"Pun" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and by way probably of saying something to shock Macready; whose personality could hardly have been sympathetic to him, uttered the remarkable wish that the last breath he drew in might be through a pipe and exhaled in a pun. ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... other hours. Some day when you wish a bit of fun with your children you will find humorous poems in many of the books. One is in Volume IV, on page 57. Nearly every stanza contains a "joke": a pun, if you please, usually. Perhaps you and your children will find them all easily, and perhaps you will not. In the last stanza is the "joke" proper, the thing for which the rhymes were written. It is an old joke, surely ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... resemblance, likeness, similitude, semblance; affinity, approximation, parallelism; agreement &c. 23; analogy, analogicalness[obs3]; correspondence, homoiousia[obs3], parity. connaturalness[obs3], connaturality[obs3]; brotherhood, family likeness. alliteration, rhyme, pun. repetition &c. 104; sameness &c. (identity) 13; uniformity &c. 16; isogamy[obs3]. analogue; the like; match, pendant, fellow companion, pair, mate, twin, double, counterpart, brother, sister; one's second self, alter ego, chip of the old block, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... of Glibly were numberless; and not to be escaped. Words are too equivocal and phrases too indefinite, for men like him not to profit by their ambiguity. To them a quirk in the sense is as profitable as a pun or a quibble in the sound. They snap at them, as dogs do at flies. It is no less worthy of observation that, though some of his actions seemed to laugh severity of moral principle out of countenance, he continually repeated others which, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... the salmon a l'amour. Emily flirted with the wing of a chicken saute au supreme, coquetted with perdrix perdu masque a la Montmorenci, and tasted a boudin a la Diebitsch. The wines were excellent—the Geisenheim delicious—the Champagne sparkling like a pun of Jekyll's. But nothing aroused the attention of the Viscount Chambery so much as a liqueur, which Mr. Graeme assured him was new, and had just been sent him by the Conte de Desir. The dessert had been some time on the table, when ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... bin bon bun. Can cen cin con cun. Dan den din don. dun. Fan fen fin fon fun. Guan guen guin guon gun. Han hen hin hon hun. Jan jen jin jon jun. Lan len lin lon lun. Man me min mon mun. Nan nen nin non. nun. Pan pen pin pon pun. Qua quen quin quon qun. Ran ren rin ron run. San sen sin son su. Tan ten tin ton tun. Uan uen. uin uon. uun. Xan xen xin xon xun. Yan yen yin yon yun. Zan zen zin ...
— Doctrina Christiana • Anonymous
... relation to the globe on which she dwelt; and requested them to consult together as to what might be the cause and probable cure of her infirmity. The king laid stress upon the word, but failed to discover his own pun. The queen laughed; but Hum-Drum and Kopy-Keck heard with humility and retired in silence. Their consultation consisted chiefly in propounding and supporting, for the thousandth time, each his favourite theories. For the condition of the princess afforded delightful scope for ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... At this quite unintentional pun the French painter laughed so much that every one turned and looked at him. He had once painted a famous man in Oxford, and knew what a ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... continued, "I wish to think well of you: you are the bravest, the most modest, and, perhaps, the handsomest man in our corps; but you have not got a single rupee. You ask me for Julia, and you do not possess even an anna!"—(Here the old rogue grinned, as if he had made a capital pun).—"No, no," said he, waxing good-natured; "Gagy, my boy, it is nonsense! Julia, love, retire with your mamma; this silly young gentleman will remain and smoke a ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to a keen recollection of his Viennese experiences and the double dealing (no pun intended) of the Austrian shopkeeper just at the present epoch in the national finance system ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... withheld"). Here is the recompense wished for by a French monk: "Detur pro pen scriptori pulcra puella" ("Let a pretty girl be given to the writer for his pains," or "as a penance") The monks enjoyed puns, as "bibere," a common pun on "vivere." One writer groans thus: "Scribere qui nescit, nullum putat esse laborem" ("Whoso knows not how to write, thinks ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... This atrocious pun turned the laugh against the learned James, and then, the telegram to News and News having been dispatched, they all went in to ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... the pun, mademoiselle?" asked Poiret. "This gentleman calls himself a man of mark because he is a ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... survived this pun, I will now go on to state that it is a common thing in Corea to begin a dinner with sweets, and that another curious custom is for all present to drink out of the same bowl of wine passed round and of course re-filled ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... makes a pun, which she herself has said is the lowest form of humor. The dig at my figure was unkind, also, and unworthy of her. I turned ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... or hinders them as he pleases. Can a stick be considered a spoke before it is put into its place, in the nave of the wheel at least? We often hear the observation, "Then I put in my spoke," &c. in the relation of an animated discussion. May I venture to suggest a pun on the preterite of the verb ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... word of unknown origin, signifies some question or statement in which some hidden and fanciful resemblance is involved, the answer often depending upon a pun; an enigma is a dark saying; a paradox is a true statement that at first appears absurd or contradictory; a problem is something thrown out for solution; puzzle (from oppose) referred originally to the intricate arguments ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... at a pun," said "C." "I trust, however, you will not desert me, now your curiosity ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... account differs from the version formerly received, which intimates that the epitaphs were written before Goldsmith arrived: whereas the pun, "the late Dr. Goldsmith" appears to have suggested the writing of the epitaphs. In the "Retaliation", Goldsmith has not spared the characters and failings of his associates, but has drawn them with satire, at once pungent and good-humoured. Garrick is smartly chastised; ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... mean's her design, and her subject as mean, The first but a rebus, the last but a dean. A dean's but a parson: and what is a rebus? A thing never known to the Muses or Phoebus. The corruption of verse; for, when all is done, It is but a paraphrase made on a pun. But a genius like hers no subject can stifle, It shows and discovers itself through a trifle. By reading this trifle, I quickly began To find her a great wit, but the dean a small man. Rich ladies will furnish their garrets with stuff, Which ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... guilty of the plot; For, true or false, they'll ne'er inquire, But use you ten times worse than Prior. In London! what would you do there? Can you, my friend, with patience bear (Nay, would it not your passion raise Worse than a pun, or Irish phrase) To see a scoundrel strut and hector, A foot-boy to some rogue director, To look on vice triumphant round, And virtue trampled on the ground? Observe where bloody **** stands With torturing ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... he sketched a huge mouth about to swallow a bull. This, done with a fine show of color, became the sign of the tavern. Martin never tired of explaining the pun to those who asked. Even before the guest-rooms were finished, travelers began arriving, drawn by the fame of Martin's savory and succulent dishes. Pilgrims, merchants, knights, squires, showmen, ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... art!—yet bitter, too And sparkling, like satiric fun; But how much better thee to brew, Than a conundrum or a pun, It is, in every point of view, Must be allow'd ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... "For a pun like that you ought to be forced to drink a bottle or two of Tosh Elixer!" retorted Bud. "How about ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... perceived—words which are by no means synonymous but designate two very different relations of things in thought. Such idealism at one fell swoop, through a collapse of assertive intellect and a withdrawal of reason into self-consciousness, has the puzzling character of any clever pun, that suspends the fancy between two incompatible but irresistible meanings. The art of such sophistry is to choose for an axiom some ambiguous phrase which taken in one sense is a truism and taken in another is an absurdity; and then, by showing the truth of ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... motto which, together with the two distaffs taken as supporters, proves the modesty of the burgher families in the days when the Orders held their allotted places in the State; and the naivete of our ancient customs by the pun on "eris," which word, combined with the "i" at the beginning and the final "s" in "melius," forms the name (Serisy) of the estate from which ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... efter han' He buckled til his ain wark, For sune a' owre the kintra-side They kent aboot his bane wark, An' hoo a law-wer fleggit Jock At Corkie's instigation, An' gart him pay a five-pun' ...
— The Auld Doctor and other Poems and Songs in Scots • David Rorie
... for a pun?" Beatrice blinked her big eyes at him. "If you're quite through with the train-robbers, perhaps ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... [FN299] A pun upon "Khaliyah" (bee hive) and "Khaliyah" (empty). Khaliyah is properly a hive of bees with a honey-comb in the hollow of a tree-trunk, opposed to Kawwarah, hive made of clay or earth (Al-Hariri; Ass. of Tiflis). There are many other ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... is at first unsure of his personage; he fumbles a little; yet the vivacity, the roaring life, is certainly a quality of the original Falstaff, for it attends him as constantly as his shadow; the pun, too, is his, and the phrase "sweet wag" is probably taken from his mouth, for he repeats it again, "sweet wag," and again "mad wag." The shamelessness, too, and the lechery are marks of him, and the love of witty word-warfare, and, ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... the neighborhood of the Rue de Buffault, where he lived, was a man of exceeding stinginess, possessed of forty thousand francs per annum. A week after the instalment of the charming librarian he was delivered of a pun: ...
— A Man of Business • Honore de Balzac
... represent the Swineherd at all, but is a play upon the name of Bishop Bloet,—the horn being intended to suggest "Blow it!" It seems hardly possible to credit the mediaeval wit with no keener sense of humour than to perpetrate such a far-fetched pun. ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... Cum in Constantino inconstantiam... execrarentur, (Sidonius Apollinaris, l. v. epist. 9, p. 139, edit. secund. Sirmond.) Yet Sidonius might be tempted, by so fair a pun, to stigmatize a prince who ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... hearty good-natured things, and I would put my name to 'em chearfully, if I could as honestly. I complimented them in a Newspaper, with an abatement for those puns you laud so. They are generally an excess. A Pun is a thing of too much consequence to be thrown in as a make-weight. You shall read one of the addresses over, and miss the puns, and it shall be quite as good and better than when you discover 'em. A Pun is a Noble Thing per se: O never lug it in as an accessory. A Pun is a sole object ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... vocabulary. Associated Words: glossary, glossarist, glossography, glossology, glossologist, lexicology, lexicologist, etymology, etymologist, etymologize, neology, lexicography, terminology, paronomasia, pun, punning, onomatopoeoea, syncope, syncopation, literal, literally, literalism, transliteration, verbal, verbalist, verbalism, battology, logomachy, logomachist, verbarium, apocope, kyriology, metonomy, autonomasia, multiloquence, perissology, purism, purist, elision, polysynthesis, coin, coinage, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Congreve ought to have been a great man, for the place and time of his birth are both subjects of dispute. Oh! happy Gifford! or happy Croker! why did you not—perhaps you did—go to work to set the world right on this matter—you, to whom a date discovered is the highest palm (no pun intended, I assure you) of glory, and who would rather Shakespere had never written 'Hamlet,' or Homer the 'Iliad,' than that some miserable little forgotten scrap which decided a year or a place should have been consigned to flames before it fell into your hands? Why did you ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... graced the dialogue incessantly; but the amazed audience could not indorse this rural festival. Jinny, amid the pigs, horses, tea, cucumbers and marmalade, talked in Mr. Zangwill's best style—a style replete with wordplay or pun—but her setting killed her, and she was ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... 'Diana's Grove.' Then the next one higher than it, but just beyond it, is called 'Mercy'—in all probability a corruption or familiarisation of the word Mercia, with a Roman pun included. We learn from early manuscripts that the place was called Vilula Misericordiae. It was originally a nunnery, founded by Queen Bertha, but done away with by King Penda, the reactionary to ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... Queen's College, Oxford. On the feast of the Circumcision the bursar gives to every member a needle and thread, adding the injunction, "Take this and be thrifty." It is said, I know not with what truth, that it is to commemorate the name of the founder, Robert Egglesfield—by the visible pun, ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... primarily wit; and while it would be too much to say that his heart is not in his theme—that he stands detached from it—still, his sympathies are indubitably subordinated to the effort, the successful effort, to bring off a neat point, to make a pun in the right place, to be striking, antithetical, epigrammatic. His verses have the finish, in their way, of Pope's couplet and Ovid's pentameter. His best known and most praised work appeals, ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... matter of it" that Sir John Falstaff has "defied my men, killed my deer, and broke open my lodge." He bears on his "old coat" (of arms) a "dozen white luces" (small fishes), and there is a lot of chatter about "quartering" this coat, which is without point unless a pun is intended. {8} Now "three luces Hauriant argent" were the arms of the Charlecote Lucys, it is certain. There is some reason then, for connecting Shallow with Sir Thomas Lucy, and an apparent basis for the deer-stealing tradition, although the incident in the play may, of course, have suggested ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... to do with it than Ev," said Adam, perpetrating a very poor pun and being immensely applauded therefor. It keyed Will Scott up to ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of sex—which was not infrequent in Juvenal and Horace— this man would look at him with a grin and a sly wink. And sometimes Thyrsis would make a casual remark in conversation, and the man would twist it out of its meaning, or make a pun out of it—to find some excuse for his satyr's leer. So at last Thyrsis was moved to say to him—"Don't you ever realize what a state ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... laughing, "and if I don't give our war whoop you may be sure this is not me—I am still on the Robinson ranch—there, that was an unpremeditated pun; I mean the old Robinson Crusoe and I forgot that he was great-grandfather to ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose
... shot," said Dick; "we'll toe him along at the end of a lariat if he does, that's all." He grinned feebly as he got off this atrocious pun, but Bert and Tom refused to be ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... "shows all the faults of nature's worst handiwork. (No pun intended.) A scraggy little paw, brown, knotted and shapeless; of course every one will know ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... the Warren stables, as we shall neither see lights nor hear noises, if it isn't the blowing of our own noses. That's what I say, and I've said it many a time; but there's nobody 'ull ventur a ten-pun' note on their ghos'es as ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... knowing blades, who put him up to the time of day, and he'll soon be as wide-awake as any on 'em. This morning he brought me a pocket-book, and in it eigh—ty pound flimsies. As he is a young hand, I encouraged him by giving him three pun' ten for the lot—it's runnin' a risk, but I done it. As it is, I shall have to send 'em all over to 'Amburg. Howsomever, he's got to take one pund in home made: bein' out of it myself, I have brought ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... good-sized hotel," said the Don. "Then," he continued, "there's Bedford ditto again—septennel would do for that; then comes Northampton—they don't want no law there at all." (I leave the obvious pun to anyone who likes to make it). "Then Okeham again—did you ever hear of anyone who came from ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... it; and Shakspeare shows that the word was not unusually so pronounced, as he introduces it with the same quantity in the prose dialogue of "Much Ado about Nothing," and makes it the vehicle of a pun which certainly argues that it was familiar to the public ear as ache and not ake. When Hero asks Beatrice, who complains that she is sick, what she is sick for,—a hawk, a hound, or a husband,—Beatrice replies, that she is sick for—or of—that which begins ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... The pun was new to the Seigneur, and he turned to the Cure chuckling. "Think of that, Cure! He knows the classics." He laughed till the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... facsimile of one of the epistolary efforts of that "baby-faced" Caroline beauty who was accustomed to sign herself "L duchesse de Portsmout." It is better still in the letter from Walpole to General Conway in chap. xl. of The Virginians, which is perfect, even to the indifferent pun of sleepy (and overrated) George Selwyn. But the crown and top of these pastiches is certainly the delightful paper, which pretends to be No. 341 of the Spectator for All Fools' Day, 1712, in which Colonel Esmond ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... not new, and laughingly accused him of failing to consult his anecdotal notebook for the double-cross to his last sprightly sally. "Your sallies are excellent, Horace, but spare us your Aunt Sallies!" De Craye had no repartee, nor did Dr. Middleton challenge a pun. We have only to sharpen our wits to trip your seductive rattler whenever we may choose to think proper; and evidently, if we condescended to it, we could do better than he. The critic who has hatched a witticism is impelled to this opinion. Judging ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... The pun on "cant" and "recant" was not original, though Lord John's application of it was. Its inventor seems to have been Lady Townshend, the brilliant mother of Charles Townshend, the elder Pitt's Chancellor of the Exchequer. When she was asked if George Whitefield, the evangelical preacher, had yet recanted, ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... better background for old mahogany than dull green. Golden brown is handsome with it, and certain shades of blue, but there is something about the green with antique furniture that seems literally to give it a soul. Never had our possessions shown to such an advantage (no pun intended, though they did shine) and never, we flattered ourselves, had the old house been more fittingly appointed. With the pictures and shades put up, the rugs put down, and the fires lit, it seemed to us just ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... laughing, and prepares to pour out again,—but you, the stranger, do make the best of your way out, with no preparation at all; whereupon you infallibly put your foot (and half your leg) into a river, really that, of rainwater—that's a Bora (and that comment of yours, a justifiable pun!) Such things you get in Italy, but better, better, the best of all things you do not (I do not) get those. And I shall see you on Wednesday, please remember, and bring you the rest of the poem—that you should like it, gratifies me more than I will try to say, but then, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... in the social circle will in spite of all due gravity awaken a harmless smile, and Shenstone solemnly thanked God that his name was not liable to a pun. There are some names which excite horror, such as Mr. Stabback; others contempt, as Mr. Twopenny; and others of vulgar or absurd signification, subject too often to the insolence of domestic witlings, which occasions ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... is the ancient way of spelling the name of Reading. In Percy's version of Barbara Allen, that ballad commences 'In Scarlet town,' which, in the common stall copies, is rendered 'In Redding town.' The former is apparently a pun upon the ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... strongholds and rock-built castles suggested to him his plan of conquest—by taking town after town and fortress after fortress, and gradually plucking away all the supports before he attempted the capital. He expressed his resolution in a memorable pun or play upon the name of Granada, which signifies a pomegranate. "I will pick out the seeds of this pomegranate one by one," said the cool and ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... time being he escaped punishment for perpetrating this alleged pun, for the wind began to freshen and the Curlew slid through the water like a thing of life. The shore drew ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... haunted her, till she found him playing with Gorgon in the road; and from that to her bewilderment twenty-four hours later, when he had called the dog Zola. She had reproved the enormity of the syncopated pun, but Dick had insisted that Zola fitted an animal whose expression was always either ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... or a bloody nose. Johnny was a bully, and he had a bully's reputation to maintain; but he never fought when the odds were against him; and he had a congressman's skill in backing out before the water got too hot. On the whole, he rather enjoyed the pun; and he had the condescension to laugh heartily, though somewhat ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... compliance to you, ask Dr. Cockburn. Radcliffe(19) I know not, and Barnard(20) I never see. Walls will certainly be stingier for seven years, upon pretence of his robbery. So Stella puns again; why, 'tis well enough; but I'll not second it, though I could make a dozen: I never thought of a pun since I left Ireland.—Bishop of Clogher's bill? Why, he paid it to me; do you think I was such a fool to go without it? As for the four shillings, I will give you a bill on Parvisol for it on t'other side of this paper; and pray tear ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... is here an untranslatable pun in the original; niemiec, the Polish word for German, ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... stroke from the King's whip, he doubled himself up, performed the contortion now called turning a coachwheel, then, recovering himself, put his hands on his hips and danced wildly on the steps; while Henry, shaking his whip at him, laughed at the only too obvious pun, for Anguish was the English version of Angus, the title of Queen Margaret's second husband, and it was her complaints that had brought him ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... quoth the little man, "a fi'-pun note!" And thrusting needle into the garment he was making he rose with brisk alacrity. "What d'ye ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... triumph from the accident of his encumbrance. By a slight stress laid on the difference of usage the unshapeliness may be done away with, and a new grace found where none was sought. Addison and Landor accuse Milton, with reason, of too great a fondness for the pun, yet surely there is something to please the mind, as well as the ear, in the description ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... stupefy Rodolphe a bit. 'This was Mimi's favorite wine,' said he, 'we have often drunk it together at this very table. I remember one day she said to me, holding out her glass, which she had already emptied several times, 'Fill up again, it is good for one's bones.' A poor pun, eh? Worthy, at the most, of the mistress of a farce writer. Ah! ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... great moral curiosity was a bearded lady, a jolly and not bad-looking Frenchwoman, whose beard was genuine enough, as I know, having pulled it. My own beard has been described by a French newspaper as une barbe de Charlemagne, a very polite pun, but hers was much fuller. It was soft as floss silk. After a while the capillary attraction ceased to draw, and Mr. Barnum thought of an admirable plan to revive it. He got somebody to prosecute him for false pretences and imposture, on the ground that Madame was a man. Then ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... East," had been spreading the story of the life and love of Christ. And here, in this year of grace 635, in the city of Chang-an, and in all the region about the Yellow River, the good priest Thomas the Nestorian, whom the Chinese called O-lo-pun—the nearest approach they could give to his strange Syriac name—had his Christian mission-house, and was zealously bringing to the knowledge of a great and enlightened people the still greater and more helpful ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... of good men out of office.) And then there's a man's time. Why not tax that? Nearly every man spends a lot of time, and he ought to pay for it. As it would be our tax, it could not be a very minute tax, although it is only the second tax which we have suggested. (That is to say—- something pun-ny.) And besides these things, there's energy. We often hear of a man's energies being taxed; but, so far as the matter is apparent to the naked eye, it is difficult to see whose energies are taxed for the good of the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 5, April 30, 1870 • Various
... aware that we have a practical pun now naturalised in our language, in the word "tandem." Are any of your correspondents acquainted ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 24. Saturday, April 13. 1850 • Various
... non fui, avvegna che Sapia Fosse chiamata." The pun is poorer even than it sounds in English: for though the Italian name may possibly remind its readers of sapienza (sapience), there is the difference of a v in the adjective savia, which is also accented on the first syllable. It is almost as bad as if she had said in English, "Sophist I found ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... was cold or in penitence for the pun, he walked over to the windows to pull down the shades. But before he did so he looked out into the night, his breath making a frosty vapor on the pane. Below him the Square gleamed in white patches under the arc-lamps, and across these white patches here and ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... pulled a long story about 'em with all the usual trimmin's. Said they were supernatural and all that. Ever seen 'em yourself? I must say they gave me a bit of a turn. I'm not keen on spirits—except in bottle form (which by the way is a rotten bad pun, Miss Brellier,) but in India one gets chockful of that sort of thing, and there never seems to be any rational explanation. It leaves you feeling funny. What's your opinion of 'em? For seen 'em you must have done, as ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... what you're talking about!" he says. "But I fancy it's a pun of some sort! Very well, then, what ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... triumphant faith they were walking the golden streets, with palms in their hands crowns on their heads, and songs in their hearts. Kid was a witty man, usually overflowing with innocent mirth; even in sight of the gallows his humor was insuppressible. Looking into King's face he made a pun on their own names, saying, "I have often heard and read of a kid sacrificed, but I seldom or never heard of a ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... generally reprobated, it seems nevertheless to have been adopted in the arms and mottoes of many honourable families. Thus the motto of the Vernons, VER NON SEMPER VIRET, is a perfect pun, and so is that of the Onslows, FESTINA LENTE. The PERIISSEM NI PER-IISSEM of the Anstruthers is liable to a similar objection. One of that ancient race, finding that an antagonist, with whom he had fixed a friendly meeting, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... f(1) The pun here cannot be kept. The word (in Greek), Paean, resembles (that for) to strike; hence the word, as recalling the blows and wounds of the war, seems of ill omen ...
— Peace • Aristophanes
... "a particular part," says the Westminster Review, "is appropriated to the heads of the houses, and is called Golgotha therefrom, a name which the appearance of its occupants renders peculiarly fitting, independent of the pun."—Am. ed., Vol. XXXV. ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... shape without the help of the shorter. Here is that war and wedding between two contrary forces, resisting and supporting each other; the meeting-place of contraries which we, by a sort of pietistic pun, still call the crux of the question. Here is our angular and defiant answer to the self-devouring circle of Asia. It may be improbable, though it is far from impossible (for the age was philosophical enough) that a man like Godfrey thus extended the mystical ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... their folk lore and fireside stories. When later, during a residence of nearly four years among the people, my eyes were opened to behold the wondrous fertility of invention, the wealth of literary, historic and classic allusion, of pun, myth and riddle, of heroic, wonder, and legendary lore in Japanese art, I at once set myself to find the source of the ideas expressed in bronze and porcelain, on lacquered cabinets, fans, and even crape paper napkins and tidies. ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... that the Negritos have no slaves and know nothing of slavery, the reverse is true, in Zambales at least; so say the Negritos and also the Filipinos who have spent several years among them. The word "a-li'-pun" is used among them to express such social condition. As has been stated, a man caught stealing may become a slave, as also may a person captured from another rancheria, a child left without support, a person under death sentence, or a debtor. It was also ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... of his "Hear hims!" proud, too, of his vote, And lost virginity of oratory, Proud of his learning (just enough to quote), He revelled in his Ciceronian glory: With memory excellent to get by rote, With wit to hatch a pun or tell a story, Graced with some merit, and with more effrontery,[mq] "His country's pride," he ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... Will, who with wit was somewhat stored (For he by no means was a fool Some Latin, too, he'd learned at school), Said (thinking he might change disgrace For laughter, and thus save his place), "Oh! call me not a stupid cur, 'Twas but a lapsus linguae, sir." "A lapsus linguae?" one guest cries, "A pun!" another straight replies. The joke was caught—the laugh went round; Nor could a serious face be found. The master, when the uproar ceased, Finding his guests were all well pleased, Forgave the servant's slippery ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... this pun into Beppo, which is 'a fair exchange and no robbery; for Scrope made his fortune at several dinners (as he owned himself) by repeating occasionally, as his own, some of the buffooneries with which I had encountered ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... answered him in a single word: Mr. Mix started, and gripped the receiver more tightly. "Nothing!... Why, I don't quite get you on that.... It's an open and shut proposition—No, I most certainly am not trying to make a pun; I'm calling you up in my official capacity. That's the most flagrant, barefaced attempt to evade a law—Why, an idiot could see it! It's to drive the crowd into the Orpheum during the week, ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... have against Griswold," declared Jack. "He will pun in the most reckless manner at all times. Some of his jokes are not what they are ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... was closed. I have but just got it. I'm not going home." (He lived eight miles off, near Axe.) "I've got to go to a Church meeting at Red Cow, and I'm sleeping there. John's Ernest is calling here for me presently. I don't fancy driving over them moors with near a thousand pun in my pocket—and colliers out on strike—not at my age, missis! If you don't know what Red Cow is, I reckon I do. It's your money. Put it in a drawer and say nowt, and I'll fetch it to-morrow. What'll happen ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... Astraea tread, Who fairly puts all characters to bed! And idle Cibber, how he breaks the laws, To make poor Pinky eat with vast applause! But fill their purse, our poet's work is done, Alike to them, by pathos or by pun. ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... as to say, the tough old knight hath a habit of swearing," said the keeper, grinning at a pun, which has been repeated since his time; "but who can help it? it comes of use and wont. Were you now, in your bodily self, to light suddenly on a Maypole, with all the blithe morris-dancers prancing around it to the merry pipe and tabor, with bells jingling, ribands fluttering, lads ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... verse is now with one consent allied To Tragedy, and rarely quits her side; Though mad Almanzor rhymed in Dryden's days, No sing-song hero rants in modern plays;— While modest Comedy her verse foregoes For jest and pun in very middling prose. Not that our Bens or Beaumonts show the worse, Or lose one point because they wrote in verse; But so Thalia pleases to appear,— Poor virgin!—damn'd ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... things, and to happy examples formerly given I will add one or two of a kind he more rarely indulged. "He is below par on the Exchange," a friend remarked of a notorious puffing actor; "he doesn't stand well at Lloyds." "Yet no one stands so well with the under-writers," said Dickens; a pun that Swift would have envied. "I call him an Incubus!" said a non-literary friend, at a loss to express the boredom inflicted on him by a popular author. "Pen-and-ink-ubus, you mean," interposed Dickens. So, when Stanfield said of his mid-shipman son, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... in form and easily understood; they are frequently enlivened by illuminating figures of rhetoric and by humor, or rendered impressive by the striking way in which they express thought, e.g. "The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinion." A pun, digression, or out-of-the-way allusion may occasionally provoke readers, but onlookers have frequently noticed that few wrinkle their brows while reading his critical essays, and that a pleased expression, ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... to the toils of an incessant jester; and the revolt against gloomy religion made him turn his wit, whenever he could, in the direction of a defence of happier and humaner views. In the long great roll that includes Homer and Shakespeare, he was the last great man who really employed the pun. His puns were not all good (nor were Shakespeare's), but the best of them were a strong and fresh form of art. The pun is said to be a thing of two meanings; but with Hood there were three meanings, ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... benevolence of his ancestry, and he stands among us a being whom every one loves and admires, without any very distinguishing trait of learning, wit, or superior qualification, to command the respect he excites. If any one tells a good story or makes a laughable pun, Tom retails it for a week, and all the school have the advantage of hearing and enjoying it. Any proposition for a boat party, cricketing, or a toodle into Windsor, or along the banks of ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... to form a pair of wings. "The first altar," written by Dosiadas of Rhodes, is the earliest instance of a Greek acrostic, or of any one which formed words. An acrostic is a play upon spelling, as a pun is upon sound; and in both cases the complication is too slight for real humour. They are rather to be considered as ingenious works of fancy. The first specimens are those in the Psalms—twelve of which have twenty-two verses beginning with the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... drawled Jack. "This—er, what shall I call him?—stopped me to tell me he was going to rub the marks off me, at the same time wittily making a pun on my name. I was just telling him to hurry, or ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... his disciple Peter suddenly solves the problem by exclaiming, "Thou are the Christ, the son of the living God." At this Jesus is extraordinarily pleased and excited. He declares that Peter has had a revelation straight from God. He makes a pun on Peter's name, and declares him the founder of his Church. And he accepts his destiny as a god by announcing that he will be killed when he goes to Jerusalem; for if he is really the Christ, it is a ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... in the play, the mixture of pleasantries and familiar speeches with the tragic dialogue, and of heroism and savagery in the character of Hernani, and they made all manner of fun of the species of pun—de ta suite, j'en suis—which terminated the first act. "Certain lines were captured and recaptured, like disputed redoubts, by each army with equal obstinacy. On one day the romantics would carry a passage, which the enemy would retake the next day, and from ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... the portraits of very large Royal Freemasons, now unsubstantial ghosts. There at the end of the room was Hood. Some publishers, I think, were our companions. I quite remember his pale face; he was thin and deaf, and very silent; he scarcely opened his lips during the dinner, and he made one pun. Some gentleman missed his snuff-box, and Hood said,—(the Freemasons' Tavern was kept, you must remember, by Mr. CUFF in those days, not by its present proprietors). Well, the box being lost, and asked for, and CUFF (remember that name) being the name of the landlord, Hood opened his silent ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Sixth, had brought her guitar, and struck the strings every now and then as an earnest of the music she intended to bring from it later on. Everybody was in a jolly mood, and inclined to laugh at any pun, however feeble. Mrs. Arnold, always bright and animated, surpassed herself, and waxed so amusing that the circle grew almost hysterical. The Wood-gatherers, whose office it was to mix the cocoa, supplied cup after cup, and refilled the kettle so often that they ventured to air the time-honoured ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... true of the majority of the names of our hills, and Professor Edward Hitchcock, in commenting on their uncouthness, concluded his disapproval with a pun worth preserving, by saying, "Fortunately there are some summits in the State yet unnamed. It is to be hoped that men of taste will see to it that neither Tom, nor Toby, nor Bears, nor Rattlesnakes, nor Sugar ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... heroic look had meant, and her respect for it was great. Its intention had not been to suggest inclusion of George and Kathryn in her pun, it had only with pure justice put it to her to ask herself what her own personal decision in such a matter ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... wan' mor' 'en twenty uv the best, lidy, jus' to mike a start—an' I doan' wanter part wiv yer 'and-writin' niver. So jes' yer send two rustlers, wot means notes, of ten pun each, rigistered, to W. 'ickle spelt wiv a haitch, 2 H'apple Blossom Row, Coving Gardin, afore this toime ter-morrer. An' jes yer remember that h'as long as yer lives I've got yer bit of 'andwritin.' I ain't goin' ter use it, but ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... humour and the nicest tact, of infinite sleights and evasions, of a picked phraseology, and the very soul of mimicry.' He had the mind of a harlequin; his wit was acrobatic, and threw somersaults. He took in a character at a glance, and threw a pun at you as dexterously as a fly-fisher casts his fly over a trout's nose. 'How finely,' says Hazlitt, in his best and heartiest mood; 'how finely, how truly, how gaily he took off the company at the "Southampton!" Poor and ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... true feeler, brings half the entertainment along with him. This brings us to notice Christmas, a Poem, by Edward Moxon, full of ingenuousness and good feeling, in Crabbe-like measure; but, captious reader, suspect not a pun on the poet of England's hearth—for a more unfortunate name than Crabbe ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 348, December 27, 1828 • Various
... servants were two negroes, somewhat quaintly clad in tight uniforms of yellow. The priest's instinctive trick of analysing his own impressions told him that the colour and the little neat coat-tails of these bipeds had suggested the word "Canary," and so by a mere pun connected them with southward travel. Towards the end of the dinner they took their yellow clothes and black faces out of the room, leaving only the black clothes and yellow face of ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... and not re-appointed to the same ship. Brahe afterwards made a proper submission for the fault he had committed, at his own court. His conduct reminds us of Sir Henry Wotton's definition of an ambassador—that he is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country. A pun upon the ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... were now bound to an evening of merriment at Albano. According to him it was not so much a case of 'divino amore' as of 'amore di vino,' and he was very anxious that the English maid should understand his pun. She laughed—pretended—showed off her few words of Italian. She thought Alfredo a funny, handsome little man, a sort of toy wound up, of which she could not understand the works. But after all he was a man; and the time ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... yet, are you forgot, my jocund Boy! DAVUS, [12] the harbinger of childish joy; For ever foremost in the ranks of fun, The laughing herald of the harmless pun; Yet, with a breast of such materials made, Anxious to please, of pleasing half afraid; 270 Candid and liberal, with a heart of steel In Danger's path, though not untaught to feel. Still, I remember, in the factious strife, The rustic's ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... dominions, and he laughed consumedly over the joke which had not long since appeared in Punch, to the effect that Pio "No, No," should rather have been named Pio "Yes, Yes," because, as the doctor explained, he granted everything his subjects asked for. Anything like a pun went ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... go down and have a glass of grog to wash the taste of that awful pun out of my mouth!" he cried, turning to leave the bridge for the first time since he had come up there at sunset. "You can call me if anything happens or should it come to blow worse, but I shall be up and down all night to ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... heard repeated many years later at a dinner in China. To appreciate this witticism, one may refer to the New York directory of 1789, which describes John Slidell, the father of the Slidell of whom we are speaking, as "soap boiler and chandler, 104 Broadway." Miss Fairlie's pun seems to me to be quite equal to that of Rufus Choate, who, when a certain Baptist minister described himself as "a candle of the Lord," remarked, "Then you are a dipped, but I hope not a wick-ed ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... is also, and perhaps chiefly, in this case, a pun on the meaning of the plural noun "cenci," "rags," or "old rags." The cry of this, frequent in Rome, was at first mistaken by Shelley for a voice urging him to go on with his play. Mr. Browning has used it to indicate ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... "Fable of the Court Pudding" (see also Dumpling, pp. 13-14) ties together both meanings of the scatological Latin-English pun on the title page ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous
... and, of course, was well abused; for success is apt to bring with it envy and satire. Mr. William Hogarth, who objected strongly to competitors, sought to jest down the advancing Scotchman with a feeble pun about a Ram's eye! Hogarth was very much less clever when he had a pen in his hand than when he was wielding a brush or ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... Timon; but Apemantus stayed a while longer and told him he had a passion for extremes, which was true. Apemantus even made a pun, but there was no good laughter to be got out ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... leave, the b—y sans culotte" returned the captain, putting himself in a better humor with his own pun. "But did you ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... time in that affair," said Quincy, conscious, when too late, that he had wasted a pun on an obtuse individual. "Are you ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... account given by "Old Age" in her "Four Ages of Man," of what he has seen and known of Puritan affairs, being in somewhat more lively strain. But lively was an adjective to which Mistress Anne had a rooted objection. Her contemporaries indulged in an occasional solemn pun, but the only one in her writings is found in the grim turn on Laud's name, in the "Dialogue" just quoted, in which is also a sombre jest ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... broke down under the opposition of the nobility. Then Calonne volunteered, witty and reckless, and convoked the notables, or not-ables, as Lafayette called them in one of his American letters, borrowing a bad pun from Thomas Paine. Calonne could do nothing with the notables, who obstinately refused to submit to taxation. Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse, took his place. This was in April, 1787, a month before Paine's arrival ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... of the particular idiom. In general, there is no alternative but experiment (directed by probabilities) of every tongue known to him who attempts the solution, until the true one be attained. But, with the cipher now before us, all difficulty is removed by the signature. The pun upon the word 'Kidd' is appreciable in no other language than the English. But for this consideration I should have begun my attempts with the Spanish and French, as the tongues in which a secret of this ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... Quacklebens are accurate enough in themselves, but are seen through a Blackwoodian atmosphere, as it were, through a mist of the temporary and boisterous Scotch humour of the day. The author occasionally stoops to a pun, and, like that which Hood made in the hearing of Thackeray, the pun is not good. Indeed the novel, in its view of the decay of the Border, the ruined Laird, the frivolous foolish society of the Well, taking the place of sturdy William of Deloraine, and farmers like Scott's grandfather, makes ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... a pun? From bad to worse! I'm enough of a psychologist to feel the evil spreading, and I've the scent ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... screaming hare; but permitted those who had lost their all in supporting his father's cause, to pine in misery and want. He would give to a painted harlot a thousand pounds for a loathsome embrace, and to a player or buffoon a hundred for a trumpery pun, but would refuse a penny to the widow or orphan of an old Royalist soldier. He was the personification of selfishness; and as he loved and cared for no one, so did no one love or care for him. So little had he gained the respect or affection of those who surrounded him, that after his ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... and woo, and fight and joke, Perhaps you'll pun! Such feats are never done by folk Before ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... been laid out in Babylonia long ages before. The very word "paradise," which in the Persian age came to signify a pleasure-park, was of Babylonian origin. It is given in the exercise-book of a Babylonian school-boy as the name of a mythical locality, and an etymological pun attempts to derive it from the ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... our hearty task at length was done, When the clock struck the hour for retiring; And we heard the spiteful squib and pun The girls were ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... 6 A.M. thermometer 68 deg.. The mosquitoes were most tormenting; as was well expressed by one of the men outside my tent, who remarked to his companion, "That the more you punishes 'em, the more they brings you to the scratch:" a tolerable pun for one of "the fancy," of which class we had rather too many in the party. The horses, although tethered and close spancelled, could not be secured, even thus. Some had broken away and strayed during the night. It was ascertained by Yuranigh, that four other ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... please, sir, there's a hofficer of the law downstairs and he wants Mr. Tempenny or forty pun', sixteen shillings and ninepence. ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... can be more destructive of the higher forms of conversation than a pun? What right has any one to explode a petard in the midst of sweet sociality, and blow every thing like sequence and sentiment sky-high? And therefore, since you, as translator of the Pasha's Letters, have taken pains to ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... Lord Campbell asserts that he once, and only once, uttered a pun. A learned gentleman, who had lectured on the law and was too much addicted to oratory came to argue a special demurrer before him. "My client's opponent," said the figurative advocate, "worked like a mole under ground, clam et secrete." His figures only elicited a grunt from the Chief Justice. ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... The pun was atrocious and, quite properly, failed to win a smile or even a reproof from the morbid young person opposite. "My grandfather," said she in meditation, "began as a clerk in a country store. Oh of course, we have discovered, since he made his money and since Mother married ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... you do know Howe," answered Horne, with a smile, which indicated that he enjoyed even a sickly pun. "I should think you had known him ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... Reynolds, whose good temper and vivacity were like condiments at a feast; John Clare, the peasant-poet, simple as a daisy; Tom Hood, young, silent, and grave, but who nevertheless now and then shot out a pun that damaged the shaking sides of the whole company; De Quincey, self-involved and courteous, rolling out his periods with a pomp and splendor suited, perhaps, to a high Roman festival; and with these sons of fame gathered certain nameless folk whose contributions to the great 'London' are now under ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... mean alone,—all alone. Don't you ever feel as if you should like to have been a pillar-saint in the days when faith was as strong as lye (spelt with a y), instead of being as weak as dish-water? (Jerry is looking over my shoulder, and says this pun is too bad to send, and a disgrace to the University—but never mind.) I often feel as if I should like to roost on a pillar a hundred feet high,—yes, and have it soaped from top to bottom. Wouldn't it be fun to look down at the bores and the duns? Let us get up a pillar-roosters' ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... silence which withheld from the world Teresa's full name. Cascales y Muoz has since thrown more light upon this episode. But these gentlemen have done nothing more than to tell an open secret. Escosura, long ago, all but betrayed it in the following pun: "Tendamos el velo de olvido sobre esa lamentable flaqueza de un gran corazn," he says, referring to the affair with Teresa, "y recordemos, de paso, que el sol mismo, ese astro de luz soberano, tan sublimemente cantado por nuestro vate, manchas tiene que ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... a grizzly," explained Harry, "a grizzly bear you know. Dad says he's the biggest he's ever seen and he seems to bear—excuse the pun, please—he seems to bear a charmed life. All the boys on the ranch are crazy to get a shot at him, but they've never been ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... have formed the bed of the lake is all in tillage; and I had some conversation with the man who cultivated it. He told me that the wall had been built with the money of sin, and not the money of piety (pap ke paisa se, na pun ke paisa se bana), that the man who built it must have laid out his money with a worldly, and not a religious mind (niyat); that on such occasions men generally assembled Brahmans and other deserving people, and fed and clothed them, and thereby consecrated ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... common parlance, idle chat, the double pun does credit to the ingenuity of a lady of a ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... trying," returned Lummox. He paused and colored deeply. "I beg," he stammered, "I hope—you don't think me guilty of a pun! When I said 'trying' I referred entirely to the effect on your sensitiveness of these tentative ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... me. He would, indeed. He would, provided the opportunity remained with him. But it would not, for I would have had judgment enough to take some strychnine first and say my smart thing afterward. The fair record of my life has been tarnished by just one pun. My father overheard that, and he hunted me over four or five townships seeking to take my life. If I had been full-grown, of course he would have been right; but, child as I was, I could not know how wicked a thing ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... old-fashioned," said Cutter. "Fifty or sixty years ago, a hundred years ago, when a man wanted to be very bitingly sarcastic, he would compose a criticism upon his enemy which was only a long string of abominable puns; each pun was printed in italics. That was thought ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... Maya dialect (one in which we have most ample printed and MS. lexicographic material), and if in that dialect no other words at all resembling xaman and xamach are found, as we are told, then (if the Mayas named the north star, or the North, by a pun on a tortilla dish) wherever this banded headdress is found, we must assume the text to be treating either of the North, or of tortillas. That might safely be left to break down of its own weight; but we shall also ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates
... said Mr. Weller.'Wery glad to see you, indeed, and hope our acquaintance may be a long 'un, as the gen'l'm'n said to the fi' pun' note.' ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... answer long enough to decide against the aimless pun of asking, "What Bushwick?" and merely asked, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... that first book on my travel shelf. It is Knight's "Cruise of the Falcon." Nature was guilty of the pun which put this soul into a body so named. Read this simple record and tell me if there is anything in Hakluyt more wonderful. Two landsmen—solicitors, if I remember right—go down to Southampton Quay. They pick up a long-shore youth, and they embark in a tiny boat in which they put to sea. Where ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... over at his chum, and ready for his pun, even under such circumstances, "my head is feeling a 'trifle heavy,' but I'm game to stand up ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... chipmonastery?" cried Groups. It was a family joke to call the chipmunk's burrow by that name, and though the puppies did not understand the pun they relished ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... know, nor yet anybody else! Why—he don't know, hisself! I says to him, I says, just you clear out them lodgers, I says, and give me the run of the premises, I says, and it shan't cost you a fi'-pun note more in the end, I says. Then if he don't go and tie me down to a price for to make good front wall and all dy-lapidations. And onlest he says wot he means by good, who's to know?... Mortar, John!" John supplied mortar with a slamp—a sound like ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... addresses a Congregation, whose interested attention the painter has portrayed with great skill, knowledge of character, and consequent variety and truth of expression. Behind the Preacher stands Death, and, with a kind of grotesque practical pun, holds the jaw of a skeleton over his head, as far more ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... outside. Nevertheless, all alike take precedence over everybody else; speak rightly or wrongly of things, of men, literature, and the fine arts; have ever in their mouth the Pitt and Coburg of each year; interrupt a conversation with a pun, turn into ridicule science and the savant; despise all things which they do not know or which they fear; set themselves above all by constituting themselves the supreme judges of all. They would all hoax their fathers, and be ready to shed crocodile tears ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... [Greek: Dikaiarchos] and [Greek: adikaiarchoi], a pun on a name not reproducible in English: "just-rulers" ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... said, 'when I left th' Five Towns fifty-two years sin' to go weaving i' Derbyshire wi' my mother's brother, tay were ten shilling a pun'. Us had it when us were sick—which wasna' often. We worked too hard for be sick. Hafe past five i' th' morning till eight of a night, and then Saturday afternoon walk ten mile to Glossop with a week's work on ye' back, and home again wi' ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... and pun which occasioned the French translator of the present work an unlucky blunder: puzzled, no doubt, by my facetiously, he translates "mettant, comme on l'a tres-judicieusement fait observer, l'entendement humain sous la clef." ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... digressions, conceits, anecdotes, and quotations from the Greek and the Latin. A page of the Magnalia is almost as richly mottled with italics as one from the Anatomy of Melancholy, and the quaintness which Mather caught from his favorite Fuller disports itself in textual pun and marginal anagram and the fantastic sub-titles of his books and chapters. He speaks of Thomas Hooker as having "angled many scores of souls into the kingdom of heaven," anagrammatizes Mrs. Hutchinson's ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... gossip touching the potency of new influences which had begun with "Asrael" was given fresh fuel by the production of "Diana von Solange." Why an opera which had lain "so lange" (to make an obvious German pun) in the limbo of forgotten things, which, indeed, had never enjoyed a popularity of any kind, though it was thirty or forty years old, should have been resurrected for production in New York was a question well calculated to irritate curiosity and provoke ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... love degenerates into lewdness; and his jests are insupportably low and illiberal, and fit only for "the dregs of Romulus" to use and to hear; he has furnished examples of every species of true and false wit, even down to a quibble and a pun. Plautus lived in an age when the Romans were but just emerging into politeness; and I cannot forbear thinking, that if he had been reserved for the age of Augustus, he would have produced more perfect plays than even the ...
— Essays on Wit No. 2 • Richard Flecknoe and Joseph Warton |
