"Punster" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... contemporaneous dramatic writers—Morton, Dibdin, Reynolds, Moncrieff, &c. Mr. J.H. Reynolds wrote, under the name of Henry Herbert, notices of contemporaneous events, such as a scene at the Cockpit, the trial of Thurtell (a very powerful article), &c. That delightful punster and humorist, with pen or pencil, Tom Hood, sent to the London his first poems of any ambition or length—"Lycus the Centaur," and "The Two Peacocks of Bedfont." Keats, "that sleepless soul that perished in its pride," and Montgomery, both contributed ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Lord Carteret, from the charge of favouring none but Tories, High-Churchmen, and Jacobites.] So that here I need only tell you, that this ill-starred, good-natur'd, improvident man returned to Dublin, unhinged from all favour at court, and even banished from the Castle: But still he remained a punster, a quibbler, a fiddler, and a wit. Not a day passed without a rebus, an anagram, or a madrigal. His pen and his fiddle-stick were in continual motion; and yet to little or no purpose, if we may give credit to the following ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... present proprietors). Well, the box being lost, and asked for, and CUFF (remember that name) being the name of the landlord, Hood opened his silent jaws and said * * * Shall I tell you what he said? It was not a very good pun, which the great punster then made. Choose your favorite pun out of "Whims and Oddities," and fancy that was the joke which he contributed to the ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... your miscellany. Dennis, the critic, has said, and I know not how many others after him, that a punster is no better than a pickpocket, and with truth, for how dare any quibbling varlet attempt to rob his neighbour of any portion of that delightful inflexibility, the very taciturnity of which bespeaks what wisdom may lie buried ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... comfortably this night; there were too many of us in the bed, and all of us bits of philosophers. I am a bit of a philosopher myself, and surely fleas cannot be considered more than very little bits. All French fleas are philosophers, it having been fairly established by a French punster that they belong to the ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... this mind. He was a great opposer of Thomas Aquinas's doctrine; and, for being a very acute logician, was called Doctor Subtilis; [Discriminating (or, literally, Slender) Teacher] which was the reason also, that an old punster always called ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... groans filled the cavern, and as several of the boys arose in attitudes of vengeance, the punster made a dive for the exit and disappeared beyond the blanket portiere. None of the protestors followed. They did not feel like engaging in any vigorous sport following the ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... son of a London bookseller, was born in that city. He undertook, after leaving school, to learn the art of an engraver, but soon gave up the business, and turned his attention to literature. His lighter pieces, exhibiting his skill as a wit and punster, soon became well known and popular. In 1821 he became subeditor of the "London Magazine," and formed the acquaintance of the literary men of the metropolis. The last years of his life were clouded by poverty and ill health. Some of ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... friends the common plea that I have heard for homophones is their usefulness to the punster. 'Why! would you have no puns?' I will not answer that question; but there is no fear of our being insufficiently catered for; whatever accidental benefit be derivable from homophones, we shall always command it fully and in excess; look again at the portentous ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... 1660, Cardinal Mazarin invited one Joseph Dominique Biancolelli, to come to Paris to give entertainments. Shortly after his arrival Biancolelli gave quite a new reading to the character of Arlechino, as he made him not only a wit and punster, but also a bit of a philosopher. Biancolelli's improvements did not end here, as he turned his attention to the dress of Arlechino, which was now made of finer and better quality, whilst the parti-coloured patches were made more artistic and attractive. On the death of Lolatelli, ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... reckoned less clever than Alice, excites a great deal more sympathy, quietly accepting a position of admiring secondariness, and yielding occasional good things in wit or poetry: she was famed among her friends as a punster and parodist, and once answered at a dinner to a question what wine they used, "Oh, we drink Heidsick, but we keep mum." An irresistibly taking and womanly remark of hers, disposing in its own way of whole schemes of Calvinistic theology, was her reply to the argument for endless punishment: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... within the last twenty years, what a discouragement it would have been for all the Royal Academicians, who would thereby have lost Hart! Dear good old SOLOMON! He was a poor HART that often rejoiced, and if he was not the best painter in the world, he was just about the worst punster. We hope to hear that our Royal Academicians, with their large-hearted and golden-tongued President at their head, will send a friendly expostulation to their Russian Brothers in oil, and obtain the abrogation of this ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... when he was a briefless barrister, Thurlow was a frequent visitor here, attracted, it is said, as were so many more of the legal fraternity, by the dual merits of the punch and the physical charms of the landlady's daughter. Miss Humphries was, as a punster put it, "always admired at the bar by the bar." The future Lord Chancellor had no cause to regret his patronage of Nando's. So convincingly did he one day prove his skill in argument that a stranger present bestirred himself, and successfully, to have the young advocate retained ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... Professor was a sort of aggregate of Dr. Johnson, Bentley, Grotius, Mezzofanti, and a slight touch of, say Conington, to bring him well up to date. But so much of the first that whenever the raconteur repeated one of the Professor's moderately bon-mots, he always put "sir" in—as, for instance, "A punster, sir, is a man who demoralises two meanings in one word;" or, "Should you call that fast life, sir? I should call it slow death." The raconteur was rather given to making use of him, and assigning to him mots which were not at all bons, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... the "Uncle and Nephew Club," of which I had the honor to be a prominent member. Almost every man belonging to it was a wit, a punster or a humorist of some kind; and I will venture to say, that had some industrious individual taken the pains to preserve and publish one-half the good things that were said at our meetings, a large volume might be ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson |
