"Waggish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dining-room were more roses,— ropes and garlands of them, hanging in festoons along the dark, shining panels, drooping from the Venetian lustres of the quaint chandelier. Even the moose's head on the wall behind the Colonel's chair had a wreath, cocked slightly on one side, which gave a waggish look to the stately creature. The huge antlers spread abroad, three feet on either side; the boys eyed ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... yourself in a large room, with deep alcoves furnished with shelves, on which, above and on all sides, were ranged huge volumes with massive clasps. "What are all these books?" inquired a youthful visitor—"old Bibles?" "No, sir; they're testaments," was a waggish official's reply. They are, in fact, copies of wills. The originals are deemed too precious for exhibition except on special application, and the stranger who pays his shilling only sees a copy. Formerly, unless a searcher knew exactly when a will was proved, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... declared that the omens were not in favour of the marriage. Upon this Helge assembled his people to hear the word which the messengers were to carry to their master, but unfortunately King Halfdan gave way to his waggish humour, and made scoffing reference to the advanced age of the royal suitor. These impolitic words were reported to King Ring, and so offended him that he immediately collected an army and prepared to march against the Kings of Sogn ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... gave her quite a waggish appearance, did as her son requested and then sat down in a corner, holding her pocket handkerchief to her chest, like a ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... because no one else can make it out."—And this is a very fair specimen of ready wit: During a season of great drought in Persia, a schoolmaster at the head of his pupils marched out of Shiraz to pray (at the tomb of some saint in the suburbs) for rain, when they were met by a waggish fellow, who inquired where they were going. The preceptor informed him, and added that, no doubt, Allah would listen to the prayers of innocent children. "Friend," quoth the wit, "if that were the case, I fear there would not be ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... supplications that he would stand still, and exclamations of "Pray, Sir!"—"Lord, how troublesome!" and "Sir, I do assure you here's no room!" he fairly and adroitly elbowed them from him till he reached her seat: and then, with a waggish grin, he looked round, to show he had got the better, and to see whom he ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... to the edge of the trees and looked out, anxiously peering in different directions, but nothing was seen of his friend. Knowing Fred's waggish nature, Jack hoped that he was indulging in some jest, but he could not quite convince himself that such was the fact. The hunger of Fred would have prevented his postponing the meal one moment longer ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... up medicine. His mind could not have been much impressed with statutes, for all the time that he was supposed to be conning over abstruse points in jurisprudence, he was sending to the printers some of the cleverest and most waggish contributions which have fallen from his pen. The Collegian,—the university journal of those days,—published most of these, and though no name was attached to the screeds, it was fairly well known that Holmes was the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... information," cried an elderly gentleman, with a knowing look and a flexible nose, to which he could give a whimsical twist when he wished to be waggish. ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... comprised the sun and the moon, instead of two moons, which were clearly absurd. The court poet improved on this explanation, and composed the neat little poem which is partially preserved by the Jewish chronicler, who asks "Is not this written in the book of Jasher?" The waggish laureate Jasher is supposed by some profane speculators to have got up the whole ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... jack jargon, the gigantic guardsman; And General Fireface, famous in the field, A great tactician, and no less a swordsman, Who ate, last war, more Yankees than he kill'd. There was the waggish Welsh Judge, Jefferies Hardsman, In his grave office so completely skill'd, That when a culprit came far condemnation, He had ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... disturbed the peace of this solemn house, where the hinges were always oiled, and where the meanest article of furniture showed the respectable cleanliness which reveals strict order and economy. The most waggish of the three youths often amused himself by writing the date of its first appearance on the Gruyere cheese which was left to their tender mercies at breakfast, and which it was their pleasure to leave untouched. This bit of mischief, and a few others ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... not only as the handsomest woman in those parts, a woman so superior that she might give George Sand a qualm, but as a woman who would produce a great sensation in Paris. Hence the extreme though suppressed astonishment of Doctor Bianchon and the waggish journalist when they beheld, on the garden steps of Anzy, a lady dressed in thin black cashmere with a deep tucker, in effect like a riding-habit cut short, for they quite understood the pretentiousness of such extreme simplicity. ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... upon the walls of the palace where his regiment was quartered the following appropriate sentence: "Delhi taken and India saved for 36 rupees 10 annas." It is said that the Governor-General demanded the name of this waggish soldier, with the intention that he might receive punishment for his daring effrontery; but it is needless to say that the author of the joke remained unknown save to a few of his comrades; and the ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... that the ship clove the dark sea into a blaze of phosphorescence, and her wake streamed like a comet's tail, a waggish middy got a bucketful hoisted on deck, and asked the doctor to analyze that. He did not much like it, but yielded to the general request; and by dividing it into smaller vessels, and dropping in various chemicals, ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... meaning of punctuation. I admit that probably they were not trying to do their best; that they might have put on a little intentional clumsiness, in the instinctive hope of escaping derision by being thought waggish. But the pity of it was that they should need to protect themselves so. They had not the rudimentary accomplishment: that was the plain truth. They could not ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... Heywood, with a waggish smile. "I do not know, queen; but at any rate it is a begging letter; and without doubt you would do well not to read it at all; for I bet you, the shameless writer of this letter demands of you some impossibility—it may be a smile, or a pressure ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... after the glorious finale to the second act, and the audience, which had hung spell-bound on the magic strains of the great maestro, seemed collectively to breathe a long sigh of satisfaction, previous to letting loose its hundreds of waggish and frivolous tongues. In the smart orchestra boxes many well-known faces were to be seen. Mr. Pitt, overweighted with cares of state, was finding brief relaxation in to-night's musical treat; the Prince of ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... indeed settled at once, to the great satisfaction of the person I have here named Spangenberg; and the same evening, in our family circle, the story was not only told by the waggish interpreter, but was given with all the ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... corridors of time. It would be treason to tell the name of that antique university-chapel where a certain wooden-headed verger was betrayed into the absurdest error; it would be personal to give the name of the waggish friend who made him his innocent butt; but the facts and the joke ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... citing for its truth:—"Though I have not written, I have seldom ceased to think of you; for you are that sort of being whom every thing, high or low, brings into one's mind. Whether I am with the wise or the waggish, among poets or among pugilists, over the book or over the bottle, you are sure to connect yourself transcendently with all, and come 'armed for every field' into ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... impudence and mischief shone forth as light radiates from a lantern. He, pausing before the sleeping Barndale, blushed not, but poked him in the ribs with the end of his walking-stick, and regarded him with an eye of waggish joy, as who should say that to poke a sleeping man in the ribs was a stroke of comic genius whereof the world had never beheld the like. He sat on his stick, cocked Mr. Barndale's hat on one side, and awaited that gentleman's waking. Mr. Barndale, ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... with his foot. A bed of roses I'll provide for thee, And crystal springs shall drop thee melody. The breathing shades we'll haunt, where ev'ry leaf Shall whisper us asleep, though thou art deaf. Those waggish nymphs, too, which none ever yet Durst make love to, we'll teach the loving fit; We'll suck the coral of their lips, and feed Upon their spicy breath, a meal at need: Rove in their amber-tresses, and unfold That glist'ring grove, the curled ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... a waggish tone, "that would be quite new. He might then make the same use of them as he would of a town ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... of those curious ceremonies called inquests. Brien Moon, Esq. is particularly fond of the ludicrous, is ever ready to appreciate a good joke, and well known for his happy mode of disposing of dead dogs and cats, which, with anonymous letters, are in great numbers entrusted to his care by certain waggish gentlemen, who desire he will "hold an inquest over the deceased, and not forget the fees." It is said-the aristocracy, however, look upon the charge with contempt-that Brien Moon, Esq. makes a small per centage by selling those canine remains to the governor ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... committee had a pious horror of all dead languages, and a patriotic fear of paying too high a compliment to England, and so reported that all proceedings in courts of law should be in the American language! An inquiry by a waggish member, whether the committee intended to allow proceedings to be in any one of the three hundred Indian dialects, restored to the English ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... had none, they stood with their hands in their ragged pockets, shivering and stamping. Most of them were undersized, some tough, some rather sickly. A dull-eyed, wretched, sodden lot. I got the liquor on their breaths. A fat old Irish stoker came drifting half-drunk up the pier with a serene and waggish smile. ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... women's clubs. Don Marquis has no taste for that sort of mummery. But little by little his potent, yeasty verses, fashioned from the roaring loom of every day, are winning their way into circulation. Any reader who went to Dreams and Dust (poems, published October, 1915) expecting to find light and waggish laughter, was on a blind quest. In that book speaks the hungry and visionary soul of this man, quick to see beauty and grace in common things, quick to question ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... of nature description, although unconventional, does not lack truth. Goethe offers a similar example, when he speaks of schalkhafte (roguish, waggish) Veilchen. ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... us not into temptation,' used with waggish and gallant humour to whisper Mrs. Davies, 'You, my dear, are ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... It was life's waggish way that the project conceived in the obscure dreams of an out-at-elbows young man, and born a foundling upon his money, should have been adopted at sight as the spoiled darling of fashion's ultra-fashionable. Undoubtedly, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... may the Gods bless me, Scapha is waggish; the hussy's quite knowing. How cleverly she understands all matters, the ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus |
