"Sense of humour" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to his new-found relative the simple story of his adventures at home, no doubt Madam Bernstein, who possessed a great sense of humour and a remarkable knowledge of the world, formed her judgment respecting the persons and events described; and if her opinion was not in all respects favourable, what can be said but that men and women are imperfect, and human life not entirely ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... perhaps authors might be more daring and candid than they are with advantage, and write regular criticisms of their own books in their prefaces, for nobody can be so good a critic of himself as the author—if he has a sense of humour. If he has not, the less he says ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... error to suppose that our law has no sense of humour, because for the most part the judges ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... to tread in that magic circle only by an exquisite refinement of taste, and by a delicate sense of humour, which is the best preservative against all extravagance. Both qualities combine in that tender delineation of character which is, after all, one of his greatest charms. His Puritan blood shows itself in sympathy, not with the stern side of ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... had a grim sense of humour, and enjoyed nothing more than really elaborate foolery. Such as, for example, the celebrated case ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... They guess too much. When the guess is right they win a reputation for wisdom. When it's wrong—as it is nine times out of eight,—they say they knew it all along but thought it wasn't wise to tell the patient and his friends. Doctoring is a grand game,—for the man who has no sense of humour and can play it with a straight face. Now let's forget old Andrew's croakings. Go and get me some change for the circus, Fritzy. Enough for Willem and me to buy all the red-ink lemonade and popcorn and peanuts and candy we can eat. Get me a whole dollar, anyhow. And then, if there's any ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... counsellor. It was she who shielded his sensitive spirit from the annoyances and trials of life, answering (for example) the innumerable letters addressed to him from all parts of the world. By her quiet sense of humour, by her selfless devotion, by ‘her faith as clear as the heights of the June-blue heaven,’ she helped him also to the utmost in the hours of his depression ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... had no sense of humour, at least I can call to mind no signs of this, but her husband had plenty of fun in him, though few would have guessed it from his appearance. I remember my father once sent me down to his workship to get some glue, and I happened to come when old Pontifex was in the act of scolding ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... think that anyone gifted with even a moderate sense of humour would have been restrained by it from issuing a second proclamation on top of the elaborate fooling of the first. Is it possible to imagine any other community or any other Government in the world in which the ruler could seriously set to work to promulgate ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... obvious mental characteristic was a shrewd common sense, which one of his admirers suggests may have been caught by contagion in his Yorkshire living. In truth it was an innate endowment shared by others of his family. In him it was combined with a strong sense of humour which is carefully kept out of his writing, and which, as I used to fancy, must have been at times a rather awkward endowment. The evangelical party has certain weaknesses to which, so far as I know, my uncle contrived to shut his eyes. ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... had a keen sense of humour, and it was well worth hanging round that West Barricade, in order to see him catch an aristo in the very act of trying to flee from ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... and Parables, they deal with first principles under the simplest forms. They convey knowledge of the world, shrewd lessons of virtue and vice, of common sense and sense of humour, of the seemly and the absurd, of pleasure and pain, success and failure, in narratives where the plot moves briskly and dramatically from a beginning to an end. They treat, not of the corner of a nursery ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... library reading and studying the political works of the period.[10] Often Lord Ffraddle was known to remark in his usual witty way, "In sooth, the child will soon have as much knowledge as her father," a sally which was invariably received with shrieks of delight by the infant Sarah, whose brilliant sense of humour was plainly apparent, even ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... himself but an unworthy successor of the first illustrious commentator, it is fair to add that the work could not have been entrusted to a more respectful disciple. Many of our tastes were similar; we had the same desire to seek the truth, the same earnest wish to be exact, perhaps the same sense of humour, and, what is necessary when writing on Marco Polo, certainly the same love for Venice and its history. Not only am I, with the late CHARLES SCHEFER, the founder and the editor of the Recueil de Voyages et de Documents pour servir a ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... the people of St. Bazile quite understood their cur, and that he was just the one for them. He was a strong man, over sixty years of age, and he spoke with a rich southern accent. Under his sacerdotal earnestness there was a sense of humour ever ready to take a little revenge for a life of sacrifice. There are ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... nothing is more certain than the fact that they lack a fine sense of humour and are ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... from which the Quaestor of Anastasius perhaps found it as hard to extract a definite meaning then, as a perplexed translator finds it hard to render it into intelligible English now. It is certainly difficult to acquit Cassiodorus of the charge of a deficient sense of humour, when we find him putting into the mouth of his master, who had so often marched up and down through Thrace, ravaging and burning, these solemn praises of "Tranquillity". And when we read the fulsome flattery which is lavished on Anastasius, the almost obsequious humbleness with which the great ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... which shaded her slate-gray eyes had that upward curl which shows an undying sense of humour, and she had been a merry little girl, with flashes of wit which had enchanted Franklin Merriam before she was snatched away to Europe at eleven, never to see him again. Even at school where she had been "dumped" (as Mrs. Merriam's intimate enemies put it), Angela had kept ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... mentioned the Pope's parti-coloured body-guard just now. In my youth their singular attire impressed me. People tell me they have been re-uniformed: I am sorry. They remain one of my liveliest recollections of the Eternal City. They affected my sense of humour, always alert in me, as you are aware. We English have humour. It is the first thing struck in us when we land on the Continent: our risible faculties are generally active all through the tour. Humour, or the clash of sense with novel examples ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... vista to her, but many of them, with stupid ignorance, mistook her position and traditions. She was offered occupations as cook, maid, or laundress. She had sense of humour enough to laugh at these, and often wished she dared repeat ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... introducing me. I remember our going together one Sunday in August to a huddled house in Chelsea, and my renewed envy of Corvick's possession of a friend who had some light to mingle with his own. He could say things to her that I could never say to him. She had indeed no sense of humour and, with her pretty way of holding her head on one side, was one of those persons whom you want, as the phrase is, to shake, but who have learnt Hungarian by themselves. She conversed perhaps in Hungarian with Corvick; she had remarkably little English for his friend. Corvick afterwards ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... about could ever have happened. She was sure that if anything of the kind had occurred in her immediate circle her mother would have consulted the family clergyman, and her father perhaps even have rung up the police; and her sense of humour compelled her to own that, in the given conditions, these precautions might ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... population. Their accost is curt; their accent and tone of speech blunt and harsh. Something of this may, probably, be attributed to the freedom of mountain air and of isolated hill-side life; something be derived from their rough Norse ancestry. They have a quick perception of character, and a keen sense of humour; the dwellers among them must be prepared for certain uncomplimentary, though most likely true, observations, pithily expressed. Their feelings are not easily roused, but their duration is lasting. Hence there is much close friendship and faithful service; and for a correct exemplification ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... was no fool. He was, in fact, a very wise man, able to understand most men and women better than they understood themselves. With such understanding, naturally enough, went a rare kindness of heart; the addition to these things of a fine sense of humour argued a certain favouritism on the part of a Providence which bestows upon ninety-and-nine mortals but one virtue apiece, and to the hundredth but two. Monseigneur Forest was, I suppose, a man in ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... Audrey felt and looked thoroughly vexed. Everything so far that day had gone wrong, and she had wanted it to be so different. What she could not see was that nothing had gone wrong seriously, and a little good temper and a sense of humour could not only have carried her through triumphantly, but have turned most of the ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... fixed opinions on every subject, and nothing could move her out of her groove. She was a good woman and a kind-hearted one, but the sense of humour was lacking in her. She disliked all that she did not understand, and under the comprehensive term Bohemianism, she embodied all that was irregular ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... twenty-five; his whole countenance indexed a sturdy honesty of thought and a merry disposition. There was considerable strength too about brow and jaw. Leslie Grey was shorter than his companion. A man of dapper, sturdy figure, and with a face good-looking, obstinate, and displaying as much sense of humour as a barbed-wire fence post. He was fully ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... accomplishments, but also of his personal appearance. He delighted to wear Wesley's old clerical clothes and especially his wig, which was much too big for the insignificant clerk's head. John Wesley must have had a sense of humour, though perhaps it might have been exhibited in a more appropriate place. However, he was determined to humble his conceited clerk, and said to him one Sunday morning, "John, I shall preach on a ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... see, Archie, one great advantage of being Irish—and it's not your fault that you're not, man, I don't blame you—one great advantage is that you can speak all languages with equal ease. Now a Scotchman's tongue is like his sense of humour and his brains—a bit hard ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... free, independent life, suffered horribly from want of space and insufficient and bad food. They could not get over the idea of having to appear twice daily for the roll-call, although there was no escape possible. But their sense of humour did ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... has always seemed as if the one chink through which Scrooge's sympathies are got at and his heart-strings are eventually touched, is discernable in his keen sense of humour from the very outset. It is precisely through this that there seems hope, from the very beginning, of his proving to be made of "penetrable stuff." When, after his monstrous "Out upon merry Christmas!" he goes on to say, "If I had my will every idiot who goes about with 'merry Christmas' on his ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... amusing. Besides, the Colonel had one weakness—sometimes he did a little gambling, and when he played he liked to play fairly high. Morris accompanied him once to the "Salles de jeu," and—that was enough. What passed there exactly, could never be got out of him, even by Mary, whose sense of humour was more than satisfied with the little comedies in progress about her, no single point of which did she ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... him," said Gladys Orchil, "because he has a sense of humour and stands straight. I like a sense of humour and—good shoulders. He's an enigma; and I like that, too. . . . I'm going to investigate him every ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... attempted to read; a woman had told him to read French novels, but he found them only a clumsy representation of the life which, for years, he had practically been leading. An accident made him acquainted with Rabelais and Montaigne; and he had relished them, for he had a fine sense of humour. He might have pursued these studies, and perhaps have found in them a slight and occasional distraction, but a clever man he met at a guingette at Passy, whither he had gone to try to dissipate ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... give your sense of humour half a chance you'd be all right. You take yourself too solemnly. You let Palla scare you. That's not the way. The thing to do is to have a jolly time with her, with them all. Accept her as she thinks she is. There's no damage done yet. Time enough ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... finally broke through and established themselves definitively on Chinese soil. The Khitans, a Manchu-Tartar people, springing from Central Manchuria, then captured Peking and made it their capital. The Khitans were a cheerful people, with a peculiar sense of humour and a still greater conviction of the inferiority of women. To show their contempt for them, it is still recorded that they used to slit the back of their wives and drink their blood to give them strength. For two and a half centuries the Khitans, under the style ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... comic opera dates from the year 1867, which saw the production of his 'Contrabandista' and 'Cox and Box,' both written to libretti by Sir Frank Burnand, and both showing not merely admirable musicianship and an original vein of melody, but an irresistible sense of humour and a rare faculty for expressing it in music. 'Thespis' (1871) first brought him into partnership with Mr. Gilbert, a partnership which was further cemented by 'Trial by Jury' (1875). It was 'Trial by Jury' that opened ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... round the walls of this city in this spirit will come suddenly upon an exception which will surprise him like an earthquake. It looks indeed rather like something done by an earthquake; an earthquake with a half-witted sense of humour. Immediately at the side of one of these humble and human gateways there is a great gap in the wall, with a wide road running through it. There is something of unreason in the sight which affects the eye as well as the reason. It recalls some crazy tale about the great works of the ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... shirts to be repaired at Trillip's. I said to him: "I'm 'FRAID they are FRAYED." He said, without a smile: "They're bound to do that, sir." Some people seem to be quite destitute of a sense of humour. ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... exclaimed, and, with that sense of humour which is the saving grace, the dear woman put her hand to her stays. She was feeling for her heart. She had none. Or any appetite, she presently told a servant who came to say ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... me into personal relations with the latter, whose lectures on the Athenian financial system were the finest and the most instructive I have ever heard. What clearness, what depth of learning, what a subtle sense of humour this splendid old man possessed! I attended his lectures in 1863, and how exquisite were the allusions to the by no means satisfactory political conditions of the times with which he spiced them. I also became sincerely attached to Friederichs, and it made me happy to be able to requite ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... both brain and eye were trained to practical observations which proved eminently valuable. His descriptions of the people with whom he came in contact during these years of country life reveal the quiet toleration of the faults and foibles of others, not devoid of the keen sense of humour and justice which characterised his lifelong ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... the principle on which Homer called the AEthiopians blameless—namely, that he had nothing to do with them. But there was a sly twinkle in the corner of Mr. Sticktoright's eye which bespoke a lurking sense of humour, and in the very few words which he ever bestowed on me there generally was a suggestion of dry—very dry—fun. He was, of course, the most uncompromising of Tories, and every form of change, in Church or State or School, was equally ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... the resemblance between Edmund and Iago in one point; and Edmund recalls his greater forerunner also in courage, strength of will, address, egoism, an abnormal want of feeling, and the possession of a sense of humour. But here the likeness ends. Indeed a decided difference is observable even in the humour. Edmund is apparently a good deal younger than Iago. He has a lighter and more superficial nature, and there is a certain genuine gaiety in him which ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... few, and those few, good. Clothes are supposed to please and satisfy women. You have musical talent, a love of books and flowers, a fine appreciation of beauty, a host of friends, and that one supreme gift of the gods—a sense of humour. In addition to all this, you have a comfortable home and an income of your own that enables you to do practically as you please. Could ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... course of time there spread a rumour That he did all this from a sense of humour. So instead of signalling and stoking, They gave themselves up to a course of joking. Whenever they knew that he was riding, They shunted his train on a lonely siding, Or stopped all night in the middle of a tunnel, On the plea that the boiler was a-coming ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... as if she was stroking the turf. It sounds absolutely incredible, but for a moment Charles thought that she was in love with him, and had come out to tempt him. Charles believed in temptresses, who are indeed the strong man's necessary complement, and having no sense of humour, he could not purge himself of the thought by a smile. Margaret, who was engaged to his father, and his sister's wedding-guest, kept on her way without noticing him, and he admitted that he had wronged her on this point. But what was she doing? Why ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... conclusion nothing to be gained by rowing round them. What killed FORSTER, and turned GEORGE TREVELYAN's hair grey, made CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN smile—not an offensive smile, but one of interested amusement. JACKSON's sense of humour not so keen, but his imperturbability even more impregnable. If Irish Member trailed his coat before him, JACKSON would say, "My dear fellow, won't you get cold? Let me help ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 26, 1892 • Various
... had laid aside her furs Magda's impression qualified itself. Lady Arabella was not in the least of the "small bird" type, but rather suggested a hawk endowed with a grim sense of humour—quick and decisive in movement, with eyes that held an incalculable wisdom and laughed a thought cynically because they saw ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... hardly be said that education of the type we have been considering demands great gifts in the teacher: simplicity, enthusiasm, sympathy, and also a vigorous sense of humour, keeping him sharply aware of the narrow line that divides the priggish from the ideal. This education ought to inspire, but it ought not to replace, the fullest and most expert training of the body and mind; for the spirit needs a perfectly balanced machine, ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... and the adventure was told to him he laughed and said that he meant to sell Rough some day. He used to say this occasionally to tease his wife because of the dog's intense devotion to her; and she, being without a sense of humour and half thinking that he meant it, would get up out of her seat and solemnly declare that if he ever sold Rough she would never again go out to the down to see what ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... face, freckles, a large mouth, and a bull-terrier—a conventional British type, I suppose, saved, nevertheless, from conventionality by his affection for his three plain sisters, his determination to see things as they were, and his sense of humour, the last of these something quite his own, and always appearing in unexpected places. The bull-terrier, in spite of the notice on the Library door that no dogs were admitted, advanced breathlessly and dribbling with excitement for Miss Milton's ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... Pepys's 'naivete' was the inoffensive vanity of a man who loved to see himself in the glass. Falstaff had a sense, too, of inadvertent humour, but it was questionable whether Pepys could have had any sense of humour at all, and yet permitted himself to be so delightful. There was probably, however, more involuntary humour in Pepys's Diary than there was in any other book extant. When he told his readers of the landing of Charles II. at Dover, for instance, it would be remembered how Pepys chronicled ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... for a moment, her sense of humour of the situation had departed. Her hand shook as she turned the key in ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... the King and the King looked at Nell; then both looked at the landlord. The lovers' sense of humour was boundless. That was their first tie; ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... is a little too much for my sense of humour, and although sympathising very tenderly with poor Mrs. B., I cannot help bursting into a little roar of laughter. Laughter and fear are deadly enemies, and I can see at once that Mrs. B. is all the ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... sitting down suddenly on the floor. (But the Prince didn't think this was at all funny, so I expect I must have been right all the time when I have only PRETENDED to laugh. I used to think that perhaps I hadn't a sense of humour.) And then the Prince kissed me again, and my Fairy Godmother came in and kissed us both. Of course we do owe it all to her really, and ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... against the wall, as usual; while the frozen witticisms of past generations were thawed out, and came bubbling with laughter from their lips. Externally, the jollity of aged men has much in common with the mirth of children; the intellect, any more than a deep sense of humour, has little to do with the matter; it is, with both, a gleam that plays upon the surface, and imparts a sunny and cheery aspect alike to the green branch and grey, mouldering trunk. In one case, however, it is real sunshine; in the ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... foolish, Mr. Quest," the Professor advised. "Don't let me lose confidence in you. Craig would not hurt a fly, and as to abducting your assistant—if my sense of humour were developed upon normal lines—well, I should laugh! What you have really done, you, and that young lady assistant of yours, is to terrify the poor fellow into such a state of nerves that he scarcely knows what he is doing. As a matter of fact, how do you know that that ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... rather of Chinese, who are also a cold-blooded race: slow, watchful, inquisitive, acquisitive, and full of the sense of humour. There are fishes in the Great Aquarium whose faces twinkle ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... fortunate," said Mrs. Orgreave simply. She had almost no sense of humour. "I'm sure she's a real good girl, ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... no mean quality, played on the flute from time to time to prevent the hours from being wearisome. For three days he sat there, until there came no more sounds from that room; then he pursued his ordinary affairs, but sought no other wife—a grim little man with a certain sense of humour. ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... smiled grimly in response. The notion of referring to Theodore Racksole as a 'New Yorker' appealed to her sense of humour, a sense in which she was not entirely deficient. She knew, of course, and she knew that Jules knew, that this Theodore Racksole must be the unique and only Theodore Racksole, the third richest man in the United States, and therefore ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... shaky on the TH and the W, and it was first hand and not mentally translated. His pronunciation of Far West, two words that were constantly on his lips, was an endless entertainment to Florence, and out of a sense of humour she forebore to correct him. It was typical, indeed, of his ignorance of everything American. Europe was at his fingers' ends; there was not a country in it he was not familiar with; intimately familiar, knowing much of what went on behind the scenes, and the lives and characters of the men, ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... trace this impression to its origin. He had not exactly a double chin, but rather a chin and a half, and the rest of him followed this moderate example. His grey hair retired in a pronounced estuary over each temple, leaving a beautifully brushed peninsula between. He had no sense of humour, but hid this deformity skillfully. Hardly anybody knew that he was a poet, except presumably his dog. He often talked to his dog; he told it every speakable thought that he had. This was his only bad habit. Occasionally his dog was heard to reply in a small ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... of Humour in Philosophers can always do more Philosophy. Assisted by a sense of humour: Witness the droll experiment Of this same scientific gent. For he, his frugal breakfast finishing, (The eggs and bacon fast diminishing) Noted how o'er his marmalade A Wasp was buzzing undismayed. General Reflection: We all are apt to be inhosp- Attitude of Man towards ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 1, 1890 • Various
... wouldn't like to,' and her sense of humour being now tickled by the conversation, she added slyly: 'but you were counting up the ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... the public who ought to have the genius; they should have the lively appreciation, the keen sense of humour, the afflatus, and all that; and then those who cater for them would not need to trouble about those things—they would only have to cater, and leave the public to perceive, by means of their genius, the ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... sit, and then Mr. Rucastle, walking up and down on the other side of the room, began to tell me a series of the funniest stories that I have ever listened to. You cannot imagine how comical he was, and I laughed until I was quite weary. Mrs. Rucastle, however, who has evidently no sense of humour, never so much as smiled, but sat with her hands in her lap, and a sad, anxious look upon her face. After an hour or so, Mr. Rucastle suddenly remarked that it was time to commence the duties of the day, and that I might ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... before he got aboard his destroyer. Gave an interview to Buchanan, A.M.S. After lunch, Braithwaite, Val, Wells, Deedes, Freddie and myself went off to Suvla aboard H.M.S. Scourge (Lieutenant-Commander Tupper). On landing, Braithwaite branched off to see the G.S. Byng has a keen sense of humour; is energetic and by his looks and manner attracts all ranks. No one could wish a better corps commander and I have never in all my experience known anyone take greater and more minute trouble with his field days and manoeuvres than he did ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... of shoulder, but evidently well knit and athletic. Becoming by some means aware of her attention, he put away his handkerchief and turned towards her. She saw his eyes gleam under black, mobile brows that seemed to denote a considerable sense of humour. The whole of his face held an astonishing amount of vitality, but the lips were straight and rather hard, so clean-cut as to be almost ascetic. He looked to her like a man who would suffer to the utmost, ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... and marvellously pure from sentimentalism, which was (and she knew it) the worst vice of the Victorian age. Mr. Leslie Stephen said that, "Miss Bronte's sense of humour was but feeble." It was robust enough when it played with sentimentalists. But as for love, for passion, she sees it with a tragic lucidity that is almost a premonition. And her attitude was by no means that of the foredoomed ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... the failure of world conquest would have been extremely comical to me, had I not seen ample evidence of the colossal effect of such a faith working in the credulous child-mind of a people so utterly devoid of any saving sense of humour. ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... a frock coat, and even a tall hat of cylindrical shape. Such a mingling of shrewd business qualities and March madness as met in LAURENCE OLIPHANT is surely a new thing. A man of gentle birth, of high culture, of wide experience, of supreme ability, and, strangest of all, with a keen sense of humour—that such an one should voluntarily step down from high social position at the bidding of a vulgar, selfish, self-seeking, and, according to some hints dropped here and there, grossly immoral man, should, at beck of his fat forefinger, go forth ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 20, 1891 • Various
... they entered the house together. They found Helen and Nora, with three or four young men from the Depot, having tea in the drawing-room. Lessingham slipped very easily into the pleasant little circle. If a trifle subdued, his quiet manners, and a sense of humour which every now and then displayed itself, ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a Frontispiece. Fourth Edition. 'Mr. Phillpotts knows exactly what school-boys do, and can lay bare their inmost thoughts; likewise he shows an all-pervading sense of humour.'—Academy. ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... his unique force of character, to his fanatical earnestness, to his relentless tenacity of purpose. In particular, it owes a debt which it can never liquidate to what was at once the cause and the result of his over-seriousness,—to his lack of any sense of humour,—a negative quality which allowed his practical logic to run its course without let or hindrance, and prevented the "brakes" of common-sense from acting when he found himself, in his very zeal for the Law, descending an ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... expected to see the forked lightning of scorn dart from those immense dark eyes of Storm's: but instead they crinkled up in an engaging smile. One glance the man gave Pat and me, against his own will I think: but it was a spontaneous combustion of his sense of humour. It struck a spark to ours, and I dared to smile also. Pat didn't quite dare, but looked relieved, though still evidently scared about what might come next, ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... an I catch him, I'll bang his behind with this paving-stone!" And he landed the stone exactly where he said he would, without Calendrino having any right to complain, because he was invisible. This same Calendrino was without any sense of humour, and Buffalmacco played on his simplicity so far as to make him actually believe he was with child, and got a brace of fat capons out of him as ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... fastidious in the matter of fiction, the natural result of a sense of humour combined with an instinctive appreciation of style. There had been a time of course, when, released from the strict censorship of a boarding-school under which all novels on the very lengthy index expurgatorius had to be read ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... Strange to say, he made no friends. Perhaps he was just a thought too perfect for a district like the Five Towns; a sin or so might have endeared him to the entire neighbourhood. Perhaps his loneliness was due to his imperfect sense of humour, or perhaps to the dull, unsmiling heaviness of his somewhat ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... "bummel" by himself. In the evening, as we sat listening to the band at the Belvedere, Harris said, a propos of nothing in particular, "These Germans have no sense of humour." ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... is undeniably great, it has not equipped them, one will not merely say with moral or religious ideas, but with an ordinary knowledge of human nature. It has not equipped them with any conception apparently of political possibilities; and it has left them without any of that saving salt, a sense of humour. Like Huxley, they have started out to give opinions without first having made themselves familiar with the subject on which they ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... live among strangers in London! When she first became known to us on her coming to Exeter, in compliance with her aunt's suggestion, she was timid, silent, and altogether without self-reliance. Even they who knew her best had never guessed that she possessed a keen sense of humour, a nice appreciation of character, and a quiet reticent wit of her own, under that staid and frightened demeanour. Since her engagement with Brooke Burgess it seemed to those who watched her that her character had become changed, as does that of a flower when it opens itself in ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... there lay the possibility and certainty of very frank earthly laughter. If, as Ralph thought, not for the first time in this rough island story, this girl were an angel, surely she was one to whom her Maker had given that rarest gift given to woman— a well-balanced sense of humour. ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... of deciding which friend it should be kept her occupied even when tea was over, and she was undergoing the humiliation of putting herself to bed in the chilly little cubicle. Should it be Margaret? No; for Margaret, with all her sweetness, had little sense of humour, and though Pixie could not reason out the matter for herself, she yet realised instinctively that she would be uncomfortable and out of place in the haphazard atmosphere of the Irish household. Should ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... almost are one, you see. It's not British to show any feeling, but really I—love him. And the devil comes along, and, of all women in the world, singles out Jack's wife, and fills my heart with her. That's the devil's sense of humour. ...
— Five Little Plays • Alfred Sutro
... at a reception one afternoon. She had a purple dress with lace, and a Queen Victoria sort of bonnet with strings, and little white feathers sticking up in the front; and she had a—" Pixie smiled into space with reminiscent enjoyment—"beautiful sense of humour!" ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... Feast," to denote an imaginary banquet, is drawn from one of the tales ("The Barber's Tale of his Sixth Brother") in the Arabian Nights, in which a series of empty dishes is served up to a hungry man to test his sense of humour by one of the Barmecides (see edition by L. C. Smithers, Lond., ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... persuasion until her father fell into a passion of anger. And the sight of him fuming in a short jacket barely covering his loins, and a pair of breeches so tight the seams would scarce hold together, so tickled her sense of humour that she fell into a long fit of laughter, and this ending her sulks she went upstairs with a good grace and returned in her hated petticoat, carrying her fine dress in a bundle. But I never yet knew the time when this sly baggage would not please herself for all her ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... the merry laugh of girlhood; she was too young to be conscious of any impropriety in the situation, and indeed there was none. But her sense of humour told her that it was funny, and she became possessed with a not unnatural curiosity to see the ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... outspoken!' she thought. 'I always say just what comes into my head. With some people it would not matter—with Michael, for example. He never misunderstands one's meaning. But poor dear Gage is so literal. Clever as she is, she has no sense of humour.' ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... alas! the noise was even more deafening than before. I was still in a state of nerves over the events of the morning. There had been a most distressing lack of poise on my part, and I couldn't help feeling after it was all over that my sense of humour had received a shock from which it was not likely to recover in a long time. There was but little consolation in the reflection that my irritating visitors deserved something in the shape of a rebuff; I could not separate myself from the conviction that my integrity as a gentleman had suffered ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... refreshments proffered them. "For seven hours they were kept within Guildhall, where they seem to have been considered as much removed from the necessities of the flesh as Gog and Magog above their heads." At length the compassion, or perhaps the sense of humour, of certain of the diners was moved by the forlorn situation of the knights in armour, and bumpers of wine were tendered them. The man in steel discreetly declined this hospitable offer, alleging that after so long a fast he feared the wine would affect him injuriously. It was ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... has a bright sense of humour much appreciated by his fellow-countrymen from Ireland. His latest notion is that journals "of a comic and serio-comic nature" should be deprived of their stocks of paper in order that catalogues and circulars should continue to appear. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various
... the more I appreciate my sense of humour. I seldom play a match when I do not get a smile out of some remark from the gallery, while I know that the gallery always enjoys at least one hearty laugh at my expense. I do not begrudge it them, for I know how very peculiar tennis ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... Pain has a decided sense of humour. The best things in the volume are the classical burlesques grouped under the title of 'The Nine Muses minus One.' They are really ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter
... these disturbing levities, Mr. Smith began to set them down under the title of "Trivia," and now at length we are enriched by the spectacle of this iridescent and puckish little book, which presents as it were a series of lantern slides of an ironical, whimsical, and merciless sense of humour. It is a motion picture of a middle-aged, phosphorescent mind that has long tried to preserve a decent melancholy but at last capitulates in the most delicately intellectual brainslide of ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... green reception-room at the end of the hall. She wore black velvet and a few diamonds, and looked impressively null. Tiny and Ila arrived almost immediately. They looked, the one an angel with a sense of humour, the other Circean with an eye to the conventions, both as smart as Paris could make them. It was nearly ten o'clock, and there was a rush ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... himself thinking that Freda had the most charming, glad little laugh of any girl he knew. He suddenly remembered that he had never heard the Ideal laugh. She smiled placidly—he had raved to Freda about that smile—but she did not laugh. Roger began to wonder what an ideal without any sense of humour would be like ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... my friend!" he exclaimed, without any trace of disturbance in his voice. "And what a sense of humour! Strange that a trifling circumstance like this should affect it. Meekins, burn some more of the powder. The atmosphere down here may be salubrious, but I am unaccustomed ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and kind words tried to soothe the feelings of the wounded lover. It was only when her vivacity and sense of humour got the better of this sprightly creature (as they would do under most circumstances of life indeed) that she would break out with her satire, but she could soon put on a demure face. "Dearest love," she said, "do you suppose I feel nothing?" and ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... their shoulders through the streets. It was a most amusing incident. I could not help thinking that the crowd were the descendants of the men who had burnt Savonarola at the stake. My friend, whose sense of humour had failed him, shouted over to me, "I hate being made a fool of like this." I told him not to be rude as we were helping on the cause of the Allies. Finally, overcome by our struggles, the men let us down, and we were pushed along in the ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... teased Dr. John about Madame's devotion to him. How he laughed! What fun shone in his eyes as he recalled some of her fine speeches, and repeated them, imitating her voluble delivery! He had an acute sense of humour, and was the finest company in the world—when ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte |
