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More "Witty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ultra-modern girl, gay, sparkling, witty, brilliant, temperamental; busily enjoying every minute of life; clad always in the most down-to-the-moment styles. He imagined her as popular, colorful, a wonderful companion for a happy, festive mood; a street that looked upon her companion streets as a debutante ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... life of the party. He felt so overjoyed because of the kind fate that had allowed him to be of considerable use to Bessie French, so that their old friendship was renewed, this time to remain, that he seemed to be fairly bubbling over with spirits. He made witty remarks about most of the food they had, and kept the others laughing from the beginning of the meal until it reached its conclusion, with the dishes well ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... introduced smallpox among the Mexican Indians. The other, who seems to have observed the fight between the men of the agent of Velasquez (Narvaez) from the safe and comfortable distance of a neighboring tree, has, because of some witty and flattering remarks which he made to Cortes, received the honor of a paragraph in the Decades ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... games seriously and played them well, and you couldn't point to him as one of those cautious persons who never by any chance drank even one cocktail too many. Indeed, he often became hilarious and witty, and added no end to the gayety of occasions, and was afterward privately reproached by Lucy. Coming from another, the hilarity and wit would have rejoiced her, but, coming from her nearest and dearest, her ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... times with Ada and Edith, and also with Frank himself. There had been the three girls who had called themselves "Beauty and the Beast" and the "Small young woman." The reader will understand that it had not been Ada who had chosen those names; but then Ada was not given to be witty. Her prettiness, such as it was, had sufficed, and Frank had loved her dearly. Then had come her great triumph, and she knew not only that she could sing, but that the world had recognised her singing. "I am a great woman, as women go," she had said to herself. ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... in fact!" cried Elizabeth, clapping her little hands. "How will Munnich curse himself for cruelty which now comes home to himself! That is very witty in you, Herr Lestocq; very laughable, is it not, Alexis? But, Alexis, you do not laugh at all; you look sad. What is the matter with you? Who has disobliged, who has ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... of any memorable scepticism published in a pointed or witty form; as Demosthenes avowed his suspicions "that the Oracle was Philippizing." This was about 344 years B.C. Exactly one hundred years earlier, in the 444th year B.C., or the locus of Pericles, Herodotus (then forty years old) is universally supposed to have read, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Mortemart's grief that life became unbearable to her. Beautiful, witty, and accomplished, she quitted the world where she was beloved, and, at the, age of seventeen, took ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... of the group, was the delight of them all. The carriage of a bantam rooster, the courage of a lion, more brain than he could stagger under; a disposition fiery, mercurial, sanguine, witty; he was made, according to Billy Fairfax's dictum, of "wire and brass tacks," and he possessed what Honey Smith (who himself had no mean gift in that direction) called "the gift of gab." He lived by writing magazine articles. ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... Francis may be very gallant and witty, nephew," cried the General, "but it is not polite to leave the card-table in ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... Paris, and a considerable intimacy arose between her and my mother, whose nature was especially calculated to sympathise with the good qualities which Lady Bulwer unquestionably possessed in a high degree. She was brilliant, witty, generous, kind, joyous, good-natured, and very handsome. But she was wholly governed by impulse and unreasoning prejudice; though good-natured, was not always good-humoured; was totally devoid of prudence or judgment, and absolutely incapable of estimating men aright. She used ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... had passed two years at Paris under the guardianship of Mesdames the daughters of His Most Christian Majesty, and who was the life and soul of the Court of X—-, the gayest of the gay, the idol of her august father-in-law, and, indeed, of the whole Court. She was not beautiful, but charming; not witty, but charming, too, in her conversation as in her person. She was extravagant beyond all measure; so false, that you could not trust her; but her very weaknesses were more winning than the virtues of other women, her selfishness more delightful than others' ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... he made a fortune, with which he bought a villa at Twickenham. There he lived in the pale sunshine of literary success, and there he quarreled with every writer who failed to appreciate his verses, his jealousy overflowing at last in The Dunciad (Iliad of Dunces), a witty but venomous lampoon, in which he took revenge on ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... or thieves to make restitution. Probably this was the surest method of recovery, in the absence of the detective system. Joseph Tyler in the "Boston Gazette," Nov. 21, 1761, is inclined to be sarcastic, and Samuel Brazer, of Worcester, in 1802, is witty, but modest. As to stealing psalm-books, no one would dream of doing such a thing in these days. Our modern thieves are not interested in devotional books; ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks
... moment of his appearance upon the stage of public life, imagine what an impression such a phenomenon must have made upon a people so lost in profligacy and sensuality of all sorts. What wonder that the unprincipled though gifted Demades, the very personification of the witty and reckless libertinism of the age, should deride and scoff at this strange man, living as nobody else lived, thinking as nobody else thought; a prophet, crying from his solitude of great troubles at hand; the ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... contrarieties, turning at times the most serious subjects into ridicule, and moralizing upon the most ludicrous occurrences of life, never failing to conclude his observations with some quaint or witty sentiment to excite risibility; seeming at the same ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... into a wooden pail And sang a country ditty, An innocent fond lovers' tale, That was not wise nor witty, Pathetically rustical, Too pointless ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... plain—lank overgrown girls with long thin legs and overhanging mops of hair like deck-swabs. They were a favourite butt of my men, who chaffed them in the humorous Eastern manner, with remarks that were, I am afraid, more coarse than witty. Kachins are not virtuous. Their customs preclude such a possibility. No Japanese maiden is more innocent of ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... practice. His first novel, "Vivian Grey," appeared in 1826, and thereafter, whenever the business of politics left him leisure, he devoted it to fiction. "Contarini Fleming," "Coningsby," "Tancred," "Lothair," and "Endymion" are the most important of a brilliant and witty series, in which many prominent personages are represented and satirised under thin disguises. His endeavours to enter Parliament as a Radical failed twice in 1832; in 1835 he was unsuccessful again as a Tory. His first seat was for Maidstone in 1837; thereafter he represented Shrewsbury ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... my enterprising gentleman—[Indeed, Louisa, your brother is a bold youth]—snatched an unexpected embrace, with more eagerness than fear, and then fell on one knee, making such a piteous face for forgiveness, so whimsical, and indeed I may say witty, that it was impossible to be serious. However, I hurried away, ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... by the modern historian and traveller as lively, versatile, and witty. "The love of liberty and independence does not seem to be rooted out of the national character by centuries of subjugation. They love to command; but though they are loyal to a good government, they are apt readily to rise when their rights and liberties are infringed. ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... his race. His aid was also invoked as a Shadchan, though he forgot to take his commissions and lacked the restless zeal for the mating of mankind which animated Sugarman, the professional match-maker. In fine, he was a witty old fellow and everybody loved him. He and his wife spoke English with a strong foreign accent; in their more intimate causeries they ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... manifest in frequent expressions from talesmen such as: "I think the defence of insanity is played out," or "I believe everybody is a little insane, anyhow" (very popular and regarded by jurymen as witty), or "Well, I have an idea that when a fellow can't cook up any other defence he claims to ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... reproached by an Episcopal brother for being witty in the pulpit, he replied, "My dear brother in the Lord, do you mean to say that if God had given you any wit you wouldn't have used it?" Let Bishop South stand for the "blasphemer," and his dull brother for the orthodox jury, and you have the moral ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... these poems have been pronounced "without rivals in our language." In the new edition now published, Mrs. Dodge has made a careful revision of the work. Every child should have a copy of these witty ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... bleus!" was the cry from every quarter: and discipline not being the order of the moment for Legionnaires off duty, young soldiers and old soldiers gathered round, making such remarks as occurred to them, witty or ribald. Les bleus were ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... linen and fine raiment; from footgear to hair-oil their wares ranged. They enlivened their auctioneering with conjuring tricks and witty stories, selling watches by the aid of legerdemain, and fancy vests by ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... tall, high-coloured, rather mannish-looking girl, handsome in form, witty in speech, and disposed towards field sports of every kind. She disliked Sophy on sight, and Madame perceived it, and easily worked on the girl's worst feelings. Besides, Marion had no lover at the time, and she had come home with the idea ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... The Lotos Flower is a gem, and the North Sea Pictures shew the fine eye of a poet who, like Byron and Shelley, can create myths, his personifications as a whole are affected, and his personal feeling is forced upon Nature for the sake of a witty effect. ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... youth, nature, learning, witty companionship, Vaughan published his first verses—breathing a love of his art and its pleasures of imagination, paying his tribute to his paternal books in "Englishing," the "Tenth Satyre of Juvenal," and not ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... course, as graceful and elegant, as witty and seductive, as she could possibly manage to be; for here were all the ladies to outshine, and all the gentlemen to charm,—and Mr. Lawrence, especially, to capture and subdue. Her little arts to effect his subjugation ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... calibre of poetical work in point of musical and general execution could be given than the fact that Moore has always with them passed, and still passes, for an eminently melodious poet. What then remains? Chiefly this. In one class of writing, liveliness of witty banter, along with neatness; and, in the other and ostensibly more permanent class, elegance, also along with neatness. Reduce these qualities to one denomination, and we come to something that may be called "Propriety": a sufficiently disastrous "raw ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... most of the great, from the country, all the thrusters after gain, the vulgar, heavy-fingered intellects, the Progressive spouters, the Bileses, the speculating brigandage, and shall give us back from the foggy world of clubs and cab-ranks and geniuses, the poets and painters, all the nice and witty and pretty people, to make towns such as this, conserved and purified, into country-side Athenses; to form distinct schools of letters and art, individual growths, not that universal Cockney mind, smoke-ingrained, stage-ridden, convention-throttled, ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... said the Spider, "You're witty and you're wise; How handsome are your gauzy wings How brilliant ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... most times useless item of cavalry equipment clanking at his heels, the lieutenant gazed with some astonishment upon the attire of his brother-officers there assembled, but found himself the butt of much good-natured and not over-witty "chaff," directed partially at the extreme newness and neatness of his dark-blue flannel scouting-shirt and high-top boots, but more especially at the glittering sabre swinging ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... know not by what destiny) Englishmen are most inferior to most of all other nations: for where they set their delight and bend themselves with an honest strife of matching others to turn into their mother tongue not only the witty writings of other languages but also of all philosophers, and all sciences both Greek and Latin, our men ween it sufficient to have a perfect knowledge to no other end but to profit themselves and (as it were) after much pains in breaking up a gap bestow no less to close it up again." To ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... on Jean de Reszke, his brother douard, and on Lassalle, found all the artistic bliss of which they were capable in listening to their combined voices in "Faust." So popular had Gounod's opera become at this time with the patrons of the Metropolitan Opera House, that my witty colleague, Mr. W. J. Henderson, sarcastically dubbed it "das Faustspielhaus," in parody of the popular title of the theater on the ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Senior class. Among the editors of 1840-41, were J. E. Hood and James O. Adams, both of whom have since gained honorable distinction in a wider field of editorial labor. A few months ago, I received as a present from B. P. Shillaber, the witty and genial author of the 'Life and Sayings of Mrs. Partington,' and other humorous works, a volume of 'The Dartmouth,' which he received from Mr. Hood. It was handsomely bound, and labelled 'Brains' on the back. Mr. Shillaber says of it in a letter, dated July 4, ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... The Hethertons had returned and would remain till after the fifteenth, and since they had come the rector found it even pleasanter calling there than it had been before, with only his bride-elect to entertain him. Sure of Dr. Bellamy, Fanny had laid aside her sharpness, and was exceedingly witty and brilliant, while, now that it was settled, the colonel was too thoroughly a gentleman to be otherwise than gracious to his future nephew; and Mrs. Hetherton was always polite and lady-like, so that the rector looked forward with a good deal of interest to the evenings he ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... relations to so many of the foremost men of his day and his long study in public archives and private libraries bore fruit in this work, which takes rank among the few great, enduring historical treatises of the world. Throughout, it is vigorous and witty, but at the same time profound; everywhere it bears evidences of truthfulness and is pervaded by sobriety of judgment. Its pictures of the efforts or threats by representatives of various great powers to break away from the papacy and establish national ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... of the valorous and witty-knight-errant, Don-Quixote, of the Mancha. Translated out of the Spanish; now newly corrected and amended. London, by Richard Hodkinsonne, for Andrew ...
— The Library of William Congreve • John C. Hodges
... Dr. Lelius to her aid, and she, the German, and Daphne, kept up a sparring conversation, in which Mrs. Barnes, driven on by a secret wrath, showed herself rather noisier than Englishwomen generally are. She was a little impertinent, the Duchess thought, decidedly aggressive, and not witty enough to carry ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Venetian comedies, and in many which he wrote in Italian, appear the standard associates of Facanapa,—Arlecchino, il Dottore. Pantalon dei Bisognosi, and Brighella. The reader is at first puzzled by their constant recurrence, but never weary of Goldoni's witty management of them. They are the chief persons of the obsolete commedia a braccio, and have their nationality and peculiarities marked by immemorial attribution. Pantalon is a Venetian merchant, ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... Sunday evening gatherings at their home in New York, where the choice spirits of the literary world held converse after the manner of their kind, as at the assemblies in the Paris salons of the 18th century. In this company Mr. Greeley was at his best, animated, witty and charmingly affable. He realized, only too well, that his best was wasted in the strife which was his daily portion and which ended in the disastrous defeat that cost him his life. The flashes of aroused egotism that sometimes blazed out in red-hot words, were only signs of impatience ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... an hour after their Sunday-noon dinner. She had been to church; had confessed indeterminate sins to a formless and unresponsive deity. She felt righteous, and showed it. Phil caught the cue. He sacrificed all the witty things he was prepared to say about Mrs. Gray's dumplings; he gazed silently out of the window till she wondered what he was thinking about, then he stumblingly began to review a sermon which he said he had heard the previous Sunday—though he must have been mistaken, as he shot several games ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... who are born good just as others are born witty. What I mean is his nature. No simpler, more scrupulously delicate soul had ever lived in such a—a—comfortable envelope. How we used to laugh at Davidson's fine scruples! In short, he's thoroughly humane, and I don't imagine there can be much of any other ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... amusing, being a brilliant talker (for I heard Jack say so) and very witty (for he is constantly laughing at the things she says, and which for the most part ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... pounds to Dekker, Chettle and Haughton for their "Pleasant comodie of Patient Grissil," printed in 1603, reprinted by the Shakespeare Society, 1841. The English authors drew several hints from the French play, but theirs is the best written on the subject (parts of Julia, the witty sister of the Marquis, of Laureo, the poor student, brother of Griselda, as proud ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... at all, although Mr. Sims executed his very best jokes. Maimie was nervous and visibly distressed, and at the earliest possible moment broke up the supper party and engaged in conversation with the lieutenant and his witty friend, leaving Harry and Kate to entertain Ranald. But in spite of all they could do a solemn silence would now and then overtake the company, till at length Maimie grew desperate, and turning to Ranald, said: "What are you thinking of? You are ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... yourself, but with my own brush. But what am I saying? What prospect of leisure have I, especially as I remain at Rome in accordance with his request? But I will see. For perhaps, as usual, my love for you will overcome all difficulties. For my having sent Trebatius to him he even thanks me in very witty and polite terms, remarking that there was no one in the whole number of his staff who knew how to draw up a recognizance. I have asked him for a tribuneship for M. Curtius—since Domitius (the consul) would have thought that he was being laughed at, if my petition had been addressed to him, for ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... musician, intelligent, witty, refined, and received (as a Cadignan) by the Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, that oracle of the noble faubourg, loved by her rivals the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse her cousin, the Marquise d'Espard, and Madame de Macumer,—Madame Firmiani gratified all the vanities which feed or excite love. She was ...
— Madame Firmiani • Honore de Balzac
... "Witty above her sex, but that's not all, Wise to Salvation was good Mistress Hall, Something of Shakespeare was in that, but this Wholly of him with whom she's now in blisse. Then, passenger, hast nere a tear To weep with her that wept with all ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... discovered upon some shores; or golden sands are seen when the waters run low. In others bare rocks, slime, or reptiles. May I never be at low tide with a bore! Despising the Bagatelle, there is the serious regular conversation bore, who listens to himself, talks from notes, and is witty by rule. All rules for conversation were no doubt invented by bores, and if followed would make all men and women bores, either in straining to be witty, or striving to be easy. There is no more certain method, even for him who may possess the talent in the ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... Buttons and Dick were in a remarkably central part of Naples. The landlord was a true Neapolitan; a handsome, gay, witty, noisy, lively, rascally, covetous, ungrateful, deceitful, cunning, good-hearted old scoundrel, who took advantage of his guests in a thousand ways, and never spoke to them without trying to humbug them. He was the father of a pretty daughter who had all her parent's nature somewhat toned down, ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... she was,—that she looked like a child whose favorite toy had been broken, that she was so pretty that he would have liked to kiss her hands in his devotion, and as she seemed to be witty, and very amusing, and as, moreover, he had no objection to such visits being prolonged, when papers had to be looked over, while sitting close together,—Maitre Garrulier appeared to be considering. Taking his chin in his ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... that Mr. Sowerby might marry her. It was not surmised that Miss Dunstable herself had had any previous notice of this arrangement, but it was supposed that the thing would turn out as a matter of course. Mr. Sowerby had no money, but then he was witty, clever, good-looking, and a member of Parliament. He lived before the world, represented an old family, and had an old place. How could Miss Dunstable possibly do better? She was not so young now, and it was time that she should look about her. ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... for the first time very equally, in the level light of the sun at morning. For what he saw was England of the Renascence; England passing from the mediaeval to the modern. Thus he looked forth, and saw many things and said many things; they were all worthy and many witty; but he noted one thing which is at once a horrible fancy and a homely and practical fact. He who looked over that landscape said: "Sheep are ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... less important than the discipline of your faculties, you may, of course, do so, but even here as little as possible. In beautiful drawing of any facility it has a weakening effect, somewhat similar to that produced by a person stopping in the middle of a witty or brilliant remark to correct a word. If a wrong line is made, it is left in by the side of the right one in the drawing of many of the masters. But the great aim of the draughtsman should be to train himself to draw cleanly and ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... the after-piece; but neither the spirit and perfection of the acting, nor the pretty face and plump shoulders of Elmire, nor the soubrette's dimpled arms, nor the ingenue's innocent eyes, nor the noble, witty lines that filled the theatre and roused the audience to fresh attention, could stir his spirit that hung entranced on the ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... side-ache, the train kept getting under her feet, and she was in constant fear lest her earrings should fly off and get lost or broken. She was flirting her fan and laughing at the feeble jokes of a young gentleman who tried to be witty, when she suddenly stopped laughing and looked confused, for just opposite, she saw Laurie. He was staring at her with undisguised surprise, and disapproval also, she thought, for though he bowed and smiled, yet something in his honest eyes made her blush and wish she had ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... "Let's stop being witty. I still haven't a clue as to how Sheridan Hennessey expects me to get to these Galactic Confederation people—or things, or whatever ...
— Combat • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... dinner, especially after Rhone wine, his favourite weakness. He would then remark on the warmth of his feeling for Anastasie, and with inflamed cheeks and a loose, flustered smile, debate upon all sorts of topics, and be feebly and indiscreetly witty. But the adopted stable-boy would not permit himself to entertain a doubt that savoured of ingratitude. It is quite true that a man may be a second father to you, and yet take too much to drink; but the best natures are ever slow to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... difference, methinks, between the cases—have thy way though. I have confidence in thee, Prudence, and believe thee as witty as pretty. Thy own goodness and love for the soldier Joy shall stand by thee like guardian angels, to save from harm. Yet like I not this tampering with anything that looks ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... as he rose to accompany her. Brother Jonah felt himself capable of much more stinging wit than this, but he reflected that there was no use in offending the new proprietor of Stone Court, until you were certain that he was quite without intentions of hospitality towards witty men whose name he was ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... a catcher at words?' said I. 'I thought that catching at words had been confined to the pot-house farmers and village witty bodies.' ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... lad—a mere stripling, Picked up in the field almost dead, With the blood through his sunny hair rippling From the horrible gash in the head. They say he was first in the action: Gay-hearted, quick-headed, and witty: He fought till he dropped with exhaustion At the gates ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... dexterity of plot, glancing play at witty talk, characters really human and humanly real, spirit and gladness, freshness and quick movement. 'Half a Rogue' is as brisk as a horseback ride on a glorious morning. It is as varied as an April day. It is as charming as two ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... seventy-nine, she is spry and jaunty and witty and good humored. Her house is as clean as a pin, and her yard ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... inconsistencies which have since received their ample and memorable punishment, cease to produce any effect on readers of the present day, except to call forth a passing feeling of repugnance at what is shallow and profane, mixed, it may be, sometimes, with an equally passing admiration for what is witty and brilliant. Even in M. Renan's view, Voltaire has done his work, and is out of date. Those who now attack Christianity have to attack it under the disadvantage of the preliminary admission that its essential and distinguishing elements are, on the whole, in harmony and not ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... I have read since I came here. Hear and wonder! I have in the first place read Boccacio's Decameron, a tale of a hundred cantos. He is a wonderful writer. Whether he tells in humorous or familiar strains the follies of the silly Calandrino, or the witty pranks of Buffalmacco and Bruno, or sings ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... of Greece and the Archipelago are again revenans of a new kind. We can hardly persuade ourselves that a nation so witty as the Greeks could fall into so extraordinary an opinion. Ignorance or prejudice, must be extreme among them since neither an ecclesiastic nor any other writer ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... turned away at the last evening session and there was scarcely standing room within the church. A witty and vivacious speech by Mrs. Helen M. Gougar (Ind.) was the first number on the program. Mrs. Julia B. Nelson (Minn.) followed in an original dialect poem, Hans Dunderkopf's Views of Equality. Mrs. Sewall showed the Absurdity of ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... language is well, and no doubt very witty, Sir Thomas; but, believe me, in the end you will find this matter anything but a farce. Now, sir, I crave your attention to a proposal which I am about to make to you on this most distressing subject. Restore this young man to his mother—use whatever means you ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Aunt Esther, for so our saint was known, were of a bright-faced, cheerful, witty, quick-moving little middle-aged person, who came into our house like a good fairy whenever there was a call of sickness or trouble. If an accident happened in the great roistering family of eight or ten children, (and when was not something happening ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... sense of humor and a generous heart, and the smile of amusement on his face told the Gothic chief that he was fully forgiven for his shrewd stratagem. Admiration was stronger than mortification in the Moslem's heart. He praised Theodomir for his witty and successful expedient, and for the three days that he remained at Orihuela banquets and fetes marked his stay, he occupying the position of a guest rather than an enemy. No injury was done to people ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... whom we have already introduced with the object of enlightening Henri de Valois respecting the doubt he had entertained with regard to Sylla—Francois de Joyeuse, young and worldly-minded, handsome and witty, was one of the most remarkable men of the period. Ambitious by nature, but circumspect by calculation and position, Francois de Joyeuse could assume as his device, "Nothing is too much," and justify ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... Congreve,—and defiled the stage. The Pilgrim's Progress of Bunyan (1628-88) is written in a plain, unaffected style, and is the most popular work of that age. In sharp contrast with Bunyan is Butler's Hudibras, a witty satire, in doggerel verse, upon Puritanism. The principal writer, prior to Queen Anne, is Dryden (1631-1700). We have passed now from the Romantic school of poetry, in which Shakspeare is the most exalted name, to ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... reading, the choice of name might have been judicious. A "concealed poet" of high social standing, with a strange fancy for rewriting the plays of contemporary playwrights, might obtain the manuscript copies from their owners, the Lord Chamberlain's Company, through that knowledgeable, witty, and venal member of the company, Will Shakspere. He might then rewrite and improve them, more or less, as it was his whim to do. The actor might make fair copies in his own hand, give them to his company, and say that the improved works were from his own pen and genius. The lie might ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... witty you are. 'Faith, if you knew your duty as well as your arithmetic, it would be betther for ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... lovely and witty. I'll tell Mrs. Andrews that. Well, and then Mrs. Burns has the B booth, and she sells beads and books and baskets and ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells
... and some don't care for her at all. It depends a good deal on yourself. She likes the ones who work, but she can be dreadfully sarcastic if she thinks you're stupid or lazy. She's fearfully clever, and says such witty things sometimes. Half-a-dozen of the girls absolutely worship her, but she's very fair, and won't have favourites. I like her better than ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... his Duchess, his second wife, by whom he had no issue. Her name was Margaret Lucas, youngest sister to the Lord Lucas of Colchester, a noble family, for all the brothers were valiant, and all the sisters virtuous. This Duchess was a wise, witty, and learned Lady, which her many books do well testify: She was a most virtuous, and loving, and careful wife, and was with her Lord all the time of his banishment and miseries; and when they came home never parted with him in his ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... profound calm. The uniform and steady pull of the crew, directed in their time by the wild chaunt of the steersman, with whom they ever and anon join in fall chorus—the measured plash of the oars into the calm surface of the water—the joyous laugh and rude, but witty, jest of the more youthful and buoyant of the soldiery, from whom, at such moments, although in presence of their officers, the trammels of restraint are partially removed—all these, added to the inspiriting sight of their gay scarlet uniforms, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... ("Seckendorf's meal," and what other commissariat there may be): a difficult march, to Amberg Country and the top of the Ober-Pfalz. After which are Mountain-passes; Bohemian Forest: and the Event—? "Cannot be dubious!" thinks France, whatever Maillebois think. Witty Paris, loving its timely joke, calls him Army of Redemption, "L'ARMEE DES MATHURINS,"—a kind of Priests, whose business is commonly in Barbary, about Christian bondage:—how sprightly! And yet the enthusiasm was great: young Princes of the Blood longing to be off as volunteers, needing ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... single-handed, with easy gallantry, to encounter and overthrow the charge of three giants of the North combined against him. I believe I am right in saying that, in the progress of the controversy, the most scientific, the most critical, and the most witty, of that literary company, all of them now, as he himself, removed from this visible scene, Professor Playfair, Lord Jeffrey, and the Rev. Sydney Smith, threw together their several efforts into one article of their Review, in order ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... animals might also be blood relations—that is to say, descended from common ancestors—and now he tells us that the ass and horse are in all probability descended from common ancestors. Will a reader of any literary experience hold that so laborious, and yet so witty a writer, and one so studious of artistic effect, could ignore the broad lines he had laid down for himself, or forget how what he had said would bear on subsequent passages, and subsequent passages on it? A less painstaking author than Buffon may yet be trusted to remember his own work well ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... make to you, so small it will not fit on to any of my larger headings. Do not make fun of your friend's little mishaps, little stupidities, losing her luggage, having said the wrong thing, or having a black on her face when she especially wished to look well! Your remark may be witty, but it does not really amuse the victim. I know it is very good for people to be chaffed, and I do not wish them to lose this wholesome bracing. And yet we have a special clinging to some tactful friends who ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... Duras, but at Jones's request it was changed to the Bonhomme Richard. This was in compliment to Franklin, who was often called "Poor Richard" by his admiring countrymen, because for many years he had published "Poor Richard's Almanac," filled with wise and witty sayings. ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... their fortunes, however unequal to their merit; others satisfying themselves with the honour of having access to great tables, and of being subject to the call of every man of quality, who upon occasion wants one to say witty things for the diversion of the company. This treatment never moves my indignation so much, as when it is practised by a person, who though he owes his own rise purely to the reputation of his parts, yet ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... that idea that was passing through my own mind. Men and women are anxious to give you the best they have, but it is in order that you may admire their wealth or their taste; and they strive to be witty, amusing, and sarcastic! but that, again, is for the eclat they are to gain. How few really struggle to make those ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... no sense of humour, and I'm sure I hope that Colonel Boucher will thoroughly understand that she has none before he speaks the fatal words. But then he has none either, and I have often noticed that two people without any sense of humour find each other most witty and amusing. A sense of humour, I expect, is not a very common gift; Miss Bracely has none at all, for I do not call romping humour. As for poor Daisy, what can rival her solemnity in sitting night after night round a table with someone who may or ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... is brilliant; she was called the handsomest woman in Washington—dashing, you know, and sarcastic and witty. Ruth, do you believe a ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 6. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... deserted by the fair, will ere long glitter with the brilliant throng, and our sidewalks be swept once more by the gracefully flowing silk. Taper fingers shall condescendingly be extended to us, the smile of beauty beam on us, and witty speech banish our resentful ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... the meantime Michael Angelo prosecuted his studies, showing the result of his labours to the Magnificent each day. In the same house lived Poliziano, a man, as every one knows, and as is testified by his works, most learned and witty. This man recognising the lofty spirit of Michael Angelo loved him exceedingly, and little as he needed it, spurred him on in his studies, always explaining things to him and giving him subjects. One day, amongst others, he suggested ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... great full sentences, so that each one was like the stanza of a narrative ballad. He let me talk, now and then, enough to free my lungs and change my position, so that I did not get tired. That evening he talked of the present state of things in England, giving light, witty sketches of the men of the day, fanatics and others, and some sweet, homely stories he told of things he had known of the Scotch peasantry. Of you he spoke with hearty kindness; and he told with beautiful feeling a story of some poor farmer ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... stage of Ralph Roister Doister and tragedy at that of The Misfortunes of Arthur, they transformed and refined both, lifting them to higher levels of humour and passion, gracing them with many witty inventions, and, above all, pouring into the pallid arteries of drama the rich vitalizing blood of a new poetry. The seven men were Lyly, Greene, Peele, Nash, Lodge, Kyd and Marlowe—named not in chronological sequence but in ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... you, the man who has overcome wicked inclinations is not the best. He has more merit to himself: I would rather trust my money to a man who has no hands, and so a physical impossibility to steal, than to a man of the most honest principles. There is a witty satirical story of Foote. He had a small bust of Garrick placed upon his bureau, "You may be surprized (said he) that I allow him to be so near my gold;—but you will ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... Guido—Raphael—neither stints To raise him to the empyreal, Whilst he is sketching his ideal. He sketches, utters, "That will do: Be pleased, my lord, to come and view." "I thought my mouth a little wider." "My lord, my lord, you me deride, ah!" "Such was my nose when I was young." "My lord, you have a witty tongue." "Ah well, ah well! you artists flatter." "That were, my lord, no easy matter." "Ah well, ah well! you artists see best." "My lord, I only (aside) earn ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... nerves suffered a little; but the young ladies loved him all the better for being witty and wicked; and thought if they could only marry him, how they ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... decrees were sufficiently ridiculous for the amusement not only of his court but of all mankind. The jester was commonly called a fool, but the poets and romancers have ever delighted to represent him as a singularly wise and witty person. In the circus of to-day the melancholy ghost of the court fool effects the dejection of humbler audiences with the same jests wherewith in life he gloomed the marble hall, panged the patrician sense of humor and tapped the tank ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... mighty sober, and the younger and more susceptible of my auditors covered their faces with their hands and seemed to shake with grief and contrition. But, pshaw, pshaw; people don't go to hear either witty agnostics lecture, or preachers preach, to get something for their brain-boxes to reason about. Believe me "—tapping the volume, still in his hand—"this sort of thing won't make anybody reason. After all, the question is one of swapping off Christ ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... delusion of conspiracy against him—also a complacent conviction of the mental instability of others. Yet, at intervals he remained clever and witty ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... for to cry What you lack? But that were not so witty: His cap and coat are enough to note, That he is the Love ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... visited Connie. Carol would have offered it harborage long before. Carol's mind worked best along that very line. It came to Connie slowly, but she gave it royal welcome. Back to her remembrance flashed the thousand witty sallies of Carol and Lark, the hundreds of times she had suffered at their hands. And for the first time in her life, she saw a clear way of getting even. And a millionaire's son! Never was such a revenge fairly crying to ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... grace beginning to speak, said, "Noble damsels, like as in the lucid nights the stars are the ornament of the sky and as in Spring-time the flowers of the green meadows, even so are commendable manners and pleasing discourse adorned by witty sallies, which latter, for that they are brief, are yet more beseeming to women than to men, inasmuch as much and long speech, whenas it may be dispensed with, is straitlier forbidden unto women than to men, albeit nowadays there are few or no women left who understand a ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... brother wits, Addison and Steele. It was strange how many common sayings of to-day were his in origin such as, "There is none so blind as they that won't see," and, "A penny for your thoughts." Like many witty people, he must needs have his little joke. He was made Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin, in 1713, and was accustomed to preach there each Sunday afternoon, and was said to have preached on the same subject on sixteen consecutive occasions. On making his seventeenth appearance he asked ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... heavy—or eye-lids, if the reader should be a critic. He had brought a book from his daughter's book-case. He remembered the volume—it was called A Book of a Thousand Stories—as the one his daughter Mary read aloud one evening, when the witty turns of speech put all the company into the best of humor. But, somehow, the wit had now lost its point—the joke had lost its zest—and let him try as he would to collect his scattered thoughts, and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... and professions were embraced in his comprehensive regard. He spared no toil to make France a happy land. He was a man of genius and of instinctive magnanimity. In conversation he had no rival. His profound and witty sayings which have been transmitted to us are sufficient to form a volume. His one great and almost only fault sadly tarnishes his otherwise ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... planet. Do you remember that story of Plato's—I recall the air-woven subtilties of the delightful idealist, to illustrate, not to prove—that story of the banquet where the ripe wines of the Aegean Isles unchained the tongues of such talkers as Pausanias and Socrates and others as witty and wise, until they fell into a discourse on the origin of Love, and, whirling away on the sparkling eddies of fancy, were borne to that prexistent sphere which, in Plato's opinion, furnished the key to all the enigmas of this? There they beheld the complete and original ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... recite to thee songs and verses and tell thee tales and anecdotes." Replied the Caliph, "My soul inclineth not to aught of this;" and Masrur rejoined, "O my lord, bid pretty boys and the wits and the cup-companions attend thee and solace thee with witty sallies." "O Masrur," ejaculated the Caliph, "indeed my soul inclineth not to aught of this." "Then, O my lord," cried Masrur, "strike off my head;"—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... my conversation were not as instructive as you had hoped, I could at least try to make it amusing—light, gay, witty! I trust you will not ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... and patience that the images and statues in the temples are produced. Among them were some very intelligent faces, somewhat abruties, to use a French word, owing to the life they lead, but exceedingly bright and cheery withal, and often very witty, when one came to talk with them. As for shrewdness and quickness of perception I know no person who has these better at his command than the Corean ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... him; but it is on his own hopes and affections only that he seems to trample, for in social life no human being can be more gentle, patient, and unassuming than Maddalo. He is cheerful, frank, and witty. His more serious conversation is a sort of intoxication. He has travelled much; and there is an inexpressible charm in his relation of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... lightning through the night—how strangely sound and sweet they sleep! (They say the French Voltaire in his time designated the grand opera and a ship of war the most signal illustrations of the growth of humanity's and art's advance beyond primitive barbarism. Perhaps if the witty philosopher were here these days, and went in the same car with perfect bedding and feed from New York to San Francisco, he would shift his type and sample to one ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... knowledge as well as playful life into her conversation. Johnson's regard for the Thrales was very real, and it was heartily returned, though Mrs. Thrale had, like her friend, some weaknesses, in common with most people who feed lions and wish to pass for wits among the witty. ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... alone and listened to the rain against the windows, and smoked until his cigar went out. The mere turning of things over in his mind, and tacking witty labels to them, afforded so much amusement that inactivity and ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... chaps with the trick of saying witty things as if he didn't see the fun in them himself," The Rat summed him up. "Chaps like that are always cleverer than the ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... unfortunate, in consequence of mismanagement by those to whom the getting up of these affairs were committed. These occurrences tended to lower both Chartists and Protectionists in public estimation, as various witty publications lampooned the prominent actors, and exposed them to overwhelming ridicule. The most signal opportunity afforded to the wits in this way was by the Chartists. On the 25th of October they announced ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... to begin again from the beginning? That would be a sure way to make an end of this. For if lovers only find one another, they lose one another! What is love? Say something witty, each one ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... twenty years, and some odd and extravagant expressions which Mr. Choate may have permitted himself to use in the courtroom to divert a sullen juror,—such turns of speech as he certainly never thought were witty, though they raised the desired laugh at the time,—to which he resorted only as a necessary, but to himself unpalatable part of the business of carrying the verdict, and which he of all men would desire to have forgotten,—make up pretty much the sum of Mr. Parker's illustrations ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... things we hear, and use them. Do you see the young person in black and white with the red-nosed man—the one who looks as if he were smelling a rose? Well, she's in our company, and she's very popular at these parties because she's so witty. As a matter of fact, she memorizes the jokes in all the funny papers and springs them as her own. Her men friends say she's too original to ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... her romance into a chair; and she thought of Quimby's warning about the "soiled invisible," and barely suppressed a groan. Involuntarily she stole a glance at this too-visible person, and shuddered. Could she reconcile "C," her visionary, interesting, witty and gentlemanly "C" of the wire, with this musk-scented being of greasy red hair, cheap jewelry and ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... theory and practice, promise and performance," writes another authority. While yet another points out that "Humor is feeling—feelings can always bear repetition, while wit, being intellectual, suffers by repetition." The truth of this is evident when we remember that we repeat a witty saying that we may enjoy the effect on others, while we retell a humorous story largely for our own ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... a large company to dinner, and Aesop was ordered to furnish the choicest dainties that money could procure. The first course consisted of tongues, cooked in different ways and served with appropriate sauces. This gave rise to much mirth and many witty remarks by the guests. The second course was also nothing but tongues, and so with the third and fourth. This seemed to go beyond a joke, and Xanthus demanded in an angry manner of Aesop, "Did I not tell you to provide the choicest dainties ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... boredom. Bored and cross, hardly ever speaking to the person with them, their friends drove up and down every afternoon, and she and Susie did the same, as silent and as bored as any of them. A few unusually beautiful, or unusually witty, or unusually young persons appeared to find life pleasant and looked happy, but they avoided Susie. Her set was made up of the dull and plain; and all the amusing people, and all the interesting people, turned their backs with one ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... clients); belonging properly to no party or—which was much the same—to the party of material interests, which was dominant in the courts and was pleased with the eloquent pleader and the courtly and witty companion. He had connections enough in the capital and the country towns to have a chance alongside of the candidates proposed by the democracy; and as the nobility, although with reluctance, and the Pompeians voted for him, he was elected by ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... worthy manufacturer complained of the length of the four-pound bread-loaves, the height of the houses, the indifference of the passengers in the streets to one another, the cold, the rain, the cost of hackney-coaches, all of which and much else he bemoaned in so witty a manner that the two artists took a mighty fancy to cousin Gazonal, and made him relate his lawsuit from ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... Eric, was golden, and she was white as the snow on Hecla; but her eyes were large and dark, and black lashes drooped above them. For the rest she was tall and strong and comely, merry of face, yet tender, and the most witty of women. ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... Dr. Fell"), who finished the building of Tom Quad in 1665; and then a quiet studious-looking man, a fellow or senior student of the College, who has nothing in his appearance to call attention. But this is Burton, by some accounted a morose person, but by those who knew him intimately a cheery and witty companion. Here, too, with slow and faltering step comes Pusey in extreme old age, and Liddon of ascetic mien. Hark to the laughter! It is Stubbs—historian Bishop—with witty saying falling from ...
— Oxford • Frederick Douglas How
... Godefroid de Beaudenord was respected by his tradespeople, for they were paid with tolerable regularity. The witty woman before quoted—I cannot give her name, for she is still living, thanks to her ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... winter, at night, amidst storms, and through isolation. The table no longer responded by a few words merely, but by sentences and pages. It was usually grave and magisterial, but at times it would be witty and even comical. Sometimes it had an access of choler. More than once I was insolently reproved for speaking to it irreverently, and I confess to not feeling at ease until I had obtained forgiveness. The table made certain exactions. It chose ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... at her thoughtfully. "Could you love such a man as he?" he asked, gravely. "He is young, he is brave, he is witty; he might well ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... times Our knowledge petrifies our rhymes; Ah! for that reckless fire men had When it was witty ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... said merrily and laughingly, but there were times when Huldah could scarcely make up her mind whether Rebecca was trying to be witty, or whether she was jealous; but she generally decided it was merely the latter feeling, rather natural in a girl ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... begin with on a white cloth, and then does a little crochet-work with a collar of some sort, and so with all manner of maidenly tasks. Barbro is not put out by their visit, and all the better; they can talk naturally, and Eleseus can be all on the surface again, young and witty as ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... of Eros"[26] is frenzied fiction again; amnesia, drunkenness, white slavery, sex, are its mingled themes. There is a pretty picture, recognizable in any smart community, of a witty woman of fashion, and a full-length portrait of a bounder. "The Yellow Fay," Saltus's cliche for the Demon Rum, was the original title of this "Fifth Avenue Incident." Romance and Realism consort lovingly ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... London.[313] Pitt resolved to take up the gauntlet flung down by these two powerful Societies. On 24th February 1794 Eaton, a publisher of Newgate Street, was tried for publishing in his periodical pamphlet, "Politics for the People: or Hogs-wash," a little parable with which that witty lecturer, Thelwall, had delighted a debating society. He told how a gamecock, resplendent with ermine-spotted breast, and crown or cockscomb, lorded it greedily over all the fowls of the farmyard.[314] The parallel to George III was sufficiently close ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... (London)—"While affording the easiest of reading, nevertheless touches deep issues deeply and fine issues finely. Not only thinks himself, but makes you think ... wise and witty.... Whether dealing with death and immortality, or riches and Socialism, he always contrives to be pungent and interesting and yet urbane, for there is no attempt either at flashy cynicism or cheap epigram.... We advise our readers to read ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... situations these trees grow to good forest size, even beyond the middle latitudes of Labrador. In latitude 53 deg. a resident told me that trees were found eighteen inches in diameter. This statement was derided when I told it on board, and the witty Judge kept the table in a roar for half an hour with pleasantries about it. But at Hopedale, two and a half degrees farther north, we learned that sticks of timber fifty feet in length were often brought to the station; while one had found its way there which was fifty-six feet long ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... said that, it would sound witty. Why can't you say it wittily? What on earth is the matter with you? Why don't you inspire everybody ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... stage at which he arrives at his mental conclusion as to the "preponderance" of the evidence. Jests and light conversation are out of place when the judge is performing his functions in the courtroom of the mind. An amusing remark or a witty quip at this juncture would suggest that the scales of decision in the salesman's own mind were somewhat unbalanced. Your attitude when you are weighing "Yes" and "No" before the prospect should be pleasant, but ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... "Joe" got awfully chaffed about her by all of his brother officers of the wardroom whose rank permitted them to take such a liberty with him; and, though we could take no share in their personal amenities, we youngsters grinned our approval of the various witty remarks and rejoinders that passed to and fro on our way back aboard the following day—the ball having lasted till long after daybreak the next morning, and Simon's Bay being all astir, with plenty of "Simons," black and white, astir ashore and afloat, as we rowed out to the ship, ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... think that Homer, as we know that Pope, was merely an ingenious fabulist; nay, more than this, that all the nations of past time were ingenious fabulists also, to whom the universe was a lyrical drama, and by whom whatsoever was said about it was merely a witty allegory, or a graceful lie, of which the entire upshot and consummation was a pretty statue in the middle of the court, or at the end of ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... which is the outlet of Lake Tahoe, and runs about northeast in the direction of the Piute reservation, along the course to be followed by us. I mention this fact only in order to bring into the story the terse and witty report of the agent, said to have been made about his discoveries regarding the mill. He said: "He found a dam by a mill site, but he didn't find any mill by ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... are witty, do not talk nonsense over-much. Remember that it is the "little nonsense now and then" that is "relished by the best of men." It is perilously easy to weary people with the "smart" style of talk. But let your cheerful sense, grave or gay, be ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... the light of classic taste and portable gas over the sawdust of the circus; but the whole character of the place was the same, the pieces were the same, the clown's jokes were the same, the riding-masters were equally grand, the comic performers equally witty, the tragedians equally hoarse, and the 'highly-trained chargers' equally spirited. Astley's has altered for the better—we have changed for the worse. Our histrionic taste is gone, and with shame we confess, that we are far more delighted ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... was trained to be a soldier; and until he was sixty years old the man belonged to the State absolutely. And all those years he ate his black broth at a public mess, seasoned only with fatigue and hunger. A witty Athenian said he did not wonder the Spartans were brave in battle, for death was preferable to ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 25, April 29, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... in literature as Mr. Cumberland. I admire his abilities and attainments. I have read his Observer, particularly the papers relating to Greek comedy, with the highest pleasure; but I think it a disgrace to him to have carried his admiration and fondness for that witty profligate Aristophanes to such a length as to attempt to raise his character on the ruins of the brightest ornament of the Heathen world, the wise and virtuous Socrates. As to his account in his "Memoirs" of ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... help you, pity you, mock or amuse you, and back of it all was the honesty and truth of a womanhood capable of courageous conduct, and despising all forms of meanness. That she was variously regarded was natural. Margaret Shippen said she cared only for dress and the men; and the witty Miss Franks, seeing further, but not all, said that Darthea Peniston was an actress of the minute, who believed her every role to be real. My wise aunt declared that she was several women, and that she did not always keep some of them in order. It was ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... people at Windyhill, had offered his bride anything to compare with the diamonds which her father had given to her mother before she was born. And Elinor was quite aware of the truth of what her mother said. But she would have liked to make a retort—to say something smart and piquant and witty in return. ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... church history, of the period. Buffoons had a share in the great "moralities," although they did not have a role in the action. Their function was to interject comical comments from time to time. The comments aimed to be witty, but were generally gross, coarse, and obscene. Late in the fifteenth century, in France, a buffoon recited a prelude containing licentious jests to an edifying morality ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... work on America, or I should have comprehended at once the cause of her indignation; for she was just such a person as would have drawn forth the keen satire of that far-seeing observer of the absurdities of our nature, whose witty exposure of American affectation has done more towards producing a reform in that respect, than would have resulted from a ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... petulantly, and still shaking his trousers. 'I'd rather get into hot water than have the hot water poured upon me;' and having said, as he thought, a witty thing, and made the whole party laugh (which I must confess they had all been very much inclined to do before at his expense), he seated himself again at the table, cooling down as the hot beverage had done, and trying to make himself agreeable to his ...
— Aunt Mary • Mrs. Perring
... are very amiable and very witty. You possess a style of conversation which is endured by the king and by Monsieur because they are accustomed to it; but I, who am only a recent arrival at the court, am less familiar with its spirit. I forewarn you that I become incensed when I am made a subject of ridicule. For this ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... begun. There was a political part to be played by the Doge, in which the people took particular interest; and to behold which, indeed, was the strongest reason of their impatience. The government of Venice, as was remarked by quaint and witty James Howell, was a compound thing, mixed of all kinds of governments, and might be said to be composed of "a grain of monarchy, a dose of democracy, and a dram, if not an ounce of optimacy." ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... and barley-water, my dear. Oh! can't you put the thundering irons down when I say a good thing? Well, I mustn't be witty any more, the ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... orioles, the golden-backed woodpeckers, the white-breasted kingfishers and the black partridges call as lustily as ever, and the bulbuls continue to twitter to one another "stick to it!" With the first fall of rain the tunes of the paradise flycatchers and the king-crows change. The former now cry "Witty-ready wit," softly and gently, while the calls of the latter suddenly ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... tourists to gape at the "Froggies." Everything was cheap; and most things were nice. Paris really was La ville lumiere. Dull care had been given its marching orders. All that was required of a man was that he should be witty, and of a woman that she should be entertaining. The world of the boulevards—with its cafes and restaurants and theatres—was the accepted rallying point of the authors and poets, the painters and musicians, and the lights twinkling in the theatrical and journalistic firmaments, ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... less with time. He had to listen every evening to David's praises of his nephew: how "he had been entered wi' Advocate Scott, and was going to be a grand lawyer," or how he had been to some great man's house and won all hearts with his handsome face and witty tongue. Or, perhaps, he would be shown some rich token of his love that had come for Christine; or David would say, "There's the 'Edinbro' News,' James; it cam fra Donald this morn; tak it hame wi' you. You're ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... have tried to grasp a bundle of sunbeams or a handful of quicksilver. His report turned out a frightful bungle; the wretched Bond, made clumsy, fatuous, pointless, sodden, when he had meant to show himself as witty and brilliant as possible, was completely crushed. With Joyce going for next to nothing and Bond for worse than nothing, the Art Circuit could hardly be said to shine. It paled, it sickened, it drooped ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... she always kept her pen and pencil busy in some way as long as she had strength to write. The diary for 1855 is in rhyme— usually six lines being allotted to each day. While some of the verses are playful and witty, most of them are religious and plaintive. The following are given ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... observed a look of pain on his brother's face. The look had at once been masked by an expression of unapproachable pride, and he had begun to question her about their flat, and the price she paid. At luncheon, before the family and guests, he had been witty and sarcastic as usual. Towards every one, excepting the children, whom he treated with almost reverent tenderness, he adopted an attitude of distant hauteur. And yet it was so natural to him that every one somehow acknowledged his right ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... as they have no resources in themselves, and have but one set of jokes to live upon. Men of parts are not reduced to these shifts, and have the utmost contempt for them, they find proper subjects enough for either useful or lively conversations; they can be witty without satire or commonplace, and serious without being dull. The frequentation of courts checks this petulancy of manners; the good-breeding and circumspection which are necessary, and only to be learned there, correct those ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... and true as well as light and false. Now you are witty, beautiful, brilliant—but ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... he lived in the court, he spent the most of his time in intellectual seclusion. As a guest of the king he may have become acquainted with Hincmar, or his acquaintance with Hincmar may have led to his friendship with Charles. He was witty, bright, and learned, like Abelard, a favorite with the great. In his treatise on Predestination, in which he combated the views of Gotschalk, he probably went further than Hincmar desired or expected: he boldly asserted the supremacy of reason, and threw off the shackles ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... he forgot to ask her what she wanted; and, strange to say, Lady Betty forgot to tell him. At the party she made quite a sensation; never had she seemed more recklessly gay, more piquant, more audaciously witty, than she showed herself this evening. There were illustrious personages present, but they paled beside her. The Duke, with whom she was a great favorite, laughed at her sallies until he could laugh no more; and even her husband, her very husband, forgot for a time the country and the ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... physical weakness had always set him apart, but while Will lived he had not greatly minded. He had kept in touch with his world through its greatest favorite, that handsome, witty brother; and it had been the same when Will was praised, or courted, as if it had been himself. Death had torn from him the best part of himself, and as if this loss were not cruel enough simply as a loss, it had left behind the conviction that in dying that worshiped brother ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... one more phase of girlhood; she, who had been a precocious and forward child, and then a shy and silent girl, came out now a bright and witty young woman, full of vivacity, modesty, and sensibility. Time cured Compton of his one defect. Ruperta stopped growing at fifteen, but Compton went slowly on; caught her at seventeen, and at nineteen had passed her by a head. He won ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... reproduction. The same remark applies, not only to the statues, but to the genre-groups and animal forms of which such fine examples can be seen in the Vatican Museum, and also to silver cups by "Mentor" or to bronzes of Corinth. Petronius, the coarse but witty "arbiter of taste" under Nero, mocks at the vulgar nouveau riche who imagined that the Corinthian bronzes were the work of an artist ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... sheathing his weapon, and laughing softly to himself. 'I love to draw spirit out of the young fellows. I am the steel, d'ye see, which knocks the valour out of your flint. A notable simile, and one in every way worthy of that most witty of mankind, Samuel Butler. This,' he continued, tapping a protuberance which I had remarked over his chest, 'is not a natural deformity, but is a copy of that inestimable "Hudibras," which combines the light touch of Horace with the broader mirth of ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... as often, too often, perhaps, influenced his conversation, and tinctured his external fictitious nature. But they have done so without examining his actions, without reflecting that this mobility vanished as it was written, or in the light play of his witty conversation, or the trivial acts of his life. Otherwise they would have been forced to confess, that it never had any influence on his conduct in matters of moment, that he was persevering and firm to an extremely rare degree in all things essential ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... refused an Austrian alliance: it would be a departure from the traditional French policy of opposing the Habsburgs. Kaunitz then appealed to the king's mistress, the ambitious Madame de Pompadour, who, like the Tsarina Elizabeth, had had plenty of occasions for taking offense at the witty verses of the Prussian monarch: the favor of the Pompadour was won, and France entered the ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... (which, by the bye, is here reckoned an indispensable appendage to a proper lodging), is the magazin des modes, where my landlady presides over twenty damsels, many of whom, though assiduously occupied in making caps and bonnets, would, I am persuaded, find repartee for the most witty gallant. ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... to influence his resolutions. A little later, he was advised to marry again, and he yielded. Several princesses were introduced; and he chose Judith of Bavaria, daughter of Count Welf (Guelf), a family already powerful and in later times celebrated. Judith was young, beautiful, witty, ambitious, and skilled in the art of making the gift of pleasing subserve the passion for ruling. Louis, during his expedition into Brittany, had just witnessed the fatal result of a woman's empire over her husband; he was destined himself to offer a more striking and more ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... and intelligent Too. She is witty and wise. She'll accomplish more now than another person I know ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen
... form," the vital word grates on the emasculate brain of the society man, and he compensates himself for his inward consciousness of inferiority by assuming easy airs of insolence. A very brilliant man was once talking in a company which included several of the superfine division; he was witty, vivid, genial, full of knowledge and tact; but he had one dreadful habit—he always said what he thought. The brilliant man left the company, and one sham-languid person said to a sham-aristocratic person, "Who is that?" "Ah, he's a species of over-educated savage!" Now the gentleman who propounded ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... to put down some intuitions about brotherhood and trust in persons. A witty friend writes, "Now that I have made up my mind, I intend looking at the evidence." A position like that is not so absurd as at first it seems. It is folly only to those who regard reason alone and deny the value ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... Lady's glove; How foreign is the garb he wears; And how his great devotion mocks Our poor propriety, and scares The undevout with paradox! His soul, through scorn of worldly care, And great extremes of sweet and gall, And musing much on all that's fair, Grows witty and fantastical; He sobs his joy and sings his grief, And evermore finds such delight In simply picturing his relief, That 'plaining seems to cure his plight; He makes his sorrow, when there's none; His fancy blows both cold and hot; Next to ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... breach of discipline, he would stride up and down the line with the tread of an elephant, and expound the Articles of War in stentorian tones that equaled the roar of a bull! But if, perchance, in the awesome precincts of his office, he afterwards got hold of a piece of doggerel some witty midshipman had written descriptive of such a scene, none would enjoy it ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... is a delightful book, witty, epigrammatic, flavorsome ... recalls Frank Stockton's bewitching foolery and perennial charm."—Milwaukee ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... humorous and witty, without vulgarity, and satirical without malice. It will be printed on a superior tinted paper of sixteen pages, size 13 by 9, and will be for sale by all respectable newsdealers who have the judgment to know a good thing when they ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... in the Clergy Club of Cincinnati, an organization which is composed of many of the leading Protestant ministers. On the occasion of the club's twenty-fifth anniversary in 1919, Dr. Dwight M. Pratt, then of the Walnut Hills Congregational Church, wrote a witty and apt characterization of each member. The following is his superb sketch ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... back to the shores of Como. They had not been resettled long before the signora received from Mrs Arabin a very pretty though very short epistle, in which she was informed of the fate of the writer. This letter was answered by another, bright, charming, and witty, as the signora's always were; and so ended the friendship between ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... The Duke being soon after recalled to join De Rosen, the siege of Enniskillen was committed to Lord Mountcashel, under whom, as commander of the cavalry, served Count Anthony Hamilton, author of the witty but licentious "Memoirs of Grammont," and other distinguished officers. Mountcashel's whole force consisted of three regiments of foot, two of dragoons, and some horse; but he expected to be joined by Colonel Sarsfield ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... concern, suggesting a friendly consultation as to the boy's future, the incensed (but always refined) poet wrote in answer a letter of mere polished badinage which offended mortally the Liverpool people. This witty outbreak of what was in fact mortification and rage appeared to them so heartless that they simply kept the boy. They let him go to sea not because he was in their way but because he begged hard ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... unfortunate in this, that none of a despot's so-called friends dare to speak their mind openly. And he himself, he said, had been by such men deprived of the friendship of Plato. A man, who thought himself witty, once tried to make a joke of Dionysius by shaking out his cloak, when he came into his presence, as is the custom before despots, to show that one has no concealed weapons; but he repaid the jest by begging him to do it when he left him, that he might be sure that he had ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... so great had been his fear lest he should inadvertently gather from his sitter some hint of the knowledge he had been urged to obtain, that he had half unconsciously been reserved and silent. The picture was going badly, and the sitter wondered what had come over the witty and ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... concealed his plans from Madame Astier, in entire ignorance that she was running a countermine in the same line as his. He acted on his own account with great deliberation. The Princess was attracted by his youth and fashion, his brightness and his witty irony, from which he carefully took the venom. He knew that women, like children and the mob, and all impulsive and untutored beings, hate a tone of sarcasm, which puts them out, and which they perceive by instinct to be hostile to the dreams ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... cared not at all whether her songs and dances found favour with the rich landholders, Sikh Sardars and the sons of Babu millionaires, who crowded to Gowhar Jan's house. "Alas," sighed Gowhar Jan, "she will never be like Chanda Malika, gay, witty and famous for generations; her education has been wasted, and her name will die!" But Imtiazan only pouted and answered; "I care not to ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... and hoarse with repeated colds. She spares, however, now by no labour or fatigue to obtain and keep that superiority and admiration which one day perhaps gave her almost equal trouble to receive and to repay. But who can bear to lay their laurels by? Corilla is gay by nature, and witty, if I may say so, by habit; replete with fancy, and powerful to combine images apparently distant. Mankind is at last more just to people of talents than is universally allowed, I think. Corilla, without pretensions either to immaculate character (in the English sense), ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... Crusades were to the witty son of Witless, Mexico and her politics are to moderns, not even excepting the predestined devourers of the Aztec land, who ought to know something of the country they purpose bringing within the full light of civilization through ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... asides of the rival neighbours, the delight of the old 'mater,' the intelligence—"A ten-pound rise all at once from Antrobus, mater. Whad d'yer think of that?" or again, the first whispering of love, dainty and witty and tender, to the girl he served a few days ago with sateen, or a gallant rescue of generalised beauty in distress from truculent insult ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... he is stern and silent at home. As he puts away his cane and shovel-hat in the rectory hall, so he locks his liveliness in his book-case and study-desk: the knitted brow and brief word for the fireside; the smile, the jest, the witty sally for society." ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... I blessed the violer woman, who at great peril of her own life, and by such witty device as doubtless Madame St. Catherine put into her heart, had sent the jackanapes up from below, and put me in the way of safety. I wasted no time, but began filing, not at the thick circlet on my wrist, but ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... serious business. The Old Comedy is a general masquerade of the world, during which much passes that is not authorised by the ordinary rules of propriety; but during which much also that is diverting, witty, and even instructive, is manifested, which would never be heard of without this momentary breaking up of the barricades ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... of all, 'tis necessary To show you people making merry, That you may see how lightly life can run. Each day to this small folk's a feast of fun; Not over-witty, self-contented, Still round and round in circle-dance they whirl, As with their tails young kittens twirl. If with no headache they're tormented, Nor dunned by landlord for his pay, They're careless, unconcerned, ...
— Faust • Goethe
... knew him much here, save by word, He having elsewhere led his busier life; Though to be sure he left with us his wife." —"Ah, one of the tradesmen's sons, I now recall . . . Witty, I've heard . . . We did not know him . . . Well, good-day. Death ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... eye the graceful form of Winnie, as she threaded her way through the dance, occasionally interchanging a witty remark with her handsome partner, and as he lead her to a seat, Natalie observed to Mrs. Santon, "how beautiful dear Winnie is to-night! I do not know who can help loving her!" So enthusiastic was she in her ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... all nonsense. Oh, no, I'm very glad you've come to see me at last... I look upon you simply as a visitor. And as for my confounded laughter, please excuse it, Rodion Romanovitch. Rodion Romanovitch? That is your name?... It's my nerves, you tickled me so with your witty observation; I assure you, sometimes I shake with laughter like an india-rubber ball for half an hour at a time.... I'm often afraid of an attack of paralysis. Do sit down. Please do, or I shall think you ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... English pig.—These animals are sure to attract the gaze of our countrymen; and poor Trotter, in his narrative of the journey of Mr. Fox, expressed his marvel so often, as to call down upon himself the witty vengeance of one ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... admirers, or rather worshippers, of Byron, and all doated on his verses; and then I thought of those who, with genius as high as his, or higher, had lived and died neglected. I thought of Milton abandoned to poverty and blindness; of witty and ingenious Butler consigned to the tender mercies of bailiffs; and starving Otway: they had lived neglected and despised, and, when they died, a few poor mourners only had followed them to the grave; but this Byron had been made a half-god of when living, and now ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... the Duchess of Cicogne, wife of the ambassador to Vienna, first lady-in-waiting to the Queen, who belonged to the highest aristocracy of the realm; a witty woman, somewhat lean, and a trifle close, who was losing her income, her estates, and her very chemise at faro. She showed much kindness to Monsieur de Boulingrin, lending herself to an intercourse for which she had no temperamental inclination, but which she thought suitable to her rank, and useful ...
— The Story Of The Duchess Of Cicogne And Of Monsieur De Boulingrin - 1920 • Anatole France
... painter, the same that was pupil of Andrea Tafi, and celebrated as a burlesque character by Messer Giovanni Boccaccio in his Decameron was as we know bosom friend of Bruno and Calendrino, also painters and of an even more witty and merry humour than himself, and as may be seen in his works scattered throughout Tuscany, of no mean judgement in his art of painting." (Lives of the most Excellent Painters by Messer ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... Reed had long represented Maine in the House of Representatives. He was a man of huge bulk, bland in appearance, imperturbable in his serenity, caustic, concise and witty of tongue, rough, sharp, strong, droll. In the cut-and-thrust of parliamentary debate and manoeuvre, as well as in his knowledge of the intricacies of procedure, Reed was a past master. He worsted his adversaries by turning the laugh ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... Courtier: "In this point (I know not by what destiny) Englishmen are most inferior to most of all other nations: for where they set their delight and bend themselves with an honest strife of matching others to turn into their mother tongue not only the witty writings of other languages but also of all philosophers, and all sciences both Greek and Latin, our men ween it sufficient to have a perfect knowledge to no other end but to profit themselves and (as it were) after much pains in breaking up a gap bestow no less to close it up again." ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... can the moral perversity of a young woman who never regrets a witty deception or a graceful subterfuge, but repents sometimes in sackcloth and ashes for her truth-telling. I'd give half my forest now to have back the letter I sent you yesterday. But since I cannot recall it, I wish you to bear in mind that what was true ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... slatted sun-bonnet made out of spotted calico. They were boisterous and even amusing, had they not been well armed and apparently without fear or reverence for any authority or individual. For the present, the Irishman was evidently in command, by virtue of his witty tongue. ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... was not convicted for the murder of her erstwhile lover Abernal, nor, at a later date, for that of her erstwhile lover Crepeat, both of whom, so it had been rudely whispered by her enemies, had rashly believed to desert her for another charmer. Witty and altogether excellent folk. Indeed, I might go further from the truth than to say that in no woman have ever I found a deeper, a more authentic appreciation of the poetry of Verlaine than ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... Witty Tom Nash was right enough when he called this kind of stuff, "that drunken, staggering kinde of verse which is all vp hill and downe hill, like the waye betwixt Stamford and Becchfeeld, and goes like a horse plunging through the myre in the deep of winter, now soust up to the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... with a great slamming of doors men rushed out to do battle for the peace of the great city. Meanwhile all the high windows had been filled with night-capped heads, and some of these people even went so far as to pour water down upon the combatants. They also sent down cat-calls and phrases of witty advice. The sticks clattered together furiously; once a man with a bloody face staggered past us; he seemed to have been whacked directly on the ear by some uneducated person. It was as fine a shindy as one could hope to witness, ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... delicate artistic genius which, with him, was so intimately a part of things beautiful and distinguished. He had the eyes of an old eagle; a general air of dignified collectedness; a rare, and a rarely charming, smile, which came out, like a ray of sunshine, in the instinctive pleasure of having said a witty or graceful thing to which one's response had been immediate. When he took me indoors, into that house which was a museum, I noticed the delicacy of his hands, and the tenderness with which he handled his treasures, touching them as if he loved them, with little, unconscious murmurs: ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... Underhill, you cannot deny inheriting a certain amount of American wit. I have so often heard the older members of the Union Club tell stories of Billy Travers's witty sayings. He must have gone the pace that kills. One of the old servants used to tell that whenever Travers and Larry Jerome and that set came in for supper, they expected the waiters to drink every fifth bottle; it made things more cheerful-like—but ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... fourth century, B.C., Athenian comedy had degenerated into brilliant and witty and scandalous farce, in many essentials resembling the new Comedy of the Restoration in England. But the vitiated Athenian palate required a seasoning which did not commend itself to English taste; it was necessary that the shafts ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... people, I dont know that youll get on with Trotter, because hes thoroughly English: never happy except when hes in Paris, and speaks French so unnecessarily well that everybody there spots him as an Englishman the moment he opens his mouth. Very witty and all that. Pretends to turn up his nose at the theatre and says people make too much fuss about art [the Count is extremely indignant]. But thats only his modesty, because art is his own line, you understand. Mind you dont chaff ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... recourse to advertisements, in which they, sometimes, made faint attempts to be witty, and, sometimes, were content with being merely scurrilous; but, finding that their attacks, while we had an opportunity of returning hostilities, generally procured them such treatment as very little contributed to their reputation, they came, at last, to a resolution ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... copy of the French Constitution?" was asked of a bookseller during the second French Empire, and the characteristically witty Gallic reply was: "We do not deal in ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... to read Bengali religious books and capable of telling witty and fairy tales from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... Bored and cross, hardly ever speaking to the person with them, their friends drove up and down every afternoon, and she and Susie did the same, as silent and as bored as any of them. A few unusually beautiful, or unusually witty, or unusually young persons appeared to find life pleasant and looked happy, but they avoided Susie. Her set was made up of the dull and plain; and all the amusing people, and all the interesting people, turned their backs with one ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... by Henry Arthur Jones is a matter for congratulation.... In 'The Manoeuvres of Jane' we see Mr. Jones in his most sprightly mood and at the height of his ingenuity; ... its plot is plausible and comic, and its dialogue is witty." ...
— Her Own Way - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... Seven slim race-horses ready for a run; Seven gold butterflies, flitting overhead; Seven red roses blowing in a garden bed; Seven white lilies, with honey bees inside them; Seven round rainbows with clouds to divide them; Seven pretty little girls with sugar on their lips; Seven witty little boys, whom everybody tips; Seven nice fathers, to call little maids joys; Seven nice mothers, to kiss the little boys; Seven nights running I dreamt it all plain; With bread and jam for supper I could dream it ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... an idiot. He was not prepared for such a speech; he did not know what to say, although he wanted to say something witty. 'Ahem!' ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... and witty, with a philosophical trend that will entertain men and woman alike—the older ones—the younger ones. Read this book for a mirror ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland
... The witty part of the matter was this: Ingersoli spoke of sin. Now, what kind of an intelligible thing could sin be in the mind of a blasphemous agnostic? What meaning could it have for any man who professes not to know, or to care, who or ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... and the conversation glided into remarks on avaricious fathers and prodigal sons. Constance was witty on the subject, and Lady Erpingham laughed herself ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wanted a book from the library, or an extra man at her dinner-table, Carrington was pretty certain to help her to the one or the other. Old Baron Jacobi, the Bulgarian minister, fell madly in love with both sisters, as he commonly did with every pretty face and neat figure. He was a witty, cynical, broken-down Parisian roue, kept in Washington for years past by his debts and his salary; always grumbling because there was no opera, and mysteriously disappearing on visits to New York; a voracious devourer of French and German literature, especially of ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... we should always be vivacious, sparkling, witty, fanciful, or even that we should use beautiful language; but good talk does ask for heart and interest. Put your heart into what you have to say: put your interest into it, and your conscience will be awakened, your zeal will be ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... 1722, and became the Attorney General and a member of the Council of Massachusetts. He was by far the most eminent lawyer in New England, and was called "the Pride of the Bar, Light of the Law, and Chief among the Wise, Witty and Eloquent." It was he who prepared the instructions to Lord Mansfield, the counsel for Connecticut in the great case of Clark vs. Tousey, in which was discussed the question whether the Common Law of England had any force in Connecticut other than as ...
— The Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of New Milford, Conn. June 17th, 1907 • Daniel Davenport
... the good, corpulent Dr. Ianson, who had been laughing so much that he quite forgot dinner was behind time, "my dear Miss Bowen, your friend is the most amusing, witty, delightful person. It is quite a pleasure to have such a ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... group of friends who met together every evening in the drawing-room of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse. Born at the close of the seventeenth century, she had come into the world in the brilliant days of the Regent, whose witty and licentious reign had suddenly dissipated the atmosphere of gloom and bigotry imposed upon society by the moribund Court of Louis XIV. For a fortnight (so she confessed to Walpole) she was actually the Regent's mistress; and a fortnight, ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... of the unexpected. Arthur's feelings were curiously contradictory at that moment. He was gratified at the tribute to his sister's fascination, and yet in some inexplicable manner conscious of a jarring note in his satisfaction. He himself had always been regarded as a sufficiently witty and interesting personage. How had it happened that he had ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... charge with bayonet these machines, By way of lesson against actual Turks;[407] And when well practised in these mimic scenes, He judged them proper to assail the works,— (At which your wise men sneered in phrases witty),[hs] He made no answer—but he took ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... his hands in his pockets, and, on being accosted, he looked vaguely and somewhat moodily at Maurice. The next moment, however, he laid a hand on the lappel of Maurice's coat, and, without preamble, burst into a witty and obscene anecdote, which had evidently been in his mind when they met. This story, and the fact that, by the North Sea, he had stood before breakers twenty feet high, were the only particulars Maurice bore away from their interview. His previous ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... in the strain after comparisons, abandoned the effort and drank in a draught of rich, ripe American slang as a glorious pick-me-up. No wonder the French officers in liaison have caught the new "code." The coming of those brown boys with their bright and glittering teeth and witty words made up to us for miles of trenches we hadn't seen. Gee, but they were bully! Oh, boy! Get ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Tekel,' and 'Upharsin,' Which hands or pens have ever traced of swords. Heaven help me! I'm but little of a parson: What Daniel read was short-hand of the Lord's, Severe, sublime; the prophet wrote no farce on The fate of nations;—but this Russ so witty Could rhyme, like Nero, o'er ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... requisite for his personal security. During his rare sojourns in Athens he always went about escorted by his Cretan guards; while on the roof of a building facing his house stood two machine-guns, "for," as a witty Athenian informed an inquisitive stranger, ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... of the affair was received with quiet incredulity. The general verdict was that he had brought his punishment entirely on his own head. Tammas, indeed, who was always rude when he was not witty, and, in fact, the difference between the two things is only one of degree, told him straight: "It served yo' well reet. An' I nob'but wish he'd ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... solely because it afforded material for versification; and, in reality, believed the destruction of Troy was providentially ordained lest Homer lack subject matter for an epic. And as for loving, I thought people fell in love in order to exchange witty rhymes." ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... of January 15, 1881, speaking of a letter just received from her, says: "Thirty years ago Mrs. Rose was in her prime—an excellent lecturer, liberal, eloquent, witty, and we must add, decidedly handsome—'the Rose that all were praising.' Her portrait, life-size and very natural, hangs in Investigator Hall, and her intelligent-looking and expressive countenance, and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... A witty but unfavourable criticism in Punch of my first story was always believed by two ladies in the parish to have been penned by one of the village tradesmen. It was in vain I assured them that the person in question could not by any possibility be on the staff of Punch. They ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... meantime the courses went round, and as the level of the wine in the bottles sank, the gaiety rose. Many a quick, sharp brain that here found its own ground now came to the fore, and the falling hail of jests and witty and amusing sayings—the last generally in the form of stories with a point that was sometimes, perhaps, rather coarse—gave a lively impression of ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... man could not but be observed and talked about. Endless stories, some of them more or less true, most of them apocryphal, were told of him—stories of his shrewd, unexpected moves in big cases, of his witty retorts, of his generosities, of his peculiarities of dress, of eating and drinking; stories of his adventures with women. Whatever he did, however trivial, took color and charm from his personality, so easy ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... said to baby. "Dear me, tink of mudder wanting to look at a big u'gy t'ing like fadder, when she could look at a 'itty witty t'ing like dis," and he rose and crossed to the crib where he deposited the small creature with yet ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... expenditures in Canada, opportunity was given for a discussion of relations with America. A few Members gave voice to the fear of war, but the general tone of the debate was one of confidence in the continuance of peaceful relations. Bright, in a vigorous and witty speech, threw right and left criticisms of Parliament, the Press, and individuals, not sparing members of the Government, but expressed the utmost confidence in the pacific policy of Lincoln. As one known to be in close touch with America his ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... never see a silk purse made out of any other thing but silk," and all his wives nodded their heads and cackled. They said it was witty, though they had no idea what ...
— Dick and His Cat and Other Tales • Various
... entirely of their opinion who spoke last, and quickly gave a demonstration of it, by ordering Khacan to buy him a slave, one that was a perfect beauty, mistress of those qualifications they had just mentioned, and especially very witty. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... concert for amateurs, elegant suppers for gay ladies, and special soirees for the learned and the witty. He was not particular as to the means of doing business; thus he trafficked in everything,—for the sale of a living, or the procuration of a mistress—for he had associates in all ranks, among ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... boys and girls are on a picnic, a thing needn't be very witty or very funny to make them laugh. From the ease with which this party exploded into laughter, it may be perceived that in spite of the high words and the pop-gun firing, there was no deep-seated ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... little proud of it, for there was not a grey hair to be seen. Although she had lost many of her teeth, her skin was not wrinkled, but had a freshness most remarkable in a person so advanced in years. Her mind was as young as her body; she was very witty and coquettish, and the officers living in the palace were continually in her apartments, preferring her company to that of younger women. Partial to children, she would join in all our sports, and sit down to play "hunt the ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... marriages of other people; just as Earl Warwick, too wise to set up for a king, gratified his passion for royalty by becoming the king-maker. The Colonel was exceedingly accomplished, a very fair scholar, knew most modern languages. In painting an amateur, in music a connoisseur; witty at times, and with wit of a high quality, but thrifty in the expenditure of it; too wise to be known as a wit. Manly too, a daring rider, who had won many a fox's brush; a famous deer-stalker, and one of the few English gentlemen who still keep up the noble art of fencing,—twice a week to ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... you this will you think me some little girl who cultivates a garden-full of illusions? You, who are witty and wise, have you not guessed that when Mademoiselle d'Este received your pedantic lesson she said to herself: "No, dear poet, my first letter was not the pebble which a vagabond child flings about the highway to frighten the owner of the adjacent fruit-trees, but a net carefully and prudently ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... hang her with jewels, and give her his crown itself to quieten her furies. 'Tis the pretty orange wench and actor woman Nell Gwynne who will please him longest, for she is a good-humoured baggage and witty, and gives ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... curious to reflect that what Gibbon said as a sarcasm, is really a serious and profound truth, and leads to conclusions exactly opposite to those drawn from it in that witty and most fascinating chapter from which the above words ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... was from this time official, and the relations of the Pope with the French authorities who occupied the pontifical city became every day more bitter. Pius VII. had chosen for his secretary of state, Cardinal Pacca, witty, amiable, devoted to the holy father, but strongly attached to the most narrow ideas as to the government of the Roman Church in the world; in other respects, prudent in his conduct towards General Miollis, and often excited to action by the Pope, who complained ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
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