"Humourist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a more abundant vein of humour than Carlyle's, though I admit that the quality of the ore is not of the finest. His every production is bathed in humour. This must never be, though it often has been, forgotten. He is not to be taken literally. He is always a humourist, not unfrequently a writer of burlesque, and occasionally ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... began to have their doubts of a Pax Germanica and saw signs rather of a Wash-out Germanicum. Things looked ill with them, so they consulted their doctor, a certain person who called himself "Dr. Help-us" by way of a jest. He proved more successful as a business man, however, than he was as a humourist. He advised that the "War of World Conquest" was not likely to produce a dividend, because its name was against it. Cut out "Imperialism"; substitute another word, with just as many syllables and no less an imposing sound, "Proletariat"; call the thing "Class Warfare"; advertise it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... are many who affirm that the humourist's point of view is, on the whole, the fairest from which the world can be judged. It is equally remote from the misleading side-lights of the pessimist and from the wilful blindness of the optimist. It sees things with uncompromising clearness, but it judges of them with tolerance ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... German Fleet is strong. I am not one of the sort of humourists who hold it up to contempt in its inactivity. For that matter I am not any sort of humourist. Perhaps you have found that out. But the German High Seas Fleet is no fit subject for joke. That it has proved harmless is due to one ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 • Various
... Miss Cox, as if the wind was a settin' from Bedlam, or may be Colney Hatch," said John, who was considered a humourist among his comrades. "I wouldn't take no liberties with a lady, Miss Cox; but if I might be so bold as to arst ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... inwardly thought that fortune had been extraordinarily kind to his niece. The stranger, he thought, must be both wealthy and generous, and such an offer was not to be despised, though made by a humourist, and one of ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... pure lyrist "singing as if he would never be old," and they are apt to turn with some impatience even from Romeo and Juliet to Hamlet and Macbeth. To them, on the other hand, the hard wit of Hudibras is equally tiresome, and more distasteful; their chosen friend is the humourist who, inspired by a subtle perception of the contradictions of life, sees matter for smiles in sorrow, and tears in laughter. Byron was not, in the highest sense, a great humourist; he does not blend together the two phases, as they are ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... were, a spirit of picnic. The horses smoked and the men laboured and shouted and drank in the sharp autumn morning; so that one had a strong effect of large, open-air existence. The fellow who drove me was something of a humourist; and his conversation was all in praise of an agricultural labourer's way of life. It was he who called my attention to these jugs of ale by the hedgerow; he could not sufficiently express the liberality ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... up in him by a spontaneous process, and flowed over into whatever he wrote or said. Macaulay described his "rapid, loud, laughing utterance," and adds—"Sydney talks from the impulse of the moment, and his fun is quite inexhaustible." He was, I think, the greatest humourist whose jokes have come down to us in an authentic and unmutilated form. Almost alone among professional jokers, he made his merriment—rich, natural, fantastic, unbridled as it was—subserve the serious purposes ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... were to share in the compilation; and if such joint-stock undertakings were practicable in literature, it would be difficult to collect a more brilliant set of contributors. After Swift—the terrible humourist of whom we can hardly think without a mixture of horror and compassion—the chief members were Atterbury, Arbuthnot, Gay, Parnell, and Pope himself. Parnell, an amiable man, died in 1717, leaving works which were edited by Pope in 1722. Atterbury, a potential Wolsey ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... the humourist's wife, Jean sought Haggart at his workshop window, which was so small that an old book sufficed for its shutter. Haggart, whom she could see distinctly at his loom, soon guessed from her knocks and signs (for he was strangely quick ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... the Empire, republican humourist of the Marseillaise, and the lukewarm socialist of the Mot d'Ordre, who could answer to the judge who demanded his name, "I am Henri Rochefort, Comte de Lucey," has been reproached by some with his titles of nobility, and with the childish pleasure that he takes ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... the fugitives were unable to regard the fire seriously. A momentary diversion was caused by an elderly gentleman who came to the hotel-door, completely dressed except that he was in his stockings, and demanded Jerry. The humourist who had called for a speech from Lemuel volunteered the statement that Jerry had just gone round the corner to see a man. "I want him," said the old gentleman savagely. "I want my boots; I can't go ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... a multitude believed, although only two-thirds of them saw what must, if real, have been equally obvious to all, may be compared with the exploit of the humourist, who planted himself in an attitude of astonishment, with his eyes riveted on the well-known bronze lion that graces the front of Northumberland House in the Strand, and having attracted the attention of those who looked at him by muttering, ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... of them had an equal Aversion to austere, sullen, designing Knaves, of what Complexion, Magnitude, or Party soever. That both of them were Men of Wit and Satyr, but that Erasmus, according to the Genius of his Country, had more of the Humourist in him than Lucian, and in all Parts of Learning was infinitely his Superior. That Lucian liv'd in an Age, when Fiction and Fable had usurp'd the Name of Religion, and Morality was debauch'd by a Set of sowr Scoundrels, Men of Beard and ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... Joanne Gray credit for her triumph. She had awakened a new kind of interest in him—only a passing interest, to be sure—but a new kind for all that. The fact amused him. In a large way he was a humourist—few guessing it, and he fully appreciated the humour of the present situation—that he, John Aldous, touted the world over as a woman-hater, wanted to peer out through the poplar foliage and see that wonderful gold-brown head shining in the ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... voice grated on my ears. His manner to a servant who waited upon him seemed harsh and irritable. I found it impossible to believe that his acquaintance with spirituality was either intimate or real. Saints ought to be gentlemen. He seemed to me a vulgar old man, a clumsy old humourist, an intolerant, fanatical, ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... interview, my conscience was a good deal exercised; and I was moved to throw myself on my knees and own the intended treachery. But then I had Hanson to consider. I was in much the same position as Old Rowley, that royal humourist, whom "the rogue had taken into his confidence." And again, here was Ronalds on the spot. He must know the day of the month as well as Hanson and I. If a broad hint were necessary, he had the broadest in the world. For a large board had been nailed by the crown prince on the very front ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... replaced by its more solemn and self-conscious deposits; like those tricks of individuality which we find quite tolerable in persons, because they convey to us the secret of lifelike expression, and with regard to which we are all to some extent humourists. But it is part of the privilege of the genuine humourist to anticipate this pensive mood with regard to the ways and things [115] of his own day; to look upon the tricks in manner of the life about him with that same refined, purged sort of vision, which will come naturally to those of a later generation, in observing ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... consist of a ballad-maker; a tapster; a drunkard; a rectified young man; a young nouice's new yonger wife; a common fidler; a broker; a iouiall good fellow; a humourist; a malepart yong upstart; a scold; a good wife, and a selfe-conceited ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... authors, for the literary class—for all who have the sense of style, the delight in the best language. He will endure while English literature endures, while English civilisation lasts. We cannot expect all the world to share our affection for this humourist whose mirth springs from his melancholy. His religion, his education, his life in this unsatisfying world, are not the life, the education, the religion of the great majority of human kind. He cannot reach so many ears and hearts ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... lately published under the title of Coriat Junior, and written by Mr. Paterson[519], was mentioned. Johnson said, this book was an imitation of Sterne[520], and not of Coriat, whose name Paterson had chosen as a whimsical one. 'Tom Coriat, (said he,) was a humourist about the court of James the First. He had a mixture of learning, of wit, and of buffoonery. He first travelled through Europe, and published his travels[521]. He afterwards travelled on foot through Asia, and had made ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... the room. "John," said I, "this is a truly remarkable world, and only hypercriticism would venture to suggest that it is probably conducted by an inveterate humourist. So lend me that pocket-piece of yours, and we will permit chance to settle the entire matter. That is the one intelligent way of treating anything which is really serious. You probably believe I am Robert Etheridge Townsend, but as a matter of ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... footman who was a humourist, had, of course, heard witty references to Robin's love affair while in attendance, and he had equally, of course, ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... that I would name my seconds and select weapons. There was something operatic about the matter to my mind, although they appeared to be in earnest, and I could not help reminding my two visitors of the proposal of a famous American humourist regarding a choice of weapons in such a case—"brick-bats at half-a-mile, or gatling-guns," or something of that nature. However, they would not be turned from their purpose even when I seriously asked if they really desired the ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... others, and he was specially remarkable for one trait very rarely found in the Middle Ages—he was always thoughtful of those beneath him. Another peculiarity he had, not common in his time; he was decidedly a humourist. The comic side even of his own troubles was always patent to him. Yet he was a man of extremely sensitive feeling, as well as of shrewd and delicate perceptions. He lived a most uncomfortable life, and he was quite aware of it. The ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... was before all things a great humourist—doubtless the greatest of this century; for, though we may find in Scott a more truly Shakespearean humour of the highest order, the humour of Dickens is so varied, so paramount, so inexhaustible, that he stands forth in our memory as the humourist of the age. ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... humourist, born at Albany, New York; went to California at 15; tried various occupations, mining, school-mastering, printing, and literary sketching, when he got on the staff of a newspaper, and became eventually first editor of the Overland Monthly, in the columns of which ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... had been hanging about in the garden, grinned and went off. He was a queer fellow, Peter, a plantation humourist, well taught in all the then unpublished lore of "Uncle Remus." Peter had a way of his own, too, with animals, and often aided Moore in collecting ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish," and so on; and, the subject being so delightful that he can't leave it—he proceeds to recommend, in place of venison for squires' tables, "the bodies of young lads and maidens not exceeding fourteen or under twelve." Amiable humourist! laughing castigator of morals! There was a process well known and practised in the Dean's gay days: when a lout entered the coffee-house, the wags proceeded to what they called "roasting" him. This is ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "Welcome to the Pirate's Cave! The Red Rover of the North Fork of the Stanislaus River salutes the Queen of the Pirate Isle!" He rose up and made an extraordinary bow. It was repeated by the others with more or less exaggeration to the point of one humourist losing his balance! ...
— The Queen of the Pirate Isle • Bret Harte
... had, in the ordinary sense of the word, no manners at all, but essentially made up for this lack by her sincere and humourous kindliness. She saw with acute vividness the ludicrous side of everybody, herself included, and to her mind the arch-humourist of all was her brother, whom she was quite unable to take seriously. She dressed as if she had looted a milliner's shop and had put on in a great hurry anything that came to hand. She towered over her sister-in-law as ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... was not discouraged by the two magistrates, the Rev. Dr. Spencer and John Carles, who had now arrived. In fact, the clergyman with an oath praised a lad who said that Priestley ought to be ducked; Carles also promised the rabble drink; and when a local humourist asked for permission to knock the dust out of Priestley's wig, the champions of order burst out laughing. A witness at the trial averred that he saw an attorney, John Brook, go among the mob and point towards Priestley's chapel. However that may be, the rabble ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... who remembered the humourist in all his departed glory, and still venerated him as a temple where the deity yet breathed, though the altar was overthrown, made to this extraordinary remonstrance no other reply than a long whiff, and a "Well, Russelton, dash my wig (a ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... saying that the good soul has attributed the participation of the United States in this war entirely to my efforts. And the nature of the advice that I am supposed to have given President Wilson would make an everlasting fortune for a humourist. But in spite of it all, I am proud to belong to them; proud of being an old resident in ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... you had no need to conform; the pelting rain of confetti effectually disguised you. I can't say I found it all very exhilarating; but here and there I noticed a brighter episode—a capering clown inflamed with contagious jollity, some finer humourist forming a circle every thirty yards to crow at his indefatigable sallies. One clever performer so especially pleased me that I should have been glad to catch a glimpse of the natural man. You imagined for him that he was taking a prodigious intellectual holiday ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... game; but he was not so new as he had been, he was almost through with the running of the Toomer gauntlet, he had a tremendous lot of money and it was with a modified vehemence that the distinguished journalist and humourist expatiated on his offensiveness to Mr. Brumley. He talked in a gentle, rather weary voice, that came through a moustache like a fringe of ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... engager of lady-helps instead of servants, an amateur reciter and skirt dancer, an owner of a lock of Paderewski's hair—torn fresh from the head personally at a concert—an admirer of George Bernard Shaw as a thinker but a hater of him as a humourist, a rationalist and reader of Punch, an atheist and table-turner, a friend of all who think that women don't desire to be slaves, a homoeopathist and Sandowite, an enemy of babies—as if all women didn't worship them!—a ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... all things, and, with his deep sense of the ridiculous, Tchekoff asked nothing better. His stories, though often based on themes profoundly tragic, are penetrated by the light and subtle satire that has won him his reputation as a great humourist. But though there was always a smile on his lips, it was a tender one, and his sympathy with suffering often brought his ...
— Swan Song • Anton Checkov
... humourist of a type that prevails in the rural South and West. Unskilled in originating methods of amusing or in witty conceptions, he had hit upon a comical idea and clung to it reverently. It had seemed to Jimmy a very funny thing to have about his person, with which to amuse his friends, ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... into the room. "Talking about the 'Merry Maggots'?" he said. "Splendid idea of Cecilia's, isn't it? I've just been thinking it over, and what we must decide on first of all is who is to be the—the humourist. He's the really important man; must be someone ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 22, 1920 • Various
... is a half-holiday at the Works, and I propose to come up and see whether our boat cannot bump Balliol. How extraordinary it is that people should neglect, on Sundays, the favourite promenade of the Short-faced Humourist. I shall be there: the old place.—Believe ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... yourself rich; to supply the needs of the poor will involve you in trouble so out of proportion to the profit that the game may not be worth the candle. Men go into banking and other businesses for the sake of obtaining what the American humourist said was the chief end of man in these modern times, namely, "ten per cent." To obtain a ten per cent. what will not men do? They will penetrate the bowels of the earth, explore the depths of the sea, ascend the snow-capped mountain's highest peak, or navigate the air, ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... German professor Carlyle indicates his own indebtedness to German idealism, the ultimate source of much of his own teaching. Yet, deep as that indebtedness was, and anxious as he might be to acknowledge it, he was as a humourist keenly alive to certain glaring defects of the great German writers; to their frequent tendency to lose themselves among the mere minutiae of erudition, and thus to confuse the unimportant and the important; to their habit of rising at times into the ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... house; that Caleb's scanty hairs were turning greyer and more grey, before her sightless face. The Blind Girl never knew they had a master, cold, exacting, and uninterested—never knew that Tackleton was Tackleton in short; but lived in the belief of an eccentric humourist who loved to have his jest with them, and who, while he was the Guardian Angel of their lives, disdained to hear one ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... turn for exact information. Uncle Thomas could have told us all about it, of course; he had been there himself, once, in the dim and misty past. But an unfortunate conviction, that Nature had intended him for a humourist, tainted all his evidence, besides making it wearisome to hear. Again, of such among our contemporaries as we had approached, the trumpets gave forth an uncertain sound. According to some, it meant larks, revels, emancipation, ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... The query of a humourist, why he should do anything for posterity since posterity had done nothing for him, set me to thinking in my early youth in the most serious way. I felt that posterity had done much for its forefathers. It had given them an infinite horizon for the future beyond the bounds of their daily effort. ...
— The Education of the Child • Ellen Key
... own. They attain their effects by bad spelling, and a simple transliteration reveals the poverty of their wit. There is but one author who represents with any clarity the spirit of his country, and that author is Mark Twain. Not Mark Twain the humourist, the favourite of the reporters, the facile contemner of things which are noble and of good report, but Mark Twain, the pilot of the Mississippi, the creator of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. He is national as Fielding is national. Future ages will look upon Huck Finn as ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... indeed to be my home, the home of my spirit, as well as the final resting-place of my household gods; and, having you so early for my friend, is it to be wondered at if I soon came to regard the American humourist as the noblest work ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... are fidgety and unadvised, with nervous, fussy fingers which indicate a nature sensitive to the little pricks of daily life. Sometimes I recognize with foreboding the kindly but stupid hand of one who tells with many words news that is no news. I have met a bishop with a jocose hand, a humourist with a hand of leaden gravity, a man of pretentious valour with a timorous hand, and a quiet, apologetic man with a fist of iron. When I was a little girl I was taken to see[A] a woman who was blind and paralysed. I ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... English novelist and humourist, was born in Calcutta, July 18th, 1811. He I was educated at Cambridge, and at first inclined to be an artist, but after a few years, devoted himself to literature. He gained popularity as a contributor to Punch, but his progress in popular favour was not rapid, until in 1846, when ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... that arch-humourist, that jester of the gods, delights in mighty contrasts, and has a trick of exalting us by false hopes and hollow lures on the very eve of working our discomfiture. From the soul that but a moment back had been aglow with evil satisfaction there burst a sudden blasphemous cry ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... think? She's rather thin." Lucy exploded, and had to kiss the unconscious humourist. "Do you think we grow fatter as we grow older? Then you must think me immense, because I'm much more ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... from the beginning to the end of her dinner. Tall, slender, bald-headed, awkward, and stammering with his elaborate British stammer whenever it suited his convenience to do so; a sharp observer who had wit which he commonly concealed; a humourist who was satisfied to laugh silently at his own humour; a diplomatist who used the mask of frankness with great effect; Lord Skye was one of the most popular men in Washington. Every one knew that he was a ruthless ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... newspapers have been organising a symposium on the subject of how to spend the coming Christmas. Herr ARTHUR VON GWINNER, director of the Deutsche Bank, is evidently something of a humourist. "More than ever," he says, "in the exercise of works of love and charity." We rather doubt whether the Herr Direktor's irony will be appreciated in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various
... manner he travelled through Europe on foot, and now, though he has scarce attained the age of thirty, his circumstances are more affluent than ever. At present, his bounties are more rational and moderate than before; but still he preserves the character of an humourist, and finds ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... generalisation, have sometimes induced, in those over whose intellects they have had real power, a coldness of heart. It was the distinction of Aurelius that he was able to harmonise them with the kindness, one might almost say the amenities, of a humourist, as also with the popular religion and its many gods. Those vasty conceptions of the later Greek philosophy had in them, in truth, the germ of a sort of austerely opinionative "natural theology," and how often has that led to religious ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... believed in by the 'old schoolmen,' and No. 2 was 'a limbus patrum where the fathers of the Church, saints, and martyrs, awaited the general resurrection.' Will any one say it was not a stroke of genius in some printing-office humourist to alter the last ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... robs, without dishonour.—Laughter and approbation attend his greatest excesses; and being governed visibly by no settled bad principle or ill design, fun and humour account for and cover all. By degrees, however, and thro' indulgence, he acquires bad habits, becomes an humourist, grows enormously corpulent, and falls into the infirmities of age; yet never quits, all the time, one single levity or vice of youth, or loses any of that chearfulness of mind which had enabled him to pass thro' this course ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... intermarry. Women to a large extent navigate the egg-boats, as indeed they do many other kinds of boats in China. Travellers report that these river-families live peaceable and happy enough lives, seldom disturbed by disputes of any kind. Possibly one cause for this may be that which some humourist suggested as the reason why "birds in their little nests agree," namely, because it would be dangerous if they "fell out." But, speaking seriously, it says much for the placable nature of these Chinese river-folk that they can pass such a happy ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... arm, he stared down at it with a forlorn shake of his head. The coroner glanced at Hammersmith. What sort of fellow was this! A giant with the air of a child, a rascal with the smile of a humourist. Delicate business, this; or were they both deceived and the ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... hand would paint Strife of Sathanas and Saint, Or in secret coign entwist Jest of cloister humourist. ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... the office boy humourist, but Bean was out of hearing in the direction of the telephone booth before the latest mot could ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... and facile pen of Antoine de la Sale clothed the dry bones of these stories with flesh and blood, and made them live, and move. Considering his undoubted gifts as a humourist, and a delineator of character it is strange that the name of Antoine de la Sale is not held in higher veneration by his countrymen, for he was the earliest exponent of a form of literary art in which the ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... country woman is selling her milk by the lump out of a sack, or that her husband, who is a bit of a humourist, has stuck up on their legs his half dozen dead pigs to glare at the passers-by as though they were still alive. There are half a score of Red Indians too; their tribe has pitched its wigwams in the forest at a little ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... imported from the Greeks, to whom at all times the contemplation of old age presented the gloomiest associations. But it must have struck at the root of all Roman traditions to represent the aged father in any but a venerable light; and inimitable as Plautus is as a humourist, we cannot regard him as one who either elevates his own art, or in any way represents the nobler aspect ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell |
