of her in whispers with their fair visitors. She perceived this, and without being embarrassed, took them up so sharply, that they were silenced, and looked down. But this was not all: after the collation she began to talk so freely and yet so humorously about them that they were frightened, and went and made their excuses, and very frankly asked for quarter. Madame de Gesvres was good enough to grant them this, but said it was only on condition that they learned how to behave. ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... themselves in the event of an attack. Shooting is entirely out of the question. The stinging sensation produced in the eyes is not pleasant, but it is not painful, and the effect wears off in a few minutes. The troops humorously refer to ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... that St. Nicholas is at once the patron saint of children and of thieves,—the latter even Shakespeare calls "St. Nicholas's clerks." And with robbers and the generality of evil-doers the child, dead or alive, is much of a fetich. Anstey's Burglar Bill is humorously exaggerated, but there is a good deal of superstition about childhood lingering in the mind of the lawbreaker. Strack (361) has discussed at considerable length the child (dead) as fetich among the criminal ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... presently the omnibus passed us, one of the ladies having wedged herself in by a miracle between the priests. It would take a yet greater miracle to unpack them again. The driver looked round with a smile—he had admitted us into the omnibus and released us—and, pointing to the roof with his whip, humorously ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... humorously lamented that she had never been to Simpson's restaurant in the Strand. Now a note arrived from Miss Wilcox, asking her to lunch there. Mr. Cahill was coming, and the three would have such a jolly chat, and perhaps end up at the Hippodrome. Margaret had no strong regard for ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... was, spirited and manly. After ridiculing Fraser's attempt "to set up a standard of precedency and rank in literature," and humorously proving that an author's works were not to be esteemed in proportion to the length of time elapsing between their production, he turned to the more serious and entirely honest defence that, like Dickens, he was supplying the lower classes ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... visit him. The sage of Skinner Street thought that now was a convenient season. Accordingly he left London, and travelled by coach to Lynmouth, where he found that the Shelleys had flitted a few days previously without giving any notice. This fruitless journey of the poet's Mentor is humorously described by Hogg, as well as one undertaken by himself in the following year to Dublin with a similar result. The Shelleys were now established at Tan-yr-allt, near Tremadoc, in North Wales, on an estate belonging to Mr. W.A. ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... public opinion veered to the point of asserting that he had caused peace to be made too soon and to the detriment of the interests of the nation in question. That was just what he expected. He knew human nature thoroughly; and from long experience he had learned to be humorously philosophical about ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... Dick and Nancy will be looking out for their mother and me just this way," continued Mr. Crowninshield half humorously. "There will be Lola ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... strain of Tartar blood in his make-up, but he is altogether the sort of man one would prefer to meet as friend rather than foe. We discussed the possibility of an offensive in the direction of Perm, from where I humorously suggested we might be able to rescue the forces of General Poole, which had gone into winter quarters somewhere in the direction of Archangel. We returned to Ekaterinburg, and without stopping, proceeded towards the Lisvin front to meet ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... ranks as a colossal German defeat that successive bloodthirsty assaults upon us by land, sea, and air should produce a Bairnsfather, depicting the "contemptible little Army," swollen out of all recognition, settling humorously down to war as though it were ...
— Fragments From France • Captain Bruce Bairnsfather
... remarkable for a quite childish, almost babyish, touch of saucy discontent, comically conscious of itself. (There is not the least artistic merit in this picture, which is a mere daub; but it is clear that the painter has made it humorously- -one might almost say, revengefully—like ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... picturesque on the other are reflected in this new romantic treatment. Sarah Addington's "Another Cactus Blooms" prophesies colour in that hard and prickly plant the provincial teacher at Columbia for a term of graduate work. Humorously and sardonically the college professor is served up in "The Better Recipe," by George Boas (Atlantic Monthly, March); the doctorate degree method is satirized so bitterly, by Sinclair Lewis, in "The ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... perhaps, she doesn't know on purpose," said Betsy, with a subtle smile. "But, anyway, it suits her. The very same thing, don't you see, may be looked at tragically, and turned into a misery, or it may be looked at simply and even humorously. Possibly you are inclined to look at ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... of all, what he believed could and should be done. Some one said that it was a hundred horse-power mouth. It admitted no trifling. When it spoke seriously, it spoke finally. But his eyes, with their merry twinkle, showed that he could also speak humorously. He was indeed a famous story-teller, fond of all sorts of riddles and jests, and remembering all of them he heard. He used often to point his arguments with an anecdote, always a fresh one. Believing with Lamb that a man should enjoy his own stories, he would laugh at his in ...
— James B. Eads • Louis How
... ye are!" The Irishman's long upper lip twitched humorously. "Well, treat her gintly then, me bhoy! You're wise to be smoking. Less chance of infection. I'll keep you company." He produced a couple of thin black cigars, and ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... smiled his slow, winning, troubled smile, thrust the hair back from his clear eyes, and bent his lean athlete's frame again to the labour. He soon discovered that this work demanded speed as well as accuracy. "And I need a ten-acre lot to turn around in," he told himself half humorously. "I'm a regular ice-wagon." ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... which birdlime may be made, whence its Latin name of Viscus. It is one of those plants which do not grow In the ground by a root of their own, but fix themselves upon other plants; whence they have been humorously styled parasitical, as being hangers-on, or dependents. It was the mistletoe of the oak that ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... it, as I heard hereafter; but at present he seemed to think that the less that was said further on clerical subjects the better, and commenced quizzing the people whom we passed, humorously and neatly enough; while I walked on in silence, and thought of Mr. Bye-Ends, in the "Pilgrim's Progress." And yet I believe the man was really in earnest. He was really desirous to do what was right, as far as he knew it; and all the more desirous, because he saw, in the present ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... herself down by Miss Burnaby. Soon she was talking to that lady in a way which at once fascinated and rather frightened her listener. Bubbles had a very pretty manner to old people. It was caressing, deferential, half-humorously protecting. She liked to shock and soothe them by turns; and they generally yielded themselves gladly, after a little struggle, both to the shocking ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... with those of his leader. From this time until his death he is up and down on the political ladder; to-day with money and good prospects, to-morrow in poverty and neglect, writing his "Complaint to His Empty Purs," which he humorously calls his "saveour doun in this werlde here." This poem called the king's attention to the poet's need and increased his pension; but he had but few months to enjoy the effect of this unusual "Complaint." For he died the next year, 1400, and was buried ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... St. Stephen's in Coleman St., commenting on Edward's Gangraena, humorously says: "I marvaile how Mr. Edwards having (it seems) an authorized power to make errors and heresies at what rate and of what materialles he pleaseth, and hopes to live upon the trade, could stay his pen at so small a number ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... he apparently had an instinctive knowledge. In the slightly contemptuous inference against civilization which his remarks left, rather than in any positively scornful tone, there was something which rather humorously suggested the man who spoke lightly of the equator, but with the difference that there would have been if the light speaking had left a horrible suspicion of that excellent circle. For Thoreau so ingeniously traced our obligations ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... the sight of Cantapresto and the travelling-carriage roused him as from a waking dream. Here, at his beck were the genial realities of life, embodied, humorously enough, in the bustling figure which for so many years had played a kind of comic accompaniment to his experiences. Cantapresto was in a fever of expectation. To set forth on the road again, after nine years of well-fed ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... view in addition to her culture. In that first day of their meeting she gave voice to some of his own unexpressed views regarding the trend of the times in public matters. She apologized, half-humorously. "But as I said to you a while ago, we hear politics talked much ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... Ballycastle. It is the story of the curious spiritual experience which came to him there. It is in a sense a "ghost story," but it is told by an artist and a stylist. "The Residents," moreover, are admirably contrasted, and in some cases deliciously humorously drawn. A charming, enigmatic, ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... Savannah, Marylyn Wade, and Joe Ewing were lolling and laughing in the doorway. Nancy caught Jim's eye and winked at him humorously. ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... humorously, "there is not so much! The father of Teresa Sandoval was the priestly son of a marquise of Spain! only one drop of Indian to three of the church in the veins of Senora Perez, so you perceive she has done honor to your house. You will leave your name in good hands when God calls ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... which he attacked the position taken up by Dr. Reville in his "Prolegomena to the History of Religions," and in particular, attempted to show that the order of creation given in Genesis 1, is supported by the evidence of science. This article, Huxley used humorously to say, so stirred his bile as to set his liver right at once; and though he denied the soft impeachment that the ensuing fight was what had set him up, the marvellous curative effects of a Gladstonian dose, a remedy unknown to the pharmacopoeia, became ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... a long silence. My cousin stood up, yawning, and sauntered away toward the door. "Shall I send Ev'leen Ann out to get the pitcher and glasses?" he asked in an accent which he evidently thought very humorously significant. ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... blanket was not so fine as Tayoga's, although he found it soft and warm enough. Willet sat on a log higher up, his rifle across his knees and gazed humorously at them. ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... banks in the country and other towns have followed the example of New York, and thus has General Jackson's currency bill been repealed without the aid of Congress. Affairs are now at their worst, and now that such is the case, the New Yorkers appear to recover their spirits. One of the newspapers humorously observes—"All Broadway is like unto a new-made widow, and don't know whether to laugh or cry." There certainly is a very remarkable energy in the American disposition; if they fall, they bound up again. Somebody has observed that the New York merchants are of ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... the economical wife in her was so final that old Batchgrew raised his eyebrows with a grin at Louis, and Louis humorously drew down the corners of his mouth in response. It was as if they had both said, ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... attempted to force the clothing upon him, rent the air with horrible shrieks heard by many others of the party, and by exertion of the unnatural strength which insanity confers, broke from his captor and escaped. Mr. K—— humorously comments on the difficulty of holding a nude antagonist. If we were inclined to be facetious on the subject we might suggest that mens sana in corpore sano is not an infallible rule. Late in the evening the maniac horresco referrens made a furious attack on the residence of Mr. G—— who ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... "Uncle John couldn't have administered first aid himself more successfully," she said to herself humorously as ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... Philip, lazily patting the dog's head, "you're welcome anyway. I'm a diplomat to-night," he added humorously, "bound upon a 'mission of exceeding delicacy' and only a companion of your extraordinary reticence and discretion ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... this covert, but comical, rebuke, fell rather humorously upon the two worthy gentlemen, who, being certainly good-natured and excellent ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... of vexations is humorously described by Domett, who concludes his letter with this tribute to ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... seemed aware of no one but themselves in their ecstasy at being reunited. Racing had been restarted; up and down the gutters newsboys ran shouting the winners. London was a Tommy on leave, insubordinately, humorously, ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... with some degree of curiosity the effective arrangement of mirrors in the dressing-room, whereby the owner of the mansion surveyed himself front, rear, head and foot, as he made his toilet, perhaps reflecting humorously upon the dismay of his manager, Mr. Walker, upon being advised as to the necessity of wearing a white vest to a party: "But, Mr. Daniel, suppose a man hasn't got a white vest and is too poor these war times to buy one?" ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... Henry Allen humorously referred to another sunlit morning over a year ago when Jane had corralled him for a private talk that had been in the nature of a burst of passionate ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... barbarian, Miss Willis, but I have a request to make. I am in the mood to-night to be unconventional"—the corners of his serious mouth lifted humorously—"to be what I really am," he illuminated, "and to meet you in the same spirit." He paused with a little shrug. "It is a disappointing reversion to the primitive, I must admit." He glanced up whimsically. "May I ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... asked, as he took a cigar from the case. He asked the question humorously, but the reply ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... lack of human understanding, the negro loafer to be found around some of our Southern towns and depots may be quoted as a signal and quite amusing example. The hat, as Mr. Sala humorously puts it, resembles an inverted coal scuttle or bucket without handles, and pierced by many holes. It is something like the bonnet of a Brobdingnagian Quakeress, huge and flapped and battered, and fearful ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... well, sir. No, not exactly; but he was a son of her late ladyship's coachman. Mr. Copperas has had two other servants of the name of Bob before, but this is the biggest of all, so he humorously calls him 'Triple Bob Major!' You observe that road to the right, sir: it leads to the mansion of an old customer of mine, General Cornelius St. Leger; many a good bargain have I sold to his sister. Heaven rest her! when she died ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... vain; they seemed indeed, but to excite the Imp of the Perverse, under whose influence he became more merciless than ever. An admirer of this virtue carried to such an extreme that it became a serious fault, as it was assuredly a grievous mistake, humorously characterized him in a parody upon "The Raven," ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... little about Benis's wife. And you never can tell. She began to wish that she had brought down with her some very special glories—things she had decided not to waste on Bainbridge. Her young hostess had eyes which were coolly, almost humorously, critical. "Absurd in a girl who simply can't have any proper criteria!" thought Miss ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... from neck to foot. She joined the conversation as the others did, and indeed more flowingly than Adela, whose visage was soured. It was Cornelia to whom Merthyr explained his temporary subjection to the piteous appeals of Mrs. Chump. She smiled humorously to reassure him of her perfect comprehension of the apology for his visit, and of his welcome: and they talked, argued a little, differed, until the terrible thought that he talked, and even looked like some one else, drew the blood from ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Dame Wisdom (whom the wags of antiquity have humorously personified as a woman) seem to take a mischievous pleasure in jilting the venerable councillors of New Amsterdam. To add to the confusion, the old factions of Short Pipes and Long Pipes, which had been almost strangled by the Herculean ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... song, beginning, "There grows a bonny brier-bush," which he did with effect. On their way home together, Marshall remarked that the words of the landlord's song were vastly inferior to the tune, and humorously suggested the following burlesque parody ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... himself sideways in the chair, and examined his collocutor's face earnestly. He endeavoured to subdue his excitement to the tone of courteous debate, but the words that at length escaped him were humorously blunt. ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... Balzac was prevented from attending by a three days' confinement in a dirty lock-up at Sevres, the cause being the old one which had partly driven him from Paris—his unwillingness to go, as he humorously put it, into the vineyards of his village, and, dressed in uniform, to see that truants from Paris ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... have to leave the story and go to the show to-night. I've bought the tickets and there is no escape," added he humorously. "But perhaps before you leave New York there will be some other chance for me to spin my yarn for you, and put your father's railroad romances entirely in ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... was, as he has humorously described himself, "a hardened and shameless tea-drinker." See his amusing Review of a Journal of Eight Days' Journey and his Reply to a paper in the Gazetteer, May ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... turkey, &c. The American practice of branding cattle by making a cut in the neck is known as a "dewlap brand." The skin of the neck in human beings often becomes pendulous with age, and is sometimes referred to humorously by the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... lifted several degrees in the social scale. The idea is novel and handled with Mr. Manville Fenn's accustomed cleverness, the restless boyish nature, with its inevitable tendency to get into scrapes, being sympathetically and often humorously drawn. ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... Some things move very slowly in England. In 1909 a commission was appointed to consider reform in divorce. Under the English law a husband can secure a divorce for infidelity, but a woman must, in addition to adultery, prove aggravated cruelty. This is humorously called "British fair play." In November, 1912, the majority of the commission recommended that this inequality be removed and that the sexes be placed on an equal footing; and that in addition to infidelity, now the only cause for divorce ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... old fellow they call the Doctor, that helps him," threw in the Captain humorously, allowing his attention to get entangled in the conversation, and treating them to one of ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... enquiries fail to discover their meaning. Dickens humorously suggests "Perhaps John Thomas," "Perhaps Joe Tyler," and under hilarious circumstances, "Pretty Jolly too," and "Possibly jabbered thus!" They are understood to be the initials of the treasurer of the Inn at the date above-mentioned. ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... humorously, and then went on, speaking always with a feverish eagerness which I find it hard to give you a sense of, for the women here have an intensity quite beyond our experience of ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... become more frequent in late years; in fact, there was almost always a letter en route either from Preshbend or Equatoria.... The Captain wanted him to come; stronger and stronger became the call. So far as money was concerned, he had done extraordinarily well. He always wrote of this half-humorously.... At last when Bedient was beginning his seventh year in the Punjab, there came a letter which held a plaint ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... wire fence and ran round to the refectory door which served as the home at rounders, all of us following; and there he danced a surprising dance of his own invention, that he called "La Paladine," the most humorously graceful and grotesque exhibition I ever saw; and then, taking a ball out of his pocket, he shouted: "A l'amandier!" and threw the ball. Straight and swift it flew, and hit the almond-tree, which was quite twenty ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... sheepherder in looks if not in speech, even to the collie that stood by his side. He wore a dusty, high-crowned black hat, overalls, mackinaw coat, with a small woolen scarf twisted about his neck, and in his hand he carried a gnarled staff. His eyes had a humorously cynical light lurking in their ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... pleaded, half-ruefully, half-humorously. "It's just that I love you so much. It's just that I'm impatient for ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... you have," he replied quietly. He looked at her meditatively, and then asked, humorously but gently: "Well Katie, what were you expecting me to do? Order ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... these rock-sharps when he gets big," suggested Mr. Mosher humorously. "Wouldn't it be kinda nice to have a perfesser in the family—with long hair and goggles? I come acrost one once that hunted bugs. He called a chinch bug a Rhyparochromus, but he saddled his horse without a blanket and put bakin' powder ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... of what is due either to himself or to his friends. The sort of view he takes may be seen in his behaviour. The gangs of boys who troop and lounge about the roads on Sundays are generally being merely silly in the endeavour to be witty. They laugh loudly, yet not humorously and kindly (one very rarely hears really jolly laughter in the village), but in derision of one another or of the wayfarers—girls by preference. So far as one can overhear it, their fun is always of that contumacious ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... use other than legal and theological weapons, if he could get them. A heretic with unpaid bills and some hidden vice is scarcely in a position to make much of his heresy. But the Rector's smile showed him humorously conscious of an almost excessive innocence of private life. The thought of how little an enemy could find to lay hold on in his history or present existence seemed almost to bring with it a kind of shamefacedness—as for experience irrevocably foregone, warm, tumultuous, human experience, ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was wheeled cheerily to her appointed place at the table by her husband, who waited on her just as assiduously as though they were lately married; instead of having "trudged along life's highway in double harness," as the deacon, humorously put it, for a matter of ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... a box of cigars, also a bottle of sherry, and chatted comfortably and humorously. There was one thing then that he had in his heart—that his anxiety for peace and appreciation of order as enjoyed under the American military government should be recorded and responsibly reported to the people of the ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... Luck let them wrangle humorously over their agricultural deficiencies, and drifted off into open-eyed dreaming. Into his picture he began to fit these two speculatively, with a purely tentative adjustment of their personalities to his requirements. They were arguing about which of the two was the worst farmer; but Luck, riding ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... indomitable youth and resistless enterprise intoxicated the air. It was the spirit that had made California possible; that had sown a thousand such ventures broadcast through its wilderness; that had enabled the sower to stand half-humorously among his scant or ruined harvests without fear and without repining, and turn his undaunted and ever hopeful face to further fields. What mattered it that Indian Spring had always before its eyes the abandoned trenches ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... humorously careful to make it exactly a quarter past the hour when she left her cab before McLean's official looking residence and stepped into the ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... each other that they had no higher intention. They were hilarious over their failures and they persisted in taking even their successes humorously. At first the "short-stake men" drifted away, but presently they began to drift back again. They liked it at Wander,—liked being mildly and tolerantly controlled by men of their own sort,—men with some vested authority, however, and a reawakened perception ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... my 'prentice, Tommy Bogey," said Bax, with an arch smile which was peculiar to him when he felt humorously disposed. ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... their fronts torn away, were being made into segments of apartment-buildings; others had gone uproariously into trade, brazenly putting forth "show-windows" on their first floors, seeming to mean it for a joke; one or two with unaltered facades peeped humorously over the tops of temporary office buildings of one story erected in the old front yards. Altogether, the town here was like a boarding-house hash the Sunday after Thanksgiving; the old ingredients ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... junior, was humorously like his father, except that he was larger-boned and promised to grow into a much bigger man. His hair was uncompromisingly red, and grew in such irregular fashion that the comb was not made which could subdue it. He had the wide-open, fighting blue eyes of the ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... Treatise on the Soul (1538); and his edition of Ammianus Marcellinus (1533) contains five books more than any former one. The affected use of antiquated terms, introduced by some of the Latin writers of that age, is humorously ridiculed by him, in a dialogue in which an Oscan, a Volscian and a Roman are introduced as interlocutors (1531). Accorso was accused of plagiarism in his notes on Ausonius, a charge which he most solemnly ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... but benevolent. The features were terrific; scowls infested its grotesque countenance; threatening brows bent inward; angry eyes rolled in apparent fury; its double gesture with sword and javelin was violent and almost humorously menacing. And Ruhannah ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... party Lincoln entered with hearty concurrence. A week after the House met he closed a letter to his partner with the remark: "As you are all so anxious for me to distinguish myself, I have concluded to do so before long," and what he said humorously he probably meant seriously. Accordingly he soon afterward[58] introduced a series of resolutions, which, under the nickname of "The Spot Resolutions," attracted some attention. Quoting in his preamble sundry paragraphs of the President's message of May 11, 1846, to the ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... in its broader and customary use it takes up the idea of dabbling; and, as a class-name, stands for 'dabbling-chick,' meaning a bird of small size, that neither wades, nor dives, nor runs, nor swims, nor flies, in a consistent manner; but humorously dabbles, or dips, or flutters, or trips, or plashes, or paddles, and is always doing all manner of odd and delightful things: being also very good-humored, and in consequence, though graceful, inclined to plumpness;[20] ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin |
