"Squib" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was a grand display of fireworks, but somehow or other they did not go off at the right time and place; however, I daresay that the crowd were equally astonished and delighted as if each squib and cracker had played its part properly. One thing I must say for the Russians, that they are a very orderly, well-behaved people; and in all the vast crowds we saw, the people appeared kind and good-natured to each other in the extreme. ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... bore from him with kindly amusement and real respect what they would bear from no one else, and he had an influence in its sometimes turbulent debates which seems unaccountable. He was the vir pietate gravis. In a once popular squib, occasioned by one of the fiercest of these debates, this unique position is noticed ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... immortalized in the sculpturesque material of poets and heroes; but the prayerful attitude encourages us to believe that the old usurer may not, after all, have had that grim reception in the other world which Shakspeare's squib foreboded for him. By-the-by, till I grew somewhat familiar with Warwickshire pronunciation, I never understood that the point of those ill-natured lines was a pun. "'Oho!' quoth the Devil, ''tis my John a' Combe!'"—that is, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... said, when he had kissed her, "every man must have his folly; I thank God mine is no worse. Off with you! I have given a child a squib." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... frail clusters, the great red grapes, the muscadine, the verjuice grape, and the laskard, for those that are costive in their belly, because it will make them gush out, and squirt the length of a hunter's staff, like the very tap of a barrel; and oftentimes, thinking to let a squib, they did all-to-besquatter and conskite themselves, whereupon they are commonly called the vintage thinkers. The bun-sellers or cake-makers were in nothing inclinable to their request; but, which was worse, did injure ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... is certainly very beautiful," cried a little Squib. "Just look at those yellow tulips. Why! if they were real Crackers they could not be lovelier. I am very glad I have travelled. Travel improves the mind wonderfully, and does away with all ...
— The Happy Prince and Other Tales • Oscar Wilde
... was tremendous was evinced by the squib-like action of his pipe, as it flew into the air, and the stumbling clatter of his feet, as he rushed blindly from the spot. Little Pax rolled on the grass in indescribable ecstasies for a few seconds, then crept through the hole, and ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... everything they don't want their wives to be. There is no fitness of disposition and character, no unity of ideals, no passionate surrender of the Self in devotion, no fixed purpose of duty, no harmony in tastes or outlook. Such love must come to disaster; it is like a damp squib, it is never properly alight and fades out swiftly in noisy splutters. Then, when the first desire goes, no friend but an enemy ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... vices? 'Let me die the death of the righteous;' let my soul be in the state of the soul of the righteous—that is, in reference to his virtues, when I die, 'and let my last end be like his' (Num 23:10). It is a sport now to some to taunt, and squib, and deride at other men's virtues; but the day is coming when their minds will be changed, and when they shall be made to count those that have done those righteous actions and duties which they have scoffed ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Your friend, now, seems a likely man; but you?— I thought you were a torch; and you're a squib. ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... enough to lampoon him for lunacy—an act which, Dr. Johnson well remarks, "no provocation could excuse." It was, in Fuller's fine old quaint language, "breaking one whom God had bowed before." Our readers will find Butler's squib in our edition of that poet, vol. ii. p. 200, under the title of "A Panegyrick on Sir John Denham's Recovery from his Madness." It is a piece quite unworthy of Butler's powers, and its sting lies principally in charging Denham with plagiarising "Cooper's ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... us about "culture," that is rather a dangerous word. I am always a little afraid of the word "culture." I recollect the very brightest squib that I read in the late election campaign—and as the President says, gentlemen, I am going to respect the proprieties of the occasion. It was sent to one of the journals from the Western Reserve; and the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... arrival at home; for I shall not see you on my way, as I mean to go by the Eastern Shore and Petersburg. Perhaps the paragraphs in some of these abominable papers may draw from you now and then a squib. A pamphlet of Fauchet's appeared yesterday. I send you a copy under another cover. A hand-bill has just arrived here from New York, where they learn from a vessel which left Havre about the 9th of November, that the Emperor had signed the definitive articles, given up Mantua, evacuated Mentz, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... them to come in, and Mr. Hope added his entreaties, but Mr. Kendal would not leave the horses, and the ladies would not leave him; and they all stood still while his effigy was paraded round the knoll, the mark of every squib, the object of every invective that the rabble could roar out at the top of their voices. Jesuits and Papists; Englishmen treated like blackamoor slaves in the Indies; honest folk driven out of ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the stick and shooting at butts became standard illustrations; they are repeated by Sir Thomas Raymond, in Bessey v. Olliot, /2/ by Sir William Blackstone, in the famous squib case, /3/ and by other judges, and have become familiar through the textbooks. Sir T. Raymond, in the above case, also repeats the thought and almost the words of Littleton, J., which have been quoted, and says further: "In all civil acts the law ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... on his side near the wall of coal in his "room" and cut into it, close to the floor, as far as his pickaxe would reach. Then he bored a hole into the top of the coal, pushed in a cartridge, thrust in a slender squib, lighted it, and ran for his life. The cartridge exploded, and perhaps a ton or two of coal fell. The miner's helper shoveled this into a car and pushed it out of the room to join the ...
— Diggers in the Earth • Eva March Tappan
... duel, or the last female victim to the corruption and profligacy of some of those from whom, the people were to expect justice, and their families protection. Others were whistling or humming some favorite air; and one of them, a poet, was reading a squib which he had ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... scribbler leaves a blank for the name of George, as if his doggerel might yet exalt him to the pillory. Such, after years of rebellion, is the heart's unconquerable reverence for the Lord's anointed! In the next column, we have scripture parodied in a squib against his sacred Majesty. What would our Puritan great-grandsires have said to that? They never laughed at God's word, though they cut off ...
— Old News - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... it,' said Mr Crummles. 'You on the top of a pair of steps with the phenomenon in an attitude; "Farewell!" on a transparency behind; and nine people at the wings with a squib in each hand—all the dozen and a half going off at once—it would be very grand—awful from the front, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... bullets, too large for the pistols and too small for the gun. I loaded the latter, however, but as often as I leveled it to fire, the little bullets would roll out of the muzzle and the gun returned only a faint report like a squib, as the powder harmlessly exploded. I galloped in front of the buffalo and attempted to turn her back; but her eyes glared, her mane bristled, and lowering her head, she rushed at me with astonishing fierceness and activity. Again ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... was madness to cover public buildings with open oil lamps and leave them to be looked after by natives—this huge Taj hotel, dry as tinder outside, a complexity of dry wooden jalousies and balconies, was covered with these lights and floating flags—how it didn't go off like a squib was a miracle. I saw one flag gently float into a lamp, burn up and fall in flaming shreds and no one was the wiser or the worse. The faintest breath of air one way or the other and the other flags would have caught fire, and in a second ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... talking a good deal about the "Man and the Apes" question, and I hear that somebody, I suspect Monckton-Milnes, has set afloat a poetical squib ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... a clever political squib. A terse and spirited paper found its way to Rome, and was soon affixed, to the statutes of Pasquin and Marforio, and in other public places of that city, and even to the gates of the papal palace. Without going beyond his own doors, his Holiness had ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... will be pleased to see One such to-day as other plays should be; Where neither chorus wafts you o'er the seas, Nor creaking throne comes down the boys to please, Nor nimble squib is seen to make afeard The gentlewomen; nor rolled bullet heard To say it thunders; nor tempestuous drum Rumbles to tell you when ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... professors— imitations in which their gestures, intonations, and bits of rhetoric and oratory were most ludicrously caricatured. I remembered, too, how a college pastor, a man greatly revered, was really driven out of the university pulpit by a squib in a students' paper, and how several of his successors had finally retreated into professorships in the Divinity School; and I felt that leading men coming from week to week from the outside world would be taken at the value which the outside world puts upon them, and that ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... two of equivocal reputation, with whom he had become acquainted in former days of equal brotherhood. No one was more faithful to his early friends than Mr. Rigby, particularly if they could write a squib. ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... Lancaster's king jars, And in the tyring-house bring wounds to scars. He rather prays you will be pleas'd to see One such to-day, as other plays should be; Where neither chorus wafts you o'er the seas, Nor creaking throne comes down the boys to please; Nor nimble squib is seen to make afeard The gentlewomen; nor roll'd bullet heard To say, it thunders; nor tempestuous drum Rumbles, to tell you when the storm doth come; But deeds, and language, such as men do use, And persons, such as comedy would choose, ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... think that Rhoda Drake (MURRAY) must be the most preposterously startling story that I have read for this age. It makes you feel as if you had had a squib exploded under your chair at a temperance meeting. After beginning placidly about persons who live in South Kensington (and are so dull that the author has to fill up with minute descriptions of their drawing-rooms), somewhere towards three-quarters through its decorous course ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 15, 1920 • Various
... devils, one of them having a wooden leg. These take a dance around Cain, and are very jocose, one of them inviting him to hell to take a cup of brimstone coffee, and another asking him to make up a party at whist. Cain snarls, and they tumble him and themselves headlong into the squib vomiting mouth. ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... is evenness of temper. In the wooing days everyone is a lamb, and only becomes the howling wolf after marriage. Circumstances that ruffle the temper in the presence of the intended are but like the harmless squib, but would become like the explosive torpedo in his or her absence or in after-marriage. Quarreling caused by matrimonial differences is the most frequent cause of infelicity, and most of it is caused by an innate irate temper of either ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... Malachi[182] this morning; it may fall dead, and there will be a squib lost; it may chance to light on some ingredients of national feeling and set folk's beards in a blaze—and so much the better if it does. I mean better for Scotland—not a whit for me. Attended the hearing in P[arliament] House ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... chamber assembled the expected guests. His Grace and the Bird of Paradise arrived first, with their foreign friends. Lord Squib and Lord Darrell, Sir Lucius Grafton, Mr. Annesley, and Mr. Peacock Piggott followed, but not alone. There were two ladies who, by courtesy if no other right, bore the titles of Lady Squib and Mrs. Annesley. There was also a pseudo Lady Aphrodite Grafton. There was Mrs. Montfort, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... undergraduates. He forgets that what appeals to an undergraduate public may be Greek to the outside reader and, unfortunately, not compulsory Greek. The reviewers had dealt kindly with my two books ("this pleasant little squib," "full of quiet humour," "should amuse all who remember their undergraduate days"); but the great heart of the public had remained untouched, as had the great purse of the public. I had determined to adopt a different ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... kingdom, parliament and the city."(547) The aspect of the city at this time was that of a huge military depot. Everywhere was heard the sound of musket-shot and rattle of drum, besides the noise of the squib or other firework of the frolicsome apprentice. So great and continuous was the din that it had to be restricted by precept of ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... fizzled out like a damp squib. Absolutely afraid to risk the remaining boats in operations that would certainly end in their being unceremoniously conveyed to Davy Jones's locker, the German Admiralty had dispatched them to the Mediterranean, where, under the Austrian flag, they attempted, ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... after-dinner discussion in London, at which Coleridge (comme de raison) was the chief speaker, the reader of this generation may wish to know the question at issue; and in order to judge of that, he must know the outline of this devil's squib. The writer brings upon the scene three pleasant young ladies, viz., Miss Fire, Miss Famine, and Miss Slaughter. 'What are you up to? What's the row?'—we may suppose to be the introductory question of the poet. And the answer of the ladies makes us aware that they are ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey |
