"Comic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... without either exhausting their humour, or varying a note from its characteristic tone, than in his large and reiterated specimens of the eloquence of the redoubted Ritt-master. The general idea of the character is familiar to our comic dramatists after the Restoration—and may be said in some measure to be compounded of Captain Fluellen and Bobadil;—but the ludicrous combination of the SOLDADO with the Divinity student of Mareschal-College, ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... in passing); and, placing these typified traits in juxtaposition in their conflict and contrast, struck the spark of comedy. Downright, as his name indicates, is "a plain squire"; Bobadill's humour is that of the braggart who is incidentally, and with delightfully comic effect, a coward; Brainworm's humour is the finding out of things to the end of fooling everybody: of course he is fooled in the end himself. But it was not Jonson's theories alone that made the success of "Every Man in His ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... strikes me silent, seals my lips, And apts me rather to sleep out my time, Than I would waste it in contemned strifes With these vile Ibides, these unclean birds, That make their mouths their clysters, and still purge From their hot entrails. But I leave the monsters To their own fate. And, since the Comic Muse Hath proved so ominous to me, I will try If TRAGEDY have a more kind aspect; Her favours in my next I will pursue, Where, if I prove the pleasure but of one, So he judicious be, he shall be alone A theatre unto me; Once ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... characters, the mind must be trained to delight in TRUTH,—not in comic rhymes, in sentimental tales, and skeptical poetry. The truth revealed in God's Holy Word, should constitute the firm basis of education; and the works of Creation and Providence the superstructure while the Divine blessing can alone rear and ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... saloon been just around the corner, I should have got drunk. As it was, I would sprawl out in the shade on my one day of rest and dally with the Sunday papers. But I was too weary even for their froth. The comic supplement might bring a pallid smile to my face, and then I would ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... cried, "that is comic, and no mistake. I really thought it was some kind of fruit. ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... laughing reply. "Bless my loose ribs! but I wouldn't miss him for anything. He's in a new play called 'Up in a Balloon Boys.' It's great!" and Mr. Damon named a certain comic moving picture star in whose horse-play Mr. Damon took a curious interest. Tom and Ned were glad enough to go, Tom that he might have a chance to do a certain amount of thinking, and Ned because he was still boy enough to ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton
... draper at Paita, does she not justify the character that I myself gave her, just before dismissing her from St. Sebastian's, of being a 'handy' girl? Mr. Urquiza's instructions were short, easy to be understood, but rather comic; and yet, which is odd, they led to tragic results. There were two debtors of the shop, (many, it is to be hoped, but two meriting his affectionate notice,) with respect to whom he left the most opposite directions. The one was a very handsome lady; and the rule as ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... first twelve years or so of their life. During that time they had been entirely in their mother's hands, hearing her opinions, regulated outwardly by her will: and yet they grew up their father's children, and not hers! How strange it was, with a touch of the comic which made her laugh!—that laugh of exasperation and impatience which marks the intolerable almost more than tears do. How was it? Can any one explain this mystery? She was of a much more vivacious, robust, ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... of life's dilemmas—little dilemmas that irritate ordinary people or in which ordinary people display themselves pusillanimous; or tragic dilemmas that find ordinary people wanting and leave them in vacillation and despair—there was none of any sort that Harry, receiving with his comic, "Mice and Mumps! Mice and Mumps, old girl!" did not receive with the assurance to her that, though this was a nuisance, he had metal and to spare to settle such; that, though this was a catastrophe, a facer, he'd too much courage, too much high, brave spirit for it to discommode him; there ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... felt as if he were taking part in a comic opera, and enjoyed the scene immensely. But now his attention was distracted by the stewards bringing in steaming platters of macaroni and stewed mutton, from which they first served the Duchessa, and then the Duke, and afterward the guests. The servants waited hungry-eyed ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... a preposterous baby. The curs were preposterous curs. Nora had always been afflicted with a surplus amount of laughter—laughter which had difficulty in attaching itself to anything, owing to the lack of the really comic in the surroundings of the poor. But with a red-headed and freckled baby boy and two trick dogs in the house, she found a good and sufficient excuse for her hilarity, and would have torn the cave where echo lies with ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... about five o'clock when Mamie, having, at a modest estimate, seen five hundred persecuted heroes, a thousand ill-used heroines, several regiments of cowboys, and perhaps two thousand comic men pursued by angry mobs, returned from her ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... so comic for the clerk to go toot on that whistling thing, and then for people with such bad voices to do the singing, instead of a regular choir, the same as ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... proclamation that whatever any one possessed before he entered into office, that he shall possess and hold until the end of his term. Next he assigns Choregi to the tragic poets, choosing three of the richest persons out of the whole body of Athenians. Formerly he used also to assign five Choregi to the comic poets, but now the tribes provide the Choregi for them. Then he receives the Choregi who have been appointed by the tribes for the men's and boys' choruses and the comic poets at the Dionysia, and for the men's and boys' choruses at ...
— The Athenian Constitution • Aristotle
... bought, not only his three pink bottles, but his green ones, his blue ones, his pills, his pomades, and his perfumed medicinal soaps that were to soften the skin, strengthen the joints, and promote longevity. After this, he sang a comic song of innumerable verses (with horn obligato) and delivered a discourse, in which he said there had never been more than three great men in the world, Louis the Fourteenth, Alexander the Great, and Hippocrates, the ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... already gone to sleep, so Antoinette informed me, when the results of Mrs. McMurray's shopping came home. I am glad she has early habits. It appears she has spent a happy and fully occupied afternoon over a pile of French illustrated comic papers in the possession ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... distinguished poet under Stanislaus Augustus was count Ignatius Krasicki, bishop of Ermeland or Warmla, and later of Gnesen, the Polish Voltaire. His principal works are an epic under the title of Woyna, Chocimska or 'War of Chocim,' and three comic epics, one of which, Monachomachia, ridicules the monkish system and exhibits its absurdity in strong colours. He wrote this poem at the suggestion of Frederic the Great, to whose coterie of literary ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... it not for the antique. Genius and science are of no avail; the position of Christ in baptism in the paintings of Verrocchio and Ghirlandajo is mean and servile; the movements of the "Thunder-stricken" in Signorelli's lunettes is an inconceivable mixture of the brutish, the melodramatic, and the comic; the magnificently drawn youth at the door of the prison in Filippino's Liberation of St. Peter is gradually going to sleep and collapsing in a fashion ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... before the second day was over, Helen seemed to discover that he was too lavish; and she told him so, with a prudent grave look, putting her hand on his arm as he was about to enter an inn to dine; and the gravity would have been comic, but that the eyes through their moisture were so meek and grateful. She felt he was about to incur that ruinous extravagance on her account. Somehow or other, the purse found its way into her keeping, and then she looked proud ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... conditions seem similar to those in England. The great serio-comic novel of Antoine de la Salle, Petit Jean de Saintre, shows us in detail the education and the adventures, which certainly involved a very early introduction to life, of a page in a great house in the fifteenth century. ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... 1845, however, that he made definite use of this material, and began the sketch for his only comic opera. The first outline was drawn during a sojourn in the Bohemian mountains, when he felt in an unusually light and festive mood. But the work was soon set aside, and was not resumed until 1862, when it was finished in Paris. The score was then begun, and written almost entirely at Biberich ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... have seen the little birds as they hopped among said leaves and commented upon the scarcity of worms. I have seen the buxom flowers as they curtsied and danced above your flower-beds like a miniature comic-opera chorus. And besides that—" ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... 1. Galuppi, Baldassaro (rather Baldassare): b. 1703, in Burano, an island near Venice, and thence called Buranello; d. 1785; a distinguished composer, whose operas, about fifty in number, and mostly comic, were at one time the most popular in Italy; Galuppi is regarded as the father of the Italian ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... admissible among the dignified personages who usually push all others out from the possession of the historical page; but a chapter of that gentleman's memoirs, as they are recorded in that exemplary recueil—the "Newgate Calendar;" nay, a canto of the great comic epic (involving many fables, and containing much exaggeration, but still having the seeds of truth) which the satirical poet of those days wrote in celebration of him—we mean Fielding's "History of Jonathan Wild the Great"—does ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... be in keeping with life generally," he answered. "In a comic opera one thing is not more idiotic than another. Yes, Monsieur Laripet, we will give them Funiculi, Funicula. I once drove in coffin nails to that tune in Verona. Now we will set people eating to it in Aix-les-Bains—we, Monsieur Laripet, you and I, who ought to be the petted minions ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... paper in New York, the Courier des Etats-Unis, published the following instance of brave self-sacrifice by a Belgian comic singer named Martens, who at one time was in this country, and gave entertainments in the "Empire City." The scene in which he figures here as the hero is laid in Bucharest, the half-oriental capital of Wallachia, at ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... first fine Sunday. Strange perverseness! I never went while you staid here, and now I go to find you! What other news is there, Mary?—What puns have I made in the last fortnight? You never remember them. You have no relish for the Comic. "O! tell Hazlitt not to forget to send the American Farmer. I dare say it isn't so good as he fancies; but a Book's a Book." I have not heard from Wordsworth or from Malta since. Charles Kemble, it seems, enters ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... arguments to find out whether they were true? Nothing of the kind. But they flew to the sudden conclusion that somehow or other the religion of the world was in danger, if Darwinism should prove to be true. And it is very curious to note I wonder how long the world will keep on repeating that serio-comic blunder from the very beginning it has been the same; almost every single step that the world proposes to take in advance is opposed by the constituted religious authorities of the time because they assume at the outset that the theories which they have been holding are divinely authorized and ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... some vaguely foreshadowed end. But there are two or three facts which stand out certain and have to be taken account of in any image we may be tempted to form of him. In the first place, his was no forbidding figure at the time to those who knew him; a queer and a comic figure evidently, but liked, trusted, and by some loved; reputed for honest dealing and for kindly and gentle dealing; remarked too by some at that time, as before and ever after, for the melancholy of his face in repose; known by us beyond doubt to have gone through great pain; known lastly ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... unnoticed—assumed the responsibility of starting the men on their journey. The odd child waved her chubby hand imperiously to her friend the driver, and cried in her loudest voice, "Away!" The driver touched his hat with comic respect. "All right, miss—time's money, aint it?" He cracked his whip, and the cart rolled off noiselessly over the thick close turf of ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... more publications than any other? Do not our publishers fatten quicker and deeper? (helping themselves, under shelter of a delusive and sneaking law, or rather absence of law, to most of their forage, poetical, pictorial, historical, romantic, even comic, without money and without price—and fiercely resisting the timidest proposal to pay for it.) Many will come under this delusion—but my purpose is to dispel it. I say that a nation may hold and circulate rivers and oceans of very readable print, journals, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... things cheerful here," Al'mah said almost gaily. "Sometimes I have four or five convalescents in here, and they like a little gaiety. I sing them things from comic operas—Offenbach, Sullivan, and the rest; and if they are very sentimentally inclined I sing them good old-fashioned love-songs full of the musician's tricks. How people adore illusions! I've had here an old Natal sergeant, over sixty, and he was as cracked as could be about ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... supper, the young men grew terribly restive and discontented. Very few of them remain, and the old traditions handed down from father to son for three or four generations are disappearing. After dinner we had music and some charming recitations by Mme. Thenard. Her first one was a comic monologue which always had the wildest success in London, "Je suis veuve," beginning it with a ringing peal of laughter which was curiously contagious—everyone in the room joined in. I like her better in some of her serious things. When she said "le ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... of eighty millions she may free her own people. She would have the hold over the land, and she would cure a cancer. I am not well off, but I would offer —— or his agent L1000, if either of them would live one week in one of these poor devil's places, and feed as these people do. Our comic prints do an infinity of harm by their caricatures—firstly, the caricatures are not true, for the crime in Ireland is not greater than that in England; and, secondly, they exasperate the people on both sides of the Channel, and they do ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... the group of girls, flushed and lovely beyond compare, holding up the ravished end of that golden braid with a comic dismay, while her despoiler laughed coarsely from a distance and pinned the trophy to his coat lapel. I now saw that blasting was too merciful. He should be removed by a slower process if the thing could as easily ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... his brother between the old lady and her daughter struck him as so irresistibly funny, that it was with the utmost difficulty that he restrained himself from a violent outburst of laughter. And, certainly, to one easily moved to merriment there was something singularly quaint and almost comic in the contrast between the subdued but courteous manner of Amos, who was patiently endeavouring to make himself agreeable to his two immediate neighbours, and the excited frivolity of Miss Morse's running fire of worldly commonplaces, occasionally interrupted by her mother's more staid utterances ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... Doggett, an excellent comic actor, who was for many years joint-manager with Wilkes and Cibber, died in 1721, and bequeathed the Coat and Badge that are rowed for by Thames Watermen every first of August, from ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... annoying cross-examination by a pert barrister. Her son's assumption of the name of Robinson had been misunderstood and severely commented upon by the judge. A sympathetic jury had awarded thumping damages, and for the next six months the family title would be a peg on which music-hall singers and comic journalists would hang their ribald jokes. Lord C—- read the letter, flushed, and dutifully handed it back to his mother. She made pretence to read it as for the first time, and counselled him to ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... whole week she sticks to it industrious, jottin' down studies of various parts of my map while I'm eatin' breakfast, and workin' over 'em until I come back from the office in the afternoon. Did I throw out any more comic cracks? Never a one—not even when the picture showed that my eyes toed in. All I did was pat her on the back and say she was a wonder. But say, I got so I dreaded to look ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... some boys looking at him, they thinking that his despair heightened his comic appearance, he began to run ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... AN EVENING PARTY.—A very valuable little book just published. A complete compendium of games, sports, card diversions, comic recreations, etc., suitable for parlor or drawing-room entertainment. It contains more for the money than ...
— The Bradys Beyond Their Depth - The Great Swamp Mystery • Anonymous
... Each was leaning on a cue, his elbow crooked in as near an imitation of Giddy's position as the stick's length would permit. The figure was curved so that it stuck out behind and before; the expression on each face was as asinine as its owner's knowledge of the comic-weekly swell could make it; the little finger of the free hand was extravagantly bent. The players themselves walked with a mincing step about the table. And: "My deah fellah, what a pretty play. Mean to say, neat, don't you know," came incongruously from the lips of Reddy Lennigan, ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... forget thy strains, While Cooper's Hill commands the neighbouring plains. But see where artful Dryden next appears, Grown old in rhyme, but charming even in years. Great Dryden next, whose tuneful Muse affords The sweetest numbers, and the fittest words. Whether in comic sounds or tragic airs She forms her voice, she moves our smiles or tears. If satire or heroic strains she writes, 120 Her hero pleases and her satire bites. From her no harsh unartful numbers fall, She wears all dresses, and she charms in all. How might we fear our ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... the Indian captives must often have been relieved by comic incidents like those of Knight's escape from his guard; but there is very little record of anything except sorrow and suffering, danger and death. Certainly in the captivity of John Slover, another of Crawford's ill-starred ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... of Lachesis, which depicts her in all the grace of youth and beauty. She is sitting spinning, and at her feet lie two masks, one comic, the other tragic, as though to convey the idea, that, to a divinity of fate, the brightest and saddest scenes of earthly existence are alike indifferent, and that she quietly and steadily pursues her occupation, regardless of human ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... been to his church?" he cried. "Not one male bach or one female fach. Go there the next Sabbath, and the black muless will not say to you: 'Welcome you are, persons Capel. But there's glad am I to see you.' A comic sermon you will hear. A sermon got with half-a-crown postal order. Ask Postman. Laugh highly you will and stamp on the floor. Funny is the Parson in the white frock. Ach y fy, why for he doesn't have a coat preacher like Respecteds? Ask me that. From where does ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans
... time to find everything, and when I got back to Dennis another song had begun. A young sailor I did not know was singing it, and the less said about it the better, except that it very nearly led to a row. It was by way of being a comic song, but except for one line which was rather witty as well as very nasty, there was nothing humorous about it, unless that it was funny that any one could have been indecent enough to write it, and any one else unblushing enough to sing it. I am ashamed to say I ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... conditions of men were gathered there—officers and privates in mutual good fellowship. The Second-in-Command of the Reedshires had just given them a ballad, and sung it jolly well too; and the armourer sergeant and one of their own lieutenants were fooling about as they waited to appear in a comic turn. ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... learned that a daughter had been born to him; two months later he received a notification from his steward that Varvara Pavlovna had asked for the first quarter's allowance. Then worse and worse rumors began to reach him; at last, a tragic-comic story was reported with acclamations in all the papers. His wife played an unenviable part in it. It was the finishing stroke; Varvara Pavlovna ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... thundering bouncer!" cried a voice from behind the boatswain's back. He turned sharply round, but did not discover the speaker. He shook his fist in that direction, however, with a comic expression in ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... laugh? Is it because humor and sound sense are essentially antagonistic? Has humanity found by experience that the man who sees the fun of life is unfitted to deal sanely with its problems? I think not. No man had more of the comic spirit in him than William Shakespeare, and yet his serious reflections, by the sheer force of their sublime obviousness, have pushed their way into the race's arsenal of immortal platitudes. So, ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... as the sorcerer Patience; perhaps more comic in his way than the sorcerer. He was a bilious, melancholy man, tall, lean, angular, full of languor, dignity, and deliberation in speech and action. So little did he like talking that he answered all questions in monosyllables; and yet he never failed to obey the laws ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... had never tried it, had forgotten it. Then, turning with an air half comic, but with something of earnestness, he said, naming me by way of start: "You have been holding a sort of autopsy over me ever since I tumbled over at Atlantic City. I exposed myself there too long both in the water and in the sun, but it was not ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... Miriam played on the piano, and sang with me on the guitar half a dozen songs, and then the other commenced. I don't know when I have been more amused. There was an odd, piney-woods dash about him that was exceedingly diverting, and he went through comic, sentimental, and original songs with an air that showed his whole heart was in it. Judging from the number of youth too timid to venture in, who peeped at us from the windows, I should say that young ladies are curiosities ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... 'weaknesses'." Everard looked annoyed. "Sing some of your comic songs, Harry," he said, wishing to change the subject. And Harry sung, to the great amusement of the party generally, and of Mrs. Arnold ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... a few weeks," he said, "I had beat myself into the more enviable position of snare drummer. Then I wanted to travel with a circus, and dangle my legs before admiring thousands over the back seat of a Golden Chariot. In a dearth of comic songs for the banjo and guitar, I had written two or three myself, and the idea took possession of me that I might be a clown, introduced as a character-song-man and the composer of my ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... fixed purpose to bring Van Degen to a definite expression of his intentions. The case of Indiana Frusk, whose brilliant marriage the journals of two continents had recently chronicled with unprecedented richness of detail, had made less impression on him than she hoped. He treated it as a comic episode without special bearing on their case, and once, when Undine cited Rolliver's expensive fight for freedom as an instance of the power of love over the most invulnerable natures, had answered carelessly: "Oh, his first wife was a laundress, ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... religion into farce. Whether it was quite worth while suffering their presence for the fun of seeing them mount, when starting for their excursion, is open to question, but that it was a unique and comic sight we were all agreed. The hotel garden, filled with guides, horses, donkeys, and pilgrims; the delicate exhibition of ankles and feet —such feet; the chairs to help the rotund damsels; the swarm of natives round one especially fat woman, who got down after all; the beaming face of the host, ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... His manners were unusually gentle and considerate of others, and he was specially remarkable for one trait very rarely found in the Middle Ages—he was always thoughtful of those beneath him. Another peculiarity he had, not common in his time; he was decidedly a humourist. The comic side even of his own troubles was always patent to him. Yet he was a man of extremely sensitive feeling, as well as of shrewd and delicate perceptions. He lived a most uncomfortable life, and he was ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... any especial date. Tartarin de Tarascon was, however, an exception to this rule, for the author wrote it for Messrs. Guillaume, the well-known art publishers, who, wishing to popularise an improved style of illustration, offered M. Daudet 150,000 francs (L6,000) to write them a serio-comic story. Tartarin, which obtained an instant popularity, proved the author's versatility, but won him the hatred of the good people of Provence, who have never forgiven him for having made fun of ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... called on the President, he met with a hearty reception, and Mr. Lincoln, taking him into a private room, repeated to him a story from a comic article by Orpheus C. Kerr, satirically criticising the conduct of the war. It was a story about Captain Bob Shorty and the Mackerel Brigade and the Anaconda Policy— something about generals in the field being ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... became a favorite of the town by virtue of her singing voice, vivacity, and gift for mimicry. Admired first as a singing actress, Miss Rafter in 1731 gave unequivocal notice of her considerable talent as a comic actress in the role of Nell in Coffey's The Devil to Pay, one of several hundred she mastered. Her specialties: Flora in The Wonder, Lady Bab in High Life Below Stairs, Lappet in The Miser, Catherine in Catherine ...
— The Case of Mrs. Clive • Catherine Clive
... although she was frightened at the time lest I should get capsized and drowned. I believe it, for she is a sweet and gracious lady; and I quite see, as she demonstrated, that the sight of me, teetotumming about, steering in an elaborate and showy way all the time, was irresistibly comic. And she gave a most amusing account of how, when she started looking for me to give me tea, a charming habit of hers, she could not see me in among my bottles, and so asked the little black boy where I was. "There," said he, pointing to the tree hanging against the rock out ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... him rather indifferently: she had given him a squat ungainly figure, an inexpressive face, a voice that in its intonations somewhat resembled the grating of a carpenter's saw; and, withal, no very nice conception of either comic or serious character; but he could recite in the "big bow-wow style," and think and dream of only plays and play-actors. To Davie the world and its concerns seemed unworthy of a moment's care, and the stage appeared the ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... us. Their eyes were constantly fixed on the board, and they appeared not to know that I was in the room. It was really beautiful. When the examination was over, I received a look from them all, half comic, half serious, which amply repaid ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... something, and we handed over the bundle to one of the house children to hold, there was a stampede of men and women off the verandah, out of the yard, and over the fence, if need be, that was exceedingly comic, but most convincing as to the reality of the terror and horror in which they held the thing. Even its own mother could not be trusted with the child; she would have killed it. She never betrayed the slightest desire to have it with her, ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... of the Countess of Neuillant, she often met Scarron, the comic poet—a paralytic and cripple—who offered her money with which to pay for admission to a convent, a proposition which she refused; subsequently, however, the countess sent her to the Ursulines to be educated. When, after two years, she lost her mother and ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... then—something will have happened. There has come a spark in the murk; a flame now, presage of a radiance: Comus has begun. His face is a great part of his equipment. A cast of it might be somewhat akin to the comic mask of the ancients; but no cast could be worthy of it; mobility is the essence of it. It flickers and shifts in accord to the matter of his discourse; it contracts and it expands; is there anything its elastic can't express? Comus would be eloquent even were ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... and serio-comic vein exaggerates the follies of democracy which he also sees reflected in social life. To him democracy is a state of individualism or dissolution; in which every one is doing what is right in his own eyes. Of a people animated by a common spirit ...
— The Republic • Plato
... dull, but in the others we can trace a gradual advance in humorous treatment leading up to the genuine comedy of the alternative Towneley plays. Thus, like Noah and his wife, the shepherds of the adoration early became recognized comic characters, and there can be little doubt of the influence exercised by these scenes upon the later interludes. With the general evolution of the drama we are of course in no wise here concerned: what it imports us to notice is that just as it was ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... habit of repetition quite as marked as Hamlet's may be found in comic persons, e.g. Justice Shallow ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... who from drink got into debt, and, after having given a paper to a creditor authorizing him to keep the son as a security for his claim, ran away, leaving poor Phil a bond slave. The story involves a great many unexpected incidents, some of which are painful, and some comic. Phil manfully works for a year, cancelling his father's debt, and then escapes. The characters are strongly drawn, and the story ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... class seem to grow less and less like anything human in proportion to the magnificence of their surroundings. There is a type of butler employed in the comparatively modest homes of small country gentlemen who is practically a man and a brother; who hobnobs with the local tradesmen, sings a good comic song at the village inn, and in times of crisis will even turn to and work the pump when the water supply ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... comic acting are not less characteristic of the people than their tragedies. They are a gay and lively, but not a humorous people. A Frenchman enters into amusements with an eagerness and relish, of ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... itself was kept in fine order, and was painted like all the king's miniature fleet—white outside, and bright salmon inside. One glance at his boat's crew showed me that they were all armed—in a flashy melodramatic style, like the Red Indians of a comic opera, each naked native having a brace of revolvers buckled to a broad leather belt around his waist, from which also hung a French navy cutlass in a leather sheath. They were all big, stalwart fellows, though no one of ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... with cards, or how to sing funny songs, like that little friend of yours from Baltimore you was tellin' me about. Look at him, now. He didn't have anything but his own ability. He could tell you every time what card you was thinkin' about, and do a skirt dance and give comic recitations and imitate a dog fight out in the back yard, and now he's married to one of the richest ladies in New York. Why couldn't you 'a' been learnin' some of them clever things, so you could 'a' married ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... again. Mrs. Frimmely says, "She only cares for French songs. English comic songs," she adds, "are so vulgar." Settler for Milburd. Glad ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand
... and optical treatment, have no public libraries, lectures, schools, debates, or camp newspapers, have not seven tennis courts, three football fields, athletic games, cricket, golf and hockey, are not amused by dramas, comic operas and cinema shows, and above all are not paid extra wages for doing their own work to make themselves comfortable. All of these advantages and more which the Ruhleben prisoners enjoy have been largely the result of the effort of the ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... laid upon the latter. All these little speeches have been written for them by their priest or some religious friend, been committed to memory, and practised with the appropriate gestures over and over again at home. Their little piping voices are sometimes guilty of such comic breaks and changes, that the crowd about them rustles into a murmurous laughter. Sometimes also one of the very little preachers has a dispitto, pouts, shakes her shoulders, and refuses to go on with her part;—another, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... to the study of philosophies, which though they be not the most mature, yet ought, as kindred of the Muses, to precede them. Besides which, being drawn on one side by the tragic Melpomene, with more matter than spirit, and on the other side by the comic Thalia, with more spirit than matter, it came to pass that, oscillating between the two, he remained neutral and inactive, rather than operative. Finally, the dictum of the censors, who, restraining him from that which was high and worthy, and towards ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... you are comic!" said Kenneth, laughing heartily, and then restraining himself. "I meant the bagpipes. ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... merged in her brain in swimming circles of heat and blinding alternations of light and darkness. All the world has to show seemed to pass before her in a chaos of palms and minarets, charging cavalry regiments, roaring lions, comic policemen and scowling murderers; and the crowd around her, the hundreds of hot sallow candy-munching faces, young, old, middle-aged, but all kindled with the same contagious excitement, became part of the spectacle, and danced on the screen with ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... moderation, and even gets so far as to suggest the necessity of reformatories. He is not very romantic, and displays an amount of self-command in judicially settling the claims of the various ladies who are anxious to marry him, which is almost comic; he is perfectly ready to marry the Italian lady, if she can surmount her religious scruples, though he is in love with Miss Byron; and his mind is evidently in a pleasing state of equilibrium, so that he will be happy with either dear charmer. Indeed, for so chivalric a gentleman, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... that Gilder, Seton, Burroughs and myself went away together, and the doorman showed a mild surprise in the fact that no carriage awaited us. Gilder with comic intonation said, "Some of you fellows ought to have saved this ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... short, and having quickly hurl'd This line about, live thou throughout the world; Who art a man for all scenes; unto whom, What's hard to others, nothing's troublesome. Can'st write the comic, tragic strain, and fall From these to pen the pleasing pastoral: Who fli'st at all heights: prose and verse run'st through; Find'st here a fault, and mend'st the trespass too: For which I might extol thee, but speak less, Because ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... who contributed to Punch and other organs; wrote the "Comic Blackstone" and comic histories of England ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... or Macbeth. Sometimes a fault is committed on the part of the teacher, by permitting a pupil to confine his selections to one favorite class. I have observed in certain schools, that one particular boy would always appear in a comic piece, another in a tragic, and so on. It would be better for the teacher to require each pupil to speak a variety of pieces, so as to secure a more general and comprehensive culture than would result from practice on ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... the people as I parsed along to keep their seats. "Don't git up for me," I sed. One of the prettiest young men I ever saw in my life showed me into a seat, and I proceeded to while away the spare time by reading Thompson's "Bank Note Reporter" and the comic papers. ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne
... "Well, Captain, I suppose you and I are the two most notorious men in the Pacific." I think it will enable you to see the Captain if I tell you that he recited to us in cold blood the words of a new comic song; doubtless a tribute to my literary character. I had often heard of Captain Morse and always had detested all that I was told, and detested the man in confidence, just as you are doing; but really he has a wonderful charm of strength, loyalty, and simplicity. The whole celebrity ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a canopy of yellow satin, ornamented with four dragons. After the ambassadors had made five prostrations, they sat down to table, and were treated as at other times. During the entertainment, many comic tricks were acted for the amusement of the emperor and the company. The first performers that appeared were painted with white and red, like girls, and dressed in gold brocade, holding nosegays of artificial ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... weave them into poetical stories, without much substance or solemnity; enhancing the beauty that may be inherent in any part of the national legend, and either rejecting the scandalous chronicle of Olympus or Asgard altogether, or giving it over to the comic graces of levity and irony, as in the Phaeacian story of Ares and Aphrodite, wherein the Phaeacian poet digressed from his tales of war in the spirit of Ariosto, and with an equally accomplished ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... ladder is the Humorous Ballad. The "Comic Ballad" we have had with us from the days of Robin Hood, but W. S. Gilbert in his "Bab Ballads" reached heights before his time unsuspected. By the use of catchy stanzas and unusual rhymes he made the type a thing of art. Most readers are familiar ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow
... certain that every hand had been against him. In many cities he had stood before sarcastic judges, and been sent on to serve his little time. Adown highways unnumbered he had sawed wood, when necessary; received handouts, worn hand-me-downs; furnished infinite material for the wags of the comic press. Long he had slept under hedges and in ricks, carried his Lares in a bandana kerchief, been forcibly bathed at free lodging-houses in icy winters. Dogs had chased him, and his fellow man: he had been bitten by the one and smitten by the other. Ill-fame ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the dance and chorus, Chan retired into the tea garden, and drank so many cups of the national beverage, with such comic gestures, that the spectators were almost sorry when the opening of the opposite window drew all eyes in that direction. At the lattice appeared a lovely being; for this potato had been pared, and on the white surface ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... was a serio-comic affair which is perhaps worth relating. Two players had a gambling dispute, and resolved to settle it in a dark room with pistols. The door was locked and one of them fired, but missed. On this the other exclaimed—'Now, you rascal, I'll finish you at my leisure.' He then began ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... Punch published the day preceding—in other words, because it did not occur to Bradbury and Evans to exceed their legitimate functions as proprietors and publishers, and to require the insertion of statements on a domestic and painful subject in the inappropriate columns of a comic miscellany. No previous request for the insertion of this statement had been made either to Bradbury and Evans, or to the editor of Punch, and the grievance of Mr. Dickens substantially amounted to this, that Bradbury and Evans did not take upon themselves, unsolicited, to gratify ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... a shout of exultation, and began pointing at the ghastly head, with mockings and derisive laughter. They had put a paper crown upon the head, which they seemed to think produced a comic effect. The queen, though at first she averted her face, soon turned back again toward the horrid trophy, and laughed, with the rest, at the ridiculous effect produced by the ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... white rabbit, overgrown in the hinder half. But there is encouragement to be got from the case of the boxing boomer. The kangaroo will never become clever of himself, but perhaps the showman may teach him. There are many comic opportunities in the kangaroo—particularly in the pouch. Let ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... blackguards; but these men were something worse. There is a comic side, more or less appreciable, in all blackguardism—here there was nothing but tragedy—mute, weird tragedy. The quiet in the room was horrible. The thin, haggard, long-haired young man, whose sunken eyes fiercely watched the turning up of ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... irresistibly comic, and I question if Liston, Munden, or Joey Knight, was ever greeted with such merriment; for Romeo dragged the unfortunate Juliet from the tomb, much in the same manner as a washerwoman thrusts into her cart the bag of foul linen. But how shall I describe his death? Out came ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... was only at a late point in its progress that a chorus of comedians was officially granted by the archon; they used to be mere volunteers. It had also already certain definite forms at the time when the record of those termed comic poets begins. Who it was who supplied it with masks, or prologues, or a plurality of actors and the like, has remained unknown. The invented Fable, or Plot, however, originated in Sicily, with Epicharmus and Phormis; of Athenian poets Crates was the first to drop ...
— The Poetics • Aristotle
... the poet and the spectator a tacit consent that no truth is to be expected in the piece. In a farce we exempt the poet from all faithfulness in his pictures; he has a kind of privilege to tell us untruths. Here, in fact, all the comic consists exactly in its contrast with the truth, and so it ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... had never heard the name before, the Broadway brand of comic opera being outside her experience to a degree which would have been inconceivable ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark by putting it thus: "If the character of Hamlet be entirely omitted, the play must suffer, even though Henry Irving himself be cast for the title-role." Anyone going to the theatre in this spirit would be likely to be less disappointed by performances that were comic or even frankly farcical. Latterly, when he grew slightly deaf, listening to any kind of piece became too much of an effort; nevertheless, he continued to the last the habit of going ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... remember how a burlesque composed by my eldest brother was once being rehearsed in my cousin's big drawing room. From our place against the verandah railings of our house we could hear, through the open windows opposite, roars of laughter mixed with the strains of a comic song, and would also occasionally catch glimpses of Akshay Mazumdar's extraordinary antics. We could not gather exactly what the song was about, but lived in hopes of being able to ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... France between 1887 and 1895 were at a low ebb. The financial scandals which led to the resignation of President Grevy in 1887, the serio-comic political career of General Boulanger, dangerous and constant labour disturbances in the great centres of industry, the Panama financial scandals of 1893, the assassination of President Carnot in 1894, and the impossibility of forming stable Ministries, caused a general lack of confidence ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... 554; mimic &c. (imitate) 19; enact; play a part, act a part, go through a part, perform a part; rehearse, spout, gag, rant; "strut and fret one's hour upon a stage"; tread the boards, tread the stage; come out; star it. Adj. dramatic; theatric, theatrical; scenic, histrionic, comic, tragic, buskined[obs3], farcical, tragicomic, melodramatic, operatic; stagy. Adv. on the stage, on the boards; on film; before the floats, before an audience; behind the scenes. Phr. fere totus mundus exercet histrionem [Lat][Petronius ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... prefers Mrs. Behn's treatment of the situation, it must, I think, be allowed that D'Urfey has managed the jest with far greater verve and spirit. Honest Tom D'Urfey is in fact one of the least read and most maligned of all our dramatists. He had the merriest comic gifts, and perhaps when the critics and literary historians deign to read his plays he will attain a higher position in ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... and went on: 'Perhaps he'll turn out to be a Lionel Monckton or a Paul Rubens. Perhaps he'll write comic opera revues ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... asked myself with rage and astonishment: "Must I then kill that brute?" There didn't seem to be any alternative. Between him and Dona Rita I couldn't hesitate. I believe I gave a slight laugh of desperation. The suddenness of this sinister conclusion had in it something comic and unbelievable. It loosened my grip on my mental processes. A Latin tag came into my head about the facile descent into the abyss. I marvelled at its aptness, and also that it should have come to me so pat. But I believe now that ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad |
