"Peccadillo" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said; "excuse me, sir, I was only amusing myself by observing once more how quickly decent people, who have a little peccadillo on their conscience, are disturbed when they think they have been found out. Your love affairs do not matter to me, sir; I don't want to know if you have a lady friend, or not. The information I want from you ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... why it is to my advantage to spare my maids of honor the remarks, annoyances, perhaps even calumnies, that might follow? Alas! you well know that the court has no indulgence for this sort of peccadillo. But we have now been walking for some time, shall we be long before we ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... according to the Gospel, a Duty to both Sexes, yet a Transgression herein, even with the aggravation of wronging another Man, and possibly a whole Family thereby, is ordinarily talk'd as lightly of, as if it was but a Peccadillo in a Young Man, altho' a far less Criminal Offence against this Duty in a Maid shall in the Opinion of the same Persons brand her with perpetual Infamy: The nearest Relations oftentimes are hardly brought to look upon her after such a dishonour done by her to ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... horseback about to take a journey ought not to bind his sword. He said that the custom was so in Florence, since a certain Ser Maurizio then held office, who was capable of putting S. John the Baptist to the rack for any trifling peccadillo. [4] Accordingly one had to carry one's sword bound till the gates were passed. I laughed at this, and so we set off, joining the courier to Venice, who was nicknamed Il Lamentone. In his company we travelled through Bologna, and arrived ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... all. There is another man within me that's angry with me, rebukes, commands, and dastards me. I have no conscience of marble, to resist the hammer of more heavy offences: nor yet so soft and waxen, as to take the impression of each single peccadillo or scape of infirmity. I am of a strange belief, that it is as easy to be forgiven some sins as to commit some others. For my original sin, I hold it to be washed away in my baptism; for my actual transgressions, I compute and reckon ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... has been evoked which so beautifully consolidates into a unit all the friends of the country in this House and throughout the nation? It is true the removal of the Secretary of War is relatively a simple matter. It is scarcely a peccadillo when considered beside the New-Orleans massacre and many other of the wholesale enormities of which he has been known to be guilty for many months past, but I believe it would be regarded as scarcely sufficient ground for this proceeding if not considered in the light of far ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... theoretically she was of course shocked at the possibility. But, oh, she was human! That a nice man should swipe a dog for her secretly touched a little, responsive tenderness in Helen May. (She used the word "swipe," which somehow made the suspected deed sound less a crime and more an amusing peccadillo than the word "steal" would have done. Have you ever noticed how adroitly we tone down or magnify certain misdeeds simply by using slang or dictionary words as the ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... the oil, grease, and rice caravan. What a pother it was—it was like the starting of an expedition to conquer all Central Africa! His Excellency's concubine still occupies the seat of honour, where she frequently goes to sleep. The courtiers of his Excellency wink at this little peccadillo. Essnousee remarked to me it was all right; "The Mudeer must have some sort of a wife." Had some conversation with an intelligent Moor on the trade of Sockna. It appears the merchants are in the same predicament as those of Ghadames. They are all without capital, and are ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... pacema. Peacefully pace. Peach persiko. Peacock pavo. Peak pinto, pintajxo. Peak (of cap, etc.) sxirmileto. Peal (of bells) sonorilaro. Pear piro. Pear-tree pirarbo. Pearl perlo. Pearl, mother of perlamoto. Peasant vilagxano, kamparano. Peat torfo. Pebble marsxtono, sxtoneto. Peccadillo peketo. Peculiar stranga. Pecuniary mona. Pedagogue pedagogo. Pedagogy pedagogio. Pedal pedalo. Pedant pedanto. Peddler kolportisto. Peddle kolporti. Pedestal piedestalo. Pedestrian piediranto. Pedigree deveno, genealogio. Pediment fruntajxo. Peel (fruit, etc.) ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... has only acted a little insincerely; white lies, my dear, white lies may be pardoned. Forgive him his peccadillo. He will have much to forgive in you, as you have confessed to me yourself. Tell him you are sorry for what you have said. He will then embrace you and all ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... described by Carlyle is doubtless mighty full of humour; but, none the less, were any prisoner at the bar to adopt Craigenputtock's suggestion, he would only add to the peccadillo of murder the grave offence of contempt of court, which has been defined 'as a disobedience to the court, an opposing or despising the ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... the Sotadic Zone the Vice is popular and endemic, held at the worst to be a mere peccadillo, whilst the races to the North and South of the limits here defined practice it only sporadically amid the opprobrium of their fellows who, as a rule, are physically incapable of performing the operation and look upon ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... I have most hopes of Ripault-Babin), my only serious competitor would be Dalzon. He has talent and wealth, stands well with the 'dukes,' and his cellar is capital; the only thing against him is a youthful peccadillo lately discovered, 'Without the Veil,' a poem of 600 lines printed 'at Eropolis,' anonymously, and utterly outrageous. They say that he has bought up and suppressed the whole, but there are still some copies in circulation with signature and dedication. ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... the daughter of this noble old man, and had been forced by the Marquis's marriage to abandon the plan. The Duke still remained the friend of the Prince, though he had not unfrequently blamed his somewhat lax principles. Whenever he discovered the Prince in any peccadillo, he used to say, "Well, we must be lenient to youth." Now, the Prince de Maulear was a young man of seventy. The beauty of Aminta, her extreme paleness alone, would have sufficed to fix attention, and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... night she had built a high and unscalable wall between him and her; a wall which he could see through and which he could kiss through, but which debarred him utterly from her. And yet what sin had he committed against her, save the peccadillo of locking her for an hour or two in a comfortable room? It was Sissie, not he, who had committed the sin. He wanted to point this out to Eve, but he appreciated the entire futility of doing so and therefore refrained. About eleven o'clock Eve ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... no more ignorant or innocent than anybody else; but there was one social misdemeanor—mere peccadillo, let us say—that was quite unintelligible to him. He could not understand how a man could go flirting after a married woman; and still less could he understand how a married woman should, instead of attending to her children and her house and ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... detested him on sight; there was something indescribably raffish in his looks and ways that raised my gorge; and when man-eating was referred to, and he laughed a low, cruel laugh, part boastful, part bashful, like one reminded of some dashing peccadillo, my repugnance was mingled with nausea. This is no very human attitude, nor one at all becoming in a traveller. And, seen more privately, the man improved. Something negroid in character and face was still displeasing; but his ugly mouth became ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... like to lower his dignity by declaring his love. The canon shewed me all the letters he had received from the King of Prussia before he had been made canon. He was the son of a tailor at Venice, and became a friar, but having committed some peccadillo which got him into trouble, he was fortunate enough to be able to make his escape. He fled to The Hague, and there met Tron, the Venetian ambassador, who lent him a hundred ducats with which he made his way to Berlin ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... said Simontault, "at this act of cruelty. Those who have passed through Italy have seen such incredible instances, that this one is in comparison but a trifling peccadillo." ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. V. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... remonstrance, alleging that I could easily explain myself after being taken to jail. They looked for you on a complaint of M. de la Gueritude. I conceived a most horrible idea of your disorders. But having been informed by letter that it was a question only of some peccadillo I had no other thought but to see you again. Many a time I consulted the landlord of the Little Bacchus on the means to hush up your affair. He always replied: 'Master Leonard, go to the judge with a big bag full of crown pieces and he will give you back your lad as white as snow.' But crown ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... to speak with a certain light irony of the tendency which women have to gossip, as if the sin itself, if it is a sin, were of the gentler sex, and could by no chance be a masculine peccadillo. So far as my observation goes, men are as much given to small talk as women, and it is undeniable that we have produced the highest type of gossiper extant. Where will you find, in or out of literature, ...
— Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... not fail to point out that he must undoubtedly inherit. His father, at Mrs. Newcome's instigation, certainly whipped Tommy for upsetting his little brothers in the go-cart; but upon being pressed to repeat the whipping for some other peccadillo performed soon after, Mr. Newcome refused at once, using a wicked, worldly expression, which well might shock any serious lady; saying, in fact, that he would be deed if he beat the boy any more, and that he got flogging enough at school, in which ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... when the god has consumed it in his pure flame, her sins are forgiven her and she departs in peace. From now on the women are averse even to letting men pass near them. The cactus-seekers themselves make in like manner a clean breast of all their frailties. For every peccadillo they tie a knot on a string, and after they have "talked to all the five winds" they deliver the rosary of their sins to the leader, who burns it ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer |
