"Jocular" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the terrified Chinaman and his captors, and he was plied with questions, some of a jocular character, by the miners, who were glad of anything that relieved the monotony ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger
... Pelham jilted you, Saunders?" He put the question in a jocular way. Its effect on Saunders was startling. His face turned almost purple ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... extraordinary, the number of persons who are being educated in this country; and yet, at the same time, the tone of the people is less scholarly than one might expect. A lady, a few days since, described to me her daughter as being always "on the go," which I take to be a jocular way of saying that the young lady was very fond of paying visits. Another person, the wife of a United States senator, informed me that if I should go to Washington in January, I should be quite "in the swim." I inquired the meaning of the phrase, but her explanation made it rather ...
— The Point of View • Henry James
... a sculptor who improves upon Nature," one day Camille said to the girls." If a woman hasn't a good form Madame Corot can supply her such amorous proportions that lovers will straightway fall at her feet." But such jocular remarks were never made to the father— in his presence Camille was subdued and suspiciously respectful. The father had "disciplined" him—but had ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... where he was, under any circumstances; his voice sounded almost jocular, at singular variance with the heaviness, the weariness of his face. He, the old servant, had been a soldier; knew how to fulfil, then, a request or an order. Something crinkled in the speaker's hand, passed ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... be issued giving the correct form of reply to such questions as, "Can I take this train to Rugby?" The answer in this case will convey a jocular suggestion that the task is best left to the engine-driver; and others in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... rejoicings of the North when General Lee surrendered. In our country home we had lived in an actual condition of camp life so long that at its conclusion I remarked to my husband in a jocular vein that I was prepared for a life with the Comanches! We restored our damaged fences, dug up our silver which had been buried many months under a tree in the garden, and Mr. Gouverneur began to turn his attention to agriculture. Our farm was among the finest in Frederick County, ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... Jocular Jimson Jones?" suggested the head and leading spirit of the Improvement Company. "We can offer him one of our cottages, and pay his debts if he has any, if he will live here and give us the benefit of ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... dismounting to assist Mrs. Mitts into the cab, the Greenwich Pensioner bore her company inside, and the Chelsea Pensioner mounted the box by the driver: his wooden leg sticking out after the manner of a bowsprit, as if in jocular homage to his friend's sea-going career. Thus the equipage drove away. No Mrs. ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... on his entrance the President accosted our member of Congress, who had us in charge, and, with a comical twist of his face, made some jocular remark about the length of his breakfast. He then greeted us all round, not waiting for an introduction, but shaking and squeezing everybody's hand with the utmost cordiality, whether the individual's name was announced to him or not. His manner towards us was wholly ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... years; and after so long a familiarity with reproach, his sensibility to the scandalous imputation must now have been much diminished, if not entirely extinguished. The other poem is partly in the same strain, but extended to greater length, by a mixture of common jocular ribaldry of the Roman soldiers, expressed nearly in the same terms which Caesar's legions, though strongly attached to his person, scrupled not to sport publicly in the streets of Rome, against their general, during the celebration of his ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... of wonderful assistance to these two men in their vocation, for the Englishman acted as correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, and the Frenchman, as correspondent of what newspaper, or of what newspapers, he did not say; and when asked, he replied in a jocular manner that he corresponded with "his cousin Madeleine." This Frenchman, however, neath his careless surface, was wonderfully shrewd and sagacious. Even while speaking at random, perhaps the better to hide his desire to ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... you know the terrible smile? [The young fellow whom they call John winked very hard, and made a jocular remark, the sense of which seemed to depend on some double meaning of the word smile. The company was curious to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... officer, while instructing his men, had insulted the French flag and had called the Alsatian recruits Wackes, a nick-name meaning "square-head," and frequently used by the people of Alsace-Lorraine in a jocular way, but hotly resented by them if used towards them by others. It was further reported that he had promised his men a reward of ten marks if one of them, in case of trouble, should bring down a Social Democrat. Forstner had ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... when about to perpetrate a joke. His trousers were a little too short, his coat-sleeves—when he wore a coat—a little too long. On ordinary occasions his hat was tilted to the back of his head, and when in a jocular humour he cocked it knowingly over one eye. Probably these peculiarities, coupled with a certain dry method of enunciating, added ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... that the peer was anything but a match for Woodward, who contrived, and with perfect success, to turn all his jocular attacks ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... science I've evidence ocular. A heart of one chamber they call unilocular, And in a sharp frost, or when snow-flakes fall floccular, Your wise man of old wrapp'd himself in a Roquelaure, Which was called a Wrap-rascal when folks would be jocular. And shell-fish, the small, Periwinkle and Cockle are, So with them will ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... blood stains on the floor at the outer door of the Queen's apartments in Holyrood Palace, where Rizzio was murdered. Sir Walter Scott has made these blood marks the subject of a jocular passage in his introduction to the "Chronicles of the Canongate," where a Cockney traveller is represented as trying to efface them with the patent scouring drops which it was his mission to introduce into use in Scotland. In another of his novels—"The Abbot"—Sir Walter Scott ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... standing in society, but one that called aloud the act of the parties to make it perfect and complete. How he should communicate his intentions to get a favorable reply, he was at a loss to know; he knew not whether to address Esq. Valeer in prose or in poetry, in a jocular or an argumentative manner, or whether he should use moral suasion, legal injunction, or seizure and take by reprisal; if it was to do the latter, he would have no difficulty in deciding in his own mind, but his gentlemanly honor was ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Tremblay who was alone, and they went off together along the wooden sidewalk in the direction of the house. Others were satisfied to exchange jocular remarks with the young girls as they passed, in the easy and familiar fashion of the country,-natural enough too where the children have grown ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... you, upon my honour, that she shall be safe and inviolate; and I hope you don't doubt me, notwithstanding any airs she may have given herself, upon my jocular pleasantry to her, and perhaps a little innocent romping with her, so usual with young folks of the two sexes, when they have been long acquainted, and grown up together; for ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... solicitous. "Is your wife pale?" it would inquire. "Is she discouraged, does she drag herself about the house and find fault with everything? Why do you not tell her to try Dr. Lanahan's Life Preservers?" Another would be jocular in tone, slapping you on the back, so to speak. "Don't be a chump!" it would exclaim. "Go and get the Goliath Bunion Cure." "Get a move on you!" would chime in another. "It's easy, if you wear the ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... a judicial jest, Witnesses, jurors, suitors smile, They quite understand I do my best, A wearisome action to beguile: "Silks" and "Juniors" seem to force, A jeering laugh as a matter of course. Ah me! who would be, A jocular Judge ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 5, 1892 • Various
... handed to Dorothy was too large and too heavy for a mere missive; and the maid, recalling some jocular promises of Raleigh's, at once suspected that some London gew-gaw lay snug within, and tore off the wrappings with eager fingers. Her hopes were not disappointed, and a dainty pair of silver ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... oppressor but the comic, good-natured "It means nothing" was there to be held up to those calling the one repeating it to task. The parody on "Reign, Master Jesus, Reign!" when heard by the Master meant only a good natured jocular appeal to him for plenty of meat and bread, but with the Negro it was a scathing indictment of a Christian earthly master who muzzled those who produced the food. "He Paid Me Seven" is a mock at the white man for failing to practice his own religion but the clown mask is there to be held up ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... to see. The man who had been stabbed—it was but a jag at the shoulder, where the dirk had gone through from front to back with only some lose of blood—was averse from being hard on the panels. He was a jocular fellow with the right heart for a duello, and in his nipped burgh Gaelic he made light of the disturbance ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... cried one of the men approvingly, while the others laughed; but they were too much interested in the books to be diverted from these for more than a few seconds. Many of them were down on their knees beside the mate, who continued in a semi-jocular strain—"Now then, take your time, my hearties; lots o' books here, and lots more where these came from. The British public will never run dry. I'm cheap John! Here they are, all for nothin', on loan; small wollum—the ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... Mary would have put this down to mere coquetry but this explanation failed now to satisfy altogether. There was something that lay deeper than that. Some sort of strain between them dating back, she surmised, to the talk her father had referred to down in North Carolina in the jocular assertion that he had told Paula she would have to begin now supporting the family. Had the same topic come up again during his ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... you will probably have discovered what was the meaning of my jocular complaint—"You answer me much too pathetically and seriously." You must have seen by the exact terms of my letter, somewhat loosely worded though it was, that by your answer I meant the manner in which you speak of my conduct towards D. with ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... me such a glare that I wished myself well rid of him, though thankful for his warnings; and seeing how he had made upon me a long abiding mark of fear, he smiled again in a jocular ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... must find some more subtle hiding-place for my letters than I had found hitherto. I may have idealized the woman, in my alarm, into a miracle of shrewdness. At any rate I knew that she would be a much more dangerous opponent than Captain Barlow, the jocular donkey who allowed himself to be fooled by a schoolboy who was in his power. I knew, too, that she would probably search me other letters, whether my ciphered blinds deceived her or not. She was not one so easily satisfied as a merchant skipper; besides, ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... Jocular opinions of the passers-by were being freely exchanged back and forth; he paid no heed to them. The scoop dropped from his hand and clattered upon the floor; he let it lay. Silent and troubled, unaware ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... as a friend (I think he was a Waiter or an Hostler at a village Inn, but many years have passed since he and I have met), remarks that the sassigassity of that dog is indeed surprising; and evermore this jocular conceit will live in my remembrance fresh and unfading, overtopping all possible jokes, unto the end of time. Or now, I learn with bitter tears how poor Jane Shore, dressed all in white, and with her brown hair hanging down, went starving through the streets; or how George Barnwell killed the worthiest ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens
... not believe him, but to women, especially if they were young and pretty, he was ever ready to talk at length about himself. He was good-looking, and talked well, so women always felt for him affectionate pity. On this occasion also, if jocular at the outset, Yourii relapsed into his usual tone; discoursing at great length about his own life. From his own description he appeared to be a man of extraordinary powers, cramped and crushed by the force of circumstances, misunderstood by his party, and one who by unlucky chance and human folly ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... articles of her parents; and twenty years of careful husbandry, during which every shilling had been scrupulously devoted to accumulation, had quite doubled the original amount. So far from being penniless, therefore, Maud's fortune was often alluded to by the captain, in a jocular way, as if purposely to remind her that she had the means of independence, and duties connected with it. It is true, Maud, herself, had no suspicion that she had been educated altogether by her "father," and that her own money had not been used for this purpose. To ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... burghers without hesitation; he took possession of the sacred elbow chair, which time out of mind had been the seat of sovereignty of the illustrious Ramm Rapelye. Nay, he even went so far in one of his rough jocular moods, as to slap that mighty burgher on the back, drink his toddy and wink in his face, a thing scarcely to be believed. From this time Ramm Rapelye appeared no more at the inn; his example was followed by several of the most eminent customers, who were too rich to tolerate being ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... suggested themselves as highly desirable. Since the affray he had been the object of irksome attentions from his fellow lodgers. It is difficult to say whether he found the more unendurable young Wickert's curiosity regarding details, Hainer's pompous adulation, or Lambert's admiring but jocular attitude. The others deemed it their duty never to refrain from some reference to the subject wherever and whenever they encountered him. The one exception was Miss Westlake. She congratulated him once, quietly but with warm sincerity; ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Sunderland and Mr. Smith we have already sufficient knowledge. As for Sir Justinian, we are not to think he was already married; the reference to his "new wife" is merely jocular, meaning his new wife when he shall get one; for Sir Justinian is still wife-hunting, and comes back to renew his suit with Dorothy after this date. "Your fellow-servant," who is as often called Jane, appears to have been a friend and companion of Dorothy, in a somewhat lower rank of life. ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... at last!' he said, regarding me with a jocular smile and a head cocked on one side, pretty much after the fashion of a thrush eyeing a worm. 'But, excuse me, after so much ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... be divined by the red points of camp-fires. Lanterns, also, were wandering like marsh lights, up and down and to and fro. Here, on the plateau, it was the same. They danced like giant fireflies. He passed a blazing log about which were gathered a dozen men. Some wag of the mess had said something jocular; to a man they were laughing convulsively. Had they been blamed, they would perhaps have answered that it was better to laugh than to cry. Cleave passed them with no inclination to blame, and came to where, ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... gayer than might have been expected. The Doctor was jocular, Lady Annabel lively, and Plantagenet excited by an extraordinary glass of wine. Venetia alone remained dispirited. The Doctor made mock speeches and proposed toasts, and told Plantagenet that he must learn ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... occurred on the 4th of August, 1904. And then nothing happened until the 4th of August, 1913. There is the curious coincidence of dates, but I do not know whether that is one of those sinister, as if half jocular and altogether merciless proceedings on the part of a cruel Providence that we call a coincidence. Because it may just as well have been the superstitious mind of Florence that forced her to certain acts, ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... soon called again, tricked out from head to foot in the latest fashion. She was a little flurried on entering a room full of jocular clerks. Escorted by Massinot, both of them with their eyes fixed on the ground, she reached my office. I closed the door ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the paper to his wife, and made no attempt to escape from judgment, but sat submissive while she read the report of Lemuel's trial. The story was told throughout in the poetico-jocular spirit of the opening sentences; the reporter had felt the simple charm of the affair, only to be ashamed of it and the ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... putting things, so occasional, so variegated, so like his own harlequin in his 'ghastly vest of white patchwork,' 'the apparition of a dead rainbow'; what is it that gives to a style, which no man can analyse, its 'terseness, its jocular pathos, which makes one feel in laughter?' Those are his own words, not used of himself; but do they not do something to define what can, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... appealed to his sister-in-law, who had retreated to a corner on the other side of the room. In a maudlin, jocular ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... was as dauntless as Spencer, and, if anything, a more distinguished looking man. He was without austerity and easy of approach; and, although inclined to reticence, he seemed fond of indulging in jocular remarks and an occasional story; but he was a man of bad temper. He fretted under opposition as much as Clinton, and he easily became vindictive toward opponents. This kept him unpopular even among men of his own faction. Clinton thought him "much of an imbecile," and suggested ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... saloon laughing, munching, singing, and playing at cards. On board the Zouave the company was as jolly as numerous, composed of officers going back to join their regiments, ladies from the Marseilles Alcazar Music Hall, strolling-players, a rich Mussulman returning from Mecca, and a very jocular Montenegrin prince, who favoured them with imitations of the low comedians of Paris. Not one of these jokers felt the sea-sickness, and their time was passed in quaffing champagne with the steamer captain, a ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... hut he was joined by McLagan. The Irishman had seen the cattle come in, and was anxious to learn the particulars. His manner, after his recent ill-humor, was almost jocular. He realized that these were cattle ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... cousin, ACIS ARRANT, generally known to his jocular intimates as Knave ARRANT, had been living in luxury with his cousin's weak mother, whom he had contrived to marry. To effect this, however, he had been compelled to tear a will into little pieces, and had, at the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various
... to appear disinterested—strove to make his manner casual; jocular even. Evelyn was piecing the threads of circumstances together and the events surrounding the Warren murder were slowly ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... after the health of old "Von Woodenburg," old "One O'clock," the "Clown Prince," or "One Bumstuff." Hans would take this in a jocular way, slamming back something about Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Lloyd George, or Sir Sham Shoes, but when we really wanted to get Fritz's goat we would tease him ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... wanted to borrow money," Bill retorted to the jocular latter part of the bartender's speech. "What time ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... a mile brought us to the mouth of the Vaivasa River, a small stream flowing into the sea from the littoral on our right. The tide was high and we therefore hailed a picket who were stationed in the trenches on the opposite bank and asked them in a jocular manner not to fire at us while we were wading across. To our surprise, for we were both well known to and on very friendly terms with the contending parties, half a dozen of them sprang up and excitedly bade us not to attempt ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... about my footsteps, and that it was still within the bounds of possibility that I might hear the cry of the trapped victim, my historic attitude entirely failed, and I was sensible of some repugnance for the natives. But here, too, the priests maintained their jocular attitude: rallying the cannibals as upon an eccentricity rather absurd than horrible; seeking, I should say, to shame them from the practice by good-natured ridicule, as we shame a child from stealing sugar. We may here recognise the temperate and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... do not seem to be able to shake off the dark historical recollections that hang about the Winter Palace. In the manner of children they will make a ghastly sport of them. Once, when they were in a specially jocular mood, Alexander, in company with his brother Constantine and some comrades in play, enacted—as youngsters in their apishly imitative mood will do—one of the most hideous scenes that concluded a previous reign. The throttling of the Emperor ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... in the motion picture audience total about two hundred, any time, but they come in groups of two or three at no specified hour. The newcomers do not, as in Vaudeville, make themselves part of a jocular army. Strictly as individuals they judge the panorama. If they disapprove, there is grumbling under their breath, but no hissing. I have never heard an audience in a photoplay theatre clap its hands even when the house was bursting with people. Yet they often see the film through ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... she demanded rather than asked, in the slangy and jocular tone she employed. "I guess she'll be thanking her stars she's got rid of you;" at which Laura smiled uncertainly, not being sure whether Cousin Grace spoke ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... visit to some friends on the confines of the county of Salop, bordering on Herefordshire, I took the opportunity long cherished of visiting the spot where lie the remains of the author of Boscobel; Fragmenta Antiquitatis, or Ancient Tenures of Land, and Jocular Customs of Manors, &c., and copied the following inscription from his monument, in the chancel of the ancient church of Orleton in the latter county. I believe it has never been published; and although neither Note ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various
... characters, in which the Greeks probably would not have participated. Though they had an abundance of wit, and a keen perception of the ridiculous, no songs have reached us which are intended to please by their pure absurdity and good-natured foolishness. Archilochus and Hipponax wrote many a jocular song; but the fun of the thing would have been lost, had the sting ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... permeating nightmare, gruesomeness of lewd, warty devils, made up of snouts, hoofs, bills, claws, and incoherent parts of incoherent creatures; of perpetual skeletons climbing in trees, or appearing behind flower-beds. But there is also—and Holbein's Dance of Death, terrible, jocular, tender, vulgar and poetic, contains it all, this German world—a great tenderness. Tenderness not merely in the heads of women and children, in the fervent embrace of husband and wife and mother and daughter; but in the feeling for dumb creatures and inanimate things, the gentle dogs of St. ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... she was right. Then came her father's letter, to pluck at her heart-strings. He invited her to the Poultry at "any hour of the day—and the sooner the better;" but was clear that she could not visit Great Cumberland Place without writing to Mamma. "Doing the civil" was his jocular way of putting it—one of Papa's little ways when he meant more. She knew that he was right, and postponed the fond man and his injunction. His love might be taken for granted by a favourite child. Just now it was her ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... for many years familiar to loungers in Hyde Park, where he appeared regularly every afternoon, riding on a little pony, and wearing a magnificent beard of twenty years' growth, which an Oriental might well have envied, the more remarkable in an age when shaving was so generally practised.—A jocular epitaph was composed on "Mary Van Butchell," of which these lines may serve as ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... was Healy, who appeared on very good terms with her indeed. He appointed himself a sort of master of ceremonies, and handed to each man his mail with appropriate jocular comments designed to embarrass the recipient. He knew them all, and his hits were greeted with gay laughter. To the man standing in the doorway with his back to them, they seemed all one happy family—and himself a rank outsider. He trailed ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... vain search of the bed-chamber and the dressing-room, Mr Andrews returned to bed and to sleep, having no doubt whatever that his too jocular friend was in hiding somewhere near. On the afternoon of the following day news came to him that Lord Lyttelton had died the previous night at the very time that he (Mr Andrews) was searching for his midnight visitant, and abusing him roundly for ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... "Is this yer a d—d picnic?" said Uncle Billy, with inward scorn, as he surveyed the sylvan group, the glancing fire-light, and the tethered animals in the foreground. Suddenly an idea mingled with the alcoholic fumes that disturbed his brain. It was apparently of a jocular nature, for he felt impelled to slap his leg again and cram his ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... morning?" said Captain Wragge, in his easy jocular way. "And how's the wind? Nor'-west and by west, is it? Very good. ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... indeed, very curious and interesting, the literary fate of Charles Lamb. Jocular Bishops, archly toying Rural Deans, Rectors with a "penchant" for anecdote, scholarly Canons with a weakness for Rum Punch, are all inclined to speak as if in some odd way he was of their own very tribe. He had absolutely nothing in common with them, except a talent for giving false impressions! ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... body, clumsy with pain, burst into fragile legs with absurdly large feet and funny writhing toes; its little stiff arms made abrupt cruel equal angles with the road. About its stunted loins clung a ponderous and jocular fragment of drapery. On one terribly brittle shoulder the droll lump of its neckless head ridiculously lived. There was in this complete silent doll a gruesome truth of instinct, a success of uncanny poignancy, an unearthly ferocity ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... a divorce," said the budding barrister, in a jocular tone. "I am afraid we can't manage that ...
— Sam's Chance - And How He Improved It • Horatio Alger
... to see him endeavouring to imitate the careless and jocular tone of the young men of fashion. How awkward was he in the attempt to put on dandy airs when pulling up the corners of his cravat he would say, "Well, Madame, is there anything new to-day? Citizen, what say ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... touched her. Burning was simply a method of disposing of the body so expeditiously as to give no occasion and opportunity for the unseemly social rites commonly performed about the scaffold of the erring male by the jocular populace. As lately as 1763 a woman named Margaret Biddingfield was burned in Suffolk as an accomplice in the crime of "petty treason." She had assisted in the murder of her husband, the actual killing being done by a man; and he was hanged, as no doubt he richly ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... Thorpe's delayed and puzzled comment upon this outburst. He looked long at his sister, in blank astonishment. "Since when have you been taken this way?" he asked at last, mechanically jocular. ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... as the evening wore on. By the time supper was finished and his pipe alight he became almost jocular, and the coldness of Miss Evans was the only drawback to an ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs
... the sacristan with a smile and a jocular remark of some sort on his lips, but he was confounded to see the old man on his knees, gazing at the picture with the eye of a suppliant in agony, his hands tightly clasped, and a rain of tears on his ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... parting glass of wine they bade the good Father good-bye, and then hoisting the sail, they stood across for Rikitea. The sun had dipped, and the land-breeze stole softly down from the mountains and sped the boat along. Baldwin was noisy and jocular; Brice silent ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... of unfathomable depth into which March felt inclined to fling himself, clothes and all, and be drowned comfortably. She then looked at the fire, then at March again. It was evident that she had not been accustomed to hold intercourse with jocular minds. Perceiving this, March at once changed his tone, and, with a feeling of respect which he could not well ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... upon it, and hung green boughs about the room, with candles here and there to lend a festal light. Moor trundled a great cheese in from the dairy, brought milk-pans without mishap, disposed dishes, and caused Nat to cleave to him by the administration of surreptitious titbits and jocular suggestions; while Phebe tumbled about in every one's way, quite wild with excitement; and grandma stood in her pantry like a culinary general, swaying a big knife for a baton, as she issued orders and marshalled her forces, the busiest and ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... grew jocular; and who can resist a doctor's jokes, when they garnish such tidings as he was telling. Was ever so pleasant a doctor! Laughter through tears greeted these pleasantries; and oh, such transports of gratitude broke forth ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... about that. Confession? It'll be judeecial, my young friend," cried the jocular Glenkindie. "And I'm afraid to listen to ye. Think if ye were to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ain't dead," replied the man, in a drawling, jocular tone. "She's worth a dozen dead ones—ain't you, Lois? I found her layin' down side of the road kind of tuckered out, that's all, and I thought I'd give her a lift. Don't you be scared, Mis' Field. Now, Lois, you jest rest all your ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... OF SLEEP, ETC.: Professor Hart suggests that De Quincey is here "indulging in jocular arithmetic. The three nights plus the three days, plus the present night, equal seven." Dr. Cooper compares with this a reference to the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. But it seems doubtful whether any ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... widely circulated at that period as they are now, and on the return of any of his domestics from the city, which one of them daily visited, he listened with great attention to the 'news, and enjoyed with much zest the narration of any jocular incident that had occurred. Mr. Gillespie had a penchant for animals, and their wants were carefully attended to. His poultry, equally with his horses, could have testified to the judicious attention which he bestowed upon them. ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... the principle, De mortuis nil, nisi bone 'em!" suggested Miss Hurribattle, with such perfect gravity that neither Miss Prowley nor the clergyman suspected the jocular atrocity that was hidden in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... agent, came to salute his lord, thinking to do honour for his fief. Thereupon the king said to him, in a jocular manner, that the Spanish ladies were of a passable temperature, and their system a fair one, but that when gentleness was required they substituted frenzy; that he kept fancying each thrill was a sneeze, or a case of violence; in short, that the embrace of a French woman brought back ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... homely atmosphere, were here as in the other Y.M. centres. One felt, one was made to feel, that his was the right to enter and stay and enjoy himself each in his own way, and that is why the Y.M. is so popular, and why both the taciturn and the jocular find their way by common consent to these ...
— One Young Man • Sir John Ernest Hodder-Williams
... exaggerated indifference. "It sure is—young feller. Now you hain't been watchin' that there leadin' lady more particularly, have you? I sort o' cal'ate she might have a takin' way with the fellers," and he prodded the tinker with a jocular thumb. ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... forgive!" He said this in a highly jocular manner, and accompanied it with a wink at Tilda, who did not understand the allusion. But again she felt the child's hand thrill and tremble, and turned about, eyeing him curiously. Her movement drew upon him the Mortimerian ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the solemn, and, as it were, official protest and warning of Our Square. Of course I did it at the worst possible moment. It was early one morning, when Mayme, on her bench, was looking a little hollow-eyed and disillusioned. I essayed the light and jocular ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... poet-by-stealth, and he hurried across the street with hungry alacrity. The poem-maker was tall and loose-jointed, and the breadth of his shoulders and long muscular limbs decidedly suggested success at the anvil or field furrow. He made a jocular pass at placing his arm around the uncompromising waist-line of his portly wife, and when warded off by an only half-impatient shove he contented himself by winding one of her white apron strings around one of his long fingers as they leaned ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... His dashing, jocular, military mode of telling the thing, so different from Jacob's plain, mercantile, matter-of-fact method, quite changed my view and opinion of the transaction. Mowbray blamed himself with such a good grace, and wished so fervently that he could make ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... unusual person, and he was often the Astronomer Royal. Besides his dignified name he possessed a wrist-watch, and there was never a movement in his mountain of blankets until 7.59 A.M., unless the jocular night-watchman chose to make a heap of them on the floor. To calls like "Breakfast all ready! Porridge on the table getting cold!" seventeen persons in varying stages of wakefulness responded. No one was guilty of an elaborate toilet, water being a scarce commodity. There were adherents ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... numerous humble tombstones in village churchyards. The gratitude felt by both rector and people for many years of faithful service is thus set forth, sometimes couched in homely verse, and occasionally marred by the misplaced humour and jocular expressions and puns with which our forefathers thought fit to honour the dead. In this they were not original, and but followed the example of the Greeks and Romans, the Italians, Spaniards, and French. This objectionable ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... at Mr. Adams and Charley. From the stern where he was sitting Mr. Grigsby approved, to Francisco, with a jocular sentence in Spanish, at which Francisco grinned again. Maria spoke aside, and Mr. Adams nodded, ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... Johnson, 'fill him drunk again. Do it in the morning, that we may laugh at him all day. It is a poor thing for a fellow to get drunk at night, and sculk to bed, and let his friends have no sport.' Finding him thus jocular, I became quite easy; and when I offered to get up, he very good-naturedly said, 'You need be in no such hurry now.' [Footnote: My ingenuously relating this occasional instance of intemperance has I find been made the subject both of serious criticism and ludicrous banter. With the banterers ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... great apparent cordiality, and entered into a long discourse with them, promising them the assistance of himself and order, and received from them a profusion of thanks. After a time Murtagh, observing, in a jocular tone, that consulting was dull work, proposed a game of cards, and the leaders, though somewhat surprised, assenting, he went to a closet, and taking out a pack of cards, laid it upon the table; it was a strange dirty pack, and exhibited every mark of having seen very long service. ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... say, that years after these events transpired, as the "Eclipse" passed up and down the Mississippi, on her trips to and from New Orleans, the jocular clerk was wont to call the attention of his passengers to a beautiful English cottage, surrounded by vines and shrubbery, which stood on the Tennessee shore, and exclaim, "The dwellers in that cottage ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... in his most happy and resplendent moods that the Archdeacon held jocular conversations with his daughter. These conversations had been, in the past, moments of agony and terror to her, but since that morning when she had suddenly woken to a realisation of the marvellous possibilities in life her terror had left her. There were other ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... among the Twiddlers was that Mr. Biles supplied an exceedingly thin and watery fluid; and one day when the judge stepped over to pay his quarterly bill he determined to make complaint. He found Mr. Biles in the yard mending the valve of his pump; and when the judge made a jocular remark to the effect that the dairy must be in a bad way when the pump was out of order, Mr. Biles, rising with his hammer ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... for a line in the Saturday Post or the Courier or maybe an old hint in the General Almanack itself. Perhaps when you become acquainted with the General and the Cornal you will wonder that they are never at any time jocular, and maybe you will think that they are soured at life and that all their kindness is turned to lappered cream. I knew them nearly jocular, I knew them tall, light-footed laddies, running about the pastures there gallivanting with the girls. But that, ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... passion and tragedy we pass by easy steps into the jocular-colloquial region in which the volume opened. Painting in these later days of Browning's has ceased to yield high, or even serious poetry, and Baldinucci's tale of shabby trickery cannot be compared, even for grotesque humour, with the ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... not meant to introduce this jocular note into our meditation, for we are honestly aggrieved that so many of the Christmas cards hark back to an old tradition that is gone, and never attempt to express any of the romance of to-day. You may protest that Christmas ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... estate. For there had passed between them many communications respecting Folking. The extravagances of the son became almost the delight of the father, when the father had become certain of the son's reform. There had been even jocular reference to Davis, and a complete understanding as to the amount of money to be given to the nephew in compensation for the blighted hopes as to the ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... the stone-arched tunnel, ushered by a lame innkeeper; and Burley, chancing to turn his head and glance back through the shadowy stone passage, caught a glimpse in the outer sunshine of the girl whose dark eyes had inspired him with jocular eloquence as he rode on his mule under ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... you know—just pot luck with us, with your old superintendent, you rascal," he uttered nervously, poking Martin in an attempt at jocular fellowship. ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... manner a protection to a woman. Strangers respect her sorrow and refrain from the jocular. Behind her crepe she may defy intrusion. But it often becomes a hardship ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... in her a woman's anxiety for the present as well as affection for the past. He remembered his aunt Mary, though he had not seen her for years. His half brothers, Bill and Guy, had changed but little except perhaps to grow lean and rangy. Bill resembled his father, though his aspect was jocular rather than serious. Guy was smaller, wiry, and hard as rock, with snapping eyes in a brown, still face, and he had the bow-legs of a cattleman. Both had married in Arizona. Bill's wife, Kate, was a stout, comely little woman, mother of three ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... "I hear you have said Intellectual women are always your dread; Now tell me, dear sir, is it true?" "Why, yes," answered Tom, "very likely I may Have made the remark in a jocular way; But then on my honour, I ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... been invited by Lord R. to dine after the play,—an arrangement which, from its novelty, delighted Lord Byron exceedingly. The dinner, however, afterwards dwindled into a mere supper, and this change was long a subject of jocular resentment ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... gradually, and with a kind of jocular moroseness, crept into their intercourse. The exciting thing about it was the silent reservation felt by both: We know how different things could be, so soon as we desired. To-day, for the first time, this game at renunciation seemed ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... as a nation are proverbial for their travelling propensities; they are to be found not only in every part of the British Isles, but in almost every known and unknown part of the wide world. It was a jocular saying then in vogue that if ever the North Pole were discovered, a Scotsman would be found there sitting on the top! Sir Walter Scott was by no means behind his fellow countrymen in his love of travel, and like his famous Moss-troopers, ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... great-uncle, and I always called her Aunt Emmy. Great-uncle Thomas and Uncle Tom were persons to be avoided, stout, heavy, bullet-headed, bull-necked, throat-clearing men, loud nose-blowers, loud soup-eaters, who reeked of tobacco when it was my horrid duty to kiss them, and who addressed me in jocular terms when they remembered my existence, of which I was always loth to remind them. With these two horrors, whom she loved, Aunt Emmy lived. She was wrapped up in them. I have actually seen her kiss ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... later the dormitory bell sounded, and he could hear the scuffling of feet on the lobby outside, and the clamour of voices as boys hustled one another in front of the boards. Evidently the majority regarded the announcement in a jocular manner; and when a distant shout of laughter came up from the passage below, and down from the landing above, it was clear that Forders did not take the matter ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... of Commons, grew "jocular upon the cruelties and sufferings almost unparalleled in the world's history," and expressed his belief that the outrages committed by the Turkish troops had been exaggerated, and sneered at the rumor as "coffee-house babble;" while as to the torture of the impalement, which had caused universal ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... tears trickled from her eyes. But just as she was feeling unable to retrace her steps, and unable to remain standing any longer, and quite at a loss what to do, she overheard the sound of jocular language inside, and listening carefully, she discovered that it was, indeed, Pao-y and Pao-ch'ai. Lin Tai-y waxed more wroth. After much thought and cogitation, the incidents of the morning flashed unawares through her memory. "It must, in fact," she mused, "be because Pao-y is angry with ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... encouraged general censure of any profession[964]; but he was willing to allow a due share of merit to the various departments necessary in civilised life. In a splenetick, sarcastical, or jocular frame, however, he would sometimes utter a pointed saying of that nature. One instance has been mentioned[965], where he gave a sudden satirical stroke to the character of an attorney. The too indiscriminate admission to that employment, which ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... very nice," admitted the young fellow, beginning to catch on. "But I didn't suppose—I didn't expect to begin life with a picnic." He entered upon his sentence with a jocular buoyancy, but at the last word, which he fatally drifted upon, his voice fell. He said to himself that he was greatly changed; that, he should never be gay and bright again; there would always be this undercurrent of sadness; he had noticed the undercurrent ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Washer are coming round," he said, and as he spoke the door opened to admit these gentlemen. Of the same height, but different appearance, their manner was faintly jocular, faintly supercilious, as if they tolerated everything. The one whose name was Trimmer had patches of red on his large cheek-bones, and on his cheeks a bluish tint. His lips were rather full, so that he had a ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy |
