"John Bull" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... very well at present, and so long as you should keep on good terms with her; but suppose, some fine morning, Exeter Hall got control of the English Government, and hinted to you, in John Bull fashion, that cotton produced by free labor would be more acceptable, what could three, or even eight millions, cut off from the sympathy and support of the North, do in opposition to the ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... servants, and even at a lower rate after the collection had been some weeks in town, would you not think it exceedingly hard to be judged of in that one of your predicaments, not only individually, but nationally—that is, not only as Ben Hoppus, your own name, but as John Bull, the name of the people of which you are an incarcerated specimen? You would keep incessantly crying out against this with angry vociferation, as a most unwarrantable and unjust Test and Corporation Act. And, no doubt, were an Ourang-outang to see you in such a situation, he would not only form ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various
... childbed upon record in our history. I feel sorry in every respect—for the loss of a female reign, and a woman hitherto harmless; and all the lost rejoicings, and addresses, and drunkenness, and disbursements, of John Bull on the occasion. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... cause of my severe punishment, but I eagerly inquired of a kind mongrel, who stopped to help me collect my scattered goods, if he knew anything about her. He said, she was called Lady Bull; that her husband. Sir John Bull, had made a large fortune somehow, and that they lived in a splendid house, had about thirty puppies, little and big, had plenty of servants, and spent a great deal of money. He could hardly imagine, he said, that it was the odour of the "fire-flies" which had occasioned me to ...
— The Adventures of a Dog, and a Good Dog Too • Alfred Elwes
... King himself) felt the edge of his satire; while Lord Thurlow, the great Lord Chancellor, was in no way neglected. Thus we find a "New Way to pay the National Debt" (1786), "Ancient Music" (1787), "Monstrous Craws" (1787), "Frying Sprats" (1791) and "Anti-Saccharites, or John Bull and his Family leaving off the use of Sugar" (1792), are all directed against the reigning House, and allude frequently to the parsimonious habits of George III. and his Queen. The story goes that this monarch, having remarked of Gillray's drawings, "I don't understand these caricatures," the ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... perhaps, say so many murders, so many suicides, so many misdirected letters (and men of letters), but not so many geniuses. In this one thing old Mother Nature will be whimsical and womanish. This is a gift that John Bull, or Johnny Crapaud, or Brother Jonathan does not find in his stocking every Christmas. Crude imagination is common enough,—every hypochondriac has a more than Shakspearian allowance of it; fancy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... which commonly attracted it. It remains a fine question whether his extravagant idealisation and justification of Henry V.—which, though it gives so little pause to some of our English critics, entitled M. Guizot to call him a mere John Bull in his ideas of international politics—it remains disputable whether this was exactly an expression of his own thought. It is notable that he never again strikes the note of blatant patriotism. And the poets of that ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... his coat pockets, he is fined 10s. or sent to gaol. Pope Gregory XIII. demonstrated the error of the calendar then in use, and all Catholic nations adopted his correction. But when the adoption of the calendar was proposed in Parliament, John Bull put his big foot down at once; he would receive no truth, not even a mathematical one, from the Pope of Rome, and it was only after the lapse of nearly 200 years, when the memory of Gregory and his calendar had almost faded away from the ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... the bride pronounced for the boat, which was a big flat-bottomed punt, as reliable in appearance as pictures of John Bull. I fetched her rugs from the car. She was helped into the boat, and then, as my fate remained to be settled, I asked her in a voice soft as silk what were her wishes in regard ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... against poor JOHN BULL, All the British he'd kill at one slap, With their bones Bully BEN a canal would fill full— The one that he dug at ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II. No. 38, Saturday, December 17, 1870. • Various
... gentleman, a scholar, and, though last not least, as genial a diner and winer as ever put American legs under a British peer's mahogany. There was a time when he was for avenging British outrage by whipping John Bull out of his boots, but now, clad in a dress-coat of unexceptionable cut, he deprecates the idea of international breaches. As a diplomatist he could scarcely show more indifference to the Alabama claim, if the claim itself were All a Bam. He roars ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... Angel. I cannot but think that there are beings with a great deal of good in them, yet with great defects, who are the animating principles of certain institutions, &c., &c.... Take England with many high virtues, and yet a low Catholicism. It seems to me that John Bull is a spirit neither of heaven nor hell.... Has not the Christian Church, in its parts, surrendered itself to one or other of these simulations of the truth?... How are we to avoid Scylla and Charybdis and go straight on to the very ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... territory, the principal cause of the contests between the two white powers, hence not so much to be viewed as a lost inheritance to be restored to the rightful owners as a prize to be secured by the rival claimants. John Bull said, "It is mine, because I took it from the French;" Brother Jonathan said, "It is mine, because I took it from the English;" while neither party gave any heed to the poor Indian, who never ceased saying, "It is ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... also prevailed an idea that France might intervene—or even recognize the Confederacy—before colder England; but that did not cause impartial Jonathan to exhibit less bitter, or unreasoning, hatred of John Bull. Yet, as a practical fact, the alleged neutrality of the latter was far more operative against the South than the North. For—omitting early recognition of a blockade, invalid under the Treaty of Paris—England denied both belligerent navies the right to refit—or bring ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... sea; had visited foreign ports innumerable; had weathered more storms than he could count, and had witnessed more strange sights than he could remember. He was tough, and sturdy, and grizzled, and broad, and square, and massive—a first-rate specimen of a John Bull, and according to himself, "always kept his weather-eye open." This remark of his was apt to create confusion in the minds of his hearers; for John meant the expression to be understood figuratively, while, in point of fact, he almost always kept one of his literal eyes open and ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... still for us the great scholar and the strongly marked individuality, but he has gradually attained a kind of apotheosis, a kind of semi-legendary position, almost rivalling that of the great John Bull himself, as the {9} embodiment of the essential features of the English character. We never think of the typical Englishman being like Shakespeare or Milton. In the first place, we know very little about Shakespeare, and not very much about Milton; and so we are thrown back ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... writes an English traveler in France in the year 1789; "so far from being meagre and ill-looking fellows, as John Bull would persuade us, they are well-formed, tall, handsome men, and have a cheerfulness and civility in their countenances and manner which is peculiarly pleasing. They also looked very healthy, great care is taken of ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... He approves a remark of George II. and patronizingly exclaims, "Sensible King!" He has occasion to mention John Adams, and salutes him thus: "Glorious, delightful, honest John Adams! An American John Bull! The Comic Uncle of this exciting drama!" He then calls him "a high-mettled game-cock," and says "he made a splendid show ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... do honour to the young Queen awoke a generous response from the crowd. Soult was cheered lustily along the whole route, and in the Abbey itself, so that he returned to France not only full of personal gratification at the welcome he had received, but strongly convinced of the goodwill of John Bull to Frenchmen in general. How the balls of destiny roll! Soult feted in London, Ney dead by a traitor's death, filling his nameless grave in Pere la Chaise. The procession, beginning with trumpeters and Life Guards, wound its way in relays of foreign ambassadors, ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... far better paid (Wanderings in West Africa, i. 182).] The whole establishment is starved; decay appears in every office, public and private; and ruin is writ large upon the whole station. An Englishman who loves his country must blush when he walks through Bathurst. Even John Bull would be justified in wishing that he had been born ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... of scientific training is to furnish you with principles to which you will be able to refer isolated facts, and so bring these within the range of recorded experience. See what the "London Times" said about the three Germans who cracked open John Bull Chatwood's strong-box at the Fair the other day, while the three Englishmen hammered away in vain at Brother Jonathan Herring's. The Englishmen represented brute force. The Germans had been trained to ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... arched eyebrows and bright-colored parasol, and a rosy Dutch girl in cap and kerchief. Then a Turk sitting cross-legged upon his cushion smoked his long pipe and beamed affably on the audience, an Esquimaux gentleman came from his igloo in the north to pose for a moment, and a boyish Uncle Sam and John Bull shook ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick
... of the alleged reasons for war, the whole world knew that the real cause was the jealousy and hatred felt for England by a certain class of United States citizens who "were bound to pick a quarrel with John Bull, excuse or no excuse." That there were many and irritating faults on the part of England cannot be denied. In the light of subsequent events it is not difficult to realize that both governments were in the wrong. The wisdom born of bitter experience and the sincere friendship of the ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... in the name of "Cafe d'Angleterre," but if its owner expected thereby to attract the custom of Mr John Bull, he was singularly mistaken. The chief customers of the place were labourers and navvies, who by their noisy jargon were evidently innocent of all ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... families, who have by far the hardest place in the house, and are worse paid, and truly verify the old adage, "the more work, the less wages." If there is any thing right, the cook has the praise—when there is any thing wrong, as surely the kitchen maid has the blame. Be it known, then, to honest JOHN BULL, that this humble domestic is expected by the cook to take the entire management of all ROASTS, BOILS, FISH, and VEGETABLES; i. e. the principal part ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... begins, it is less frequent. One year there was a nest in the laurels at Otterbourne House (since taken away), and at eight in the morning and seven at night the nightingale came on the lawn to feed, and was every morning chased by a surly John Bull of a robin. When the young are coming out of the nest the parents chide them, or strangers, in a ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... Centennial year I followed the races; gambling on horses, running faro bank, red and black, old monte, and anything else that came up. I had a partner at the beginning by the name of John Bull, of Chicago, and he was a good, clever boy. He dealt faro, and I the red and black. We separated at Jackson, Mich., he going to Chicago and I to Cleveland, where I witnessed the great race between "Goldsmith Maid" and ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... of the country. The honourable gentlemen descended—or, as they thought, ascended—to the most vehement invective, and such was at times the torrent of personal abuse which parties heaped on one another, while good-natured John Bull looked on and smiled at his rulers, that, as in the United States of to-day, a debate was often the prelude to a duel. Pitt and Fox, Tierney, Adam, Fullarton, Lord George Germain, Lord Shelburne, and Governor Johnstone, all 'vindicated their honour,' ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... author, and relying for support upon my pen? Indeed, I think the illegibility of my handwriting is very author-like. How proud you would feel to see my works praised by the reviewers, as equal to the proudest productions of the scribbling sons of John Bull! But authors are always poor devils, and therefore Satan may take them. I am in the same predicament as the honest gentleman in ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... goes far to soften criticism. But the singular thing is that in his proceedings he showed qualities which had not been generally attributed to him, and was wanting in those very points which the public had imagined to be characteristic of him. He had gone out with the reputation of a downright John Bull fighter, who would take punishment or give it, but slog his way through without wincing. There was no reason for attributing any particular strategical ability to him. But as a matter of fact, setting the Colenso attempt aside, the crossing for the ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in that daft fashion, or the Canucks will imagine you are one of the irresponsibles who lately arrived in New York from Europe, and that the cute Yankees have quietly shipped you over to John Bull's domains." ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... of grain waving under the August sun, than in these acres of yellow sand, and the thought of a perpetual summer, with never the soft grey tones of an autumn sky or the crisp frostiness of a winter's morning—well, it doesn't appeal to my John Bull soul!" ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... previous twenty years was "as different as civilized people from savages"; while Stafford Smith, writing in 1779, tells that music was then "thought to be in greater perfection than among even the Italians themselves." There is a characteristic John Bull complacency about these statements which is hardly borne out by a study of the lives of the leading contemporary musicians. Even Mr Henry Davey, the applauding historian of English music, has to admit the evanescent character of the larger works which came from the composers of ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... don't take care, we'll tar-and-feather him; and if his government says much about it, she'll larn what and who South Carolina is. We can turn out a dozen Palmetto regiments that'd lick any thing John Bull could send here, and a troop o' them d—d Yankee abolitionists besides. South Carolina's got to show her hand yet against these fellers, afore they'll respect the honor and standing of her institutions. They can't send their navy to hurt us. And it shows that ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... "He's a true John Bull. Now, Miss Sallie, you shall have a chance without waiting to draw. I'll harrrow up your feelings first by asking if you don't think you are something of a flirt," said Laurie, as Jo nodded to Fred as a sign that peace ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... ever, and he has become aesthetic in his tastes. There was broken china enough to stock a small shop. I am afraid I am rather too much a Philistine for their notions. I got some good downright stares and shrugs over my tough John Bull tendencies. ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the situation of his country as he and his countrymen saw it. The Russian Bear, coming down from the north, his feet planted in Manchuria and northern Korea, sees the British Bulldog seated in southern China, while "The Sun Elf'' ( Japan), sitting upon its Island Kingdom, proclaims that "John Bull and I will watch the Bear.'' The German Sausage around Kiau-chou makes no sign of life, but the French Frog, jumping about in Tonquin and Annam and branded "Fashoda and Colonial Expansion,'' tries to stretch a friendly hand to the Bear over the Bulldog's head. Then, to offset this proffered ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... "Recollections" will remember that in one chapter I said I should have something further to say of my esteemed friend the late Mr Barber Hopkinson. As is well known, Mr Hopkinson was of a merrily genial disposition—a veritable type of the real John Bull, and where his company was, there was no dearth of quaint, good-humoured talk. As a sportsman, he was ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... custom of smoking amongst genteel Englishmen has nearly died away with them. It is a foul custom; it makes a foul mouth, and a foul place where the smoker stands. However, every nation has its whims. John Bull relishes stinking venison; a Frenchman depopulates whole swamps in quest of frogs; a Dutchman's pipe is never out of his mouth; a Russian will eat tallow-candles; and the American indulges in the cigar. "De gustibus non ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... they were too far off; therefore, when evening fell, I again commended myself to Heaven, and lay down, utterly exhausted. In the morning, as soon as I woke, I made toward the nearest of the cleared lands which I had seen the day before; and that afternoon I reached the house of John Bull, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... indicating that, notwithstanding its beauty, it was regarded as a sort of "Dead Sea fruit." The Italians first dared to use it freely; the French followed; and after eying it askance as a novelty for unknown years, John Bull ventured to taste, and having survived, began to eat with increasing gusto. To our grandmothers in this land the ruby fruit was given as "love-apples," which, adorning quaint old bureaus, were devoured by dreamy eyes long before canning ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... various countries, of laws of insurance, of sea-rights, of feats of seamanship, of luck and ill luck, and here and there a little politics of the old-fashioned, elementary sort. They boasted themselves and their country not a little, and criticised everybody else, and John Bull especially, very severely often, but almost always very acutely, too. They would play euchre and smoke cigars from nine o'clock till eleven, and would then go to bed and sleep till the breakfast-bell. Altogether, they were ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... of England's freest women into the conventional lie of marriage: Mary Wollstonecraft and, later, George Eliot. And recently Puritanism has demanded another toll—the life of Oscar Wilde. In fact, Puritanism has never ceased to be the most pernicious factor in the domain of John Bull, acting as censor of the artistic expression of his people, and stamping its approval only on the ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... introduced so early), when it was requisite to administer a corrective dose to the nation, Robespierre was found; a most foul and nauseous dose indeed, and swallowed eagerly by the patient, greatly to the latter's ultimate advantage: thus, when it became necessary to kick John Bull out of America, Mr. Washington stepped forward, and performed that job to satisfaction: thus, when the Earl of Aldborough was unwell, Professor Holloway appeared with his pills, and cured his lordship, as per advertisement, &c. &c.. Numberless instances might be adduced ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the cardinal—we might say the only distinction between Atheism and Agnosticism. The Agnostic is a timid Atheist, and the Atheist a courageous Agnostic. John Bull is infuriated by the red cloak of Atheism, so the Agnostic dons a brown cloak with a red lining. Now and then a sudden breeze exposes a bit of the fatal red, but the garment is promptly adjusted, and Bull forgets ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... British race, centred upon the little town in mid-Natal where Sir George White with his army maintained a valiant resistance against a strenuous and determined foe without, and disease and hunger and death within, until, to use his own words, that slow-moving giant John Bull should pass from his slumber and bestir himself to take back his own. For that reason alone the story of Ladysmith will remain memorable. But it is a story which is brilliant in brave deeds, which tells of danger boldly faced, of noble self-sacrifice ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... there that does not remember his excellent representation of the Gates of Calais, with the meagre sentinel and still more skinny cook bending under the weight of a dish crowned with an enormous sirloin of beef, no doubt intended to regale some newly-arrived John Bull, whilst a fat monk scans it with a longing eye. Next the bust of Eustache de St. Pierre awakes the attention, and the surrender of Calais and his devoted patriotism rises in one's memory. Another souvenir also must not be forgotten, namely, ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... that struck me so piquantly as that story about the old gentleman. It is almost too good to be true, but you are not in the habit of quizzing. The trait is so naturelike and Dickens-like, no American—no living soul but a peppery, crotchety, good-hearted, mellow old John Bull—could have done such a thing. God bless him! Perhaps the verses are not much, and perhaps he is no great judge whether they are or not: but what a pleasant thing it is to win the hearty liking of any honest creature who is neither your relation nor compatriot, and who must fancy ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... I fancy that in the future we have our own very definite plans about England, and that your information will be very vital to us. It is to-day or to-morrow with Mr. John Bull. If he prefers to-day we are perfectly ready. If it is to-morrow we shall be more ready still. I should think they would be wiser to fight with allies than without them, but that is their own affair. ...
— His Last Bow - An Epilogue of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... expense, and where there was a particularly gruff and crabbed old waiter, who, I suppose, thought himself free to display his surliness because we arrived at the hotel on foot. For my part, I love to see John Bull show himself. I must go again and again and again to Chester, for I suppose there is not a more ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... odd assemblage of names, which seemed to grow into them until nothing else was so suitable: Basilisk, Betli, Caruso, Castor, Franklin, Fusilier, Gadget, George, Ginger, Ginger Bitch, Grandmother, Haldane, Jappy, John Bull, Johnson, Mary, Pavlova, Scott and Shackleton. Grandmother would have been better known as Grandfather. He was said to have a grandmotherly appearance; that is why he received the former name. The head dog was Basilisk, and next to ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... usual inmates, will rend them. One party is as bad as the other, and I hope and pray that when the national misfortune of a great defeat at sea overtakes us, followed by the invasion of England, that John Bull will turn and rend the jawers and talkers who prevent us from being prepared to meet invasion.—From a letter written by Lord Wolsley, ex-Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, to Lord Wemyss, and published, and ignored by the public, in the ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... levelled eyes black with reproach upon him. Then turning to the ladies: "That shows how he misunderstands me. Just because I had a witty mother,—just because I 'm not a stolid, phlegmatic ox of a John Bull,—just because I 'm sensitive and impressionable,—he calls me flighty. But you know better, don't you? You, with all your fine feminine instincts and perceptions, you know that I 'm really as steady and as serious as the pyramids ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... Lawrence in an English steamer, where everything is not so much English as John Bull-y. The servants at the table are thoroughly and amusingly yellow-plush,—if that is the word I want, and if it is not that, it is another; for I am quite sure of my idea, though not of the name that belongs to it. The servants are smooth and sleek and intense. ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... possession, one of them being a record of the trial by Pierce Egan, the author of Life in London and Boxiana. Walter Scott writes in his diary of being absorbed in an account of the trial, while he deprecates John Bull's maudlin sentiment over 'the pitiless assassin.' That was in 1826, but in 1828 Scott went out of his way when travelling from London to Edinburgh, to visit Gill's Hill, and describes the scene of the tragedy very vividly. Lockhart's Life, ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... other words, its supply is unequal to the demand. The heavy Britishers have awakened to the fact, since 1851, that, of all condiments and delicacies, cranberry-sauce and cranberry-pie are best in their way; and John Bull takes many a barrel clean out of our market now. It so happened that in the Pines of New Jersey cranberries superior to those of Cape Cod have grown unheeded for centuries,—grew red and purple and white and pink when Columbus was unthought of, as well ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... every court between Stockholm and Milan. Yet is he not one particle wiser than if he had spent the same time in walking up and down the Strand. He has contrived, however, to pick up on his tour, strange odds and ends of foreign follies, which stick upon the coarse-grained materials of his own John Bull character like tinfoil upon sackcloth: so that I see little difference between what he was, and what he is, except that from a simple goose,—he has become a compound one. With all this, L—— is not unbearable—not yet at least. He amuses others as ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... striking twelve, we were abreast of the strong beams, that were clamped together with iron, and constituted the boom or chief water defence of Hamburgh. We passed through, and found an entire regiment under arms, close by the Custom—house. Somehow or other, I had drank deep of that John Bull prejudice, which delights to disparage the physical conformation of our Gallic neighbours, and hugs itself with the absurd notion, "that on one pair of English legs doth march three Frenchmen." But when I saw the weather—beaten ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... a rough but good-natured man on the whole, had two or three little peculiarities. In the first place, he piqued himself on a sort of John Bull independence; was a bit of a Radical (a strange anomaly in an admiral)—which was owing, perhaps, to two or three young lords having been put over his head in the earlier part of his career; and he made it a point with his nephew ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book IV • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... at London. The Morning Chronicle is out upon me for having done I don't know what in North America and Germany. All fidle-stik. I send you the paper to see how eassy John Bull is gulled. I could send you some important news. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... their hands upon the knife. John Bull used to laugh at Brother Jonathan for whittling, and Mr. Punch always drew the Yankee with a blade in his fingers; but they found out long ago in Great Britain that whittling in this land led to something, a Boston notion, a wooden clock, a yacht America, a labor-saving machine, a cargo of wooden-ware, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... trains, happy lovers shot, vitrioled and so forth by rivals. I got my first glimpse of the life of pleasure in foully drawn pictures of "police raids" on this and that. Interspersed with these sheets were others in which Sloper, the urban John Bull, had his fling with gin bottle and obese umbrella, or the kindly empty faces of the Royal Family appeared and reappeared, visiting this, opening that, getting married, getting offspring, lying in state, doing everything but anything, ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... to think of it. Bah! What odds to me? I have higher stakes to play for. But according to old Twemlow's description, she must be the daughter of that old bear Darling, with whom I shall have to pick a bone some day. Ha! How amusing is that battery to me! How little John Bull knows the nature of French troops! To-morrow we are to have a grand practice-day; and I hope they won't shoot me in my new lodgings. Nothing is impossible to such an idiot as Stubbard. What a set of imbeciles I have found to do with! They have scarcely wit enough to amuse ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... lovingly as if it had been a Cavalier's? Did not lads and lasses run out shouting? Did not the old yeoman father hug him, weep over him, hold him at arm's length, and hug him again, as heartily as any other John Bull, even though the next moment he called all to kneel down and thank Him who had sent his boy home again, after bestowing on him the grace to bind kings in chains and nobles with links of iron, and contend to death for the faith delivered to the ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... house with Fear: Ef you want peace, the thing you've gut to du Is jest to show you're up to fightin', tu. I recollect how sailors' rights was won Yard locked in yard, hot gun-lip kissin' gun: Why, afore thet, John Bull sot up thet he Hed gut a kind o' mortgage on the sea; You'd thought he held by Gran'ther Adam's will, An' ef you knuckle down, he'll think so still. Better thet all our ships an' all their crews Should ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... it all. Of course, by the time we got to Calais, I was head over heels in love, and so was she, for that matter. The old man was a jolly old John Bull of a man. I don't believe he had the slightest approach to any designs on me. He didn't know any thing about me, so how could he? He was jolly, and when we got to Calais he was convivial. I attached myself to the two, and had a glorious time. Before three days ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... great calm eye, that was always looking folk full in the face, mildly; his countenance comely and manly, but no more; too square for Apollo; but sufficed for John Bull. His figure it was that charmed the curious observer of male beauty. He was five feet ten; had square shoulders, a deep chest, masculine flank, small foot, high instep. To crown all this, a head, overflowed by ripples of dark brown hair, sat with heroic grace ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... quite unnecessarily reduced the centre of Dublin to ruins, and the British commanders killed their leading prisoners of war in cold blood morning after morning with an effect of long-drawn-out ferocity. Really it was only the usual childish petulance in which John Bull does things in a week that disgrace him for a century, though he soon recovers his good humor, and cannot understand why the survivors of his wrath do not feel as jolly with him as he does with them. On the smouldering ruins of Dublin the appeals to remember Louvain were presently supplemented ...
— O'Flaherty V. C. • George Bernard Shaw
... waistcoat and corded moleskin small clothes, his silver buckles and broad silver thumb-ring, his gold snuff-mull and the cowries clashing at his fob, was considered the type of the real Scottish countryman. He was really infinitely like the later caricatures of John Bull than anything counted distinctively Scottish—that is, till you heard ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... glancing at his paper, his eyes fixed on the ceiling, near a chandelier, wrote while counting. "There you are!" he said, tearing the sheet from his note book and giving it to Des Esseintes who looked at him with curiosity, as though he were a rare animal. What a surprising John Bull, he thought, contemplating this phlegmatic person who had, because of his shaved mouth, the appearance of a wheelsman of an ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... knew, Tibe had jumped into his cab, and he had no idea where he came from, as he'd been reading in a guide-book; but the strangest thing was, he felt certain Tibe had belonged to him when a puppy; only his dog wasn't named Tibe, but John Bull—Bully for short, and he sold him to an American, because it turned out his wife didn't like bulldogs in the house, she thought ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... without it. But their throwing the helve after the hatchet, and giving up the malt-duty because they had lost the other, was droll enough. After all, our fat friend[35] must learn to live within compass, and fire off no more crackers in the Park, for John Bull is getting dreadfully sore on all sides when ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... him there. It afforded me keen enjoyment. Besides being a John Bull Englishman, I am a cripple and ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... oath of stout John Bull, Who damned away his eyes as heretofore: There Paddy brogued "By Jasus!"—"What's your wull?" The temperate Scot exclaimed: the French ghost swore In certain terms I shan't translate in full, As the first coachman will; and 'midst the war,[hc] The voice of Jonathan was ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... "There! John Bull can read my name without spectacles. Now let him double the price on my head, for this is ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... inevitable Englishman, slender, good-looking, with pale hair and bright, active eyes. Harrigan had traveled over half the world and never failed to find at least one subject of John Bull in any considerable group of men. This young fellow was talking with a giant Negro, his neighbor. The black man chattered with enthusiasm while ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... gentleman, sitting back in his chair, and holding Syd's hand still in his; "there's a deal of favour and interest in these days, my dear Belton. John Bull's ships ought to be commanded by the best men in the navy, but they're not; and those of us who would like to do away with all the corruption, can't stir. Never mind that now. Let's talk of Admiral Tom. How ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... Hans Armadillo, who came at full trot, Brother Jonathan Beaver, escaped from the trappers, Sloth, Tortoise, and Dormouse, notorious nappers. That beau, the musk-Ox, with his long scented hair, And John Bull just arrived on his travels, were there; Messrs. Martin, Hare, Squirrel, the Ermine, and Stoat, And the rock-mountain sheep, with his cousin, the goat; Then the sociable marmot, and tiny shrew mouse, The raccoon and agouti from ...
— The Quadrupeds' Pic-Nic • F. B. C.
... replied the polite Italian; "that is to say, so far as she goes. Yes! I agree with her. John Bull does abhor the crimes of John Chinaman. He is the quickest old gentleman at finding out faults that are his neighbours', and the slowest old gentleman at finding out the faults that are his own, who exists on the face of creation. Is he so very much ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... English as men spoke before Chaucer began to write; and even to-day in any Wexford fair or market you will see among the strong, well-nourished, prosperous farmers many faces and figures which an artist might easily assimilate to an athletic example of the traditional John Bull. Redmond himself, hawk-faced and thick-bodied, might have been taken for no bad reincarnation of Raymond Le Gros. To this extent he was less of a Celt than many of his countrymen; but he was assuredly none the less Irish because he was a Wexfordman. ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... alarm watchmen with the last division of the "Soldier tired," affront my friends by saluting them with "Adieu thou dreary pile," or annoy my father with shouting "The Austrian trumpet's loud alarms" at a moment when, with all the fervour of true John Bull anti-gallicanism, he was lamenting over Ulm and Austerlitz; execrating Mack, pitying Francis and Alexander, and cursing the victorious Napoleon by ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 491, May 28, 1831 • Various
... their deep, healthy bloom, which an American taste is apt to deem fitter for a milkmaid than for a lady; the moustached gentlemen with frogged surtouts and a military air; the nursemaids and chubby children, but no chubbier than our own, and scampering on slenderer legs; the sturdy figure of John Bull in all varieties and of all ages, but ever with the stamp of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... lutanists. There was also in the hall the musique of the cittie, and in the upper chamber the children of His Majestie's Chappell sang grace at the King's table; and also whilst the King sate at dinner John Bull, Doctor of Musique, one of the organists of His Majestie's Chapell Royall, being in a cittizen's cap and gowne, cappe and hood (i.e., as a liveryman), played most excellent melodie uppon a small payre of organes, placed there for ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... their betters, and above all that suicidal iniquity of strikes, seem in these latter days to have generally demoralised a race of citizens of whose virtues our commonwealth once was proud. No wonder that John Bull had to go to Germany to finish ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... a bundle of hay, Mankind are the asses who pull; Each tugs it a different way,— And the greatest of all is John Bull! ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... done), went their several ways; with all affability conveying to Mr and Mrs Meagles that general assurance that what they had been doing there, they had been doing at a sacrifice for Mr and Mrs Meagles's good, which they always conveyed to Mr John Bull in their official condescension ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... home, and very likely makes a book. But the scope of his ideas does not seem to be enlarged by all this. The body travels, not the mind. And, however he may abuse his own land, he returns home as hearty a John Bull, with all his prejudices and national tastes as rooted, as before. The English—the men of fortune—all travel. Yet how little sympathy they show for other people or institutions, and how slight is the interest they take in them! They are islanders, cut off from the great world. But their island ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... amuses himself whenever he meets them, by imposing upon their credulity the most absurd stories which he can invent, which they swallow whole, go home with their eyes sticking out of their heads with wonder, and print all they have heard for the benefit of John Bull's calves. ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... confidence; if he is insulted, he resents it; and if you should venture to strike him, he never will rest quiet under the dishonour; yet you seldom or ever hear of quarrels ending in murder. The dagger and pistol are weapons in a manner unknown. The fist, a la mode de John Bull, is commonly the ultimatum of a ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... a health to old honest John Bull, When he's gone we shan't find such another, And with hearts and with glasses brim full, We will drink to old ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... Chicago both gone, already! John Bull must have been at work among the savages a long time, to get them ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... Russians and Greeks were there; and each vessel was characterised by some nautical peculiarity. Of course the greater number were our own English vessels, as plainly to be pronounced British as ever was John Bull in the ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... stands a-watching near by, With his finger aside of his nose— John Bull with a wink in his eye, Looks round to see how the wind blows— O! jolly old John, with his eye Ever set on the East and its woes. More than hoeing their own little rows These wary old wags understand, But they take off ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... what is told be true, it exhibited the most singular sagacity. Not having seen it myself, I can only give the general report. But, beyond all question, it has been the wonder of London for years, and however willing John Bull may be to be deluded, there is no instance of his being deluded long. This bird's chief faculty was singing, seldom a parrot faculty, but its ear was so perfect, that it acquired tunes with great rapidity, and retained them with such remarkable exactness, that if, by accident, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... stately chiel they ca' John Bull Is unco thrang and glaikit wi' her; And gin he cud get a' his wull, There 's nane can say what he wad gi'e her: Johnny Bull is wooing at her, Courting her, but canna get her; Filthy Ted, she 'll never wed, as lang 's sae mony ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... to suggest to students in ethnology, the Query, how it comes to pass that John Bull has a peculiar propensity to call things by his own name, ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 179. Saturday, April 2, 1853. • Various
... seeds began to germinate in our garden, when we found, to our chagrin, that, between John Bull and Paddy, there had occurred sundry confusions in the several departments. Radishes had been planted broadcast, carrots and beets arranged in hills, and here and there a whole paper of seed appeared to have been planted bodily. My good old uncle, ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... with great pleasure your article in the last "Atlantic." If anything could make John Bull blush, I should think it might be that; but he is a hardened and villainous hypocrite. I always felt that he cared nothing for or against slavery, except as it gave him a vantage- ground on which to parade his own virtue and ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... little more practice. Madame de Stael has written me two English notes, quite beautiful in ideas, and not very reprehensible in idiom. But English has nothing to do with elegance such as theirs—at least, little and rarely. I am always exposing myself to the wrath of John Bull, when this cterie come in competition; It is inconceivable what a convert M. de Talleyrand has made of me; I think him now one of the first members, and one of the most charming, of this exquisite set: Susanna is as completely a proselyte, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... with even better humour that as Home Rule is the only true marriage between the nations his description is the more correct. This is all a pretty play of wit, but we must not allow it to conceal from us the fact that if John Bull deals generously with Ireland at this present moment he will be playing the part, not merely of a philanthropist, but ...
— Home Rule - Second Edition • Harold Spender
... taste of the day lies in more direct caricature, and our volatile friend Punch does the needful in his wicked sallies of wit, and his fertile pencil. His sharp rubs are perhaps more effective to John Bull's temper, who can take a blow with Punch's truncheon and bear no malice after it,—the heavy lectures of the ancients are not so well suited to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various
... however, of the present day are a fat, gross, and degenerate breed; and more like well-fed aldermen, than Irish pigs of the old school. They are, in fact, a proud, lazy, carnal race, entirely of the earth, earthy. John Bull assures us it is one comfort, however, that we do not eat, but ship them out of the country; yet, after all, with, great respect to John, it is not surprising that we should repine a little on thinking of the good old times of sixty years since, when every Irishman could ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... with numerous presents, of which the only danger to be apprehended was lest they should go mad on account of them. The women screamed in a convulsive manner at everything they received, and cried for five minutes together with the excess of their joy; and to the honour of "John Bull" be it recorded, he sent by one of the men as he left the ship a piece of sealskin, as a present to Parree, being the first offering of real gratitude, and without any expectation of return, that I had ever received from any of them. I never saw them express more surprise than on ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... so now. It binds you to nothing. You regular John Bull Englishmen are so full of scruples that you lose as much of life as should serve to ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... my D'Artagnan. "You are having a good deal of trouble to keep this short-legged Emperor from getting John Bull and the rest ...
— A Diplomatic Adventure • S. Weir Mitchell
... the John Bull newspaper, sets this question at rest. It is declared that her ladyship is not the writer of the ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... monstrous mission! Let England imagine herself dependent on such a protectorate for her cotton, and the thought may possibly occur that it would have been better to have sided at once openly and squarely with the North. But John Bull is strangely changed in these times, and Yankee protection is inconceivably more awful to him than the slavery with which he has been for twenty years ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... "What's that John Bull a-saying?" asked a brawny fellow, placing himself in front of the irate vestryman. "Look here, old fellow," he continued, "if you want to save a whole bone in your body, you had better slope, and never dare to talk again about hauling down the American flag ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... the delighted captain, as he pointed out the movement with his finger, "there comes John Bull into the mousetrap, and ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... will be a great emigration this summer, because John Bull longs to see something beyond the limited circumference of his birthright - but that foreign nations will be now so watchful of his proceedings, so jealous of his correspondence, and so easily offended by his ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... the first train for London, where we arrived at midnight. Two weeks in that vast Babel,—then, ho! for Paris! Twelve hours by rail and steamer carried us out of John Bull's dominions into the brilliant metropolis of his French neighbor. Joseph accompanied us, and wrote letters home, filled with gossip which I knew, or hoped, would make Margaret writhe. I had not found ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... Dr. Arbuthnot was the author of the celebrated satire on the Partition Treaties, entitled "The History of John Bull," to which Englishmen have ever since owed their popular nickname. It is to him also that Pope dedicated the Prologue to ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... think we did the old man credit. [With a laugh.] John Bull's daughters, they called us ...
— Fanny and the Servant Problem • Jerome K. Jerome
... exclaimed, as soon as he got on board. "John Bull don't beat Brother Jonathan yet. Let them talk of their lords and their ladies; there is not a gentleman in Boston that is not quite as noble-looking as the one that I saw, and a great deal more knowing, I can ...
— Hurrah for New England! - The Virginia Boy's Vacation • Louisa C. Tuthill
... his way, bless him! He likes a red rag to go at, the old John Bull that he is; but if another begins to flutter somewhere else, he forgets number one and goes ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... the metropolis, and one of the most prominent of this class is public amusement. Every season has its novelty, whether the opera of a great foreign composer, or the lectures of a literary lion; besides endless panoramas, dioramas, cosmoramas, and cycloramas, which bring home to John Bull the wonders of the habitable globe, and annihilate time and space for his delectation. We see the Paris of the Huguenots to the sound of Meyerbeer's blood-stirring trumpets; or gain companionship with Hogarth, Fielding, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... about twenty-five, a brother of Isaac, and a smart, good-looking young man, was owned by Mrs. Colley also. "This is just the class of fugitives to make good subjects for John Bull," thought the Committee, feeling pretty well assured that they would make good reports after having enjoyed free air in Canada for a short time. Of course, the Committee enjoined upon them very earnestly "not to forget their brethren left behind groaning in fetters; but to prove by their ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... John Bull takes girls in pantaloons quite calmly and approvingly, now that she has learned that if there are enough of them, dad and the boys will pay no more attention to them in trousers than they would pay to ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... the man who would tell him a lie, and would give the thief who puts his hands into his pocket the cat-o'-nine-tails most unmercifully. The persecutions of the Gipsies in this country from time to time has been brought about, to a great extent, by themselves. John Bull dislikes keeping the idle, bastard children of other nations. He readily protects all those who tread upon English soil, but in return for this kindness he expects them, like bees, to be all workers. Drones, ragamuffins, and rodneys cannot grumble if they get kicked out of ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... John," "Uncle Jonathan," or "Saint John." The second appellation he got from his extraordinary likeness (when cleaned up and nicely dressed) to the figure by which the great American nation is typified in comic papers, as England is typified by John Bull. The first and third arose in the well-known goodness of his character and a taste he was supposed to possess for living on locusts and wild honey, or their local equivalents. Personally, however, he preferred to be addressed as ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... give us no holidays." And then instantly the room was in a fuss and a flurry. No Englishman could have made a more bustling exit; and, indeed, even in his physical aspect, John Adams was a perfect picture of the traditional John Bull. His natural temperament carried out this likeness: high-mettled as a game- cock during the Revolutionary war, he was, in politics, passionate, dogmatic and unconciliating, and in social life ceremonious and showy ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... been a decidedly strenuous month for more than one cabinet in Europe. Germany and France were snapping and snarling. France was going around with its chest stuck out; its attitude decidedly belligerent. Of course, this cockiness was due to the fat fingers of honest John Bull; indeed, England had more than ten fingers in this pie that was baking. I knew that the air was full of Morocco and war talk. I knew that there was a certain faction in Germany that was trying to push the Kaiser into a war. This clique, ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... is the same violin that I played on, when I first came to the United States, in the Park Theatre. That was on Evacuation day, 1843. I went to the Astor House, and made a joke—I am quite capable of doing such things. It was the day when John Bull went out and Ole Bull came in. I remember that at the very first concert one of my strings broke, and I had to work out my piece on the three strings, and it was supposed I did it on purpose." Ole Bull ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... Stael has written me two English notes, quite beautiful in ideas, and not very reprehensible in idiom. But English has nothing to do with elegance such as theirs—at least, little and rarely. I am always exposing myself to the wrath of John Bull, when this coterie come into competition. It is inconceivable what a convert M. de Talleyrand has made of me; I think him now one of the first members, and one of the most charming, ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... villager; cottager, cottier[obs3], cotter; compatriot; backsettler[obs3], boarder; hotel keeper, innkeeper; habitant; paying guest; planter. native, indigene, aborigines, autochthones[obs3]; Englishman, John Bull; newcomer &c. (stranger) 57. aboriginal, American[obs3], Caledonian, Cambrian, Canadian, Canuck*, downeaster [U.S.], Scot, Scotchman, Hibernian, Irishman, Welshman, Uncle Sam, Yankee, Brother Jonathan. garrison, crew; population; people &c. (mankind) 372; colony, settlement; household; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... John Bull and his Wife Wing Kelley and his Wife Oliver Tyron and his Wife John Wing and his Wife John Hoag ye 2d and Wife Benjam Hoag and his Wife Abner Hoag and Wife Philip Allen and Wife Moses Hoag and Wife George Soule and Wife Wm. Russell and Wife David Hoag and Wife Ebenezer ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... John Bull for pastime took a prance, Some time ago, to peep at France; To talk of sciences and arts, And knowledge gained in foreign parts. Monsieur, obsequious, heard him speak, And answered John in heathen Greek: To all he asked, 'bout ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... which we refer, no fewer than thirty-seven gentlemen, many of them of great eminence, including MR. WIGSBY (of Chumbledon Square), were seen upon their legs at one time; and it was on the same great occasion that DOGGINSON - regarded in our Vestry as 'a regular John Bull:' we believe, in consequence of his having always made up his mind on every subject without knowing anything about it - informed another gentleman of similar principles on the opposite side, that if he 'cheek'd him,' he would resort ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... have met since I left Ireland, almost. We walked over Hyde Park together on St. Patrick's Day, and renewed our home recollections by gathering shamrocks, and placing them in our hats, even under the eye of John Bull." ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... his thoughts in charity with the glad prose of Jeremy Taylor, and wept over Bowles's Sonnets, and studied Cowper's blankverse, and betook himself to Thomson's Castle of Indolence, and sported with the wits of Charles the Second's days and of Queen Anne, and relished Swift's style and that of the John Bull (Arbuthnot's we mean, not Mr. Croker's) and dallied with the British Essayists and Novelists, and knew all qualities of more modern writers with a learned spirit, Johnson, and Goldsmith, and Junius, and Burke, and Godwin, and the Sorrows of Werter, and Jean Jacques Rousseau, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... Toward John Bull there is no mercy. He is shown naked, trying to hide himself with neutral flags; he is sprawled in his mill with a river of French blood flowing by from the battle-fields of France, while the cartoonist asks France if she ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... we get the Berlin dailies promptly. Soon after the Germans are reading the war correspondence from their own front we are reading it, and laughing at jokes in their comic papers and at cartoons which exhibit John Bull as a stricken old ogre and Britannia who Rules the Waves with the corners of her mouth drawn down to the bottom of her chin, as she sees the havoc that von Tirpitz is making with submarines ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... difficult things sometimes explain each other, we now see the origin of keeping wild beasts in the Tower; for they certainly can be of no other use than to show the origin of the government. They are in the place of a constitution. O John Bull, what honours thou hast lost by not being a wild beast. Thou mightest, on Mr. Burke's system, have been ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... John Bull pays a tax of $700,000,000 a year to the liquor interest, to say nothing of the indirect damages resulting from the fact that the liquor interest is the chief supporter of the brothel, the baccarat table, and the Tory Democracy. The ...
— Newfoundland and the Jingoes - An Appeal to England's Honor • John Fretwell
... men, and aid their country's welfare. But never let colonization be opened like an artery, through whose "unkindest cut" some of the best blood of the country shall slip away and be lost forever. We want the cotton labor even more extensively diffused, to conquer John Bull with bales, as at New Orleans. Let ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... flaxen; and his dress was not worn with that scrupulosity with which the Bostonian bore his clothes; there was a touch of slovenliness in him that scarcely consorted with the alert, ex-military air of some of his movements. "Good-looking young John Bull," he thought concerning Mr. Arbuton, and then thought no more about him, being no more self-judged before the supposed Englishman than he would have been before so much Frenchman or Spaniard. Mr. Arbuton, on the other hand, if he had met an Englishman so well ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... Watt in Cornwall, "I have thought it but respectful to give our folks a dinner to-day. There were present Murdoch, Lawson, Pearson, Perkins, Malcom, Robert Muir, all Scotchmen, John Bull and Wilson and self, for the engines are now all finished and the men have behaved well and ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... a poem entitled Medicus Magus, or the Astrologer, a droll story brimming over with quiet humour, folk-lore, philology and archaic lore. Also The Ragbag, which is dedicated to "John Bull, Esq." The style of his poetry was Johnsonian, or after the manner of Erasmus Darwin, a bard whom the present generation has forgotten, but whose Botanic Garden, published in 1825, is full of quaint ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... have to think again. This frequently happens to me upstairs; and downstairs poor Johnny will find to his horror one day that his great work has already been given to the world by another—a certain Dr. John Bull. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 13, 1914 • Various
... war both far and near Has played the very deuce then, And little Al, the royal pal, They say has turned a Russian; Old Aberdeen, as may be seen, Looks woeful pale and yellow, And Old John Bull had his belly full Of dirty ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... He seemed to be perfectly unconcerned about all the tricks of the hearth flame, presenting as he did a most solid face for any light to play upon. To me it seemed to be a weather-beaten face of a bluff and resolute man, the like of which we attribute to John Bull. At any rate, he was like John Bull in one respect: he was sturdy and square, and fit to hold ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... Afrikaners" who followed the same procedure? The Smits who became Smith, the Louw that suddenly shrank into Lowe (could he sink lower?), the Jansen transformed into Johnson, and the Volschenk merged into Foolskunk? What did John Bull think of all these precious acquisitions ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... favourites or pets; but they were found mischievous and dangerous. Their morality was easy,—but difficult to understand; compounded of three-fourths sentiment—nine-tenths selfishness, twelve-ninths instinct, self-devotion, metaphysics, and cant. 'Twas hard to come at a common denominator. John Bull, with his four rules of vulgar arithmetic, could never make it out; altogether he never could abide these foreign bores. Thought 'em confounded dull too—Civilly told them so, and half asleep bid them "prythee begone"—They ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... if need be. Well, a few years ago, Chicago was bitterly scourged with a fire. The need and distress thus caused appealed to the nations of the earth for help. The response was grand and glorious. Even hateful old John Bull did well. But what did Ireland do? Take two of her leading cities as an example; one in the North, the other in the South. Belfast in the North, of the Tribe of Dan; Dublin in the South, of the Phoenicians. Belfast sent 36,000 dols.; Dublin, 2,000 dols. Why this ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... identical bunting that he had lowered four years before, and attached the flag to the halyards, and when it began to ascend, General Gilmore grasped the rope behind him, and, as it came along to our part of the platform several of us grasped it also. Mr. Thompson shouted, "Give John Bull a hold of that rope." When the dear old flag reached the summit of the staff, and its starry eyes looked out over the broad harbor, such a volley of cannon from ship and shore burst forth that one might imagine the old battle of the Monitors was ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... mechanical contrivance for the production of ear-stunning noises. Wherever they burst forth into utterance, the whole parish is instantly admonished of their whereabouts, and, with the natural instinct of John Bull for a row—no matter how it originates—forth rushes the crowd to enjoy the dissonance. The piercing notes of a score of shrill fifes, the squall of as many clarions, the hoarse bray of a legion of tin ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... the Provencal, "I will teach him something better. Just wait, John Bull, you will soon know me; I'll get the best of you, and then we will divide ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... dark hair and beard. He seemed very devoted to the young lady, and parted with her in melancholy silence. His account of this young lady moved me very strangely. He was not at all a sentimental man, but a burly John Bull, which made his story all the more touching. It is strange, I must say, that one like her should go into that place and never be seen again. I do not know what to think of it, nor did any of those with whom I spoke ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... You know John Bull got up a Crystal Palace in England, some time since, to which people of all nations sent articles of their own making,—not to sell, but to show the great crowd who came to look at them what they could do when they tried. It was a grand ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... The people, too, though the cobbler only dimly saw that, were as much the deposit and accretion of all dead ages as was the coal that lay bedded in the fencing hills. Irish, Dutch, whites, blacks, Moors, old John Bull himself: you can find the dregs of every day of the world in any mill-town of the States. Adam had a dull perception of this. Christmas eve came to all the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... could not find a better than the man before us, for, you will observe, the more objectionable points about our ideal of the negro are not very prominent in him. His lips are not thicker than the lips of many a roast-beef-loving John Bull. His nose is not flat, and his heels do not protrude unnecessarily. True, his hair is woolly, but that is scarcely a blemish. It might almost be regarded as the crisp and curly hair that surrounds a ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne |
