"Squib" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... anonymously) subsequently became the subject of a celebrated after-dinner discussion in London, at which Coleridge (comme de raison) was the chief speaker, the reader of this generation may wish to know the question at issue; and in order to judge of that, he must know the outline of this devil's squib. The writer brings upon the scene three pleasant young ladies, viz., Miss Fire, Miss Famine, and Miss Slaughter. 'What are you up to? What's the row?'—we may suppose to be the introductory question of the poet. And the answer of the ladies ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... Besides, they might retaliate by spiflicating our agent in Damascus. Wise folk who live in glass-houses don't throw stones. What I think has been accomplished is to reduce our probable risk down to Yussuf Dakmar, who's a mean squib at best; and I think we've drawn suspicion clear away from Mabel Ticknor. All that remains is for me to go to that room where you see the light burning and discuss matters ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... Lord Chancellor. Lord Eldon did not at all relish the joke, perhaps because it was not at the expense of the Grenvilles, and soon afterwards again expressed his intention to resign. This had been repeated so often that it elicited the following squib:— ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... Meanwhile, Dick, recalling conversations which he had had with Earle, in which the latter had described certain rough and ready methods which he had successfully adopted in treating venomous snake bites, opened a shot cartridge, extracted the powder therefrom, and with it made a squib. This he had ready long before Earle was prepared to use it; but when at length the blood was flowing freely and naturally from the wound, they laid the now comatose victim prone upon the ground, ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... Malachi[182] this morning; it may fall dead, and there will be a squib lost; it may chance to light on some ingredients of national feeling and set folk's beards in a blaze—and so much the better if it does. I mean better for Scotland—not a whit for me. Attended the hearing in P[arliament] ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... scars. He rather prays you will be pleas'd to see One such to-day, as other plays should be; Where neither chorus wafts you o'er the seas, Nor creaking throne comes down the boys to please; Nor nimble squib is seen to make afeard The gentlewomen; nor roll'd bullet heard To say, it thunders; nor tempestuous drum Rumbles, to tell you when the storm doth come; But deeds, and language, such as men do use, And persons, such as comedy would choose, When she would shew an image of the times, And sport with ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... worse side of the Mont Saint Gothard, We shall begin by way of rejoicing; None of that shooting the sky (blank cartridge), Nor a civic guard, all plumes and lacquer, Hunting Radetzky's soul like a partridge 255 Over Morello with squib and cracker. ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... Gaudissart muttered to himself as the German took his leave. "But, after all, one lives on mutton; and, as the sublime Beranger says, 'Poor sheep! you were made to be shorn,'" and he hummed the political squib by way of giving vent to his feelings. Then he ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... Oxford. He fancies unconsciously that the world is peopled with undergraduates. He forgets that what appeals to an undergraduate public may be Greek to the outside reader and, unfortunately, not compulsory Greek. The reviewers had dealt kindly with my two books ("this pleasant little squib," "full of quiet humour," "should amuse all who remember their undergraduate days"); but the great heart of the public had remained untouched, as had the great purse of the public. I had determined to adopt a different style. And now my third book was ready. It ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... the men of the day, found a good deal of pleasure in poking fun at woman's use of dress and ornaments as bait for entrapping lovers, and many a squib expressing this theory appeared in the newspapers. These cynical notes no more represented the general opinion of the people than do similar satires in the comic sheets of to-day; but they are interesting at least, as showing a long prevailing weakness ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... at the end of a busy week, he found it occasionally convenient to entertain a clever friend or two of equivocal reputation, with whom he had become acquainted in former days of equal brotherhood. No one was more faithful to his early friends than Mr. Rigby, particularly if they could write a squib. ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... with coarse features, a type of ordinary man whom we smile to see immortalized in the sculpturesque material of poets and heroes; but the prayerful attitude encourages us to believe that the old usurer may not, after all, have had that grim reception in the other world which Shakespeare's squib foreboded for him. By the by, till I grew somewhat familiar with Warwickshire pronunciation, I never understood that the point of those ill-natured lines was a pun. "'Oho!' quoth the Devil, ''t is my John a' Combe'"—that is, ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Athanasian Creed, and was delighted when Stanley's review in "The Times" of Mr. Ffoulkes' learned book showed it to have been written by order of Charles the Great in 800 A.D. as what Thorold Rogers used to call "an election squib." In the "Filioque" controversy, once dear to Liddon and to Gladstone, now, I suppose, obsolete for the English mind, but which relates to the chief dividing tenet of East from West, he showed an interest humorous rather than reverent; took pains to acquaint himself with ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... in the Township of Loaferdom, in the County of Hatework," says a printer's squib, "found themselves laboring under great inconvenience for want of an easily traveled road between Poverty and Independence. They therefore petitioned the Powers that be to levy a tax upon the property of the entire county for the purpose of laying out a ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... deal about the "Man and the Apes" question, and I hear that somebody, I suspect Monckton-Milnes, has set afloat a poetical squib on the subject... ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... nations and distant ages as armed with irresistible weapons—which now is permitted to give testimony, not only against individuals, but nations themselves, but which, in that time, was not more effective in practical results than at this day a caricature in St. James's-street, or a squib in a weekly newspaper—a power which exposed to relentless ridicule, before the most susceptible and numerous tribunal, the loftiest names in rank, in wisdom, and in genius—and which could not have deprived a beggar of his obol or a ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fun upon Macklin's Lectures, led him to establish a summer entertainment of his own at the Haymarket. He took up Macklin's notion of applying Greek tragedy to modern subjects, and the squib was so successful that Foote cleared by it 500L in five nights, while the great Piazza Coffee-room in Covent Garden was shut up, and Macklin in the Gazette ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... Almanack," 1836 (thirteen woodcuts); "Squib Annual of Poetry, Politics, and Personalities" (twelve designs); [with Cruikshank] "Sayings worth Hearing, and Secrets worth Knowing"; "Terrific Penny Magazine"; T. K. Hervey's "Book of Christmas," ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt |
