"Provocative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rapturously to one's self: This is a woman. Her fluffy head was such a dot against the back of the chair, the curve of her chubby ringed hand above the head was so adorable, her black eyes were so provocative, her slippered feet so wee—yes, and there was something so mysteriously thrilling about the fall of her skirt that you knew instantly her name was Clara, her temper both fiery and obstinate, and her personality ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... a fearful strain on my feminine curiosity," said Miss Graham, the provocative smile quirking at the comers ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... voice gave a new quality to the words. He seemed happy in church, and prayed with great absorption, though I noticed that his Bible was often open before him all through the service. The Vicar's sermons were good of their kind, suggestive rather than provocative, about very simple matters of conduct rather than belief. I have heard Father Payne speak of them with admiration as never being discursive, and I gathered that the Vicar was a great admirer of ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... merged into dreams, and then came out again. The low murmur of the talk outside, like the distant hum of a waterfall or a mill, was sedative. The act of listening to it—as she did for a few moments with natural curiosity—was provocative of sleep. ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... cross that morning, Bertha's pretty little face was indeed a good deal swelled and inflamed about the eyes and cheeks. She again took refuge in silence, but this made no difference to Freydissa, or rather it acted, if anything, as a provocative of wrath. "Speak, you hussy!" was usually her irate manner of driving the helpless little ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... the flowers, she might well have turned an older head than that of the boy beside her. Brunette, with smooth cheeks deeply touched with rose, black eyes, and a warmly crimson mouth that could be at once provocative and relentless, she glowed like a flower herself in the sweet and enervating heat of the summer's first warm day. She wore a filmy gown of a dull cream colour, with daring great poppies in pink and black and gold embroidered ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... came in, fell on his knees, and begged for mercy, for he had not the luxurious drink in his store-cellar. This superfluous word "store-cellar" might sound ironical and provocative, though unintentionally. Still it was welcome as an occasion for ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... looks being purged and cleansed, so as to see more clearly-that the facts remaining identical, their whole aspect and bearing may be altered, and that which was felt, and rightly felt, to be painful and provocative of sadness and gloom, may change its character and beget a solemn joy. It would be but a small thing to transform the conditions; it is far better and higher to transform us. We all need, and some of us, I have ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... suggestion of life, form, colour and movement never less than evanescent, mysterious,—no reality. It is the language of mystic signs and portents—the inspiration of the gods—wholly spiritual—divine signalling. Remindful of superstition, provocative of imagination. Might not the inhabitants of some other world (Mars) controlling mighty forces thus surround our globe with fiery symbols, a golden writing which we have not the ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... Fielding writ)— Tales full of Nature, Character, and Wit, Were reckon'd most delicious boil'd and roast: But stomachs are so cloy'd with novel-feeding, Folks get a vitiated taste in reading, And want that strong provocative, ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... by dressed in a neatly tailored gray jellaba, European style high-heeled shoes, and a pinkish silk veil so transparent that you could see she wore lipstick. Very provocative, dark eyes can be over a veil. We both ...
— I'm a Stranger Here Myself • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... mobilization, nor did they even offer any explanation. It was not until the afternoon of July 31 that the emperor received a telegram from the czar in which he guaranteed that his army would not assume a provocative attitude toward us. But mobilization on our frontiers had been in full swing since the night of July 30-31, and France, though indeed not actually mobilizing, was admittedly ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... part, held his turban at arm's length between his finger and thumb, and looked at it with a mixture of reverence and embarrassment highly provocative of laughter. The contemplation over, he was about coolly to deposit the delicate fabric on the ground between his feet; he seemed to have no shadow of an idea of the treatment or stowage it ought to receive: if his mother had not come to the rescue, I think he would ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... so little English, and spoke that little so badly, that General Duncan insisted upon their repeating the English call, which would be something like this: "Post Number One. Nine o'clock. All's well." The Pawnee effort to obey was so ludicrous, and provocative of such profanity (which they could express passing well), that the order ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... imitators could make people burst with laughter when they took off his delivery of that line. And, indeed, the original, too, was almost provocative of laughter—rightly so, for such emotional indignation has its funny as well as its terrible aspect. The mad, and all are mad who have, as Socrates put it, "a divine release from the common ways of men," may speak ludicrously, even ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... shook his head noncommittally—yet he reached for the rifle. That silent smile of his was beginning to become provocative to his companion, as though in it ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... to be pretty good," he said. "You better send cookee word to bring your meals to yuh, Tex. Because if you roost there till I tell yuh, you'll be roosting a good long while!" He got up and lounged out, his hands in his pockets, his well-shaped head carried at a provocative tilt. He heard Tex swear under his breath and mutter something about making the darned little runt come through yet, whereat Johnny ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... rigorism was sincere, and that it is necessary so to accept it to understand him. It seems to me, on the contrary, that if Mandeville's rigorism were sincere, the whole satirical structure of his argument, its provocative tone, its obvious fun-making gusto, would be incomprehensible, and there would be manifest inconsistency between his satirical purposes and his ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... turning to the companion of her own studies, she added: "Did you hear, Charmian? If we had only succeeded in perceiving the wisdom and calm, purposeful order of existence which the Stoics, amid so much that is perverse, unhealthy, and provocative of contradiction, nevertheless set above everything else! How can I, in order to live wisely, imitate Nature, when in her being and action I encounter so much that is contradictory to my human reason, which is ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... 1865 saw Mushet less provocative and more appealing; as for instance: "It was no fault of Mr. Bessemer's that my patent was lost, but he ought to acknowledge his obligations to me in a manly, straightforward manner and this would stamp him as a great man as well ...
— The Beginnings of Cheap Steel • Philip W. Bishop
... third view of this provocative book. The triangle we have had tiresomely with us, but it is woman's love that is, perversely, always the hero. Hergesheimer studies the man, studies him not as will, or energy, or desire a-struggle with duty or morality, but merely as sex. ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... the famous physician, held that alcohol was the greatest provocative of colds; aspirin was their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 12, 1919 • Various
... the Greeks in this matter; for the profession of purity and chastity forbids getting children, laughter, wine, and many other very commendable and lawful things; and perhaps these priests avoid salt, as being, according to some men's opinions, by its heat provocative and apt to raise lust. Or they refuse it as the most pleasant of all sauces, for indeed salt may be called the sauce of all sauces; and therefore some call salt [Greek omitted]; because it makes food, which is necessary for life, to ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... While our landlady was on the premises, I took occasion to invite her up to my own room, with a view of seeing whether my mattress of pebbles and iron-filings could be supplemented by another of shavings or straw, or some material less provocative of bodily injuries. She was most sympathetic, persuasive, logical and after the manner of her kind proved to me conclusively that the trouble lay with the too-saft occupant of the bed, not with the ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... deciding for further confidences. Her situation was perplexing her very much, and the Widgett atmosphere was lax and sympathetic, and provocative of discussion. "It isn't only the dance," ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... Thereafter, South Korea achieved amazing economic growth, with per capita output rising to 13 times the level in the North. Since late 1997, however, the nation has suffered widespread financial and organizational difficulties. Continuing tensions between North and South have raised concerns of provocative military ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... of goods and of books, mentioned in some of the statutes we have quoted, is frequently forbidden. At Orleans the statutes prohibit leading the bajan "ut ovis ad occisionem" to a tavern to be forced to spend his money, and denounce the custom as provocative of "ebrietates, turpiloquia, lascivias, pernoctationes" and other evils. They also forbid the practice of compelling him to celebrate the jocund advent by seizing books, one or more, or by exacting anything from him. There are numerous other references in French statutes, some of ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait
... through the iron gates on to her own floor, and Philip swung up to his rooms. Somehow, he entered almost light-heartedly. The roar of the city below was no longer provocative. He felt as though he had stretched out a hand towards it, as though he were in the way of ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... with the same slow seriousness of demeanor, which, with their silence, gave the performance the effect of a religious rite. Occasionally some one shouted: perhaps a dozen young fellows broke out in song; but the shout was provocative of nothing, the song faltered as if the singers were frightened at their own voices. One blithe fellow, with a bear's head on his fur-capped shoulders, began to dance; but, on the crowd stopping to observe him seriously, ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... encouragement, the rights of belligerents. Without them their privateers were useless, as they could have gone into no ports and sold their prizes nowhere. Mr. Seward was in touch with the New England school. It clamored for war with any friend to the revolting States. But Lincoln corrected what was provocative in the original advice to our minister, Adams, at St. James'. The English were no longer held to have issued a proclamation without due grounds in usage or the law of nations. It became by the modification no more a proceeding about which we could ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... Meanwhile, as though it looked for something, the light spread itself in Mildred Caniper's room and she attuned her ears for the different noises of the day. There was Miriam's laughter, more frequent than it had been before her stepmother was tied to bed, and provocative of a wry smile from the invalid; there was her farewell shout to Rupert when he took the road, her husky singing as she worked about the house. Occasionally Mildred heard the stormy sound of Mrs. Samson's breathing ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... Lettur. Seeing a number of men come down the hill, as the column prepared to move, Mr. Roche, making his voice tremendous, after the fashion of a Greek chorus, commanded the police to arrest and handcuff any riotous person making provocative noises. This had the desired effect, and the march back began in silence. When the column was fairly in the road, "boos" and groans went up from knots of men higher up the hill, but no heed was taken of these, and no further incident occurred. I shall be curious ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... own showing, when brought before the bishops, the "marytrs" frequently twitted their judges, gave them homethrusts and "privy nips," and behaved themselves generally in a very provocative and irritating manner. It is surprising, nevertheless, to find how very seldom the examiners lost their tempers, bearing with a considerable amount of insolence in a singularly good-humoured spirit, doing their best to give the accused a chance of escape. Of the six who ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... occupies a hundred and twenty. The translations from Seneca were done by Thomas Day, then very young, the author of Sandford and Merton, and the creator of that constellation of excellence, Mr Barlow, whose connection in any degree with Boswell is almost provocative of a smile. The peculiar orthography of the writer is defended in the preface, for he allows himself not only such divergencies as 'tremenduous,' 'authour,' 'ambassadour,' but also 'authentick' and 'panegyrick.' The dedication of the first ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... night to Mrs. Madison and the Carters, and Betty, although the Montgomerys did not linger, waited for him to come out. There was nothing to reflect the light in the dark walls of the large square hall, and it always was shadowy, and provocative to ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... memory, and of what he had done in Canada, would be a governor-general working out fairly the Dictator's views of government. Although he had definitely made up his mind what course of action to follow, he was never betrayed into committing himself before the proper time. Deputations waited on him with provocative addresses; but none was cunning enough to snare him in his speech. The 'sacrifice' ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... is most effective in gaining attention, in conveying information, in arousing the perceptive faculties of another mind. Restrict its use to these purposes only. The mental tone is not pleasing to the ear. It is pitched high. It suggests arguments and disputes. It is the provocative tone of quarrels. So it should be employed most carefully, with every precaution against ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... she drawled. "It is Aurore." She struck a provocative pose, her hand on her hip, her head thrown back, while her eyes changed colour as ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... confessed that the prospect of parting with him and not Midget was provocative of her woe. This staggered Bryce and pleased him immensely. And at parting she kissed him good-bye, reiterating her opinion that he was the nicest, kindest boy she had ever ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... original, striking, and affecting situation; provocative, too, of the utmost curiosity? A fugitive from justice, in a strange, small, dark, ancient house, is seized, threatened, and presented with a young and lovely female stranger. In this opening we recognise the hand of a master genius. ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... he would have seen the danger signals in that unnaturally quick eye. Bela had dropped her usual air of reserve. To-night she seemed anxious to please. She smiled on each man in a way that bade him hope. She laughed oftener and louder. It had a conscious, provocative ring that the wise man would have grieved to hear. Competition became keen ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... the boat. Back on the land, in my house, I took no before breakfast eye-opener, no bed-going nightcap. And I haven't drunk hot toddies since, and that was many a year ago. But the point is, I LIKED those toddies. The geniality of which they were provocative was marvellous. They were eloquent proselyters for John Barleycorn in their own small insidious way. They were tickles of the something destined to grow into daily and deadly desire. And I didn't know, never dreamed—I, who had lived with John ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... Constance any sub-intent in her next remark? Had it any hinterland of discussion of the ethics of Love, provocative of practical application to the lives of old maids and old bachelors—if the one, then the other, in this case—strolling in a leisurely way through bracken and beechmast, fancy-free, no doubt? If she had, and ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... which she was invested lured me to her, and yet beyond this there existed a charm indefinable that held me captive. She was a gay, laughing spirit, but with a steadiness of character in reserve ever provocative of surprise. I could never be sure which mood was uppermost, or which best represented the real womanhood. Nor could I decide in which guise she appealed to me the most. Hers was a witchery ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... other guests, to what company would not Sir Alfred Lyall have added that touch of something provocative and challenging which draws men and women after it, like an Orpheus-music? I can see him sitting silent, his legs crossed, his white head bent, the corners of his mouth drooping, his eyes downcast, like some one spent and wearied, ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Mr. Haim a little annoyed with his daughter, and was Marguerite exquisitely defiant? Time hung. The situation was slightly awkward, he thought. And it was obscure, alluring.... He stood there, below the level of the street, shut in with those beings unknown, provocative, and full of half-divined implications. And all Chelsea was around him and ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... "when a new passion begins to stir in us before the old one is quite extinct. So, as the sun sets, we gladly behold the moon rise on the opposite horizon, and rejoice in the double splendour of the two heavenly lights." Be it said that the atmosphere of the household was provocative of relaxed feelings. Goethe was not the only guest. Besides Merck there was a youth named Leuchsenring whose special line of activity had endeared him to a wide circle. Leuchsenring made it his business to enter into correspondence with susceptible souls ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... stark and bare of one common-sense idea. In the writing line, I was never so involved before and see no end to the ink-(an humorous voluntary provocative, I trust of much merriment)-creasing ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... so many of the enemy I was regarded with a strange interest by my fellow-travellers. They could see I was not a German, and although they did not resort to any provocative word or deed, it would have needed a blind man to have failed to detect their uncompromising hostility towards me. We travelled via Soest, and my position was rendered additionally unnerving because train after train labelled with the ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... of money, came to Attica, and there was a perfect race among the ordinary public men of the assembly who should be the first to take his pay, he distributed amongst these some trifling sums by way of a bait and provocative, but to Phocion he made an offer of no less than seven hundred talents and all manner of other advantages he pleased to demand; with the compliment that he would entirely commit himself and all his affairs to his disposal. Phocion ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the earth!" returned a voice that was provocative in the extreme—a reply that instantly brought every man at the faro table to his feet. For a time, at least, it seemed as if the boys from The Ridge would get the trouble they ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... spirit, between the fair young Duchess and her chosen lover: a circumstance which must surely stand in the way of its popularity. Though "A Soul's Tragedy" has the saving quality of humour, it is of too grim a kind to be provocative of laughter. ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... the supporters of the young girl were equally effusive and enthusiastic in their devotion. As usual in such cases, the real contest was between the partisans themselves; each successive demonstration on either side was provocative or retaliatory, and when they were apparently rendering homage to their idols they were really distracted by and listening to each other. At last, Hathaway's party being reinforced by fresh visitors, a tall brunette of the opposition remarked in a professedly ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... mingled with human cries, and laughter, and murmured invitations, and barterings, and refusals, there had been music that seemed to wind on and on in ribands of sound—music that was hoarse and shrill and weary, that was piercing, yet at the same time furtive—music that was provocative, and yet that was often sad, with a strange sadness of the desert and of desire among the sands. Even now, in the maze around this cafe, there was another maze of sound, the tripping notes of Eastern dance tunes, the wail of the African hautboy, the twitter of ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... we approach the once far-famed ATTICUS: the once illustrious RICHARD HEBER, Esq., the self-ejected member of the University of Oxford. Even yet I scarcely know how to handle this subject, or to expatiate upon a theme so extraordinary, and so provocative of the most contradictory feelings. But it were better to be brief; as, in fact, a very long account of Mr. Heber's later life will be found in my Reminiscences, and there is little to add to what those pages contain. ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... to choke back my rage against Sidney at its hottest, like Vesuvius swallowing its own lava, and resolve to fight the battle of Eagle March only on the lines of noblesse oblige—the lines on which he would choose to fight, no matter what the provocative. ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... been worked to death by people who don't know its meaning, I would have added that he was a votary of the kultur of his race. His ideal, I suppose, was more the Renaissance virtu than our milk-and-water virtue. He made me feel that I was a worm. In short, he was a very interesting, provocative and exasperating humbug, and his very existence seemed to me sufficient reason for turning Aliens into a book which would shed a flickering light upon the fascinating problem of ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... staff was giving itself a concert—a tri-di hi-fi rendition of Rigoletto, one of the greatest of the ancient operas, sung by the finest voices Terra had ever known. The men wore tuxedos. The girls, instead of wearing the nondescript, non-provocative garments prescribed by the Board for their general wear, were all dressed ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... achieved by a disunited Christendom? The nations are rivals. Their rivalry persisted at the Peace Conference, disappointing all the hopes of idealists. Must it not always persist, must not horrible carnage, awful desolation, ruinous destruction, and, at any rate, dangerous and provocative rivalries, always dog the steps of humanity ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... workmen willing to accept employment on those conditions, and at the rate of wages first offered. Considering that the men who now stood listening with lowering brows of defiance were all of them leading members of the Union, such resolutions were in themselves sufficiently provocative of animosity: but not content with simply stating them, Harry Carson went on to characterise the conduct of the workmen in no measured terms; every word he spoke rendering their looks more livid, their glaring eyes more fierce. One among them would have spoken, but checked himself, in obedience to ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Libertine as he was, he thought of nothing but women, and in young, fresh, provincial women he displayed an intense, in fact, an absorbing interest. He pictured them as delightfully shy and timid, yet sturdy as a woodland mushroom, and their provocative perfume of youth and purity he ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... rippled into a delicious silver stream of laughter, a little thin, but charmingly provocative. Winsome did not join, but she looked up imploringly at her grandmother, leaning her head back till her tresses ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... he was ushered was a parlor. Absently he seated himself. The maid tittered. He looked at her—or rather the tipped-up nose, an attractive bit of anatomy. Saucy, provocative! Mr. Heatherbloom's head tilted a little; he surveyed the detail with the look of a connoisseur. She colored, went; but remained in the hall to peer. There were many articles of virtu lying around—on tables or ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... rankled as he rode. He was not greatly shocked at Jim's defection, for he was always fully conscious of his vanity and weakness; but he was by no means certain that Jim's extravagance and braggadocio, which he had found only amusing and, perhaps, even pathetic, might not be as provocative and prejudicial to others as Gilroy had said. But, like all sympathetic and unselfish natures, he sought to find some excuse for his old companion's weakness in his own mistaken judgment. He had no business to bring poor Jim on the land, to subject his singular temperament to the ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... be decided on such principles of law and equity, but which might be quite as irritating and provocative of war, called non-justiciable. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... that, because there is an undoubted Italian majority in Fiume, the city should be awarded to Italy. If Italy were asking only what was beyond all shadow of question Italian, I should sympathize with her unreservedly. But to place 10,000 Slavs under Italian rule would be as unjust and as provocative of future trouble as to place 30,000 Italians under the rule of Belgrade. Nor is the cession of the city itself the end of Italy's claims, for, in order to place it beyond the range of the enemy's guns (by the ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... Hartlepooli gave a rousing crow, clattered down to the floor and forthwith commenced a spirited combat with his reflection in the wardrobe mirror. Remembering that the bird was more or less under his care Latimer performed Hague Tribunal offices by draping a bath-towel over the provocative mirror, but the ensuing peace was local and short-lived. The deflected energies of the gamecock found new outlet in a sudden and sustained attack on the sleeping and temporarily inoffensive pigling, and the duel which followed was desperate and embittered beyond any possibility of effective ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... stimulate the fetus to movements that may be seen by the eye, but an excess of iced water may prove injurious, even to the causing of abortion. Cold water dashed on the belly has a similar effect on the fetus and is equally provocative of abortion. ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... her provincial innocence, Dora Marshall was exactly the sort to misunderstand and to be misunderstood, a combination sometimes quite as dangerous in its results, and as provocative of trouble, as the intrigues of ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... polished and the most hypocritical nations of Europe. For such acts the records of the doings of some of the inhabitants of your city toward the friends of the Union, before my coming, were a sufficient provocative and justification. But I have not so conducted. On the contrary, the worst punishment inflicted, except for criminal acts punishable by every law, has been banishment with labor to a barren island, where I encamped my own soldiers ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... spectator with an innocence, a dignity, a delightful grotesqueness, which make the picture a thing of close truth as well as of fine decorum. You might kiss their hands, but you certainly would think twice before pinching their cheeks—provocative as they are of this tribute of admiration—and would altogether lack presumption to lift them off the ground or the higher level or dais on which they stand so sturdily planted by right of birth. There is something inimitable in ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... French government, annexed all the property of the Maltese knights in his dominion to his royal domains, by which act the treaty of Amiens was to a certain degree violated. All these events were indications of a future rupture; and another grand provocative to the rupture was the fierce and systematic hostility displayed by Napoleon against the commerce of Great Britain. Instead of being allowed, through the return of peace, to flow into its old channels, it was still more impeded in France and in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... a sudden, ends in nothing." No doubt these definitions would apply to the last few examples given, although, even then, the formula needs the addition of sundry limitations, for we often make an ineffectual effort which is in no way provocative of laughter. While, however, the last few examples are illustrations of a great cause resulting in a small effect, we quoted others, immediately before, which might be defined inversely as a great effect springing from a small cause. The truth is, this second definition has ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... been written hurriedly and upon his own responsibility entirely. Inquiries have shown that his Ministers know nothing of the matter. At the same time it is couched in so unfortunate a manner, and certain phrases in it are of so provocative a character, that its publication would undoubtedly lead to a most dangerous state of feeling in this country. There would be such a ferment, sir, that I do not hesitate to say that within a week of the publication of ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... as soon as Daphne had seen Elsie Maddison, and he had begged an afternoon to go on an expedition with them, Daphne had become intolerable. She had shown her English friend and his acquaintances a manner so insulting and provocative, that the young man's ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to draw to point in (on an average) two or three hundred lines at most—there are fabliaux of a thousand lines, and fabliaux of thirty or forty, but the average is as just stated. The incidents had to be adjusted for best effect, neither too many nor too few. The treatment had to be mainly provocative—an appeal in some cases by very coarse means indeed to very coarse nerves, in others by finer devices addressed to senses more tickle o' the sere. And so grew up that unsurpassed and hardly matched product the French ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... harmful to the Austrian export trade that in January 1909 Count Achrenthal had to indemnify Turkey with the sum of L2,500,000 for his technically stolen property. Further, the attitude of Russia and Serbia throughout the whole winter remained so provocative and threatening that, although war was generally considered improbable, the Austrian army had to be kept on a war footing, which involved great expense and much popular discontent. The grave external crisis was only solved at the end of March 1909; ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... purposes. You see, he was of an argumentative disposition. Therefore it took him but a little time to get tired of arguing with a person who agreed with everything he said and consequently never furnished him a provocative to flare up and show what he could do when it came to clear, cold, hard, rose-cut, hundred-faceted, diamond-flashing REASONING. That was his name for it. It has been applied since, with complacency, as many as several times, in the Bacon-Shakespeare ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... mean to tell you, Frank!' She gave the prettiest, most provocative little wriggles as her secret was drawn from her. 'I wanted to do it without your knowing. I thought it would be a surprise for you. But I begin to understand now that my ambition was much too ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... to be an insult. Always the ear expected its discontinuance, until finally the persistence ground on the nerves like the barking of a dog at night. At last it was an indecency, an orgy of unholy revel, a profanation, a provocative to anger of the inscrutable woods god. Then stillness again with ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... that. The people only gave him power that he might rid them of the Bourbons and because they saw that he was a great man. The Revolution was a grand thing!" continued Monsieur Pierre, betraying by this desperate and provocative proposition his extreme youth and his wish to express all that was in ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Cherokee empire "by slow but sure degrees to the very great danger of our southern colonies." His position was that of Secretary of State and as such, with a studiedly provocative arrogance, he carried on correspondence with the British authorities. The colonial Government seems, on this occasion, to have listened to the traders and to have realized that Priber was a danger, for soldiers were sent ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... seemed spiritless, and the charming face held a gravity that was quite foreign to it. In the searching winter sunlight he could even discern one or two faint lines about the violet-blue eyes, while the curving mouth, with its provocative short upper lip, drooped ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... like unto wine. Still, when a monarch jests, if you are wise, if you have a favour to sue, or a position at Court to seek or to maintain, you smile, for all that the ineptitude of his witless wit be rather provocative of sorrow. ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... company and before she had played in the classics and got enduring fame. The audacious, superb, quaint Irish creature! Never have I seen such splendid high comedy. Then the charm of her voice,—a little like Ethel Barrymore's when Miss Ethel is speaking very nicely,—her smiles, and dimples, and provocative, inviting coquetterie! Her Rosalind, her Country Wife, her Helena, her Railroad of Love, and above all, her Katharine in "The Taming of the Shrew!" I can only ejaculate. Directly she came on I knew how she was going to do the part. She had such shy, demure fun—she understood, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... the slightest idea of mercy, pity, or compassion for suffering. A fellow-creature, or animal, writhing in pain or torture, is to him a sight highly provocative of merriment and enjoyment. I have seen a number of blacks at Loanda, men, women, and children, stand round, roaring with laughter, at seeing a poor mongrel dog that had been run over by a cart, twist and roll about ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... the early classic authors have commented upon the surprising swiftness with which common rumor travels. If its speed was provocative of comment in those bygone days, which lacked most of the accelerating features now found on every hand, it should certainly fare far faster at the present time. At any rate, no tidings ever spread through the subliminal Chinese empire, warning of Magyar hordes beyond the ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... would not allow to become demonstrative. Alma could at first say nothing. The faint rose upon her cheek had vanished; her eyes were heavy, and lacked their vital gleam; her mouth, no longer mobile and provocative, trembled on the verge of sobs, pathetic, childlike. She hung her head, moved with a languid, diffident step, looked smaller and slighter, a fashionable garb of woe aiding ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... from waters they had come to consider almost their own, and there were many cases of seizure and of angry charge and countercharge. President Grant, in his message to Congress in 1870, denounced the policy of the Canadian authorities as arbitrary and provocative. Other issues between the two countries were outstanding as well. Canada had a claim against the United States for not preventing the Fenian Raids of 1866; and the United States had a much bigger bill against Great Britain for neglect in permitting the escape of the Alabama. Some ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... not the smallest belief in the woman's power to destroy my cattle by any alleged occult virtue pertaining to her wonderful ring, the sight of it flashed before my eyes in so provocative a manner reminded me of my almost forgotten promise to Siluce to take the jewel from Bimbane, if I could; and, exasperated at last beyond endurance by her abuse and threats, I sprang to my feet, seized her right hand in mine, and, while I stifled her cries ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... head and opened the hymn-book; the rest of us, bareheaded too, ranged ourselves beside him; and so we stood facing the mob while the verses were sung in comparative quiet. The words might be provocative, but few heard them. The tune commanded an audience, as in Cornwall a tune usually will. The true secret of the spell, however, lay in my father's presence and bearing. A British crowd does not easily attack one whom it knows as a neighbour ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... bitter ashes at her lips, yet who preserved in this modern maelstrom some sense of its falseness, its baseness. He wept for Helen, playmate of the years never to return, sweetheart of his youth, betrayer of his manhood, the young woman of the present, blase, unsexed, seeking, provocative, all perhaps, as she had said, that men had made her—a travesty on splendid girlhood. He wept for her friends, embodying in them all of their class—for little Bessy Bell, with her exquisite golden beauty, her wonderful smile that was a ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... did not hurry matters. He spat meditatively into first one fist and then into the other. He grasped the goad in both hands. He looked calculatingly at Mr. Kyle, who was on his hands and knees, and was cocking an arch and provocative look upward, approving the grins of the men ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... and so away by the Great Western Railway to town, for time and the printer's devil press, and it is a terrible long and slippery descent, and a shocking bad road. At the bottom, however, there is a pleasant public; whereat we must really take a modest quencher, for the down air is provocative of thirst. So we pull up under an old oak which ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... them solely to the enemy. England and we, our army and navy authorities repeat without ceasing, arm solely for "peace," Germany and Japan it is who are bent on loot and glory. "Peace" in military mouths to-day is a synonym for "war expected." The word has become a pure provocative, and no government wishing peace sincerely should allow it ever to be printed in a newspaper. Every up-to-date dictionary should say that "peace" and "war" mean the same thing, now in posse, now in actu. It may even reasonably be said that the intensely sharp competitive preparation ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... partly the price of her crown. A few letters from old friends were formally answered. Sanchia had never been a free writer; nobody but Senhouse had found her letters eloquent—he only had been able to feel the throb beneath the stiff lines. Her handwriting, round and firm, had for him a provocative quality; it stung his imagination. He used to sing her "divine frugality of utterance," and protest that it was all of a piece with the rest of her life. No one, he had told her once, but a sculptor could embody her in Art—her chill perfection, ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... said what was gied me in that hour. Ye know how a drydock echoes. I saw young Steiner standin' listenin' above me, an', man, he used language provocative of a breach o' the peace. I was a spy and a disgraced employ, an' a corrupter o' young Bannister's morals, an' he'd prosecute me for libel. He went away when I ran up the steps—I'd ha' thrown him into the dock if I'd caught him—an' there I met McRimmon, wi' Dandie pullin' ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... none, except with his comrades: if, like him, all are internes, they can communicate to each other only their ignorance. If day-scholars are admitted, they are active smugglers or willing agents who bring into the house and circulate forbidden books and obscene journals, along with the filthy provocative and foul atmosphere of the streets.—Now, with excitement of this kind or in this manner, the brains of these captives, as puberty comes on and deliverance draws near, work actively and we know in what sense[6359] and in what counter-sense, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... inestimable privilege to claim the friendship of a man whose life and letters are a perpetual stimulus to action, an invariable provocative of thought. I have just had a letter from my friend, telling me that he is in despair of the stage. His play is a thing of the past, and he vows that he has done with dramatic ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... space—half dark... deadly... completely confused... Provocative!... delicate... dream-like... recesses, heavy doors And broad shadows, which lead to blue corners... And somewhere a sound that clinks like a Champagne glass. On a fragile rug lies a wide picture book, Distorted ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... except such a one as an apple with a worm-hole has. One might, very probably, trace a regular gradation between these two extremes. In cities where the evenings are generally hot, the people have porches at their doors, where they sit, and this is, of course, a provocative to the interchange of civilities. A good deal, which in colder regions is ascribed to mean dispositions, belongs ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... his, half child and half woman as she was. The woman was beginning to predominate. He remembered her with Mag's baby, her almost passionate tenderness, her precocious knowledge of the child's needs. He remembered her manner with the two men they had just left, coquettish, innocently provocative. It had startled him. Evidently, Jacqueline was becoming aware of certain powers in herself which she was not averse to practising upon whatever victims came to hand; even upon ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... silence which implied a kind of recognition of Philip V. To this league were joined Prussia, Hanover, Lueneburg, Hesse-Cassel, while France, to whom Spain was now allied, could count upon the help of Bavaria. War was not yet declared, but at this very moment Louis XIV took a step which was wantonly provocative. James II died at St Germain on September 6; and his son was at once acknowledged by Louis as King of England, by the title of James III. This action aroused a storm of indignation among the English people, and William found himself supported by public opinion ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... and looked at him curiously. There was something provocative in the curl of her lips ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a provocative air as she came nearer and took Pons' hand in hers. "Do you not know what it is to love a woman that will do anything for her lover? Is it possible? If I were in your place, I should not wish to leave this world for another until I had known the greatest happiness on earth! . . . Poor ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... a modern morning repast, and differed little from dinner or supper, except in respect to quantity. On the present occasion, there were carbonadoes of fish and fowl, a cold chine, a huge pasty, a capon, neat's tongues, sausages, botargos, and other matters as provocative of thirst as sufficing to the appetite. Nicholas set to work bravely. Broiled trout, steaks, and a huge slice of venison pasty, disappeared quickly before him, and he was not quite so sparing of the ale as ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... girl stood up to wave at me. Her hand, held up with the loose robe falling back from her slim white arm, offered me a huge scarlet blossom. The love offering. As I hesitated, her laughter rippled out. She tore the mask from her face. Her red mouth was smiling; her eyes, provocative, were dancing with mischief. She tossed the flower into my face as her escort, with a shout of mock anger, ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... a quarter million Mahometans in the Empire. Add to these the Hindoos and Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains, whom I was taught in my childhood, by way of religious instruction, to regard as gross idolators consigned to eternal perdition, but whose faith I can now be punished for disparaging by a provocative word, and you have a total of over three hundred and forty-two and a quarter million heretics to swamp our forty-five million Britons, of whom, by the way, only six thousand call themselves distinctively "disciples of Christ," the rest being members of the Church of England and other denominations ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... were beginning to flicker and droop in the sconces. But the three ladies refused to find the little room either cold or dark; their talk was not half done yet, and their muffs would keep them warm. The shadow of the deepening gloom they found delightfully provocative ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... editor on the Banner. He always maintained that the most excruciating thing he had ever written was the line at the top of the first column of the so-called editorial page, which said: "City Editor—Harry Sylvester Squires." Nothing, he claimed, could be more provocative of hilarity than that. ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... moment had lost its value; a "permit" was all-important—even Croesus himself would have starved without one. To procure these useful scrips all sorts of formalities had to be entered into, and the amount of time lost in waiting to prove one's right to live was provocative of many an oath, at the expense of the British army. Kafirs, coolies, Europeans of all nations, the wealthy the poor, and the lowly—all struggled to procure the precious "permit," as if they were at all hazards determined to gain one week's respite before finally succumbing ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... it right to love and hate, whereas the contrary happens, passion following some judgements, but declining to follow others. Wherefore they acknowledge, the facts compelling them to do so, that every judgement is not passion, but only that judgement that is provocative of violent and excessive impulse: admitting that judgement and passion in us are something different, as what moves is different from what is moved. Even Chrysippus himself, by his defining in many places endurance and continence ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... no longer upon stone benches by the sounding shore, in this thrice delicious proximity and thrice provocative magic of the serene southern night. All the more had best not do so, because Damaris proved even more rare in spirit, exquisite in moral and imaginative quality—so he perhaps over-fondly put it—than ever before. Carteret got on his feet and walked away a few paces, continuing ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... the throat and shoulder of this demure, fair-skinned, and blue-eyed creature, who was so palpably playing at masquerade. A silken parody of a shepherdess—a laughing, dainty, snowy-fingered aristocrat, sweet-lipped, provocative, half reclining under a purposely conventional oak, between the branches of which big white clouds rolled in a dark-blue sky—this was Rosalie as Duane had painted her with all the perversely infernal skill of a brush always tipped with a mockery as delicate as her small, ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... something more selfish, that Brignoli never read these severely critical words. His vanity was that of a child, and they would have grieved him inordinately. There was truly something of the bleat in his voice, and his walk on the stage, whether in concert or opera, was provocative of the risibles, but even his mannerisms were fascinating. Shall we, because a critic did not like him, be ashamed for having thrilled a little when we heard his "Coot boy, sweetheart, c-o-o-o-t boy!" thirty years ago? I trust not. And if he were here again, ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the stage-box and, stretching out his hands, clapped vigorously and shouted 'Bravos.' A real battle set in between Liszt, whose face was red with anger, and the audience. Blandine, who was sitting next to me, was, like me, beside herself at this outrageously provocative behaviour on the part of her father, and it was a long time before we could compose ourselves after the incident. There was little in the way of explanation to be got out of Liszt. We only heard him refer a few times, in terms of furious contempt, ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... she remembered that she had once or twice already found the matter-of-fact quietness with which the man made his appearance and went away again almost disconcerting. If this had been the result of affectation it would have been provocative, but, as Ida was aware, it seldom occurred to the man that anybody else was greatly interested in his doings. She felt, however, that he might have made ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... unanimous in answering the question, "What is a short-story?"; but they differed, rather violently, over the fulfilment of requirements by the various illustrations. Without doubt, the most provocative of these was Mr. Steele's "Contact." Three of the Committee think it a short-story; two declare it an article; all agree that no finer instance of literature in brief form ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... laughed. I did not remember having said anything provocative of laughter. Up to this very minute, I have been firm in my conviction that I'm right. When I come to consider the situation, it appears that a majority of people are encouraging others to become bad. They seem to believe that one must do wrong in order to succeed. If they happen to see some ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... or retire into a desert, a disposition which Johnson checked by one of his habitual gibes at the quantity of easily accessible desert in Scotland. Boswell is equally frank in describing himself in situations more provocative of contempt than even drunkenness in a drawing-room. He tells us how dreadfully frightened he was by a storm at sea in the Hebrides, and how one of his companions, "with a happy readiness," made ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... with us, defeats the end it aims at. That expense which is lavished to impress us with awe and admiration, serves only as a provocative to laughter, and inducement to contempt; where great wealth and good taste go together, we at once recognize the harmonious adaptation of means and ends; where they do not, all extrinsic and adventitious ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... was taboo. He made more thorough love to Balatta— also saw to it that she scrubbed herself more frequently. Eternal female she was, capable of any treason for the sake of love. And, though the sight of her was provocative of nausea and the contact of her provocative of despair, although he could not escape her awfulness in his dream-haunted nightmares of her, he nevertheless was aware of the cosmic verity of sex that animated her and that made her own life of less value ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... the shade under the hedges, where hints of future marriages were given to many a pretty girl, and to nudges and pinches were returned small screams suggestive of additional assault—and inviting denials of "Indeed I won't," and that crowning provocative to riotous conduct, ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... bodies were white and silvery, and they had staring black eyes. They were not so large as the California flying-fish, nor did they have any blue color. They resembled the California species, however, in that same strange, hunted look which always struck me. To see these flying-fish this way was provocative of thought. They had been pursued by some hungry devil of a fish, and with a birdlike swiftness with which nature had marvelously endowed them they had escaped the enemy. Here I had at once the wonder and beauty and ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... Miss Fennimore was, and often as she frowned on Maria's outbreaks, she never could detect their provocative. Over-restraint and want of sympathy were direct instruction in unscrupulous slyness of amusement. A sentence of displeasure on Maria's ill-mannered folly was in the act of again filling her eyes with tears, when there was a knock at the door, and all ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was no very imminent danger of war with the United States. The issues of peace and war, however, depended upon the attitude of that House and of the country. Weakness never promoted peace, and an uncertain and half- hearted attitude was provocative of war. This country had, he believed, the desire to preserve its power and influence on the American continent. It was for the good of mankind that the rule of the British Crown and the influence of the wisely-regulated liberty of Britain and of the British Constitution ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... shots. That he ever sought or was ever allowed a share in the command may be denied peremptorily; but it is more than likely that he expressed himself in an excited manner and with a highly inflammatory effect upon his hearers. He was, at least, severely punished. The Germans, enraged by his provocative behaviour and what they thought to be his German birth, demanded him to be tried before court-martial; he had to skulk inside the sentries of the American consulate, to be smuggled on board a war-ship, and to be carried almost by stealth out of the island; and what with the agitations ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Aborigines of Australia ordinarily acting under the influence of no worse motives or passions than usually actuate man in a civilised state, we ought in fairness to suppose that sufficient provocative for retaliation has been given in those few instances of revenge, which, our imperfect knowledge of the circumstances attending them does not enable us satisfactorily to account for. In considering this ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... hat on one side of his head. Such a phenomenon was almost unknown in the streets of Monroe, and keenly conscious of his presence, and instantly curious as to his identity, the girls could not pass him without a provocative glance. "Stunning!" said each girl in ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... of the weather and the steady fall in the price of corn. (Who would have thought, to hear us, that only two short days ago we had confronted each other on either side of a hedge,—I triumphant, provocative, derisive; he flushed, wroth, cracking his whip, and volleying forth profanity? So powerful is all-subduing ceremony!) Sabina the while, demurely seated with a Pilgrim's Progress on her knee, and apparently absorbed in a brightly coloured presentment of ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... ignorant as I am of antiquarian matters, this sounds very curious; and I send it you in case you may find it worthy of insertion, as provocative of discussion, and with the utilitarian idea that I may gain some ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... Virtuosos. And yet not one of these words exactly fits them. What they are really doing is living in the atmosphere and the temper of "the grand style"—and that is why they are so irritating and provocative! To them the most important thing in the world is to realize to the fullest limit of their consciousness what it means to be born a Man. The actual drama of our mortal existence, reduced to the simplest terms, is enough to occupy their consciousness ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... OF LONE" is different from any of Mrs. Southworth's other novels. The plot, which is unusually provocative of conjecture and interest, is founded on thrilling and tragic events which occurred in the domestic history of one of the most distinguished families in the Highlands of Scotland. The materials which these interesting ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... delivered himself he rolled in-doors, and there sat down to his morning pipe. But anger and laughter are alike provocative of thirst, and seeking a jug in the kitchen he took his way to the cellar, and there had a copious draught of small beer, after which he settled himself down in his arm-chair, prepared to make the best of anything which might ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray |
