"Pleasantry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... entertained no rooted objection. What he did object to, and object to with all the dogged insistence of his nature, was the fact that this habitual flow of profane scurrility was only the prelude to what, with grim pleasantry, he was accustomed to describe as "serving out slops." Anything intended to cover his back was "slops" to the sailor, and the punishments meted out to him ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... can't be age, you know," continued Young, in a tone of pleasantry, "for I'm not much above thirty. I suspect it's that asthmatic affection that has troubled me of late. However," he added, in a heartier tone, "it won't do to get downhearted about that. Come, what say you to begin school at ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... Pencroft, with an attempt at pleasantry. "The sea will extinguish the volcano, and there will be ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... doing here. What's he been asked here for I wonder? He can't amuse anybody much." These words, however, were contradicted practically as soon as they were said by a peal of laughter which rose from the Contessa's little corner, all caused as it was evident by some pleasantry of Montjoie's. ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... it seemed, young Frost made no reply to this pleasantry; for already he was impatient to be gone. Although the room was intensely cold and uncomfortable, still his guest lingered, standing before the massive cabinet, exclaiming upon the exquisiteness of the workmanship, and every now and then ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... and wit and vivacity; that turn for pleasantry which is our national inheritance seems natural to her. . . . But her wit deals only with pleasant frivolities; her ideas are the children of her memory rather than of her imagination. French in everything else, she is original in her vanity. ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... Brewster adds to his account of Wargentin's phantom moon, that 'the deception was discovered by turning the telescope about its axis.' As Admiral Smyth well remarks, to endeavour to explain away in this manner the observations made by Cassini and Short 'must be a mere pleasantry, for it is impossible such accurate observers could have been deceived by so gross a neglect.' Smyth, by the way, was a believer in the moon of Venus. 'The contested satellite is perhaps extremely minute,' he says, 'while some parts of its body may be less capable ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... diagram when he heard of the procedure; and then, not being trepanned for the pleasantry, remarked that if Toole and Huxley collaborated on the stage, it would be eminently the proper thing, and in his mind there was little choice between them, both being ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... dead, should appear in the flesh. When he was asked concerning his comrades, he pointed to the sticks he was carrying, and said, "Here is both the one and the other." This he observed with equal truth and pleasantry; for his speech, though most thought it idle, yet departed not from the truth; for it pointed at the weregild of the slain as though it were themselves. Thereon, wishing to bring the company into a gayer mood, he jollied the cupbearers, and diligently did the office of plying the drink. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... was four years old. Had nothing to care for but an old mother; didn't know what he should do, if he lost her. Though so long in this country, he had all the simplicity and childlike light-heartedness which belong to the Old World's people. He laughed at the smallest pleasantry, and showed his great white English teeth; he took a joke without retorting by an impertinence; he had a very limited curiosity about all that was going on; he had small store of information; he lived chiefly in his horses, it seemed to me. His quiet animal nature acted as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... harm, having absolutely no knowledge of the class whatever, "except," with arch humor, "as presented on the stage, where, as everybody who had seen them there knew, they were harmless enough, goodness knows!" And the airy chorus lady shrugged her shoulders and smiled at her own bit of pleasantry. "But for the matter of that, I still think something ought to be done, and what other means can we find for restoring the lost innocent?" and Miss Norma tossed her frizzled blonde head, quite enjoying, ...
— The Angel of the Tenement • George Madden Martin
... "Long live Corinne!" "Long live Genius and Beauty!" The emotion was general but Lord Nelville did not yet share it, and though he had observed in his own mind that in order to judge of such a ceremony we must lay aside the reserve of the English and the pleasantry of the French, he did not share heartily in the fete till at ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... this sickly attempt at pleasantry was quite lost upon the scholastic pair. They understood her literally; and Mrs Root began, "My eye-water—" However, leave was taken, and I was left with the lady. She took me on her lap, and a hearty hug we had together. She then rang ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... elementary passions of human nature. As a whole, it leaves an impression of hardness, shallowness, and levity. The polite cynicism of Congreve, the ferocious cynicism of Swift, the malice of Pope, the pleasantry of Addison, the early worldliness of Prior and Gay are seldom relieved by any touch of the ideal. The prose of the time was excellent, but the poetry was merely rhymed prose. The recent Queen Anne revival ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... as can be recollected, in the following words: 'Ladies and gentlemen, this is the last time I shall drink your health as a public man. I do it with sincerity, wishing you all possible happiness.' There was an end of all pleasantry. He who gives this relation accidentally directed his eye to the lady of the British minister, Mrs. Liston, and tears were running ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... in the class soon laid aside their rude manners and forgot their jealousy in admiration. Massart laughed at them and said: "Fie! Boys! The hen is beating the roosters." Much truth was hidden in the master's pleasantry. Camilla was rapidly distancing them all. She was the favorite scholar. She had the advantage of Massart's private instruction three times a week and exhibited an aptitude for the work that advanced ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... Castlemere, with his beautiful Countess leaning lovingly on his arm, are pacing leisurely up and down among the assembled guests, exchanging here and there words of courteous pleasantry. Lounging over the back of a handsome fautiel, Colonel Snaffle, of the Lancers, is conversing with Pauline Barton, in his usual gay and lively manner, relating to some reminiscence which occurred to them while dwelling ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... source of the order, and foresaw that her numerous distinguished admirers would not have any difficulty in protecting her, and persuading the Queen Regent to rescind her order, and therefore gave herself no concern, receiving the order as a pleasantry. ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... Sir, thus it is. This is the proportion. Let me see; forty times forty is sixteen hundred. As three to sixteen hundred, so is the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman.' With so much ease and pleasantry could he talk of that prodigious labour which he ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... agreeable blue eyes wandered down the table and met it. Perhaps Madeline's own eyelids fluttered a little as she saw the sudden stricture in the face that received her message, and the grimace with which it uttered, pallid with apprehension, its response to a pleasantry of General Worsley's. She was not consummate in her self-control, but she was able at all events to send the glance travelling prettily on with a casual smile for an intervening friend, and bring it back to her dinner-roll without mischief. It did not adventure ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... sense of humor. Back in Chicago—where he'd been more or less weaned on gin, and discovered that, unlike his father, he didn't much care for the stuff—and even in Washington, people didn't go around accusing you of drunkenness just because you made some harmless little pleasantry. ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... lose the company of Colonel Howard so soon?" said Katherine, advancing to her guardian, with an air of blandishment and pleasantry. "I know that he too soon forgets the hasty language of our little disputes, to part in anger, if, indeed, he will even quit us till he has tasted ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... after King the hairless mullah gave a signal and the great stone door slid slowly into place. It was like a tombstone. It was as if the world that mortals know were a thing of the forgotten past and the underworld lay ahead. "Lead along, Charon!" King grinned. He needed some sort of pleasantry to steady his nerves. But even so he wondered what the nerves of India would be like if her millions ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... not enough for Messala, that the oratory of ancient times engrosses all his admiration; he must have his fling at the moderns. Our talents and our studies are sure to feel the sallies of his pleasantry [a]. I have often heard you, my friend Messala, in the same humour. According to you, the present age has not a single orator to boast of, though your own eloquence, and that of your brother, are sufficient to refute the charge. But you ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... say with mournful pleasantry, "without doubt you have had a master, and a kind one; but tell me who was he, and where is he now? Was he old or young, and was it in the last stage of maddening loneliness that he made friends with such a creature ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... his steed worn lean and thin by much service in war. So Fairfax, His stall-worn steed the champion stout bestrode. WARB.] On this note Mr. Edwards has been very lavish of his pleasantry, and indeed has justly censured the misquotation of stall-worn, for stall-worth, which means strong, but makes no attempt to explain the word in the play. Mr. Seyward, in his preface to Beaumont, ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... because his sensitive literary conscience was unwilling that it should be printed until developed into something more than a crude sketch,—and lastly came the Treatise on Fashionable Life, a manual which, under the form of pleasantry, was saturated with philosophy and lofty ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... from a tour in Western Asia sends to the Drawer the following account of a little bit of pleasantry which took place in the gala town ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various
... warmest-hearted, happiest, hopefullest creature that ever set Fortune at defiance"; he speaks also of "the buoyancy of his spirits and the inward light of his mind"; and adds,—"There is nothing gloomy or bitter in his ordinary talk, but, rather, a wild, rough, boyish pleasantry, much more like Nature than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... organic connection with the Synthetic Philosophy, or indeed with any philosophy of value. Mr. Spencer's warning to his readers seems to quite justify Mr. Bradley's rather caustic comment, "I do not wish to be irreverent, but Mr. Spencer's attitude towards his Unknowable strikes me as a pleasantry, the point of which lies in its unconsciousness. It seems a proposal to take something for God simply and solely because we do not know what the devil it can be." (Note to p. 128 ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... of the most candid reader, in opinions which are not conformable to his own way of thinking; and that the harshness of reasoning is not a little softned and smoothed by the infusions of mirth and pleasantry. ...
— Essay upon Wit • Sir Richard Blackmore
... become of us when the old, the feeble, the tiresome, and the interminable will all be thrown broadcast over society without an object or an occupation. Imagine what Bores will be let loose upon the world, and fancy how feeble will be all efforts of wit or pleasantry to season a mass of such incapables! Think, I say, think of this. It is a peril that has been long threatening—even from that time when old Lord Hertford, baffled and discouraged by the invariable reply, "I regret, my Lord, that I cannot play Whist," exclaimed, "I really believe that the day ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... of pleasantry a notion may be formed from an anecdote which one of his intimate associates, a juror of the revolutionary tribunal, has related. A courtesan who bore a conspicuous part in the orgies of Clichy implored Barere to use his power against a head-dress which did not suit ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... this?" cried Beauvallon. "Is it not enough that I am condemned to death, but you must subject me to an atrocious pleasantry? This is ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... set afoot by a pleasantry of Ensign Tyler's, of Massey's dragoons, with a playful allusion to a letter in a feminine hand which Kenneth had let fall, and which Tyler had restored to him. Quip had followed quip until in their jests they transcended all bounds. Livid with passion and unable ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... through unwittingly trampling upon the susceptibilities of the people, in the following manner. It appears that the peasantry in the suburbs of Ferrara bore ill-will toward the citizens of that town and called them "asses." This little pleasantry was manifested by the suburbanites in "hee-hawing" at the citizens when fitting opportunity presented itself. Now it happened that Paganini played at a concert, and some of the audience expressed dissatisfaction with the singer, Madame Pallerini, and hissed her. ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... may be regarded as land surrounded by ocean; that is to say, she is an island. In the same way, it is sheer gross irrelevancy to speak of Britain as an island, unless indeed the word be understood as a mere modus loquendi arising out of a rather poor geographical pleasantry. Britain, in reality, is a small continent. Near her—a little to the south-east—is situated the large island of Europe. Thus, the enlightened French traveller passing to these shores should commune ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... in a dim way to understand. This was the thing which Tissot had not been able to bear; which in the end had driven the young man with the small chin from the house. This was the pleasantry to which his feeble resistance, his outbursts of anger, of jealousy, or of protest had but added piquancy, the ultimate sting of pleasure to the jaded palate of the performers. This was the obsession under which she lay, the trial and persecution which she ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... promising substantial proofs on our side, and by refuting those of the opponent. The second, by giving hopes of being brief, and by having recourse to the means prescribed for making the judge attentive. In the latter case, too, some seasonable pleasantry, or anything witty to freshen the mind will have a good effect. It will not be amiss, likewise, to remove any seeming obstruction. As Cicero says of himself, he is not unaware that some will find it strange that he, who for so many years had ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... But yer'll have to put up with us low fellows for a bit instead, which if yer don't like it, yer can lump it, and if yer won't lump it, where will yer have it?" and he tapped his bayonet invitingly. Needless to say, the speaker's pleasantry was impracticable. But the officer did not know that; he only knew the way they have in Germany. Wherefore the officer relapsed into ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... youth with a lip that betrayed by its tremulous motion the interest he took in her speech—"never includes a long period of time. But," he added with a smile of good- humoured pleasantry, "if admitted to such a distinction, I should not feel myself competent to the task of commenting on so much innocence and purity, as I know I should find ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... desk beside me. Were I to die now there are three such besides The Prime Minister, half of which has only yet been issued. One of these has been six years finished, and has never seen the light since it was first tied up in the wrapper which now contains it. I look forward with some grim pleasantry to its publication after another period of six years, and to the declaration of the critics that it has been the work of a period of life at which the power of writing novels had passed from me. Not improbably, however, these pages may be ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... commendable gruffness, considering his contentment at heart, as he hastily retreated to his gondola under the Rialto for needed shelter from the banter which followed him, until some other unwary victim became the centre of the well-meant pleasantry. ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... suspected them to possess, so did he begin to gather courage and facility of expression. By degrees he proceeded modestly from the mild and timid effort at wit to the steadier nerve of moderate confidence—another step brought him to the indifference of a man who can bear an unsuccessful attempt at pleasantry, without being discomposed; the third and last stage advanced him to downright assurance, which having reached, he stopped at nothing. From this forward he began to retort upon his clerical companions, who found that the sheepish youth whom they had often made ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... feminine scribes." Nevertheless, she thought it prudent to reside for a time upon her estate in Brittany. A copy of a letter by St. Evremond was found, written three years before from the Spanish frontier. It was a sarcastic pleasantry at the expense of Mazarin and the Paix des Pyrenees, St. Evremond was a soldier, a wit, and the leader of fashion; Colbert hated him, and magnified a jeu d'esprit into a State-crime. He was exiled, and spent the rest of his long life in England. Of the baser sort, hundreds ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... soothing and comforting. The First Part has deep and awful shadows mingled with its light, terribly instructive, and like warnings from hell and the grave. The Second Part is more continually and uninterruptedly cheerful, full of good nature and pleasantry, and showing the pilgrimage in lights and shades that ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... recalled some odd stories to the young man's memory; he had heard of lodgers who thus gradually drained away, not only their own effects, but the very furniture and fittings of the house that sheltered them; and now, in a mood between pleasantry and suspicion, and aping the manner of a drunkard, he roughly bumped against the man with the chin-beard and knocked the portmanteau from his shoulder to the floor. With a face struck suddenly as white ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he writes, "why he did not use the name of Macgregor; his replies were significant, and give a picture of the man: 'It isn't a good Methodist name. You can use it, but it will do you no good.' Yet the old gentleman, by way of pleasantry, used to announce himself to friends as ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of disgusting habits. If I were to introduce my medical attendant to a friend with the words 'This is my leech', the gentleman (or lady) so presented would think I was indulging in the same sort of pleasantry as is used when a coachman is called a 'whip'; and he (or she) would probably not consider the joke to be in the best of taste. Of course all educated people know that it was once not unusual to speak of a man of medicine as a 'leech'; but probably there ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... you, dear sir, by all the ties of friendship, by no means to have one uneasy thought on my account; but to have the same pleasantry of countenance, and unruffled serenity of mind, which (God be praised!) I have in this, and have had in a much severer calamity. Furthermore, I charge you, if you value my friendship as truly as I do yours, not to utter, or even harbour, the least ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... division of labor, never anything but good feeling between them. Clemens had a poor opinion of his own comprehension of politics, and perhaps as little regard for Lamed's conception of humor. Once when the latter attempted something in the way of pleasantry ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... rising. I never lost an opportunity to flatter either the person of my visitor, if it should be a lady, or, if it should be a man, the greatness of his country in war. And in case my compliments should miss their aim, I was always ready to cover my retreat with some agreeable pleasantry, which would often earn me the name of an "oddity" or a "droll fellow." In this way, although I was so left-handed a toy-maker, I made out to be rather a successful merchant; and found means to procure many little ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... began to propose, object, and even insist upon her own way, drawing from me the threat of immediate dismission from my service, at which her companion laughed with an awkwardness showing she regarded the pleasantry as a presumption. Before one o'clock, the first room was almost empty. Then the great bell rang, and Clara, coming from the auxiliary chamber, put her head ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... aware that the narrative states that "the Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited Jonah upon the dry land." But this we conceive to be a mere pleasantry on the part of the unknown author. The idea of the Lord whispering into a whale's ear is ineffably ludicrous: besides, the whale had a very natural inclination to rid itself of Jonah, and needed no ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... bit me," said he, passing it off with that old stock pleasantry of the range, which covered anything and everything that a man didn't want ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... sad Figure who waited without. This ingenious Gentlewoman, in this piece of Bawdry, refined upon an Author of the same Sex, [9] who, in the Rover, makes a Country Squire strip to his Holland Drawers. For Blunt is disappointed, and the Emperor is understood to go on to the utmost. The Pleasantry of stripping almost Naked has been since practised (where indeed it should have begun) very successfully ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... to understand that one of these officers is the double of the other?" asked the first lieutenant, who seemed to be disposed to take in the situation as a pleasantry ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... curiosity of several of the sifters, who had recently joined the "company," the parties alluded to were requested to favor them with the recital; and though the request was made with only a half-concealed irony, still it was all in good-natured pleasantry, and was immediately complied with. Old ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... seemed to be reflections of the streaming crimson there. She shook her face to the sky, and affected laughter at the symbol. Her companions clapped hands. Farina's eyes yearned to her once, and then he rose and joined in the pleasantry. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... ludicrous side of the whole affair, thereby revealing one of the characteristics which endeared him to his friends. No matter how desperate a situation might be, he could always find in it something at which to laugh. He laughed going into danger and coming out of it, with a joke or a pleasantry always trembling on the end ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... inconsistency the most shocking as to the fulfilment of some great moral obligation; just as from the brute restiveness of a word (Equotuticum), that positively would not come into the harness of hexameter verse, he has extracted a gay, laughing alias (viz., 'versu quod dicere non est'); a pleasantry which is nowhere so well paralleled as by Southey's on the name of ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... Bavarian," she said. "I have always, from my childhood, heard this talk that Germany must grow, must get to the sea. I thought it was just talk—a pleasantry!" ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... given to pleasantry. Journeying east on one occasion, attended by two of his aids, he asked some young ladies at a hotel where he breakfasted, how they liked the appearance of his young men! One of them promptly replied, 'We cannot judge of the STARS in the ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various
... running fire of pleasantry at the expense of my poor steed; which, not content with attacking his physical, extended to his moral qualities. An old gentleman near me observing, 'that I ought not to have mounted him at all, seeing he was so damned groggy;' to which I ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... and Pine Tree were young, and maybe their youth caused them to smile slightly at Dick's pleasantry. Nor did they annoy the boys with excessive vigilance, and they answered many questions. It was, indeed, they said, the greatest village in the West that was now gathered on the banks of the Little Big Horn. Sioux from all tribes had come ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... of Richie Moniplies going behind the arras to get an opportunity of teasing Heriot, was a pleasantry such as James might be supposed to approve of. It was customary for those who knew his humour to contrive jests of this kind for his amusement. The celebrated Archie Armstrong, and another jester called Drummond, mounted on other people's ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... most delicate shade of difference between civility and intrusiveness, familiarity and common-place, pleasantry and sharpness, the natural and the rude, gaiety and carelessness; hence the inconveniences of society, and the errors of its members. To define well in conduct these distinctions, is the great art of a man of the world. It ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... great private investigator." Despite the seriousness of the occasion, Muriel could not refrain from venturing this pleasantry. ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... Silbermann."(6) Through the whole book runs a humour not often found elsewhere in Mickiewicz; the reports of the debates in Jankiel's tavern and in Dobrzyn hamlet are masterly in their blending of kindly pleasantry with photographic fidelity to truth. The poet sees the ludicrous side of the Warden, the Chamberlain, the Seneschal, and the other Don Quixotes who fill his pages, and yet he loves them with the most tender ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... Mark Twain learned to ride one of the old high-wheel bicycles of that period. He wrote an account of his experience, but did not offer it for publication. The form of bicycle he rode long ago became antiquated, but in the humor of his pleasantry is a quality which does not ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... vex me from sheer wantonness of heart in order to try my patience? By God, I swear to you that, if you continue these fashions of going on, you will find yourself very much out in your expectations! I see quite well that you have been put up to all this pleasantry in order to make me dismiss a servant whom I cannot do without, and who has served me loyally for five-and-twenty years. By God, I will do nothing of the kind! And I declare to you that if I were reduced to ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... same time both speakers knew that what they had seen in Sylvia's face and heard in her voice exceeded pleasantry. ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... A never-failing pleasantry is to rehearse the drama of the Assize Court; to elect a president, a jury, a public prosecutor, a counsel, and to go through the whole trial. This hideous farce is played before almost every great trial. At this time a famous case was proceeding in the Criminal Court, ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... overhauled, and her fuel carefully selected. Picked men made up her crew, and all the upper works that could be disposed of were landed before the race, in order to decrease air resistance. It was the current pleasantry to describe the captain as shaving off his whiskers lest they catch the breeze, and parting his hair in the middle, that the boat might be the better trimmed. Few passengers were taken, for they could not be relied ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... outcome of Don Sabas' little pleasantry arrived in the form of the imposing and preposterous commission, the collector smiled. He had not expected such prompt and overwhelming response to his recommendation. He despatched a muchacho at once ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... serious arguments in judicial cases by jests and facetious remarks, with a view to the advantage of his clients, he paid too little regard to what was decent. Indeed, Cicero was by natural temper very much disposed to mirth and pleasantry, and always appeared with a smiling and serene countenance. But Demosthenes had constant care and thoughtfulness in his look, and a serious anxiety, which he seldom, if ever, set aside, and, therefore, was accounted by ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... said Havill, 'since we first met an unexpected rivalry has arisen between us! But I dare say we shall survive the contest, as it is not one arising out of love. Ha-ha-ha!' He spoke in a level voice of fierce pleasantry, and uncovered ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... absolutely still was our order, wasn't it, Mr. Arnold?" she said, with her little pink smile. "And I'm afraid Miss Howe isn't in time to be of much use to us, is she?" It was the bedside pleasantry that expected no reply, that indeed ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... had cast aside the stem), 'and thou hast not a friend perhaps in all this world that will give thee a macaroon.' In saying this, I pulled out a paper of 'em, which I had just bought, and gave him one;—and, at this moment that I am telling it, my heart smites me that there was more of pleasantry in the conceit of seeing how an ass would eat a macaroon than of benevolence in giving him one, which presided ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... airs and the concursions of seas, by which Epicurus (as himself writeth) was in his voyage to Lampsacus within very little of drowning? The very composition of the body—it containing in it the matter of all diseases, and (to use a pleasantry of the vulgar) cutting thongs for the beast out of its own hide, I mean pains out of the body—is sufficient to make life perilous and uneasy, and that to the good as well as to the bad, if they have learned to set their complacence ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... while working in the Castello dell'Uovo, taking pleasure in watching his pencil and listening to his discourse; 'and Giotto,' says Vasari, 'who had ever his repartee and bon-mot ready, held him there, fascinated at once with the magic of his pencil and pleasantry of his tongue.' We are not told the length of his sojourn at Naples, but it must have been for a considerable period, judging from the quantity of works he executed there. He had certainly returned to Florence in 1332." ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... said Mr. Rogers. "But unless I'm a Dutchman, it used to be The Gabriel's antimacassar"—and with that Mr. Rogers winked, for he had (as the other knew to his cost) an artless, primitive sense of pleasantry. "A gage d'amour, I'll bet any man a sovereign. ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... this minute come home, and find such a delightful letter from you, that I cannot help answering it, and telling you so before I sleep. You need not affirm, that your ancient wit and pleasantry are revived; your letter is but five and twenty, and I will forgive any vanity, that is so honest, and so well founded. Ireland I see produces wonders of more sorts than one; if my Lord Anson was to go lord-lieutenant, I suppose he would return a ravisher. How different am ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... ladies with Fulkerson when he rang. He seemed to be amusing them both, and they were both amused beyond the merit of so small a pleasantry, Beaton thought, when Fulkerson said: "Introduce myself, Mr. Beaton: Mr. Fulkerson of 'Every Other Week.' Think I've met you at our place." The girls laughed, and Alma explained that her mother was not very well, and would be sorry not to see him. Then she turned, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... hotel on their heads, "as the brains of every man who dined there would be much improved by being mingled with bricks and mortar." Thomas Walker's control of the local constables sufficed to thwart this pleasantry. ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... of what is to come to your lordship. And I tell you that I would not now change places with you—that I would not exchange this halter that you fling about my neck for the stone that you carry in your body. The death to which you may doom me is a light pleasantry by contrast with the death to which your lordship has been doomed by that Great Judge with whose name your lordship makes ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... it to be a failure. “Father Daniel,” it was said, “professed to have reason and truth on his side; but his adversary had in his favour what goes much farther with men,—the arms of ridicule and pleasantry.” As late as 1851 an edition of the ‘Letters’ appeared by the Abbé Maynard, accompanied by a professed refutation of their misstatements. But the truth is, Pascal’s work is one of those which admit of no adequate refutation. ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... no notice of this coarse pleasantry, she simply adhered to her thesis. "One has taken one's dose and one isn't such a fool as to be deaf to some fresh true note if it happens to turn up. But for abject horrid unredeemed ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... take it for granted that your pop-gun of pleasantry has killed off the six thousand 'strong-minded' women and 'weak-minded' men who signed the petitions to the Legislature for Justice to Woman. And thus having disposed of personalities, will you be pleased to pass on to a discussion ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... ardent love of liberty and the constitution of his country: they discover a mind strongly actuated with the principles of virtue and reason; and while they abound in sentiments the most judicious and philosophical, they are occasionally blended with the charms of wit, and agreeable effusions of pleasantry. What is likewise no small addition to their merit, they contain much interesting description of private life, with a variety of information relative to public transactions and characters of that age. It appears from Cicero's correspondence, that ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... at least the hundredth edition of this amiable pleasantry, but Sidonia found it superb for all that, and thought herself bound to reply, ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... regarded by the Greeks as one of their poets, and still less as a writer. They considered him merely as an ingenious fabulist, to whom, at a later period, nearly all fables, that were invented or derived from any other source, were attributed. He was a slave, whose wit and pleasantry procured him his freedom, and who finally perished in Delphi, where the people, exasperated by his sarcastic fables, put him to death on a charge of robbing the temple. No metrical versions of these fables are known to have existed in ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... satisfies us as many days, and a railroad accident not longer. We hasten from one event to another, and it would be hard to tell now whether it was a collision on the Saint Jo line, or a hundred and thirty lives lost on the Mississippi, or some pleasantry from our merry Andrew, which distracted the public mind from the subject of monumental honors. It is certain, however, that, at the time alluded to, there was much talk of such things in the newspapers and in the meetings. A popular subscription was opened ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... catch-words. The armies are full of pleasant and pious folk. But they have yielded to the only enemy that matters—the enemy within. They have sinned against passion and truth, and vain will be their strife after virtue. As the years pass, they are censured. Their pleasantry and their piety show cracks, their wit becomes cynicism, their unselfishness hypocrisy; they feel and produce discomfort wherever they go. They have sinned against Eros and against Pallas Athene, and not by any heavenly intervention, but by the ordinary course of nature, those allied deities ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... in twice crossing this great continent, I could make a second Joe Miller of one, and a Jane Shore of the other. If this traveller could have understood the Beggars' Opera, the humour of Sam. Foote, or the pleasantry among English sailors, watermen, and the lower order of the people, he would have known, that, though the English nation have not so much vivacity as the French, they are behind-hand with no nation whatever, where true wit and genuine humour are to be displayed. ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... passetemps [Fr.], sport; labor of love; pleasure &c 827. relaxation; leisure &c 685. fun, frolic, merriment, jollity; joviality, jovialness^; heyday; laughter &c 838; jocosity, jocoseness^; drollery, buffoonery, tomfoolery; mummery, pleasantry; wit &c 842; quip, quirk. [verbal expressions of amusement: list] giggle, titter, snigger, snicker, crow, cheer, chuckle, shout; horse laugh, belly laugh, hearty laugh; guffaw; burst of laughter, fit of laughter, shout of laughter, roar of laughter, peal of laughter; cachinnation^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... their own land till the right moment. He who could do this was indeed practising for his calling as Conqueror. And if the details of the story, details specially characteristic, are to be believed, William showed something also of that grim pleasantry which was another marked feature in the Norman character. The startling message which struck the French army with panic was deliberately sent with that end. The messenger sent climbs a tree or a rock, and, with ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... the Morning Herald observes, the assertion may be true, and states that Dr. Goldsmith had a brother, whose name he thinks was Charles, and whom he met in public company about thirty years since. In person he resembled the poet, and was a man of some pleasantry, sang a tolerable song, and, like his brother, had a good deal of oddity in his manner. He then resided at Somer's Town, and as the correspondent was informed, had been many years in the West Indies, whence he came ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 573, October 27, 1832 • Various
... I sat for hours beside her, told her of my love which would remain forever the same; I reminded her of her pledges of constancy, reviving instances of our past lives, even bringing to my mind bright bits of pleasantry which had been ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... songs, printed in this collection, the most popular are "Tullochgorum," "John o' Badenyon," and "The Ewie wi' the Crookit Horn." The whole are pervaded by sprightliness and good-humoured pleasantry. Though possessing the fault of being somewhat too lengthy, no song-compositions of any modern writer in Scottish verse have, with the exception of those of Burns, maintained a stronger hold of the Scottish heart, or been more commonly sung in the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... he should have all the gold of Glengyle. Having delivered this defiance to humanity he shut himself up, without the smallest expectation of its being answered. One day, however, a deaf and seemingly senseless lad from a distant village brought him a belated telegram; and Glengyle, in his acrid pleasantry, gave him a new farthing. At least he thought he had done so, but when he turned over his change he found the new farthing still there and a sovereign gone. The accident offered him vistas of sneering speculation. Either way, the boy would show the greasy greed of the species. Either ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... judgment, or of liberty, which lay so much nearer to his heart than any point of mere erudition. There is a little article on Aius-Locutius, the Announcing Speaker, one of the minor Roman gods. Diderot begins by a few lines describing the rise of the deity into repute. He then quotes Cicero's pleasantry on the friendly divinity, that when nobody in the world had ever heard of him, he delivered a salutary oracle, but after people had built him a fine temple, then the god of speech fell dumb. This suggests ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... as sure as you're not; either that, or he's got a hot potato in his poor little mouzey-wouzey;' and poor O'Flaherty smiled a great silent moist smile at the well-bred pleasantry. The major, who did not choose to hear Mag's banter, made a formal, but rather smiling salute. The lieutenant returned it, and down came the unlucky mortar and a china plate, on which Puddock had mingled the ingredients, with a shocking crash and jingle ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... ass was perhaps typical of the ass which Jesus rode! The children of Israel worshipped a golden ass, and Balaam made another speak. How fortunate then was James Naylor, who desirous of entering Bristol on an ass, Hume informs us—it is indeed but a piece of cold pleasantry—that all Bristol could not ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... means reassured her. Some fifty yards behind, but mounted on fine horses, were two young gentlemen, plainly in a state of tipsy merriment, and by no means disposed to allow any prey, in the shape of a woman old or young, to escape them without some sort of pleasantry on their part. Cherry heard their laughter and their coarse words without understanding what it all meant; but a great terror took hold of her, and leaving her basket in the middle of the path, in ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... carried him instantly to his hammock, while the lieutenant was driven away to the place where the bride and her friends remained in great anxiety, which vanished when he assured them that his commodore was safe, being succeeded by abundance of mirth and pleasantry at the account he ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... hobbling footgear when sober, they were at a double disadvantage when drunk and weaving on their legs. They made no attempt to follow Morgan and revel in his sufferings and peril, but fell back, content to enjoy their pleasantry at ease. ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... and for some time longer sought to convince or move his friend both by earnest appeal and light pleasantry, but to all appearance without success, although he reduced him to silence. He left him at last, and went home meditating on the truth of the proverb that "a man convinced against his will is of ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... who knew not the value of the lamp and the interest that Aladdin had to keep it safe, entered into the pleasantry and commanded a slave to take it and make the exchange. The slave obeyed, went out of the hall, and no sooner got to the palace gates than he saw the African magician, called to him, and showing him the old lamp, said, "Give me a ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... extraordinary mode of proceeding for an intelligent and virtuous people, Mr. Blunt; and I must take the liberty of saying that I suspect you of pleasantry. If you wish an answer, I will say, at once by such a process we might get a knave, or a fool, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... smile on her face as she spoke, and Quincy smiled to show that he did not misunderstand her pleasantry. As he turned to ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... Bonaparte has penetrated with great sagacity, is, that they, who are so ready to perceive what is ridiculous in others, desire nothing better than to render themselves ridiculous, as soon as their vanity finds its account in it in some other way. Nothing certainly presents a greater subject for pleasantry, than the creation of an entirely new noblesse, such as Bonaparte established for the support of his new throne. The princesses and queens, citizenesses of the day before, could not themselves refrain from laughing at hearing ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... scenes were going on in out-of-the-way places—in angles of the walls and bastions, or behind the gates-between youthful couples about to be separated for a season. Interesting scenes these of pathos and pleasantry—a combination of soft glances and affectionate fervent assurances; alternate embraces (that were apparently received with reluctance, but actually with delight, and proffers of pieces of calico and beads and other trinkets (received both apparently and actually with extreme ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... fact," he went on with the same good-humoured pleasantry, "which our friend citizen Chauvelin had forgotten was that, though I happen to have aroused his unconquerable ire, I am but one man amongst a league of gallant English gentlemen. Their chief, I am proud to say; but without them, I should be powerless. Without one of them near me, by the side of ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... seemed never to lose sight of St. Luc. Sometimes he called him to repeat to him some pleasantry, which, whether droll or not, made St. Luc laugh heartily. Sometimes he offered him out of his comfit box sweetmeats and candied fruits, which St. Luc found excellent. If he disappeared for an instant, the king sent for him, and ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... Dan, as he walked on up the street. But the pleasantry made inadequate appeal. Every one was getting more out of the season than he was. Once he drew a dollar from his pocket and started back. But no. What was a dollar to him? He knew where there were more. That wasn't it. He put the money in ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... might say so as much as he pleased; there was no one likely to go and see! One day, in a parlor at Edinburgh, a Scotch gentleman took up the subject in his presence, as it had become the topic of daily pleasantry, and, in reference to the eating of raw flesh, said that the thing was neither possible nor true. Bruce made no reply, but went out and returned a few minutes later with a raw steak, seasoned with pepper and ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne |
