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More "Repartee" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was ordered. You know how the Bohemian feast of reason keeps up with the courses. Humor with the oysters; wit with the soup; repartee with the entree; brag with the roast; knocks for Whistler and Kipling with the salad; songs with the coffee; the ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... ungracious beneath the charm of her manner, even had he been naturally so, and he soon found himself disarmed of all his disagreeable reflections and basking with delight in the sunshine of her presence, her bright wit and repartee, and her sweet, rippling laugh. By the time supper was over it would have been difficult to tell who was the more ardent admirer of the fascinating widow—the ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... good housekeeper. She's an ideal mother. She's the most affectionate creature under the sun. Her devotion to her mother and father was beyond words. Her love for her—daughter she's hers, not mine—is perfect. She hasn't any of the graces of the smart society woman. She isn't quick at repartee. She can't join in any rapid-fire conversation. She thinks rather slowly, I imagine. Some of her big thoughts never come to the surface at all, but you can feel that she is thinking and that ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... his opponent to pay his flippant gibe the honor of repartee, he was disappointed. To be sure, Hobart, admirably erect in his slender grace, was moved to a slight, disdainful smile, but it evidenced scarcely the appreciation that anybody less impervious to criticism than Ridgway would ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... fallacious illustrations, etc. It gives to one a sort of mental illumination, quickening the perceptive faculties, and brightening up the reasoning and judging powers, and finally, giving a sharp edge to the powers of repartee and answer. ...
— The Human Aura - Astral Colors and Thought Forms • Swami Panchadasi
... much to her taste; quiet peasant women, in black cloaks and hoods, driving bullock-carts or carts drawn by dogs, six or eight of these inextricably harnessed together and panting for dear life; blue-bloused men in French caps, but bigger and blonder than Frenchmen, and less given to epigrammatic repartee, with mild, blue, beery eyes, a fleur de tete, and a look of health and stolid amiability; sturdy green-coated little soldiers with cock-feathered brigand hats of shiny black, the brim turned up over the right eye and ear that they might the more conveniently ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... please shut the door after you?" interrupted Lancelot, biting his lip with irritation. And Mrs. Leadbatter, who was standing in the aperture with no immediate intention of departing, could find no repartee beyond slamming the door as hard ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... silence." We all know that there are talkers so distinguished that you must not ask both of them to dinner on the same day lest they silence each other, while we know others who bring to us just an average amount of tact, facility of expression, geniality, and a pleasant gift at a quotation, a bit of repartee; such a person we call a ready small- talker, a "most agreeable person," one who frightens nobody and who has a great popularity. Such a one has plenty of small change, very useful, and more easy to handle ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... Scintillating repartee, covert side-thrusts, shrewd observations, subtle innuendoes, are all used to assist in the revelation of this egotism. One fair April morning, after his return to England from a three years' absence, Sir Willoughby met Laetitia Dale, an early ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... answered the malicious damsel, unable either to suppress the repartee, or the arch ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... sketched by Plutarch[29] with considerable minuteness, and his representations have been permitted, until of late years, to pass unchallenged. He has described them as at once passionate and placable, easily moved to anger, and as easily appeased; fond of pleasantry and repartee, and heartily enjoying a laugh; pleased to hear themselves praised, and yet not annoyed by criticism and censure; naturally generous towards those who were poor and in humble circumstances, and humane even towards their enemies; ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... young Prince: modest, honest, with abundance of sense and spirit; kind too and good, hot temper well kept, temper hot not harsh; quietly holds his own in all circles; good discourse in him, too, and sharp repartee if requisite,—though he stammered somewhat in speaking. Submissive Wilhelmina feels that one might easily have had a worse husband. What glories for you in England! the Queen used to say to her in old times: "He is a Prince, that Frederick, who has a good heart, and ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... art of cross-examining a witness, Curran was pre-eminent. A clever repartee is recorded of him in a horse cause. He had asked the jockey's servant his master's age, and the man had retorted, with ready gibe, "I never put my hand into his mouth to try!" The laugh was against the lawyer till he made the bitter reply,—"You did perfectly right, friend; for ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... clever man, but odd) complained in riding, to our friend Scrope Davies, that he had a 'stitch' in his side. 'I don't wonder at it,' said Scrope, 'for you ride like a tailor.' Whoever has seen B. on horseback, with his very tall figure on a small nag, would not deny the justice of the repartee."] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... volatility, prattle, and fondness for bons mots they delight in a species of drawling, melancholy, church music. Their most favourite dramatic pieces are almost without incident, and the dialogue of their comedies consists of moral insipid apophthegms, entirely destitute of wit or repartee." While amusing himself with the sights of Paris, Smollett drew up that caustic delineation of the French character which as a study in calculated depreciation has rarely been surpassed. He conceives the Frenchman entirely as a petit-maitre, and his view, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... in common. Manly in bearing, persistent of purpose, and prompt in decision, they were also richly dowered with social gifts. Like Pitt, Mornington had classical attainments and literary gifts of no mean order; and his high spirits and powers of repartee must have brought new energy to the jaded statesman. Entering Parliament as member for Windsor, he found his duties far from congenial. On some occasions nervousness marred the effect of his speeches; and his constituents involved ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... more of palaces than the likes of me. Thee manners be so fine," said Jan; and the repartee drew a roar of laughter, in which the bandy-legged boy joined. "But I've lived in a windmill," Jan added, "and that be more ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... close press of friends she did not notice the strangers; time was too short and they were too many. A lord of her acquaintance, who still hoped to make her his lady, took her into dinner, and called upon all her powers of wit and repartee to meet his conversational tactics during the meal. It was an exhilarating encounter, and of sufficient interest to keep her "eyes in the boat". Moreover, the table was immense, and the chief of the strangers sitting on her side of it, a long ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... girl could catch you in her grip and sweep you along with her. Your mad career generally ended in a crowd and a free fight of confetti. There was one fair masquer, however, to whom Aristide became peculiarly attracted. Her movements were free, her figure dainty and her repartee, below her mask, ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... alacrity, self-esteem, and love of sharp repartee occasionally betrayed him into tactless sallies and epigrammatic retorts, deeply wounded the pride of more than one delegate of the lesser Powers in a way which they deemed incompatible alike with circumspect statesmanship and the proverbial hospitality of his country. For he is incapable of ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... us all in the war of words, and by colloquial powers at once delighted and kept us in order; even M. yielded to the dashing vivacity of S.D." The last is everywhere commended for the brilliancy of his wit and repartee: he was never afraid to speak the truth. Once when the poet in one of his fits of petulance exclaimed, intending to produce a terrible impression, "I shall go mad!" Davies calmly and cuttingly observed, "It is much ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... that the only yearning I felt was for something dark and quiet, and small and uncomfortable. She was rather pleased, but the boy put a string across the drawing-room door when I went out, and tripped me up. Then we had a little conversation—quite a short one—but full of repartee. That's ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... of the great. As to untaught nobility of manners, there came to the Court of France in 1429, from a small pig-breeding village on the marches of Lorraine, one whose manners were deemed of exquisite grace, propriety, and charm, by all who saw and heard her: of her manners and swift wit and repartee, the official record of her trial bears concordant evidence. Other untaught gifts she possessed, and the historic record is unimpeached as regards that child of genius, ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... information he had himself volunteered. However that might be, his welcome at Sceaux was sincere. Nor did I wonder at his being a favorite, from the jovial jests and flings he cast at those who crowded round, which set them all a-laughing. His familiarity with the doings of the day, and the quick repartee he used to men of ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... men connected with the Turf, from the highest to the humblest; but although I have spent the most agreeable hours amongst them, there is little which, if written, would afford amusement: everything in a story, a repartee, or a joke depends, like a jewel, on its setting. At Lord Falmouth's, my old and esteemed friend, I have spent many jovial and happy hours. He was one of the most amiable of hosts, and of a boundless hospitality; ran many distinguished ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... clever at repartee!' quoth the Prince, and, so saying, he lifted a billet of wood, which chanced to be lying near at hand, and smote the boy on the head ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... hitherto loose structure of English prose, by lending it point and polish. His carefully balanced periods were valuable lessons in rhetoric, and his book became a manual of polite conversation and introduced that fashion of witty repartee, which is evident enough in Shakspere's comic dialogue. In 1580 appeared the second part, Euphues and his England, and six editions of the whole work were printed before 1598. Lyly had many imitators. ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... disrespect of his smile annoyed his companion, but the day was hot and she had no repartee ready. She only murmured as she threw away ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... have grown to feel that they owe no explanation to any one, even to God, for what they do or do not. While I lost vitality and composure by such idle reflections, you were amusing the nervous travellers by your bright bits of narrative and ready repartee. That fortunate fellow you have promised to marry at the end of two years has no idea what a charming companion he will find ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... casual observer this would appear but a brilliant repartee, while, in fact, it was significant as indicative of a sagacious policy. Closing the churches would have given warrant to the charge of interference with the observances of religion. So careful was the General to avoid anything of this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... talents of Otway," he says, "in his scenes of passionate affection rival, at least, and sometimes excel those of Shakspeare." Again: "The comedies of Congreve contain probably more wit than was ever before embodied upon the stage; each word was a jest, and yet so characteristic that the repartee of the servant is distinguished from that of the master; the jest of the cox-comb from that of the humorist or fine gentleman of the piece." Lesser writers of the time are also sympathetically characterized,—Shadwell, for instance, whom he thought ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... lady regarded me with undissembled incredulity, to which I was able to find no better repartee than a profound and I ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... together the less wisdom you will obtain. Radicalism pretends that the greater number of illiterate, passionate, thoughtless—above all, young people, you heap together, the greater will be the enlightenment resulting. The second thesis is no doubt the repartee to the first, but the joke is a bad one. All that can be got from a crowd is instinct or passion; the instinct may be good, but the passion may be bad, and neither is the instinct capable of producing a clear idea, nor the passion of leading to a ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... explicit description was not far to seek. It was evident that Delancy took it to himself, for he, in his turn at last, colored rosily. But he did not choose to accept a personal reference, and contented himself with a bit of repartee: ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... on her father's face, the gladness in her own was somewhat dimmed. What was making that loved face so care- worn, the mind so listless, the attitude so weary? But she was young; the spirits of youth never flow long in one direction. The repartee, brilliant and at the same time with every sting withdrawn, flashed up and down the table like so many fireflies on a wet lawn in July, and ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... in his house; but I do not know whether this design of the illustrious Cornaro was ever carried into effect. Giovan Maria was a fine talker, pleasant and agreeable in conversation, and very acute in repartee, insomuch that Cornaro used to declare that a whole book could have been made with his sayings. And since, although he was crippled by gout, he lived cheerfully, he preserved his life to the age of seventy-six, ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... a great favourite on the farm, where he played the part of the old jester, and made up for his practical deficiencies by his success in repartee. His hits, I imagine, were those of the flail, which falls quite at random, but nevertheless smashes an insect now and then. They were much quoted at sheep-shearing and haymaking times, but I refrain from recording them here, lest Tom's wit should prove to be ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... of cannon, and garrisoned by upwards of two thousand men. A stronger illustration of what the directing powers of a master mind may accomplish, over those under its control, was probably never afforded more than on this occasion. One would have imagined, from the reckless laugh and ready repartee, which marked the early part of the march, that they expected to possess themselves of the Fort merely by the will of their General, and without suffering any of those contingencies which are the unfailing results of such enterprizes. In short, it seemed as if they thought ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... himself on her—or rather on the more obnoxious members of her following—by dint of a faculty for light and stinging repartee which would send her, flushed and biting her lip, to have her laugh out in private. But Langham for a long time was defenceless. Many of her friends in his opinion were simply pathological curiosities—their vanity was ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... which seem to us the most utterly incompatible with good dispositions in the offender, are those which offend ourselves. All other persons are able to draw a milder conclusion. Laniger, who has a temper but no talent for repartee, having been run down in a fierce way by Mordax, is inwardly persuaded that the highly-lauded man is a wolf at heart: he is much tried by perceiving that his own friends seem to think no worse of the reckless assailant than they did before; and Corvus, ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... re-entrance into society with her daughter, she produced a greater impression than did Effie. She had a merry, joyous disposition, and without possessing half the mental superiority her daughter was gifted with, she had a light, easy conversational ability, playful repartee, an elegant style and manner, and a sufficient knowledge of accomplishments to produce an effect in the gay world, and make her the centre of attraction of every circle she entered; and the world wondered so brilliant a mother should have so indifferent ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... of tale, indeed, may be pretty fairly paralleled with the ordinary anecdote terminating in a repartee or an Irish bull. Such a retort as the famous "je ne vois pas la necessite" we have all seen attributed to Talleyrand, to Voltaire, to Henri Quatre, to an anonymous judge, and so on. But this variety does not in any way make it more likely that the thing ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... cheek of beauty. Elizabeth at eighteen would have been fetching in any dress, but in each of her three new evening frocks she looked bewitching. She was a gay, trig little person, with snapping, dark eyes and an arch expression; a tireless dancer, quick and audacious at repartee; the very ideal of a college belle. The student world had fallen prostrate at her feet, and Tom Whittemore most ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... white powder the coats of the passers-by; clusters of flowers tied with favors of gay-colored ribbon were lavishly flung at the feet of bright-eyed peasant girls, who rejected or accepted them at pleasure, with light words of badinage or playful repartee; clowns danced and tumbled, dogs barked, church bells clanged, and through all the waving width of color and movement crept the miserable, shrinking forms of diseased and loathly beggars whining for a soldo, and clad in rags that barely covered ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... Table—a position which he never resigned. Notwithstanding his biting sallies, we may be sure that it was not Jerrold's primary object to make his victims wince. There is no doubt that the "little wine" that so stimulated him to witty and brilliant conversation full of flash and repartee, sometimes turned sour upon his lips, and changed the kindness that was in his heart into a semblance of gall. Mr. Sidney Cooper has gravely set it on record how on leaving the Punch Dinner Jerrold would tie a label ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... necessary to one's personal happiness, to exercise control over one's words as well as acts: for there are words that strike even harder than blows; and men may "speak daggers," though they use none. The stinging repartee that rises to the lips, and which, if uttered, might cover an adversary with confusion, how difficult it is to resist saying it! "Heaven, keep us," says Miss Bremer, in her 'Home', "from the destroying power of words! There are words that sever hearts more than sharp ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... tugboat comes out again and flings us our mail. Bosun and donkeyman trudge aft and take the letters for the foc'sle, the mess-room steward deposits a letter in my lap, and I think of my friend. At this moment he is engaged in repartee with the housekeeper as she lays the table for tea. The heavy twilight is settling down over the river outside; lovers are pacing the walk as they return from their Sunday tramp. Possibly, too, that fantastic scene which he has described to me is now enacting. ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... is in debt, gather themselves to her." The strangest people, on the strangest errands, run over each other in that cosy little nest of hers. Fine ladies with over-full hearts, and seedy gentlemen with over-empty pockets, jostle each other at her door; and she has a smile, and a repartee, and good, cunning, practical wisdom for each and every one of them, and then dismisses them to bill and coo with Claude, and laugh over everybody and everything. The only price which she demands for her services is, to ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... at once and easily into the outward life of the people among whom he is,—while he always reserves within himself a cold, stern individuality; he often is angered when he should be amused, and retorts with resentment when he should reply in repartee. Still, the American is not sombre to the core. He has a kind of grim merriment bestowed somewhere in the recesses of his being. It is quaint and severe, however, and abounding in dry conceits. It inclines more to the nature ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... I can conceive the enthusiasm with which Monsieur Rigault inspires the members of the Commune. But this excellent citizen did not confine himself to this haughty repartee. I am informed (and I have reason to believe with truth) that he added: "Moreover, that's too old a tale. You have been trying it ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... from Captain Pakenham, the Admiral's son, this week: I like him. I was particularly pleased with his respectful manner to my father. He has some of his father's quickness of repartee, but with his own manner—no affectation of his father's style. We were talking of a Mrs. ——. "What," said I, "is she alive still? The last time I saw her she seemed as if she had lived that one day longer by particular ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... the dramas written under the influence of Marlowe prose is comparatively rare. Elsewhere Shakespeare employed prose for a variety of purposes: for low comedy, as in the tavern scenes in Henry IV, and the scenes in which Sir Toby figures in Twelfth Night; for repartee, as in the wit-combats of Beatrice and Benedick; for purely intellectual and moralizing speeches, such as Hamlet's over the skull of Yorick. On the other hand, highly emotional scenes are usually in verse, as are romantic passages like the conversation of Lorenzo ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... occupation which seemed to give a good deal of personal freedom, and his experience of life in an office had made him determine never to have anything more to do with one; his answer to the Vicar slipped out almost unawares, because it was in the nature of a repartee. It amused him to make up his mind in that accidental way, and he resolved then and there to enter his father's ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... indisputable merits have won them European reputations. This is not a piece of flattery addressed to France, for there were a good many foreigners present. And, indeed, the men who most shone were not the most famous. Ingenious repartee, acute remarks, admirable banter, pictures sketched with brilliant precision, all sparkled and flowed without elaboration, were poured out without disdain, but without effort, and were exquisitely expressed and delicately appreciated. The men of the world especially were conspicuous ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... and, as much as depends upon himself, will satisfy them most completely. Anacreon has left behind some little deposit of good humour and urbanity, which has continued to nourish the heart of his Translator; for M. Gail is yet jocose, and mirth-loving; fond of a lively repartee, whether in conversation or in writing. He may count some ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... pungent witticisms. Some of the men took part and an old squaw concluded by bestowing on him a ludicrous nick name, at which a general laugh followed at his expense. Raymond grinned and giggled, and made several futile attempts at repartee. Knowing the impolicy and even danger of suffering myself to be placed in a ludicrous light among the Indians, I maintained a rigid inflexible countenance, and wholly escaped ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... thinking woman, Mrs. Hamilton may be pardoned if she deemed it as yet a thing that could not be; and she, too, smiled at the playful mischief with which Emmeline would sometimes claim the attention of young Myrvin, engage him in conversation, and then, with good-humoured wit and repartee, disagree in all he said, and compel him to defend his opinions with all the ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... during the last half-hour, seated in McAllister's kitchen, where the uproarious merriment had drowned all other sounds. Hobbs had become a great favourite with the Highland family, owing to his hearty good humour and ready power of repartee. The sharp Cockney, with the easy-going effrontery peculiar to his race, attempted to amuse the household—namely, Mrs McAllister, Dan, Hugh, and two good-looking and sturdy-limbed servant-girls—by measuring wits with the "canny Scot," as he called the farmer. ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... a chapter from the Arabian Nights; write out the dramatis personae, taking care that you have plenty of supernaturals, genii, elves, gnomes, ghouls, or vampires, to make up a competent corps de ballet; work out your dialogue in slipshod verse, with as much slang repartee as you possibly can cram in, and let every couplet contain either a pun or some innuendo upon the passing events of the day. This in London is considered as the highest species of wit, and seldom fails to bring down three distinct rounds of applause from the galleries. I fear ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... excuse himself to his conscience by the plea, that the deception once begun must be kept up until it could be ended with safety. For he saw that her heart was really bound up in him. She no longer kept up the brilliant fence of repartee; she had abandoned all coquettish arts, and, for once at least, was sincerely, fondly, even foolishly, in love. Home he went, sadder than before, his conscience yet more aroused, and his resolutions ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... said the caliph. "Because," replied the grand vizier, "the longer we live in this world, the more reason we shall have to comfort ourselves with the hopes of dying in good sociable company." The caliph, who loved a repartee, began to laugh at this; and putting his ear to the opening of the door, listened to hear the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... and Set Down,'" replied Art, for he knew his Village Repartee and was on to all of last ...
— People You Know • George Ade
... and smelt powerfully of sheep, and had worked hard all day in the blazing sun, but they were never too tired for fun, or at night to dance, after they had bathed and dressed. We all had splendid horses. They reared and pranced; we galloped and jumped every log which came in our path. Jokes, repartee, and nonsense rattled off our tongues. We did not worry about thousands of our fellows—starving and reeking with disease in city slums. We were selfish. We were heedless. We were happy. We ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... is not like other men,' said Charlotte, who, at fourteen, had caught much of her brother's power of repartee, and could be quite as provoking, when unrestrained by any one ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... should see them as they come from the factory in the warm afternoon sunshine. They stop in groups and continue discussions of matters of interest that have come up during the day. You hear the most eager discussion, such spirited repartee; and in the factory itself these groups gather at any time. When there may be some tiny bit of friction it is disposed of amicably, comrade to comrade. And some of the wives of the workmen have taken the greatest ...
— The Gibson Upright • Booth Tarkington
... Prussians, as if their strength, like that of Samson's, depended on their chevelure. There is a very pretty graceful girl who attends here and at the different restaurants and cafes with an assortment of bijouterie and other knick-knacks to sell. She is full of wit and repartee; but her answer to all those who attempt to squeeze her hand and make love to her is always: "Achetez quelque chose." Her name is Celine and she has a great flow of conversation on all subjects but that of love, which she invariably cuts short ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... whom he did not like. In this connection he could—and did—use the worst expressions I have ever heard. He was a born cynic, who said his say in 'plain talk,' not 'langwidge.' For all that, he was filled to the neck with humor, and was a past-master in the art of repartee, always in plain talk, remember. Explain it if you can. Bill was roundly hated by many because he had a way of talking straight truth. He had an uncanny knack of seeing behind the human scenery of the Bad Lands, and always told right out what he saw. That is why they were all ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... renovigo. Renewable renovigebla. Renounce forlasi, malpretendi. Renovate renovigi. Renovation renovigo. Renown famo. Rent (payment) depago, luprezo. Rent dissxiro, dissxirajxo. Renunciation forlaso, eksigxo. Repair ripari. Reparation riparo. Repartee respondajxo. Repast mangxado. Repay repagi. Repeal nuligi. Repealable nuligebla. Repeat ripeti. Repel repeli, repusxi. Repent penti. Repentance pento—ado. Repetition ripetado. Repiece fliki. Repine plendi, murmuri. Replace anstatauxi. Replant replanti. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... Roman Catholicism. Parsees and Christianity. Their works of charity. Persian visitors. Religious controversy. Mr Hole's pictures. Hindu family quarrels. Indian repartee. Appreciation of ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... the most popular of the Park speakers was the Antiguan. His arguments were so clever it was obvious that he was well and widely read. His absolute understanding of the crowd and his witty repartee used frequently to cause his opponents to lose their tempers, and that was always their undoing. The crowd as a rule was very fair and could easily distinguish arguments from abuse. Thus, on one Sunday the debate was as to whether nature ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... months after her marriage, and died two days after giving birth to a son, afterwards Edward VI. She was one of those passive women who make neither friends nor enemies. She indulged in no wit or repartee, like her brilliant but less beautiful predecessor, and she passed her regal life without uttering a sentence or a sentiment which has been ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... pour into his ear Your own confiding grief; In vain you claim his sympathy, In vain you ask relief; In vain you try to rouse him by Joke, repartee, or quiz; His sole reply's a burning sigh, And "What a mind it is!" O Lord! it is the greatest bore, Of all the bores I know, To have a friend who's lost his heart A short ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... was the Duchess of York, who travelled in a whirlicote with her younger children and her ladies, and at the halting-places never relaxed the stiff dignity with which she treated every one. Eleanor did indeed accompany her sister, but she had not Jean's quick power of repartee, and she often answered at haphazard, and was not understood when she did reply; nor had she Jean's beauty, so that in the opinion of most of the young nobles she was but a raw, almost dumb, Scotswoman, and was left to herself as much as courtesy ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... musty old books, with which he muddled his brains; more at ease laughing and chatting with the pipers and maids in the servants' hall, than with the gentry in the drawing-room; always cutting jibes and jokes at Mrs. Barry, at which she (who was rather a slow woman at repartee) would chafe violently: in fact, leading a life of insubordination and scandal. And, to crown all, the young scapegrace took to frequenting the society of the Romish priest of the parish—a threadbare rogue, from some Popish seminary in France or Spain—rather than the company of the vicar ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... he'd been born in England he'd be a hero. Ye marry a woman who swears an' dhrinks an' bets on th' races an' ye quarrel with her. Th' r-rest iv th' play is made up iv hard cracks be all th' char-ack-ters at each others' morals. This is called repartee be th' learned, an' Hogan. Repartee is where I say: 'Ye stole a horse' an' ye say: 'But think iv ye'er wife!' In Ar-rchy r-road 'tis called disordherly conduct. They'se another play on where a man r-runs off with a woman that's no betther thin she ought to be. He bates her an' she marries a burglar. ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... foresight? Do we tell another of his faults, when the communication, though probably beneficial to him, cannot be made without embarrassment or pain to ourselves, and may probably lessen his regard for our person, or his opinion of our judgment? Can we stifle a repartee which would wound another; though the utterance of it would gratify our vanity, and the suppression of it may disparage our character for wit? If any one advance a mistaken proposition, in an instance wherein the error may be mischievous to him; can we, to the prejudice perhaps of our credit ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... up for you, Mac!" he said genially. "Quite a repartee. Well, come with us to-night and see The Girl Gets Left. That'll give you a notion of the sort of stuff ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... and laughed with a peculiar expression of intelligence at this repartee, which was followed by a dialogue of little consequence betwixt his wife and him, in which the stranger took no share. At length he suddenly interrupted them by the question: "Can you tell me when ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... by genial companions,—"for 'tis meet that noble minds keep ever with their likes"—his star was at its zenith. Then indeed, all rules were suspended; no point of order suggested—"The man and the hour had met." His marvellous narratives of quaint incidents and startling experiences, his brilliant repartee, sallies of wit, banter, and badinage have rarely been heard since the days of the Round Table or the passing of "the ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... whom it was so interesting to listen, and so hard to talk when my turn came." There was, indeed, a grand and surprising superiority in Channing's talk, both in the topics and the treatment of them. There was no repartee in it, and not much of give and take, in any way. People used to come to him, his clerical brethren, I remember Henry Ware and others speaking of it, they came, listened to him, said nothing themselves, and went away. In fact, Channing talked for his own sake, generally. His topic ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... dinner at the old homestead was a merry one. Mrs. James spread a feast that was fit for the halls of Lucullus. Laughter, jest, and repartee flew from lip to lip. Nobody appeared to notice that Robert ate little, said nothing, and sat with his form shrinking in his shabby "best" suit, his gray head bent even lower than usual, as if desirous of avoiding all observation. When the others spoke to him he answered deprecatingly, ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... digging down deep in the soil, and carefully separating the iron ore, so Laconian oratory has no rind,[592] but by the removal of all superfluous matter goes home straight to the point like steel. For its sententiousness,[593] and pointed suppleness in repartee, comes from the habit of silence. And we ought to quote such pointed sayings especially to talkative people, such neatness and vigour have they, as, for example, what the Lacedaemonians said to Philip, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... a taciturn, serious man the rest of the day. He did not even bandy a repartee with Joe Scott, who, for his part, said to his master only just what was absolutely necessary to the progress of business, but looked at him a good deal out of the corners of his eyes, frequently came to poke the counting-house fire for him, and once, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... rough give and take he was an adept. After breakfast he stayed and helped her wash the dishes, romping with her the whole time in the midst of gay bursts of laughter and such repartee ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... who rarely ever failed to get the best of whoever tried repartee with him, met more than his match when he ran up against Yankee tact. He was raising money to pay off ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... like the above, are of frequent occurrence in the Talmud; and we select here a few out of the many specimens of Rabbinical ready wit and repartee. ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... and Education. As for his Parts, none had them more lively than he. Wit and Repartee, in an affected Rusticity, were natural to him. He was ever ready, and never at a Loss; and none came so near as he to be a Match for Serjeant Mainard. His great Dexterity was in the Art of special Pleading, and he would lay Snares that often ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... forgotten his purse and that upon discovering this he had come back for the supplies of war. They joked him unmercifully, even Daisy,—who was manifestly incredulous about his explanation,—and he accepted their hilarious repartee with the ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... scalp massage, a Turkish bath, his opinion on the merits of the newest White Hope, a shoeshine, some kind of a skin food, and a series of comparisons of the weather we are having this time this month with the weather we were having this time last month. Not all of us are gifted with the power of repartee by which my friend Frisbee turned the edge of ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... Commissary was not, I think, a practiced literary man; no sooner, at least, had he taken pen in hand and embarked on the composition of the proces-verbal, than he became distinctly more uncivil, and began to show a predilection for that simplest of all forms of repartee: "You lie." Several times the Arethusa let it pass, and then suddenly flared up, refused to accept more insults or to answer further questions, defied the Commissary to do his worst, and promised him, if he did, that he should bitterly repent it. Perhaps if he had worn ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tatterdemalion of a monk here, this Friar Jack, who is fain to drink to hearten himself up, and dies for fear. —Rare weather.—I now find the answer of Anacharsis, the noble philosopher, very proper. Being asked what ship he reckoned the safest, he replied: That which is in the harbour. He made a yet better repartee, said Pantagruel, when somebody inquiring which is greater, the number of the living or that of the dead, he asked them amongst which of the two they reckoned those that are at sea, ingeniously implying that they are continually in danger of death, dying alive, and living die. Portius Cato ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... I saw you start off yesterday I was just a little uneasy; for you looked so blamed important and chesty that I am inclined to think you will tell the first customer who says he doesn't like our sausage that he knows what he can do about it. Repartee makes reading lively, but business dull. And what the house ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... And said to myself, In the self-same repartee, Look to thyself, Or not look to thyself, The self-same thing ...
— The Nursery Rhyme Book • Unknown
... The celebrated Letter to Chesterfield, and the letter in which he tells MacPherson that he will not be 'deterred from detecting what he thinks a cheat by the menaces of a ruffian,' are as good specimens of the smashing repartee as anything in Boswell's reports. Nor, indeed, does his pomposity sink to mere verbiage so often as might be supposed. It is by no means easy to translate his ponderous phrases into simple words without losing some of their meaning. The structure of the sentences is compact, though they are too ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... that is parochial. It is your profoundly interesting son I alluded to. Did you notice his supercilious departure? And his morbid celerity of repartee?" ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... arrived at Tyburn insolently drunk. He blustered and ranted, until the spectators hissed their disapproval, and he died vehemently shouting that he would act the same murder again in the same case. Unworthy, also, was the last dying repartee of Samuel Shotland, a notorious bully of the Eighteenth Century. Taking off his shoes, he hurled them into the crowd, with a smirk of delight. 'My father and mother often told me,' he cried, 'that I should die with my shoes on; but you may all see that I ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... themselves.'—'Whatever my own conduct may have been, madam,' replied he, 'is not the present question; tho' as I have made no use of advice myself, I should in conscience give it to those that will.'—As I was apprehensive this answer might draw on a repartee, making up by abuse what it wanted in wit, I changed the subject, by seeming to wonder what could keep our son so long at the fair, as it was now almost nightfall.—'Never mind our son,' cried my wife, 'depend upon it he knows what he is about. I'll warrant ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... Their interests had hitherto been concentrated in the string of whalers being towed down to the distant starting-point by a picket boat. Before they could rally their forces a cross-fire of rude chaff, winged by uproarious laughter, had opened on either side. Catch-word and jest, counter and repartee utterly unintelligible to anyone outside Lower-deck circles were hurled to and fro like snowballs. Every discreditable incident of their joint careers as units of that vast fighting force, personalities ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... together for a longer time, because of their cordial personal attitude toward him, but will find himself much less fatigued at the end of the rehearsal; for nothing drains one's vitality so rapidly as scolding. A bit of humorous repartee, then, especially in response to the complaints of some lazy or grouchy performer; the ability to meet accidental mishaps without anger; even a humorous anecdote to relieve the strain of a taxing rehearsal—all these are to be highly recommended as ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... stupefaction at the old man's readiness in repartee] Look here: what do you mean by gittin into my car and lettin me bring you here if you're not the person I took that ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... in the Senate at the important juncture when the annexation of Texas and the Mexican war were agitating the country, he soon took an active part in the discussions. He was particularly distinguished for his aptness in repartee, and for his keen and incisive humor. Politically he belonged to the conservative or Hunker wing of the Democracy. Entering the Senate just as Silas Wright was leaving it to assume the Governor's chair, he joined ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... types of drama: the chronicle play, representing the glories of English history; the domestic drama, portraying homely scenes and common people; the court comedy (called also Lylian comedy, after the dramatist who developed it), abounding in wit and repartee for the delight of the upper classes; the melodrama, made up of sensational elements thrown together without much plot; the tragedy of blood, centering in one character who struggles amidst woes and horrors; romantic comedy and romantic tragedy, in which men and women were more or less ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... one of genuine pity in contemplation of her solitary life—a life directed by a restless energy that only grew in intensity with the deepening realisation of her purposelessness. Yet she was so confident in her bearing, and so capable of foiling with repartee any approach of his, that he contented himself with a studied politeness that was no more personal than the grief of ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... their wish, for he makes a very brief pause after every two or three words.... He speaks without gestures, pathos or intonation, and without emphasizing any of his words. Is this the man who as early as 1847 was the leader of the nobility in the old Diet and their quickest man at repartee; who, in 1849 and 1850 as a member of the Second House and the United Parliament of Erfurt, whipped the liberal majority to a frenzy of fury with his bitter and poignant speeches; who as the President of the Ministry since 1862 has faced, almost alone, the solid phalanx of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... world, but who confounds the Wisdom of the Wise. "The Full Moon" presents a little comedy enacted on an Irish railway station. It is characterized by humor of an original and delightful character and repartee that is distinctly clever. ...
— Magic - A Fantastic Comedy • G.K. Chesterton
... Lang has neglected to tell me what is the matter with you; so, I'm sorry to say, I am cut off from all the customary consolations. I can't say, 'Think how much worse it would be if you had a broken leg!' when you may have the crushing repartee up your sleeve, 'But it is my leg that is broken.' This is a pity. But there are consolations. You are an Englishman (I believe); you are a man of letters; you have never been made C.B.; your hair was not red; you ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... boatmen who professionally propelled the keels and flats of the Ohio, they were a class unto themselves—"half horse, half alligator," a contemporary styled them. Rough fellows, much given to fighting, and drunkenness, and ribaldry, with a genius for coarse drollery and stinging repartee. The river towns suffered sadly at the hands of this lawless, dissolute element. Each boat carried from thirty to forty boatmen, and a number of such boats frequently traveled in company. After the Indian scare was over, they generally stopped over night ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... accustomed capacity was suddenly paralyzed. Like some huge ship staggered by the sea, it took its punishment with heavy, sullen endurance. Socially he had never, as it were, seen through a ladder; and Jasmine's almost uncanny brilliance of repartee and skill in the delicate contest of the mind had ever been a wonder to him, though less so of late than earlier in their married life. Perhaps this was because his senses were more used to it, more blunted; or was it because something had gone from her—that ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... had been more favorably impressed with Zibeline's appearance than he cared to show. The generous action of this beautiful girl, her frankness, her ease of manner, her cleverness in repartee, were likely to attract the attention of a man of his character. He reproached himself already for having allowed himself to be influenced by the rancorous hostility of the Desvanneaux, and, as always happens with just natures, the sudden change of his mind was the more favorable as his first ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... must have added to his natural abilities and quickness, rare talents for attaining such knowledge as was possible, knowledge of all woodcraft and of nature, knowledge of musical instruments, and acquaintance with arms. Clean of limb and sure of foot, ready of repartee, fearless and alert, he was, even as a boy, something of what he was to become in maturity, one of the greatest men of his own or any age. Unique in some capacities, versatile and varied in arts and accomplishments, at once vindictive and forgiving, impetuous and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... and ordered my carriage, whilst M. the intendant was thanking me for the vast service I had rendered him. I assure you, sire, that I never laughed more heartily."* *The duc de Richelieu preserved his coolness and talent at repartee in the most trivial circumstances. The story is well known of the man who came to ask for his aid, saying they were related. "How?" asked the duke. "Sir, by Adam." "Give this man a penny," said the duke, turning to a gentleman of his train; "and if all of his relations give ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... Chenoweth's predecessors had revealed their desires in a guise lacking this prodigious artlessness, she already possessed no novel acquaintance with the exclamation. But she made no comment; her partner's style was not a stimulant to repartee. "It would be heaven," he amplified earnestly, "it would be heaven to dance with you forever—on a desert isle where the others couldn't come!" he finished with sudden acerbity as ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... I could not think of any repartee that would be appropriate, especially as Martha was staring so hard at the glass of sugar. I had noticed all the fall that she was an odd child about candy. She never would touch a mouthful of any that we made—and we made it pretty ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... of Muhammadans in Hindu eyes; they, like the English, are regarded as distinguished foreigners, who, if they consented to be proselytised, would probably in time become Brahmans or at least Rajputs. A repartee of a Mahar to a Brahman abusing him is: The Brahman, 'Jare Maharya' or 'Avaunt, ye Mahar'; the Mahar, 'Kona diushi nein tumchi goburya' or 'Some day I shall carry cowdung cakes for you (at his funeral)'; as in the Maratha Districts the Mahar is commonly engaged ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... although they had expressed great compassion for the poor innocent while suffered to wander in rags about the village, no sooner beheld him decently clothed, provided for, and even a sort of favourite, than they called up all the instances of sharpness and ingenuity, in action and repartee, which his annals afforded, and charitably bottomed thereupon a hypothesis that David Gellatley was no farther fool than was necessary to avoid hard labour. This opinion was not better founded than that ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... impossible, in brief space, to indicate more than their general features. In the famous "war-dance,"—which was frequently danced, as it still is, for amusement,—speeches, exhortations, jests, personal satire, and repartee were commonly introduced as a part of the performance, sometimes by way of patriotic stimulus, sometimes for amusement. The music in this case was the drum and the war-song. Some of the other dances were also interspersed with speeches ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... himself before thee, without leave or commandment." "O Saad," asked the king, "whence cometh this man?" And the Amir answered, "O my lord, I know not; but he is a youth fair of favour, lovesome of aspect, accomplished in discourse, goodly of repartee, and valour shineth ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... potations of potheen and the usual blarney about himself for as to who he in reality was let x equal my right name and address, as Mr Algebra remarks passim. At the same time he inwardly chuckled over his gentle repartee to the blood and ouns champion about his god being a jew. People could put up with being bitten by a wolf but what properly riled them was a bite from a sheep. The most vulnerable point too of tender Achilles. Your god was a ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... himself as he pleased; but this was not permissible in the society of his equals in rank; for this reason, and because those faculties of quick remark and repartee, which distinguished them, had been denied to him, he felt uneasy and out of his element when he mixed with them, and he would hardly have accepted Ameni's invitation, if it had not so ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... was the young man whom his friend had addressed as "Tacks," the young man with whom Captain Dan had exchanged repartee in the Rathskeller ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... A bright repartee tells us what the second favorite thought. "Ah! Shaftesbury," said the King to him one day, "I verily believe you are the wickedest dog in my dominions." "Yes, your Majesty," replied Shaftesbury, "for a SUBJECT I ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... antworten, he is not so good by business for ein family to provide—is not that—hein?' And he hands us a riddle—a conundrum, some calls it—and he chuckles interiorly and gives both of us till to-morrow morning to work out the answer to it. And he says whichever of us guesses the repartee end of it goes to his house o' Wednesday night to his daughter's birthday party. And it means Laura for whichever of us goes, for she's naturally aching for a husband, and it's either me or Bill Watson, for old Hildebrant likes ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... 'Antar.' Though the Arab delights to hear and to recount tales, his tales are generally short and pithy. It is in this shorter form that he delights to inculcate principles of morality and norms of character. He is most adroit at repartee and at pungent replies. He has a way of stating principles which delights while it instructs. The anecdote is at home in the East: many a favor is gained, many a punishment averted, by a quick answer and a felicitously turned expression. Such anecdotes exist as popular traditions in very ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... what kind of a life he'd lead, so Skinny was wise to what she ment when she piped "Ask dad." If she'd told me that same I would have thought she was flashin a spiel for Sweet Caps. Skinny says that's repartee, but I think its RAP-artee. Speakin of Russia, I see by the papers that a new revolution has busted out there. That God forsaken country reminds me of a fly wheel on a automobeel—2000 ...
— Love Letters of a Rookie to Julie • Barney Stone
... of the cab and took off his collar—in strips. It interfered with his breathing, as I couldn't get a holt low enough to regulate his respiration. He kicked out two cab windows, but I bumped his head agin the woodwork, by way of repartee. It was a real pleasure, not to say recreation, experimenting with the noises he made. Seldom I get a neck I give a cuss to squeeze. His was number fifteen at first, by the feel; but I reduced it a quarter size at ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... necessary to forgive all his enemies." On receiving the proper answer, he said to the Queen—"Dorothy, write to your brother that I forgive him all the evil that he has done me; but wait till I'm dead first." A good repartee of Sir Andrew Mitchell on the battle of Quebec, is mentioned. "Is it true," said the king to him, "that, after all, you have taken Quebec?" "Yes, sire," said Sir Andrew Mitchell the envoy, "by the help of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... a clatter of dishes and a buzz of conversation, abounding in rough jests and repartee. The boys took their part in frank, good fellowship and were hearty in their praises of the hard riding they had seen that morning. The ranchmen deprecated this as only "part of the day's work," but were pleased none the ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... stories of the pair having met at dinner almost on the eve of Danton's arrest, and parting with sombre disquietude on both sides. The interview, with its champagne, its interlocutors, its play of sinister repartee, may possibly have taken place, but the alleged details are plainly apocryphal. After all, 'Religion ist in der Thiere Trieb,' says Wallenstein; 'the very savage drinks not with the victim, into whose breast he means to plunge a sword.' Danton was warned ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... the genial and graceful Henry Erskine, the brother of the Lord Chancellor of that name, the pride and the favourite of his profession—the sparkling and ready wit who, thirteen years before the day of Burns, had met the rude manners of Dr. Johnson with a well-known repartee. When the Doctor visited the Parliament House, Erskine was presented to him by Boswell, and was somewhat gruffly received. After having made his bow, Erskine (p. 046) slipped a shilling into Boswell's hand, whispering that it was for the ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... description of vehicle that ever came out of Long Acre; whilst more four-horse coaches, with fast teams and still faster loads, are thundering in the rear. Slang reigns supreme; and John Gilpin's friend, who had a "ready wit," would here meet with his match. Nor are jest and repartee (what John calls "chaff") the only missiles bandied about. Toys, knocked off "the sticks" for the purpose, darken the air as they fly from one vehicle to another, and the broadside from a well-supplied coach is like that of a seventy-four. Fun and good-humour abound, but confusion gets worse ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... place. At the same time, when he looked at the picture, he discovered a remembrance of his feeling that she was a very difficult person to teach anything to. Her learning always had insulted his own meagreness of information and aptness in repartee. Next to not finding her, his big worry had become ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... have replied with ingenuousness, 'My life, I have nothing to say.' But, as the repartee did not occur to him, he contented himself with coming in from the balcony and standing at the ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... out jubilant, like nightingale on bough, with story, and jest, and repartee; and became forthwith the soul of the whole company, and the most charming of all cavaliers. And poor Rose knew that she was the cause of his sudden change of mood, and blamed herself for what she had done, and shuddered and blushed at her own delight, and longed that ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... every appearance of childish diffidence. I was celebrated round the country for the petulance of my remarks, and the quickness of my replies; and many a scholar, five years older than myself, have I dashed into confusion by the steadiness of my countenance, silenced by my readiness of repartee, and tortured with envy by the address with which I picked up a fan, presented a snuff-box, or received an ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... something more than assurance. A French general having inconsiderately asked this stranger what we should find between Wiazma and Moscow, the Russian proudly replied, "Pultowa." This answer bespoke a battle; it pleased the French, who are fond of a smart repartee, and delight to meet with enemies worthy ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... were Mr. Brace's theories of evidence. He added that he was not fully persuaded that there was any hell to go to, yet probably he scrupled not to preach 'tidings of damnation.' He wanted to be more certain of Gowrie's guilt, than he was that there is hell-fire. 'Spiteful taunts' followed, Mar's repartee to the argument about hell being obvious. Bruce must have asserted the existence of hell, from the pulpit: though not 'fully persuaded' of hell. So why not ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... question, or the great roots of Christian faith; ending with the latest joke in the town or the West Raw, the last effusion by Affleck, tailor and poet, the last blunder of AEsop the apothecary, and the last repartee of the village fool, with the week's Edinburgh and Glasgow news by their respective carriers; the whole little life, sad and humorous—who had been born, and who was dying or dead, married or about to be, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... the time I am speaking of. Henry Lovell was at once like and unlike his sister, Mrs. Middleton; he was exceedingly attractive; there was no denying the charm that existed in the rapid intelligence, the quick conception, and the ready humour that lit up his eyes and countenance, and sparkled in his repartee. His powers of captivation were as great as hers, but he knew that power, and even used it for an end; while in her it was spontaneous as the bubbling of a stream, as the song of the birds, or as the joy of childhood. Both had ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... of a rooster-fight," retorted Reeves. In his triumph he was not unwilling to banter repartee with the hateful Hiram. "You fellers with what you call sportin' blood"—he sneered the words—"come along and think nobody else can't do anything right but you. You fetch along cat-meat with feathers on ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... repartee; but practice had sharpened my faculties in this direction, and I had, moreover, become fairly conversant with the type of query to which the seeker after knowledge on these occasions usually confines himself. The great ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... what, and then give me my fire, and my friends, the humblest glass of wine, and a few penn'orths of chestnuts, and I will still make out my Christmas. What! Have we not Burgundy in our blood? Have we not joke, laughter, repartee, bright eyes, comedies of other people, and comedies of our own; songs, memories, hopes? [An organ strikes up in the street at this word, as if to answer me in the affirmative. Right thou old spirit of harmony, wandering about in that ark of thine, and touching the public ear ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... the bundle of sticks which together could not be broken. From them I think we learn that Shakespeare, however pleasant or attractive at times, was not a man yielding or complacent to opposition or injury; but that he was a man of fighting blood or instincts, quick in wit and repartee, apt and inclined for aggressive sally, ready to slash and lay about him in all encounters,—in short, a very Mercutio in temperament, and in the lively and constant challenges of ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... to Mary Lee's letter that night. She described everybody whom they had met at dinner, from her Queen Rose, as she called Molly Glendenning, to the courtly old Confederate general at the end of the table. She had been so absorbed in the repartee and bright speeches round her that she had not noticed that she and Travis were not included in the conversation. But Travis had noticed. There were many callers that night after dinner; men who took the girls away ...
— Cicely and Other Stories • Annie Fellows Johnston
... there still at midday when they changed the guard. She was there when night fell, still squatting in the roadway, still exchanging repartee and hints at the supernatural with armed men who shuddered now and then between their bursts of mockery. The sore, suffering dogs that sniff through the night for worse eyesores than themselves whimpered and watched her. The guard changed and the moon paled, but she stayed ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... before a popular audience. His speech abounded with argumentative appeal and bristled with illustrative anecdote, and, when occasion required, with apt repartee. ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... pretty Mabel, but not as its parent or natural chief. I see how it is with you, loving your repartee, and brilliant with wit. Well, I like spirit in a young woman, so it be not the spirit of a scold. This Pathfinder is all extraordinair, Mabel, if truth may be ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... fairy tale, or a chapter from the Arabian Nights; write out the dramatis personae, taking care that you have plenty of supernaturals, genii, elves, gnomes, ghouls, or vampires, to make up a competent corps de ballet; work out your dialogue in slipshod verse, with as much slang repartee as you possibly can cram in, and let every couplet contain either a pun or some innuendo upon the passing events of the day. This in London is considered as the highest species of wit, and seldom fails to bring down three distinct rounds of applause ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... that, just as I got to the caustic part, the exigencies of his profession demanded that he should punch six tickets in rapid succession. My repartee was consequently drowned amid a perfect carillon of bells. But meanwhile I had ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 23, 1914 • Various
... He often turned off grief with a smile, where other men relieve it with a tear. Sensitive natures shrink from letting the world see their exquisite sensibility. Besides, Murger's gayety was intellectual rather than physical. It consisted almost entirely in bright gleams of repartee. It was quickness, 'twas not mirth. No wonder, then, that the world was deceived; the mind retained its old activity amid all its fatigue; and besides, the world sees men only in their hours of full-dress, when the will lights up the leaden ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... mind of the genius, by contrast, comparison, analogy, inference, and imagination, weaves around it a wealth of possibility: the dull-witted man sees the same, but his mind travels no farther than the actual vision. The quick mind supplies the apt repartee, while the dullard thinks of the appropriate reply next morning—if at all. The disadvantage of the latter mind is that it does not work easily, the danger of the former is that it may work too easily and get out of control. Where the central control does not suffice to keep a strong ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... samovar of cheap tea is never empty. Here, although important interests are represented, the intercourse between buyers and sellers is less grave and methodical than in the bazaar. There are jokes, laughter, songs, and a constant play of that repartee in which even the serfs are masters. Here, too, jugglers and mountebanks of all sorts ply their trade; gypsies sing, dance, and tell fortunes; and other vocations, less respectable than these, flourish vigorously. For, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... hilltops, after the manner of mountain men or those who address themselves to mules; and John Calhoun in turn had a truly mighty voice which wafted every word to her ears. But as she listened, half in awe at their savage repartee, a third but quieter voice broke in, and she leapt into her dress and went dashing down the hill for her father had come back from the mine. He was deaf, and slightly crippled, as the result of an explosion when his ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... more genuine or more deserved. He had just passed his twenty-seventh year. In the House of Burgesses he had the reputation of being the silent member. He never acquired the art of a debater. He was neither quick at rebuttal nor at repartee, but so surely did his character impress itself on every one that when he spoke the Assembly almost took it for granted that he had said the final word on the subject under discussion. How careful he was to observe the scope and effects of parliamentary speaking appears from a ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... together with an effort. He realised that it would never do to bandy schoolboy repartee with Priscilla. His loss of dignity would be complete. And besides, he was very likely to get the worst of the encounter. He was out of practise. Prefects do ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... words, from a tracker's point of view, the local wit set the entire company in shrieks of laughter at his quick repartee. ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... no ascetic; I'm as pleasant as can be; You'll always find me ready with a crushing repartee; I've an irritating chuckle, I've a celebrated sneer, I've an entertaining snigger, I've a fascinating leer; To everybody's prejudice I know a thing or two; I can tell a woman's age in half a minute - and I do - But although I try to make myself as pleasant as I can, Yet everybody says ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... the merits of the newest White Hope, a shoeshine, some kind of a skin food, and a series of comparisons of the weather we are having this time this month with the weather we were having this time last month. Not all of us are gifted with the power of repartee by which my friend Frisbee turned the edge ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... our hero and the baron ate A sumptuous dinner in the hall of state, And all the household, ranged along the board, Made good cheer with Sir Gawayne and their lord, And passed the brimming bowl right merrily With friendly banter and quick repartee. And Gawayne asked if they had chanced to hear Of a Green Chapel by a Murmuring Mere, And straightway all grew grave. Within his breast Sir Gawayne felt a tremor of unrest, But told his story with ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... serious young minds, always will have their doubts. They want to earn their convictions. I hope the day will never come when young men will not insist on seeing things. These young men were quick-witted and ready with repartee and counter-argument, and I saw in each eye a glint of an ideal. The debate was strong, but the ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... cap wi' oil — this isn't the Cunard! Ye thought? Ye are not paid to think. Go, sweat that off again! Tck! Tck! It's deeficult to sweer nor tak' The Name in vain! Men, ay an' women, call me stern. Wi' these to oversee Ye'll note I've little time to burn on social repartee. The bairns see what their elders miss; they'll hunt me to an' fro, Till for the sake of — well, a kiss — I tak' 'em down below. That minds me of our Viscount loon — Sir Kenneth's kin — the chap Wi' Russia leather tennis-shoon an' spar-decked yachtin'-cap. ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... their acquaintance. He insisted that it was always a pleasure to meet any friends of his very dear friend, Miss Rogers. The girls at the table giggled with embarrassment, and one or two of them made rather pallid attempts at repartee. Then Carroll and the seventeen-year-old found a table in the very center of the floor, even as a boy, recognizing Carroll, appeared ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... he had ridden away and forgotten his purse and that upon discovering this he had come back for the supplies of war. They joked him unmercifully, even Daisy,—who was manifestly incredulous about his explanation,—and he accepted their hilarious repartee with the proper amount ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... to stimulate his ardour, and the amiable Spence, or Mrs. Patty Blount to listen reverentially to his morality. Let the conversation kindle into vivacity, and host and guests fall into a friendly rivalry, whetting each other's wits by lively repartee, and airing the little fragments of worldly wisdom which pass muster for profound observation at Court; for a time they talk platitudes, though striking out now and then brilliant flashes, as from the collision ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... wombat cannot jump like the kangaroo or the wallaby, and his sprightliness and activity are the sprightliness and activity of a cast-iron pig. He is slow, but I scarcely think he is quite such an ass as the kangaroo. I have even found him indulging in repartee, as you shall see. Every single movement of any part of the wombat is deliberate and well considered; it is apparently debated at great length by all the other parts, and determined upon by a formal resolution, duly proposed, seconded, and carried by the ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... for conversation at receptions, dinners, ordinary social affairs, is merely chatter made up, of persiflage and repartee. One must be able to furnish it, however, for small talk is conversational "small change," without which it is not easy to "do business." Lacking it, one is like Mark Twain's man with the million dollar check and not change enough to buy ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... learned teaching a host of pupils, and won therein his own great renown whilst laying the foundation for that of the abbey of Bee, which was destined to be carried still higher by one of his disciples, St. Anselm. Lanfranc was eloquent, great in dialectics, of a sprightly wit, and lively in repartee. Relying upon the pope's decision, he spoke ill of William's marriage with Matilda. William was informed of this, and in a fit of despotic anger, ordered Lanfranc to be driven from the monastery and banished from Normandy, and even, it is said, the dependency ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... favorably impressed with Zibeline's appearance than he cared to show. The generous action of this beautiful girl, her frankness, her ease of manner, her cleverness in repartee, were likely to attract the attention of a man of his character. He reproached himself already for having allowed himself to be influenced by the rancorous hostility of the Desvanneaux, and, as always happens with just natures, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... unrecognized and uninjur'd by the coteries, the art-writers, the talkers and critics of the saloons, or the lecturers in the colleges—lies sleeping, aside, unrecking itself, in some western idiom, or native Michigan or Tennessee repartee, or stumpspeech—or in Kentucky or Georgia, or the Carolinas—or in some slang or local song or allusion of the Manhattan, Boston, Philadelphia or Baltimore mechanic—or up in the Maine woods—or off in the hut of the California miner, or crossing the Rocky mountains, or along the Pacific ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... their accent on the last syllable are commonly French, as acquiesce, repartee, magazine, or words formed by prefixing one or two syllables to an acute syllable, as ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... This ready repartee must have shown Mistress Marguerite that Jeanne, ignorant as she may have been, was none the less capable of displaying a good grace and common sense in ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... Mulgrave(118) very much. He has more wit, and a greater readiness of repartee, than any man I have met with this age. During dinner he was all brilliancy, but I drew myself into a little scrape with him, from which I much wanted some of his wit to extricate myself. Mrs. Thrale was speaking ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... conversation was very interesting, all taking part in it. Penloe had that rare gift of a good conversationalist, being able to make others talk their best instead of doing all the talking himself. Stella and Penloe were both good at repartee. The ladies talked more than Penloe, and there seemed to be a real genuine feeling, as if one ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... must naturally have cooled down. Then the Pharisees appear cautiously endeavouring to entrap him into admissions which might render him obnoxious to the Roman governor. He saw through their design, however, and foiled them by the magnificent repartee, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's." Nothing could more forcibly illustrate the completely non-political character of his Messianic doctrines. Nevertheless, we are told that, failing in this attempt, the chief ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... made brilliant sally after sally, to which she responded with all an Irish girl's aptitude for repartee. ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... she improved every day. He had learned to conceive a very high idea of her abilities; and he dilated with especial satisfaction on the powers of conversation which she was developing; on her wit and readiness in repartee; on her originality, as well as facility of expression; and on her perfect possession of the royal art of speaking to a whole company with such notice of each member of it, that each thought himself the person to whom her remarks were principally addressed. ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... sparkling of diamond ear-rings and shoe-buckles! What bright eyes, (Ah, those were Waller's Sacharissa's as she passed!) what killing looks and graceful motions! How the faces of the whole ring are dressed in smiles! how the repartee goes round! how wit and folly, elegance and awkward imitation of it, set one another off! Happy, thoughtless age, when kings and nobles led purely ornamental lives; when the utmost stretch of a morning's ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... say, "Oh, that's very old." This has the same effect on a conundrum-maker as the most brilliant repartee. ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand
... with a capital "C,"—an elaborate and studied art which in old days such men as Sharpe and Jekyll and Luttrell illustrated, and, in times more modern, Brookfield and Cockburn and Lowe and Hayward. For the ordinary chit-chat of social intercourse—chaff and repartee, gossip and fun and frolic—I believe that London was just as good in 1876 as it had been fifty years before. We were young and happy, enjoying ourselves, and on easy terms with one another. "It was roses, roses all the way." Our talk was unpremeditated ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... of May I found myself by chance near a clear stream where some troops of women in various poses washed their white linen, and when they had spread it to the sun on the grass, they chattered thus in lively repartee, laughing." Then begin the action and the dialogue. The scenario may be set forth in this wise: boisterous salutations, hilarious talk and accounts of flirtations; tittle tattle about neighbors and lively ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... than ever. He had made his little present of eau-de-Cologne. "Oh fie!" says the Captain, with a horse-laugh, "it SMELLS OF THE SHOP!" He taunted the tailor about his wig, and the honest fellow had only an oath to give by way of repartee. He told his stories about his club and his lordly friends. What chance had either against the ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... published in a slender volume entitled Do We Agree? On both occasions the crowd was enormous and many had to be turned away. All three men were immensely popular figures and all three were at their best debating in a hall of moderate size where swift repartee could be ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... charming to be brilliant, to be apt at repartee, to scatter bright remarks among a company as a queen scatters largess among the throngs on coronation day, to have a following in society who are like ladies in waiting. Oh, it must be delightful, for a while, to be a society heroine! You know just such a girl. She ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... —Rare weather.—I now find the answer of Anacharsis, the noble philosopher, very proper. Being asked what ship he reckoned the safest, he replied: That which is in the harbour. He made a yet better repartee, said Pantagruel, when somebody inquiring which is greater, the number of the living or that of the dead, he asked them amongst which of the two they reckoned those that are at sea, ingeniously implying that they are continually in ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... lives of men exhausted and worn out in the struggle for existence, as great drunkards as the inhabitants of Kuvalda's shelter, and, like them, outcasts from the town. Their ability to speak on all subjects, their freedom of opinion, skill in repartee, courage in the presence of those of whom the whole street was in terror, together with their daring demeanor, could not but be pleasing to their companions. Then, too, they were well versed in law, and could advise, write petitions, ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... at repartee!' quoth the Prince, and, so saying, he lifted a billet of wood, which chanced to be lying near at hand, and smote the boy on the head so ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... pots of thick cream and delectable coffee descended from her hands, with no mistake in any orders or delay in the prompt succession of courses, on the cloth before you by some legerdemain of manipulation in the narrow quarters to the accompaniment of her repartee. It was past understanding how she accomplished such results in quantity and quality on that single stove with the help of one assistant whom, apparently, she found in the way at times; for the assistant would draw back in the ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... card-sharper. If he knows anything of the arts, of history, of economics, or of science, he had better forget it, or else use it as a forestaller would a knowledge of the time when prices should be raised. A confident man with a blood-shot voice and a gift for repartee is sure to make a success of politics, especially if he is not too particular. This did not matter once, perhaps, when politics merely afforded excitement for taverns and a career for the avid and meddlesome. The country was prosperous, ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... your face!"—"Faith, yer honour," replied the witness, with the utmost simplicity of truth and honesty, "my face must be moighty clane and shinin' indade, if it can reflect like that." For once in his life the great barrister was floored by a simple witness. He could not recover from that repartee, and ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... of his own greatness he makes a piquant repartee. Madame retorts, the conversation becomes as lively as it is interesting, and this husband, a very superior man, is quite astonished to discover the wit of his wife, in other respects, an accomplished woman; the right word occurs to her with wonderful readiness; ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... is parochial. It is your profoundly interesting son I alluded to. Did you notice his supercilious departure? And his morbid celerity of repartee?" ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... that was a homage and not an insult. He was so good, too, to the humble, and always so gay. He was not, certainly, the ideal of elegance, but there was a moderation in his gestures, a gentleness in his way of speaking, which savoured of the old French peer. He was quick at repartee, and his observations were gentle but pertinent. He recited poetry badly, but adored hearing it well recited. He often made ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... parties and balls. In her aunt's company she sometimes felt depressed, but alone she was cheerful and without a care. At the Pagellas' she was like a child of the house. She had the Spanish love of ceremony and magnificence, the ready repartee of the Parisian, and, like a well- brought-up girl, knew how to preserve the balance between friendliness and mirth. She was not in the least prudish, and she understood everything; but there was a certain sublimity in ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... quite unconsciously embodied it. He was par excellence the product of a "social" atmosphere; he moved more freely within the Court than without; his whole mind was absorbed by the subtleties of language; a brilliant conversation, an apt repartee, a well-turned phrase were the very breath of his nostrils; his ideal was the intellectual beau. Add to this compound the ingredient of literary ambition and the result is a comic dramatist. Lyly, Congreve, Sheridan, were all men of fashion first and writers of comedy after. In the author ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... other things, chiefly because it was an occupation which seemed to give a good deal of personal freedom, and his experience of life in an office had made him determine never to have anything more to do with one; his answer to the Vicar slipped out almost unawares, because it was in the nature of a repartee. It amused him to make up his mind in that accidental way, and he resolved then and there to enter his father's ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... no experience, consequently they can form no judgments. By imprudently endeavouring to turn the attention of children to conversation that is unsuited to them, people may give the appearance of early intelligence, and a certain readiness of repartee and fluency of expression; but these are transient advantages. Smart, witty children, amuse the circle for a few hours, and are forgotten: and we may observe, that almost all children who are praised ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... heart, and impulsive, all his qualities were gifts of nature; hardly any were the fruit acquired by labor and meditation. He had the spirit of the French race, superficial, rapid, spontaneous, and happy in the hazard of repartee, the smile kindly and communicative, the glance open, the hand outstretched, the attitude cordial, an ardent thirst for popularity, great confidence in his relations with others, a constancy in friendship rare upon the throne, true modesty, a restless seeking ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... were just yarning for the fun there is in it, I should say that I was back in King's Highway, helping Beryl King gather posies and brush up her repartee, the very next morning—or the second, at the very latest. As a matter of fact, though, I steered clear of that pass, and behaved myself and stuck to work for six long weeks; that isn't saying I never thought ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... may allow him to win of you at play, for you are sure to be too hard for him at repartee: since you monopolise the wit that is between you, the fortune ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... this story be true, it is worth nothing as an augury; for quickness of repartee was precisely the accomplishment which the adult Goldsmith conspicuously lacked. Put a pen into his hand, and shut him up in a room: then he was master of the situation—nothing could be more incisive, polished, and easy than his playful sarcasm. ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... like other men,' said Charlotte, who, at fourteen, had caught much of her brother's power of repartee, and could be quite as provoking, when unrestrained by any one whom she ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the beloved Lincoln. Bolivar was insulted and slandered as was Lincoln, and if Lincoln was assassinated by a man, Bolivar escaped the weapon of the assassin only to sink under poisonous treachery and ingratitude. It is true that Bolivar was quick-tempered, at times sharp in his repartee; his intellectual aptness had no patience with stupidity, and occasionally his remarks hurt. But when the storm had passed, he was all benevolence, enduring all, forgiving ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... rockets. It was just the very thing that all the young people wanted. And then began such a storm of questions; such a variety of wild and improbable suggestions; such a catalogue of countries as would take years to explore, and such merry banter and repartee, that even Mrs. Morton caught the enthusiasm, and threw herself into the proposal with a vigor that caused her husband to open his eyes wide in ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... Highway; but passed not The hostel. Within there Too mocking to Love's re-expression Was Time's repartee! ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... with practised ease about everything, had perfect control over their words, made quick sallies, and were skilled in repartee. ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... almost as pithy as Swift, though the style is never so simple. The celebrated Letter to Chesterfield, and the letter in which he tells MacPherson that he will not be 'deterred from detecting what he thinks a cheat by the menaces of a ruffian,' are as good specimens of the smashing repartee as anything in Boswell's reports. Nor, indeed, does his pomposity sink to mere verbiage so often as might be supposed. It is by no means easy to translate his ponderous phrases into simple words without losing some of their meaning. ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... occupants of the houses and passers-by, for three or four hours in the day, as we shall see. The theme is always the same, but it is treated in an infinite variety of ways, and therein we see the instinct of mimicry, the abundance of grotesque ideas, the fluency, the quickness at repartee, and even the natural eloquence ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... that Captain Kettle would have found occasion to make acid comment on this repartee from his inferior officer, but at that moment another voice addressed him from the slit at the other side of his prison, and he turned sharply round. To his surprise this new person spoke in ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... her on the platform in bygone days, well remember her matchless powers as a speaker; and how safe we all felt while she had the floor, that neither in manner, sentiment, argument, nor repartee, would she in any way compromise the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... those of the neighbours' cottages up the yard at the back of the house. Stumps, her husband, a short, easy-going shoemaker, with a beery, humorous eye and ponderous calves, who lived mostly on his wife's earnings, stood in a corner of the room, exchanging shots of the roughest description of repartee with every boy in turn. "Stumps, you lout, you've had too much beer again to-day." "'Twasn't of your paying for, then." "Stumps's calves are running down into his ankles; they want to get to grass." "Better be doing that than gone altogether like yours," etc. Very ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... courtiers, were also introduced for burlesque. These elements appear, however, in other plays than this, with no intention of burlesque; and it seems probable that Shakespeare greatly enjoyed this display of his power as a master in the prevailing fashion of courtly repartee. In this fashion, as well as in the handling of the low-comedy figures, and in other ways, Shakespeare followed in the steps of John Lyly, the author of the novel Euphues and of the seven court comedies ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... than the likes of me. Thee manners be so fine," said Jan; and the repartee drew a roar of laughter, in which the bandy-legged boy joined. "But I've lived in a windmill," Jan added, "and that be more than thee've ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... was a great favourite on the farm, where he played the part of the old jester, and made up for his practical deficiencies by his success in repartee. His hits, I imagine, were those of the flail, which falls quite at random, but nevertheless smashes an insect now and then. They were much quoted at sheep-shearing and haymaking times, but I refrain from recording them ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... of wit and a mistress of repartee. The milliner, who was a native of Lyons, came in one ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... and had worked hard all day in the blazing sun, but they were never too tired for fun, or at night to dance, after they had bathed and dressed. We all had splendid horses. They reared and pranced; we galloped and jumped every log which came in our path. Jokes, repartee, and nonsense rattled off our tongues. We did not worry about thousands of our fellows—starving and reeking with disease in city slums. We were selfish. We were heedless. We were ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... neglected to tell me what is the matter with you; so, I'm sorry to say, I am cut off from all the customary consolations. I can't say, "Think how much worse it would be if you had a broken leg!" when you may have the crushing repartee up your sleeve, "But it is my leg that is broken." This is a pity. But there are consolations. You are an Englishman (I believe); you are a man of letters; you have never been made C.B.; you hair was not red; you have played cribbage and whist; you did not play either ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... doing. To say a negro is incapable of instruction, is a mere absurdity; for those few boys who have been educated in our schools have proved themselves even quicker than our own at learning; whilst, amongst themselves, the deepness of their cunning and their power of repartee are quite surprising, and are especially shown in their proficiency for telling lies most appropriately in preference to truth, and with an off-handed manner that ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... Allah to curse them, as "dogs of Christians," who profaned the sacred presence of the followers of Islam by breathing the same air as themselves; finally reaching the courtyard of Mohammed's khan, after much jostling and struggling and good-natured expostulation and repartee, enlivened with many a hearty laugh as some donkey driver came to grief with his load, or when a venerable Arab sheikh on a tall dromedary sputtered with rage at finding the way impassable and ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... persons, whose indisputable merits have won them European reputations. This is not a piece of flattery addressed to France, for there were a good many foreigners present. And, indeed, the men who most shone were not the most famous. Ingenious repartee, acute remarks, admirable banter, pictures sketched with brilliant precision, all sparkled and flowed without elaboration, were poured out without disdain, but without effort, and were exquisitely expressed and delicately ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... politically enemies. Prisoners were in the basement beneath, guards were patrolling the hall without, yet we laughed and joked, with never a reference to the great conflict in which all present bore part. Of course much of this was but veneer, and back of repartee and well-told story, we were intent upon our own problems. With me, now that I had decided upon my plans, everything centred upon Miss Willifred. I would search the house for Le Gaire, endeavor to have one word with her alone, and then retire to a place of greater safety with ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... "I believe not. An author must be nothing if he do not love truth; a barrister must be nothing if he do." Harcourt was no whit annoyed by the repartee, but having given his warning, went his way ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... pitiable to have such a husband, and so all the world thought. A graceful, brilliant woman, like Bertha, who smiled on morning callers, made a figure in ball-rooms, and was capable of that light repartee which, from such a woman, is accepted as wit, was secure of carrying off all sympathy from a husband who was sickly, abstracted, and, as some suspected, crack-brained. Even the servants in our house gave her the balance of their regard and pity. For there ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... manners, there came to the Court of France in 1429, from a small pig-breeding village on the marches of Lorraine, one whose manners were deemed of exquisite grace, propriety, and charm, by all who saw and heard her: of her manners and swift wit and repartee, the official record of her trial bears concordant evidence. Other untaught gifts she possessed, and the historic record is unimpeached as regards that child ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... (entranced with the airy persiflage, but knowing her own to be no light hand at repartee). ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... view I then took of his conversational powers. When his spirits were at their highest he was without an equal as a wit, without an equal as a humourist. He had more than even Cyril Aylwin's quickness of repartee, and it was of an incomparably rarer quality. To define it would be, of course, impossible, but I might perhaps call it poetic fancy suddenly stimulated at moments by animal spirits into rapid movements—so rapid, indeed, that what in slower movement would be merely fancy, in him ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... him, Miss Evelyn," the cowman interrupted. "His arm's just as good as a new wooden one, and his repartee is as sharp as the cutlas that broke the skin ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... housekeeper. She's an ideal mother. She's the most affectionate creature under the sun. Her devotion to her mother and father was beyond words. Her love for her—daughter she's hers, not mine—is perfect. She hasn't any of the graces of the smart society woman. She isn't quick at repartee. She can't join in any rapid-fire conversation. She thinks rather slowly, I imagine. Some of her big thoughts never come to the surface at all, but you can feel that she is thinking ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... he essayed to speak, and that promise was rarely broken. There was a gentle play about his mouth which declared that his wit never descended to sarcasm, and that there was no ill-nature in his repartee. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... time the appearance of a lad named Nat Banbury or any of his cohorts was a signal for repartee, challenges, sometimes a sortie. Advances were made by Banbury toward the enlistment of the two new recruits in his ranks, but Frank had already made ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster
... not recognized in this community," thought he. Then the glibness and merit of some of their answers surprised and amused him. He, like me, had seldom met an imaginative repartee, except in a play or a book. "Society's" repartees were then, as they are now, the good old tree in various dresses and veils: Tu quoque, tu mentiris, vos damnemini; but he was sick and dispirited on the whole; such very bright illusions had been dimmed in these ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... unsuspected talent. Florence was herself anxious for the newspaper's debut, and she made her anxiety so clear to Atwater & Rooter, Owners & Propreitors, every afternoon after school, during the following week, that by Thursday further argument and repartee on their part were felt to be indeed futile; and in order to have a little peace around there, they carried her downstairs. At least, they defined their action as "carrying," and, having deposited her in the yard, they were obliged to stand guard at the doors, which they closed and contrived ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... of great power,—fluent and elegant in diction, bright and sparkling in thought, keen and quick in repartee. ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... genial companions,—"for 'tis meet that noble minds keep ever with their likes"—his star was at its zenith. Then indeed, all rules were suspended; no point of order suggested—"The man and the hour had met." His marvellous narratives of quaint incidents and startling experiences, his brilliant repartee, sallies of wit, banter, and badinage have rarely been heard since the days of the Round Table or the passing of "the Star ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... At it!" chuckled the hot-tempered gentleman in undertones. And when he said this, it seemed as if the voices of Mr. and Mrs. Skratdj rose higher in matrimonial repartee, and the children's squabbles became louder, and the dog yelped as if he were mad, and the maids' contest was sharper; whilst the snap-dragon flames leaped up and up, and blue fire flew ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... did not answer; quick as she was in repartee, she had the much rarer gift of sympathetic silence. She laid a kind hand on her daughter's bent head ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... organs of a number of men steadfastly and studiously employed in the delightful occupation of preparing their mouthfuls for deglutition. "O noctes coenaeque Deum," said friend Flaccus. Oh, hunting breakfasts! say we. Where are now the jocund laugh, the repartee, the oft-repeated tale, the last debate? As our sporting contemporary, the Quarterly, said, when describing the noiseless pursuit of old reynard by the Quorn: "Reader, there is no crash now, and not much music." ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... This band of auxiliaries was headed by the earl of E——t, Dr. Lee, and Mr. N——t. The first possessed a species of eloquence rather plausible than powerful; he spoke with fluency and fire; his spirit was bold and enterprising, his apprehension quick, and his repartee severe. Dr. Lee was a man of extensive erudition and irreproachable morals, particularly versed in the civil law, which he professed, and perfectly well acquainted with the constitution of his country. Mr. N——t was an orator of middling abilities, who ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... thorough gentleman is, I dare say," assented Mrs. Laudersdale, indifferently, with no spirit for repartee, breaking an egg and putting it down, crumbling a roll, and finally attacking a biscuit, but gradually raising the siege, yawning, and leaning back in ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... your intention, I wish to God she may play ill." "Why so?" said the caliph. "Because," replied the grand vizier, "the longer we live in this world, the more reason we shall have to comfort ourselves with the hopes of dying in good sociable company." The caliph, who loved a repartee, began to laugh at this; and putting his ear to the opening of the door, listened to hear ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... them most completely. Anacreon has left behind some little deposit of good humour and urbanity, which has continued to nourish the heart of his Translator; for M. Gail is yet jocose, and mirth-loving; fond of a lively repartee, whether in conversation or in writing. He ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... tell me, then," said Marjorie, demurely, in the fun of the repartee forgetting for the first time the bits of yellow ware secreted among the ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... Hank grumbled, in the futile repartee of the stupid. "You think you're smart, but I don't. You wait!" Then he rode away down the trail, glowering at the world through puffy lids and repeating to himself many crushing things he wished he had thought to ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... water-fowl. Instead of soft, gentle murmurings there were low growls and snarls as the long, white claws and teeth tore the warm red flesh from the bones. It could hardly have been a pleasant conversation to anyone but themselves, but I suppose they enjoyed it as much as the choicest repartee. In truth they had good reason to be satisfied and contented with themselves and each other, and with what they had just done, for not every flying leap is so successful, and not every duck is as plump and juicy as the two that they were discussing. So they talked on in angry, ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... Mr. Rochester she thrust it down into the pocket of her voluminous mid-Victorian skirt and sat on it. Instead of languishing and fainting where Rochester could see her, she held her head rather higher than usual, and practised the spirited arts of retort and repartee. And nobody gave her any credit for it. Then Rochester puts the little thing (poor Jane was only eighteen when it happened) to the torture, and, with the last excruciating turn of the thumbscrew, she confesses. That was the enormity ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... it dazzled me; that the only yearning I felt was for something dark and quiet, and small and uncomfortable. She was rather pleased, but the boy put a string across the drawing-room door when I went out, and tripped me up. Then we had a little conversation—quite a short one—but full of repartee. ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... society that, however, degenerated very soon into an ordinary clique. Actuated by jealousy, President Boirouge was one of the principals in the defeat of Procureur Clagny for deputy. He was reputed to be unchaste at repartee. [The ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... and garrisoned by upwards of two thousand men. A stronger illustration of what the directing powers of a master mind may accomplish, over those under its control, was probably never afforded more than on this occasion. One would have imagined, from the reckless laugh and ready repartee, which marked the early part of the march, that they expected to possess themselves of the Fort merely by the will of their General, and without suffering any of those contingencies which are the unfailing results of such enterprizes. In short, it seemed as if they thought that whatever be directed, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... a time then. Let us by all means be convivial. Only you must show me how," Mrs. Dallow went on to Nick. "What does he mean, Cousin Agnes? Does he want us to drain the wine-cup, to flash with repartee?" ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... offensive word, never making people feel their inferiority and dependence, but, on the contrary, encouraging them to express opinions, and even to converse, tolerating in conversation a semblance of equality, smiling at a repartee, playfully telling a story—such was his drawing-room constitution. The drawing-room as well as every human society needs one, and a liberal one; otherwise life dies out. Accordingly, the observance of this constitution in by-gone society is known ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... dairyman!" cried Lady Frensham, with an air of quite conclusive repartee. "You're hopeless, Mr. ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... talent for repartee has an amusing illustration in Lord Rossmore's recent book "Things I Can Tell." While acting as magistrate at an Irish village, Lord Rossmore said to an old offender brought before him: "You here again?" "Yes, your honor." "What's brought you here?" "Two policemen, your honor." ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... and banter and repartee, they came to it, of course; the most delightful combination and joint arrangement. Two wagons, the General's and Dr. Ingleside's two saddle-horses, Frank Scherman's little mountain mare, that climbed like a cat, and was sure-footed as a chamois,—these, with a side-saddle ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... an hour, when their patience gave out, and they began to ply him with questions. He endured their fire of interrogatory for a little while till he lost his own temper. Excited outcry followed angry repartee. Thrust and rejoinder were mingled with cheers and hisses. The mayor, who presided, tried to calm the assemblage, but the passions of the crowd would brook no control. Douglas, of short, sturdy build and imperious and controversial nature, stood his ground courageously, with flushed and ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... The merry repartee dies away upon her lips, as she becomes conscious of the catastrophe. It is with a forced smile that she declares, "It is nothing; O, not of the slightest consequence!" That unlucky peach! How many blunders, how many pauses, how many absent-minded ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... composed a concerto in seven flats." "You lie!" retorted the bluff monarch, "the Boehm flute has not yet been invented. Away with you, hayseed from Halle." Whereat the mighty Bach softly laughed, being tickled by the regal repartee, and stole home, and there he sat him down and composed a nine-part fugue for Boehm flute and jackpot on the word Potsdam, the manuscript of which is ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... seated in an ice-cream saloon. The conversation was supplied mainly by the girl and Willie, and took the form of a wordy sparring match. Every time she scored a point the girl glanced at Macgregor. He became mildly amused by her repartee, and at last took a ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... for it, any more than a porcupine can be really fond of his own quills. I couldn't bear, somehow, that the man with the nice eyes should be hearing me called a "pert piece," and thinking me one. Quite a smart repartee came into my head, but a heavy feeling in my heart kept me from putting it into words; and Nebuchadnezzar went grunting on: "I know as much about old lace as any man in this street, if not in town. That's why ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... had a sense of humour and could appreciate a repartee even when it hit him hard. Then we stopped talking for the climb ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... pished, and pshawed. "Very good," I thought; "you may fume and fidget as you please: but this is the best plan to pursue with you, I am certain. I like you more than I can say; but I'll not sink into a bathos of sentiment: and with this needle of repartee I'll keep you from the edge of the gulf too; and, moreover, maintain by its pungent aid that distance between you and myself most conducive to our real ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... that the spirit of this question was satirical; but he was unable to reply, except by a feeble shake of the head—though ten minutes later, as he plodded forlornly his homeward way, he looked over his shoulder and sent backward a few words of morose repartee: ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... we felt under the necessity of laying the matter before our imperial master. 'Had it been any of the other actors,' his highness also says, 'I wouldn't have minded if even one hundred of them had disappeared; but this Ch'i Kuan has always been so ready with pat repartee, so respectful and trustworthy that he has thoroughly won my aged heart, and I could never do without him.' He entreats you, therefore, worthy Sir, to, in your turn, plead with your illustrious scion, and request him to let Ch'i ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... all ought to make more allowance for what is said in mere sport and repartee," said Hemstead. "But what to you is law and force is to me a personal Friend. You know that there are some names—like those of mother and wife—that are too sacred ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... to be in Landor's society a half-hour and not reap advantage. His great learning, varied information, extensive acquaintance with the world's celebrities, ready wit, and even readier repartee, rendered his conversation wonderfully entertaining. He would narrate anecdote after anecdote with surprising accuracy, being possessed of a singularly retentive memory, that could refer to a catalogue of notables far longer than Don Giovanni's picture-gallery of conquests. Names, it is true, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... glance fell on her father's face, the gladness in her own was somewhat dimmed. What was making that loved face so care- worn, the mind so listless, the attitude so weary? But she was young; the spirits of youth never flow long in one direction. The repartee, brilliant and at the same time with every sting withdrawn, flashed up and down the table like so many fireflies on a wet lawn in July, ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... distinguished that you must not ask both of them to dinner on the same day lest they silence each other, while we know others who bring to us just an average amount of tact, facility of expression, geniality, and a pleasant gift at a quotation, a bit of repartee; such a person we call a ready small- talker, a "most agreeable person," one who frightens nobody and who has a great popularity. Such a one has plenty of small change, very useful, and more easy to handle than the very large ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... did I wonder at his being a favorite, from the jovial jests and flings he cast at those who crowded round, which set them all a-laughing. His familiarity with the doings of the day, and the quick repartee he used to men of different ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... last—actually bound in with him (it is like a promise) for ever. The more one knows about people's lives in this world, the more indefinitely, the more irrelevantly,—sometimes almost comically, or as a kind of an aside, or a bit of repartee,—they end them. Suddenly, sometimes while we laugh or look, they turn upon us, fling their souls upon the invisible, and are gone. It is like a last wistful haunting pleasantry—death is—from some of us, a kind of bravado in it—as one would say, "Oh, well, dying is really after all—having ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... of the regiment: "don't you know this brigade? This is Gordon's flying brigade,"—which was received with much merriment. The men were in excellent humor, ready to bandy words with any one, especially the cavalry, whom they began to divine they were to operate with. This elegant repartee was kept up all along the line. Occasionally, officers exchanged greetings, where friends could make each other out in the dark. A hasty word and shake of the hand (perhaps the last), and our cavalry friend is left still watching the column as it marches briskly along. Another cavalry ...
— History of the Second Massachusetts Regiment of Infantry: Beverly Ford. • Daniel Oakey
... Plato's pride with greater pride, As did the Cynic on some like occasion; Deeming the sage would be much mortified, Or thrown into a philosophic passion, For a spoilt carpet—but the "Attic Bee" Was much consoled by his own repartee.[783] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... having inconsiderately asked this stranger what we should find between Wiazma and Moscow, the Russian proudly replied, "Pultowa." This answer bespoke a battle; it pleased the French, who are fond of a smart repartee, and delight to meet ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... idiot that he had been! To take her for Mrs. Palmer's niece—that peerless creature with the calm acceptance of any situation, which marked the woman of the world, with the fine appreciation and quickness of repartee that spoke of generations of culture—to imagine that she could be Mollie Booth! He had been blind, besottedly blind. And now he had lost her! She would never forgive him; she had gone without a ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... brightens, the host coruscates. The young lady on your right suddenly develops into a charming girl, with becoming appreciation of your pet topics and an astounding aptness for repartee. The Gorgon thaws, and implores Mr. Snapshot, whose jests are popping as briskly as the corks, not to be so dreadfully funny, or he will positively kill her. Belle Breloques can always talk, and now ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... might have replied with ingenuousness, 'My life, I have nothing to say.' But, as the repartee did not occur to him, he contented himself with coming in from the balcony and standing at the side of ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... fond of the theatre; he listens in silence, never hisses, and applauds with measure. Does not the spectacle please him? He chews his buyo and goes out quietly, not to trouble those who may like it. He expects in his plays a combat every fifteen seconds, and all the rest of the time repartee between comic personages, or terrifying metamorphoses. The comedy chosen for this fete was "Prince Villardo, or the Nails Drawn from the Cellar of Infamy," comedy with sorcery ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... on until Mr. Price stamped disgustedly out of the office. It was easy enough, and required nothing brilliant in the way of strategy or repartee, to turn Issachar's attack into retreat. But all the rest of that afternoon Albert was conscious of that peculiar feeling of uneasiness. After supper that night he did not go down town at once but sat in his room thinking ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... even seen, the penniless orphan of a penniless brother of his father, and who had been sent to sea; so that, after all, his mother was the only natural friend he had. This poor little boy would fly from that mother with a sullen brow, or, perhaps, even with a harsh and cutting repartee; and then he would lock himself up in his room, and weep. But he allowed no witnesses of this weakness. The lad was very proud. If any of the household passed by as he quitted the saloon, and stared ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... But Franklin was essentially a journalist. In his swift, terse style, he is most like Defoe, who was the first great English journalist and master of the newspaper narrative. The style of both writers is marked by homely, vigorous expression, satire, burlesque, repartee. Here the comparison must end. Defoe and his contemporaries were authors. Their vocation was writing and their success rests on the imaginative or creative power they displayed. To authorship Franklin laid no claim. He wrote no work of the imagination. He developed only incidentally a style ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... the style is never so simple. The celebrated Letter to Chesterfield, and the letter in which he tells MacPherson that he will not be 'deterred from detecting what he thinks a cheat by the menaces of a ruffian,' are as good specimens of the smashing repartee as anything in Boswell's reports. Nor, indeed, does his pomposity sink to mere verbiage so often as might be supposed. It is by no means easy to translate his ponderous phrases into simple words without losing some of their ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... ascetic; I'm as pleasant as can be; You'll always find me ready with a crushing repartee; I've an irritating chuckle, I've a celebrated sneer, I've an entertaining snigger, I've a fascinating leer; To everybody's prejudice I know a thing or two; I can tell a woman's age in half a minute - and I ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... sickness or trouble, the plan, the last shopping, the game, the garment, the new preparation for the table—in a way peculiarly her own. One could never be with her many minutes without hearing some bright fancy, some quick stroke of repartee, some ludicrous way of putting a thing. But whether she told of the grumbler who could find nothing to complain of in heaven except that "his halo didn't fit," or said in her quick way, when the plainness of a lady's dress was commended, "Why, I didn't ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... thirty in her conversation—she told me she was sick of ocean travelling—her eighth voyage; and she was sick of the Continent, too—you get no good candy there and her Momma did nothing but shop. She has the voice of a young peacock and the repartee of a Dublin car driver—absolutely "all there." They are fairly rich "store keepers" from Buffalo. The mother has nerves, the father dyspepsia and the nurse is seasick, so Matilda is quite her own mistress, and rushes over ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... which the plot stands still, while the spectators are entertained with flippant dialogue and repartee, are ridiculed in the scene betwixt Prince Prettyman and Tom Thimble in the Rehearsal; the facetious Mr Bibber being the original of the latter personage. The character of Trice, at least his whimsical humour of drinking, playing at dice by himself, and quarrelling ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... But the great charm about him is the expression of infinite fun and mirth that is always upon his face. Never for a moment while he is awake is his face still. Always the same, yet always shifting, with a thousand varying shades of roguish joy. Quick, bright, full of boyish repartee, full of shouts and laughter. And the same incessant life which plays upon his face shows itself in every movement of his limbs. Never for a moment is he still unless he has some work upon his hands. He has his little ...
— By The Sea - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... that. But I made them wait to find out. I was so occupied with repartee and acting that I failed to seize the real chance of all the world. I told them I had been tried out as an anesthetic, but was not sure of myself in an opposite capacity. I begged them to send for the member ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... culinary end that worries me," smiled Magee. "It's the repartee and wit. I want the mayor to feel at home. Do you know any good stories ascribed to Congressman Jones, ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... strictly the truth, but the abrupt manner of bringing it home to him momentarily took away Mr. Carr's power of repartee, although he was apt enough in general, as became ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... the readiest of public speakers by his long experience. So it was matter for surprise that he, famed for rapid repartee, should have refrained from taking any notice of an interrupter whose shout could have been turned on him; so thought a friend on ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... enjoyment in the kitchen. It was a time of high festival, what with me and the egg supper. Merriment and jocularity, a little tide-wave of social excitement, swelled and broke on all sides of me; making a soft ripply play of fun and repartee, difficult to describe, and which touched me as much as it amused. It was very unlike the enjoyment of a set of white people holding the same social and intellectual grade. It was the manifestation of another race, less coarse and animal in their original ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... she said, not ready for repartee or discussion or much of anything else to-night, 'you have cut short your allowance of sugar, and quite prevented the cream. Give me the sugar ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... he ran in for afternoon tea on the terrace or an hour's chat in the evening,—sometimes it happened that the day saw him three times at Champ-au-Haut—her presence to all appearance afforded him only an opportunity to tease her goodnaturedly; he delighted in her repartee. Mrs. Champney, keenly observant, failed to detect in the girl's frank joyousness the least self-consciousness; she was just her own merry self with him, and the "give and take" between them afforded Mrs. Champney a ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... at public festivals and private entertainments. In the Homeric hymn to Mercury, we read that the god extemporized a song, "just as when young men at banquets slily twit each other." When the cups flowed, and the conversation sparkled, men indulged in repartee, or capped each other in verses. One man, for instance, would quote or compose a line beginning and ending with a certain letter, and another person was called upon for a similar one to complete the couplet. ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... trusting the wrong man. Now Alfred and James Albert, Junior, think they have a great joke on him; and they've twitted him so much about it he'll scarcely speak to them. From the first, Alfred says, the old chap's only repartee was, 'You wait and you'll see!' And they've asked him so often to show them what they're going to see that he ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... than a man of virile temperament; he was gifted with other qualities than energy, determination, and common sense. He was not witty. He had no talent for repartee, and the most industrious collector of anecdotes will find few good things attributed to him. But he possessed a kindly humour which found vent in playful expressions of endearment, or in practical jokes of the most innocent description; ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... a heart which had escaped her control, though hitherto she had found no difficulty in keeping it well in hand. There was a novelty, a difference, in the situation this time, a new and unexpected element in the event. She hesitated. Why was it no merry quip came to the lips usually so ready with repartee? ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... without any more ado. This malice of his seemed strange to me, as he had never suffered at their hands, so far at least as I knew; was it to be attributed to his jealousy of outlaws who excelled him in his business? Not being good at repartee, I made no answer to Lizzie, having found this course more irksome to her than the very best invective: and so we entered the house together; and mother sent at once for me, while I was trying to console ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... have thought myself that mere personality is hardly enough to give point to any repartee—there is a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... when the object is only to prevent my saying a bon mot, for there is not the least wit in my nature. I am a very matter-of-fact, plain-spoken being, and may blunder on the borders of a repartee for half an hour together without ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... you pour into his ear Your own confiding grief; In vain you claim his sympathy, In vain you ask relief; In vain you try to rouse him by Joke, repartee, or quiz; His sole reply's a burning sigh, And "What a mind it is!" O Lord! it is the greatest bore, Of all the bores I know, To have a friend who's lost his heart ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... most interesting. It was not characterized by sallies of wit or brilliant repartee, nor was it of that nature which is most welcome in society. It was frequently intermingled with trenchant, quaint remarks, leavened with a quiet, graceful humor of her own; but it was eminently calculated for a tete-a-tete. Mrs. Browning never made an insignificant remark. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... lived only eighteen months after her marriage, and died two days after giving birth to a son, afterwards Edward VI. She was one of those passive women who make neither friends nor enemies. She indulged in no wit or repartee, like her brilliant but less beautiful predecessor, and she passed her regal life without uttering a sentence or a sentiment which has ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... found smart repartee, shot forth from back seats, gave me glee, still I aspired to climb the tree, so with restrained temerity I donned a gown of silk, i.e. became a fully-fledged K.C. Then, after able A.J.B. was shunted by his great party and A.B.L. ...
— Punch, Volume 156, January 22, 1919. • Various
... controversy, irritating in manners, indiscreet, and lacking flexibility in the management of men. The messages which he wrote as President were dignified and judicious, and his addresses were not lacking in power, but he was prone to indulge in unseemly repartee with his hearers when speaking on the stump. He exchanged epithets with bystanders who were all too ready to spur him on with their "Give it to 'em, Andy!" and "Bully for you, Andy!" giving the presidency the "ill-savor of a corner ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... acquaintance, much the contrary. For he proved a very rational, honorable and eligible young Prince: modest, honest, with abundance of sense and spirit; kind too and good, hot temper well kept, temper hot not harsh; quietly holds his own in all circles; good discourse in him, too, and sharp repartee if requisite,—though he stammered somewhat in speaking. Submissive Wilhelmina feels that one might easily have had a worse husband. What glories for you in England! the Queen used to say to her in old ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the dispute. 'I feel,' he said, 'the impregnability of the case made out by Mr. Taylor. But the misfortune is, that I have seen so many previous impregnable cases made out for other claimants.' Ay, that would be unfortunate. But the misfortune for this repartee was, that I, for whose use it was intended, not being in the predicament of a stranger to the dispute, having seen every page of the pleadings, knew all (except Mr. Taylor's) to be false in their statements; after which ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... one of those brave old commanders, Who served through all our glorious wars in Flanders. Frank and good-natur'd, of an honest heart, Loving to act the steady friendly part; None led through youth a gayer life than he, Cheerful in converse, smart in repartee; But with old age, its Vices Come along, And in narration he's extremely long; Exact in circumstance, and nice in dates, He each minute particular relates. If you name one of marlbro's ten campaigns, He gives you its whole history for your pains, And Blenheim's ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... too true. The spirit of repartee and fun often made him display his intellectual faculties at the expense of his moral nature and his ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... that could be got together. Blair makes it plain that he has mighty little use for me, and still less for Hamilton. But Nutt seems to get a lot of satisfaction in keepin' him stirred up, winkin' now and then at me when he gets a rise out of Blair; though I must say, so far as repartee went, the little chap had all ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... considerable minuteness, and his representations have been permitted, until of late years, to pass unchallenged. He has described them as at once passionate and placable, easily moved to anger, and as easily appeased; fond of pleasantry and repartee, and heartily enjoying a laugh; pleased to hear themselves praised, and yet not annoyed by criticism and censure; naturally generous towards those who were poor and in humble circumstances, and humane even towards their enemies; jealous of their liberties, and keeping even ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... Beethoven was ready in repartee, and full of resources, with a wit that was spontaneous and equal to any emergency. One New-year's day, as he and Schindler were sitting down to dinner, a ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... (to be resumed next morning), and indulge in lively professional chaff, which would soon become personal and free and boisterous—a good-humored kind of warfare in which I did not shine, for lack of quickness and repartee. For instance, they would ask one whether one would rather be a bigger fool than one looked, or look a bigger fool than one was; and whichever way one answered the question, the retort would be that "that was impossible!" amid roars of ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... They achieve repartee the brilliance of which dazzles him to contemptible silence. If statistics were at hand we should doubtless learn that no man has ever talked to himself save by way of demonstrating his own godlike superiority, and the tawdry impotence of all obstacles and opponents. ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... man look to his own ground," said Leonard, with a cleverness of repartee caught from ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... but when you try to be smart you're absolutely insufferable. You're mentally incapable of recognizing the line of demarcation between legitimate persiflage and objectionable familiarity. An ignoramus of your particular class ought to confine his repartee to unqualified affirmation or the negative monosyllable." Whereupon he pulled his hat more firmly upon his head, hunched his shoulders in disgust, remembered his manners, and bowed to Miss Georgie Howard, and stalked ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... before he came in sight of them, the shrill yells with which sled load interchanged repartee with sled load; everlastingly there was the monotone of the singers. It was plain that the same spirit of gay adventure was ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... been the object of human consumption. Both the business office and the editorial rooms of the Standard were largely and brilliantly represented, and the collation was interspersed with highly intelligent affabilities. Constant streams of sparkling repartee rippled across the table, jocund anecdotes and refined civilities of every variety abounded, the festivities in every way being characterized by vivacity, ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... been exhilarating, full of color and motion—laughter and repartee mingling with the adieux of the knights and seigneurs to their ladies, the notes of the hunting-horns, the snorts of impatient steeds, the short expectant bark of the dogs, as the Master of the hounds, the young Count of Jaffa, with his great army of hunters ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... either pointed or solid, wise or merry[174]; and that one apophthegm only is recorded[175].' In this respect, Pope differed widely from Johnson, whose conversation was, perhaps, more admirable than even his writings, however excellent. Mr. Wilkes has, however, favoured me with one repartee of Pope, of which Johnson was not informed. Johnson, after justly censuring him for having 'nursed in his mind a foolish dis-esteem of Kings,' tells us, 'yet a little regard shewn him by the Prince of Wales melted his obduracy; and he had not much to say when he was asked by his Royal Highness, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... through some very beautiful movements of the dance that was entirely unobjectionable. In two minutes she had turned her face, beaming with pleasure, so that Mr. Vandeford could see that all was well with her; and ten minutes later she giggled out loud at the repartee of two ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... a repartee may be conveyed in a scream; for Fanny now lost her temper altogether. "Your conduct with those two men is abominable," said she. "I won't speak to you ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... upon himself, will satisfy them most completely. Anacreon has left behind some little deposit of good humour and urbanity, which has continued to nourish the heart of his Translator; for M. Gail is yet jocose, and mirth-loving; fond of a lively repartee, whether in conversation or in writing. He may count some ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... however, as a wit and a writer that Swift is now chiefly famous. Many are the stories told of his readiness in repartee, his bright sallies in conversation, and of his skill in quick and caustic rhyming. It is said that one day, when traveling in the south of Ireland, he stopped to give his horse water at a brook which crossed the road; a gentleman of the neighborhood halted for the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... intellectualism, which, whilst inevitably pleasing, is beyond probability. Certain novelists vaunt and revel in the creation of impossibly vivacious wits. Nature has a finer grace; its faithful reflection is purer art. Those true to natural humour and the spontaneous rather than the fabricated repartee represent a small minority. Amongst the novelists Goldsmith and Jane Austen have few to follow them, and with the dramatists Moliere and Pinero are almost his solitary associates. Perfectly natural are the arguments, ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... belongs to them as a matter of outward ceremony. This pretension they cannot keep up by fair means; for in wit or argument they are not superior to the common run of men. They therefore answer a repartee by a practical joke, which turns the laugh against others, and cannot be retaliated with safety. That is, they avail themselves of the privilege of their situation to take liberties, and degrade those about them, as they can only keep up the idea of their ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... when you first meet him; he seems a Titan, but he contains a dwarf, like the pasteboard giant who saluted Queen Elizabeth at the gates of Kenilworth. Choleric though kind, and full of imperial hauteur, he has the caustic tongue of a soldier, and is quick at repartee, but quicker still with a blow. He may have been superb on a battle-field; in a household he is simply intolerable. He knows no love but barrack love,—the love which those clever myth-makers, the ancients, placed under the patronage ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... had much talent for repartee, but she knocked silly what little I had, and I gulped down my tea a beaten man, while she gloated after me even as I passed out ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... the least understanding of the real character and composition of the Nationalist Party. It had always a dozen or more capable men who could dress the ranks and hold their own "on the floor of the House" as against the best intellects and debating power of either British party. Irish readiness and repartee made question time an overwhelmingly Irish divertissement. Our members had a unique faculty for bringing about spectacular scenes that read very well in the newspapers and made the people at home think what fine fellows they had representing them! ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... probably, Washington never heard praise more genuine or more deserved. He had just passed his twenty-seventh year. In the House of Burgesses he had the reputation of being the silent member. He never acquired the art of a debater. He was neither quick at rebuttal nor at repartee, but so surely did his character impress itself on every one that when he spoke the Assembly almost took it for granted that he had said the final word on the subject under discussion. How careful he was to ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... said the hostess in the applause which recognized Wetmore's mischievous intent. "I'll not believe anything of the kind." From her this had the effect of repartee, and when she asked with the single-heartedness which Wetmore had praised among her friends as her strongest point, and advised her keeping up as long as she possibly could, "It isn't so, is it, Mr. Ludlow?" the finest wit could not have done more for her. The general ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... Busied with his all-important balance of accounts, may deem Weighing words superfluous trouble: cheat to clerkly ears may seem Just the joke for friends to venture: but we are not friends, you see! When a gentleman is joked with,—if he's good at repartee, He rejoins, as do I—Sirrah, on your knees, withdraw in full! Beg my pardon, or be sure a kindly bullet through your skull Lets in light and teaches manners to what brain it finds! Choose quick— Have your life snuffed out or, kneeling, ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... down. Then the Pharisees appear cautiously endeavouring to entrap him into admissions which might render him obnoxious to the Roman governor. He saw through their design, however, and foiled them by the magnificent repartee, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's." Nothing could more forcibly illustrate the completely non-political character of his Messianic doctrines. Nevertheless, we are told that, failing ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... of heart, and impulsive, all his qualities were gifts of nature; hardly any were the fruit acquired by labor and meditation. He had the spirit of the French race, superficial, rapid, spontaneous, and happy in the hazard of repartee, the smile kindly and communicative, the glance open, the hand outstretched, the attitude cordial, an ardent thirst for popularity, great confidence in his relations with others, a constancy in friendship rare upon the throne, true modesty, a restless seeking for good advice, a ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... mouth to mouth. Her little flirtations with prominent men and the ambitious tyros who had been drawn to her salon had given rise to much gossip. Not by any means a beauty, her pretty face and tiptilted nose, her perennial cheerfulness, birdlike vivacity and gift of repartee had made her the center ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... I confess, are strict observers of these punctilios: They would not, for example, have suffered Cleopatra and Octavia to have met; or, if they had met, there must have only passed betwixt them some cold civilities, but no eagerness of repartee, for fear of offending against the greatness of their characters, and the modesty of their sex. This objection I foresaw, and at the same time contemned; for I judged it both natural and probable, that Octavia, proud of her new-gained conquest, would search ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... each at other's breast, When the great Enemy, the common Foe, Though baffled, unsubdued, lays ever wait For some unguarded pass, to cheat the walls Not all his dread artillery could breach? How is each lunge, and ward, of tart reproof, And bitter repartee—painful to friends— By th' Adversary hailed with general yell Of triumph, or derision! O, my friends! Believe me, lines of loving charity Dishearten enemies, encourage friends, And woo enlistment to your ranks, more sure Than the best weapon of the readiest wit, Whose point is venomed with the ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... to talk about you!" said Carter Hazzard. Julia found his audacity delightful; she began to feel that she could not keep up with the dazzling rush of his repartee. "You know, the minute I ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... fresh and sweet, So large and lovely—and so cheap! They lay in one delicious heap, And added to the sumptuous feast For each and all in taste expert The acme of all fine dessert; So, singling out the very least As in itself an ample treat, While sparkling repartee and jest Exhilarated host and guest, Of rarity so delicate In dreamy reverie I ate, By magic pinions as it were Transported from this realm of snows To be a happy sojourner Away down where the orange grows; ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... exercise. He became more witty, more masterful, while the repartee of his adversaries sank to wretched piffle. He met disaster only once. That was when his conscience began to hurt him after a particularly bitter assault on Bulger in which the latter had been more than usually contemptible ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... down into the pocket of her voluminous mid-Victorian skirt and sat on it. Instead of languishing and fainting where Rochester could see her, she held her head rather higher than usual, and practised the spirited arts of retort and repartee. And nobody gave her any credit for it. Then Rochester puts the little thing (poor Jane was only eighteen when it happened) to the torture, and, with the last excruciating turn of the thumbscrew, she confesses. That was the enormity that was never ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... benches, could not forbear to cheer their old opponent. Besides securing American gold for his country, he has transferred some American bronze to his own complexion, and has, if anything, sharpened his faculty for skilful evasion and polite repartee by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 • Various
... maiden's manner was lively, and we may add that her smile and repartee were ready. But her gaiety was assumed, as a quality essentially necessary to her trade, of which it was one of the miseries, that the professors were obliged frequently to cover an aching heart with a compelled smile. This seemed to be the case with Louise, who, whether ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... words, but sed to go ask her paw. Now Skinny knowed her "old" man was dead, he also knowed what kind of a life he'd lead, so Skinny was wise to what she ment when she piped "Ask dad." If she'd told me that same I would have thought she was flashin a spiel for Sweet Caps. Skinny says that's repartee, but I think its RAP-artee. Speakin of Russia, I see by the papers that a new revolution has busted out there. That God forsaken country reminds me of a fly wheel on ...
— Love Letters of a Rookie to Julie • Barney Stone
... them I think we learn that Shakespeare, however pleasant or attractive at times, was not a man yielding or complacent to opposition or injury; but that he was a man of fighting blood or instincts, quick in wit and repartee, apt and inclined for aggressive sally, ready to slash and lay about him in all encounters,—in short, a very Mercutio in temperament, and in the lively and constant challenges of ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... cried Lady Frensham, with an air of quite conclusive repartee. "You're hopeless, Mr. Britling. ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... reckoned of a pretty wit and not more cutting were the Sheffield razors that were piled before her than the remarks she sometimes made to those who, incited thereto by her reputation for readiness of retort, sought to engage her in a contest of repartee. It was seldom that she issued from these encounters other than triumphant, leaving her presumptuous opponents defeated and chagrined. But in the month of November of the last year, for once she owned to herself that she had been overcome,—overcome, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... part of conversation; but, as it is our usual custom to counterfeit and adulterate whatever is too dear for us, so we have done with this, and turned it all into what is generally called repartee, or being smart; just as when an expensive fashion cometh up, those who are not able to reach it content themselves with some paltry imitation. It now passeth for raillery to run a man down in discourse, to put him ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... was no little variety. These were sometimes combined. It is impossible, in brief space, to indicate more than their general features. In the famous "war-dance,"—which was frequently danced, as it still is, for amusement,—speeches, exhortations, jests, personal satire, and repartee were commonly introduced as a part of the performance, sometimes by way of patriotic stimulus, sometimes for amusement. The music in this case was the drum and the war-song. Some of the other dances were also interspersed with speeches and sharp ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... and that man's besetting sin was curiosity. "You be Christian, ma?" said he. I asked him if he had ever met a white man who was not. "Yes, ma," says Samuel. I said "You must have been associating with people whom you ought not to know." Samuel fortunately not having a repartee for this, paddled on with his long paddle for a few seconds. "Where be your husband, ma?" was the next conversational bomb he hurled at me. "I no got one," I answer. "No got," says Samuel, paralysed ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... burnished blade and cheeks like purple wine or anemones blood-red: her lips as coral and carnelian shine and the water of her mouth is sweeter than old wine; its taste would quench Hell's fiery pain. Her tongue is moved by wit of high degree and ready repartee: her breast is a seduction to all that see it (glory be to Him who fashioned it and finished it!); and joined thereto are two upper arms smooth and rounded; even as saith of her ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... was required, than by the addition of some circumstances, and the exaggeration of others, to make merriment supply the place of demonstration; nor was I so senseless as to offer arguments to such as could not attend to them, and with whom a repartee or catch would more effectually answer the same purpose. This being effected, there remained only "the dread of the world:" but Roxana soared too high, to think the opinion of others worthy her notice; Laetitia seemed to think of it only ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... against a wretched gladiator, armed only with a foil of lead, and after shedding the blood of the helpless victim, struck medals to commemorate the inglorious victory. The triumphs of Frederic in the war of repartee were of much the same kind. How to deal with him was the most puzzling of questions. To appear constrained in his presence was to disobey his commands, and to spoil his amusement. Yet if his associates were enticed by his graciousness to ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... "Governor, I am very well, but there is no Mrs. Hughes; bishops in our church don't marry.'' "Good gracious,'' answered the governor, "you don't say so; how long has that been?'' The bishop must have thoroughly enjoyed this. His Irish wit made him quick both at comprehension and repartee. During a debate on the school question a leading Presbyterian merchant of New York, Mr. Hiram Ketchum, made a very earnest speech against separate schools for Roman Catholics, and presently, turning to Bishop Hughes, said, "Sir, we respect you, sir, but, sir, we can't go your purgatory, sir.'' ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... quick little body, full of good-humour, slightly given to repartee, and perhaps rather too impatient of a fool. But though averse to a fool, she could sympathize with folly. A great poet has said that women are all rakes at heart; and there was something of the rake at heart ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... and humorous style. This accords with the taste of present-day readers, many of whom take up a book only for the momentary amusement that it gives them, and are well content with interminable dialogues that do little more than echo, with a certain spice of epigram and smart repartee, the commonplaces interchanged among clever people at a country house or in a London drawing-room. Nevertheless, we believe that Anglo-Indian fiction is seen at its best in the novel of action, since war and love-making ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... seem to have made use of it themselves.'—'Whatever my own conduct may have been, madam,' replied he, 'is not the present question; tho' as I have made no use of advice myself, I should in conscience give it to those that will.'—As I was apprehensive this answer might draw on a repartee, making up by abuse what it wanted in wit, I changed the subject, by seeming to wonder what could keep our son so long at the fair, as it was now almost nightfall.—'Never mind our son,' cried my wife, 'depend upon it he knows what he is about. I'll warrant we'll never ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... you're right. Besides, I remember now what I did say. I said that much as I enjoyed the pleasant give and take of friendly conversation, dearly as I loved even the irresponsible monologue or the biting repartee, yet still more was I attached to the silent worship of the valse's mazy rhythm. 'BUT,' I went on to say, 'but,' I added, with surprising originality, 'every rule has an exception. YOU are the exception. May I have two dances, and then ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... his Pantomime was such that you could fancy he would have been the Pulcinello of the Italians, the Harlequin of the French, that he could have returned a smart repartee from Carlin. His motions, eccentric as they were, were evidently not a mere lesson from the gymnasium; there was a will and mind overflowing with, nay living upon fun, real fun. He was so extravagantly natural, that the most saturnine looker-on ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... whole arm. The two-handed sword, the old claymore, are his weapons, not the rapier. This was plain enough in the word-combats of Queen Mary and her lady gaoler in Loch Leven. Much more conspicuous is the "swashing blow" in the repartee of "St. Ronan's." The insults lavished on Lady Binks are violent and cruel; even Clara Mowbray taunts her. Now Lady Binks is in the same parlous case as the postmistress who dreed penance "for ante-nup," as Meg Dods says in an interrupted harangue, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... was just the very thing that all the young people wanted. And then began such a storm of questions; such a variety of wild and improbable suggestions; such a catalogue of countries as would take years to explore, and such merry banter and repartee, that even Mrs. Morton caught the enthusiasm, and threw herself into the proposal with a vigor that caused her husband to open his eyes ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... orator of great power,—fluent and elegant in diction, bright and sparkling in thought, keen and quick in repartee. ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... hero and the baron ate A sumptuous dinner in the hall of state, And all the household, ranged along the board, Made good cheer with Sir Gawayne and their lord, And passed the brimming bowl right merrily With friendly banter and quick repartee. And Gawayne asked if they had chanced to hear Of a Green Chapel by a Murmuring Mere, And straightway all grew grave. Within his breast Sir Gawayne felt a tremor of unrest, But told his story with a gay outside, And asked for some good man to be his guide To find ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... As to untaught nobility of manners, there came to the Court of France in 1429, from a small pig-breeding village on the marches of Lorraine, one whose manners were deemed of exquisite grace, propriety, and charm, by all who saw and heard her: of her manners and swift wit and repartee, the official record of her trial bears concordant evidence. Other untaught gifts she possessed, and the historic record is unimpeached as regards that child ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... was by this time far enough out of the reserve of first meetings to let the exhilarating June air and sunshine do their work, and her voice, never raised beyond a pretty note, was ready with laugh and word and repartee. Now studying her hook, now questioning Miss Powder, now answering Mr. Nightingale, and then seriously devoted to her fishing,—she shewed the absolute sport of her young joyous nature, a thing charming in itself, even without so piquant a setting. It was no great wonder that a gentleman now ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... distingue woman; and on her re-entrance into society with her daughter, she produced a greater impression than did Effie. She had a merry, joyous disposition, and without possessing half the mental superiority her daughter was gifted with, she had a light, easy conversational ability, playful repartee, an elegant style and manner, and a sufficient knowledge of accomplishments to produce an effect in the gay world, and make her the centre of attraction of every circle she entered; and the world wondered so brilliant ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... or could hold her own in society, he could not opine; and it annoyed him keenly, for he was, like most society-men, very punctilious regarding the manners of the particular woman who belonged to him. That she was, in fact, an elegant conversationalist, quick and brilliant at repartee, a fine linguist and an intelligent thinker for a woman, he did ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... know what a thorough gentleman is, I dare say," assented Mrs. Laudersdale, indifferently, with no spirit for repartee, breaking an egg and putting it down, crumbling a roll, and finally attacking a biscuit, but gradually raising the siege, yawning, and leaning back in ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... suggestive glance at his lean legs, sympathetically inquired "if he wasn't afraid he'd lose all his flesh," he was fully able to appreciate the feminine dexterity and malice of the allusion. His quick wit could have suggested a deserved repartee; but even in his misery Blake would say no wounding word to a lady of the regiment. He had good reason to take very little comfort in her, however, as an exponent of the regimental feeling on which the —th had prided itself. Mrs. Turner was far too voluble on the subject of the awful disgrace ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... whalers being towed down to the distant starting-point by a picket boat. Before they could rally their forces a cross-fire of rude chaff, winged by uproarious laughter, had opened on either side. Catch-word and jest, counter and repartee utterly unintelligible to anyone outside Lower-deck circles were hurled to and fro like snowballs. Every discreditable incident of their joint careers as units of that vast fighting force, personalities that would have brought blushes ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... my mug, emptied it moodily, broke a fine repartee on the sergeant's dull head (he was consumed with mirth), and followed the same road at a slow pace; for my business took ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... dovetailed by the Editor with no lack of ingenuity. The Narrative itself purports to be a series of adventures, or a volume of accidents to a young playwright in quest of dramatic fortune, with a due admixture of love and murder, and "a happy union."—These are relieved by pungent attempts at repartee and harmless raillery, so as to make the dialogue portion glide off pleasantly enough. Instead of quoting an entire chapter from the volume, we are enabled to transfer to our pages a few of its epigrammatic illustrations. First, is what Mr. Reynold calls l'auteur ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... Dickert's book is that it presents the gay and bright, as well as the grave side of the Confederate soldier's experience. It is full of anecdote and incident and repartee. Such quips and jests kept the heart light and the blood warm beneath ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... of stupefaction at the old man's readiness in repartee] Look here: what do you mean by gittin into my car and lettin me bring you here if you're not the person I took ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... morning; and photographs of his friends at Eton, and of the school, and of some of the masters. He talked very earnestly and elaborately about these dull matters, and passed by the opportunities which her first embarrassed replies offered for the repartee of youth. And he who was most impatient of restraint and simple occupations talked and behaved like a dull, simple, kindly old gentleman. His method may not have left Eve with a dazzling impression of him; she could ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... seen or heard at any hour, which could pain the most precise or the most fastidious. Even if a chance oath may float on the air from the stable-yard to the lodging of a French cook, 'tis of the newest fashion, and, if responded to with less of novel charm, the repartee is at least conveyed in the language of the most polite of nations. They bet upon the Derby in these parts a little, are interested in Goodwood, which they frequent, have perhaps, in general, a weakness for play, live highly, and indulge those ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... to Benham that here indeed was the very sister of his spirit. His words sprang into his mind as one thinks of a repartee. "But why shouldn't you ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... deal stung by his banter, which she felt to be directed equally against them both, but she could think of no repartee. ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... House-boat on the Styx Coffee and Repartee Mollie and the Unwiseman Worsted Man; A Musical Play for Amateurs The Enchanted Typewriter Ghosts I Have Met Mrs. Raffles Olympian Nights R. Holmes & Co. And ...
— Alice in Blunderland - An Iridescent Dream • John Kendrick Bangs
... the manner of mountain men or those who address themselves to mules; and John Calhoun in turn had a truly mighty voice which wafted every word to her ears. But as she listened, half in awe at their savage repartee, a third but quieter voice broke in, and she leapt into her dress and went dashing down the hill for her father had come back from the mine. He was deaf, and slightly crippled, as the result of ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... who often stayed with her. It was in allusion to this rumour that he said, 'Whenever my name is coupled with that of a young lady in this manner, I make it a point of honour to say I have been refused.' To the last, we are told, Lady Morgan preserved the natural vivacity and aptness of repartee that had made her the delight of Dublin society half a century before. 'I know I am vain,' she said once to Mrs. Hall, 'but I have a right to be. It is not put on and off like my rouge; it is always ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... foresee, they will true and intrinsic appear. Self-unconscious, and sweetly unable to guess How more lovely by far is the grace you possess, You will wrong your own beauty. The graces of art, You will take for the natural charm of the heart; Studied manners, the brilliant and bold repartee, Will too soon in that fatal comparison be To your fancy more fair than the sweet timid sense Which, in shrinking, betrays its own best eloquence. O then, lady, then, you will feel in your heart The poisonous pain of a fierce jealous dart! While you see her, yourself you no longer will ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... under certain peculiar conditions, but subject to the same rules as conversation by word of mouth, except so far forth as they may be modified by those necessary conditions. You do not take your partner's bright saying home with you and bring a repartee to the next ball, by which time she has forgotten what her bon mot was, and has another, every whit as good, upon her lips; you do not return a lead in whist at the next rubber; you do not postpone the laugh over the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... as we receive a true and faithful account of your adventures in just as many pages as you can afford; but Tom must in the meantime send me a long letter ... Tell Tom I have half resolved to give up punning and take to repartee. A young fellow said to me the other day, 'Ah! Mr. Consul (as I am always called), I wish I could discover a new pleasure.' 'Try virtue!' was my reply. A pompous ex-Governor said swaggeringly to me at the last dinner party at which I assisted, 'Well, Mr. Consul, I suppose you ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... intelligence, clear judgment, and in general very just views on the ordinary affairs of life. Like the women of the southern provinces of Spain, they are remarkable for quickness and smartness of repartee, and in a wordy contest a Limena is sure to come off triumphant. They have a great deal of decision of character, and a degree of courage which does not usually fall to the lot of the female sex. In these respects they are infinitely superior to the timid, ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... see!" said I, rushing angrily from the room. It was a very weak retort, and I frankly admit that I am ashamed of it, but it was the best I had at hand at the moment. My stock of repartee, like most men's vitality, is at its lowest ebb at four ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... of the guests. As for prepared or premeditated art, Mr. Mahaffy has a great contempt for it and tells us of a certain college don (let us hope not at Oxford or Cambridge) who always carried a jest-book in his pocket and had to refer to it when he wished to make a repartee. Great wits, too, are often very cruel, and great humourists often very vulgar, so it will be better to try and 'make good conversation without any large help from these ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... an effort. He realised that it would never do to bandy schoolboy repartee with Priscilla. His loss of dignity would be complete. And besides, he was very likely to get the worst of the encounter. He was out of practise. Prefects ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... fool enlivened the Christmas festivities at the Court of Henry the Eighth, and many quaint stories are told of his drolleries and witticisms. Though a reputed fool, his sarcastic wit and sparkling talents at repartee won him great celebrity. Very little is known of his actual biography, but some interesting things are told about him in a scarce tract, entitled "A pleasant History of the Life and Death of Will Somers," &c. (which was first published in 1676, and a great part of which is said to have been ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... know; did he?" She had turned upon him swiftly with an outflash of the playful daring which had been one of his major fetterings in time past—the ecstatic little charm that goes with quick repartee and ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... sat with her on the platform in bygone days, well remember her matchless powers as a speaker; and how safe we all felt while she had the floor, that neither in manner, sentiment, argument, nor repartee, would she in any way compromise the dignity ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... fine 'ead of yours," he remarked; "all your own? No offence," continued Jarman, without giving Minikin time for repartee. "I was merely thinking there must be room for a lot of sense in it. Now, what do you, as a practical man, advise 'im: dose of poison, or Waterloo Bridge ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... on the broad marble steps, or seated on soft cushions at their parents' feet, listened to the sparkling wit, repartee and agreeable rattle that broke forth among the gay loungers on the terrace. Occasionally the eyes of the whole party would rest with admiration and pride on the scene enacting before them, and well they might, for on the smooth, soft, velvet-like sward of the croquet lawn, eight youthful ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... had no experience, consequently they can form no judgments. By imprudently endeavouring to turn the attention of children to conversation that is unsuited to them, people may give the appearance of early intelligence, and a certain readiness of repartee and fluency of expression; but these are transient advantages. Smart, witty children, amuse the circle for a few hours, and are forgotten: and we may observe, that almost all children who are praised and admired for sprightliness and wit, reason absurdly, and ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... of the qualifications which ensure social success. He was cold and grave even to sadness, reserved and timid even to excess. His mind wanted brilliancy and lightness; he lacked the facility of repartee, and the amiable art of conversing without a subject; he could neither tell a lie, nor pay an insipid compliment. Like most men who feel deeply, he was unable to interpret his impressions immediately. He required to reflect ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... lowered uncomfortably. They felt it was a silly thing of Gourlay to blow his own trumpet in this way, but, being boys, they could not prick his conceit with a quick rejoinder. It is only grown-ups who can be ironical; physical violence is the boy's repartee. It had scarcely gone far enough for that yet, so they lowered in ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
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