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More "Quip" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... names were James Leander, the latter being conferred for no more classical reason than his father's association with a famous boating club, but the fact supplied Furneaux with material for many a quip. These things Theydon learnt later. At present he was giving all his attention to Winter, who led the way into a dainty furnished bedroom. The electric lights were governed by two switches. A pair of lamps occupied the usual place in front of a dressing table; ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... folly. So I, a fool, do greet thee, fool, and welcome thee to this my palace of ease and pleasaunce where, an ye be minded to list to the folly of a rarely foolish fool, I will, with foolish jape and quip, befool thy mind to mirth and jollity, for thou art a sad ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... the governor's "quip modest," he merely growled out something about zeal in discharging his duty, and anxiety to prevent smuggling, to which the ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... strangest feet, two toes behind and two in front, and when he came down near where I stood, I saw a bright-red spot on the head. When I went a step nearer, he didn't like it, and then laughed out loud at me—'Quip! Cher, cher, cher, cher! Ha! ha! ha! ha!' I thought he might be some kind of a Woodpecker, but those in uncle's room are a ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... one—and looked very disconsolate. "What has become of your case?" Lincoln asked. "Gone to h—-," was the gloomy response. "Well, don't give it up," Lincoln rejoined cheerfully; "you can try it again there"—a quip which has been attributed to many wits in many ages, and will doubtless make the reputation of jesters yet to be.] But the fact is that with all his stories and jests, his frank companionable humor, his gift of easy accessibility ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... of the work of Erasmus—his Greek edition of the New Testament and his Praise of Folly—has already been mentioned. In a series of satirical dialogues—the Adages and the Colloquies—he displayed a brilliant intellect and a sparkling wit. With quip and jest he made light of the ignorance and credulity of many clergymen, especially of the monks. He laughed at every one, himself included. "Literary people," said he, "resemble the great figured tapestries of Flanders, which produce effect only when ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... to tell, began on this wise:—Albeit, debonair my ladies, you have forestalled me to-day of more than two of the stories, of which I had thought to tell one, yet one is still left me to recount, which carries at the close of it a quip of such a sort, that perhaps we have as yet heard nought ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... to its powers over gentlemen who made debts without the intention of paying them, as he may have received at frequent unsolicited interviews with a sergeant or a bum-bailiff, has this passage in his "Quip for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... a limerick," said Jeffers lightly. "It's about a young spaceman named Mike, who said: 'I can do as I like!' And to prove his bright quip, he took a round trip, clear to Sirius B on a bike. Or, the tale of the pirate, Black Bart, whose head was as hard as ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... his gang were toward the fore—first out. They spread off to one side with jest and quip, with flash of bottle and slap on shoulder. The populace thinned a bit from the steps.... And then suddenly as a pistol shot Cleve Whitmore's voice rang out ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... had come to stand in awe of his almost uncanny powers of guessing facts from nuances, and of linking nuances into conclusions often startling in their thoroughness and correctness. But Dick, his shoulder toward her, laughing over some quip of Hancock, was just turning his laughter-crinkled eyes toward her as he started ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... Herbert E. Pyecroft—for such she learned was his full name; a face customarily sedate and elderish, and then, almost without perceptible change, for swift moments oddly youthful; with a wide mouth, which would suddenly twist up at its right corner as though from some unholy quip of humor, and whose as sudden straightening into a solemn line would show that the unseemly humor had been exorcised. In manner he was bland, ornate, gestureish, ample; giving the sense that in nothing less commodious than a church could he loose his person and his powers ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... enjoyment of the situation by a smile of elderly amusement. Or yet again we can see him at the room of some boon companion seriously announcing to a convulsed assembly his intention of applying for a fellowship, and when the last quip had been hurled at him through clouds of smoke and the laughter had died down, proposing that the house should go into committee for the purpose of concocting the now famous letter to Burleigh. When we next catch a glimpse of ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... hurt her when he flung himself into a chair and exchanged a quip with Harlequin in the usual manner as with an equal, and it offended her still more that Harlequin, knowing what he now knew, should use him with the ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... recorded in his lifetime relates that Burbage, when playing Richard III., agreed with a lady in the audience to visit her after the performance; Shakespeare, overhearing the conversation, anticipated the actor's visit and met Burbage on his arrival with the quip that "William the Conqueror was ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... walked like a king through the filth and the clutter, (Sweet to meet upon the street, why did you glance me by?) But he caught the quaint Italian quip she flung him from the gutter; (What can there be to cry about that I should ...
— A Few Figs from Thistles • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... well known, and that his domestic experiences have made him the good apostle he is. I remember how well he turned off the argument against himself as to the miracle of the marriage-feast in Cana of Galilee: "Yes, certainly, drink as much wine made of water as you can." It was a witty quip, but is no reply to that miracle of hospitality. Apropos,—I do not know whether or not the following anecdote can be fathered on Mr. Gough, but it is too good to be lost, especially as it bears upon the fate ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... thought of Emmy as imbedded in domestic affairs. After all, damn it, as he was thinking; if you want one girl it is rotten luck to be fobbed off with another. Alf knew quite well the devastating phrase, at one time freely used as an irresistible quip (like "There's hair" or "That's all right, tell your mother; it'll be ninepence") by which one suggested disaster—"And that spoilt his evening." The phrase was in his mind, horrible to feel. Yet what could he have done in face ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... from the East and from the West, That's subject to no academic rule; You may find it in the jeering of a jest, Or distil it from the folly of a fool. I can teach you with a quip, if I've a mind; I can trick you into learning with a laugh; Oh, winnow all my folly, and you'll find A grain or two of ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... My quip brought a glint into her eyes and a richer colour to her cheek. "Yes, heard of him," she said, with a trace of chagrin in her voice. "And now, O Nimrod of the watery plains, how far is ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... The quip escaped him, so to speak, unawares. His voice remained serious and free of all chaff. And he muttered, ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... is possible that Byron was thinking of Horace Walpole's famous quip, "The summer has set in with its usual severity." But, of course, the meaning is that, owing to excessive and abnormal fogs, the summer gilding might have to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... digest that quip of the mule?" said Richard. "Wash it down with a brimming flagon, man, or thou wilt choke upon it. Why, so—well pulled!—and now I will tell thee, thou art a soldier as well as I, and we must brook each other's jests in the hall as each other's blows in the tourney, ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... trusty blade, an' laying bare his knotted arm, approached the dastardly ruffian with many a merry quip and jest, prepared ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... to put him off. Then Worry began to shadow David by day, to share his pillow at night. If Fisher, like so many others, should fail—! But with an effort he concealed the unbidden guest from Shirley. With her he was always cheery, ready with quip and laugh, teasing her over her devotion to that red-faced bit of humanity, hight Davy Junior. And in truth, the sight of her, still weak and fragile but happy in the possession of her baby, would give him a fresh courage. Things couldn't happen to ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... good stories. But the close is the stage at which he arrives at his mental conclusion as to the "preponderance" of the evidence. Jests and light conversation are out of place when the judge is performing his functions in the courtroom of the mind. An amusing remark or a witty quip at this juncture would suggest that the scales of decision in the salesman's own mind were somewhat unbalanced. Your attitude when you are weighing "Yes" and "No" before the prospect should be pleasant, but quiet and serious, as is becoming ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... failure to stop all supplies from reaching Germany. Lord SYDENHAM attributed it to the Declaration of London, which had crippled the Navy; Lord BERESFORD thought it was the result of trying to run a war with a Cabinet that included twenty-one amateurs. Lord LANSDOWNE, a master of the quip modest, thereupon stated the Government's intention to add a twenty-second to the twenty-one by appointing a Minister ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 1, 1916 • Various
... few thousand dollars less to put up here and there, and he would have been ruined; his blood became hotter whenever he thought of it. He had had to fight the worst of it through alone, for George, who had been useful as a kind of buyer and seller, who was ever all things to all men, and ready with quip and jest, and not a little uncertain as to truth—to which the old man shut his eyes when there was a "deal" on—had, in the end, been of no use at all, and had seemed to go to pieces just when he was most needed. His father had put it all ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... Judge came in with a smile on his round face and shot off a merry remark. But the quip didn't take as it should have done. He was received with quiet nods and not with smiles and loud greetings as usual. Nothing daunted, he made his way to the bar, and, standing next to Hitchcock, called ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... much winter in the country as it is in the town. The trees are still there, and in and about them birds remain. "Quip! whip!" sounds from the elms; "Whip! quip!" Redwing thrushes threaten with the "whip" those who advance towards them; they spend much of the day in the elm-tops. Thick tussocks of old grass are conspicuous at the ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... labor of love; pleasure &c 827. relaxation; leisure &c 685. fun, frolic, merriment, jollity; joviality, jovialness^; heyday; laughter &c 838; jocosity, jocoseness^; drollery, buffoonery, tomfoolery; mummery, pleasantry; wit &c 842; quip, quirk. [verbal expressions of amusement: list] giggle, titter, snigger, snicker, crow, cheer, chuckle, shout; horse laugh, belly laugh, hearty laugh; guffaw; burst of laughter, fit of laughter, shout of laughter, roar of laughter, peal of laughter; cachinnation^; Kentish ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the Gallic love of wit and laughter. To joke and quip seemed to him beneath the dignity of men. It is, rather, the safety-valve of a highly intelligent people—the outlet for their ironic perceptions of life. The most amusing songs of the war that I ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... brook; But when the twangling ended, skipt again; And being asked, 'Why skipt ye not, Sir Fool?' Made answer, 'I had liefer twenty years Skip to the broken music of my brains Than any broken music thou canst make.' Then Tristram, waiting for the quip to come, 'Good now, what music have I broken, fool?' And little Dagonet, skipping, 'Arthur, the King's; For when thou playest that air with Queen Isolt, Thou makest broken music with thy bride, Her daintier namesake down in Brittany— And so thou ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... Burbage, when playing Richard III, agreed with a lady in the audience to visit her after the performance; Shakespeare, overhearing the conversation, anticipated the actor's visit, and met Burbage on his arrival with the quip that 'William the Conqueror was before Richard ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... such a man? I then asserted the reasonableness of all that is. To this he agreed, reserving, however, one exception. He looked at me, as he said it, in a way I could not mistake. The inference was obvious. That he should be guilty of so cheap a quip in the midst of a ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... at the prospect of his services being in requisition again. He had not yet learnt the application to all things mundane of Disraeli's quip that it is ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... it shall be a duty and a pleasing sport to wander with Momus beneath the tropic stars where Melpomene once stalked austere. Now to cause laughter to echo from those lavish jungles and frowning crags where formerly rang the cries of pirates' victims; to lay aside pike and cutlass and attack with quip and jollity; to draw one saving titter of mirth from the rusty casque of Romance—this were pleasant to do in the shade of the lemon-trees on that coast that is curved like lips set ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... pass each other as fast as if they had been shod with seven-league boots. So he not only kept up with us easily, but oftentimes made a detour through the fields and over the wild country on either side, as a questing dog does, ever returning to us with some quaint vagrant fancy or quip of ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... police force has always been fair game for the students, a position "he" (to use the long-standing quip) did not always appreciate. Gatherings of students in the streets were at one time looked upon with great disfavor, while the daily "rushes" at the old post-office, before the days of carrier delivery, were particularly prolific sources of trouble. The office ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... quip would leave us cold. The "Isles of Greece" seem rather tawdry too; but on the "Address to the Ocean," or on "The Dying Gladiator," "time has writ ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wandering warble of a brook; But when the twangling ended, skipt again; And being asked, 'Why skipt ye not, Sir Fool?' Made answer, 'I had liefer twenty years Skip to the broken music of my brains Than any broken music thou canst make.' Then Tristram, waiting for the quip to come, 'Good now, what music have I broken, fool?' And little Dagonet, skipping, 'Arthur, the King's; For when thou playest that air with Queen Isolt, Thou makest broken music with thy bride, Her daintier namesake down in ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... dubious smile over the quip. This much he felt that he could afford, since those same courts served his ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... is full of quips and anecdotes. Probably the most famous coffee quip is that of Mme. de Sevigne, who, as already told in chapter XI, was wrongfully credited with saying, "Racine and coffee will pass." It was Voltaire in his preface to Irene who thus accused the amiable letter-writer; and she, being dead, could ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... until one of the men shook his head, when he snatched at the opportunity of firing his quip. ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... it off with a light laugh and a genial quip. Just say: 'Oh, here you are!' or something. You know ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... was next to Miss Thorn's, while the Celebrity was placed at the right of Miss Trevor. I observed that his face went blank from time to time at some quip of hers: even a dull woman may be sharp under such circumstances, and Miss Trevor had wits to spare. And I marked that she never allowed her talk with him to drift into deep water; when there was danger of this ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... love; pleasure &c 827. relaxation; leisure &c 685. fun, frolic, merriment, jollity; joviality, jovialness^; heyday; laughter &c 838; jocosity, jocoseness^; drollery, buffoonery, tomfoolery; mummery, pleasantry; wit &c 842; quip, quirk. [verbal expressions of amusement: list] giggle, titter, snigger, snicker, crow, cheer, chuckle, shout; horse laugh, belly laugh, hearty laugh; guffaw; burst of laughter, fit of laughter, shout of laughter, roar of laughter, peal of laughter; cachinnation^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... by word or by sign, but rested, never smiling, and tasting neither food nor drink, because she pined with longing for her deep-bosomed daughter, until careful Iambe—who pleased her moods in aftertime also—moved the holy lady with many a quip and jest to smile and laugh and cheer her heart. Then Metaneira filled a cup with sweet wine and offered it to her; but she refused it, for she said it was not lawful for her to drink red wine, but bade them mix meal and water with soft mint and give her ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... to put up here and there, and he would have been ruined; his blood became hotter whenever he thought of it. He had had to fight the worst of it through alone, for George, who had been useful as a kind of buyer and seller, who was ever all things to all men, and ready with quip and jest, and not a little uncertain as to truth—to which the old man shut his eyes when there was a "deal" on—had, in the end, been of no use at all, and had seemed to go to pieces just when he was most ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... not flaunt in gay parterres; it resembled those that Cowley and Evelyn delighted in, with clipped trees, and shaven lawns, and stone satyrs, and dark, shadowing yews, and a sun-dial, with a Latin motto sculptured on it, standing at the farther end. Lamb was the slave of quip and whimsey; he stuttered out puns to the detriment of all serious and improving conversation, and twice or so in the year he was overtaken in liquor. Well, in spite of these things, perhaps on account of these things, I love his memory. For love and charity ripened in that nature as peaches ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... gossiping to him about our village worthies, making him laugh heartily at their sayings passed into tradition and fable among us boys; for our one-eyed shoemaker and our corpulent grocer, like many other country wits to fortune and to fame unknown, surpassed either Douglas Jerrold or Sydney Smith in quip and drollery. And I did not omit George Lenox, for all Belfield except his wife was in the secret of his affairs, and they were our crowning joke, in which poor George himself joined merrily, although the story was so ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... the Society of Friends, you may extract a jest by saying "that many of the characters trembled with anxiety before its production—in fact, were quakers!" The name of the Manager of the Haymarket has frequently been the subject of a quip, if not a crank; still it may yet serve as a peg for slyly observing that, "At the fall of the Curtain, TREE, naturally enough, appeared with ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... to say that his effects were nil, but he felt that the quip was too subtle, and would be lost on his present audience, so he merely said that he was not. There was a rather awkward silence for a minute. Then the Head ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... Mrs. Dinnie, baker, in return for a flagon bun. Long ago her daughter, Janet, and Betsy had agreed to marry on the same day, and many a quip had Mrs. Dinnie cast at their romantic compact. But Janet died, and so it was a sad letter that Tommy had to write to her mother. "I'm doubting you're no auld enough for this ane," soft-hearted Betsy said, but she did not ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... and all is included; the eager and absorbing quest is the quest of truth. It is this which the new generation demands from science, not the oratorical art of the professor, the noble gesture, the quip that lightens the weight of the discourse, the lively peroration of the carefully elaborated harangue, and all those expedients which were once developed by a special art for the express purpose of capturing the attention. It is passion for ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... of Saxo's, for the scene is comic. The king comes forth when the hero is victorious, and laughing at his hairy legs, nick-names him Shaggy-breech, and bids him to the feast. Ragnar fetches up his comrades, and apparently seeks out the frightened courtiers (no doubt with appropriate quip, omitted by Saxo, who hurries on), feasts, marries the king's daughter, and begets on her ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... trawler. Most of the available wheezes were pulled long ago by Plato in the Republic (not the New Republic) or by Samuel Butler in his Notebooks. Contribs come valiantly to hand with a barrowful of letters every day—("The ravings fed him" as Don captioned some contrib's quip about Simeon Stylites living on a column); but nevertheless the direct and alternating current must be turned on six times a week. His jocular exposal of the colyumist's trade secret compares it to the ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... was vain for the Rabbi of the little western isle to contend by quip or reason against the popular frenzy. England, indeed, was a hotbed of Christian enthusiasts awaiting the Jewish Millennium, the downfall of the Pope and Anti-Christ, and Jews and Christians ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... 2? God loves a trinity." Should any one take three pieces, he would say: "Where do you see a waggon with three wheels? Who builds a three-cornered hut?" Lastly, should any one take four pieces, he would cap them with a fifth, and add thereto the punning quip, "Na piat opiat [45]". After devouring at least twelve steaks of sturgeon, Chichikov ventured to think to himself, "My host cannot possibly add to THEM," but found that he was mistaken, for, without a word, Pietukh heaped upon his plate an enormous ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... His mother looks for great things from Osborne. I'm rather proud of him myself. He'll get a Trinity fellowship, if they play him fair. As I was saying at the magistrates' meeting yesterday, "I've got a son who will make a noise at Cambridge, or I'm very much mistaken." Now, is it not a queer quip of Nature,' continued the squire, turning his honest face towards Molly, as if he was going to impart a new idea to her, 'that I, a Hamley of Hamley, straight in descent from nobody knows when—the Heptarchy, they say—What's the ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... bards! A pleasant quip! No manufactured gloom to dim that far light! Of dirge's luxury deprive my lip? So suns might say there shall be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 29, 1892 • Various
... of all. I may be super-sensitive and crotchety about such things, but I can see no excuse for keeping a servant—especially a nurse-maid—who laughs at everything that's said by her superiors, even though the quip may be no more side-splitting than a ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
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