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More "Piquancy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dozen to choose from, and even the eye of Jock, who doubtless knew nothing about them, made Lady Randolph a little more scrupulous than usual in choosing her book. She was one of those women who like the piquancy and freedom of French fiction. She would say to persons of like tastes that the English proprieties were tame beside the other, and she thought herself old enough to be altogether beyond any risk of harm. Perhaps this was why she divined Sir Tom's motive in placing them at the top of the shelves; ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... but this season the stronger sex seem really to be developing some originality. Here are a few notes taken on the troopship Montfort, where of course you know every one is smart. (Tout ce qu'il y a de plus Montfort has become quite a proverb, dear.) Generally speaking, piquancy and coolness are the main features. For instance, a neat costume for stables is a pair of strong boots. To make this rather more dressy for the dinner-table, a pair of close-fitting pants may be added, ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... in the choice of the cacao beans but also in the selection of spices and essences, for, whilst the fundamental flavour of a chocolate is determined by the blend of beans and the method of manufacture, the piquancy and special character are often obtained by the addition of minute quantities of flavourings. The point in the manufacture at which the flavour is added is as late as possible so as to avoid the possible loss of aroma in handling. ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... those groups of pages, of maids-in-waiting, of shepherds, of deities, etc., which are so characteristic of Lyly's plays. There is no real distinction between page and page, and between nymph and nymph; but their merry conversations give a piquancy and colour to the drama which make up for, and in part conceal, the absence of character. All that was necessary for the creation of character was to fit these pieces of the moral type together again in a different ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... incidentally how little real courage and romance there frequently was about the favourite law-breakers of fiction, but how they might give rise to the need of the highest courage in others and lead to romantic adventures of an exceedingly exciting kind. A certain piquancy is given to the story by a slight trace of nineteenth century malice in the picturing of ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... the indefinable charm of her presence, her piquancy, and her beauty, was a perpetual challenge to the admiration of Deputy-Marshal Woodward. It pursued him in his dreams, and made him uncomfortable in his waking hours, so much so, indeed, that his duties as a revenue officer, perplexing at best, became a ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... Harry, that to me a broonette has always more fascination than a blonde. It seems—I may be wrong—as though there's more piquancy, more character." ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... that there was not as much rurality about this girl as he had thought at first. There was a piquancy about the conversation which he liked. That she shared his enjoyment was doubtful, for a slight line of resentment was ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... the great events of the past, down to the period of the American Revolution, they instinctively attribute to Moses. There is a fine bold confidence in all their citations, however, and the record never loses piquancy in their hands, though strict accuracy may suffer. Thus, one of my captains, last Sunday, heard a colored exhorter at Beaufort proclaim, "Paul may plant, and may polish wid water, but it won't do," in which the sainted Apollos would hardly have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... that had come to him when beneath the menhir's shadow he had watched the opening of her eyes, returned to him. It was not an unpleasant sensation. Rather it added a piquancy to their relationship. But it was distinctly real. She watched the feeding of the monster; and then he came again and stood beside her on ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... solicitous about a woman's past than about her future. The point we are aiming at is to bring about a reversal of our system of manners. If we did so we should end, perhaps, by giving to faithful married life all the flavor and the piquancy which women of to-day ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... it was curious that the same trees produced an apple having a slightly different flavour to what it had in this country. You could always distinguish an American apple by its peculiar piquancy—a sub-acid piquancy, a wild strawberry piquancy, a sort of woodland, forest, backwoods delicacy of its own. And so on, and so on—"talk, talk, ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... and unless it can satisfactorily account for its position there, by proving appositeness and either originality or indispensability, then cast it aside. The conscientious performance of this rite will soon give a wonderful freshness and piquancy to your style. ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... was within two feet of him bent in seeming innocence over the tray. With a mischievous laugh he reached over and flipped the hot ashes from his cigar upon her neck. She screamed affectedly and danced about shaking off the ashes. Then with feigned maidenly piquancy and many reproachful glances, she went out laughing ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... the noblesse. Great natures are prone to make a virtue of misfortune; and there is something irresistibly attractive about well-doing when persisted in through evil report; innocence has the piquancy of the forbidden. ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... the absolute nature of man; piquancy and charm to that which serves and modifies this. Infinitude and immortality are of the one; the strictest finiteness belongs to the other. In the first you can never be too deep and rich; in the second never ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... original people, a communion with more cultivated natures which causes you to discover and appreciate a thousand hidden beauties in literature, art or music that left to yourself, you would have failed to notice. Under these circumstances you will often be astonished at the point and piquancy of your own conversation. This is but too true of ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... form of statement, and is used to magnify or diminish an object. It is quite natural, under the impulse of strong emotion or imagination, to use exaggerated statements, and frequently it serves to lend piquancy and force to style. But this tendency is dangerous, and should be kept under restraint. As a rule it is best to see and describe things as they are. The following from "Julius Caesar" will serve as an example ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... of Scottish soldiers on their way up the line. Such a bit of luck in the shape of a free cinema show had rarely come their way and they were bent on enjoying it to the fullest extent. The fact that the officer now standing ruefully on the bank was in Tartan riding "troos" of course added to the piquancy of the situation. ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... shack she was still bareheaded. She loved the feel of the sun, and the few freckles it brought only added a piquancy to ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... her dam was a Virginian mare of the stately kind which of late years has filled the eye in the sale-ring at Newmarket and held its own between the flags. And piquancy was added by the fact, recorded in the Kentucky stud-book, that the dam traced her origin direct to Iroquois who in the Derby of 1881 had lowered the English colours to ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... are many pleasant people, drawn together from all parts of the world. A resident here would find great piquancy in the associations,—those he met having such dissimilar histories and topics. And several persons I saw, evidently transplanted from the most refined circles to be met in this country. There are lures enough in the West for people of ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... course become us to write if we were dealing with the life of a living sovereign,—would not be interesting. No one on going to hear Thackeray lecture on the Georges expected that. There must be some piquancy given, or the lecture would be dull;—and the eulogy of personal virtues can seldom be piquant. It is difficult to speak fittingly of a sovereign, either living or not, long since gone. You can hardly praise ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... reviled, and though Humfrey did not imply a word save in commendation of the young missionary's devotion, she went indoors feeling almost injured at his not understanding it; but Honora's petulance was a very bright, sunny piquancy, and she only appeared the more glowing and animated for it when she presented herself at the breakfast-table, with a ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the orange, the fruits of Ceylon have one deficiency, common, I apprehend, to all tropical countries. They are wanting in that piquancy which in northern climates is attributable to the exquisite perfection in which the sweet and aromatic flavours are blended with the acidulous. Either the acid is so ascendant as to be repulsive to the European palate, or the saccharine so preponderates as to render Singhalese ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... add piquancy to the visit." Then he added, "Don't you see, Bulchester, that I dare not throw away an opportunity? Ship 'Number One' has foundered. 'Number Two' must come to land. That is ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... relished all the more because he kept a jealous account of them with his conscience. He sauntered along, now throwing a cunning and effectual fly, now resting, smoking, and chattering, as the fancy took him. He found a great deal of the old stimulus and piquancy in Langham's society, but there was an occasional irritability in his companion, especially towards himself personally, which puzzled him. After a while, indeed, he began to feel himself the unreasonably cheerful person which he evidently appeared to his companion. A mere ignorant enthusiast, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... familiar with Villon, Pathelin, the Quinze Joies de Mariage, the Cent Nouvelles, the chronicles and the romances, and even earlier works, too, such as the Roman de la Rose. Their words, their turns of expression came naturally to his pen, and added a piquancy and, as it were, a kind of gloss of antique novelty to his work. He fabricated words, too, on Greek and Latin models, with great ease, sometimes audaciously and with needless frequency. These were for him so many ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... might have designed it—one of those perfect travelling costumes of which the America girl seems to possess a monopoly; and the spectacles—well, the spectacles, though undoubtedly real, added just a touch of piquancy to an otherwise almost painfully timid and ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... by no means matched his appearance. He spoke with a grave and silvery pitch that made his words seem to soar lightly over his audience. His accent was that of the genuine society man, but a delicate touch—a mere suspicion—of Scotch gave the cultured tones a certain odd piquancy. A solemn note of deep passion trembled, as it were, amid the floating music, and every word went home. This jolly, rosy missionary is one of the best of living popular speakers, and his passionate simplicity fairly conquers ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... greater part of the time I did not know how to defend myself from her—at once so natural and so perfidious; and occasionally I allowed myself to love her with all my heart, so much did she seem to cherish me with all enthusiasm. She had depth of wit, a piquancy of expression, and knew how to disguise those interested adulations with turns so noble and beautiful that I have never met, neither before nor since, any woman worthy of being compared with her. She was, in her single self, a whole society; and certainly there was no possibility of being wearied ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... forgot all French encroachments, and the imbecility of geographers in general, as his glance chanced to fall upon a young woman of fresh and striking beauty, and delightful piquancy of ways and expression, who with a clumsy club was pounding fragments of pottery—urns, vases, and goglets—for the foundation of the watt. Very artless and happy she seemed, and free as she was lovely; but the instant she perceived she had attracted the notice of the king, she sank ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... interesting," said the female, "when a lady has a husband and doesn't own him; or when she owns him and hasn't really got him; it adds a piquancy to life, especially to theatrical life, which does want these ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... and I will not spoil the piquancy of the moral by a comment. No comment would help those to see who have eyes to see, no comment would give sight to the hopelessly blind. Goncourt's statement is eloquent and suggestive enough; I leave it a naked simple truth; but I would put by its side another ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... in ecstasy. All the evening the sound of his low, deliberate voice was unceasing, and his calm announcements to his two little cousins were each one more startling than the last; while James, to whom it was likewise all sunshine, was full of vivacity, and a shrewd piquancy of manner that gave zest to all he said, and wonderfully enlivened the often rather ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... well for a little time. The contrast amuses by its piquancy. To write of wild and whirling things in your books, but in public life to be associated with nothing more wild and whirling than a shirt-fronted eye-glassed hansom; to be at heart an Alastor, but in appearance a bank-clerk, delights an age ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... about her," she commanded. There was a piquancy, a gay impelling force in this girl that grief and hardship had not been strong enough to conquer. Her hours of sadness were spent alone—hours when she was supposed to sleep, but instead, lay awake and sobbed ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... his eyes lowered and fixed on Clementine's pretty feet. "You do not know, countess, what charm, what unexpected piquancy of mind she has." Then, feeling his courage fail him, he added hastily, "There is not a woman in society, with her mincing airs, that is worth the honest ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... pressed in a steady stream towards the castle courtyard to see the hanging. In those days there were hangings so many after assizes that an execution could hardly be said to possess the interest of novelty. But there were circumstances enough attending the forthcoming show to give it quite a piquancy of its own in the eyes of the worthy Lancastrian burghers, who hurried with wives and children to the place of doom, anxious to secure sitting or standing room with a good ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... page with its loveliness, that, seeing how an artless woman is foreign to Mr. Reade's ideas, we are forced to believe that Nature was too strong for him and he wrote against the grain. Nevertheless, there is enough of his own prejudice retained for piquancy,—and since the poor things must be insignificantly wicked, see how charming they can be! There are many scenes between these covers that would well bear repetition, were they not too fresh in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... dress makes a much finer appearance than before, and will be welcomed by older readers as gladly as its predecessor was greeted by girls and boys. The lavish use the publishers have made of colored plates, woodcuts and photographic reproductions, gives an unwonted piquancy to the printed page, catching the eye as surely as the text ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... butter, or if a little cold boiled rice is handy it may be substituted for the flour, and should be added with one ounce of butter to the sauce five minutes before it is strained. A teaspoonful of lemon juice added the last thing will give additional piquancy to the sauce. ...
— New Vegetarian Dishes • Mrs. Bowdich
... to me,—and, to say the truth, it added an indefinable piquancy to the scene,—what proportion of all these people, whether soldiers or civilians, were true at heart to the Union, and what part were tainted, more or less, with treasonable sympathies and wishes, even if such ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... fight down her growing coldness, and reciprocate as it deserved the affection with which he was so lavish. The result of these mental exercises was to impart a humility and constrained cordiality to her air very opposite to its usual piquancy and impulsiveness, and, by a sense of her own shortcomings, to distract her mind from speculation, which she might otherwise have indulged, over the sudden development of so many unpleasant qualities in her lover. Though, indeed, ...
— Potts's Painless Cure - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... with one little book; and had written another and a better one with the ease and assurance of a novelist born, should be willing to remain a shorthand clerk earning three guineas a week. (He preferred now to regard himself as a common shorthand clerk, not as private secretary to a knight: the piquancy of the situation was thereby intensified.) And as the day of publication of A Question of Cubits came nearer and nearer, he more and more resembled a little Jack Horner sitting in his private corner, and pulling out the plums of fame, and soliloquizing, 'What a curious, interesting, ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... be audible. I snuff it in the wind. I taste it already. I feel it in every sense; and so will you hereafter." This letter certainly wants the polish of Junius, but it has the power of bitter thought, and it sneers with practised piquancy. Of course, a broad line is to be drawn between a work of study and the work of the moment—between the elaborate vigour which prunes and purifies every straggling shoot away, and exhibits its production for a prize-show, and the careless luxuriance which suffers the tree to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... could not help falling in love with Daisy, who was the only girl he ever saw except the high-bred, milk-and-water misses whom he sometimes met in Lady Jane's drawing-room, and who, in point of beauty and grace and piquancy, could in no degree compare with the playmate of ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... sense to the main doctrine, though he stated explicitly some reserves already implicitly involved. A writer must not be surprised if popular readers remember the unguarded and dogmatic utterances which give piquancy to a theory, and overlook the latent qualifications which, when fully expressed, make it approximate to a commonplace. The political bearing of his reasoning is significant. The application of Godwin's theories of equality would necessarily, as he urges, stimulate an excessive ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... the body of the building, they had trooped in; some even coming from the shore of the Atlantic, a mile beyond, across the downs, whence other upland square church-towers could be viewed on the sky-line against the grey January heavens. The occasion was in a sense unique, and its piquancy strengthened by that rivalry which ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... in expression between French, English, and German ivory carvings is quite interesting. The French faces and figures have always a piquancy of action: the nose is a little retroussee and the eyelids long. The German shows more solidity of person, less transitoriness and lightness about the figure, and the nose is blunter. The English carvings are often spirited, so as to be almost grotesque in their strenuousness, and the tool-mark ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... doubly the case when he alludes to Joseph as a suitor for the hand of Maria. So, too, with the following scene between Joseph and Charles; in itself it would be flat enough; the fact that Sir Peter is listening lends it a certain piquancy; but this is ten times multiplied by the fact that Lady Teazle, too, hears all that passes. When Joseph is called from the room by the arrival of the pretended Old Stanley, there would be no interest in his embarrassment if we believed the person behind the screen to be the French milliner. ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... wholly silent on the general impressions left by the little I have seen of the society of Paris; and, occasionally, when it is characteristic, an anecdote may be introduced, for such things sometimes give distinctness, as well as piquancy, to ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... result has been satisfactory. In Alsace-Lorraine no one can help being struck with the fine appearance of the people. The men are tall, handsome, and well made, the women graceful and often exceedingly lovely, French piquancy and symmetrical proportions combined with Teutonic fairness of complexion, ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... by strings of alternate red and white beads. Others limited the decoration to two rats' tails depending from the temples, where phrenologists localize our "causality." Many had faces of sufficient piquancy; the figures, though full, wanted firmness, and I noticed only one well-formed bosom. The men wore red feathers, but none ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... imperfect yet animated, of that marvelous sympathy that exists between all phases of life, whether in humanity or in external nature. His natural outbursts of feeling are rare, but delicious as caviare, with a certain quaver of piquancy. 'Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous. The dawn is my Assyria; the sun-set and moon-rise my Paphos and unimaginable realms of faerie; broad noon shall be my England of the senses and the understanding, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... it is a bungling performance, most unskilfully put together, and contains quite as much of what its hero did not do, as of what he did. The prolixity of the narrative is not even relieved by the piquancy of style, which forms something like a substitute for thought in many of the lower order of French historians. It is less to history, however, than to romance, that the French public is indebted for ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... acuity, acuteness, edge; asperity, acrimony, impatience; acumen, sagacity, shrewdness, astuteness, aptness; pungency, piquancy. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... was the thing which Tissot had not been able to bear; which in the end had driven the young man with the small chin from the house. This was the pleasantry to which his feeble resistance, his outbursts of anger, of jealousy, or of protest had but added piquancy, the ultimate sting of pleasure to the jaded palate of the performers. This was the obsession under which she lay, the trial and persecution which she had warned him he would find ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... the land agent was about to commence the process of mastication, or of deglutition rather, for he troubled himself very little with the first operation, when the report of a cork drew his attention towards the chaimpaigne. To Aristabulus this wine never came amiss, for, relishing its piquancy, he had never gone far enough into the science of the table to learn which were the proper moments for using it. As respected all the others at table, this moment had in truth arrived, though, as respected himself, he was no nearer to it, according to a regulated ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... of western life usually contain a great deal of originality and piquancy; that is why ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... Gore's. He recalled the pretty, willful turn of her head and the saucy side-glance of her eyes, the proud curve of her neck, the color on her cheeks delicate as the first peach- blossom in spring. That he had no right thus to be thinking of a woman perhaps added a certain piquancy to his thought; but he quieted his conscience with the reflection that he was in the path of duty, and of a duty, moreover, which was likely to prove ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... become burdensome recurrences. Insensibly to herself she was becoming dependent on his timid devotion, his constant attention; and he, lover-like, once so attracted, in spite of his judgment, by her liveliness and piquancy, now doted on her languor, and thought her silence more ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... prolific pen. Mr. Kegan Paul, essayist, critic, editor, and ex-clergyman, was always an interesting figure; and his successive transitions from Tractarianism to Latitudinarianism, and from Agnosticism to Ultramontanism, gave a peculiar piquancy to his utterances on religion. He deserves remembrance on two quite different scores—one, that he was the first publisher to study prettiness in the production of even cheap books; and the other, that he was an early and enthusiastic ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... and his regularity were proper to the man, and neither to the past nor present age. Of his bons mots we have a sprinkling, and but a sprinkling, in this volume; but the celebrated one about language is not there, though others of less piquancy are. Did M. Colmache consider it of apocryphal authenticity? We ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... silence in which Darrell studied the face before him; the same, yet not the same, as on that summer night. The childlike naivete, the charming piquancy, had given place to a sweet seriousness, but it was more ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... descriptions of long-sought bank-burglars and murderers. But although Thyrsis had often declared that he would rob a bank to secure his freedom to work, he had not yet done it, and so these experiences only added piquancy to ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... khaki-clad, sportsmanlike missionary strode in, and after the preliminary greetings Diana asked with charming piquancy, "O! are you really ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... prove it!" He was to prove that he had the right to say such things about Sophia Tiralla. They were all simply burning with curiosity. What did he know of her, what, what? That anybody knew such things about her only added to her charm and piquancy in their eyes. ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... know. But a lump got into his throat. She might be a Missouri girl, this moment. And there came to him the vision of one, of a Missouri girl molding biscuits, patting them, and her arms were bared, in a simple piquancy just like Jacqueline's now. He even saw the pickaninnies in the shade of the porch outside, worshiping the real Missouri girl from the very whites of their eyes. How he had loved to tease her! He could not help ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... Alice Frome, caught gloriously in the wind like a winged Victory. Her hair was parted in the middle with a touch of Greek simplicity and fell in wavy ripples over her temples beneath the jaunty cap. She put her arms on the railing and leaned forward, her chin tilted to an oddly taking boyish piquancy. ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... of brute beasts would give a piquancy and a pleasantry to moral design as well as to ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... the childhood of Moses with just enough mystery mixed in it to give it a perpetual piquancy, we learn that he was brought up an Egyptian, as the son of Pharaoh's daughter, and that it was she who gave him ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... the head, and he who desires to be understood in the twenty-fourth century will not be careless of the meanings that his words inherit from the fourteenth. To know them is of service, if only for the piquancy of avoiding them. But many times they cannot wisely be avoided, and the auspices under which a word began its career when first it was imported from the French or Latin overshadow it and haunt it to ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... With less piquancy, but not without the germ of the same idea, Dean Moss (ob. 1729), in his sermon Of the Nature and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... seems, however that De Beriot continued to meet with success even after the advent of Paganini. His playing was distinguished by unfailing accuracy of intonation, great neatness and facility of bowing, grace, elegance, and piquancy. ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... kindred and friends of Jefferson,—who, it was known, had sent the bride a valuable present and a long letter,—the interested in Rand, the inimical, for party and other reasons, to the Churchills and the Carys. The county knew that Miss Churchill might have had Greenwood. The knowledge added piquancy to the already piquant fact that she had chosen the house on the Three-Notched Road. Colonel Churchill and Major Edward, the county knew, would not come to the wedding; neither, of course, would the two Carys; neither, it appeared, ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... almost as attractive as those of Lucerne, and gave an air of modernity and civilisation to the little place, which would have been out of the picture, had it not contrived to suggest the piquancy of contrast. The Boy spent a hundred francs for a silver chamois poised upon the apex of a perilous peak of uncut amethysts, mounted on ebony, and I was witty at the expense of his purchase, likening it to the white elephant of Instantaneous Breakfasts ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... fairer, and younger in her graceful gown, and her broad hat—which was in sharpest contrast to the sunbonnet which had so long been her disguise—lent a girlish piquancy to her glance. Mrs. Brinkley expressed in one short phrase the change of sentiment which swept almost instantly over the room. "Why, she's ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... the glance, as he admitted willingly enough afterward. She was the dainty type, with fluffy bright brown hair, eyes the color of wood violets, a nose tilted to the precise angle of bewitching piquancy, and the adorable mouth and chin familiarized to two continents by the artistic pen of the Apostle of the American Girl. How he could have ridden within arm's reach of her through all the daylight hours of a long summer day remained as one of Ford's unanswered enigmas; but it required an ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... now the home of peace and joy; but there have been times when its history has been shrouded in tragic mystery, and even to-day there is the Druce claim to give piquancy to ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... away, however, I could feel the warmth of her, could catch the delicacy of the perfume she used. I noted the play of her slender fingers, the trimness of her ankle, the piquancy of a nose revealed to me in ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... pineapple, Madam,—the which he had concocted during our slumber. We drained this,—one gets so thirsty after breakfast in Mexico,—and then to horse again for a twelve miles' ride back to the city. I omitted to mention two or three little circumstances which gave a zest and piquancy to the entertainment. When we arrived at the hacienda, although servitors were in plenty, each cavalier unsaddled and fed his own steed; and when we addressed ourselves to our siesta, every one who didn't find a double-barrelled gun at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... give the piquancy to the sauce. How many very wantonly pleasant sports spring from the most decent and modest language of the works on love? Pleasure itself seeks to be heightened with pain; it is much sweeter when it smarts and has the skin rippled. The courtesan Flora said ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... a little studio at the top of Orange Street. At this time he was rather popular in Polchester society. Mrs. Combermere took him up and found him audacious and amusing. His French name gave a kind of piquancy to his audacity; he was unusual; he was striking. It was right for Polchester to have an artist and to stick him up in the very middle of the town as an emblem of taste and culture. Soon, however, he began to decline. It was whispered that he drank, that his morals ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... a picture of Russian interior life, we pass to Gretch, an author of some European reputation. His "Trip to Germany" describes, with singular piquancy, the manners of a very curious race—the Germans of St Petersburg; and "Tchernaia Jenstchina," "the Black Woman," presents a picture of Russian society, which was welcomed with great eagerness by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... Her gayety and piquancy had given place to a gentle shyness. Clay let the burden of conversation fall upon her. He knew that he had come to his hour of hours and his soul ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... authority, is the 'hydra of calamities, the sevenfold death'. Arthur Welsh's was all that and a bit over. It was a constant shadow on Maud's happiness. No fair-minded girl objects to a certain tinge of jealousy. Kept within proper bounds, it is a compliment; it makes for piquancy; it is the gin in the ginger-beer of devotion. But it should be a condiment, ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... plates." Isn't this rare! "I should add, there is a stove near the door." O Sybarite! Doesn't this suggest the notion of a delightful little dinner a deux! With "the mordants,"—which is, of course, a generic name for sauces of varied piquancy,—and with his "dishes" artistically prepared and set before "the plates," as in due order they should be, he is as correct as he is original. A true bon vivant. The Baron highly commends the book, which only for the rare ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Feb. 20, 1892 • Various
... our parlor manners were somewhat less decorous and elegant, owing to the fact that Reginald and Willie had been industriously circulating the episode of the morning, with such additions as they thought would add point and piquancy, among the rest of the boys, and there was no end of innuendo and witticism indulged in, that caused the young gentlemen to retire in groups and laugh; and we could hear such remarks as, "Dick, there was a whale hooked on this coast this afternoon, did you know it?" Or, "I think Jack Deadeye ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... is utterly strange to him. The Teutonic sage who evolved the ideal portrait of an elephant from his "inner consciousness" was a commonplace, matter-of fact person compared with the daring visionary who conjures up a complete system of language from the same fertile but untrustworthy source. The piquancy of Senhor Pedro Carolino's New Guide of the Conversation in Portuguese and English is enhanced by the evident bona fides and careful compilation of "the little book," or as Pedro himself ...
— English as she is spoke - or, A jest in sober earnest • Jose da Fonseca
... attempts to obtain the vegetable I wished, I succeeded, by artificial means frequently employed, in growing a small vegetable, combining the flavour of a delicate cream with the piquancy of lemon. ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... so formal and grand I shall never enjoy your delicious dishes any more, with Hubert adding to their piquancy with his ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... most personable, and he could flatter ladies, and drink like a gentleman, and wear his evening clothes to perfection—he still had them made in London—and that sort of unmarried man is always in demand in New York. Add to these social graces the piquancy of a little literary reputation, and you have the perfect ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... a piquancy to this kind of thing!" was Horne's smiling reply, as they reached an open space in the walk, and he waved his hand towards the charming scene before them, the house with its lights, on its rising ground above the ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... even by great beauty. So your perfect room must not be kept too rigidly in one style. To have attraction it must have variety in both line and colour, and reflect the taste of generations of home lovers. The contents of dusty garrets may add piquancy to modern decorations, giving a touch of the unusual which is ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... events or of characters, which were admirably easy and simple—too simple, indeed, for the complicated phenomena which they professed to explain. His style was clear, animated, showy, and even its faults were of an exciting kind. It was his habit to give piquancy to his writing by putting things concretely. Thus, instead of saying, in general terms—as Hume or Gibbon might have done—that the Normans and Saxons began to mingle about 1200, he says: "The great grandsons of those who had fought under William and the ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... The piquancy about natural or other forms thus reduced to angularity argues, of course, no affectation of quaintness on the part of the worker, but was the unavoidable outcome of her way of work. There is a pronounced and early limit to art of this rather naive kind, but that there is ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... days, as patent hives furnish all the honey found in city stores and no bee-bread is sold. In remote country places, however, where the honey is removed en masse from the hive, there will be plenty of bee-bread to give piquancy to the children's bread and honey. Moreover, where bees are kept, the bee-keeper can usually be persuaded to take out a little bee-bread for the children to see and taste; for it is always present no matter what the kind of hive used, though ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... which her vivacity, good-nature, and amiability, are duly appreciated. Her lively sallies and naive remarks are very amusing; and the frankness and simplicity she has preserved in a profession and position so calculated to induce the reverse, add to her attractions and give piquancy ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... superior success of the former in flirtation. The latter were not consoled by their experience that no flirtation lasted beyond the period of rustication. Dr. Price usually had several young men fitting for college also, which fact added more piquancy to the provincial society. In the summer riding parties were fashionable, and in the winter county balls and cotillion parties; a professor came down from Boston at this season to set up a dancing school, ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... letters, and, lo and behold ye! such is the strange allure emanating from the hussy, that the resultant portrait is either that of a martyred Magdalene, or, at the very least, has all the enigmatic piquancy of a Monna Lisa... Not a slut, but what is a hetaera; and not a hetaera, but what is well-nigh Kypris herself! I know of but one depiction in all literature that possesses the splendour of implacable veracity as well as undiminished ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... somewhat nauseous-looking meat is disclosed; but no more objectionable in appearance than the substance of a fully ripe passion fruit. The flavour! Ah, the flavour! It surpasseth the delectable oyster. It hath more of the savour and piquancy of the ocean. It clingeth to the palate and purgeth it of grosser tastes. It recalleth the clean and marvellous creature, whose life has been spent in cool coral grottoes, among limestone and the salty essences of the pure and sparkling sea, and if you be wise and devout and grateful, you ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... life and variety. Thus we have those groups of pages, of maids-in-waiting, of shepherds, of deities, etc., which are so characteristic of Lyly's plays. There is no real distinction between page and page, and between nymph and nymph; but their merry conversations give a piquancy and colour to the drama which make up for, and in part conceal, the absence of character. All that was necessary for the creation of character was to fit these pieces of the moral type together again in a different way, and to breathe ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... reception given by the public to Bolingbroke's posthumous works in 1754. For though few persons will be inclined to agree with Horace Walpole's opinion that Bolingbroke's 'metaphysical divinity was the best of his writings,' yet the eminence of the writer, the purity and piquancy of his style, the real and extensive learning which he displayed, would, one might have imagined, have awakened a far greater interest in his writings than was actually shown. Very few replies were written to this, ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... higher than those of the Parson, who never fulminated from the pulpit till she felt the fear of hell melting her bones within her. This the lawyer did, and managed at the same time to make her feel herself a good woman, one of the saved, and the piquancy of the double sensation was the hidden drug of Annie's life. She dallied with thoughts of eternal suffering as a Flagellant with imagings of torture, and when her mind was reeling at the very edge of the pit she would pull herself back with a loud outcry on ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... he had enjoyed these last two years more than any of the ten since he built "Charmleigh" and settled down to semi-rural domesticity with his young wife. There had been a certain piquancy, a savour added to existence, by the country's peril, and all the public service and sacrifice it demanded. His chauffeur was gone, and one gardener did the work of three. He enjoyed-positively enjoyed, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and largely satisfied by hope and even by some degree of present fruition. Even vice would be in many ways sauceless and insipid in the absence of faith. Who does not remember the old cynic's testimony (in the "New Republic") to the piquancy lent by Christianity to many a sin, otherwise pointless. If the moralist distinguishes between actions that are evil because they are forbidden, and those that are forbidden because they are evil, the libertine has a counter-distinction between those that are forbidden because they are pleasant, ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... yet lofty nature, with a nervous organization and all that it entails of torment and delight, the craving for perfection becomes morbid. Intellectually he is akin to Sterne, though he is not a literary worker. There is an indescribable piquancy about his epigrams and sallies of thought. He is eloquent, he knows how to love, but the uncertainty that appears in his execution is a part of the very nature of the man. The brotherhood loved him for the very qualities which the philistine would ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... took up again her life at her father's home. To the little girl she had carried on her flight to Michigan and to the boy whose hair had the copper-red of the father, she devoted herself. The girl had been named Mary, and she inherited the piquancy and wit that had made her mother the belle of the valley, and as she grew to womanhood the mountaineers saw again the Nancy Brooks they had loved before war had come with its cold blighting fingers ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... was everywhere characteristic of his times, and nowhere more conspicuous than in France. "Soyez piquant, si vous ne pouvez pas etre vrai," was his advice to a fellow artist, Ducreux; and his own work too often shows evidence of the sacrifice of truth to piquancy. His single figures and heads are not, as a class, so true to nature as his compositions, although they are much better known to the public. Scattered far and wide through all the great art galleries of the world, they have been greatly admired ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... absolute nature of man; piquancy and charm to that which serves and modifies this. Infinitude and immortality are of the one; the strictest finiteness belongs to the other. In the first you can never be too deep and rich; in the second never ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... persuaded her, we must suppose, for a brief moment, that Fyodor Pavlovitch, in spite of his parasitic position, was one of the bold and ironical spirits of that progressive epoch, though he was, in fact, an ill-natured buffoon and nothing more. What gave the marriage piquancy was that it was preceded by an elopement, and this greatly captivated Adelaida Ivanovna's fancy. Fyodor Pavlovitch's position at the time made him specially eager for any such enterprise, for he was passionately anxious ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... up-to- date rifles, thanks to Russia yesterday and Germany to-day, and all perfectly well aware that a world war is in progress. That's sport, you know—not the 'image and likeness of war' that Jorrocks called it, but the real red root. And you've got a mystery thrown in to give it piquancy. I haven't found out yet how Yasmini got up the Pass without my knowledge. I thought it was a trick. Didn't believe she'd gone. Yet all my mer swear they know she has gone, and not one of them will own to having seen her go! What d'you ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... the return of Cherubina to real life, where she is eventually restored to her father and to Stuart. The incidents, which follow one another in rapid succession, are foolish and extravagant, but the reminiscences they awaken lend them piquancy. The trappings and furniture of a dozen Gothic castles are here accumulated in generous profusion. Mouldering manuscripts, antique beds of decayed damask, a four-horsed barouche, and fluttering tapestry rejoice the heart of Cherubina, for each item in this curious medley ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... and ordinary dwellings, many of which have considerable artistic grace, though they are quaint rather than monumental (Fig. 190). Stepped gables, high dormers, and volutes flanking each diminishing stage of the design, give a certain piquancy to the street ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... How could you? But father's controlling the country half an hour more than usual this evening, and I expect mamma was so angry about it she forgot to telephone you that dinner's moved accordingly. (With piquancy and humour.) I was rather surprised to hear when I got home from my Ministry that you'd sent word you'd like to ...
— The Title - A Comedy in Three Acts • Arnold Bennett
... not come? The pines are gold with evening And breathe their old-time fragrance by the sea; You loved so well their spicy exhalation,— So smiled to smell it and old ocean's piquancy; And those weird tales of winds and waves' relation— Could you forget? Will you ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... not only in the choice of the cacao beans but also in the selection of spices and essences, for, whilst the fundamental flavour of a chocolate is determined by the blend of beans and the method of manufacture, the piquancy and special character are often obtained by the addition of minute quantities of flavourings. The point in the manufacture at which the flavour is added is as late as possible so as to avoid the possible loss of aroma in handling. The flavours used include cardamom, cassia, cinnamon, cloves, coriander, ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... habit of narration, of talking with her mistress like a sort of companion, of describing people and drawing silhouettes of them, had eventually developed in her a facility of animated description, of happy, unconscious characterization, a piquancy and sometimes an acrimony in her remarks that were most remarkable in the mouth of a servant. She had progressed so far that she often surprised Mademoiselle de Varandeuil by her quickness of comprehension, ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... the pretty face it was intended to mar. But when the observer had studied the eyes sufficiently to notice this defect, he was generally incapacitated for criticism; and even the scar on her cheek was thought by some to add piquancy to her smile. The youthful editor of THE FIDDLETOWN AVALANCHE had said privately that it was "an exaggerated dimple." Colonel Starbottle was instantly "reminded of the beautifying patches of the days of Queen Anne, but more particularly, sir, of the ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... episode of the breaking of Devil, the unexpected return of his Grace of Osmonde, the preparations for the union, had given an extra stimulant to that interest in her ladyship which was ever great enough to need none. Thereunto was added the piquancy of the stories of the noticeable demeanour of Sir John Oxon, of what had seemed to be so plain a rebellion against his fate, and also of my lady's open and cold displeasure at the manner of his bearing himself as a disappointed man who presumed to show anger ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... I was in a peaceful frame of mind when I left her, I was filled with a sense of cosy comfort which gained all the more piquancy because flavored with an infinitely delicate bitterness that I could not understand. In a revery I strolled along through the streets which, because the diminutive houses cast so little shadow, became hotter every minute, and passed slowly ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... times, but "toujours perdrix" is not always welcome. A pinch of mushroom powder, or a few chopped oysters, are excellent with beef or veal; so will be a spoonful of Montpellier butter stirred in, or curry, not enough to yellow the sauce, but enough to give a dash of piquancy. A pickled walnut chopped, or a gherkin or two, go admirably with mutton or pork chops. In short, this is just where imagination and brains will tell in cooking, and little essays of invention may be tried ...
— Culture and Cooking - Art in the Kitchen • Catherine Owen
... large, five-lobed, with large sinuses, light in color, coarsely toothed. Bunches large, long, cylindrical, heavily shouldered, sometimes not well filled, often loose and scraggly; berries small, round, firm and crisp, golden-yellow, sweet with considerable piquancy; quality good. ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... from Cognac, he now sought to obtain by pursuing with greater ardor his flirtation with Ida. Indeed, to such a nature as his, her beauty was quite as intoxicating as the "spirit of wine." There was a brilliancy in her appearance to night and a piquancy in her words that struck him ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... portrait of her, and I hear you are to do a more elaborate picture 'in the fall.' Now, Dal, you know you admire her immensely. She is lovely, she is charming, she hails from the land whose women, when they possess charm, unite with it a freshness and a piquancy which place them beyond compare. In some ways you are so unique yourself that you ought to have a wife with a certain amount of originality. Now, I hardly know how far the opinion of your friends would influence ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... the one person whose presence he was ready to endure. Indeed there would perhaps be a piquancy ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... he said, and then at the last moment, just as the train was starting, slip away and let her go on her journey alone. To the boy, who knew enough of the inner history of the household to enjoy the piquancy of the situation, such a trick seemed quite amusing. He went away picturing in his mind the scene at the railway station ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... exclusive; but his rigid temperance, and his regularity were proper to the man, and neither to the past nor present age. Of his bons mots we have a sprinkling, and but a sprinkling, in this volume; but the celebrated one about language is not there, though others of less piquancy are. Did M. Colmache consider it of apocryphal authenticity? We ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... of the pahu filled the air with their solemn tremor, the lighter and sharper tones of the pu-niu gave a piquancy to the effect, adding a feature which may be likened to the sparkling ripples which the breeze carves in ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... teach in song. And if novelists were always scrupulous, what do you think they would write? Only milk-and-water proprieties, tamely-virtuous platitudes. Do you think Dickens never saw a taproom or a thief's den?—or that Thackeray is unacquainted with the "Cave of Harmony"? No,—all the piquancy of life comes from the slight soupcon of wickedness wherewithal we ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... covered at least ten pages—replaced it in the drawer, and "then, with a countenance of the utmost weariness, lighted his chamber candle and went upstairs to bed." And here, by the way, is one of the amusing oversights which give such a piquancy to "Pickwick." Before he began to read his paper, we are carefully told that Mr. Pickwick "unfolded it, lighted his bedroom candle that it might burn up to the time he had finished." It was Mr. C. Kent who pointed this out to him, when Boz seized the volume and humorously made as though he would ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... Indian Archipelago, radiant in the glowing sunshine, and their atmosphere fragrant with spices and other sweet odours that concealed the deadly malaria of the climate, a new sensation of peril added piquancy to the zest of ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Perhaps a little cynicism is mixed with her descriptions of the guests and their raiment, but it adds a piquancy in which Floyd has been utterly deficient. Silks and satins, and point and Venetian seem real laces when a woman talks about them. And the prospect for to-night is like ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... to talk to people about themselves, with a judicious linking together of his own peculiarities and theirs. He imagined that that sort of thing lent a piquancy to conversation. The aim of Oliver Kenwick's life was to be effective; his art had suffered from it, and even in social matters he sometimes had the misfortune to overshoot ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... his lips as though his month fairly watered at the pleasing prospect; for those who are fond of the dish say that frogs' legs are more delicate than the best spring chicken, with just a little taste of fish about them that rather adds to the piquancy. ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... was still bareheaded. She loved the feel of the sun, and the few freckles it brought only added a piquancy to her face. ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... Victory. Her hair was parted in the middle with a touch of Greek simplicity and fell in wavy ripples over her temples beneath the jaunty cap. She put her arms on the railing and leaned forward, her chin tilted to an oddly taking boyish piquancy. ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... weaving social schemes for the future, Yeovil had come home in a frame of mind that threatened the destruction of those schemes, or at any rate a serious hindrance to their execution. The situation presented itself to Joan's mind with an alluring piquancy. ...
— When William Came • Saki
... if one may judge from its present frank condemnations of plays and players. The theatre apparently has not, for we read that at that period "a very great majority of the standard plays and farces on the stage depend mostly for their piquancy and their power of interesting an audience upon intrigues with married women, elopements, seductions, bribery, cheating, and fraud of every description . . . . Stage costume, too, wherever there is half a chance, is usually made as lascivious and immodest as ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... throttles and hangs it with chains of shakes." What, however, Rellstab and the "old musician"—for he, too, exclaims, "nothing but bravura and figuration!"—did not see, but what must be patent to every candid and unprejudiced observer, are the originality, piquancy, and grace of these fioriture, roulades, &c., which, indeed, are unlike anything that was ever heard or seen before Chopin's time. I say "seen," for the configurations in the notation of this piece are so different ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... her gaze, and she drew her brow into a little frown. It gave her a curious piquancy, and ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... misapplications that weaken and disfigure the style of him who adopts them; and some, downright vulgarisms—that is, phrases that come from below, and are thrust into clean company with the odors of slang about them. These last are often a device for giving piquancy to style. Against such abuses we should be the more heedful, because, from the convenience of some of them, they get so incorporated into daily speech as not to be readily distinguishable from their healthy ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... the day before he had thought of Therese. He had all night dreamed and yearned over her image. He saw her again, delightful, but in another manner, and even more desirable than he had imagined in his insomnia; less visionary, of a more vivid piquancy, and also of a mind more mysteriously impenetrable. She was sad; she seemed cold and indifferent. He said to himself that he was nothing to her; that he was becoming importunate and ridiculous. This irritated him. He murmured bitterly in her ear: "I have reflected. I did not wish to come. Why did ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... reserve, he gives his modern readers confidential revelations of the utmost piquancy; and when he words his epistles with diplomatic care, he displays with equal acuteness, to the student familiar with the intrigues of public life at Rome at the time, the sinuosities of contemporary statesmanship and the wiles of the wary ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... quantity of strong, clear, highly-flavoured stock of a greenish-brown colour. The colour can be obtained by boiling some winter greens or spinach along with the other things. A few chopped gherkins, capers, or chillies will give the required piquancy. Have 4 ozs. tapioca soaked overnight, add to the boiling stock and cook gently till perfectly clear. Some small quenelles may be poached ...
— Reform Cookery Book (4th edition) - Up-To-Date Health Cookery for the Twentieth Century. • Mrs. Mill
... tender hogs, which had lived and fattened upon the acorns, fragrant hickory-nuts and dainty beechnuts of the abundant "mast" of the forest, until the were saturated with their delicate, nutty flavor. This was farther enriched by a piquancy gained from the smoke of the burning hickory and oak, with which they were cured, and the absorption of odors from the scented herbs in the rooms where they were drying. Many have sung the praises of Kentucky's horses, whisy and women, but no poet ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... written another and a better one with the ease and assurance of a novelist born, should be willing to remain a shorthand clerk earning three guineas a week. (He preferred now to regard himself as a common shorthand clerk, not as private secretary to a knight: the piquancy of the situation was thereby intensified.) And as the day of publication of A Question of Cubits came nearer and nearer, he more and more resembled a little Jack Horner sitting in his private corner, and pulling out the plums of fame, and soliloquizing, 'What a curious, ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... Pond," one that conveys in its very sound the idea of savoury dishes, and an abundance of a certain and a very agreeable sort has been changed to "Orient," Heaven save the mark! Long Island has, hitherto, been famous, in the history of New York, for the homely piquancy of its names, which usually conveyed a graphic idea of the place indicated. It is true, "Jerusalem" cannot boast of its Solomon's Temple, nor "Babylon" of its Hanging Gardens; but, by common consent, it is understood that these two names, ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... it might be. I wouldn't forsake it for anything the King could offer me. It's a merry time, with romance, love and adventure in it, with plenty to get and plenty to spend, with a seasoning of danger to give it piquancy—a gentleman's life from cock-crow to cock-crow, and not worthy of a passing thought is he who cannot make a good end of it. I'd sooner have the hangman for a bosom friend than a man who is likely to whimper on the day of reckoning. Did I tell you that a reverend bishop offered me fifty guineas ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... reflects at length upon the matter of his history. At the same time he lacks the naiivete which makes Corio, Allegretti, Infessura, and Matarazzo so amusing. He gossips as little as Machiavelli, and has no profundity to make up for the want of piquancy. The interest of his chronicle is greatest in the part which concerns Savonarola, though even here the peculiarly reticent and dubitative nature of the man is obvious. While he sympathizes with Savonarola's political ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... for a little time. The contrast amuses by its piquancy. To write of wild and whirling things in your books, but in public life to be associated with nothing more wild and whirling than a shirt-fronted eye-glassed hansom; to be at heart an Alastor, but in appearance a bank-clerk, ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... stronger sex seem really to be developing some originality. Here are a few notes taken on the troopship Montfort, where of course you know every one is smart. (Tout ce qu'il y a de plus Montfort has become quite a proverb, dear.) Generally speaking, piquancy and coolness are the main features. For instance, a neat costume for stables is a pair of strong boots. To make this rather more dressy for the dinner-table, a pair of close-fitting pants may be added, but this is optional. Shirts, if worn, are neutral ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... true, has little solidity; but if he would rest two or three years on his oars, he might collect the scatterings of wit and poetry, which would in that time accrue to him from his readings and reflections, into a volume of essays, etc., which would be inferior in brilliancy and piquancy to but few of any nation.' Possibly; but in the mean time, let us advise our friend, Mr. WILLIS has the little substantials of every-day life to look after. He 'pleases to write' frequently and currente calamo, because he 'pleases to ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... going to live without them. We shall not see their like again. The new lot—present lot—are splendid fellows. They are probably better soldiers. Certainly they are more uniformly trained. But there was a piquancy about our old scamps in 'K(1)' that was unique—priceless—something the world will ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... to his aunt's. But (to say nothing of the twenty thousand a year, which, after all, and lie you as romantic as you may please to be, is not a thing to be sneezed at) Trix's face, its mingled eagerness and shame, its flushed cheeks and shining eyes, the piquancy of its unwonted humility, overcame him. He ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... for one Madigan twin to be "mad" at the other, and yet that the business of playing be uninterrupted, the Smith twins invariably made their appearance. They were supposed to save one's dignity; in reality, they lent piquancy to games ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... altogether. There is a thing, and a generation finds a name for it. The delicacy which prompts a later generation to reject that name is by no means necessarily a result of stricter habits, is far more often due to the flatness which comes of untiring repetition and to the greater piquancy of litotes. I am told that there are, or were, people in America who reject the word 'leg' as a gross word, but they must have found a synonym. So there is not a word in Congreve for which there is not some ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... any of these pleasant questioning-eyed young people again. The most reckless part of the adventure would be over with this day—and she was rather sorry. After all, she did not much regret the wave of fate which had swept her and her maid-chaperon temporarily apart. There was a certain piquancy in ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... welcomed by older readers as gladly as its predecessor was greeted by girls and boys. The lavish use the publishers have made of colored plates, woodcuts and photographic reproductions, gives an unwonted piquancy to the printed page, catching the eye as surely as the text engages ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... curiously compounded of cynical hardness, blind love, and broken-hearted pathos.... A strong and interesting study of Georgia characteristics without depending upon dialect. There is just sufficient mannerism and change of speech to give piquancy to the ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... mental note that there was not as much rurality about this girl as he had thought at first. There was a piquancy about the conversation which he liked. That she shared his enjoyment was doubtful, for a slight line of resentment was noticeable ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... a large number of mathematical treatises, the titles only of which are preserved. We gather from one of these titles, 'On irrational lines and solids', that he wrote on irrationals. Democritus realized as fully as Zeno, and expressed with no less piquancy, the difficulty connected with the continuous and the infinitesimal. This appears from his dilemma about the circular base of a cone and a parallel section; the section which he means is a section 'indefinitely ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... the Seckle for preserving, both on account of the flavor and size. A nice way is to stick a clove in the blossom end of each pear, for this fruit seems to require some extraneous flavor to bring out its own piquancy. Another acceptable addition to pear preserves may be found instead, by adding the juice and thinly pared rind of one lemon to each five pounds of fruit. If the pears are hard and tough, parboil them until tender before beginning to preserve, and from the ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... amused our childhood. But we should expect the fable, in company with other and more important literary forms, to be more and more loosely, or at least largely, comprehended as time went on, and so to degenerate in conception from this original type. That depended for much of its piquancy on the very fact that it was fantastic: the point of the thing lay in a sort of humorous inappropriateness; and it is natural enough that pleasantry of this description should become less common, as men learn to suspect some ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... into the passage and opens the outer door. Standing outside cheerfully humming a tune is a large, forceful, breezy young man of twenty-eight. He is DERMOD GILRUTH. Splendid in physique, charming of manner, his slightly-marked Dublin accent lends a piquancy to his conversation. He has all the ease and poise of a traveled, polished young man of breeding. Dartrey's face brightens as he ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... a certain eccentricity in eschewing hair dyes and cosmetics. Her face was full of little irregularities; a hardly perceptible cast in one eye; the nose drawn a bit to one side, and the mouth twitched decidedly to the other when she talked or laughed. It was this misproportion which gave a piquancy to her expression and which in charming people, no doubt made ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... Or, suppose Beethoven's name be mentioned. Here is a specimen brick from the sort of material Beethoven anecdotes are made. Call it, for the sake of piquancy, "Beethoven and Esterhazy." ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... read her through and through, and while her father-in-law might love her, and see her beauty and charm with all the rest of the world, Harriet knew that she must begin an actual campaign for his esteem on her wedding day. The prospect had an unexpected piquancy. She had little fear of its outcome. She would make Ward Carter a wife for whom his father must come to feel genuine gratitude and devotion. Every fibre of her being would be strained to make the Carter marriage a success. She knew what ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... at Chicago, are many pleasant people, drawn together from all parts of the world. A resident here would find great piquancy in the associations,—those he met having such dissimilar histories and topics. And several persons I saw, evidently transplanted from the most refined circles to be met in this country. There are lures enough in the West for people of all kinds;—the enthusiast and the ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... sent to the "Advertiser" was hardly less prominently displayed. His editorial was the "Courier's" leader, and it appeared verbatim et literatim. He viewed his work with pride and satisfaction; even his ironical editorial "briefs" had, he fancied, something of the piquancy he admired in the paragraphing of the "New York Sun." But his gratification at being able to write "must" matter for both sides of a prominent journal was obscured by the greater joy of being the chief adjutant of the "Courier's" sagacious ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... of the trees were red glimmering cigarettes and pipes. The odour of tobacco mingled with the fresh, nocturnal coolness and gave it a sweet piquancy. Piquant also, in the nocturnal stillness, were the sounds of the young, eager voices. And these people had no concern with the mystery of the wood made audible in the silence. The people behaved as if they were at home. They sat about and walked ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... and the tone being thus determined, I betook myself to ordinary induction, with the view of obtaining some artistic piquancy which might serve me as a key-note in the construction of the poem—some pivot upon which the whole structure might turn. In carefully thinking over all the usual artistic effects—or more properly points, ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... grow disappointed that the daughter did not manifest some of her mother's quaint and genial good sense, or some sparkle and piquancy that would correspond to her father's humor: but the few remarks she made had reference chiefly to the people at the meeting, and verged toward ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... version of the tale, Browning has used a poet's licence to heighten the effect and increase the piquancy of the narrative. The poem is written in ottava rima, but, very singularly, there is not one double rhyme from beginning to end. It is difficult to see why Browning, a finer master of grotesque compound ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... slovens by instinct. Her blouse was never clean, but she wore it with an air. Her skirt testified that skillets spit grease; but in it she somehow looked as trim as a trout fly. Even the hole in her stocking gave her piquancy; and she had wonderful black hair, which probably had not been combed properly for a month, and big, crackling black eyes. They told us that one day, a week or two before we came, she had been particularly cheerful—so cheerful ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... manifestations. It is narrow because it is focussed, but this does not mean that it is small. Although the story of "The Age of Innocence" might have been set in a far broader background, it is the circumstances of the New York society which Mrs. Wharton knows so well that give it a piquancy, a reality that "epics" lack. They are like the accidents of voice, eye, gesture which determine individuality. ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... piquancy and novelty in Thoreau come from the unexpected turn he gives to things, upsetting all our preconceived notions. His trick of exaggeration he rather brags of: "Expect no trivial truth from me," he says, "unless I am on the witness stand." He even exaggerates his own tendency ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... with them? It was not the beauty of mere form and colour, either, that struck Mrs. Barclay in Lois's face. You may easily see more regular features and more dazzling complexion. It was not any particular brilliance of eye, or piquancy of expression. There was a soundness and fulness of young life; that is not so uncommon either. There was a steadfast strength and sweetness of nature. There was an unconscious, innocent grace, that is exceedingly rare. And a high, noble expression of countenance and ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... glanced in embarrassment at her nephew, whose face, to her surprise, was beaming with enjoyment. The truth was that John Henry, who would have condemned so unreasonable an accusation had it been uttered by a full-grown male, was enraptured by the piquancy of hearing it on the lovely lips of his cousin. To demand that a pretty woman should possess the mental responsibility of a human being would have seemed an affront to his inherited ideas of gallantry. His slow wit was enslaved ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... essayist, critic, editor, and ex-clergyman, was always an interesting figure; and his successive transitions from Tractarianism to Latitudinarianism, and from Agnosticism to Ultramontanism, gave a peculiar piquancy to his utterances on religion. He deserves remembrance on two quite different scores—one, that he was the first publisher to study prettiness in the production of even cheap books; and the other, that he was an early and enthusiastic worker in the cause ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... of Mrs. Akemit's household Percival acknowledged the sway with never a misgiving. He had been the devoted lover of Baby Akemit from the afternoon when he had first cajoled her into autobiography—a vivid, fire-tipped little thing with her mother's piquancy. He gleaned that day that she was "a quarter to four years old;" that she was mamma's girl, but papa was a friend of Santa Claus; that she went to "ball-dances" every day clad in "dest a stirt 'cause big ladies don't ever wear waist-es at night;" that she had once ridden in a ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... brightened through the features, with all the effect of light gleaming forth from within the solid oak. The face became alive. It was a beautiful, though not precisely regular and somewhat haughty aspect, but with a certain piquancy about the eyes and mouth, which, of all expressions, would have seemed the most impossible to throw over a wooden countenance. And now, so far as carving went, this wonderful ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... brilliant Napiers. This lady did not know how to put in a single stop, and her spelling is more wildly eccentric than words can describe, yet her letters are enthralling, and natural fire and fun actually seem to derive piquancy from the schoolgirlish errors. If you sit down to write with the intention of being impressive, you may not make a fool of yourself, but the chances are all in that direction; whereas, if you resolve with rigid determination to say something essential about some fact and to say ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... onion? Well, for the simple reason that though an onion is one of the most valuable of all vegetables, though it is the finest of relishes, though it has added piquancy to a thousand feasts, yet nobody praises the onion. Of course you know the author is right here. You may have read some great poetry in your time, poems on daffodils, violets, roses, daisies. Even you have known a great poet who could write ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... evolved the ideal portrait of an elephant from his "inner consciousness" was a commonplace, matter-of fact person compared with the daring visionary who conjures up a complete system of language from the same fertile but untrustworthy source. The piquancy of Senhor Pedro Carolino's New Guide of the Conversation in Portuguese and English is enhanced by the evident bona fides and careful compilation of "the little book," or as Pedro himself gravely expresses it, "for ...
— English as she is spoke - or, A jest in sober earnest • Jose da Fonseca
... Dr. Galbraith had not the advantage of knowing Evadne's early history when they first became acquainted adds a certain piquancy to the flavour of his impressions, and the reader, better informed than himself with regard to the antecedents of his "subject," will find it interesting to note both the accuracy of his insight ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... over, and perhaps their opinions were quite as wise, and Miss Nugent's conversation was equal to that of any of Nuttie's London friends, but it was only woman's talk after all—the brilliancy and piquancy, the touch and go, she had enjoyed in Lady ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... name of Lucia Catherwood. There was a new beauty in Richmond, the newspaper said, one whose graces of face and figure were equaled only by the qualities of her mind. She had relatives of strong Northern tendencies, and she had been known to express such sympathies herself; but they only lent piquancy to her conversation. She had appeared at one of the President's receptions; and further on Prescott saw the name of Mr. Sefton. There was nothing by which he could tell with certainty, but he inferred that she had gone there with the Secretary. A sudden thought ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... the stage, then a more lengthy one of the old woman, with the contents of the letter she was reading. It was from a niece at a boarding-school, who proposed, in a brief and direct way, to visit this aunt during her coming vacation. The tableau was acted so well, and with such piquancy, that claps and peals of laughter from the audience, and finally calls for "Kate Underwood," who demurely makes her appearance from behind the curtain, drops a stage courtesy, and disappears. The poem had been (this audience constituting the judges) excellent, the very best thing Kate ever ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... friends. She had observed, assimilated, and translated her new ideas through her own personality as far as her means permitted. If her mother and father had looked carefully at their daughter, they would have seen how much more effectively her hair was arranged; what piquancy of mode had been observed in the making of her new dresses; what careful pride had dictated the fashion and fit of her high-heeled shoes; what trouble was systematically taken to preserve her delicate skin and to restore ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Variety, satire, finesse, feeling, movement, terseness, suavity, grace, gayety, at times even nobleness, gravity, grandeur—everything—is to be found in him. And then the happiness of the epithets, the piquancy of the sayings, the felicity of his rapid sketches and unforeseen audacities, and the unforgettable sharpness of phrase! His defects are eclipsed by his immense variety of ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... gives a picture of Russian interior life, we pass to Gretch, an author of some European reputation. His "Trip to Germany" describes, with singular piquancy, the manners of a very curious race—the Germans of St Petersburg; and "Tchernaia Jenstchina," "the Black Woman," presents a picture of Russian society, which was welcomed with great ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... house on Thursday afternoons; his practice was to go out into the great, mysterious world. Never before had he shared a meal with the girls alone. The situation was indubitably unexpected, unforeseen; it was, too, piquant, and what added to its piquancy was the fact that Constance and Sophia were, somehow, responsible for Mr. Povey. They felt that they were responsible for him. They had offered the practical sympathy of two intelligent and well-trained young women, born nurses by reason of their sex, and Mr. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... beauty by any set rule of the world. Her large black eyes were neither slitted nor slanted in the Asiatic way. They were long, true, but set squarely, and with just the slightest hint of obliqueness that was all for piquancy. ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... York, the least snobbish of great cities, a man need have but a dress suit and car-fare—if he be the right kind of a man, of course—to go anywhere and hold up his head with the best. In a place so universally rich, there is even a certain piquancy in being a pauper. The Grossenstecks were overcome to think I shined my own shoes, and had to calculate my shirts, and the fact that I was no longer young (that's the modern formula for forty), and next-door to a failure in the art I had followed for so many years, served ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... that to me a broonette has always more fascination than a blonde. It seems—I may be wrong—as though there's more piquancy, more character." ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... March, and for winter requirements in July and August, in shallow drills 6 or 8 in. apart. Cut for use when 3 or 4 in. high. The tender tops and leaves are used in soups and stews, to which they impart a warm, aromatic flavour. They likewise give piquancy ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink
... are by far the most brilliant representatives of the French school of Opera Comique. The work of the former which shows his genius at its best is "La Dame Blanche." It possesses in a remarkable degree dramatic verve, piquancy of rhythm, and beauty of structure. Mr. Franz Hueffer speaks ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... heart. The physician under whose care he had placed her, after examining her wounds, had not given much hope of her recovery. It was not that de Jars was capable of a lasting love, but Charlotte was young and possessed great beauty, and the romance and mystery surrounding their connection gave it piquancy. Charlotte's disguise, too, which enabled de Jars to conceal his success and yet flaunt it in the face, as it were, of public morality and curiosity, charmed him by its audacity, and above all he was carried away by the bold and uncommon character ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... seeming innocence over the tray. With a mischievous laugh he reached over and flipped the hot ashes from his cigar upon her neck. She screamed affectedly and danced about shaking off the ashes. Then with feigned maidenly piquancy and many reproachful glances, she went ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... Lord Chesterfield at the Hague, when, a few months before the restoration, that nobleman fled to the continent to escape the consequences of Francis Woolley's murder. In Lely's picture of the young Countess of Chesterfield, her piquancy attracts at a glance, whilst her beauty charms on examination. Her cousin, Anthony Hamilton, describes her as having large blue eyes, very tempting and alluring, a complexion extremely fair, and a heart "ever open to tender sentiments," by reason of which her troubles arose, as shall ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... the place in a box which Stella had reserved for her at the office, and, aside from the purpose which was rapidly taking shape in her mind, she enjoyed the play very much. Stella Larue, as the "Grass Widow," played her part with a piquancy which Constance knew was not wholly a matter ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... departure, and the happy, joyous expression, which now filled with animation their charming faces, on which the late fading rose had begun once more to bloom. Their faith in the future gave to their countenances something resolute and decisive, which added a degree of piquancy to the beauty of ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... was perfect in its contour, her cheeks innocent of the Parisienne's usual aids to beauty, her lips red and well moulded, while two tiny dimples gave a piquancy to a face which was far more beautiful than any I had met in all ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... amused with the piquancy and humour of the following introduction of a Notice of a volume of Poems, "by John Jones, an old servant," which has just appeared under the editorship of Mr. Southey and the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... thought that the loss of Deventer and, with it, the almost ruinous condition of three out of the seven Provinces, might excuse on their part a little piquancy of phraseology, nor was it easy for them to express gratitude to the governor for his grave and gentle admonitions, after he had, by his secret document of 24th November, rendered himself fully responsible ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... never altogether understand," she replied. "Nothing requires a little artificial aid so much as nature. It is the piquancy of the contrast, you see. That is why the decorations of Watteau are the most wonderful in the world. He knew how to combine the purely, exquisitely artificial with the entirely simple. Now to break the news ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... until he was sure that her indifference was not an affectation. He had read of women who used it as a lure. If it were Charlotte's special weapon he was quite willing to be brought to submission by it. After all, there was piquancy in the situation; for to most men, love sought and hardly won is far sweeter ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... girls we can warmly commend. There is a delightful piquancy in the experiences and trials of a young English girl who ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... not help falling in love with Daisy, who was the only girl he ever saw except the high-bred, milk-and-water misses whom he sometimes met in Lady Jane's drawing-room, and who, in point of beauty and grace and piquancy, could in no degree compare with the playmate of ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... age, but not the fashion, of youth, and her Parisian dress clung over her wasted figure and well-bred bones artistically if not gracefully; the younger lady, evidently her daughter, was crisp and pretty, and carried off the aquiline nose and aristocratic emaciation of her mother with a certain piquancy and a dash that was charming. The gentleman was young, thin, with the family characteristics, ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... way to understand. This was the thing which Tissot had not been able to bear; which in the end had driven the young man with the small chin from the house. This was the pleasantry to which his feeble resistance, his outbursts of anger, of jealousy, or of protest had but added piquancy, the ultimate sting of pleasure to the jaded palate of the performers. This was the obsession under which she lay, the trial and persecution which she had warned him he would ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... they were in their box at Covent Garden listening to the sensuous music of "Carmen," and comparing the sauciness of the charming little devil who sang the habanera, with the piquancy of the last Carmen but three, and with the refinement of the one who had made so great a success at Munich. They agreed that the savagery of the newest was very fascinating,—Stephen Linton called it womanly,—but ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... which her excitement called forth, added piquancy to her natural charms, and inflamed Santa Anna's wicked passions all the more. But more than any of them revenge. For now he knew how much the fair petitioner was interested in the man whose suit she had preferred. ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... exaggerated form of statement, and is used to magnify or diminish an object. It is quite natural, under the impulse of strong emotion or imagination, to use exaggerated statements, and frequently it serves to lend piquancy and force to style. But this tendency is dangerous, and should be kept under restraint. As a rule it is best to see and describe things as they are. The following from "Julius Caesar" will serve ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... moment he forgot all French encroachments, and the imbecility of geographers in general, as his glance chanced to fall upon a young woman of fresh and striking beauty, and delightful piquancy of ways and expression, who with a clumsy club was pounding fragments of pottery—urns, vases, and goglets—for the foundation of the watt. Very artless and happy she seemed, and free as she was lovely; but the instant she perceived she had attracted the notice of the king, she sank down and hid ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... He knew what he himself would do in the circumstances, but in crises few men of character do the necessary thing in exactly the same way. Here was comedy of a high order, a mystery and necessary revelation of singular piquancy. To his thinking ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
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