"Coquette" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a deal of pains, Simon," says the sitter, after a long and well-pleased scrutiny. "Tell me, no flattery now, why should I be so difficult to paint?" Why, indeed, you saucy innocent coquette! Perhaps, because, all the while, you are turning the poor artist's head, and driving pins and needles into ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... young coquette than Miss Newcome, in her second season, these eyes never looked upon, that is the truth. In her first year, being engaged to Lord Kew, she was perhaps a little more reserved and quiet. Besides, her mother went out with her that first season, to whom Miss ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... leave me in charge to you?" Laura said, looking up into Mr. Pynsent's face, and dropping her eyes instantly, like a guilty little story-telling coquette. ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... be not true or not binding; as, to deny a statement or a relationship; or to refuse to grant as something requested; as, his mother could not deny him what he desired. To discard is to cast away as useless or worthless; thus, one discards a worn garment; a coquette discards a lover. Revoke (L. re, back, and voco, call), etymologically the exact equivalent of the English recall, is to take back something given or granted; as, to revoke a command, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... lofty, dark rooms, diabolically cold and damp, I reached the state bedroom where the Countess lay. From the rumors that were current concerning this lady (monsieur, I should never end if I were to repeat all the tales that were told about her), I had imagined her a coquette. Imagine, then, that I had great difficulty in seeing her in the great bed where she was lying. To be sure, to light this enormous room, with old-fashioned heavy cornices, and so thick with dust that merely to see it was enough to make you ...
— La Grande Breteche • Honore de Balzac
... witty. He seemed very devoted to Miss Wilkins, but Miss Wilkins was accustomed to the devotion of all the officers of the Eighth Infantry. In fact, it was said that every young lieutenant who joined the regiment had proposed to her. She was most attractive, and as she had too kind a heart to be a coquette, she was a universal favorite with the women as well as ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... at the time, lest something should delay this letter, and you be left to imagine all kinds of doleful reasons for its non-appearance. We anchored in Reykjavik harbour this afternoon (Saturday). H.M.S. "Coquette" sails for England on Monday; so that within a week ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... way at all? Because Mr. Durand did? Possibly. I remember that for all his ardent love-making, I felt a little piqued that he should divide his attentions in this way. Perhaps I thought that for this evening, at least, he might have been blind to a mere coquette's fascinations. ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... course of the tale, though, it is true, it grows confused towards the end, and touches the melodramatic in the same way as Nash's novel. Thus the above conversation is interrupted by the entrance of the coquette Emilia, long before loved by Peregrine who had vainly asked for her hand. "Peregrine would have answered, but a pluck by the sleeve obliged him to turn from Selinda to entertain a lady mask'd who had given him the nudg. ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... transient breath of poetic incense that women want; each can receive that from a lover. It is not life-long sway; it needs but to become a coquette, a shrew, or a good cook, to be sure of that. It is not money, nor notoriety, nor the badges of authority which men have appropriated to themselves. If demands, made in their behalf, lay stress on any of these particulars, those who make ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... did not allow him to see anything of the coquette in that confession. It all seemed to be consecrated by the love he felt for her—a love which was so honest that he perceived no boldness in the attitude of this girl who had come so far to meet him. He took her into his arms again, and ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... head of an enchanting valley, called the Valley Coquette because of its windings and the curves which return upon each other at every step, and seem more and more lovely as we advance, whether we ascend or descend them, there lived, in a little house surrounded by vineyards, a half-insane man named Margaritis. ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... creatures, who from the age of nine even to the age of marriage too often are the torment of a mother even when she is not a coquette, is it by the privilege of your years or the instinct of your nature that your young ears catch the faint sound of a man's voice through walls and doors, that your eyes are awake to everything, and that your young spirit busies itself in divining all, even the meaning of a word spoken in the air, ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... Vere, grafted upon the comprehending woman whom he had seen looking out of her eyes on the day of his last visit to the island, had put the finishing touch to the amorous madness of the Marchesino. He dreamed Vere an accomplished coquette. He believed that her cruelty on the night of his serenade, that her coldness and avoidance of him on the day of the lunch, were means devised to increase his ardor. She had been using Emilio merely as an instrument. He had been a weapon in her girlish hands. That was ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... ought not to want to be any more attractive to-night than usual. Am I a wicked girl? My cousin Maurice says, 'Coquetry is the cowardly woman's weapon, and I love you, little cousin, because you are not a coquette.'" ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... was romantic, whatever tragedy might follow. That it was to be tragedy I was assured, but this pretty, emotional butterfly had no such thoughts. Why should she have? She was safeguarded by the prince of a regnant line; she was to be the mistress of millions; and she could coquette at will in dark corners with handsome officers. She was bored, no doubt, and when dominoes with her maid failed her, she had Barraclough to fall back on, and there was her art behind all if she had only an audience. I began to see ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... coverlet of the wide bed is smooth and cold. Above, in the firelight, winks the coronet of tarnished gold. The knight shivers in his coat of fur, and holds out his hands to the withering flame. She is always the same, a sweet coquette. He will wait ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... for your patient kindness; I will not trespass on it longer. You have the best and kindest heart of any woman in the world. Why don't you exult a little over your conquest? It's complete enough to satisfy the most insatiable coquette. Don't look so sad. I'll be your merry-hearted friend ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... irresistibility, her every smile, her every gesture, the intonations of her voice, the turn of her head, her bubbling brilliance, her cool indifference, the ice of her intellect, the glow of her sympathy, each contributing to the masterpiece of her coquetry. But with him she was not even a coquette—jerky, passionate, nervous, humble, exacting, dull—she tired him ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... being distinctive. She mistrusts the stranger. He may be a good man on Tweed or Tay, but until he has been formally introduced to Spey and been admitted to her acquaintance, she is chary in according him her favours. She is no flighty coquette, nor is she a prude; but she has her demure reserves, and he who would stand well with her must ever treat her with consideration and respect. She is not as those facile demi-mondaine streams, such as the Helmsdale or ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... in Burmah when the news came of the first disaster to the Irish troops in South Africa. He threw up his business as lightly as a coquette throws up a midsummer lover, and started for the war. At Bombay he was stopped by a yard or two of red tape, and had to go back to Calcutta, where he used his Irish tongue to such purpose that he got a permit to leave India, and made his way to the scene of trouble. He first joined General ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... send me too thy griefs and cares; In all of thee sure thy Esopus shares. As thou at all mankind the flag unfurls, Who on my fair one satire's vengeance hurls? Who calls thee, pert, affected, vain coquette, A wit in folly, and a fool in wit? Who says, that fool alone is not thy due, And quotes thy treacheries to prove it true? Our force united on thy foes we'll turn, And dare the war with all of woman born: For who can write and speak as thou and I? My periods that deciphering defy, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... or no, and I'll horsewhip the untimely stripling for this reckless theft of my one delight. If he were a hundred men I'd horsewhip him—" He dropped his voice suddenly and unnaturally. "Bathsheba, sweet, lost coquette, pardon me! I've been blaming you, threatening you, behaving like a churl to you, when he's the greatest sinner. He stole your dear heart away with his unfathomable lies! ... It is a fortunate thing for him that he's gone back to his regiment—that he's away up the country, and not here! ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... Even his entertainments were neglected; when he appeared at any private or public assembly, the ladies, instead of glowing with pleasure, as formerly, now tittered or regarded him with looks of disdain; and a certain pert, little, forward coquette, with a view to put him out of countenance, by raising the laugh at his expense, asked him one night, at a drum, when he had heard from his relations in Poland? She succeeded in her design upon the mirth of the audience, ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... insulted maternal heart could not forget the humiliations and the sufferings which this man who now called for Josephine had inflicted upon her daughter. She could not pardon the viscount for having deserted his young wife, and that for the sake of a coquette! She therefore sought to inspire Josephine with mistrust; she told her that these vows of the viscount were not to be relied upon; that he had not given up his paramour to come back to Josephine, but that he was forsaken by her and abandoned by ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... completely was she caught in her own toils; she could but feel the retribution just. Of all men, she knew, George Graham to be one of the most fastidious, and that of all things he held the most despicable, she well knew, was a coquette. She loved him with passionate devotion, but knew, if the effort cost him his life, he would cast her from his affections. She was almost maddened with the thought. She did indeed feel that Mr. Barclay was amply revenged, and in feeling every hope of happiness was lost, she could judge to what ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... flirtation with a policeman round the corner. I am glad the aunt could explain things so satisfactorily. I was wrong about that girl. Shows how careful one must be in judging of other people, doesn't it? I must say she looked to me like a regular little coquette." ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... want of him? To explain the past? To justify herself? He knew enough already, and desired to know no more. Could she hope—natural coquette that she was—to regain her hold upon him? The man smiled grimly, confident of his own strength. Yet why should she care for such a conquest, the winning of a common soldier? There must be some better reason, ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... Three or four of the plates have much fun and humour: the Stolen Interview, after Stephanoff—an old lady being asleep at noonday in an easy chair, her daughter profits by the nap to return the attentions of her devoted admirer at the open door; the girl's expression is admirable. Another, the Coquette, after Chalon, is engraved in a light, sprightly style by Humphreys; a beautiful French flirt, at her toilet, is repelling with her fan—that wand of coquetry—a French Abbe on bended knee, whilst her other hand is rapturously seized by a second suitor, just ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 399, Supplementary Number • Various
... but Uxmoor, and Vizard went on to explain, "That Lady Betty Gore is as heartless a coquette as any in the county; and don't you flirt with her, or you ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... A coquette loves by calculation, Tattiana's love was quite sincere, A love which knew no limitation, Even as the love of children dear. She did not think "procrastination Enhances love in estimation And thus secures the prey we seek. His vanity first let us pique With ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... excellent effect), both take their troubles to Ernestine. And a young French aviator (this is a pre-War story), guest at Hatchways, analyses and discusses situations and characters from his coign of privilege—a device adroitly handled by the discreet author, who adds two charming girls, coquette Lise, Iveagh's first love, and wise, loyal, perceptive Bess, whom he found at last. To those who appreciate subtle portraiture let me commend this study.... I feel just as if I had been for a long week-end at Hatchways, anxiously wondering, as I write my "roofer," ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... kind? How often had he maintained an opposite opinion—seeming contemptuous, indolent, invulnerable, unconscious of her beauty, amused rather than attracted by her brilliant spirit. Every instinct of the coquette, jealous of her own power and wretched from the sterile suffering of wounded pride, resented bitterly the unpardonable ease which he had appeared to enjoy in her society. Now, however, that he appealed to ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... would be indiscreet, Replied the king, more charms we often meet, Beneath a chambermaid or laundress' dress, Than any rich coquette can well possess. Besides, with those, less form is oft requir'd, While dames of quality must be admir'd; Their whims complied with, though suspicions rise; And ev'ry hour produces fresh surprise, But this sweet charmer ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... course, he was well known at the cafe, and they did not detain Lisette, but it was a most ignominious position for a young woman. And there was no wedding next day, and everybody knew why. The little coquette, who had mocked suitors by the dozen, was jilted almost on the threshold of the Mairie. She smacked Tricotrin's face in the morning, but her humiliation was so acute that it demanded the salve of immediate marriage; and at the moment she ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... Kann collection, Paris, then in London, and later sold to Mr. Altman. In Germany we find the following: At the Berlin Museum, The Pearl Collar. The Drop of Wine, in the same museum, Berlin. The Coquette, Brunswick Museum. The Lady and Her Servant, in the private collection of James Simon, Berlin. The Merry Company and The Reader in the Dresden gallery. The Geographer at the Window, in the Staedel Institute, Frankfort. In France, The Astronomer of the A. de Rothschild collection at Paris, ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... a pained voice. "I cannot imagine why so many people should have thought that. Yes, and Richard himself. It never was; and I know I am no coquette!" ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... done to the young girl, under the name of prudence or worldly wisdom, by breaking down her ideal of life, and especially her ideal of the possible partner of her future life. Tennyson speaks of one form of this, in addressing the vain coquette as the possible ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... an old-fashioned cotillon, and one of the figures, the "coquette," brought every one, in turn, before me. I received a pleasant word or two from those whom I knew, and a long, kind, silent glance from Miss May Danvers. Where had been my eyes? She was tall, stately, twenty-five, had large dark ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... tried to pay her, and which he now acknowledged to himself would have suited for Milly Harrington better than Sir John Pynsent's sister. Was she really as childlike as she seemed, or was she a designing coquette? ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... all was now over between him and Frau Kahle. His acquaintance with women of her stamp had never been extensive, and to read the soul of one so utterly false and grossly sensual as this inveterate coquette, was quite beyond the ability of Lieutenant Pommer, analysis of his own or anybody else's character not being his ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... waving of white feathers recommenced. He felt that she was looking at him; almost in spite of himself their eyes met. He looked away with hot cheeks and burning eyes. Was this girl a trained coquette, or—— ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... love or be it hate, must be stirring within me in order to poetize successfully. And this cannot be comprehended by delicate and discreet people; this low Roman populace even venture to call me a coquette, only because I constantly need a new glow, and because I constantly seek new emotions and new ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... that kept Woodville there was jealousy. Sylvia, discreet as she was—no sparkling, teasing coquette—had yet all the irresistible magnetism of a woman who is obviously made for tenderness. But she showed as much deftness in keeping back her admirers as most girls do in attracting them. She had curious deep delicacies; she disliked nothing so much as to feel or show her power as a ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... coquette, who can't say "No," And won't say "Yes," and keeps you on and off-ing On a lee-shore, till it begins to blow— Then sees your heart wrecked, with an inward scoffing. This works a world of sentimental woe,[lq] And sends new Werters yearly to their coffin; But yet ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... current but unpublished records of social Louisiana, that Agatha had gone about shattering hearts in a most unintentional but effective fashion up to the time Mr. Jimmy Cannable refused to be routed. Certainly it is no blot upon this fair young coquette's fame to admit that she had plighted herself to at least four ardent suitors in days gone by, and it was equally her own affair if she took every woman's privilege of shifting her fancy before ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... fail to attract the attention of the artists present, and as day after day went by, flattering remarks and undisguised admiration did not fail to strike home; attentions from the "gentry" were grateful to one who was a born coquette, and Eily's ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... her soft brown eyes flashed into his, the little curl of her lips seemed to transform her whole expression. She was no longer the gravely minded prophetess of a great cause, the scheming woman, furious at the prospect of failure. She was suddenly wholly feminine, seductive, a coquette. ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... with a smile of pleasure, held out her slender, delicate hand to him, and began to speak in a voice in which for the first time new deep womanly notes vibrated. Mademoiselle Bourienne, who was in the drawing room, looked at Princess Mary in bewildered surprise. Herself a consummate coquette, she could not have maneuvered better on meeting a man she ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... friendly advances. She had spoken to a nice girl, her own age or thereabouts, and the girl's mother or aunt or chaperon, whoever it was, had taken her away. It had puzzled her at the time. Now she knew. The crowd that had seen her off, from the Pretty Coquette Company—that had queered her, she decided. ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... dream! Though the fete is grand, And a hundred hearts at her command, She takes no part, for her soul is sick Of the Coquette's art and the Serpent's trick,— She someway feels she would like to fling Her sins away as a robe, and spring Up like a lily pure and white, And bloom alone for ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... life; this was Claperon, the deputy-governor of the Rouen jail, with whom she had made acquaintance during one or two compulsory visits paid by her brother to that functionary. Claudine, who was a bit of a coquette, though she did not altogether reject his suit, gave him little encouragement, so that, betwixt hopes and fears and doubts and jealousies, poor Claperon led a very uneasy ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... him the unbounded influence she possessed over his royal rival; and the half-suppressed agony displayed by the unfortunate lover at the exhibition afforded her a pleasure such as only the most refined coquette can feel. ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... of a large painting in a pleasure-house in Shiraz, illustrative of the treatment of a loyal lover by a heartless coquette, which is one of the popular legends of Persia. Sheik Chenan, a Persian of the true faith, and a man of learning and consequence, fell in love with an Armenian lady of great beauty who would not marry him unless he changed his religion. To this he agreed. Still she would not ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... was such a favorite with her. How often have I seen the old lady, her feet upon the bar, reclining in the easy-chair, with her dress half raised in front, toying with the snuff-box, which lay upon the ledge between her box of pastilles and her silk mits. What a coquette she was! to the day of her death she took as much pains with her appearance as though the beautiful portrait had been painted only yesterday, and she were waiting to receive the throng of exquisites from the Court! How the armchair recalls to me the inimitable sweep of her ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... observing the puzzling behavior of Beth and my chum. I had expected that he would avoid her as much as possible and speak to her only when common politeness made conversation obligatory, and that she, a born coquette, would seek to add his scalp to her collection. Instead, to my surprise, their roles were reversed. He appeared interested in her every remark and looked at her often and intently. He was quite assiduous in his attentions ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... asked her to marry him the night before, and she had only refused! Impossible to suppose that it was the mere plotting of the finished coquette. This lover required ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... way to dispose of the Malay girl; but his anxiety was removed when Captain Po-ho, in due form, offered to marry her, an arrangement to which she appeared to have no objection. Jack was at all events very glad to get her out of the ship, as, to say the best of her, she was a determined coquette, and had turned the heads of half the midshipmen, and, it was whispered, of more than one of the lieutenants, during the short time she had been ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... rapid slopes of the hillsides of Saint Cloud are peopled with a heterogeneous mass of villas of what the Parisian calls the "coquette" order, but which breathe little of the spirit of romance and gallantry of Renaissance times. Saint Cloud is simply a "discreet" Paris suburb, and the least said about it, its villas and ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... with cool dissolute persistency. She deceived, lied, and wept with the felicity of a fanatic. She sought and found happiness at the cost of not only self-respect, but honour and virtue. She was not a shrew, but a born coquette, without morals rather than immoral, and, withal, a superb enigmatic who would have made the Founder of our faith shed tears of sorrow. It is by distorting facts that her eulogists make it appear that she was a loving ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... minstrels seem far away. There is the very earliest cat-bird, mimicking the bobolink before the bobolink has come: what is the history of his song, then? is it a reminiscence of last year? or has the little coquette been practising it all winter, in some gay Southern society, where cat-birds and bobolinks grow intimate, just as Southern fashionables from different States may meet and sing duets at Saratoga? There sounds the sweet, low, long-continued ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... by Dickens, neither of them adding very much to his reputation, appeared in 1836, to wit:—'The Stranger Gentleman, A Comic Burletta in Three Acts'; and 'The Village Coquette,' a comic opera in two acts. They were presented upon the stage towards the close of that ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... levity, felt its charm, notwithstanding half its winning influence was lost in the feeble light. It at once created a sort of confidence between them, and the discourse was continued on the part of the hunter, without the lively consciousness of the character of this coquette of the wilderness, with which it had ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... love with the grace of the lily That sways on its slender fair stem, My love with the bloom of the rosebud, White pearl in my life's diadem! You may call her coquette if it please you, Enchanting, if shy or if bold, Is my darling, my winsome wee lassie, Whose birthdays are ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... wear out, a street which leads to the abbey of Grand-mont, and to a trench, which works very well with the bridge, and at the end of which is a finer fair ground. A street well paved, well built, well washed, as clean as a glass, populous, silent at certain times, a coquette with a sweet nightcap on its pretty blue tiles—to be short, it is the street where I was born; it is the queen of streets, always between the earth and sky; a street with a fountain; a street which lacks nothing to be celebrated ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... the course of this afternoon mere mirages seen by an eye disordered by suspicion? They might be, but Mr. Hobhouse was prepared to stake his davy that they were real. And what then did they imply? Surely not that she suspected the truth. He could not read them into that. That she was simply a coquette and for want of more amusing game (such for instance as Mr. O'Brien) was prepared to have a little flirtation with his successor? This was, somehow or other, not a very agreeable solution, but I began to suspect it might be the true one. In any case she was a puzzling ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... mistress, and thinking that any negro who took such good care of his master's property would make a good husband, she sought an interview with Candace, and so pleaded with her in behalf of poor Jim that the dusky coquette relented, and went down herself to Aunt Sukey's cabin to tell her lover that she did love him all along, and was "jis' er projeckin' wid 'im," and that she would surely ...
— Diddie, Dumps & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... no such character here as a coquette, but alas! how many envious prudes! Some days ago I walked into my Lord Kilcoubry's (don't be surprised, my lord is but a glover), [Footnote: William Maclellan, who claimed the title, and whose son succeeded in establishing the claim in 1773. The father is said to have voted at ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... could know how many men will be made wretched when I get married," said the languishing coquette to her most ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... "La Coquette Corrigee" had been selected for representation at the Theatre Francais solely because it was the piece in which Mademoiselle Contat shone most. Yet the notions propagated by the Queen's enemies coinciding ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... receives and the way she receives it one would think he was right. Graydon, however, seems to be her favorite, and if he could remain long enough it is not hard to see what might happen. But she is a great belle and a coquette too, I should imagine, and she has a large enough following to turn any girl's head. I don't wonder at it either, for she is the most lovely creature I ever saw, and yet she doesn't make a pleasant impression on me. The men are just wild about her. Mr. ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... the clear course. His calls and invitations for rides and tennis and golf were more frequent than ever. She must have understood; but, being a normal young woman, as well as a very, very pretty one, she was a bit of a coquette and kept the boy—for, after all, he was scarcely more than that—at arm's length and in a state of alternate hope and despair. I shared his varying moods. If he could not be sure of her feelings ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of her," John Wilkes wrote, "and withal the most modest, pleasing and delicate flower I have seen"—should have lovers by the score. Every gallant who came to Bath, sought to woo, if not to win, her. But Elizabeth Linley was no coquette; nor was she a foolish girl whose head could be turned by a handsome face or pretty compliments, or whose eyes could be dazzled by the glitter of wealth and rank. She was wedded to her music, and no lover, she vowed, should wean her from her allegiance. ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... sung; but you must not think that she still feared Dow. I felt McKenzie's clutch on any arm for hours after he left me, but she was far braver than I; indeed, dangers at which I should have shut my eyes only made hers gleam, and I suppose it was sheer love of them that first made her play the coquette with Gavin. If she cried now, it was not for herself; it was because she thought she had destroyed him. Could I have gone to her then and said that Gavin wanted to blot out the gypsy wedding, that throbbing little breast would have frozen at once, and the drooping head would have been ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... Clotilde paid any attention to him. Knowing how quickly Madame de Lucenay decided on anything, he imagined that she pushed her audacity and contempt so far that she wished to play the coquette openly and before him with the ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... Quaker gowns, and breasts of doves, and a gray day, and a gentlewoman's hair; and horses must be gray....Now grey is for eyes, the eyes of a witch, with green lights in them and much wickedness. Gray eyes would be as tender and yielding and true as blue ones; a coquette must ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... His blood, quickened by praise, flushes his face, his eye sparkles, his features play, but his heart is empty, his soul void, his intellect without expansion; he is as vain, weak, and selfish as an old coquette. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... her husband, and a most accomplished coquette, the Marquise was recovering from a serious love-affair, when she summoned Balzac to afford her amusement and distraction. Delicate and fragile, her face was rather too long for perfect beauty, ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... need possess the manly virtues, for she must have been an untowardly female—a sour, lantern-jawed spinster, with all the inclinations but none of the qualities of a coquette." ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... she said, "as I see you are likely to do. You are inclined to think me a strange bold girl, half coquette, half romp, desirous, perhaps, of storming you into admiration. You never were more mistaken. I would show as much favour to your father, as readily make him my confidant, if he were here—and if I thought he were capable of understanding me. The truth is, I must ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... upward. Stop your horse now, for practice. Do not speak to him during your first lessons, except by your master's express command, but address him in his own language, using your reins, your foot, and your whip, if your master permit. "Why do you make coquette of your horse?" asked a French master of a pretty girl who was coaxingly calling her mount "a naughty, horrid thing," and casting glances fit to distract a man on the ungrateful creature's irresponsive crest. "Your horse does not care anything ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... own country dwells in our hearts as well as on our tongues." Ah! never may I lose the Border accent! "Love's Miracle! To cure a coquette." "Most honest women are tired of their task," says this unbeliever. And the others? Are they never aweary? The Duke is his own best critic after all, when he says: "The greatest fault of a penetrating wit is ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... snatched it up. He stood for a second holding it in his hand as if not knowing what to do with it, then he dashed it down into the fireplace. The glass splintered into hundreds of fragments. Jimmy Challoner stood staring down at them with passionate eyes. He hated her. She was a flirt, a coquette ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... of the world! If I had not cajoled those three deputies they might have wanted La Billardiere's place themselves; whereas, now that I have invited them here, they will be ashamed to do so and will become our supporters instead of rivals. I have rather played the coquette, but—it is delightful that the first nonsense with which one ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... of 'What Every Woman Knows,' Barrie accomplishes, by the chess game and the entrance of the brother, what ten minutes of dialogue would have failed to do. Roberto Bracco's 'Infedele,' played in English as 'The Countess Coquette,' by Nazimova, is a still more remarkable instance. The play, in lines, is a very short one, but by the use of pantomime, even long stretches of it, there is produced a play of the regular length. One of the most intense scenes in modern drama is the prison scene in Galsworthy's ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... "'Coquette! nothing can frighten me. Tell me that you will cost me my whole future, that I shall die two months hence, that I shall be damned for ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... who, perhaps, will laugh at me—one of those aristocratic women of whom you no doubt have a horror; one of those angelic beauties to whom one ascribes a soul; a true duchess, very disdainful, very loving, subtle, witty, a coquette, like nothing I have ever yet seen, and who says she loves me, who wants to keep me in a palace at Venice (for I tell you everything), and who desires I should write nothing, except for her; one of those ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... vexation, shrewdly increased it by pretending to associate him with the transparent coquette, while at the same time manifesting disapproval of her by a fine reserve. Amelia felt herself scanned quietly, coldly, and half curiously, as if she belonged to some strange and hitherto unknown type, and her vivacious egotism began to fail her. She was ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... coquette began to describe the lovers about whom all the women of her acquaintance raved; there was not a single man of ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... back to us presently, quite contented to look at her successes and not to speak to her again that evening. At supper-time we watched her from a distance, and a more brilliant young coquette than Miss Georgy showed herself to be I have never seen. She looked more and more beautiful as the night wore on, the flush deepening in her cheeks, her eyes dilating, her hair loosening. Men full fledged though we considered ourselves now in our senior ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... of Kate that she demanded the love and loyalty of her betrayed lover to the bitter end, false and heartless though she had been. The coquette in her played with him even now in the midst of the bitter pain she must have known she was inflicting. No word of contrition spoke she, but took her deed as one of her prerogatives, just as she had always taken ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... complicate the question. Sometimes a ruined aristocrat marries a rich tradesman's daughter, in order to repair his fortune, while the vanity of his fiancee makes a title a desirable acquisition. Sometimes a coquette, by clever flirtation, will simulate a love which she does not feel, to catch a rich man in her net. But more commonly there is calculation on both sides and ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... as possible; my slow and stiff motions all attested that the effects of the narcotic were not yet entirely dissipated. The chamber was evidently furnished for the reception of a woman; and the most finished coquette could not have formed a wish, but on casting her eyes about the apartment, she would have found that ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... letter, and said things which I suppress with great violence to my vanity. There are many terms in my narratives which he complains want explaining, and has therefore desired, that, for the benefit of my country readers, I would let him know what I mean by a Gentleman, a Pretty Fellow, a Toast, a Coquette, a Critic, a Wit, and all other appellations in the gayer world, who are in present possession of these several characters; together with an account of those who unfortunately pretend to them. I shall begin with him we usually ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... Was Phoebe a mere coquette pure et simple? As soon as she had got safe within these walls, she stooped down over the primroses to get rid of Martha, and then in the darkness had a cry, all by herself, on one side of the wall, while the young lover, with his ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... not comfort him,—in his extremest need he found her most barren. He had been wont to rejoice in her as the creature of his own senses; but when he asked her to sympathize with his pain, she laughed at him,—the magnificent coquette!—and bade him, since she was only the reflection of himself, be content with his own sympathy. Truly, if man and Nature be thus allied, and God be but man developed, then is self-sufficiency the only virtue worth cultivating, and idolatry ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... Part of the Audience, and accounts for their Prepossession against this reasonable Delight in the following Manner. The Prude, says he, as she acts always in Contradiction, so she is gravely sullen at a Comedy, and extravagantly gay at a Tragedy. The Coquette is so much taken up with throwing her Eyes around the Audience, and considering the Effect of them, that she cannot be expected to observe the Actors but as they are her Rivals, and take off the Observation ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... he is disturbed and urged onward by his senses, where will he find satisfaction? His horror of adultery and debauch keeps him at a distance from prostitutes and married women, and the disorders of youth may always be traced to one or other of these. A maiden may be a coquette, but she will not be shameless, she will not fling herself at the head of a young man who may marry her if he believes in her virtue; besides she is always under supervision. Emile, too, will not ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... patronised his enemy Shadwell; upon whose northern dedications, inscribed to the duke and his lady, our author is particularly severe. In the preface to the "Evening's Love," Dryden anxiously justifies himself from the charge of encouraging libertinism, by crownings rake and coquette with success. But after he has arrayed all the authority of the ancient and modern poets, and has pleaded that these licentious characters are only made happy after being reclaimed in the last scene, we may be permitted to think, that more proper heroes may be selected ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... lady or perish in the attempt, the little boys applauded vehemently, especially one little fellow who was apparently on a visit to the family, and had been carrying on a child's flirtation, the whole evening, with a small coquette of twelve years old, who looked like a model of her mamma on a reduced scale; and who, in common with the other little girls (who generally speaking have even more coquettishness about them than much older ones), looked very properly shocked, when the ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... both sides. The houses were very fine, and of wonderful height and grandeur, and good reason why, for emperors and kings lived there, princes in hundreds, noblemen and gentlemen in thousands, and a great many women of all grades. I could see many a horned coquette, like a full-rigged ship, strutting as if set in a frame with a fair store of pedlery about her, and pearls in her ears to the value of a good-sized farm: some were singing so as to be praised for their voices, ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... dear Charles. I know you may probably feel that this avowal ought to be expressed with more hesitation, veiled over by the hypocrisy of language, disguised by the hackneyed forms of mere sentiment, uttered like the assertions of a coquette, and degraded by that tampering with truth which makes the heart lie unto itself. Oh, yes!—perhaps, Charles, you may think that because I fail to express what I feel in that spirit of ambiguity which a love not confident in the truth, purity, and rectitude of its own principles ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... spots! It may be objected to Robin that he is noisy and demonstrative; he hurries away or rises to a branch with an angry note, and flirts his wings in ill-bred suspicion. The Mavis, or Red Thrush, sneaks and skulks like a culprit, hiding in the densest Alders; the Cat-Bird is a coquette and a flirt, as well as a sort of female Paul Pry; and the Chewink shows his inhospitality by espying your movements like a Japanese. The Wood-Thrush has none of these under-bred traits. He regards me unsuspiciously, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... humanity seems to be that Laura was the most consummate coquette in history. She dressed to catch Petrarch's attention; wore the flowers he liked best; accepted his amorous poems without protest; placed herself in his way by ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... the chevalier, "does Blue Beard coquette at the same time with a filibusterer, a buccaneer, and a cannibal? Bah! what ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... exercise a civilizing—I may call it a sobering—influence. A charming, clever, witty woman always does—especially if she is a little of a coquette. My dear uncle, the society of such women has been half my education. If Clifford is suspended, as you say, from college, let Eugenia be ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... flaxen—not a drab—but that peculiar sevenpenny-moist-sugar tint which the poets of old were wont to call golden. Her voice was melodious; her notes in alt were equal to Grisi's: in short, she would have been a very desirable, loveable young lady, if she had not been a coquette. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... merely said,—"Oh, you cruel beauty!" returning to his paper again; but, seated in the bay-window was one, who could not thus lightly look upon the conduct of the coquettish Winnie, for it was evident she was a sad coquette. Often had Natalie observed her, as she received each admirer with the same bewitching smile, impressing him with the belief that he of all others was the favored one, and he would depart, to return again as early as the rules ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... a moment from a gallant bounding ship to a mere hulk drifting in an entangled mass of debris. Of course she had a perfect right to suit herself about the kind of a man she took for a husband, but he certainly had not thought she was such an utter coquette. If ever a woman gave a man reason to think himself as good as engaged, she had given him that reason, and yet she refused him as coolly as she would have declined a second plate of soup. There must be some truth, after all, in the rant of the poets about the heartlessness ...
— Deserted - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... he came to the conclusion that she had fooled him, had lied to him. She did not intend to sail on the Wilhelm, at all. It was all very clear to him now, that strangeness in her manner, those odd occasional smiles What was she? An adventuress! That sweet-faced girl a little ordinary coquette, a liar? He turned cold with the thought. Nor was she alone in her duplicity. Had not her uncle and aunt been as ready to deceive him? Were they trying to throw him off their track for some subtle purpose? Had they done something for which they were compelled to fly the country as quickly as possible? ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... eyes. What a charming coquette she would make, if she were not so innocent. But the long fringe of lashes ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... constantly deceived in guessing their age. She would have been pretty if she had been clean; and was abundantly and expensively ornamented. Sometimes we hear it figuratively said of a domestic coquette, that she carries all her property on her back. These Greeks must be well off, if it may not sometimes be so said with propriety of them. They have a plan of advertising a young lady's assets, in a manner that must ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... more Tory than the party that tried to destroy American liberty during the Revolution? And now this Whig party like a masked thief was abroad in the land to pick up what spoils it could, and to take from trusting hearts sustenance for its misbegotten existence. It was already beginning to coquette with the slavery question, hoping to deceive the people with humanitarian and moral professions. Very well! If it was the Good Samaritan it pretended to be let it give up its bank and its tariff, ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... rebuff with no offended question. In the maid 'twas surely a wilful and bewildering thing to deny him. I could not make it out: but wished, in the breeze and sunlight of that day, that the wound had not been dealt. 'Twas an unkind thing in Judith, thinks I; 'twas a thing most cruel—thus to coquette with the ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... arm! No; fool to take it at all! What a girl! I never saw such—pho! How it bleeds! Will it never stop! They'll think there's been a murder here. What could possess me to run after her? A rustic coquette! Rustic! No; a most courtly one. She had me fairly in her power. But she has too much sense to tell. 'Pon my word, I never loved any one so much before. Disgusting! All over my cravat. If I were to meet any one? If Freda were to see me, what would she think or say? And I actually talked of ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... use. With mistaken notions as to the significance and the motive of social relations they imagine that they shall always meet with deceptive smiles; and so at last the moment comes for them when the world leaves them bald, stripped bare, without fortune or worth, like an elderly coquette by the door of a salon, or a ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... secretly occupies himself with literature. He has written a little comedy in the style of a "proverb;" and—as every one who writes now constantly brings on the stage some real person or some actual fact—he has introduced a coquette into it, and he reads it confidentially to a few ladies who are very kind to him. But he has never married, although he has had many excellent opportunities for doing so. For that Varvara Pavlovna ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... with our best attempts at civility: the master himself avoided offending him, knowing why he came; and if he could not be gracious, kept out of the way. I rather think his appearance there was distasteful to Catherine; she was not artful, never played the coquette, and had evidently an objection to her two friends meeting at all; for when Heathcliff expressed contempt of Linton in his presence, she could not half coincide, as she did in his absence; and when Linton evinced disgust and antipathy to ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... Valerie loved you so well," replied Lisbeth. "She is frivolous and a coquette, she loves to have attentions paid her, and to have the comedy of love-making performed for her, as she says; but you are her ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... to revile dress, who were formerly the greatest coquette and the most frisky and fluttering of all the Princess's women. At least, that is what is still spoken of you in the hotel, as having been handed down from time out of mind, by generation to ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Mr. Stryker's admiration had very much increased since they had been together at the Springs. He had set out for Saratoga, with the firm determination to play the suitor to Elinor; he resolved that he would not fall in love with the pretty widow; but a clever coquette and a man of the world, are adversaries well matched; and, as usual in such encounters, feminine art and feminine flattery seemed likely to carry the day. Mr. Stryker, in spite of himself, often forgot to be properly attentive ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... the question immediately. He had been brought of a sudden to the vexatious conclusion that Mrs. Willoughby was a coquette just like the rest of her trivial sex—no better, indeed, than the girl at his side, whose first anxiety was not as to whether Mallinson was seriously ill, but why he wrote the information to Mrs. Willoughby. He felt that Mrs. Willoughby had ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... cruel coquette made me endure were horrible. Sometimes she would treat me as a child, sometimes as a man. She would always leave me if ever there came a ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... kiss had stirred his fancy, her subsequent repulse had established her influence. The stubborn virtue, which was a part of the inherited fibre of her race, had achieved a result not unworthy of the most finished coquette. Against his desire for possession there battled the instinctive chastity that was woven into the structure of Sarah Revercomb's granddaughter. Hardly less violent than the natural impulse against which it warred, it gave Blossom an advantage, which the obvious weakness of her heart had helped ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... the least the air of a coquette. Impossible to associate any such trivial idea with Rosamund's habitual seriousness of bearing, and with the stamp of her features, which added some subtle charm to regularity and refinement. By temper critical, and especially disposed to mistrustful scrutiny by the present ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... when she had on the pretty plaid that had come from Fort Benton, and when her heavy black hair was done up just right, she had twice the sex confidence she felt in old togs. Jessie would have denied indignantly that she was a coquette. None the less she was intent on conquest. She wanted this quiet, self-contained ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... sometimes to the neglect of other topics, in the American young woman, it was not because she is interested in herself, but because she is on the way to be one of the most agreeable objects in this lovely world. She may struggle against it; she may resist it by all the legitimate arts of the coquette and the chemist; she may be convinced that youth and beauty are inseparable allies; but she would have more patience if she reflected that the sunset is often finer than the sunrise, commonly finer than noon, especially after a stormy day. The secret of a beautiful old age is as well ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... waters rimmed with velvety green. Every raindrop on the pines was a prism; the mountain a brocade of blossom. To the right Fuji, the graceful, ever lovely Fuji; capricious as a coquette and bewitching in her mystery, with a thumbnail moon over her peak, like a silver tiara on the head of a proud beauty; at her base the last fleecy clouds of the day, gathered like worshipers at the feet of some ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... deep green and remarkably free from blights. Perfectly hardy; forms so large a bush in time that it should be placed in the rose shrubbery rather than amid smaller species. 9. Margaret Dickson. A splendid, finely formed, fragrant white rose, with deep green foliage. 10. Coquette des Blanches. One of the very hardy white roses, an occasional pink streak tinting the outside petals. Cup-shaped and a profuse bloomer. 11. Coquette des Alps. A very hardy bush, coming into bloom rather later than the former and lasting ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... sense, and an easy, unaffected conduct can draw the line between prudery and coquetry. It would be no great departure from truth to say that it rarely happens otherwise than that a thorough-paced coquette dies in celibacy, as a punishment for her attempts to mislead others by encouraging looks, words, or actions, given for no other purpose than to draw men on to make overtures that they may be rejected.... Every blessing, among which ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various |
