"Humorist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... frenzy, and frenzy into an almost universal delirium, two cablegrams crossed each other along the bed of the Atlantic Ocean. One was to say that the Pittsburg gun was ready, and the other that the loading of the Bolton Baby—feeding, some callous humorist of the day called it—was to begin the next morning. This meant that there was just a week—an ordinary working week, between the human race and something very like ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... to him. Though Dickens shrank timorously in childhood from her frightful stories, he himself, like the fat boy in Pickwick, sometimes "wants to make our flesh creep." It seems, indeed, an odd trait of the humorist that he can at will wholly discard his gaiety, and, like the Pied Piper, pipe to another measure. W.W. Jacobs, besides his humorous sailor yarns, has given us The Monkey's Paw; and Barry Pain's gruesome stories, Told in the Dark, are as forcible as any of his ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... on, undisturbed by the dog man's quaint menaces. He did not exactly see himself and Peter getting into trouble at the hands of a crack-brained village humorist. ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... healthful and might be compared to Rhine-wine. Hawthorne's humor at its best is more refined than Thackeray's, as well as of a more amiable quality, and reminds one (on Taine's principle) of those delicate Italian wines which have very little body, but a delightful bouquet. As a humorist, however, Hawthorne varies in different times and places more than in any other respect. He adapts himself to his subject; is light and playful in "The Select Party"; takes on a more serious vein in "The Celestial Railroad"; in his resuscitation ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... worthless man, now that no one admires or tries to respect him. Again, it may be advanced, in Hook's behalf, that political animosity—a less despicable, though not less hurtful passion than love of gentility—contributed to Hook's dislike of the quarter on the north side of Holborn. As a humorist he ridiculed, as a panderer to fashionable prejudices he sneered at, Bloomsbury; but as a tory he cherished a genuine antagonism to the district of town that was associated in the public mind with the wealth and ascendency of the house of ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... advice, Westby." Irving turned from the humorist, and raised his voice. "All ready for the mile ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... the cadaverous humorist. "Ever this indigenous Pius IX—fulminating, fulminating, fulminating!—Too much inferno. The cure does half his burning for Beelzebub! We are served ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... sacrificed. For it is only fair to state, as a just tribute to the enterprise and energy of that young and thriving settlement, that there was not probably a single citizen who did not feel himself better able to control the deceased humorist's property. Some had exprest a doubt of their ability to support a family; others had felt perhaps too keenly the deep responsibility resting upon them when chosen from the panel as jurors, and had evaded their public duties; a few had declined office and a low salary; but no one shrank from ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... I was a bother to nobody. He was so extraordinarily kind and simple that I wondered how on earth it was that I had really hated him at one time, for I had hated him quite honestly, and I came to the conclusion that as soon as he had ceased to be a pompous humorist he had become a very nice man. At any rate he no longer made jokes, and I never had been able to think them good ones, because those which I remembered had been ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... Seymour's rejoiced considerably that night. The air was dark with flying cushions, and darker still, occasionally, when the usual humorist turned the gas out. Milton was out, for he had gone to the dinner which followed the Ripton match, and the man in command of the house in his absence was Mill. And the senior day-room had no respect ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... JEROME, humorist, famous for "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" and the "Three Men" series, and for his play "The Passing of the Third ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... a violinist who would say, "If I were not a genius, I could not play so well with such little practice." The poor fellow did not know how poor a fiddler he really was. Well did Strickland Gillilan, America's great poet-humorist, say, "Egotism is the opiate that Nature administers to deaden the pains ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... general texture of our communal life can we effectually improve the quality of that. But we may bear in mind that factor of observation, and give it a casting vote in any decision upon public decency. That is all too often forgotten. Before Broadbeam, the popular humorist, for example, flashes his glittering rapier upon the County Council for suppressing some vulgar obscenity in the music-halls, or tickles the ribs of a Vigilance Association for its care of our hoardings, he should do his ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... yo' brought his muzzle, man?" cried old Tammas, the humorist; and, turning, climbed all in a heat on to an upturned bucket that stood by. Whereat the puppy, emboldened by his foe's retreat, advanced savagely to the attack, buzzing round the slippery pail like a wasp on a windowpane, in a vain attempt to reach ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... which persons of various character seek for themselves notoriety or a name: or desire to leave a reputation behind them, when they are no more. This is the love of posthumous fame, a subject which has afforded an extensive theme both for the philosopher and the humorist. ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... comedies; and yet more appropriate to the robust genius of the Comic Epic was the accident that placed on the wall, beneath the window of his birth-room, a jovial jest in stone. For here some sixteenth-century humorist had displayed the arms of Abbot Beere in the form of a convivial rebus or riddle—to wit, a ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... There was nothing particularly wise or witty in the words; but their truth was so evident, and the manner in which they were spoken so clear and calm, that they were followed by a roar of laughter that for a little time upset the mighty humorist, though, in the extempore song in which he rallied, he did ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... of rhetoric, no eloquent passages; he is not a wit, a humorist or a clown; yet, so great a vein of pleasantry and good nature pervades what he says, gliding over a deep current of practical argument, he keeps his hearers in a smiling good mood with their mouths open ready to swallow all he says. His sense of the ludicrous is very keen, and an exhibition of ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... imperturbable expression. He had quite as much reason as I, if not more, for joining our gloom-party. He, too, was waiting sentence. For six days his wild, untamed spirit had been cabined in these walls; but he had been born a humorist, and even in bonds he sought to play the clown. He went through contortions, pitched coins against himself, and staggered around the room with a soda-water bottle at his lips, imitating a drunkard. But ours was a tough house even for his irrepressible spirit to play ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... greeted her with a word or two of respectful yet half-humorous courtesy,—a courtesy which never really offends a true woman, although it often piques her self-aplomb by the slight assumption of superiority in the humorist. A woman is quick to recognize the fact that the great and more dangerous passions are always SERIOUS, and may be excused if in self-respect she is often induced to try if there be not somewhere under ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... friend. Every Southern man becomes grave when he thinks of that terrible stretch of time, partly, it is true, because life was nobler, but chiefly because of the memories of sorrow and suffering. A professional Southern humorist once undertook to write in dialect a Comic History of the War, but his heart failed him, as his public would have failed him, and the serial lived only for a ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... novelist and a humorist. Mistral is a poet; hence, although he professes to aim at a full expression of the "soul of his Provence," there are many aspects of the Provencal nature that he has not touched upon. He has omitted all the traits that lend themselves to ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... round the dingy room with an air of profound pity and wonder, asked him whether he didn't think the apartments were elegant, and if he would like, for Mrs. Bacon's drawing-room, any of the articles of furniture? Mr. Warrington's character as a humorist, was known to Mr. Bacon: "I never can make that chap out," the publisher was heard to say, "or tell whether he is in ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in our reserve billets, and not sorry either. The enemy threw a shell in beside us this morning as I was getting up, to show that he had not forgotten us! It must have come 5 miles at least. He is a humorist, too, of a grim sort, for 3 days ago he bombarded the little town (French) of Estaires with French shells. I suppose some gun he had captured from them. Anyhow, his ammunition is certainly, as a rule, not as good as the stuff he was using. Have a headache this morning. I often get one ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... Trapper evidently relished the mirthfulness of his companion, for his face was lighted with the amused expression of the humorist when he has told to an appreciative comrade an experience against himself. But in an instant his countenance dropped, and, looking at the huge kettle that stood half buried in the coals and warm ashes in front of the glowing ...
— Holiday Tales - Christmas in the Adirondacks • W. H. H. Murray
... went on presently, for she was a bit of a humorist, "he looks very dirty and pale, doesn't he? I suppose the poor thing has been hiding in the ant-bear holes with nothing to eat. I am told that up in the Drakensberg yonder the ant-bear holes are full of Englishmen. They had rather starve in them ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... glory, and hypocrisy, is invaluable; that a good laugh can come only from a warm heart; that the man in motley is often wiser than the judge in ermine or the priest in lawn. These qualities are goodly in literature. We all love the kindly humorist from Chaucer to Holmes, inclusive. How genial and gentle they are, as they sit with us around the fireside, chucking us under the chins, and slyly poking us in the ribs; and in the field how nobly they have charged upon humbugs and shams. They have ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... As the scout law intimates, he must never go about with a sulky air. He must always be bright and smiling, and as the humorist says, "Must always see the doughnut and not the hole." A bright face and a cheery word spread like sunshine from one to another. It is the scout's duty to be a ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... commercial activity, and gradually assuming a character of repose and leisure, in many regards more attractive than the life and bustle of earlier days. Many persons are still living there who remember the humorist as a quaint and tricksy boy, alternating between laughter and preternatural gravity, and of a surprising ingenuity in devising odd practical jokes in which good nature so far prevailed that even the victims were too much ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... benefits of equal suffrage. Ex-Governor John W. Hoyt of Wyoming came to the platform and corroborated these statements, paying a fine tribute to the political influence of women. He was followed by Mrs. Lida A. Meriwether (Tenn.), whose reputation as a humorist was fully sustained in her clever portrayal of Dreams that Go by Contraries. Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt (N. Y.) gave a brilliant address on The ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... welcome to what he pleased to have, in consideration of the company he brought together, to hear his wonderful talk, his wit, and his dreams, he was helpless in the snare. We must remember that he was a fine scholar, as well as a dreamer and a humorist; and there was no order of intellect, from the sage to the peasant, which could resist the charm of his discourse. He had taken his degree with high distinction at Oxford; and yet the old Westmoreland "statesman," who, offered whiskey and water, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... weeks in Mark Twain's life. Artemus Ward was in the height of his fame, and he encouraged his new-found brother-humorist and prophesied great things of him. Clemens, on his side, measured himself by this man who had achieved fame, and perhaps with good reason concluded that Ward's estimate was correct, that he too could win ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... trembled, his brow grew damp with unpleasant, memories; he seemed bent upon clearing his conscience once for all. But he succeeded only in convulsing his hearers. Women giggled, men wiped tears from their eyes and declared he was a consummate actor and the rarest, the most fantastic humorist they had ever listened to. They swore that Cuba had lost, in him, a peerless champion. When he had finished they cheered him loudly and the orchestra broke ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... nothing so disappointing to a humorist as to lead up to an interruption, and then find he is not interrupted. Mr. Chamberlain seldom fails to bring off his little unsuspected repartee, and it is his mastery of this art that make his speeches ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... they did. So on they went, most of the time in gales of merriment, as some house or modest little shop suggested some character or happening in the books of the great writer and humorist. ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... be a child who wrote it—a child with a child's imagination and a child's viewpoint and a child's ignorance of the things she wrote about. In a way of speaking it is like those unintentionally humorous obituary poems which appear in the papers. No professional humorist can hope to equal them because when he writes one he does it with deliberate intent to be funny and invariably he betrays his hand. It is when some poor mourning amateur dips a 'prentice pen in the very blood of his or her ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... Spencer, who take all knowledge, or large fields of it, to be their province. The author of "Thoughts on the Universe" has something in common with these, but he appears also to have a good deal about him of what we call the humorist; that is, an individual with a somewhat heterogeneous personality, in which various distinctly human elements are mixed together, so as to form a kind of coherent and sometimes pleasing whole, which is to a symmetrical character as a ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... that goes with spirit and sparkle, Mrs. Fedden's little story shows her to be a genuine humorist.... She deserves to be welcomed cordially to the ranks of those who can make ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... pretty, with gray eyes, fair hair, a straight nose, and two bewitching dimples when she smiled. These dimples were rather misleading, for they gave strangers the impression that Lilias was humorous, which was entirely a mistake: it was Dulcie who was the humorist in reality, Dulcie whose long lashes dropped over her shy eyes, and who never could say a word for herself in public, though in the society of intimate friends she could be amusing enough. Dulcie, at fourteen, seemed years younger than Lilias; she did not wish to grow up too ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... was at one of my entertainments at Leicester," said the humorist-caricaturist looking across at me with twinkling eyes. "A terrible hissing! I showed Mr. Gladstone on the sheet. Immediately it burst forth like a suddenly alarmed steam-engine. The audience rose in indignation—they tried to outdo it with frantic applause, but in spite of their lusty efforts ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... whose reputation in English literature is mainly that of a humorist. He had learned that the only noble humanity is that in which the fountains of laughter and of tears lie so close together that their waters intermingle. I beseech you not to confound the 'laughter of fools,' which is the 'crackling ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... could not help being amusing, and she was so good a judge of that quality that we accept her opinion of Henry's humour without demur; but he became so grandiloquent when wishing to be serious that he certainly must have wanted that last and rarest gift of a humorist—the art ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... was small and flash, as barbers mostly are, He wore a strike-your-fancy sash, he smoked a huge cigar: He was a humorist of note and keen at repartee, He laid the odds and kept a 'tote', whatever that may be, And when he saw our friend arrive, he whispered 'Here's a lark! Just watch me catch him all alive, this ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... Obviously a widow, she had a poor, loose-hung, trailing little body, which no nourishment could plump or fortify. Her visage was habitually doleful, but contracted itself at moments into a grin of quaint drollery, which betrayed her for something of a humorist. ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... Edward Noyes Westcott his true place in American letters—placing him as a humorist next to Mark Twain, as a master of dialect above Lowell, as a descriptive writer equal to Bret Harte, and, on the whole, as a novelist on a par with the best of those who live and have their being in the heart of hearts ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... as were the eyes, the crimson below them deepening to splendor the velvet in the iris. The one severe line in the face, the thin, straight nose, ended in wide nostrils in the quivering, mobile nostrils of the humorist. The swell of the gourmand's paunch beneath the soutane was proof that the cure was a true Norman he had not passed a lifetime in these fertile gardens forgetful of the fact that the fine art of good living is the one indulgence the Church has left to ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... Spanish mother. Though an eminent scholar and critic, he did not hesitate in his Amantes de Teruel to play to the popular passion for sentimentality. He produced some lyric verse of worth. Manuel BRETON DE LOS HERREROS (1796-1873) was primarily a humorist and satirist, who turned from page xxxix lyric verse to drama as his best medium of expression. He delighted in holding up to ridicule the excesses of romanticism. Mention should be made here of two poets who had been, like Espronceda, pupils of Alberto Lista. The eclectic poet MARQUES ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... the old humorist," he announced, as he joined her. "He hasn't forgotten anything, and wasn't he glad to see me again? You use an English saddle, I dare say, and ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... Edison, but possibly, alas! a wicked partner. Why does he say such things as these? 'Mr. Edison claims that he realizes 90 per cent. of the power applied to this machine in external work.' . . . Perhaps the writer is a humorist, and had in his mind Colonel Sellers, etc., which he could not keep out of a serious discussion; but such ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... "Juliette" plucked at her apron and appeared doubtful of the truth of his protestations. Then the "funny man" had his innings. He sat in a chair with a shoe in his hand and tried to smack the head of a humorist who knelt in front but always managed neatly to avoid his blows, the whole being punctuated by vigorous exclamations in Italian, and much energetic ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... word. Affectation is felt to be a disharmony between the pose and the inner values or an attempt to win superiority or "difference" of a superior kind by acting. In either case it excites ridicule, hatred or disgust, and shafts at it form part of the stock in trade of the satirist, humorist and indeed every portrayer of life. What men demand of each other is sincerity, and even where the insincerity is merely a habitual pose it arouses hostile feeling which expresses itself all the way from criticism ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... never accepted. The history of such words as buncombe, dude, Mugwump, gerrymander, and joy-ride illustrate for English the fact that words of a certain kind meet a more hospitable reception in the spoken language than they do in literature. The writer of comedy or farce, the humorist, and the man in the street do not feel the constraint which the canons of good usage put on the serious writer. They coin new words or use old words in a new way or use new constructions without much hesitation. The extraordinary material progress ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... beaming broadly upon the minister, as if the mere mention of the fact promoted jollity. "That's it, Brother Gorringe,—take your seat at Brother Ware's desk. Mind the Dominie's pen don't play tricks on you, an' start off writin' out sermons instid of figgers." The humorist turned to Theron as the lawyer walked over to the desk at the window. "I allus have to caution him about that," he remarked with great joviality. "An' do YOU look out afterwards, Brother Ware, or else you'll catch that pen o' yours scribblin' ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... first beheld this message we took the inn-keeper for a humorist and clever advertiser; but now we are convinced that he was in earnest when he said that his guests would lick the sauce pan in ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... recent. When Scarlatti, Handel, and Bach were at their height, Russia, outside of court circles, was still in a state of serfdom. Tolstoi was born as late as 1828, Turgenieff in 1818 and Pushkin, the half-negro poet-humorist, was born in 1799. Contemporary with these writers was Mikhail Ivanovitch Glinka—the first of the great modern composers of Russia. Still later we come to Wassili Vereschagin, the best known of the Russian painters, who was not born until 1842. It may ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... 'when one keeps a little house down at Wimbledon, these things have a way of dropping out as time goes on.' 'Just like the teeth,' said I. He thought over this for a while, and then laughed—oh, he laughed quite a lot—and declared I was a humorist. He hadn't heard anything so quick, not for a long while. 'Mr. Collingwood,' he said, 'I'm a lonely man with it all. I don't mind owning to you that I've taken up these here politics partly for distraction. It used to be different when me and Maria could stick ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... struggle with his kind, and narrowed more and more as it was curbed within the channels of active discipline and duty, missed its due career altogether, and what might have been the poet, contracted into the humorist. ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "You're a humorist of a high order," he said warmly. "It's the huge joke of the thing that is making people like it. Let me see, the publisher is advertising a quotation from some paper that has called it the funniest ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... No: that is part of my private pleasure. Your friend here is a humorist. I laughed at his telling you to think of yourself to keep up your heart. I say, think of ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... hovering between two meanings, this oscillation between the ironical and the serious, is always amusing, and sometimes delightful. Some simple-minded people are revolted, even in literature, by the ironical method; and tell the humorist, with an air of moral disapproval, that they never know whether he is in jest or in earnest. To such matter-of-fact persons Disraeli's novels must be a standing offence; for it is his most characteristic peculiarity that the passage from one phase to the other is imperceptible. ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... "fool,"—that is to say, to a very absurd and ridiculous person, under whose conduct she was exposed to the "whips and scorns," the disdain and bitter retaliation, natural to the union of a beautiful and accomplished, though vain and haughty woman, with a very eccentric, irritable, and bombastic humorist. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... given her the habit of ending her sentences with a melancholy cooing and an unintelligible murmur of agreement. It was undoubtedly sincere and sympathetic, but at times inappropriate and distressing. It had lost her the friendship of the one humorist of Tasajara, whose best jokes she had received with such heartfelt commiseration and such pained appreciation of the evident labor involved as to reduce him ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... who was up to all mystification, Quite a humorist, saw the intent of the Sun; And was ever too airy—though lofty his station— To spoil the least taste of the prospect of fun; So he hemm'd, and he haw'd—took a roll of pure vapour, Which the light from the beam made ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... the good old days was not often a humorist. Life to him was a serious business. When he was not reiving other people's kye, other people were probably reiving his; and as a general rule one is driven to conclude that he was not unlike that famous Scotch terrier whose master attributed the dog's persistently staid and even melancholy ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... France, with the exception of Montaigne, it was Rabelais (1495-1553), a physician, philosopher, and humorist, who, notwithstanding his profanity and obscenity, was the most popular author of his day, and who well represents the tone of the Renaissance in that country. Ronsard (1524-1585), an imitator of the Latins and Greeks, was the favorite poet of Mary, Queen of Scots. In the first ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... I met them—the unassuming celebrity, and the young entrepreneur. The great humorist, alack! will never read the tale as I have told it, but I am hopeful, that in "The Tale of Timber Town," his erstwhile companion and the public will perceive the literary value of the theme which arrested the attention of so great a writer as ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... and the superficial infallibility of the self-satisfied Cockerell. Accordingly, after consultation with that eager searcher after knowledge, Second Lieutenant Little, he took the laudable but fatal step of carrying his difficulties to one Captain Wagstaffe, the humorist of the Battalion. ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... his eyes and went over to ring for tea. He did not know very much more about the case of the humorist than when he first sat down to listen; but he realized that no amount of words from his Swedish friend would help to reveal the real facts. A personal interview with the author himself could alone ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... entered the room a man looked up from his paper with some interest. He was a peculiar-looking man, with a keen face, streaked by suffering—a face that was always ready to wince. This man was a humorist, but he looked as if his own life had been a tragedy. He continued to look at De Lloseta and Fitz with a quiet scrutiny which was somewhat remarkable. It suggested the scrutiny of a woman who is taking ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... communion with my sergeant-major, a wonderful cockney humorist, who possessed the truth on all points. As far as Fusilier Bluff was concerned, said he, the attack was an effort to reach and destroy the terrible whizz-bang gun. It was believed that the gun's location was in a nullah where its dump of ammunition was ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... came daily, photographing. The sole rays in a dreary protraction of existence were afforded by the Intelligence Summaries, run by Captain Lang, a versatile and popular humorist. Deserters reported that at a certain place the enemy's staff consisted of only one lame Turk and one 'powerful Christian.' The 'powerful Christian' had to do all the work, and was preparing for ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... poets in the man who has with such irresistible humour, sometimes approaching to the farcical, delineated humble Scotch life. One passage in the book always struck me very much. We have in it the poet as well as the humorist; and it is a perfect example of what I have been trying to describe in the pages which you have rend. I mean the passage in which Mansie tells us of a sudden glimpse which, in circumstances of mortal terror, he ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... Positivist, who sneers at the Clergyman; there are a Squire and his wife from Rutlandshire: she is next the Radical Candidate for the Isle of Dogs. They do not seem to get on well together. GRIGSBY and the humorist of the future are chaffing each other across the table: nobody understands them; I don't know whether they are quarrelling or not. Miss JONES, the authoress of Melancholy Moods (in a Greek dress, with a pince-nez: a woman should ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 23, 1892 • Various
... me so much pleasure that I was vexed with the indifference with which some of my friends laid the works of the great humorist aside. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... second, balladist, humorist, and Tory, in proportions of about equal importance,—one of the group of wits and devotees of the status quo who made Blackwood's Magazine so famous in its early days,—was born in Edinburgh, June 21st, 1813. He was the son of Roger Aytoun, "writer to the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... No. 11 will be commenced a new burlesque serial, "The Mystery of Mister E. Drood," written expressly for this paper by the celebrated humorist, ORPHEUS C. KERR. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various
... twenty-one yet, and has scarcely ever been out of the bush in her life. She has lived her book, and I feel proud of it for the sake of the country I came from, where people toil and bake and suffer and are kind; where every second sun-burnt bushman is a sympathetic humorist, with the sadness of the bush deep in his eyes and a brave grin for the worst of times, and where every third bushman is a poet, with a big heart that ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... better perspective, I should have said not less but a good deal more in its praise. The humorous passages in "The English Constitution" are in their way perfect, and, what is more, they are really original. They owe nothing to any previous humorist. They stand somewhere between the heartiness of Sydney Smith and the dainty fastidiousness of Matthew Arnold, and yet imitate neither. They have a quality, indeed, which is entirely their own and is entirely delightful. ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... and the bitterest earnestness. As one turns its pages one is sometimes tempted to think Luther half right when he declared Erasmus "a regular jester who makes sport of everything, even of religion and Christ himself." Yet there was in this humorist a deep seriousness that cannot be ignored. Erasmus was really directing his extraordinary industry, knowledge, and insight, not toward a revival of classical literature, but to a renaissance of Christianity. He believed, however, that revolt from the pope and the Church would produce a great ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... had been a bit of a humorist when he was an Oxford don. "Speak of that to Briggs," he said, "and he would answer, 'Cash for me, and the blessing may take care of itself.' As to the ladies—why, they deafen you about blessings on their humble efforts, and the ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... games; neatest in tent; best all-round camper; boy who talks least about himself; the one with the best table manners; the quietest boy, most generous boy, handsomest boy, best-natured boy and the camp humorist. ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... chosen to settle the question autobiographically, we follow substantially the narrative[4]—that ought to be true; for, mythical or historical, it appropriately localizes and fitly circumstances the nativity of the humorist ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... rudely cut short by the loss of his fortune and he was forced to earn his living by literature and journalism. Under various pseudonyms he soon gained a reputation as a satirist and humorist, his first success being The Great Hoggarty Diamond. Then years of work for PUNCH and other papers followed before he won enduring fame by Vanity Fair, which he styled "a ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... they make as good an appearance as the wealthy did a hundred years ago. It would be safe to say that they have more comforts and conveniences in their homes to-day than the more prosperous had at the time of the Revolution. The humorist, John Phenix, said that "Gen'l Washington never saw a steamboat, nor rode in a railroad car;" and possibly his house was not heated by steam, or furnished with pipes for hot and cold water. Nor did he ever use gas, or the telegraph or telephone. Whether the people who lived then would have ...
— The Olden Time Series: Vol. 2: The Days of the Spinning-Wheel in New England • Various
... Hill, become imperial minded, goes down to destruction in a sea of blood, Auberon Quin confesses to Wayne that this whole story, so full of human tragedy and hopes and fears, had been merely the outcome of a joke. To him all life was a joke, to Wayne an epic; and this antagonism between the humorist and the fanatic has created the whole wild story. Wayne has the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... get out, I expect, when he wants to," replied the wrinkled humorist, with a weather-beaten grin. "They do say he whips off on a broomstick about once a month and steers for Bos-ton!" His fashion of utterance was a leisurely sing-song, like the roll of a ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... Twain had not shown up. It was before the days of taxis, so Dillingham was sent after him in a hansom. After going to the wrong address, he finally located the humorist in Chelsea. He found Mark Twain sitting in his dressing-gown, smoking a Pittsburg ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... world through her husband; no happiness but his comfort; no vanity but his glory; sacrificing herself to his wants, and where he proves inadequate putting her imagination out to service and bringing home a basket of flowers to deck his brow. Of our sweethearts the humorist hath it:— ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... druggist paid the town humorist no attention. He hurried to the counter and leaned across it, asking his ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... be a great journalist, and spelled hard words with great fluency. He never tried to be a humorist in any of his newspaper ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... intitlemint on account o' my shape," he would say, with a strut, on occasion, if he were bantered, for he had learned that the name held personal suggestions which it took a little bravado to confront. Evidently Apollo's master was a humorist. ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... went West. In the archives of our government is a state paper wherein President Lincoln referred to Mississippi gunboats with draught so light that they would float wherever the ground was a little damp. Typically American in its grotesquerie was the assertion of a rural humorist who asserted that the hogs thereabout were so thin they had to have a knot tied in their tails to prevent them from crawling through ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... of, with a literary personage. I do not remember, indeed, ever caring much about any of the stalwart Doctor's grandiloquent productions, except his two stern and masculine poems, "London," and "The Vanity of Human Wishes"; it was as a man, a talker, and a humorist, that I knew and loved him, appreciating many of his qualities perhaps more thoroughly than I do now, though never seeking to put my instinctive perception ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with the writer's surpassing capacity to handle almost all branches of inquiry and all forms of presentation. In Jersey she had shown herself an historian, in Guernsey a poetess, in Alderney a political economist, and in Sark a humorist: there were sketches of character scattered through the pages which might put our "fictionists" to the blush; the style was eloquent and racy, studded with gems of felicitous remark; and the moral spirit throughout was so superior that, said one, "the recording angel" (who ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... loved dancing and mirth and the joy of living as much as did any of the men he so courageously opposed, was not more remote from a conception of him once current in this country than was the real Cowper—the frank, genial humorist, who wrote "John Gilpin," who in his youth "giggled and made giggle" with his girl-cousins, and in his maturer years "laughed and made laugh" with Lady ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... that each side should pay its own losses. Mr. Wade said that his language might bear the construction that the English consul, Mr. Harry Parkes, should pay all the cost himself. If Commissioner Yeh was a humorist he chose a bad time for indulging his proclivities, and, a sufficient force being available, orders were at once given to attack Canton. On December 15 Honan was occupied, and ten days were passed in bringing up the ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... a vastly stimulating and entertaining place if you take it aright—namely, if you recognise that it is the creation of a profound humorist, is designed for wholly practical and personal uses, and proceed to adapt your conduct to that knowledge in all light-heartedness and good faith. Thus, though in less trenchant phrase since she was still happily very young, meditated Madame de Vallorbes, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... name "interest" suggests to many that this must be some plan for sugar-coating education, or perhaps for giving children only what they like. And this is quite the opposite of the traditional view which is expressed by the humorist who said, "It does not matter much what you teach a boy, so long as he doesn't like it." But the idea of interest in modern psychology does not mean letting the child have his own way, any more than discipline means doing only ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... sucked up juices from all the land, whose liberal fruits were showered all around; having a key to unlock all hearts, and a treasure for each; hospitable friend, husband-lover, doting father; a boisterous wit, fantastic humorist, master of pathos, practical joker, sincere mourner; always an extremist, yielding to various excess; an April day, all smiles and tears; January and May met together; a many-sided fanatic; a universal enthusiast; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... it began to struggle. An awful puppet, with a gibbet chain for a string. Some humorist of night must have seized the string and been playing with the mummy. It turned and leapt as if it would fain dislocate itself; the birds, frightened, flew off. It was like an explosion of all those unclean creatures. Then they ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... lard. I never sell goods without knowing where I can find them when I want them, and if these fellows try to put their forefeet in the trough, or start any shoving and crowding, they're going to find me forgetting my table manners, too. For when it comes to funny business I'm something of a humorist myself. And while I'm too old to run, I'm young enough to ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... letters receive no greater deference at the hands of the American humorist. Even an Oliver Wendell Holmes will say of metaphysics that it is like "splitting a log; when you have done, you have two more to split." A poster long used by the comedians Crane and Robson represented ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... by stating that he had been on intimate terms with that great man, MARK TWAIN, and wondered if I had ever heard the story (which he used to tell against himself) of the visitor to his house who, after a very delightful stay, during which the humorist had been at the top of his form, asked his daughter if her father was always like that? "Only when we ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 5th, 1914 • Various
... to this tradition of farce, drollery and joke was Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910), known as "Mark Twain," born in Missouri, who raised it to an extraordinary height of success and won world-wide reputation as a great and original humorist. His works, however, include a broader compass of fiction, greater humanity and reality, and ally him to the masters of humorous creation. Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908) of Georgia introduced a new variety in Nights ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... The prostrate humorist revived. Susie's jeers had the effect of a bucket of ice-water, for he had not been aware that this blot upon his escutcheon—the disgraceful epoch in his life when he had earned honest money herding ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... undecided whether to treat the occupant of Suite A as a humorist or a lunatic, but finally he observed, "This isn't ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... beads; and you need but look at him to see that he is aware how becoming it is. He thinks it was given to him for good conduct, and is doing his best to merit another. The little donkey is a still more original animal. He is a practical humorist, full of perverse tricks, but all intended for effect, and without a particle of malice. He generally walks behind, running off to one side or the other to crop a mouthful of grass, but no sooner does Dervish ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... seeing that the order was a positive one, had the good sense to obey. He "hardened" the funny-bone of either arm against the punching bag to the tune of jeering laughter from the rest of the squad. That was Coach Luce's way of dealing with the too-funny amateur humorist. ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... and he accordingly felt perfectly safe in his companionship and well enjoyed his humorous exploits. One day Derby and Mr. Gouverneur were sauntering through the streets of Washington when the keen eye of the humorist was attracted by a sign over a store door which read, "Ladies' Depository"—the old-fashioned method of designating what would now be called a "Woman's Exchange." Turning to his companion, Derby remarked: "I have a little business ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... remark about the physical effect of some common, hired books. A few of them (not necessarily books of verse) are melodious; the music some others make for you as you read has the disagreeable emphasis of a barrel-organ; the tinkling-cymbals book (it was not written by a humorist) I only met once. But there is infinite variety in the noises books do make. I have now on my shelves a book apparently of the most valuable kind which, before I have read half-a-dozen lines, begins to make a noise like a buzz-saw. I am inconsolable; I shall ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... did he who had the right to do so speak of the foolishness of the cross. Foolishness, without doubt, foolishness. And the American humorist, Oliver Wendell Holmes, was not altogether wide of the mark in making one of the characters in his ingenious conversations say that he thought better of those who were confined in a lunatic asylum on account of religious ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... rain has begun its winter session, and, as a military humorist put it, trench warfare is becoming a constant drain. The problem of parapet mending has been reduced to arithmetical form a la Colenso, as follows: "If two inches of rain per diem brings down one quarter of a company's parapet, and one company, working about twenty-six ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... course of education; he has a flexible mind, capable of much expansion, and convertible towards far loftier studies and activities than those of his early life; and if he came to Washington a backwoods humorist, he has already transformed himself into as good a statesman (to speak ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne |
