"Humorist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... inanity. The absurdity next struck her; and with the absurdity flashed into her mind the conviction that this was not the doing of a vampire; for of all creatures under the moon, he could not be expected to be a humorist. A wild hope sprang up in her mind that Karl was not dead. Of this she soon ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... time to time the only possible phrases for the case, that I mean the Victorian Englishman to appear as a blockhead, which means an unconscious buffoon. To all this there is a final answer: that he was also a conscious buffoon—and a successful one. He was a humorist; and one of the best humorists in Europe. That which Goethe had never taught the Germans, Byron did manage to teach the English—the duty of not taking him seriously. The strong and shrewd Victorian humour appears in every slash of ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... steadily, slackening for a moment, and then shooting ahead, as if the propelling power were the subject of strange perturbation. The roguish boys, and the men too, and, chief of them, that practical humorist of a conductor, observing this, screamed, "Boo! boo! boo I boo!" all the louder. Tiffles knew that the critical time had come, and philosophically laughed at the ruin of his last grand project, as he had laughed at the ruin of forty other grand ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... one of the most accredited journals of England the other day that Ireland had never produced a poet, could not even show a second-rate humorist,' ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... must be said about the introduction to the anecdote. A clumsy, inappropriate introduction is fatal, whereas a single apt or witty sentence will kindle interest and prepare a favorable hearing. The following extreme illustration, by the English humorist, Captain Harry Graham, well satirizes ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... and handsome, resolved upon marrying this famous termagant, and taming her into a meek and manageable wife. And truly none was so fit to set about this herculean labor as Petruchio, whose spirit was as high as Katharine's, and he was a witty and most happy-tempered humorist, and withal so wise, and of such a true judgment, that he well knew how to feign a passionate and furious deportment when his spirits were so calm that himself could have laughed merrily at his own angry feigning, for his natural temper was ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Mercy, but, as Dickens remarks, she showed none to him. Though Dickens shrank timorously in childhood from her frightful stories, he himself, like the fat boy in Pickwick, sometimes "wants to make our flesh creep." It seems, indeed, an odd trait of the humorist that he can at will wholly discard his gaiety, and, like the Pied Piper, pipe to another measure. W.W. Jacobs, besides his humorous sailor yarns, has given us The Monkey's Paw; and Barry Pain's gruesome stories, Told in ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... has now spent a year in a very arduous course of education; he has a flexible mind, capable of much expansion, and convertible towards far loftier studies and activities than those of his early life; and if he came to Washington a backwoods humorist, he has already transformed himself into as good a statesman (to ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with interest of and about Smollett had been said. So far from this being the case, however, it was but a few years ago, that, as we all recollect, the brilliant pen of Thackeray was brought to bear on the same subject, and the great humorist of this generation employed his talents worthily in illustrating the genius of a past age. "'Humphrey Clinker,'" says he, "is, I do believe, the most laughable story that has ever been written since the goodly art of novel-writing began." This ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... of the unknown humorist in the crowd commended itself to the more energetic of the party, who immediately turned towards the by-road leading to Dene Hall. The others—the minority— followed as minorities do, because they distrusted ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... had a poor, loose-hung, trailing little body, which no nourishment could plump or fortify. Her visage was habitually doleful, but contracted itself at moments into a grin of quaint drollery, which betrayed her for something of a humorist. ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... draw himself up out of the chair, and unroll, and unroll, and unroll until at last his gigantic stature reached up almost as high as Gray's. But he fell short a little. I learned, later, that it was a man named Shaw who afterward became famous as a writer and humorist under the pseudonym of Josh Billings. He was the son of Henry Shaw, formerly of Lanesboro; at that time a millionaire dwelling in New York, and known to fame as one of the two Massachusetts Representatives who voted for the Missouri Compromise in 1820. Henry Shaw was, I believe, a native ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... making of the genuine humorist the faculty of observation is the first necessity. Consider the great pictorial humorists, whether dead or living, whose names are familiar in the mouth as household words. That they gained acknowledgment by masterly ...
— Frank Reynolds, R.I. • A.E. Johnson
... in his own person, a proof of the necessity of the Norman Conquest. He had, at all events, a just and high estimate of the merits of my brilliant colleague. "Heu quanto minus est cum reliquis versari quam tui meminisse!" But Roosevelt was not himself a humorist, and his writings give little evidence of his possession of the faculty. Lincoln, now, was one of the foremost American humorists. But Roosevelt was too strenuous for the practice of humor, which implies a certain relaxation of mind: ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... of a friend, whom I lost some years ago, is the only one I recollect, which jumps precisely with the reasoning of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. My friend was an old Scottish laird, a bachelor and a humorist—wealthy, convivial, and hospitable, and of course having always plenty of company about him. He had a regular custom of swallowing every night in the world one of Dr. Anderson's pills, for which reasons may be readily imagined. But it is not so easy to account for his insisting on ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... Billy among the irreverent of the town. As he sat aloft on his boot-blacking throne, waiting for crime to be done among us, conning meantime one of those romances in which his heroes did rare deeds, he would be subjected to intrusion. Some coarse town humorist would leer upon him from the doorway—a leer of furtive, devilish cunning—and whisper hoarsely, ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... Rue de Tournon, where the two brothers Daudet had taken up their abode. That publisher was Jules Tardieu, himself an author of some merit (under the transparent pseudonym of J. T. de St. Germain): a mild, quiet humorist of the optimistic school, a Topffer on a small scale and with ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... would defeat the very earnestness from which it sprang. So, one morning, the landscape-maker went to the telephone, and called for the number of a friend whom he rightly believed to be the wisest man, and the greatest humorist, in New York. The call brought no response, and the painter dried his brushes, and turned up Fifth Avenue to an apartment hotel in a cross street, where on a certain door he rapped with all the elaborate formula of a secret code. Very cautiously, the door opened, and revealed ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... gerrymander, and joy-ride illustrate for English the fact that words of a certain kind meet a more hospitable reception in the spoken language than they do in literature. The writer of comedy or farce, the humorist, and the man in the street do not feel the constraint which the canons of good usage put on the serious writer. They coin new words or use old words in a new way or use new constructions without much hesitation. The extraordinary material progress ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... the peoples whom he visits, his readers, and the author himself, all suffer a good deal together, and do not so often combine in hearty, unforced laughter as could be wished. This is the more a pity because Mr. Browne is a genuine humorist, and must be very sorry to fatigue anybody. In his less boisterous moments he is really charming, and, in spite of all his liveliness, he does give some clear ideas of the lands he sees. It appears to us that the travels through Iceland are the best in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... and Divorce Court reminds me of a curious application for the postponement of a trial made by George Brown, who was as good a humorist as he was ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... Tennyson, the famous anecdote a propos of Tennyson's publication of The Idylls of the King—"all very fine, Alfred, but when are you going to do some work"—and many other such written deliverances suffice to show how absolutely out of court a great tragic humorist and rhetorician may be on an art practised by writers at least as valuable to English literature as himself, say Wordsworth, Shelley, Coleridge, and Keats. Carlyle was a great writer, but the names of these four ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... citizens, perhaps beside his father Sophroniscus the sculptor, a short, square, pug- nosed boy of ten years old, looking at it all with strange eyes—"who will be one day," so said the Pythoness at Delphi, "the wisest man in Greece"—sage, metaphysician, humorist, warrior, patriot, martyr—for ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... the final impression we receive from the work of Robert Browning is that of a great nature, an immense personality. The poet in him is made up of many men. He is dramatist, humorist, lyrist, painter, musician, philosopher and scholar, each in full measure, and he includes and dominates them all. In richness of nature, in scope and penetration of mind and vision, in energy of passion and emotion, he is probably second among English poets to Shakespeare alone. In art, in ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... conduct by saying that if he had borne witness against the burglars, he was afraid that their friends would jump on his back (saltarmi adosso), as he phrased it, in the dark; for by this sort of terrorism the poor and the wicked have long been bound together in Italy. Piero was a humorist in his dry way, and made a jest of his own caution; but his favorite joke was, when he dressed himself with particular care, to tell the women that he was going to pay a visit to the Princess Clary, then the star of Austrian society. This mild pleasantry was repeated indefinitely ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... at the University of Edinburgh, and afterwards appointed parish minister of Fodderty and Chaplain to the 71st Highlanders, his father having resigned both offices in his favour. He was a noted humorist and said by those who knew him best to be much more at heart a soldier than a minister. He married first, his cousin, Mary, daughter of John Mackenzie of Brea, "the Laird," and sister of Alexander, XI. of Hilton, with issue ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... than discounted by a simple message which read: 'Work may now be resumed as usual in the trenches.' The enemy, meanwhile, appeared to be well acquainted with our plans, for voices were heard calling out, 'Come on, Bucks, come on, Berks!' 'The Royal Berks will lead the attack,' while a humorist shouted from the fort at Gommecourt, 'Run away, English; go away home.' The enemy had indeed good reason to be confident in the strength of these positions, which twice next year were to defy capture after the most elaborate preparation. ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... most hoary and patriarchal anecdotes tells of the minister who, finding a burglar in his study, held the man in deep slumber by the reading of last Sunday's discourse while his wife slipped out for the policeman. An American humorist, who has laid us under life-long obligation for hours of honest laughter, tells us, in the history of his courtship of Betsy Jane, that her folks and his "slept in the same meeting house." Again and ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... that our genial humorist came near the serious reality of a duel he was the party challenged. The cause of the misunderstanding that promised to result so tragically was a magazine article in which the doctor caricatured a peculiar kind of Virginia Editor. ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... thinks himself right, as mad as a man who thinks himself God Almighty. The Provost of West Kensington is mad, because he thinks he is respectable, as mad as a man who thinks he is a chicken. All men are mad but the humorist, who cares for nothing and possesses everything. I thought that there was only one humorist in England. Fools!—dolts!—open your cows' eyes; there are two! In Notting Hill—in that unpromising elevation—there has been born an artist! ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... after all the Delphic Oracle might not have been such a fool. For he knew his ignorance; but the rest were ignorant without knowing it. This was his own way of telling the story; and you can never be sure how much camouflage was in it;—and yet, too, he was a giant humorist. Anyhow, he did show men their ignorance; and you all know his solemn way of doing it. He drew them on with sly questionings to see what idiots they were; and then drew them on with more sly questionings to perceive at least ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... not without a qualm or two, which I should be a liar to deny, I went and stood nearer to them. Nearly all their clothes had fallen away, hanging but in shreds here and there. That the hat had so jauntily kept its place was one of those grim touches Death, that terrible humorist, loves to add to his jests. The cards, which had apparently just been dealt, had suffered scarcely from decay—only a little dirt had sifted down upon them, as it had into the rum glasses that stood too at each man's side. And, as I looked at the skeleton jauntily facing ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... the animals to be truly considered "lower," natural distinctions were better appreciated, and there seemed to be something absurd in the idea of their thinking or talking. Hence AEsop's fables are spoken of by Aristophanes as something laughable, and the fabulist came to be regarded as a humorist. This feeling gained ground so much afterwards that Lucian makes AEsop act the part of a buffoon in "The Isles of the Blessed." Such views no doubt influenced the traditions with regard to the condition and characteristics of their composer. There was the more field for this, inasmuch as even ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... "'A Coming Humorist.' ... In Mr. Milne it may not be extravagant to descry a writer with a future before him."—Evening ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... humorist as an extremist. I have ridden with him under fire and heard him crack jokes with Minie balls flying uncomfortably about. Some one spoke kindly of him to old Ben Wade. "Yes, yes," said Wade; "I never did believe in the ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... Vervain. If I could make such jokes as that priest was, I should set up for a humorist at once. He had the touch of pathos that they say all true pieces of humor ought to have," he went on instinctively addressing himself to Miss Vervain, who did not repulse him. "He made me melancholy; and his face haunts me. I should ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... numerous as the representatives themselves. In Hoelderlin we have the ardent Hellenic idealist; Lenau gives expression to all the pathos of Weltschmerz, Heine is its satirist, the misanthrope, while in Raabe we even have a pessimistic humorist. ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... the Year Round, with which he was connected until his death, which occurred very suddenly at his residence. Gad's Hill, Kent, on June 9th, 1870. He left his latest work, The Mystery of Edwid Drood, unfinished, and it remains a fragment. It was not merely as a humorist, though that was his great distinguishing characteristic, that Dickens obtained such unexampled popularity. Be was a public instructor, a reformer and moralist. Whatever was good and amiable, bright and joyous in our nature, he loved, supported ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... of Love, when Margaret de Valois decided that the lover had more claims than the husband. Romance dies with marriage is the plaint of poet and novelists; the charm of woman disappears with her mystery, with possession. And the typical humorist speaks of the curl papers and kimono of the wife, the snores and unshaven beard of the husband. "Familiarity is the death of passion" is the theme of countless writers who bemoan its passing in ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... respectable; his talents were of a high order, and he had in him a vein of genius of no ordinary kind. He died in 1635, but his poems were not published till 1647. They are of various merit, and treat of various subjects. In his 'Journey to France,' you see the humorist, who, on one occasion, when the country people were flocking to be confirmed, cried, 'Bear off there, or I'll confirm ye with my staff.' In his lines to his son Vincent, we see, notwithstanding all his foibles, the good man; and in his 'Farewell to the Fairies' the fine ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... "As the natives of Mulinuu appear to be under the protection of the Imperial German naval guard belonging to the vessel under your command, I have the honour to request you to inform me whether or not they are under such protection? Amicable relations," pursued the humorist, "amicable relations exist between the government of the United States and His Imperial German Majesty's government, but we do not recognise Tamasese's government, and I am desirous of locating the responsibility for violations ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... version of the battlesong, "Good-bye, good-bye to Tipperary," ending with "And we shan't get there". And they all went on firing steadily. The officers pointed out that such an opportunity for high-class, fancy shooting might never occur again; the Germans dropped line after line; the Tipperary humorist asked, "What price Sidney Street?" And the few machine guns did their best. But everybody knew it was of no use. The dead grey bodies lay in companies and battalions, as others came on and on and on, and they swarmed ...
— The Angels of Mons • Arthur Machen
... There were tales told about him, that he wrote for papers in London, and stuffed his vases and his pillows with money, but TAMMAS HAGGART only shook his head at what he called "such auld fowks' yeppins," and evidently didn't believe a single word. Now TAMMAS, you must know, was our humorist. It was not without difficulty that TAMMAS had attained to this position, and he was resolved to keep it. Possibly he scented in the stranger a rival humorist whom he would have to crush. At any rate, his greeting was not marked with the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... newly-fledged offspring? Or could it be sotto voce remarks of the bird himself? It was impossible to decide, and I went home much puzzled to account for it; but a day or two later the mystery was solved,—the thrush showed himself to be a humorist. ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... you see, was a humorist, as humour was then understood upon the northern shores of Africa, where he had ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... year. This is the third time our note-book and pencil have been busily employed in this very pleasant corner of Kensington. At No. 16, Madame Albani has chatted over five o'clock tea and deliciously thin bread and butter; at No. 27, Mr. F. C. Burnand once frankly declared that to become a successful humorist one must needs possess a serious turn of mind, and refuse ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... though all gravity on the bench, and seldom indulging in any sportiveness in parliament, was a humorist at table, and fond of humorous recollections. His story of Dunning on his travels has got into print; but, in the hands of a genuine humorist, it must have been an incomparable ground for burlesque. Dunning, when solicitor-general, had gone to see ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... town humorist no attention. He hurried to the counter and leaned across it, asking his question for a ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... already as humorous and fanciful idiom of their own, only that through habit it has lost its humour. When Keats wrote the line, 'What pipes and timbrels, what wild ecstasy!' I am willing to believe that the American humorist would have expressed the same sentiment by beginning the sentence with 'Some pipe!' When that was first said, somewhere in the wilds of Colorado, it was really funny; involving a powerful understatement and the suggestion of a mere ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... voice, and given her the habit of ending her sentences with a melancholy cooing and an unintelligible murmur of agreement. It was undoubtedly sincere and sympathetic, but at times inappropriate and distressing. It had lost her the friendship of the one humorist of Tasajara, whose best jokes she had received with such heartfelt commiseration and such pained appreciation of the evident labor involved as to ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... received the remarkable reply that the prime-minister refused his offer to call lest he should succeed in convincing him, and Mendizabal did not wish to be convinced. This seemed to show that the Mendizabal was something of a philosopher and a little of a humorist. ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... today of Mordecai Lincoln, and there would be less interest in poor Thomas if he had not become the father of Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth President of the United States. Mordecai Lincoln was a joker and humorist. One who knew him well ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... your ticket, haven't you?' remarked a humorist. 'Don't give it up till you reach the end ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... or toleration of the possibility of life being something better than a round of sordid worries, relieved by tobacco, punch, fine mornings, and petty successes in buying and selling, passes with his guest as the whimsical affectation of a shrewd Irish humorist and incorrigible spendthrift. Aunt Judy seems to him an incarnate joke. The likelihood that the joke will pall after a month or so, and is probably not apparent at any time to born Rossculleners, or that he himself unconsciously entertains ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... thus wantonly sacrificed. For it is only fair to state, as a just tribute to the enterprise and energy of that young and thriving settlement, that there was not probably a single citizen who did not feel himself better able to control the deceased humorist's property. Some had exprest a doubt of their ability to support a family; others had felt perhaps too keenly the deep responsibility resting upon them when chosen from the panel as jurors, and had evaded their public duties; a few had declined ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... shape. But the critics who attacked him for this negative pole of his intellectual character overlooked the positive one. He had kindness and sympathy enough; but he always gave them first to those who wanted them most. And as humorist and satirist he had a natural tendency to attack power,—to play Pasquin against the world's Pope. In fact, his radicalism was that of a humorist. He never adopted the utilitarian, or, as it was called, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... be hanged. At his wits' end, the Bishop sent a servant to the man, and told him to fear nothing, for that, if he suffered death, he was a martyr, and that he himself would preach his funeral sermon. The Governor, who was perhaps a humorist, laughed at the message, which, he said, was not consoling, and then himself let Hernandez out of prison under heavy bail. The excommunication was then taken off, and peace ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... soul's creativeness in sleep might furnish no whimsical criterion of the quantum of poetical faculty resident in the same soul waking. An old gentleman, a friend of mine, and a humorist, used to carry this notion so far, that when he saw any stripling of his acquaintance ambitious of becoming a poet, his first question would be,—"Young man, what sort of dreams have you?" I have so much faith in my old friend's theory, that when I ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... know a violinist who would say, "If I were not a genius, I could not play so well with such little practice." The poor fellow did not know how poor a fiddler he really was. Well did Strickland Gillilan, America's great poet-humorist, say, "Egotism is the opiate that Nature administers to deaden the pains ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... manuscript, have been published and have proved very interesting. They give such an inside picture of savage life, with its nastiness, its alternate gluttony and starving, and its ferocity, as it would be hard to find elsewhere, drawn in such English as the wildest humorist ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... what my forte is, Gilbert—the fanciful, the fairylike, the pretty. To write Captain Jim's life-book as it should be written one should be a master of vigorous yet subtle style, a keen psychologist, a born humorist and a born tragedian. A rare combination of gifts is needed. Paul might do it if he were older. Anyhow, I'm going to ask him to come down next summer and meet ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... "star turn." "Romeo" sang an impassioned love song, with his hand on his heart, while "Juliette" plucked at her apron and appeared doubtful of the truth of his protestations. Then the "funny man" had his innings. He sat in a chair with a shoe in his hand and tried to smack the head of a humorist who knelt in front but always managed neatly to avoid his blows, the whole being punctuated by vigorous exclamations in Italian, and much energetic ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... Whipple, meaning again to be humorous. But the restored Wilbur eyed him coldly, with just a faint curiosity that withered the humorist in him. "Well, well!" he repeated, but in dry, businesslike tones, as if he had not meant to be funny in the ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... wit to madness and he made a joke; the same old joke has been made by those who followed after him. It will continue to be made with impertinent impunity until the sea gives up its seals; for the temptation is there daily and hourly, and the humorist is but human—he can not long resist it; so he will buttonhole you on the veranda of the Cliff House and whisper in your astonished ear as if he were imparting a state secret: "Their ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... O'Leary: Scotch dialect comedian and humorist; well known in Scotland; has standing offer from Duke of Sutherland to ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... needing strong resolution and infinite pains; and reading for mere reading's sake, instead of for the sake of the good we gain from reading, is one of the worst and commonest and most unwholesome habits we have. And so our inimitable humorist has made delightful fun of the solid books,—which no gentleman's library should be without,—the Humes, Gibbons, Adam Smiths, which, he says, are not books at all, and prefers some "kindhearted play-book," or at times the Town and County Magazine. Poor Lamb has not a little to answer ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... Englanders who had peopled it, and it was with New England that for many a year its whole social and commercial intercourse was carried on. It was no accident that Nova Scotia later produced the first Yankee humorist, "Sam Slick." ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... order-blank of the Tribune. When he appeared before Field he was whiskered like a western farmer and his head had not pushed its way through a thick growth of hair. He was altogether a different looking personage from the bald-headed, clean-shaven humorist with whose features the world was destined to ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... veracity, as would undermine the very foundations of social life, and as would render the law against falsehood little more than a variable personal rule for limited and selected applications,—after the fashion of the American humorist who "believed in universal salvation if he could pick his men." Rothe teaches that falsehood is a duty, not only when it is needful in dealing with public or personal enemies, but often, also, in dealing with "children, the sick, the insane, ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... bit of a humorist, answered that we would give him as many cartridges as he wanted, if he gave us all the rifles he had ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... we share nothing else with them. And we deliver ourselves from them by passing, in literature, into the company of an author who wrote before their time, and yet is familiarly modern. To read Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, then, is to go behind the New Humorist—into a time before he was, or his Humour. Obviously we go in like manner behind many another, but the funny writer of the magazines is suggested because in reference to him our act has a special significance. We connect him with Dr. Holmes by a reluctant ancestry, by an impertinent ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... to Darjeeling. What a godsend this cool hill-station is to Calcutta, for in twenty hours the par-boiled Europeans by the Hooghly can find themselves in a temperature like that of an English April. At Silliguri, where the East Bengal Railway ends, some humorist has erected, close to the station, a sign-post inscribed "To Lhassa 359 miles." The sign-post has omitted to state that this entails an ascent of 16,500 feet. The Darjeeling-Himalayan Railway, an intrepid little mountain-climber, looks as ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... stage, one a heartless hypocrite and the other a madman. Certainly I am not prejudiced in favor of Christianity, and yet I enjoyed the play. If Mr. Caine says he is trying to bring the stage and the pulpit together, then he is a humorist, with the humor ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... Town I met them—the unassuming celebrity, and the young entrepreneur. The great humorist, alack! will never read the tale as I have told it, but I am hopeful, that in "The Tale of Timber Town," his erstwhile companion and the public will perceive the literary value of the theme which arrested the attention of so great a writer ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... allow him on deck to take the air and such exercise as could be got there, and the moment your back was turned he was away sans conge. Few of these runaways were as considerate as that Scotch humorist, William Ramsay, who was pressed at Leith for beating an informer and there put on board the tender. Seizing the first opportunity of absconding, "Sir," he wrote to the lieutenant in command, "I am so much attached to you for the good usage I have received ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... midnight symposia. Towards the end of his college-session, Carlyle was introduced to a club which gave him great satisfaction. The principal member was Robert Simson, the celebrated mathematician. Simson was a great humorist, and was particularly averse to the company of ladies. Matthew Stewart, afterwards Professor of Mathematics at Edinburgh, was a constant attendant at ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... in his failure as a humorist Joe Brand gave expression to the general opinion of the two men who, up till that time, had been accounted, to use a local expression, the "wisest guys west ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... page 242" (the original article) "is probably a friend of Mr. Edison, but possibly, alas! a wicked partner. Why does he say such things as these? 'Mr. Edison claims that he realizes 90 per cent. of the power applied to this machine in external work.' . . . Perhaps the writer is a humorist, and had in his mind Colonel Sellers, etc., which he could not keep out of a serious discussion; but such jests are ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... invariably believe me to be sincere. I know that my work does not amount to a string of dried beans—I always calmly admit it—but I also know that I do the best that is in me without regard to praise or blame. When I was the mark for every humorist in the country, I went ahead; and now when I am the mark for only fifty per cent of the humorists of the country, I go ahead; for I understand that a man is born into the world with his own pair of eyes, ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... None but a 'humorist' would have announced the decease of a cat in such mingled terms and tones of jest and earnest as the following:—'Alas! Grosvenor,' writes Southey to his friend Mr Bedford (1823), 'this day poor old Rumpel was found ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... barber to the camp was assigned to an Englishman named L——, who I think might be accurately described as our official humorist. Armed with this weapon, and although absolutely ignorant of the new calling thrust upon him, delighted to secure some change to the monotonous round of toil, L—— entered upon his work with commendable zest. But he construed the duty into a form of amusement, ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... held mysterious communion with my sergeant-major, a wonderful cockney humorist, who possessed the truth on all points. As far as Fusilier Bluff was concerned, said he, the attack was an effort to reach and destroy the terrible whizz-bang gun. It was believed that the gun's location ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... through the medium of the keys. "It's in exactly the same position as that of a humorist who has to print explanatory diagrams with all of his jokes. The administration papers were hot over the situation. The king can do no wrong idea was worked for all it was worth, but beyond this they drew pathetic ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... a quarter of a mile of the gate, and I had just settled to my thorough dissatisfaction that the old footman must be a humorist, and had diverted himself by making a kind of April-fool out of season of me, when, through the trees, which at that spot stretched their huge branches across the road so as to form a complete arch, I fancied I perceived ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... villainy. The truly great writer is more likely to write in the hope of expressing the hearts of others than his own. And there are other desires, too, most legitimate, that he may feel. An English humorist said recently in the preface to his book: "I wrote these stories to satisfy an inward craving—not for artistic expression, but for food and drink." But I cannot conscientiously advise any man to turn to writing merely as a means of earning his victual unless he ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... "You're a humorist of a high order," he said warmly. "It's the huge joke of the thing that is making people like it. Let me see, the publisher is advertising a quotation from some paper that has called it the ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... was a sin to kill a cat; in England cats are slain in myriads without a tremor of compunction. Among the Jews it is a sin to eat pork, but an English humorist writes you a delicious essay on Roast Pig. Bigamy is a sin in the whole of Europe but the south-eastern corner, and there it is a virtue, sanctioned by the laws of religion. Marrying your deceased wife's sister ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... labour abroad, and, as it were, a spirit of picnic. The horses smoked and the men laboured and shouted and drank in the sharp autumn morning; so that one had a strong effect of large, open-air existence. The fellow who drove me was something of a humorist; and his conversation was all in praise of an agricultural labourer's way of life. It was he who called my attention to these jugs of ale by the hedgerow; he could not sufficiently express the liberality of these men's wages; he told me how sharp an appetite was given by breaking ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pricking the balloons of conceit, vain glory, and hypocrisy, is invaluable; that a good laugh can come only from a warm heart; that the man in motley is often wiser than the judge in ermine or the priest in lawn. These qualities are goodly in literature. We all love the kindly humorist from Chaucer to Holmes, inclusive. How genial and gentle they are, as they sit with us around the fireside, chucking us under the chins, and slyly poking us in the ribs; and in the field how nobly they have charged upon humbugs and shams. They have been true knights, chivalrous, kind-hearted, ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... biographer, humorist, was, before all, a historian in temper, and was drawn as by some subtle and unseen attraction to study that nation to which America owed its discovery. Irving is an evident American. He loved the ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... little book is a happy example of the way in which the double life can be lived blamelessly and to the great advantage of the community. The book fairly entitles Mr. Leacock to be considered not only a humorist but a benefactor. The contents should appeal to English readers with the double virtue that attaches to work which is at once new ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... family. For the poor artist is expected to please all down to the youngest child, and perhaps that one most, for she often rules the rest. And people do not too much consider the feelings of painters. I knew an artist, a great humorist, who spent much time at the court at Lisbon. He had to paint a child, I believe the Prince of the Brazils. I remember, as if I saw him act the scene but yesterday, and it is many years ago. Well, the maid of honour, or whatever was her title, brought the child into ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... disappointing to a humorist as to lead up to an interruption, and then find he is not interrupted. Mr. Chamberlain seldom fails to bring off his little unsuspected repartee, and it is his mastery of this art that make his speeches sparkle with diamond ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... "Now we'll get 'em.... Lord!" in a piercing undertone as some misguided humorist in the cruiser's stokehold inconsiderately allowed a puff of black smoke to issue forth from the foremost funnel, completely to obliterate ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... "He'll do, the old humorist," he announced, as he joined her. "He hasn't forgotten anything, and wasn't he glad to see me again? You use an English saddle, I dare say, and ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... his football performances, Mansell was a continual source of laughter. He and Gordon were in the same Greek set and studied under Mr Claremont, a dry humorist, who had adopted schoolmastering for want of something better to do, had apparently regretted it afterwards, and developed ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... third by being better informed. A fourth by a deception or bribery. A fifth by honesty. Each has something that dominates the weaker men about him. Take my ward. Burton is a prize-fighter, and physically a splendid man. So he has his little court. Driscoll is a humorist, and can talk, and he has his admirers. Sloftky is popular with the Jews, because he is of their race. Burrows is a policeman, who is liked by the whole ward, because of his kindness and good-nature. So I could go on telling you of men who are a little more marked than the rest, who have power ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... bakery in connection with this mill turns out 400 loaves at a baking. As in every exposition, visitors crowd the booths where edible samples are distributed. After viewing many such scenes, a local humorist dubbed this building "the ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... of rhetoric, no eloquent passages; he is not a wit, a humorist or a clown; yet, so great a vein of pleasantry and good nature pervades what he says, gliding over a deep current of practical argument, he keeps his hearers in a smiling good mood with their mouths open ready to swallow all he says. His sense of the ludicrous is very keen, and an exhibition of ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... a Cockney humorist, who, in times of peace, was the owner of a fried fish and chip barrow in that home of low comedians—the East End. After him appeared Sergeant Andrews, disguised in one of Eliza's discarded skirts, with a wisp of straw on ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... being left on one side of the main currents of commercial activity, and gradually assuming a character of repose and leisure, in many regards more attractive than the life and bustle of earlier days. Many persons are still living there who remember the humorist as a quaint and tricksy boy, alternating between laughter and preternatural gravity, and of a surprising ingenuity in devising odd practical jokes in which good nature so far prevailed that even the victims were too much amused ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... humorist I have ever known in my life. His humor was always spontaneous, and that gave it a zest and elegance that ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... melancholy-sweet, yet ever look beyond and deeper than the things about him. Where a burlier tragedian must elaborately pose himself for the youth he would assume, this actor so easily and constantly falls into beautiful attitudes and movements, that he seems to go about, as we heard a humorist say, "making statues all over the stage." No picture can equal the scene where Horatio and Marcellus swear by his sword, he holding the crossed hilt upright between the two, his head thrown back and lit with high resolve. In the fencing-bout ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... that Mrs. Kemble was not (superficially) a vulgar woman, but it would have taken the soul of gentility to have presented, without quailing, her amazingly odd companion to her particular set of visitors. A humorist would have found his account in the absurdity of the scene all round; and Jane Austen would have made a delicious chapter of it; but Mrs. Kemble had not the requisite humor to perceive the fun of her companion, her acquaintances, and ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... allot a Harlequin Chamber for the birth of the author of nineteen comedies; and yet more appropriate to the robust genius of the Comic Epic was the accident that placed on the wall, beneath the window of his birth-room, a jovial jest in stone. For here some sixteenth-century humorist had displayed the arms of Abbot Beere in the form of a convivial rebus or riddle—to wit, a cross and ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... myself as a humorist, the impression I made on my comrades was that of a serious and religious fellow. I quoted the Bible to them so often that they nicknamed me "the Welsh Parson." I was the general errand boy of the town. Everybody knew me. And ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... HUMORIST, n. A plague that would have softened down the hoar austerity of Pharaoh's heart and persuaded him to dismiss Israel with his ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... if not of Ambrose's, which dashed the somber picture of war round Richmond, with high-lights boldly put in by master-hands! Of them were quaint George Bagby, Virginia's pet humorist; gallant, cultured Willie Meyers; original Trav Daniel; Washington, artist, poet and musician; Page McCarty, recklessly brilliant in field and frolic alike; Ham Chamberlayne, quaint, cultivated and colossal in originality; Key, Elder and other artists; ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... lips curved generously over superb teeth; the cheeks were glowing, as were the eyes, the crimson below them deepening to splendor the velvet in the iris. The one severe line in the face, the thin, straight nose, ended in wide nostrils in the quivering, mobile nostrils of the humorist. The swell of the gourmand's paunch beneath the soutane was proof that the cure was a true Norman he had not passed a lifetime in these fertile gardens forgetful of the fact that the fine art of good living is the one indulgence the Church has ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... as a humorist and a charming storyteller, but he has also written serious and tender works. His life of Washington is a tribute of loving reverence to the great American for whom he was named. As a boy, Irving was of a rather mischievous turn, a trait which perhaps ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... as good an appearance as the wealthy did a hundred years ago. It would be safe to say that they have more comforts and conveniences in their homes to-day than the more prosperous had at the time of the Revolution. The humorist, John Phenix, said that "Gen'l Washington never saw a steamboat, nor rode in a railroad car;" and possibly his house was not heated by steam, or furnished with pipes for hot and cold water. Nor did he ever use gas, or the telegraph or telephone. Whether the people ...
— The Olden Time Series: Vol. 2: The Days of the Spinning-Wheel in New England • Various
... some little reputation as a humorist, but as is so often the case with those who make us laugh, his very ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... himself as a "philosopher, psychologist, and humorist." It was partly because Patrick delighted in long words, and partly to excuse himself for being full of the sour cream of an inhuman curiosity. His curiosity, however, did not extend itself to science and belles lettres; it concerned ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... or two, takes an evil delight in leaving you in doubt whether he is launching into a tragic narrative or whether he will suddenly look up through his spectacles and expect to see you laughing. His English friends are in a constant state of embarrassment because they know that he is a humorist of genius, but his humour is so subtle that they do not trust themselves to see the point when it comes and laugh at the right place. Now, there are only two things that can make the professor look sterner than he looks while ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... scrum at football. To him there was something wonderfully entertaining in the process of 'barging' the end man off the edge of the form into space, and upsetting his books over him. M. Gerard, however, had a very undeveloped sense of humour. He warned the humorist twice, and on the thing happening a third time, suggested that he should go into extra lesson on ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... turn the embarrassing pause that followed this remark to his profit. The beef having kept him silent during the early part of the dinner, he resolved now to prove what a humorist he was, and by raising his voice he strove to attract the attention of the company to himself. This, however, was not easily done. Dubois had begun to pinch the backside of the canvas-handed maid, who was lifting a plate of custards over his head; ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... Crossmichael, where he had gathered together, one by one, a sect of about a dozen persons, who called themselves "God's Remnant of the True Faithful," or, for short, "God's Remnant." To the profane, they were known as "Gib's Deils." Bailie Sweedie, a noted humorist in the town, vowed that the proceedings always opened to the tune of "The Deil Fly Away with the Exciseman," and that the sacrament was dispensed in the form of hot whisky-toddy; both wicked hits at the evangelist, who had been suspected of smuggling in ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... like it a bit: never in any other sea was I put under more than once in the same short space of time, say three minutes. A large English steamer passing ran up the signal, "Wishing you a Merry Christmas." I think the captain was a humorist; his own ship was throwing her propeller out ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... he was a humorist; idle in the extreme; but his invention was of the true Birmingham model, active. He could well design, but procured others to execute; wherever he found merit he caressed it: he was remarkably polite to the ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... of the Italian masks has always found a more unfavourable reception in England than in France. The fool or clown in Shakspeare's comedies is far more of an ironical humorist than a mimical buffoon. Intrigue in real life is foreign to the Northern nations, both from the virtues and the defects of their character; they have too much openness of disposition, and too little acuteness and nicety of understanding. It is remarkable that, with greater violence of passion, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... terribly in the same way. But despite all this, it is very obvious that if love has, in Rosalind's phrase, "clapped him on the shoulder," the little god left him "heart-whole." Being, as it is, the source of the deepest and strongest emotions, love presents many aspects for the humorist, and perhaps to no one more than to him who has felt it intensely. Horace may or may not have sounded the depths of the passion in his own person; but, in any case, a fellow-feeling for the lover's pleasures ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... stronghold, which one must speak of in earnest as that unconscious humorist the classic American traveller is supposed invariably to speak of the Colosseum: it will be a very handsome building when it's finished. Even Perugia is going the way of all Italy—straightening out her streets, ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... from his general concept of comedy itself, and that concept is inextricably mingled with memories of foul ambuscades and mortifying hurts. And so it is not often that he is willing to admit any wisdom in a humorist, or to condone frivolity in ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... in the long, low-ceiling library she was introduced to Mr. Kingdon, a man of winning personality, a philosopher and a humorist. Ranged beside him were three appalling critics: two boys of nine and seven years respectively, and a little girl of five. They stared at her solemnly and surveyingly while she ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... in estimating motive and character. He actually enjoyed the first call made by Miss Perkins, suggested her coming again on the morrow, and summoned his chief surgeon and his provost marshal, another keen humorist, to be present at the interview. It has been asserted that this triumvirate went so far as to encourage the lady to even wilder flights of assertion. We have her own word for it that then and there she was promised as offices three big rooms in the Palace,—the Ayuntamiento,—six ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... Bok had an experience which, while interesting, was saddening instead of amusing. He was sitting in Mark Twain's sitting-room in his home in Hartford waiting for the humorist to return from a walk. Suddenly sounds of devotional singing came in through the open window from the direction of the outer conservatory. The singing was low, yet the sad tremor in the voice seemed to give it ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... boy, I've laid around many a camp-fire this way and listened to old Dave tell stories. He was quite a humorist in his way, and possessed a wonderful memory. He could tell you the day of the month, thirty years before, when he went to mill one time and found a peculiar bird's nest on the way. Colonel Andrews, owner of several large plantations, ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... "Huckleberry Finn,"—for Mark Twain and Alphonse Daudet both achieved the almost impossible feat of writing a successful sequel to a successful book, of forcing fortune to a repetition of a happy accident. The abundant laughter the French humorist excited is like that evoked by the American humorist,—clean, hearty, healthy, self-respecting; it is in both cases what George Eliot in one of her letters called "the exquisite laughter that comes from a gratification ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... the humorist is that he cannot be a man of one idea—for the essence of humor lies in the contrast of two. He is the universal disenchanter. He makes himself quite as much the subject of ironical study as his neighbor. Is he inclined to fancy himself a great poet, or an original ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... a humorist or song-writer or publisher that I wish to portray him, but as an odd, lovable personality, possessed of so many interesting and peculiar and almost indescribable traits. Of all characters in fiction he perhaps most suggests Jack Falstaff, with his ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... in Albany. He is the son of a queer man, and is something of a humorist himself. I have seen one of his sons. He has two. One's name is Paraclete, and the other Preserved. His daughter is pretty, very, and her name is Deliverance. They call her Del, for short. They do, on my word! Worse than Delphine, is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... Anglo-Saxon school its present-day characteristic, putting upon one of the very lightest forms of art the stamp of a noble time. The point is that whilst du Maurier thus deferred to the dignity of human nature he remained a satirist, not a humorist merely, ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... his other writings. Among those which are well worthy of being read for their own sakes, I would assign a prominent place to the present volume. Much of the story element in it is admirable, and, further, it shows M. Zola as a genuine satirist and humorist. The Rougons' yellow drawing-room and its habitues, and many of the scenes between Pierre Rougon and his wife Felicite, are worthy of the pen of Douglas Jerrold. The whole account, indeed, of the ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... "So-so; an effeminate humorist; says the most absurd things, and fancies them wise. Never mind him. You wanted to ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... grinned, and, leading the way in, ordered refreshment for two, exchanging a pleasant wink with the proprietor as that humorist drew the lad's half-pint ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... whereby a man himself grows fat, they were apt to run goose-hunting into regions of bilberries and crowberries, and be swallowed up at last in remote peat-bogs. Of that unwise science, which, as our Humorist expresses it,— ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... Liability Anglicised Utopia An English Girl A Manager's Perplexities Out Of Sorts How It's Done A Classical Revival The Practical Joker The National Anthem Her Terms The Independent Bee The Disconcerted Tenor The Played-Out Humorist ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... WASHINGTON IRVING. When I'm in another sort of humour, bring me THACKERAY. For rollicking Irish life, give me LEVER. But as to youth-about-town life of the present day, I do not know of any second-class humorist who approaches within measurable distance of the author of The Pottleton Legacy, in the past." So far the Baron. And ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various
... put into each, may add to this illusion. Now, in looking, for instance, at H. B.'s slim vapory figures, they have struck us as excellent LIKENESSES of men and women, but no more: the bodies want spirit, action, and individuality. George Cruikshank, as a humorist, has quite as much genius, but he does not know the art of "effect" so well as Monsieur Daumier; and, if we might venture to give a word of advice to another humorous designer, whose works are extensively circulated—the illustrator of "Pickwick" and "Nicholas Nickleby,"—it ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... enormous proportions to those engaged in them that such a modest thing as the literary product seems insignificant in comparison; and hence it is that the man of action always holds in slight esteem the man of thought, and especially the expresser of feeling and emotion, the poet and the humorist. It is only when we look back over the ages, when civilizations have passed or changed, over the rivalries of States, the ambitions and enmities of men, the shining deeds and the base deeds that make up history, that we are enabled ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... me most," said the professional humorist, "is that somebody is willing to buy 'em ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... are of distinguished literary interest. Brandstatter is the painter of the customs and manners of the Galician Hasidim, whom he rallies with kindliness that yet has a keen edge, and with perfect artistic taste. Almost he is the only humorist of the time. His style is classic without going to extremes. He often makes use of the Talmudic jargon peculiar to Rabbinical scholars, whom he has the skill to transfer to his canvas down to their slightest gestures and mannerisms. ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... are wiser than others," said the Slabberts in the Taal, and there was a hoarse laugh, and the humorist turned his big heavy body away, and became one of a crowd of other Dutchmen, who were, in veiled hints and crooked allusions, discussing the situation across the Border. Emigration Jane was not sensitive to the electricity in the atmosphere. She knew no Dutch, and was perfect in the etiquette ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... humour will not be a saving humour unless it is of high order. A great humorist is as rare as a great poet or a great philosopher. Though ours may not be great we must keep it in the line of greatness. Remember, great humour must be made out of ourselves rather than out of others. The fine humorist is delightfully ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney |
