"Jesting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the man was a poseur, and that his affectations were the result of living in a small and admiring coterie. If, when one begins to write and talk in that jesting way, there is some one at your elbow to say, "How refreshing, how original, how rugged!" I suppose that one begins to think that one had better indulge oneself in such absurdities. But readers outside the ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... being either wrapped in his mantle or obscured by the shadow, the tones of his voice had made too powerful an impression on him the first time he had heard them for him ever again to forget them, hear them when or where he might. It was more especially when this man was speaking in a manner half jesting, half bitter, that Franz's ear recalled most vividly the deep sonorous, yet well-pitched voice that had addressed him in the grotto of Monte Cristo, and which he heard for the second time amid the darkness and ruined grandeur ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... thought you were jesting. [He gets up and speaks confidentially and half-humorously.] Now, you don't mean to say you're really capable of undermining the ground here where a friend of yours has been fortunate enough to get a ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... despondently; but Miss Murray's almost volatile nature kindles the philosophy of hers. She knows now that Floyd Grandon did not marry her for love, that he did not even profess to, and that in most marriages there is at least a profession of love at the beginning, and it is very sweet. Even such half-jesting love as these two young people make unblushingly before her face, in the naughty audacity of youth, is delightful. Mr. Grandon could never do or say such things; he is ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... were of the same age, 22; they hoped to get married when he was promoted to the rank of full surgeon; they were destined to wait seven-and-a-half years before she returned home to fulfil his early jesting prophecy of making her a Frau Professorin. Here, again, was stern disciplining on the part of destiny. For the first years they were able to meet during the intervals between the long surveying cruises of the ship; they cheated the months ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... Hastings ever had been; but ever and anon there came a glance of the eye, or a curl of the lip; a family expression which was familiar and pleasant to her. John Ayliffe accompanied the carriage to the gate of Mrs. Hazleton's park; and there the lady beckoned him up, and in a kind, half jesting tone, bade him keep himself disengaged the next day, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... to which she is considered to be married. She is not taken back to her father's house but to that of some relative, such as her brother-in-law or grandfather, who is permitted to talk to her in an obscene and jesting manner, and is subsequently disposed of as a widow. Or in Sambalpur she may be nominally married to an old man and then again married as a widow. The Savars follow generally the local Hindu form of the marriage ceremony. On the return of the bridal pair seven ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... say," she continued in a low voice that vibrated with emotion, for her obvious distress was enhanced by his evident belief that she was jesting. "I have given my word—written it—entered into a most solemn obligation. Somehow, the prospect of reaching a civilized place to-morrow induces a more ordered state of mind than has been possible since—since ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... scowled as he rolled over to ease his aching bones. He was in no mood for jesting. There was no land in sight nor the gleam of a sail, naught but the empty waste of the Atlantic, and ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... Revolution! He was the old, the middle-aged, and the young. He was Capt. Miles, of Concord, who said that he went to battle as he went to church. He was Capt. Davis, of Acton, who reproved his men for jesting on the march. He was Deacon Josiah Haynes, of Sudbury, 80 years old, who marched with his company to the South Bridge at Concord, then joined in the hot pursuit to Lexington, and fell as gloriously ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... too often heard her brother remark: "Such a one is dead; he only survived his retirement two years"; she had too often heard Colleville, her brother's intimate friend, a government employee like himself, say, jesting on this climacteric of bureaucrats, "We shall all come to it, ourselves," not to appreciate the danger her brother was running. The change from activity to leisure is, in truth, the critical period for government employees of ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... Madame de Rochefide had the lightly jesting tone of a woman who loves, together with a certain tenderness and abandonment of manner. Calyste had reason to think himself beloved. But when, wandering along the shore beneath the rocks, they came upon one of those charming creeks where the waves deposit the most extraordinary ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... they had received one hundred roubles at the same time for their expenses. They had concluded from this circumstance that the child was probably of high birth, but they had never supposed that he was of royal descent, and had thought that the boy was only jesting when he had called himself a prince. Then the farmer himself attended the king to the village where he had taken the youth as herd-boy, not, indeed, by his own wish, but at the request of the boy, who could not live longer in that lonely place. But how shocked was the farmer, ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... stay-at-home—especially the enthusiasm that pretends that soldiers not only behave like music-hall clowns, but are incapable of the more terrible emotional experiences. He would like, I fancy, to forbid civilians to make jokes during war-time. His hatred of the jesting civilian attains passionate expression ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... Many an allusion and jesting word showed that Pellicanus still believed him to be the son of a knight, and this at last became ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... room till it was past the supper hour, dreading what she knew not, yet knew. When she went down the four were seated at supper. As she opened the door roars of laughter greeted her, and the first sight she saw was Wilhelm's face, full of vivacity, excitement. He was telling a jesting story, at which even her mother was heartily laughing. Her father had laughed till the tears were rolling down his cheeks. John was holding his sides. Wilhelm was a mimic, it appeared; he was imitating the ridiculous speech, gait, gestures, of a man he had seen ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... began speaking of his affairs, of which Agatha was in a state of entire ignorance. She said, jestingly—for they had fallen into quite familiar jesting now, and were laughing together like a couple of children—that she had not the least idea whether she were about to marry a prince ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... anniversary. Isabella viewed these projects with a mournful smile. Her countenance became sadder and more serious, except when in the presence of her husband. There she assumed an appearance of gayety: laughing, jesting, and drawing from her violin its sweetest sounds. But, with her attendants, or in the company of the other members of the imperial family, she was melancholy, and made her preparations for death, which she foretold would overtake her ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... document whereby Geissler made over the whole of the money to his wife and children. Isak and Sivert were called in to witness the signatures to these. When it was done, the gentlemen wanted to buy over Isak's percentage for a ridiculous sum—five hundred Kroner. Geissler put a stop to that, however. "Jesting ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... Land of Content, By the gay crowded pleasure-highway, With laughter, and jesting, I went With the mirth-loving throng for a day; Then I knew I had wandered astray, For I met returned pilgrims, belated, Who said, "We are weary and sated, But we found ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... was said in a half-jesting way; and it certainly did not at all represent—so far as Macleod had ever made out—the real opinions of her neighbors in the world held by this really kind and gentle old lady. But Macleod had noticed before that Miss Rawlinson never spoke with any great warmth about Miss Gertrude ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... talisman wherewith to disenchant them. Our medicines produce no effect on them, and all we can do is, like quacks, to increase the dose. Of course, if ten boxes of Morison's pills have killed a man, it only proves that—he ought to have taken twelve of them. We are jesting, but, as an Ulster Orangeman would say, "it is in good ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... earliest dawn, these hinted rainbows, these blue evening shades, that precious quality which I should recognise again when, all night long after a dinner at which I had partaken of them, they played (lyrical and coarse in their jesting as the fairies in Shakespeare's Dream) at transforming my humble chamber into a bower of ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... smiled. She thought that Choulette was mocking. But he denied the charge, indignantly, and Miss Bell said that Madame Martin was wrong. It was a fault of the French, she said, to think that people were always jesting. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... champagne," of which he talked so airily, that had all the honor of crowning him king of fate and poet of the world. Long after midnight, upon such and many other occasions, would he and his companions sit laughing and jesting and drinking, some saying witty things, and all of them foolish things and worse; inventing stories apropos of the foibles of friends, and relating anecdotes which grew more and more irreverent to God and women as the night advanced, and the wine gained power, and the shame-faced angels ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... his impiety. When he landed at Peloponnesus, he went into the temple of Jupiter Olympius, and disrobed his statue of a golden mantle of great weight, an ornament which the tyrant Gelo[283] had given out of the spoils of the Carthaginians, and at the same time, in a jesting manner, he said "that a golden mantle was too heavy in summer and too cold in winter;" and then, throwing a woollen cloak over the statue, added, "This will serve for all seasons." At another time, he ordered ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... possible to Him, to the Lord," remarked Alexyei Sergyeitch.—"He is a worker of wonders!—I presume He will make thee a clever woman also.... Come, my dear, I was jesting; give ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... nonsense," said Don Quixote, "that until now has been a reality to my hurt, my death will, with heaven's help, turn to my good. I feel, sirs, that I am rapidly drawing near death; a truce to jesting; let me have a confessor to confess me, and a notary to make my will; for in extremities like this, man must not trifle with his soul; and while the curate is confessing me let some one, I ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the youth got himself a capital bride. And after he had married her he went back to his parents. They had long ago counted him as lost to them for ever. And indeed it was no subject for jesting; he had been away from home three whole years, and yet it seemed to him that he had not in all spent more than twenty-four hours ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... sure that if he remained there he would be called upon in some way for a declaration of his sentiments,—and that the call would be one which all his wit would not enable him to answer with any comfort. It was very well jesting about milestones, but every jest brought him nearer to the precipice. He perceived that however ludicrous might be the image which his words produced, she was clever enough in some way to turn that image ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... read assiduously scores of times every day. Whether a train was delayed an hour at a siding or whether it stopped so suddenly that all were thrown from their seats, there was no profane language, but usually jesting and joking instead. Little discomforts which would cause an ordinary American or European soldier to use volumes of profanity were passed by without notice or comment by these psalm-singing Boers, and inconveniences of greater moment, like the disarrangement ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... least, we still find a tendency to introduce extraneous elements. Thus Gl' Intricati, printed in 1581, and acted a few years before at Zara, the work of Count Alvise, or, it would appear, more correctly Luigi, Pasqualigo, contains a farcical and magical part combined with some rather coarse jesting between two rogues, one Spanish and one Bolognese, who speak in their respective dialects. Another play in which a comic element appears is Bartolommeo Rossi's Fiammella (1584), which has the further ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... glad to hear through Mrs. Clayton that reaction has occurred, and that you manifest repentance for your recent violence toward one who always means you well. A little jesting on the part of your guardian, my dear girl, should meet with a very different reception, and handsome women must submit to compliments with a good grace, or run the risk of being called prudes or viragos. Not that I mean to apply either term ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... him, putting of cases, and debating so as suited their capacities, and encouraged their industry. And so in the Temple, he seldom moved without a parcel of youths hanging about him, and he merry and jesting with them." ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... the Queene and it seems indeed had more of her eare than any body else, and would be with her talking alone two or three hours together; insomuch that the Lords about the King, when he would be jesting with them about their wives, would tell the King that he must have a care of his wife too, for she hath now the gallant: and they say the King himself did once ask Montagu how his mistress (meaning the Queene) did. He grew ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... The cavaliers were jesting and laughing, while the Puritans were silent, or conversing in low, measured tones on the ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... assure them, that Justiniano is of a condition to command over the whole Earth; and that Isabella is of a House, and Gentlewoman good enough, to make Knights of the Rhodes, if she have children enough for it, and that she have a minde thereunto. But setting this jesting aside, and coming to that which regards the Italian names, know that I have put them in their natural pronunciation. And if you see some Turkish words, as Alla, Stamboll, the Egira, and some others, I have done it of ...
— Prefaces to Fiction • Various
... is no matter for jesting. No: though she used me ill, I would not believe her dead ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... king 'struck down the noblest of the Humanists, Thomas More, who died the death of a saint, gloriously jesting.' The question of the monasteries is one that is solved by the simple statement that the King wanted money and the monasteries supplied it. Is there any justification for the crimes of Henry? For Chesterton 'it is unpractical to discuss whether Froude finds any justification for Henry's ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... am not jesting, Davie. That is one way of fighting the good fight—is it not? And I want to have a good ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson
... with the Princess after the war of 1866 while sitting next to her at table I was obliged to conclude that she had subsequently allowed herself to be influenced in her judgment of my character by further-reaching calumnies. I was ambitious, she said, in a half-jesting tone, to be a king or at least president of a republic. I replied in the same semi-jocular tone that I was personally spoilt for a republican; that I had grown up in the royalist traditions of the family and had need of a monarchical institution for my ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... brother; the late jesting Monsieur Makes now your brothers dying prophesie equall At all parts, being dead ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... fair when Durante Alighieri came into the world, for he was born on a May morning, and the Florentines were making holiday. There was mirth and jesting within the tall grey houses round the little church of San Martino. The Alighieri dwelt in that quarter, but more humbly than their fine neighbours, the Portinari, the Donati, and ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... the ungodly will have when they come into hell. 'He cried.' It is like he was laughing, jesting, jeering, drinking, mocking, swearing, cursing, prating, persecuting of the godly in his prosperity, among his filthy companions. But now the case is otherwise, now he is in another frame, now his proud, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... man laughed derisively. He had resumed his seat by the other's side. "Pho!" he said, "you'll be jesting. For the power, it's but a name. If he were to use, were it but the thin end of it, it would run into his hand! The boys would rise upon him, and Flavvy'd be the worst of them. It's in the deep bog he'd be, before he knew where he was, and ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... feathers, as he elegantly termed it, by urging him to join the expedition; on the contrary, to the secret but carefully concealed consternation of Rex and Lance, the prime movers in the matter, Mr Dale seemed more than half disposed to yield to Brook's jesting entreaties that he would make one of the party. It almost seemed as though this intensely selfish and egotistical individual were at last becoming ashamed of his own behaviour and had resolved upon an attempt to ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... that wrapped me in perfect lassitude when I sank into my hammock on the first night of travel. However, as we became better acquainted with each other and with wood-life, we tripped along merrily in the shadowy silence of the forest,—singing, jesting, and praising Allah. Even the slaves were relaxed into familiarity never permitted in the towns; while masters would sometimes be seen relieving the servants by bearing their burdens. At nightfall the women brought water, cooked food, and distributed ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... I answered with cheerful paradox. But she would have none of my jesting, and if I hadn't allowed her to wash and bind it up right away I'm afraid I wouldn't have got any tea that night. When she finished she placed her hands upon my shoulders and kissed me full on ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... your letter, and I really don't know what to say to you. I should not even have answered you at all, if it had not been that I fancied that under your jesting remarks there really lies hid a feeling of some friendliness. Your letter made an unpleasant impression on me. In answer to your rigmarole, as you call it, let me too put to you one question: What for? What have I to do with you, or you with me? I do not ascribe to you any bad motives ... on ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... might not you Forestall our sport, to make us thus untrue? Do not you know my lady's foot by the squire, And laugh upon the apple of her eye? And stand between her back, sir, and the fire, Holding a trencher, jesting merrily? You put our page out: go, you are allow'd; Die when you will, a smock shall be your shroud. You leer upon me, do you? There's an eye Wounds ...
— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... as far BACK," I cried, jesting; for she looked about twenty-four, and had cheeks like a ripe nectarine, just as pink and ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... with my beak?' Stalky replied. 'Pater went Berserk after call-over, and fell on a lot of us for jesting with him about his impot. You ought ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... followed by her ladies and the three young men and guided by the song of some score nightingales and other birds, took her way westward, by a little-used footpath, full of green herbs and flowers, which latter now all began to open for the coming sun, and chatting, jesting and laughing with her company, brought them a while before half tierce,[149] without having gone over two thousand paces, to a very fair and rich palace, somewhat upraised above the plain upon a little knoll. ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... dog; to thrive Like him, so senseless—and so much alive! And once I called myself a blithe Hellene, Who am too much in love with life to live. (The shrug is pure Hebraic) ... For what I've been, A lenient Lord will tax me—and forgive. Dieu me pardonnera—c'est son metier. But this is jesting. There are other scandals You haven't heard ... Can it be dusk so soon? Or is this deeper darkness ...? Is that you, Mother? How did you come? Where are the candles?... Over my bed a strange tree gleams—half filled With stars ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... himself with another place. Where, in the whole range of history, could we meet with a similar instance of magnanimity? Where, with such a noble picture—of a great soul rising superior to adversity? Seneca in the bath, uttering moral apophthegms with his dying breath—Socrates jesting over his bowl of hemlock juice—were great creatures—immense minds; but Lord Melbourne reading his own dismissal to his friends—after dinner, too!—over his first glass of wine—leaves them at an immeasurable distance. Oh! that we had the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... lesson of the year 1000—for then, too, people had anticipated the end. The star was no star—mere gas—a comet; and were it a star it could not possibly strike the earth. There was no precedent for such a thing. Common-sense was sturdy everywhere, scornful, jesting, a little inclined to persecute the obdurate fearful. That night, at seven-fifteen by Greenwich time, the star would be at its nearest to Jupiter. Then the world would see the turn things would take. The master mathematician's grim warnings were treated ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... Men and horses were seen to come down the broken path which leads to the shore; the latter all properly tackled for carrying their loading. Twenty fishing barks were pushed afloat at once, and crowded round the brig with much clamour, laughter, cursing, and jesting. Amidst all this apparent confusion there was the essential regularity. Nanty Ewart again walked his quarter-deck as if he had never tasted spirits in his life, issued the necessary orders with precision, and saw them executed with punctuality. In half an ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... a good deal of such "scurril jesting" in the paper, especially in a department called "Prattle." There were verses on all manner of subjects—mostly the nobility and their works and ways, from the viewpoint of disapproval—and epigrams, generally ill-humorous, like the ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... suburbs, on finding their houses flooded in the darkness of night, lost the jesting calm which they had so boastfully displayed during the daytime. Now fear of the supernatural came over them, and with childish anxiety they sought protection of some Higher Power to avert the danger. Perhaps this freshet was the final ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... indulged, and you are sure to become in time the object of just contempt and ridicule. It will soon be well known that the surest way to inflict pain upon you is to extol the excellences or to dwell on the happiness of others, and your failings will be considered an amusing subject for jesting observation to experimentalize upon. I have often watched the downward progress I have just described; and, unless the grace of God, working with your own vigorous self-control, should alter your present ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... treasure. But he forgot that to go back absent, and dreamy, and indifferent, when he had before been gay and ardent about everything, was the surest way of awakening suspicion; and when, in response to the jesting questions which were put to him upon the subject, he only blushed and returned evasive answers, all the ladies were certain that he had lost his heart, and did their utmost to discover who was the happy possessor of it. As to the Prince, he was becoming day by day more attached ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... young! She was on the sunny side of fifty, and anybody would take him to be her brother!" and when he asked her what time he should remove his furniture, she wondered he had lived so long in the house with her and never yet found out her jesting propensities. She's sure she couldn't desire a nicer or more circumspect boarder than Mr. Bond! And so the matter passed over. She knew her own interest too well to venture on forbidden ground again. And he had got attached to the room, ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... Bertram, with your worthy friend here, that I have been rather jesting with edge-tools; and although neither you nor I, nor any sensible man, can put faith in the predictions of astrology, yet, as it has sometimes happened that inquiries into futurity, undertaken in jest, have in their ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... principles; as, indeed, even in his written speeches, both political and judicial, we see him continually trying to show his learning by the way. And one may discover the different temper of each of them in their speeches. For Demosthenes's oratory was, without all embellishment and jesting, wholly composed for real effect and seriousness; not smelling of the lamp, as Pytheas scoffingly said, but of the temperance, thoughtfulness, austerity, and grave earnestness of his temper. Whereas, Cicero's love of mockery often ran ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... connection with Linda. Through Eileen's brain ran bits of the conversation of the previous evening. She recalled that the men she had intended should spend the evening waiting on her and paying her pretty compliments had spent it eating like hungry men, laughing and jesting with Linda and Marian, giving every evidence of a satisfaction with their entertainment that never had been evinced with the best brand of attractions ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... day, no matter in what mood of merry jesting or practical modernity we set out, an hour of riding in the open air brings us back to the mystical charm of the Holy Land and beneath the spell of its memories and dreams. The wild hillsides, the flowers of the field, the shimmering olive-groves, ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... one of the women on the other side. Ume was merely a method of choosing partners by the master of ceremonies touching with a wand, called the maile, the couple selected for the forfeit, while he sang a jesting song. The sudden personal turn at the close of many of the oli may perhaps be accounted for by their composition for this game. The kaeke dance is that form of hula in which the beat is made ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... and love and generosity have sway instead of selfishness. For this reason we ought to regard sex with reverent thought, to hold it sacred to the highest purposes, to speak of it ever with purest delicacy, and never with jesting or prurient smiles. I do not want you to center your thought on the physical facts of sex, but I would like to have you feel that womanhood, which is the mental, moral and physical expression of sex, is a glorious, divine gift, to be ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... Forsyde's comin'," and Monsieur Profond "poinded" with a yellow-gloved finger; "small car, with a small lunch"; he moved on, groomed, sleepy, and remote, George Forsyte following, neat, huge, and with his jesting air. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... at him curiously, almost with the expectation of finding that he was jesting. This flowering of sentiment was unexpected. It had come, as he had described his native spring blooms, almost at the snow bank's edge. She reached out, gathered up the faded blossoms ruthlessly, and dropped them into a ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... about to destroy it, because great complaint concerning the people has come to Jehovah and he has sent us to destroy it." So Lot went out and said to his sons-in-law, "Up, go out of this place, for Jehovah will destroy the city." But his sons-in-law thought he was only jesting. ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... and smiled sweetly. "Renee laughs at sentiment," she said. "What is it that Shakespeare says about jesting at scars because ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... since the time of the last of the Georges, to effect an improvement in the general aspect of our churchyards, which was certainly very much needed. Culpable neglect, it may be added, was sometimes shown in the admission of jesting or profane epitaphs. The inscription on Gay's monument in Westminster Abbey is a well-known example. One other instance, in illustration, will be abundantly sufficient. Imagine the carelessness of supervision which could allow the following buffoonery ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... grave, the women make quilts. The tiny girl shows you with pride the completed four patch or nine patch, square piled on square, which 'mammy aims to set up for her ag'inst spring.' The mother tells you half jesting, half in earnest, 'the young un will have several ag'inst she has a home of her own.' No bride of the old country has more pride in her dower chest than the mountain bride in her pile of quilts. The old woman will show you a stack of quilts from floor to ceiling ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... Carlos," answered Standish, deciding that the other was jesting. "It's frightfully awkward. Frightfully! Er—you see, old chap, Myra says she won't come to Auchinleven for the shooting if you are going to be one of the party, and—er—well, as you can understand, that places me in ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... a moment we fell to jape and jesting; foolishly, for the Gods are always listening, and the Desert-Gods have long ears. 'You're last from school,' said Brigade-Major McLeod. 'You know Napier's message—"Peccavi, I have Sind." Give me a wire for Corps, "I have B-led."' '"Sanguinevi,"' I said, 'if such a verb ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... a small lean man in a light-gray surcoat. "The king loves not talk about what the king does. 'T is ill jesting with lions. Remember William Walker, hanged for saying his son should be heir ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... counted one hundred and ninety. All this time the ordinary amount of water was coming over the cliff and accumulating in the air, swedging and widening and forming an irregular cone about seven hundred feet high, tapering to the top of the wall, the whole standing still, jesting on the invisible arm of the North Wind. At length, as if commanded to go on again, scores of arrowy comets shot forth from the bottom of the suspended mass as if ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... Madame de Remusat, III., 75, 155: "When the minister of police learned that jesting or malicious remarks had been made in one of the Paris drawing-rooms he at once notified the master or mistress of the house to be more watchful of their company."—Ibid., p.187 (1807): "The emperor ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... fundamental seriousness—with that absolute gravity which imperils the publication of a book and entirely prohibits the production of a play on such matters. There is something in human nature beyond my explaining which leads towards jesting in these directions. An instinct, I know, is an instinct; of which a main character is that its exercise shall be independent of any knowledge as to its purpose. We eat because we like eating, rather than because we have reckoned that so many calories are ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... His cruelty was not inferior to his arrogance; he caused numbers of the most illustrious senators and others to be put to death, upon the most trifling pretences. One AE'lius La'ma was condemned and executed only for jesting, though there was neither novelty nor poignancy in his humour. Occea'nus was murdered only for celebrating the nativity of O'tho. Pomposia'nus shared the same fate, because it was foretold by an astrologer that he should be emperor. ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... thee?'' and he answered, "She doth, O Commander of the Faithful;" whereupon the King said, "By the life of my head and the tombs of my forefathers, she is a gift from me to thee, she and her waiting- women!" Ala al-Din fancied that the Caliph was jesting with him; but, on the morrow, the King went in to Kut al-Kulub and said to her, "I have given thee to Ala Al-Din, whereat she rejoiced, for she had seen and loved him. Then the Caliph returned from his serraglio palace to the Divan; and, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... Nurse thought that, when I was up she could conceal it with a Corking-pin. Thus appointed, Ned led the Way, saying, the onlie Occasion on which a Gentleman needed not to excuse himself to a Lady for going first, was when they were to ride a Pillion. Noe more jesting when once a-Horseback; for, after pacing through a few deserted Streets, we found ourselves amidst such a Medly of Carts, Coaches, and Wagons, full of People and Goods, all pouring out of Town, that Ned had enough to do to keep cleare of 'em, and of the Horsemen and empty Vehicles coming ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... may add that—a party here for a day or two—if Grandma Elsie does not use up all the holidays with hers," he said in a half jesting tone and ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... with indignation, and tingling to his finger's ends, with this untimely mirth. His flashing eyes asked if this were a time for jesting. ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... all the varied contrivances of Roman engineering genius. Military students will read the particulars for themselves in Caesar's own language. Enough that the work was done within the time, with the legions in perfect good humor, and giving jesting names to the new instruments of torture as Caesar invented them. Vercingetorix now and then burst out on the working parties, but produced no effect. They knew what they were to expect when the thirty days were out; but they knew their commander, and had absolute ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... in other words: That man is noble who doth fear no fate Which may afflict humanity; but, like A gallant soldier, meets the charge half way, And takes his wounds a-jesting. Now ev'ry one of us, whom Nature whips, Must take it meekly; for she means our good; And learn to go along ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... yet neither one nor other, but a goodly knight, famous in battle, joust and tourney, a potent lord of noble heritage, known to the world as Sir Pertinax of Shene Castle and divers rich manors and demesnes. Furthermore, I that do seem a sorry jesting-fellow, I that in antic habit go, that cut ye capers with ass's ears a-dangle and languish here your fellow in bonds, am yet no antic, no poor, motley Fool, but a duke and lord of many fair towns ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... Dayton (a senator), after some jesting conversation, asked me to converse with him in private. We retired. He said that he, with some other gentlemen, wished to have a termination put to the pending election; but be wished to know what were ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... cart to a trader for two marks. Then they set forth upon their way, the Sheriff riding upon his horse and Robin running beside him. Thus they left Nottingham Town and traveled forward along the dusty highway, laughing and jesting together as though they had been old friends. But all the time the Sheriff said within himself, "Thy jest to me of Robin Hood shall cost thee dear, good fellow, even four hundred pounds, thou fool." For he thought he would make at least that ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... a Grecian nose And a beautiful tail. His friends Were wont to say in a jesting way A divinity shaped his ends. The fact is sad, but his foxship had A fault we should all eschew: He was so deceived that he quite believed What he ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... step below are carved the names of Charles, of his nieces, Mary and Anne, and of their respective husbands. Their wax effigies, now in the Islip Chapel, used to stand here, and were the only monuments raised to the Stuart sovereigns—a fact which called forth much jesting comment from their political opponents. From this small chapel we pass to the one opposite, crossing once more the top of the steps. At the entrance is a stone which immediately arrests attention, for upon it is the touching epitaph dedicated by his ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith
... week. He shaved himself and changed his clothes, putting on the first white silk shirt he had worn for many a day. He even found an old can of shoe-polish and touched up the pair of dusty shoes. And then, laughing at the looks the men turned upon him, at the few jesting remarks which they chose to make, he walked through the trees and ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... of how handsome Walter was. At twenty he was splendid to see; then, too, he had the sense of power in him, and great hopes; he looked forward, ever jesting of course, but he looked to see himself where he had the right to expect. He believed in himself profoundly; but HE NEVER DISBELIEVED IN OTHERS. To the roughest Highland student he always had his fine, kind, open dignity of manner; and a good word ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fireplace again Georgiana turned upon them in her old jesting way, which yet had in it, as they all felt, a quality which was new. "Stop it, girls. No, I'll not sell one of you a rug of any size, shape, or colour. I'm far behind, as I told you. But—I'll send Madge a gorgeous one for a wedding present, if she'll tell me her ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... believe even Mr. Kenyon—whenever he says that I am perversely obscure. Unfortunately obscure, not perversely—that is quite a wrong word. And the last time he used it to me (and then, I assure you, another word still worse was with it) I begged him to confine them for the future to his jesting moods. Because, indeed, I am not in the very least degree perverse in this fault of mine, which is my destiny rather than my choice, and comes upon me, I think, just where I would eschew it most. So little has perversity to do with its occurrence, that my fear of it makes me sometimes ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... the alert, Surveying, drilling, ordering, jesting, pondering; For the man was, we safely may assert, A thing to wonder at beyond most wondering; Hero, buffoon, half-demon, and half-dirt, Praying, instructing, desolating, plundering; Now Mars, now Momus; and when bent to storm A fortress, Harlequin ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... very idly," said St. George, then, softening his falcon's glance. "Pray excuse such savage jesting. I should like to share my grandfather's estate with you, the adopted child of his elder grandson. It ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... "Nay, I am not jesting," said the Minister. "You were called two years since, and your defence in the case of Simeuse and Hauteserre had raised you ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... the purlieus of the palace. Liberty of criticism was as easy to the rude multitude as to the witlings of the Court, and its effects, when it spread to that multitude, were far more deadly. The King's judgment might condemn, but his facile love of jesting made him inclined to listen to, the empty and sordid chatter of frivolity that sounded through his Court. "Meanwhile," says Clarendon, "all men of virtue and sobriety, of which there were very many in the King's family, were grieved and heartbroken with hearing what they could not choose ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... grinning, sweating, swearing, and foaming, with malice diabolical, they cut down the tree, because it bore the name of Liberty.' (Essex Gazette, 1775.) Some idea of the size of the tree may be formed from the fact that it made fourteen cords of wood. The jesting at the expense of the Sons of Liberty had a sorry conclusion; one of the soldiers, in attempting to remove a limb, fell to ...
— Under the Liberty Tree - A Story of The 'Boston Massacre' • James Otis
... the Captain, almost beside himself with joy—'dear ladies, you cannot be jesting, and I accept your offer with gratitude and delight. Good heavens, what a lucky fellow ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... behind a perpendicular projection of the wall, and nearly succeeded. They had passed, indeed, before they noticed her. Then they turned and gazed curiously at her; and one of them made some remark, apparently of a jesting nature, for they both laughed. Then again they turned and moved on out of sight ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... eager all, with clamorous speech, To hide my stammering welcome and my tears. I am no host carousing long and late, Enticing guests with epicurean hints; Nor am I Timon, sick of this sad world, Who, jesting, cries, "The sky is overhead, And underneath that famous rest, the earth: Show me the man who can ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard
... forbear from jesting on so important a matter. For some time past the efforts of those who most truly love you, my dear child, have been concentrated on the endeavor to settle you suitably; and you would be guilty of ingratitude in meeting with levity those proofs of kindness which ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... unusual sense of the possible dignity of common men and common things. His humour rioted in comparisons between potent personages and Jim Jett's brother or old Judge Brown's drunken coachman, for the reason for which the rarely jesting Wordsworth found a hero in the "Leech-Gatherer" or in Nelson and a villain in Napoleon or in Peter Bell. He could use and respect and pardon and overrule his far more accomplished ministers because he stood up to them with no more fear or cringing, ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... hindrances—exactly in that proportion would it cease to be known or felt that there had ever been any hindrances to be smoothed. This, however, is digression, to which I have been tempted by the interesting nature of the grievance. In a jesting way, this grievance is obliquely noticed ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... be true of this for others, for me and my imagination, at any rate, it was altogether true. I was never for dalliance, I was never a jesting lover. I wanted fiercely; I made love impatiently. Perhaps I had written irrelevant love-letters for that very reason; because with this stark theme I could not ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... opinion, She were better progress to the baths at Lucca, Or go visit the Spa In Germany; for, if you will believe me, I do not like this jesting with ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... in length, train and convoying troops emerged from Winchester in the early light and began a rumbling, bellowing, singing, jesting, determined progress up the Valley pike. Ewell followed with his brigadiers—Taylor, Trimble, Elzey, Scott, and the Maryland Line. The old Army of the Valley came next in column—all save the Stonewall Brigade that was yet ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... Cartesians had any desire to go to heaven, it was out of curiosity. "Talk to the Cardinal (de Retz) a little of your MACHINES; machines that love, machines that have a choice for some one, machines that are jealous, machines that fear. ALLEZ, ALLEZ, you are jesting! Descartes never intended to make ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... bitter tone of jesting now, for she caught at any means of keeping down the sobs which would rise in her throat. He took her hand ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... by a certain earnestness and seriousness. He set, indeed, all his guests at ease by his courtesy and the interest he took in each; and yet all felt that in his presence loud laughter would be out of place and loose jesting impossible. Enghien, on the other hand, being a wild and reckless young noble, one who chose not his words, but was wont to give vent in terms of unbridled hatred to his contempt for those whom he deemed his enemies, imposed ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... Pope's figure was an easy one for those clumsy caricaturists to draw. Any stupid hand could draw a hunchback, and write Pope underneath. They did. A libel was published against Pope, with such a frontispiece. This kind of rude jesting was an evidence not only of an ill nature, but a dull one. When a child makes a pun, or a lout breaks out into a laugh, it is some very obvious combination of words, or discrepancy of objects, which provokes the infantine satirist, or tickles ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... this badinage. From his view-point the situation was too serious for jesting. It was outrageous that he, the son of John P. Whittington, should be expected to shift for himself ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... seriously injuring him. And this it was that so speedily broke up the whole throng. Within little more than a minute of the most violent uproar of hundreds of human voices, my brother-in-law and I were able to stroll arm-in-arm through the moonlit streets, quietly jesting and laughing, on our way home; and then it was that, to my amazement and relief, he informed me that he was accustomed to this ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... described him on their first acquaintance as having "the mind and feelings of a gentleman." Thurlow, it is true, after one of Crabbe's earlier interviews, had declared with an oath (more suo) that he was "as like Parson Adams as twelve to a dozen." But Thurlow was not merely jesting. He knew that Fielding's immortal clergyman had also the "mind and feelings of a gentleman," although his simplicity and ignorance of the world put him at many social disadvantages. It was probably the same obvious difference in Crabbe from the common type ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... is always jesting, even at his own expense. He means he is so drunk he would pick a quarrel with ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... repeated the Girl in the same jesting manner as before; then, quickly coming out from behind the bar, she went over to him and put out her ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... sense, he agreed to halve the businesse, he continuing the fooling, and Patteson—for that is the simple good fellow's name—receiving the salary. Father delighteth in sparring with Patteson far more than in jesting with the king, whom he alwaies looks on as a lion that ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... sway about very unsteadily, besides that every step was with a jolting motion. It kept Daisy in constant uneasiness. Dr. Sandford walked on just before with his gun; Alexander Fish came after, laughing and jesting with the ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... "Jesting apart," he continued, "you are spoiling yourself, ruining your preaching, and pulling down a splendid building to re-fashion it into one which sins against the rules of nature and art. You must remember, too, that if at your age, like a piece of cloth, you have taken a wrong fold, it will not ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... her hands; we do sometime think one way, and sometime another; what betideth the lord deputy is known to him only who knoweth all; but when a man hath so many showing friends, and so many unshowing enemies, who learneth his end here below? I say, do not you meddle in any sort, nor give your jesting too freely among those you know not; obey the lord deputy in all things, but give not your opinion; it may be heard in England. Though you obey, yet seem not to advise in any one point; your obeysance may be, and must be, construed well; ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... jesting here. In the very spirit of serious truth, we assure you, that the delusion about "jentaculum" is even exceeded by this other delusion about "prandium." Salmasius himself, for whom a natural prejudice of place and time partially obscured the truth, admits, however, that prandium was ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... astonishment. "Stronger than Croton? Art thou jesting? Croton was the strongest of men, but now here ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... She felt again the touch of his deft, strong hands, and heard again the tender cadence of his voice as he said: "I hope you are not in pain? We will release you very soon." She dwelt long upon the final scene at the table, when, with a jesting word on his lips, but with love in his eyes, he took her hand to remove the marks of her bonds; and the flush that came to her was not one of anger—it rose from the return of her joy of those few moments ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... to relate what had happened. He went, rose in his place, and told his story. The spirit of the assembly rose to the occasion. Howe was the first to call for vigorous action. "Address the King," he said, "to send his Dutch troops after these men. I know not who else can be trusted." "This is no jesting matter," said old Birch, who had been a colonel in the service of the Parliament, and had seen the most powerful and renowned House of Commons that ever sate twice purged and twice expelled by its own soldiers; ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and most primal emotions, with love and joy and wonder, the half-fearful triumph of swift inertia, attained at last in the full element of life. The others were different; they were dimpling and laughing and jesting in their unintelligible guttural. Their faces knew nothing of the seriousness of the bride's. One of them was exceedingly pretty, with a beauty unusual in her race. Her high cheek-bones were covered with the softest rosy flesh, her wide mouth ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... hand, and a little behind him. Jack, too much agitated to respond to the unseasonable jest, threw up the barrel of his piece, in order to prime, when a bullet came, from nobody knew where, aslant, and put an end to jesting for ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... amused at his abrupt manner, for he was still a young man, and had somewhat the air of a navy officer; but he tackled me with great solemnity. I could make fun of what he said, for I do not think it was very wise; but the subject does not appear to me just now in a jesting light, so I shall only say that he related to me his own conversion, which had been effected (as is very often the case) through the agency of a gig accident, and that, after having examined me and diagnosed my case, he selected some suitable tracts from his repertory, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... have been surely jesting, major. We may be going to push forward in that direction, and occupy some strong position until the army comes up, but it would be the height of madness to attack an enemy, in a strong position, and just tenfold ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... master's life. He preferred his free existence, to which he adapted himself with the ease of a parasite. After dinner was over, he would listen to the weighty discussions between learned priests and serious old church-goers, nodding his approval, and an hour later he would be jesting impiously in some cafe or other with painters, actors and journalists. He knew everybody; he only needed to speak to an artist twice and he would call him by his first name and swear that he loved and admired ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... me so little as to apprehend my jesting in a serious sense? Know that two of those whom you saw on my right hand are spies of the Landgrave. Their visit to me, I question not, was purposely made to catch some such discoveries as you, my friends, would too surely have thrown ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... box-tree; Malvolio's coming down this walk. He has been yonder i' the sun practising behaviour to his own shadow this half hour. Observe him, for the love of mockery; for I know this letter will make a contemplative idiot of him. Close, in the name of jesting! Lie thou there [throws down a letter], for here comes the trout that must be caught ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... jesting, they pressed on until their advance guard met the plodding, cheerless, downcast refugees. The French peasants halted in their tracks, staring, unable to believe their eyes. Here, in the flesh, by thousands upon ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... the holy places to show to the people. The sacred way which led from Athens to Eleusis was rich in such memorials. The nine days of the wanderings of Demeter in the Homeric hymn are the nine days of the duration of the greater or autumnal mysteries; the jesting of the old woman Iambe, who endeavours to make Demeter smile, are the customary mockeries with which the worshippers, as they rested on the bridge, on the seventh day of the feast, assailed those who passed ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... a jesting way, that Arthur was the truest, most old-fashioned, and most ridiculously scrupulous brother that ever grew up among the daisies; but he was affected, as ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... I was only jesting. Give the order. There is more than enough for us all. We go our way from ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... talked with him about the famous pictures in the Braccio gallery. And all this had happened not once, but many times in the course of years. Then she had unfolded to him her schemes about her own little palace, and he had promised to help her, by and bye, half jesting, half in earnest. She would give him rooms in the upper story to live in, she said, disposing of everything beforehand. He should be close to his work, and have it under his hand always until it was finished. ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... come to horrify the country convents? If he had only heard of it from Tibble Wry-mouth, he would have doubted, in spite of its power over him, but he had heard it from a man, wise, good, and high in place, like Dean Colet. Yet to his further perplexity, his uncle had spoken of Colet as jesting at Wolsey's table. What course should he take? Could he bear to turn away from that which drew his soul so powerfully, and return to the bounds which seem to him to be grown so narrow, but which he was told were safe? Now ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... they should be rescued from the mud, and their sacredness taught to children. A medical friend writes that he always taught his son that the vulgar sex names are really beautiful words of ancient origin, and that when we understand them aright we cannot possibly see in them any motive for low jesting. They are simple, serious and solemn words, connoting the most central facts of life, and only to ignorant and plebeian vulgarity can they cause obscene mirth. An American man of science, who has privately and anonymously printed some pamphlets ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... very much frightened, for he seemed quite dead; still they allowed him to remain after they had given notice of what had happened; and at dawn the body was carried to the hospital. We might imagine it to be no jesting matter if the soul of the man should chance to return to him, for most probably it would seek for the body in East Street without being able to find it. We might fancy the soul inquiring of the ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... street with the single boardwalk was crowded with people, some well dressed and others in the roughest of costumes. There was loud talking and jesting, and most of the pedestrians seemed to be in good humor, although occasionally they would pass a group evidently out of luck and willing ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... Brown say, but I was in no humor to talk, or even to listen; and yet I can now frankly confess that if he had not made light of my misfortune I should have suffered ten times the amount of mental agony that I did. His jesting style of treating the affair was alone sufficient to make me keep up my spirits, and imagine the matter as one of less consequence than it ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... started and flushed, for the tone of voice was even more eloquent than the words themselves. The moment which she had vaguely expected, dreaded, and hoped for, had come suddenly upon her, provoked by her own jesting words. She did not know what to say, or how to say it, only one definite thought stood out distinctly in the confusion of her mind, namely, that Dr Maclure was standing unprotected in the damp and cold. She held out her hand towards him, ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... jesting apart, perhaps it would have been a more accurate classification than placing her among ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... required Zachariah's startling comment to lift him out of the slough of despond. Spurred by the desire to convince his servant that his speculations were groundless, he made a great to-do over the imposed task of hanging the pictures, jesting merrily about the possibility of their heads being snapped off by Mistress Viola if she popped in the next morning to find that they had ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... Cadwallader the laugh is scarce ever absent, and the dimple on his cheek—to employ a printer's phrase—appears stereotyped. With the young Welshman a joke might be carried to extremes, and he would only seek his revanche by a lark of like kind. But with him of Yorkshire, practical jesting would ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... a moment of bewilderment—of absence of mind. She has just arrived in London—is dazzled and excited. If, sir, you have a sister, a daughter, a mother, a wife, picture her—after such a careless accident—grasped by a policeman, dragged through the streets, exposed to the eyes of the jesting crowd—the blackest construction put upon her action, shrinking before a magistrate, cast into prison, and, God knows what else!—and all because of an act, not in reality more inexplicable than that of a man who walks off with a hat not his own, or another ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various |
