Droll Quotes & Sayings

He looks like a man.'
'How descriptive,' Susan said in a droll tone. 'Remind me never to advise you to seek work as a novelist. — Julia Quinn

My dad was great. He was very droll, very dry. — Albert Finney

'James and the Giant Peach' magnificently starts out Dahl's career as a blithe and droll Bad Uncle corrupter and affirmer of youth. Its influence can be subsequently traced down the decades in everything from Maurice Sendak to Lemony Snicket to J. K. Rowling. — Paul Di Filippo

It's the Queen's English now,' observed Peter mildly.

'Is there a difference?' asked Oundle rhetorically. 'I fervently hope not.'

'There will be in time,' said Peter.

'That will be deplorable,' replied Oudle. 'I shall not myself deviate by a syllable from correct usage.'

'My language is foul, and yours is Fowler?' said Peter, and added one of his sudden quirky smiles, 'or know your Onions.'

This quip crossed the barrier of the table, because the man sitting nearly opposite Peter laughed.

'Onions?' said Oudle.

'C.T. Onions, I imagine,' said the man opposite. 'Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.'

'Oh, I see,' said Oudle. 'Very droll. — Jill Paton Walsh

Droll thing life is
that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself
that comes too late
a crop of inextinguishable regrets. — Joseph Conrad

Kiernan reaches to pull out my chair, but I beat him to it and then nudge the chair across from me out about six inches with my foot.
He pulls it out the rest of the way and says, "Thank you, dearest," in a droll tone before retreating behind the menu. — Rysa Walker

But: all journeys were return journeys. The farther one traveled, the nakeder one got, until, towards the end, ceasing to be animated by any scene, one was most oneself, a man in a bed surrounded by empty bottles. The man who says, "I've got a wife and kids" is far from home; at home he speaks of Japan. But he does not know - how could he? - that the scenes changing in the train window from Victoria Station to Tokyo Central are nothing compared to the change in himself; and travel writing, which cannot but be droll at the outset, moves from journalism to fiction, arriving promptly as the Kodama Echo at autobiography. From there any further travel makes a beeline to confession, the embarrassed monologue in a deserted bazaar. The anonymous hotel room in a strange city ... — Paul Theroux

Hollis " I said "you're messing with me right now aren't you You're in Paris or somewhere and just-"
"What " he replied. "No This is the real deal. Here I'll prove it."
There was a muffled noise followed by some static. Then I heard my mother recite at a distance in her most droll flat tone "Yes. It is true. Your brother is in love and in my kitchen. — Sarah Dessen

My brother betrayed me and our people. If I were as cold as I'd like to be, his hide would be on the floor so everyone could walk on him. Unfortunately, my other brothers were a little disturbed by that so we compromised with the wall."
"Understood," Ash said. "Where's the rest of the pack?"
"In the back.We're staying out of it. We don't like to kill our own."
Zarek snorted at that."Unless it's your brother."
Dante approached Zarek and the two of them had a mutual sneer-off."Law of the jungle.The betrayee gets to eat the betrayer."
Zarek gave him a droll stare."Law of my jungle. Kill them all and let Hades sort them out."
Dante actually laughed at that. "I like this one, Ash. He understands us."
"Gee, Z," Ash said jokingly. "I think you may have found a new friend after all. That should make Astrid happy. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

CALM is the bottom of my sea: who would guess that it hides droll monsters!
Unmoved is my depth: but it sparkles with swimming enigmas and laughters. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Oh, for heaven's sake, she thought with droll exasperation, this certainly explains a lot. It's no wonder I haven't been able to keep my hands off the blasted man since the day I met him. He's an artifact! A Celtic one at that! — Karen Marie Moning

... no person, no matter how vivid an imagination he may have, can invent anything half so droll as the freaks and fancies that originate in the lively brains of little people. — Louisa May Alcott

Life is droll. It has no common sense. It is the game of a mountebank. — William John Locke

In the half darkness I winked to my other self, my mad dictator, and congratulated him on his droll victory. I closed my eyes and felt the warmth flowing from Shosha's head to my face. What did I have to lose? Nothing more than what everyone loses anyway. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

Is this Dornish wine?" Tyrion asked him once, as he pulled a stopper from a skin. "It reminds me of a certain snake I knew. A droll fellow, till a mountain fell on him. — George R R Martin

O, sir,' murmured Sheila, still on her knees, 'please forgive me.'
'Forgive you! 0, la, la, la!' cunningly cried the droll, and strutting like an actor. 'Forgiveness is easy, is it not? O, yes, it is nothing. You are a young woman full of pride. O. yes! - but that is nothing. And full of penitence, and that is nothing, too. Pride is nothing, penitence nothing, forgiveness nothing, but even a bargain in farthings must be paid to be made, and I am a plain business man. What costs nothing brings no balm, and you would not like that, you would not like that, now would you?' ("The Bogey Man") — A.E. Coppard

Heron of Alexandria! I've never read his treatise on pneumatics and hydraulics!" (Kate) cried in excitement.
"What luck."
She barely heard (Rohan)'s droll comment, gasping aloud when she spotted the rarest of tomes. "You have Al-Jazari's Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices?"
"Do I?"
"I don't believe it! Is this the original fourteenth-century Latin translation from the Arabic?"
"Couldn't tell you."
She handled the aged manuscript with awe. "You mean you haven't read it?"
"Alas."
"Oh, Rohan! Sir Isaac Newton wouldn't have been able to formulate the laws of motion if it weren't for writers like this. — Gaelen Foley

He wasn't any different after he got shot. He just had a very dry sense of humor. One day a young girl came up to him, looked at his face, and asked, "What happened to you?" He bent down and said, in a very serious voice, "Never run with scissors." Dry, droll, and a heart of gold. You couldn't help but love him. — Chris Kyle

I imagine that it will not be easy to persuade Mortmain into a bonnet," Magnus observed. "Though the color would be fetching on him."
Henry burst into laughter. "Very droll, Mr. Bane."
"Please, call me Magnus."
"I shall! — Cassandra Clare

Destiny. My destiny! Droll thing life is
that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. — Joseph Conrad

What did Nabokov and Joyce have in common, apart from the poor teeth and the great prose? Exile, and decades of near pauperism. A compulsive tendency to overtip. An uxoriousness that their wives deservedly inspired. More than that, they both lived their lives 'beautifully'
not in any Jamesian sense (where, besides, ferocious solvency would have been a prerequisite), but in the droll fortitude of their perseverance. They got the work done, with style. — Martin Amis

Let me be frank even though I'm Vincent and prefer to be called V. — Brian Celio

The most splendid thing about the Amish is the names they give their towns. Everywhere else in America towns are named either after the first white person to get there or the last Indian to leave. But the Amish obviously gave the matter of town names some thought and graced their communities with intriguing, not to say provocative, appellations: Blue Ball, Bird in Hand, and Intercourse, to name but three. Intercourse makes a good living by attracting passers-by such as me who think it the height of hilarity to send their friends and colleagues postcards with an Intercourse postal mark and some droll sentiment scribbled on the back. — Bill Bryson

Edge will contact you mind- to- mind and let you know what's going on."
"So I should be prepared to hear voices in my head ... other than the usual ones." Vance added the last part with a grin.
Cory gave him a droll stare and said, "Exactly. — Lanie Malone

Nay," she said stubbornly. "I have just been told that the only chance I have for freedom is in your hands and by all that is holy, you will deliver me my freedom or I shall see to it that you live out the rest of your life in merciless misery."
He gaped at her. On any other man such an expression would have looked foolish, but to credit Lord Stryder, even when taken by surprise, he still managed to carry off an air of supreme authority and handsomeness. "I beg your pardon? Have you gone completely mad?"
"Not I, but rather the king you love so well. It appears he would see us marry."
"My hairy arse."
She gave him a droll stare. "That is much more information about your person, Lord Stryder, than I care to know. — Kinley MacGregor

The proverbial German phenomenon of the verb-at-the-end about which droll tales of absentminded professors who would begin a sentence, ramble on for an entire lecture, and then finish up by rattling off a string of verbs by which their audience, for whom the stack had long since lost its coherence, would be totally nonplussed, are told, is an excellent example of linguistic recursion. — Douglas Hofstadter

What if this was a sign? Maybe I'm not supposed to be an Outsider.
He surprised her by taking her hand and threading his fingers through hers. "You already are an Outsider. You fit everywhere. You just don't see it yet."
She stared at their hands. He'd never done that before.
Roar gave her a droll look. "It's just odd having you lay your hand on my arm all the time," he said, responding to her thoughts.
Yes, but this feels intimate. Don't you think it does? I don't mean that I think we're being too intimate. I guess I do. Roar, sometimes it's really hard to get used to this.
Roar flashed a grin. "Aria, this isn't intimate. If I were being intimate with you, trust me, you'd know."
She rolled her eyes. Next time you say something like that, you should toss a red rose and then leave with a swish of your cape. — Veronica Rossi

I need dating advice. Fast."
Ash arched a single brow at that. "I'm useless. I've never been on one."
The three human men turned to gape at him.
"What?" Ash asked them defensively.
Nick started laughing. "Oh man, this is priceless. Don't tell me the great Acheron is a virgin?"
Ash gave him a droll look. "Yeah, Nick. I'm lily-white. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Sam gave Captain Suicide a droll stare. How did you die again? Oh wait, I know this. 'I can take 'em. I don't need to wait for reinforcements. I can do it myself.' How'd that work out for you again? — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Then his lips curved into a small droll smile. And that smile? It was lovely. Wonder — Kylie Scott

If we consider what happens in conversation, in reveries, in remorse, in times of passion, in surprises, in the instructions of dreams, wherein often we see ourselves in masquerade,
the droll disguises only magnifying and enhancing a real element, and forcing it on our distinct notice,
we shall catch many hints that will broaden and lighten into knowledge of the secret of nature. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The most interesting thing about artists is how they live — Marcel Duchamp

I have observed that in comedies the best actor plays the droll, while some scrub rogue is made the fine gentleman or hero. Thus it is in the farce of life. Wise men spend their time in mirth; it is only fools who are serious. — Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

Imagine all contradictions, all possible incompatibilities
you will find them in the government, in the law-courts, in the churches, in the public shows of this droll nation. — Voltaire

BECAUSE OF PIETY'S PENCHANT for taking itself too seriously, theology does well to nurture a modest, unguarded sense of comedy. Some droll sensibility is required to keep in due proportion the pompous pretensions of the study of divinity. I invite the kind of laughter that wells up not from cynicism about reflection on God but from the ironic contradictions accompanying such reflection. Theology is intrinsically funny. This comes from glimpsing the incongruity of humans thinking about God. I have often laughed at myself as these sentences went through their tortuous stages of formation. I invite you to look for the comic dimension of divinity that stalks every page. — Thomas C. Oden

His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, and the beard of his chin was as white as the snow. — Clement Clarke Moore

I read from Mark Twain's lips one or two of his good stories. He has his own way of thinking, saying and doing everything. I feel the twinkle of his eye in his handshake. Even while he utters his cynical wisdom in an indescribably droll voice, he makes you feel that his heart is a tender Iliad of human sympathy. — Helen Keller

The clocks had nothing to do with time but were merely instruments, the clicking and ticking of silver and gold and bronze and pinchbeck arrows, a droll and slapstick rhapsody of lies. — Tabitha King

When I was a young philosopher, I asked a senior colleague, Pat Suppes (then and now a famous philosopher of science and an astute student of human nature), what the secret of happiness was. Instead of giving me advice, he made a rather droll observation about what a lot of people who were happy with themselves seem to have done, namely:
1. Take a careful inventory of their shortcomings and flaws
2. Adopt a code of values that treats these things as virtues
3. Admire themselves for living up to it
Brutal people admire themselves for being manly; compulsive pedants admire themselves for their attention to detail; naturally selfish and mean people admire themselves for their dedication to helping the market reward talent and punish failure, and so on. — John R. Perry

That clever mind, that sharp tongue and droll wit. His love for Ella, manifested in sacrifice and secret smiles; his sense of honor and duty; his pride in the face of unceasing subjugation. His joy of nature, his respect for all things living, his skill with ... well, everything. — Rachel Haimowitz

There are no superstitions but those you invent — Jack Lasenby

And a gun was taken," I said. "That was yours?" She handed me the cup and saucer. "Yes. A pistol my husband had given me." "Thirty-eight caliber." "Yes. A Colt, I think. I'd never fired it, and it wasn't loaded. My husband bought it as a joke several years ago." "A joke?" She smiled and sipped at her drink. "We were having an argument once, I don't even remember now what about, and I got so angry I told him that if I had a gun I'd shoot him. The next day he gave me the gun." Very droll. The rich are different. — Walter Satterthwait

That's the role... you know the droll... you just learn how to draw a drone. — Deyth Banger

Between the optimist and the pessimist, the difference is droll. The optimist sees the doughnut; the pessimist the hole! — Oscar Wilde

through the transcript. Some colleagues, at least, found the whole exercise droll. Fisher Ames, a Federalist — Michael Waldman

It's no surprise that the droll and (seemingly) all-knowing wizard behind the Chicago Style Q&A puts it all together-entertainingly-for manuscript editors in this real-world guide to job success and survival. The surprise is how urgent it is for every author, client, and boss who works with editors to embrace Carol Fisher Saller's 'subversiveness'-or suffer the next outcome from hell. — Arthur Plotnik

Ren frowned as he surveyed the madness they were knee-deep in. "Why are you under such heavy fire?"
Nick gave him a droll stare. "Oh, I don't know. But we're really enjoying it. Fear has such a wonderfully romantic scent to it that they ought to turn it into cologne and deodorant. Eau de Ew. Let's all just take a minute, and bask in it. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Alexia seemed to recall hearing one matron complain that the Italians were very passionate in their support of balls. — Gail Carriger