Jests

He then rose and dressed himself as fast as he could; and while he was dressing, Partridge, notwithstanding many severe rebukes, could not avoid throwing forth certain pieces of brutality, commonly called jests, on this occasion. ❋ Unknown (2004)

But his jests were the vehicles for telling to them the soundest truths. ❋ Unknown (N/A)

Sometimes, at the country fairs, the fun is rather slow, particularly where the prizes are small; but on exciting occasions, there is a constant small fire of jests, which is very amusing. ❋ Various (N/A)

Almost we can hear and echo the laughter of that merry home-circle; their jests are our own, differently phrased, their joys and sorrows knit our hearts to them across the century. ❋ A. M. W. [Compiler] Stirling (N/A)

Febrer recalled his jests of other times, on nights of feasting, seated before a plate of fresh oysters, in the fashionable ❋ Vicente Blasco Ib����ez (1897)

He was roused from this employment by a loud laugh from the man whose funeral he was meditating, and saw that Peder was enjoying life at present as much as the youngest, with a glass of punch in his hand, and a group of old men and women round him recalling the jests of fifty years ago. ❋ Harriet Martineau (1839)

How many wise sayings have been called jests because they were wittily uttered! ❋ Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton (1838)

Among the jests was a burlesque criticism of Tom Thumb. ❋ Unknown (1711)

M. le Dauphin Louis behaved splendidly; he went about the ball talking indiscriminately to all those he met on his path, in a very gay and decorous manner introducing the kind of jests suited to the occasion. ❋ Elena Maria Vidal (2009)

The several "jests" which follow these introductory sentences indicate that the inn-yards differed in no essential way from the early public playhouses. ❋ Joseph Quincy Adams (1913)

The majority of the too celebrated "jests" attributed to George ❋ George Saintsbury (1889)

It may be doubted whether such tales as the above were ever regarded as true, but it was not until thought became more active that the falsity of them was fully appreciated, and "jests" gradually acquired their present signification. ❋ Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange (1873)

[1] This notion, that schoolmasters "lack wit," however absurd, seems to have been entertained from ancient times, and to be still prevalent in the East; the so-called jests of Hierokles are all at the expense of pedants; and the Turkish typical noodle is Khoja _ (i.e., ❋ William Alexander Clouston (1869)

I have copied these pages from Mr. Everett's book that my readers might have a clear and just idea of those notions which these unhappy men entertain of the life they lead, and hope they may be of some use in giving such youths as are too apt to be taken with their low kind of jests, a just abhorrence of committing villainy, merely to divert the mob, and make themselves the sole topic of discourse in alehouses and cellars. ❋ Arthur L. Hayward (N/A)

_fabliaux, novelle_, "jests," and so forth: and which are now flung together in gross, chiefly by the excessively clumsy and unimaginative expedient of making the personages tell long strings of them as their own experience. ❋ George Saintsbury (1889)

We must look at this, as well as at some other demonstrations of which this time was the witness, to see what new mastership this is that was coming out here so signally in this age in various forms, and in more minds than one; what soul of a new era it was that had laughed, even in the boyhood of its heroes, at old Aristotle on his throne; that had made its youthful games with dramatic impersonations, and caricatures, and travesties of that old book-learning; that in the glory of those youthful spirits -- 'the spirits of youths, that meant to be of note and began betimes' -- it thought itself already competent to laugh down and dethrone with its 'jests'; that had laughed all its days in secret; that had never once lost a chance for a jibe at the philosophy it found in possession of the philosophic chairs -- a philosophy which had left so many things in heaven and earth uncompassed in its old futile dreamy abstractions. ❋ Delia Bacon (1835)