"Prude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of your people, go by night, and carry her off. What can be more simple? It would have been the proper way at first, with such a prude as she! Don't fear the result. It's not so terrible to them. I've known it tried before. Long ere the cibolero can return, she'll be ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... would do what he could to exalt the character of the colored women. So, at every chance he got, he talked to the men who approached him, of virtue and integrity. He soon got the name of being a "virtuous prude" and the white men decided to corrupt him ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... frowned. "But she wasn't selfish or hard. She used to let them hang on till they just dropped off. She was one of those women that nothing surprises. Her train was made up of the ugly and the handsome—bore, prude, wit, and libertine. She gave them all something; you could feel it. I think she got tired of giving ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... words bearing on them the slime of the serpent's trail; uses, too, of words which imply moral perversity—not upon their parts who employ them now in their acquired senses, but on theirs from whom little by little they received their deflection, and were warped from their original rectitude. A 'prude' is now a woman with an over-done affectation of a modesty which she does not really feel, and betraying the absence of the substance by this over-preciseness and niceness about the shadow. Goodness must have gone strangely out of fashion, the corruption of manners must have been profound, ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... Gainsborough" hat on her powdered wig more becomingly and smiling up in the face of Ross Courtney, who happened to be standing close by. "So sweetly unconventional! Everybody here thinks her improper; she may be, but I like her. I'm not a bit of a prude." ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... dear little prude I had no idea that you would take it so seriously but Aunt Emma was so disappointed and spoke of the rejected suitor in such glowing terms, and said that you had sacrificed a splendid opportunity ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... Yon ancient prude, whose wither'd features show She might, be young some forty years ago, Her elbows pinion'd close upon her hips, Her head erect, her fan upon her lips, Her eyebrows arch'd, her eyes both gone astray To watch yon amorous couple in their play, With bony and unkerchief'd ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... gesture, and swung to his daughter. "You hear him, the mealy-mouthed prude! Perhaps you'll believe at last that marriage with him would be the ruin of you. He would always be there the inconvenient husband—to mar ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... from San Francisco, Grant tried to persuade Bridget to stop teasing him about the navigational foul-up and set him straight. He had put up with it as long as he did only because she had worn an off-shoulder yellow gown, snugly fitted, that made the uniform seem like the design of a Mid-Victorian prude. ...
— A Fine Fix • R. C. Noll
... insisted they would never make you jealous, and they rather bored you. So I did not say a word about this one. Of course Laura is anxious to further his cause. She thinks me a good woman and somewhat of a prude. Poor soul! She doesn't suspect the wedding ring with the diamond in it you've seen me sometimes wear! You know it's the sort of thing wicked women affect when they want to be cynical about the marriage tie. Well, Laura is doing her best to persuade me to be the ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... desirous all sinners to save, And to make each a prig or a prude, If two thousand long years have not made us behave, It is time you ...
— Soldier Songs and Love Songs • A.H. Laidlaw
... be a great loss in these times; he knows his business, lets his Ministers do as they please, but expects to be informed of everything. He lives a strange life at Brighton, with tagrag and bobtail about him, and always open house. The Queen is a prude, and will not let the ladies come decolletees to her parties. George IV., who liked ample expanses of that sort, would not let them be covered. In the meantime matters don't seem more promising either here or abroad. In Ireland there ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... sympathized; others, his abrupt atrocious manner—"Turned his back on me with a scowl, and didn't say another word," as a sporting fast married lady said to me, who had attempted to tell him an improper story. "I didn't mean to offend him; young men generally like it. I hate a young man to be a prude and a Puritan. Why, he isn't even going ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... worlds and conditions upon them that are similar to our own conditions: if his notions be presented undisguisedly as fiction, or only as an "interesting hypothesis," he'll stir up no prude rages. ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... house at night—to see friends, and keep up with really good movies. Ruth prefers night clubs and gay parties. David thinks Ruth ought to be more careful about those white lies and those extremely decollete dresses; Ruth thinks David is rather a prude and mighty inconsiderate in the way he keeps picking on her. And then there is Junior. Ruth believes in loving one's children wholeheartedly and trusting that affection and understanding will bring them through all right in the long run; David thinks that ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... you, for I have not words to say what she is: but if an agreeable height, a modest air, a virgin shame, and impatience of being beheld, amidst a blaze of ten thousand charms—The whole room flew out—Oh, Mr. Triplett! When Mrs. Lofty, a known prude, said she believed she knew whom the gentleman meant; but she was, indeed, as he civilly represented her, impatient of being beheld. Then turning to the lady next her—The most ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... of my time, too, you know, for when I get to be a junior I'll have to begin the 'prune and prism' act," retorted the girl with a roguish wink. "Then"— suddenly straightening herself, drawing down the corners of her mouth, crossing her eyes, and assuming the air of a would-be prude—"the prospective infraction of law and order would have to be decorously stated something like this: ahem! 'Those irrepressible, irresponsible and notorious sophomores are secretly preparing to engage ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... sit the play out, but he did not know whether he was more bored or nauseated. If that was what the theatre was coming to, then it was high time the police stepped in and closed the playhouses. He was no prude and could laugh as well as anyone at the witty immorality of a farce at the Palais Royal, but here was nothing but filth. With an emphatic gesture he held his nose and whistled through his teeth. It was the ruin of the family, the uprooting ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... stamped on. He would never allow himself comfortably to be that sort of man. Yet he was, it seemed, enough that sort of man to make friendship with Mrs. Chepstow difficult, perhaps impossible. If love had led him to such an inclination, he would, being no prude, have understood it as a perfectly natural and perfectly healthy thing. But he did not love Mrs. Chepstow. He would never love, really love, again. For years he had said that to himself, and had ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... The Prude's Fall was supposed to take place in 1919, but its atmosphere was clearly ante-bellum. Anyhow there was no sign of the alleged damage done to our moral standards by the War. But nobody will quarrel on that ground with Mr. BESIER and Miss EDGINTON, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... his book to worlds far removed from the English prude: to wanton peccadilloes and salacious practices condemned by the Church. He grew excited. The impotence of his mind and body which he had supposed final, vanished. Solitude again acted on his disordered nerves; he was once more obsessed, not ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... history of Venus in four tableaux, while the panels formed other episodes of the same history, all most graceful in outline and voluptuous in expression. This was the house which Noce, in the innocence of his heart, had designated as fit for a prude. ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... well as training Gertrude was a formalist and a prude, but she was human and she unconsciously obeyed a law of nature which ordains the union of the dissimilar. This was why, having met only men of her own kind hitherto, she had escaped the touch of passion and now felt drawn toward one who greatly ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... they have, after all, one less than many of their sex who pride themselves on chastity, without really possessing it; that is, hypocrisy. As they shew themselves to be what they really are, they cannot make the secret mischief which a detected prude not unfrequently occasions under the deceitful mask of modesty. Degraded in their own eyes, and being no longer able to reign through the graces of virtue, they fall into the opposite extreme, and display all the audaciousness ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... soul, character, and stamina; who grappled with the realities of life, in their labors; and enjoyed its pleasures with truth and honesty. This over-nice, mincing delicacy, and sentimentality, in which their grand-daughters indulge, is but the off-throw of the boarding-school, the novelist, and the prude—mere "leather and prunella." Such remarks may be thought to lie beyond the line of our immediate labor. But in the discussion of the collateral subjects which have a bearing upon country life and residence, we incline ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... suspicious, and betray a secret affinity. The difference between the 'Great Vulgar and the Small' is mostly in outward circumstances. The coxcomb criticises the dress of the clown, as the pedant cavils at the bad grammar of the illiterate, or the prude is shocked at the backslidings of her frail acquaintance. Those who have the fewest resources in themselves naturally seek the food of their self-love elsewhere. The most ignorant people find most to laugh at in strangers: scandal and satire prevail most in country-places; ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... little Eve managed without difficulty to collect. It is but human to take a harmless interest in what our next-door neighbor is doing, has done, or may do. Primarily gossip was harmless; to-day it is still harmless in some quarters. The gossip of the present time is like the prude, always looking for the worst and finding it. The real trouble with the gossip lies in the fact that she has little else to do; her own affairs are so uninteresting that she is perforce obliged to look into the affairs ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... English prudery, the accusation implied being part of the general charge of hypocrisy. It is said by observers among ourselves that the prudish habit of mind is dying out, and this is looked upon as a satisfactory thing, as a sign of healthy emancipation. If by prude be meant a secretly vicious person who affects an excessive decorum, by all means let the prude disappear, even at the cost of some shamelessness. If, on the other hand, a prude is one who, living a decent life, cultivates, either by bent or principle, a somewhat extreme delicacy ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... writing, because Miss Neumann had come in. Today she has colored legs with patent-leather shoes—I find that exciting. I had promised myself to watch her no longer... lately she shown herself to be such a prude... in the afternoon she went into the city. She came back late. I met her on the staircase. But she broke away and said, excitedly, "Go to bed." And she went into her room. In the following days I did not see her. ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... the family were converted into wood-nymphs, who peeped from every bower; and the footmen gamboled over the lawns in the figure of satyrs. When her majesty hunted in the park she was met by Diana who, pronouncing our royal prude to be the brightest paragon of unspotted chastity, invited her to groves free from the intrusions of Acteon." The most elaborate of these entertainments of which we have any notice, were, perhaps, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... till I conclude. I should not ask so much of others. You, Svanhild, I've learnt to fathom thro' and thro'; You are too sensible to play the prude. I watched expand, unfold, your little life; A perfect woman I divined within you, But long I only saw a daughter in you;— Now I ask of you—will you be my wife? [SVANHILD ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... he might have been thinking of the spiritistic triumphs of Mrs. Meeker or of Ena with her sweet curves. Whatever might be said of the latter, it was clear that she was no prude. McGeorge drew a deep breath; it was the only ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... made a pleasant relief from the rarer altitudes of the uplift. He stood chatting gayly with a group of habitues, including some of the best known men of the town. All greeted Plonny pleasantly, West cordially. None of our foreign critics can write that the American man is a moral prude. On two occasions, Plonny had been vindicated before the grand jury by the narrow margin of one vote. Yet he was much liked as a human sinner who had no pretenses about him, and who told a good ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... are absurd, so much the better. Never mind, I prefer to have my money. I will buy the chateau they have spoken to me of, with Gothic towers of the time of Louis XIV.; that will give me a noble appearance. It will not be like my affair with this prude of a Madame d'Harville—fine game! Oh, no; I have not made my expenses, as the stupid old portress in the Rue du Temple said, with her fantastic periwig. This pleasantry has cost meat least a thousand crowns. It is true, the furniture ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... even if he had dared; but a moment later a big man who squeezed himself in between table and revolving chair, next to the girl, made an excuse to ask for the salt, and begin a conversation. He did this in a matter-of-fact, bourgeois way, however, which not even a prude or a snob could think offensive. And apparently the girl was far from being a prude or a snob. She answered with a soft, girlish charm of manner which gave the impression that she was generously kind of heart. Then something ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... of Italian players who had got up a comedy called "The Pretended Prude." When I learnt they were going to represent it, I sent for them and told them not to do so. It was in vain; they played it, and got a great deal of money by it; but they were afterwards sent away in consequence. They then came ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... frolick arrows pass Thro' hearts of Potentates, and Prentice-boys; Who mark'st with Milkmaids' forms, the tell-tale grass, And make'st the fruitful Prude repent her joys! ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... on the dollars of American women under the leadership of modern culture. And, you know, the maiden follows mama. She is an apologist of sublime lewdness, of emancipated human caninity. Now I am no prude. I can stand a fairly strong touch of human nature. I can even put up with a good deal of the frankness of the cat and dog. But the frankness of some modern authors makes me sorry that Adam was a common ancestor of theirs and mine. ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... pretty creature at your side! Heaven preserve her to you a hundred years in health and with plenty of sons!" Then the new bride answered, "It is very clear that you are a simpleton, and would remain so were you to live a hundred years, acting the prude as you do, and refusing to kiss so handsome a youth, whilst I let a herdsman kiss me for a couple ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... sure I do," answered she, "for Mr Harrel has told me a thousand times, that however you played the prude, you would be his ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... the other side of the room is a prude who plays at importance, to whom one could bring one's self to say that she is pretty, because she is pretty, though she has a blemish or two upon her face. Item, she is more spiteful, more conceited, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... objection to girls, which is, that they will eternally fancy every man they converse with has designs; a coquet and a prude in the bud are equally disagreeable; the former expects universal adoration, the latter is alarm'd even at that general civility which is the right of all their sex; of the two however the last is, I think, much the most troublesome; I wish these very apprehensive young ladies ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... listened with all her ears. She did not think herself a prude, and only a moment before she had been accusing Mrs. Wayne of ignorance of the world; but never in all her life had she heard such words as were now freely exchanged between Burke and his hostess on the subject of the degree of consent ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... how the men withdrew together in groups at a little distance, whispering as they usually do when having sport with a pretty woman who is not exactly a prude; and it was with some shame, at any rate, with expressed repugnance that he took the stool still warm from Achleitner's body. Mara began to ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... that one might imagine him to be. A quiet, unobtrusive fellow, he seldom spoke except when he had something worth saying. Since childhood he had always been a leader among his fellows. Johnny was a good example to others, but no prude. He had played a fast quarter on the football team, and had won for himself early renown and many medals as a light weight, champion boxer. He never sought a quarrel, but, if occasion demanded it, Johnny went into action with a vim and rush ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... protective and numbing. The less they were thrown together, she found, the better friends they were. At home they were really no more than neighbours; abroad she was Mrs. Macartney, and never would dine out without him. She was old-fashioned; her friends called her a prude. But she was not at all unhappy. She liked to think of Lancelot, she said, and to be quiet. And really, as Miss Bacchus (a terrible old woman) once said, Lucy was so little of a married woman that ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... on first introduction had been much pleased, not to say captivated, with her cordial address, frank unsophisticated manners, and winsome looks; he contrasted her to much advantage with the affected coquette, the cold formal prude, the flippant woman of fashion, the empty heads and hollow hearts wherewithal society is peopled. He had long been wearied out with shallow courtesies, frigid compliments, and other conventional hypocrisies, up and down the world; and wanted something better to love than ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... who is a relation. I first saw her on a party of pleasure at Mr. Frazier's, where we walked, talked, sang, and danced together. I thought her cousin watched her with a jealous eye; for she is, you must know, a prude; and immaculate—more so than you or I—must be the man who claims admission to her society. But I fancy this young lady is a coquette; and if so, I shall avenge my sex by retaliating the mischiefs she meditates against us. ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... sounds like something with three legs. Not but what I'd rather be a biological freak than a grind—or a prude." ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... these two months, when she came into the Opera at the end of the first act, fierce as an incensed turkey-cock, you know her look, and towing after her Sir Francis Dashwood's new Wife,(1175) a poor forlorn Presbyterian prude, whom he obliges ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... and fixed a stare on me. 'Oh, I see what you mean. I'm drunk. . . . It's no use your pretending,' he caught me up argumentatively. 'I've taken too much t'drink. Tiring day. Hope you're not a prude?' ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... informed as to his mother's means, would give him an easy discount. Usury and the deceptive help of renewals enabled him to lead a happy life for nearly eighteen months. Without daring to leave Madame de Serizy the poor boy had fallen madly in love with the beautiful Comtesse de Kergarouet, a prude after the fashion of young women who are awaiting the death of an old husband and making capital of their virtue in the interests of a second marriage. Quite incapable of understanding that calculating ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... them some evenings ago, and this book reminded her of them. She had bought Jane Addams' "Newer Ideals of Peace," and he had yawned over it undisguisedly. Then he had brought this novel, and—well, she had balked at the second chapter, and he had kissed her and called her his "little prude." She did not want to be a prude; she hated to seem so, and had for some time prided herself on emancipation from narrow New England prejudices. For example, she had not objected to wine at dinner; it had seemed indeed rather fine, imparting, as it did, an old-fashioned ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... monsieur. In a few days I shall be eight-and-forty; I am no prude; I can hear whatever ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... to repress a thrill of satisfaction; "of course you couldn't marry him." He understood now the meaning of Dunlavey's words to her in Dry Bottom. "If you wasn't such a damn prude," he had said. He looked at the girl with a sudden, grim smile. "He said something about running you and your brother out of the country," he said; "of course you won't allow him to ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... me!—But why should I play the prude? I will own there was a time, when I thought myself handsome. 'Tis past. Alas! the enchanting beauties of a female countenance arise from peace of mind—The look, which captivates an honourable man, must be reflected ...
— The Stranger - A Drama, in Five Acts • August von Kotzebue
... Argemone, sweet prude, thought herself bound to read Honoria a lecture that night, on her reckless exhibition of feeling; but it profited little. The most consummate cunning could not have baffled Argemone's suspicions more completely than her sister's utter simplicity. She cried just ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... in him, by her attitude of indestructible and unique possession. If she didn't know him she would like to know who did. But up till now she had meant to spare Mrs. Majendie her knowledge of him, for she was not ill-natured. She was sorry for the poor, inept, unhappy prude. ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... foolish little prude," said the artful woman, affecting anger: "I invited you to go in hopes it would divert you, and be an agreeable change of scene; however, if your delicacy was hurt by the behaviour of the gentlemen, you need not go again; so there ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... it?" said the big man, brutally. "Well, you've brought it on yourself, being such a damn prude!" ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... went To the Place of the Orient, And the stout Queen sneered, "Ah, well! You are proud and prude, ma belle! But I think I will hazard a guess I shall see you one day playing chess With ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... he took her in his arms, holding her across him—all her magnificent weight upon his knees. Oh, she was a lovely creature ... as he kissed her firm, shy mouth it seemed to him as if her whole body was a challenge. A queer kind of antagonism seized him—prude or rake, she should get her lesson from ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... would think him insensible, tho' he was only immerst in Thought? Why did not you intice him? Come, come, be easy, I will engage to procure you another private Meeting; but take Care not to act the Prude again so unseasonably. Ply him with every alluring Art, and even make Use of a fond Violence to make him yield. He is not to be treated like common Lovers. These Injunctions cannot be disagreeable ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... reaction set in. She wondered how she could have been so cold, called herself a prude and an idiot, questioned if any man could really care for her, and got up in the dead of night to try new ways of doing her hair. But as soon as he reappeared her head straightened itself on her slim neck and she sped her ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... provoked it to have come within the Wind of it; and at other times so very languishing, that I have been glad for the Lady's sake the Lover was at a sufficient Distance from it. I need not add, that a Fan is either a Prude or Coquet according to the Nature of the Person [who [3]] bears it. To conclude my Letter, I must acquaint you that I have from my own Observations compiled a little Treatise for the use of my Scholars, entitled The Passions ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... a year of tremendous activity, she rushed into print no less than ten original romances, beside translating half of a lengthy French work, "La Belle Assemblee" by Mme de Gomez. At this time, too, her celebrity had become so great that "The Prude, a Novel, written by a Young Lady" was dedicated to her, just as Mrs. Hearne at the beginning of her career had put a romance, "The Lover's Week," under the protection of the famous Mrs. Manley. Between 1720 and 1730 Mrs. Haywood wrote, beside plays and translations, thirty-eight ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... all in order again for another customer, which happened to be a famous prude, whom her parents after long threatenings, and much persuasion, had with the extremest difficulty prevailed on to accept a young handsome goldsmith, that might have pretended to five times her fortune. The fathers and mothers ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... have gained my respect. Frankness in a Jesuit? Come; what has the Society come to that frankness replaces cunning and casuistry? Bah! There never was an age but had its prude to howl 'O these degenerate days!' Corrupt and degenerate you say? Yes; that is the penalty of greatness, richness, and idleness. It began with the Egyptians, it struck Rome and Athens; it strikes France to-day. Yesterday we wore skins and furs, to-day silks ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... I thought him simply glorious. Here he is bursting in on the prude conventionality of Fernhurst full of new ideas, smashing up the things that have been accepted unquestionably for years. By Jove, the rest of ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... necessary to travel that long way to Doornward to see his dearly beloved one. She must be quite a pretty girl, the Princess Ludovicka Hollandine, and, moreover, of very tender complexion, and not at all disposed to play the prude with the young, handsome Electoral Prince, who seems particularly to ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... his darts were lost, Yet still resolved to spare no cost; He could not answer to his fame The triumphs of that stubborn dame, A nymph so hard to be subdued, Who neither was coquette nor prude. I find, says he, she wants a doctor, Both to adore her, and instruct her: I'll give her what she most admires, Among those venerable sires. Cadenus is a subject fit, Grown old in politics and wit; Caressed by Ministers ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... whole their continence was great; So that some disappointment there ensued To those who had felt the inconvenient state Of "single blessedness," and thought it good (Since it was not their fault, but only fate, To bear these crosses) for each waning prude To make a Roman sort of Sabine wedding, Without the expense ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... perde ventura, Anzi rinnuova come fa la luna:— So thought Boccaccio, whose sweet words might cure a 330 Male prude, like you, from what you now endure, a Low-tide in soul, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... stupide. Il est etrange Que je cherche un preneur de ville, ayant ici Mon vieil oiseau de proie, Eustache de Nancy. Eustache, a moi! Tu vois, cette Narbonne est rude; Elle a trente chateaux, trois fosses, et l'air prude; A chaque porte un camp, et, pardieu! j'oubliais, La-bas, six grosses tours en pierre de liais. Ces douves-la nous font parfois si grise mine Qu'il faut recommencer a l'heure ou l'on termine, Et que, la ville prise, on echoue au donjon. ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... regular bad 'un, but now she professes to be as over-nice as her mistress; like master like man, they say. The princess herself, who is now so stiff and starched, knew how to carry on a lively game in her time. Fifteen years ago, she was no such prude: do you remember that handsome colonel of hussars, who was in garrison at Abbeville? an exiled noble who had served in Russia, whom the Bourbons gave a ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... when she makes her entrance into this history which we are relating, she was an antique virtue, an incombustible prude, with one of the sharpest noses, and one of the most obtuse minds that it is possible to see. A characteristic detail; outside of her immediate family, no one had ever known her first name. She was ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... a good woman and a prude to all the world, and a courtesan to her husband, is the gift of a woman of genius, and they are few. This is the secret of long fidelity, inexplicable to the women who are not blessed with the double and splendid faculty. ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... Sally's curious, pitiless eyes had discerned them. She had discerned and disapproved, and she had resolved that no squeamish delicacy should keep her from preventing Beatrix's playing the part of a prude. ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... abolished space; annihilated time. Like other queens, she had many of the failings and prejudices of her humanity. In spite of her own origin, she disliked Jews, and rarely neglected a chance to maltreat them. She was not in the least a prude. To her, sin was simply humanity, and she seemed often on the point of defending her arbitrary acts of mercy, by frankly telling the Trinity that if the Creator meant to punish man, He should not have made him. The ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... evening.[989] Elsewhere, if here and there a daily service was kept up, the congregation was sure to consist only of a few women; and the Bridget or Cecilia who was regularly there, was sure of being accounted by not a few of her neighbours, 'prude, devotee, or Methodist.'[990] At the end of the century, and on till the end of the Georgian period, daily public prayers became rarer still. In the country they were kept up only 'in a few old-fashioned town churches.'[991] How much they had dwindled ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... ill-results announced by the managers, who regard the existence of the Censor as valuable to them, because it frees them from responsibility and enables them to gratify the taste of the prurient prude, the person who revels in and blushes at the indelicacy ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... 'Why, what a little prude you are;' and Frank laughed uneasily. 'What possible harm is there in reading an address? The postmaster has to do it, and any one who took it to the office would do ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... all right! You little sanctimonious-eyed prude! You bet it's all right! Maybe we'll meet again, Janet. You can't ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... it takes her some time to decide about. At the same moment he is saying to himself: "What sort of woman is this, and what on earth shall I talk to her about? I hope to heaven she isn't a girl of the period. She doesn't look like it—still less like a prude. How I hate a society dinner! I suppose I shall be bored to ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... I, with more gravity than she was prepared for, 'she is a prude; but I am not certain that in foreign society, where less liberties are tolerated than in our country, if such a bearing be not wiser.' What I was going to plunge into, heaven knows, for the waiter entered at the moment, and presenting me with a large and ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... personal distinction, accomplished in the highest sense, with a perfect accord of intelligence, good taste, and good manners. Later, when pretension crept into the inferior circles which took this one for a model, the term came to mean a sort of intellectual parvenue, half prude and half pedant, who affected learning, and paraded it like fine clothes, ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... prolonged his visit to the friend with whom he was staying at Carlsruhe, on purpose to woo me. He loaded me with presents, which I was unwilling to take, only Madame Rupprecht seemed to consider me an affected prude if I refused them. Many of these presents consisted of articles of valuable old jewellery, evidently belonging to his family; by accepting these I doubled the ties which were formed around me by circumstances even more than by my own consent. In those days we ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... prude, Sophia, and if Henrietta imagines that a man like Francis Sales, any man worth his salt—besides, Henrietta has knocked about the world. She is no more innocent than ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... not intend to set up for a prude, but she certainly did not mean to treat highgrading as if it were a joke. If Jack Kilmeny was innocent, why did he not indignantly ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... of knowledge, which is better than the innocence of ignorance. It is a pleasure to see a woman handling so delicate a topic so well. Miss Morley deserves thanks for doing it so impeccably. Even a prude can find nothing to carp at in the ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... played the prude. She received the sergeant-major's attentions very coolly, and cut short his conversational efforts so as to excite him the more. At the same time her mockingly triumphant and provocative glances would contradict the virtuous compression ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... preposterous in premises, precipitate in conclusions,—yet irresistible and convincing to every woman in their illogical sincerity. There was not a word of love in it, yet every page breathed a wholesome adoration; there was not an epithet or expression that a greater prude than Mrs. Ashwood would have objected to, yet every sentence seemed to end in a caress. There was not a line of poetry in it, and scarcely a figure or simile, and yet it was poetical. Boyishly egotistic as it was in attitude, it seemed to be written less OF himself than TO her; ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... ringing laugh that young men liked, but there were limits that few who knew her overstepped. One or two had done so, but had been rebuked in a way they wished to forget. Sadie had the tricks of an accomplished coquette, but something of the heart of a prude. ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... going to be a little prude?" he said in a whisper. "I can give you the time of your life if you'll let me. I've ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... galliard that sun e'er shown upon. She was the wonder and dismay of all that looked on her. She loved a soldier dearly, and her mouth would purse and play, and her eye would glisten at a cap and plume; and yet the veriest prude in all ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... "Prude!" exclaimed the collar; and then it was taken out of the washing-tub. It was starched, hung over the back of a chair in the sunshine, and was then laid on the ironing-blanket; then came the warm box-iron. "Dear lady!" said the ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... for; and that Francis, who saw these underlined manuscripts, and yet persisted in the conventional view of Boswell, was not a Mid-Victorian prig but a common imbecile. It is true that he has been stupid enough to mangle and emasculate the letters that he was employed to publish; an officious prude unquestionably he was, but no fool, ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... they will count me over-modest, Deem me Victorian, dub me prude; I may have early views, the very oddest, On what is chaste and what is rude; Yet am I certain that my leg Would not look right beneath ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... was believed to have cost the "prude" her virtue; but Miss Stuart had proved again and again that she was no such compliant maid. The only passport to her favours, though a King sought them, was a wedding-ring; and amid all the temptations of a dissolute Court, ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... form of action. He rang, and ordered up his man Harris, a close, discreet personage, and directed him to go over to Homburg, and bring back all the information he could about the new singer; her address in Homburg, married or single, prude or coquette. Should information be withheld, Harris was to fee the porter at the opera-house, the waiter at her hotel, and all the human commodities that knew anything about her. Having dismissed Harris, he lighted his seventh ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... the devil. He praised, blamed, patronized, puffed his pipe, and dwelt with superiority on topics which are best left alone, until Wilmot wanted to kick him downstairs. Scupper, aware of Wilmot's dislike for him, and thoroughly cognizant of its causes, did his best to goad the "young prude" (as he chose to consider him) into open hostility. He strutted, boasted, puffed, and talked loosely without avail. Wilmot maintained a beautiful calm, and the more he raged internally the more Chesterfieldian and gorgeously at ease his manners became. ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... at court, in this world—nay, almost in the other—through the medium of the Honourable Mrs. M'Catchley. Mrs. M'Catchley was, moreover, the most elegant of women, the wittiest creature, the dearest. King George the Fourth had presumed to admire Mrs. M'Catehley; but Mrs. M'Catchley, though no prude, let him see that she was proof against the corruptions of a throne. So long had the ears of Mrs. Pompley's friends been filled with the renown of Mrs. M'Catchley, that at last Mrs. M'Catchley was secretly supposed to be a myth, a creature of the elements, a poetic fiction of Mrs. Pompley's. ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... point blank. No man was ever so manageable. My diplomatist is getting liker and liker to him every day. Leaner, of course, and does not habitually straddle. Whiskers and morals, I mean. We must be silent before our prudish sister. Not a prude? We talk diplomacy, dearest. He complains of the exclusiveness of the port of Oporto, and would have strict alliance between Portugal and England, with mutual privileges. I wish the alliance, and think it better to maintain the exclusiveness. Very ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and stared at her with unseeing eyes. He was no prude, but he had those decent prejudices of which no self-respecting man can wholly rid himself, however broad-minded he may try to ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... beast, but what she was sure to be jealous of it; that Mohun was the prettiest fellow in England; that he hoped to see more of him whilst in the country; and that he would let Mohun know what my Lady Prude said ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... he is laughing up his sleeve at me for having taken him seriously, and thinks he is punishing me by ignoring me for being such a little prude!" said Myra. "Perhaps I did make rather a fool of myself, but I intend to get even with him. Yes, I'll get even with the conceited creature! Do you know what I have decided to do, aunt? I am going to make love to Don Carlos and make him fall in love with me in earnest, just to have the satisfaction ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... prude is woman, thus to disguise her inclination. They call thee Barbara—Bab! restrain not thy fancy. Come, hang round my neck and love me. What! wouldst thou be an ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... Painter, to say his Figures seem to breathe; but surely, it is a much greater and nobler Applause, that they appear to think." [Footnote: Fielding occasionally refers to Hogarth for the pictorial types of his characters. Bridget Allworthy, he tells us, resembled the starched prude in Morning; and Mrs. Partridge and Parson Thwackum have their originals in the Harlot's Progress. It was Fielding, too, who said that the Enraged Musician was "enough to make a man deaf to look at" (Voyage to ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... incident brought her turned Laura's head, making her so foolhardy in her inventions that Maria, who for all her boldness of speech was at heart a prude like ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... very aggravating To hear the solemn prating Of the fossils who are stating That old Horace was a prude; When we know that with the ladies He was always raising Hades, And with many an escapade his Best productions ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... to blame as you," observed Albert. "I went willingly, but after it was all over I was sorry I did. I am no prude, I enjoy a little excitement and don't mind a social evening with a few friends, but it doesn't pay to do things you despise ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... my guests. She was very much diverted with this distress, which she declared she could not comprehend, but frankly agreed to remain with me; and promised, at my earnest desire, not to publish what I had confessed to her, lest I should gain, around Windsor, the character of a prude. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... a prude, is never long embarrassed, however difficult may be the position in which she finds herself; she seems always to have on hand the fig-leaf which our mother Eve bequeathed to her. Consequently, when Eugene, interpreting, in favor of his vanity, the refusal to admit him, ...
— Study of a Woman • Honore de Balzac
... to me in this Siamese-twins arrangement of two so uncongenial. I am at one and the same time pupil and teacher, offender and judge, performer and critic, chaperone and protegee, a prim, precise, old maid and a rollicking schoolgirl, a tomboy and a prude, a saint and sinner. What can result from such a combination? That we get on tolerably is a wonder. Some days, however, we get on admirably together, part of me paying compliments to the other part of me—whole days being given to ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... naturally inherited the profound animosity that Lady Douglas bore to her mother, which had already come to light in the few words that the two women had exchanged. Besides, in ageing, whether from repentance for her errors or from hypocrisy, Lady Douglas had become a prude and a puritan; so that at this time she united with the natural acrimony of her character all the stiffness of the new religion she ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... desire you to take my word for it. If you will follow me, you will no longer be the dupe of a false prude, who makes you act so ridiculous ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... though I never was greatly given to the tender and sentimental, and have not had any tendencies that way greatly increased by the elegancies and courtesies of a midshipman's berth,—not to say that, as far as I recollect, Mdlle. Virginia was a bit of a prude, and M. Paul a pump,—yet were it but for old acquaintance sake, I determined on making a pilgrimage. Pamplemousses is a small village about seven miles from Port Louis, and the road to it is lined by rows of tamarind trees, ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... such a prude, my dear Milly," said the first voice. "To me this kind of thing is like a thunderstorm, or a ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... who was out of breath at the effrontery of the pair, toward the door. 'Are you blind, ma'am? Have you gone foolish? What should I have sent for you for, but to protect her? I see your mind; and off with the prude, pray! Madame will have my room; clear away every sign of me there. I sleep out; I can find a bed anywhere. And bolt and chain the house-door to-night against Cecil Baskelett; he informs me that ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... pair of clear brown eyes upon his face, and the faintest trace of astonishment crept into them. She was a woman with high principles, but neither a fool nor a prude, and she saw no sign of dissolute living there. The man's gaze was curiously steady, his skin clear and brown, and his sinewy form suggested a capacity for, and she almost fancied an acquaintance with, physical toil. Yet he had already denied the truth to her. ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... chamber-maid Frederika, who, more easy going than she, gladly allowed the Baron to trifle wantonly with her and pinch her cheeks or play with her curls. The insolent wench looked at her derisively, and called out, "That will give you a good appetite for the kermess, Miss Prude." ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... upon the matter is utterly unworthy of acceptance as being a representation of what people with blood in them think or do on such occasions." Thus am I crushed between the upper millstone of the Mr Redford, who thinks me a libertine, and the nether popular critic, who thinks me a prude. Critics of all grades and ages, middle-aged fathers of families no less than ardent young enthusiasts, are equally indignant with me. They revile me as lacking in passion, in feeling, in manhood. Some of them even ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... stove had cooked into her skin, thought the girl, mercilessly. Didn't she know there was such a thing as a powder puff? Women like that brought their own troubles upon themselves, that's what they did. And she was an old prude, too. Anyone could see with half an eye that she didn't like the idea of Uncle Martin learning to dance—why, she didn't even like his getting the Victrola—when it was just what both he and Bill had been wanting. But for all that she was her aunt, her own mother's sister ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... world this," said Mr. Crampton, in a great rage, when the letter was shown to him. "This same fellow, Scully, dissuades my nephew from taking a place, because Scully wants it for himself. This prude of a Lady Gorgon cries out shame, and disowns an innocent amiable girl: she a heartless jilt herself once, and a heartless flirt now. The Pharisees, the Pharisees! And to call ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of this lovely scene," said Margaret, moving away. Mr. Bass watched her until she disappeared, and then entered in his notebook a phrase for future use, "The prosperous propriety of a pretty plutocrat." He was gathering materials for his forthcoming book, "The Last Sigh of the Prude." ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... temperament for the first time broke out in verse; and I fabricated some glowing lines, in which I be-rhymed the little lady under the favorite name of Sacharissa. I slipped the verses, trembling and blushing, into her hand the next Sunday as she came out of church. The little prude handed them to her mamma; the mamma handed them to the squire, the squire, who had no soul for poetry, sent them in dudgeon to the school-master; and the school-master, with a barbarity worthy of the dark ages, gave me a sound and peculiarly humiliating flogging for ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... for him to have recognized them as yet; but Sally's curious, pitiless eyes had discerned them. She had discerned and disapproved, and she had resolved that no squeamish delicacy should keep her from preventing Beatrix's playing the part of a prude. ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray |
