Quips and Quiddities: A Quintessence of Quirks, Quaint, Quizzical, and Quotable. VariousЧитать онлайн книгу.
LOSSOM of hawthorn whitens in May: Never an end to true love's sway! Blossom of hawthorn fades in June: I shall be tired of my true love soon! Blossom of hawthorn's gone in July: Darling, I must be off—good-bye!
Anon.
HE late Mr. Nightingale was telling Horace Smith of his having given a late royal duke an account of an accident he had met with when he had been run away with, and of the duke's exclaiming aloud to himself, when he heard he had jumped out of the carriage, "Fool! fool!" "Now," said the narrator to his auditor, "it's all very well for him to call me a fool, but I can't conceive why he should. Can you?" "No," replied the wag, as if reflecting, "because he could not suppose you ignorant of the fact."
J. C. Young, Diary.
UCH are the sylvan scenes that thrill This heart! The lawns, the happy shade Where matrons, whom the sunbeams grill, Stir with slow spoon their lemonade; And maidens flirt (no extra charge) In comfort at the fountain's marge!
C. S. Calverley, Fly Leaves.
HE crow!—the crow!—the great black crow! He loves the fat meadow—his taste is low; He loves the fat worms, and he dines in a row With fifty fine cousins all black as a sloe. Sloe—sloe! you great black crow! But it is jolly to fare like a great black crow!
P. J. Bailey, Festus.
F a man's got a bit of property, a stake in the country, he'll want to keep things square. Where Jack isn't safe, Tom's in danger.
Mr. Wace, in George Eliot's Felix Holt.
URN not from poor pussy in disdain, Whose pride of ancestry may equal thine; For is she not a blood descendant of The ancient Catty line?
R. H. Newell, Orpheus C. Kerr Papers.
HEARD the other day of Jekyll making the following pun. He said, "Erskine used to hesitate very much, and could not speak very well after dinner. I dined with him once at the Fishmongers' Company. He made such a sad work of speechifying that I asked him whether it was in honour of the Company that he floundered so?"
Crabb Robinson, Diary.
HO knows if what Adam might speak Was mono- or poly-syllabic; Was Gothic, or Gaelic, or Greek, Tartàric, Chinese, or Aràbic? It may have been Sanskrit or Zend— It must have been something or other; But thus far I'll stoutly contend— It wasn't the tongue of his mother.
Lord Neaves, Songs and Verses.
EN'S natures are neither black nor white, but brown.
Charles Buxton, Notes of Thought.
H, Love's but a dance, Where Time plays the fiddle! See the couples advance— Oh, Love's but a dance! A whisper, a glance— "Shall we twirl down the middle?" Oh, Love's but a dance, Where Time plays the fiddle!
Austin Dobson, Proverbs in Porcelain.
MET a man in Oregon who hadn't any teeth—not a tooth in his head—yet that man could play on the bass drum better than any man I ever met.
C. F. Browne, Artemus Ward's Lecture.
HE Duke of Rutland, at one of his levées, being at a loss for something to say to every person he was bound in etiquette to notice, remarked to Sir John Hamilton that there was a prospect of an excellent crop. "The timely rain," observed the duke, "will bring everything above ground." "God forbid, your excellency!" exclaimed the courtier. His excellency stared, whilst Sir John continued, sighing heavily as he spoke, "Yes, God forbid! for I have three wives under it!"
Sir Jonah Barrington, Memoirs.
OU are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak For anything tougher than suet; Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak— Pray, how did you manage to do it?" "In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law, And argued each case with my wife; And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw Has lasted the rest of my life."
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland.
E monde récompense plus souvent les apparances du mérite que le mérite même.
La Rochefoucauld, Réflexions.
URRAN told an anecdote of an Irish parliament man, who was boasting in the House of Commons of his attachment to trial by jury. "Mr. Speaker, by the trial by jury I have lived, and by the blessing of God, with the trial by jury I will die!" Curran sat near him, and whispered audibly, "What, Jack! do you mean to be hanged?"
Crabb Robinson, Diary.
HEY roused him with muffins—they roused him with ice— They roused him with mustard and cress— They roused him with jam and judicious advice— They set him conundrums to guess.
Lewis Carroll, Hunting of the Snark.
Y old friend Maltby, the brother of the bishop, was a very absent man. One day at Paris, in the Louvre, we were looking at the pictures, when a lady entered who spoke to me, and kept me some minutes in conversation. On rejoining Maltby, I said, "That was Mrs. ——. We have not met so long, she had almost forgotten me, and asked me if my name was Rogers." Maltby, still looking at the pictures, "And was it?"
Rogers, apud J. R. Planché.
O one likes to be disturbed at meals Or love.
Lord Byron, Don Juan.
HAT is man's end? To know and to be free. Think you to compass it by tracts and tea?
Alfred Austin, The Season.
O preach long, loud, and damnation, is the way to be cried up. We love a man that damns us, and we run after him again to save us.
