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More "Humour" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mysteries of his Trade; and whatever Trouble she creates, she is sure to hear nothing but the most obliging Language; and has always before her a chearful Countenance, where Joy and Respect seem to be blended with Good-Humour, and all together make up an artificial Serenity, more ingaging than untaught Nature is able ...
— The Tricks of the Town: or, Ways and Means of getting Money • John Thomson
... for dinner, always. We had a billiard-room, too: but that didn't work so well. I could never bring her up to my standard of play, not within forty in a hundred, by reason that she'd use the rest for almost every stroke. She had a sense of humour, had Maria: you'd have got along with her, Mr. Collingwood, and she'd have got along with you. You'd have struck sparks. One evening I asked her, 'Maria, why are you so fond of the jigger?' 'Because of my figger,' says she, pat as you please. Now, wasn't that humorous, eh? She meant, ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... fish won't bite," he said, and the humour of his remark cheered him. He was ten miles from the shore, and the blue coast was a dim, ragged line on the horizon. He pulled out a big luncheon basket from the cabin and eyed it with disfavour. It ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... it were ozone of the mountains. But her joy had been quickly dissipated, for to dissipate joy was her chief recreation. A fortnight before the migration to Brighton Hilda, contemplating all that had to be done, had thought, aghast: "I shall never he able to humour her into doing it all!" Closing of accounts, dismissals, inventories, bills, receipts, packing, decision concerning trains, reception of the former proprietor (especially that!), good-byes, superintending ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... the yeoman by the hand, and declared he had fairly won the prize. He bought the wine from him for five marks, and bade that it should be broached at once, and that every one who wished should have a draught. Thus good humour and jollity were restored, and the rest of the sports went ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... pretend that I consider her to have made the most of her opportunity. There are at least two classic examples of her theme, Mr. ANSTEY'S Vice Versa and Mr. DE LA MARE'S Return. Mrs. PENROSE cannot approach either the charming humour of the one or the delicate beauty of the other. On a lower plane her story has its amusing moments, and there is a vein of real tenderness in her picture of the relations of her hero and his faithful lady—a happy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 2nd, 1914 • Various
... could do it. The first point is to select an item of intelligence about which few people care to hear. This must be spun out very thin and long, and adorned with easy extracts from TUPPER, the copy-books, or Mr. W.H. SMITH'S speeches. Then wrap it up in a blanket of humour, sprinkle with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 16, 1890 • Various
... with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by the things that go with good judgment. He is not hampered by a sense of humour or by charity, or by the dumb certainties of experience. He is the more logical for losing certain sane affections. Indeed, the common phrase for insanity is in this respect a misleading one. The madman is not the man who has lost his ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... complexion (which, subsequently, the climate of France somewhat changed), for his piercing and scrutinising glance, and for the style of his conversation both with his masters and comrades. His conversation almost always bore the appearance of ill-humour, and he was certainly not very amiable. This I attribute to the misfortunes his family had sustained and the impressions made on his mind by the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... shepherd housed him every night, And faced the prospect like a patient soul, Borne up by some vague hope of better days, And God's fine blessing in his faithful wife, Until the humour of his malady Took cunning changes from the good to bad, And laid him lastly on a bed ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... had a bed myself; surely they don't believe that even a professional humourist could be so bursting with humour as to make himself an apple-pie bed and not make one for his brother-in-law in the same room! It would be too much ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, October 6, 1920 • Various
... the gentleman knew he was respectable; but was silent. He was not now in an eloquent or seditious humour. ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... camp on the 28th of January, driving to Hoogly on the river of that name, and thence following the grand trunk-road westward towards Burdwan. The novelty of palkee-travelling at first renders it pleasant; the neatness with which every thing is packed, the good-humour of the bearers, their merry pace, and the many more comforts enjoyed than could be expected in a conveyance horsed by men, the warmth when the sliding doors are shut, and the breeze when they are open, are all fully ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... tried to look as if she had not heard the remark; but it spoilt her pleasure in seeking for shells, and she decided mentally that she should never like Cousin Gerald. The arrival of her brother seemed to have restored Julia's good-humour, and when in the evening he proposed a stroll on the pier she gladly assented, and the whole party set out to hear the band which played there two or three ...
— Ruth Arnold - or, the Country Cousin • Lucy Byerley
... please me?" repeated Elizabeth sharply, not at that moment in the humour of being pleased with anything.—"It does NOT please me that he should pass saucily into my presence, or that you should exclude from it one who came to justify himself ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... Henry unless he was able to convince them that he was guiltless of the murder. Henry was too cautious to abide their coming. He crossed first to England and then to Ireland, resolved to have something to offer the Pope which might put him in a better humour. ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... a place in this department. Inoffensive ignorance, benignant stupidity, and unostentatious imbecility will always be welcomed and cheerfully accorded a corner, and even the feeblest humour will be admitted, when we can do no better; but no circumstances, however dismal, will ever be considered a sufficient excuse for the admission of that last—and saddest evidence of intellectual poverty, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... dark, I should think it WAS a king that spoke; there's no denying it, when the humour's upon on him he doth thunder and lighten like your true King; now where got he that trick? See him scribble and scratch away contentedly at his meaningless pot-hooks, fancying them to be Latin and Greek—and except my wit shall serve me with a lucky device for diverting him from his purpose, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... good deal remains; what it is that remains—that is his secret, his joke, as one may say. It would be cruel, in this terrible denudation, to deny him the consolation of his national gift, that "American humour" of which of late years ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... the brig was fairly within range of the "Vigilant," Bob bowled a 9-pound shot across that craft's fore-foot, as an invitation to her to heave-to. Monsieur Durand, however, seemed in no humour for accepting any such invitation just then, for he immediately returned a decided negative from his long brass 9-pounder, sending the shot very cleverly through both Bob's topsails, and narrowly missing the mainmast- ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... seizure, seventy droll stories, in that reservoir of nature, his brain. By the gods! they are precious yarns, well rigged out with phrases, carefully furnished with catastrophes, amply clothed with original humour, rich in diurnal and nocturnal effects, nor lacking that plot which the human race has woven each minute, each hour, each week, month, and year of the great ecclesiastical computation, commenced at a time when the sun could scarcely ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... Putney, aged seventy-three, Sir Nicholas Copperas, Knt., a gentleman well known on the Exchange for his facetious humour. Several of his bons-mots are still recorded in the Common Council. When residing many years ago in the suburbs of London, this worthy gentleman was accustomed to go from his own house to the Exchange in a coach called 'the Swallow,' that passed his door just at breakfast-time; ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ceremony took place in the "Wilson Hall," which is used as a Senate House, and for other public functions in connection with the University. The ceremony itself was almost identical with that at one of our Universities, and it was similarly interrupted by noisy Undergraduates, whose humour consisted in rendering the proceedings inaudible without contributing anything amusing of their own. One lady who took a degree was much cheered. The Bishop of Melbourne (Dr. Moorhouse) is the Chancellor, and delivered an address to the "fractious ...
— Six Letters From the Colonies • Robert Seaton
... of ready humour, ready pathos, and crowding adventure. . . . Stirring and entertaining ballads about great rides, in which the lines gallop like the very ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... her in high good humour; and she took to herself, and bridled upon it, to express myself in Charlotte's manner, the praises and graces this adroit manager gave her, as if ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... literature we have been considering the absence of certain elements which are an integral part of our modern literature. This poem, for instance, is, as far as I know, the only love poem before the Conquest which has come down to us. There is no romance either, and there is, we may say, no humour. Life is a very serious thing, so often lying close to the sword-edge; and the duties of life are simple. There is to be a great, very great enlargement of the borders of English literature later ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... dissent from those who, with steam vessels, go to Whale-Fish Isles, it will be but fair for me to stay, that I arrived at this our first stage in the journey to the Nor'-West, in far from good humour. We had been twenty-four days from Greenhithe to Cape Farewell, and sixteen days from the latter point to our anchorage; hurry being out of the question when a thing like the "Emma Eugenia" was pounding ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... character, the God, on whom you lavish your incense? Are not the descriptions given you of the divinity, visibly borrowed from the implacable, jealous, revengeful, sanguinary, capricious inconsiderate humour of man, who has not cultivated his reason? O men! You adore only a great savage, whom you regard, however, as a model to imitate, as an amiable master, as a ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... official's introduction the two lads presented themselves aboard the warship about mid-day, and were fortunate enough to find Admiral Williams not only disengaged, but also in a particularly good humour. He at once granted them an interview; asked them several questions, as the Naval Director had done; and finally accepted their services, much to the gratification of the two lads. He gave Douglas a commission as second lieutenant on board the flagship, ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... she retired to a villa about fifteen miles from Ravenna, where she was visited by Byron at comparatively rare intervals. By the end of July he had finished Marino Faliero, and ere the close of the year the fifth canto of Don Juan. in September he says to Murray, "I am in a fierce humour, at not having Scott's Monastery. No more Keats,[1] I entreat. There is no bearing the drivelling idiotism of the manikin. I don't feel inclined to care further about Don Juan. What do you think a very pretty Italian lady said to me the other day, when I remarked that 'it ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... Bonifaz-Kloster—Storr, the great Austrian master, whose conception of 'Faust,' in the Royal Gallery at Vienna, is in itself a great poem; and the whole Duesseldorf school—have conformed to the ancient type. Even the humorists have made it, in some instances, a vehicle of their humour. Few of those who were wont to enjoy Richard Doyle's inimitable sketches in Punch, whose guiding-spirit he used to be, can forget the funny little figure, surmounted by his well-known initials; and the lovers of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... the later school of Attic sculpture they are treated with more and more of refinement, till in some happy moment Praxiteles conceived a model, often repeated, which concentrates this sentiment of true humour concerning them; a model of dainty natural ease in posture, but with the legs slightly crossed, as only lowly-bred gods are used to carry them, and with some puzzled trouble of youth, you might wish for a moment [17] to smoothe away, puckering the forehead a little, between the pointed ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... for it but to wake up, though I was most unwilling to do so. I was not at all shy, but yet in the humour I was in then I felt disinclined to make friends with Uncle Geoff, and I wished he hadn't come to the station himself. He lifted me out, however, very kindly; and when I found myself standing on the platform, in the light of the lamps, I could ...
— The Boys and I • Mrs. Molesworth
... appeared in any humour to talk at the table. Mother sat silently at the end and poured out the tea while Dad, at the head, served the pumpkin and divided what cold meat there was. Mother would n't have any meat—one of us would have to go without if ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... which the lady may have suspected and was prepared to humour. A man must be humoured at times—particularly when the woman is trying for something that can only be come at ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... breakfasted, disentangled themselves from the Bedlam of a troop-deck meal, and gained the upper air, they were in better humour to regard their surroundings from a philosophical, if not an appreciative, standpoint. The depressing drizzle had ceased, the clouds were breaking, and the shore, except for the mist-filled nullahs and the cloud-wrapped Asiatic ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... will enable the reader to appreciate Addison's charming humour and sane grasp of character. The high moral tone of his work, the common-sense and broad culture and literary insight which caused the Spectator to exert a profound influence over a dissolute age, these ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... "Barmecide Feast," to denote an imaginary banquet, is drawn from one of the tales ("The Barber's Tale of his Sixth Brother") in the Arabian Nights, in which a series of empty dishes is served up to a hungry man to test his sense of humour by one of the Barmecides (see edition by L. C. Smithers, Lond., ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... crossed his mind. They had passed three or four headlands before the girl halted and waited for her attendant, who came up muttering to herself and grumbling; compliments from Jean and caresses from Hilda restored her good humour, and the work of the evening commenced. "Follow me closely," said the girl; "let your eye be keen and your step firm: the descent is no child's sport." Jean looked at the cliff, fitted for the flight of gull or cormorant rather than the foot of man, still less of gentle ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... will know why she was called La Desirous, with Prosper le Gai, and will understand how a man may fall in love with his own wife. Finally, of Galors and his affairs, of the great difference there may be between a Christian and the brutes, of love and hate, grudging and open humour, faith and works, cloisters and thoughts uncloistered—all in the green wood—you will know as much as I do if you have cared to follow the argument. I hope you will not ask me what it all means, or what the moral of it is. I rank myself with the historian in this business ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... become of any account, are a mighty and ardent enthusiasm, a thorough authority in the service of Truth, a wide horizon and philosophically trained thinking powers. These must make up for my lack of humour and facility." ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... name—one of the few corresponding to the names given to the Japanese semi, such as tsuku-tsuku-boshi, or minmin-semi. The most interesting composition upon this cicada is by Oliver Wendell Holmes, but it is of the lighter sort of verse, with a touch of humour in it. I shall quote a few verses only, as the piece contains some allusions that would require explanation ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... the draught getting warm, you dress again and carry on. This plan can't be done here as there are no fans. I suppose you realised that Austen Chamberlain was only indulging his irrepressible sense of humour when he announced in the H. of C. that in Mesopotamia "The health of troops has on the whole been good. Ice and fans are installed wherever possible," i.e. nowhere beyond Basra. The hot weather sickness casualties have been just over 30% of the total force: but as they were nearly all ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... hold, that human creatures could successfully be paired and bred after the manner of dogs or horses. He no longer holds that view. Not only does he no longer hold that view, but he has written about it in "Mankind in the Making" with such smashing sense and humour, that I find it difficult to believe that anybody else can hold it either. It is true that his chief objection to the proposal is that it is physically impossible, which seems to me a very slight objection, and almost ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... than minor misfortunes such as these to damp French geniality and good nature, and when our soiree came to an end, everyone returned home well fortified with umbrellas, cloaks, and goloshes in the best possible humour. Sometimes these veillees will be devoted to declamation and story-telling, one or two of the party reading aloud a play or poem, or reciting for the benefit of the rest. In the bitter winter nights this sociable custom is not laid aside, even ladies with their lanterns braving the snow ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... little thing, but I'd like to have you humour me." She met his look directly. "It's when we are married to-day you'll be dressed—well, not the way you usually dress." Her colour came and went, her throat was a-throb. ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... Connie. Then I shall have got him one subscriber, as he asks me to do. I am afraid I shan't get any more, for I thought Aunt Lily was in a good humour yesterday, and I put one of the little advertisement papers he sent out on the table, and she found it, and only said something about wondering who had sent the advertisement of that paper that Mr. Leadbitter ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... will the fool come again, Sim?" It is true that he could well afford to spare it, as what could he not well afford to spare? but I will confess that it seems to me worthy of a place among his own Sly's most admirable and notable sallies of humour. ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Harietta's ill humour rose again; she was annoyed that she had forgotten this incident. Her instinct of self-preservation usually preserved her from committing any such mistakes. She felt that it was now advisable to become cajoling; also there was ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... always honest in his convictions, right or wrong, had not been gifted by nature with a pleasing address, although he could attach people to him when he chose. He was irascible and violent, the victim of a passionate jealous nature, without the saving graces of humour and liveliness of temperament. But his sturdy upright figure was very imposing; his brow, which appeared to end with the tip of his nose, so bold was the curve, would have been benevolent but for the youthful ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... Rien n'est beau que le vrai; le vrai seul est aimable, he quotes; he was a deliberate and diligent searcher after truth, always striving to attain the heart of things, to arrive at a knowledge of first principles. It is, too, not without a sort of grim humour that this psychological vivisectionist attempts to lay bare the skeleton of the human mind, to tear away all the charming little sentiments and hypocrisies which in the course of time become a part and parcel of human life. A ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... patriot King" misled for a time by evil counsellors. True, the moderates, from sheer alarm, still sought to save the monarchy, and for a time with surprising success. But bolder men, possessed both of insight and humour, perceived the futility of all such efforts to hold down on the throne the father of his people lest he should again run away. In this perception the young Republican party found its genesis and its inspiration. In truth, the attempted flight of the King was a death-blow ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... the graceful style; he is not very original but his waltzes and "Laendlers" have the true Viennese ring, and the kirmess in the first act is very characteristic; it is melodious and {470} full of healthy humour. The airs ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... you're of the same opinion as myself," said Doggie, and thought no more of the absurd but deathless pair of lovers. The unprincipled McPhail, not without pawky humour, immediately gave him Paul et Virginie, which Doggie, after reading it, thought the truest and most beautiful story in the world. Even in later years, when his intelligence had ripened and his sphere of reading expanded, he looked upon the passion of a Romeo or an Othello as ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... inside any Amberson house or any place else where young Georgie is. Fact is, the boy seemed to have so much feeling over it I had my doubts about coming myself, but my wife said it was all nonsense; we mustn't humour Fred in a grudge over such a little thing, and while she despised that Georgie Minafer, herself, as much as any one else did, she wasn't going to miss a big Amberson show just on account of a boys' rumpus, and so on and so on; ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... aware of his brother's fierce humour, did not dare to face him after this humiliation, but left him to fume impotently in his sickroom, while he stole away to Jerba, there to work night and day at shipbuilding. Ur[u]j joined him in the following spring—the King of Tunis had probably had enough of him—and they soon ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... him, and was bound to humour him; and in order to respond sympathetically to Enwright's pessimism he attempted to describe his sensations concerning the London Sunday, and in particular the Sunday morning aspect of Earl's Court streets. He animadverted with virulence, ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... gravely to his men, while a little gleam of intelligence and humour twinkled in his grey eyes. "When a man signals 'all right,' he must be all right, you know. Let 'em alone, but stand by and ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... to France, and lived at Paris for upwards of six months on funds supplied by his father. His resources being exhausted, he left Paris in the middle of July 1777 on foot. On reaching England he made another lecturing tour, which proved unsuccessful. His wit, humour, and knowledge of the world rendered him at one time an indispensable appendage to convivial gatherings of a kind; but in his later days he was so entirely neglected as to be obliged to sell gingerbread-nuts at fairs and race-meetings for a subsistance. ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... will be the man who will be in the best humour, and have the clearest brain, to kneel down when he gets up to his daily work, and "in everything, by prayer and supplication, make his requests known to God." And then, whether he can make both ends ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... possibility of getting hold of 'truth,' and too careless to wait for an answer to his question about it; loftily ignorant of and indifferent to the notions of the troublesome people that he ruled, but alive to the necessity of keeping them in good humour, and unscrupulous enough to strain justice and unhesitatingly to sacrifice so small a thing as an ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... Alvanley and Montrond came in a chaise and four, and were only three hours and three-quarters coming from town. Luttrell and Rogers are here. The dinner very bad, because the cook is out of humour. The evening ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... hours to yourself while you are staying with me, brother," he said—this form of address borrowed from the speech of our peasants being the usual expression of the highest good humour in a moment of affectionate elation. "I shall be always coming in ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... Malcolm's address that pleased Lord Lossie —the mingling of respect and humour, probably—the frankness and composure, perhaps. He was not self conscious enough to be shy, and was so free from design of any sort that he doubted the good ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... atmosphere is. You have to come out into the fresh air to find out that. We look at the errors of others through a microscope; we look at our own through the wrong end of the telescope; and the one set, when we are in a cynical humour, seem bigger than they are; and the other set always ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... judge whose law books are, or should be, known to all lawyers. His Boke of Husbandry, published in 1534, is one of the classics of English agriculture, and justly, for it is full of shrewd observation and deliberate wisdom expressed in a virile style, with agreeable leaven of piety and humour. Fitzherbert anticipated a modern poet, Henley, in one of his most happy phrases: "Ryght so euery man is capitayne of his owne soule". The Husbandry is best available to the modern reader in the edition by Skeat published for the English ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... fulfilled my purpose in crossing to Arran, then this joy you speak of were not greater than my own. But when I go out hunting, Allan, I like to hunt; when I come over to ask a question of our neighbour, it is not to my humour to be thus stranded upon a hilltop. So now, if it please you, we ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... envelope," said Bill, with growing ferocity. "Now gum it up. Here, Jack, will ye kindly drop this in the contribution box for the orphans while we watch you?" The clerk entered into the humour of it all. He ran across the street to the gate of the orphan asylum and dropped the envelope into the box. Mason tried to escape but Bill's mighty hand was laid on his collar. And now the storm of animal rage pent up in him for so long broke forth. He used no weapon but his fists, and when ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... gently sipping her tea, and after a good long while of abstraction, she at last smiled: "Never mind," she remarked; "you can go. But come after you've had your evening meal, and I'll then tell you about it. Just now there are visitors here; and besides, I don't feel in the humour." ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... been at home a year—a year of discontent and ill-humour. She had quarrelled with her father, because he would not take her to Paris; with her mother, because she would not give her more new gowns and bonnets and feathers and fur-belows; with the priest, the poodle, with the autocracy below-stairs, ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... glows, as has been said, with a black splendour, in Marlowesque or Websterian fashion. Nor, again, is it a "Fleur du Mal" of the Baudelairian kind, but only an ugly as well as noxious weed. It is prosaic and suburban. There is neither tragedy nor comedy, neither passion nor humour, nor even wit, except a little horse-play. Congreve and Crebillon are as far off as Marlowe and Webster; in fact, the descent from Crebillon's M. de Clerval to Laclos' M. de Valmont is almost inexpressible. And, once more, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... drill-sergeant for the time being. He used to have the mid-finger of the right hand extended in such a way that he could nip and slap you with it very painfully. He used this finger constantly to pound and drill his comrades, all being done of course in the height of glee, frolic, and good-humour. This finger, no doubt by the unlawful use to which he put it, at one time developed a painful tumour, to the delight of those who were in the habit of receiving punishment from it. James pulled a long face, and acknowledged that it was a punishment sent him for ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... from the first, while sickness of every description had carefully avoided him, he looked even younger than his years. He was a tall, powerful, and strikingly handsome man, of very dark complexion, with black hair, beard, and moustache, and dark eyes that sparkled with good humour and vivacity; and his every movement and gesture were characterised by the stately dignity of the true old Spanish hidalgo. He had spoken but little during dinner, his English being far from perfect; ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... the bells in the belfry old, Or so it seemed to me they sang; And the year died out as the moments rolled, Still o'er its bier the joy-bells rang: 'Twas mourning an instant, merriment then, And the ghastly shroud where the old year lay— How like is the humour of bells and men— Became swaddling-clothes ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... visitors, mostly of the sterner sex; for Mrs. Falkner liked her acquaintance to drop in informally—a predilection her acquaintance, if young and especially of the harder sex aforesaid, for obvious reasons, delighted just at present to humour. George, however, in no wise shared his aunt's expansiveness in this direction, if only that it meant that Lilith was promptly surrounded by an adoring phalanx, even as on the deck ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... unseated on petition for bribery on the part of his agents. Blue- books are not ordinarily light reading; but the Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the alleged corrupt practices at Bridgewater is not only a model of terse and vigorous composition, but to persons with a sense of humour, inclined to view human irregularities and inconsistencies in a sportive rather than an indignant light, it is a sustained and diverting comedy. Of the constituency, both before and after the Reform Bill, three- fourths, the Commissioners artlessly inform us, sought ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... a humour to thank either her guardian or the soldier for anything they might do now, but when they arrived she told them what had taken place the night before; and on the gentlemen promising to ride back to the village and make inquiries into the matter, to prevent its recurrence, she was obliged ...
— Hayslope Grange - A Tale of the Civil War • Emma Leslie
... her, but his glance, travelling from her to Klutz, who sat quite still with head sunk on his chest, legs straight out before him, the hand with the paper loosely held in it hanging down out of the cuffless sleeve nearly to the floor, and vacant eyes staring into space, his good humour returned, and he gave another harsh laugh. "Well?" he said, standing in front of this dejected figure. "How long will you sit there? If I were you I'd lose no time. You don't want those two to ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... hat on his head, and walked grumbling forth. Meantime, Catherine paced up and down the floor, exclaiming—'I wonder where he is—I wonder where he can be! What did I say, Nelly? I've forgotten. Was he vexed at my bad humour this afternoon? Dear! tell me what I've said to grieve him? I do wish he'd come. I ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... and immediately closed again. The Duc d'Abrantes, a man of much wit and humour, but not to be trifled with, came out. He wished to have the pleasure of announcing upon whom the successorship had fallen, and was surrounded as soon as he appeared. Keeping silence, and turning his eyes on all sides, he fixed them for a moment on Blecourt, then looked in another ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... months had slipped away; something about the rush and motion of things in the last twenty-four hours inspired her; the fierce winds of yesterday and to-day stirred her spirit to do, to be in motion herself. They had communicated their energy, their life, their free and ungoverned humour. Elizabeth's thoughts ran on as fast as her blood. She thought of Luther, and of all he had said to her, of her neglected opportunities which he had pointed out to her, and wondered modestly if he were right, and then knew that he was. She thought of how she, ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... spoken till Erica and Frolich were about their cheese-making the next morning. Erica had rather have kept the cattle, but Frolich so earnestly begged that she would let Stiorna do that, as she could not destroy the cattle in her ill-humour, while she might easily spoil the cheese, that Erica put away her knitting, tied on her apron, tucked up her sleeves, and prepared for ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... copies of the ultra-popular and so-called comic papers. But you could not call Ally Sloper, that Punchinello of the Victorian era—who has received the honour of an elaborate article in the Nineteenth Century—a child's hero, nor is his humour of a sort always that childhood should understand—"Unsweetened Gin," the "Broker's Man," and similar subjects, for example. It is quite possible that respectable people did not care for their babies to read ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... that," he remarked. "You might find us sometimes in a humour when there would not be much doubt about the matter. Your men are safe enough, as they will doubtless join us, and three stout hands will be welcome. You may think yourself fortunate, if you ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... trudging thither on foot during 1586, by way of Oxford and High Wycombe. {31a} Tradition points to that as Shakespeare's favoured route, rather than to the road by Banbury and Aylesbury. Aubrey asserts that at Grendon near Oxford, 'he happened to take the humour of the constable in "Midsummer Night's Dream"'—by which he meant, we may suppose, 'Much Ado about Nothing'—but there were watchmen of the Dogberry type all over England, and probably at Stratford itself. The Crown Inn, (formerly 3 Cornmarket Street) ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... the assurance of my life made me resolve to offer myselfe for to serve, and to take party with them. But I feared much least he should mistrust me touching his advis to my resolution. Neverthelesse I finding him once of a good humour and on the point of honnour encourages his son to break the kettle and take the hattchett and to be gon to the forraigne nations, and that was of courage and of great renowne to see the father of one parte and the son of another part, & that he should not mispraise if he should seperat ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... a gentle hint of his duty in the position of eldest son, and he soon recovered his good humour. However, as the body as well as the skin of the jackal was becoming offensive, they united in dragging it down to the sea, while Jack placed his belt ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... in very good humour that night with himself and all the world. He had taken a double first in Mods., in History and Classics, after crowning a brilliant career at Eton with a Balliol Scholarship. He was stroke of his ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... Edith Longworth and her cousin walked the deck together. Young Longworth, although in better humour than he had been the night before, was still rather short in his replies, and irritating in ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... again, suspecting a joke, for the Zulus have a sense of humour, then repeated the message word for word, trying to pronounce Ishmael as Rachel did, saluted, mounted his horse, and galloped ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... and little fear of its ever flagging, for the good-humour of the glorious old twins drew everybody out, and Tim Linkinwater's sister went off into a long and circumstantial account of Tim Linkinwater's infancy, immediately after the very first glass of champagne—taking ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... who rode on Madonna's right turned in his saddle and put up his hand as if to beckon Stefano. I was regaling him with one of the choicest of Messer Sacchetti's paradoxes, gurgling, myself, at the humour of the thing I told. I paid no heed to the sign. I continued to expound my quip, as though we had the night before us in which to make its elusive humour clear. But out of the tail of my eye I watched my good friend Stefano, and I saw his right hand steal round ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... dear Howells, an admirable study of life, and as it was read to me my chief pleasure in listening was in your sympathetic, creative imagination, your insight, your humour, and all your other gifts, which make your stories, I believe, the most faithful representations of actual life that were ever written. Other stories seem unreal after them, and so when we had finished ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... then left the cabin; the former, who was in no very good humour, muttering as he walked away—"If the Company send their monkeys on board, I think I may well have my bear" And, pleased with his joke, Mynheer Kloots recovered ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... was to sell the property and retire to a villa in Florence or Capri. Then the absurdity, the rich humour of an idea, struck him. He, a scholar, a gentleman and a misunderstood poet, sitting in the office of a store, appealed to him. Somebody remarked in his hearing that the idea was "rich." He saw himself in "character" and the part appealed to him. ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... I'll knock all that idiotic bosh on the head. It's bad enough to sit in the House and listen to this fellow frothing, without having to bring a quarter-bred savage into one's own family. However, he's really not a man to be ashamed of, so far as appearances go.... And I must humour her. Five thousand a ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... him a trooper of the Mounted Rifles. Others may forget the men who went away, many never to return; but deep in the hearts of their comrades will be fully valued those years of campaigning, when they knew the unselfish sacrifices of comradeship, the careless courage, the humour, and the ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... having had time to cool, while Peggotty was out showing Mr. Dick the soldiers at the Horse Guards—and being, besides, greatly pleased to see Agnes—rather plumed herself on the affair than otherwise, and received us with unimpaired good humour. When Agnes laid her bonnet on the table, and sat down beside her, I could not but think, looking on her mild eyes and her radiant forehead, how natural it seemed to have her there; how trustfully, although she was so young and inexperienced, my aunt confided in her; how strong ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... thoughts, renders them more acute, and inspires a greater plenty of witty sallies. For "Bacchus had not the name of Lysian, or Opener, if I may use the term, bestowed upon him for nothing but purely because he opens the mind, by putting it into an agreeable humour, and renders it more subtile and judicious[3]." For this reason it is grown into a proverb, That water-drinkers are not near so knowing ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... new vista to her, but many of them, with stupid ignorance, mistook her position and traditions. She was offered occupations as cook, maid, or laundress. She had sense of humour enough to laugh at these, and often wished she dared repeat them for her ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... the house this night, ma'am," said he; and to her angry "I will go," he barked, "If you do go, don't come back here. I'll have a dutiful wife or I'll have none—stay in or stay out. I'm tired humouring your whimsies, let you humour mine now——" ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... in such exuberant good humour at seeing KIMBERLEY opposite to him, could not resist temptation to try on little joke. It was not, he said, either desirable or usual that he, as outgoing Minister, should say anything on present occasion. But perhaps KIMBERLEY would oblige, and would give House full exposition ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 27, 1892 • Various
... in the Wandle. Dr. Paley was so much attached to this amusement, that when the Bishop of Durham inquired of him when one of his most important works would be finished, he said, with great simplicity and good-humour, 'My lord, I shall work steadily at it when the fly-fishing season is over.'"—Then we have a poetical description of river scenery, till two of the party ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various
... front of simple boldness as he would wear upon day of battle. The sword the Queen had given him was at his side, and his garb was still that of a gentleman, not of a Huguenot minister such as Elizabeth in her grim humour, and to satisfy her bond with France, would make of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... England after an absence of three years spent in aimless roaming. My age was thirty-one years, and my salient characteristic at the time was to hold fast by anything that interested me, until my humour changed. Brande's conversational vagaries had amused me on the voyage. His extraordinary comment on the Universe decided me to cement our shipboard ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... that they possess some of the vices as well as some of the virtues of human beings. The tom-cat is frequently fierce, treacherous, and vindictive, and at no time can his humour be crossed with impunity. Mrs F—mentions ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... to go was not clear, for she had no such excuse as her brother; but she grumbled almost as much as her aunt at the solecism of a wedding in the gentleman's home; and for the only time in her life showed ill-humour. She was vexed with Esther for her taste in bridesmaid's attire (hers was given by her uncle); sarcastic to Cecil for his choice of gifts; cross to her mother about every little arrangement as to dress; satirical on Allen's revival of spirits in prospect of a visit to a great house; annoyed at ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... That most charming mixture of dignified self respect, with unfailing gracious courtesy to others, those manners in which frankness and refinement mingled with and set off each other, that perfect purity of thought and utterance, and yet that thorough enjoyment of all that was good and racy in wit or humour—this has passed away with him. So beautiful and consistent a life in that kind of living ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... reproachful: "Ah, master! So long as the tailor has done his work successfully, who ever will divine where I suffer inconvenience, where secretly my shoe pinches me?"—"The wicked shoe!" Sachs is for a moment really deceived; "It was your humour yesterday not to try it on."—"You see? I had too much confidence. I was mistaken in the master."—"I am sorry, indeed I am!" He is on his knee at once: "Let me look at it, my child, that I may help you, right off, quick!"—"As ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... next room. My poor brother, Francis, I remember, stole up in spite of orders to the contrary, and sat by my bedside, and read Pope's Homer to me. Frank had a violent love of beating me; but whenever that was superseded by any humour or circumstances, he was always very fond of me, and used to regard me with a strange mixture of admiration and contempt. Strange it was not, for he hated books, and loved climbing, fighting, playing, and robbing orchards, ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... Cromwell: let us see from what root these armies grew. 'Cromwell,' says Sir Philip Warwick, 'made use of the zeal and credulity of these persons' (that is—such of the people as had, in the author's language, the fanatic humour); 'teaching them (as they too readily taught themselves) that they engaged for God, when he led them against his vicegerent the King. And, where this opinion met with a natural courage, it made them bolder—and ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... that Drake's glance met hers she had just waked up to the humour of her conduct, and recognised it as a veritable child's device. She could not but laugh, and, laughing there into the eyes of the man, she lost her hostility to him. However, Mrs. Willoughby made an effort ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... diamonds, gave the breast to her child without rising from her seat, the infant being brought to the table as superbly habited as its nurse, the mother. She performed this maternal duty with so much good humour, and with a gracefulness peculiar to herself, that this charitable office—which would have appeared disgusting and been considered as an affront if done by some others of equal rank—gave pleasure to all ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... ignorance; so I hit upon what I thought to be rather a good idea. I kept my eye on the two young students, and followed them. When they tittered, I tittered; when they roared, I roared; and I also threw in a little snigger all by myself now and then, as if I had seen a bit of humour that had escaped the others. I considered this particularly artful ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... myself called forth in all parts of Cornwall. The mere sight of two strangers walking with such appendages as knapsacks strapped on their shoulders, seemed of itself to provoke the most unbounded wonder. We were stared at with almost incredible pertinacity and good humour. People hard at work, left off to look at us; while groups congregated at cottage doors, walked into the middle of the road when they saw us approach, looked at us in front from that commanding point of view until we passed them, and then wheeled round with one accord and gazed at ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... private writing; and thus pour out by the hand the floods which may drown the head. If the humour for much talking was partly drawn forth in this way, that which remained would be sufficient to drop ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... description, she would know what she was to do: and thereupon the lady gave her a chunk of salt meat, and bade her God-speed. The beldam before long smuggled into the lady's chamber the boy of whom she had spoken, and not long after another, such being the humour of the lady, who, standing in perpetual dread of her husband, was disposed, in this particular, to make the most of her opportunities. And one of these days, her husband being to sup in the evening with ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... be sounded except in the following words:—heir, herb, honest, honour, hospital, hostler, hour, humour, and humble, and all their derivatives,—such as humorously, ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... went on to supplement it by the further discovery that their masters had invaded Anywhere in order to please the Pope, and introduce true religion. This second role completes the dedication of the invaders on the altar of mendacity. It was Leo XIII. himself who, with that charming humour of his, deprecated the attitude of certain a priori historians who, said he, if they were writing the Gospel story would, in their anxiety to please the Pope, probably ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... here presented. It belongs to the school of Scribe and the "soliloquy," and the author avails himself of the recognised dramatic conventions of the day. At the same time, though the characters may be conventional in type, they are, thanks to Bjornson's sense of humour, alive; and the theme of the estrangement and reconciliation of the "newly-married couple" is treated with delicacy and charm. It is true that it is almost unbelievable that the hero could be so stupid as to allow the "confidante" to accompany his young wife ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... HUMOUR, a word used in and out of season in the time of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, and ridiculed ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... it, but between it and the depths of his own mind remains forever an inviolable film of sceptical "white light." This "qualified assent" is precisely what excites the fury of such individualistic thinkers as Tolstoi and Bernard Shaw. It were amusing to note the difference between the "humour" of this latter and the "humour" of Shakespeare. Shaw's humour consists in emphasizing the absurdity of human Custom, compared with the good sense of the philosopher. Shakespeare's humour consists in emphasizing the ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... the day groups of priests and novices move up and down the market collecting offerings from the people, while some "original" or buffoon gives the scene its touch of humour. ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... one of the aboriginals attached to the expedition, being called upon to respond, after some hesitation, said, "Well, gentlemen, I am not in good humour to-night. (Laughter.) I am very glad I got through. We got a capital gaffer that leaded us through; but it wasn't him that got us through, it isn't ourselves, but God who brought us through the place, and we ought to be very thankful to God for getting us through. (Laughter ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... floors, with Filomena crying after her: "Hasten then, child of iniquity! You are slower than a day without bread!" He had almost resolved to speak of the foundling to his mother, who still seemed in a condescending humour; but his attention was unexpectedly distracted by a troop of Egyptians, who came along the road leading a dancing bear; and hardly had these passed when the chariot of an itinerant dentist engaged him. The whole way, indeed, ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... to you, Cock, makes me roll my r's. Guardian of the house, the orchard and the fields, more than all else I am bound to protect your song. And I growl at the dangers I suspect lurking. Such is my humour. ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... fortifying this harbour, which was to imprison a stormy sea in a granite basin, and give the French navy a halting place in the channel. Here he passed fifteen years in domestic life, much troubled by the ill humour and ascetic devotion of his wife; in military studies constant, but without application, and in the dissipation of the philosophic and voluptuous society ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... and disappointment! We went away greatly mortified, and left the deceased to do as well as he could for himself, as we had taken so good care of him when alive for nothing. We set sail once more for Montserrat, and arrived there safe; but much out of humour with our friend the silversmith. When we had unladen the vessel, and I had sold my venture, finding myself master of about forty-seven pounds, I consulted my true friend, the Captain, how I should proceed in offering my master the money for my freedom. ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... with a remarkably light springy step, a bold erect carriage, and was altogether a fine, manly, independent fellow. He had none of the fawning obsequiousness which is so common to the Hindoo, but was a merry laughing fellow, with a keen love of sport and a great appreciation of humour. His gun was fearfully and wonderfully made. It was a long, heavy flint gun, with a tremendously heavy barrel, and the stock all splices and splinters, tied in places with bits of string. I would rather ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... domestic economy of the host, namely, a sound drubbing to the poor maty-boy, brings to my mind an anecdote which, being in a story-telling vein, I cannot resist the temptation of introducing. It was related to me, with great humour, by one of the principals in the transaction, whose candour exceeded his fear of shame. He had been in the habit of beating his servants, till one in particular complained that he would have him before ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... gun or spear or any lethal weapon whatever;—of which great event, more hereafter. Anders, the southern Eskimo, made himself generally agreeable, and Butterface became a prime favourite, chiefly because of his inexhaustible fund of fun and good humour, coupled with his fine ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... he was already feeling the weight of isolation from the Royal Family; he was beginning to suffer the insults of the king. But, beneath all this, his gaiety still ran like a river under ice, and in the ageing of a poet, humour and physical decline combined ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... misfortune if you didn't give us a stiff job," he said, with an airy good-humour which at once made the other's blustering ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... attempted, in these stories, to provide antidotes against ill-humour, the epidemic rage for dissipation, and the fatal propensity to admire and imitate whatever the fashion of the moment may distinguish. Were young people, either in public schools, or in private families, ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... like his conversation, were perfectly unaffected and full of quiet humour. In his lonely life they were the chief means he had of talking with his friends, and they were always welcome. In reply to one of them Carlyle wrote: 'Thanks for your friendly human letter; which gave us much entertainment in the reading (at breakfast ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... more volatile than leaf, when breeze Of autumn most its natural moisture dries, And strips the fluttering foliage from the trees, Which, blown about, before its fury flies, Changes her humour, and her husband sees, Whom she some time had loved, with other eyes, And in her every wish and every thought Schemes how my brother's love may ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... those to whom it constitutes their chief attraction. The interest of the stories they tell—the vivacity of the characters they delineate—the weight and force of the maxims and sentiments in which they abound—the very pathos and wit and humour they display, which may all and each of them exist apart from their poetry and independent of it, are quite sufficient to account for their popularity, without referring much to that still higher gift, by which they subdue to their enchantments those whose souls are attuned to the finer impulses ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... though, to be sure, he was simply arrayed—as if, indeed, he were not worth a thousand a year. Certainly he had about him a sense of power, but his occasional laugh was too vigorous for one whose own great sense of humour was conveyed by an infectious, rippling murmur ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... fine humour. He had not before appeared to so great advantage. Vavasor had never put off his company manner with Hester's family, but Gartley was almost merry, quite graciously familiar—as if set on bringing ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... all resembling moving masses of clouds. Indeed, these usually walked behind those monarchs. Besides these, O Bharata, the elephants that Yudhishthira had in his seven Akshauhinis, numbering seventy thousand with humour trickling down their trunks and from their mouths, and resembling (on that account) showering clouds, also followed the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... told me, at the same time, that there was no such thing in nature as a weed, and that it was his design to let his garden produce what it pleased; so that, you may be sure, it makes a very pleasant show as it now lies. About the same time he took a humour to ramble up and down the country, and would often bring home with him his pockets full of moss and pebbles. This, you may be sure, gave me a heavy heart; though, at the same time, I must needs say, he had the character of a very honest man, notwithstanding ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... of the public good. Our countryman, inferior to Bonaparte in invention, was far superior to him in wisdom. The French Emperor is among conquerors what Voltaire is among writers, a miraculous child. His splendid genius was frequently clouded by fits of humour as absurdly perverse as those of the pet of the nursery, who quarrels with his food, and dashes his playthings to pieces. Cromwell was emphatically a man. He possessed, in an eminent degree, that masculine and full-grown robustness of mind, that equally diffused intellectual ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... healthy, the envy of all in Ruhleben camp, the suspected of every German guard in the place—for how could a fellow retain such proportions with such attenuated diet?—but, boasting of an excellent digestion, the fellow was seldom in an ill humour. Even when he grumbled and said scathing things of the Germans, he was half laughing, and it required a very great deal of annoyance indeed to rouse his passions. Yet the smallest hint of disloyalty to Great ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... suppose not," said Mr Morgan, not without a thrill of importance; "nor the stake," he added, with a little laugh, for he was not without a sense of humour; and the two went out to the architect's to ascertain the result of his cogitations over the church. They passed that sacred edifice in their way, and went in to gaze at it with a disgust which only an unhappy priest of high culture and ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... been their losses, were in high good-humour over their victory. After all, it was a victory, and a hard-fought one. They only lived for such. Losses were nothing to them. The spoils of the slavers' caravan—arms, ammunition, goods of all sorts, were distributed ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... had a telephonic message from my doctor, who asked me why I had neglected him for a fortnight and urged me to go to Harley Street at once. To humour him I went the next morning. Hunnington is a bluff, hearty fellow who feeds himself into pink floridity so as to give confidence to his patients. In answer to his renewed inquiry as to my neglect, I remarked that a man condemned to be ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... the child should. However, the child was not to be put off, although several times I gave him a box on the ear for worrying me; for, notwithstanding this usage, the child would frequently ask me to read it, when he thought I was in a good humour; and at last I complied with his wishes; 'Please, father,' said the child, 'will you read about Solomon's wise judgment' 'I don't know where to find it,' was the reply. 'Then,' says the child, 'I will tell you; it is in the third chapter of the ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... of the ss. Wizard, emerged from the dock-gates in high good-humour to spend an evening ashore. The bustle of the day had departed, and the inhabitants of Wapping, in search of coolness and fresh air, were sitting at open doors and windows indulging in general conversation with any-body ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... Simba was at the moment sharpening his hunting knife in preparation. Winkleman swore heartily and fluently, then grinned. He was at heart a good soul, Winkleman, with a sense of amusement if not of humour, and a philosophy of life denied most of his inexperienced and theoretical countrymen. And also he realized that he had his work cut out to prevent the program being carried through. The African is slow to come to a definite ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... English society, there can be no doubt,"—Coleridge wrote in the margin of his copy, "I doubt this, particularly in respect to Addison, and think I could select from Defoe's writings a volume equal in size to Addison's collected papers, little inferior in wit and humour, and greatly superior in vigor of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... better, and the procession there, as well as all the proceedings at the Royal Exchange, were splendid and royal in the extreme. It was a fine and gratifying sight to see the myriads of people assembled—more than at the Coronation even, and all in such good humour, and so loyal; the articles in the papers, too, are most kind and gratifying; they say no Sovereign was more loved than I am (I am bold enough to say), and that, from our happy domestic home—which gives such a good example. The Times you have, and I venture to add a Chronicle, as ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... first-rate advocate, and, I need not say, was at all times scrupulously fair. He had a high sense of honour, and was replete with a quiet, subtle humour, which seemed to come upon you unawares, and, like all true humour, derived no little of its pleasure from its surprise. In addition to his abilities, Thesiger was ever kind-hearted and gentle, especially in his manner towards ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... as opposed to his matter, he is more the Teuton, for he shows all of the racial patience and pertinacity and all of the racial lack of humour. Writing a novel is as solemn a business to him as trimming a beard is to a German barber. He blasts his way through his interminable stories by something not unlike main strength; his writing, one feels, often takes on the character of an actual siege operation, ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... King and the Barker (i.e. Tanner), King Edward the Fourth and the Tanner of Tamworth, King James and the Tinker, and King Henry II. and the Miller of Mansfield. Usually the point of the story is the lack of ceremony displayed by the subject, and the royal good-humour and largesse ...
— Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Fourth Series • Frank Sidgwick
... men kept passing back from business on the way to their clubs—men whose figures shrouded in cocoons of fog came into view like spectres, and like spectres vanished. Then even in his compassion George's Quilpish humour broke forth in a sudden longing to pluck these spectres by ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... in fine humour. He had not before appeared to so great advantage. Vavasor had never put off his company manner with Hester's family, but Gartley was almost merry, quite graciously familiar—as if set on bringing out the best points of his ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... Englishmen whom no amount of business cares will induce to neglect the exercise of his body, the obligation at all times to keep "fit"; square-rigged, as it were, with a lean face and a wide moustache accentuating a square chin. Occasionally a gleam of humour, a ray of idealism, lighted his practical grey eyes. Each of these two had managed rather marvellously to triumph over early training by self-education: the labour leader, who had had his first lessons ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... hearty laugh. She even threw her slipper at a statue gilded like a shrine, twisting herself about from very ribaldry and allowed her bare foot, smaller than a swan's bill, to be seen. This evening she was in a good humour, otherwise she would have had the little shaven-crop put out by the window without more ado than her ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... fast. I would fain keep all the cry as well as all the wool to ourselves; but as for giving over work, that can only be when I am in woollen."'[166] From this time forward the brightness of joy and sincerity of inevitable humour, which perfected the imagery of the earlier novels, are wholly absent, except in the two short intervals of health unaccountably restored, in which he wrote ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... a short, grey-haired lady. Her large strong features must have made her, when she was young, a hard-looking woman; but time and sorrow had strangely softened them; while about the corners of the thin firm mouth lurked a suggestion of humour that possibly had not always been there. Joan, waiting to be introduced, towered head and shoulders above her; yet when she took the small proffered hand and felt those steely blue eyes surveying her, she had the sensation of being ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... and from his high altitude looked down on the choleric little man before him; but not even for a second did he seem to lose his own imperturbable good-humour. He laughed his own pleasant and inane laugh, and burying his slender, long hands into the capacious pockets of his overcoat, he said leisurely—"a bloodthirsty young ruffian, Do you want to make a hole in a law-abiding ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... it is for barter, but I should rather conclude that it is for the purpose of exciting commiseration, and to obtain some European article for them. A few of the men were permitted to come on board, and the good humour of the captain invited one to dance with him: he took the step with much agility and quickness, and imitated every gesture of his lively partner. The breeze freshening, we soon parted with this barbarous people, and when at a short distance from the ship, ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... us are—balanced; in spite of occasional reveries we do come to terms with the limitations of life, with those desires and dreams and discretions that, to say the least of it, qualify our nobility, we take refuge in our sense of humour and congratulate ourselves on a certain amiable freedom from priggishness or presumption, but for Benham that easy declension to a humorous acceptance of life as it is did not occur. He found his limitations soon enough; he was ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... o' me," returned the boy, relapsing into the mother-tongue, which, except it be spoken in good humour, ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... expressed my total dissent from those who, with steam vessels, go to Whale-Fish Isles, it will be but fair for me to stay, that I arrived at this our first stage in the journey to the Nor'-West, in far from good humour. We had been twenty-four days from Greenhithe to Cape Farewell, and sixteen days from the latter point to our anchorage; hurry being out of the question when a thing like the "Emma Eugenia" was pounding the water in a trial ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... passed, which Johnson relished with great good humour. But his conversation alone, or what led to it, or was interwoven with it, is ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... walk." For once Bertie followed instead of leading, though he was strongly inclined to return to the house. He did not think his cousin was ugly, and he pitied her for being so pale and sad-looking; but somehow he felt disappointed too, and out of humour with himself, and Eddie, and every one else, and in an unusually silent mood he set off for a ramble in the woods. Both boys were disappointed in Agnes, ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... in gay good humour again, and she perched on the arm of her father's chair, as she proceeded ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... separated from our troops a little out of humour, because it was impracticable for them to march without any preparatory provision for their reception. They will probably march in two months, if no ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... her to laugh. Dan thought it was "beastly mean," but then he was not in a frame of mind to see the humour of the situation, for up the whole of that long steep hill he had marched at Mokus's head, tugging with all his might at the bridle with one hand, while the other held a huge carrot just beyond the obstinate creature's reach. Dan was not only hot and tired and ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... irreverently call 'chaff' enters largely as an element into Irish life; and when Walpole stigmatised the habit to Joe Atlee as essentially that of the smaller island, he was not far wrong. I will not say that it is a high order of wit—very elegant, or very refined; but it is a strong incentive to good-humour—a vent to good spirits; and being a weapon which every Irishman can wield in some fashion or other, establishes that sort of joust which prevailed in the melee tournaments, and where each tilted ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... jesting humour. I tell you that I come from Space, or, since you will not understand what Space means, from the Land of Three Dimensions whence I but lately looked down upon your Plane which you call Space forsooth. From that position of advantage I discerned all that you speak of as SOLID (by ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... out upon life and the world with the same eyes and find the same method to record what he sees. Some men can only marvel with Louis Stevenson at the wide contrast between the "prim obliterated polite face of life" and its "orgiastic foundations"; others are only reconciled to it by the humour in the contrast or by the pity invoked by its victims. What makes the genius is just the fact that he looks out upon life, that he feels, that he uses his eyes, in his own way; also, that he invents his ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... of a work rich in the raciest beauties and defects of an author long since made known to the British public, the present writer has striven to recast the trenchant humour, the scornful eloquence, the epigrammatic dash of Mr. Michelet, in language not all unworthy of such a word-master. How far he has succeeded others may be left to judge. In one point only is he aware of having been less true to his original than ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... grimly in response. The notion of referring to Theodore Racksole as a 'New Yorker' appealed to her sense of humour, a sense in which she was not entirely deficient. She knew, of course, and she knew that Jules knew, that this Theodore Racksole must be the unique and only Theodore Racksole, the third richest man in the United States, and therefore probably in the world. Nevertheless she ranged ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... they crave must be of a different kind from that with which they can daily become familiar if they please. There are theatres and music-halls in town; it does not add to the wittiness of the Pierrot or the humour of the comic singer to find them exercising their functions on a hot dusty beach, densely packed with humanity, strewn with torn newspapers, burnt matches, orange skins, and banana peelings. Yet those who feel in this manner ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... bursts of laughter were so loud and frequent that the actor was several times obliged to stop in the midst of his part. Bonaparte alone (and it struck me as being very extraordinary) was silent, and coldly insensible to the humour which was so irresistibly diverting to everyone else. I remarked at this period that his character was reserved, and frequently gloomy. His smile was hypocritical, and often misplaced; and I recollect that a few days after our return he gave us one of these specimens of savage hilarity which ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... in great detail. I remember now his partially unbuttoned waistcoat, as though something had occurred to distract him as he did it up, and a little cut upon his chin. I liked a certain humour in his eyes. I watched, too, with the fascination that things have for an observant boy, the play of his lips—they were a little oblique, and there was something "slipshod," if one may strain a word so ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... Prince's position in his new country, and what his title was to be. One can easily fancy how interesting and engrossing such talks would become, especially when they were enlivened by the bright humour, and controlled by the singular unselfishness, of the object of so many hopes and plans. It was already blustering wintry weather, but there was little room to feel the depressing influence of the grey cloudy sky or the chill of the shrilly whistling wind and driving rain. Prince Ernest had the ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... and each day saw "the snakes" approaching nearer to their goal on the crest of the fells. Peregrine still pursued his calling, for the farmers, partly to humour the old man, gave orders that a gap here and there should be left in the walls through which he could drive his flocks. The work slackened somewhat during the hay harvest, and the services of the wallers were enlisted ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... are relieved from his presence at once.' 'True, man, I am relieved from his presence, but his enchantments may still reach me; it is them that I most dread—he keeps me in a continual state of alarm; and I would give anything to get him away in a good humour.' ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... appreciative of Percy's good qualities. She was expansive, affectionate and constant; and she really cared far more about Percy now than she did when she married him. And this, though she was quite aware that he was entirely wanting in several things that she had particularly valued in Nigel (a sense of humour for one), and that he had inherited rather acutely the depressing Kellynch characteristic of ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... hardly be said that education of the type we have been considering demands great gifts in the teacher: simplicity, enthusiasm, sympathy, and also a vigorous sense of humour, keeping him sharply aware of the narrow line that divides the priggish from the ideal. This education ought to inspire, but it ought not to replace, the fullest and most expert training of the body and mind; for the spirit needs a perfectly balanced machine, ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... at a Dutch wedding, and expect to be at one or two more very shortly. There was drinking, and singing, and fiddling, and dancing. I was pleased extremely. Every one seemed to be in good-humour with himself, and this naturally led them all to be in ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... might be afforded to disturb so wise an arrangement, the Petulantes and Celtic legion immediately besought him, on behalf of their commissaries, to give them the government of any provinces he pleased, and when he refused them, they retired without being either offended or out of humour. ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... parents brought the stock home on the night of Amelia's visit to the haycocks, the bulldog's conduct had been most strange. His usual good-humour appeared to have been exchanged for incomprehensible fury, and he was with difficulty prevented from flying at the stock, who on her part showed an anger and dislike fully equal ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... of kinship, or whether the captain was merely struck by Alister's powerful-looking frame, and thought he might be very useful when he was better fed, I do not know; but I feel sure that as he returned my new comrade's salute, he did so in a softened humour. Perhaps this made him doubly rough to me, and I have no doubt I looked as miserable an object as one ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... political honesty is like Joseph Surface's French plate, or the tinsel spread over a pair of Birmingham saleshop candlesticks, whose tenderness will not withstand the wear and tear of conveyance in the purchaser's pocket. But the oddity of the reviewer's comparisons even puts one in good humour with their virulence. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 342, November 22, 1828 • Various
... always in the same humour to Dame Margaret and Agnes," he said; "so far as I can see I am the only one whom you delight ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... cause of Italian freedom, and his life was the measure and the cost of his interest in the liberty of Greece. Then again he was full not merely of wit, which is sometimes only an affair of the tongue, but of humour also, which goes much deeper; and it is of the essence of the humoristic nature, that whether sunny or saturnine, it binds the thoughts of him who possesses it to the wide medley of expressly human things. Byron did not misknow himself, nor misapprehend the most marked turn of his own ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... mysterious sickness, and tenderly and carefully were they nursed by me and fed with delicate portions from the king's table. I later learned with much chagrin that "chewing tobacco" (strictly forbidden) was the cause of this sudden onset. My sense of humour alone saved ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... little at being laughed at, returned somewhat defiantly, "He was comparing you to me—to your advantage, of course—and said that I had no sense of humour. I answered that you were always mocking at something, and if that was what he meant by a sense of humour, I was very ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... no answer to my question," cried the wretched father, tightening his grasp upon the old man's arm. "I do not ask you to palliate his guilt. It admits of no excuse. Did you see him do it? Tell me that—tell me quickly. I am in no humour for trifling." ...
— George Leatrim • Susanna Moodie
... normal states of mind, and in a short time all the little happenings of life will be received in this spirit. I shall be a centre of cheer and helpfulness to those about me, infecting them with my own good humour, and this cheerful mood will become so habitual that nothing ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks
... hardly knew. The truth was that he too was baffled and disconcerted to the inmost recesses of his being and that he was continuing to act only from obstinacy, from a sense of duty, so to speak, and without putting his ordinary good humour and high ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... with instinctive tact, the primitive diction and imagery, and produced strains in which the unbroken energy of half-civilised ages, their stern and deep passions, their daring adventures and cruel tragedies, and even their rude wild humour are reflected with almost the brightness of a ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... instance of mobile humour in his exposure of the unreality of all movement, Zeno might be taken so far only for a master, or a slave, of paradox; such paradox indeed as is from the very first inherent in every philosophy which (like that of Plato himself, accepting even Zeno as one of its institutors) opposes ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... then put her a subtle question and one as nearly approaching humour as was permissible in ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... evince in uttering his name. I therefore in the first instance endeavoured to ascertain only the oldest names on record; and on subsequent occasions, when I found a native alone and in a loquacious humour, I succeeded in filling up some of the blanks. Occasionally round their fires at night I managed to involve them in disputes regarding their ancestors, and on these occasions gleaned much of the information of ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... time about eight o'clock: tea had just been over, the tray removed, and the table put to rights. The star of my attraction was seated at one side of the fire, myself at the opposite, the lady of the house in the centre. We were all in excellent humour, and Julia and I eyed each other in the most persevering style imaginable. Her aunt indeed rallied us upon the occasion; and I thought Julia never appeared half so beautiful ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 13, No. 359, Saturday, March 7, 1829. • Various
... a bride, While none can rule with kinglier pride; Calm to hear, and wise to prove, Yet gay as lark in soaring love. Well it were, posterity Should have some image of his glee; That easy humour, blossoming Like the thousand flowers of spring! Glorious the marble which could show His bursting sympathy for woe: Could catch the pathos, flowing wild, Like mother's milk to ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... chagrin and disappointment! We went away greatly mortified, and left the deceased to do as well as he could for himself, as we had taken so good care of him when alive for nothing. We set sail once more for Montserrat, and arrived there safe; but much out of humour with our friend the silversmith. When we had unladen the vessel, and I had sold my venture, finding myself master of about forty-seven pounds, I consulted my true friend, the Captain, how I should proceed in offering my master the money for my freedom. He told me to ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... mothers of England was however so pleasant to her sense of humour that she hurriedly abandoned this line of reflection. What had she been about? to be so blind to Harry's proceedings? She had been lately absorbed, with that intensity she could still, at fifty, throw into the most diverse things, in a piece of new ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is more interesting than her teaching. She had all the best qualities of her noble Castilian ancestors— simplicity, straightforwardness, and dauntless courage; and the record of her self-denying life is enlivened by numerous flashes of humour, which make her character more lovable. She is best known as a visionary, and it is mainly through her visions that she is often regarded as one of the most representative mystics. But these visions do not occupy a ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... the opening of the theatre at Oxford, passed this bitter sarcasm on the naturalists,—"Mirantur nihil nisi pulices, pediculos—et se ipsos;"—nothing they admire but fleas, lice, and themselves! The illustrious SLOANE endured a long persecution from the bantering humour of Dr. KING. One of the most amusing declaimers against what he calls les Sciences des faux Scavans is Father MALEBRANCHE; he is far more severe than Cornelius Agrippa, and he long preceded ROUSSEAU, so famous for his invective against the sciences. The seventh chapter of his fourth ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... the joke, and opened the vials of their wrath upon the mocking child of Nimes, who would have been better employed, they doubtless thought, in showing up the infirmities of his own family. I am bound to add that when I passed through Tarascon they did not appear to be in the least out of humour. Nothing could have been brighter, easier, more suggestive of amiable indifference, than the picture it presented to my mind. It lies quietly beside the Rhone, looking across at Beaucaire, which seems very distant and independent, and tacitly ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... your heart shakes in you and slips out to drown contentedly in those slate-blue depths. No, no, there is no describing Margarita. Perhaps King came nearest to it when he said that she was Eve before the fall, plus a sense of humour! But Eve is distinctly Miltonian to us (unfortunately for the poor woman) and Margarita would have horrified Milton—there is no doubt ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... go on with my story," added Antonio angrily. At once the old woman grew quiet, and Antonio continued, "after a time I saved a little bit of money, and bought a new jerkin, so that I looked quite fine; and then I got enrolled amongst the gondoliers. As I was always in a blithe humour, worked hard, and knew a great many good songs, I soon earned a good deal more than the rest. This, however, awakened my comrades' envy. They blackened my character to my master, so that he turned me adrift; and everywhere where I went or where I stood they cried after ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... The good humour which prevailed in Virginia on the restoration of Charles to the throne, was not of long duration. The restraints on commerce, and the continually decreasing price of tobacco, soon excited considerable discontents. The legislature endeavoured, by prohibiting its culture for a limited time, to raise ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... We that are, &c.] This speech is set down as it was delivered by the Knight, in his own words: But since it is below the gravity of heroical poetry to admit of humour, but all men are obliged to speak wisely alike, and too much of so extravagant a folly would become tedious and impertinent, the rest of his harangues have only his sense expressed in other words, unless in some few places, where his own words could ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... fair faces, the golden hair of some youths who stood bound in the market-place of Rome. "From what country do these slaves come?" he asked the traders who brought them. "They are English, Angles!" the slave-dealers answered. The deacon's pity veiled itself in poetic humour. "Not Angles, but Angels," he said, "with faces so angel-like! From what country come they?" "They come," said the merchants, "from Deira." "De ira!" was the untranslatable reply; "aye, plucked from God's ire, and called to Christ's ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... the only author I have ever known whose talk is like his books. The prodigality of humour, intuition and searching thought that he puts into his pages he also puts into what he says. And he is the only man I ever met who can sing his stories as well as tell them. Like the rest of the Irish writers of to-day, what he writes ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... "there is one advantage at the end of a debate, besides the relief which is afforded by its termination, and that is that both sides of the House seem pretty well agreed as to the particular point that really is at issue; but the rich humour of the noble duke (Duke of Somerset) has again diverted us from the consideration of the motion really before the House. If the noble duke and his friends were desirous of knowing what was the policy which her Majesty's Government ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... me, brother Peter, I find my Scholer to be so sutable to my own humour, which is to be free and pleasant, and civilly merry, that my resolution is to hide nothing from him. Believe me, Scholer, this is my resolution: and so here's to you a hearty draught, and to all that love us, and the honest ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton
... of the Incas, and I took Golden Star aside and told her to take two of these and to clothe herself in one and Joyful Star in the other, so that we might see our two Inca princesses side by side as they might have looked in the days of the past, and she fell in with my humour, laughing and clapping her hands like ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... and keep her company. There's no sense in putting yourself into such a state. It makes you a trouble to yourself and everybody else. And in the end, a thousand to one if anything comes of all the turmoil and fuss—Mrs. Cooper, to be only fair to her, when she's in a reasonable humour, allows as much." ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... themselves much in the same way as if they had been school-children surreptitiously breaking loose from an assembly of grown-ups. The boy became volubly friendly and bubbling over with unexpected humour and high spirits. He tried to persuade Cicely to stay away from the ball-room for a fourth dance. Nobody would miss them, he explained. But she said she must go back, and when they joined the crowd again her partner was haled off with ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... that these masterpieces consist principally of a series of scenes and comical or semi-tragical situations, rather loosely strung together on the thread of the experiences undergone by the principal personages. The main object is not so much ingenuity of plot as the presentation with much humour, some strokes of caricature, and a touch of pathos, of morals and manners, of public abuses and private vices, the way of living and standard of thinking, the distinctive prejudices and ingrained beliefs, that characterised different classes at a time ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... "Malice or humour in the early days expressed itself in what were called pipes—a ditty either taught by repetition or circulated on scraps of paper: the offences of official men were thus hitched into rhyme. These pipes were a substitute for the newspaper, and the fear of satire ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... an insight both into the passion for the new science of grammar and what might be called the physical humour of the East in this anecdote. Abu Safwan Khalid Ibn Safwan, a member of the tribe of Tamim, was celebrated as an eloquent speaker. He used to visit Bilal Ibn Abi Burda and converse with him, but his language was frequently ungrammatical. This grew at length so irksome that Bilal said ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... philosophers have merely learned to practice humour in the presence of what is commonplace. But what is it you do want ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange
... must submit to the cruel and surprising injustice that had been done her. What astonished her most was that young men—or, at any rate, not old men—the same men who always looked so approvingly at her (one of them, the public prosecutor, she had seen in quite a different humour) had condemned her. While she was sitting in the prisoners' room before the trial and during the intervals, she saw these men looking in at the open door pretending they had to pass there on some business, or enter the room and gaze on her with approval. And ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... will go to the Bible with an unprejudiced mind will discover that it is one of the great books of the world, full of beauty, humour, and aspiration, and disfigured, as great books often are, by occasional brutalities and ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... have naught to do with me is my hope," answered La Mothe, with a little laugh which had no humour in it. "And as to deserts, he drank overmuch and beat the watch. Truly a vicious rascal! God send us all sober to bed, Uncle, and may a sudden end find nothing worse on our conscience than a dizzy brain. But that's not ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... least may be said, that in these early essays contributed to the Monthly Review there is much more of Goldsmith the critic than of Goldsmith the author. They are somewhat laboured performances. They are almost devoid of the sly and delicate humour that afterwards marked Goldsmith's best prose work. We find throughout his trick of antithesis; but here it is forced and formal, whereas afterwards he lent to this habit of writing the subtle surprise of epigram. They have the true manner of authority, nevertheless. He says ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... tear-wetted cheek and, setting her back across the brook, stood to watch until the child and woman were lost to my sight. Then I sat down, scowling at the hurrying water, chin on fist, for my black humour, banished awhile by the child's innocent faith in me, was returned and therewith an added bitterness. Scowling yet, I plucked forth my knife and seizing my staff, set to trim and shape it to a formidable weapon; and as I ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... staggered back a few steps, and fell, stunned and motionless, against the stable door. Unconsciously he had passed just behind the heels of the stranger's horse, which being by no means in good humour with the clumsy manoeuvres of his shampooer, the hostler, had taken advantage of the opportunity presented to him of working off his irritability, and had consequently inflicted a severe kick upon the right shoulder of ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that, if ever curious building did flourish in England, it is in these our years wherein our workmen excel and are in manner comparable in skill with old Vitruvius, Leo Baptista, and Serlo. Nevertheless their estimation, more than their greedy and servile covetousness, joined with a lingering humour, causeth them often to be rejected, and strangers preferred to greater bargains, who are more reasonable in their takings, and less wasters of time by a great ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... ceased to discuss the subject with his friend, he could not dismiss it from his mind. The sparkling wit, the wild, extravagant humour, for which he had been famous, seemed to have withered up in the furnace of his terrible grief. He lunched with Prescott in almost dead silence, and as soon as it was over got up hurriedly ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... wine, a dish of tobacco, and some pipes. The Don then offered us to smoke some cigarros, but we, not understanding them, took instead our homely pipes, and each with a beaker of hot wine to his hand sat roasting before the fire, scarce saying a word, the Don being silent because his humour was of the reflective grave kind (with all his courtesies he never smiled, as if such demonstrations were unbecoming to his dignity), and we from repletion and a feeling of wondrous contentment and repose. And another thing served to keep us still, which was that our Moll, sitting ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... house was denuded, the garden seats pressed into service, and at the end of five minutes, the court was established amid the circle of trees, the reporters had their coats off and their pipes lighted, the photographers ditto and their cameras placed. Good humour was restored; peace reigned; and Goldberger smiled again, for he knew that the adjectives with which the reporters would qualify his name would ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... pass it by with careless tread, Not knowing that a shadowy ... Tracks every traveller even to where the dead 10 Wait peacefully for their companion new; But others, by more curious humour led, Pause to examine;—these are very few, And they learn little there, except to know That shadows follow them ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... irritated that this form should be insisted upon, because, though the fact was not apparent, he thought it was sufficiently notorious, he procured a certificate at the same time for the loss of his arm; saying, they might just as well doubt one as the other. This put him in good humour with himself, and with the clerk who had offended him. On his return to the office, the clerk, finding it was only the annual pay of a captain, observed, he thought it had been more. "Oh!" replied Nelson, "this is only ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... best and noblest attributes of the people wither and die out by the process of transplanting. The German preserves inviolate his love of lager, and leaves behind him his love of Fatherland. The Celt, Scotch or Irish, appears to eliminate from his nature many of those traits of humour of which their native lands are so pregnant. It may be that this is only the beginning, that a national decomposition of the old distinctions must occur before the new elements can arise, and that from it all will come in the fulness of time a ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... visited by Lord W—'s younger sister, who laughed at us for our inconsiderate match, though she owned she envied our happiness, and offered me the use of her clothes until I could retrieve my own. She was a woman of a great deal of humour, plain but genteel, civil, friendly, and perfectly well bred. She favoured us with her company till the night was pretty far advanced, and did not take her leave till we retired ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... its manufacture, the loss in flour and meal to the country, the money received for licences, the number of crimes caused by its use, and the cost of these to the country. The other "went in" for "wit and humour," and there was much clapping of hands and laughter from such of the audience as had not heard his funny stories before, and his was generally pronounced ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... specimens of what Brunetiere called Hugo's barbarous and Merovingian humour, a species of humour which suits well the reproduction of a mediaeval Chanson, even if it offends the critical in ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... we attended a book sale, and were much amused by the volubility and humour of the Yankee salesman, who, with his coat off in a close crowded room, lectured upon the merits of the authors he offered, whether poetical, religious, historical, mathematical, or political, with equal ease and grace, greatly to the edification of the bystanders. The ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... opinion, though Edna, who has a good heart, professed to find it diverting already. Unfortunately she has no sense of humour. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... commented at length on the peculiar temperament of those who have expressed dislike of his perfect playground—Chateaubriand, Johnson, Addison, Bishop Berkeley. Bishop Berkeley, who crossed Mont Cenis on New Year's Day 1714, complained that he was "put out of humour by the most horrible precipices." There is huge comfort to be drawn from Stephen's pages descriptive of the "simple-minded abhorrence of mountains," and from his categorical declaration that love of the sublime shapes of the Alps springs from "a delicate and cultivated ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... Letty's hair was gathered in a great knot at the top of her head, and little ringlets hung like tendrils down the sides of her face, the benevolence of which was less immediately striking than that of her sister's, because of the constant play of humour upon it, especially about the mouth. If a spirit of satire could be supposed converted into something Christian by an infusion of the tenderest loving-kindness and humanity, remaining still recognizable notwithstanding ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... a very amiable man of about forty, with large brown mutton-chop whiskers, and a very well trained moustache; good-looking and, I should think, with some humour, that is for a person connected with the Courts. He was something about the Court, but in what capacity he held up his official head, I am unable to say. He was evidently regarded with great respect by the crowd ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... take a few, but care has been taken to attempt to show the enormous versatility of Chesterton's mind. It has been said quite wrongly that Chesterton cannot describe pathos. This is certainly untrue. He can so admirably describe humour that he cannot help knowing the pathetic, which is often so akin to humour. I am not sure that this ability to describe the melancholy is not to be seen in one of these essays that narrates how he travelled in a train ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... that the prodigal son of real life, in nineteen cases out of twenty, speaks spontaneously and feelingly of his father, with, perhaps, a dash of reverent humour; whereas, to quote Menenius, he no more remembers his mother than an eight-year-old horse? This is cruel beyond measure, and unjust beyond comment; but, sad to say, it is true; and the platitudinous tract-liar, for the sake of verisimilitude, as well as of novelty, should make ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... ill-kept halls. All this mass of people ate what they could get, but always had their fill, drank till they were drunk, and carried off what they could, praising and blessing their genial host; and their host too when he was out humour blessed his guests—for a pack of sponging toadies, but he was bored when he was without them. Piotr Andreitch's wife was a meek-spirited creature; he had taken her from a neighbouring family by his father's choice and command; her ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... with them to the Globe Theatre to see two Warwickshire brothers, Edmund and Will Shakspeare, who are on the boards there,—the latter taking the part of Old Knowell, in Ben Jonson's play of "Every Man in his Humour." His friends say that this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... to their feet, when suddenly the humour of the situation struck them, and they laughed in unison; and Amiria, shaking with merriment, collapsed upon the sofa, and hid ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... of the cracks in the stone flagging—and, of course, he needn't have done this, unless he had an abnormal sense of humour—he handed me the tattered, disreputable-looking copy of 'A Modern Circe,' with a bow that wouldn't have disgraced a Chesterfield, and then went back to his easel, while I fled after Aunt ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... conclusion to the study of a personality so perplexing and vagarious as Sir John Willison. But he himself, having a high sense of humour, will appreciate its psychological justice as much as he regrets its historical inaccuracy. Sir John has always aimed at being a big Canadian, and he has usually succeeded. He did his share of contribution to right thinking about the war, as he did in ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... says: "A new sheaf of verse of quiet remarkable interest.... They all proclaim Mr Moore to be a real poet ... his true vocation is to interpret the souls of the people he obviously knows and loves so well. He knows their humour and their half articulate pathos so well—and apparently he shares the secret only ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... came a longer criticism of Wilton's Wooing in the Erechtheum. Somebody took BROWZER to pieces, averring that "Mr. BROWZER has neither grammar" (here followed a string of examples of BROWZER'S idioms) "nor humour," (here came instances of his wit and fancy), "nor taste" (again reinforced by specimens), "nor even knowledge of the French language, which he habitually massacres." (Here followed a l'outrance, bete noir, soubriquet, all our old ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 31, 1892 • Various
... her engagement at eleven o'clock, came in flushed and smiling—the extraordinary warmth and fervour of her reception by the audience which she had at first been so inclined to treat with scant courtesy had restored her to good humour, and when she had eaten a few mouthfuls of delicate food and drunk her first glass of champagne she began to ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... country expected many signal improvements at his hands; the individual happiness of thousands depended upon him; but this power, which had devised great schemes, and which was the rock of support to so many, could itself be shaken and overthrown in a moment, by the splenetic humour of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... the Crown of France; who in exchange restor'd the towns of Calice, Ardres, Montbulin, Dourlens, la Capelle, and le Catelet in Picardy, and Blavet in Britanny: which Articles were Ratifi'd and Sign'd by his Majesty the eleventh of June [1598]; who in his gayety of humour, at so happy a conclusion, told the Duke of Espernon, That with one dash of his Pen he had done greater things, than he could of a long time have perform'd with the best Swords of his Kingdom."—Life of the Duke of Espernon, London, 1670, p. 203; Histoire du Roy ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... mechanician nevertheless proceeded gravely to explain and defend his "profession of faith," which was altogether unnecessary. On this Huntington returned to the charge, and directed against the mechanic a fresh volley of Scripture texts and phraseology, not without humour, if profanity be allowable in controversy, as where he says, "Poor man! he makes a good patent lock, but cuts a sad figure with the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven!" "What Mr. Bramah is," says S.S., "In respect to his character or conduct in life, as a man, a tradesman, a neighbour, a gentleman, ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... horn-pipes, and ballads in the same book, by beginning it at the other end, the insertions being continued from front and back till sacred and secular met together in the middle, often with bizarre effect, the words of some of the songs exhibiting that ancient and broad humour which our grandfathers, and possibly grandmothers, took delight in, and is in ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... By Margaret Sidney. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. This gorgeously got up and profusely and beautifully illustrated volume is one of engrossing interest. All the characters are skilfully drawn, the events are interestingly marshalled, and the plot most naturally developed. For humour and pathos, for sympathy yet fidelity, for loftiness of tone yet simplicity of style, this charming volume has few superiors. Here and there it reminds us of Mark Twain, anon of Dickens, and often of George Eliot, for the authoress has many of the ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... adventure. Especially good is the description of Mexico and of the dungeons of the Inquisition, while Don Diego Polo is a delightful mixture of bravery and humour, and his rescue of the unfortunate prisoners is told with great spirit. The book is thoroughly ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... looked up at him quickly, chilled already by his humour. Clare thought that the woman's voice shook a little, as she pronounced the name. Brook did not turn his head ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... Only that fine weather prevailed the whole time, the brig would most assuredly have been lost, for the mutineers were utterly without discipline, and would only furl, or set, or trim the sails just as the humour took them. Every night Loftgreen was put in irons and left to ...
— The South Seaman - An Incident In The Sea Story Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... of musicians mounted on horses or mules surrounded the two-wheeled cart in which sat Hernbeize of Ghent, the treasurer of the orchestra, and his fat wife. The corpulent couple, squeezed closely together, silent and out of humour, had taken no notice of each other or their surrounding since Frau Olympia had presumed to drag her husband by force out of the first wagon, where he was paying a visit to a clarionet player's ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... looked more than once at his visitor as he did so, in a preoccupied, impersonal way. To the other's notion, he seemed the personification of business—without an ounce of distracting superfluous flesh upon his wiry, tough little frame, without a trace of unnecessary politeness, or humour, or sensibility of any sort. He was the machine perfected and fined down to absolute essentials. He could understand a joke if it was useful to him to do so. He could drink, and even smoke cigarettes, with a natural air, if these exercises seemed properly ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... of "Jerusalem" is happily relieved by the undercurrent of Miss Lagerloef's sympathetic humour. When she has almost succeeded in transporting us into a state of religious fervour, we suddenly catch her smile through the lines and realize that no one more than she feels the futility of fanaticism. The stupid blunders of humankind do not escape her; neither ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... different," returned the other, with some emotion in his voice and manner. "Your riband was fairly won, fighting the battles of England, and can be worn with credit to yourself and to your country; but these baubles are sent to me, at a moment when a rising was foreseen, and as a sop to keep me in good-humour, as well as to propitiate ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... reserved for infantry, and overturns. The result is a block, which promptly extends forward and back for a couple of miles. A peculiarly British chorus of inquiry and remonstrance—a blend of biting sarcasm and blasphemous humour—surges up and down the line; until plunging mules are unyoked, and the offending vehicle man-handled out of sight into the inky blackness by the roadside; or, in extreme cases, is annihilated with axes. Everything has to make way for a ration train. To crown all, it is more than likely that ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... the animal organism could have developed along these lines. In the thirteenth century, this is always possible; but in much later times, and in the Renaissance, the grotesques simply became comic and degraded, and lacking in humour: in a later chapter this idea will ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... of herself in a difficult world. Her hair was very fair, her eyes brown and very bright, and the contrast was extraordinarily piquant. They were valiant eyes, full of spirit; eyes, also, that saw the humour of things. And her mouth was the mouth of one who laughs easily. Her chin, small like the rest of her, was strong; and in the way she held herself there was a boyish jauntiness. She looked—and was—a capable ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... insults, I resolved at once to reconquer his esteem. The judgment of the world I have consistently despised, but I had already begun to set a certain value on the good opinion of my entertainer. Beginning with a note of pathos, but soon brightening into my habitual vivacity and humour, I rapidly narrated the circumstances of my birth, my flight, and subsequent misfortunes. He heard me to an end in silence, gravely smoking. "Miss Fanshawe," said he, when I had done, "you are a very comical and most enchanting ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... common throughout the Palace cannot compare for gust and flavour." And quoth the third and youngest of the three, and by far the most beautiful and lively of them all, a maiden of charming nature, full of wit and humour; sharp-witted, wary and wise, when her turn came to tell her wish, "O sisters, my ambition is not as ordinary as yours. I care not for fine bread nor glutton-like do I long for dainty dishes. I look to somewhat nobler and higher: indeed I would desire nothing less than to be married by the King ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... for speaking. Sir Walter Scott in his frank way declared that he received an impulse from Miss Edgeworth's example as a story-teller. In the general preface to his own final edition of the Waverley Novels he said that "Without being so presumptuous as to hope to emulate the rich humour, pathetic tenderness, and admirable tact, which pervade the works of my accomplished friend, I felt that something might be attempted for my own country of the same kind with that which Miss Edgeworth so fortunately achieved for Ireland—something ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... that though the gods approve of some kinds of virtue, are displeased with some kinds of vice, and, to a certain extent, protect or forsake their worshippers according to their moral conduct, yet neglect to pay due respect to the deities, and forgetfulness to keep them in good humour, might be visited with even worse consequences than moral delinquency. And those who will carefully study the so-called "Mosaic code" contained in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, will see that, though Jahveh's prohibitions ...
— The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study - Essay #8 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... should share with me that memory—Dr. Paul, of the West Kirk. Almost at the first word I was sure it was my architect, and in a moment we were deep in a discussion of Hatiheu church. Brother Michel spoke always of his labours with a twinkle of humour, underlying which it was possible to spy a serious pride, and the change from one to another was often very human and diverting. "Et vos gargouilles moyen-age," cried I; "comme elles sont originales!" "N'est-ce pas? Elles sont bien droles!" he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... husband I have got. A better in the world there's surely not; With him I can adjust as humour fits, No need to rise at early dawn, like cits, To prove to him that two and three make four, Or ask his leave to ope ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... fraud be discovered?' asked Jane. 'Gilbert Carstairs is quite a good sort, but his wife has very little sense of humour.' ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... came on deck, however, the conditions appeared anything but promising, for he was in a frightfully bad humour at the calm, cursing the weather, his own ill-luck, and everything else that he could think of to execrate. I allowed him to give unrestrained vent to his ill-humour for some minutes, and when at length he had calmed down ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... when the debate was over, Lincoln carried Illinois on the popular vote, although he lost the senatorship through the arrangement of legislative districts that gave the election to the Democrats. Disappointed, Lincoln retained his good humour, and laughed over what he called the little episode. "I feel," said Lincoln, "like the boy who stubbed his toe; it hurt too hard to laugh, and he was too big to cry. But I have been heard on the great subject of the age, and though I ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... servants, and assistants in business and trade, come most closely and continually into contact with their employers; and they are about them from morning till night, and see them in every phase of character, in every style of humour, in every act of life. How powerful is the force of example! Rectitude is promoted, not only by precept but by example, and, so to speak, by contact it is increased more widely. Kindness is communicated in the same way. Virtue of every kind acts like an electric shock. Those who come under its ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... expounding his literary ideas, he informed me that Ricardo Leon, who at that time had just published his first novel, would, in his opinion, come to be acknowledged as the first novelist of Europe. He also assured me that Dickens's humour was absolutely vulgar, cheap and ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... lighted, Jean, and make sure that the tank's full. As for the engine, I must humour it and trust to luck. I'll get her to Paris somehow," ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... done so, constituted my lawful critic and corrector. It occurred, therefore, that where the author of Anastasius, as well as he of Hadji Baba, had described the manners and vices of the Eastern nations, not only with fidelity, but with the humour of Le Sage and the ludicrous power of Fielding himself, one who was a perfect stranger to the subject must necessarily produce an unfavourable contrast. The Poet Laureate also, in the charming tale of "Thalaba," had shown how extensive ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... humour enlivened the situation. Mrs. Gosling-Green (nee a Pounding-Pobble, Superiora Pounding-Pobble, one of the Pounding-Pobbles of Putney) was under the orders, very much under the orders, of the wife of the Sergeant-Major, and early and plainly learnt ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... contains a quibble on 'rests' and 'restless' discord. 'Nimble notes' was used in the Shakespearian time as we should use the term 'brilliant music.' Lucrece was in no humour for trills and runs, but rather for Dumps, where she could keep slow time with her tears. The Dumpe (from Swedish Dialect, dumpa, to dance awkwardly) was a slow, mournful dance. [See Appendix.] There is another quibble in l. 1131, on ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... I don't deny it?" Sir Hugh repeated. His assumption of good-humour was gone. He, too, was scowling now. "What have you ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... death is a highly affecting piece of English. The ironical humour blent with pathos in his picture of this ill-rewarded old disciplinarian (who combined a tenderness of heart with a fondness for military metaphor that frequently reminds one of "My Uncle Toby"), the details of the ailments ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... down what should be all along understood by the word Principle or Element. Carneades thank'd him for his admonition, but told him that they had not been unmindful of so requisite a thing. But that being Gentlemen and very far from the litigious humour of loving to wrangle about words or terms or notions as empty; they had before his coming in, readily agreed promiscuously to use when they pleased, Elements and Principles as terms equivalent: and to understand both by the one and the other, those primitive and simple Bodies of which ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... of dust, under which every vestige of the subterranean house disappears. It is now done: the Tachytes will come here no more. Other burrows will occupy her, distributed at the whim of her vagabond humour. ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... to speak calmly, sir—but how much longer can an educated clergy keep a straight face to speak of this wretchedly impotent God? Christians of a truth have had to bind their sense of humour as the Chinese bound their women's feet. But the laugh is gathering even now. Your religion is like a tree that has lain long dead in the forest—firm wood to the eye but dust to the first blow. And this is how it will go—from a laugh—not through the solemn absurdities of the so-called higher ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... le vrai seul est aimable, he quotes; he was a deliberate and diligent searcher after truth, always striving to attain the heart of things, to arrive at a knowledge of first principles. It is, too, not without a sort of grim humour that this psychological vivisectionist attempts to lay bare the skeleton of the human mind, to tear away all the charming little sentiments and hypocrisies which in the course of time become a part and parcel of human ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... for the seamen. As many of their former amusements were worn threadbare, he proposed a masquerade, in which officers and men alike took part. Admirably dressed characters of various descriptions made their appearance, and were supported with a degree of spirit and humour which would not have discredited a more refined assembly. It does especial credit to the disposition and good sense of the men that, although the officers entered fully into the spirit of these ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... pages, and men-at-arms. He waited two days there for Abbot Milo to come up with last news of Jehane; then at the head of sixty spears he rode fleetly over the marshes towards Louviers. After his first, 'You are well met, my lords,' he had said very little, showing a cold humour; after a colloquy with Milo, which he had before he left his bed, he said nothing at all. Alone, as became one of his race, he rode ahead of his force; not even the chirping Monk (who remembered his brother Henry and often sighed for him) cared to risk a ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... with solid satisfaction, opening the large brown eyes beneath those tufts of clustering fair hair which promise much beauty for him in his manhood. Francesco's boy, who is older and begins to know the world, sat with a semi-suppressed grin upon his face, as though the humour of the situation was not wholly hidden from him. Little Teresa, too, was happy, except when her mother, a severe Pomona, with enormous earrings and splendid fazzoletto of crimson and orange dyes, pounced down upon her for some supposed ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... or no the enemy could see him. More than once he was shot at, and more than once he had a narrow escape at the hands of some hostile sniper, but this appeared to have no effect on him, and after such an escape he was just as reckless as before. He had withal a kind heart and a great sense of humour. ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... as the servant announced 'Miss Levering.' It is seldom that in this particular stratum of London life anything so uncontrolled and uncontrollable as a 'sensation' is permitted to chequer the even distribution of subdued good humour that reigns so modestly in the drawing-rooms of the Tunbridge world. If any one is so ill-advised as to bring to these gatherings anything resembling a sensation, even if it is of the less challengeable sort of striking personal beauty, the general aim of the company is to pretend either that ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... mood was not proof against the humour of the small child's pantomime; and both he and Sir Richard ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... upwards. The situation had its humour. It was certainly rather amusing to elude him. She knew he had caught her far too ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... these histories to her doctor. Her worn, thin, lined, determined face would form for itself new and humorous creases, and her pale blue eyes would kindle with humour and with joy as her doctor burst into his hearty laugh. And the good Anna full of the coquetry of pleasing would bridle with her angular, thin, spinster body, straining her stories and ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein
... of the Boer is always in evidence, although the Englishman must perforce humour it. It would be interesting to learn, for instance, how many thousands of pounds are sewn up in mattresses all over the country because the owners are chary concerning the integrity of bank-managers. They have no doubt whatever but that a bank ...
— The Boer in Peace and War • Arthur M. Mann
... expectation. Even these, however, began to fail me, and the road grew comparatively quiet and deserted. Having kept guard like a sentinel for more than half an hour, I returned in no very good humour, with the punctuality of an expected inmate—ordered the servant to draw the curtains and secure the hall-door; and so my wife and I sate down to our disconsolate cup of tea. It must have been about ten o'clock, and we were both sitting silently—she ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... of his mother's arm was soft and tender for all that. Her inclination to humour him in sundry respects not implying too much freedom of movement contrasted favourably with the sterner restraint exercised by his father. And so it was only natural that, to begin with, he should cling no less closely to her than ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... all of us copy you, and humour your uncle. I can see he feels time going very fast, and I shall play at being in a hurry all the time I am looking after the ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... to Gorgon forms compare them; I have seen painted shapes that bear away The feast of Phineus. Wingless, though, are these, And swarth, and every way abominable. They snort with breath that none may dare approach, And from their eyes a loathsome humour pours, And such their garb as neither to the shrine Of Gods is meet to bring, nor mortal roof. Ne'er have I seen a race that owns this tribe, Nor is there land can boast it rears such brood, Unhurt and free from sorrow for its pains. Henceforth, be it the lot ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... fun and humour, did not always understand the curious phases of them presented to him by his civilised friend—looked innocently in his face and said, "Me no tink about it at all!" Whereupon Olly burst into a short laugh, and expressed ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... making up, not only for others but for herself, a sham person who did not exist. That Nan found infinitely oppressive. So did Pamela, but Pamela was more tolerant and sympathetic and less ill-tempered than Nan, and observed the ways of others with quiet, ironic humour, saying nothing unkind. Pamela, when she didn't like a way of talking—when Rosalind, for instance, was being malicious or indecent or both—would skilfully carry the talk somewhere else. She could be a rapid and good talker, and could tell story after story, lightly and coolly, till danger ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... (SMITH, ELDER) there are those elements of patriotism, humour and pathos which I find so desirable in War-time books. Jitny was neither man nor woman, but a motor-car, and without disparaging those who drove her and rode in her I am bound to say that she was as much alive as any one of them. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 12, 1916 • Various
... feet, with new hope in her heart. Perhaps, oh, perhaps, Huldah and Dick might manage again to escape! If they did, they would go to her, surely! Of course she should be at home to receive them! She told Miss Rose, and though Miss Rose scarcely believed it possible, she thought it kinder to humour her,—besides which there was just the chance,—a chance which ...
— Dick and Brownie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... may be some under it! Oh! Very good. Then I suppose you're going to mine, and sink a shaft and tunnel, and——" the humour of it was too much for him, and he broke off in a loud laugh, which ended in a set of expressions not quite relevant, but calculated to ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... the cause of their being misrepresented; there is no country perhaps, in which the habit of deceiving for amusement, or what is termed hoaxing, is so common. Indeed this and the hyperbole constitute the major part of American humour. If they have the slightest suspicion that a foreigner is about to write a book, nothing appears to give them so much pleasure as to try to mislead him; this has constantly been practised upon me, and for all I know, they may in some ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... Divisional Staff at Landrecies as a superfluous interpreter. Looking like an ordinary French subaltern with a pince-nez, he was in fact a Protestant pastor from Tours, son of the Vicomte de Saint Andre, very intelligent and "cultured," with a great sense of humour and extremely keen. I really cannot speak too highly of him, for he was a most useful addition to the Staff. In billeting and requisitioning, and in all matters requiring tact in connection with the inhabitants or the French Army, he was invaluable. I used him later as A.D.C. in action, ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... stared into each other's eyes, Harry fascinated, the man filled with wrath and a cruel, sneering humour. ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... edge naturally given to his remarks by his genius for clear and effective statement, partly account for this impression; still I used to think that he liked fighting, and occasionally liked to give play to his sarcastic humour—though always strictly within the limits imposed by courtesy. I remember that on one occasion when I had read to the Society an essay on the "Incoherence of Empiricism," I looked forward with some little anxiety to his criticisms; and when they came, ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... in the humour of Augustus, of granting amnesty to the proscribed. Usurpation granting amnesty to right! treason to honour! cowardice to courage! crime to virtue! He is to that degree embruted by his success that he thinks this ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... beguile the heavy heart of one moment of sorrow; if I can now and then penetrate through the gathering film of misanthropy, prompt a benevolent view of human nature, and make my reader more in good humour with his fellow beings and himself, surely, surely, I shall not then have ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... at the moment, and appeared in the humour for conversation, asking me of his own free will if it were possible that I was "Noel Stanton, ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... has, under the above title, produced as lively a little volume of humour and pleasantry as it has lately been our good fortune to meet with. Every page, nay, every line is a satire upon the extravagance and precocity of what Vivian Grey calls our "artificial state;" and all the weak sides of our age are mercilessly dealt ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... agitated in his presence, fancied she did not understand him, and was unworthy of his confidence; miserably, drearily—but continually—she thought of him. Kister's society, on the contrary, soothed her and put her in a good humour, though it neither overjoyed nor excited her. With him she could chatter away for hours together, leaning on his arm, as though he were her brother, looking affectionately into his face, and laughing with his laughter—and she rarely thought of him. In Lutchkov there was something enigmatic ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... not seem to be in a good humour. The boys drew back somewhat in awe, and sat down to rest on the stones by the wall. Still Antonino's eyes followed them, though he did not move. Sebastiano looked up at him uneasily from time to time, but Ruggiero gazed steadily at the sea with ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... however, was one of those rarely gifted individuals who cannot assume an aspect which is foreign to temperament. He was of a cheerful, even sanguine disposition, and his countenance faithfully reflected the ordinary bent of his humour. Seeing him at a distance, the casual observer would at once have judged him to be either an athlete or an ascetic. There was no superfluous flesh about him; he was tall and muscular, with well- knit limbs, broad shoulders, and a head altogether lacking in the humble or conciliatory 'droop' ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... answered Michael, with a smile. "Who is Darius Boland, you're askin' in y'r mind? Well, he's the new manager come from the Llyn plantations in Virginia; and right good stuff he is, with a tongue that's as dry as cut-wheat in August. And there's humour in him, plenty-aye, plenty. When did I see him, and how? Well, I saw him this mornin', on the quay at Kingston. He was orderin' the porters about with an air—oh, bedad, an air! I saw the name upon the parcels— Miss Sheila Llyn, of Moira, Virginia, and so I ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... their royal honours, And soon my voice was made an oracle. I probed their heart, and flattered their caprice; Bestrewed with flowers the precipice's brink; Serving their passions, naught to me was sacred; Measure and weight I changed as they inclined. As much as Joad's unpliant humour pained The softness of their supercilious ear, So much I pleased them with my dexterous art; Concealing from their eyes the bitter truth; Lending convenient colour to their rage; And, lavish, above all, of wretches' blood. At length, to Baal, whom she had introduced, ...
— Athaliah • J. Donkersley
... to punish him. "Young man, young man," he would say, "people who forget their books are a confounded nuisance, and I don't want confounded nuisances with me." Gordon got on with him very well on the whole, as he had a sense of humour and always laughed at his master's jokes. But he only did Latin and English in the Fourth room, for the whole school was split up into sets, regardless of forms, for sharing such less arduous labours as science, maths, French and Greek. So that Gordon found himself suddenly appointed to Mr ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... not recollect having ever repented giving a letter to the postman, or wishing to retrieve it after he had once deposited it in his bag. What I have once set my hand to, I take the consequences of, and have been always pretty much of the same humour in this respect. I am not like the person who, having sent off a letter to his mistress, who resided a hundred and twenty miles in the country, and disapproving, on second thoughts, of some expressions contained in it, took a post-chaise ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 480, Saturday, March 12, 1831 • Various
... direct as Richard understood directness. Slander was the weapon he used in that secret duel; the countryside was well stocked with stories of Mr. Wilding's many indiscretions. I do not wish to suggest that these were unfounded. Still, the countryside, cajoled by its primitive sense of humour into that alliteration I have mentioned, found that having given this dog its bad name, it was under the obligation of keeping up his reputation. So it exaggerated. Richard, exaggerating those exaggerations ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... rangy, with dynamic energy, and a wonderful personality that holds the gallery. His smile is famous, while his sense of humour never deserts him. A sportsman to his finger-tips, there is no more popular figure in American tennis than Murray. His is not a great game. It is a case of a great athlete making a second-class game first class, by sheer power of personality ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... a pleasing and polished writer of lyric and pastoral poetry, appears to have been a close and attentive observer of nature and manners,—abounding in wit and humour,—and a pious and religious man. He was also a soldier, a good fisherman, and a warm admirer of Queen Elizabeth, of whom he gives a beautiful character in "A Dialogue full of pithe and pleasure, upon the Dignitie or Indignitie ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 26. Saturday, April 27, 1850 • Various
... of a formula, perhaps, by saying that it was a compound of solid good sense and an almost reckless whimsicality of speech. The curious thing about it was that it was not markedly intellectual, and still less literary. It had not the finish of such wit as is preserved in anthologies of humour. Every one who enjoyed the conversation of Lady Dorothy must have perceived with annoyance how little he could take away with him. Her phrases did not often recur to please that inward ear, "which is the bliss of solitude." What she said seemed at the ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... the two Generals came in from some vanity of inspection to grumble a little merrily at the open air banquet, but to take their places in all good humour, and the lively meal began with all the home witticisms, yet not such as to exclude strangers. Indeed, Hubert Delrio was treated with something like distinction, and was evidently very happy, with Vera by his side. ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... applied to priests and curates; now to knights. "Aye, aye, sir," is the well-known answer from seamen, denoting 'cuteness, combined with good humour and obedience. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... Calice, Ardres, Montbulin, Dourlens, la Capelle, and le Catelet in Picardy, and Blavet in Britanny: which Articles were Ratifi'd and Sign'd by his Majesty the eleventh of June [1598]; who in his gayety of humour, at so happy a conclusion, told the Duke of Espernon, That with one dash of his Pen he had done greater things, than he could of a long time have perform'd with the best Swords of his Kingdom."—Life of the Duke of Espernon, ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... You've probably changed in all this long time. And why not? It needn't be entirely a disadvantage. A little bit of humour couldn't harm you. I don't see why one must look at all things in that damnably ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... the public good, which, as we see in all the legal societies of the world, he constantly consults, daily contributing, by his superior skill, to their prosperity, and not sacrificing their good to his own wealth, or pleasure, or humour: but in an illegal society or gang, as this of ours, it is otherwise; for who would be at the head of a gang, unless for his own interest? And without a head, you know, you cannot subsist. Nothing but a head, and obedience to ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... legs as if running for'ard to Skipper. The boys looked on and laughed, and when he no longer quivered and churned his legs they continued to laugh. Born in savagery, having lived in savagery all their lives and known naught else, their sense of humour was correspondingly savage. To them, the sight of a stunned and possibly dead puppy was a side-splitting, ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... everybody agrees there is only one Nelson." This strong and valiant sailor was never at any time unconscious of his power. What troubled him was other people's lack of appreciation of it, though he accepted with a whimsical humour the grudging spirit in which credit was given to his unerring judgment and unequalled bravery. Nor can we examine the great deeds of his career without feeling a thrill of pride in the knowledge that ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... human body exist in the four humours, blood, bile, atrabilis and pituita; and these four humours correspond in quality with the elements. Blood, which is the reservoir or continent of them all, is a temperate humour. Bile, being the representative of calidum, is hot and dry. Melancholy represents, in our microcosm, the element earth or siccum, and is dry and cold. But pituita, which is moist and cold, corresponds with the humidum element. Air exists ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... like a schoolgirl. If we're friends and I let you come in here, you mustn't let your vest come over your cuffs and you must take those spots off your waistcoat, and brush your hair and clean your nails, and you must just be sensible and have a little humour. Why ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... part, are quite as willing to accept it; but the responsibility can neither be shuffled off by him nor accepted by them. His motive in surrendering Jesus to them was probably nothing more than the low and cowardly wish to humour his turbulent subjects, and so to secure an easy tenure of office. For such an end what did one poor man's life matter? He had a great contempt for the accusers, which he is scarcely at the pains to conceal. It breaks out in half-veiled sarcasms, by which he cynically indemnifies ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... you that.' He is moving about now in better humour, and, meeting the loaf in his stride, he cuts a slice from it. He is hardly aware of this, but Mrs. Dowey knows. 'I like the Scotch voice of you, woman. It drummles on like a ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... be peaceful,' spoken in goodnatured jest, of course, and without one thought at the time of the sacrilege of which I was guilty? Yea, I would pat the fat little fellow on the head, and, when the humour seized me, would show him my hoard of gold mohurs, even jingle before him a bag of silver rupees, or ask his opinion on the colour and quality of some gem, speaking words of foolishness the while, like a child playing with a toy. And when I lay back on my cushions, sometimes ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... on the threshold, saw an erect lithe figure of medium height with a breadth of shoulder suggesting great power. Under the folds of a blue turban, whose fringed ends hung gracefully over the left shoulder, was a face full of determination and expressing a reckless good-humour, not devoid, however, of some dignity. The squareness of lower jaw, the full red lips, the mobile nostrils, and the proud carriage of the head gave the impression of a being half-savage, untamed, perhaps cruel, and corrected the liquid softness of the almost feminine eye, that general characteristic ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... thought that there was no more between them than a league of friendship. The chief ground for her conjecture was the impolite and almost rude way in which the Cardinal conversed with her Majesty. "But, however," said Madame de Chevreuse, "when I reflect on the Queen's humour, all this may admit of another interpretation. Buckingham used to tell me that he had been in love with three Queens, and was obliged to curb all the three; therefore I cannot tell what to think ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... dangerous it is to judge with too much haste, especially in those circumstances where passion may either augment or diminish the view we take of certain objects. This truth, animated by a great deal of humour and wit, drew crowds of spectators for forty nights, though the play was brought out in summer and the marriage of the young king kept the court ...
— Sganarelle - or The Self-Deceived Husband • Moliere
... visited it, the call should be returned at Waally's habitations. This answer brought on an angry discussion, in which Waally, once or twice, forgot himself a little; and when he took his leave, it was not in the best humour possible. ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... referred to in Britten & Boulger's "Biographical Index of Botanists," 1893. Dr. Masters tells us that Beaton had a "first-rate reputation as a practical gardener, and was esteemed for his shrewdness and humour." -Darwin on ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... please Antony. She had borne him first a son named Ptolemy, and then a son and daughter, twins, Alexander Helius and Cleopatra Selene, or Sun and Moon. She gamed, she drank, she hunted, she reviewed the troops with him, and, to humour his coarser tastes, she followed him, in his midnight rambles through the city, in the dress of a servant; and nothing that youth, beauty, wealth, and elegance could do to throw a cloak over the grossness of vice and crime was forgotten by her. The biographer thought it waste of time to ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... with the queen in Mary's behalf; and immediately after their departure, she commanded him, of her own accord to deliver her the warrant for the execution of that princess. She signed it readily, and ordered it to be sealed with the great seal of England. She appeared in such good humour on the occasion, that she said to him in a jocular manner, "Go, tell all this to Walsingham, who is now sick; though I fear he will die of sorrow when he hears of it." She added, that though she had so long delayed the execution, lest she should ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... as representative of this rapidly-diminishing yet nevertheless still numerous section of the world of Art and Letters? Formerly, provided we were masters of style, possessed imagination and insight, understood human nature, had sympathy with and knowledge of life, and could express ourselves with humour and distinction, our pathway was, comparatively speaking, free from obstacle. We drew from the middle-class life around us, passed it through our own middle-class individuality, and presented it to a public ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... visionary world. He was conversant with nothing else, and this must have been the secret by which he produced compositions so entirely spiritual. He who has daily intercourse with the world, and feels the vulgar human passions, cannot be in a humour to write poems which do not ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... in the shed. This he himself with great care wrapped round her, feet and chair and all, and secured it in various places with old forks. He declared then she looked for all the world like an Indian, except her face; and, in high good-humour both, he went to cutting up the pork, and Ellen from out of her buffalo robe ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... because a person affected in this manner was not allowed, by the twelve tables, to have the management of his own affairs; therefore the words are not, if he is mad (insanus), but, if he begins to be raving (furiosus). For they looked upon madness to be an unsettled humour, that proceeded from not being of sound mind; yet such a person might perform his ordinary duties, and discharge the usual and customary requirements of life: but they considered one that was raving as afflicted with a total blindness of the mind, which, notwithstanding it is allowed ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... accomplish the voyage, seemed to be my principal support; but the boatswain very innocently told me, that he really thought I looked worse than any one in the boat. The simplicity with which he uttered such an opinion diverted me, and I had good humour enough to return him a ...
— A Narrative Of The Mutiny, On Board His Majesty's Ship Bounty; And The Subsequent Voyage Of Part Of The Crew, In The Ship's Boat • William Bligh
... will, my dear lady. To put it plainly, then, you are going the quickest way to make Adrien tired of you. After all, if you happen to possess a goose with the propensity to lay golden eggs, surely it is wise to humour him. And if the said goose happens to dislike the smell of onions, why fill the house with that particular perfume, sufficient to suffocate an elephant? Again, is it not the height of folly to stick plaster statues on the staircase which he ascends ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... this expression to some noticeable degree in the presence of man. In the later school of Attic sculpture they are treated with more and more of refinement, till in some happy moment Praxiteles conceived a model, often repeated, which concentrates this sentiment of true humour concerning them; a model of dainty natural ease in posture, but with the legs slightly crossed, as only lowly-bred gods are used to carry them, and with some puzzled trouble of youth, you might wish for a moment [17] to smoothe away, puckering the forehead ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... here," Father Noble replied. "It is all we can do at present. They do not want us," he had a quaint humour, "but we ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... he had begun to acknowledge to himself that he might rather be afraid of her anger than she of his. There was a courage about her which nothing could dash. She had grown up under his eyes strong, brave, sometimes almost bold, with a dash of humour, but always quite determined in her own ideas of wrong or right. He had in truth been all but afraid of her when he found himself compelled to tell her of the decision to which his conscience compelled him. But the will was made,—the third, perhaps the fourth or fifth, which had seemed to him to ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... of pot-pourri on the black table in the centre, an oak settee by the open fireplace, a couple of Persian rugs on the polished floor. The room had its quaintness, too, such as she had alluded to in her memorable essay read before the Riseholme Literary Society, called "Humour in Furniture," and a brass milkcan served as a receptacle for sticks and umbrellas. Equally quaint was the dish of highly realistic stone fruit that stood beside the pot-pourri and the furry Japanese spider that sprawled in a silk web ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... is of the graceful style; he is not very original but his waltzes and "Laendlers" have the true Viennese ring, and the kirmess in the first act is very characteristic; it is melodious and {470} full of healthy humour. The airs often recall ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... long time before we saw either Selenite or mooncalf, though we heard the bellowing and gruntulous noises of these latter continually drawing nearer to us. We crawled through stony ravines, over snow slopes, amidst fungi that ripped like thin bladders at our thrust, emitting a watery humour, over a perfect pavement of things like puff-balls, and beneath interminable thickets of scrub. And ever more helplessly our eyes sought for our abandoned sphere. The noise of the mooncalves would at times be a vast flat calf-like sound, at times it rose to an amazed and wrathy bellowing, and again ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... the Orchestra). It's beastly dull, that's what it is—none of the give-and-take humour and practical fun you get in Paris or Vienna!... That's a nice, simple-looking little thing in the seat over there. (The simple-looking little thing peeps at him, with one eye over her fan, in arch invitation.) Gad, I'll go up and talk to her—it will be something ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 23, 1892 • Various
... alluring tenderness that your heart shakes in you and slips out to drown contentedly in those slate-blue depths. No, no, there is no describing Margarita. Perhaps King came nearest to it when he said that she was Eve before the fall, plus a sense of humour! But Eve is distinctly Miltonian to us (unfortunately for the poor woman) and Margarita would have horrified Milton—there is no doubt ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... expression, and had such comical excuses to offer, that Captain Frankland saw that it would be worse than useless to punish him. Indeed, punishment would scarcely have corrected such faults as he had. Gerard, from being small, and having delicate features, though they were full of rich humour, looked younger than I did; but he was in reality older, and had much more experience of the world. His constitution was considered delicate, which was the reason his father took him to sea at first; but now he liked the life so much, he told me, that he had resolved ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... this Carlos regarded the crowd with a smile, but many of these were in no humour for smiling. They were really awed by the terrible fate which they believed awaited the reckless cibolero. ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... mystery, or where Isaac bids his father bind his eyes that he shall not see the sword. It was for long the fashion to say, as Sir Walter Scott did, that these plays had little poetic life, or human interest in them. But they are, at their best, truly touched with essential emotions, with humour, terror, sorrow, pity, as the case may be. Dramatically they are far more alive at this moment, than the English drama of the ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... conceived a fresh plan for extricating his cause from the difficulties that beset it. By January 1860 all Chung Wang's arrangements were completed. He distributed considerable sums of money among his men to put them in good humour, and then set forth. His first movements were directed to misleading his enemy as to his real object, and having succeeded in this he marched as rapidly as possible towards the important harbour of Hangchow, ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... of humour, Andrea kissed her on the ear, slipped an arm round her waist and proceeded to say a host of foolish things to her. The Corso was very lively, the shop windows resplendent, newspaper-vendors yelled, public and private vehicles crossed the path of their carriage; all the stir and ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... breaks the king's hate forth, And he confesseth that he loves me not! Y. Mor. Cry quittance, madam, then, and love not him. Q. Isab. No, rather will I die a thousand deaths: And yet I love in vain; he'll ne'er love me. Lan. Fear ye not, madam; now his minion's gone, His wanton humour will be quickly left. Q. Isab. O, never, Lancaster! I am enjoin'd, To sue unto you all for his repeal: This wills my lord, and this must I perform, Or else be banish'd from his highness' presence. Lan. For his repeal, madam! he comes not back, Unless ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... his head. He went on with his solitary game and, to all appearance, paid no heed to his companion's words. Monty was not in the humour to be ignored. He flung himself on the ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Bill, who had showed signs of humour the day before. "See here," said he, "you fellows have got my money, and you've blacked my eye and kicked me blue, so you ought to be satisfied. Before I go, tell ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... the eminently excellent and loveable, and his entire character of the most transparent, childlike simplicity. The great realities of eternity were never far distant from his thoughts. Endowed with powers of humour at least equal to his other faculties, and a sense of the ludicrous singularly nice, he has often reminded us in his genial moments, when indulging most freely, of a happy child at play in the presence of its father. Never was there an equal amount of wit more harmlessly ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... on men and things were to me always interesting, for he was a shrewd observer, and displayed occasionally a pleasant, dry humour. But I very soon discovered that his opinions were not to be accepted without reserve. His strong, inflexible Teutonic nature often prevented him from judging impartially. He had no sympathy with the men and the institutions around him, and consequently he was unable to see ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... Mr Collinson and his companions had been rescued was the Poisson Volant, a privateer fitted out at Port a Petre, in Dominique. She had had a long run of ill-luck, so the surgeon told him, and this had put her officers in very bad humour. The dark, stout man was her captain, of whom the surgeon seemed to ...
— Sunshine Bill • W H G Kingston
... thought it, sir. Well, if he is he will soon be in a good humour again when he finds how busy we have been and what we have made out. Ah, here is our ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... of mind, and timely exertion, she had prevented her prepossession from growing into a passion that might have made her miserable. Proud of this conquest over herself, she was now disposed to treat Mr. Vincent with more favour than usual. Self-complacency generally puts us in good-humour ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... he quarrelled, or did his best to quarrel, in regard to everything about the place, though at the same time he did not cease to grumble at his visitor for going away and leaving him. Belton bore it all so well that the grumbling and quarrelling did not lead to much; but it required all his good-humour and broad common sense to prevent serious troubles ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... unanswerable, and suddenly, while she still stood battling with her tears, something in the utterance touched her sense of humour. She gulped down a sob, and gave ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... by me, Lucy," invited Just, in good humour at the success of his plan. "You can keep handing me food as I consume it. I never was so starved in my life. Well, have you had a good time? Sorry I had to desert you, but I've no doubt the others introduced you round and ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... his enemies' heads—and he had owned to over fifty—as he thought of destitute homes and weeping women and children, seemed decidedly tragi-comic; but the old man was earnest enough, and was quite unconscious of the grim humour of the situation. ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... had fallen away, as the engineer-in-chief had foretold they would, before Charles Gould's mediation. Sir John had been extremely feted in Sulaco, next to the President-Dictator, a fact which might have accounted for the evident ill-humour General Montero displayed at lunch given on board the Juno just before she was to sail, taking away from Sulaco the President-Dictator and the distinguished foreign guests in ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... Armstrongs was not unlike Johnny; and, indeed, it has been observed that throughout the whole branches of the family there was an extraordinary union of boldness and humour—two qualities which have more connection than may, at first view, be apparent. Law-breakers, among themselves, are seldom serious; a lightness of heart and a turn for wit being necessary for the sustenance ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... every spot, and claimed some particular sites as their own. Offerings were made to them in the open air, by scattering a little rice with a short formula at the close of all ceremonies to keep them in good humour. ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... of its use that appeals to the ear as well as the eye. This is to be found in the finale of Beethoven's sonata, op. 106, where it is applied to a theme with such sharply contrasted rhythmic and melodic features that with long familiarity a listener would probably feel not only the wayward humour of the passage in itself, but also its connexion with the main theme. Nevertheless, the prominence given to the device in technical treatises, and the fact that this is the one illustration which hardly any of them cite, show too clearly the way in which music is treated not ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... make the audiences laugh. But he was perhaps the first actor who ever played the fat knight to the life. His remarkable corpulence qualified him to play the character without stuffing. The good-humour of his visage was fully equalled by the protuberance of his stomach; and if the "totus in se teres atque rotundus" of Horace, is the poet's definition of a good man, the actor rose to the summit of human virtue. The best prologue, since the days of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... the time of Francis I., are brought forth from the orangery to adorn the central avenue, and the gardens become vocal with many voices of children at their games—French children with their gentle humour and sweet refined play. R. and L. of the central avenue we find the two marble exhedrae, erected in 1793 for the elders who presided over the floral celebrations of the month of Germinal by ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... man, of iron build, and so tall that his sou'-wester almost touched the ceiling of his low-roofed parlour. His face was eminently masculine, and his usual expression was a compound of sternness, gravity, and good-humour. He was about forty years of age, and, unlike the men of his class at that time, wore a short curly black beard and moustache, which, with his deeply bronzed countenance, gave him the aspect of ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... upon Moses.[9] Well, this temper is not the richest nor the highest, but it often exists in alliance with rich and high qualities. It was so with Condorcet. And we are particularly bound to remember that with him a harsh and impatient humour was not, as is so often the case, the veil for an indolent reluctance to form painstaking judgments. Few workers have been so conscientious as he was, in the labour that he bestowed upon subjects which he held to be worthy of deliberate scrutiny and consideration. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... nose short, or a cheek sunken, I fancy that you do not succeed well in giving the impression of the person,—not so well as when you interpret at once to the heart the essential moral qualities of the face—its humour, gravity, sadness, spirituality. If I should tell you in physical terms how a hand feels, you would be no wiser for my account than a blind man to whom you describe a face in detail. Remember that when a blind man recovers his sight, ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... notice of these by way of specimen. I could give you two or three dozen of the like and yet have abundance left behind. 'Tis sufficient from these to apprise any one of the humour of those times, and how a set of thieves and pickpockets not only robbed and cheated the poor people of their money, but poisoned their bodies with odious and fatal preparations; some with mercury, and some with other things as bad, ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... reader, you fail to recognise in this form our old friend Heu taceo. But here he is to a certainty, in spite of the rat: and in a different form of letters the compositor will show him, up to you as—vellem et Orp. [HEU TACEAM]. Possibly, being in good humour, you will be disposed to wink at the seemingly surreptitious AM, though believing the real word to be taceo. Let me say, therefore, that one reading, I believe, gives taceam. Here, then, shines out at once—(1) Eurydice the lovely wife; (2) detained by the gloomy tyrant Pluto; ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... The dry humour of this brought a twinkle into the Easterner's gray eyes. He took the hat from her outstretched gloved hand, but paused with it half raised ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... occupy as the wife of Erskine, and she resolved to leave no means untried for the accomplishment of her wishes. Accordingly, she was particularly attentive to the young man whenever thrown into his company; and sought, by flattering his self-love, to make him feel in the best possible humour with himself while in her society. In this way she succeeded in drawing him frequently to her side, where Emeline was always to be found. A sprightly, well-educated, and finely accomplished girl, Emeline soon interested ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur
... of her head. The eyes were a rich, warm, luminous brown, fringed with long lashes, and in them lurked all manner of fathomless mysteries. The mouth was soft, yet full and firm—a real mouth, such as Nature bestows upon her real women. It was a face of freshness and youth and humour, and now was tremulous ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... liberalism was abroad in the sons of the Puritans. In Elizabeth Brower the ardent austerity of her race had been freely diluted with humour and cheerfulness and human sympathy. It used to be said of Deacon Hospur, a good but lazy man, that he was given both to prayer and profanity. Uncle Eb, who had once heard the deacon swear, when the latter had been bruised by a kicking cow, said that, so far as he knew, the deacon ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... good-for-nothing jade home," replied the old man advancing, and grasping his son-in-law's hand, with a hearty grip. "She did nothing but mope and cry all the while; and I don't care if she never comes to see us again, unless she brings you along to keep her in good humour." ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... copies, and has the merit of restoring some readings which had escaped Theobald. He had not systematically studied the literature and language of the 16th and 17th centuries; he did not always appreciate the naturalness, simplicity, and humour of his author, but his preface and notes are distinguished by clearness of thought and diction and by masterly common sense. He used Warburton's text, to print his own from. The readings and suggestions attributed to 'Johnson,' in our notes, are derived either ...
— The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] - Introduction and Publisher's Advertising • William Shakespeare
... me," returned the boy, relapsing into the mother-tongue, which, except it be spoken in good humour, ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... letter containing a narrative of his trial and imprisonment, written by him from prison, occur many touches of humour. In his remarks ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 236, May 6, 1854 • Various
... A prisoner, on examination before Bonner, was asked if he thought he could bear the flame. You may try me, if you will, he said. A candle was brought, and he held his hand, without flinching, in the blaze.[450] With such a humour abroad, {p.198} it seemed to Renard that the Lords had only to give the signal, and the queen and the bishops ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... gentleman received the remonstrance with great good-humour, and promised from that time forward, to spend his evenings at a coffee-house—a determination which afforded ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... being, so entirely different from yourself, could exist in Europe in the nineteenth century. It is said that those who can converse with Irish peasants in their own native tongue, form far higher opinions of their appreciation of the beautiful, and of the elements of humour and pathos in their hearts, than do those who know their thoughts only through the medium of English. I know from my own observation that this is quite the case with the Indians of North America, and it is unquestionably so with the Gipsy. When you know a true specimen ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... this part of China. The people could not remember seeing anything at all like him before. Some of them even doubted if he could be a human being at all, and the children cried out in fear that it was a black devil. But his good humour soon reconciled them to his appearance, and they became accustomed to look upon him ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... I can get along," replied Mandy, catching off her hat and gathering up her skirt over her shoulders, "but we'll have to hustle, for I'd hate to have you get, wet." Her imperturbable good humour and her solicitude for him rebuked Cameron for ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... sell a man a book you don't sell him just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue—you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night—there's all heaven and earth in a book, a real book I mean. Jiminy! If I were the baker or the butcher or the broom huckster, people would run to the gate when I came by—just waiting for my stuff. And here ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... glimpses of him which their now restricted intercourse allowed. Of the man who could inspire and keep alive so devoted a feeling, it may be pronounced with confidence that he could not have been such as, in the freaks of his own wayward humour, he represented himself; while, on the lady's side, the whole history of her attachment goes to prove how completely an Italian woman, whether by nature or from her social position, is led to invert the usual course of such frailties among ourselves, and, weak in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 474 - Vol. XVII. No. 474., Supplementary Number • Various
... my husband speaking, but some passerby. However, I looked up at George with a smile, and found him looking down at me with much the same humour. We had often spoken of the odd phrases one hears in the street, and how interesting it would be sometimes to hear a ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... over his tongue, and his eyes twinkled with a sort of leer, which indicated that the fellow was not without some humour. He submitted patiently to the rebuke, however, making no ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... arose, and prevented him from continuing for some time. "I only ask for fair play and a patient hearing!" he pleaded. "Give me that, and I will undertake to restore you all to good humour before I ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... it has already been remarked, had much vivacity and sportive humour, with very engaging frankness of temper and manners. Early in her widowhood she was rallied in a large company upon Dr. Darwin's passion for her, and was asked what she would do with her captive philosopher. 'He is not very fond of churches, ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... more of the same sort, sir." And, casting about for another phrase with which to humour him, I took the first that came to my tongue; leaning my arms on the table (for I had finished eating), I said with a smile, "Well, what say you to this? This is something to know, isn't it? Je ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... congratulations were cordial. The House is in good humour again. All are glad to get rid of the question. The Duke of Cumberland, Falmouth, and Winchelsea, perhaps Kenyon, are lost to the ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... received a rare scare, which suggests to me that Jean, in spite of her tragic ending, may not have been without a spice of humour. Thomas, for that was the swain's name, made an assignation one night to meet Jenny in ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... to catch the eye, with a voice to cajole the senses as with music of bugles, and an oratory to inspire. Moreover, the destiny which shaped his ends had mercifully denied him that which is a boon to common men but a curse to public men. Jason Mallard was without a sense of humour. He never laughed at others; he never laughed at himself. Certain of our public leaders have before now fallen into the woful error of doing one or both of these things. Wherefore they were forever after called humourists—and ruined. When they said anything serious their friends ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... or circumstances may throw in our path, we may gradually acquire a caseful of most desirable specimens, against which it is out of the question to raise any charge of incompleteness, where incompleteness is the governing aim. Book-buying under these conditions is a humour. We are at liberty to take or leave. Because we conceive a fancy for a work by this or that author, we feel under no obligation to accommodate every scrap which he has printed, or which his friends or followers have penned. The object of our personal selection suffices ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... a lark, arresting the people who at first affected to despise you. I can always keep myself cheerful by the humour of that. If you've lost your sense of the ridiculous, you'd better join the Northwest Mounted Police—for an Englishman ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... associations that are apt to beset my mind on mingling among English scenes. I hope they may, in some measure, plead my apology, should I be found harping upon stale and trivial themes, or indulging an over-fondness for any thing antique and obsolete. I know it is the humour, not to say cant of the day, to run riot about old times, old books, old customs, and old buildings; with myself, however, as far as I have caught the contagion, the feeling is genuine. To a man from a young country, all old things are in a manner new; and he ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... here the shepherd housed him every night, And faced the prospect like a patient soul, Borne up by some vague hope of better days, And God's fine blessing in his faithful wife, Until the humour of his malady Took cunning changes from the good to bad, And laid him lastly on ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... mingled chime Of Jonson's humour and Corneille's rhyme. [Footnote: The greater part of The Maiden Queen, however, is written either in prose ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... quite out of humour with the bandbox and all that appertained thereunto, the temper of the young man was such that he was by no means prepared to see it confiscated without his knowledge or consent. In two long strides he overhauled the steward, plucked ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... infernally full of humour that there's no room in her for anything else. I doubt if she's got lungs. I'm sure she hasn't got ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... the hawker at your entry in London is very odd and whimsical you did extremely well to humour the man in his opinion about Mr. Wilkes. I dare say if you had done otherwise his fist would have convinc'd you of the goodness of your cause, and then it would have been impossible for you to pass for ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing
... leaked out that earlier in the year a party of Sioux on their way to Fort St Charles on a friendly visit had been fired upon by a party of Chippewas. The Sioux had shouted indignantly, 'Who fire on us?' and the Chippewas, in ambush, had yelled back with grim humour, 'The French.' The Sioux {42} retreated, vowing a terrible vengeance against the treacherous white men. Their opportunity came even sooner than they had expected. A trader named Bourassa, who had left ...
— Pathfinders of the Great Plains - A Chronicle of La Verendrye and his Sons • Lawrence J. Burpee
... having taken a most inconsiderate step," said her father to her. "You are little sensible to the judgment of the world, to what people say; I am much more so. Humour my weakness or cowardice. Let us endeavour to keep up appearances; do not let us appear to be in a hurry, or to have something to hide; let us act with due deliberation. Just at present no one is in Paris; let us give our friends time to return there. We will present ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... picture is pleasing; but I must beg you not to forget that there is another on the same subject.—When convenience, and fair appearance joined to folly and ill-humour, forge the fetters of matrimony, they gall with their weight the married pair. Discontented with each other—at variance in opinions—their mutual aversion increases with the years they live together. They contend most, where they should ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald
... Guiberto placidly, 'her uncle is bedridden; her aunt never leaves him; the servants are old and sullen, and will stir for nobody. Finding her resolved, as they believe, to become a nun, they are little assiduous in their services. Humour her, if none else does, Amadeo; let her fancy that you intend to be a friar; and, for the present, walk not on ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... beginning to notice and secretly to reflect on their generic characteristics—their profoundly serious convictions concerning themselves and their art modified by surface individualities; their composite lack of humour—exceptions like Ogilvy and Annan, and even Neville only proving the rule; their simplicity, running the entire gamut from candour to stupidity; their patience which was half courage, half a capacity for suffering; and, in the latter, more ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... a touch of masculine irony and humour about this that took my fancy; and we went to the house, Miss —— saying that two new persons in one afternoon would be rather a strain for her uncle, much as he would enjoy it, and that his enjoyment must be severely limited. "His illness," she ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Live filled his soul with passionate rebellion and coloured his exposition with the hues of despair. But to minds temperamentally different from his, minds whose egotism is qualified by a more unselfish humour, it is possible to avail one's self of Schopenhauer's vision, without submitting one's self to his conclusions, to see our wills only as temporary manifestations of an ampler will, our lives as passing phases of a greater Life, and to accept these facts even joyfully, to take our places in that ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... man in the chimney-corner, who, in spite of the taciturnity induced by the pipe of tobacco, could not or would not refrain from this slight testimony to his comrade's humour. ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... in responsive echo; but, just then their aunt bustled into the room, her face the picture of good-humour, in marked contrast to theirs, and she caught the ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... always put my aunt into great good-humour, and she promised at the end of it to pay for the new setting of the diamond; desiring me to take it on my arrival in London to the great jeweller, Mr. Polonius, and send her the bill. "The fact is," said she, "that the gold in which the thing is set is worth five guineas at the very ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his wonted range, and at last set out in quest of some little herd whose leader his superior strength might beat down and supplant. Of his own prowess, his power to supplant all rivals, he had no doubt. But hitherto he had found none to answer his challenge, and his humour was testy. He had no idea what sort of an animal it was that was making such objectionable noises on the other side of the hill; but whatever it might be, he did not like it. He knew it was not a bear. He knew it was ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... more tended to preserve their happiness is that they know no other use of riches than the enjoyment of them. They know no other use of it than that of promoting mirth and good humour; for which end they generously bring their gains into a common stock, whereby they whose gains are small have an equal enjoyment with those whose profits are larger, excepting only that a mark or ignominy is affixed on those who do not contribute to the common stock ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... character. First the mature wisdom and stern integrity of the father; then the exuberant tenderness of the mother. And then one is brave and enthusiastic, another thoughtful, and another tender. One is remarkable for being full of rich humour, another is sad, mournful, even melancholy. Again, besides these, there are diversities of condition in life. First, there is the heir, sustaining the name and honour of the family; then perchance the soldier, in whose career all the anxiety and solicitude of the family is centred; then the ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... high-class game in imperial politics," says SARK. "Rather akin to the humour of making a butter slide on the pavement for the discomfiture of unsuspecting passers-by. But ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, May 20, 1914 • Various
... their horses and prepare to set out. shortly after this harange he was joined by six or eight only and with these I smoked a pipe and directed the men to put on their packs being determined to set out with them while I had them in the humour at half after 12 we set out, several of the old women were crying and imploring the great sperit to protect their warriors as if they were going to inevitable distruction. we had not proceeded far before our party was augmented by ten or twelve more, and before we reached the Creek which ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... cousin! Who can help admiring that natural humour, that pleasant, broad, red, thoughtless (patting his ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith
... of the Hellespont, they asked, in a very modest manner, to be provided with money to defray the expenses of their march, as well as provisions, and to be allowed a respite of two days. But the chief magistrate of the city was indignant at this request, being also out of humour with them on account of some injury which had been done to property of his own in the suburbs, and collected a great mob of the lowest of the people, with a body of armourers, of whom there is a great number ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... "Fifty times." The magistrate remarked, in somewhat grim humour, "Then this is her Jubilee," and, moved by the coincidence, he let her go free. So Rose spent her jubilee ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... I would cast it into the fire and burn it." "Never," comments a modern writer,[684] "had the King spoken a truer word, or described himself more accurately. Few would have thought that, under so careless and splendid an exterior—the very ideal of bluff, open-hearted good-humour and frankness—there lay a watchful and secret eye, that marked what was going on, without appearing to mark it; kept its own counsel until it was time to strike, and then struck, as suddenly and remorselessly as a beast ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... The old humour re-asserted itself among the wild, careless fellows who had come through. Tich, one of the Duo, Birfer, and Ginger were no longer there to plot out their daily round of "schemes." Clarke, Martel, Stumpy, and Old Casey were left to ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... "The Old Ship," and carried it about with him, setting it up wherever his fancy dictated. And that, on my honour as a Learned Clerk, is the whole plot of a fat, closely-printed book of more than three hundred pages. I hope I have a fairly catholic appreciation of humour; certainly, I can enjoy most things, from MEREDITH to the American coloured comic supplement; but The Flying Inn was too much for me. It cannot have been easy to write, even given useful characters like Lord Ivywood and Captain ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
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