The 2,188 occurrences of buffoon

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~   ~   ~   Sentence 49   ~   ~   ~

All who are acquainted with the early history of the Italian stage are aware that Arlecchino is not, in his original conception, a mere worker of marvels with his wooden sword, a jumper in and out of windows, as upon our theatre, but, as his party-coloured jacket implies, a buffoon or clown, whose mouth, far from being eternally closed, as amongst us, is filled, like that of Touchstone, with quips, and cranks, and witty devices, very often delivered extempore.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 539   ~   ~   ~

One George he insisted upon regarding as a buffoon, another as a yokel.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,754   ~   ~   ~

A little way from him, there was a sort of play going on--a clown and a knowing one, like Widdicombe and the clown with us,--the buffoon answering with blundering responses, which made all the audience shout with laughter; but the only joke which was translated to me would make you do anything but laugh, and shall therefore never be revealed by these lips.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 5,039   ~   ~   ~

But I had been the wife of a buffoon, of a police-spy, of a base man, ready to sell me to any one who would give him money."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,098   ~   ~   ~

"I have studied a buffoon this morning, I think," was the punning sneer with which M. de Lesdiguieres replied.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,856   ~   ~   ~

In the course of one week he had been lawyer, mob-orator, outlaw, property-man, and finally buffoon.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,864   ~   ~   ~

"Buffoon!" he apostrophized it.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 8,635   ~   ~   ~

Consider that in four years I have been lawyer, politician, swordsman, and buffoon--especially the latter.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 649   ~   ~   ~

When he was just midway across, the little door opened once more, and a gaudily-dressed fellow like a buffoon sprang out, and went rapidly after the first one.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 676   ~   ~   ~

Sombre is human life, and as yet without meaning: a buffoon may be fateful to it.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 686   ~   ~   ~

he that spake was the buffoon from the tower.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 689   ~   ~   ~

It was thy good fortune to be laughed at: and verily thou spakest like a buffoon.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 692   ~   ~   ~

And when he had said this, the buffoon vanished; Zarathustra, however, went on through the dark streets.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,354   ~   ~   ~

Full of clattering buffoons is the market-place,-and the people glory in their great men!

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,737   ~   ~   ~

The rest: these are always the great majority, the common-place, the superfluous, the far-too many-those all are cowardly!- Him who is of my type, will also the experiences of my type meet on the way: so that his first companions must be corpses and buffoons.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 4,036   ~   ~   ~

But only a buffoon thinketh: "man can also be OVERLEAPT."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 5,567   ~   ~   ~

There is one that must first come, -One who will make you laugh once more, a good jovial buffoon, a dancer, a wind, a wild romp, some old fool:-what think ye?

~   ~   ~   Sentence 5,909   ~   ~   ~

Oh, how sad the buffoons of the populace seem to me to-day!

~   ~   ~   Sentence 6,244   ~   ~   ~

Then, however, did it come to pass that Zarathustra, astonished at such merely roguish answers, jumped back to the door of his cave, and turning towards all his guests, cried out with a strong voice: "O ye wags, all of you, ye buffoons!

~   ~   ~   Sentence 7,292   ~   ~   ~

The man who does not laugh, like the man who does not make faces, is already a buffoon at heart.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,847   ~   ~   ~

It must lie then for the mere pleasure of lying; and our unknown guest, that infinite and doubtless immortal subconsciousness in which we have placed out last hopes, is after all but an imbecile, a buffoon or a rank swindler!

~   ~   ~   Sentence 592   ~   ~   ~

for Vathek, instead of preaching to them, treated them as buffoons, bade them present his compliments to Visnow and Ixhora, and discovered a predilection for a squat old man from the isle of Serendib, who was more ridiculous than any of the rest.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 152   ~   ~   ~

I dare answer for him, he would be more uneasy in their company, than he was with Crispinus, their forefather, in the Holy Way; and would no more have allowed them a place amongst the critics, than he would Demetrius the mimic, and Tigellius the buffoon; ------- Demetri, teque, Tigelli, Discipulorum inter jubeo plorare cathedras.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 55   ~   ~   ~

Out of this income the expenses of the little court, of the bodyguard, of the mercenary troops, and of the public buildings were met, as well as of the buffoons and men of talent who belonged to the personal attendants of the prince.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 889   ~   ~   ~

Alexander spoke Spanish in public with Cesare; Lucrezia, at her entrance to Ferrara, where she wore a Spanish costume, was sung to by Spanish buffoons; their confidential servants consisted of Spaniards, as did also the most ill- famed company of the troops of Cesare in the war of 1500; and even his hangman, Don Micheletto, and his poisoner, Sebastiano Pinzon Cremonese, seem to have been of the same nation.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,224   ~   ~   ~

The better type of these people is the amusing man (l'uomo piacevole), the worse is the buffoon and the vulgar parasite who presents himself at weddings and banquets with the argument, 'If I am not invited, the fault is not mine.'

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,236   ~   ~   ~

This prince, whose taste for the most refined intellectual pleasures was insatiable, endured and desired at his table a number of witty buffoons and jack-puddings, among them two monks and a cripple; at public feasts he treated them with deliberate scorn as parasites, setting before them monkeys and crows in the place of savory meats.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,650   ~   ~   ~

In the Carnival of 1491, they sent one another chariots full of splendid masks, of singers, and of buffoons, chanting scandalous verses.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,642   ~   ~   ~

No public buffoon ever cracked his jokes at Herrnhut.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,406   ~   ~   ~

The King of Prussia overloads men of talent with his benefits for precisely the reasons which induce a little German Prince to overload with benefits a buffoon or a dwarf."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 865   ~   ~   ~

But it is particularly suitable for the purposes of a great buffoon.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,680   ~   ~   ~

There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 511   ~   ~   ~

He sees them in their natural attitudes and true colours; descended from their pedestals, and divested of their formal draperies, undisguised by art and affectation -- Here we have ministers of state, judges, generals, bishops, projectors, philosophers, wits, poets, players, chemists, fiddlers, and buffoons.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 732   ~   ~   ~

I suppose you will wander from house to house, like that wretched buffoon Philippus (Xenophon; Convivium.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,263   ~   ~   ~

Rhymers, whose books the hangman should burn, pandars, actors, and buffoons, these drink a health and throw a main with the King; these have stars on their breasts and gold sticks in their hands; these shut out from his presence the best and bravest of those who bled for his house.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,959   ~   ~   ~

that, if he will be constant to his queen, sober at table, regular at prayers, frugal in his expenses, active in the transaction of business, if he will drive the herd of slaves, buffoons, and procurers from Whitehall, and make the happiness of his people the rule of his conduct, he will have a much greater chance of reigning in comfort to an advanced age; that his profusion and tyranny have exasperated his subjects, and may, perhaps, bring him to an end as terrible as his father's.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 592   ~   ~   ~

He neglected the studies of the place, stood low at the examinations, was turned down to the bottom of his class for playing the buffoon in the lecture-room, was severely reprimanded for pumping on a constable, and was caned by a brutal tutor for giving a ball in the attic story of the college to some gay youths and damsels from the city.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,906   ~   ~   ~

The strictness of his morals furnished such buffoons as Peter Pindar and Captain Morris with an inexhaustible theme for merriment of no very delicate kind.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,794   ~   ~   ~

Ye veteran Swiss, of senatorial wars, Who glory in your well-earned sticks and stars; Ye diners-out from whom we guard our spoons; Ye smug defaulters; ye obscene buffoons; Come all, of every race and size and form, Corruption's children, brethren of the worm; From those gigantic monsters who devour The pay of half a squadron in an hour, To those foul reptiles, doomed to night and scorn, Of filth and stench equivocally born; From royal tigers down to toads and lice; From Bathursts, Clintons, Fanes, to H- and P-; Thou last, by habit and by nature blest With every gift which serves a courtier best, The lap-dog spittle, the hyaena bile, The maw of shark, the tear of crocodile, Whate'er high station, undetermined yet, Awaits thee in the longing Cabinet,- Whether thou seat thee in the room of Peel, Or from Lord Prig extort the Privy Seal, Or our Field-marshal-Treasurer fix on thee, A legal admiral, to rule the sea, Or Chancery-suits, beneath thy well known reign, Turn to their nap of fifty years again; (Already L-, prescient of his fate, Yields half his woolsack to thy mightier weight;) Oh!

~   ~   ~   Sentence 835   ~   ~   ~

"Why I could tell pretty stories of all the confusion that is going on," replied the ogre, "for one hears things that are enough to drive one mad, such as buffoons rewarded with gifts, rogues esteemed, cowards honoured, robbers protected, and honest men little thought of.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,619   ~   ~   ~

Reserve she had none; would talk about strangers, or friends, herself, her mother, her God, and the last buffoon-singer, in a breath.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,053   ~   ~   ~

He had the Consolation to beg a peace from those he had provoked to war by the most outrageous insolence; and he had the glory to espouse Mrs. Maintenon in her old age, the widow of the buffoon Scarron.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,243   ~   ~   ~

It was a bustling wedding-feast, where people come and go, footmen, stablemen, cooks, musicians, buffoons, where everyone pays compliments and makes a noise.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,207   ~   ~   ~

The whole flight of pandars and buffoons pounce upon it, and carry it in triumph to the royal laboratory, where his Majesty, after a brutal jest, dissects it for the amusement of the assembly, and probably of its father among the rest.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,178   ~   ~   ~

He was not a driveller, or a pedant, or a buffoon, or a coward.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,904   ~   ~   ~

There still remained a rugged and clownish soldier, half fanatic, half buffoon, whose talents, discerned as yet only by one penetrating eye, were equal to all the highest duties of the soldier and the prince.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,604   ~   ~   ~

The caresses of harlots, and the jests of buffoons, regulated the policy of the State.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 4,097   ~   ~   ~

Long after, when he had retired to his deer- park and fish-ponds in Suffolk, and had no motive to act the part either of the hidalgo or of the buffoon, Evelyn, who was neither an unpractised nor an undiscerning judge, conversed much with him, and pronounced him to be a man of singularly polished manners and of great colloquial powers.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 5,584   ~   ~   ~

Such was the nation which, awaking from its rapturous trance, found itself sold to a foreign, a despotic, a Popish court, defeated on its own seas and rivers by a state of far inferior resources and placed under the rule of pandars and buffoons.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 6,289   ~   ~   ~

Old Horace is constantly represented as a coarse, brutal, niggardly buffoon, and his son as worthy of such a father.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 9,343   ~   ~   ~

A succession of nominal sovereigns, sunk in indolence and debauchery, sauntered away life in secluded palaces, chewing bang, fondling concubines, and listening to buffoons.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 10,340   ~   ~   ~

Writers the most unlike in sentiment and style, Methodists and libertines, philosophers and buffoons, were for once on the same side.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,295   ~   ~   ~

Buffoons, dressed in copes and surplices, came dancing the carmagnole even to the bar of the Convention.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,806   ~   ~   ~

But, though at least equal to her model in wit, information, and talents for intrigue, she had not that self-command, that patience, that imperturbable evenness of temper, which had raised the widow of a buffoon to be the consort of the proudest of kings.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 6,307   ~   ~   ~

To be the leader of the human race in the career of improvement, to found on the ruins of ancient intellectual dynasties a more prosperous and a more enduring empire, to be revered by the latest generations as the most illustrious among the benefactors of mankind, all this was within his reach, But all this availed him nothing, while some quibbling special pleader was promoted before him to the bench, while some heavy country gentleman took precedence of him by virtue of a purchased coronet, while some pandar, happy in a fair wife, could obtain a more cordial salute from Buckingham, while some buffoon, versed in all the latest scandal of the Court, could draw a louder laugh from James.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 9,421   ~   ~   ~

Voltaire is the prince of buffoons.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 70   ~   ~   ~

Before a perusal of these hundred pages, will melt away for ever the lingering tradition or prejudice that Chaucer was only, or characteristically, a coarse buffoon, who pandered to a base and licentious appetite by painting and exaggerating the lowest vices of his time.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 513   ~   ~   ~

He was a jangler, and a goliardais*, *buffoon <46> And that was most of sin and harlotries.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 709   ~   ~   ~

Goliardais: a babbler and a buffoon; Golias was the founder of a jovial sect called by his name.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,974   ~   ~   ~

Now, listen to me, Master Bardelys, master spy, master buffoon, master masquerader!

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,034   ~   ~   ~

Then in the corridor there was a sound of steps and voices, and as I turned I beheld in the doorway, behind Saint-Eustache, the faces of Castelroux, Mironsac, and my old acquaintance, the babbling, irresponsible buffoon, La Fosse.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 4,278   ~   ~   ~

"Now, Marcel, while that buffoon prepares to inform me that the book has been inspired by Diana herself, tell me what else you have to tell."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 687   ~   ~   ~

What made (say Montagne, or more sage Charron) Otho a warrior, Cromwell a buffoon?

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,004   ~   ~   ~

Is there a lord who knows a cheerful noon Without a fiddler, flatterer, or buffoon?

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,262   ~   ~   ~

106 At Bristol the rabble, countenanced, it was said, by the magistrates, exhibited a profane and indecent pageant, in which the Virgin Mary was represented by a buffoon, and in which a mock host was carried in procession.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,463   ~   ~   ~

229 A still more infamous apostate was Joseph Haines, whose name is now almost forgotten, but who was well known in his own time as an adventurer of versatile parts, sharper, coiner, false witness, sham bail, dancing master, buffoon, poet, comedian.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 5,108   ~   ~   ~

At his ear stood a buffoon disguised as a devil with horns and tail.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,180   ~   ~   ~

He is looked upon as the prince of buffoons.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 598   ~   ~   ~

At times they remind one of buffoons, and they always resemble those absurdly conceited people who, in their desire to appear very superior, look like caricatures.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,007   ~   ~   ~

And when that friend of yours, that grinning buffoon, Mr. Paklin, stood up and declared with his eyes raised to heaven that not one of us was capable of self-sacrifice, who approved of it and nodded to him encouragingly?

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,727   ~   ~   ~

They are at San Antonio--the baker, the buffoon, the two young men who dig.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,026   ~   ~   ~

What eternal and incurable sorrows there be in the gaiety of a buffoon!

~   ~   ~   Sentence 130   ~   ~   ~

The employment of a lover is that of a mountebank, of a soldier, of a quack, of a buffoon, of a prince, of a ninny, of a king, of an idler, of a monk, of a dupe, of a blackguard, of a liar, of a braggart, of a sycophant, of a numskull, of a frivolous fool, of a blockhead, of a know-nothing, of a knave.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 848   ~   ~   ~

Wise men and buffoons alike dragged him down into that paltry abyss, the one always counselling caution, the other inventing amusements.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 5,040   ~   ~   ~

Not because he had his hair curled at the barber's, not because he was in such a hurry to show his wit, but because he is a spy, a speculator, because he is a skin-flint and a buffoon.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 8,679   ~   ~   ~

"And to be sure you're right: God has given me a figure that can awaken none but comic ideas in other people; a buffoon; but let me tell you, and I repeat it, excuse an old man, my dear Rodion Romanovitch, you are a man still young, so to say, in your first youth and so you put intellect above everything, like all young people.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,501   ~   ~   ~

Soames was rather tiring; and as to Mr. Bosinney--only that buffoon George would have called him the Buccaneer--she maintained that he was very chic.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,175   ~   ~   ~

But if any of them were to play the buffoon, or to turn any quavers, like these difficult turns the present artists make after the manner of Phrynis, he used to be thrashed, being beaten with many blows, as banishing the Muses.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 5,331   ~   ~   ~

In their midst Galiani, secretary of the Neapolitan Embassy, a clever dwarf; a genius, "a sort of Plato or Machiavelli with the spirit and action of a harlequin," inexhaustible in stories, an admirable buffoon, and an accomplished skeptic, "having no faith in anything, on anything or about anything,"[4206] not even in the new philosophy, braves the atheists of the drawing-room, beats down their dithyrambs with puns, and, with his perruque in his hand, sitting cross-legged on the chair on which he is perched, proves to them in a comic apologia that they raisonnent (reason) or résonnent (resound or echo) if not as cruches (blockheads) at least as cloches (bells);" in any event almost as poorly as theologians.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 736   ~   ~   ~

Meanwhile, at the Palais-Royal, other buffoons, who with the levity of gossips sport with lives as freely as with words, have drawn u.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,741   ~   ~   ~

"Towards six o'clock,[32153] Collot being at table enjoying an orgy with prostitutes, buffoons and executioners, eating and drinking to choice music, one of the judges of the Tribunal enters; after the usual formalities, he is led up to the Representative, and informs him that the young man had been arrested and examined, and the strictest inquiries made concerning him; he is found irreproachable and the Court decided to set him free.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,319   ~   ~   ~

in "Madame de Rémusat," I., 108, one of his confessions to Talleyrand: he crudely points out in himself the distance between natural instinct and studied courage.--Here and elsewhere, we obtain a glimpse of the actor and even of the Italian buffoon; M. de Pradt called him "Jupiter Scapin."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 6,791   ~   ~   ~

Buffoon!

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,251   ~   ~   ~

Why didn't he grow the rest of those idiotic little moustaches, which made him look like a music-hall buffoon?

~   ~   ~   Sentence 5,033   ~   ~   ~

Just when everybody was silent, like the buffoon he had always been; and Eustace got up to the nines below, too dandified to wear any colour or take any notice.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,189   ~   ~   ~

"If you, sir, choose to make a buffoon of yourself," he said sharply, with a slight trembling of the lower jaw, "I can't prevent your doing so; but I warn you that if you dare to play the fool in my presence, I will teach you to behave yourself."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 11,745   ~   ~   ~

"Put him beside his wife and he looks a regular buffoon!"

~   ~   ~   Sentence 11,748   ~   ~   ~

Natasha looked joyfully at the familiar face of Pierre, "the buffoon," as Peronskaya had called him, and knew he was looking for them, and for her in particular.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 12,783   ~   ~   ~

He was the buffoon, who went by a woman's name, Nastasya Ivanovna.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 13,306   ~   ~   ~

Nastasya Ivanovna the buffoon sat with a sad face at the window with two old ladies.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 13,343   ~   ~   ~

"Nastasya Ivanovna, what sort of children shall I have?" she asked the buffoon, who was coming toward her in a woman's jacket.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 13,344   ~   ~   ~

"Why, fleas, crickets, grasshoppers," answered the buffoon.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 16,729   ~   ~   ~

She said and felt at that time that no man was more to her than Nastasya Ivanovna, the buffoon.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 17,222   ~   ~   ~

The crowd drew up to the large table, at which sat gray-haired or bald seventy-year-old magnates, uniformed and besashed almost all of whom Pierre had seen in their own homes with their buffoons, or playing boston at the clubs.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 20,941   ~   ~   ~

Though people were afraid of Marya Dmitrievna she was regarded in Petersburg as a buffoon, and so of what she had said they only noticed, and repeated in a whisper, the one coarse word she had used, supposing the whole sting of her remark to lie in that word.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 25,790   ~   ~   ~

No one found more opportunities for attacking, no one captured or killed more Frenchmen, and consequently he was made the buffoon of all the Cossacks and hussars and willingly accepted that role.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,547   ~   ~   ~

But as a philosopher he really was a joy for ever, an inexhaustible buffoon.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 4,896   ~   ~   ~

Mr. Jackson was not a buffoon, but he behaved like one, which is what matters; and from the Winter Garden she could see people laughing at him, and at her husband, who got excited too.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,244   ~   ~   ~

Do not suppose I am going, sicut est mos, to indulge in moralities about buffoons, paint, motley, and mountebanking.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 512   ~   ~   ~

"Jupiter, Madame the Virgin, buffoons of the devil!

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