"Wits" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thousand quaintnesses of phrase moved him to a gush of glorious mirth. It was not that he did not appreciate the poet, but the unearthly strangeness of it all, the delicate contradiction of laws and behaviours known to freshmen, tickled his keen wits and emotions until they brimmed into puzzled laughter. "Away! Away!" he ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... his horse forward at his best speed. This hope was a vain one, as he soon discovered. The Indians, infuriated by his boldness, mounted their horses and gave chase immediately. Sam had an excellent habit, as we know, of keeping his wits about him, and of preparing carefully for difficulties likely to come. The first thing to be done was to escape, if possible, and so he continued to press his high-spirited colt forward, while he debated the probabilities of being overtaken, and discussed with himself the ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston
... man-about-town, living, to all appearance, by his wits. He was to be seen mostly in the downtown portions of the city, standing for hours in front of some newspaper office, gnawing at his finger-ends, and staring at the passers-by with a hungry look that alarmed the timid and provoked alms from the benevolent. Needless to say that he rejected the latter ...
— A Difficult Problem - 1900 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... mental picture of an American policeman was that conglomerate average one unconsciously imbibes from a distant view of our city forces, and by comparison with foreign,—a heavy-footed, discourteous, half-fanatical, half-irreligious clubber whose wits are as slow as his judgment is honest. Instead of which I found the Z. P. composed almost without exception of good-hearted, well set up young Americans almost all of military training. I had anticipated, from other experiences, a constant ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... implements of woman's graceful work; so that the place had the home-look of a chamber, and spoke that intense love of the out-door life which abounds in our old poets from Chaucer down to the day when minstrels, polished into wits, took to Will's Coffee-house, and the lark came no more to ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that comes to the rescue of all scheming gentry who depend on their wits emerged from perverse hiding. An ingenious idea to solve the nagging problem of the fifty thousand arrived full-blown. Grinning secretively to himself, he walked into the ...
— The House from Nowhere • Arthur G. Stangland
... those Norman puppies call it,—like Regnar Lodbrog, or Frithiof, or Harold Hardraade; and try what man can do for himself in the world with nothing to help him in heaven and earth, with neither saint nor angel, friend or counsellor, to see to him, save his wits and his good sword. So send off the messenger, good mother mine: and I will promise you I will not have him ham-strung on the way, as some of my housecarles would do for me if I but held up my hand; and let the miracle-monger fill ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... to that one thing only to which they were at first adapted, but transfer them to all other of like nature, and accustom young men by many parallel instances to see the communicableness of them, and exercise the promptness of their wits in such applications ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... have to be broken over again; lucky if he don't break your neck in the operation. The little girl will feel strange enough, anyway, coming among people that she has never seen, and I don't intend that she shall be frightened out of her wits into the bargain by your harum-scarum ways. You'd give her the impression that we were only half-civilized. So I'll drive over for her in the family sleigh, and take Alf with me. He will be nearer her own age, and help to break ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... said the friendless girl. "I have nothing to look for but what my own labour can bring me; and while that little pink-faced chit Amelia, with not half my sense, has ten thousand pounds and an establishment secure, poor Rebecca (and my figure is far better than hers) has only herself and her own wits to trust to. Well, let us see if my wits cannot provide me with an honourable maintenance, and if some day or the other I cannot show Miss Amelia my real superiority over her. Not that I dislike poor Amelia: who can dislike such a harmless, good-natured creature?—only it will be a fine ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to his wife will show how much he enjoyed American hospitality, and how far he appreciated American character. "I was received on Saturday," he wrote from New York on the 4th of October, 1872, "as a member of the Lotus Club—the wits and journalists of New York. It was the strangest scene I ever was present at. They were very clever—very witty at each other's expense, very complimentary to me; and, believe me, they worked the publishers who were ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... superstitious would call it a presentiment—that my part in life is not yet altogether played; that, somehow and some day, I shall mix again in great affairs, I shall again spin policies in a busy brain, match my wits against my enemies', brace my muscles to fight a good fight and strike stout blows. Such is the tissue of my thoughts as, with gun or rod in hand, I wander through the woods or by the side of the stream. Whether the fancy will be fulfilled, I cannot tell—still ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... been blessed with a wife, to whose nimbler wits he might have submitted the case, it is probable that he would not have sat for so long a time in his great chair brooding over the contents of the violet-tinted envelope from Boston. But unfortunately the good minister had been forced to lay his helpmate beneath the rough sods of the ...
— The Transfiguration of Miss Philura • Florence Morse Kingsley
... come here, Sybil is talking such splendid stuff, and, moreover, she is frightened out of her wits, and I do believe wishes ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... If he did, it's quite time he was taken over to the church, and buried, for he must be out of his wits." ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... device which, when introduced into Massachusetts several years afterward, also by a Revolutionary father, came to be christened with the satiric name of "gerrymandering." Surely it was a rare bit of luck, in the case of Patrick Henry, that the wits of Virginia did not anticipate the wits of Massachusetts by describing this trick as "henrymandering;" and that he thus narrowly escaped the ugly immortality of having his name handed down from age to age in the coinage of a base word which should ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... Muriel stood unmoving, arrested in every muscle by this accident. But her steady wits—skilled in her profession—did not wholly desert her. She saw that the man was dead. There was peril in that—immense, uncalculated peril, but the prior and immediate peril, the peril of discovery in the very accomplishment of theft, was by ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... heaven curse them!" exclaimed Zachariah's companion when they were in the road. "I could have ripped 'em up, every one of 'em. My wife is in bed with her wits a-wandering, and there a'nt a lump of coal, nor a crumb of bread, nor a farthing in ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... quoth Kriemhild. "Thy fair person was first caressed by Siegfried, my dear husband. Certes, it was not my brother who won thy maidhood. Whither could thy wits have wandered? It was an evil trick. Wherefore didst thou let him love thee, sith he be thy vassal? I hear thee make plaint without good ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... want you, Ryan,' the trooper said, 'And listen to me, if you dare resist, So help me heaven, I'll shoot you dead!' He snapped the steel on his prisoner's wrist, And Ryan, hearing the handcuffs click, Recovered his wits as they turned to go, For fright will sober a man as quick As all the drugs ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... saw her at the station at Brockenhurst—in the New Forest—didn't we Maude," said Mrs. Slifer, "and it must have been—now let me see—" poor Mrs. Slifer collected her wits, a bent forefinger at her lips. "To-day's Thursday and we got to Mullion yesterday—and we stopped at Winchester for a day and night on our way to the New Forest, it was on Saturday last of course. We'd been having a drive about that part of the forest ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... our proper course. Though the sun was of some assistance, yet we might be going too much to the north or too much to the west, and might pass a long way off from the station which we wished to reach. All we could do therefore was to exert our wits, and, should we have got out of the direct path, to try and find it. At length the foliage before us became somewhat thicker, but no sign of water did we see. We were riding on when a loud cry ...
— Adventures in Australia • W.H.G. Kingston
... why I did not write to you during the journey,—our wits are then like wheels. Here I am, for the last two days, in the depths of Brittany, at the hotel du Guenic, —a house as covered with carving as a sandal-wood box. In spite of the affectionate devotion of Calyste's family, I feel ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... rapid study of his countenance. She had never entertained for a moment the supposition that his wits were unsettled, but none the less the constant recurrence of that idea in her mother's talk had subtly influenced her against her husband. It had confirmed her in thinking that his behaviour was inexcusable. And now it seemed to her that anyone might be justified in holding him ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... read Authors in my dayes and knew the length of the poets in my tyme too, which was an hexameter and which a pentameter, but the wits are not as ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... parley further with the auctioneer, I set my wits to work to meet the new emergency. I felt convinced that the cheque would prove to be genuine, and that the fraud, wherever it lay, might not be disclosed in time to aid the authorities. My duty, therefore, ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... was testimony to the headway we are making that we are ceasing to be dangerous, and getting to be picturesque. In these days of strenuous social competition, when mammas are almost at their wits' end for some new device, when it costs incredible sums to make no impression at all—here was offered a new and inexpensive way of being unique. There could be no question that men were getting to ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... are not laboriously hunted out in indexes, and then added by way of afterthought and extraneous interpolation. Hence quotations and references that in a writer even of equal knowledge, but with his wits less promptly about him, would seem mechanical and awkward, find their place in a page of Macaulay as if by a delightful process of complete assimilation ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... about his wits," said Blunt, "but it seems to me that he's gone on in this train ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... day to be a Duchess. This little elf with the merry eyes, dancing feet, and the voice of an angel, was none other than Mrs Fenton's daughter by a former husband, a naval officer, and the prime favourite of all the wits and actors whom her fame drew ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... and I left the komatik at the hospital door, I made out 'Senath dancing in an agitatedly aimless fashion on our platform. She was also waving her arms about. For a moment it crossed my mind that she had lost her modicum of wits, but as she was immediately joined by Tryphena, I gave up the theory as untenable, and continued to hasten up the hill to the Home. Our boiler had sprung, not one but many leaks, and the precious hot water destined for the ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... third suggested that it was only necessary to "talk" the matter in order to bring down the punishment upon their anxious heads. Monroe, who always adopted moderate counsels, thought it would be just as well to frighten the old gentleman out of his wits. Indeed, all, except Wilton, protested against inflicting any serious injury upon him. A ducking, or something of that kind, would do him no harm; but they did not wish to hurt, only ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... his voice and manner, "Come along, then. We'll get a taxi and anyway go out and have a look at the rooms. But I shouldn't be surprised," he added, "if before I've done with you you'll have driven me sheer out of my wits." ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... head hanging low, he wheeled on heel and started for the gap in the hedge. Caleb could not move, nor did Allison, whose wits were quick enough in most things. But Garry Devereau followed and overtook his friend. He did not speak to him; he merely dropped one hand upon his drooping shoulders. And yet the men, had they talked for ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... men on it. It offered not so much a chance of solution as an opportunity to revive the old dramatic story. He could see, when he closed his eyes, the local photographers climbing to that cabin and later sending its pictures broadcast, and divers gentlemen of the press, eager to pit their wits against ten years of time and the ability of a once conspicuous man to hide from the law, packing their suitcases ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... matter with you, morally or mentally. In the Village they leave you in peace, and take it for granted that you're decent until you've blatantly proven yourself the opposite. I'd have lost my nerve or my wits or my balance or something if I hadn't had the Village ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... that it was rather in bad taste for Orville Jones—and he not recognized as one of the wits of the occasion anyway—to say, "In fact, the whole thing about prohibition is this: it isn't the initial cost, ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... condition of the ground. If you take pride in playing all of them in their turn, hard and thoroughly, and making as good a record in them as you can, you will find that it will not only keep you healthy and make you grow, but will help you in your school work as well, by keeping your wits bright and your head clear. There is a fine group of running games, for instance, such as Prisoner's Base, or Dare Base, Hide-and-Seek, or I Spy, and the different kinds of tag,—Fox-and-Geese, Duck-on-Rock,—which are not only capital exercise for leg muscles, lungs, and heart, but fine training ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... to dwell upon my having been possessed of a watch, and to say that I ought to be treated medicinally for having told him a lie about the balloons. I saw misfortune gathering round me in every direction, and felt that I should have need of all my wits and a good many more, if I was to steer myself and Arowhena to a ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... opening out before the eyes of enthusiasts—strange speculations and wondrous possibilities. The march of mind seemed so rapid that the most advanced thinkers of yesterday were already out of date. 'Voltaire est bigot: il est deiste,' exclaimed one of the wits of Paris, and the sentiment expressed the general feeling of untrammelled mental freedom and swift progression which was seething all over the country. It was at this moment that the production of BEAUMARCHAIS' brilliant ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... the others, in the face of our common danger, gathered round me solicitously. All, that is, except the cook; for, although our captors had exhibited a lively curiosity about those of us who were white, they had frightened the poor negro almost out of his wits by feeling of his cheeks and kinky hair and by punching his ribs with their fingers, until now, having been deprived of his beloved cleaver, he cowered like a scared puppy before the gravely interested natives. "O Lo'd," he muttered between chattering teeth, "O Lo'd, why am dis yeh nigger ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... chronicle another adventure of Jerry's, in which he was less fortunate than he had been in the present case. He was a genuine vagabond, and lived by his wits, being too lazy to devote himself to any regular street employment, as boot blacking or selling newspapers. Occasionally he did a little work at each of these, but regular, persistent industry was out of his line. He was a drone by inclination, and ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... wits' end," concluded the old nobleman, shaking his head, and looking sorrowfully at his son. "If you wish it, I will go to Donna Veronica myself. It would be—well—very informal, to say the least. Poor Gianluca! My poor boy! If you would only be satisfied to marry your ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... called the stupid child. Only, this was to be said of him, that dulness of uptake and disappointment of his teachers were the worst things about this poor boy; he was not so ill-behaved as many were who were made more of. When his wits began to waken up after he had come some length he had no little leeway to make up in his learning; but that was the chief drawback to Old Honest's pilgrimage. For one thing, no young man had a cleaner record behind him than our Honest ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... host, who is still busy digesting the President's Message. Obviously, the longer he has it under consideration, the worse he finds it. He has nausea from its bragging, his head aches with its loudness, and its emptiness fills him with wind. We are at our wits' end to prescribe for him, and take our leave with grave commiseration, telling him that we, too, have had it, but that the symptoms it produces in the North are a reddening in the cheek and a spasmodic contraction of the right arm. Now comes great dinner on. A slave announces ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... how we still get divine direction. Bring your own wits to bear on your action, and then do not obstinately stick to what seems right to you, but ask God to negative it if it is wrong, and to confirm you in it if it is right. If we humbly ask Him, 'Am I to go, or not to go?' we shall not be ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... journalist named Gregoire, a sickly, prematurely aged, limping fellow, with alert wits, an Alsatian, who knew Danish and regularly read Bille's Daily Paper, had in many ways taken me up almost from the first day of my sojourn on French soil. This man recommended me, on my expressing a wish to meet with a competent teacher, to take instruction in the language from ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... very cautious all the Friday evening, and made himself as irresistible as he could, using all his clever wits to flatter and cajole Cecilia, and leaving not a trifle unconsidered which could ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... goodness knows," he interrupted. "This last week we have had to exert our wits and bodies in more ways than we ever did before in all our lives. True, I do miss my modeling somewhat." He spoke the last with a soft mellowness in his voice and a wistfulness that made her look ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... hope you will get it, General; but meanwhile you are frightening these honest people out of their wits, and disturbing the tragedy. Good ...
— Vera - or, The Nihilists • Oscar Wilde
... in the issue of this first round in the duel between Pilate and the rulers the sequence of events which brought about the fulfilment of our Lord's prediction of His crucifixion, since that was not a Jewish mode of execution. This encounter of keen wits becomes tragical and awful when we remember Who it was that these men were ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... occasion to inveigh against those which little regard the office of preaching; which are wont to say, "'What need we such preachings every day? Have I not five wits? I know as well what is good or ill, as he doth that preacheth." But I tell thee, my friend, be not too hasty; for when thou hast nothing to follow but thy five wits, thou shalt go to the devil with them. David, that holy prophet, said not ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer
... as I am, I'll give my advice from this spot; my wits are much sharper when I'm sitting [3]. Besides, advice is given with higher sanction from ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... subsequently when practicing his trade in London, in 1724-26, he made the acquaintance of Dr. Mandeville, author of the Fable of the Bees, at a pale-ale house in Cheapside, called "The Horns," where the famous free-thinker presided over a club of wits and boon companions. Though a native of Boston, Franklin is identified with Philadelphia, whither he arrived in 1723, a runaway 'prentice boy, "whose stock of cash consisted of a Dutch dollar and about a shilling in copper." ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... it can take direct routes instead of following the roundabout methods of buses and underground railways. She leaned back, closing her eyes. If this summons to Bob indeed meant that their sailing orders had come, she would need all her wits and her coolness. For the first time she realized what her stepmother's absence from home might mean—a thousandfold less plotting and planning, and no risk of a horrible scene at the end. Cecilia loathed scenes; they had not existed in Aunt Margaret's ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... "As if," says Calvin to Bullinger, "finding himself at his wits' end, he had called in a consultation of ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... leaving the main road two miles beyond Cissbury and bearing to the west) is distinguished as the birthplace, in 1584, of one who was considered by Hugo Grotius to be the glory of the English nation—John Selden. Nowadays, when we choose our glories among other classes of men than jurists and wits, it is more than possible for even cultured persons who are interested in books to go through life very happily without knowledge at all of this great man, the friend of great men and the writer best endowed with common ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... diabolic writer's head as though it had been a tennis-ball. Coleridge, the yet unknown criminal, absolutely perspired and fumed in pleading for the defendant; the company demurred; the orator grew urgent; wits began to smoke the case as an active verb, the advocate to smoke as a neuter verb; the 'fun grew fast and furious,' until at length the delinquent arose, burning tears in his eyes, and confessed to an audience now bursting with stifled laughter (but whom he supposed ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... beard dripping. Many a creature, fox and wolf, and man himself, has through the centuries trembled at that sound. There was a silence during which he collected his wits, momentarily upset. Then again, faint and far away, like the ringing of a distant bell, came the sound. Miles between where he swung himself out of the creek and where he now stood the hound was coming on his trail. Tom turned like a stag, brushed aside the bushes and began for the first ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... comments on the reading. A more complete waste of breath and brilliancy can hardly be imagined. He is not yet, however, married, and marriage is a great chastener. The children all stood up when I came in, and the teacher ceased sharpening his wits on a dulness that could not feel, and with many bows put a chair for me and begged me to sit on it. I did sit on it, and asked that they might go on with the lesson, as I had only come in for a minute ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... makes the Winter's storms repose in peace, And spends her franchise on each living thing: The daisies sprout, the little birds do sing, Herbs, gums, and plants do vaunt of their release. So when that all our English Wits lay dead, (Except the laurel that is ever green) Thou with thy Fruit our barrenness o'erspread, And set thy flowery pleasance to be seen. Such fruits, such flow'rets of morality, Were ne'er ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... companions. Their daily work is exciting, and when they want change they often gamble, because that is the only form of excitement which is keener than the stir and tumult of the theatre. When Devine won three hundred pounds on one Derby he was a lost man. He pitted his wits against the bookmakers'; he took to loafing about with those flash, cunning fellows who appear to spend their mornings in bars and their evenings in music-halls; he lost his ambition, and he began to lead a double ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... work easily and agreeably, that is to say, as they were used to doing it. It was for his interests that every laborer should work as hard as possible, and that while doing so he should keep his wits about him, so as to try not to break the winnowing machines, the horse rakes, the thrashing machines, that he should attend to what he was doing. What the laborer wanted was to work as pleasantly as possible, with rests, and above all, carelessly and heedlessly, without thinking. That summer ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... revealed. For they behold a vast multitude, stained with care, haggard, forlorn, striving, dying, toiling even to their death, that the passing whim of a tyrant may be gratified. Louis commanded; Versailles arose, a palace of rare delight for princes and nobles, for wits and courtly prelates, for grave philosophers and ladies frail as fair. A palace and a hell, a grim monument to regal egoism, created to minister to the inflated vanity of a despot, an eternal warning to mankind that the abuse of absolute power is an accursed thing. Every flower, in those wide gardens ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... umbrella. "The hotel is only four blocks away—you'll find me there to-morrow morning if you call. But mind you tell your wife just what I told you—and no meandering of your own—you hear! She'll strike out some idea with her woman's wits, you bet. Good-night, old man!" He reached out his hand, pressed Blandford's strongly and potentially, and strode down ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... what happened. She thought the fish was alive and ran for her life, and the mouse hustled about helter-skelter trying to find the hole in the wall, for his wits were just scared out of ...
— Sandman's Goodnight Stories • Abbie Phillips Walker
... revolution is almost at hand. [Murmurs of applause.] It would move the laughter of the Tuileries and its ministers, of the Bourse and of its gamblers, of every dainty salon of this silken city of would-be philosophers and wits, if they were told that here within this mouldering baraque, eight men, so little blessed by fortune, so little known to fame as ourselves, met to concert the fall of an empire. The Government would not deem us important enough to notice ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... had clambered once by means of a movable step-ladder, rarely left there by the attendant, in order to rescue my famished cat, shut up there by accident. I recollected the maddened look of the creature, as it flew by me like a flash, frightened out of its wits, Mrs. Austin had said, by the clicking of the machinery of the huge clock, and the chiming of the responsive bell. Both were silent now, and there was room enough for a prisoner's cot in that lonely and dismantled turret as there once had been for a telescope ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... their arrival. After enjoying this rural fare, the same equipage conducts them back again, by all accounts, much faster than they came; which may well be conceived, as the coachman is one of the brightest wits ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... covet my neighbor's wits when I see you!" announced the wanderer. "If I settled myself into a respectable practice I should be obliged to march with the army of doctors who carry a great array of small weapons, and who find out what is the matter with their patients after all sorts of experiment and painstaking analysis, ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... town still talk about the story that Ike Webb wrote for the last edition of the Evening Press that afternoon. It was a great story, as Ike Webb told it—how, still sitting on the floor, old Judge Barbee got his wits back and by word of mouth commissioned the major a special sergeant-at-arms; how the major privily sent men to close and lock and hold the doors so that the Stickney people couldn't get out to bolt, even if they had now been of a mind to do so; how the convention, ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... commented unfavorably upon the alignment; "You were a bit late in coming," they said. Of course our boys had answers, and to these the Tommies had further answers, and this encounter of wits very naturally led to a result which could not possibly have been happier. I don't know what the Tommies expected the Yankees to do. I suppose they were as ignorant of our nature as we of theirs, ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... bet, gentlemen," said Talleyrand, "that you cannot, with all your united wits, guess the grand subject of my conversation with the good Baron Edelsheim." Without waiting for an answer, he continued: "As the Baron is a much older and more experienced traveller than myself, I asked him which, of all the countries he had visited, could boast the prettiest ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... you that hope, and any other you may see fit to aspire to," John Martin said, with a grim smile, "since there isn't the remotest chance of your succeeding in the task you have set yourself. Believe me, it will take both money and wits to get the better of Hamar, Curtis ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... sure he doesn't. He knows Maggie doesn't know what she is saying. But he was dreadfully put out about Berkins; he is frightened out of his wits lest he should hear of it. But for goodness' sake don't mention that I said anything to you about it; I am in trouble enough as it is. Father says he can stand it no longer. I am very much afraid that he will leave Southwick. It depends on what Aunt ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... queen's desire, spoke thus: "Dearest ladies, it chanceth often that, like as fortune whiles hideth very great treasures of worth and virtue under mean conditions, as hath been a little before shown by Pampinea, even so, under the sorriest of human forms are marvellous wits found to have been lodged by nature; and this very plainly appeared in two townsmen of ours, of whom I purpose briefly to entertain you. For that the one, who was called Messer Forese da Rabatta, though little of ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... visitors to that quiet seaside resort. Costers have been arriving at the rate of several hundreds a day, attracted by the prospect of finding the raw materials for the indispensable decoration of their costumes, and the local authorities are at their wits' end to provide adequate accommodation. Amongst the latest arrivals is the great architect, Sir MARTIN CONWAY, who has been consulted with regard to the erection of a number of bungalow skyscrapers, and an urgent message has been despatched to Sir EDWIN LUTYENS at Delhi, begging ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... kindly, that'll do nicely," said the lad; and with that he pulled off his clothes and lay down in the cradle; but, to tell you the truth, it was quite as big as a four-poster. As for the old dame, she had to follow the man who showed her to bed, though she was out of her wits ...
— East of the Sun and West of the Moon - Old Tales from the North • Peter Christen Asbjornsen
... for pieces of the burning canvas, blazing and smoking, were falling in a shower from the part of the bag already consumed, and the fiery particles were fairly raining down on the man. But he still had his wits about him, though his perilous position was enough to make any one lose his mind, and he swung from side to side on the bar, shifting skillfully with his hands and dodging the larger particles of blazing ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton
... Catholics have their own edition of the Pilgrim: they have cut out Giant Pope, but have been too good-natured to insert Giant Protestant in his place. Unheralded, unannounced, though not uncriticised (they accused the Tinker of being a plagiarist, of course), Bunyan outshone the Court wits, the learned, the poets of the Restoration, and ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... of the "dauntless three" (as they have been already named) about whose safety doubts were entertained, has swum the river and is safe. I saw him, when the bridge fell, standing alone, but obviously with all his wits about him, despite the ninety thousand foes before and the broad flood behind. When he turned round he might have seen, I believe, from where he was standing (just where, on other occasions, I have stood myself) the white porch of his home. His lips parted as if in prayer. The ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 24, 1917 • Various
... heard, was Monsieur deceived by his wife's ready reply. No doubt her wits had been sharpened by her intercourse with the clerk, and after that he showed her plenty of other tricks, and in the end he and her husband became ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... then,' I said, cheerfully. 'If we three—Crawfurd, you, and I—can't match wits with one polyglot son of the "Dawn," we might as well let the bottom drop out of the Monroe Doctrine and ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... of gold and perpetrating a murderous assault on Harry Hardy. The news brought Joe Rogers and Ephraim Shine together at their secret meeting-place in the corner paddock—Rogers much disturbed and puzzled, Shine shaken almost out of his wits. ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... Host of the "Tabard," who accompanied the party all the way. He called the pilgrims together and spoke as follows: "My merry masters all, now that it be my turn to give your brains a twist, I will show ye a little piece of craft that will try your wits to their full bent. And yet methinks it is but a simple matter when the doing of it is made clear. Here be a cask of fine London ale, and in my hands do I hold two measures—one of five pints, and the other of three pints. Pray show how it is possible for me to put ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... sitting in his great chair at Will's Coffee-house, Russell Street, Covent Garden, tobacco-pipe in hand; but there is no evidence that Dryden smoked. The snuff-box was his symbol of authority. Budding wits thought themselves highly distinguished if they could obtain the honour of being allowed to take a pinch from it. Of Dr. Aldrich, who was Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, and who wrote a curious "Catch not more difficult to sing than diverting to hear, to be sung by four men smoaking ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... march of Sherman's the newspapers in his front were proclaiming daily that his army was nothing better than a mob of men who were frightened out of their wits and hastening, panic-stricken, to try to get under the cover of our navy for protection against the Southern people. As the army was seen marching on triumphantly, however, the minds of the people became disabused ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... this ward, and I believe a civil word would have won him." If, on the other hand, the candidate endures the raillery and smiles a sickly smile, he really fares no better. After a prolonged battle of wits (in which he takes care not to be too successful) he discovers that the beery gentleman in shirtsleeves has no vote, and that, in the time which he has spent in these fruitless pleasantries, he might have canvassed ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... a shrewd glance at his companion: Butler's face was flushed, his eyes were wandering: his wits seemed dulled: the glasses of whisky were ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... in secluded corners of their gardens or beneath the floors of their cellars, while those who had nothing to conceal busied themselves in hastening through the city by its back ways and byways, knocking up their relatives and acquaintances and frightening them out of their wits by informing them that a hostile army had entered the city, the saints knew how, and coming from the saints knew where, and were encamped in the Grand Plaza. At which intelligence the city awoke to life with amazing rapidity, men turned out into the streets and shouted the news to others, or others ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... it was only by an effort that he recovered and kept his self-control. But keep it he did. You may trust your practised duellist for that when he comes face to face with the necessity to demand satisfaction. And soon the mist of passion clearing from his keen wits, he sought swiftly for a means to fasten the quarrel upon Sir Terence in Sir Terence's own coin of galling mockery. Instantly he found it. Indeed it was not very far to seek. O'Moy's jealousy, which was almost a byword, as we know, had been apparent more ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... Pisistratus is said first to have stamped upon it its present order. The songs of the Rhapsodists, the Scalds, and the Minstrels, which once seemed as fugitive as the breath of him who chaunted them, repose in libraries, and are embalmed in collections. The sportive sallies of eminent wits, and the Table Talk of Luther and Selden, may live as long as there shall be men to read, and ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... at Hazlehurst, for Mrs. Foster made a charming hostess. Foster, who as a rule was indifferent to women's society, livened the party by matching wits with Margaret Keith; and Lieutenant Walters found Mrs. Keith's ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... him as a trainer of tigers. But for my Yunnan coolie I wrote a good letter most willingly in spite of the fact that he was a confirmed opium-smoker; in all the long journey that he made with me I could not see that it weakened his wits or his muscles. I was told that such journeyings were not at all uncommon, the coolies taking work wherever offered, and going on and on as new jobs turned up. With all its shortcomings the Manchu Government did not make ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... wits were wool-gathering. Confound that little adventuress! He had turned away so suddenly, and he knew the owner of the bag. I would find him at once—he was not far away—and I would wash my hands of ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... up till morning," they cried. "We have plenty of money now, there is no need to spare! Drink, and don't drink away your wits." ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... gimlet as any in all Christendom, but the timber is too hard to pierce! Grant ye that "the movement" is waxing more wondrous with each springing sun, who shall say what it might not have been but for the sharp hatcheting of us wits among its boughs? If the doctor have not cured his patient by to-morrow he may at least claim that without the physic the man would have ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... "Fine wits destroy themselves with their own plots in meddling with great affairs of state. They commonly do as the ape, that saw the gunner put bullets in the cannon, and was pleased with it, and he would be doing so too; at last he puts himself into the piece, and so both ape and bullet ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 469. Saturday January 1, 1831 • Various
... yielded to the sway of the bully for many moons began to take notice, and even say things that were not calculated to soothe the lacerated feelings of Jim who was picking himself up slowly, and trying to collect his scattered wits. ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster
... of instinct are members of a commonwealth whose constitution rests on immovable bases, never any need of reconstruction there! They never dream of settling it by vote that eight hours are equal to ten, or that one creature is as clever as another and no more. They do not use their poor wits in regulating God's clocks, nor think they cannot go astray so long as they carry their guide-board about with them,—a delusion we often practise upon ourselves with our high and mighty reason, that admirable finger-post which points every ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... old setter puppy with a reddish brown coat, white lips and white forepaws. 'Stay,' I said to the man in the overcoat, 'what will you sell it for?' 'For two roubles.' Take three!' The man looked at me in amazement, thought the gentleman had gone out of his wits, but I flung the notes in his face, took the pup under my arm and made for my carriage! The coachman quickly had the horses harnessed and that evening I reached home. The puppy sat inside my coat all the way and did ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... yourself too much. If Mr. Bowmore is innocent—and you say you are so certain of it—then I've no doubt of finding a way to prove it if only you'll make your best effort to help me, and keep your wits about you. As far as I can see at present there's nothing against him that we need be afraid of if we tackle it properly, and, of course, the police make arrests of this sort by way of precaution in a case like this, on the merest hint. Come now, you say you were ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... of McFingal (1782), a Hudibrastic satire of the Revolution, The Conquest of Canaan (1785), an epic, and The Vision of Columbus (1787), later remade into The Columbiad, also an epic. These poets gathered about them a less talented company, and all were denominated in common the "Hartford Wits," by which name rather than by their works they are remembered. The national hymn, "Hail Columbia," was composed by Joseph Hopkinson (1770-1842) in 1798. Fiction, in turn, was first cultivated by Charles Brockden ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... have set myself against the lofty histories, although I tire upon their lower slopes and have not yet persisted to their upper and windier ridges. I have, also, a pretty knowledge of the Queen Anne wits and feel that I must have dogged and spied upon them while they were yet alive. But in general, although I am curious in the earlier chapters of learning, I lag in the inner windings. However, for a fortnight I have sat ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... the intelligence of her historians; her want of stability was the price she paid for intellectual versatility and acuteness unrivaled in modern times. '"O ingenia magis acria quam matura," said Petrarch, and with truth, about the wits of the Florentines; for it is their property by nature to have more of liveliness and acumen than of maturity ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... mind. I'm glad you're out of it. I'm sorry you went as you did. I was tired, at my wits' end. Your presence in the private staircase was the last straw. You ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... went insane over an idea. When the year ended, and the world rolled on, none the worse for conflagration or deluge, green with the spring leafage and ripe with the works of man, dismay gave way to hope, mirth took the place of prayer, man regained their flown wits, and those who had so recklessly given away their wealth bethought themselves of taking legal measures for ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... extant, one of which is the brilliant story of the Dinner of Trimalchio. The action takes place for the most part in Southern Italy, and the principal characters are freedmen who have made their fortunes and degenerate freemen who are picking up a precarious living by their wits. The freemen, who are the central figures in the novel, are involved in a great variety of experiences, most of them of a disgraceful sort, and the story is a story of low life. Women play an important role ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... said the Wanderer, "for wine makes wise men foolish and strong men weak, and to-night methinks we shall need our wits ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... the stage of the amusement-hall, where all the convalescents who could walk or who could be rolled thither in chairs were gathered. The lecturer had not arrived. But the lady of the manor seated herself at the speaker's table, singling out Scotch wits in the audience—for whom she was more than a match—while the sculptor and I looked on and grinned and resisted her blandishments to make speeches. When at last the lecturer came he sat down informally on the table with ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... all his wits about him. There was a huge electric sign on the stamp works roof, advertising the company's output. The glare of it could be seen for miles, and it lit up brilliantly the ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... were all the facts in my possession, those you told me, those I already knew, and those I did for myself deduce from both, than I sent for young Roger de Berchelai, whose wits and devotion I could safely trust, gave him all he would need for board and lodging, boats and steeds, that he might accomplish the journey in the shortest possible time, and despatched him to Rome with a written account of the whole ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... wrenched him around. Awkward, fighting in the air-puffed suits, with only a body-weight of some thirty pounds! Coniston stumbled over the rocks. I had still scarce recovered my wits, but I avoided his outflung arms, and, stooping, tried to recover my revolver. It lay nearby. But Coniston followed my scrambling steps and fell upon me. My foot struck the weapon; it slid away and fell down a crag into ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... of Englishmen, not always accompanied, it is to be feared, by political honesty, the expedition of Drake afforded the highest gratification. Swarms of wits, accordingly, who are never wanting in any reign, either to eulogize what the government has sanctioned, or to infuse something of literary immortality into popular enthusiasm, were in requisition on this extraordinary occasion, and, as usual, vied ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... orders, would scarcely have obtained so much as this, and moreover felt no vocation for the ecclesiastical estate. Thus he fronted the world with no better armour than the bachelor's gown and the wits of a younger son's grandson, with which equipment he contrived in some way to make a very tolerable fight of it. At twenty-five Mr. Charles Aubernon saw himself still a man of struggles and of warfare with the world, but out of the seven who stood before ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... lad, himself always wide-awake and on the alert, "a scout to succeed must forever keep his wits about him and observe things. In fact, Elmer says he should take as a motto, besides the words 'Be Prepared' the old sign you ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... Events of 1829 will be interesting to all readers. In short, we can scarcely conceive a work that is likely to be more extensively useful than the present: it concerns the business of all; it is perhaps less domestic than in previous years; but as "great wits have short memories," its ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 405, December 19, 1829 • Various
... me. I hate it. If I hadn't let myself go with the damned thing I'd have had my wits about me and would ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... wit at all. But the pun may contain a very high form of wit, and may please either for its cleverness, or for its amusing quality, or for the combination of the two. Naturally, the really excellent pun has always been in favor with the wits of all countries. Johnson's saying, that a man who would make a pun would pick a pocket, is not to be taken too seriously. It is not recorded that Napier ever "pinched a leather," but he captured Scinde, ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... (copper coins equal in value to 3/4 of a cent) were required for posho. It was every day for four weeks that this system of roguery was carried out. Each day conceived a dozen new schemes; every instant of his time he seemed to be devising how to plunder, until I was fairly at my wits' end how to thwart him. Exposure before a crowd of his fellows brought no blush of shame to his sallow cheeks; he would listen with a mere shrug of the shoulders and that was all, which I might interpret any way it pleased me. A threat to reduce his ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... fast, that she does not (rude as her character is) swear at all, unless the poor interjection I'cod—by his Authority can be made an Oath; and then if you'll peruse him on, here is a whole page and half upon this hint, That the Ladies must have left their Wits and Modesties behind them that came, and lik'd her Words or Actions; and that her Nastiness, and dirty Conversation, is a Midnight Cart, or a Dunghil, instead of an Ornamental Scene. [Footnote: Collier, ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... fabric. The ship was fitted with two Wolseley motors of one hundred and eighty horse-power each, and with a whole series of vertical and horizontal rudders. She was popularly called the Mayfly—a name which, both in and out of Parliament, suggested to bright wits an ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... lass began to cry and take on, and asked him if he meant to befool a poor innocent, ignorant, young thing, and pursue her and drive her out of her very wits. She had put all her hope and trust in him, she said, and ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... a rogue," said the Pensioner. "You remember how he got on top of the house awhile ago and frightened us out of our wits by shouting 'Fire! fire!' down the chimney; how we ran out to see about it; how I asked him 'Where?' and says he, 'Down there in the fireplace, grandpa.' He is a chip of the old block. I used to do just so. But there is one good ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... I am at my wits' end to know what I shall next do for her. She wearies for her Aunt Alice, and will not allow of ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... greeting of him was radiant, her welcome panoplied in words that verged close to inspiration. A woman would have scented warning instantly, deep feeling and the curled and perfumed phrase being suspicious cronies and sure to rouse those lightly slumbering watch-dogs, the feminine wits. But Peter only turned the other cheek. More than once, in the days that followed, he devoutly thanked his patron saint, caution, that his relations with Judith had been governed by characteristic prudence. Kitty admitted ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... she laughed, she displayed her teeth, but at ordinary times her air was taciturn and haughty—especially in the presence of Polina and Maria Philipovna. Yet she seemed to me almost destitute of education, and even of wits, though cunning and suspicious. This, apparently, was not because her life had been lacking in incident. Perhaps, if all were known, the Marquis was not her kinsman at all, nor her mother, her mother; but there was evidence that, in Berlin, ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... gathered himself up, and had time to turn his quid, and smooth down his hair; but again the uproar was renewed, and Donnally was lugged in, scrambling and struggling, between two seamen—"this here Irish chap, your honour, has lost his wits, if so be he ever had any, your honour. He has gone ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... Strafford. That minister in his letters to Laud murmured against the lenity with which Hampden was treated. "In good faith," he wrote, "were such men rightly served, they should be whipped into their right wits." Again he says, "I still wish Mr. Hampden, and others to his likeness, were well whipped into their right senses. And if the rod be so used that it smart not, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... counsel and ghostly wits; and of affection springeth holy desires and ordained[26] feelings. And right as Rachel and Leah were both wives unto Jacob, right so man's soul through light of knowing in the reason, and sweetness of love in the affection, is spoused unto God. By Jacob ...
— The Cell of Self-Knowledge - Seven Early English Mystical Treaties • Various
... last. If Victor once took it into his head that I had forfeited my right to his esteem, what would happen next I dare not think; for he is violent, full of personal pride, and vain above all things. While his wits are not keen enough to enable him to behave discreetly at a delicate crisis when his lowest passions are involved, his character is weak, and he would very likely kill me provisionally even if he died of remorse next day. But there is no fear ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... revolting—justified, of course, by the country's needs in time of war, but none the less revolting. There is nothing of glamour in the Secret Service, nothing of romance, little even of excitement. It is a cold-blooded exercise of wits against wits, of spies against spies. The amateur plays a fish upon a line and gives him a fair run for his life, but the professional fisherman—to whom a salmon is a people's food—nets him coldly and expeditiously as he comes in from ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... expert and making curious affiliations. At her death there was a small inheritance; she had not been provident. The little she left went rocketing, and there was the wind to be raised again: young Corliss had wits and had found that they could supply him—most of the time—with much more than the necessities of life. He had also found that he possessed a strong attraction for various women; already—at twenty-two—his experience was considerable, and, in ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington |
