Sentence Examples:
A public, scurrilous, and profane jester, that more swift than Circe, with absurd similes, will transform any person into deformity.
When Percival came to that pavilion the Lady Yvette looked up and beheld him with great astonishment, and she said to herself: "That must either be a madman or a foolish jester who comes hither clad all in armor of wattled willow twigs."
Martial is a poet of no good repute, and it gives a man new thoughts to read his works dispassionately, and find in this unseemly jester's serious passages the image of a kind, wise, and self-respecting gentleman.
The thing had something of the form of a jester's bauble with points, which hung flabby and undulating.
It is usual to laugh at the witticisms of these jesters, even when they are the most severe; and the sovereign himself respects their privilege.
Barlow (Billy), a jester, who fancied himself a "mighty potentate."
What is the use of waxing wroth with this jester?
Some jester, enlarging upon the increase of bald heads and purblind people, has deduced a wonderful future for the children of men.
Like the jesters of the Middle Ages, the philosophers of the eighteenth century found in the use of pranks and buffoonery the best way of telling the truth.
A new, grateful sound has again the big conclusive phrase that merges into more pranks of the jaunty tune in the biggest revel of all, so that we suspect the jolly jester is the real hero and the majestic figures are, after all, mere background.
Afterward the host conducted the men to his "den," a luxurious paneled library filled with rare prints, and we listened for an hour to the jokes and anecdotes of a semiprofessional jester who took it on himself to act as the life of the party.
What he would have exactly meant by this nobody would have known, but everyone would have laughed, as he was one of those self-patented jesters at whose witticisms the company laughed first and wondered afterwards.
Paul's for my piety and learning but because I am a scoffer and a jester.
The king keeps jesters, who make jokes; and he has mimics, who play antics to make him laugh.
He was guilty of accepting bribes, and, as some maintain, "was the great patron of ribaldry, and the protector of the low jester and the filthy."
Finally, the king had always in his service the Hula, who, like the buffoon or jester of the French kings, must amuse his majesty by mimicry or dancing.
Since the revolution, he has rapidly come into his own, and is now a sort of licensed jester, flagellating Communists and non-Communists alike.
Then, last of all, at a little distance from the rest, the jester entered, affecting a very dejected air.
The jester sometimes visited him in his lonely dwelling and shocked and delighted him with alternate tales of the court's wickedness and with harmless jokes that made his wizened cheeks pucker and wrinkle into unaccustomed smiles.
We were told that the jester (some will not allow him to be called the fool) assisted his master in drinking eighteen bottles of the best Rhenish wine daily.
The effect of the serious events in bringing these persons to an armistice of wit is a happy stroke of art; and perhaps some such thing was necessary, to prevent the impression of their being jesters by trade.
The jester had gone, but she imagined him lurking behind every corner, and she impotently recalled his words: "There is no way out of the magic circle."
Neither austerity and anger, nor joy and ecstasy is the consequence, but sometimes a modest, dignified, serene smile spreads itself over their face, and seems gently to rebuke the uncouth jester.
What blows he gave to all his opponents, now with a club, wielded by an angry giant, now with a jester's bauble!
Fresh, pure, gracious being, how the scoffing jester disrobes and analyzes her!
Sycophants, courtiers, jesters, imbecile sons of princes, became great ecclesiastical dignitaries.
He never could sport with jesters, or laugh with buffoons, or chat with fools; and because of this he seemed to be haughty and disdainful.
No doubt these early actors bore some relation to the jesters who were established members of noble households, and of whom impromptu jokes and witticisms were looked for upon all occasions.
The sentimental exterior of this man concealed a jester's nature, and the sober appearance of this Castilian wore all the characteristics of a polished lounger.
On the other hand, romances were better heard than read, and only enough copies of them were made to supply wealthy households and the minstrels and jesters whose business it was to learn and recite them.
Rigoletto, the Duke's jester, has an only daughter, Gilda, whom he keeps closely immured in an out-of-the-way part of the city, to preserve her from the vicious influence of the court.
Stockton is very unlike Mark Twain: he is quiet, domesticated, the jester of the family circle.
The jester was delighted at the propinquity of his favorite beverage and decided that he would always remain in the cellar, regaling himself with the vintage.
The fellow is no better than a smirking jester, whose antics you can expose till men and women, who had foolishly laughed and wept as he moved them, turn from him, loathing him as a swindler.
As in an old Norman tale, he who had entered as a jester or minstrel in comic garb, laid aside his disguise, and appeared as a wise counselor or brave champion who had come to free the imprisoned emperor.
She told me, not thinking I had been myself, that I was the Prince's jester, that I was duller than a great thaw; huddling jest upon jest with such impossible conveyance upon me that I stood like a man at a mark, with a whole army shooting at me.
Some roguish fellows having conspired to cast ridicule on this custom, by writing absurd names, the guards were instructed to make an example of the next jester whose name should strike them as suspicious.
As the jesters approached their end, they had more of the moralist and politician in them than of the mountebank.
The whipping boy, a device to put princes on their honor to be neither negligent nor wanton in the fulfillment of their duties; and the jester to break us of our too self-conscious airs and exhibit to us our follies.
In the jesters, fools and humpbacks immortalized by Don Diego was revealed the forced merriment of a dying nation that must needs find distraction in the monstrous and absurd.
The most amiable and beneficent of men, it has been remarked, "have always been a favorite subject of ridicule for the satirist and jester."
The duly labeled "joke" follows a certain law and rule; whereas no jester could invent the grotesqueries of the unconscious humorist.
On the one hand, he is a prodigy of learning, a veritable warehouse of musical information, true, half-true and apocryphal; on the other hand, he is a jester who delights in reducing all learning to absurdity.
The jester must be able to grapple his theme and hang on to it, twisting it this way and that, and making it yield magically all manner of strange and precious things, one after another, without pause.
Peter got a jester's cap and bells, which he vowed was a dunce's cap intended for Rose, to that young lady's great indignation.
Then follows, not only for purposes of quotation, but as patterns for future jesters, a large collection of puns and witty sayings, methodically arranged according to their species, among them some that are admirable.
The jester thanked them for the thump on the back, and when they set the venison before him, he regarded it with the doubtful, ambiguous expression of a spoiled child, who does not know whether to laugh or to cry.
Truly he was not the fitting companion for the buffoons and jesters among whom he was too often compelled to sit in the palaces where he accepted bounty.
They stood together earnestly watching for the coming of the uncle, feeling quite uncertain whether to expect a frail old broken man, or to find themselves absolutely deluded, and made game of by the jester.
Unfortunately, while Harvey was smarting under these insulting gibes and jests, the jester himself got into public trouble.
Amongst other frivolous charges brought against him on his trial, it was mentioned that he kept an Italian jester, thought to be a spy, and that he loved to converse with foreigners and conform his behavior to them.
At length the flames, suddenly increasing in virulence, forced the jester to climb higher up the chain, to be out of their reach; and, as he made this movement, the crowd again sank, for a brief instant, into silence.
"Take care you and I do not also die hard," I replied, stepping out of the way of an idiot lad, who, dressed as a jester in Walker's colors, was sitting on a horse whose progress was blocked by the crowd, which began jibing at the rider.
The young woman who was to be the jester's bride was very pretty, and she was otherwise a favorite with those who knew her, and the Czar determined to improve the occasion of the wedding for a grand frolic.
As the Archbishop passed in stately procession to the Cathedral, some jeered him, and one jester had chalked white cartwheels on all the walls on either side of the procession.
Are jesters and buffoons your choice friends?
"He will come down now, for the first queen's jester has gone for him, and has promised to take him to the inn where dissectors are drinking."
Now, reassured, burning with delight, the jester spurred presumptuously forward, no longer feeling bound to lag in the rear.
And, indeed, the foreign jester seemed momentarily disconcerted, although he strove to appear indifferent.
From a candle set in a spiked, enameled stick, a yellow glimmering, that came and went with the sputtering flame, rested upon an ironical face, a graceful figure in motley and a wand with the jester's head and the bell.
The jester half drew his dagger; his quiet confidence and glittering eye impressed even his antagonist, inured to scenes of violence and strife.
He roared, and sprang with vicious lunges upon the duke's jester, who falling back before the suddenness of the assault, whipped out his weapon in turn, and, laughing, threw himself into an attitude of defense.
The jester, however, paid no attention to these signs of new acerbity on her face.
Before the jester could quiet and mount the nag, the shadow resolved itself into a man, and, behind him, came a numerous band, the play of light on helmet, sword and dagger revealing them as a party of troopers.
Over the entrance was suspended the jester's gilded wand and a staff, from which hung a blown bladder.
Here were quartered the court jesters whom Francis had commanded to be fittingly attired for the lists and to take part in the general combat.
This allusion to the petticoat rule which dominated the luckless jester at home was received in good part by all save the hapless domestic bondman himself.
Now the fool had dismounted, and she observed that he was bending over another jester who had been unhorsed.
Who among the jesters could have unseated him?
Immovably the king's guest gazed upon the jester, who, unabashed, calmly endured the scrutiny.
Over a goodly gathering of jesters, buffoons, poets, and even philosophers, he lorded it, holding his head as high as his hump would permit and conscious of his own place in the esteem of the king.
That she could ride in such madcap fashion, seemingly oblivious of the gravity of their desperate fortunes, was not ill-pleasing to the jester; no timorous companion, shrinking from phantoms, he surmised she would prove.
"There were many others there for that purpose," returned the jester, following the proprietor to the door of the hostelry.
Who was this starveling the jester seemed to know?
Whereupon, with a quick gesture, he threw the dregs of his glass in the face of the jester.
No other response would she make, and the jester, after waiting in vain for her to speak, turned and made his way to his own chamber, adjoining hers.
A number of suspicious stains enhanced the gruesome character of the room, and as these appeared to lead to the wardrobe, the jester carried his investigation to a more careful survey of that imposing piece of furniture.
A wave of anger against this unwieldy hypocrite and well-fed malefactor swept over the jester.
At that gruesome sight, his fellows paused irresolute, and, seeing their indecision, the jester rushed headlong upon them, striking fiercely, when their hesitation turned into panic and the knaves fairly fled.
Turning, the jester beheld the Spanish troubadour, who was composedly engaged in placing bundles of straw against the wall of the inn.
"As we have burned the roof over our heads," he continued, addressing the wondering jester and his companion, who had already mounted and were waiting, "let us seek another hostelry."
The jester appeared somewhat dissatisfied, but contented himself with requesting the other to set about the meal at once.
The jester made no motion to remount, but remained at her horse's head, closely surveying the road they had traveled.
He threw the dregs of his glass in the face of the jester.
"Then do you set our queen of fools, our fair Jacqueline, out of his Majesty's good graces," interposed one of the lesser jesters, a mere baron's hireling, who long had burned with secret admiration for the maid of the coquettish cap.
From the book and the picture, the jester, feeling the princess draw back impulsively, dared look up, and, looking up, could not look down from a loveliness surpassing the idealization on vellum of a monkish dream.
The picture is the portrait of a jester, dressed in courtly clothes and with a feathered cap upon his head.
Edith was entirely disguised as a jester and enjoyed her own quips immensely when she tapped a visitor on the shoulder with her bauble and said, "Good morrow, fair maid, art looking for a swain?"
Behind follow as chamberlains a band of coopers, a jester dancing on a cask, and a troop of gay youths full of all "quips and cranks and youthful wiles."
There was a tall may-pole carried by a man dressed as a jester, and boys and girls in early English peasant costumes held the ends of the long fluttering ribbons, laughing as the crowd applauded.
As he lacked money, he had to take many humble offices to earn his bread, and more than once had to undergo the indignity of sitting among the jesters and buffoons at some great house that had honored him with its favor.
The ever-present jester is a proof that humor is an exotic, which does not grow naturally on the soil, and does not belong more intimately to the American people than did the cumbersome jokes of Archie Armstrong to the monarch who employed him.
Do not be a professed jester nor yet a punster.
Last night, and most of the time to-day, you were the trifler, the incorrigible jester.
This rule will apply to the majority of mazes and puzzle gardens; but if the center were enclosed by an isolated wall in the form of a split ring, the jester would simply have gone round and round this ring.
An antic jester in green and gold led the dance.
This forcing method to which some conservatories seem addicted reminds one of those men who in bygone ages made a specialty of disfiguring the forms and faces of children, to make dwarfs, jesters and freaks out of them.
A flash of joy and triumph irradiated his fallen features; and thrusting the note into the folds of his robe, he inquired of the jester by whom it had been brought, and how long.
He is the most accomplished versifier among all our jesters.
It is rendered longer when the wind is chill; but Jimmy, no longer the jester, could never remember how he reached there on that wintry afternoon, and its hills, bleak with snow, were no more drab and cold than the dead fires of his dreams.