Murphy always said he was incomparable at buffoonery; and I verily think, if he had had good eyes, and a form less inflexible, he would have made an admirable mimic.英文原著 · 《Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson》
CYRANO: Ay, and then?. Seek a protector, choose a patron out, And like the crawling ivy round a tree That licks the bark to gain the trunk's support, Climb high by creeping ruse instead of force? No, grammercy! I, like all the rest Dedicate verse to bankers?--play buffoon In cringing hope to see, at last, a smile Not disapproving, on a patron's lips? Grammercy, no! learn to swallow toads? --With frame aweary climbing stairs?--a skin Grown grimed and horny,--here, about the knees? And, acrobat-like, teach my back to bend?-- No, grammercy!英文原著 · 《Cyrano de Bergerac》
"There have been greater Poets than Voltaire; there was never any so well recompensed: and why? Because Taste (GOUT, inclination) sets no limits to its recompenses. 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." [ OEuvres de Voltaire, xxvii. 220 n.] Could there be a phenomenon more indisputably of bramble nature?英文原著 · 《History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 16》
The play ended. There was some buffoonery still to come, but we would not stay for that. We staggered, half-blind and dazzled, both in eyes and brain, out into the dark streets, John almost carrying me. Then we paused, and leaning against a post which was surmounted by one of the half-dozen oil lamps which illumined the town, tried to regain our mental equilibrium. John was the first to do it. Passing his hand over his brow he bared it to the fresh night-air, and drew a deep, hard breath. He was very pale, I saw. "John?"
He turned, and laid a hand on my shoulder.英文原著 · 《John Halifax》
Clemens says, "Tell him I am just as grateful to him as I can be." (It sounds as if she were grateful to you for heroically trampling the truth under foot in order to praise me but in reality it means that she is grateful to you for being bold enough to utter a truth which she fully believes all competent people know, but which none has heretofore been brave enough to utter.) You see, the thing that gravels her is that I am so persistently glorified as a mere buffoon, as if that entirely covered my case--which she denies with venom.英文原著 · 《Letters Vol. 2》