"Primness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... almost awkwardly as if she were totally unused to smiling, at my cheap jocularity. Then she said with that forced precision, a sort of conscious primness: ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... this, there is an air about the place that makes it different from so many old-country habitations. You do not feel that you may look but mustn't touch. You are not reminded that everything is for show, and not for use. There is no primness in the garden. There is an honest degree of orderly disorder, and an absence of formality. You do not feel as if you ought not to walk on the grass for fear of hurting it. There is no artificiality apparent; no ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... turned on him a face from which all primness had vanished. The corners of her mouth broke and her eyes grew soft. She smiled at Mr. Vyner, and Mr. Vyner, pluming himself upon his address, ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... Aren't you glad you came?" asked Sophie, as she led her friends into the parlor, which she had redeemed from its primness by putting bright chintz curtains to the windows, hemlock boughs over the old portraits, a china bowl of flowers on the table, and a splendid fire on ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... everybody were against everybody, agreeing in nothing but in appealing to the elder sister. First, there was Alda's story. Never had there been such a miserable time—with Geraldine interfering, fussy, fretful, fault-finding; Clement intolerable in primness and conceit, only making the children worse when he pretended to keep them in order, and making such a fuss about Geraldine, when nothing ailed her but change of weather, incurring the expense of the Dearport doctor, and bringing down the Sister upon them, so awkward to have her in the drawing-room ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... globe which showed the stars and planets, and wondered how the nuns had become possessed of such a thing, and how they could have imagined that it could ever be of any use to them. She grew fond of this room, and divided her time between it and the garden. It had none of the primness of the convent parlour, which gave her a little shiver every time she entered it. In the further window there stood a deep-seated, venerable arm-chair, covered in worn green leather, the one comfortable chair, Evelyn often thought, in the convent. And in this chair ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... disentangling them. What he wished to accomplish had either been accomplished, though not in France, or did not deserve to be accomplished, or was altogether impracticable. His attack on the formality and holiday primness of the dramatic probabilities, of the excessive symmetry of the French versification, declamation, and mode of acting, was just; but, at the same time, he objected to all theatrical elevation, and refused to allow to the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... thou wilt perceive, I was bashful; for Miss Rawlins, by her preparatory primness, put me in mind that it was proper ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... where Lola found herself cast adrift, was a curious microcosm and full of contrasts. A mixture of unabashed blackguardism and cloistered prudery; of double-beds and primness; of humbug and frankness; of liberty and restraint; of lust and license; of brutal horse-play passing for "wit," and of candour marching with cant. The working classes scarcely called their souls their own; women and children mercilessly exploited by smug profiteers; the "Song of the Shirt"; ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... the flowering season, certainly gave it a mussed appearance. At such times, if the great front door was left open on a warm day, the house took on a look of open-mouthed horror, which immediately relapsed to primness once the ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... primness, let me be understood. The straight, smooth hair, the folded hands, the demure face and exact deportment from ten years of age to eighty, do not always indicate womanliness; nor does the attempt to turn young girls into elderly women ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... real illusion, but to the idea that for him, in that matter, there could ever be an acceptable pis-aller. He congratulated Miss Blanchard upon her engagement, and she received his compliment with a touch of primness. But she was always a trifle prim, even when she was quoting Mrs. Browning and George Sand, and this harmless defect did not prevent her responding on this occasion that Mr. Leavenworth had a "glorious heart." Rowland wished to manifest an extreme regard, but ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... of a worldly ambition summons you to— "——Pursue Your tasks, in social silence too," with just sense enough to understand all you can say to her—and nothing so wise as to mortify you at any time by setting you right. Then, instead of the natty primness of your bachelor's apartment, you have your eyes feasted by that elegant confusion of the little sanctuary—the charm of which cannot, unseen, be apprehended, and is only known to those who are privileged to enter, by the passport of Hymen. A bit of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 275, September 29, 1827 • Various
... care. Neighbours might be content to surround their houses with fences of almond-scented oleander, and let the hundred varieties of South African shrubs bloom in wild profusion under the shadowing eucalyptus tree, but his gardens were laid out with well-ordered primness, and in them he delighted to see growing the fragrant flowers that reminded him and his visitors of home life in England. All this is in danger of becoming a shell-fretted wilderness now. "Long Tom" once having turned his attention in this direction continued to pound away until ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... go. And he found he didn't even think of marrying. He didn't even want to come or go, particularly. A rather frumpy old bachelor, with thinning hair and a thickening neck. Much has been written about the unwed, middle-aged woman; her fussiness, her primness, her angularity of mind and body. In the male that same fussiness develops, and a certain primness, too. But he grows flabby where ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... end of the garden there was a view of the Dublin mountains, and the long walk that divided the garden had been designed in order to draw attention to them. The contrast between the wild mountain and the homely primness of the garden appealed to his sense of the picturesque; and even now though the fate of his life was to be decided in a few minutes he could not but stay to admire the mysterious crests and hollows. In this faint day the mountains seemed more like living things, more mysterious and moving, ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... middle-aged people seem occasionally to come into the world ready tamed. With a certain old-fashioned primness, they step sedately through the paths of childhood. So good, ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... Miss Kitty might be like this. How Miss Ailie adored Miss Kitty! She trembled with pleasure if you said Miss Kitty was pretty, and she dreamed dreams in which she herself walked as bridesmaid only. And just as Miss Ailie could be romantic, Miss Kitty, the romantic, could be prim, and the primness was her own as much as the curls, but Miss Ailie usually carried it for her, like a ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... you might better wait until he asks you, before you talk of giving him up to somebody." Mrs. Purnell spoke with the primness that was to be expected, but her daughter made no reply. She had never mentioned the night in Moran's office, and her mother knew nothing of Wade's kiss. But to the girl it had meant more than any declaration in words. She had kept her lips inviolate until ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... answered, emphatically, "for as proper a fellow as ever I met in all my vagabond days. Barring his primness he would have proved a gallant"—he was going to say "pirate," but paused in time and said "seaman." "God pardon him for a Puritan," he went on, "for he has in him the making ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy |
