"Absinthe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Marceline and her two subordinates, Constance and Felicite; and beneath this, le pere et la mere Jaurion sold their cheap goodies, and jealously guarded the gates that secluded us from the wicked world outside—where women are, and merchants of tobacco, and cafes where you can sip the opalescent absinthe, and libraries where you can buy books more diverting than ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... beneath the green summit of Monterone, and as their graceful boat made ripples on the moonlit waves of Orta and Lugans. In a word, the conviction of weakness was the only alloying influence to the pleasure of his tour, the one absinthe-drop that lent bitterness to the honeyed wine. It was not only the consciousness of the wrong act and its possible results, but horror at the instability of moral principle which it showed, and a deep fear ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... at that table, for the man has much to tell of his young brother Claude; of the ruin she has made of his life; of the little green devils that lurk in a glass of absinthe, and clutch their victim, and drag him down deeper, ever deeper, into the ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... feet, and the long detour we had to make in order to reach the summit was a series of the gentlest ascents, a wandering over fair meadow-land several thousand feet above the sea-level. Here we found the large yellow gentian, used in the fabrication of absinthe, and the bright yellow arnica, whilst instead of the snow-white flower of the Alpine anemone, the ground was now silvery with its feathery seed; the dark purple pansy of the Vosges was also rare. We ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... his name and pulled his ears. He had been a prisoner of Abd-el-Kader, bearing the scar of a yataghan stroke on his neck, of one ball in his shoulder and another in his chest; and notwithstanding absinthe, duels, debts of play, and almond-eyed Jewesses, he fairly won, with the point of the bayonet and sabre, his grade of captain in ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... the festival, a lot of degenerates who bawl the songs of music halls; and sometimes in the place of honor, a group of tenth-rate barnstormers, imported for the occasion, to civilize these rustics and give them a taste of refined pleasures. For drinks, liquors mixed with brandy or absinthe: in the whole thing neither originality nor picturesqueness. License, indeed, and clownishness, but not that abandon which ingenuous joy brings in ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... critics summoned across the ocean to present to universities which have heard Emerson, Longfellow, Henry Reed, Lowell, Whipple, and Curtis the coagulated nastiness of Verlaine, Mallarm, and their compeers, I expect next to hear of courses introducing young men to the beauties of absinthe, Turkish cigarettes, and stimulants unspeakable. Doubtless these things are all due to the "oscillatory law of human progress,'' which professors of "horse sense'' like my friend Joe Sheldon ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... rag-picker, who had formerly been one of the handsomest women in Paris. Now, for the sake of a laugh, the women of the district made her drink absinthe, after which the street boys would chase her and ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... gunpowder, or boiled in a solution of nitrate or chlorate of potash. But, till then, they had not found any of these polypores or even any of the morels which could replace them. On this day, the engineer, seeing a plant belonging to the wormwood genus, the principal species of which are absinthe, balm-mint, tarragon, etc., gathered several tufts, and, presenting them to the ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... feet by six, in which sat, smoking their pipes round a charcoal brazier, no fewer than six old soldiers of the First Republic, with their uniforms torn and worn threadbare. Evidently they were of the mauvais sujet class; their bleary eyes and limp jaws told plainly of a common love of absinthe; and their eyes had that haggard, worn look of slumbering ferocity which follows hard in the wake of drink. The other side stood as of old, with its shelves intact, save that they were cut to half their depth, and in each shelf of which there were six, was a bed made with rags and straw. The ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... evil. I never know what I shall be at a particular moment. Sometimes I like to sit at home after dinner and read 'The dream of Gerontius.' I love lentils and cold water. At other times I must drink absinthe, and hang the night hours with scarlet embroideries. I must have music, and the sins that march to music. There are moments when I desire squalor, sinister, mean surroundings, dreariness, and misery. The great unwashed mood is upon me. Then I go out from luxury. The mind has its West End ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... was as gravely, decently, demurely pretty as before. If she had seemed before a thin-stemmed, mild-hued flower of Puritanism, it may be imagined whether in her present situation this delicate bloom was less apparent. Beside her an old gentleman was drinking absinthe; behind her the dame de comptoir in the pink ribbons was calling "Alcibiade! Alcibiade!" to the long-aproned waiter. I explained to Miss Spencer that my companion had lately been her shipmate, and my brother-in-law came up and was introduced to her. ...
— Four Meetings • Henry James
... street. Somewhere a mandoline was being thrummed, and a very French voice rose above it singing a song of the Paris pavements. In the large cafes just below the balcony where the two women were standing crowds of people were seated at little tables, sipping absinthe, vermouth, and bright-colored syrups. Among the Europeans of various nations the dignified and ample figures of well-dressed Arabs in pale blue, green, brown, and white burnouses, with high turbans bound by ropes of camel's ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... name, and at the jolly southern accent, the Tarasconian lifted his head, and perceived, a couple of steps away, the honest tanned visage of Captain Barbassou, master of the Zouave, who was taking his absinthe at the door of a ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... things in the war. [Cheers.] One afternoon we had to postpone our conference in Paris, and the French Minister of Finance said, "I have got to go to the Chamber of Deputies, because I am proposing a bill to abolish absinthe." [Cheers.] Absinthe plays the same part in France that whisky plays in this country. It is really the worst form of drink used; not only among workmen, but among other classes as well. Its ravages are terrible, and they abolished it by a majority of something like 10 to ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... together. He had learned the difference between a "straight flush" and a "full house" under the palms at Raffles Hotel in Singapore; he had been instructed in the ways of the wise in Shanghai by a sophisticated attache of the French Legation, who imparted his knowledge between sips of absinthe, as he looked down on the passing show from a teahouse on the Bubbling Well Road; he had rapturously listened to every sweet secret that Japan had to tell, and had left a wake of ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... received them with studied Parisian hospitality. He had decorated his arbor with fresh flowers for the occasion, and bright tropical fruits, with their own green leaves, did duty for the coffee or the absinthe of his fatherland on his homemade rustic table. Yet in spite of all the rudeness of the physical surroundings, they felt themselves at home again with this one exiled European; the faint flavor of civilization pervaded and permeated the Frenchman's hut after the unmixed savagery to which they had ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... ever seen. Became a traveler. Introduced ale and stout in England, whiskey in Scotland, everything in Ireland, cocktails and patent medicines in the United States, beer in Germany, champagne in France, absinthe in France, and vodka in Russia. Career: Magnificent. Recreation: Paris. Address: Greece. Clubs: All, except W. C. T. U. Epitaph: He Will Live In The ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... to any one; he came to me, to beg me to give up the lieutenant, who was taking to absinthe. My dear, you should just see the man! (Oh, if I only had my locket!) All Italy can't show such another! I gave up the lieutenant that day and married the colonel just as fast as was possible. That's why I haven't ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... and Dortje were not the same. What had become of Dortje I cannot say; but on the left-hand side of the busy, bustling, picturesque Oude Gracht there was a handsome shop filled with all manner of cakes, sweeties, confections, and liquors—from absinthe to Benedictine, or arrack to chartreuse. In that shop was a handsome, prosperous, middle-aged woman, well dressed and well mannered, no longer Professor van Dijck's Koosje, but the Jevrouw ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... Wives and mothers, and even young girls, who are ashamed to drink at home, go to these fashionable restaurants for their liquor. Some will drink it openly, others will disguise it as much as possible. Absinthe has been introduced at these places of late years, and it is said to be very popular with the gentler sex. Those who know its effects will shudder at this. We have seen many drunken women in New York, and the majority have been well ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... would have "soaked" you as quickly as he would have soaked his thumb in your coffee. He saved money and started a basement table d'hote in Eighth (or Ninth) Street. One afternoon Andre drank too much absinthe. He announced to his startled family that he was the Grand Llama of Thibet, therefore requiring an empty audience hall in which to be worshiped. He moved all the tables and chairs from the restaurant into the back yard, ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... peasant family who lived in it looked to their bit of land and their two or three cows to keep them, not to the auberge. The bottles of liquor on the shelf were rarely taken down, except on Sundays, when villagers might saunter in, to gossip and smoke over coffee and eau de vie, or the glass of absinthe, which, since the failure of the vines in the South of France, has become there the most convivial of all drinks, although it makes men more quarrelsome than any other. In these poor riverside villages, ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... as these fellows find out that they are no better off for the change, and that a Republic does not mean beer and skittles, or, as they would like, unlimited absinthe and public workshops, with short hours and high pay, they will begin to get savage, and then there will be trouble. The worst of it is one can never rely upon the troops, and discipline is certainly more relaxed than usual now that the Emperor has been upset, and every ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... behind the embankment which alone saves the city from inundation? Shall we ignore the French Market with its clean stalls piled with fresh vegetables, sea food, and all manner of comestibles, including file for the glorious Creole gombo. Shall we not view the picturesque if sinister old Absinthe House, dating from 1799, with its court and stairway so full of mysterious suggestion, and its misty paregoric-flavored beverage, containing opalescent dreams? Shall we not go to Sazerac's for a cocktail, or to Ramos' for one of those delectable gin-fizzes suggesting an Olympian soda-fountain ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... himself to the Wagon and started up Seltzer Avenue, he realized that an immediate Absinthe Frappe would be worth $15,000 to him, but instead of ordering one, he resolved to write Doc Wiley a Letter advising him that while he was putting the Nixey Mark on that Green Magoo he should include all other Colors bestowed ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... decline of militarism by the decline of flogging; I could prove the increase of militarism by the increase of standing armies and conscription. But I can prove anything in this way. I can prove that the world has always been growing greener. Only lately men have invented absinthe and the Westminster Gazette. I could prove the world has grown less green. There are no more Robin Hood foresters, and fields are being covered with houses. I could show that the world was less red with khaki or more red with the new penny stamps. But in all cases ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... about where and how to get them, and how to mix them, and how much Angostura to put into 'em, and the musty ale that used to be had at Losekam's in Washington, and the Beaux Arts cocktails that used to come with a dash of absinthe, and the shipment of pinch-neck Scotch which somebody smuggled in on his cruiser-yacht from the east end of Cuba, and so-forth and so-forth until I began to feel that the only important thing in the world was the possession and dispensation of alcohol. And out ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... leggy dogs. Then came the cool of the afternoon, i.e., the mercury, with evident reluctance, dawdled down to 84 degrees; military bands performed, the Europeans emerged, smoking as in the morning, to play billiards or ecarte, or sip absinthe at their cafes; then came the mosquitoes and dinner, after which I was told that card-parties were made up, and that the residents played till near midnight. Thus from observation and hearsay, I gathered that the life ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... took up a full bottle the contents of which had a greenish, somewhat oily tinge. "Absinthe," he said. "Guaranteed to turn your brains to mush if you take it long enough. What was the name of ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... emerged from a door leading into the back room, with a tall, empty glass in his hand, and Morrow asked for a beer. As he stood sipping it, he watched the bartender replenish the empty unwashed glass he had carried with a generous drink of doubtful looking absinthe and a squirt ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... the annual dinner of the club, which took place in a private dining room at the "Clarry" (the Clarendon Hotel) in February, Forbes was called upon to respond to the toast "The Real Kathleen." His voice, tremulous with emotion and absinthe frappe, nearly failed him; but he managed to stammer a few phrases which, thought at the time to be extemporaneous, called forth loud applause; but it was found later that he had jotted them down on the tablecloth during the soup and ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... thermometer at eighty-five in the shade, with needle-gun, heavy knapsack, eighty rounds of ammunition, huge great-coat, camp-kettle, sword, spade, water-bottle, haversack, and lots of odds and ends dangling about them, with perhaps a loaf or two under one arm. Sunstroke? No. Why? Sobriety. No absinthe there, ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... Musset was old. At rare intervals came the flash and outbreak of a fiery mind; but the years were years of lassitude. His patriotic song, Le Rhin Allemand, is of 1841. In 1852 the Academy received him. "Musset s'absente trop," observed an Academician; the ungracious reply, "Il s'absinthe trop," told the truth, and it was a piteous decline. In 1857, attended by the pious Sister Marceline, ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... vagabondage to which these papers refer. It would make, I told him, a picaresque romance compared with which that of Gil Bias de Santillane were the tale of wanderings round a village pump. Such, said I, is given to few men to produce. But Paragot only smiled, and sipped his absinthe. It was against his principles, he said. The world would be a gentler habitat if there had never been written or graven record of a human action, and he refused to pander to the obscene curiosity of the multitude as to the thoughts and ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... me on the following evening and take me to the cafe at which Strickland was most likely to be found. I was interested to learn that it was the same as that at which Strickland and I had drunk absinthe when I had gone over to Paris to see him. The fact that he had never changed suggested a sluggishness of habit which seemed ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... now," resumed the district attorney, as his colleague drew back out of sight once more. "You cannot remember the saloon in which you drank. That's possible enough; but perhaps you can remember what they gave you. Was it whiskey, rum, absinthe, or what?" ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... stand between the man and himself after such an appellation. He would have esteemed it a favor now to be what he was named, and only lifted his creased beaver gratefully, and hobbled nervously away, and stopping near by at a cafe drank a great glass of absinthe, with almost ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... of absinthe in dreams, denotes that you will lead a merry and foolish pace with innocent companions, and waste your inheritance in prodigal lavishness ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... Between four and five o'clock he went for a walk on the boulevards, to get a little fresh air, as he used to say, and then came back to the seat which had been reserved for him, and asked for his absinthe. He would talk to the regular customers whose acquaintance he had made. They discussed the news of the day and political events, and that carried him on till dinner time; and he spent the evening as he had the afternoon, until it was time to close. That was a terrible moment ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... dangerous in Lanyard's esteem; a vindictive animal, that Popinot; and the creatures he controlled, a murderous lot, drug-ridden, drink bedevilled, vicious little rats of Belleville, who'd knife a man for the price of an absinthe. But Popinot wouldn't move without leave from De Morbihan, and unless Lanyard's calculations were seriously miscast, De Morbihan would restrain both himself and his associates until thoroughly convinced Lanyard was impregnable ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... back to this time last year, and remembered my idle evenings in third-rate cafes, on the rive gauche, playing dominoes, talking the foul slang of Parisian bohemia, and poisoning my system with adulterated absinthe. And now I feast upon sweet cakes and honey, and think it paradisiac enjoyment to play whist—for love—in a farm-house parlour. I am younger by ten years than I was twelve ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... make haste, zhay angazha Rigol-bouche itself!" Take me away from these furnished apartments and maisons dorees, from the Jockey Club and the Figaro, from close-shaven military heads and varnished barracks, from sergents-de-ville with Napoleonic beards, and from glasses of muddy absinthe, from gamblers playing dominoes at the cafes, and gamblers on the Bourse, from red ribbons in button-holes, from M. de Four, inventor of 'matrimonial specialities,' and the gratuitous consultations of Dr. Charles Albert, from liberal ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... you know," said Havens; "and they'll be rather expecting you at the club. C'est l'heure de l'absinthe. Of course, Loudon, you'll dine with ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne |
