"Pleasantry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not have you get cross with me. I must always have my little pleasantry. Does he get cross with you like ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... the cards or spit at a crack, gents, to see which one does deliver the oration." But the pleasantry did not evoke any smile from that ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... replied with a pleasantry so broad and so significant that Heliodora's cheek fired; for she saw that Basil ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... sustained; but Palissy would not sell them, considering that to have done so would be to "decry and abate his honour;" and so he broke in pieces the entire batch. "Nevertheless," says he, "hope continued to inspire me, and I held on manfully; sometimes, when visitors called, I entertained them with pleasantry, while I was really sad at heart. . . . Worst of all the sufferings I had to endure, were the mockeries and persecutions of those of my own household, who were so unreasonable as to expect me to execute work without the means of doing so. For years my furnaces ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... VIII., as described by Holinshed, perhaps furnishes a clue to the Queen's pleasantry, though Shakspeare has omitted the particular incident relating to Sir Henry Nevill. The old chronicler, after giving an account of Wolsey's banquet, and the entrance of a noble troop of strangers in masks, amongst whom he suspected that the king ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 50. Saturday, October 12, 1850 • Various
... office boast and pleasantry that Lilly could recite offhand through the current program of any of the nine theaters, leaping glibly from motion picture, to acrobat, ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... May, 1778, besides various articles of her wearing apparel, such as slippers, &c., and also her guitar, all of which had been concealed in the ceiling since the sad close of her history. Numbers flocked to see them; but, as it was a mere pleasantry, the hoax was well received, and ended in the neighborhood of Danvers with the privileged "April fool's day" of its date, although it may even yet have believers ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... time I heard Brother Gherard Naeldwijc say in pleasantry that in those times on fast days they would sometimes divide one fig into four or six portions that so the great quantity of the bread they consumed might be seasoned by those fragments. On a time also there come to us, I know not whence, ...
— The Chronicle of the Canons Regular of Mount St. Agnes • Thomas a Kempis
... entrance filled with rioters. Garrison, all unconscious of danger, walked over to these persons and remonstrated in his grave way with them in regard to the disturbance which they were producing, winding up with a characteristic bit of pleasantry: "Gentlemen," said he, "perhaps you are not aware that this is a meeting of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, called and intended exclusively for ladies, and those only who have been invited to address them. Understanding this fact you will not be so rude and indecorous as to thrust ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... pleasantry, we erupted pellmell into the drive, all frantic by word or deed to distract the terrier from his purpose. Shrieks, curses, and a copy of La Fontaine's Fables were hurled simultaneously and in vain at our favourite, and it was Berry, to whom the fear of further ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... difficulty a burst of laughter. And after that he would not say another word, bad, good, or indifferent, though I felt the bed shake more than once, and knew that he was digesting his pleasantry. ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... not so much as in black, start from Versailles on the second evening with their leaden bier. At a high trot they start; and keep up that pace. For the jibes (brocards) of those Parisians, who stand planted in two rows, all the way to St. Denis, and 'give vent to their pleasantry, the characteristic of the nation,' do not tempt one to slacken. Towards midnight the vaults of St. Denis receive their own; unwept by any eye of all these; if not by poor Loque his neglected Daughter's, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... where persons who are not Members are admitted on sufferance, as it were—and perceiving two or three gentlemen at supper, who, he was aware, were not Members, and could not, in that place, very well resent his behaviour, he indulged in the pleasantry of sitting with his booted leg on the table at which they were supping! He is generally harmless, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... to say I was, if I wasn't," said he, and his manner made it a mere pleasantry to put her ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... writing men exercise their privilege to use that little Pliocene pleasantry about the boy who is not strong enough to work being educated for a preacher. We are apt to overlook the fact, however, that the boy not strong enough to work is often the only one who desires an education—all of this according to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... artists; and he had an eager interest in their lives and haunts, which he had made the subject of minute and novel enquiry. This store of knowledge gave substance to his talk, yet never interrupted his buoyancy and pleasantry, because only introduced when called for, and not made matter of parade or display. But the happy combination of qualities that rendered him a favourite companion, and won him many friends, proved in the end injurious ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... on a pleasantry, whereat Moses opened his mouth in a soundless laugh, but, observing the professor's goggles levelled at him, he transformed the laugh into an astounding sneeze, and immediately gazed with pouting innocence and interest at ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... can also the letters to his lady correspondents, among them being Maria Edgeworth, Lady Dunraven, and Lady Campbell. Many of these sheets relate to literary matters, but they are largely intermingled With genial pleasantry, and serve at all events to show the affection and esteem with which he was regarded by all who had the privilege of knowing him. There are also the letters to the sisters whom he adored, letters brimming over with such exalted sentiment, that most ordinary sisters would be tempted ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... persisted in viewing the fair side of things; and therefore the interval between Sunday and Tuesday evening, did not pass without some mixture of cheerfulness. On Monday, Dr. Fordyce forbad the child's having the breast, and we therefore procured puppies to draw off the milk. This occasioned some pleasantry of Mary with me and the other attendants. Nothing could exceed the equanimity, the patience and affectionateness of the poor sufferer. I intreated her to recover; I dwelt with trembling fondness on every favourable circumstance; and, as far it was possible in so ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... Willoughby, "his conversation this afternoon rather amused me. It recalled to my mind an excellent and most characteristic pleasantry, which you may not have heard. The story goes that Coleridge once asked Lamb, 'Did you ever hear me preach?' 'Preach!' said Lamb; 'Gad, I never heard you do anything else!' And yet, if Mr. Collins ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... she said. "I have always, from my childhood, heard this talk that Germany must grow, must get to the sea. I thought it was just talk—a pleasantry!" ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... he began in a dim way to understand. This was the thing which Tissot had not been able to bear; which in the end had driven the young man with the small chin from the house. This was the pleasantry to which his feeble resistance, his outbursts of anger, of jealousy, or of protest had but added piquancy, the ultimate sting of pleasure to the jaded palate of the performers. This was the obsession under which she lay, the trial and persecution which ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... rush in, esurient, triumphant; are exploded in a sharp blast of musketry from the bushes all round, every wounded man made prisoner;—and come no more back to that post." Friedrich himself records this little fact: "slight pleasantry to relieve the reader's mind," says he, in narrating it. [OEuvres, iii. 123.]—Enough of those small matters, while so many large ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Cross, What solemn pleasantry is thine, Vowing to seek the life divine Through abnegation and through loss! Men but make monuments of sin Who walk the earth's ambitious round; Thou hast the richer realm within ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... journeys between Stratford and London, Davenant is said to have affected the reputation of being Shakspeare's son. If he really did this, there was a levity, or rather a want of feeling, in the boast, for which social pleasantry, and the spirits which are induced by wine, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... been a device deliberately assumed to enable him to escape mental suffering. At all events it was a prominent trait of his character, but does not seem to have added to his enjoyment of life. No circumstance, however painful, but that he is able to extract some jest or pleasantry from it. The paradox is before us of a man world-weary at the core, outwardly serene, gay. In the same ratio in which those things which serve to make life enjoyable to the average man were diminished or withdrawn, does his tendency to incessant ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... wights, with more merriment than discretion, ventured to exhibit themselves before the cortege of Henri, and to exclaim loud enough to reach the ears of royalty, "a la fraise on connoit le veau!" a piece of pleasantry for which they subsequently ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... to duties,' continued he, 'I believe, if I am rightly informed, there can hardly be said to have been any duties hitherto,' and he gave a sort of half laugh, as though to pass off the accusation in the guise of a pleasantry. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... would say, with mournful pleasantry, "without doubt you have had a master and a kind one; but, tell me, who was he, and where is he now? Was he old or young, and was it in the last stage of maddening loneliness that he made friends with such a ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... a phantom and a fiction. But, possible as it may be, that the Bishop in reality suspected him to exaggerate the flame of his devotion for the two great objects of his idolatry, Laura and St. Augustine, he writes in a vein of pleasantry that need not be taken for grave accusation. "You are befooling us all, my dear Petrarch," says the prelate; "and it is wonderful that at so tender an age (Petrarch's tender age was at this time ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... the rest. But the unsparing satirist was not content with this, but went on, with most of the other attendants upon the King, and being intimately versed in court scandal, he directed his lash with telling effect. As a contrast to the malicious pleasantry of the Cap Justice, were the gambols and jests of Robin Goodfellow—a merry imp, who, if he led people into mischief, was always ready to get them out of it. Then there was a dance by Bill Huckler, old Crambo, and Tom o' Bedlam, the ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... and fortunately filled a hand with which he hoped to pay a part of the war-debt of the South and get a new overcoat in London. Later, however, the United States disavowed this act of Captain Wilkes, and said it was only a bit of pleasantry on ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... expected (though I think the official request had not been made) that the Prince of Wales (now his Majesty King Edward VII.) would be the President of the English branch of the League, while ex-President Harrison was to have acted in a similar capacity in America. By a grim pleasantry of Fate, the letter from England conveying final and official information of the approval of the aforesaid Ministers, and arranging for the publication of the first formal overture from the United States (for the movement was to be made to appear to emanate therefrom) arrived in America ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... that will give thee a macaroon.' In saying this, I pulled out a paper of 'em, which I had just bought, and gave him one;—and, at this moment that I am telling it, my heart smites me that there was more of pleasantry in the conceit of seeing how an ass would eat a macaroon than of benevolence in giving him one, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... evade them. The Beasley house seemed a proper place of operation in beating up the field. Ira's cold reception of the suggestion was duly disposed of by the deputy. "I have the RIGHT, ye know," he said, with a grim pleasantry, "to summon ye as my posse to aid and assist me in carrying out the law; but I ain't the man to be rough on my friends, and I reckon it will do jest as well if I 'requisition' your house." The dreadful recollection that the deputy had the power to detail him and the constable to scour the plain ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... saw that the Colonel, to whom he most frequently addressed himself, took his pleasantry gravely. "Nicholas is not a bad fellow," he added. "He told me you had been kind ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... Second Part is more soothing and comforting. The First Part has deep and awful shadows mingled with its light, terribly instructive, and like warnings from hell and the grave. The Second Part is more continually and uninterruptedly cheerful, full of good nature and pleasantry, and showing the pilgrimage in lights and shades that ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... in search of him on whom they wished to wreak their vengeance. A bandit named Teutgaud, notorious in those times for his robberies, assaults, and murders of travellers, had thrown himself headlong into the cause of the commune. The bishop, who knew him, had by way of pleasantry and on account of his evil mien given him the nickname of Isengrin. This was the name which was given in the fables of the day to the wolf, and which corresponded to that of Master Reynard. Teutgaud and his men penetrated into the cellar of the church; they went along tapping ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... I can't!" cried Yourii, almost angry now. "Perhaps I'll join you later." Such rough pleasantry on Ivanoff's part was not at all ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... after the period in which the play was written; the women were not. I saw no inconsistency. Their talk seemed to open to one the brilliant world in which they lived; every sentence made one older and wiser, every pleasantry enlarged one's horizon. One could experience excess and satiety without the inconvenience of learning what to do with one's hands in a drawing-room! When the characters all spoke at once and I missed some of the phrases they flashed at each ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... roof. The poor sufferer in Trinidad who lost his all in the devouring flames will remember your charity to his latest moments. The traveller, as he leaves your port, casts a longing, lingering look behind: your attentions, your hospitality, your pleasantry and mirth are uppermost in his thoughts; your prosperity is close to his heart. Let us now, gentle reader, retire from the busy scenes of man and journey on towards the wilds in quest ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... afford to laugh at the pleasantry of the man who, it was evident, felt a partiality for ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... because she knew it would be a relief to her. Nor was she insensible to the gratification it would afford her vanity to discuss so serious a matter with her husband, whose general tone with her was one of jest and pleasantry, to the disparagement of her intellectual powers, as she thought. So, after glancing up several times timidly at Silas's still set profile, she said, in ...
— Two Days' Solitary Imprisonment - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... rather to hear than to communicate; for sound and studious views; and, judging by the extreme short-sightedness of common politicians, for a remarkable prevision of events. All this, however, without grace, pleasantry, or charm, heavily set forth, with a dull countenance. In our numerous conversations, although he has always heard me with deference, I have been conscious throughout of a sort of ponderous finessing hard to tolerate. He produces none of the effect of a gentleman; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... call for more than one observation; I cannot forbear to make one upon the term which Mr. Cochrane Johnstone employs to describe this transaction—"A HOAX," a mere joke, a matter of pleasantry. Gentlemen, a young, a giddy, an unthinking and careless man, who had no concern in the transaction, and who had never been suspected to have had any, might perhaps, in conversation, make use of that term; but Mr. Cochrane Johnstone is ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... away no less gratified, and shared the doubloon between them, the old woman as usual taking a part and a half, both by reason of her seniority, as because she was the compass by which they steered their course on the wide sea of their dances, pleasantry, and tricks. ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... a tinge of pleasantry in the latter that pleased me very greatly when I wrote it, and I find immediately overlying it another essay in ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... for Old Point Comfort, and, if she had good weather off Cape Hatteras, would reach Fortress Monroe by Christmas-day, and he suggested that I might make it the occasion of sending a welcome Christmas gift to the President, Mr. Lincoln, who peculiarly enjoyed such pleasantry. I accordingly sat down and wrote on a slip of paper, to be left at the telegraph-office at Fortress Monroe ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... sleepily watchful through the tortoise-shell eyes, but a bit wilted in the heat. Some of the men swinging corduroy and blue jean legs from the station platform evidently perpetrated a pleasantry; for there was a loud guffaw, and a shower of tobacco wads into the ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... Wyatt received this harmless pleasantry convinced me at once that he was mad. At first he stared at me as if he found it impossible to comprehend the witticism of my remark; but as its point seemed slowly to make its way into his brain, his eyes, in the same proportion, seemed protruding from their sockets. Then he grew very ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... what he said, John," she begged, making no attempt to carry the pleasantry farther, though its possibilities still seemed to flicker about her lip; and Amherst proceeded to recount ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... speech; for the blushes of the maiden who listened covered her burning cheeks till her dark eyes seemed to glow with their reflection; but, after struggling a moment with shame, she laughed, as if unwilling to understand him seriously, and replied in pleasantry: ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... air assumed by Monsieur de Clagny, wanted to infuriate him by one of those cold-drawn jests which consist in defending an opinion in which we have no belief, simply to rouse the wrath of a poor man who argues in good faith; a regular journalist's pleasantry. ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... those equivocal references in which the undisciplined animalism of youth often has a stealthy satisfaction, always called the blood to his cheeks and covered him with embarrassment. For all that, his spirit was full of a frank gaiety, and he would indulge in long bursts of laughter at a pleasantry or frolic that struck him. We may be glad to know this, because without express testimony to the contrary, there would have been some reason for suspecting that Turgot was defective in that most wholesome and human quality ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... building with his own hands a fire in her sleeping room "ben" the house, and in every way the highest marks of respect were shown her for her devotion to the cause. Though he expected to join her again shortly, the Prince made her his warmest acknowledgments of thanks in a spirit of pleasantry which covered much tender feeling. They had been under fire together and had shared perils by land and by sea during which time his conduct to her had been perfect, a gentle consideration for her comfort combined with the reserve that became a ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... Andy stumbles on uttering a quaint pleasantry, for it is partly true as well as droll—the notion of a man gaining Paradise through a mistake. Our intentions too seldom lead us there, but rather tend the other way, for a certain place is said to be paved ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... the president, with mock gravity, "I consider the whole affair, however ridiculous, most immoral and reprehensible. What, shall a crack-shot make a target of an elder? Never! Let us seek more appropriate butts for our barrels! You may perhaps look upon the whole as a piece of pleasantry but let me tell you that you ran a narrow chance of being indicted for a breach of the peace! And remember, that even shooting a deer may not prove so dear a shot as bringing ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... avoid being missed by Similitude, and by Affinity to take one thing for another. This is a Way of proceeding quite contrary to Metaphor and Allusion; wherein for the most Part lies that Entertainment and Pleasantry of Wit, which strikes so lively on the Fancy, and therefore is acceptable to all People, because its Beauty appears at first Sight, and there is required no Labour of Thoughts to examine what Truth, or Reason, there is in it. The Mind, without ...
— An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Railery, Satire, and Ridicule (1744) • Corbyn Morris
... conspicuous case in point demonstrating his utter lack of comprehension of a boy's way of looking at things. He was on a visit to our home at Enochsville, and on the night of his arrival, having called for a glass of fermented grape-juice, thinking to indulge in a mere pleasantry, I brought him a tumblerful of sweetened red ink, the which he gulped down so avidly that it was not until it was beyond recall that he realized what I had done; and when in his wrath he called for an instant ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... clean, and the bed in it narrow and hard; but between the two was a dining-room that would tempt a laugh to the lips of any who looked in. The table was small, but stout, and all the furniture of the room substantial, made of fine wood, and carved just enough to give the notion of wrinkling pleasantry. His mother's and sister's doing, Pere Jerome would explain; they would not permit this apartment—or department—to suffer. Therein, as well as in the parlor, there was odor, but of a more epicurean sort, ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... these old stories? Why, in the memory of the people? Go from chapel to chapel, get the good people who attend them into conversation, and if they think they can trust you they will tell you with a mixture of seriousness and pleasantry wonderful stories, from which comparative mythology and history will one day ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... and the scholars despise their masters and tutors; young and old are all alike; and the young man is on a level with the old, and is ready to compete with him in word or deed; and old men condescend to the young and are full of pleasantry and gaiety; they are loth to be thought morose and authoritative, and therefore they adopt the manners ...
— The Republic • Plato
... the case of Selma there was a basis of ethical earnestness, appropriate to woman, beneath her chatty flow of small talk. That she was comparatively a new-comer accounted partially for this impression, but it was mainly due to the fact that she still reverted after her sallies of pleasantry to a grave method ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... broke into a broader smile, and the three young ladies laughed in musical echo to his pleasantry, swaying their bodies to and fro, with nervous jerks of their shoulders. The ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... La Vendee against the Republic. After having escaped all the dangers which threatened the royalist leaders during this stormy period of modern history, he was wont to say in jest, "I am one of the men who gave themselves to be killed on the steps of the throne." And the pleasantry had some truth in it, as spoken by a man left for dead at the bloody battle of Les Quatre Chemins. Though ruined by confiscation, the staunch Vendeen steadily refused the lucrative posts offered to him by the Emperor Napoleon. Immovable in his aristocratic faith, ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... were filled with fear," said Charley, quickly, regretting his attempt at pleasantry, "but they found that they had been only children frightened at shadows. They have slain that which made ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... considerably more subtle than the wit of the middle ages. There was a store of traditional jests on the learned professions, law, astrology, medicine —the last especially; and the schools of rhetoric and philosophy were, from their first beginning, the subject of much pleasantry. Any popular reputation, in painting, music, literature, gave material for facetious attack; and so did any bodily defect, even those, it must be added, which we think of now as exciting pity or as to be passed over in silence.[10] Many of these jokes, which even then may have ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... little pleasantry. He was struck with the fact that Nicolovius had described exactly the sort of living arrangement that he himself most ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... to have suffocated himself with this pleasantry, which he repeated at least forty times during tea; polishing his radiant face with the sleeve of his coat, and dabbing his head all over with his pocket-handkerchief, in the intervals. But he was not without a graver source of enjoyment to fall back upon, when so disposed, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... an apology from Moody the actor, who had interfered to prevent the theatre being fired. Moody appeared, and, after an Irish fashion, expressed regret that he had displeased the audience "by saving their lives in putting out the fire." This pleasantry was very ill received. Mr. Fitzpatrick's party insisted that the actor should go down on his knees and implore their pardon. Moody refused with an oath, and abruptly quitted the stage. He was received with open arms by Garrick in the ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... garden, too? How delightful!' will be forced to murmur, 'How sweet the clover smelt on your lawn as we came up the drive. What a perfectly entrancing golf-ball.' If I must go to the trouble and expense of keeping up a private pleasaunce I want everybody to see the pleasantry of it at once." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... most artificial and 'conceited' in the collection—the poet plays somewhat enigmatically on his Christian name of 'Will,' and a similar pun has been doubtfully detected in sonnets cxxxiv. and cxlvii. The groundwork of the pleasantry is the identity in form of the proper name with the common noun 'will.' This word connoted in Elizabethan English a generous variety of conceptions, of most of which it has long since been deprived. Then, as now, it was employed in the ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... 'since we first met an unexpected rivalry has arisen between us! But I dare say we shall survive the contest, as it is not one arising out of love. Ha-ha-ha!' He spoke in a level voice of fierce pleasantry, and uncovered his ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... vitality; great feeders, great laughers, great story-tellers, who come sweeping over their company with a huge tidal wave of animal spirits and boisterous merriment. I have pretty good spirits myself, and enjoy a little mild pleasantry, but I am oppressed and extinguished by these great lusty, noisy creatures, and feel as if I were a mute at a funeral when they get into ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... alcalde," spoke out Don Juan, disgusted with this ill-timed pleasantry, "a proof that there has been a forced entry into the chamber is this broken glass of the window, of which you see some pieces ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... conveyed me home to his house beside the Barbican, Plymouth; stopping on the way before every building of exceptional height and asking me quizzically how I would propose to set about climbing it. At the time, in the soreness of my heart, I resented this heavy pleasantry, and to be sure, after the tenth repetition or so, the diversity of the buildings to which he applied it but poorly concealed its sameness. But, in fact, he was doing his best to be kind, and succeeded in a sort; for it roused a childish scorn in me and so ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... had a resistless charm, and his power of turning a conversation into channels of his own choice was invaluable, in dealing with conceited disputatious orientals. "Indomitable in his purpose to do good, affable and courteous in manner, of ready tact, and abounding in resistless pleasantry, he gained access wherever he chose to go, and wielded an influence powerful for good upon all with whom he chose to associate. He commanded the respect of foreign ambassadors and travellers, of dignitaries in the ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... to pleasantry. Journeying east on one occasion, attended by two of his aids, he asked some young ladies at a hotel where he breakfasted, how they liked the appearance of his young men! One of them promptly replied, 'We cannot judge of the STARS in ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various
... scalding tears poured down, she straightway made answer: "Ah, that rational man who thinks to advise us in sorrow, Knows not how little of power his cold words have in relieving Ever a heart from that woe which a sovereign fate has inflicted. Ye are prosperous and glad; how then should a pleasantry wound you? Yet but the lightest touch is a source of pain to the sick man. Nay, concealment itself, if successful, had profited nothing. Better show now what had later increased to a bitterer anguish, ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... interrupted Mrs Varden, with a smile of mingled scorn and pleasantry. 'Very dear! We ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... his glass, he addressed the company, with a smile, as nearly as can be recollected, in the following words: 'Ladies and gentlemen, this is the last time I shall drink your health as a public man. I do it with sincerity, wishing you all possible happiness.' There was an end of all pleasantry. He who gives this relation accidentally directed his eye to the lady of the British minister, Mrs. Liston, and tears were ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... proposition, at first, as a piece of pleasantry; but Grace expressing a strong desire to see a large town, or what was thought a large town in this country, in 1799, and Lucy looking wistful, though she remained silent under an apprehension her father could not afford the expense ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... passport; adding, that if it was informal, Monsieur might write to the municipality that granted it. The man, however, did not approve of the jest, and took the Marquis before the municipality, who sentenced him to a month's imprisonment for his pleasantry. ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... boy,' said Sir Richard, gettin' redder in the face than I ever before saw him, 'I am not accustomed to low pleasantry, and—' ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... bantered on in this strain up to the very nose of the enemy, but the man in his path was utterly unresponsive to his humour. In truth he did not understand a word of the nobleman's pleasantry. He uttered something like a war-cry, threw his bonnet off a head as bald as an egg, and smote ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... Mouncey had been intimate with most of the wits and men about town for twenty years before. 'He had in his time known Tobin, Wordsworth, Porson, Wilson, Paley, and Erskine. He would speak of Paley's pleasantry and unassuming manners, and describe Porson's deep potations and long quotations at the "Cider Cellars."' Warming with his theme, Hazlitt goes on in his essay to etch one memorable evening at the 'Southampton.' A few only were left, 'like stars at break of day,' ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... the hundredth edition of this amiable pleasantry, but Sidonia found it superb for all that, and thought herself bound to reply, "You ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... 1809, on the first appearance of "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," I found the author, who was then generally understood to be Lord Byron, not only jesting on the subject—and with sufficiently provoking pleasantry and cleverness—in his verse, but giving also, in the more responsible form of a note, an outline of the transaction in accordance with the original misreport, and, therefore, in direct contradiction to my published ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... swallow, as one aware of the consequences of fasting for agitation's sake, and he nearly crammed Gerald; so that Adrian and Fely laughed, and he excused himself by declaring that he wanted his turkey-cock to gobble and not pipe. For which bit of pleasantry he encountered a glare from Gerald's Hungarian eyes. He was afraid on one side to lose sight of his nephew, on the other he did not feel equal to encounter a scolding from Marilda, so he sent Adrian and Fely down to the Marine Hotel to fetch Franceska, while he stole a moment or two for greeting ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the color-loving people, the spectacle certainly must have presented a scene of great brilliancy. The prizes were money and champion flags, and with the lowest was also given a live pig—a little pleasantry corresponding to the leather medal in ...
— Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... can do. Ask for Maister Bishopriggs (that's me) when ye want a decent 'sponsible man to gi' ye a word of advice. Set ye doon again—set ye doon. And don't tak' the arm-chair. Hech! hech! yer husband will be coming, ye know, and he's sure to want it!" With that seasonable pleasantry the venerable Bishopriggs winked, ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... establishment, in an account given by a Mr. Courtenay to Sir James Mackintosh; though it speaks of a time after Reynolds had received the honor of knighthood. "There was something singular," said he, "in the style and economy of Sir Joshua's table that contributed to pleasantry and good humor, a coarse, inelegant plenty, without any regard to order and arrangement. At five o'clock precisely, dinner was served, whether all the invited guests were arrived or not. Sir Joshua was never so fashionably ill-bred as to wait an hour perhaps for two ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... steed] [i.e. his steed worn lean and thin by much service in war. So Fairfax, His stall-worn steed the champion stout bestrode. WARB.] On this note Mr. Edwards has been very lavish of his pleasantry, and indeed has justly censured the misquotation of stall-worn, for stall-worth, which means strong, but makes no attempt to explain the word in the play. Mr. Seyward, in his preface to Beaumont, ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... appeared, was of finer texture. The Doctor's was the graver of the two; there was something of grimness about it,—partly owing to the northeasters he had faced for so many years, partly to long companionship with that stern personage who never deals in sentiment or pleasantry. His speech was apt to be brief and peremptory; it was a way he had got by ordering patients; but he could discourse somewhat, on occasion, as the reader may find out. The Reverend Doctor had an open, smiling expression, a cheery ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... the stern soldier-like pleasantry of the old Moorish monarch. He ordered a rich silken vest and a scarlet mantle to be given to the alfaqui, and dismissed him with great courtesy. "Tell His Majesty," said he, "that I kiss his hands ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... in the balance, and where the minds of his kith and kin were already too full of excitement to leave much room for another event. He went away reluctantly enough out of the momentary paradise where his Perpetual Curacy was a matter of utter indifference, if not a tender pleasantry, which rather increased than diminished the happiness of the moment—into the ordinary daylight world, where it was a very serious matter, and where what the young couple would have to live upon became the real question to be considered. ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... her with the self-satisfaction of a successful operator, is a young man of thirty or thereabouts. He does not give the impression of being much of a workman: his professional manner evidently strikes him as being a joke, and is underlain by a thoughtless pleasantry which betrays the young gentleman still unsettled and in search of amusing adventures, behind the newly set-up dentist in search of patients. He is not without gravity of demeanor; but the strained nostrils stamp it as the gravity of the humorist. His eyes are clear, alert, ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... erudition. There is a little article on Aius-Locutius, the Announcing Speaker, one of the minor Roman gods. Diderot begins by a few lines describing the rise of the deity into repute. He then quotes Cicero's pleasantry on the friendly divinity, that when nobody in the world had ever heard of him, he delivered a salutary oracle, but after people had built him a fine temple, then the god of speech fell dumb. This suggests to Diderot to wonder with edifying ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... our order, wasn't it, Mr. Arnold?" she said, with her little pink smile. "And I'm afraid Miss Howe isn't in time to be of much use to us, is she?" It was the bedside pleasantry that expected no reply, that indeed ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... indiscreet adoration. It was just like Philip Crewe, this marrying on probabilities; and it was equally like the rest of them to accept the state of affairs as an excellent joke, and regard the result as an exquisite piece of pleasantry. 'Toinette herself was only another careless, unworldly addition to the family circle, and enjoyed her position as thoroughly as the rest did; and as to Tod, what a delicate satire upon responsibilities ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... your brother, recovering himself, and with some pleasantry, is he for a voyage to the moon? Or does he wait the arrival of the next comet, to make the tour of ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... your lordship. And I tell you that I would not now change places with you—that I would not exchange this halter that you fling about my neck for the stone that you carry in your body. The death to which you may doom me is a light pleasantry by contrast with the death to which your lordship has been doomed by that Great Judge with whose name your lordship makes ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... pleasantry; it struck him as rather insolent; but he curbed his irritation, and inquired as politely as he could if a horse or any kind of vehicle could be hired in ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... all the better for this pleasantry? so womanly, so genial, so rich, and so without a sting,—such a true diversion, with none of the sin of effort or of mere cleverness; and how it takes us into the midst of the strong-brained and strong-hearted men and women of that time! what an atmosphere of sense and good-breeding and ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... but she could not for the life of her understand why our party should be particularly favored at a celestial exhibition like this. On the whole, she questioned inwardly whether it might not be some subtle pleasantry, and smiled, experimentally, with a note of interrogation in the smile, but, finding no encouragement, allowed her features to subside gradually as if nothing had happened. I saw all this as plainly as if it had all been printed in great-primer type, ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... your bag if you'll carry mine, Gerald," cried Standish facetiously, as my brother-in-law, a trifle offended at the Admiral's last pleasantry, proceeded with much dignity to his ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... and lunch all usually seem as happy as if they were enjoying a regular social picnic dinner. Amid the merriment and pleasantry of the occasion they seem to forget all consciousness of weariness, or thought that their work is hard, and resume it again ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... very good also. This is the night of all others, when Indian orators try to be humorous and witty. As a race they do not excel along these lines, but sometimes they get off some very good things. While they began their speeches with some bright pleasantry that brought smiles, and even laughter, there was never anything unbecoming to the place, and all quickly drifted into a strain of thanksgiving to God for his blessings. To listen to their grateful ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... with. 'And now, boys,' said he once to a mob that had gathered at his door, 'if any of you has a stick, just leave it in my porch for a keepsake.' With shouts of laughter the shillelaghs came flying over the heads of the people in front till the porch was filled. The pleasantry gave Howe a stock of fuel, and sent away the mob disarmed ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... "I mean: 'tis the signal, men! If the Cap'n has not failed us the lugger should be in the cove at this hour,—and we coves should be in the lugger, too. Ha! how like ye the pleasantry? 'Tis a pretty wit I have, as no less a man than Mr. Pope himself told me at the Coca Tree—No; I don't believe Mr. Pope would know the mate of a ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... every one who wished to inaugurate a charitable enterprise, and his business house was a rendezvous for all the distressed, and a sort of "intelligence office" for the poor seeking employment. His temper was cheerful and frequently gay; no man more relished pleasantry and mirth in the society of his friends, with whom his manner was free and even at times jovial; but he never himself indulged in personal jests nor familiarities, nor did he permit them from his most intimate associates; to attempt them with him gave him certain ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... and now, forbidding such an outlet: and all day the stream of gloomy tenderness within him had started forth and returned upon itself in dark courses and eddies, wearying him in the end until the pleasantry of the prefect and the painted little boy had drawn from him ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... their own land till the right moment. He who could do this was indeed practising for his calling as Conqueror. And if the details of the story, details specially characteristic, are to be believed, William showed something also of that grim pleasantry which was another marked feature in the Norman character. The startling message which struck the French army with panic was deliberately sent with that end. The messenger sent climbs a tree or a rock, ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... solved partly by the care and elegance of his dress, and partly by the training given him by his mother, a Radziwill. His courage amounted to daring, but his mind was not more than was needed for the ephemeral talk and pleasantry of Parisian conversation. And yet it would have been difficult to find among the young men of fashion in Paris a single one who was his superior. Young men talk a great deal too much in these days of horses, money, taxes, deputies; French ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... speech, in jovial words and songs and raillery enough, if not in wit. De Aery, as having by a hair's breadth just escaped with his life, and in virtue of his extraordinary feat in leaping five hundred feet or more through a bank of snow, now that the danger was over, was made the butt of much pleasantry, which he bore with his usual equanimity ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... orders, the youngster remained standing there. Now followed the beans which, if not for their size then for their hardness might have figured in an artillery park, and one of the boarders permitted himself some pleasantry about the edibleness of so petreous a vegetable; a pleasantry that glided over the impassive countenance of Dona Casiana without ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... excessively fat, was of diminutive stature, and by her cheerful pleasantry she beguiled in some degree the wearisomeness of the long evening hours, and banished that ennui, which the disagreeableness of their situation had partially induced, simply by her endeavours to do so. For not content with paying them formal ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... there are more boardinghouses to the square acre in Washington than there are in any other city in the land, perhaps. If you apply for a home in one of them, it will seem odd to you to have the landlady inspect you with a severe eye and then ask you if you are a member of Congress. Perhaps, just as a pleasantry, you will say yes. And then she will tell you that she is "full." Then you show her her advertisement in the morning paper, and there she stands, convicted and ashamed. She will try to blush, and it will be only polite in you to take the effort for the deed. She shows you her rooms, now, and ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... a tour in Western Asia sends to the Drawer the following account of a little bit of pleasantry which took place in the gala town of ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various
... to the boy's story of his love and regret with sympathy and apparent understanding. He encouraged him wherever he sought encouragement. He had a pleasantry of happy expression wherever it was needed. In a word he played to the last degree upon a nature as weak as it was ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... bearing famous names; worlds within worlds, high diplomatic figures, the partisan leaders, the constant stream of agitated rumours about weighty affairs in England and Europe; the keen play of ambition, passions, interests, under easy manners and fugitive pleasantry; gross and sordid aims, as King Hudson was soon to find out, masked by exterior refinement; so much kindness with a free spice of criticism and touches of ill-nature; so much of the governing force of England still gathered into a few great ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... pleasantry and facetiousness in thy discourse with her, and do whatever lies in thy power at the same time, to keep from her all books and writings which tend there to: there are some devotional tracts, which if thou canst entice her to read over, it will be well: but suffer her not to look into ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... with it at present."—"Thirty dollars Would be a high price for it, but to aid you I'll call it thirty."—"Could you not say fifty?" "You're joking with me now, Miss Percival." "Then we will end our pleasantry. Good by." "Stay! You want money: I shall be ashamed To let my partners know it, but to show How far I'll go for your encouragement— Come! I'll ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... the poverty and crudeness of my youth that had made me intolerant. One of the big lessons life has taught me is that people can be amiable, tolerant, and even friendly, and still be sincere. The pleasantry of social relations among the civilized peoples of the earth is a mere garment we wear for our own protection and to cover our feelings. It is the oil of the machinery of life. I have found that men and women who take part in the big work of the earth wear that garment ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown
... exterminated by the effects of the 'firewater' and the vicious habits brought in by more civilised men. The Red man is usually proud and reserved; serious, if not gloomy, in his views of life; comparatively indifferent to wit or pleasantry; vain of personal endowments; brave and fond of war, yet extremely cautious and taking no needless risks; fond of gambling and drinking; seemingly indifferent to pain; kind and hospitable to strangers, yet revengeful and ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... a violent antagonist to the Low Church Whigs and in consequence, of this, drew to his house such people as had a mind to indulge their spleen against the government, by retailing little stories of treason. He was thought to be a man of strong natural parts, and possessed a very agreeable pleasantry of temper. Ward was much affronted when he read Mr. Jacob's account, in which he mentions his keeping a public house in the city, and in a book called Apollo's Maggot, declared this account to be a ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... young Frost made no reply to this pleasantry; for already he was impatient to be gone. Although the room was intensely cold and uncomfortable, still his guest lingered, standing before the massive cabinet, exclaiming upon the exquisiteness of the workmanship, and every now and then running his dainty fingers along the carving of its front. ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... remembering, I fancy," she replied; and then made some observation about Mrs. Hubbard, to turn the conversation. The raillery and pleasantry of a man with no more tact, or true delicacy, than William Cassius Clapp, was more than even Elinor's sweet temper could ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... novice in the science—that his admiration had awakened one dormant but hallowed affection, long lulled in the soft lap of pleasure. The maiden, with whom it was his sole aim to pass a few hours of pleasantry and amusement, had enthralled him by so sudden a spell, that he was more than half inclined to believe in the boasted skill and exploits of the sex, which has rendered Lancashire so famous. Her unaccountable absence impressed itself strangely upon his thoughts. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... lightly down the ladder to the gun-deck as Mr. Mouse, and making another dive down to the berth-deck, exchanging a rapid volley of pleasantry with the midshipmen in the steerage, he opened the wardroom door and entered. There, in a large open space, transversely dividing the stern of the ship, with rows of latticed-doored staterooms on either side, lighted by open skylights from above, with a barrel of a wind-sail coming down between ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... to smile as at some amiable pleasantry, but McLean caught the snarl of his lifted lip, and felt the currents ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... his cousin's direction, spattering him with drops. "Don't mention it, dear fellow!" he said, through his chattering teeth. "It serves me right for expecting civilized manners in the backwoods. This no doubt appears to you an exquisite pleasantry, and its delicacy will be appreciated, no doubt, by others of your circle. Enfin, in the presence of your father, whom I respect, I can but accept your apology. Since you ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... communications of friends and officials. Cries of Ja wohl! Ja wohl! and Bravo! were heard from the right during the speech of Bismarck, with now and again a general ripple of laughter at some pleasantry accessible to the German mind; but these were much outdone in heartiness by the applause which frequently interrupted Richter when speaking. There is a massiveness about this scene which rises up in memory with a vividness greater, if possible, than ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... not abduct Barbara and go free, he would kill himself when they came to take him. But he did not wish to kill himself. He wished to live a long time after, gloating on his memories. He had also on foot a scheme which, starting almost as a pleasantry, had developed in his mind, and was still developing, until its latent possibilities staggered ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... President of the Royal Society. George Nicol, the bookseller, was an extensive purchaser at this sale for the King, for whom, indeed, he acted in a similar capacity up to the last. Nicol told Dibdin 'with his usual pleasantry and point, that he got abused in the public papers, by Almon and others, for having purchased nearly the whole of the Caxtonian volumes in this collection for his Majesty's library. It was said abroad that a Scotchman had lavished away the King's money in buying old black-letter ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... the only male friend to whom her husband turned for consolation. Miss Fox seems to have been the only woman who inspired Bentham with a sentiment approaching to passion. He wrote occasional letters to the ladies in the tone of elephantine pleasantry natural to one who was all his life both a philosopher and a child.[235] He made an offer of marriage to Miss Fox in 1805, when he was nearer sixty than fifty, and when they had not met for sixteen years. The immediate occasion ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen |
