"Pique" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in it. The phrase "I hate" does not suit you at all; and a public confession "I am a sinner, a sinner, a sinner," is such pride that it made me feel uncomfortable. When the pope took the title "holiness," the head of the Eastern church, in pique, called himself "The servant of God's servants." So you publicly expatiate on your sinfulness from pique of Solovyov, who has the impudence to call himself orthodox. But does a word like orthodoxy, Judaism, or Catholicism ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... with respect to the election of a burgess for Westminster were attended with some extraordinary circumstances, which we shall now record for the edification of those who pique themselves on the privileges of a British subject. We have already observed, that a majority appearing on the poll for lord Trentham, the adherents of the other candidate, sir George Vandeput, demanded a scrutiny, which was granted by the high bailiff of Westminster, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... I scarcely saw him eat a hearty meal during his whole stay in the country. Both at Parker's Hotel in Boston, and at the Westminster in New York, everything was arranged by the proprietors for his comfort and happiness, and tempting dishes to pique his invalid appetite were sent up at different hours of the day, with the hope that he might be induced to try unwonted things and get up again the habit of eating more; but the influenza, that seized him with such masterful powder, held the strong man down ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... down at Crompton—gave a 'piece of your mind' to my father, which, it seems, he took as a sample of the whole of it. There, don't be angry: the provocation, it must be allowed, was in your case greater than mine; but then you pique yourself on your self-control! However, this Fane did hate me, and told the chaplain of his suspicions; the good parson was my friend, however, and all might have gone well, but for this oaf—this idiot ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... high. Although I try with all my might, I never seem to strike it right. Now I admit it seems to me They show great inconsistency. But they imply I am to blame; Of course that makes my anger flame, And in a fiery fit of pique I stay at ninety for a week. Or sometimes in a dull despair, I give them just a frigid stare; And as upon their taunts I think My spirits down to zero sink. Mine is indeed a hopeless case; To strive ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... Marguerite, all clad in fur, lace, and velvet to astonish the inhabitants, who instead of being impressed, so outshone the visitors, by their own and their wives' magnificence of apparel, that Marguerite was reported to have left the banquet hall in pique. The belfry quite dominated the square at the eastern angle, where were the houses ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... piece of news swept away the feeble barrier Genevra would have erected in her pique. Eagerly she joined in questioning the Persian girl, but Neenah would only reply that Selim was waiting for the sahib. The Princess was immeasurably consoled to find that the body-servant had destroyed the fuses and that they were in no immediate ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... infected with the plaguy prejudices of Whiggism when he began the work.' Ib. p. 144. In 1770 he wrote:—'I either soften or expunge many villainous, seditious Whig strokes which had crept into it.' Ib. p. 434. This growing hatred of Whiggism was, perhaps, due to pique. John Home, in his notes of Hume's talk in the last weeks of his life, says: 'He recurred to a subject not unfrequent with him—that is, the design to ruin him as an author, by the people that were ministers at the first publication of his History, and called themselves Whigs.' Ib. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... observed Noble, who in return observed her not at all, being but semi-conscious. Looked upon thoughtfully, it is a coincidence that we breathe; certainly it is a mighty coincidence that we speak to one another and comprehend; for these are true marvels. But what petty interlacings of human action so pique our sense of the theatrical that we call them coincidences and are astonished! That Julia should arrive during Noble's long process of buying a ticket to go to her was stranger than that she stopped to look at him, though still ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... are still the same. You pique yourself on paying your borrowings. Had it been a debt of honour indeed, I should not have been surprised: for those are debts that must be discharged. Otherwise, it would introduce ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... an appeal to those cultivated persons who will read it "to overrule the dicta of judges who would sacrifice truth and justice to professional rule, or personal pique, pride, or prejudice"; meaning, the great mass of those who have studied the subject. But how? Suppose the "cultivated persons" were to side with the author, would those who have conclusions to draw and applications ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... matter should be pressed upon the attention of Congress during its present session. In 1870 an admirable law was passed by the House of Representatives under the skilful and intelligent leadership of Hon. James A. Garfield, but it failed in the Senate because of the apathy of some and the personal pique of others. It seems incredible that in that dignified body so little attention was paid to this vast subject. Again and again its consideration was postponed because a sufficient attendance could not be secured to act upon the proposed law, which at last fell to the ground, a victim ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... in a matter of this nature," put in Bulstrode, with a little pique, "Mr. Follock has every reason to be contented. Had I known, however, that the customs of New York allowed a lady who is present to be toasted, that gentleman would not have had the merit of being the ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... frank, friendly, manly in private life, was seized with the dotage of age and the fury of a woman, the instant politics were concerned—who reserved all his candour and comprehensiveness of view for history, and vented his littleness, pique, resentment, bigotry, and intolerance on his contemporaries—who took the wrong side, and defended it by unfair means—who, the moment his own interest or the prejudices of others interfered, seemed to forget all that was due to the pride of intellect, to the sense of manhood—who, praised, admired ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... added the baron, laughing, for he saw that his daughter spoke in sudden pique, rather than from her excellent heart. Adelheid, whose good sense, and quick recollections, instantly showed her the weakness of this little display of female feeling, laughed faintly in her turn, though she ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... a moment's pause, "I think I have the key to this mystery. She loves this handsome Rex, that is evident; perhaps they have had a lovers' quarrel, and she has married this one on the spur of the moment through pique. Oh, the pretty little dear!" sighed Ruth. "I hope she will never ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... neglect, all his defalcations, the cruelty of his conduct to her, the evidence of his never intending to marry her, the selfishness which makes him indifferent to her troubles, and unwilling to help her. Work on pride, on pique, on jealousy, on the love of comfort and luxury, and the horror of poverty and privation, which are always powerful in the minds of women like Madame Durski. Don't talk much to her at first about Douglas Dale, ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... and breathed short, twisting his hands. It was part of his nature to insist that all the world should believe in the concord of his people. He had walked there to talk with a fair woman. He had imagined that she would pique him ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... upon the vast frailty of human nature, and considering the power of the reviewer to exercise petty personal pique, I think there is little dishonesty of this nature in reviews. The prejudice is the other way round, in "log rolling," as it is called, among little cliques of friends. Though I have known more than one case more or less like that ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... and would refer all to duty merely, and to the worth that a man can and must give himself in his own eyes by the consciousness of not having transgressed it, since whatever runs up into empty wishes and longings after inaccessible perfection produces mere heroes of romance, who, while they pique themselves on their feeling for transcendent greatness, release themselves in return from the observance of common and every-day obligations, which then seem to them petty and ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... many other matters which words could but indifferently say, and it was one of her favourite ways of turning aside a question to which she did not think fit to give any reply. And Bice swallowed her pique and asked no more. The lamps were all shaded like the windows in this bower of beauty. There was scarcely a corner that was not draped with some softly-falling, richly-tinted tissue. A delicate perfume breathed through this ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... elephantine nature—not in his insensitive hide nor in his clumsy foot, but in the way he will lift his foot if a child lies in his way, and in his sensitive trunk and still more sensitive mind and capability of pique on points of honor. Hence it will follow that one of the probable signs of high breeding in men generally, will be their kindness and mercifulness, these always indicating more or less firmness of make in ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... was no sudden wave of hostility or pique, but a sentiment which had for years existed in the minds of both nations—a sentiment of mutual suspicion. The Englishman thought Germany was prepared to dispute with him the maritime supremacy of Great Britain, the German that England intended to attack Germany before Germany could ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... could have had any motive in leaving out Weatherbee? Why had she told the story at all? She was a woman of great self-control, but also she had depths of pride. Had she, in the high tide of her anger or pique, taken this means to retaliate for the disappointment he had ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... that if they are compared with those in "Lavengro" "the illusion in Borrow's narrative is disturbed by the uncolloquial vocabulary of the speakers." For Borrow's dialogues do produce an effect of some kind of life; those of Hindes Groome instruct us or pique our curiosity, but unless we know Gypsies, they ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... gravely resigned the empty title of General, which only made confusion worse confounded, and rode away to act as colonel of his own Lincoln regiment, pitying his master's perplexity, and resolved that no private pique should hinder him from doing his duty. His regiment was of foot soldiers, and was just opposite to the standard of ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... your veins is poured Heroic blood full fit to boast; For annals of the scoring-board Have made our name a cricket Toast. If now in pride or pique you choose To make this scandalous default, How many bygone Cricket Blues Will issue, raging, ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... Love, you did give all I asked: it must be understood that his wife has replied with pique, to what he said in the ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... first were friends; But when a pique began, The dog, to gain some private ends, Went mad, and bit ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... say Some sorts of love breed jealousy. And yet, I would I had not wagered; it implies Doubt. If I doubted? Pshaw! I'll walk awhile And let the cool air fan me. 'Twas not wise. 'Tis only Folly with its cap and bells Can jest with sad things. She seemed earnest, too. What if, to pique me, she should overstep The pale of modesty, and give bold eyes (I could not bear that, nay, not even that!) To Marc or Claudian? Why, such things have been And no sin dreamed of. I will watch her close. There, now, I ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... his thoughts worked swiftly. There would be a certain cruelty, to his mind, in forcing Arlt to appear again before the audience which had just cut him so mercilessly. On the other hand, it would be the part of childish pique for him to refuse to show himself. Nevertheless, he needed Arlt's support. He disliked to play his own accompaniments, and he felt that, in doing so, he risked possible disaster. The hesitation lasted only for a ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... Greenriver. As the car stopped in front of the door Toni cast a rather wistful look at the jasmine-covered old house she had learned to love; and for a moment she felt as though she saw herself as those other women had seen her—the ignorant, frivolous, common little person whom Owen had married out of pique. ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... is always more or less anxious to know if he has picked up every scrap of his inheritance, if he has not overlooked a credit, or a trunk of old clothes. The Treasury knows that. A letter addressed to the late Rogron at Provins was certain to pique the curiosity of Rogron, Jr., or Mademoiselle Rogron, the heirs in Paris. Out of that human interest the Treasury was able ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... sentiment loses its hold and a woman comes to know that if she cares to try hard enough she can love any man who will be thoughtful and gentle, and whose habits of life are not hopelessly at war with her own. But that kind of love doesn't breed love. Your vanity would pique itself for a little while, and then you would know the curse of unsought love and murder me in your heart a thousand times a day. No, David, I have read you to little purpose if these are the things you will ask of the woman who takes your ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... the 1st of January, ran off to the southward, and cruised for some weeks in the West Indies. Here she captured the British man-of-war schooner "Pictou," fourteen guns, and several merchant-vessels. She also fell in with the British thirty-six-gun frigate "Pique," which fled, and escaped pursuit by cutting through a narrow channel during a dark and squally night. The "Constitution" then returned to the coast of the United States, and narrowly escaped falling into the clutches of two British frigates. ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... France. No sooner does any grandee die, than she puts on mourning. Ah well! if she is such a great lady, why did she condescend to become a catin? She ought to expire with shame: for myself, it is my profession; I don't pique myself on anything else. The King keeps me; I am at present his solely. I have brought him a son, whom I intend he shall acknowledge, and I am assured that he will, for he loves me quite as well as he does his Portsmouth.' This creature takes the top of the walk, and embarrasses ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... girls had shown their pique at this treatment in a variety of small ways. Peachy and Clara made long detours around the island in the effort not to pass near the camp. Chiquita and Lulu flew overhead, but only in order to throw pebbles and sand down on the men while they ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... occurrences still recent, it would be impossible, of course, to submit it to the public eye, without the omission of some portion of its contents, and unluckily, too, of that very portion which, from its reference to the secret pursuits and feelings of the writer, would the most livelily pique and gratify the curiosity of the reader. Enough, however, will, I trust, still remain, even after all this necessary winnowing, to enlarge still further the view we have here opened into the interior of the poet's life and habits, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... while. Then came the verdict, delivered from rolling clouds: 'If you were only a mass of blathering vanity, Dick, I wouldn't mind,—I'd let you go to the deuce on your own mahl-stick; but when I consider what you are to me, and when I find that to vanity you add the twopenny-halfpenny pique of a twelve-year-old girl, then I bestir ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... for? What had he come out to do?" They were awkward questions. He tried several answers and was driven from one to another till he was bound to admit that he was out there that night partly out of pique, and partly out of pride; and that his object (next to earning the pleasure of thinking himself a better man than his neighbours) was, if so be, to catch a poacher. "To catch a poacher? What business had he to be catching poachers? If all poachers were to be caught, he would have ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... pique quarantine police critique unique machine routine ravine regime intrigue caprice suite valise Bastile magazine guillotine ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins
... trouble yourself,", cried Lady Juliana, in extreme pique. "I believe I can get this done without your obliging interference; but I don't know whether I ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... into the humours of a Court; to devote his brilliant imagination and affluence of invention either to devising a pageant which should throw all others into the shade, or a compromise which should get great persons out of some difficulty of temper or pique. ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... have seventy-two quarterings, and not a farthing; it is now in your power to be wife to the greatest lord in South America, who has very beautiful moustachios. Is it for you to pique yourself upon inviolable fidelity? You have been ravished by Bulgarians; a Jew and an Inquisitor have enjoyed your favours. Misfortune gives sufficient excuse. I own, that if I were in your place, I should have no scruple in marrying the Governor and ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... altogether unnoticed by the most casual attendant, sentinel, or lord-in-waiting, and the very fact that special commands had been issued to guard all the doors of entrance to the Royal apartments on either hand, during her visit, only served to pique and inflame the ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... be caressed by the perfumed hands of the beautiful Onoto, who had heard her this evening for the first time and had thrown herself with enthusiasm into her arms after the last number. Onoto was an artist too, and the pique she felt at first over Annouchka's success could not last after the emotion aroused by the evening prayer before the hut. "Come to supper," Annouchka ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... Caroline Merton—shrewd, worldly, and ambitious—he found the sort of plaything that he desired. They were thrown much together; but to Vargrave, at least, there appeared no danger in the intercourse; and perhaps his chief object was to pique Evelyn, as well as to gratify ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book I • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... and in 1897 The Ladies' Home Journal began one of the most popular series it ever published. It was called "Great Personal Events," and the picturesque titles explained them. He first pictured the enthusiastic evening "When Jenny Lind Sang in Castle Garden," and, as Bok added to pique curiosity, "when people paid $20 to sit in rowboats ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... a gradual change to lighter mourning may be made by discarding the widow's cap and shortening the veil. Dull silks are used in place of crape, according to taste. In warm weather lighter materials can be worn—as, pique, ...
— The Book of Good Manners • W. C. Green
... holding her the while with a grasp so tight that it gave her pain. When she wrung herself from him, she shook her little hand with a rage that quivered through every nerve, and had more of hate than of romping folly or momentary pique ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... or the blowing up of powder mills, went away exceedingly scandalized, and said, "I protest, they are such an impious set of people, that I believe if the last trumpet was to sound, they would bet puppet-show against Judgment." If we get any nearer still to the torrid zone, I shall pique myself on sending you a present of cedrati and orange-flower water: I am already planning a ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... a sense of pique which I did not trouble to conceal, and walked to the other end of the raft. I turned my back upon the girl and stood looking out upon the leaden waters of the Caribbean Sea. The ocean was now calm. ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... on lines (as to the Cantilenae) which I had myself anticipated, and partly on the question of the composition of the chansons by this or that person or class, in this or that place, at that or the other time. But I had felt no "pique" whatever in the matter, and these latter points fall entirely outside my own conception of the chansons. I look at them simply as pieces of accomplished literature, no matter how, where, in what circumstances, or even exactly when, they became so. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... were tainted with the perverse irony, which, at the beginning of their acquaintance, had made his manner so repellent. But now, Maurice was not, at once, frightened away by it; he could not believe Heinrich's pique was serious, and gave himself trouble to win his friend back. He chid, laughed, rallied, was earnest and apologetic, and all this without being ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... private life, which are unquestionably conspicuous. I am conscious of having often spoken of him with asperity, and it is some satisfaction to my conscience to do him this justice. When the greatest (I will not say the best) men are often influenced by pique or passion, by a hundred petty feelings which their philosophy cannot silence or their temperament obeys, it is no wonder that we poor wretches who are cast in less perfect moulds should be still more liable to these pernicious influences; and it is only by keeping an habitual watch over ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... hat, rolled up her sleeves, and began on vigorous ablutions. She had laughed, yes, and heartily, but in her complicated many-roomed heart a lively pique rubbed shoulders with her mirth, and her merriment was tinctured with a liberal amount of the traditional feminine horrified disgust at having been uncomely, at having unconsciously been subjected to an indignity. She was determined that no slightest stain should ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... engine at work to make things up again, supposing Emily to have determined from pique, not from the real feelings of her heart: he is frighted to death lest I should counterwork him, and so jealous of my advising her to continue a conduct he so much disapproves, that he won't leave us a moment together; he even observes ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... happy moments—or, perhaps, two soul-sides, one to face the world with, one to show his manuscripts when he's writing. You hint a fault, and hesitate dislike. That, indeed, is only natural, on the part of an old friend. But you pique my interest. What is the trouble with him? ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... excursions, with his friend A——-, in Ireland, and his friend B——-, in Germany. The rest of the party were all cheerful and good-humoured. Mr. Ellsworth was quite devoted to Elinor, as usual, of late. Mary Van Alstyne amused herself with looking on at Mrs. Creighton's efforts to charm Harry, pique Mr. Stryker, and flatter Mr. Wyllys into admiring her; nor did she disdain to throw away several arch smiles on Mr. Hopkins. "She seems successful in all her attempts," thought Mary. Harry was quite attentive to her; and it was evident that Mr. Stryker's admiration ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... for a few moments, in a way I felt might pique his curiosity, if it did not gain ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... be. Murray says it was in the beautiful Hall of the Ambassadors that Don Fadrique was killed, but the other manuals are not so specific. Wherever it was, there is a blood-stain in the pavement which our Granadan guide failed to show us, possibly from a patriotic pique that there are no blood-stains in the Alhambra with personal associations. I cannot say that much is to be made of the vaulted tunnel where poor Maria de Padilla used to bathe, probably not much comforted by the courtiers ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... injurious effects of the proceedings of Velasquez and the bishop, which had prevented him from making a much larger contribution. He complained also against the contador, Rodrigo de Albornos, who had aspersed him from private pique, because he had refused to give him in marriage the daughter of the prince of Tezcuco; and that he understood Albornos corresponded in cyphers with the bishop of Burgos. Cortes had not yet learnt that the bishop was removed from the management of the affairs of the Indies. By the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... of pique, it was true, but life with him had never seemed intolerable until he had shown her that ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... we could not notice, his words began to thrill us like potent oratory. We felt all that ecstasy of buoyant and auspicious rebellion which animated Hotspur the night he could have plucked bright honor from the pale-faced moon. At Jim's final question, Cornish, forgetting his pique, sprang to the map, swept his finger along the line Elkins had described, followed the main ribs of Pendleton's great gridiron, on which the fat of half a dozen states lay frying, on to terminals on lakes and rivers; and as he turned his black eyes upon us, we knew from ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... his mind, they began to impart to his manner a tinge of gallantry, the beginning of a departure from his old fraternal and affectionate ways. He was too well-bred to show pique openly, or to reveal a sense of injury during the first hours of reunion, but he already felt absolved from being very attentive to a girl who not only had proved so conclusively that she could manage admirably for herself, ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... not at all," said Lucy, with a little air of pique. "I am pleased, but that, of course, is no reason why you should be pleased. There is no girl in the world I love so well as ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... notably displayed several years later, when a lady incited him to quarrel with one of his best friends on account of a groundless pique of hers. He went to Washington for the purpose of challenging the gentleman, and it was only after ample explanation had been made, showing that his friend had behaved with entire honor, that Pierce and Cilley, who were ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... expedients de die in diem. Indeed, what principles of government can they have, who in the space of a month recanted a life of political opinions, and now dare to threaten this and that innovation at the huzza of a mob, or in pique at a parliamentary defeat? ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... Captain Dujardin, a gallant young officer, well-born, and his own master, had courted her with her parents' consent; and, even when the baron began to look coldly on the soldier of the Republic, young Dujardin, though too proud to encounter the baron's irony and looks of scorn, would not yield love to pique. He came no more to the chateau, but he would wait hours and hours on the path to the little oratory in the park, on the bare chance of a passing word or even a kind look from Josephine. So much devotion ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... said Elmore, with the pique of a man who does not care to be quite trampled under foot. "I don't see that the theory ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... Rapita is the first example of heroico-comic poetry. Tassoni claims in print the honor of inventing this new species, and tells his friends that 'though he will not pique himself on being a poet, still he sets some store on having discovered a new kind of poem and occupied a vacant seat.' The seat—and it was no Siege Perilous—stood indeed empty and ready to be won by any free-lance of letters. Folengo had ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... an end to this miserable pique between us," cried Andrew warmly. "It's absurd, and I hate it. I thought we were to be always friends. I can't bear it, Frank, for I ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... who was as fine a fellow as poor Captain Savage, whom we buried yesterday; there could not be a finer than either of them. I was at the taking of the Pique, and carried him down below after he had received his mortal wound. We did a pretty thing out here when we took Fort Royal by a coup-de-main, which means, boarding from the main-yard of the frigate, and dropping from it into the fort. But what's that ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... I pique myself somewhat on the power of judging character, and there was something about this applicant which inspired hope; so that, before I introduced her into the room, I felt it necessary to enlighten my mother with a little of my wisdom. I therefore whispered in her ear, with the decisive ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... was being berated by pro-Southerners as weakly continuing an outworn policy and as having "made himself the laughing-stock of Europe and of America[799];" on the other he was regarded, for the moment, as insisting, through pique, on a line of action highly dangerous to the preservation of peace with the North. October 23 Palmerston wrote his approval of the Cabinet postponement, but declared Lewis' doctrine of "no recognition of Southern independence until the ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... again; and my master said, I fear, Pamela, you have been hardly used, more than you'll say. I know my sister's passionate temper too well, to believe she could be over-civil to you, especially as it happened so unluckily that I was out. If, added he, she had no pique to you, my dear, yet what has passed between her and me, has so exasperated her, that I know she would have quarrelled with my horse, if she had thought I valued it, and nobody else was in her way. Dear sir, said I, don't say so of good ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... discarded lover heartlessly played with, as she herself confessed he had been, Claude Bainrothe bore himself very proudly and calmly in Evelyn Erle's presence, I thought. At first, there was a shade of coolness, of pique even in my own manner toward him as the memory of Evelyn's insinuations rose between us; but after the lapse of a few weeks all thought of this kind was put away, and he was received with a pleasure as undisguised, as it was innocent ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... in tears at his decision, but they felt that there was truth in his words, that the Scottish nobles were far more influenced by feelings of personal jealousy and pique than by patriotism, and that so long as Wallace remained the guardian of Scotland they would to a man side with the English. The next day Wallace assembled all his followers, and in a few words announced his determination, and ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... pride was aroused. To be sure I was in her debt for the opportunity she had given me of meeting these literary friends, but that gave her no license to misrepresent me, in a light which in my present humor was the most distasteful she could have selected. Under the spur of pique I redoubled my graciousness toward Mr. Spence and Mr. Fleisch, and likewise watched my opportunity to court the artist with a smile, whereupon he sighed again and reached out his hand for the crystal pitcher; but ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... companions alone, but by every one of the four teachers, I was looked upon as a harmless little girl whose mother knew nothing about the fashionable world. I do not think that anything in my manner showed either my pique or my disdain; I believe I went out of doors just as usual; but these things were often in my thoughts, and taking by degrees more room ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... dog and man at first were friends, But when a pique began, The dog, to gain some private ends, Went mad ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... young woman was against the marriage—for she loved some one more to her choice—but her father had forced her to it; and some quarrel happening just at the time with the favourite lover, she had consented—from pique, ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... Josephine, with the least bit in the world of pique in her voice. "Well, that is the fault of your eyes, and not of his. I tell you those eyes are my destiny—I feel it and know it. I have not seen a pair before in a long while, that looked as if they could laugh ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... things is much more able to preserve quietness and order, than one that is perfectly ignorant and unskilful. Besides, I think none will doubt but that the steward ought to be a friend, and have no pique at any of the guests; for otherwise in his injunctions he will be intolerable, in his distributions unequal, in his jests apt to scoff and give offence. Such a figure, Theon, as out of wax, hath my discourse ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... friendly; very short, and not very frequent; mostly of Helen and what she did; there was almost nothing of himself, and the past, at least as far as a certain night in June was concerned, was never mentioned. At first this was a relief to Lois, but by and by came a feeling too negative to be called pique, or even mortification at having been forgotten; it was rather an intangible soreness in ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... opportunities for a reply; she looked round the circle for applause so openly, that not a few of the women began to think that their return together was something more than a coincidence, and that Lucien and Louise, loving with all their hearts, had been separated by a double treason. Pique, very likely, had brought about this ill-starred match with Chatelet. And a reaction set in against ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... the stranger by others equally tremendous. Kidd, as usual, was his hero, concerning whom he seemed to have picked up many of the floating traditions of the province. The seaman had always evinced a settled pique against the one-eyed warrior. On this occasion he listened with peculiar impatience. He sat with one arm akimbo, the other elbow on the table, the hand holding on to the small pipe he was pettishly puffing, his legs crossed, drumming with one ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... "That must be the Wartburg," long before we were near it. It was raining hard when we reached Eisenach station, and engaged a carriage to take us to the Wartburg. The mist, which wreathed thickly around, showed us only glimpses as we wound slowly up the castle hill—enough, however, to pique the imagination, and show how beautiful it might ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Bordeaux, where his letters of recommendation, as well as his large fortune, gave him an entrance to the salons of the nobility. His wife contributed greatly to maintain him in the good graces of an aristocracy which may perhaps have adopted him in the first instance merely to pique the society of the class below them. Madame Evangelista, who belonged to the Casa-Reale, an illustrious family of Spain, was a Creole, and, like all women served by slaves, she lived as a great lady, knew nothing of the value of money, repressed no whims, even the ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... very angry with Michael when he left her. There was perhaps more hurt pride and pique in her anger than she would have cared to own. He had failed to succumb to her charms, he had not seemed to notice her as other men did; he had even lost the look of admiration he used to wear when they were boy and girl. He had refused utterly to tell her ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... a fresh white pique suit, with blue ribbons at her throat and belt, and was looking very ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... note!" and she took out a crumpled envelope, directed in Aunt Mary's handwriting to Fred, on the back of which Alex had written, "Dear B., we beg pardon, but Carey and Dick are going up to Andrews's about his terrier.—A. L." "Very cool, certainly!" said Beatrice, laughing, but still with a little pique. "What a life ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... crunching gravel, and when I was still rods away, he laid his finger on his lips for silence. I went to him rather resentfully, for I had had no mind to shout my news in the street of the settlement, and I thought that he was acting like a child. But he took no notice of my pique, and clapped me on the shoulder ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... Joshua Reynolds saw the lurking scruples of pride existing between the author and actor, and thinking it a pity that two men of such congenial talents, and who might be so serviceable to each other, should be kept asunder by a worn-out pique, exerted his friendly offices to bring them together. The meeting took place in Reynolds' house in Leicester Square. Garrick, however, could not entirely put off the mock majesty of the stage; he meant to be civil, but he was rather too gracious and condescending. ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... and took a fresh sheet of paper, but she refused to notice the hint. A sense of pique, of wonder at his politeness and half-resentment at his obliviousness of her presence, drew her back and she ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... got up and walked to the window and back again, and then began fumbling in his pockets for his knife. No, he did not want it; yes, he did. He would just cut the envelope and make believe he had read it to pique his wife; but he would not read it. Yes, that was it. He found the knife and slit the paper. His fingers trembled as he touched the sheets that protruded. Why would not Leslie come? Did she not know ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... k can c s cite ch sh chaise ch k chaos g j gem n ng ink s z as s sh sure x gz exact gh f laugh ph f phlox qu k pique[1] qu kw quit ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... as a good goer against the field, and he had a real desire to win her affection. The more indifferent she was to him, the keener was his desire to possess her. His unsuccessful wooing had passed through several stages, first astonishment, then pique, and finally something very like passion, or a fair semblance of devotion, backed, of course, since all natures are more or less mixed, by the fact that this attractive figure of the woman was thrown into high relief by the colossal fortune ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... not only watched, but easily detected, both the rapid transitions and the character of these opposite emotions. Under the sudden influence of passions, that probably will not escape our readers, he could not forbear uttering, in a tone in which pique might have been ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... the wedding oration had been preached over those twelve bridal pairs, and the wedding benediction had been granted, it was not Gabriele, the boyish betrothed of Toinetta, who brought the blushing bride, partly in triumph and partly in pique, to her father's side, but Piero Salin, the handsomest gondolier on the lagoons, the most daring and dreaded foe of all the established traghetti. It had been impossible for the spectators from the body of the ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... loved a lady of great beauty, and she returned your love; but while you were away at sea, her parents made her believe that you were false to her. They wished her to marry a wealthy banker, and, in a fit of pique, she accepted him. She has always loved you in secret, however, and now ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... unable to proceed. At these unfortunate break downs, he would be obliged to resign the speaking-trumpet to the first-lieutenant; and if, as sometimes happened, the latter (either from accident, or perhaps from a pardonable pique at having the duty taken out of his hands), was not at his elbow to prompt him when at fault—at these times the cant phrase of the officers, taken from some farce, used to be, "York, ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... melody, textual accents and rhythms, Slavicism expressed in an Italian translation, Moussorgsky and Debussy, Political reasons for French enthusiasm, Rimsky-Korsakoff's revision of the score, Russian operas in America, "Nero," "Pique Dame," "Eugene Onegin," Verstoffeky's "Askold's Tomb," The nationalism of "Boris Godounoff," The Kolydda song "Slava" and Beethoven, Lack of the feminine element in the drama, The opera's lack of coherency, Cast of the first ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... diamond." How the subscribers to the Circulating Library of the enterprising Mr. Loring must catch their breaths in amazement, when that courteous gentleman hands them for the last new novel—sandwiched between "Pique" and "Woodburn"—thoughts of such a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... disastrously. She had spent wakeful hours as a result of that meeting; but the cloud of apprehension had passed, leaving her sky serene again. And now Harboro had put aside the incident of the Mesquite Club ball as if it did not involve anything more than a question of pique. ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... to supply the needs of the body at small cost, do not pique yourself on that, nor if you drink only water, keep saying on each occasion, I drink water! And if you ever want to practise endurance and toil, do so unto yourself and not unto others—do not ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... accept the Serbs, fearing the spread of cholera, and the Allies are thinking that the Greeks want to be endangered by cholera any more than the Italians?... The history of the Balkan politics of the Allies is the record of one crass mistake after another, and now, through pique over the failure of their every Balkan calculation, they try to unload on Greece the results of their own stupidity. We warned them that the Gallipoli expedition would be fruitless and that the Austro-Germans would surely crush Serbia.... At the beginning of the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... they bowed to the commander.) "As I was saying to Barker, as matters stand in this regiment, some half a dozen at least of the men referred to as its 'representative officers' are apparently resentful of my arrest of Lieutenant Lanier, and attribute my course to pique, because he saw fit to show himself at the hop I declined to permit him as officer-of-the-guard to attend. You think, possibly, that because men like Captain Snaffle, Lieutenant Crane, and one or two of ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... by the worthy man was in keeping with his manners and his countenance. No power could have made him give up the white muslin cravats, with ends embroidered by his wife or daughter, which hung down beneath his chin. His waistcoat of white pique, squarely buttoned, came down low over his stomach, which was rather protuberant, for he was somewhat fat. He wore blue trousers, black silk stockings, and shoes with ribbon ties, which were often unfastened. His surtout coat, olive-green ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... I shall see Mrs. Jones to-morrow, or at latest the day after," said Mrs. Townsend, resolving to pique the man by making him understand that she could easily learn all that she wished to learn from the woman: "a great comfort Mrs. Jones must be to ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... the pageants at the festivities in her honour at Kenilworth. Although twenty years have passed, memory still loves to linger about those days when she visited her favourite, the fascinating Earl of Leicester, on her royal progress, before state policy and private pique had combined to ...
— Shakespeare's Christmas Gift to Queen Bess • Anna Benneson McMahan
... Gerald," he pursued good humouredly "she is a splendid girl, and one that you need not be ashamed to own as a conquest. By heaven, she has a bust and hips to warm the bosom of an anchorite, and depend upon it, all that Cranstoun has said arises only from pique that he is not the object preferred. These black eyes of hers have set his ice blood on the boil, and he would willingly exchange places with you, at I ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... have shown it. This is another perverse and suicidal inconsistency on a woman's part: she should never exhibit these small meannesses of pique, sullen tempers, jealousy, to her husband, since they place her wholly at a disadvantage, making her less attractive than the objects she ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... than national reputation said to one of her admirers, "I, for one, cannot endure your Maria Mitchell." At her solicitation he explained why; and his reason was, as she had anticipated, founded on personal pique. It seems he had gone up from New York to Poughkeepsie especially to call upon Professor Mitchell. During the course of conversation, with that patronizing condescension which some self-important men extend to all women indiscriminately, he proceeded ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... distraite, as De Chauxville noted. The girl's dislike for him was an iron that entered the quick of his vanity anew every time he saw her. There was no petulance in the aversion, such as he had perceived with other maidens who were only resenting a passing negligence or seeking to pique his curiosity. This was a steady and, if you will, unmaidenly aversion, which ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... marrying him so suddenly. But, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, I have never quite made up my mind that Ethel was really fickle. She did it out of pique, or pride, or impulse, or whatever it is that sways women in such cases. She was angry, or indignant—how like fire and ice at once she was when she was angry!—and she was resolved to show me that she could do without me. ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... no doubt, very sensible to your good opinion," remarked the captain, with evident pique; "but, Winnebeg, as I am sure you never allow a white man to interfere with you, when you find fault with your young chiefs, you must ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... his coat, and followed that with his collar and tie, he thought of his steamer trunk with its Tuxedo and dress-coat, its pique shirts and poke collars, its suede gloves and kid-topped patent leathers, and he felt the tips of his ears beginning to burn. He was sorry now that he had given the Missioner the ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... called for five o'clock in the private grill room at the Pan-American Building. Postcards will have been sent out the day before by the Secretary, saying: "Please try to be present as there are several important matters to be brought up." This will so pique the curiosity of the members that they will hardly be able to wait until five o'clock. One will come at four o'clock by mistake and, after steaming up and down the corridor for half an hour, will go home ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... absence of any padding in the broad shoulders of the frock coat he wore, to her mind, more than compensated for the "ready-made" scarf, and if the white waistcoat was not fashionably cut, she knew that she had never been able to afford a pique skirt of ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... than Paris was that morning, at that charming golden hour of the day when the world seems peopled only with good and generous spirits who love one another. Paris does not pique herself on her generosity; but she still takes to herself at this charming hour an air of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... that I have on no occasion sanctioned the baser motives of private pique, envy, revenge, and love of detraction. At least I have not recommended harsh treatment upon any of these grounds. I have argued simply on the abstract moral principle which a Reviewer should ever have present to his mind: but if any of ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... Quan, the assistant stage manager, all had looked at her, as at some one they couldn't classify. John Galbraith, out of a wider experience of life, had classified her, or thought he had, as a well-bred young girl who, in a moment of pique, or mischief, had decided it would be fun to go on the stage. The test he had applied wasn't, from that point of view, unnecessarily cruel. The girl he had taken her for, would, on being ordered to repeat that grotesque bit of vulgarity of his, have drawn her dignity about her like a cloak, and ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... attempt to struggle; she nursed no sense of open resentment against her captors. The battery of her vital forces was depleted and depolarized. She experienced only a faintly poignant sense of disappointment, of indeterminate pique, as she realized that she was no longer a free agent. Leaning back in the cushioned gloom, inert, impassive, with her eyes half-closed, she seemed to be drifting through an eddying veil of gray. The voices so close beside her ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... butterfly wings, her face looked smaller than its wont. Laced tight, after the fashion, the cotte-hardie made her waist appear little larger than could be clasped by the hands of a soldier, while a silken-shod foot with which she tapped the ground would have nestled neatly in his palm. Was it pique that moved her thus to address the duke's jester? Since he had arrived, Jacqueline had been relegated, as it were, to the corner. She, formerly ever first with the princess, had perforce stood aside on the coming of the foreign fool whose company her mistress strangely seemed ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... him because her father made her marry him, and in her own phraseology "the matter was not worth fighting about." She had broken just two years before with the only man she had ever loved, had renounced him in a fit of pique and passion on account of some scandal about a French dancing-girl; and from that hour she had assumed an air of recklessness: she had danced, flirted, talked, and carried on in a manner that delighted the multitude and shocked the prudes. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... though Maude showed no disposition to take this seriously. I did suspect, however, that they were more and more determined to rescue Maude from what they would have termed a frivolous career; and on one of these occasions—so exasperating in married life when a slight cause for pique tempts husband or wife to try to ask myself whether this affair were only a squall, something to be looked for once in a while on the seas of matrimony, and weathered: or whether Maude had not, after all, been right when she declared that ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... down on her own head. Perfect conscientiousness was an unfailing characteristic of her literary efforts. Even the severest of her critiques,—that on Longfellow's Poems,—for which an impulse in personal pique has been alleged, I happen with certainty to know had no such origin. When I first handed her the book to review, she excused herself, assigning the wide divergence of her views of Poetry from those of the author and his school, as her reason. She thus induced ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... letter! Very well! I know what I will do. I am almost certain I will do it. But first I will go down to the beach and give it a couple of hours' sober reflection. No one shall say I acted hastily, ill-advisedly, or in pique. ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... far-off whimpering of wail and woe. And from this romantic state of mind there is absolutely no possible theoretic escape. Whether, like Renan, we look upon life in a more refined way, as a romance of the spirit; or whether, like the friends of M. Zola, we pique ourselves on our 'scientific' and 'analytic' character, and prefer to be cynical, and call the world a 'roman experimental' on an infinite scale,—in either case the world appears to us potentially as what the same Carlyle once called it, a vast, ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... is the shade afforded by the trees that line the way on either side. To walk from the "Thermes" along the Allee des Bains, turning into the Casino gardens, or continuing further—leaving the "Chute de la Pique" on the right—along the riverside till the road to Montauban cuts it at right angles, is a most delicious evening stroll. We prolonged this, by taking the road in question between the poplars up to the village of Montauban itself; but found more interest in the beautiful ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... Noel," said he, "calm yourself. Do not allow yourself to be overcome by a feeling of irritation. You have, I see, some little pique against your mother, which you will have forgotten to-morrow. Don't speak of her in this icy tone; but tell me what you mean by calling ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... so much complaisance, the constable considered himself to be quits with his former allies, and free to follow his leaning towards the Catholic party. "The veteran," says the Duke of Autnale, "did not pique himself on being a theologian; but he was sincerely attached to the Catholic faith because it was the old religion and the king's; and he separated himself definitively from those religious and political innovators whom ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... of pique and disappointment, when she realised that Denis Quirk was impervious to her attractions, Sylvia Jackson suddenly awoke to a new interest in life. At the moment she was hesitating between an interesting ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... unfailing courage and good sense won fights that the incompetency or cankering jealousy of commanders had lost. High officers were occasionally disloyal, or willing to sacrifice their country to personal pique; still more frequently they were ignorant and inefficient; but the enlisted man had more than enough innate soldiership to make amends for these deficiencies, and his superb conduct often brought honors and promotions to those only who ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... Simon O'Dougherty when he had driven a few miles from the door; and, in a tone of much pique and displeasure, reproached him for having deceived him into a belief that the Grays were his friends. Simon was rather embarrassed; but the genius of gossiping had luckily just supplied him with a hint, by which he could ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... he adds, 'when I was at Eton, and Mr. Bland had set me on an extraordinary task, I used sometimes to pique myself upon not getting it, because it was not immediately my school business. What! learn more than I was absolutely forced to learn! I felt the weight of learning that; for I was a blockhead, and pushed ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... time gone by—nay, still possessed in the Northumberland branch. Would not Mr. Palfrey take another glass of rum? and also look at the last year's balance of the accounts? Mr. Freely was a man who cared to possess personal virtues, and did not pique himself on his family, though ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... without actually saying it has managed to convey the fact that you are a monster of perfidy; and Lisbeth, poor child, is probably crying her eyes out, or imagining she hates you, is ready to accept the first proposal she receives out of pure pique." ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... the house must be done all over again, and exactly as you would like it; so there's no more to be said about it,' said George, without a trace of pique or ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... parsing; as, "To set off the banquet [that or which] he gives notice of."—Philological Museum, i, 454. Sometimes the objective word is put first because it is emphatical; as, "This the great understand, this they pique themselves upon."—Art of Thinking, p. 66. Prepositions of more than one syllable, are sometimes put immediately after their objects, especially in poetry; as, "Known all the world over."—Walker's Particles p. 291. "The thing ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... to Manchester Square (where she was staying with one of her numerous aunts) in a frame of mind that embraced a tangle of competing emotions. In the first place she was conscious of a dominant feeling of relief; in a moment of impetuosity, not wholly uninfluenced by pique, she had settled the problem which hours of hard thinking and serious heart-searching had brought no nearer to solution, and, although she felt just a little inclined to be scared at the headlong manner of her final decision, she had now very little doubt in her own mind that the ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... got over his little pique, he made the first advances, by writing a note to Upton, which he slipped under his study door, and which ran ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... over Rosamond, though, we could not quite understand. It was not pique, or rivalry; there was no excitement about it; it seemed to be a pure, spirited dignity of her own, which she all at once, ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... naturally into his position of wilderness leader, and Major Braithwaite, a cultivated man with a commission, a man who was old enough to be his father, yielded to him without pique or the thought of it. The wild youth of great stature and confident bearing inspired him with a deep sense of ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Pericles, in compliance with the resentment of a prostitute,(1) at the expense of much of the blood and treasure of his countrymen, attacked, vanquished, and destroyed the city of the SAMMIANS. The same man, stimulated by private pique against the MEGARENSIANS,(2) another nation of Greece, or to avoid a prosecution with which he was threatened as an accomplice of a supposed theft of the statuary Phidias,(3) or to get rid of the ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... besides that there is a Vanity in making that only his Design, I question if there be not many Imperfections as well in those Schemes and Precepts he has given for the Direction of others, as well as in that Sample of Tragedy which he has written to shew the Excellency of his own Genius. If he had a Pique against the Man, and wrote on purpose to ruin a Reputation so well establish'd, he has had the Mortification to fail altogether in his Attempt, and to see the World at least as fond of Shakespear as of his Critique. But I won't believe a Gentleman, and a good-natur'd Man, ...
— Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespear (1709) • Nicholas Rowe
... gravely put, I laughed outright "Why really, my dear Count, I cannot pretend to answer decidedly for the turn that the affair might take; but my impression—to speak in that idiomatic English, more racy than elegant, which you pique yourself upon understanding—my full impression is, that Helen having for no reason upon earth but her interest in you, ratted from Conservatism to Radicalism, will for the same cause lose no time in ratting back again. A woman's politics, especially if she be a young woman, are ...
— Country Lodgings • Mary Russell Mitford
... this, one that would seize and carry her off; but then the time and place were other than the present, and he resembled more closely the type of man with which she had been familiar all her life. The spirit of antagonism which he aroused was due rather to pique than to dislike, for in spite of his audacity she could not ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... the men of the Mechanics' Institute (the roof of which she pointed out to him) went crazy over 'Shirley'; how everybody about 'thowt Miss Bronte had bin puttin ov 'em into prent,' and didn't know whether to be pleased or pique; how, as the noise made by 'Jane Eyre' and 'Shirley' grew, a wave of excitement passed through the whole countryside, and people came from Halifax, and Bradford, and Huddersfield—aye, an Lunnon soomtoimes '—to Haworth church on a Sunday, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward |
