"Wiseacre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... self-satisfied rogue!) and passes on. He passes on, and thinks that woman was rather pleased with what I said. "That joke I made was rather neat. I do really think Lady Maria looks rather favourably at me, and she's a dev'lish fine woman, begad she is!" O you wiseacre! Such was Jack Morris's observation and case as he walked away leaning on the arm of his noble friend, and thinking the whole Society of the Wells was looking at him. He had made some exquisite remarks about a particular run of cards ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... dissatisfaction, would have men to have a privilege to change their wives, or to repudiate them, deserves to be hissed at rather than confuted; for nothing can tend more to usher in all confusion and beggary throughout the world: therefore that wiseacre deserves," &c. [Footnote: Howell's Familiar Letters Book IV, Letter 7, addressed "To Sir Edward Spencer, knight," (pp 453-457 of edit. 1754.) The letter is dated "Lond. 24 Jan.," no year given; but the dates are worthless, being afterthoughts, when the Letters ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... press, and hearing the old man was very cholerick, I thought fit to raise it up—and only wrote—I referred my discourse then in hand to the discussion and judgment of sober persons, but not unto Thomas Wiseacre, for Senes bis pueri: These very words begot the writing of forty-two sheets against myself and astrology. The next year I quibbled again in three or four lines against him, then he printed twenty-two sheets against ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... Mrs. Wiseacre, that renowned law-giver, who lavishes her advice on all who will receive it, without hope of fee or reward, except that of being thought wiser than anybody else. But, like many more deserving characters, she meets with nothing ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... a word or two in self-defence. A little, a very little, of the average rustic would go a long way in fiction. But I do not profess to deal with the average rustic. I deal, and love to deal, with the rustic exceptional, the village notable and wiseacre. Observant readers will have noticed that the date of one story is 1853, and that the epoch of the other is remoter by a dozen years. In my boyhood, in the Staffordshire Black Country, the rustic people were saturated with the ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... the triumphant exultation of a schoolboy who has successfully looted a rare bird's-nest. "We found it half-way down the cliff, hidden behind a patch of samphire. And it doesn't seem to be any the worse for the adventure. Now, Miss Wiseacre, seeing that we have the frame, perhaps you will fulfil your promise of convincing me, once and for all, that yonder Rembrandt ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... a wiseacre, contracting the brown leather of his brow in suspicious wrinkles, "some ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... wiseacre's comment; but their buzzing ceased, as again the gate swung back to suffer two ladies to peer forth. Ladies, in the truth, for the twain had little in common with the ogling village maids, and whispers ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... Cabinet of Madrid worse conducted at home or more despised abroad; the Spanish Monarch more humbled or Spanish subjects more wretched; the Spanish power more dishonoured or the Spanish resources worse employed. Never, before the treaty with France of 1796, concluded by this wiseacre (which made him a Prince of Peace, and our Government the Sovereign of Spain), was the Spanish monarchy reduced to such a lamentable dilemma as to be forced into an expensive war without a cause, and into a disgraceful peace, not only unprofitable, but absolutely ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... named Fabe, Feap, Thape, or Theab berry, probably by reason of a mistake which arose through an incorrect picture. The Melon, in a well-known book of Tabernaemontanus, was figured to look like a large gooseberry, and was headed, Pfebe. And this name was supposed by some wiseacre to be that of the gooseberry, and thus became attached to the said fruit. Loudon thinks it signifies Feverberry, because of the cooling properties possessed by the gooseberry, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... his meditations; he was eager to know as many more of the Children as he could. He was introduced to the discoverer of a new sun, to the inventor of a new joy, to the hero who was to wipe out injustice from the earth and to the wiseacre who was to conquer Death.... There were such lots and lots of them that it would take days and days to name them all. Our friend was rather tired and was beginning to feel bored, when his attention was suddenly aroused by hearing a ...
— The Blue Bird for Children - The Wonderful Adventures of Tyltyl and Mytyl in Search of Happiness • Georgette Leblanc
... wiseacres laughed. The learned ignorance of the wiseacre always compels him to laugh at the man with an idea that is new. Didn't the wiseacres imprison Galileo? Haven't they persecuted the pioneers in all ages? But Time has a habit of vindicating the pioneers while consigning the scoffing wiseacres ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... differences which will be noted later on. Here I wish to point out that the fourteen ingredients named may be divided into two groups of seven each—the egoistic and the altruistic. The prevailing notion that love is a species of selfishness—a "double selfishness," some wiseacre has called it—is deplorably untrue and shows how little the psychology of love has heretofore ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... true:—"Every day have these slangwhangers made furious attacks on each other and upon their respective adherents, discharging their heavy artillery, consisting of large sheets loaded with scoundrel, villain, liar, rascal, numskull, nincompoop, dunderhead, wiseacre, blockhead, jackass." As single words were not always explosive enough to make a report equal to their feelings, they had recourse to compounds;—"pert and prating popinjay," "hackneyed gutscraper," "maggot of corruption," "toad on a dung-heap," "snivelling sophisticating ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... of us inquired, "What is Epaphroditus doing?" the answer was, "He is consulting about so and so with Felicion."—Had he not sold him as good-for-nothing? Who had in a trice converted him into a wiseacre? ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... plundered millions; and I ask what reparation or atonement they can expect to obtain in hours of future dalliance, after they shall have made a tender of their person to this great deflowerer of the virginity of republics. We have, by our own wise (I will not say wiseacre) measures, so increased the trade and wealth of Montreal and Quebec, that at last we begin to cast a wistful eye at Canada. Having done so much toward its improvement, by the exercise of "our restrictive energies," we begin to think the laborer worthy of his ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various |
