"Sense of humor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sense of humor dropped its oil On the hard ways his purpose went; Small play of fancy lightened toil; He spake alone ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... fat bundle of "swag," you, my good reader, might naturally suppose that this shining light of the "System," contented with his profits, would pass on to new victims; or, if you have a mistaken impression of Mr. Rogers' sense of humor, for really he has a keen sense of the ridiculous—after five o'clock on week-days and all day Sunday—you might think he would take the opportunity to order me to tack up his card on the Utah office door, inscribed, "We will return when you recoup," and transfer his milking machine ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... elements in romance. 6. Find examples of another romantic characteristic, exaggeration. 7. Do you think that in his use of hyperbole and impossibilities Spenser shows that he was deficient in a sense of humor? 8. Observe the lyric note in iii and liv. 9. How does the poet impress the reader with the size of the Dragon? 10. Which Muse does he invoke? 11. Spenser's poetry is richly sensuous: find passages in which he appeals to the sense of sight ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... am supposing the respected reader to be endowed with a sense of humor, which he may or may not possess; indeed, don't we know many an honest man who can no more comprehend a joke than he can turn a tune. But I take for granted, my dear sir, that you are brimming over with fun—you mayn't make jokes, but you could if ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... desire to be helpful had tickled the big, generous Irishman's peculiar sense of humor, and from now on, instead of giving Patsy a horse to ride now and then as he had formerly done, he put into his charge all the ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... I am aware that the traditional hero is always armed, and that Hotchkiss as the low comedian should have had a revolver that missed fire. As a fact, we had nothing of the sort. Hotchkiss carried the fire tongs, but my sense of humor was too strong for me; I ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... brasses, she is enough to melt the heart of Diogenes. Nevertheless, I cannot break mine at losing a girl who was born for a Robert van Buren. After all, Nell is more bewilderingly beautiful, and has twice Phyllis's magnetism. She has too fine a sense of humor to fall in love with a man's inches and muscles. That one speech of Phyllis's taught me resignation, and showed me in a flash that, despite her charms, she ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... destitute of the national sense of humor; but he read this letter not only without amusement in its English, but with intense bitterness and renewed alarm. It appeared to him that the willingness of the ladies to put the affair in his hands had not strongly manifested itself till it had quite passed their own ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... So did Miss Batchelor, to whom she also told the story (in strict confidence). So did everybody whom Miss Batchelor may or may not have confided in. And when the thing became public property, Sir Peter wished he had restrained his sense of humor. ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... and driven hither and thither like a wreck on the ocean. Mr. Melville Stone, the veteran American journalist, gave his countrymen his impression of the first British delegate. "Mr. Lloyd George," he said, "has a very keen sense of humor and a great power over the multitude, but with this he displays a startling indifference to, if not ignorance of, the larger affairs of nations." In the course of a walk Mr. Lloyd George expressed surprise when informed that in the United States the war-making ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... route he had come. He was the most mournful of sights, sitting most of the day in a retired spot, brooding, apparently over his fate. He never smiled, though I who have been much in China, tried to stir him from his sadness by exclamations and gestures. His race has a very keen sense of humor. They see a thousand funny things about them, and laugh inwardly; but they never see anything amusing in themselves. The individual man conceives himself a dignified figure in a ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... young scoundrel!" Cappy murmured to himself. "He has a sense of humor, thank God! Ah, poor old narrow-gauge Skinner! If that fellow ever gets a new or unconventional thought in his stodgy head, it'll kill him overnight. He's hopping mad right now, because he can't say a word in his own defense, but if he doesn't make ...
— The Go-Getter • Peter B. Kyne
... him a buffoon because it heard only the echo of the hoarse laughter after his stories. They found when he spoke in Cooper Union that he had a mind that would have sat unembarrassed and luminous in the company of the men of the age of Pericles. But he had a sense of humor that, had he been there, would have saved Socrates from the hyssop. Mr. Bryce says, that all the world knows the Americans to be a humorous people. [Footnote: Bryce, "American Commonwealth," 2:286.] "They are," he has said, "as conspicuously the purveyors of humor to the nineteenth ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... Milly Sears had called her husband "father" and now that he had fathered all his children away from home she still called him "father." Poor Mrs. Sears had no sense of humor. ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... Pemberton, a man with no sense of humor, had been unusually expansive; but he shrank angrily into himself now, as though from a cold douche. It took some time for one to get accustomed to Fom's way of instructing authorities upon the subjects which they were ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... himself he is the most charming companion that it is possible to conceive. His manners are as genial and as winning as those of his father and grandfather, both of whom he surpasses in brilliancy of intellect, and in quickness of repartee, as well as in a keen sense of humor. He gives one the impression of possessing a heart full of the most generous impulses,—aye, of a generosity carried even to excess, and this, together with a species of indescribable magnetism which appears to radiate from him in these ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... accident was fortunate. Wabi, who possessed a Caucasian sense of humor, shook with merriment as he gave his assistance, and Rod, after he had dug the snow from his eyes and ears and had emptied a handful of it from ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... morbid-minded people are developing a sense of humor," said Matsukuo, "but I'm not sure I care ...
— The Penal Cluster • Ivar Jorgensen (AKA Randall Garrett)
... Sherman, a freckled, red-headed, pale little girl, always shabby and pinched-looking, eager, silent, and hard-working. Miss Sherman gave the impression—or would have given it to anyone who cared to study her—of having been intimidated and underfed from birth. She had a keen sense of humor, and, when Susan Brown "got started," as Susan Brown occasionally did, Miss Sherman would laugh so violently, and with such agonized attempts at suppression, that she would almost strangle herself. Nobody guessed that she adored the brilliant Susan, unless Miss ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... America, which are sure to afford freedom and subsistence to any man who can bait a hook or pull a trigger." The picture of Dr. Franklin, the philosopher, at the age of sixty-one, "cheerfully" sustaining his family in the wilderness by the winnings of his rod and his rifle stirs one's sense of humor; but the paragraph indicates that he was in strict harmony with his countrymen, who were expressing serious resolution with some rhetorical exaggeration, in ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... set Thomas to this?" whispered the minister's wife, who had a profound sense of humor. The truth was, the choice of the school had fallen upon Ranald and Margaret Aird. Margaret was quite willing to act, but Ranald refused point-blank, and privately persuaded Thomas to accept the honor in his stead. To this Thomas agreed, all the more readily that Margaret, whom he adored ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... nook, just off the breakfast room, she found the basket quite as she had left it. The girls watched her eagerly as she first drew out a soft white covering. It was now becoming apparent that this self-same Mary possessed an entirely undeveloped sense of humor, for as she watched the eager faces crowding about her she was surely, deliberately delaying the process of displaying ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... men at home; several of the older men resembled their well-set-up English cousins. This seemed particularly true of the navy, which has acquired a type—lean, keen, firm-lipped young men, with a sense of humor—entirely different from the German often seen in cafes, with no back to his head, and a neck overflowing his collar. Particularly interesting were those who, called back 'into uniform from responsible positions in civil life, were attacking, as if building for ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... his keen sense of humor would sometimes lead him to make fun in a kindly way of his slower colleagues. The members of the Executive Council and the Faculty sometimes felt he treated them rather too much as if he were the teacher and they the pupils. His frequent humorous sallies and stories exasperated some ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... his fine sense of humor, and he dearly loved to enjoy a joke with his wife and children, though he never indulged in witticisms that would wound the feelings of the most sensitive person; he was too much of a gentleman to thus ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... proudly to her friends. He was very delighted, he said, that I was to remain over night, as that would give us a long evening to test the tobacco thoroughly. A neighbor of his had also been experimenting; and Pettigrew, who has a considerable sense of humor, told me a diverting story about this gentleman and his friends having passed judgment on home-grown tobacco after smoking one pipe of it! We were laughing over the ridiculously unsatisfactory character of this test (so called) ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... It touched his ironic sense of humor that he, who had devoted his life to maintaining that all men are not free and equal, when on that very day that same doctrine of liberty was undermining his throne—that he should be discussing it with the small ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of intruding vanished at this sally. Her own sense of humor caused her to claim kinship with Hippy and his pranks and she answered ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... have had." Then he turned and strode from the room, leaving the excommunicated one to his reflections. Faithful are the wounds of a friend, and my father was as much touched as he was amused by this example of my uncle's candor. Of course, there was a great vacuum in the place where my uncle's sense of humor might have been; but there are a time and place for such men as he, and more than once the men without sense of humor have moved ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... a good housekeeper; cobwebs got in, and it was hard to rule. She was smitten with a mania for the stage, and spent most of her leisure in writing and acting plays of melodramatic style ad high-strung sentiment, improbable incidents, with no touch of common life or sense of humor, full of concealments and surprises, bright dialogues, and lofty sentiments. She had much dramatic power and loved to transform herself into Hamlet and declaim in mock heroic style. From sixteen to twenty-three was her apprenticeship ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... Eugenie used often to say with a laugh that she was the only true royalist at the imperial court of France. That was well enough for her in her days of flightiness and frivolity. No one, however, accused Queen Victoria of being frivolous, and she was not supposed to have a strong sense of humor. None the less, after listening to the skirling of the bagpipes and to the romantic ballads which were sung in Scotland she is said to have remarked with ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... feelings had not been hurt, though one might say that the evening left her sense of humor rather sore. At that moment she was dallying with the temptation to describe the whole scene in a letter to a valued friend in Philadelphia, who would have appreciated it with mirth. In the end she did not write. It would have ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... connected with the work of relief were others that illustrated the saving sense of humor which keeps people from going insane in times of great ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... Nutt is,—always puttin' up some deep and elaborate game on Mr. Robert, or relatin' by the hour the horse-play stunts he's pulled on others. A bit heavy, his sense of humor is, I judge. His idea of a perfectly good joke is to call up a bald-headed waiter at the club and crack a soft-boiled egg on his White Way, or balance a water cooler on top of a door so that the first party to walk under gets soaked by it,—playful ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... him off his guard Hermia drew him into the general conversation, aroused his sense of humor, until with a story of an experience in France, which he told with a dry wit that well suited him, he found himself the center of interest at the head of ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... life from a sour or severe disposition, with hard and stringent notions, is ill prepared to meet the experiences of the world; but he who has the sweetness of hope, he who has an imagination lit up with cheerfulness, he who has the sense of humor which softens all things—he who has this atmosphere of the mind—has made himself superior to accident. As the angel described by Milton, who was smitten by the sword, and whose wounds healed as soon as the sword was withdrawn, so ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... love another," said Hugh slowly, and cleverly concealing his elation at the unexpected change in the situation. He was not without a sense of humor, and forgetting, for the moment, the seriousness of her revelation, he could not resist the temptation to play ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... to dismiss a thought from her mind, but her face failed to reflect Lois' smile of anticipation. She was a queer puzzle, was Polly. Uncle Roddy once described her as a tangle of deep thoughts, completely surrounded by a sense of humor. And Mrs. Farwell always insisted that she discussed the weightiest problems of life when she was running for a trolley. Lois was the exact opposite, an artist, a dreamer of dreams, who, when her mind was off on some airy flight, was ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill
... least trifle aquiline, and by a blurred outline the painter had given to the black hair piled high upon the head a suggestion of waviness. The eyebrows were straight, the brown eyes looked at the world with an almost scornful sense of humor, and I marked that there was determination in the chin. Here was a face that could be infinitely haughty or infinitely tender, a mouth of witty—nay, perhaps cutting—repartee of brevity and force. A lady who spoke quickly, moved quickly, or reposed absolutely. A person who commanded ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... perhaps he was glad to have the Western sense of humor come to the rescue of his compassion. "Well, it was a cold day for you to come all this way for nothing," said he. "You go home and tell Lieders ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... duel between M. Floquet and the melodramatic General Boulanger is that Bishop Freppel has moved in the Chamber of Deputies for the legal abolition of private combats. That a bishop should do this is remarkable. If Bishop Freppel possessed any sense of humor, he would leave the task to laymen. His Church did not establish duelling; on the contrary, she censured it; but it was countenanced by her principles, and her protest was unavailing. The judicial combat was an appeal to God, like the ordeal by fire or water, ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... wasn't one left, because the squirrels when caught had climbed into the trees and had so violently torn about with trap and chain that they had broken off every single branch with a nut on it. So many things happen in our experiments that appeal to one's sense of the ludicrous, if he has a sense of humor, that I assure you nut raising is a source of great delight to those who are fond ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... that their sense of humor was a little less fantastic than my own; but I liked them very much, because they were so earnest and simple and human and (what ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... have appeared before President Wilson I have used dozens of these same jokes, about him, And he has the best sense of humor and is the best audience I ever played too, Which bears out the theory I work on, That you can always joke about a big Man that is really big, But dont ever kid about the little fellow that thinks he is something, cause he will get sore Thats why ...
— Rogers-isms, the Cowboy Philosopher on the Peace Conference • Will Rogers
... note in his voice profoundly moved the girl. For the first time her face showed something other than childish good nature and a sense of humor. "I don't like these trees myself," she answered. "They look too ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... singular sight, and one that Phil would doubtless often recall with a lively sense of humor. The lantern lighted up the tent of the motor boat, showing the emaciated black devouring the food about like a starving wolf might be expected to act; and the three watching boys, Phil still gripping his Marlin, Tony the hatchet, and Larry ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... said, "but a sense of humor was always my undoing, and this reversal of our positions is a little odd, isn't it? I am not going to marry Juliet Lundy because she happens not to care for me in that way at all. My appearance is scarcely that of ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... by nature he had been endowed with vivacity of spirit; for, as he continued, with an industry which was remarkable, to refresh himself, there were appearances, which came to the eye and the corners of his mouth, which made the observer conclude that he was not lacking the sense of humor; and, if his experience had been most unfortunate, there was in him an ability to appreciate the ludicrousness of its changeful situations. Indeed, one could but conclude that originally he must have been of a buoyant, not to say sanguine disposition; and, ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... knave of purgatory. Lorry, at last recognizing the hopelessness of his suit, was ready to throw down his arms and abandon the field to superior odds. His presumption in aspiring for the hand of a Princess began to touch his sense of humor, and he laughed, not very merrily, it is true, but long and loudly, at his folly. At first he cursed the world and every one in it, giving up in despair, but later he cursed only himself. Yet, as he despaired and scoffed, he felt within himself an ever-present ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... best news I've heard since I left Richmond, and I'm just tickled nearly to death!" exclaimed Sally, spinning about to hug Aileen rapturously. This sudden change of base was so astonishing that Beverly's sense of humor came to her rescue ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... predicament was, this picture of himself as the fraudulent philanthropist was too much for Bunker's sense of humor, and to the extreme astonishment of his visitors he went off into a fit of laughter so hearty and prolonged that it was some time before he recovered ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... effected— this emancipation from affection and the bondage of being like other people? Is it open to us to choose to be genuine? I see nothing insuperable in the way, except for those who are hopelessly lacking in a sense of humor. It depends upon the range and scale of your observation whether you can strike the balance of genuineness or not. If you live in a small and petty world, you will be subject to its standards; but if ...
— On Being Human • Woodrow Wilson
... However I should not imagine that it would prove very useful to him who was being cut up; but of course this is all but conjecture. The chances are that ere long you will know much more about it than I," and he grinned as he spoke. The Sagoths have a well-developed sense of humor. ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... had made an error involving a few murders—and a few thousand years. He was entitled to a sense of humor, ...
— The Ultroom Error • Gerald Allan Sohl
... couldn't do a blessed thing unless the police would come and pull the crowd out from behind, and the police were not interfering with the populace just then. An American street crowd is gifted with a fine sense of humor, and the sight of these two veteran officers perched on a baggage-truck and reconnoitring their ground was full of suggestion. "Don't jump on us, major: we couldn't stand them feet!" shouted one jovial tough. "A speech from Old-Man-Afraid-Of-His-Dignity!" sang out a ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... has been forcing him to eminence. He does not fill the eye as a sanctified hero should; he is too vitally human, too affectionate, too bitter, and he has, moreover, springs of humor which bubble up continually. (You cannot imagine an archangel with a sense of humor.) But it is this very mixture in the man that holds the character student. Lloyd George is quite unpretentious, loves children, will join heartily in the chorus of a popular song, and yet there is concealed behind these softer traits ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... first, upon the development of those elements which are pleasing to others, such as intelligence, judgment, reason, memory, sympathy, kindliness, courtesy, tactfulness, refinement, a sense of humor, decision, adaptability, self-confidence, proper personal pride, dignity, and perhaps others; second, upon a knowledge of each individual with whom one comes in contact, so that one knows best how to gain that person's ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... bear. Jesus calls us to His rest, and meekness is His method. The meek man cares not at all who is greater than he, for he has long ago decided that the esteem of the world is not worth the effort. He develops toward himself a kindly sense of humor and learns to say, "Oh, so you have been overlooked? They have placed someone else before you? They have whispered that you are pretty small stuff after all? And now you feel hurt because the world is saying ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer
... idly, her back against the rail, "that it was invented by the authority who started the slander about women's having no sense of humor." ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... more from his own temperament than from political expediency. It was bound up in his love of efficiency and also in his sense of humor. During this same hot conservation controversy he writes to an old friend, "I have no intention of saying anything in reply to Pinchot. He wrote me thirty pages to prove that I was a liar, and rather than read that again I will ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... reporters are always asking me this question, do aviators have imagination? I'm not sure I know what imagination is. It's like this stuff about "sense of humor." Both phrases are pretty bankrupt now. A few years ago when I was running a car I would make believe I was different people, like a king driving through his kingdom, but when I'm warping and banking I don't have time to think about making believe. Of course I do notice ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... at her; she was a good-looking young person, and he liked her smile, for it betokened a sense of humor, and that pleased him. 'How much?' he repeated. 'A vehicle, a man, ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... of playing amiable and harmless tricks upon the first of April that its origin is not definitely known. It is not a holiday and not worthy to be one, but it should be good for our sense of humor and that is one of the best things we can have. An April fool is sometimes called a ...
— Our Holidays - Their Meaning and Spirit; retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... the steep, narrow streets that lie beyond the bridges and lead up to the city wall. It was still, still as the desert; she looked at him, and his earnestness quelled her sense of humor over the absurdity of ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... what wonders I could achieve in this marvelous age!" Her sense of humor made her laugh at herself. "Easy for a girl to ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... guardians thought appropriate to the occasion, but was assisted in this effort by her genuine pity for the wounded. In her joyous relief at escape from a hated union her heart was light indeed. She had, moreover, no slight sense of humor, and was just bubbling over with mirth at the fact that although the Yankee monsters, from whom it was said she must be rescued at every cost, were masters of the situation, they were engaged in nothing more ruthless than feeding their horses, preparing supper, and caring for the wounded. ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... up her pretense that her healing wounds were not healing and never would heal. She teased Otto and even flirted with him. This elevated her father and his mother to hilarity. They were two very sensible young-old people, with a keen sense of humor—the experience of age added to the simplicity and gaiety ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... have a delightful sense of humor, something that you can always count upon. She wrung her little claw-like hands together, twisted them with emotion; yet her sense of humor prevailed. She flashed ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... and cultured men are to be pitied, for they are ever the butt, byword and prey of the untaught, who are often the knowing. As success came to Southey he lost the sense of values, that is to say, the sense of humor. He attacked Byron with great severity, and Byron's reply was the dedication of Don Juan, "To the illustrious Poet-Laureate, Robert Southey, LL.D." It was as if the play of "Sappho" were dedicated to the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... "Young gentlemen," he said, "I did not expect you to be so unkind." I longed to explain, but did not find words at the moment, and we went on with our lesson. The fact was that Testa had not the least sense of humor in his composition, and so he could not understand what had happened. A humorous man, acquainted with the nature of boys, would have understood the attack of fou rire, and forgiven it; but then a humorous man would have thought twice ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... Shalt, irritably. "That was your voice, your pitch. The voice of your dummy, Spud." He wasn't going to be taken in by any warped sense of humor. Robbie Crawford was the best ventriloquist in America. He was also noted for his practical jokes. "An experiment of this magnitude shouldn't be treated ...
— The Second Voice • Mann Rubin
... week they were married by a justice of the peace, and returned to Poker Flat. I am aware that something more might be made of this episode, but I prefer to tell it as it was current at Sandy Bar—in the gulches and barrooms—where all sentiment was modified by a strong sense of humor. ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... of her friendliness: "I've never had anything but a machine for a private secretary before. Miss Armstrong was hardly a companionable person. No sense of humor. But an excellent machine. Oh, yes—excellent. Better at figures than you, my dear Miss Vars, but oh, her complexion! Really I couldn't drink tea with Miss Armstrong. I never tried it, but I'm sure it would not have been ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... glanced slyly at Thankful Blossom's face with an amused look, as if he had already heard the colloquy between her and his superior officer, and had appreciated that which neither of the earnest actors in the scene had themselves felt,—a certain sense of humor in the situation. ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte
... leaned back, overjoyed, in his chair. Here was a man not to be annoyed by the mere filching of his story. Here was a man with a sense of humor—an opponent worthy his foe's best efforts. In his role of a haberdasher overcome with woe, Mr. ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... a rigid aloofness creeping over her, and, having a very wholesome sense of humor, smiled as she ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... very erect for a woman of her age. Her bright, expressive, gray eyes twinkled humorously when she talked. She had developed a fine character by her years of unselfish devotion to family and friends. Her splendid sense of humor helped her to overcome difficulties, and her ability to rise above her environment, however discouraging their conditions, prevented her from being unhappy or depressed by the small annoyances met daily. She never failed ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... could tote to camp in a year. For a snack between meals he would eat fifty bales of hay, wire and all and six men with picaroons were kept busy picking the wire out of his teeth. Babe was a great pet and very docile as a general thing but he seemed to have a sense of humor and frequently got into mischief, He would sneak up behind a drive and drink all the water out of the river, leaving the logs high and dry. It was impossible to build an ox-sling big enough to hoist Babe off the ground for shoeing, but after they logged ...
— The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan • W.B. Laughead
... him. Frowning had no effect, and toward the end of his outburst I even protested in words. But it was no use. He spoke quickly, and he spoke very loudly, and not a word was lost on Bainbridge. Bainbridge had a fine sense of humor; but like many other humorists, he did not relish jocosities of which he was the subject. Any levity in any manner connected with Hili-li, I knew would be to him unendurable. He had from the beginning taken the Peters disclosures, ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... my call was considered ended, so I took my departure. I related the details of my neighborly visit to Silvia, but her sense of humor was not stirred. It was entirely dominated by her ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... a rhyme for every letter of the alphabet, each illustrated by a full page picture in colors. The verses appeal to the child's sense of humor without being foolish or sensational, and will be welcomed by kindergartners for teaching rhythm ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... as he grew stronger and sturdier he evinced much curiosity, playfulness and drollery, and to these characteristics would have to be added, when he became partly grown, a kind of bear sense of humor ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... keep his temper when its acts make him ashamed of it. He is disgusted and indignant to the last degree at seeing "Mr. Quelconque" chosen over the illustrious statesman who was his favorite candidate. But all his indignation cannot repress a sense of humor which was one of his marked characteristics. After fatiguing his vocabulary with hard usage, after his unsparing denunciation of "the very dirty politics" which he finds mixed up with our popular institutions, he says,—it must be remembered that this was ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... American consul-general at Constantinople, was not without a sense of humor, and I easily enlisted him in Larry’s behalf. The Englishman thirsted for vengeance and invoked all the powers. He insisted, with reason, that Larry was a British subject and that the American consul had no right to give ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... much as he ever is, at anything I do." For the moment, Phebe's sense of humor asserted itself. Then she grew grave again. "It is settled that I am to work with him till summer. Then, next fall, if I really want to go on with it, I am to go to Philadelphia to study there. Hope will be shocked, and ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... before. The Wolfan sense of humor is only half-human. The finest joke is to criticize and insult a stranger, preferably an Earthman, to his very face, in an unknown language, perfectly deadpan. In my civilian clothes I ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... would any one have dared to bring Fosdick, who was believed to be his pet abomination, into a conversation. Even in Hastings he found a kind of joy; the presence of a retired Hamlet among the foliage of the family tree was funny now that he had got used to it; and Amzi had a sense of humor. This little company expected him to explode and he must not disappoint them. The color mounted to his bald dome and ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... the amateur product appealed to his sense of humor. The more he thought of it, the stronger became his desire to own the paper. Strange he had never before considered publishing a monthly magazine. Yes, he would get out the few remaining issues of the ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... them!" Carolyn June snapped, then laughed as the absurdity of the situation dawned upon her and her sense of humor overcame the moment of anger and indignation. "I have it—I've got it! We will Vamp' them in dead earnest! We'll fix the 'fixers,' ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... January (1807), after an uneventful voyage down the Mississippi, Burr's flotilla reached the mouth of Bayou Pierre, some thirty miles above Natchez. Here at length was the huge armada which was to shatter the Union—nine boats and sixty men! Tension began to give way. People began to recover their sense of humor. Wilkinson was never in greater danger in his life, for he was about to appear ridiculous. It was at Bayou Pierre that Burr going ashore learned that Wilkinson had betrayed him. His first instinct was to flee, for if he should proceed to New Orleans he would fall into Wilkinson's hands and ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... tickled by a pleasant sense of humor, caught through the parlor window a last glimpse of Selma's inspired face bowing gravely, yet wistfully, in acknowledgment of his lifted hat, and he strode away under the spell of a brain picture which he transmuted into words: "There's the sort of case where the ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... and Addresses to Great People," was written in conjunction with J.H. Reynolds, his brother-in-law. This was followed by "Whims and Oddities," in prose and verse; "National Tales," and "The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies," a book full of imaginative verse. Hood's rich sense of humor found scope in his "Comic Annual," appearing through ten successive years, and his collection of "Whimsicalities." Among his minor poems, "The Bridge of Sighs" and "The Song of the Shirt" deserve ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... heels and decided that he was going to enjoy the coming quarter of an hour. Teacher pleased him from the first. She was neither old nor ill-favored, and she was most evidently nervous. The combination appealed both to his love of power and his peculiar sense of humor. Settling deliberately in the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... The Colonel, with little sense of humor and of the fitness of things, related a somber episode of those dark and bitter days, in which he had acted a conspicuous part and always formed a central figure. Nor was the Doctor happier in his selection, when he told the old, ever new and curious story of the waning ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... another sense, I used to take Ned's genius for granted, and think nothing of it. Now I have found out in a single fortnight that we saw all of Sholto that there was to be seen. His reserves of talent existed only in our imagination. He has absolutely no sense of humor; and he is always grumbling. Neither the servants, nor the food, nor the rooms, nor the wine, satisfy him. Imagine how this comes home to me, who, from not having heard grumbling for two years, had forgotten that men ever were guilty of it. I flirted a little, a very little, with the ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... is not funny. To see men like you fetching and carrying for dull kings, who would drop through the gallows or go to planting turnips without your brains—it does not appeal to my sense of humor or to ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... beginning to end. Mr. Logan has animation of style, good spirits, a gift of agreeable and enlivening expression, and a certain charm which may be called companionableness. To travel, with him must have been a particular pleasure. He has sense of humor, a way of getting over rough places, and understanding of human nature. There is not a dull chapter in ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... Perhaps a lively national sense of humor is one of the surest exponents of advanced civilization. Certainly a grim sullenness and fierceness have been the leading traits of the Rebellion for Slavery; while Freedom, like a Brave at the stake, has gone through ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... is more of sense of humor in the apparently phlegmatic passivity of the Russian nitchevo than is suspected by those not acquainted with him. There is also a great timidity in it; for the Russian moujik or christianik (peasant farmer) has scarcely been sure his soul is his own, since time immemorable. ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... sense of humor; a sense of humor sardonic, it is true, cruel, sometimes grewsome; and yet it is a ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... bearings. Most of the men, when they came out, made straight for a saloon—they seemed to place fertilizer and rattlesnake poison in one class. But Jurgis was too ill to think of drinking—he could only make his way to the street and stagger on to a car. He had a sense of humor, and later on, when he became an old hand, he used to think it fun to board a streetcar and see what happened. Now, however, he was too ill to notice it—how the people in the car began to gasp ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... A sense of humor is many a man's salvation, and was M'Adam's one redeeming feature. The laughableness of the thing—this ferocious atomy defying him—struck home to the little man. Delighted at such a display of vice in so tender a ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... table-cloths over them. I shaved and made a neat toilette, and came upon deck just as we lay off that little Dutch fort, which is, I dare say, described in "Murray's Guide-book," and about which I had some rare banter with poor Hicks and Lady Kicklebury, whose sense of humor is certainly not very keen. He had, somehow, joined her ladyship's party, and they were looking at the fort, and its tri-colored flag—that floats familiar in Vandevelde's pictures—and at the lazy shipping, and the tall roofs, and dumpy church towers, and flat ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... were all too easily the best—and the pistol always too ready. We've been cartooned through the world with a fearsome, half-contemptuous slap on the back. Our living has been made out of luxuries. Agriculturally, socially, politically, we have gone wrong, and but for the American sense of humor the State would be in a just, nation-wide contempt. The Ku-Klux, the burning of toll-gates, the Goebel troubles, and the night rider are all links in the same chain of lawlessness, and but for the first the others might not have been. But ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... where the bump called 'sense of humor' ought to be. Too bad! Pretty creature, too. Cause her lots of trouble, in the days ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... chapter we have to announce a group of wholesome recreations which may be entered into by our lovely young people—the man and the woman of tomorrow—whom we one and all wish to keep clean and good and pure; all the while helping them to develop the sense of humor and the element of play. Such recreations are tennis, golf, croquet, roque, boating, sledding, skiing, bicycling, motoring, horseback riding, and a host of others too numerous to mention. Let us not forget that ofttimes pursuits such as garden-making and ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... has a sense of humor," he said to himself. Then he got up hastily, went into the tent, and brought out a letter, which he read carefully from the beginning to the signature scribbled in the upper corner of the first page—"Your own Bess." After that ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... of Boston, a very nice chap and awfully handsome, is there, too. The same morning I went out to photograph the soldiers, and Lord William Frederick, who is their colonel, charged them after me whenever I appeared. It seems he has a sense of humor and liked the idea of making an American run on the Fourth of July from Red-coats. I doubt if the five hundred men who were not on horseback thought it as funny. They chased me till I thought I would die. The Conservative member for the county got in last night and we ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... Whittier, who has the keenest sense of humor, told a friend that in one of these the whole number of pupils was three, average attendance one and a half! He was deeply interested ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... ankle, and the whiteness of Kate's face stamped deeper into Marion's conscience the guilty sense of being to blame for it all. She had started in by teasing Kate over little things, just because Kate was so inquisitive and so lacking in any sense of humor. She could see now that she had antagonized Kate where she should have humored her little whims. It wouldn't have done any harm, Marion reflected penitently, to have confided more in Kate. She used to tell her everything, and Kate had always been so ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... no man lie ever so little for his benefit, said quietly, "I hurt it knocking a man down;" and now for the first time to-day I observed the old amused look steal over his handsome face and set it a-twitching with some sense of humor as he saw the shock which went over the faces of the two elders when we bade ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... Jane. She could not reproach Mrs. Bates for thus indulging her sense of humor in order to recoup herself for the ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... must be his sense of humor," he continued. "The Bishop loves a joke, and Demming is a droll fellow. He is a sort of grim joke himself, you know, a high-toned gentleman who lives by begging. He brings his bag to the hotels every day. Of course you have heard him talk, Miss Louise. His ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... sincere. You interest me immensely. And we might teach you something too—what it means to have a sense of humor. I know enough of socialism to know that no socialist can have it. May I ask ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... friends were not looking, began to toss tiny pebbles over. He was chuckling with glee. First he would throw one, peer over to watch the effect, then dodge back. Stacy Brown's sense of humor seemed impossible to satisfy. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Ozarks • Frank Gee Patchin
... was interluded with comments on men and affairs—the very nature of his task brought into play that sense of humor and that stimulation of fancy to which ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... promise to be good," returned Herb. "But I still think that was a pretty fine joke, only you fellows haven't got enough sense of humor to appreciate it." ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... Richard Mead, Fellow of the College of Physicians and of the Royal Society, and Physician to his Majesty. 9th Edition. London, 1744." Though Defoe, like his admiring critic Mr. Saintsbury, had but small sense of humor, even he must have felt tickled in his grave at this ponderous scientific tribute to his skill in ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... myself even, and never answer to myself. Practically the only question they did not ask was if I ever intended to marry. I was tempted to volunteer that information, but, as neither man had the smallest sense of humor, I decided it was wiser to ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... a sense of humor, John; but you was born without it. But, I tell you, it makes me young again. Why, it makes a woman old to feel she can do just as she pleases and not git talked about; and I feel I ain't got one foot in the grave ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... attempted, the writer usually fancies herself the lover, and describes feminine, not masculine, beauty. College girls show possibly more maturity of reflective power than do their brothers, but they are notably weaker in the sense of humor. Fourth, amongst so much merely graceful verse, there are not wanting touches here and there of genuine poetry. I shall be disappointed if the reader does not discover many such in ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... housekeeper brushed a profusion of knick-knacks. There was no Bible. Anna was the first to notice the omission. This seemed to deprive the young clergyman of his dignity. He looked confused, blushed, and turning to the housekeeper told her to fetch the Bible. This seemed to appeal to the housekeeper's sense of humor. She burst out laughing and said something about looking for a needle in a haystack. Sanderson turned on her furiously, and she left the room, looking sour, and muttering indignantly. She returned, after what seemed an interminable ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... as though he had been an eldest son of the house. If they had expected that the ragged, shabby fellow, who entered the house so stealthily an hour ago, would provide food for their exquisitely delicate sense of humor, they were wofully disappointed. Alban ate his dinner without uttering a ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... perfect, whose disposition is cheerful, who can be enthusiastic under the most discouraging circumstances, to whom discomfort is of no moment, and who possesses at least a sense of the ridiculous, if not a real sense of humor! The perfect traveler furthermore, is one who possesses the virtue of punctuality; one who has not forgotten something at the last minute, and whose bags are all packed and down at the hour for the start. Those who fuss and flurry about being ready, ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... case of Cyril Brown, staff correspondent of the "New York Times" in Berlin, with whom I floundered through the maze of official red tape and military snares that entangled the reporter at the German capital. Brown is an individual with a sense of humor and a Mark Twain penchant for ten-pfennig cigars. He takes his work seriously, but, unlike most war correspondents, not himself. After some interesting freight-car adventures of his own planning, he reached the Grosser Hauptquartier, a small city on the Meuse, where at that time the brain ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... would find the habit not only more efficacious, but much more economical than many of their time-saving machines and tunnels. I offer this suggestion to the great American nation for what it is worth, and I know they will receive it in the spirit in which it is made, for they have the saving sense of humor. ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... reluctantly out into the bitterly cold room, and crept shivering into his clothes. He never quite understood Ford's sense of humor, at such times, but he had learned that it is more comfortable to crawl out of bed than to be kicked out, and that vituperation is a mere waste of time when matched against sheer heartlessness and a superior ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... see that your sense of humor is improving. If convenient, run over to New York the last of the week. I'll give you a card. My client's office is ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... not without fears that the joke might prove too much for a man of his habit. She regarded him thoughtfully, and when he returned at one o'clock to dinner, and encountered instead a violent dust-storm which was raging in the house, she noted with pleasure that his sense of humor was more under control. ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... along the sill that it might have the entire benefit of its brief shining. He put the audience into peals of laughter over the wit of some poor creatures in certain trying situations, showing that a sense of humor is not lacking in "the other half"; and then set them weeping ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... contempt for immorality, and that evening, for a good half hour, as he sat watching the star-sheen on the warm Adriatic, he felt rebuked and depressed. He was at a loss how to answer Babcock's letter. His good nature checked his resenting the young minister's lofty admonitions, and his tough, inelastic sense of humor forbade his taking them seriously. He wrote no answer at all but a day or two afterward he found in a curiosity shop a grotesque little statuette in ivory, of the sixteenth century, which he sent off to Babcock ...
— The American • Henry James |
