"Precieuse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... reading, yet had made some acquaintance with the literature of the day. Her natural quick parts and good taste enabled her to shine, even in literary conversation. Her bright eyes looked volumes. Her silvery laugh was wiser than the wisdom of a precieuse. Her witty repartees covered acres of deficiencies with so much grace and tact that men were tempted to praise her knowledge no less than ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... language, the natural deterioration of which was into a kind of euphuism, such as English readers will remember to have seen exemplified in Walter Scott's Sir Piercie Shafton. These ladies called each other, with demonstrative fondness, "Ma precieuse." Hence at last the term precieuse as a designation of ridicule. Madame de Sevigne was a precieuse. But she, with many of her peers, was too rich in sarcastic common sense to be a precieuse ridicule. Moliere himself, thrifty master of policy that he was, took pains to explain that he ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... heureux; jusque-la, je lui pardonne son indifference. Dites a M. le chevalier des Alleurs que je n'oublierai jamais la generosite de ses procedes pour moi. Comptez que tout detrompe que je suis de la vanite des amities humaines, la votre me sera a jamais precieuse. Je ne souhaite de revenir a Paris que pour vous voir, vous embrasser encore une fois, et vous faire voir ma constance dans mon amitie et dans ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey |
