"Witticism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Beni Sukh'r, who plundered him of all his flocks and herds, horses, tents, and even most of his clothing,—then described the march of Ibrahim Pasha's army in their disastrous attempt upon Kerak: also some of the valiant achievements of his kinsman Gublan; and then proceeding to witticism, gave me his etymological origin of the name of Hhesban—namely, that, on the subsiding of the great deluge, the first object that Noah perceived was that castle, perched as it is upon a lofty peak; whereupon he exclaimed, Hhus'n ban—"a castle ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... witticism, and the hours passed quickly on until it was near midnight, when it was suggested that "Old Hundred" be sung, and all joined in the anthem. As the last note died away, the stroke of the clock announced the hour of twelve, and all departed to their houses to sleep, and dream of ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... asked Tom, derisively. "I bet if you had her alone she wouldn't be so hard to manage—would you, Rita?" Tom thought himself a rare wit, and a mistake of that sort makes one very disagreeable. Rita's face burned scarlet at Tom's witticism, and Mrs. Bays promptly ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... right, but, by God, I've got you! And I mean that he's goin' to, that he's got to, make a choice between them and you. So we'll just wait and find out which he loves best, his beau or his dough!" And he laughed harshly at the feeble witticism, as he added, in his guttural undertone: "And I guess we get the worth of our money, whichever way ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... When awake he was a man of extremely complaisant presence, and suffered no lady to go by without a compliment to her complexion, her blond hair, or her beautiful eyes, whichever it might be. He got money for these attentions, and people paid him for any sort of witticism. One day he said to the richest young dandy of the city,—"Pah! you stomach me with your perfumes and fine airs;" for which he received half a florin. His remarks to gentlemen had usually this sarcastic flavor. I am sorry to say that so excellent a madman was often drunk and unable ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... Indeed, the story has more the air of a witticism, invented to express the sullen humor with which many of the young men went away, than the sober statement of a fact. Still, it is not impossible that such a thing may have actually occurred; for the veneration of the old Russian families for their own country, and the ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... centralization applied to intellect, as a high literary court to maintain intellectual unity and protest against innovation. Bonaparte, aware of all this, had thought of re-establishing its ancient privileges; but it had in his eyes one fatal defect—esprit. Kings of France could condone a witticism even against themselves, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... sat himself between the loose stones on the projecting piece of rock, whilst they fired and blasted the rock below so that it shook again, and the stones about him thundered down. Should one expostulate with him on his fool-hardiness, he would answer with the usual witticism here: "I ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... words possessing the same, or nearly the same, sound, though quite different in their derivation and signification, it is almost more difficult to avoid, than to fall on such a verbal play. It has, however, been feared, lest a door might be opened to puerile witticism, if they were not rigorously proscribed. But I cannot, for my part, find that Shakespeare had such an invincible and immoderate passion for this verbal witticism. It is true, he sometimes makes ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... years space be in divident between them." This agreement, we know, was carried out, but whether it led to an exchange of companies, or what effect it had upon the players, we cannot say. Possibly to this period of joint management may be assigned the witticism of Dick Tarleton recorded as having been uttered "at the Curtain" where the Queen's Men were then playing.[100] It may even be that as one result of the affiliation of the two houses the Queen's Men were transferred to ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... largest, with several small contiguous ante-rooms, the entrances to which, if so desired, might be concealed, for uniformity or completeness of appearance, by filling them with sham or dummy book-backs, the titles of which may be made an occasion for witticism or joking allusion ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... laughter was the response to this witticism, and the amused shopkeeper forthwith displayed various samples of cords. Fandor promptly made his ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... was given to grinning those days at her flutterings. On more than one occasion he told her, none too flatteringly, that she made him think of an officious hen with a brood which a high rate of mortality and prowling night-raiders had left bereft of all save two of her hatch. But this particular witticism did not bother her in the least, perhaps because she realized how pat the comparison was. Instead of silencing him she showed him the letter which she constructed some days later—constructed most painstakingly, ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... Boston came naturally in time to be attributed. The famous saying that "Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris," is generally supposed to be his, though Oliver Wendell Holmes told me one day that he himself was really the author of it; but, if a keen witticism was floating about fatherless in the Boston circles it drifted to Tom Appleton as putative parent. His, too, was a kindly nature, and many a rising artist found his way to a larger recognition by Appleton's unobtrusive ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... Flemming continued to turn over the leaves of the sketch-book, with an occasional criticism and witticism. At length he came to a leaf which was written in pencil. People of a lively imagination are generally curious, and always so ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... difficulty at first. They insisted on regarding us as a joke, and used to repeat the absurd witticism of the street boys. I heard Janet say "Methusaleers" one day. She denied it, but I am perfectly certain she did not say "Fusiliers," My wife fussed about dry socks and wanted me to take my umbrella on a route march ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... and emotions. Bonds had become old fogeyish. Marriages went to pieces, the parties in love affairs engaged in a sort of "dance down the middle" and turn other people's partners. The rearrangement of figures sometimes made for great witticism. Occasionally people laughed at themselves as at each other. The admirers of engaging matrons had been known to renew their youth at the coming-out balls of lovely daughters in their early teens, and to end by assuming the flowery chains of a new allegiance. ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... table, this haymaking supper being the annual order of the household. The girl's small delicate head, with its coronal of wild roses, looked strange and incongruous among the rough specimens of manhood about her, and sometimes as the laughter became boisterous, or some bucolic witticism caught her ear, a faint flush coloured the paleness of her cheeks and a little nervous tremor ran through her frame. She drew as closely as she could to the old farmer, who sat rigidly upright and quiet, eating nothing but a morsel of bread with a bowl of hot salted ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... having decided to teach rather than preach, I embarked for Germany to enjoy a year of foreign study. Like Western professors in general (to borrow the witticism of President Eliot) I occupied not so much a chair as a sofa, and felt that I needed enlargement for the ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... a hiatus in the Journals at the point of Monk's reception and speech in the House; but the speech was printed separately, and is given in the Parl. Hist. III. 1575-7. The original authority for Henry Marten's witticism is, I ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... officers and canons. We must, perforce, 'monsieur' them, and salute them a league off as if they were their masters. The secretary even of the wife is very important. The secretary is more important than the mistress nowadays"; and the old officer laughed at his provincial witticism. ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... trotting round, now stopping to scold about some one who, "burn his skin!" had fallen short in his duty; now laughing good-humoredly until her sides shook, at some witticism ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... ventures to express indignation at Loofs' "invectives." As a compliment to Lasson he declares that he could easily conceive of the possibility of an ape ascending the professor's chair and speaking as intelligently as he (Lasson); which remark he probably intended as a witticism. He informs his readers that the criticism of Haeckel by men like Virchow, His, Semper, Haacke, Baer, and Wigand have been examined by professional specialists and proved practically worthless. This statement alone so clearly reveals Schmidt's lack of critical ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... whether of friendly concern or of selfish annoyance, he would have been the last to inquire. That they should have passed him by, in his picturesque situation, without a word, thus cutting him off from the delivery of a witticism which he had concocted for their edification, was certainly a grievance, and as he rose to his feet, unregarded, and followed after, it is perhaps not to be wondered at, if the thought crossed his mind, that it might be worth while to cut ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... Wyatt received this harmless pleasantry convinced me at once that he was mad. At first he stared at me as if he found it impossible to comprehend the witticism of my remark; but as its point seemed slowly to make its way into his brain, his eyes, in the same proportion, seemed protruding from their sockets. Then he grew very red, then hideously pale, then, as if highly amused with what I had insinuated, he began a loud ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... quiet harmonious unfolding of the deeper secrets of life. It was a time of swift and pitiless change, of action rather than reflection, of the turning of many separate currents into one headlong stream. "We must, indeed, all hang together," runs Franklin's well-known witticism in Independence Hall, "or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately." Excellently spoken, Doctor! And that homely, cheery, daring sentence gives the keynote of much of the Revolutionary writing that has ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... Fuller's racy witticism: "S. Paul's is truly the mother church, having one babe in her body, S. Faith, and another in her ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... poor Sydney's handwriting never was good. I remember I used to tell him, when he answered my invitations, that I should have imagined that a fly dipped in ink had crawled over the paper." He laughed for a moment at his former moss-encrusted and ducal witticism, and continued ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... spread from planet to planet. Why, to-morrow, Sir, that commonplace phrase, 'Quite permiscuous! Who'd ha' thought of it?' will be upon the lips of every inhabitant; it will receive brevet-rank as a witticism of the first order, it will enrich the language, and enjoy an immortality, which will endure—ah, till the introduction of a newer catchword! I assure you the most successful book—the wittiest comedy, the divinest poem, have never won for their authors the immediate and sensational ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... centre the sheets that were being read so eagerly, laughed over by the very cadgers at their booths, conned by the women at the stairheads, lying on every counter, where Allan's new verses would be pulled to pieces by brother wits who had known him to do better, or heard a livelier witticism from his lips no farther gone than yestreen, must very soon have come to the notice of the westland lads at the college, and from them to the learned professors, and still more directly to the lively groups that went and came to the Parliament House. ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... pleasant comedy,' by William Haughton, which—from 1597 onwards—held the stage for the unusually prolonged period of forty years. 'Women, because they cannot have their wills when they dye, they will have their wills while they live,' was a current witticism which the barrister Manningham deemed worthy of record in ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... leaning against the pig-pen, with Captain Pharo and Uncle Coffin, of nudging and being nudged by them into frequent excess of laughter over some fondly rambling anecdote or confiding witticism, until Captain Pharo, "taking the sun," decided to put off until some other day going to the Point to get a nail put in ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... day, Mr. Codlin pitched the show in a convenient spot, and the spectators were soon in the very triumph of the scene. The child, sitting down with the old man close behind it, was roused from her meditation by a loud laugh at some witticism of Mr. Short. ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... sure—Prosper—and I hope he will, I'm sure." Mr. Knox chuckled at his mild little witticism and twinkled at me jocosely. "Your letter, Sir John? Yes, to be sure, I received it. What you propose ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... having been repeated by Sigulius, and Cicero answers him, heaping all maledictions upon Sigulius. But he does not deny the words, or their intention—and though he is angry, he is angry half in joke. He had probably allowed himself to use the witticism, meaning little or nothing—choosing the phrase without a moment's thought, because it contained a double meaning. No one can conceive that he meant to imply that young Caesar should be murdered. "Let us reward him, but for the moment let us be rid of him." And then, too, he had in the ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... Convention. There he was in his glory. His tact and good humor were infinite, and he held those hundreds of excitable and explosive men in the hollow of his hand. He would dismiss a dangerous motion with a witticism so apt that the mover himself would join in the laugh, and give it up. His broad face in repose was that of a Quaker, at other times that of a Bacchus. There was a religious streak in this jolly partisan, and he published several poems that breathed the sweetest and loftiest ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... this day week, sir, you returned A theme of mine, from which I learned (Through various comment on the side Which you had scrawled) that I defied The highest rules of criticism For cheap and careless witticism.... 'Are you quite sure that this could be?' And 'Shaw is no authority!' But Eager Ass, with what he's sent, Plays havoc with your best ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... the Court Fool, "you cannot feed capons so." Whereat the Fool, put into a difficult position, through his fear of offending the Prince by not laughing, or angering the King (his employer) by laughing, has to acknowledge the Prince's witticism with a deferential, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 16, 1892 • Various
... than four hundred per cent. However, the oft-quoted prices of the later years—when, for instance, a pair of shoes cost a hundred dollars—signify little, for they rested on an inflated currency. None the less they inspired the witticism that one should take money to market in a basket and bring provisions home in one's pocketbook. Endless stories could be told of speculators hoarding food and watching unmoved the sufferings of a famished people. Said Bishop Pierce, in a sermon before ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... out that notable witticism, that my outside is the best of me, thine the worst of thee; and that, if I set about mending my mind, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... throw it, he thought. Not seeing anyone in the yard, he slipped in, and at once saw near the gate a sink, such as is often put in yards where there are many workmen or cab-drivers; and on the hoarding above had been scribbled in chalk the time-honoured witticism, "Standing here strictly forbidden." This was all the better, for there would be nothing suspicious about his going in. "Here I could throw it all in a ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... cities love to be amused. Those of Paris, being quicker witted than most mortals, care much to have something happening. They detest dullness and are fond of wit. In countries where speech and the press are free, a witticism, or a clever book, is seldom a great event. But under Louis XVI., as has been said, you could never quite tell what would come of a paragraph. A minister of ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... good-humouredly at what he considered his own witticism concerning the little weakness of Miss Tranter, and proceeded to shoulder ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... shrilly at his own witticism and then grew morose again. "The way things is, there ain't no profit ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant
... the puncher smiled at this ancient witticism. But Knowles burst into a hearty laugh, which was caught up and reenforced ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... round of somewhat cloudy witticism, with proposals to Lambert for an exchange on terms rather embarrassing to meet, seeing that even the least preposterous was not sincere. Taterleg winked to assure him that it was all banter, without a bit of harm ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... among women, and it is said that "if he put a brass plate on his door and charged five guineas a time" he might be one of the richest mind-doctors in London. He himself declares that his real work is almost entirely personal. I have heard him speak with some contempt of preaching, quoting the witticism of a friend that "Anglican preaching is much worse than it really need be," or words to that effect. He likes ceremonial and private confidence. He has the instincts of ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... arranged on a clean pocket-handkerchief spread on the grass. Regie carried out his directions as butler with solemn exactitude; and though Mary, who had inherited the paternal sense of humor, thought fit to tweak the handkerchief and upset everything, she found the witticism so coldly received by "Auntie Hester," although she explained that father always did it, that she at once suited herself to her company, and helped ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... gravely, and not until he had made several sales did he venture on a joke or a witticism, although he had a plentiful stock of cheap wit, such as crowds ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... uttering a witticism, but his words were followed by loud guffaws from all sides, even the lawyers ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... co-translators of the Psalms of David into English metre, "mistaking vulgarity for simplicity, they turned into bathos what they found sublime." And Tate and Brady's version, the "Dry Psalter" of "Samuel Oxon's" witticism, was little better. Think of the poetical beauties of the following lines, sung with vigour ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield |
