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More "Wit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... difficult to say whether the wit or the mystery disgusted Trevelyan the most. He had felt that he was defiling himself with dirt when he first went to Mr. Bozzle. He knew that he was having recourse to means that were base and low,—which could ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... said the other; 'the theme or the example?' And they both laughed, though I did not seize the point of the wit. ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... appearance of knowingness is on their side, of naivete and gullibility on his. Yet, in the inarticulate heart of him, he clings to it that he is not a dupe, and that there is a realm in which (as Emerson says) all their wit and intellectual superiority is no better than the cunning of a fox. Moral scepticism can no more be refuted or proved by logic than intellectual scepticism can. When we stick to it that there is truth (be it of either kind), we do so with ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... it?" said Whistling Dick, with tentative familiarity; "you wit yer little Gherman-band nixcumrous chunes. Watcher know about music? Pick yer ears, and listen agin. Here's de way I ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... book the reader may get that ability in judgement, which above all should be cultivated, the editor thought it worth while to prefix to the anthology an exposition of the norms of judgement used in selecting the epigrams. He drew these norms not merely from his own wit or from the authorities of Antiquity, but from the conversation of learned men experienced in civilized life. Hence the reader will find here their judgements, not the editor's, and will, if he is unbiased, perceive how ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... what they desired. They stopped work and rolled on the ground in their laughter. They were stimulated to the highest flights of wit. ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... the dry season of 1903 — the dryest for years in Bontoc — there was water in at least a fourth of this little garden. There is evidently a very small. but perpetual spring within the plat. Taro now occupies the garden and is weeded and gathered by Na-wit', an old man chosen by the old men of the pueblo for this office. Na-wit' maintains and the Igorot believe that the vegetable springs up without planting. As the watering of fil-lang' is through the special dispensation of Lu-ma'-wig, so the taro left by ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... at the speaker in horror. He had reason to know that Dick was reckless, but this dare-devil despair apalled him. Yet he had wit enough to attempt no remonstrance, so he gulped ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... back in prehistoric days, was the first dog with the wit to know his master's sheep apart from all other sheep. Perhaps that is the best, if least scientific, ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... afraid to open her soft little heart to him, and show him innocently all its goodness, and ignorance of worldliness. She warmed and brightened under his kindly influence, and was often surprised in secret at her own simple readiness of wit and speech. ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a turnip on my shoulders, let me stick to th' fallow," he said to his exasperated mother. He had too low an opinion of himself. But he went about at his work on the farm gladly enough, glad of the active labour and the smell of the land again, having youth and vigour and humour, and a comic wit, having the will and the power to forget his own shortcomings, finding himself violent with occasional rages, but usually on good terms with ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... them. That had only been his suspicion—groundless after his swift glance at her. Perhaps unconsciousness of his meaning, a simulated innocence, and ignorance might serve her with this strange man. She resolved to try it, to use all her woman's intuition and wit and cunning. Here was an educated man who was a criminal—an outcast. Deep within him might be memories of a different life. They might be stirred. Joan decided in that swift instant that, if she ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... was considered to be the most brilliant of my pupils, taking a Double First under my auspices and leaving Oxford with flying colors when I retired myself a year or two ago. He has been very lucky since, he is full of ambitions in the political line, and he has a fearless and rather caustic wit." ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... from by-gone ages. In my mouth the words are melting, From my lips the tones are gliding, From my tongue they wish to hasten; When my willing teeth are parted, When my ready mouth is opened, Songs of ancient wit and wisdom Hasten from me not unwilling. Golden friend, and dearest brother, Brother dear of mine in childhood, Come and sing with me the stories, Come and chant with me the legends, Legends of the times forgotten, Since we now are here together, Come together from our roamings. ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... the reality of it all. It seemed like some fairy tale or book story come true. Again, it seemed more like a stage, and these the actors, she and Billy having blundered into the scene in some incomprehensible way. Much of wit she sensed which she did not understand. Much she did understand. And she was aware that brains were playing as she had never seen brains play before. The puritan streak in her training was astonished and shocked by some of the broadness; but she refused ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... as every body says, corrected by Dryden. It is the most entire piece of mirth, a complete farce from one end to the other, that certainly was ever writ. I never laughed so in all my life. I laughed till my head [ached] all the evening and night with the laughing; and at very good wit therein, not fooling. The house full, and in all things of mighty content to me. Thence to the New Exchange with my wife, where, at my bookseller's, I saw "The History of the Royall Society," which, I believe, is a fine ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... know thy secret—thou lovest above thy station: if thou hast wit, courage, and discretion, I can secure to thee the realization of thy most sanguine hopes; and the sole condition I ask in return is, that thou shalt be steadfast to thine own ends. I shall demand from thee a solemn oath to marry her whom thou lovest; to bear her to thine home on ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... for but few years,—adding that it was far different for Gilbert, who, he supposed, would very soon be a Dean with a Cathedral of his own, and would forget his humble friend the old Vicar. But Gilbert put the wit aside, and talked earnestly with the Vicar about the end of life and what might be hereafter. But the old Vicar said solemnly that he knew not, and indeed cared little. But that he would go into the dark like a child holding a loving hand, and would ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... toward caricature. Such productions may please some distinguished and intelligent natures which cannot have been highly favored in the distribution of the delicacies of sentiment and the exquisite graces of wit. In a word, the art indulging in this class of manifestations acts according to the mode simpliste. I borrow this term from Charles Fourier, and I say once for all, that by it I mean not the entire, but the almost exclusive predominance of one or the other of the modalities ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... of the woods! thou motley fool! Who shall thy gay buffoonery describe? Thine ever-ready notes of ridicule Pursue thy fellows still with jest and gibe. Wit—sophist—songster—Yorick of thy tribe, Thou sportive satirist of Nature's school, To thee the palm of scoffing we ascribe, Arch scoffer, and mad Abbot of Misrule! For such thou art by day—but all night long ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... customs and peculiarities and ethics were also touched upon in a manner suited to the requirements and capacity of the reader; medical and hygienic advice were given for man and beast, ending with the quaint warning to use before and after taking that unfashionable medicine, prayer. Wit, history, romance, poetry, all contributed to the almanac. The printer turned an extra penny by advertising various articles that he had for sale, from negro slaves to garden seeds. So, in addition to what the original readers ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... of fashionable life and surrounded by the amusements and bustle of the metropolis of New England, for you to exclaim, "How lonely I am!" is unpardonable, or at most admits of but one excuse, to wit, that you can plead the feelings of the youth who exclaimed, "Gods annihilate both time and space and make ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... that faith is dead withouten workis, So for to worken give me wit and grace! That I be quit from thence that most dark is; O thou that art so fair and full of grace, Be thou mine advocate in that high place, There, as withouten end is sung Hozanne, Thou Christes mother, daughter dear ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... questions of the day, and planned literary sketches, afterwards published in the Nova Scotian. Among those who thus gathered round him, such men as S. G. W. Archibald, Beamish Murdoch, and Jotham Blanchard are now only remembered by students of Nova Scotian history. Even the Irish wit and humour of Laurence O'Connor Doyle gives him but a local immortality. But the names of Thomas C. Haliburton (Sam Slick) and Captain John Kincaid of the Rifle Brigade are known even to superficial students of English literature, ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... to sit to any one, could not withstand this dynamic little stranger. He did not sue: he invited; he did not invite: he commanded. He was twenty-one years old. He wore spectacles that flashed more than any other pair ever seen. He was a wit. He was brimful of ideas. He knew Whistler. He knew Edmond de Goncourt. He knew every one in Paris. He knew them all by heart. He was Paris in Oxford. It was whispered that, so soon as he had polished off his ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... settled down. She is very busy with the lawyer, and makes him explain each and every angle he draws in his plans. Quite right of her, too, for undeniably the lawyer is the right man for her, a wit and a sportsman, well-to-do, rather simple-minded, strong-necked. At first Mrs. Molie seemed unable to reconcile herself to the constant companionship of these two in the living room, and she frequently had some errand that took her ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... exhibited with more force than eloquence his loyalty to the crown, and a conservatism which was branded by the liberals as mediaeval. But his originality, his boldness, his fearlessness, his rugged earnestness, his wit and humor, his biting sarcasm, his fertility of resources, his knowledge of men and affairs, and his devoted patriotism, marked him ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... said Rupert. "There's a way out of every difficulty if one has the wit to find it. Keep cool, my dear girl! If you let yourself go, you will ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... tranquillity." A good definition so far as it goes. But Wordsworth could see only one side of the shield. He was notoriously so deficient in the faculty of humor, that even Sydney Smith was unintelligible to him. Few specimens of what can be called wit can be found in his writings. He could not see that there is a poetry of wit as well as of sentiment,—of the intellect as well as of the emotions. No wonder he could not enjoy Pope, and had little relish for Horace. And yet how ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... shall be managed in groups and series as far as is practicable, and shall consist of three primary series, to wit: Agricultural, Mechanical and Domestic Industry. The chief of each group to be elected weekly, and the chief of each series once in two months by the members thereof, subject to the approval of the ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... in a state of greater purity than a subsequent recension, which subsequent recension was anterior to our present Gospels, and being older was purer, because nearer to the fountain-head of knowledge: but this older and purer form is characterized by a more pronounced supernatural element—to wit, the 'fire' in Jordan and the 'light'—so that, the older and purer the tradition, the more supernatural is ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... I am testing an idea, that is all. You must be guided by your own wit and judgment, in which I have the utmost confidence. Don't waste your time or fascinations on the wrong people. Find out if among the French or Belgian flying officers, who from time to time visit London, there are any whose connections and movements ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... again refer the Government of Her Majesty, the Queen of Great Britain, to the London Convention of 1884, concluded between this Republic and the United Kingdom, which in Article XIV. guarantees certain specified rights to the white inhabitants of this Republic, to wit:— ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... opinion I then formed of D'Arcy as a talker was not of much account. But since then I have seen very much of men, and I find that I was right in the view I then took of his conversational powers. When his spirits were at their highest he was without an equal as a wit, without an equal as a humourist. He had more than even Cyril Aylwin's quickness of repartee, and it was of an incomparably rarer quality. To define it would be, of course, impossible, but I might perhaps call it poetic ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... that battle of tongues La Boulaye was covering himself with glory and doing credit to his patron, the Incorruptible. He was of a rhetoric not inferior to Vergniaud's—that most eloquent Girondon—and of a quickness of wit and honesty of aim unrivalled in the whole body of the Convention, and with these gifts he harassed to no little purpose those smooth-tongued legislators of the Gironde, whom Dumouriez called the Jesuits of the Revolution. His popularity with the men ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... monk lay on his back in the bed, wit his head propped rather highly on a hard straw bolster; and the extreme attenuation of his body was indicated by the very slight degree in which the clothes that covered him were raised above the love of the bedstead. On the coverlet upon ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... they have spoken wisely. He knows the sparkle of the true stone, and puts it in high place, wherever he finds it. Such is the happy position of Homer,[550] perhaps; of Chaucer,[551] of Saadi.[552] They felt that all wit was their wit. And they are librarians and historiographers, as well as poets. Each romancer was heir and dispenser of all the hundred tales of ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the churches merely as works of art. He understood the mechanism of human society, and never offended too much against the current prejudices, for the executioners had more power than he; but he bent the social laws to his will with the grace and wit that are so well displayed in his scene with M. Dimanche. He was, in short, the embodiment of Moliere's Don Juan, Goethe's Faust, Byron's Manfred, and Maturin's Melmoth—grand pictures drawn by the greatest geniuses of Europe, and to which neither the harmonies ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... company, to no less a person than the famous Englishman Walter Mapes, or Map, the author of De Nugis Curialium, the reputed author (v. chap. i.) of divers ingenious Latin poems, friend of Becket, Archdeacon of Oxford, churchman, statesman, and wit. No valid reason whatever has yet been shown for questioning this attribution, especially considering the number, antiquity, and strength of the documents by which it is attested. Map's date (1137-96) is the right one; his abilities were equal to any literary ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... out—up to a certain point—as smoothly as ever it had done in his dreams. The only hitch which he had feared—to wit, the non-appearance of Sidney Mercer, did not occur. It would spoil the scene a little, he had felt, if Sidney Mercer did not present himself to play the role of foil; but he need have had no fears on this point. Sidney had the gift, not uncommon ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... "You nit-wit!" she snapped. "You can't bury me out here. I want to go back to New York, where there's a little life. I'm bored with you and ...
— The Worlds of If • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... as joy, dross pass for gold, Vulgarity can masquerade as wit, Or spite wear friendship's garments; but I hold That passionate feeling has no counterfeit. Chief jewel from Jove's crown 'twas sent men, lent For inspiration ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... installation was directed by the 1st of January. This has entailed upon the Post Office Department a great deal of very heavy labor, but the Postmaster General informs me that on the date selected, to wit, the 1st of January, near at hand, the department will be in readiness to meet successfully the requirements ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William H. Taft • William H. Taft
... cry of grief was raised at the evil omen. But the ready wit of William failed him not. "By the splendour of God," he cried, "I have taken seizin of my kingdom; the earth of England is in my hands." The whole army landed in order, but only one day was spent at Pevensey. On the next day the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... passages, the teaching seem. to be, that the body of the full-grown spiritual man is radiant or luminous,-for those at least, who have anointed their eyes wit! eye-salve, so ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... Muller's house and asked him to let me have a room, at the same time giving him what remained of my capital, namely twenty francs. I quickly discovered that my old friend was embarrassed by my perfectly open confidence in him, and that he was at his wit's end to know what to do with me. I soon gave up the large room containing a grand piano, which he had allotted to me on the impulse of the moment, and retired to a modest little bedroom. The meals were my great trial, not because I was fastidious, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... dozen verses from them. Marillac boldly defended the cause of contemporary literature, which he considered as a personal matter, and poured out a profusion of sarcastic remarks in which there was more wit than good taste. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... character, that I hope no one will attempt to claim any merit from this negative sort of goodness, or value herself merely for not being the very worst thing she possibly can be. Let no mistaken girl fancy she gives a proof of her wit by her want of piety, or that a contempt of things serious and sacred will exalt her understanding, or raise her character even in the opinion of the most avowed male infidels. For one may venture ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... deckhand jobs were ever open to Neils, yet, for some reason best known to himself, he preferred to stick by the Maggie. In his dull way it is probable that he was fascinated by the agile intelligence of Mr. Gibney, the vitriolic tongue of Captain Scraggs, and the elephantine wit and grizzly bear courage of Mr. McGuffey. At any rate, he delighted in hearing them snarl ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... it would not have been very easy to find anything more perfect than these extemporised representations of Nicolo Musso; they overflowed with wit, humour, and genius, and lashed the follies of the day with an unsparing scourge. The audience were quite carried away by the incomparable characterisation which distinguished all the actors, but particularly by the inimitable mimicry ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... I went and dined at Lady Lucy's, where you know I have not been this long time. They are plaguy Whigs, especially the sister Armstrong, the most insupportable of all women, pretending to wit, without any taste. She was running down the last Examiner,(6) the prettiest I had read, with a character of the present Ministry.—I left them at five, and came home. But I forgot to tell you, that this morning my cousin Dryden Leach, ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... and simpered, like a man pleased equally with his own wit and with that he had excited in others, and the discourse changed; though, throughout the night, as indeed was the fact on all other occasions during his visit, the Signor Grimaldi received from him so marked and particular attentions, as to create a strong sentiment in favor ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... declared me a heathen, fit only for the stake. Their blind zeal did not let them see that my comparison between the old and the new was merely to prove that a goodly number of our grandmothers had more blood in their veins, far more humor and wit, and certainly a greater amount of naturalness, kind-heartedness, and simplicity, than the majority of our emancipated professional women who fill the colleges, halls of learning, and various offices. This does not mean a wish to return to the past, nor does it condemn woman ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... had learnt to rue, Noting how to occasion's height he rose, How his quaint wit made home-truth seem more true, How, iron-like, his temper ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... must not be at all a cynical thing—as soon as it becomes cynical, it loses all its natural grace; it is an essentially tender-hearted quality, apt to find excuse, ready to condone, eager to forgive. The possessor of it can never be ridiculous, or heavy, or superior. Wit, of course, is a very small province of humour: wit is to humour what lightning is to the electric fluid—a vivid, bright, crackling symptom of it in certain conditions; but a man may be deeply and essentially humorous, and never ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... toward reducing them to a condition of servility." The right of a man of color that, in the selection of jurors to pass upon his life, liberty, and property, there shall be no exclusion of his race and no discrimination against them because of color, was asserted in a number of cases, to wit: Virginia v. Rives,[48] Neal v. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... evening passed, I shall not stop to relate: suffice it to say, that a more brilliant feast of wit and jollification, not even the North Cork ever enjoyed. Father Luke's drollest stories, his very quaintest humour shone forth, and the Abbe sang a new "Chanson a Boire," ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... 'Democracy' and never has the old woman been at a heavier discount since 1793. I see no discredit to the founders of the American constitution in the main fact of the rupture. On the contrary it was a great achievement to strike off by the will and wit of man a constitution for two millions of men scattered along a seaboard, which has lasted until they have become more than thirty millions and have covered a whole continent. But the freaks, pranks, and follies, not ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... enthusiasts in the provincial literary chambers, compounded of the effusions of your Voltaires and Jean-Jacques and such dirty-fingered scribblers. You have not among all your philosophers one with the wit to understand that we are an order consecrated by antiquity, that for our rights and privileges we have behind us the ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... seen him or heard him spoken of, or I should not have encouraged myself with this hope. At my first glimpse of his tall, gaunt figure, hard features, and brisk impatient movements, I knew that my wit and equanimity would be put to their full test ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... year Lady Fanny's diaries begin), the Duke of Wellington resigned, having emphatically declared that the system of representation ought to possess, and did possess, the entire confidence of the country. He had gone so far as to say that the wit of man could not have devised a better representative system than that which Lord John Russell, in the previous session, had attempted to alter by proposing to enfranchise Manchester, Leeds, and Birmingham. But the election which ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... fold; His ancestry of kin was to Lier,* *Liar For first he maketh promise for to hold His lady's counsel, and it not unfold; — Wherefore, the secret when he doth unshit,* *disclose Then lieth he, that all the world may wit.* *know ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... that intelligence devoted to Brahman, is the lower Arani; the preceptor is the upper Arani; penances and conversance wit tithe scriptures are to cause the attrition. From this is ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... looked, a many King Davids had found excuse for loving one Bathsheba. Then the inner light which had so informed every feature sought again its shrine, and Mistress Damaris Sedley, who was of a nature admirably poised and a wit most ready, lifted with the latest French shrug the jest from her own shoulders to those of another: "Oh, madam! was it you who spoke? Surely I thought it was your dead starling that you taught to call you by that name—but ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... vornehmlichkeit. Their imagination lacks style, training, education, and knowledge of the world; it has an ill-bred air even in its Sunday dress. The race is poetical and intelligent, but common and ill-mannered. Pliancy and gentleness, manners, wit, vivacity, taste, dignity, and charm, are ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... intensely alive. She, of course, was a native not of Park Lane but of Chelsea; and the people who had frequented her home there were of a different sort. They had had, mostly, a different kind of brain, a kind more restless and troublesome and untidy, and a different type of wit, more pungent and ironic, less well-fed and hilarious, and they were less well-dressed and agreeable to look at, and had (perhaps) higher thoughts (though how shall one measure height?) and ate (certainly) plainer food, ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... of mornings, Jimmy maintaining that everybody had a cold bath every morning, whereas John insisted with equal heat that nobody ever bathed ("washed," I think he called it), oftener than once a week, to wit, on Saturdays only. They engaged in a pillow fight to settle it, and as Jimmy had John fairly well smothered by his rapid fire, I voted that the ayes appeared to have it when they ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... spite of his phiz, and that shows her tact in getting on well with the dignitaries, Jeanie Mac Dougal, and you're a woman and must praise the wit of the sex. She has seen much. She has been obliged to do as the others do. But good wool is ne'er the waur for the finish of it! My faith is in her from what I know of the worth o' her in the old days. And now that she has seen, she can understand better. ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... the fox or by the dog, quickly takes to hole. Hence, perhaps, the wit of the fox that a hunter told me about. The story was all written upon the snow. A mink was hunting a rabbit, and the fox, happening along, evidently took in the situation at a glance. He secreted himself behind a tree or a rock, and, as the rabbit came along, ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... its effect. He acquired a vocabulary. That is to say, instead of the few hundred words which were all the other boys knew by which to express their thoughts, he soon had twice as many; besides that, he soon got a reputation as a wit and story-teller, and his command of words made him fond of speechmaking. He resembled most boys in liking to "show off." He had learned, too, that there were comforts in the world which he need never look for in his father's house, ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... ingenious had she been, so subtle was her woman's wit, that she had never admitted to me any knowledge of him further than a formal introduction I had once made ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... Justice. Is not your voice broken, your wind short, your chin double, your wit single, and every part about you blasted with antiquity, and will you yet call yourself young? Fie, fie, ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... Lowe writes to Bathurst:—"The enclosed extract of a letter from Count Montholon may merit, as usual, your lordship's perusal." (This, of course, is intended as wit.) "It may be regarded as a bulletin of General Bonaparte's health, meant ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... staple of Roman diet. She never lost her childish relish for boiled pork and cabbage, for bacon, for ham, hot or cold. She was by no means a glutton, ate deliberately and daintily, and while she ate, joined in the general conversation or even led it. She had a quick wit and a sharp tongue and her sallies were acclaimed. She was sought after as a guest not merely because she was a Vestal, but for herself, for her gaiety ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... followed, bashful and out of countenance, not knowing what to say, happiness had so dulled his wit. To see Adelaide, to hear the rustle of her skirt, after longing for a whole morning to be near her, after starting up a hundred time—"I will go down now"—and not to have gone; this was to him life so rich that such sensations, too greatly ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac
... a curious microcosm and full of contrasts. A mixture of unabashed blackguardism and cloistered prudery; of double-beds and primness; of humbug and frankness; of liberty and restraint; of lust and license; of brutal horse-play passing for "wit," and of candour marching with cant. The working classes scarcely called their souls their own; women and children mercilessly exploited by smug profiteers; the "Song of the Shirt"; Gradgrind and Boanerges ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... would darken his eyes to the very pictures of his own hearth? Were such a thing possible, were it even real, it would still be liable to the just objection of the critics—that, being marvelous in appearance, even as a fact it ought not to be brought forward for any purpose of wit, but only as a truth of physiology, or as a fact in the records of a surgeon. The 'incredulus odi' is too strong in such cases, and it adheres to three out of every four French anecdotes. The French taste ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... courage to wade through its muddy paragraphs he doubtless emerged vowing never to read Saltus. Besides only the novels are touched on. In 1903 G. F. Monkshood and George Gamble arranged a compilation from Saltus's work which they entitled "Wit and Wisdom from Edgar Saltus" (Greening and Co., London). The work is done without sense or sensitiveness and the prefatory essay is without salt or flavour of any sort. An anonymous writer in "Current ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... read in MS. by Elizabeth Barrett, and pronounced upon with the frank yet critical delight of her nature. In the abstruse symbolic title, too,—implying, as Browning expected his readers to discover, "sound and sense" or "music and discoursing,"—her wit had divined a more felicitous application to ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... with a soft voice and a slight Scotch accent, and wit; and a knowledge of things which were little known in the wilderness. Buddy never dreamed then how strangely culture was mixed with pure savagery in his life. To him the secret regret that he had not dared ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... both by the magic of retrospect and her own genius for admiration. London, Freshwater, Paris, Rome—these are the settings of her memories; and we see them all by a light that (perhaps) never was on land or sea, in whose radiance beauty and wit and genius move wonderfully to a perpetual music. In truth, however, these eminent Victorians of Lady RITCHIE'S circle must have been a rare company; I have no space for even a catalogue of them—Mrs. CAMERON, with her vague magnificence, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... buffoonery, his coarseness of speech, his pedantry, his contemptible cowardice. Under this ridiculous exterior, however, lay a man of much natural ability, a ripe scholar with a considerable fund of shrewdness, of mother wit and ready repartee."[2] ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... wit and eloquence, he could not contrive to make of the grand-daughter of Henry the Seventh, a Pericles, or an Alexander, or a Ptolemy, or an Augustus, or an encourager of anything that did not appear to be directly connected ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... "you make too much of it; but still, I say, I am capped. Firstly, that she did not love you; and secondly, that you did not love her. You are both young; you are both handsome; you are both well enough for wit and even for temper—take you on the right side. What ailed you ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... the Lady Hesther Stanhope [2] at Athens, and do not admire "that dangerous thing a female wit." She told me (take her own words) that she had given you a good set-down at Malta, in some disputation about the Navy; from this, of course, I readily inferred the contrary, or in the words of an acquaintance of ours, that "you had ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... to manage tings," grinned blackie. "Come, I take fifteen dollars, and you see I true man. Honour bright among teves, you know; you trust me and I trust you—he! he! he!" and blackie grinned at his own wit. ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... lower class of inhabitants, towards their own families, and towards themselves, if they should delay any longer to lay open their interests to your noble and grand Lordships, in a manner the most respectful, but the most energetic; to wit, that the United States of America have very rigorously forbidden, by a resolution of Congress, agreed to in all the Thirteen States, the importation of all English manufactures, and in general, all the merchandizes fabricated in the dominions which yet remain to ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... the Jews. Afterwards another man appeared, remarkable both for his age and majesty, and of great beauty about him, concerning whom Onias replied: "This is a love of the brethren and of the people Israel, who prayeth much for the people and for the Holy city—to wit, Jeremiah the prophet." 2 Macc. 15:12-14. Besides, we know from the Holy Scriptures that the angels pray for us. Why, then, would we deny this of the saints? "O Lord of hosts," said the angels, "how long wilt thou not have mercy on Jerusalem and on the ...
— The Confutatio Pontificia • Anonymous
... what we are going to, the comfort and safety of the Princess Irene may require you to communicate with me. You have ready wit for such emergencies. Leave me ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... pseudonym of "Uncle Scribble," contributed to the pages of the Sporting Magazine an admirable series of photographs—to adopt a modern word—of hunting and hunting men, as remarkable for dry wit and common sense, as a thorough knowledge of sport. But "Uncle Scribble," as the head of a most successful Boarding School, ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... write a sonnet and sing it, he did not esteem his castle to be at the mercy of the "editor" of a manuscript. He might indeed owe his life to the fidelity of a minstrel, or be guided in his policy by the wit of a clown; but he was not the slave of sensual music, or vulgar literature, and never allowed his Saturday reviewer to appear at table without ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... once of novelty and recollection. From my nursery days, the names of Peter, Catharine, and their marvellous city, rang in the ears of all Paris. Romance had taken refuge at the pole; Voltaire, Buffon, D'Alembert—all the wit, and all the philosophy of France—satirized the French court under the disguise of Russian panegyric; and St Petersburg was to us the modern Babylon—a something compounded of the wildness of a Scythian desert, and the lustre ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... sure tidings of the war, and then ride to join me with the conqueror. Cry not on cowardice; it is but wisdom, Dick; for this poor realm so tosseth with rebellion, and the king's name and custody so changeth hands, that no man may be certain of the morrow. Toss-pot and Shuttle-wit run in, but my Lord Good-Counsel ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is a small book in which to treat of so large a subject, and to avoid prolixity I have had to generalise. This is a dangerous practice, for what is gained in brevity is too often lost in accuracy: brevity may be always the soul of wit, it is rarely the body of truth. The expert will find that I have considered him in that I have given attention to recent developments, and if I have talked of the methods peculiar to one place as though they applied to the whole world, ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... just that word which, by another intuition, he perceives belongs to it, when you will see for yourself. Thus, the Kadosch term Nekam, which signifies vengeance, having been duly anatomised, will come out as follows:—N (ex) E (xterminatio) K (risti) A (dversarii) M (agni), to wit: "Death, Extermination of Christ, the Great Enemy." Wicked and wily Jean Kostka to outrage the decencies of orthography and against all reason write the name of the Liberator with a K, thereby concealing the true meaning, which revealed for the first time is as follows:—N ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... Howard was to be treated to just that human quality which he put into even his hastily penned notes—and, as in conversation with him, so in his letters there are repeated flashes of sage comment and of good native wit. Not too often can we make the plea for the gathering and preserving of such material. Autobiography, after all, is what biography ought to be—it is the live portrait by the side of which a mere appreciative sketch fades. I have looked through the "Memorial" volume to Bronson Howard, issued by ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard
... all. Kenneth's friends sent John Mackenzie of Tollie to inform him of these wrongs, whereupon he made a speedy return to an affair so urgent, and so suitable to his genius, for as he never offered wrong so he never suffered any. His heat did not overwhelm his wit, for he took a legal procedure, obtained a commission of fire and sword against Glengarry and his complices, which he prosecuted so bravely as in a short time by himself and his brother he soon forced them ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... reason for this extraordinary distinction? or must we resolve it solely into the irregular caprices of the human mind? The greatest genius which has enlightened this age seems in this affair to have been carried by the sharpness of his wit into a subtilty hardly to be justified by the way of thinking of that unpolished period. Speaking of the reasons for introducing this method of trial, "Qui ne voit," says he, "que, chez un peuple exerce a manier des ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... housemaids were all right, and the under-butlers, being properly subject to my control, I could wither when they grew too familiar, but the footmen were intolerable guyers. On more than one occasion their quick Irish wit had put me to my trumps to maintain my dignity, and I had noticed of late that their alleged fun at my expense had made even the parlormaid giggle in a most irritating fashion. Henriette's suggestion promised at least a week's immunity from this sort of thing, ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... am sorry your last letters give us no greater hopes of that which we so much long for, to wit, your Excellence's speedy return home; it seeming by them that the treaty was not much advanced since your last before, notwithstanding the great care and diligence used by your Excellency for the promoting thereof, as also the great acceptance you have with the Queen and Court, ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... great brilliancy and wit, who was subject to these periods, once said to me, "My dear Sir, there are times when I know I am possessed of the Devil, and then I never let myself speak." And so this wise woman carried her burden about with her in a determined, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... her friends, but still more celebrated for her enemies—known for her love, but famous for her hate—a girl without feeling, a woman without tenderness—a banished wife, a careless mother—on whom extraordinary wit, masculine sense, a clear judgment, and an ardent love of letters seem to have been lavished for no other purpose than to show that, without a good heart, they serve only to make their possessor the most contemptible of mankind. Lady Mary Wortley's heart was the receptacle ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... the special correspondent from Washington of the New York Tribune, and later of the Times. Her letters were racy, full of wit, sentiment, and discriminating criticism, plenty of fun and a little sarcasm, but not so audaciously personal and aggressive as some letter-writers from the capital. They attracted attention and were widely copied, large extracts being made ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... her two daughters was blind of one eye, and her only son was so simple that the loungers in the antechamber of the Pope were accustomed to amuse themselves with his want of wit. She is said to have died of a broken heart after the death of this son, and her portrait of him is ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... me be it male or female?" for he was minded on this wise to cut short his words. The young Sayyid replied, "O Hajjaj, draw me aside its tail so I may inform thee thereanent."[FN64] "O young man, say me on what pasture best grow the horns of the camel?" "From leaves of stone." "O lack-wit! do stones bear leaves?" "O swollen of lips and little of wits and wisdom, say me do camels have horns?" "Haply thou art a lover fond, O youth?" "Yes! in love drowned." "And whom lovest thou?"—"I ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... their ill-conditioned king all the better for knowing that after him was to come a prince after their own heart, one of English sympathies and English instincts; one who even as a boy had won their hearts by his pluck, his frankness, and his wit, and who, as he grew up, developed into a manhood as vigorous and noble as that of his father was ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... to be in ecstasies over her wit and over the repertory of ready-made phrases she keeps ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... we see that Lincoln ruled his own spirit; and we also behold the fact that he could rule others. The letter shows wise diplomacy, frankness, kindliness, wit, tact and infinite patience. Hooker had harshly and unjustly criticised Lincoln, his commander in chief. But Lincoln waives all this in deference to the virtues he believes Hooker possesses, and promotes him to succeed Burnside. In other words, the man who had been wronged promotes ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... Ab Hawwit, we began at 9:15 a.m. to exchange the broad Wady Surr of the flat seaboard, with its tall banks of stiff drab clay, for a gorge walled with old conglomerates, and threading the ruddy and dark-green foot-hills of ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... inquire . It incites; sometimes it enthralls. It innervates; it exhaults. Under its spell, reason is flung to the winds, and matters of great mundane moment are trivial and of no account: for it bewilders the wit and snatches the judgment of sane and rational men. It is most powerful in youth; it is most powerful upon youth; yet some retain it till far on in years, and no age but feels its sway:—a veiled and mysterious force; sometimes daemonical, often divine: ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... mine host; one that hath taught me more wit than ever I learned before in my 55 life; and I paid nothing for it neither, but was paid ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... of Poems, issued in 1844, in which the permanent lines of his poetic development appear more clearly than in A Year's Life. The tone of the first volume was uniformly serious, but in the second his muse's face begins to brighten with the occasional play of wit and humor. The volume was heartily praised by the critics and his reputation as a new poet of convincing distinction was established. In the following year appeared Conversations on Some of the Old Poets, a volume of literary criticism interesting now mainly as pointing to maturer ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... and ill-digested notions which he has picked up in his recent studies. Be assured that extensive and accurate knowledge is the slow acquisition of a studious lifetime; that a young man, however pregnant his wit, and prompt his talent, can have mastered but the rudiments of learning, and, in a manner, attained the implements of study. Whatever may have been your past assiduity, you must be sensible that as yet you have but reached the threshold of ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... Hillyard had been at a loss to discover in Stella Croyle the woman whom Hardiman had led him to expect. Her spirits were high, but unforced. She chattered away with more gaiety than wit, like the rest of Hardiman's guests, but the gaiety was apt to the occasion. She had the gift of a clear and musical laugh, and her small delicate face would wrinkle and pout into grimaces which gave to her a rather attractive air of gaminerie—Hillyard could find no word but the ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... pleasant to every properly constituted mind to be a centre of amiable interest for one's fellow creatures, and when one is a young man conscious of becoming mourning and a certain wit, and the fellow creatures are three young and ardent and sufficiently expressive young women who dispute for the honour of walking by one's side, one may be excused a secret exaltation. They ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... thought much of a Chinaman's wit," he observed; "but I did not think he was such a goose as to fancy that a breeze would be sent merely because he put some twisted-up bits of ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... is how to keep these two people apart," she struck in. She had recovered. I admired the quickness of women's wit. Mental agility is a rare perfection. And aren't they agile! Aren't they— just! And tenacious! When they once get hold you may uproot the tree but you won't shake them off the branch. In fact the more you shake ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... of this story of the South African diamond mines and adventures in London, on the sea and in America: "As a story teller Mr. Marshall cannot be improved upon, and whether one is looking for humor, philosophy, pathos, wit, excitement, adventure or love, he will find what he seeks, a-plenty, in this capital tale." 12mo, cloth. ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... blood in her veins. All the same I lover her; and I must go on loving her; and if I can humble her inordinate vanity I will. I'll do a Melancolia that shall be something like a Melancolia—"the Melancolia that transcends all wit." I'll do it at ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... myself hungered. I shared the repast, but not the merriment. At that moment, no wit could have won from me a smile; the most luxurious table could not have furnished me ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... Scottish hearers were very particular on the subject of their minister's preaching old sermons; and to repeat a discourse which they could recollect was always made a subject of animadversion by those who heard it. A beadle, who was a good deal of a wit in his way, gave a sly hit in his pretended defence of his minister on the question. As they were proceeding from church, the minister observed the beadle had been laughing as if he had triumphed over some of the parishioners with whom he had ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... other vows I broke one by one. For a faggot must be broken every stick singly. But the strict vow I kept, for I entered Rome on foot that year in time, and I heard high Mass on the Feast of the Apostles, as many can testify—to wit: Monsignor this, and Chamberlain the other, and the Bishop of so-and-so—o—polis in partibus infidelium; for ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... of the funniest possible for a house party. The players sit around the room or in a circle. One player who has ready wit is chosen to be ringmaster, or there may be different showmen or ringmasters for each group of animals. The ringmaster takes his place in the center, and will be more effective if furnished with a whip. He shows off in turn different troops of animals, ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... drawing-room of my lady the Countess of Epsom, the Marquise of Biddeford, and at the tables of my Lady Stamford, and of her grace the Duchess of Alwington. The doors of the London clubs were always wide open to one who could keep the table in a roar by his wit. Lord Upperton had chosen him as his companion during his visit to ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... under which you wish to include all fish of the Salmon kind. Does not this include common Trout? You specially include Char by name. Would it not be better to limit your intentions to all migratory fish of the Salmon kind, to wit, Salmon, Grilse, &c. &c.? I think also the meaning of a fixed net wants defining more rigorously. As it now stands it appears to me that it would include any net which should be fastened on a root or stone whilst it was ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... the quiet, almost listless woman could concoct dainty feasts for these illustrious people out of her poverty; for they were illustrious in their day. Were the wit and poesy and knowledge the successive desserts, and bright gossip the sparkle of the Barmecide wine? She thought of the little cottage, when she read of Madame Scarron ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... not be long in noticing what has happened to this objectionable word. When they do they will, of course, forthwith take up all the others. It will be a little startling perhaps at first, but in the end there will be no swearing left. I have no doubt there will be those who will air their petty wit on the pioneer women, but where a martyr is wanted a woman can always be found to offer herself. She will clothe herself in cursing, like the ungodly, and perish in that Nessus shirt, a martyr to pure language. And then this dull cad swearing—a mere unnecessary affectation ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... earnestness and acuteness, and her great love. It was but evidence that she was to be, what she became in time, his rhinoceros-bird in all things, his right hand, prompter in such relations as a woman's wit and woman's way best serve. She was of him. But with two who blended, so there must be many added intervals of delicious nonsense before the reality ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... a jovial monk, wearing the gray gown and sandals of the Recollets, was renowned throughout New France for his wit more than for his piety. He had once been a soldier, and he wore his gown, as he had worn his uniform, with the gallant bearing of a King's Guardsman. But the people loved him all the more for his jests, which never ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... finding no good come of his interrogatories, hath set me at large; tho' I continue under his eye, to wit, with a dowager of his acquaintance, a Mistress Finch. Wee dwell in a private house midway down St. Thomas his street, in Redcliffe: and she hath put a dismal dress upon me (Jack, 'tis hideous), but otherwise uses me not ill. But take care ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... was pierced from within with five magnificently answerable gates. That is to say, the gates could neither be burst in nor any way forced from without. 'This famous town of Mansoul had five gates, in at which to come, out of which to go; and these were made likewise answerable to the walls; to wit, impregnable, and such as could never be opened or forced but by the will and leave of those within. The names of the gates were these: Ear-gate, Eye-gate, Mouth-gate; in short, 'the five ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... there no heir of direct descent? For a time it seemed there would be or really was. To wit, a son of Le Roi, the officer who had wedded into the ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... captain, appointed to superintend disembarkation of an attacking force, who holds plenary powers, and generally leads the storming party. His acts when in the heat of action, if he summarily shoot a coward, are unquestioned—poor Falconer, to wit! ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... Doctor. 'God forbid! May she live to laugh at it, as long as she CAN laugh, and then say, with the French wit, "The farce is ended; ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... are! I felt that upon that human creature weighed the eternal injustice of implacable nature! Life was over with her, without her ever having experienced, perhaps, that which sustains the most miserable of us all—to wit, the hope of being once loved! Otherwise, why should she thus have concealed herself, have fled from the face of others? Why did she love everything so tenderly and so passionately, everything living that ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... leak in the dike? 9. What would have happened if he had grown afraid, or tired? 10. Peter saw a duty to be performed and was brave enough to do it, though it was not easy, and might have cost him his life. What were the results of his quick wit and courage? 11. How was Peter doing his part as a good citizen? 12. Find in the Glossary the meaning of: prattle; presence; anxious; trickling; stoutest; save; astir; yester; stricken. 13. Pronounce: chafe; ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... perfections of a hero of romance of that time. Add to this a charming head, uniting the most opposite styles of beauty; that is to say, black hair and blue eyes, strongly-marked features, and a complexion like a woman. Unite with all these, wit, loyalty, the greatest courage, and you will have an idea of the high consideration which Le Fargy must have enjoyed from the ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... the Lancashire carpenter, invented his spinning-machine, a village wit called it a "jenny." The machine was fine, delicate, subtle, and as spinning was a woman's business anyway, the new machine was ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... unfortunate marquise. Desgrais had just the manner of the younger son of a great house: he was as flattering as a courtier, as enterprising as a musketeer. In this first visit he made himself attractive by his wit and his audacity, so much so that more easily than he had dared to hope, he got leave to pay a second call. The second visit was not long delayed: Desgrais presented himself the very next day. ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... moment and in another mood his heart might have softened at this evident peace-offering; but this afternoon, with the new child of his imagination slain by Snorky Green's brutal wit, the whole proceeding was undeniably crude, a bribe too openly offered. He would have to return them; that was inevitable and that was of course the last thing he wished to do. He sat down at his desk, scowling horribly, ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... the daughters divine of Zeus, the immaculate Nine, Who gaze from your mansions serene on intellects subtle and keen, When down to the tournament lists, in bright-polished wit they descend, With wrestling and turnings and twists in the battle of words to contend, O come and behold what the two antagonist poets can do, Whose mouths are the swiftest to teach grand language and filings of speech: For now of their wits is the ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes
... all the fairies began to give their gifts to the Princess. The youngest gave her for gift that she should be the most beautiful person in the world; the next, that she should have the wit of an angel; the third, that she should have a wonderful grace in everything she did; the fourth, that she should dance perfectly well; the fifth, that she should sing like a nightingale; and the sixth, that she should play all kinds of music to ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... and then instantly burst forth again as from a parenthesis and clattered on with might and main till every stomach in the party was laden with all it could carry. And when the new-comers ascended the ladder to their comfortable feather beds on the second floor—to wit the garret—Mrs. ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... woman, of great natural talent, one of the true ladies of the old school, of whom not many specimens now remain in Mexico; the other extremely pretty, lively, and amiable, a true Andalusian both in beauty and wit. The old Countess was dressed in black velvet, black blonde mantilla, diamond earrings and brooch—her daughter- in-law also in black, with a mantilla, and she had a pretty little daughter with her, whose eyes will certainly produce a kindling effect on ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... men the old great game of war—wit against wit—courage against courage—life against life. We try many men here, and reject a good few. But the men who have gone through our training here are valuable, both for attack and defence—above all, let me repeat it, they are ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... out before the hosts and challenged the bravest of the Fians to single combat, and the Fians, in mockery, thrust Conan forth to the fight. When he appeared, Liagan laughed, for he had more strength than wit, and he said, "Silly is thy visit, thou bald old man." And as Conan still approached, Liagan lifted his hand fiercely, and Conan said, "Truly thou art in more peril from the man behind than from the man in ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... father and mother have been quite willing, then he wants no confidant. He does not care to speak very much of the matter which among his friends is apt to become a subject for raillery. When you call a man Benedick he does not come to you with ecstatic descriptions of the beauty and the wit of his Beatrice. But no one was likely to call him Benedick ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... city after the birth of Mahomet. The arts of grammar, of metre, and of rhetoric, were unknown to the freeborn eloquence of the Arabians; but their penetration was sharp, their fancy luxuriant, their wit strong and sententious, [40] and their more elaborate compositions were addressed with energy and effect to the minds of their hearers. The genius and merit of a rising poet was celebrated by the applause of his own and the kindred tribes. A solemn banquet was prepared, and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... I am a poet! What's my employment? Writing. Is that a living? Hardly. I've wit though wealth be wanting, Ladies of rank and fashion All inspire me with passion; In dreams and fond illusions, Or castles in the air, Richer is none on ...
— La Boheme • Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica
... speak of New Andalusia, I may here mention that I found that denomination, for the first time, in the convention made by Alonso de Ojeda with the Conquistador Diego de Sicuessa, a powerful man, say the historians of his time, because he was a flattering courtier and a wit. In 1508 all the country from the Cabo de la Vela to the Gulf of Uraba, where the Castillo del Oro begins, was called New Andalusia, a name since restricted to ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... empire, and Chingay, and Bala, with diuers other Scribes, came vnto vs, and interpreted the letter word for word. And hauing written it in Latine, they caused vs to interprete vnto them eche sentence, to wit if we had erred in any word. And when both letters were written, they made vs to reade them ouer twise more, least we should haue mistaken ought. For they said vnto vs: Take heed that ye vnderstand all things throughly, for if you should ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... and Park are both very pleasant and good, and we lived there with great content; but God had ordered it should not last, for upon the 20th of July 1654, at three o'clock in the afternoon, died our most dearly beloved daughter Ann, whose beauty and wit exceeded all that ever I saw of her age. She was between nine and ten years old, very tall, and the dear companion of my travels and sorrows. She lay sick but five days of the smallpox, in which time she expressed so many wise and devout sayings, as ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... of ed: as, saint, sainted; bigot, bigoted; mast, masted; wit, witted. These have a resemblance to participles, and some of them are rarely used, except when joined with some other word to form a compound adjective: as, three-sided, bare-footed, long-eared, hundred-handed, flat-nosed, hard-hearted, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... libel ... will be found the most powerful invective that the skill of man could invent. I will not say the skill, but the wit, art, and false contrivance of man, instigated by Satan;" "to say that this is not a libel, is to say that there is no justice, equity, or right ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... figure in the legislative assembly. He was honest, but slow of wit, and apt to become passive if pushed beyond his power to understand. This man who could throw the earth up to a hill of corn with skill and precision, who could build a haystack which would turn the rains ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... unapproachable. A schooner, yawl, or cutter in charge of a capable man seems to handle herself as if endowed with the power of reasoning and the gift of swift execution. One laughs with sheer pleasure at a smart piece of manoeuvring, as at a manifestation of a living creature's quick wit and ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... usually at the mercy of the nearest preacher who has a pleasant voice and ingenious fancy; receiving from him thankfully, and often reverently, whatever interpretation of texts the agreeable voice or ready wit may recommend: while, in the meantime, he remains entirely ignorant of, and if left to his own will, invariably destroys as injurious, the deeply meditated interpretations of Scripture which, in their matter, have been sanctioned by the consent of all the Christian Church for a thousand ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... morals), Billy the Music, the Seraph Cuchulain and Brien O'Brien, a lost soul who had a threepenny-bit stolen on him by Cuchulain that same, you would guess there's only one living man could be behind it—to wit JAMES STEPHENS, Crock-of-Gold STEPHENS. Fantastic things indeed happen in The Demi-Gods (MACMILLAN), which is a kind of inspired nightmare, a sort of Chestertonian inconsequence done into Gaelic, a little less ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 18, 1914 • Various
... unstable judgment are prone to verbosity. His profound moral sense made him sparing of words in the disputes in which the men of the day are prone to engage on any and every subject, but in polite conversation he displayed an eloquence full of wit and intelligence, emanating always from good sense and a temperate and just appreciation of worldly matters. He had no toleration for those sophistries, and mystifications, and quibbles of the understanding with which persons of intelligence, imbued with affected culture, ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... aristocratic commonwealth? Look at the Greeks, who knew both forms; are they agreed which is the best? Plato, Thucydides, Xenophon, Aristophanes—the Dreamer, the Historian, the Philosophic Man of Action, the penetrating Wit—have no ideals in Democracy. Algernon Sidney, the martyr of liberty, allows no government to the multitude. Brutus died for a republic, but a republic of Patricians! What form of government is then the best? All dispute, ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... philosophy Advantageous, too, a little to recede from one's right Advise to choose weapons of the shortest sort Affect words that are not of current use Affection towards their husbands, (not) until they have lost them Affirmation and obstinacy are express signs of want of wit Affright people with the very mention of death Against my trifles you could say no more than I myself have said Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face Agesilaus, what he thought most proper for boys to learn? Agitated betwixt hope and fear Agitation ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne
... of North Carolina on the subject, to wit, that it did not directly prohibit the importation of slaves. It imposed a duty of L5 on each slave imported from Africa; L10 on each from elsewhere; and L50 on each from a State licensing manumission. He thought the Southern States could not be members of the Union, if the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... She could hardly see the way back to her seat, for in her ignorant lonely little life she had never been singled out for applause, never lauded, nor crowned, as in this wonderful, dazzling moment. If "nobleness enkindleth nobleness," so does enthusiasm beget enthusiasm, and so do wit and talent enkindle wit and talent. Alice Robinson proposed that the school should sing Three Cheers for the Red, White, and Blue! and when they came to the chorus, all point to Rebecca's flag. Dick Carter suggested that ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... law of N. Carolina on the subject, to wit that it did not directly prohibit the importation of slaves. It imposed a duty of L5. on each slave imported from Africa. L10. on each from elsewhere, & L50 on each from a State licensing manumission. He thought the S. States could not be members of the Union if the clause should ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... waters of Lethe which are so eagerly prescribed as medicinal for all its wrongs and woe. This drama, however, must not be judged for more than was meant. It is a mere plaything of the imagination; which even may not excite smiles among many, who will not see wit in those combinations of thought which were full of the ridiculous to the author. But, like everything he wrote, it breathes that deep sympathy for the sorrows of humanity, and indignation against its oppressors, which make it worthy of ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... readily as Trenck answered in his sleep to the guards who regularly called to him every night at midnight. Children may answer expertly to the questions, "What is attention? What is memory? What is imagination? What is the difference between wit and judgment? How many sorts of ideas have you, and which are they?" But when they are perfect in their responses to all these questions, how much are they ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... I could not tell you beforehand, because it would have been against my dignity to seem to participate before the deed in things of that kind. To you the opportunity was afforded, but you had not the ready wit either to see ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... berth, so that Worby was not sure what was the result of the mason's renewed mending of the tomb. Only he made out from fragments of conversation dropped by the workmen passing through the choir that some difficulty had been met with, and that the governor—Mr. Palmer to wit—had tried his own hand at the job. A little later, he happened to see Mr. Palmer himself knocking at the door of the Deanery and being admitted by the butler. A day or so after that, he gathered from a remark his father let fall at breakfast ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... scarce raised above a whisper, but emotion clanged in it. 'What do you know about me? If you had commanded the finest barque that ever sailed from Portland; if you had been drunk in your berth when she struck the breakers in Fourteen Island Group, and hadn't had the wit to stay there and drown, but came on deck, and given drunken orders, and lost six lives—I could understand your talking then! There,' he said more quietly, 'that's my yarn, and now you know it. It's a ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Didst thou not find I did quip thee? "Psyllus. No, verily; why, what's a quip? "Manes. We great girders call it a short saying of a sharp wit, with a bitter sense in a sweet word." Alexander and Campaspe, Old Plays, vol. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 • Various
... method bring Into their rhymes running in rattling rows; [Men] that poor Petrarch's long deceased woes With newborn sighs and denizened wit do sing.' ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... early piety, sweetness of disposition, wit, beauty (I must certainly have been, as a child, skinny), or helpful kindness (except that irrational benevolence ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... especially when she read reproach in her aunt's eyes. If she complained that her guests were too much for her, Vera would not bring herself to assist immediately, but presently she would appear in the company with a bright face, her eyes gleaming with gaiety, and astonished her aunt by the grace and wit with which she entertained the visitors. This mood would last a whole evening, sometimes a whole day, before she again relapsed into shyness and reserve, so that no one could read her mind ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... because I've had some money left me. He thinks it fine to have a private secretary with a fortune. I know that he tells people all manner of lies about it, making it out to be five times as much as it is. Dear old Huffle Snuffle. He is such an ass; and yet he's had wit enough to get to the top of the tree, and to keep himself there. He began the world without a penny. Now he has got a handle to his name, and he'll live in clover all his life. It's very odd, isn't it, ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... bullying was a novelty with a direct traceable salutary effect. But whatever harshness was visible in him was tempered by his wife, who was New England, Boston itself, at its best. She had a grave charm, a wit, rather than humor, which irradiated her seriousness, and gave even her tentative remarks ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... a rash, swift way, to the great cause of Protestantism and to all good causes. He was himself a solemnly devout man; deep, awe-stricken reverence dwelling in his view of this universe. Most serious, though with a jocose dialect, commonly having a cheerful wit in speaking to men. Luther's books he called his Seelenschatz, (soul's treasure); Luther and the Bible were his chief reading. Fond of profane learning, too, and of the useful or ornamental arts; ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... well for the Count's honor as for the peace of the country." Lastly, on June 10, 1338, a treaty was signed at Anvers between the deputies of the Flemish communes and the English ambassadors, the latter declaring: "We do all to wit that we have negotiated the way and substance of friendship with the good folk of the communes of Flanders, in form ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... consist of five great divisions, to wit: 1. A Colonial exhibition. 2. A General Export exhibition. 3. A Retrospective exhibition of Fine Arts and of Arts applied to the Industries. 4. Special exhibitions. 5. Lectures and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... the story of how Jesuit confessors were instructed to manage their penitents in a matter made immortally famous by the wit and genius of Pascal, the matter of "directing the intention." There is nothing in the "Provincial Letters" better suited than this at the same time to interest the general reader, and to display the quality of these renowned productions. (We do not scruple to change our chosen translation a little, ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... relish that did me great credit, as it showed that I am something of a connoisseur in the choice of such luxuries. And then they laughed so loudly at my jokes, no matter how poor they were, that, for a few days after my arrival home, I really thought the air of Australia had improved and sharpened my wit. ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... was rather mixed; the taste which prevails there was not pure enough for him; and he ventured to hint that, in his opinion, there was a want of elegance of manner; he could not accustom himself to see wit concealed under ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... have distinguished two sorts of gods whom man discovers or creates for himself by the exercise of his unaided faculties, to wit natural gods, whom he infers from his observation of external nature, and human gods or inspired men, whom he recognises by virtue of certain extraordinary mental manifestations in himself or in others. But there is another ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... very little girl and a very great lady. She will only be a Baroness, which is a come down for her; she was born a Marquise. What eyelashes she has! Get it well fixed in your noddles, my children, that you are in the true road. Love each other. Be foolish about it. Love is the folly of men and the wit of God. Adore each other. Only," he added, suddenly becoming gloomy, "what a misfortune! It has just occurred to me! More than half of what I possess is swallowed up in an annuity; so long as I live, it will not matter, but after my death, a score of years hence, ah! my poor children, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... ridiculous way he has when be thinks that an air of unconcern may ease a situation, and of course Rustum Khan mistook the nasal noises for intentional insult. He turned on the unsuspecting Fred like a tiger. Monty's quick wit and level voice ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... wise as he generally is, was not wise to match his wit against that of a woman, and an offended beauty. How miserably he comes off in every encounter! He would die, forsooth! once—she would die twice over! There is a hit in his very liver! And as to the ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... relative values of things. She knows that mere clothes can never really take the place of charm and breeding; that expensive entertainments, no matter how costly and choice the viands, can never give equal pleasure with a cup of tea served with vivacity and wit; and that the best things of Paris are, in fact, free to all alike—the sunshine of the boulevards, the ever-changing spectacle of the crowds, the glamour of the evening glow beyond the Hotel des Invalides, and the lure of the lamp-strewn ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... religious rites, Appears, reproving his delights, Since nuptial honours he neglected; Which straight he vows shall be effected. Fair Hero, left devirginate, Weighs, and with fury wails her state: But with her love and woman's wit She ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... the first class of his writings. It deserves that place. The admitted exaggerations in Pickwick are incident to its club's extravaganza of adventure, of which they are part, and are easily separable from the reality of its wit and humor, and its incomparable freshness; but no such allowances were needed here. Make what deduction the too scrupulous reader of Oliver might please for "lowness" in the subject, the precision and the unexaggerated force of the delineation ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... the ladder so I can reach the long branches?" she said, her quick wit helping her with ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... and show the Easterns what a Viking's son could do. And as he dreamed of the infinite world and its infinite wonders, the enchanters he might meet, the jewels he might find, the adventures be might essay, he held that he must succeed in all, with hope and wit and a strong arm; and forgot altogether that, mixed up with the cosmogony of an infinite flat plain called the Earth, there was joined also the belief in a flat roof above called Heaven, on which (seen at times in visions through clouds and stars) ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... retire at times, locking the door behind us; and there we think of high and beautiful things, and hold commune with our Maker; or count our money, or improvise that repartee the gods withheld last night, and shake hands with ourselves for our wit; or caress the thought of some darling, secret wickedness or vice; or revel in dreams of some hidden hate, or some love we mustn't own; and curse those we have to be civil to whether we like them or not, and nurse our little envies till we ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... russet is the most important to the artist; and there are many pigments classed as red, purple, &c., which are of russet hues. But there are few true russets, and only one original pigment of that colour is now known on the palette, to wit— ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... of Ends has either a Price or a Dignity. Skill, Diligence, &c., bearing on human likings and needs, have a Market-price; Qualities like Wit, Fancy, &c., appealing to Taste or Emotional Satisfaction, have an Affection-price. But Morality, the only way of being End-in-self, and legislating member in the Realm of Ends, has an intrinsic Worth or Dignity, calculable ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... to make him snarky again. I mean to say names with hyphen marks in 'em—I'd never heard the hyphen pronounced before, but everything is so strange. He said only the lowest classes did it as a form of coarse wit, and that he was wasting himself here. Wouldn't stay another day if it were not for family reasons. Queer sort of wheeze to say 'hyphen' in a chap's name as if it were a word, when it wasn't at all. The old girl, though—bellower she is—perfectly top-hole; familiar ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... long before Don Lorenzo, the young son, was perplexed by the knight's behavior and conversation, and at his first opportunity he confided this perplexity to his father. Don Diego told him that he himself was at his wit's end, for he had heard him speak as sensibly as he ever heard any man speak; then again, he said, he had seen him perform the most unbelievable acts of madness. Don Lorenzo again engaged in conversation with Don Quixote, ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... ever seen any other book than the Bible. Marco had grown grey in the mission: on account of his usefulness, he had been in many respects better treated than most of the Indians: he spoke Spanish with tolerable fluency; and when Estudillo endeavoured to exercise his wit upon him, often embarrassed him not a little by his repartees. This Marco affords a proof that, under favourable circumstances, the minds even of the Indians of California are susceptible of improvement; but these examples ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... laughed at Abe's discomfiture, and the neighbors approved of Thomas Lincoln's rude act as a matter of discipline. In their opinion Abe Lincoln was getting altogether too smart. While they enjoyed his homely wit and good nature, they did not like to admit that he was in any way their superior. A visitor to Springfield, Ill., will even now find some of Lincoln's old neighbors eager to say "there were a dozen smarter men in this city than Lincoln" ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... Lost as it is, and rejoice that we have in it, one of the finest Works that ever the Wit of Man produc'd: But then the Imperfection of this Work must not be pleaded in favour of such other Works as have hardly any thing worthy of Observation in them. Placing Milton with his blank Verse by himself ...
— Letters Concerning Poetical Translations - And Virgil's and Milton's Arts of Verse, &c. • William Benson
... it the Isabelle of her early childhood—revoltee, enemy to authority, defier of God and the universe. Her wit against them all. She would take what she wanted now, and let them ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... either, but passively carry himself even. The Queen, my Lord tells me, he thinks he hath incurred some displeasure with, for his kindness to his neighbour, my Lady Castlemaine. My Lord tells me he hath no reason to fall for her sake, whose wit, management, nor interest, is not likely to hold up any man, and therefore he thinks it not his obligation to stand for her against his own interest. The Duke and Mr. Coventry my Lord says he is very well with, and fears ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... says Dr. Johnson, "he condescended to lay aside the philosopher, the scholar, and the wit, to write little poems of devotion, and systems of instruction adapted to their wants and capacities, from the dawn of reason to its gradation of advance in the morning of life. Every man acquainted with the common ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... prowess made apparent of Four brave and valiant champions of proof, Who, without any arms but wit, at once, Like Fabius, or the two Scipions, Burnt in a fire six hundred and threescore Crablice, strong rogues ne'er vanquished before. By this each king may learn, rook, pawn, and knight, That sleight is much more prevalent ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... whose own lives are not free from reproach and who take that particular form of zeal for God which consists in putting the criminal law in force against others, that, no doubt, does more to create a sympathy with the defendant than with the prosecutor. And if it should be done by those who enjoy the wit of Voltaire, and who do not turn away from the sneers of Gibbon, and rather relish the irony of Hume, our feelings do not go with the prosecutors, and we are rather disposed to sympathise with the defendant. ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... but an illiberal business for a traveller, who designs to publish remarks upon a country to sit down coolly in his closet and write a satire on the inhabitants. Severity of that sort must be enlivened with an uncommon share of wit and ridicule, to please. Where very gross absurdities are found, it is fair and manly to note them; but to enter into character and disposition is generally uncandid, since there are no people but might ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... covered with the stores left there by the Chandernagore party, who had escaped to Australia; this he learned two days later from the white traders at Mioko, the settlement on Duke of York Island, twenty or thirty miles away. Rabardy was at his wit's end. He knew that another steamer was due in a month or two, and determined to wait and consult with the new Governor, who was coming out with a fresh batch of three hundred people. No work at settlement was begun, for Rabardy considered the former site could be bettered. Meanwhile, there ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... the Laird to listen to the dictates of prudence, and to act with sufficient caution, till it came to what he called the dirty part of the work, to wit, the valuation of small articles, and then was the blood of the Dymocks all up; nor would he hear of requiring a bond for the payment of this last sum, such a document, in fact, as should bind the purchaser down to payment without ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... old cell; but when I went to the spot, behold! the prison had vanished; and so I was greatly disappointed, (Laughter.) On going to Washington, I mentioned to President Lincoln, the disappointment I had met with. With a smiling countenance and a ready wit, he replied, "So, Mr. Garrison, the difference between 1830 and 1864 appears to be this: in 1830 you could not get out, and in 1864 you could not get in!" (Great laughter.) This was not only wittily said, but it truthfully indicated the wonderful revolution that had taken place in Maryland; ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... ... and surely women were created by Heaven for some better end than to labor in vain their whole life long." The supercilious commendations of men are gall and wormwood to her: "Some, more condescending, are gracious enough to confess that many women have wit and conduct; but yet they are of opinion that even such of us as are the most remarkable for either or both still betray something which speaks the imbecility of our sex." She makes an excellent plea forgiving women a thorough education, complaining that it is denied them, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... While Frank Armour read he came to feel for the first time that his brother Richard had suffered, maybe, from some such misery as had come to him through Julia Sherwood. It was a dispassionate, manly letter, relieved by gentle wit, and hinting with careful kindness that a sudden blow was better for a man than a lifelong thorn in his side. Of Julia Sherwood he had nothing particularly bitter to say. He delicately suggested that she had acted according to her ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... examples of hair-brained prowess, which I have neither the opportunity nor the inclination to follow. But, old Jack Falstaff! kind Jack Falstaff! sweet Jack Falstaff! has enlarged the boundaries of human enjoyment; he has added vast regions of wit and good-humor, in which the poorest man may revel, and has bequeathed a never-failing inheritance of jolly laughter, to make mankind merrier and better to ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... 1788, aged 81 years. More than fifty of these years, as he used himself to say, he had passed at his writing-desk. His father was a councillor of the parliament of Burgundy. His mother was celebrated for her wit, ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... reverential attitude as the palanquin of some lord passed by. Caustic or benign, generally malicious, the comment of the Kidahachi and Yajiro[u]bei—"O[u]kubo Hikoroku Dono; 'tis true he possesses influence, and the roughness of Hikoza Sama, but the keen wit of the honoured father lacks."—"Yet the lord O[u]kubo has much kindness beneath his roughness. The latter is passport to the favour of the suzerain." Iyeyasu Ko[u] ruled by statecraft; Hidetada Ko[u] ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... have been raised in favour of a Mrs. Clements, but they cannot be substantiated. Shakespeare in the Taming of the Shrew makes Grumio ask Katherine "What say you to a piece of beef and Mustard?" and speaks, in Henry IV., of Poins' wit being "as thick [379] as Tewkesbury Mustard"; whilst Fuller in his Worthies of England, written only a very few years after Shakespeare's death, says "the best Mustard in England is made at Tewkesbury in the county of Gloucester." Coles observes (1657), "in Gloucestershire about Teuxbury ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... to your Yankee wit to get it through," Mrs. Boughton had written, citing several instances where similar things had been done and no ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... gossip and pen pictures of the people he knew. The little drop of malice he injects into his descriptions of the personages he encounters is harmless enough and proves that the young man had considerable wit. Count Gallenberg, the lessee of the famous Karnthnerthor Theatre, was kind to him, and the publisher Haslinger treated him politely. He had brought with him his variations on "La ci darem la mano"; altogether the times seemed ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... Why, my good "voice," they were driven in my way. I had happened to make a statement, than which, so far as I have ever been able to see, nothing can be more modest or inoffensive; to wit, that I am convinced of my own utter ignorance about a great number of things, respecting which the great majority of my neighbours (not only those of adult years, but children repeating their catechisms) affirm themselves to possess full information. I ask any candid ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... the orgy. They were hard cases, rough, tough fighting men, but they gave the big fellow plenty of sea-room. No ruffling or swaggering in his direction. No gibes or practical jokes. The bludgeon-like wit of the house very carefully passed him by. For he was so ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... preserve the colloquially expressed ideas of illustrious men. It appears that Julius Caesar compiled a book of apophthegms, in which he related the bons mots of Cicero; and Quintilian informs us that a freedman of that celebrated wit and orator composed three books of a work entitled De Jocis Ciceronis. We are told by Suetonius that Caius Melissus, originally the slave but afterwards the freedman and librarian of Maecenas, collected the sayings of his master; and Aulus Gellius has filled his Noctes Atticae ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... one's eyes, and suspect that all one has ever seen in this world may have been a pure ocular delusion. In particular, I begin myself to suspect that the word "la gloire" never occurs in any Parisian journal. "The great English nation," says M. Michelet, "has one immense profound vice"—to wit, "pride." Why, really, that may be true; but we have a neighbour not absolutely clear of an "immense profound vice," as like ours in colour and shape as cherry to cherry. In short, M. Michelet thinks us, by fits and starts, admirable—only that we are detestable; and he would ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... their lives is absolutely without interest. Who cares what happens to them? In literature we require distinction, charm, beauty and imaginative power. We don't want to be harrowed and disgusted with an account of the doings of the lower orders. M. Daudet is better. He has wit, a light touch and an amusing style. But he has lately committed literary suicide. Nobody can possibly care for Delobelle with his "Il faut lutter pour l'art," or for Valmajour with his eternal refrain about the nightingale, or for ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... therefore, for himself, and as prince and steward of Scotland, and by the consent of his right trusty cousins and councillors hereby grants to the said George Colwan, his heirs and assignees whatsomever, heritably and irrevocably, all and haill the lands and others underwritten: To wit, All and haill, the five merk land of Kipplerig; the five pound land of Easter Knockward, with all the towers, fortalices, manor-places, houses, biggings, yards, orchards, tofts, crofts, mills, woods, fishings, ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... retreating Holmes, who was making all sail for the smoke-room, and Laurence tranquilly resumed his former occupation—gazing out over the blue-green surface, to wit. Not long, however, was he to be left to ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... longer keen and prompt of apprehension. What she had read and what she had learned seemed to escape her. Her memory, which formerly retained everything, became confused and unreliable. The sharp wit of the Parisian maid-servant gradually vanished from her conversation, her retorts, her laughter. Her face, once so animated, was no longer lighted up by gleams of intelligence. In her whole person you would have said that she had become once more the stupid peasant girl that she was when ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... the day Roebuck yielded so readily to my demands as to National Coal. The whole trouble with me was that up to that time I had won all my victories by the plainest kind of straightaway hard work. I was imagining myself victor in contests of wit against wit, when, in fact, no one with any especial equipment of brains had ever opposed me; all the really strong men had been helping me because they found me useful. Too easy success—there is the clue to the wild folly of my ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... matters—the enemy within. They have sinned against passion and truth, and vain will be their strife after virtue. As the years pass, they are censured. Their pleasantry and their piety show cracks, their wit becomes cynicism, their unselfishness hypocrisy; they feel and produce discomfort wherever they go. They have sinned against Eros and against Pallas Athene, and not by any heavenly intervention, but by the ordinary course of nature, those allied ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... always longed to tread the stage of society—to her mind, a fairyland of wit and gallantry, masquerades and music, to say nothing of handsome young polo players and titled admirers from foreign shores—"big fools," all of them, as you can guess, when dazzled by the smiles of ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... into bitter laughter. "You have little wit," she said, "to be talking that daft way. Eh, William?" she added, turning to her other brother-in-law. "What ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... their good wishes, which, unlike most wishes, were sure to come true. The first wished that the little Princess should grow up the fairest woman in the world; the second, that she should have wit like an angel; the third, that she should be perfectly graceful; the fourth, that she should sing like a nightingale; the fifth, that she should dance perfectly well; the sixth, that she should play all kinds of music perfectly. Then the old fairy's turn came. ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... were not wasted. Slowly the mellowing influence of the grape pronounced itself. To this influence I added that of such wit as Heaven has graced me with, and by a word here and another there I set myself to lash their mood back into the joviality out of which his coming had for ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... answered the slave-girl; and I said, "She is presently on the earth; so when doth she ascend to heaven and where is the ladder by which she goeth up?" Quoth the girl, "She hath her lodging in a palace between two rivers,[FN181] to wit, the palace of El Mamoun el Hakim bi Amrillah."[FN182] Then said I, "I am a dead man, without recourse; "but she replied, "Have patience, for needs must she return unto thee and buy stuffs of thee yet again." "And how cometh it," asked I, "that the Commander of the Faithful ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... of the flashes of light which indicated the whereabouts of the enemy, and this made them continue their flight, the surprise having been too great for their nerves; while the right interpretation was placed upon the adventure at once—to wit, that in ignorance of the fact that Colonel Lindley had done in the darkness exactly what might have been expected, and occupied the kopje, the Boers had brought up a heavy gun with the intention of mounting it before morning, and ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... The village wit was left triumphant, and Julius proposed to return by a cross-road leading into the plantations. Suddenly a scud of rain mixed with whirling yellow leaves sent them hurrying into a cart-shed, where, with a sudden start, they found themselves rushing in ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... once been effected, the poet may all the sooner halt in his rapid career, and indulge the bent of his own genius. There are points, when the most elaborate and polished style, the most enthusiastic lyrics, the most profound thoughts and remote allusions, the smartest coruscations of wit, and the most dazzling flights of a sportive or ethereal fancy, are all in their place, and when the willing audience, even those who cannot entirely comprehend them, follow the whole with a greedy ear, like music in unison with their feelings. Here the poet's great ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... Second Book) Friar Philip's Geese Richard Minutolo The Monks of Catalonia The Cradle St. Julian's Prayer The Countryman Who Sought His Calf Hans Carvel's Ring The Hermit The Convent Gardener of Lamporechio The Mandrake The Rhemese The Amorous Courtesan Nicaise The Progress of Wit The Sick Abbess The Truckers The Case of Conscience The Devil of Pope-fig Island Feronde The Psalter King Candaules and the Doctor of Laws The Devil in Hell Neighbour Peter's Mare The Spectacles The Bucking Tub The Impossible Thing The Picture The Pack-Saddle The Ear-maker, ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... her supremely the best. She desired it as a lover his mistress. To detect it, to observe it, gave her the keenest pleasure. To take a leading part in and shape it to the turn of her own heart, her own purpose, her own wit was, so ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... supererogation to report how speedily the welcome news were made known, by billet-doux, to Henry Clements; but they rather smote his conscience, too, when he reflected that he had not yet made formal petition to the powers on his own account. To be sure, they (the lovers, to wit) were engaged only yesterday, quite in an unintended, though delightful, way: and, previously to that important tete-a-tete, however much he may have thought of only dear Maria—however frequently he found himself beside her in the circle of their many mutual friends—however happily he ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Humanists was Desiderius Erasmus (1467-1536). No literary man has ever enjoyed a wider fame during his own lifetime. He was not less resplendent for his wit than for his learning. Latin was then the vehicle of intercourse among the educated. In that tongue the books of Erasmus were written, and they were eagerly read in all the civilized countries. He studied theology in Paris; lived for a number of years in ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... compliments Moses had paid her, expressed or understood, and those of all her other admirers, who had built up a sort of cloud-world around her, so that her little feet never rested on the soil of reality. Sally was shrewd and keen, and had a native mother-wit in the discernment of spirits, that made her feel that somehow this was all false coin; but still she counted it over, and it looked so pretty and bright that she sighed to think it was ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... on thee, Jack: I will hold my peace. When thy brains be come home from the journey they be now gone, thou canst give me to wit, an' it ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... a Wife, and her name was Diffidence. So when he was gone to bed, he told his Wife what he had done, to wit, that he had taken a couple of Prisoners and cast them into his Dungeon, for trespassing on his grounds. Then he asked her also what he had best do further to them. So she asked him what they were, whence they came, and whither they ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... 1882, when the elite of American literature gathered at Boston to celebrate her seventieth birthday, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes read a poem in which Mrs. Stowe's share in the emancipation of the colored race was recorded with equal wit ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... woman's head. What wife of what navigator there was no telling. But earrings of gold and emerald still clung to the withered ears, and the hair, two-thirds of a fathom long, a shimmering silk of golden floss, flowed from the scalp that covered what had once been the wit and will of her that Bashti reasoned had in her ancient time been quick with love in the arms ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... friends, to steal away your hearts. I am no orator, as Brutus is, But, as you know me all, a plain blunt man, That love my friend; and that they know full well That gave me public leave to speak of him. For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth, Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech, To stir men's blood: I only speak right on; I tell you that which you yourselves do know; Show you sweet Caesar's wounds, poor, poor dumb mouths, ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... here to the dust of the justice court, A picker of rags in the rubbage of spites and wrongs, — I, whom fortune smiled on! I in a village, Spouting to gaping yokels pages of verse, Out of the lore of golden years, Or raising a laugh with a flash of filthy wit When they brought the drinks to kindle my dying mind. To be judged by you, The soul of me hidden from you, With its wound gangrened By love for a wife who made the wound, With her cold white bosom, treasonous, pure and hard, Relentless to the last, ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... poet. He who taught that no matter what the rank, a man wuz a man "for a' that." Who sung and dignified the humble pleasures of the poor. "The Cotter's Saturday Night" will be remembered when many a scientific tome and eloquent poem writ in long words is dust and ashes. And the scathing irony and wit satirizing the ignorant rich, the scorn of meanness and bigotry, the love of liberty and justice the melting tenderness of his love poems, the People he loved and wrote ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... of them, examining the exact meaning of each passage as it occurs. There are, in all, in the Idler three letters on painting, Nos. 76, 79, and 82; of these, the first is directed only against the impertinences of pretended connoisseurs, and is as notable for its faithfulness as for its wit in the description of the several modes of criticism in an artificial and ignorant state of society: it is only, therefore, in the two last papers that we find the expression of the doctrines which it is our business ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... and at Tarentum and Sena, in Africa, Sardinia, Spain, and Macedonia, had shown himself capable as a soldier, a staff- officer, and a general. He was the same in the Forum, as in the battle-field. His prompt and fearless utterance, his rough but pungent rustic wit, his knowledge of Roman law and Roman affairs, his incredible activity and his iron frame, first brought him into notice in the neighbouring towns; and, when at length he made his appearance on the greater arena ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Bourdeaux. He first carried on his imposture in Germany, where he made considerable sums by selling an elixir to arrest the progress of old age. The Marechal de Belle-Isle purchased a dose of it; and was so captivated with the wit, learning, and good manners of the charlatan, and so convinced of the justice of his most preposterous pretensions, that he induced him to fix his residence in Paris. Under the Marshal's patronage, he first appeared in the gay circles of that capital. Every one was delighted with ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... for a second or third brief term of life and favour; and therefore, it being so, who can have the heart to blame the parties that in the exercise of their vocation make hay while the sun shines? There is one personage, and one alone, who makes it whether or no, summer and winter, to wit, the auctioneer; his commission is assured; on what or from whom he gets it he cares not. He cheerfully leaves the adjustment of ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... one was fire and fickleness,[343] a child Most mutable in wishes, but in mind A wit as various,—gay, grave, sage, or wild,— Historian, bard, philosopher, combined;[ks] He multiplied himself among mankind, The Proteus of their talents: But his own Breathed most in ridicule,—which, as the wind, Blew where it listed, laying all things prone,— Now to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... answered Poly. "Ah! she is beautiful!" he went on. "She walk the groun' as sof' and proud and pretty as fine yong horse! She sit her horse like a flower on its stem. Me and her good frens too. She say she lak me for cause I am simple. Often in the winter she ride out wit' my team and hunt in the bush while ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... do you to wit that Owyn Glyndowr, Henry Don, Rees Duy, Rees ap Gv. ap Llewellyn, Rees Gether, have won the town of Carmarthen, and Wygmer the Constable had yielded the castle to Carmarthen; and have burnt the town, and slain more than fifty men: and they be in purpose to Kedwelly, and a siege ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... ("fille unique maintenant restee, de la noble maison de France"), the only survivor of her illustrious house. Brantome praises her excellent beauty in a long string of laboured hyperboles. Ronsard, the Court poet, has done the same in a poem of considerable length, wherein he has exhausted all his wit and fancy. From what they have said, we may collect that Marguerite was graceful in her person and figure, and remarkably happy in her choice of dress and ornaments to set herself off to the most advantage; that her height was above the middle size, her ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... vulgar degradation to fall in with the stream of antichristian opinions, and to want elevation of intellect to apprehend how the doctrine of Catholicism in its true character, is religiously simple and ennobling. Yet I had the meanness to bow to human opinion out of deference and respect. The wit and sarcasms of my neighbour seemed to confound me, while I could not disguise from myself that they were idle and empty as the air. I dissimulated, I hesitated to announce my own belief, reflecting ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... to the picturesque; and that Jean Jacques never wrote, played the knave, or existed. If I were a Swiss Caliph Omar, I should make a general seizure, to be followed by a general conflagration, of every volume that has ever touched on the wit and wickedness of the one, or the intolerable sensibility of the other. I should next extend the flame to all tours, meditations, and musings on hills, valleys, and lakes; prohibit all sunset 'sublimities' as an offence against the state; and lay ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... something incredibly exasperating in his comments on political opponents. He flayed and roasted them alive. It was like thrusting a blazing torch into the raw flesh of his victims. Nor was it simple "abuse." The satirist was too intelligent to rely upon that. It was his scorching wit which made opponents shrink. His scalpel divided the arteries, and touched the vitals of the living subject. Personal peculiarities were satirized with unfailing acumen. The readers of the Examiner, in those days, will still recall ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... that I saw was very dreadful and unchristian. Many of the persons resembled hogs and monkeys more than human beings; and a great deal of what passed for wit and merriment was nothing other than pure evil. Virtue was very little reckoned of; or, rather reckoned only as giving additional zest to its own corruption. I do not mean that there were no virtuous people at all—(there were virtuous people ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... wife. I shall pay court to Madame Evangelista; I intend to desert you basely, and say sly things to your discredit,—nothing openly, or that Mascarille in petticoats would detect my purpose. How did you make her such an enemy? That is what I want to know. If you had had the wit to be in love with that woman before you married her daughter, you would to-day be peer of France, Duc de Manerville, and, possibly, ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... Blanche Haight, a tall sophomore with bleached hair, and eyes set too near together. She was considered a wit, and every time she spoke the other ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... did not grow excited, while being seated removed from him the worry of his shoulders. Ruth knew them for clever girls, superficially brilliant, and she could scarcely understand their praise of Martin later that night at going to bed. But he, on the other hand, a wit in his own class, a gay quizzer and laughter-maker at dances and Sunday picnics, had found the making of fun and the breaking of good- natured lances simple enough in this environment. And on this evening success stood at his back, patting him on the shoulder and telling him that he was making ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... play the fool, in not recognising that heaven is inaccessible and doubtful. But clearer eyes perceive the not at all doubtful dullness of wit, and the gratifying accessibility of every woman when properly handled,—yes, even of her who dares to deal in ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... first place, he wishes to dispose of certain individuals who call themselves men of wit and fashion—about town—who he is told have abused his book "vaustly"—their own word. These people paint their cheeks, wear white kid gloves, and dabble in literature, or what they conceive to be literature. For abuse ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... rest of the learned, in sorrier case than dead men, and so being here, we are in our own house." Then none was there but understood Guido's meaning and was abashed, insomuch that they flouted him no more, and thenceforth reputed Messer Betto a gentleman of a subtle and discerning wit. ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... his attention to it over the boundary-line of mannerism, few earlier novelists, though some of them were great writers, had made a point of it, the chief exceptions being in the particular line of "wit," such as Hamilton, Crebillon fils, and Voltaire. Chateaubriand had been almost the first to attempt a novel-rhetoric; and it must be remembered that Chateaubriand was a sort of human magnus Apollo throughout ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... crowded by an audience such as has rarely excited the fears or the emulation of an orator. There were gathered together, from all parts of a great, free, enlightened, and prosperous empire, grace and female loveliness, wit and learning, the representatives of every science and of every art. There were seated round the Queen the fair-haired young daughters of the House of Brunswick. There the Ambassadors of great Kings and Commonwealths gazed with admiration on a spectacle which no other ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... this beyond doubt; to wit, that I am the gravest public danger that confronts England, because I have the strange power of turning the nation passionately away from the truth by the simple act of uttering it. The necessity for contradicting ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... disposition, temper, mood; facetiousness, jocularity, waggery, pleasantry, wit, satire; pl. caprices vagaries, whims, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Sir Charles Napier—the Napier of Scinde—who had been Resident in Cephalonia thirty years before, in Byron's closing days, describes the richer classes as lively and agreeable; the women as having both beauty and wit, but of little education; the poor as hardy, industrious, and intelligent—all full of pleasant humour and vivacity, with a striking resemblance, says Napier, to his countrymen, the Irish. The upper class was mainly Italian in origin, and willingly ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... a true poet, endowed with a vivid imagination and with a delicate and subtle wit. He scorned the coarse invective in which the satirists of his day used to delight. He had many enemies on account of his plain-spoken words and keen criticisms. The problem which perplexed the Patriarch Job—the happiness of prosperous vice, the misery of ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... grace of movement, the triumph of tact and ingenuity, the devotion to conventionalism, either pedantry or the genius of the hour, also rules the drama in Paris. With all its brilliancy, entertainment, grace, wit, and popularity,—there exists not a permanently vital and universally recognized type of this greatest department of literature, familiar and endeared alike to peasant and peer, a representative of humanity for all time,—like the bard around whose name and words cluster ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... heightened with libations of whiskey, the play writer having a credit with the grocer at the corner for three bottles, which, in a case of emergency, may be extended to four. He writes occasionally for the Sunday newspapers, thinks John Brougham the greatest dramatist and wit of the age, and stands ready either to join him in a glass or sing his praises, though there is as much reason for committing so flagrant an outrage as there would be in praising the ten thousand and one stanzas written by that wonderful and ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... half disgusted with them before he can rightly say why," answered Sir Richard with a smile. "There is too much hatred and bitterness in Nicholas Trevlyn's religion to endear it to his children. The boy has had the wit to see that the Established Church of the land uses the same creeds and holds the same cardinal doctrines as he has been bred up in. For the Pope he cares no whit; his British blood causes him to think scorn of any foreign potentate, temporal or spiritual. He has the making of a good churchman ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... if there were many Huguenots in Burgundy. No, replied the gentleman nor would they be permitted to exist there. "Then there can be very few people of intelligence in that province," returned Montigny, "for those who have any wit are mostly all Huguenots." The Prince of Orange here endeavored to put a stop to the conversation, saying that the Burgundians were very right to remain as they were; upon which Montigny affirmed that he had heard masses enough lately to last him for ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... from the militia districts of the county assembled, on the 19th and 20th of May, 1775, and kept a public house of entertainment. Here Patrick Jack, on suitable occasions, was accustomed to "crack" many an Irish joke, to the infinite delight of his numerous visitors; and by his ready wit, genial good humor and pleasantry, greatly contributed to the reputation of his house, and inculcated his own patriotic principles. The house soon became the favorite place of resort for the students of the collegiate ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... its aim may be laughter, requires taste, delicacy, and invention; and that the mirth it creates should not even be without wit. This depends not only upon the execution, but on the choice of the subject. It is not enough to value oneself upon a close imitation of nature, if the subject chosen for imitation is not worth imitating, or improper to represent; that is to say, either trivial, indifferent, ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... pointed assaults in this Discourse, such for instance as that on the pedantic parade of wit, or that on the excessive preponderance of literary instruction in the art of education, are due to Montaigne; and in one way, the Discourse might be described as binding together a number of that shrewd man's ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... between two equal but opposite attractions. They slandered the worthy animal. The Ass, who is no more foolish than any one else, would reply to the logical snare by feasting off both bundles. Will my caterpillars show a little of his mother wit? Will they, after many attempts, be able to break the equilibrium of their closed circuit, which keeps them on a road without a turning? Will they make up their minds to swerve to this side or that, which is the only method of reaching their bundle of hay, the green branch yonder, ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... dining-room, presided over by Josephine and her daughters, whose presence seemed at first to abash my warriors of the torch. But only for a few moments. Realizing presently that these Goddesses had apparently but one aim in life, to wit, to help them to salad, oysters, and ice-cream, diffidence disappeared like fog before the morning sun, and with it the viands down the throats of my red, white, and blue supporters. In the liquid line Josephine gave a choice of hot ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... aphorism. "There is," he writes, "from the metaphysical observer's point of view, neither disease nor health of the soul; there are only psychological states." The etats d'ames of Felicien Rops, then, may or may not have been morbid. But he has contrived that his wit in its effect upon his spectators is too often profoundly depressing and morbid ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... Recamier, and if I dare say it, the reputation of high talents in myself. Perhaps he also flattered himself with attacking the memory of my father in his daughter, in order that it might be truly said that in this world, under his reign, the dead and the living, piety, beauty, wit, and celebrity, all were as nothing. Persons made themselves culpable by being found wanting in the delicate shades of flattery towards him, in refusing to abandon any one who had been visited by his disgrace. ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... leader's orders the three young Englishmen remained in the thick of the crowd: together wit Deroulede they contrived to form a sturdy rampart round Juliette, effectually protecting ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... boasting—that's the poltroon's wit, The coward's shield of glass, A coin whose surface, silver's counterfeit, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... compelled me to detest those who now govern, who having none to punish them, will allow no one to reprove their misdeeds. I am content that my banishment should deliver them from the fears they entertain, not of me only, but of all who they think perceives or is acquainted wit their tyrannical and wicked proceedings; and they have aimed their first blow at me, in order the more easily to oppress you. I do not grieve on my own account; for those honors which my country bestowed upon me while free, she cannot in her slavery take from me; and the recollection ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... abandon the struggle, for she had vowed that she would some day make the whole town burst with envy, by an insolent display of happiness and luxury. Had she been able to act her part on a more spacious stage, where full play would have been allowed her ready wit, she would have quickly brought her dream to pass. Her intelligence was far superior to that of the girls of her own station and education. Evil tongues asserted that her mother, who had died a few years after she was born, ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... Edgeworth a fine old fellow, of a clarety, elderly, red complexion, but active, brisk, and endless. He was seventy, but did not look fifty—no, nor forty-eight even. I had seen poor Fitzpatrick not very long before—a man of pleasure, wit, eloquence, all things. He tottered—but still talked like a gentleman, though feebly. Edgeworth bounced about, and talked loud and long; but he seemed neither weakly nor ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... events described are as lofty as those sung by Homer in his great work, and the characters brought upon the stage still more interesting. I think Hotspur as much of a hero as Hector, and young Henry more of a man than Achilles; and then there is the fat knight, the quintessence of fun, wit, and rascality. Falstaff is a creation beyond the genius ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... a bone," said Walker. A sea splashed over him and sent a shower into the cabin. "A vewy wet bone," he added, with a broad grin, for the Northumbrian had a ready wit though he had such a solemn jowl, and he could not pronounce an "r" to save ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... in our affairs, it is certainly for our good, yet I have the misfortune to be something singular in this belief, and therefore I never attempt to justify it, but content myself to possess my own opinion in private, for fear of encountering men of more wit or words than I have ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... classes. They have in them all the reforming spirit of the times, and must be of essential service everywhere, since cheap law is as desirable us any other species of economy. Brevity, too, as recommended in these little books, should be the soul of law as it is of wit, for we all know that as the law lengthens so the cost strengthens. Another advantage will be, that the sooner a man is set right, the more time will he have for increasing his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various
... man from Massachusetts, who had united with the Southern leaders in the support of Breckenridge, who had wisdom as well as wit, and who now sought to dispel this false idea. In the month of December he was in Washington, and he asked his old associates what ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... then is unmild and haughty, then it is known that he is not from God, nor [should] ye mind his words." Quoth they again, "How may we know that distinctly?" Quoth he, "See ye that he come first to the synod with his fellows, and sit; and, if he rises toward you when ye come, then wit ye that he is Christ's servant, and ye shall humbly hear his words and his lore. But if he despise you, and will not rise toward you since there are more of you, be he then despised by you." Well, they ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... brought home to her that the charm of Laodice for the stranger from Ephesus, to whom the Greek knew the girl had fled, had been her purity. Why should it matter so much about virtue? she had asked herself. Why should it weigh so immeasurably more than the noble gifts of wit and beauty and strength and charm? Behold, she was wise enough to educate a barbarous nation, beautiful enough to bewitch potentates—for a time—strong enough to take a city; yet Hesper, who best of all could appreciate the value ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... a complete surprise: a sure proof that the unscrupulous Hook had conducted it improperly, for to surprise redskins fairly is beyond the wit of the ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... Camel-drivers crossed the Colonnades, a storyteller had bewitched a circle of people around him. It was the same old tale of love and adventure that many generations have listened to; but the lively fancy of the hearers rent it new interest, and the wit of the improviser drew forth sighs of ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... Issedones, the Gindares, the Nasamones, the Sauromates, the Lydians, the Lybians, and the Egyptians; bipeds of all colours, from East to West and from North to South. The Great King, who was a man of wit, asked the Greeks, who burn their dead, to eat them; and the Hindoos, who eat them, to burn them, and was much amused by their indignation. The wise Herodotus who doffs his cap, though he may grin behind it, will not judge them himself and does not think it fair to laugh at them. He says: ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... quick and clever. Delightful little flashes of wit and humour sparkled out occasionally. She could be whimsical—even charmingly capricious. Sometimes innocent mischief glimmered out in the unfathomable deeps of her blue eyes. Sarcasm, even, was not unknown to her. Now and ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... He was intensely interested in every thing pertaining to the welfare of the colony. He was one of the commissioners that ran the dividing line between Virginia and North Carolina. His writings show a brightness and wit that mark him as the best author the colony possessed during the first half of the 18th century. In his every act we see that he is more the Cavalier than ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... if to me belong Nor mighty Milton's gift divine, Nor Marvell's wit and graceful song, Still with a love as deep and strong As theirs, I lay, like them, my best ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the spirit of mortal be proud?" And this evening, the seventh since the storm, when for one weak moment she had allowed the conversation to drift toward wedlock, he had stated a woman's chances of marrying between the ages of fifteen and twenty, to wit, 14-1/2 per cent; and between thirty and ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... said rather angrily, "it pleases you to reckon lightly of this matter: but what, I pray you, if you have to make account thereon with the Queen's Grace's laws, not to speak of holy Church? Sir, I give you to wit that my wife is an ill hussy, and an heretic belike, and lacketh a sharp pulling up—sharper than I can give her. She will not go to church, neither hear mass, nor hath she shriven her this many a day. You are set in office, methinks, to administer the laws, and have no ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... and mensuration. He could flourish a swan without ever taking his pen from the paper. Nay, there is little doubt but from long habit he could have flourished it blindfold, like the man who had so often modelled the wit of Ferney in breadcrumbs, that he could produce little busts of Voltaire with his hands under the table; he had not his equal in Practice or the Rule of Three, and his piece, when sent round at Christmas, was the admiration of ...
— Aunt Deborah • Mary Russell Mitford
... why did he not make himself known to her on the train?" asked Earl of himself. But this query was soon dislodged from his mind by one of far more interest to him, to wit: "Is it not likely that I may utilize this young woman as a means of bringing to me a second glimpse of that girl that paid us a visit from the ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... into conversation, the gentleman of the cigarette and I. He was an Englishman from a London newspaper. He was counting on his luck to get him into Calais and his wit to get him out. He told me his name. Just before I left France I heard of a highly philanthropic and talented gentleman of the same name who was unselfishly going through the hospitals as near the front as he could, ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... lean up against a mantel, or propose a toast, or give an order to a manservant, or whisper a gallant speech in a lady's ear with equal ease. The shabby old house on Calumet Avenue was transformed into a brocaded and chandeliered rendezvous for the brilliance of the city. Beauty was here, and wit. But none so beautiful and witty as She. Mrs.—er—Jo Hertz. There was wine, of course; but no vulgar display. There was music; the soft sheen of satin; laughter. And he, the gracious, tactful host, ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... deeply for her sons, but of the three she had a decided preference for Winn. Winn had a wicked temper, an unshakable nerve, and had inherited the strength of Sir Peter's muscles and the sledge-hammer weight of Lady Staines's wit. He had been expelled from his private school for unparalleled insolence to the head master; a repetition of his summing up of that gentleman's life and conduct delighted his mother, though she assisted Sir Peter in thrashing ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... in both ways, as has already been said in speaking of the passage of the blood through the lungs; whence it appears manifest that in the circuit the blood moves from thence hither, and hence thither; from the centre to the extremities, to wit, and from the extreme parts back again to the centre. Finally, upon grounds of circulation, with the same elements as before, it will be obvious that the quantity can neither be accounted for by the ingesta, nor yet be held necessary ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... he had proved himself no fool in interesting anecdote of the town, and a quaint and naive description of the view the lowly take of those who call themselves the great. Under the skilful questioning of one or other this simple fellow—of keen wit and observation—had shown a phase of life unknown to them, beyond the careless view afforded from between the blinds of the curtains of the palanquin. The vulgar boldness of his predecessors was conspicuously lacking, as ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... of his age he was removed to London, and then admitted into Lincoln's Inn, with an intent to study the law, where he gave great testimonies of his wit, his learning, and of his improvement in that profession; which never served him for other use ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... hence, with median stress, the wave, moderate intervals, medium or low sentential pitch, it is used as naturally interpretative of solemnity, reverence, awe, deep pathos, ardent admiration, and all elevated emotion. Colloquial tones, excited argument, wit, raillery, and all the lighter emotions, require for their expression, brilliancy rather than grace, and so are more fittingly interpreted by short quantities and ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... or, indeed, brought me into trouble. We were blind, blind I say, in changing our raiment and in appealing to the populace. * * * I handed myself and all belonging to me over to my enemies, while you were looking on, while you were holding your peace; yes, you, who, if your wit in the matter was no better than mine, were impeded by no personal fears."[277] But the reader should study the entire letter, and study it in the original, for no translator can give its true purport. This the reader must do before he can ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... industry. In what manner he spent his time in London, it is none of my business to inquire; thof I know pretty well what kind of lives are led by gemmen of your Inns of Court.—I myself once belonged to Serjeants' Inn, and was perhaps as good a wit and a critic as any Templar of them all. Nay, as for that matter, thof I despise vanity, I can aver with a safe conscience, that I had once the honour to belong to the society called the Town. We were all of us attorney's clerks, gemmen, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... the South Pass, and our course home would have been eastwardly; but that would have taken us over ground already examined, and therefore without the interest that would excite curiosity. Southwardly there were objects worthy to be explored, to wit: the approximation of the head-waters of three different rivers—the Platte, the Arkansas, and the Grand River fork of the Rio Colorado of the Gulf of California; the passages at the heads of these rivers; and the three remarkable mountain coves, called ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... letter we see that Lincoln ruled his own spirit; and we also behold the fact that he could rule others. The letter shows wise diplomacy, frankness, kindliness, wit, tact and infinite patience. Hooker had harshly and unjustly criticised Lincoln, his commander in chief. But Lincoln waives all this in deference to the virtues he believes Hooker possesses, and promotes him to succeed Burnside. In other words, ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... are lately much in Fashion upon this and the like Occasions, why may not we be allow'd some tolerable Liberty in this kind; provided we keep close to our Author, and our own Translation of him. As for our Author, wherever Learning, Wit or Judgment have flourish'd, this Poet has always had an extraordinary Reputation. To mention all his Excellencies and Perfections were a Task too difficult for us, and perhaps for the greatest Criticks alive; so very few there are that ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... with heavy lids like those of his mother, and with his father's long eyelashes. He was witty like the Emperor, whom people surnamed "Louis the Imbecile," and who certainly had the most refined, subtle, and at the same time the most generous wit. ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... stopped me, saying, "This neighbour biddeth twenty Ashrafis to price for the piece of glass, but I have as yet given her no reply. What sayest thou?" Then I bethought me of what Sa'd had told me; to wit, that much wealth would come to me by virtue of his leaden coin. The Jewess seeing how I hesitated bethought her that I would not consent to the price; so quoth she, "O neighbour, an thou wilt not agree to part with the bit of glass for twenty pieces of gold, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... The general observer decided him out of condition and unfit for baseball. His position under the bat was awkward, and his face wore an expression of blankness, which seemed to indicate a lack of that quick wit and keen intelligence to be found ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... back," said Jahan. "The miracle is now complete, you know. I'm delighted at it. I did not know what to do with her; I had even renounced all attempts to teach her to read; I left her for days together in a corner, infirm and tongue-tied like a lack-wit.... But your brother came and took her in hand somehow or other. She listened to him and understood him, and began to read and write with him, and grow intelligent and gay. Then, as her limbs still ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... distilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. And, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... countenance, they are sure not to be long behind-hand in returning it, and that very often with interest. If we were the aggressors in this way, some ironical observation respecting the Kabloonas was frequently the consequence; and no small portion of wit as well as irony was at times ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... sooner halt in his rapid career, and indulge the bent of his own genius. There are points, when the most elaborate and polished style, the most enthusiastic lyrics, the most profound thoughts and remote allusions, the smartest coruscations of wit, and the most dazzling flights of a sportive or ethereal fancy, are all in their place, and when the willing audience, even those who cannot entirely comprehend them, follow the whole with a greedy ear, like music in unison with their ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... as a bone," said Walker. A sea splashed over him and sent a shower into the cabin. "A vewy wet bone," he added, with a broad grin, for the Northumbrian had a ready wit though he had such a solemn jowl, and he could not pronounce an "r" ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... happenings of the world are controlled by a force much greater than us, and it brings everything into completion when it is needed, no sooner and no later. Many civilizations try to out wit fate, but they cannot, and in the end they do its bidding. Not, however, in the way they had planned, and with more consequences than they would like, at which point they try to change fate again and undo those consequences, and soon ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... this commotion. But here she was mistaken. Mrs. Colwyn was safe in her room, but Ph[oe]be, the charity orphan, had been met, while ascending the kitchen stair with the tea-tray in her hands, by a raid of nursery people—Tiny and Curly and Julian Brand, to wit—had been accidentally knocked down, had broken the best tea-set and dislocated her own collar-bone; while Julian's hand was severely cut and Curly's right eye was black and blue. Tiny had fortunately escaped without injury, and it was ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Adams, in one of those ill-natured letters to Dr. Rush which filled my aunt with rage. "Sancte Washington, ora pro nobis." The Massachusetts statesman admired our grave and knightly St. George, but there are those who cannot fly a kite without the bobtail of a sneer—which is good wit, I think, but not my own; it was Jack ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... it, like all other souls, liable to aberration both for better and worse. They held that some organisms show more ready wit and savoir faire than others; that some give more proofs of genius and have more frequent happy thoughts than others, and that some have even gone through waters of misery which they ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... is his own favourite In love! The thought to bring me rest Is that of us she takes the best. 'Twas but to see him to be sure That choice for her remain'd no more! His brow, so gaily clear of craft; His wit, the timely truth that laugh'd To find itself so well express'd; His words, abundant yet the best; His spirit, of such handsome show You mark'd not that his looks were so; His bearing, prospects, birth, all these Might well, with small suit, ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a line, Nor all thy tears wash out a word ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... the younger members of families long acquainted and associated, are apt to be rather rollicking, not to say "rough and tumble," affairs, where practical jokes and unmerciful "guying" are the characteristic wit, and such smart tricks as bumping an unsuspecting comrade's head against the wall are applauded with shrieks of admiring laughter. The onlookers may be excused for their tacit countenance of the rudeness, since some element of drollery—that might have been wit, under better conditions—compels ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... There was the same sweet pedantry of the Attic e, the same superiority to the most venial abbreviation, the same inconsistent forest of exclamatory notes, thick as poplars across the channel. The present plantation started after my own Christian name, to wit "Dear Duncan!!" Yet there was nothing Germanic in Catherine's ancestry; it was only her apologetic little way of addressing me as though nothing had ever happened, of asking whether she might. Her own old ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... religious creeds in the world, and amongst them all there is not one more energetic, more mysterious, or more wit-shaken than Mormonism. It is a mass of earnest "abysmal nonsense," an olla-podrida of theological whimsicalities, a saintly jumble of pious staff made up—if we may borrow an idea—of Hebraism, ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... speeds the reeking shaft; Deep in his sinewy thigh inflicts a wound, And strikes the astonish'd hunter to the ground, While, with a voice which neither bray'd nor spoke, Thus fearfully the beast her silence broke:— "Pains, agonizing pains must thou endure, Till wit of lady's love shall work the cure: Wo, then, her fated guerdon she shall find The heaviest that may light ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... a leaden figure in the legislative assembly. He was honest, but slow of wit, and apt to become passive if pushed beyond his power to understand. This man who could throw the earth up to a hill of corn with skill and precision, who could build a haystack which would turn the rains and snows of winter, and break a colt to the harness without breaking its spirit, who had ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... regiments, returning to the trenches, chanced to meet. There was the usual exchange of wit. ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... the middle and on the side towards the nave, the altar of the holy cross. Above the pulpitum and placed across the church, was the beam, which sustained a great cross, two cherubim, and the images of St. Mary and St. John the Apostle.... The great tower had a cross from each side, to wit, a south cross and a north cross, each of which had in the midst a strong pillar; this pillar sustained a vault which proceeded from the walls on three of its sides," etc. Prof. Willis considers that as far as these parts of the building are concerned, the present ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... cannot fail to be interested and impressed by the forensic power and ability in this book and by the humane spirit which has led to its compilation. Mr. Coleridge brings all his power of wit, irony, and sarcasm to the aid ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge
... I had wit enough to let the smoldering go on for a moment or two more, and to pour the whole of my canful of water over the fire before the third stone came down the chimney. The live embers on the floor I easily disposed of after that. The man on the roof must have heard the hissing ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... and his wife's brown alpaca began to be noticed more or less among the women. But Samp's practice didn't seem to fall off—it only changed. He didn't have so much real estate lawing and got more criminal practice. Gradually he became a criminal lawyer, and his fame for wit and eloquence extended over all the State. When a cowpuncher got in trouble his folks in the East always gave Samp a big fee to get the boy out, and he did it. When he went to any other county-seat besides our own to try a case, ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... is he now, in execution Of any bold, or Noble Enterprize, How-euer he puts on this tardie forme: This Rudenesse is a Sawce to his good Wit, Which giues men stomacke to disgest his ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... standing. He failed to grasp his friend's purpose. His wit was unequal to the rapid process of the other's swiftly ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... or gods, men, asuras or monsters, pretas or demons, beasts, and beings in hell. In portraying these, the artists and sculptors do not always slavishly follow tradition or uniformity. The critical eye notes nearly as much genius, wit and variety as in the mediaeval cathedral architecture of Europe. Probably the most popular groups of idols are those of the seven or the thirty-three Kuannon, of the six Jizo[31] or compassionate helpers, and of the sixteen or the five hundred Rakan[32] or circles of primitive disciples ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... neighborhood, which I will try to set down in order, God sparing my life and memory. And they who light upon this book should bear in mind not only that I write for the clearing of our parish from ill fame and calumny, but also a thing which will, I trow, appear too often in it, to wit—that I am nothing more than a plain unlettered man, not read in foreign languages, as a gentleman might be, nor gifted with long words (even in mine own tongue), save what I may have won from the Bible or Master William Shakespeare, ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... (which, being so beyond description, I have endeavoured a sketch), on white horses, preceded by a herald and three trumpeters, entered the quadrangle, and by proclamation asserted that the ladies of The Blended Rose excelled in wit, beauty, and accomplishment those of the whole world, and challenged any knight to dispute it. Thereupon appeared the seven knights of The Burning Mountain, and by their herald announced that they would disprove by arms the vainglorious assertions of ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... humorists," said my friend, "I wonder if you have heard that story of MARK TWAIN which he often told against himself. A visitor to his house who had been greatly entertained by a constant flow of wit and satire asked MARK TWAIN'S daughter if he was always in the same good spirits. 'Only when we have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 5th, 1914 • Various
... dismay of the young exquisite whose couch was beside her chair,[93] when he should learn how completely he had been duped. Then, too, Lucius Ahenobarbus had a voluble flow of polite small talk, and he knew how to display his accomplishments to full advantage. He had a fair share of wit and humour; and when he fancied that Cornelia was not impervious to his advances, he became more agreeable and more ardent. Once or twice Cornelia frightened herself by laughing without conscious forcing. Yet it was an immense relief to her when the banquet was over, and the guests—for Favonius ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... is pretty much as I have described him, and Magnificence consists in such expenditures: because they are the greatest and most honourable: [Sidenote:1123a] and of private ones such as come but once for all, marriage to wit, and things of that kind; and any occasion which engages the interest of the community in general, or of those who are in power; and what concerns receiving and despatching strangers; and gifts, and repaying gifts: because the Magnificent man is not apt to spend upon himself ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... aune, ell), the official supervision of the shape and quality of manufactured woollen cloth. It was first ordered in the reign of Richard I. that "woollen cloths, wherever they are made, shall be of the same width, to wit, of two ells within the lists, and of the same goodness in the middle and sides.'' This ordinance is usually known as the Assize of Measures or the Assize of Cloth. Article 35 of Magna Carta re-enacted the Assize of Cloth, and in the reign ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Afrikaansche Spoorweg Maatschappy," abbreviated "Z.A.S.M.," undertook the work and completed it in 1887, from the Portuguese border to Pretoria. The line from Pretoria to the Natal border was soon after built, as also several extensions around the Wit-waters Rand, and that from Pretoria to Pietersburg. The section connecting Delagoa Bay as far as the Transvaal border had previously been completed by McMurdo, and is the subject of ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... teaches conjointly repentance and remission of sins." (421.) In his Brief Summary of the Gospel, Agricola says: "In the New Testament and among Christians or in the Gospel we must not preach the violation of the Law when a man breaks or transgresses the Law, but the violation of the Son, to wit that he who does not for the sake of the kingdom of heaven willingly omit what he should omit, and does not do what he should do, crucifies Christ anew." (St. L. 20, 1622ff.; Frank 2, 313, Gieseler 3, 2, 137; Pieper, Dogm. ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... and they have not failed me. The day I left for Gettysburg to dedicate the battlefield, you were so sure of my defeat in the approaching convention that you shouted across the street to a friend as I passed: 'Let the dead bury the dead!' It was a brilliant sally of wit. I laughed at it myself. And yet the people unanimously called me again ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... his mother say a thousand times that she was pretty; he had laughed himself a thousand times at her quick wit. But he had never dreamed that it would make his heart come up into his throat and suffocate him whenever he thought of her, or that her lightest and simplest words, her most casual and unconscious glance, would burn ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... possession of all the avenues that led to the palace. For this purpose she went on board a small vessel, and, in the evening, landed near the palace; where, being wrapt up in a coverlet, she was carried as a bundle of clothes into the very presence of Caesar. 18. Her address instantly struck him; her wit and understanding fanned the flame; but her affability entirely brought him over to ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... of city life and continuous study, his talents grew like wheat in black soil. In the summer of seventy-three he began to contribute to the columns of The Gazette. Certain of his articles brought him compliments from the best people for their wit, penetration and good humor. He had entered upon a career of great promise when the current of his life quickened like that of a river come to a steeper grade. It began with a letter from Margaret Hare, dated July 14, 1773. ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... passage, were acted (about 1668) for one of Shakespeare or Jonson. His explanation is remarkable. It was because the later dramatists 'understood the conversation of gentlemen much better,' whose wild 'debaucheries and quickness of wit no poet can ever paint as they have done.' In a later essay he explains that the greater refinement was due to the influence of the court. Charles II., familiar with the most brilliant courts of Europe, had roused us from ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... speaker was a Labour Member of Parliament. He used no polished phrases, no brilliant epigrams. He had no knowledge of the classics, and could not illustrate his arguments by quotations from great writers. But he had something better—a homely wit, a great human sympathy. He had a ready tongue, too, and the crowd roared ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... companionship, which was fully borne out on this occasion. He could, indeed, speak well on any subject. He was full of sound information, and overflowed with anecdote—in fact, his way of telling a story was inimitable. He had a fund of wit, which seemed ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... previously called, and who have to make their answers, not immediately, but much later; and who, moreover, may, in the presence of the fact, have been overcome by fear, astonishment, terror, etc.! I find that probing even comparatively trained wit- nesses is rather too funny, and the conclusions drawn from what is so learned are rather too conscienceless.[1] Such introductions as: "But you will know,''—"Just recall this one,''—"You wouldn't be ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... admired Norris, still maintained that Edward MacDowell was the handsomest man of her circle, and in this I supported her, for he was then in the noble prime of his glorious manhood, gay of spirit, swift of wit and delightfully humorous of speech. As a dinner companion he was unexcelled and my wife quite lost her heart to him. Between Frank Norris and Edward MacDowell I appeared but a rusty-coat. I sang small. Fortunately for me they were both not only loyal ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... devoid of ill-nature or malevolence; indeed there was an original humour and pleasantry in his most lively sallies of anger or impatience, which, with his broken English, were extremely risible. His natural propensity to wit and humour, and happy manner of relating common occurrences in an uncommon way, enabled him to throw persons and things into very ridiculous attitudes. Handel's general look was somewhat heavy and sour, but when he did smile, it was his sire the sun, bursting out of a black cloud. ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... politely but perfunctorily. She was living too deeply to-night to appreciate wit. John, too, was strangely silent, his eyes resting often and adoringly upon Colette. Shrewdly Derry divined the situation and relieved it by rattling on with a surface banter that ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... see my hour: Unless thy answer to my next demand Shall set thee free from our avenging hand. The question, whose solution I require, Is, What the sex of women most desire? In this dispute thy judges are at strife; Beware; for on thy wit depends thy life. Yet (lest surprised, unknowing what to say, 100 Thou damn thyself) we give thee farther day: A year is thine to wander at thy will, And learn from others, if thou want'st the skill. But, not to hold our proffer turn'd to ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... I hope You, my Gracious Patrons, will not be Offended if I Assigne you a part in this Pasquinade, which is this,— You are to Act as a Chorus to the whole. When you behold a Fool pleasantly exposed You are to laugh, if you please, not else;— When a Knave is Satyrized with Spirit & Wit, You are to Applaud;— and when Pasquin is dull you are to explode, which I Suppose will be the Chief of Your Part. But, before I Enter upon my Office of Public Censor, give me leave Gracious Patrons, as is my Custom, whenever I come, to give a short Sketch ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin
... the 19th of June 1586, the colonists set sail and arrived in England some six weeks later. They brought with them two things which afterward proved to be of wit great importance. The first was tobacco. The use of it had been known ever since the days of Columbus, but it was now for the first time brought to England. The second was the potato. This Raleigh planted on his estates in Ireland, and to this day Ireland is one of ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... though it was in bad German. Chamisso understood Danish; I gave him my poems, and he was the first who translated any of them, and thus introduced me into Germany. It was thus he spoke of me at that time in the Morgenblatt: "Gifted with wit, fancy, humor, and a national na vet , Andersen has still in his power tones which awaken deeper echoes. He understands, in particular, how with perfect ease, by a few slight but graphic touches, to call into existence little pictures and ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... as he spoke, followed by his companion. The third man stepped a pace or two to the right, and levelling a long double-barrelled pistol, deliberately fired, when McCarthy's first pursuer fell; the second man, however, with that remarkable, quickness of wit which characterizes the Irish, in their outrages as well as in their pastimes, suddenly stooped, and taking the dreadful dagger out of the hands of the wounded man, continued the pursuit bounding after his foe with ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... well-meaning, sensible men would not lessen their power of doing good by a positive, assuming manner, that seldom fails to disgust, tends to create opposition, and to defeat everyone of those purposes for which speech was given to us, to wit, giving or receiving information or pleasure. For, if you would inform, a positive and dogmatical manner in advancing your sentiments may provoke contradiction and prevent a candid attention. If you wish information and improvement ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... You must be a man of wit, forsooth, and a man of quality! You must spend as if you were as rich as Nicias, and prate as if you were as wise as Pericles! You must dangle after sophists and pretty women! And I must pay for all! I must sup on thyme and onions, while you are swallowing thrushes and hares! I must drink water, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... into which it drops and is forgotten until some raking up in the department turns up the old blotters and the old things once more. But at last the mail-bag contained something that was altogether out of the usual run, to wit, a Chinese baby. ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... the Indians that they have become blended with them. One of the commonest songs is very wild and pretty. It has for refrain the words "Mai, Mai" ("Mother, Mother"), with a long drawl on the second word. The stanzas are quite variable; the best wit on board starts the verse, improvising as he goes on, and the others join in the chorus. They all relate to the lonely river life and the events of the voyage— the shoals, the wind, how far they ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... classical spit, With a stuffing of praise and a basting of wit, You may twitch at your collar and wrinkle your brow, But you're up on your legs, and ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... these hopes and views, and with little education, or a very imperfect one,—when these people, from whatever rank of life selected, many from the best, most from the middling, very few from the lowest, but, high, middling, or low, they are sent out to make two things coincide which the wit of man was never able to unite, to make their fortune and form their education at once. What is the education of the generality of the world? Reading a parcel of books? No. Restraint of discipline, emulation, examples ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... wild contending hues? Thou by the Passions nursed, I greet The comic sock that binds thy feet! 50 O Humour, thou whose name is known To Britain's favour'd isle alone: Me too amidst thy band admit; There where the young-eyed healthful Wit, (Whose jewels in his crisped hair 55 Are placed each other's beams to share; Whom no delights from thee divide) In laughter loosed, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... the suggestion which I am about to offer has not already presented itself to every reader of ordinary intelligence who has taken the trouble to follow the course of my argument thus far with attention. It requires no acuteness whatever,—it is, as it seems to me, the merest instinct of mother-wit,—on reaching the present stage of the discussion, to debate with ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... counted. She had the birth and education of a lady, the strength of a healthy woman, and a will of her own. Such was the list as she made it out for herself, and I protest that I assert no more than the truth in saying that she never added to it either beauty, wit, or talent. ...
— The Parson's Daughter of Oxney Colne • Anthony Trollope
... Poopinac. As the most peerless of all the beauties at Court during the last years of a desperately tottering throne, she has been hailed and heralded (and is still in some outlying villages in Old Provence and Old Normandy) as almost an enchantress, so great was her beauty and her wit. Born in a stately chateau in Old Picardy, she was brought up in comparative seclusion; her father, the Duc de Potache,[1] spent his time at Court, so that her radiant loveliness was left to mature and develop unnoticed. Her ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... in the presence of his daughters and of Mr Sparkler, who happened, by some surprising accident, to be calling there. 'How are you, Sparkler?' said Gowan carelessly. 'When you have to live by your mother wit, old boy, I hope you may get on ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... aloud from an excellent collection of books I had prepared. Reading introduced topics of conversation, in which I employed all that I had in memory, and all that had been created in myself by the electric collision of great authors. Never did a professional wit more ingeniously produce as sudden coruscations the bon mots tediously studied; never did a philosophical conversationalist use to more advantage the wisdom conned over in the closet. I talked eloquently, profoundly. I rattled forth witticisms ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... checker and backgammon boards; the landlord a great player, seemingly a stupid man, but with considerable shrewdness and knowledge of the world.—F———, the comedian, a stout, heavy-looking Englishman, of grave deportment, with no signs of wit or humor, yet aiming at both in conversation, in order to support his character. Very steady and regular in his life, and parsimonious in his disposition,—worth $ 50,000, made by his profession.—A clergyman, elderly, with a white neckcloth, very unbecoming, ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the consideration of matters quite foreign to the pursuits with which I am ordinarily occupied; but, in that respect, I am only in the position which is, nine times out of ten, occupied by counsel, who nevertheless contrive to gain their causes, mainly by force of mother-wit and common-sense, aided by some ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... capital which once reflected the wit and fashion of Europe has fallen into decay. The silent streets no more echo with the rumble of coaches and gay chariots, and grass grows where busy merchants trod. Stately ball-rooms, where beauty once reigned, are cold and empty and mildewed, and halls, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... actually thought this impudence clever, and glanced across the table for applause as he spoke. But although Mamma Watchmaker, if she had heard it, might have thought it a piece of astonishing wit, the strangers at the public table were quite of a different opinion, and there was a general cry of ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... was an eminently witty man in a very witty age; but to the honour of his judgment let it be said, that though his great wit is evinced in numberless passages, in a few only is it shown off. This paragraph is one of ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... vicinity, hoping to acquire a better education, but the pupils and teacher persecuted him so sorely that he was obliged to withdraw. Determining to lose no time in waiting for an education, he at once began the work of preaching. Being possessed of strong natural sense, a ready wit, and being thoroughly imbued with the spirit of frontier life, he was just the man to carry the Gospel home to the hearts of the rude pioneers of the great West. His manner was that of a backwoodsman, and he had no city airs and ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... blessing go with you," said the younger brother. "I, too, should like to serve my country and the king, but I have neither words nor wit for a king's court. To hammer a shoe from the glowing iron while the red fire roars and the anvil rings—this is the work that I do best, and I shall be a blacksmith, even as my father was ...
— The Story-teller • Maud Lindsay
... at his excruciating wit, but she was touched also by his courtesy, and she told him he was awful kind and she was ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... a shrewd fellow, and as bad as any that lived in those parts. His father had not half the quick wit ...
— The Hero of Ticonderoga - or Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys • John de Morgan
... She was an intruder and a calamity, of course. That a Feather should become a parent gave rise to much wit of light weight when Robin was exhibited in the form of ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... our fatigue in our desire to wit-ness the last ceremony, after which the woman is forever cut off from the external world. It was just going to begin; and we kept our eyes and ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... at the disasters which befell Egypt, Moses' keen wit might well have suggested to him to explain the strange and terrifying occurrences, to his father, by the intervention of the God of Israel in behalf of ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... not be so interested in late suppers, and in various forms of sense gratification because you enjoy more thoroughly the higher pleasures. You will serve your friends with delicate food, simply and daintily prepared, and seasoned with that wit and wisdom which remain as a permanent mental pabulum. You will make them feel that when you come to visit them you come not to get something to eat, but to enjoy them, to receive from them the inspiration ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... author's commendation.' Neither needed men of so excellent parts to have despaired of a fortune which the poet Virgil promised himself, and, indeed, obtained, who got as much glory of eloquence, wit, and learning, in the expressing of the observations of husbandry as of the heroical ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... interminable comment and embittered her condition. She occupied herself a great deal with her children, not so much from taste as for the sake of an interest in her almost solitary life, and exercised her mind on the only subjects which she could find —to wit, the intrigues which went on around her, the ways of provincials, and the ambitions shut in by their narrow horizons. So she very soon fathomed mysteries of which her husband had no idea. As she sat at her window ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... was his fancy to invite Men of science, wit, and learning, Who came to lend each other light; 355 He proudly thought that his gold's might Had set those ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... the craft of authorship, and the mysteries of bookselling. ROBERT GREENE, the master-wit, wrote "The Art of Coney-catching," or Cheatery, in which he was an adept; he died of a surfeit of Rhenish and pickled herrings, at a fatal banquet of authors;—and left as his legacy among the "Authors by Profession" "A Groatsworth of Wit, bought with a Million of Repentance." One died of another ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... been much in his thought—to whom he had furnished ground for suspecting him of following her with evil intent—Sergius amongst others. In a word, he saw a necessity for averting attention from himself in the connection. Here also his wit was willing and helpful. The moment the myrmidon dropped from the portico with news that the Princess was out in her chair unattended, he decided she was ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... no, nor mine To chant the wrath that fill'd Pelides' breast, Nor dark Ulysses' wanderings o'er the brine, Nor Pelops' house unblest. Vast were the task, I feeble; inborn shame, And she, who makes the peaceful lyre submit, Forbid me to impair great Caesar's fame And yours by my weak wit. But who may fitly sing of Mars array'd In adamant mail, or Merion, black with dust Of Troy, or Tydeus' son by Pallas' aid Strong against gods to thrust? Feasts are my theme, my warriors maidens fair, Who with pared nails encounter youths in fight; Be ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... with which they adopt certain Americanisms, and other cant phrases of the day. Such habits cannot be too severely reprehended. They lower the tone of society and the standard of thought. It is a great mistake to suppose that slang is in any way a substitute for wit. ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... Feminine wit is not apt to be abstract. It struck the consul that in Miss Elsie's sprightliness there was the usual ulterior and personal object, and he glanced around at his fellow-passengers. The object evidently was sitting at the end of the opposite seat, an amused but well-behaved listener. For ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... considerable accession to my small fortune. I then received an invitation from General St. Clair to attend him as a secretary to his expedition, which was at first meant against Canada, but ended in an incursion on the coast of France. Next year, to wit, 1747, I received an invitation from the general to attend him in the same station in his military embassy to the courts of Vienna and Turin. I then wore the uniform of an officer, and was introduced at these ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... special variety of human nature obtained in the Social Kingdom by a process analogous to that of the gardener's craft in the Vegetable Kingdom, to wit, by the forcing-house—a species of hybrid which can be raised neither from seed nor from slips. This product is known as the Cashier, an anthropomorphous growth, watered by religious doctrine, trained up in fear of the guillotine, pruned by vice, to flourish on a third floor ...
— Melmoth Reconciled • Honore de Balzac
... will please the FANCY and instruct the JUDGMENT. And here we beg leave to observe that we shall have nothing so much at heart as the support of VIRTUE and MORALITY and the noble cause of LIBERTY. The refined amusements of LITERATURE, and the pleasing veins of well pointed wit, shall also be considered as necessary to this collection; interspersed with chosen pieces, and curious essays, extracted from the most celebrated authors; So that, blending PHILOSOPHY with POLITICKS, HISTORY, &c., the youth of both ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... the sweet voice which the fox in his flattery attributed to him, but he has a good, strong, native speech, nevertheless. How much character there is in it! How much thrift and independence! Of course his plumage is firm, his color decided, his wit quick. He understands you at once and tells you so; so does the hawk by his scornful, defiant whir-r-r-r-r. Hardy, happy outlaws, the crows, how I love them! Alert, social, republican, always able to look out for himself, ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... had at many points certain affinities to Carlyle's hero Johnson, but lacked his epigrammatic wit—and much else. But he seems to have desired to emulate Johnson in one particular, as we ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... follows: "Flashy people may burlesque these things, but when hundreds of the most sober people in a country, where they have as much mother-wit certainly as the rest of mankind, know them to be true, nothing but the absurd and froward spirit of Sadduceeism can question them. I have not yet mentioned so much as one thing, that will not be justified, if it be required, by the oaths of more considerate persons, ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
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