"Corset" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... skeleton or the fanged snout-bones of a dog. There was a constant rustling of rats that played among the rib cages, sat atop crania, scuttled behind shin-bones. Brett picked his way, stepping over imitation pearl necklaces, zircon rings, plastic buttons, hearing aids, lipsticks, compacts, corset stays, prosthetic devices, rubber heels, wrist watches, lapel watches, pocket watches with corroded ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... origin of the corset is lost in remote antiquity. The figures of the early Egyptian women show clearly an artificial shape of the waist produced by some style of corset. A similar style of dress must also have prevailed among the ancient Jewish maidens; for Isaiah, in ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... continual rambles along the beach in her girlish days, of exquisite purity. Her education, I grieve to say, had been most shamefully neglected; her mother, though a most exemplary woman, both as a Christian and a member of society, had never tied her up in a fashionable corset to improve her figure, nor sent her to a fashionable boarding school to improve her mind; the consequence was that she knew nothing of the piano,—Virgil seems to have had the gift of prophecy with regard to ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... resumed her ordinary calico gown, but such was the impression left upon Renshaw's fancy that she seemed to wear it with a new grace. At any other time he might have recognized the change as due to a new corset, which strict veracity compels me to record Rosey had adopted for the first time that morning. Howbeit, her slight coquetry seemed to have passed, for she closed the open trunk with a return of her old listless air, and sitting on it rested her elbows on her ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... never get here. When I come to dress I found the children had cut up my corset into a harness for the dog and Jessup's said they hadn't anybody to send up with a new one and John said he couldn't go because his foot's bad, him having stepped on the rake yesterday afternoon and not wanting to ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... words, the corset must be nothing but a belt, but with as much hip length as the wearer finds convenient ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... continuity from one boundary to another. Before long, persons arriving at the mayor's office released him from all embarrassment. They were able to convert the proces-verbal into a mere certificate of death, by recognizing the body as that of the Demoiselle Ida Gruget, corset-maker, living rue de la Corderie-du-Temple, number 14. The judiciary police of Paris arrived, and the mother, bearing her daughter's last letter. Amid the mother's moans, a doctor certified to death by asphyxia, through the injection ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... stops. She is also provided with a caudal appendage that ends in a patent fly-brush. This she uses to wrap around the neck of the milkmaid to prevent her getting away before she has a chance to kick her health corset off ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... contrived to get along, thanks to a hundred francs which her father-in-law, touched by her goodness, sent to her once a month. Nevertheless, foreseeing that that resource might fail her, the poor young woman had taken up the hard and toilsome work of corset-making in the service of a celebrated dressmaker. This precaution proved a wise one. The father died, and his property was obtained by the son (the old monarchical laws of entail being then overthrown) and ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... terrible corset you have on, which compresses the center of the body, making you look a great deal fatter than you really are, must be taken off, and you must have a corset which any dress maker can fit to you—a corset for ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... no ordinary woman of Western make. She had been imported from the East by her husband three years before. She had been 'forelady in a corset factory,' when matrimony had enticed her away, and the thought that walked beside her as she baked, and washed, and fed the calves, was that some day she would go 'back East.' And this in spite of the fact that for those parts she ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... working loose, German sagas, not Greek; no thank you, hair ribbons, openwork stockings, and if possible a gold pin like the one Hella got for a birthday present. But Father says that our Christ Child would find that rather too expensive. Inspee wants a corset. But I don't think she'll get one because it's unhealthy. The tablecloth for Father is finished and is being trimmed, but Mother's book cover is not quite ready yet. I'm giving Dora a little manicure case. Oh, ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... appearance on the platter. She saw that Al and her father were served. Then she went back to the kitchen, and the thud of her iron was heard as she deftly fluted the ruffles of the crepe blouse. Floss appeared when the meal was half eaten, her hair shiningly coiffed, the pink ribbons of her corset cover showing under her thin kimono. She poured herself a cup of tea and drank it in little quick, nervous gulps. She looked deliriously young, and fragile and appealing, her delicate slenderness revealed by the flimsy garment she wore. Excitement and anticipation lent a glow to her eyes, ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... seas, for other lands. The walled garden full of shadows blazed with colour as if the flowers were giving up the light absorbed during the day. The amazing old woman became very explicit. She suggested to the girl a corset and a petticoat with a cynical unreserve which humiliated me. Was I of no more account than a wooden dummy? ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... Mr. Bartley took care of that. He would never let me wear a corset, and for years he made me do calisthenics under ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... it seemed a hard problem to solve. I fear you will wonder at what I am sending; but, knowing that you are nearly thirteen years old and must be growing very fast, I have decided to send you a corset. I hope you will like and appreciate it enough to ...
— The value of a praying mother • Isabel C. Byrum
... at herself with entire satisfaction. Lucy had beautiful neck and arms, unexpectedly plump for a girl so apparently slender. Her skin was full of rosy color, too. She gazed at the superb curve of her shoulders rising above the dainty lace of her corset-cover, and smiled undisguisedly. ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... "Corset, perhaps," he suggested. "And the apology? A verbal one will suffice on this occasion, accompanied by the sum of one shilling ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... to have flexible magnets so that they may be bent into different shapes. These may be made from watch or clock springs, as such steel, called spring steel, will straighten out again as soon as the pressure is removed from it. Corset steels, dress steels, hack-saw blades, etc., make ...
— How Two Boys Made Their Own Electrical Apparatus • Thomas M. (Thomas Matthew) St. John
... reaching down into her collar and drawing up a loop of worn ribbon. "Straight front corset," she observed, flushing, "makes a nice pocket for almost everything." She drew up a chamois-skin bag, of an unprepossessing mouse colour, and emptied out a roll of bills. "Two hundred and twelve dollars," she said, ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... willowy girls are afraid of nothing so much as growing stout; and if a young lady begins to round into proportions like the women in Titian's and Giorgione's pictures, she is distressed above measure, and begins to make secret inquiries into reducing diet, and to cling desperately to the strongest corset-lacing as her only hope. It would require one to be better educated than most of our girls are, to be willing to look like the Sistine Madonna or ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... small opening for excretions. Buffon and Brown mention infibulation in Abyssinia, the parts being separated by a bistoury at the time of marriage. In Circassia the women were protected by a copper girdle or a corset of hide and skin which, according to custom, only the husband could undo. Peney speaks of infibulation for the preservation of chastity, as observed by him in the Soudan. Among the Nubians this operation ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... was eager to get away, for he feared his mother's plaint for money. He knew nothing of the three five-hundred-dollar bills now sewed up in the buxom Leah's corset. ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... have blamed you: I'd have done the same only for Margaret. Too much straightlacedness narrows a man's mind. Talking of that, what about those hygienic corset advertisements that Vines & Jackson want us to put in the window? I told Vines they werent decent and we couldnt shew them in our shop. I was pretty high with him. But what am I to say to him now if he comes and throws ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... Correctness korekteco. Correspond korespondi. Correspondence korespondado. Corridor koridoro. Corrode mordeti. Corrupt putrigi. Corrupt (bribe) subacxeti. Corrupt (vicious) malvirta. Corruption putro. Corsage korsajxo. Corsair korsaro. Corse malvivulo. Corset korseto. Cortege sekvantaro. Cossack Kozako. Cosmopolite kosmopolita. Cosmography kosmografio. Cost kosto. Costiveness mallakso. Costly multekosta. Costume kostumo. Cosy komforta. Cot liteto. Cottage dometo. Cotton (raw) kotono. Cotton (manufactured) ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... is also an opportune time to demonstrate to what extent serious results may follow mistakes in dressing. The habit of permitting growing girls to constrict the waist, to bind and pull the abdomen by too tight garters, or too tight corset, is wrong, and no mother should permit it. In another part of the book, this matter is taken up more fully, but if it is explained to the girl while she is considering the subject of menstruation, she may more quickly and more fully ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... the preceding. About 1820 was a corset-fitter at No. 14 rue de la Corderie-du-Temple, Paris; employed by Mme. Meynardie. She was also the mistress of Gatien Bourignard. Passionately jealous, she rashly made a scene in the home of Jules Desmarets, her lover's son-in-law. Then she drowned herself, in a fit of despair, and was buried ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... mademoiselle's shrieks on the landing, a maid ran to a doctor's office near by but did not find him; four other women employed in the house assisted mademoiselle to lift Germinie up and carry her to the bed in her mistress's room, on which they laid her after cutting her corset lacings. ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... Little they care if their husbands see the puffs, the hairpins, the artful props which supported the elegant edifices of the hair, and the garlands or the jewels that adorned it. No more mysteries! all is over for the husband; no more painting or decoration for him. The corset—half the time it is a corset of a reparative kind—lies where it is thrown, if the maid is too sleepy to take it away with her. The whalebone bustle, the oiled-silk protections round the sleeves, the pads, the hair bought from a coiffeur, all the false ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... given in her honour at Rome by the banker Tortonia, the Princess shocked even the least prudish by the abandon of her dancing and the tenuity of her costume, which, we are told, consisted of "a single embroidered garment, fastened beneath the bosom, without the shadow of a corset and without sleeves." And at Naples, where King Joachim Murat gave her a regal reception, with a sequel of fetes and gala-performances in honour of the wife of the Regent of England, she attended a rout, at the Teatro San Carlo, so lightly attired "that many who saw her at ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... low, heavily laden lumber wagon, drawn by straining horses, creaked down the street. They concentrated their fire upon the driver by tacit consent, for each of the marksmen had had an aversion to causing runaways drilled into him by the hair brush or corset ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... pupils each year, she is the greatest since Carrienta. But I must have first right to her. You hear, first right! I will teach her free of charge. Leave your name and address with my secretary as you go out. Send her Monday at four. Loose clothing. Not even corset waists. Good afternoon. Good-by—Zoe"—placing his hands on her curls as if ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... in the sun and had started to run and had fallen over some stumps. Instantly they saw that she had been prostrated by the heat, and having recently studied "First aid to the injured" they proceeded to remove her blouse and open her corset, when lo! there upon a silver chain around her neck was not only Ethel Hollister's ring but another belonging to Honora Casey. She had missed it a few days after Ethel had lost hers, but she wisely refrained from ...
— Ethel Hollister's Second Summer as a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... Chiriquian, their affinities being rather with the pottery of Costa Rica and Nicaragua. One remarkable piece, of which a sketch is given in Fig. 50, c, is of large size and is shaped somewhat like an hour glass, and on account of its peculiar form and markings may be said to resemble a corset. The upper end is somewhat the smaller, and the septum, which forms the bottom of the vessel, is placed about an inch above the base of the foot. The interior surface is smoothly polished and painted a dark dull red. The exterior is uncolored and neatly fluted. The ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... broken near the center by a high apartment building, and another still higher rose like a cliff just back of the house in which Roger lived. Still others, and many factory lofts, reared shadowy bulks on every hand. From the top of one an enormous sign, a corset pictured forth in lights, flashed out at regular intervals; and from farther off, high up in the misty haze of the night, could be seen the gleaming pinnacle where hour by hour that great bell slowly boomed the time away. Yes, here the ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... would make him remain seated near her by the fire, until twelve o'clock at night, singing soft refrains, and at every opportunity showed her fair shoulders, and the white temptations of which her corset was full, and casting upon him a thousand piercing glances, all without showing in her face the thoughts that ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac |
