"Persiflage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and young Hume, eat a haunch of venison from Drummond Castle, and seemed happy. We had music and a little dancing, and enjoyed in others the buoyancy of spirit that we no longer possess ourselves. Yet I do not think the young people of this age so gay as we were. There is a turn for persiflage, a fear of ridicule among them, which stifles the honest emotions of gaiety and lightness of spirit; and people, when they give in the least to the expansion of their natural feelings, are always kept under by the fear of becoming ludicrous. To restrain ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... turning a concentrated light ... he turns the pivot with his finger ... he baffles the swiftest runners as he stands and easily overtakes and envelopes them. The time straying towards infidelity and confections and persiflage he withholds by his steady faith ... he spreads out his dishes ... he offers the sweet firmfibred meat that grows men and women. His brain is the ultimate brain. He is no arguer ... he is judgment. He judges not as the judge judges but as the sun falling around a helpless thing. As he sees the ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... look, and saw the fierce demand through the softness and persiflage. He gave it no answer, but, turning to her, kindled into the man whom she was so proud to show as her capture,—a man far off from Stephen Holmes. Brilliant she called him,—frank, winning, generous. She ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... always talking in the Row, everlastingly gossiping, bantering and sarcastically praising things, and going on in a style which was a curious commingling of earnest and persiflage. Col. Sellers liked this talk amazingly, though he was sometimes a little at sea in it—and perhaps that didn't lessen the relish of the ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... his cynicism and his slang. Now the one, travelling salesman of blighting corrosive laughter, and the other, brainless ambassador of Fashion, their mission to kill among us love and labour, the first by persiflage, the second by display,—they have brought to us, even here in our peaceful sunny corner, the two pests, the saddest in the world, the jest which insists on being funny at any cost, and the cry which insists on being the latest scream! [The BLACKBIRD is heard tentatively ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... Voltaire. It is simply incredible to me that human beings possessed of the same senses as ours could find satisfaction for their imagination in the sterile moralising, stilted sentiment, superficial wit, and tiresome persiflage of that queer generation. I suppose they didn't really. I suppose they used to go off on the sly, and read Rabelais and Villon. I suppose it was only the preposterous "social world" of those days who enjoyed nothing in literature except pseudo-classic attitudes and gestures; just as it ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... breath. The French welcomed us back, and we rested a moment under their hospitality. Our own French guns were carolling away; the arrives were coming in. It seemed to Henry and me that we were not so badly frightened as we knew we were. For we kept a running fire going of airy persiflage—which was like the noise of boys whistling through a graveyard. Henry said: "That German gunner is playing by ear! His time is bad, or else it's syncopated." Then to Major Murphy: "Nice sightly location that Hill 304; ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... refused to be heartened by this airy persiflage. "I'm all het up after my fight with the king," he quavered presently. "I wonder if there's any ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... drive madly through the streets conveying women, flashing with jewels and as beautiful as dreams, from opera and concert, and the little bijou supper rooms of the Cafe Tout le Temps are filled with laughing groups, while bon mots, persiflage and repartee fly upon the air—the ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... writer was no votary of the older school of high-flying chivalrous romance, with its tournaments, its crusaders, its valiant warriors, and distressed maidens. His youthful aversion for shams and conventionalities, his strong propensity toward burlesque and persiflage, his early life among cities and commonplace folk, seem to have obscured in some degree his appreciation of even such splendid compositions as Ivanhoe or The Talisman; or, at any rate, his sense of the ridiculous overpowered his admiration. ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... ordinarily, but when you try to be smart you're absolutely insufferable. You're mentally incapable of recognizing the line of demarcation between legitimate persiflage and objectionable familiarity. An ignoramus of your particular class ought to confine his repartee to unqualified affirmation or the negative monosyllable." Whereupon he pulled his hat more firmly upon his head, hunched his shoulders in disgust, remembered his ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... carriage, the women began a light, friendly chatter; smiles and laughter; little jests about Benedicks, about the servant question, about coming home late o' nights; antenuptial persiflage. There was little that was spontaneous; each jest was an effort; but it sufficed to relieve what ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... should have called there daily and have dined there weekly, and yet never have given the former object of his adoration the slightest idea that he cared a breath for her presence. According to etiquette, he should never have addressed her but in a vein of persiflage, and with a smile which indicated his perfect heartease and her bad taste. According to etiquette, he should have flirted with every woman in her company, rode with her in the Park, walked with her in the ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... He knew perfectly well that if a man has no ear for music he had better not try to sing. But the danger with such men is that they are apt to doubt if music itself be not a vain delusion. This danger Hawthorne escaped. There is none of the shallow persiflage of the sceptic in his tone, nor any affectation of cosmopolitan superiority. Mr. Edward Dicey, in his interesting reminiscences of Hawthorne, published in Macmillan's ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... little harmless freedoms of manner with Dick Kearney and O'Shea were now completely given up. No more was there between them that interchange of light persiflage which, presupposing some subject of common interest, is in itself ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... verse [75] is a further persiflage of the old song. Its reading, too, is changed. It is said there that age, with his stealing steps, as clawed the lover in his clutch [76] and shipped him into the land as if he ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... that—I frequently think of it," said Villiers, adding his mite to the persiflage all appeared determined to ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... and here, too, he learned success by failure.[C] The new conditions, social and political, that followed the Revolution of 1830, helped him also; for new liberties admitted, and the new bourgeois plutocracy invited, the good-humored persiflage in which he was an easy master. On the other hand, he was hardly touched by the accompanying Romantic movement in literature that was then convulsing the theatre-going public with "Hernani" and "Antony." He ...
— Bataille De Dames • Eugene Scribe and Ernest Legouve
... Singleton Letters, however, there are some little lapses of the same kind (worse, indeed, because these letters were signed) as the attack on Canning in the Plymley Letters. Sydney Smith exclaiming against "derision and persiflage, the great principle by which the world is now governed," is again edifying. But in truth Sydney never had the weakness (for I have known it called a weakness) of looking too carefully to see what the enemy's advocate is going to say. Take even the famous, the immortal apologue ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... by depreciating the ministers of this religion. Let us declare open war on them, let us provoke suspicions on their devotion, on their private conduct, and by ridicule and persiflage we shall be right in the consideration attached to the state and the ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein
... expansion in the demands of the unions since the early days of the Philadelphia cordwainers; yet these demands involve the same fundamental issues regarding hours, wages, and the closed shop. Most unions, when all persiflage is set aside, are primarily organized for business—the business of looking after their own interests. Their treasury is a war chest rather than an insurance fund. As a benevolent organization, the American union is far behind ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... dull at the ranch, if you had to ride twenty miles on a day like this to pick a fight with me," he observed, leisurely singling one leaf out of his book of papers. "Left your horse to bake in the sun, too, I suppose, while you practice the art of persiflage ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... read with pleasure—and then at the end are disgusted with ourselves for being pleased, and enraged at the writer for deluding us; for we thought there would be something beneath his graceful manners and airy persiflage, and lo, there ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... the hairy boy to the right of Whomsoever J. Opper, who afterwards became the father of a lad who grew up to be editor of the Persiflage column of the ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... lion. He had still a foot in either camp, for though he had the conviction that he was right, he was still fumbling for his words. The memoirs of Madame d'Epinay tell us how in 1754, at dinner at Mlle Quinault's, impotent to reply to the polite atheistical persiflage of the company, he broke out: 'Et moi, messieurs, je crois en Dieu. Je sors si vous dites un mot de plus.' That was not what he meant; neither was the First Discourse what he meant. He had still to find his language, and to find his language ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... just dealt the Dutchman what you might call idle persiflage until you fellows had been gone a few minutes, and then I held him out my dollar. 'What's that?' says he. 'That's a dollar,' says I, 'to pay for my dinner.' 'How about all those other fellows?' says he. 'I got nothing to do with them,' says I. 'They can pay for their own dinners,' ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... consciousness that he was all her own. The exigencies of etiquette prevented for more than an hour any nearer approach, but when Mr. Dunbar had rendered "Caesar's things" to social Caesar, and paid tribute of bows, smiles, compliments and persiflage into the coffer of custom, he made his way through the throng, to the spot where his betrothed stood resting ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... inspection of him. Nursemaids had done their worst on the subject of stepfathers; fairy tales had presented the pattern. He knew exactly what was going on in her mind, and—quite as earnestly beneath his persiflage as he had set himself to woo the widow—he set himself to win her daughter. It was a matter of moments only before he saw the color coming back into her square little face and the horror seeping out of her ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... "Notes" were freely bought by Border farmers under a rather laughable mistake; but surely it was no new thing for a Scotch reader to find a religious tract under a catching title. There were a few replies; one by Mr. Dyce, who defended the Anglican view with mild persiflage and the usual commonplaces. And there the matter ended, for the public. For Ruskin, it was the beginning of a train of thought which led him far. He gradually learnt that his error was not in asking too much, ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... General Kronau, who rode at his side, and he rubbed his nose. Kronau had been a favorite of Albrecht's... How would he act? In truth, the Marshal's thoughts were not altogether pleasant. Some of these men surrounding him, exchanging persiflage, might never witness another sunset. For, while the world would look upon this encounter as one looks upon a comedy, for some it would serve as tragedy. Often he lent his ear to the gay banter of the young American, and watched the careless smile on his face. What was he doing here? Why was he ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... governor rose and led the way to the drawing-room, where they rejoined the ladies and the conversation took on a different colour and weight, by which it lost all value for those who knew not the art of twittering persiflage and found less joy in a handkerchief flirtation than in the nation's onward march. Rolf and Quonab enjoyed it now about as much as Skookum had done ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Phebe than Mrs. Plowden, a more tender Celia than Miss Schletter, a more realistic Audrey than Miss Fulton, I have never seen. Rosalind suffered a good deal through the omission of the first act; we saw, I mean, more of the saucy boy than we did of the noble girl; and though the persiflage always told, the poetry was often lost; still Miss Calhoun gave much pleasure; and Lady Archibald Campbell's Orlando was a really remarkable performance. Too melancholy some seemed to think it. Yet is not Orlando lovesick? Too dreamy, I heard it said. Yet Orlando ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... Persiflage of this sort did not appear to be accomplishing anything. Hiram relieved his feelings by a smacking, round oath and stamped ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... persiflage and very manifest contempt of her, she sprang suddenly upon him, and caught at the lapels of ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... but he lives on the surface of everything! He is altogether shallow and blase. His good-nature is the fruit of want of feeling; between his gracefulness and his sneering persiflage ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... Hyde did not feel any desire to bring even her name into such a mocking, jeering, perfectly heartless conversation. He was content to laugh, and let the hour go past in such flim-flams of criticism and persiflage. He remembered when he had been one of the units in such a life, and he wondered if it were possible that he could ever drift back into it. For even as he sat there, with the memory of his wife and child in his heart, he felt the light charm of Lady Arabella's claim upon him, and all the fascination ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... and the bonds of government are by no means synonymous," said Dank, and felt rather proud of himself when his companions favoured him with a stare of amazement. The excellent lieutenant was not given to persiflage. He felt that for ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... was said of Maximus Grant; but Sunna was in a very merry mood, and Adam watched her, and listened to her in a philosophical way;—that is, he tried to make out amid all her persiflage and bantering talk what was her ruling motive and intent—a thing no one could have been sure of, unless they had heard her talking to herself—that mysterious confidence in which we all indulge, and in which we all tell ourselves the truth. Sunna was ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Goldsmith; "Eighteenth-Century Vignettes," and the like. But his particular ancestor among the Queen Anne wits was Matthew Prior, of whose metrical tales, epigrams, and vers de societe he has made a little book of selections, and whose gallantry, lightness, and tone of persiflage, just dashed with sentiment, he has reproduced with admirable spirit in ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... singular chance, next to the very same youth whose ribs he had crushed on the Elevated a few hours before. The young man was in more amiable mood. He grinned. "Don't you flap again and spill me coffee, Mr. Chicken," he said, with delicate persiflage. ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... your occupation, Mr. Bayham?" asks the Colonel, rather gloomily, for he had an idea that Bayham was adopting a strain of persiflage which the Indian gentleman by no means relished. Never saying aught but a kind word to any one, he was on fire at the notion that any should ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... interests, but secretly assisting one another, were, as Richard the 3rd calls it, a weak device of the enemy. I found myself greatly relieved, and sat down and wrote a letter to the Mayor and Corporation, which I may cite as a modele de vrai persiflage. I went and dined with Lord Ferrars and Lady Townshend;(101) she has received all her arrears, so we have now the pleasure of continuing our ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... then his manner changed. He growled a little and began swaying his head from side to side, and when I saw the green glint come into his eyes—the danger signal that all the carnivorae flash and all hunters heed—I knew the time was up for airy persiflage and that I was in for a 'scambling and unquiet time' unless I promptly took up the quarrel. It was an easy shot, through the throat to the base of the skull, and the bullet smashed ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... PERSIFLAGE, a French term for a light, quizzing mockery, or scoffing, specially on serious subjects, out of a cool, callous contempt ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... chief engineer of the G. E. and W., when they picked him up at the hotel, proved to be an entire human being with red whiskers and not a care in the world. Bobby was enjoying a lot of preliminary persiflage when Shepherd incidentally mentioned ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... last years he even became cynical and rugged and vulgar, in which we may of course trace the influence of his tavern associates. It is to his credit that he did not sink into Byronic misanthropy and bitter self-lacerating scorn, or even into Heine's irreverence and persiflage. ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... followed by a toro, or small boy, he had bought from some of the savage tribes to carry his blanket and cooking pot for him. To the friends who darted out to the line of march, he was gracious, but he held his head high, and had no time for mere persiflage. ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... from terrace to terrace, scarcely pausing to answer the persiflage with which her companion sought to detain her; she was overwrought and unhappy, in spite of herself; she had no faith in the vision of Ecciva; she felt hurt and outraged by her coldness, and she was hastening back for one look in the true and noble face of the Lady of the Bernardini, who mothered ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... finds Socialism ever so much more Utopian since William Morris went into it. Can you imagine a true-born Briton following the flag of Swinburne, or throwing up a barricade with George Meredith? To the last Beaconsfield was suspected of persiflage because he wrote novels and was witty. America makes her authors ministers and envoys, but England insists that brains are a disqualification for practical life. "Authors are so unpractical: we don't want them to act—we only want ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... all this gaiety I could not help stealing many a furtive glance towards Callimena. I addressed her again and again, and she answered me politely but so briefly as to give me no opportunity of displaying my powers in the way of persiflage. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt |
