"Foppish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of abstract truth and the consideration of it. Such journals sold by thousands in Paris before Napoleon III. throttled the newspapers. These very men were fond of pleasure and pursued it, and I have been told by residents, that often persons of a foppish exterior and fashionable conduct, are also celebrated for the extent of their learning. At home we rarely look for talent or learning among the devotees of fashion, or at least, among those who exalt fashion above all ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... careless in dress and rather affected it. Great heavy boots, loose collar, and general roughness of attire were then peculiar to the West and in our circle considered manly. Anything that could be labeled foppish was looked upon with contempt. I remember the first gentleman I ever saw in the service of the railway company who wore kid gloves. He was the object of derision among us who aspired to be manly men. I was a great deal the better in all these respects after we moved ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... a ring with a star-sapphire, which made him incongruous, showy and foppish, and that was a thing not easy of forgiveness in the West. Certainly the West would not have tolerated him as far as it did, had it not been for three things: the extraordinary good nature which made him giggle; the fact that on more than one occasion he had given ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and his two 15 or 16 year old twin sons have come to stay for the summer holidays in a Cornish fishing village. The two boys are very different. Arthur, or Taff, is very foppish and afraid of getting wet, hurt, or in any way inconvenienced. The other boy, Richard, or Dick, is the exact opposite, always running hither and thither, always wanting to get involved in anything that is going, ready to make friends with all and sundry, ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... white vest pattern, or perhaps you would prefer velvet?" queried a foppish little fellow. And Theodore, who was sharper at that style of talk than any of them, and was rapidly losing his embarrassment, replied in a tone ...
— Three People • Pansy
... prowling in search of a kill. His commercial caution steered him wide of the moral women in his employ, but the other kind, and especially the innocent or the inexperienced, had cause to know and to fear him. In appearance he was slender and foppish; he affected a pronounced waist-line in his coats, his eyes were large and dark and brilliant, his mouth was sensual. He never raised his voice, he never appeared to see plain women; such girls as accepted his attentions were ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... by this extraordinary measure, she continues to reside at the house of Don Jabin, whose daughter, Berillia, she saves from a monastery by making up the deficiency in her dowry. The ungrateful girl, however, resents Emanuella's disapproval of her foppish lover, and resolves to be revenged upon her benefactress. She, therefore, forwards Emanuella's affair with Emilius until the lovers are hopelessly compromised; then taking advantage of the loss of the lady's fortune at sea, ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... permitted yourself certain expressions concerning his lordship here, which we cannot allow to remain where you have left them. You must retract, sir, or make them good." His gravity, and the preciseness of his diction now, sorted most oddly with his foppish airs. ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... get me here, after I'd been on the ranch only a month." It was the same young woman in the not too foppish garb of a cowboy. In wide-brimmed hat, flannel shirt, woolly chaps, quirt in hand, she bestrode a horse that looked capable ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... captandum; canting, insincere. not natural, unnatural; self-conscious; maniere; artificial; overwrought, overdone, overacted; euphuist &c 577. stiff, starch, formal, prim, smug, demure, tire a quatre epingles, quakerish, puritanical, prudish, pragmatical, priggish, conceited, coxcomical, foppish, dandified; finical, finikin; mincing, simpering, namby-pamby, sentimental. Phr. conceit in weakest bodies strongest ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... 's so foppish that he will have them made tight enough to display the goodness of his thighs," rejoined Gibbs, who, being dry, was enjoying the plight of the rest. "Make yourselves smart, gentlemen, there ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... owl of magisterial air, Of solemn aspect, filled the chair; And, with the port of human race, Wore wisdom written on his face. He from the flippant world retired, And in a barn himself admired; And, like an ancient sage, concealed The follies foppish life revealed. He pondered o'er black-lettered pages Of old philosophers and sages— Of Xenophon, and of the feat Of the ten thousand in retreat; Pondered o'er Plutarch and o'er Plato, On Scipio, Socrates, and Cato. But what most roused the bird's conceit, Was Athens—academic ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... halting his company and riding forward. He was a thin and foppish young gentleman in a flaxen wig, and spoke with a high sense of authority, having but recently sacrificed the pleasures of his coffee-house and a fine view of St. James's Park to seek even in the cannon's mouth a bubble reputation ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Rodomont, whose Beauty I have long admir'd, and whose Estate I do profoundly reverence. [Aside.] Nor can I on a just survey of my Person and Parts find the least Obstacle, why her Inclinations shou'd n't mount like mine, that without much Ceremony or foppish Courtship, we might unite Circumstances, and astonish the World at the Sight of a couple so prodigiously ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... Commons, and won victories for her in foreign courts, and had penetrated and frustrated the designs of her enemies, gave him a splendid position in the esteem of English patriots. They even looked kindly upon his foibles, his foppish attire, his fondness for the turf, and his frivolous gayety, which shone undaunted when the national gloom was blackest. When he died there was a general belief that England had lost a son who had spared nothing in laboring for her aggrandizement, and he went to his last resting-place ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... blackthorn stick lay across them. His dark, handsome, aquiline features were convulsed into a spasm of vindictive hatred, which had set his dead face in a terribly fiendish expression. He had evidently been in his bed when the alarm had broken out, for he wore a foppish, embroidered nightshirt, and his bare feet projected from his trousers. His head was horribly injured, and the whole room bore witness to the savage ferocity of the blow which had struck him down. Beside ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... father's emphatic "No." He had work for them to do, and he never allowed pleasure to usurp the time for labour. The result is recorded on the page of English history. The three brothers of the Peel family became renowned in their country's brilliant progress. Harry Garland, the idle, foppish youth, became a ruined spendthrift. In this way the language of inspiration is verified. "Honour thy father and mother (which is the first commandment with promise), that it may be well with thee." The providence ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... the other extreme. It was fashionable to despise fashion. It was etiquette to pay no regard to etiquette. The haughty Austrian noble prided himself in dressing as he pleased, and looked with contempt upon the studied attitudes and foppish attire of the French. The Parisian courtier, on the other hand, rejoicing in his ruffles, and ribbons, and practiced movements, despised the boorish manners, as he deemed ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... Sighs, Crying, nor Prayers, Their subtile Whinings, nor Treacherous Tears, That shall one kind Return for ever gain, But when t' oblige us they've done all they can, We'll laugh, deride, and scorn the Foppish Sex, And wrank Invention for new ways to vex, Till they to shun us, prompted by Despair, Or Drown themselves, or hung in ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses From Women • Various
... himself as a student. He would toil no more in the studios of others—he was now a full-blown artist himself. So he argued. 'Naturally vain.' writes J.T. Smith, one of his biographers, 'he became ridiculously foppish, and by dressing to the extreme of fashion was often the laughing-stock of his brother artists, particularly when he wished to pass for a man of high rank, whose costume he mimicked; and that folly ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... eyes as they cross the square; and all turn their back on Him, caring little enough for this Saviour unlike the head familiar to them, recognizing Him only with sheep-like features and a pleasing expression; such, in short, as the foppish image at the cathedral at Amiens before which the lovers of a ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... a foppish-looking fellow, lying at length on a rosewood sofa, intent on the pages of a yellow-covered volume which he held above his perfumed head; "come, have done with 'Ten Thousand a Year,' and let us have a last game of cards. ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... in Archie Maine's quarters often told him that he was rather a good-looking young fellow; that is to say, he gave promise of growing into a well-featured, manly youth without any foppish, effeminate, so-called handsomeness. But nature had been very kind to him, and, honestly, he scarcely knew anything about his own appearance; for when he looked in his glass for reasons connected with cleanliness— putting his hair straight, ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... joined the Congregational Church, and was accustomed to open his school with an extempore prayer. He used the word "Deist" as a term of reproach; he deemed it "criminal" in Gibbon to write his fifteenth and sixteenth chapters, and spoke of that author as a "learned, proud, ingenious, foppish, vain, self-deceived man," who "from Protestant connections deserted to the Church of Rome, and thence to the faith of Tom Paine." And he never delivered himself from this narrowness and ignorance. In the ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... that he must have worth," said the Judge, "from the recommendation of my friend B. This vanity, and these foppish habits of his, we shall soon know how to get rid of; the man himself is unquestionably good; and, dear Elise, be kind to him, and manage so that he shall feel at home ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... formed Joe's acquaintance earlier than Mabel and in a less pleasant way. He was a rather foppish young man who cultivated a mustache that the girls called "darling," and affected what he fondly believed to be an ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... passed, prohibiting Templars wearing beards of more than three weeks' growth, upon pain of a forty-shilling fine, and double for every week after monition. The young lawyers were evidently getting too foppish. They were required to cease wearing Spanish cloaks, swords, bucklers, rapiers, gowns, hats, or daggers at their girdles. Only knights and benchers were to display doublets or hose of any light colour, except scarlet and crimson, or to affect velvet caps, scarf-wings ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... ear, as the name of the person with whom Clarissa had fallen in love; and to the scene at the glove-shop. What can be more magnificent than his enumeration of his companions—"Belton, so pert and so pimply—Tourville, so fair and so foppish!" etc. In casuistry this author is quite at home; and, with a boldness greater even than his puritanical severity, has exhausted every topic on virtue and vice. There is another peculiarity in Richardson, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... face flushed a poppy red and his white hand went to his sword hilt. There was courage in the foppish substance, and he would clearly have rejoiced to try his chance in ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... that thou wouldst, and even that thou wouldst not," answered De Marsay, with a laugh. He had recovered his foppish ease, as he took the resolve to let himself go to the climax of his good fortune, looking neither before nor after. Perhaps he counted, moreover, on his power and his capacity of a man used to adventures, to dominate this girl a few hours later and learn ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... bowsprit into the sea and flinging green water over her bows. A wave of confidence and affection for her welled through me. I had been used to resent the weight and bulk of her unwieldy anchor and cable, but I saw their use now; varnish, paint, spotless decks, and snowy sails were foppish ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... I did, for I afterwards discovered that this precious gossiping young man, with his rings and ribbons, was no other than a government spy, on the look-out for malcontents. Certainly his disguise was good, for I never should have imagined it from his foppish exterior and mincing manners. ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... semicolons with flapping of his elbows, and all but doubling his body at his periods. Mr. Romfrey had enough of it half-way down the column; his head went sharply to left and right. Cecil's peculiar foppish slicing down of his hand pictured him protesting that there was more and finer of the inimitable stuff to follow. The end of the scene exhibited the paper on the turf, and Colonel Halkett's hand on Cecil's shoulder, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Below the exigence, or be not backed With show of love, at least with hopeful proof Of some sincerity on the giver's part; Or be dishonoured in the exterior form And mode of its conveyance, by such tricks As move derision, or by foppish airs And histrionic mummery, that let down The pulpit to the level of the stage; Drops from the lips a disregarded thing. The weak perhaps are moved, but are not taught, While prejudice in men of stronger minds Takes deeper root, confirmed by what they see. A relaxation of ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... Behind the slight, foppish figure, the eye of his mind saw suddenly—not the sunlight and colour of Jaipur, but a stretch of grey-green sea, tawny cliffs, and sandy shore ... St Rupert's! Of course, unmistakable: the sullen mouth, ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... scent and ear-rings—as foppish attire and fantastical phrases do become an honest lover," said Phoebe, indignantly. "Dost think that Mary Burton prizes these weary labyrinthine sentences—all hay and wool, like the monstrous swelling of trunk hose? Far better can I read in Master Lilly's books. Thinkest thou I came hither ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... the sort of education the colored people of the South stand most in need of is elementary and industrial. They should be instructed for the work to be done. Many a colored farmer boy or mechanic has been spoiled to make a foppish gambler or loafer, a swaggering pedagogue or a cranky homiletician. Men may be spoiled by education, even as they are spoiled by illiteracy. Education is the preparation for a future work; hence men should be educated with special reference ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... Titian, because he could see none. Once, by way of pleasing Reynolds, he pretended to lament that the great painter's genius was not exerted on stuff more durable than canvas, and suggested copper. Sir Joshua urged the difficulty of procuring plates large enough for historical subjects. "What foppish obstacles are these!" exclaimed Johnson. "Here is Thrale has a thousand ton of copper: you may paint it all round if you will, I suppose; it will serve him to brew in afterwards. Will it not, Sir?" (to Thrale, who ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... the tenth of May, nurse told me in a whisper that "my uncle had come." I dressed rapidly, and, washing after a fashion, flew out of my bedroom without saying my prayers. In the vestibule I came upon a tall, solid gentleman with fashionable whiskers and a foppish-looking overcoat. Half dead with devout awe, I went up to him and, remembering the ceremonial mother had impressed upon me, I scraped my foot before him, made a very low bow, and craned forward to kiss his hand; but the gentleman ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... in shop, street, church, theatre, bar-room, official chair, are pervading flippancy and vulgarity, low cunning, infidelity—everywhere the youth puny, impudent, foppish, prematurely ripe—everywhere an abnormal libidinousness, unhealthy forms, male, female, painted, padded, dyed, chignon'd, muddy complexions, bad blood, the capacity for good motherhood deceasing or deceas'd, shallow notions of beauty, with a range of manners, or rather lack of manners, (considering ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... flaming enough to set the turkey yard afire; the silken hose and big shoe-buckles late introduced from France by the king; and a beaver hat with plumes a-nodding like my lady's fan. My curls, I mind, tumbled forward thicker than those foppish ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut |
