"Wiseacre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Wiseacre! Cannot one be at a fair and buy land at the same time? Yes, I WAS at the fair, and my steward bought the ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... the room had come to let the souvenirs uninterruptedly exchange war impressions and speculate as to how long it would last—a problem as to which they were not more exactly informed than many a human wiseacre. Under cover of this kind of talk, which is apt to become noisy, the humdrum of the others, the chairs and the table and the mantelpiece, and the pacific ornaments, and the mirror, could chat in their own mild way; the wicker-chair, for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 10, 1917 • Various
... had long cared for him, and was most happily endowed with wealth and good looks also. When he left for Canada they were inwardly glad (they imagined that something might occur to end the engagement)—all except Richard, the wiseacre of the family, the book- man, the drone, who preferred living at Greyhope, their Hertfordshire home, the year through, to spending half the time in Cavendish Square. Richard was very fond of Frank, admiring him immensely for his buxom strength ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... jawing away about young Square-toes," struck in Gower. "He's no end of a sucking wiseacre, I dare say; but we've no time to lose, and I've got the fives court at ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... walked out, with ruffled dignity, carefully dressed. His immaculate clothes and his solemn face were the two halves of his stock in trade. Under the clothes lay buried Ketchup the blacksmith; under the wiseacre face was Ketchup the ignoramus. Ignoramus he was, but not a fool. As he rode along back with Jonas, he plied the latter with questions. If he could get the facts of the case out of Jonas, he would pretend to have inferred them from the symptoms and ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... that my clock was made by Tubal Cain, before the flood, and for proof of the fact declare, that on the first of January, 3857 B. C., at 6 o'clock P. M., I had seen the two hands directly in line, and some wiseacre were to calculate the time, and find that at that hour the hands ought to have been just in that position, and conclude thence that I was undoubtedly one of the antediluvians, and the clock no less certainly a specimen of the craft ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... bidden of the publishers, who have incurred the responsibility of presenting her to the American public, to write a preface to this edition of her novel. She does so with the more diffidence because it has been impressed upon her, by more than one wiseacre, that her novels treat of a life too narrow, an atmosphere too circumscribed, to be understood ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... shallow-brained puppy, who, upon any cause of dissatisfaction, would have men to have a privilege to change their wives, or to repudiate them, deserves to be hissed at rather than confuted; for nothing can tend more to usher in all confusion and beggary throughout the world: therefore that wiseacre deserves," &c. [Footnote: Howell's Familiar Letters Book IV, Letter 7, addressed "To Sir Edward Spencer, knight," (pp 453-457 of edit. 1754.) The letter is dated "Lond. 24 Jan.," no year given; but the dates are worthless, being afterthoughts, when the Letters ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... the middle of the eighteenth century they said that Christianity had one foot in the grave, but then came the amazing revival of religious life under the Wesleys. In the middle of the last century one wiseacre said, "In fifty years your Christianity will have died out"; yet, for all our failures, probably Christianity in all its history has never made more progress than in the last half century. If you ask why, one reason is clear: man cannot ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... the skins of the inhabitants. That city cannot be said to be without letters which has its poetic brotherhood, limited though it be, and which reveres the memory of Cervantes, as the memory of Shakespeare is revered in no English seaport. Wiseacre should hie him to Cadiz on the 23rd of April, when the birth of Cervantes is celebrated, for in spite of intestine broils, Spaniards are true to the worship of the author of "Don Quixote," and his no less ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... bannerets and stitchers in tapestry. Ah! if the particular God who happened to be at the digging of us out of the happier pit of oblivion had only made me a man, I, at least, should neither have been a straitlaced Jackanapes nor yet a prating, callow-bearded wiseacre." ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... idiot, imbecile, natural; simpleton, dolt, dunce, defective, witling, dotterel, driveler, blockhead, beetlehead, ninny, ignoramus, numskull, booby, clodpate, nincompoop, ass, wiseacre, dunderhead, halfwit, oaf, dullard, coot, mooncalf; zany, harlequin, buffoon, jester, merry-andrew, droll, clown, scaramouch. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... for we have quite an assortment; and should the idea survive, and grow, and become too large for the bed, and if we have grown to love it too much to cut off its feet and thus make it fit (as did that old robber of Attica), why then we run the risk of having some wiseacre say, as is said of Chopin: 'Yes—but he is weak in sonata-form'! ... Form should be nothing more than a synonym for coherence. No idea, whether great or small, can find utterance without form; but that form will be inherent in the idea, and there will be as many forms as there are adequately ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... standing boast with Mr. Wiseacre that he had never been humbugged in his life. He took the newspapers and read them regularly, and thus got an inkling of the new and strange things that were ever transpiring, or said to be transpiring, in the world. But ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... at, and, I feared, was going to check her; but he only said, "Proceed, Polly, proceed with that catechism—prove yourself the little wiseacre you are. If Miss Snowe were to blush and look confused, I should have to bid you hold your tongue; and you and I would sit out the present meal in some disgrace; but she only smiles, so push her hard, multiply the cross-questions. ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... youthful impetuosity went down before him till there was but one great personality left who could talk to him as a father would to his wayward son. It was Bismarck, he who dragged Prussia from the depths and gave her the ideal for a world power. The cool calculating wiseacre said, 'Steady, ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... truly the sincerest flattery, as some ancient wiseacre said years ago, then there is pretty clear evidence daily afforded to prove that we are complimenting our American sisters by slowly adopting ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... a very great noise in the country, and so greatly provoked were the people who resided in the other parishes, that they absolutely sent old Gaffer Goosecap (a busy fellow in other people's concerns) to find out evidence against her. The wiseacre happened to come to her to school, when she was walking about with a raven on one shoulder, a pigeon on the other, a lark on her hand, and a lamb and a dog by her side; which indeed made a droll figure, and ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... close (let us say) of Queen Anne's reign, when I was a boy at a private and preparatory school for young gentlemen, I remember the wiseacre of a master ordering us all, one night, to march into a little garden at the back of the house, and thence to proceed one by one into a tool or hen house (I was but a tender little thing just put into short clothes, and can't exactly say whether ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... sick of breakbone fever down the road a piece. The subject of crops succeeded inevitably. The squire spoke of the need of rain. Instantly he regretted it, for the other man, who was by way of being a weather wiseacre, cocked his head aloft to study the sky ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... edition of a Latin classic, which was printed without title-page, like most fifteenth century books, and began at the top of the first leaf, in large letters—"HOC INCIPIT," signifying "This begins", followed by the title or subject of the book. The wiseacre who owned it had the book richly bound, and directed it to be lettered on the back—"Works of Hoc Incipit, Rome, 1490." This is a true story, and the hero of it might perhaps, on the strength of owning so many learned works, have passed for a philosopher, if he ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... at least he had kissed fondly the musky satin paper, made sacred to him by the hand of Emily Fotheringay. This was all he had in return for his passion and flames, his vows and protests, his rhymes and similes, his wakeful nights and endless thoughts, his fondness, fears and folly. The young wiseacre had pledged away his all for this: signed his name to endless promissory notes, conferring his heart upon the bearer: bound himself for life, and got back twopence as an equivalent. For Miss Costigan was a young lady of such perfect good-conduct and self-command, that she never would ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Noise in the Country, and so provoked were the People in the other Parishes, that they accused her of being a Witch, and sent Gasser Goosecap, a busy Fellow in other People's Concerns, to find out Evidence against her. This Wiseacre happened to come to her School, when she was walking about with the Raven on one Shoulder, the Pidgeon on the other, the Lark on her Hand, and the Lamb and the Dog by her Side; which indeed made a droll Figure, and so surprized the that ...
— Goody Two-Shoes - A Facsimile Reproduction Of The Edition Of 1766 • Anonymous
... at home or more despised abroad; the Spanish Monarch more humbled or Spanish subjects more wretched; the Spanish power more dishonoured or the Spanish resources worse employed. Never, before the treaty with France of 1796, concluded by this wiseacre (which made him a Prince of Peace, and our Government the Sovereign of Spain), was the Spanish monarchy reduced to such a lamentable dilemma as to be forced into an expensive war without a cause, and into a disgraceful peace, not ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... Against the grain, this fifteen-year: my son And that dead woman were too strong for me: They turned me false to my nature; broke me in Like a flea in harness, that draws a nutshell-coach. Till then I'd jumped, and bit, at my own sweet will. Oh! amn't I the wiseacre, the downy owl, Fancying myself as knowing as a signpost? And yet, there's always some new twist to learn. Life's an old thimblerigger; and, it seems, Can still get on the silly side of me, Can still bamboozle ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... guerrillas was a serious business then. An order had been issued by the wiseacre in command of the Army of the Potomac that all guerrillas taken should be put to death. This did not deprive the bushwhackers of a single man, but they naturally retaliated by a counter-order that all prisoners of theirs should be shot. In this game of pop and pop again the ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... modelled foliage (mentioned in Chapter XIV). [Footnote: One would-be critic wrote to the papers condemning the whole arrangement, because, in one of the cases, one plant was about a foot nearer the water or a yard nearer to another plant than it should be! The same wiseacre, or his friend, wrote quite an article upon some supposed "fir twigs" which, much to his confusion, were nothing of the sort, but a plant quite proper to its place ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... thieves, and became a hardened villain. The king was apprised of this event; and, seizing the hand of amazement with the teeth of regret, said:—"How can any person manufacture a tempered sabre from base iron; nor can a base-born man, O wiseacre, be made a gentleman by any education! Rain, in the purity of whose nature there is no anomaly, cherishes the tulip in the garden and common weed in the salt-marsh. Waste not thy labor in scattered seed upon a briny soil, for it can ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... seal to Herrick's fame, it is now only needful that some wiseacre should attribute the authorship of the poems to some man who could not possibly have written a line of them. The opportunity presents attractions that ought to be irresistible. Excepting a handful of Herrick's college ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Base—so named by a wiseacre American navy man back in the twentieth century—was nothing to brag about. Thousands of square miles of powdered ice that has had nothing to do but blow around for twenty million years is not at all inspiring after the first few minutes unless ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... would very fain have followed him to England; but, for reasons indifferently good, could never be allowed. If the truth must be told, the sage Leibnitz had a wisdom which now looks dreadfully like that of a wiseacre! In Mathematics even,—he did invent the Differential Calculus, but it is certain also he never could believe in Newton's System of the Universe, nor would read the PRINCIPIA at all. For the rest, he was in quarrel about Newton with the Royal Society here; ill ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... sonorous piano-forte, proceeded to wake the clangorous echoes of the Empyrean. They bade the prolyx Caucasian gentlemen not to misconstrue their inexorable demands, while they dined on acclimated anchovies and apricot truffles, and had for dessert a wiseacre's pharmacopoeia. Thus the truculent Pythagoreans had a novel repast ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway
... be still growing harder; but this is one of those sayings which men love to repeat whether they are true or not. Such sayings themselves grow harder and adhere more firmly with age, and it would take many blows with a trowel to clean an old wiseacre of them. Many of the villages of Mesopotamia are built of second-hand bricks of a very good quality, obtained from the ruins of Babylon, and the cement on them is older and probably harder still. However that may be, I was struck by the peculiar toughness ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... leaving that now prosperous city, he directed that P.P.C. cards be sent to all persons who had called upon him. It seems that the social convenances had not yet dawned upon this city, now the abode of arts and sciences, as the town wiseacre, learned in many things as well as social lore, was called upon for an elucidation of the three mysterious letters. Apparently he was not as able an exponent as was Daniel at Balshazzar's feast, who so readily deciphered "the handwriting on the wall." He construed the letters ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... plundered millions; and I ask what reparation or atonement they can expect to obtain in hours of future dalliance, after they shall have made a tender of their person to this great deflowerer of the virginity of republics. We have, by our own wise (I will not say wiseacre) measures, so increased the trade and wealth of Montreal and Quebec, that at last we begin to cast a wistful eye at Canada. Having done so much toward its improvement, by the exercise of "our restrictive energies," we begin to think the laborer worthy of his hire, and to put in a claim for ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... "the porter and eatables followed behind." "They could scarcely have followed before,"—he objects, in the very accents of Boeotia. Nor will he pass "the hollow-sounding bittern" of the Deserted Village. A barrel may sound hollow, but not a bird—this wiseacre acquaints us. ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... he has got a notion in his head that men are descended, or rather, I should say, ascended from apes, which he declares has been proved by a Lord Monboddo, or some other wiseacre, and if we had a monkey, we might somehow or other put his theory to the test, and, at all events, have some ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... be admitted that this is rather hard on the innocent, but they now have to suffer with the guilty for the sins of an indolent and uninterested legislature. Moreover, if such a right of arrest were proposed, some wiseacre or politician would probably rise up and denounce the suggestion as the first step in the direction of a military dictatorship. Thus, we shall undoubtedly fare happily on in the blissful belief that our personal liberties are the subject of the most ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... The Norman writers and editors most conversant with their own idiom interpret Guiscard or Wiscard, by Callidus, a cunning man. The root (wise) is familiar to our ear; and in the old word Wiseacre, I can discern something of a similar sense and termination. It is no bad translation of the surname and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... very beautiful to teach Truth, but error should not be corrected with too much eclat. If the love of Truth, alone, was the guiding impulse of Galileo, he might have secretly explained his theory to one of the wiseacres, and this wiseacre could have casually demonstrated it, so all the rest could have said, "That is what ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... Well, this wiseacre, after his portentous introduction, fills the rest of his sixteen loosely printed double-columned octavo pages with a farrago of the most indescribable character, made up of brags, lies, promises, forged recommendations and letters, boasts ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... London Cuckolds. This immensely popular play, five merry side-splitting acts which kept the stage for a century, was produced in 1682 at Dorset Garden. Ravenscroft has no less than three cuckolds in his Dramatis Personae: Doodle, Dashwell, and Wiseacre. The intrigues and counter-intrigues are innumerable. At the end the cuckolds ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... meet with no downfall," said Gaston, walking away, and muttering to himself. "A plague upon it! To train two boys is more than I bargained for, and over and above to hinder this wiseacre Ashton from ruining himself, or being ruined by le Borgne Basque! What brought him here? I thought he was safe in Castile with the Free Companions. I would let the oaf take his course, for a wilful wrong-headed fool, but that it would scarce be doing ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... misinterpreted. Rogers, the poet, meeting in times long subsequent with a survivor of those days, asked him what Goldsmith really was in conversation. The old conversational character was too deeply stamped in the memory of the veteran to be effaced. "Sir," replied the old wiseacre, "he was a fool. The right word never came to him. If you gave him back a bad shilling, he'd say, Why, it's as good a shilling as ever was born. You know he ought to have said coined. Coined, sir, never entered his head. He was ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... dead shot. Moreover, he had the reputation of being ready to fight at the drop of the hat. To the Rutherford boys he was a hero. Whether he was one also to Beulah her guest had not yet learned, but it took no wiseacre to guess that he wanted ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... plague of it!—Could a man do as the birds do, change every Valentine's day, [a natural appointment! for birds have not the sense, forsooth, to fetter themselves, as we wiseacre men take great and solemn pains to do,] there would be nothing at all in it. And what a glorious time would the lawyers have, on the one hand, with their noverini universi's, and suits commenceable on restitution of goods and chattels; and the parsons, on the other, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... wiseacre?" demanded Bob Tice, of the second patrol; for at the time they were marching without the least semblance ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... that, his one grievance was that the regiment was not getting to the front. Heat and frost, hurricane and dust-storm—nothing came amiss. And he described himself as stronger than ever, and poured scorn on the medical wiseacre who had tried to ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... serious enough. One wiseacre in command in London declared his belief that the Tower was no ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... "How do you know?" he roared. "You sit over there making wiseacre remarks and do nothing! Play cards, that's all! What do you know about things like this, Mister Joseph Kelvin? What does a ...
— Hanging by a Thread • Gordon Randall Garrett
... a wiseacre to his friend. "Look at the girl and the chaps! Peach, eh? That's the life! Ho-hum! Gotta get back to the old office, Bill. See you to-night at lodge, ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... slangwhangers made furious attacks on each other and upon their respective adherents, discharging their heavy artillery, consisting of large sheets loaded with scoundrel, villain, liar, rascal, numskull, nincompoop, dunderhead, wiseacre, blockhead, jackass." As single words were not always explosive enough to make a report equal to their feelings, they had recourse to compounds;—"pert and prating popinjay," "hackneyed gutscraper," "maggot of corruption," "toad on a dung-heap," "snivelling sophisticating ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... while we are still conscious of Time and opportunity." He paused, then went on in his customary gay manner: "But fortunately we are not positive, nothing is certain, no truth is so satisfactorily demonstrated that some wiseacre cannot be found to disprove it, . . hence it happens my friend..." and his face assumed its wonted careless expression ... "that we men whose common-sense is offended by priestly hypocrisy and occult necromantic jugglery,—we, who perhaps in our innermost ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... should be allowed to penetrate the dense cold air, which, pressing up against the rarefied hot air, would raise the balloon. Fifthly, by a car of iron and a ball of magnetised iron, which the aeronaut would keep throwing up in the air, and which would attract and draw up the balloon. The wiseacre who invented these modes of flying in the air seems, some would say, to have been more in want of very strict confinement on the earth than of the freedom of ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion |
