Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Pleasantry   /plˈɛzəntri/   Listen
Pleasantry

noun
(pl. pleasantries)
1.
An agreeable or amusing remark.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Pleasantry" Quotes from Famous Books



... society. Yus, and we'd have had Sir John French 'ere to meet you. But yer'll have to put up with us low fellows for a bit instead, which if yer don't like it, yer can lump it, and if yer won't lump it, where will yer have it?" and he tapped his bayonet invitingly. Needless to say, the speaker's pleasantry was impracticable. But the officer did not know that; he only knew the way they have in Germany. Wherefore the officer relapsed ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan

... The pleasantry was what Jack needed. He grinned at the thought of big Bob shaking so much with fear as to shake off his shoes, and his recovery ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge

... was all over with Mr. Omer, after he had uttered this libellous pleasantry. He coughed to that extent, and his breath eluded all his attempts to recover it with that obstinacy, that I fully expected to see his head go down behind the counter, and his little black breeches, with the rusty little bunches of ribbons at the knees, come quivering ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... so he promised to write her one. Being reminded of this promise, he sent her one, and received a cold letter of reproof from her after another letter was on the way to her. Receiving a second rebuke, he was desperate over the pleasantry, and wished to atone for this by presenting to her, with M. de Hanski's permission, some manuscripts already sent. He wished to send her the manuscript of Seraphita also, and to dedicate this book to her, if ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd

... described the different pugilistic qualities of Molyneux and Dutch Sam, offered playfully to give Lady Jane the odds upon the Tutbury Pet against the Rottingdean man, or take them, as her Ladyship chose: and crowned the pleasantry by proposing to back himself against his cousin Pitt Crawley, either with or without the gloves. "And that's a fair offer, my buck," he said, with a loud laugh, slapping Pitt on the shoulder, "and my father told me to make it too, and he'll ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... diamonds on his fingers. As for the queen, furious, and left to her own guidance, she went for the Marechal de la Meilleraie and desired him to take as many men as he pleased and to go and see what was the meaning of this pleasantry. ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... Jean Silvain Bailly, the accomplished scholar,—the aspiring politician. It was one of those petits soupers for which the capital of all social pleasures was so renowned. The conversation, as might be expected, was literary and intellectual, enlivened by graceful pleasantry. Many of the ladies of that ancient and proud noblesse—for the noblesse yet existed, though its hours were already numbered—added to the charm of the society; and theirs were the boldest criticisms, and often ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... grave and severe in the usual affairs of life, could take on a tone of pleasantry while ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens

... with him was before there was sure cause to suspect his intentions regarding Margaret. His manner toward her was the model of proper civility. He was a hundred times more amiable and jocular with Fanny, whom he treated with the half-familiar pleasantry of an elderly man for a child; petting her with such delicacy as precluded displeasure on either her part or mine. He pretended great dejection upon learning that her heart was already engaged; and declared ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens

... continued he, 'I believe, if I am rightly informed, there can hardly be said to have been any duties hitherto,' and he gave a sort of half laugh, as though to pass off the accusation in the guise of a pleasantry. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... stampe of merrit, let none presume To weare an vndeserued dignitie: O that estates, degrees, and offices, Were not deriu'd corruptly, and that cleare honour Were purchast by the merrit of the wearer; How many then should couer that stand bare? How many be commanded that command? How much low pleasantry would then be gleaned From the true seede of honor? And how much honor Pickt from the chaffe and ruine of the times, To be new varnisht: Well, but to my choise. Who chooseth me shall get as much as he ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... looking for a safe investment ez will pay ye better than forty-rod whiskey at two bits a glass, jist you hang onter that ar rifle. It may make your fortin yet, or save ye from a drunkard's grave." With this ungracious pleasantry he hurried his dilatory passengers back into the coach, cracked his whip, and was again upon the road. The lights of the "Summit House" presently dropped here and there into the wasting shadows of the trees. Another stretch through the close-set ranks ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte

... she needed a brief interval in which to collect her thoughts and calm a growing nervousness that in spite of her efforts at pleasantry would assert itself in various little ways, evident enough to my observation. A saucepan of water was set upon the hot coals on the hearth, the lemons cut and squeezed into two elegant goblets, upon square lumps of sugar that eagerly ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor

... denner." Of course this was but a manner of speaking, and he had never hanged a man for being a Radical in his life; the law, of which he was the faithful minister, directing otherwise. And of course these growls were in the nature of pleasantry, but it was of a recondite sort; and uttered as they were in his resounding voice, and commented on by that expression which they called in the Parliament House "Hermiston's hanging face" - they struck mere dismay into the wife. She sat before him speechless and fluttering; at each dish, as ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the minds of the children the faintest idea of playfulness or jocularity. Perhaps it was difficult to connect the serious men, who occasionally walked beside them and seemed to grow more taciturn and depressed as the day wore on, with this past effusive pleasantry. ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte

... talking together. The men were dressed more or less after the period in which the play was written; the women were not. I saw no inconsistency. Their talk seemed to open to one the brilliant world in which they lived; every sentence made one older and wiser, every pleasantry enlarged one's horizon. One could experience excess and satiety without the inconvenience of learning what to do with one's hands in a drawing-room! When the characters all spoke at once and I missed some of the phrases they flashed at each other, I was in misery. ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather

... characteristic of the man. He lived largely in an atmosphere of poetic pleasantry, which served as an alleviation to his cares and as an attraction ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns

... happy to get out of Confederate hands that it wants to dance, and it is indulging in a waltz," replied Deck as another pleasantry. ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic

... the middle of the afternoon, and the emigrant-party plodded patiently forward, chatting and conversing upon ordinary topics with such pleasantry and zest that no one would have suspected the least thought of danger had entered their heads. So long as the silence of the scouts continued, the emigrants knew there was no cause for alarm. Should danger threaten, they would ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis

... always followed the impulses of my heart," she wrote, "in easily performing a task for which that was all that was needed. Monseigneur and Mademoiselle believe me blindly, for I have never deceived them, even in jest. A pleasantry that a child's mind cannot understand embarrasses him, destroys his ease and confidence, humiliates and even angers him, if he believes that he has been deceived. Monseigneur has more need than most children of this discretion. The directness ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... you'll excuse me." "Will you not leave it?"—"No, I'm not disposed To part with it at present."—"Thirty dollars Would be a high price for it, but to aid you I'll call it thirty."—"Could you not say fifty?" "You're joking with me now, Miss Percival." "Then we will end our pleasantry. Good by." "Stay! You want money: I shall be ashamed To let my partners know it, but to show How far I'll go for your encouragement— Come! I'll ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent

... candid criticism. I hope they will not be offended that in one or two places I have preserved my own reading, contrary to their opinion; as I never would own that I am wrong, till I am convinced that it is so. My orthography I have sufficiently explained; and although some pleasantry has been shewn, I have not met with ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell

... scaffold," said this austere man, who, as soon as he touched them, increased immensely the importance of any propositions. "I would sooner lay my head upon the scaffold than admit that, in the mere intention of a stupid pleasantry, Cabrion could be so obstinately exasperated against me; a farce is only played for the gallery. Now, in his last undertaking, this obnoxious creature had no witness; he acted alone and in obscurity, as always; he clandestinely introduced himself into the ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... I can hardly understand how Englishmen take a pleasure in 'chaffing' these grotesque beings, who usually reply with some gross, outrageous insolence. At the best they utter impertinences which, issuing from a big and barbarous mouth in a peculiar patois, pass for pleasantry amongst those who are not over-nice about the quality of that article. The tone of voice is peculiar; it is pitched in the usual savage key, modified by the twang of the chapel and by the cantilene of the Yankee—originally Puritan Lancashire. ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... could well afford to laugh at the pleasantry of the man who, it was evident, felt a partiality for them. He ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis

... soldiery were ever objects of scorn to the royalists of Villeneuve, who dubbed them "patachines" ("pestacchina," Ital. for slipper), and taunted them with drilling under parasols—a pleasantry repaid by the Italians who hurled the epithet "luzers" (lizards) against the royalists, who were said to pass their time sunning themselves against ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... careful selection in clothing his thoughts for writing or dictation. His sentences were interrupted by long pauses, as if to allow time for them to penetrate the ear, and to be appreciated by the mind of the listener; he relieved them, every now and then, by graceful pleasantry, never degenerating into coarseness, as though he purposely upheld the conversation on these light and sportive wings, to prevent its being borne down by the weight ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine

... a vein of pleasantry, one might perceive that they would not use one unnecessary word, nor let an expression escape them that had not some sense worth attending to. For one being asked to go and hear a person who imitated the nightingale to perfection, answered, "I have heard ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... walking straw sentry; straw sentry falls flat; Tolpatches rush in, esurient, triumphant; are exploded in a sharp blast of musketry from the bushes all round, every wounded man made prisoner;—and come no more back to that post." Friedrich himself records this little fact: "slight pleasantry to relieve the reader's mind," says he, in narrating it. [OEuvres, iii. 123.]—Enough of those small matters, while ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... Street he was not regarded by Edinburgh society as particularly brilliant in conversation, since he never aspired to lead by learned disquisitions. He told stories well, with great humor and pleasantry, to amuse rather than to instruct. His talk was almost homely. The most noticeable thing about it was common-sense. Lord Cockburn said of him that "his sense was more wonderful than his genius." He did not blaze like Macaulay or Mackintosh ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... refreshment-room, where persons who are not Members are admitted on sufferance, as it were—and perceiving two or three gentlemen at supper, who, he was aware, were not Members, and could not, in that place, very well resent his behaviour, he indulged in the pleasantry of sitting with his booted leg on the table at which they were supping! He is generally harmless, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... which I found, on opening, contained four ten-pound notes, and several pieces of gold. 'Didn't I tell you so, brother?' said Mr. Petulengro. 'Now, in the first place, please to pay me the five shillings you have lost.' 'This is only a foolish piece of pleasantry,' said I; 'you put it into my pocket whilst you were moving about me, making faces like a distracted person. Here, take your purse back.' 'I?' said Mr. Petulengro, 'not I, indeed! don't think I am such a fool. I have won my wager, so pay me the five shillings, brother.' 'Do drop this folly,' ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... Osmond's pleasantry; I decide nothing," said Madame Merle, but also as in pleasantry. "I believe you've a very good school, but Miss Osmond's friends must remember that she's very ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James

... most artificial and 'conceited' in the collection—the poet plays somewhat enigmatically on his Christian name of 'Will,' and a similar pun has been doubtfully detected in sonnets cxxxiv. and cxlvii. The groundwork of the pleasantry is the identity in form of the proper name with the common noun 'will.' This word connoted in Elizabethan English a generous variety of conceptions, of most of which it has long since been deprived. Then, as now, it was employed in the general psychological sense of volition; but it was more often ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... working at some tapestry, said to her, "Mademoiselle, I confide to your care, and by oral , the most amiable little devil in France. And now, mademoiselle du Barry, having nothing further to add, I pray God to take you to His powerful and holy keeping." After this pleasantry the king, delighted at the gay termination of a somewhat serious scene, went, or rather vanished; for to use a proverbial expression, he ran like a thief. As soon as I was alone with my sister-in-law, I told her all that had passed. "I see," said she, "that the king ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon

... one of those who mistook his talent after all. He used to be very much dissatisfied that I preferred his Letters to his Sermons. The last were forced and dry; the first came naturally from him. For ease, half-plays on words, and a supine, monkish, indolent pleasantry, I have never seen ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... and business, which made it very hard to know how exactly to take him. If I dared to laugh at a joke, he fired up, and ordered me angrily to get on with my work. And if I did become engrossed in the figures and entries before me, he was sure to trip me up with some act or speech of pleasantry. ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... had passed, Simon found himself established in the new character of Lame Gulch Professor. So, at least, Enoch called him, and it was not displeasing to the subject of Enoch's pleasantry to know that others had adopted the suggestion and bestowed upon him that honorable title. His little class numbered fifteen or twenty children of assorted ages and dispositions, who came, lured by rumors of pleasant things, and remained ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller

... spoke out Don Juan, disgusted with this ill-timed pleasantry, "a proof that there has been a forced entry into the chamber is this broken glass of the window, of which you see some pieces still lying on ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid

... torrent of his soul.— Not so: his judgment takes the winding way Of question distant, and of soft essay; More gentle methods on weak age employs: And moves the sorrows to enhance the joys. Then, to his sire with beating heart he moves, And with a tender pleasantry reproves; Who digging round the plant still hangs his bead, Nor aught remits the work, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... manners, and his contrivances, as well as to his speeches, have obliged him to recollect himself a little. He will have it, that the menaces which he threw out just now against my brother and Mr. Solmes, are only the effect of an unmeaning pleasantry. He has too great a stake in his country, he says, to be guilty of such enterprises as should lay him under a necessity of quitting it for ever. Twenty things, particularly, he says, he has suffered Joseph Leman to tell him of, that were ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... knocked the lid off. I then perceived that within it was an oblong package carefully tied up in oiled silk, and on bending down to examine the package more closely I perceived that it was directed to Susan. With a dogged resolve to follow out Gregory Wilkinson's hideous pleasantry to the bitter end, I lifted the package out of the box—it was pretty heavy—and began to open it. Inside the first roll of the cover was a letter that also was directed to Susan. She had got up by this time, and ...
— Our Pirate Hoard - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier

... promises long enough to calculate interest," interposed Doctor Prescott, with stern pleasantry; "that's my rule, young man, and it's the one I expect others to follow in their business dealings with me. Don't give and don't take; then you'll make your ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... small volley of French pleasantry; but the effort was obviously a forced one. The pulses of her heart were throbbing with anxiety and fear; and they all began to feel suspense increasing to agony, when at last the whistled tones of ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child

... sensitive literary conscience was unwilling that it should be printed until developed into something more than a crude sketch,—and lastly came the Treatise on Fashionable Life, a manual which, under the form of pleasantry, was saturated with ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet

... great evenness and animation on his side. I had seldom seen his mind greater or more collected. There was frequently a considerable degree of vivacity in his sallies, and they would probably have had a greater share, had not the concern and dejection I could not disguise damped the spirit of pleasantry he seemed ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp

... heart going out to him, she would say to herself with a mock pleasantry that carried an ache with it, "No, no, Elizabeth-Jane—such dreams are not for you!" She tried to prevent herself from seeing him, and thinking of him; succeeding fairly well in the former attempt, in the latter not ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... different matter!" said The Chobb, slightly relaxing; "and if the gentleman withdraws it, and replaces the sum correctly, I am the last man in the world to find fault with a harmless pleasantry." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... brother, and yours too, M. de Longueville; I confess that I am astonished, I who have always served the king so well, and believed myself secure of the cardinal's friendship." The chancellor, who was not in the secret, declared that it was Guitaut's pleasantry. "Go and seek the queen then," said the prince, "and tell her of the pleasantry that is going on; as for me, I hold it to be very certain that I am arrested." The chancellor went out, and did not return. M. Servien, who had gone to speak ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... almost ceaseless. The boatman sings at the oar, the family at evening worship, the girls at night in the guest-house, sometimes the workman at his toil. No occasion is too small for the poets and musicians; a death, a visit, the day's news, the day's pleasantry, will be set to rhyme and harmony. Even half-grown girls, the occasion arising, fashion words and train choruses of children for its celebration. Song, as with all Pacific islanders, goes hand in hand with the dance, and both shade into the drama. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... ... little could we be trusted to recognize either King or clown!"—He laughed,— then added—"Nevertheless I tell thee once again 'twas not the King, . . His Majesty hath too much at stake, to risk so dangerous a pleasantry!" ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... take a pair of clouted brogues[15] in her hand, and off to the Castle! Here she gives herself out to be a soutar[16] in the employ of James More, and gets admitted to his cell, the lieutenant (who seems to have been full of pleasantry) making sport among his soldiers of the soutar's great-coat. Presently they hear disputation and the sound of blows inside. Out flies the cobbler, his coat flying, the flaps of his hat beat about his face, and the lieutenant and his soldiers mock at him as he runs off. They laugh not so hearty ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... for his scornful pleasantry, and vexed with the others for taking it so seriously and heavily, and putting him so unnecessarily in the wrong. He was angry with Dunham, and he said ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells

... "Just a little pleasantry of the Mercutians," Hilary said bitterly. He looked upward. High overhead hovered ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner

... meeting this weekly regulation was established for the summer, and the lots were drawn once more. There was no question but that this pleasantry gave a new and unexpected turn to the company; and every one was stimulated to display whatever of wit and grace was in him, and to pay court to his temporary fair one in the most obliging manner, since he might depend ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... be the Shawnees have attempted a little pleasantry after their bloody work, and caged up some poor creature within those logs," thought he. "I'll let him loose ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis

... Paulvitch many questions, and examining his companion. The Russian told them that the ape was his—nothing further would he offer—but kept harping continually upon the same theme, "The ape is mine. The ape is mine." Tiring of Paulvitch, one of the men essayed a pleasantry. Circling about behind the ape he prodded the anthropoid in the back with a pin. Like a flash the beast wheeled upon its tormentor, and, in the briefest instant of turning, the placid, friendly animal was metamorphosed to a frenzied demon of rage. The broad grin ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... but seemed never to lose sight of St. Luc. Sometimes he called him to repeat to him some pleasantry, which, whether droll or not, made St. Luc laugh heartily. Sometimes he offered him out of his comfit box sweetmeats and candied fruits, which St. Luc found excellent. If he disappeared for an instant, the king sent for him, and seemed not happy if he was out of his sight. All at once ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas

... it is so new to me, I scarcely realized that I had any permission," she said, with a little attempt at pleasantry. "But as her aunt—and guardian, as one may say—personally I should have the greatest satisfaction to know that Margaret's destiny was in the hands of one we all esteem and know as we ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... followed this joke, which evidently had some domestic allusion (the general tendency of rural pleasantry), was followed by a light step on the platform, and the young man entered. Seeing a stranger present, he stopped and colored, made a shy salute and colored again, and then, drawing a box from the corner, sat down, his hands clasped lightly together and his very handsome ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... mere pleasantry, with all the bombast of lyrical emphasis, the invocation terminated in a cry of ardent conviction, quivering with profound poetical emotion, and Sandoz's eyes grew moist; and, to hide how much he felt moved, he added, roughly, with a sweeping gesture ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... never before had an idea of its fascinating power. Some of our crew, of reputed good habits, became so bewitched with gaming that they plundered their companions and returned to their cards and wheels of fortune with a serious and anxious ardor, totally void of pleasantry, that seemed to ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse

... addressed the company, with a smile on his countenance, saying: 'Ladies and gentlemen, this is the last time I shall drink your health, as a public man. I do it with sincerity, and wishing you all possible happiness.' There was an end of all pleasantry." ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford

... has to do with less. Privilege, on which so large a part of life here rests, is already pretty well shot to pieces. A lot of old baggage will never be recovered after this war: that's certain. During a little after-dinner speech in a club not long ago I indulged in a pleasantry about excessive impedimenta. Lord Derby, Minister of War and a bluff and honest aristocrat, sat near me and he whispered to me—"That's me." "Yes," I said, "that's you," and the group about us made merry at the jest. The ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick

... the graver of the two; there was something of grimness about it,—partly owing to the northeasters he had faced for so many years, partly to long companionship with that stern personage who never deals in sentiment or pleasantry. His speech was apt to be brief and peremptory; it was a way he had got by ordering patients; but he could discourse somewhat, on occasion, as the reader may find out. The Reverend Doctor had an open, smiling expression, a cheery voice, a ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various

... that you condemn and despise me, for, foolish and conceited as you are, you scarcely know how to distinguish between friend and foe. You think the misfortune that little pleasantry would have brought upon you highly important, whereas, if carried out as intended, it would have saved you from real ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai

... we not all the better for this pleasantry? so womanly, so genial, so rich, and so without a sting,—such a true diversion, with none of the sin of effort or of mere cleverness; and how it takes us into the midst of the strong-brained and strong-hearted men and women of that time! what an atmosphere of sense and good-breeding ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... the dishonor of his child. But I see,' continued she, 'that your majesty speaks in this manner only to try me. You may have thought me light and simple and unworthy to attend upon the queen. I pray your majesty to pardon me, that I have taken your pleasantry in ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... Crapaud," he would say with mournful pleasantry, "without doubt you have had a master, and a kind one; but tell me who was he, and where is he now? Was he old or young, and was it in the last stage of maddening loneliness that he made friends with ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade

... a touching Act of delicate Feeling not unmixed with Pleasantry, achieved and performed ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... to believe? He did not know. How was he to separate the true from the false among all these equally surprising assertions? On the other hand, the gravity of his companion, which certainly was not feigned, dismissed all idea of pleasantry. ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau

... for addresses. Some of them were very good also. This is the night of all others, when Indian orators try to be humorous and witty. As a race they do not excel along these lines, but sometimes they get off some very good things. While they began their speeches with some bright pleasantry that brought smiles, and even laughter, there was never anything unbecoming to the place, and all quickly drifted into a strain of thanksgiving to God for his blessings. To listen to their grateful joyous words, one would think they were the most highly favoured people ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young

... sad wailing of a little child overcome with grief. The lad's shoulders marked the heart-rending rhythm. Tears appeared through the crossed fingers. Lupin leaned forward and, without touching Beautrelet, said, in a voice that had not the least tone of pleasantry, nor even of the ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc

... ashore under a running fire of pleasantry about their plight, and were told moral stories about people who tried to play jokes on others and got the worst of it themselves, and Sahwah advised them gravely never to go out in a rowboat that wouldn't stand without hitching, and so on and so forth until the poor Hares did not ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey

... a taste for conversation, and the princesses a good-humoured love for it, that doubles the regret of such an annihilation of all nature and all pleasantry. But what will not prejudice and education inculcate? They have been brought up to annex silence to respect and decorum: to talk, therefore, unbid, or to differ from any given opinion even when called upon, are regarded as high improprieties, if not ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay

... coroner's jury, who having learned from a 'horse-doctor' that he was 'dead as a door-nail, so there was an end,' returned their verdict accordingly, just as he returned to his senses, when an angry altercation and a pitched battle between the body and the coroner winds up the lay with due spirit and pleasantry. ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... odious title, why, give it up at once. Don't pray, pray lose money by me. It would grieve me far more than it would you. A good many of these are about books quite forgotten, as the "Pleader's Guide" (an exquisite pleasantry), "Holcroft's Memoirs," and "Richardson's Correspondence." Much on Darley and the Irish Poets, unknown in England; and I think myself that the book will contain, as in the last article, much exquisite poetry and curious prose, as in the forgotten ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... brain, and march to their destiny by catch-words. The armies are full of pleasant and pious folk. But they have yielded to the only enemy that matters—the enemy within. They have sinned against passion and truth, and vain will be their strife after virtue. As the years pass, they are censured. Their pleasantry and their piety show cracks, their wit becomes cynicism, their unselfishness hypocrisy; they feel and produce discomfort wherever they go. They have sinned against Eros and against Pallas Athene, and not by any heavenly intervention, but by the ordinary course of nature, those allied deities ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster

... years old. Had nothing to care for but an old mother; didn't know what he should do, if he lost her. Though so long in this country, he had all the simplicity and childlike light-heartedness which belong to the Old World's people. He laughed at the smallest pleasantry, and showed his great white English teeth; he took a joke without retorting by an impertinence; he had a very limited curiosity about all that was going on; he had small store of information; he lived chiefly in his horses, it seemed to me. His quiet animal ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... would be much more satisfactory to be sailing under a real Tartar," remarked the little man with mild pleasantry. ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson

... of address, which was used by the "ship's gentleman" in the cant of the ward-room, as a pleasantry of an old shipmate, for the two had long sailed together in other vessels, at once announced to Harry that he saw the very chaplain for whose presence he had been so anxiously wishing. The "reverend and dear sir" smiled at the sally of his friend, a ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... but he used it with a poetic instinct which we cannot parallel, identified himself with it, yet remained always its born and question-less master. He finds the Clown and Fool upon the stage,—he makes them the tools of his pleasantry, his satire, and even his pathos; he finds a fading rustic superstition, and shapes out of it ideal Pucks, Titanias, and Ariels, in whose existence statesmen and scholars believe forever. Always poet, he subjects all to the ends of his art, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... men exercise their privilege to use that little Pliocene pleasantry about the boy who is not strong enough to work being educated for a preacher. We are apt to overlook the fact, however, that the boy not strong enough to work is often the only one who desires an education—all of this according to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard

... him from the necessity of any labours but those of national undoing. Holding but an inferior and struggling rank in all the manlier provinces of the mind, in science, poetry, and philosophy; he was the prince of scorners. The splenetic pleasantry which stimulates the wearied tastes of high life; the grossness which half concealed captivates the loose, without offence to their feeble decorum; and the easy brilliancy which throws what colours it will on the darker features of ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... upon an excursion to Greenwich, and on having our friend's company on that voyage, and we induced the Vicomte to forgo his bacon, and be our guest for once. George Warrington chose to indulge in a great deal of ironical pleasantry in the course of the afternoon's excursion. As we went down the river, he pointed out to Florac the very window in the Tower where the captive Duke of Orleans used to sit when he was an inhabitant of that fortress. At Greenwich, which palace Florac informed us was built by Queen Elizabeth, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... and sarcasm this mode of conduct exposes her; or how exceedingly cold and hollow that ceremony must be, which is not the language of a warm heart. She does not reflect how insipid those smiles are, which indicate no internal pleasantry; nor how awkward those graces, which spring not from habits of good-nature and benevolence. Thus, pertness succeeds to delicacy, assurance to modesty, and all the vagaries of a listless to the sensibilities ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous

... we'll show you the place where Milly fell down. Come along, quicker, Shames," cried Junkie, adopting the name that the skipper used; for the boy's love of pleasantry not infrequently betrayed him ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne

... one of these officers is the double of the other?" asked the first lieutenant, who seemed to be disposed to take in the situation as a pleasantry of the commander. ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic

... had recovered, in some measure, from their alarm; and, beginning to regard the whole matter as a well-contrived pleasantry, set up a loud shout of laughter at the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... growing more and more confused, she could bear it no longer, and burst into tears. The abbe and his guests were touched by her shyness, and endeavoured to restore her confidence. Scarron himself leant over, and whispered a few kind words in her ear; then breaking out into some happy pleasantry, he gave her time to recover her composure. Such was the first debut in Parisian society of Francoise d'Aubigne, who was destined, as Madame Scarron, to be afterwards one of its leaders, and, as Madame de ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... well spent. Never have I felt nearer the divine presence, nor more of the joy, the rest that springs from intimate communion with the blessed Saviour. How strange the revulsion of feeling in a few moments of time. I had looked with a little of pleasantry upon the quaint figures and novel costumes of the worshippers; now, I saw only the earnest attitude, the anxious gaze, the loving look. Jesus was all in all, and their love ...
— Scenes in Switzerland • American Tract Society

... the conversation then became animated, and even gay. Bonaparte was in high spirits. He said to some one, smiling, and pointing to Bernadotte, "You are not aware that the General yonder is a Chouan."—"A Chouan?" repeated Bernadotte, also in a tone of pleasantry. "Ah! General you contradict yourself. Only the other day you taxed me with favouring the violence of the friends of the Republic, and now you accuse me of protecting ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... and Pine Tree were young, and maybe their youth caused them to smile slightly at Dick's pleasantry. Nor did they annoy the boys with excessive vigilance, and they answered many questions. It was, indeed, they said, the greatest village in the West that was now gathered on the banks of the Little ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler

... absolutely still was our order, wasn't it, Mr. Arnold?" she said, with her little pink smile. "And I'm afraid Miss Howe isn't in time to be of much use to us, is she?" It was the bedside pleasantry that expected no reply, that ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)

... comprehended as time went on, and so to degenerate in conception from this original type. That depended for much of its piquancy on the very fact that it was fantastic: the point of the thing lay in a sort of humorous inappropriateness; and it is natural enough that pleasantry of this description should become less common, as men learn to suspect some serious analogy underneath. Thus a comical story of an ape touches us quite differently after the proposition of Mr. Darwin's theory. Moreover, there lay, perhaps, at the bottom ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... venture a heavy pleasantry or two which distorted his long nose into a series of white-ridged wrinkles, then he ambled away and disappeared within the abode of that divinity who shapes our ends, the manicure; and Hamil turned once more toward ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers

... turned to one of his companions and said something in which she caught the name of Mr. Loomis, and which was received with an appreciative chuckle. She suspected herself of being the object of the pleasantry, and straightened her thin shoulders ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton

... of value. Mr. Spencer's warning to his readers seems to quite justify Mr. Bradley's rather caustic comment, "I do not wish to be irreverent, but Mr. Spencer's attitude towards his Unknowable strikes me as a pleasantry, the point of which lies in its unconsciousness. It seems a proposal to take something for God simply and solely because we do not know what the devil it can be." (Note to p. ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen

... that ever set Fortune at defiance"; he speaks also of "the buoyancy of his spirits and the inward light of his mind"; and adds,—"There is nothing gloomy or bitter in his ordinary talk, but, rather, a wild, rough, boyish pleasantry, much more like Nature than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... gin, and discovered that, unlike his father, he didn't much care for the stuff—and even in Washington, people didn't go around accusing you of drunkenness just because you made some harmless little pleasantry. ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett

... be," said Mr. Rogers. "But unless I'm a Dutchman, it used to be The Gabriel's antimacassar"—and with that Mr. Rogers winked, for he had (as the other knew to his cost) an artless, primitive sense of pleasantry. "A gage d'amour, I'll bet any man ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... sir; but this is nothing more than harmless pleasantry. Women are that way. See how pleased she is—how full of smiles and happiness she seems. It's a dull sort of life here in the woods. Poor Daisy, she sees so little of gayety, it would be cruel to ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic

... mistress was making him wear the horns, that she was hobnobbing with the General, and that she was in possession of one of the five keys of the house in the Eglisottes quarter; and as he was as jealous as an Andalusian, and felt a horror for that kind of pleasantry, he swore that he would make his rival pay a hundred fold for the trick which ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... of a conspiracy against Augustus, which must be crushed before it grows more dangerous. Varius is there, and being a writer of tragedies, keeps up, as your tragic author is sure to do, a ceaseless fire of puns and pleasantry. At these young Sybaris smiles faintly, for his thoughts are away with his ladylove, the too fascinating Lydia. Horace—who, from the other side of the table, with an amused smile in his eyes, watches him, as he "sighs like furnace," ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin

... of a bedridden old gentleman in their neighbourhood. They meet at the corner of his park with paper and pencils, a pole, a chain and a semicircle, measure his fields, calculate the value of his mines, and then proceed to his house in order to take an inventory of his plate and furniture. But this pleasantry, excellent as pleasantry, hardly deserves serious refutation. No person who has a right to give any opinion at all about politics can think that the question, whether two of the greatest empires in the world should be ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the brick pleasantry was not too hard for him. There was no mandragora in the honorary draught of learning that he had bought. That was before the passage of the Pure Food ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry

... dear girl," said Quimbleton remorsefully. "But I couldn't help thinking how agreeable a psychical seidel of dark beer would be just now. You are our little Jeanne Dark, you know," he added, with an atrocious attempt at pleasantry. ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley

... boots, more than once. Her wit is positively brilliant, and in this connection it may be asserted once for all that it was she who first gave vogue to the greeting, "Doodledo," an abbreviated form of "How d'you do," though others have been given the credit for that sparkling pleasantry. In the art of "setting down" she is unapproachable, combining gentle courtesy with fine satire and mordant epigram, as on the occasion when a certain pushing and impossible outside person claimed her acquaintance in public with a loud ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 18, 1914 • Various

... the consequences of fasting for agitation's sake, and he nearly crammed Gerald; so that Adrian and Fely laughed, and he excused himself by declaring that he wanted his turkey-cock to gobble and not pipe. For which bit of pleasantry he encountered a glare from Gerald's Hungarian eyes. He was afraid on one side to lose sight of his nephew, on the other he did not feel equal to encounter a scolding from Marilda, so he sent Adrian and Fely down to the Marine Hotel to fetch Franceska, while ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge

... answer: "Ah, that rational man who thinks to advise us in sorrow, Knows not how little of power his cold words have in relieving Ever a heart from that woe which a sovereign fate has inflicted. Ye are prosperous and glad; how then should a pleasantry wound you? Yet but the lightest touch is a source of pain to the sick man. Nay, concealment itself, if successful, had profited nothing. Better show now what had later increased to a bitterer anguish, And to an inward consuming despair might perhaps have reduced me. Let me go back! for here in ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... that such a figure was not wrought to pleasantry; and that to brave it was no child's play. The dead Arab at my feet was proof of what could be done! So I examined again along the wall; and found here and there chippings as if someone had been tapping with a heavy hammer. This then had been what happened: The grave-robber, ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker

... beating arms of a mill, such as I have seen in counties where are no waterbrooks, but folk make bread with wind—it is not for a man devoid of scholarship to determine. Enough that they who made the ring intituled the scene a "mill," while we who must be thumped inside it tried to rejoice in their pleasantry, till it ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... had discovered the good lady's extreme perturbation in regard to Lakalatcha, and had promptly declared for spending a day there with his bride. It was an exceptional opportunity to witness the volcano in its active mood. Each time that Joyce had essayed this teasing pleasantry, which never failed to draw Mrs. Stanleigh's protests, I observed that his wife remained silent. I assumed that she had decided to keep her own counsel in regard to the trip she ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... embarrass and make uncomfortable those to whom the situation is already sufficiently trying? Why, after so much pains and expense have been employed to make the occasion beautiful and impressive, should the "practical joker" take it upon himself to spoil it all by an ill-timed "pleasantry" which is the acme of rudeness and discourtesy? It is a curious character that can enjoy perpetrating what are really outrages upon other ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... features of country-town life which the march of improvement has swept away: a lady by birth, but owing little to schools or teachers, books or travel: a woman of strong natural understanding and some wit, who loved her nightly rubber at whist, could rap out an oath or a strong pleasantry, and whose quick estimates of men and things became proverbs with the ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... pleasantry of the king's, then one of the company remarked that not a woman's will, though it might be like steel of the finest temper, nor her muscular power, would serve to change Athelwold's nature or keep him from his friend, but ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson

... might be observed on this curious head of our author's speculations. But, taking leave of what the writer says in his serious part, if he be serious in any part, I shall only just point out a piece of his pleasantry. No man, I believe, ever denied that the time for making peace is that in which the best terms maybe obtained. But what that time is, together with the use that has been made of it, we are to judge by seeing whether terms adequate to our advantages, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... proofs on our side, and by refuting those of the opponent. The second, by giving hopes of being brief, and by having recourse to the means prescribed for making the judge attentive. In the latter case, too, some seasonable pleasantry, or anything witty to freshen the mind will have a good effect. It will not be amiss, likewise, to remove any seeming obstruction. As Cicero says of himself, he is not unaware that some will find it strange that he, who for so many years had ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser

... Every company is differently circumstanced, has its particular cant and jargon; which may give occasion to wit and mirth within that circle, but would seem flat and insipid in any other, and therefore will not bear repeating. Nothing makes a man look sillier than a pleasantry not relished or not understood; and if he meets with a profound silence when he expected a general applause, or, what is worse, if he is desired to explain the bon mot, his awkward and embarrassed situation is easier imagined' than described. 'A propos' of repeating; take great care never to ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... coloured under this stinging pleasantry—whether from a good conscience affronted or from a bad one made worse; but he otherwise showed a bold front, only bending his eyes a moment on his watch. "As he's to come to you himself—and I don't ...
— The Outcry • Henry James

... fancies that frog is derived from the syllable [Greek: trach (k)] of [Greek: batrachos]. This will cause some people to smile, and recall Menage's pleasantry about Alfana, the man of Orlando; It is true that frog at first sight seems to have no letter in common except the snarling letter (litera canina). But this is not so; the a and the o, the s ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... After having escaped all the dangers which threatened the royalist leaders during this stormy period of modern history, he was wont to say in jest, "I am one of the men who gave themselves to be killed on the steps of the throne." And the pleasantry had some truth in it, as spoken by a man left for dead at the bloody battle of Les Quatre Chemins. Though ruined by confiscation, the staunch Vendeen steadily refused the lucrative posts offered to him by ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac

... present taking a constitutional down Fifth Avenue encased in a sandwich frame calling attention to the merits of Backer's Tar Soap. He is, if I may so express it, between the boards instead of on the boards—a little pleasantry of ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells

... smile as at some amiable pleasantry, but McLean caught the snarl of his lifted lip, and felt the currents ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley

... of the whole affair, thereby revealing one of the characteristics which endeared him to his friends. No matter how desperate a situation might be, he could always find in it something at which to laugh. He laughed going into danger and coming out of it, with a joke or a pleasantry always trembling on the ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford

... by its character-drawing and its pathos, I doubt if it would have captivated the world without its humor. This is of the old-fashioned kind, the large humor of Scott, and again of Cervantes, not verbal pleasantry, not the felicities of Lamb, but the humor of character in action, of situations elaborated with great freedom, and with what may be called a hilarious conception. This quality is never wanting in the book, either for the reader's entertainment ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... good humor; stretching himself out on my sofa he began to chaff me about my appearance, which indicated, he said, that I had not slept well. As I was little disposed to indulge in pleasantry I ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset

... amusement, game, recreation, fun, play, diversion, pastime, jollity, pleasantry, hilarity, gayety, merriment; derision, mockery, ridicule, jeer; plaything, toy; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... something between both, participating of the character of each. The poets, who disputed the prize, generally added one of these pieces to their tragedies, to allay the gravity and solemnity of the one, with the mirth and pleasantry of the other. There is but one example of this ancient poem come down to us, which ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... Gore was singularly reserved and grave in the presence of slaves. He indulged in no jokes, said no funny things, and kept his own counsels. Other overseers, how brutal soever they might be, were, at times, inclined to gain favor with the slaves, by indulging a little pleasantry; but Gore was never known to be guilty of any such weakness. He was always the cold, distant, unapproachable overseer of Col. Edward Lloyd's plantation, and needed no higher pleasure than was involved in a faithful discharge of the duties of his office. When he whipped, he seemed ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... dismissed as 'a handsome beau'; but he had the merit or the good fortune to become a doctor of medicine, so that when the crash came he was not empty-handed for the war of life. Charles, at the day-school of Northiam, grew so well acquainted with the rod, that his floggings became matter of pleasantry and reached the ears of Admiral Buckner. Hereupon that tall, rough-voiced, formidable uncle entered with the lad into a covenant: every time that Charles was thrashed he was to pay the Admiral a penny; everyday that he escaped, the process was to be reversed. 'I recollect,' writes Charles, ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson

... from Raoul's ready leash rewarded the felicity of this application, and sent the fool howling off to seek a more favourable audience, for his pleasantry. At the same time Raoul pressed up to Damian, and with an earnestness very different from his usual dry causticity of manner, begged him for God's sake not to make himself the general spectacle, by standing there as if the devil sat on the doorway, but either ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... There is so much pleasantry and humour, as well as spirit and heroism in this story, as we have it recorded by William de Malmesbury, who represents the menace as thrown out in the King's presence, that I shall make no apology for setting down his words ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... university and college life consists in a judicious mixture of the grave and the gay. The honor which these undergraduates paid to their guest was seriously intended, was admirably planned, and its genuineness was all the more apparent because it had a note of pleasantry. Mr. Roosevelt spoke as a university student to university students and what he said, although brief, extemporaneous, and even unpremeditated, deserves to be included with his more important addresses, because it affords an ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt

... began to beset Major Bonnet. What his daughter had remarked in pleasantry, the people of the town began to talk about unpleasantly. Here was a good-sized craft about to set sail, with little or no cargo, but with a crew apparently much larger than her requirements, but not yet large enough for the desires of her owner. To ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton

... if she had good weather off Cape Hatteras, would reach Fortress Monroe by Christmas-day, and he suggested that I might make it the occasion of sending a welcome Christmas gift to the President, Mr. Lincoln, who peculiarly enjoyed such pleasantry. I accordingly sat down and wrote on a slip of paper, to be left at the telegraph-office at Fortress Monroe for transmission, ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... with strokes of pleasantry and lively criticism, and ever and anon reveal most delightful pictures of fireside groups. A high-toned morality pervades the whole. We feel sure that the book will be a general ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh

... know, Signor Pastrini," said Albert, lighting a second cigar at the first, "that this practice is very convenient for bandits, and that it seems to be due to an arrangement of their own." Doubtless Signor Pastrini found this pleasantry compromising, for he only answered half the question, and then he spoke to Franz, as the only one likely to listen with attention. "Your excellency knows that it is not customary to defend ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... was that she had been indulging in some clumsy pleasantry, amusing herself one day by inscribing in the sale-book, alongside of the dabs and skate and mackerel sold by auction, the names of some of the best-known ladies and gentlemen of the Court. This bestowal of piscine names upon high dignitaries, these entries of the sale of duchesses and baronesses ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... source of much weary labour. Four eldest sons had been brought to her feet and been allowed to slip away; and all, as Lady Eardham said, because Gus would "joke" with other young men, while the one man should have received all her pleasantry. Emily was quite of opinion that young Newton should by no means have been allotted to Gus. Lady Eardham, who had played besique with an energy against which Josephine would have mutinied but that some promise was made as to Marshall and Snelgrove, could see ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... Lord Mansfield covered his retreat from an untenable position with a sparkling pleasantry. An old witness named ELM having given his evidence with remarkable clearness, although he was more than eighty years of age, Lord Mansfield examined him as to his habitual mode of living, and found he had been through life an early riser ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton

... modest young woman into a swoon of indignation and confusion, by his shameful manner of attacking her with this cry as she harmlessly passed along before me. MR. CARLYLE, some time since, awakened a little pleasantry by writing of his own experience of the Ruffian of the streets. I have seen the Ruffian act in exact accordance with Mr. Carlyle's description, innumerable times, and I never ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... passed without any open violence, and with even some good-humored pleasantry on the part of the great crowd assembled. The draft was conducted openly and fairly, and the names of the conscripts were publicly announced and published by the press of Sunday morning. It appeared that the names of many men, too poor to pay the commutation, ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... young Frost made no reply to this pleasantry; for already he was impatient to be gone. Although the room was intensely cold and uncomfortable, still his guest lingered, standing before the massive cabinet, exclaiming upon the exquisiteness of the workmanship, and every now and then running his ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold

... in the hot-beds of affectation and conceit;" such attention to the mother-tongue is prescribed, that the young nerves of the letter-writer must tremble when he takes up his pen. Besides, he is told that "he should be extremely reserved on the head of pleasantry," and that "as to sallies of wit, it is still more dangerous to let them fly at random; but he may repeat the smart sayings of others if he will, or relate part of some droll adventure, to ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

... world-policy Mr. Lloyd George likewise fell a victim. But his fault was not so glaring. For it should in fairness be remembered that it was not he who first preached the advent of the millennium. He had only given it a tardy and cold assent, qualified by an occasional sally of keen pleasantry. Down to the last moment, as we saw, he not only was unaware that the Covenant would be inserted in the Peace Treaty, but he was strongly of the opinion, as indeed were M. Pichon and others, that the ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... in the cabin of the River Queen, smiling faces gathered around the dinner-table. One of the guests was a young officer attached to the Sanitary Commission. He was seated near Mrs. Lincoln, and, by way of pleasantry, remarked: "Mrs. Lincoln, you should have seen the President the other day, on his triumphal entry into Richmond. He was the cynosure of all eyes. The ladies kissed their hands to him, and greeted him with the waving of ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley

... suppose, that when the disciples heard from the lips of their Master the play of words on the name of Peter, there was no smile of appreciation on the bearded faces of those holy men? From any other lips we should have called this pleasantry a— ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... this information with the brutality of the police, who will doubtless some day become perfect, I take pains to speak to her in the most gracious terms. On my lips, in my eyes, in my whole countenance, an expression plays, which indicates both curiosity and indifference, seriousness and pleasantry, harshness and tenderness. These little conjugal scenes are so full of vivacity, of tact and address that it is a pleasure to take part in them. The very day on which I took from the head of my wife the wreath of orange blossoms which she wore, I understood ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac

... upon his enemies. The very commencement of his reign gave symptoms of his sanguinary disposition. A tradesman of London, who kept shop at the sign of the Crown, having said that he would make his son heir to the crown; this harmless pleasantry was interpreted to be spoken in derision of Edward's assumed title; and he was condemned and executed for the offence.[*] Such an act of tyranny was a proper prelude to the events which ensued. The scaffold, as well as the field, incessantly ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... he could not understand. In Ireland he called the Roman Catholic faith "a lie and a heathenish superstition"; or, in a lighter mood, made imbecile jokes about pigs and potatoes. In Scotland, thriftiness and oatmeal were the themes of his pleasantry; in Wales, he found the language, the literature, and the local nomenclature equally comic, and reserved his loudest guffaw for the Eisteddfod. Abroad, "Foreigners don't wash" was the all-embracing formula. Nasality, Bloomerism, and Dollars epitomized his ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell

... figure, attitude and countenance, there breathes something precise and decisive, something alert, wiry, and strong. You can understand, from the look of him, that sense, not so much of humour, as of what is grimmest and driest in pleasantry, which inspired his address before the fight at Camperdown. He had just overtaken the Dutch fleet under Admiral de Winter. "Gentlemen," says he, "you see a severe winter approaching; I have only to advise ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson

... impossibility of setting melody to French words on the part of a writer who had just produced the Village Soothsayer, informs us that the letter created a furious uproar, and set all Paris in a blaze. He had himself taken the side of the Italians in an amusing piece of pleasantry, which became a sort of classic model for similar facetiousness in other controversies of the century. The French, as he said, forgive everything in favour of what makes them laugh, but Rousseau talked reason and demolished the ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... frequently used instead of the in naming an object as typical of its class, especially when the speech carries any flavour of pleasantry. Cf. Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, IV. ii. 46, 'Every true man's apparel ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various

... civility we parted, but it was not until I had rejoined my anxious friends with the ambulance that I began to suspect Commandant Cronje of a piece of pleasantry. Major Pollock, it appeared, had interceded on my behalf so effectually that my fate had been decided and my safe return promised long before I had met the Commandant. He afterwards entertained himself by playing upon my anxiety, which, I have no ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young

... and left me as ill inclined to prosecute my journey as he was well disposed to go on his; he had, however, supplied my pen with ample materials for pleasantry. But all times are not the same. Perhaps the day may arrive when, taking up the thread which I am now compelled to break, I may complete what is now wanting, and what I would fain tell. But adieu to gayety; adieu to humor; ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... winter's night, is enough to warm all Rochester's heart." The matron receives us politely, and shows us two large books of foolscap size with ruled columns, one of these containing a record of the visitors to the Charity, and the other a list of the recipients thereof. A little pleasantry is caused by one of us entering his name in the wrong book, but this mistake is promptly rectified by the matron, who informs us that we are scarcely objects for relief as "Poor Travellers." She then kindly repeats to us the two legends respecting ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes

... darkness concealed; he moistened his thin lips, and then gave a little cackling laugh, as if he regarded this as pleasantry. But the demolition of the literary pretensions of his family ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... full-blooded Hoosier, tells me he is a Scotchman, and was born in Ayrshire, in the same house in which Robert Burns had birth. His grandfather, James Humphreys, was the neighbor and companion of the poet. It was of him he wrote this epitaph, at an ale-house, in the way of pleasantry: ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty

... between them often in talk the refrain, jocosely, descriptively applied, of "old Roman." It had been, as a pleasantry, in the other time, his explanation to her of everything; but nothing, truly, had even seemed so old-Roman as the shrug in which he now indulged. ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... of the same colour, and shoes to answer. His features were not naturally intended to wear a smiling aspect, but he was in general rather given to professional jocosity. His step was elastic, and his face betokened inward pleasantry, as he advanced to Mr. Bumble, and shook him cordially ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens



Words linked to "Pleasantry" :   jest, jocularity, joke



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com