What part of speech is a kiss?—A conjunction.
What is the shape of a kiss?—A-lip-tickle.
Why is a kiss like a sermon?—Because it requires, at least, two heads and an application.
Why is a kiss like a rumor?—Because it goes from mouth to mouth.
When is a man like a spoon?—When he touches a lady’s lips without kissing them.
When are kisses sweetest?—When syrup-titiously obtained.
Why are two young ladies kissing each other an emblem of Christianity?—Because they are doing to each other as they would men should do unto them.
Kissing goes by favor.
If you can kiss the mistress, never kiss the maid.
Many kiss the child for the nurse’s sake.
She would rather kiss than spin.
Better kiss a knave than be troubled with him.
He that kisseth his wife in the market-place shall have enough to teach him.
To kiss a man’s wife, or wipe his knife, is but a thankless office.
Kisses are the messengers of love.
Kiss and be friends.
None kitheth like the lithping lath (lass).
There’s something in a kiss that never comes amiss.
Stolen kisses are sweet.
Kissing is the prologue to sin.
Kissing is lip-service.
As easy as kiss your hand.
Kisses are the interrogation-points in the literature of love.
A sweetmeat which satisfies the hunger of the heart.
Cherries kiss as they grow.
A kiss from my mother made me a painter.
Benjamin West.
I came to feel how far above all fancy, pride, and fickle maidenhood, all earthly pleasure, all imagined good, was the warm tremble of a devout kiss.
Keats.
It is delightful to kiss the eyelashes of the beloved—is it not? But never so delightful as when fresh tears are on them.
Landor.
The fragrant infancy of opening flowers flowed to my senses in that opening kiss.
Southern.
Kisses are like grains of gold or silver found upon the ground, of no value themselves, but precious as showing that a mine is near.
George Villiers.
The first lesson which the infant is taught is to kiss; it is at once the language of infancy and the currency of childhood. The little passionless face as it rests upon its mother’s bosom is moulded into smiles by a kiss, and thus by love’s fruit sweet echo is produced. Who shall tell the mystery, the deep love and earnestness, the quiet joy, the proud hope, of a mother’s kiss? and what brow or cheek of all that have gone forth into the wide, wide world, but wears this heavenly jewel, as imperishable as the glance of a diamond?
Kisses are like creation, because they are made out of nothing and are very good.
Sam Slick.
You may conquer with the sword, but you are conquered by a kiss.
Heinsius.
Oliver Wendell Holmes says a kiss is “the twenty-seventh letter of the alphabet,—the love-labial which it takes two to speak plainly.”
I put my lips to the panel of the door, as a kiss for my dear, and came quietly down again, thinking that one of these days I would confess to the visit.
Dickens.
I picture you to myself as my hand glides over the paper. I think I see you, as you look on these words, and envy them the gaze of those dark eyes. Press your lips to the paper. Do you feel the kiss that I leave there?
Bulwer-Lytton.
He, from his very birth, cut off from the social ties of blood,—no mother’s kiss to reward the toils, or gladden the sports, of childhood,—no father’s cheering word up the steep hill of man.
Bulwer-Lytton.
Many a man and woman has been incensed and worshiped, and has shown no more feeling than is to be expected from idols. There is yonder statue in St. Peter’s, of which the toe is worn away with kisses, and which sits, and will sit eternally, prim and cold.
Thackeray.
[1] The ancients supposed that honey contained a tenth part of nectar, and therefore the lips of Lydia were imbued with double the nectar bestowed on honey.
[2] Ulysses had been sent by Agamemnon to the offended Achilles to induce him to return, but was treated by the latter with disdain, hence the importunity of Briseis.
[3] “Os parvum decensque labia corallini coloris ad morsum aptissima.”
[4] “Teneris labellis molles morsiunculæ.”
[5] The temple of Jupiter Ammon and the tomb of Battus, founder of the city of Cyrene, were four hundred miles apart, the intervening space being a waste of sand.
[7] Tennyson.
[8] The Duke of Clarence to Lady E. Beauchamp.
[9] Ruprecht may be called the Father Nicholas, who comes on Christmas eve and plays all sorts of tricks.
[10] The pax is a piece of board having the image of Christ upon the cross on it, which the people used to kiss after the service was ended, that ceremony being considered the kiss of peace.
[11] The admirers of Robert Burns will remember the lines:
[12] An actual expression of a child.
[13] Francesca da Rimini.
[14] Mr. Longfellow translates the passage thus:
[15] Burns.
[16] Neck.
[17] “But I think my heart was e’en sairer when I saw that hellicat trooper, Tam Halliday, kissing Jenny Dennison afore my face. I wonder women can hae the impudence to do sic things; but they are a’ for the redcoats.”—Scott: Old Mortality.
[18] “The Merry Pranks of Robin Goodfellow,” from which this stanza is taken, though attributed to Ben Jonson, is not found among his works.
[19] Shakspeare, it will be observed, represents Hermione as a colored statue. Paulina will not allow it to be touched, because the paint is not yet dry.
[20] A kiss appears to have been an established incident in ancient English marriage ceremonies.
[21] That by the impression of my kiss forever remaining on thy hand, thou mightst think on those lips through which a thousand sighs will be breathed for thee.
[22] A kiss was anciently in England the established fee of a lady’s partner. The custom is still prevalent among some of the country-people.
[23] Thus Bassanio, in “The Merchant of Venice,” when he kisses Portia:
[24] Queen Mab.
[25] Probable allusion to the kissing comfits mentioned by Falstaff, “Merry Wives,” v. 5.
[26] The poet here, no doubt, copied from the mode of his own time, since kissing a lady in a public assembly was not then thought indecorous. In King Henry VIII., Act i., scene v., Lord Sands is represented as kissing Anne Boleyn, next whom he sat at supper.
[27] The handkerchief.
[28] In the serious treatment of this idea the following lines from Whittier’s “Angels of Buena Vista” are among the most beautiful:
[29] The readers of Byron’s “Don Juan” will remember the wish
[30] This epigram, though taken from the French, may be traced back to the Latin Anthology:
[31] There is a similar point in a Greek epigram of Strato:
[32] Mrs. Thomson, in her “Life of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough,” says:
“The proud Duke of Somerset married twice. His second duchess once tapped him familiarly on the shoulder with her fan; he turned round, and, with an indignant countenance, said, ‘My first duchess was a Percy, and she never took such a liberty.’”
[33] This riddle was originally published in the “Gentleman’s Magazine.” A correspondent furnished the following answer: