"Coquette" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... own myself no advocate for hats; I am sorry the ladies ever invented or adopted so tantalizing a fashion: for, where there is beauty, they only serve to shade it; and, where there is none, to excite a most unavailing curiosity. I fancy they were originally worn by some young and whimsical coquette." ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... thy labours to the servile crowd, Entice the wary, and control the proud; Make the sad miser his best gains forego, The solemn statesman sigh to be a beau, 120 The bold coquette with fondest passion burn, The Bacchanalian o'er his bottle mourn; And that chief glory of thy power maintain, 'To poise ambition in a female brain.' Be these thy triumphs; but no more presume That my rebellious heart will yield ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... smooth sailing over calm waters. Three weeks of warmth and sunshine by day, and of poetry and starlight by night. Three weeks of drifting in the romance which surrounds the name of that great sorceress, that wonderful siren, that consummate coquette, that most fascinating woman the world has ever known. Three weeks of steeping one's soul in the oldest, most complete and satisfactory ruins on the face of the earth. Here, in delving into the past, we would have no use for the comparative word "hundreds." ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... lying in wait for me when I went to a piece of low, swampy ground overgrown with bushes. Think of the opportunity this combination offers to the Eastern mosquito, and consider my emotions when I found but a solitary individual, and even that one disposed to coquette with me. ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... the Paddington road, he suddenly said, "I really cannot understand how a girl, brought up as you have been, can conduct herself in the way you do. I am sorry to say so, Ellen; but you really are a thorough coquette—a regular actress." ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... of this dainty work of art, which was such a favorite with her. How often have I seen the old lady, her feet upon the bar, reclining in the easy-chair, with her dress half raised in front, toying with the snuff-box, which lay upon the ledge between her box of pastilles and her silk mits. What a coquette she was! to the day of her death she took as much pains with her appearance as though the beautiful portrait had been painted only yesterday, and she were waiting to receive the throng of exquisites from the Court! How the armchair recalls to me the inimitable ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... knowing nod. "Of course he is, with such a wife as that—a femme superbe. Madame Ruck is preserved in perfection—a miraculous fraicheur. I like those large, fair, quiet women; they are often, dans l'intimite, the most agreeable. I'll warrant you that at heart Madame Ruck is a finished coquette." ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James
... Allen distinguished out of the merry war in which they seemed engaged were spoken in the tone of pretty petulance such women use—a coquette's defence. ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... a coquette! Don't trust her. She will smile on you one minute, and frown on you the next—toss you flowers with one hand, and hail stones with the other. I know her. Many's the time she has coaxed me out of ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... proof of that I am going to take Moranges with me to-night. He is young and inexperienced, and it will be a good lesson for him to see how a gallant whose amorous intrigues did not begin yesterday sets about getting even with a coquette. He can turn ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... nothing of the world! If I had not cajoled those three deputies they might have wanted La Billardiere's place themselves; whereas, now that I have invited them here, they will be ashamed to do so and will become our supporters instead of rivals. I have rather played the coquette, but—it is delightful that the first nonsense with which one ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... of Kate that she demanded the love and loyalty of her betrayed lover to the bitter end, false and heartless though she had been. The coquette in her played with him even now in the midst of the bitter pain she must have known she was inflicting. No word of contrition spoke she, but took her deed as one of her prerogatives, just as she had always taken everything she chose. She did not even spare him the ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... old aunts, all in a tremble at the dangerous hops and vagaries of a lively niece; while the gay-plumaged birds of the air ring out their wild applause, and the flowers on the bankside murmur tenderly, "Oh, take us with you, dear sister!" But the joyous, sparkling river rushes on like a coquette, bounding and ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... with no offended question. In the maid 'twas surely a wilful and bewildering thing to deny him. I could not make it out: but wished, in the breeze and sunlight of that day, that the wound had not been dealt. 'Twas an unkind thing in Judith, thinks I; 'twas a thing most cruel—thus to coquette with ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... to give it the value of speech, needs either the pressure of extreme servitude, or complete liberty. Adam, the Marquis du Rouvre, and Clementine did not observe this luminous by-play of the old coquette and the old diplomatist, but Paz, the faithful watchdog, understood its meaning. It was, we must remark, an affair of two seconds; but to describe the tempest it roused in the captain's soul would take far too much space in ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... do not altogether blame you, for I have been indiscreet, foolish. I—I have not meant to be; I merely endeavored to prove kind and friendly, never once dreaming it would come to this. Now it must end, absolutely end; even if you despise me for a heartless coquette, there is no other way. My path is laid out for me, and I must walk in it. It may not be altogether pleasant, but I made my choice, and it is too late now for retreat. I want you to help me, ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... then, and was rich, prosperous, and content. Her lords knew how important she might be in days to come, when the inevitable struggle between the rival Kings of France and England should commence; and like an accomplished coquette, she made the most of her knowledge, and played her part well, watching her opportunity for demanding an increase of those rights and privileges of which she had not ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... to her so often his protestation of indifference, that she finished, sometimes, by believing him; and then she believed she detested Malicorne. If she tried to bring him back by coquetry, Malicorne played the coquette better than she could. But what made Montalais hold to Malicorne in an indissoluble fashion, was that Malicorne always came cram full of fresh news from the court and the city; Malicorne always brought to Blois a fashion, a secret, or a perfume; ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... ever happened to them in their lives, and much that had not. Amy was convinced that Mr. Blondin was just desperately in earnest, and that, for the sake of other aspirants, Nina ought not to trifle with him, and Nina, with blazing cheeks and tumbled hair, was assuming rapidly the airs of a sad coquette. ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... Point's delightful parade ground Sighs many a hapless cadet, Who's basked through the long days of Summer In the smiles of a city coquette; And now the incipient hero Beholds his enchantress depart, With the spoils of her lightly-won triumph, His buttons, as well ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... Tiurai, helped old Madame Rose to care for the rooms at the Tiare. She was thirteen years old, willowy, with a beautiful, smiling face, and two long, black plaits. Though innocent, almost artless, in appearance, she was an arch coquette, and flirted with old and young. One day a turkey that shared the back yard with two automobiles, a horse, three carriages, several dogs, ten cats, and forty chickens, disappeared. Juillet was sent ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... if I were a coquette," she said, flushing a little under the very open admiration of his eyes, "which ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... dances was an old-fashioned cotillon, and one of the figures, the "coquette," brought every one, in turn, before me. I received a pleasant word or two from those whom I knew, and a long, kind, silent glance from Miss May Danvers. Where had been my eyes? She was tall, stately, twenty-five, had large dark eyes, and long dark lashes! ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... coquette, whose greatest delight was to prove her power over every man who came in her way, whether married or single, and perceiving Zoe's dislike to her, and jealousy of any attention paid her by Edward, she took a malicious pleasure in drawing him to ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley
... knowing nothing of its depths, he floats gracefully through its shallows. His blood, quickened by praise, flushes his face, his eye sparkles, his features play, but his heart is empty, his soul void, his intellect without expansion; he is as vain, weak, and selfish as an old coquette. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... had always been very cool to her. She deemed her a self-sufficient coquette. However, the Comtesse Diane was a constant attendant at the gay parties which were then the fashion of the Court, though ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 4 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... common attention upon my toilet that morning. The senhora was nothing to me. It is true she had, as she lately most candidly informed me, a score of admirers, among whom I was not even reckoned; she was evidently a coquette whose greatest pleasure was to sport and amuse herself with the passions she excited in others. And even if she were not,—if her heart were to be won to-morrow,—what claim, what right, had I to seek it? My affections were already pledged; promised, it is ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... my pipe, and paused on the stairs to light it; then, pouching flint and tinder-box, I emerged upon the roof, to find myself face to face with a young girl I had never before seen—the Hon. Miss Grey, no doubt—and very dainty in her powder and one coquette patch that emphasized the slow color tinting ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... say so. You men consider a coquette the best thing a woman can be. And you yourself are not different from the rest, even if you do put on such a solemn and honorable air. I know very well, Geert—To tell the truth, ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... followed in all cases by u, and has usually the sound of kw, as in queen; but in a few words derived from the French, qu is sounded like k, as in coquette. ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... the question immediately. He had been brought of a sudden to the vexatious conclusion that Mrs. Willoughby was a coquette just like the rest of her trivial sex—no better, indeed, than the girl at his side, whose first anxiety was not as to whether Mallinson was seriously ill, but why he wrote the information to Mrs. Willoughby. He felt that Mrs. Willoughby had no right ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... non, malgre vos appas, Mon ame n'est point satisfaite; Non, vous n'etes qu'une coquette, Qui subjuguez les coeurs, et ne rous ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... hero of Moliere's comedy Le Misanthrope. He has a pure and noble mind that has been soured and disgusted by intercourse with the world. Courtesy he holds to be the vice of fops, and the manners of society mere hypocrisy. He courts Celmene, a coquette and her treatment of his love confirms ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... turn the thought of Ferdinand twisted it back to the sticking-point again, and he was all resolve once more. The experience of ages has declared that there is no better spur for the halting paces of a laggard lover than that which is supplied by jealousy. The simplest coquette that ever tortured hearts in a hay-field is aware of the fact, and needs no appeal to the experience ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... by the future, she became in the purity of her soul a coquette. She dissimulated her feelings, became exacting, and hid from her lover the passion of joy which was consuming her; indeed, she only revealed her true self after marriage had shown her the steadfast nobility of her husband's character, when she could no longer ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... shown unmistakable signs of affection for her, but had never spoken. He was a good fellow, according to common report, and she had a good deal of liking and respect for him, and a little pity, being a good girl, and no coquette. ...
— Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle Barfield - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... would be indiscreet, Replied the king, more charms we often meet, Beneath a chambermaid or laundress' dress, Than any rich coquette can well possess. Besides, with those, less form is oft requir'd, While dames of quality must be admir'd; Their whims complied with, though suspicions rise; And ev'ry hour produces fresh surprise, But this sweet charmer ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... "'Coquette! nothing can frighten me. Tell me that you will cost me my whole future, that I shall die two months hence, that I shall be damned for ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... clever, cool coquette, Who flouts all Grundian decrees,— pretty, pouting, piquant pet, That loves to ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... and it is a long time since my troubles began. Money, wickedly acquired, brings no good. On arriving home, I bought the wretched meadow for much more than it was worth; and the day I walked over it, feeling that is was actually mine, closed my happiness. Claudine was a coquette; but she had a great many other vices. When she realised how much money we had these vices showed themselves, just like a fire, smouldering at the bottom of the hold, bursts forth when you open the hatches. From slightly greedy as she had been, she became a regular glutton. ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... were lost, Yet still resolved to spare no cost; He could not answer to his fame The triumphs of that stubborn dame, A nymph so hard to be subdued, Who neither was coquette nor prude. I find, says he, she wants a doctor, Both to adore her, and instruct her: I'll give her what she most admires, Among those venerable sires. Cadenus is a subject fit, Grown old in politics and wit; Caressed by Ministers of State, Of half mankind ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... the same warm hue were nestled at her throat. The contrast of her dark eyes and hair and warm olive complexion was simply superb, and Malcolm secretly clapped his hands and murmured "bravo" under his breath. "She has the soul of the coquette and the artist too," he said to himself. "Oh, woman, woman, surely Solomon had you in his thoughts when he declared 'All is vanity;'" and then he remembered Elizabeth Templeton and felt ashamed of his cynicism. The next moment he noticed the coast was clear, and obeying ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... not protest this as a coquette might have done. On the contrary, she remained silent, and I was aware that while she liked and respected me, she was not profoundly moved by this farewell call. Nevertheless I hoped, and in that hope I repeated, "You will ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... the turn of her head, her bubbling brilliance, her cool indifference, the ice of her intellect, the glow of her sympathy, each contributing to the masterpiece of her coquetry. But with him she was not even a coquette—jerky, passionate, nervous, humble, exacting, dull—she tired ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... esteemed her more highly. He thought that the society of the Austrian court was after all a better school for a wife than the society of the Directory, and he had found in Marie Louise, a girl worthy of all regard, one invaluable blessing, one treasure which a widow, charming, it is true, but a coquette, lacked; ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... with her perfect face dividing their rippling flow she looked like some immaculate saint of legend being led to martyrdom. Rowland's eyes presumably betrayed his admiration, but her own manifested no consciousness of it. If Christina was a coquette, as the remarkable timeliness of this incident might have suggested, she was ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... that all was now over between him and Frau Kahle. His acquaintance with women of her stamp had never been extensive, and to read the soul of one so utterly false and grossly sensual as this inveterate coquette, was quite beyond the ability of Lieutenant Pommer, analysis of his own or anybody else's character not being his ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... office, her perfect health, her slim boyishness, her exquisite lines and graceful turn of hand, arm and body, or the flower- like turn of the neck, were the very harmony and poetry of life. But she was terribly provoking too; and he realized that she was an unconscious coquette, that her spirit loved mastery as ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in a pained voice. "I cannot imagine why so many people should have thought that. Yes, and Richard himself. It never was; and I know I am no coquette!" ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... the wide bed is smooth and cold. Above, in the firelight, winks the coronet of tarnished gold. The knight shivers in his coat of fur, and holds out his hands to the withering flame. She is always the same, a sweet coquette. ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... Laura, but with an indulgent smile, which was her way of saying that it was true but did not signify. She was no coquette, but she preferred to create an agreeable impression. Always in France, where women are the focus of social interest, there had been men who did as Laura Selincourt pleased, and the incense which Val alone continued to burn was not ungrateful to her altar. "As if Val would mind about a little ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... the daughter of Sir Roger Needham, and she has been described, even by the grave Evelyn, as a 'famous, and, indeed, incomparable beauty.' A coquette, she was, however, the friend of intellectual men; and it was probably at the house of St. Evremond that the Count first saw her. Her figure was good, she was fair and delicate; and she had so great a desire, Count Hamilton relates, to 'appear magnificently, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... to explain. Just at that moment my schoolfellows came trooping in. Georgette seeing me standing there, ink-stained and disgraced, and already—the coquette!—forgetful of her promise, exclaimed, with ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... face: it interferes with their eating, but it has to be put up with. They smear their ears with a white substance, or their face with blue, vermillion and black. They are more elaborate in their war-toilette than a coquette would be in dressing—in order to conceal the paleness which fear might engender. They are profuse of gold and silver brocade, porcelain necklaces, bracelets of beads—the women, especially in their youth. This is their jewellery, their ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... made so absolutely. The sedentary life to which they are condemned weakens them, and then their weakness is accepted as an inherent, instead of an artificial, quality. Rousseau concludes that a woman is naturally a coquette, and governed in all matters by the sexual instinct, because her earliest amusements consist in playing with dolls, dressing them and herself, and in talking. These conclusions are almost ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... train smiling at gallants from behind her fan; and surely, I thought, no one in the whole world ever went tripping to a ball in such strange and monstrous headgear as she wore. Yet she had been a notable beauty in her day, and even in her old age was still something of a coquette. ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... the small coquette, and Teacher was only just in time to snatch Isidore's faultless writing from the deluge of ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... on the part of the mature coquette evinced a profound knowledge of mankind, and, above all, of him on whom she practised her arts. The profuse display of the bust and shoulders in those days, when the ladies of the court left so little to the imagination of the amorous monarch ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... Madame Moutonnet is long past forty, but it is a settled affair that she is never to be more than thirty-six. She never was handsome, but she is large and tall, and her husband is persuaded she is superb. She is not a coquette, but she thinks herself superior to every body else in talents and beauty. She never cared a rush about her husband, but if he was untrue to her she would tear his eyes out. Madame Moutonnet, you perceive, is excessively jealous of her rights. A daughter is the sole issue of the marriage ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... wide-spread reputation for her fogs; but little do they know how much a fog may add to natural scenery, who never witnessed its magical effects, as it has caused a beautiful landscape to coquette with the eye, in playful and capricious changes. Our opening scene is in one of these much derided fogs; though, let it always be remembered, it was a fog of June, and not of November. On a high head-land of the coast of Devonshire, stood a little station-house, ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... him than for any of these senseless coxcombs? Were the smiles and attention that had so captivated him to be equally shared by them? This was not to be borne. He could have endured her ignorance, even a fool might be tolerated, but an unfeeling coquette never could. From that moment Amaranthe, with all her beauty, was dismissed ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... implements and wiles failed to entrap a lover, and the coquette was left as a "wall-flower," as the Germans express it, the men of the day satirized the unfortunate one just as mercilessly. Read, for example, a few lines from the Progress of Dullness, thought to be a very humorous poem ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... preparing this delicate and acceptable feast for our entertainment. Is it not so, my charmer? And you have dressed yourself in this bewitching style of chaste simplicity, solely to please me—am I right? But come; though you have not yet spoken or looked at me, sweet coquette that you are, I read in your bright eyes the confirmation of my hopes. Let us first banquet upon the delights of love, and then sip the ruby contents of the sparkling wine-cup, which I'll swear are not one half so sweet as the ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... Portuguese did not reflect that the moon shone full into the room, and that the muslin curtains would not prevent my seeing her exquisite figure, which shewed to greater advantage in the position she happened to take. If Pauline had been a coquette I should have considered her scruples as mere artifice calculated to increase my ardour; but she had no need to use such stratagems. At last she was within my arms, and we clasped each other closely and in silence that was only broken ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... What a shock when she turns round! She wears over her face the horribly grinning, deathly mask of a specter or vampire. The mask unfastened, falls. And behold! a darling little fairy of about twelve or fifteen years of age, slim, and already a coquette, already a woman,—dressed in a long robe of shaded dark blue china crape, covered with embroidery representing bats—gray bats, black ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... will so lower their ceaseless warble, that, though almost within reach, the little minstrels seem far away. There is the very earliest cat-bird, mimicking the bobolink before the bobolink has come: what is the history of his song, then? is it a reminiscence of last year? or has the little coquette been practising it all winter, in some gay Southern society, where cat-birds and bobolinks grow intimate, just as Southern fashionables from different States may meet and sing duets at Saratoga? There ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... corner. I am glad the aunt could explain things so satisfactorily. I was wrong about that girl. Shows how careful one must be in judging of other people, doesn't it? I must say she looked to me like a regular little coquette." ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... is no principle of massing or of continuity in his productions—neither height nor breadth nor depth of capacity. There is no truth of representation, no strong internal feeling—but a continual flutter and display of affected airs and graces, like a finished coquette, who hides the want of symmetry by extravagance of dress, and the want of passion by flippant forwardness and unmeaning sentimentality. All is flimsy, all is florid to excess. His imagination may dally ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... for she is, without exception, the greatest coquette I ever came across. She always had crowds of admirers, many of whom she contrived to draw on until they came to 'the point,' and then laughed at them. By Jove she will make a fool of you, Everard, if you ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... had cherished ever since her hand had wrote therein. Gazing upon those features with a world of tenderness, Ah, Monsieur, he said, had you but beheld her as I did with these eyes at that affecting instant with her dainty tucker and her new coquette cap (a gift for her feastday as she told me prettily) in such an artless disorder, of so melting a tenderness, 'pon my conscience, even you, Monsieur, had been impelled by generous nature to deliver yourself wholly into the hands of such an ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... allow him to see anything of the coquette in that confession. It all seemed to be consecrated by the love he felt for her—a love which was so honest that he perceived no boldness in the attitude of this girl who had come so far to meet him. He took her into his arms again, and she ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... of no greater offence than of being totally heartless with all her charms, and of aiming at no treachery more dangerous than that of making conquests, only to deride them. It was the popular qualification of all her beauties and accomplishments that she was a coquette, at once so cold, and so insatiate. Perhaps, the woman politician never so thoroughly conceals her game as when she masks it with the art which men are most apt to describe as the prevailing passion ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... smile on thee yet, believe me, Carlton; and the more sweetly for this seeming neglect. She's a fickle goddess, and often plays the coquette, but, like others of this class, she seldom chides but she smiles again the ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... thirty-four—and then the others! She was always at home in the evening, and they all used to come. They were old Florentine names. But she used to let me stay after them all; she thought an old English name as good. What a transcendent coquette! . . . But basta cosi as she used to say. I meant to go tonight to Casa Salvi, but I couldn't bring myself to the point. I don't know what I'm afraid of; I used to be in a hurry enough to go there once. ...
— The Diary of a Man of Fifty • Henry James
... the manly virtues, for she must have been an untowardly female—a sour, lantern-jawed spinster, with all the inclinations but none of the qualities of a coquette." ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... Piozzi had acquired the difficult art of growing old; je sais vieillir: she dwells frequently but naturally on her age: she contemplates the approach of death with firmness and without self-deception: and her elasticity of spirit never for a moment suggests the image of an antiquated coquette. Of the seven letters in question, the one cited as most compromising is the sixth, in which Conway is exhorted to bear patiently a rebuff he had just received from some ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... the grace of the lily That sways on its slender fair stem, My love with the bloom of the rosebud, White pearl in my life's diadem! You may call her coquette if it please you, Enchanting, if shy or if bold, Is my darling, my winsome wee lassie, Whose birthdays ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... before, became the head of the Sphinx, encircled with a coronet of fire. She bestowed a look of rapturous gratitude on Staines, and then glided away, like the stately Juno, to admire herself in the nearest glass like any other coquette, black, ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... a street which leads to the abbey of Grand-mont, and to a trench, which works very well with the bridge, and at the end of which is a finer fair ground. A street well paved, well built, well washed, as clean as a glass, populous, silent at certain times, a coquette with a sweet nightcap on its pretty blue tiles—to be short, it is the street where I was born; it is the queen of streets, always between the earth and sky; a street with a fountain; a street which lacks ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... promote the manufacture of the brush whisky. The managers of the moon-shining interest had taken measures to guard Wyatt's aged father from this fantasy of woe, but they had not dreamed that the mountain coquette might care. He himself stood appalled that this ghastly fable should delude his heart's beloved, amazed that it should cost her one sigh, one sob. Her racking paroxysms of grief over this gruesome figment of a grave he was ...
— His Unquiet Ghost - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... to the significance and the motive of social relations they imagine that they shall always meet with deceptive smiles; and so at last the moment comes for them when the world leaves them bald, stripped bare, without fortune or worth, like an elderly coquette by the door of a salon, or a stray ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... that was when she had plighted her secret troth to him, and had broken it for three million pounds. Why not? She was a woman, she was beautiful, she was a siren who had lured him and used him and tossed him by. Why not? All her art was now used, the art of the born coquette which had been exquisitely cultivated since she was a child, to bring him back to her feet—to the feet of the wife of Rudyard Byng. Why not? For an instant he had the dark impulse to treat her as she deserved, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... irritated, 'I do well wasting my time listening to you. Believe me, seigneur, Florine is also a coquette; she does not deserve that you should be so gallant ...
— Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book - Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations • Edmund Dulac
... jealousy the cruel coquette made me endure were horrible. Sometimes she would treat me as a child, sometimes as a man. She would always leave me if ever there came ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... not know?" he said. "You should know, Mollie, of all others. You were with her when she played that miserable coquette's trick,—that pitiful trick, so unlike herself,—you were with her that night when she let Gowan keep her away from me, when I waited for her coming hour after hour. I saw you with them when he was bidding ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... daughter of Grant Webster, a well-known merchant of Boston, and wife of Rev. John Foster, of Brighton, Massachusetts, whose pedigree, but few removes backward in the line of her husband,[A] interlinked, as has been already hinted, with that of the "Coquette." Thus did they hold towards each other that very significant relationship—especially in the past century—of "cousins" a relationship better heeded and more earnestly recognized and cherished than that of nearer kin ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... parade of dress, and passed as many hours daily at his toilette as an elderly coquette. A tenth part of his day was spent in the brushing of his teeth and the oiling of his hair, which was curling and brown, and which he did not like to conceal under a periwig, such as almost everybody of that time wore. (We have the liberty of our hair back now, but powder and pomatum along with it. ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... trouble she causes. John ought to be thankful he is well rid of her. Did you hear what Beatrice Miller said at lunch about her? I call it shocking bad taste, her coming up to town and flirting and flaunting about under poor John's nose—heartless coquette! Creating 'a sensation,' indeed! That is one of those horrible American expressions that are the fashion ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... Whether it was for this, or whether she meant to leave her friend anything (as was indeed expected, all things considered, not without reason), nobody knows—for she never breathed a syllable on the subject herself, and died without a will. The accomplished coquette of twenty, who had pampered hopes only to kill them, who had kindled rapture with a look and extinguished it with a breath, could find no better employment at seventy than to revive the fond recollections and raise up the drooping hopes of her kinswoman only to let them fall—to rise no more. Such ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Polly had a good deal of the coquette in her make-up, and she thoroughly enjoyed the jealousy between the two young men. Whenever Radnor by any chance incurred her displeasure, she retaliated by transferring her smiles to Mattison; and the virtuous young sheriff ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... is more clever than irreproachable behavior," she said at one time to close friends. Her behavior was both irreproachable and clever, and it obtained for her the satisfaction of her highest ambitions. She fascinated and lured the King, playing the coquette to him, but evading him with a baffling assumption of virtue, yielding just enough to draw the Monarch on; then playing the part of a prude, until, finally, she became in the eyes of the fascinated Louis the most desired of women. It was not long before Madame de ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... and hear what fell to me * For love of you gazelle to dree! Shot me a white doe with her shaft * O' glances wounding woundily. Love was my ruin, for was I * Straitened by longing ecstasy: I loved and woo'd a young coquette * Girded by strong artillery, Whom in a garth I first beheld * A form whose sight was symmetry. I greeted her and when she deigned * Greeting return, 'Salm,' quoth she 'What be thy name?' said I, she said, * 'My name declares my quality![FN340]' ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... mildly teasing the girl about her popularity, assuming, as an old friend, a whimsically injured tone. She could never be sure how much or little his speeches meant, but, being an outrageous little coquette herself, she seldom put much confidence ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... I grieve to say that she was a bit of a coquette. I tried to cure her of this serious defect, but for once I found that I had undertaken something I could not accomplish. In vain I lectured, Betty only laughed; in vain I gravely rebuked, Betty only flirted more ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the kind? How often had he maintained an opposite opinion—seeming contemptuous, indolent, invulnerable, unconscious of her beauty, amused rather than attracted by her brilliant spirit. Every instinct of the coquette, jealous of her own power and wretched from the sterile suffering of wounded pride, resented bitterly the unpardonable ease which he had appeared to enjoy in her society. Now, however, that he appealed to her womanliness by a humble surrender, her better, more generous nature asserted ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... wrong—it was just possible! There might be women who were womanly,—there might be beautiful girls who were neither vain nor frivolous,—there might even be creatures of the feminine sex, besides whom a trained Parisian coquette would seem nothing more than a painted fiend of the neuter gender. These were new and startling considerations to the feather-light mind of the Frenchman,—and unconsciously his fancy began to busy itself with the old romantic ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... maternal heart could not forget the humiliations and the sufferings which this man who now called for Josephine had inflicted upon her daughter. She could not pardon the viscount for having deserted his young wife, and that for the sake of a coquette! She therefore sought to inspire Josephine with mistrust; she told her that these vows of the viscount were not to be relied upon; that he had not given up his paramour to come back to Josephine, but that he was forsaken by her and abandoned by her. Madame de Gisard had regretted ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... beautiful, intelligent, and witty to a most extraordinary degree, had absolutely broken the hearts of half the men of rank on the island; for though yet scarcely twenty years of age, Senorita Isabella was a confirmed coquette. It was her passion to command and enjoy a devotion, but as to ever having in the least degree cherished or known what it was to love, the lady was entirely void of the charge; she had never known ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... called country dance— (Whom folks, of late, have used so ill, Preferring a coquette from France, That mincing ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Venus. Before leaving Paris he had had an intrigue with a certain Mile. M———, a somewhat frivolous and unscrupulous beauty, who had bled his not overfilled purse with the avidity of a leech. Berlioz heard just before returning to Paris that the coquette was about to marry, a conclusion one would fancy which would have rejoiced his mind. But, no! he was worked to a dreadful rage by what he considered such perfidy! His one thought was to avenge himself. He provided himself with three loaded pistols—one for the faithless ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... flashed into his, the little curl of her lips seemed to transform her whole expression. She was no longer the gravely minded prophetess of a great cause, the scheming woman, furious at the prospect of failure. She was suddenly wholly feminine, seductive, a coquette. ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... coquette," continued a third. "But she will have no chance. These strangers are poor, lean, broken-down, and badly dressed. They are not soldiers at all, like the men at the citadel. No lace, no gold tape, ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... be compared to that of a prism, every facet of which reflects a different color. The ardor burning under this changeable surface, which, through some sudden cause, betrayed its presence, was so deeply hidden, however, that it seemed impossible to fathom it completely. Was she a coquette, or simply a fashionable lady, or a devotee? In one word, was she imbued with the most egotistical pride or the most exalted love? One might suppose anything, but know nothing; one remained undecided and thoughtful, but fascinated, the mind plunged into ecstatic ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... with cool dissolute persistency. She deceived, lied, and wept with the felicity of a fanatic. She sought and found happiness at the cost of not only self-respect, but honour and virtue. She was not a shrew, but a born coquette, without morals rather than immoral, and, withal, a superb enigmatic who would have made the Founder of our faith shed tears of sorrow. It is by distorting facts that her eulogists make it appear that she was a loving ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... right—hand neighbour, who in turn acquired the same right of compelling the person next to him to make a fool of himself; at last it came to Transom, who, by the by, sung exceedingly well, but he had got more wine than usual, and essayed the coquette ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... coquette!" he muttered with his hat pulled over his eyes. "Ebling's a fool: Ruth Stanley is worth a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... contrary, whether prudes or flirts, old or young, stupid or clever, will intermeddle with everything. No honest woman," to use the Cardinal's own words, "would permit her spouse to go to sleep, no coquette allow her lover any favour, ere she had heard all the political news of the day. They will see all that goes on, will know everything, and—what is worse—have a finger in everything, and set everything in confusion. We have a trio, among others"—and he again named the three fair factionists ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... in the least the air of a coquette. Impossible to associate any such trivial idea with Rosamund's habitual seriousness of bearing, and with the stamp of her features, which added some subtle charm to regularity and refinement. By temper critical, and especially disposed to mistrustful scrutiny by the ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... Blanche was nature's self, warm, gentle, confiding,—as an unmarried woman, she was a heartless coquette,—as a matron, an exemplary mother and an affectionate wife. During the time Delancey was abroad, he heard of Blanche but seldom, for the lovers were not of that age in which a correspondence would be tolerated by Blanche's family. She once managed ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... I suffered from it cruelly. He was jealous. Good, kind, tender, and generous as he was, this horrible passion made him unjust, ironical, and violent. I can assure you that my behavior gave not the least cause for suspicion. I was not a coquette. But I was young, fresh; I passed for beautiful. That was enough. He would not let me go out alone, and would not let me receive calls in his absence. Whenever we went to a reception, I trembled in advance ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... drab—but that peculiar sevenpenny-moist-sugar tint which the poets of old were wont to call golden. Her voice was melodious; her notes in alt were equal to Grisi's: in short, she would have been a very desirable, loveable young lady, if she had not been a coquette. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... longings, be it love or be it hate, must be stirring within me in order to poetize successfully. And this cannot be comprehended by delicate and discreet people; this low Roman populace even venture to call me a coquette, only because I constantly need a new glow, and because I constantly seek new emotions and new inspirations for ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... almost immediately after reaching Iceland; but I said nothing about it at the time, lest something should delay this letter, and you be left to imagine all kinds of doleful reasons for its non-appearance. We anchored in Reykjavik harbour this afternoon (Saturday). H.M.S. "Coquette" sails for England on Monday; so that within a week you will ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... was ordinary, their thoughts, feelings, and views were all ordinary—were I to write a chapter on the subject I could not elucidate it further. Zephyrine was somewhat more distinguished in appearance and deportment than Pelagie and Suzette, but in character genuine Parisian coquette, perfidious, mercenary, and dry-hearted. A fourth maitresse I sometimes saw who seemed to come daily to teach needlework, or netting, or lace-mending, or some such flimsy art; but of her I never had more than a passing glimpse, as she sat in the CARRE, with her frames and some dozen of ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... fascinating manners, and varied reading, she gained a wide circle of friends. Her face was a Greek oval, her complexion fresh and clear, her eyes deep blue, her mouth pretty and always smiling. She was accused of being a coquette, ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... College Street we took our way, And there we met The beautiful Miss Mary Gray, That arch coquette, Who stole last spring my heart away And has ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray
... She walked slowly to the window, and, making the smallest possible peephole through the curtain, looked out. The motionless figure of a horseman still lingered on the road, with an excess of devotion that only a coquette, or a woman very much in love, could tolerate. The "Rose," at that moment, was neither, and, after a reasonable pause, turned away, saying quite audibly that it was "too ridiculous for any thing." As she came back to her ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... you take me for an easy Fool to be impos'd upon?—One that wou'd be cuckolded by every feather'd Fool; that you'd call a Beau un Gallant Homme. 'Sdeath! Who wou'd doat upon a fond She-Fop?—a vain conceited amorous Coquette. [Goes out, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... coquette, still this side of middle age, educated on novels and albums and on fussing with household affairs and servants. She is highly inquisitive and has streaks of vanity. Sometimes she gets the upper hand over her husband, and he gives in simply because ...
— The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol
... an object of sentiment, in a few days' time became the joke of the school. His taste in literature was as impossible as his taste in candy. He ran to titles which are supposed to be the special prerogative of the kitchen. "Loved and Lost," "A Born Coquette," "Thorns among the Orange Blossoms." Poor Mae repudiated them, but to no avail; the school had accepted Cuthbert—and was bent upon eliciting all the entertainment possible from his British vagaries. Mae's ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... you are thinking," she cried impulsively "You are wrong—very wrong, Mr. Chase. Lady Deppingham is a born coquette—a born trifler. It is ridiculous to think that she can be seriously engaged ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... with all the Russians and Hessians that he has hired to recover the Ohio. We are an ungrateful people! Make a great many compliments for me to my Lady Ailesbury; I own I am in pain about Missy. As my lady is a little coquette herself, and loves crowds and admiration, and a court life, it will be very difficult for her to keep a strict eye upon Missy. The Irish are very forward and bold:—I say no more but it would hurt you both extremely to have her marry herself idly ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole |
