"Coquetry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from this time Elizabeth found no more serious suitors amongst her courtiers, though they flattered her by continuing, almost to the end of her life, to address her in the language of love, or rather of gallantry. With all her coquetry, her head was clear, her passions were cool; and men began to perceive that there was little chance of prevailing with her to gratify her heart or her fancy at the expense of that independence on which her lofty temper led her to set so high a value. Some were ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... own pupils. If she had not succeeded in driving Halloway away, why should she stand out for the subterfuge of banishing Jerry? It reminded her of Joe's picking an easy man to whip. There was even a faint challenge of coquetry in her manner as she disdainfully announced: "Ef thet's ther way I'm feedin' yore vanity, come over whenever ye feels like hit. I'll strive ter endure ye, ef ye ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... coquetry he had never seen before, Pauline stretched out a truly Spanish foot and offered him its dainty covering. Won by the animation of her manner, Manuel forgot his misgivings and played his part with boyish ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott
... even twice a day. Sometimes she was alone, frequently she had companions, but she was always the same, always appeared gratified at his arrival, and always extended to him the same welcome, graceful and genial, but without a spark of coquetry. Yet she did not affect to conceal that she took a certain interest in him, because she was careful to introduce him to distinguished men, and would say, "You should know him, he is master of such a subject. ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... he answered slowly, for he was thinking of the Gerty whom he had known—of her audacious cynicism, her startling frankness, her suggestive coquetry. Was it possible that this creature of red and white flesh, of sweetness and irony, was really a multiple personality—the possessor of divers souls? Had he seen only the surface of her because it was to the surface alone that he had appealed? Or was it that Laura's creative instinct had builded ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... soft eyes were fixed steadfastly upon his. There was a sort of question in them which he seemed to have surprised there more than once during the last few days. A sudden uneasiness seized him. His brain was crowded with unwilling fancies. There were, without doubt, symptoms of coquetry in her appearance. He had spoken of blue as the one sublime color. As she leaned a little back in her chair, resting from her labors, he could scarcely help noticing the blue silk stockings and suede shoes which matched the hidden color of her skirt, the ribbon which gleamed from the dusky ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... toilet with feminine coquetry, put on a white waistcoat, which suited him better with the coat, sent for the hairdresser to give him a finishing touch with the curling-iron, for he had preserved his hair, and started very early in order to show his eagerness to ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... smart slippers, and put on a pair of walking-shoes, tying them, with her foot on a chair, in a quiet disregard of her visitor's presence; took a brown holland sunbonnet from the wall, clapped it over her browner hair and hanging braids, and tied it under her chin with apparently no sense of coquetry in the act—becoming though it was—and without glancing at him. Alas for Madison's ethics! The torment of her worldly speech and youthful contempt was nothing to this tacit ignoring of the manhood of her lover—this silent acceptance of him as something even lower than her husband. He ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... less distinction and more peace. The First Consul required his sister to accompany her husband to San Domingo. She was forced to obey, and to leave Paris, where she swayed the scepter of fashion, and eclipsed all other women by her elegance and coquetry, as well as by her incomparable beauty, to brave a dangerous climate, and the ferocious companions of Christophe and Dessalines. At the end of the year 1801 the admiral's ship, The Ocean, sailed from ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... like to have been trouble between the two friends, for Lars loved a maiden at the farm, who out of coquetry often smiled at Gustavus, until the giant Dalesman became terribly jealous. One day when she brought them their noon-day ale, she handed it first to Gustavus, who, after drinking, returned it with a pleasant word and a pat ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... doll eyes rolled a double circuit of coquetry and slanted off with a suggestive glance at the massive doorway of the Hawker-Sponge mansion, one of the most ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... interview, Mr. Chester, a cat—or a bear rather—in a strange garret, roamed the Tiffany home and entertained her who would listen. He warmed to Kate especially, and that household fairy, in her flights between errands of mercy, played him with all the prettiness of her coquetry. At luncheon he quite lost his embarrassment and responded to the advances of three friendly humans. Yes ma-am, he had been glad to learn that Bertram was doing well in the city. He had five sons, all doing well. He'd risked letting Bert try college, ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... repeat to you, mademoiselle," said D'Artagnan, "what M. de Bragelonne said of you, at Antibes, when he already meditated death: 'If pride and coquetry have misled her, I pardon her while despising her. If love has produced her error, I pardon her, but I swear that no one could have loved her ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... class, he insisted upon exchanging his own riding horse, "Five Spot," for the sorry mule which the Duchess rode. But even this act did not draw the party into any closer sympathy. The young woman readjusted her somewhat draggled plumes with a feeble, faded coquetry; Mother Shipton eyed the possessor of "Five Spot" with malevolence, and Uncle Billy included the whole party ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... proximity he watched her with a new attention, and he saw that her father, too, studied her covertly, as though realizing that he had a grown daughter on his hands. Her way with Harwood was not without coquetry; she tapped his arm with her fan lightly when he refused to enter into a discussion of his attentions, of which she protested she knew much, to Miss Bosworth. He admitted having called on Miss Bosworth once; her brother was a Yale man, and had asked him to the house on the score of ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... veil, so as with some coquetry to display a bold Roman profile, a full dark bright eye, and a cheek over whose natural olive art shed ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... meant domesticity and dignity to Sissy. In Split it bred and fostered a spirit of coquetry; she believed herself to be very French in long skirts. "I'll just say she said 'Yes' when I asked her. She never knows what she ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... please, and the wish to hold other hearts than the royal one she had enslaved, in thraldom, all might, perhaps, have been well. But, alas like many other beautiful women, she had a strong tendency to coquetry. How severely she suffered for it, it is the purpose of this history to relate. An excellent description of her has been given by a contemporary writer, the Comte de Chateaubriand, who, while somewhat disparaging her personal attractions, speaks in rapturous terms of her ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... and nodded her little head at me with an air of sublimated coquetry that would have done credit to a ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... weight of her father's words had stilled and solemnised her, removing every trace of coquetry. Her head was bowed as at the benediction; she was sobbing. Mitri patted her head and bade ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... time other dangerous resources which may tempt the unoccupied and uninterested girl into their excitements. Those whose minds are of too active and vivacious a nature to live on without an object, may too easily find one in the dangerous and selfish amusements of coquetry—in the seeking for admiration, and its enjoyment when obtained. The very woman who might have been the most happy herself in the enjoyment of intellectual pursuits, and the most extensively useful to others, is often the one who, from misdirected energies and feeling, will pursue most eagerly, ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... languishing eyes of celestial blue, conducted us into a very neat parlour, and observing how loosely and lightly my little girl was clad, began to pity her in the sweetest accents, regardless of the rosy down of health on her cheeks. This same damsel was dressed—it was Sunday—with taste and even coquetry, in a cotton jacket, ornamented with knots of blue ribbon, fancifully disposed to give life to her fine complexion. I loitered a little to admire her, for every gesture was graceful; and, amidst the other villagers, she looked like a garden lily suddenly rearing ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... mouth relaxed but she did not shift her gaze. "You forget. It was not planned—by me." On rare occasions Mary Louise could slip from her matter-of-fact self into coquetry and back again before one realized. It was like the play of a lightning shuttle, so quick that one rarely caught the flash of the back stroke. Joe had erred ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... with the wild black hair and the awful "picture hat"!' But they stared for a few moments as if, in despite of themselves, fascinated by this lady be-feathered, be-crimped, and be-ringed, wearing her huge hat cocked over one ear with a defiant coquetry above a would-be conquering smile. The unerring wits in the crowd had already picked her out for special attention, but her active 'public form' was even more torturing to the fastidious feminine sense ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... her hair is trimmed, and curled, and brushed with exquisite neatness; and her whole dress arranged with that nice attention to the becoming, the suitable both in form and texture, which would be called the highest degree of coquetry, if it did not deserve the better name of propriety. Never was such a transmogrification beheld. The lass is really pretty, and Ned Miles has discovered that she is so. There he stands, the rogue, close at ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 345, December 6, 1828 • Various
... toilet-boxes, containing blond sponges, curling-irons, sea-wolves' teeth to polish the nails, the green rouge of Egypt, which turns to a most beautiful pink on touching the skin, powders to darken the eyelashes and eyebrows, and all the refinements that feminine coquetry could invent. Other litters were freighted with purple robes of the finest linen and of all possible shades from the incarnadine hue of the rose to the deep crimson of the blood of the grape; calasires of the linen of Canopus, which is thrown all white into the vat of the dyer, ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... partisans.' Erasmus is one of those whom contact with others weakens. The less he has to address and to consider others, friends or enemies, the more truly he utters his deepest soul. Intercourse with particular people always causes little scruples in him, intentional amenities, coquetry, reticences, reserves, spiteful hits, evasions. Therefore it should not be thought that we get to know him to the core from his letters. Natures like his, which all contact with men unsettles, give their best and deepest when they speak ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... Madame Bouchereau trifled with an elegant nosegay, whose perfume she frequently inhaled, and whose crimson flowers contrasted so well with the fairness of her complexion, as to justify a suspicion that there was some coquetry in the manoeuvre executed with such apparent negligence. Leaning back in her chair, she frequently turned her head, the better to hear Magnian's smiling and half-whispered remarks. The husband paid ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... loyal to her own sex—and all the weakest of that dear miscellany, nourishing, cherishing next her soft heart, voicelessly flattering, hopes that she would have died sooner than have acknowledged. She tore off her nightcap, and her hair fell about her shoulders in profusion. Undying coquetry awoke. By the faint light of her nocturnal rush, she stood before the looking-glass, carried her shapely arms above her head, and gathered up the treasures of her tresses. She was never backward ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... said, with that coquetry which somehow or other is in the heart of every young girl, "I have often been sorry that I am not able to read, but never so much so as when your housekeeper brought me your letter. I kept the paper in my hands, which spoke ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... ball and with Mrs. Fairbrother's full cognizance. The effectual way in which she had wielded her fan between the glittering ornament on her breast and the inquisitive glances constantly leveled upon it might at the time have been due to coquetry, but to them it looked much more like an expression of fear lest the deception in which she was indulging should be discovered. No one fixed the time where I did; but then, no one but myself had watched the scene with the eyes of love; besides, and ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... now her image by rote, and as I conned the traits in memory it seemed as if I read her very heart. She was dressed with something of her mother's coquetry and love of positive colour. Her robe, which I knew she must have made with her own hands, clung about her with a cunning grace. After the fashion of that country, besides, her bodice stood open in the middle, in a long slit, and here, in spite of the poverty ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... want to—to do what you want me to?" she asked, and she was even able to summon a smile with a tinge of coquetry that served to draw the wily Senator ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... dramatic instinct, which saw that such forms were a drag upon the action of a play. And yet at times Lyly could use his clumsy weapon with great precision and effect. How admirably, for example, does he express in his antithetical fashion the essence of coquetry. Iffida, speaking to Fidus of one she loved but wished to test, is made to say, "I seem straight-laced as one neither accustomed to such suites, nor willing to entertain such a servant, yet so warily, as putting him from me with my ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... belle; never was; never can be; have neither wealth, beauty nor coquetry enough to make me one. I have no lovers nor admirers to break their hearts about me, one way or another; but there is one honest fellow—hem! never mind; I feel as if I belonged to somebody else; that's all. I am very much obliged to you, ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... too sacred. She was a trifle appalled by it, if the truth must be told. If Richard had scattered his love-making through the month of her convalescence, or if he had made his avowal in a different mood, perhaps Margaret might have met him with some natural coquetry. But Richard's tone and manner had been such as to suppress any instinct of the kind. His declaration, moreover, had amazed her. Margaret's own feelings had been more or less plain to her that past month, and she had diligently disciplined ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... continued the lively girl, taking it off, and shaking down a profusion of sable ringlets, which, half laughing, half blushing, she separated with her white slender fingers, in order to clear them away from her beautiful face and piercing hazel eyes. If there was any coquetry in the action, it was well disguised by the careless indifference of her manner. I could not help saying, "that, judging of the family from what I saw, I should suppose the ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... Straw, Witch Hazel and Colored Daisy—"Your folly and coquetry have broken the spell of ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... do wish you could have seen her in that frilled white thing with the two huge blue bows at the ends of the long plaits at my dinner-dance the other night, standing and looking at everybody with all the fascination and coquetry of—of—well, that little Golden Bird peeping at us from the left-hand corner of Mrs. Red Ally's right wing. Where did ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... delay, and such a bunch of coquetry as I have never seen. She raised one objection after another; but Tom was a firm man, and his late experiences in the wilderness had made him impatient of trifling. He had promised the Kentucky settlers, fighting for their lives in their blockhouses, that he would come back again. And a resolute ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... us if we're kind; And yet upbraid us if we seem severe! Do you, t' encourage us to tell our mind, Yourselves put off disguise, and be sincere. You talk of coquetry!—Your own false hearts Compel our sex to ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... who crossed their path, were advancing slowly towards the three crosses of Paullinus, which stood in a line, not far from the church-porch. They were females, one about five-and-twenty, very comely, and habited in smart holiday attire, put on with considerable rustic coquetry, so as to display a very neat foot and ankle, and with plenty of ribands in her fine chestnut hair. The other was a very different person, far advanced in years, bent almost double, palsy-stricken, her arms and limbs shaking, her head nodding, her chin wagging, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... no tantalizing coquetry in Zany's manner now. In a moment she was in Chunk's arms sobbing, "Tek me way off fum dis place. I go wid you now, dis berry minute, en I neber breve easy till we way, way off enywhar, I doan keer whar. Oh, Chunk, you doan know w'at been gwine on en I darsn't ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... figure she became more graceful, and no woman ever had a finer complexion. Being endowed with a most sturdy constitution, she owed all her beauty to nature and nothing to artifice; her face needed no paint, her wit no coquetry; with no fondness for luxury or dress, possessing simple and quiet tastes, never striving for effect, always preferring half-tints to a blaze of light, her expression and demeanor always had a quality of simplicity and directness which fascinated ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... then the "Fool" would rush away to the valley, and be received by Miss Milly with a certain reserve of manner that finally disappeared in a flush of color, some increased vivacity, and a pardonable coquetry. And so the days passed. Miss Milly grew better in health, and more troubled in mind; and Mr. Hawkins became more and more embarrassed; and Five Forks smiled, and rubbed its hands, and waited for the approaching denoument. And then it came—but not, perhaps, in the manner that ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... mere prettiness—a quite unusual prettiness, it had to be admitted; a slightly haggard prettiness, perhaps; a prettiness a little worn by work, a little coarsened by wind and weather; a prettiness too desperate for youth and too tragic for coquetry, but for those very reasons doubtless all the more haunting. He was obliged to remind himself that it was nothing to him, since he had never swerved from the intention to marry Lois Willoughby as soon as he ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... left without words for the only real feeling which she had ever experienced. And indeed she really was not one of those women who cannot make up their minds to grow old. Long before the hour of curfew—though indeed there had perhaps never been much fire in her to put out—all her coquetry, all her feminine eagerness to captivate and charm, all her aspirations towards fame or fashion or social success had been transferred to the account of her son, this tall, good-looking young fellow in the correct attire of the modern ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... broke off one of the snowy blossoms, and, with childlike coquetry, fastened it in ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... pleased with nothing when you are not pleased with your wife. One of the "Spectators" is very just that says, "A man ought always to be upon his guard against spleen and a too severe philosophy; a woman, against levity and coquetry." If we go to Naples, I will make no acquaintance there of any kind, and you will be in a place where a variety of agreeable objects will dispose you to be ever pleased. If such a thing is possible, this will secure our everlasting happiness; and I am ready to wait on ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... delighted in melting tenderness and playful coquetry, in "Statira" or "Millamant;" and even at an advanced age, when she ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... science. Just see with what admirable stupidity girls lend themselves to reap the benefit of the education which is imposed upon them in France; we give them in charge to nursery maids, to companions, to governesses who teach them twenty tricks of coquetry and false modesty, for every single noble and true idea which they impart to them. Girls are brought up as slaves, and are accustomed to the idea that they are sent into the world to imitate their grandmothers, ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... quarter, he noticed a well-dressed young girl walking before him in company with a delicate looking boy of seven or eight years. Something in the carriage of her graceful figure, something in a certain consciousness and ostentation of coquetry toward her youthful escort, attracted his attention. Yet it struck him that she was neither related to the child nor accustomed to children's ways, and that she somewhat unduly emphasized this to the passers-by, particularly those of his own sex, who seemed to ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... to your string?" As he thus wittily expressed himself, the gentleman took off his cap, and thrust his fingers through a very curling and comely head of hair; the young lady looked at him with evident coquetry, and said, "How you ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the first united tug, each person placed carefully by the doctor, and guys for the rope driven at intervals decided by Martin, when there was an interruption for Cherry's arrival on the scene. With characteristic coquetry she did not approach, as the others had, by means of the front porch and the garden path, but crept from the study window into a veritable tunnel of green bloom, and came crawling down it, as sweet and fragrant, as lovely and as fresh, ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... Interests into which the bourgeoisie is divided—Land and Capital—sought to restore its own supremacy and the subordinacy of the other. We speak of two bourgeois interests because large landed property, despite its feudal coquetry and pride of race, has become completely bourgeois through the development of modern society. Thus did the Tories of England long fancy that they were enthusiastic for the Kingdom, the Church and the ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... served as a model to the sculptor. Large, sparkling eyes gave animation to her countenance, and took all hearts by storm. Add to these rare endowments a lively though malicious wit, great skill in all showy accomplishments, and especially in the arts of coquetry, and is it wonderful that she was almost worshipped in her father's ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... She had observed the peculiar fire which lighted up his eyes in the presence of Ellen Kingsbury, and she bethought her of a plan which would ensure her some amusement at the expense of these impertinent rustics, though in a manner different somewhat from her original more natural idea of simple coquetry. ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... lift her down, with no sign of prudishness or coquetry, and he led the horse uphill while she followed. Her attitude pleased him, because he had no desire for philandering, although he was content to act as protector and guide. Still, while he adapted ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... not a cure; it was merely a temporary drug for our vanity," he rejoined gaily. "It didn't cure me, so you could hardly regard it as a remedy for Mrs. Stribling's complaint. I imagine coquetry is a more obstinate malady even than priggishness, and, Heaven knows, I tried hard enough to get rid ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... dull prolixity the history of his patron, Pierre de Lusignan, King of Cyprus, in his Prise d'Alexandrie; the Voir dit relates in varying verse and prose the course of his sexagenarian love for a maiden in her teens, Peronne d'Armentieres, who gratified her coquetry with an old poet's adoration, and then wedded ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... contrary, the embarrassment which she could not yet wholly subdue lent her an air of girlish timidity. All in all, Barine was a charming creature, who bewitched men by her vivacity, her grace, and her exquisite voice, not by coquetry and pertness. That she possessed unusual mental endowments Cleopatra did not believe. Barine had only one ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... in beauty's mould, all elegance and perfect grace; so fair that his comeliness deserved to be proverbial; for he was as a green bough or the tender young of the roe, ravishing every heart with his loveliness and subduing every soul with his coquetry and amorous ways.[FN265] It was of him the poet spake when ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... by a life at the North; but the awe of white people in which he had been reared was still too strong to permit his taking any active steps toward the object of his secret desire, had not the lady herself come to his assistance with a little of the native coquetry of her race. ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... triple waistcoat, the vast cravat engulfing the chin, the gaiters, the metal buttons on the greenish coat,—all these reminiscences of Imperial fashions were blended with a sort of afterwaft and lingering perfume of the coquetry of the Incroyable—with an indescribable finical something in the folds of the garments, a certain air of stiffness and correctness in the demeanor that smacked of the school of David, that ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... her mysteries. For, if a bad complexion be inexcusable, to be ill-painted is unforgivable; and, when the toilet is laden once more with the fulness of its elaboration, we shall hear no more of the proper occupation for women. And think, how sweet an energy, to sit at the mirror of coquetry! See the dear merits of the toilet as shown upon old vases, or upon the walls of Roman ruins, or, rather still, read Boettiger's alluring, scholarly description of 'Morgenscenen im Puttzimmer Einer Reichen Roemerin.' Read of Sabina's face as she comes through the curtain of her bed-chamber ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... Venus—the beautiful Venus?—the Venus of the Medici?—she of the diminutive head and the gilded hair? Part of the left arm (here his voice dropped so as to be heard with difficulty,) and all the right, are restorations; and in the coquetry of that right arm lies, I think, the quintessence of all affectation. Give me the Canova! The Apollo, too, is a copy—there can be no doubt of it—blind fool that I am, who cannot behold the boasted ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... beautiful figure and shapely shoulders, back, and bosom—which in the fashion of those days were very much exposed—and she seemed to bring the glamour of a ballroom with her as she moved toward Anna Pavlovna. Helene was so lovely that not only did she not show any trace of coquetry, but on the contrary she even appeared shy of her unquestionable and all too victorious beauty. She seemed to wish, but to be unable, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... seemed to him that her very dress had a warmer rustle and glimmer, that there emanated from her glance and movements some heady fragrance of a long-past summer. He smiled to think that this phantom coquetry should have risen at the summons of an academic degree; but some deeper sense in him was stirred as by a vision of waste riches adrift on the ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... the invalid. Miss Broadhurst accompanied her mother, for she did not like to go out with any other chaperon—it was disagreeable to spend her time alone at home, and most agreeable to spend it with her friend Miss Nugent. In this she had no design, no coquetry; Miss Broadhurst had too lofty and independent a spirit to stoop to coquetry: she thought that, in their interview at the gala, she understood Lord Colambre, and that he understood her—that he was not inclined to court her for her fortune—that ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... up her apron and filled it with the vivid blooms. The child that had thus brought loaves of bread to a governor's table spread beneath a sugar-tree, with mountains round about, had been no purer of heart, no more innocent of rustic coquetry. When her apron was filled she would have returned to the house, but Haward would not have it so. "They will call when dinner is ready," he said. "I wish to talk to you, little maid. Let us go sit in the shade of the ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... impression I have of my life at Vienna is melancholy. Goethe has said, that in youth we cannot be happy unless we love. I did not love; but I was devoured by a restless wish to be something to others. I became the victim of ingratitude and cold coquetry—then I desponded, and imagined that my discontent gave me a right to hate the world. I receded to solitude; I had recourse to my books, and my desire again to enjoy the society of Adrian became ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... a certain literary coquetry may be permissible to retailers of the marvelous, the sober chronicler is bound to forego such advantage as he may reap from an odd-sounding name, on which many ephemeral successes are founded in these days. Wherefore ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... surely see through this obvious patter; but I had under-estimated the average human capacity for swallowing flattery. Instead of dismissing his fulsome nonsense with a contemptuous smile, Lady Georgina perked herself up with a conscious air of coquetry, and asked for more. 'Yes, they were delightful days in Vienna,' she said, simpering; 'I was young then, Count; I enjoyed life with ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... like the music in the house, they seemed strangely far away. The stirring of the wind made the sudden damp on his forehead icy-cold. Margaret's hands slowly left her face, which had changed as by a miracle. Every trace of coquetry was gone. It was the face of a woman who knew her own heart, and had the sweet frankness to speak it, that was lifted ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... either of coquetry, tears, flatteries, or promises of enduring love, remained untried to induce Bonaparte to take the decisive step. Sometimes Pauline would pout; sometimes her eyes shed the tears of repentance over her own faithlessness, and she vowed she would take refuge in a cloister if Bonaparte ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... impersonal as force itself, Felice had once, by some mysterious feminine art, addressed, in all innocence, her little maneuver of fascination. One lift of the steady eyelid, one quiet glint of that terrible cold gray eye, that poniarded her every tissue of complexity, inconsistency, and coquetry, had been enough. Felice had fled the field from this young fellow, so much her junior, and then afterward, in a tremor of discomfiture and distress, had kept ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... will, having precluded all advances on your part. The declaration, without the most indirect invitation of yours, must proceed from the man, to render it permanent and valuable; and nothing short of good sense and an easy, unaffected conduct, can draw the line between prudery and coquetry. It would be no great departure from truth to say that it rarely happens otherwise than that a thorough-paced coquette dies in celibacy, as a punishment for her attempts to mislead others, by encouraging looks, words, or actions, given for no other purpose than to draw men on to make ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... pride of my sex; I can bear being told I am in the wrong, but tell it me gently. Perhaps I have been indiscreet; I came young into the hurry of the world; a great innocence and an undesigning gaiety may possibly have been construed coquetry and a desire of being followed, though never meant by me. I cannot answer for the [reflections] that may be made on me: all who are malicious attack the careless and defenceless: I own myself to ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... of her manner towards him. Simplicity verges on coquetry. Was she flirting? he said to himself. No forcible translation of favour into suspicion was able to uphold such a theory. The performance had been too well done to be anything but real. It had the defects without which nothing is genuine. ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... for the second time in his life. He met, saw, and was conquered by Elizabeth Newton, the daughter of a wheelwright, at Ashton, a small hamlet close to Helpston. She was but a plain girl, but possessed of all the arts of coquetry; and though John Clare did not care much for her at first, she gradually entangled him into fervent affection, or what he held to be such. It was not Platonic love, by any means, like that for sweet Mary Joyce; and less so on the part ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... after our arrival, and found the rites homely and naked, very much like those of our own Presbyterians. There was a luxury about this building that you would hardly expect to meet among a people so simple, which quite puts the coquetry of our own carpeted, cushioned, closet-like places of worship to shame. This is the summer church of Vevey, another being used for winter. This surpasses the refinement of the Roman ladies, who had their summer ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... there is but one of them," explained the countess to the abbe when he questioned her. That answer showed the priest her total want of coquetry. Laurence did not conceive that she was loved by ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... tragedy occurred there are seven rocks, visible only on rare occasions when the river is very low, and till lately it was a popular superstition that these rocks were placed there by Providence, anxious to impart a moral to young women addicted to coquetry and practical jests. To this day many boatmen on the Rhine regard these rocks with awe, and it is told that now and then seven wraiths are to be seen there; it is even asserted that sometimes these apparitions sing in strains as delectable as ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... Gallery, next day, she was not late by coquetry, but because she had changed her dress at the last minute, and because she was afraid of letting him think her eager. She saw him at once standing under the colonnade, looking by no means imperturbable, and marked the change in his face when he caught sight of her, with a little thrill. She ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... that I had almost forgotten this latter creature, the automaton. Apparently she had, too, for at first a puzzled look came to her eyes, then she smiled up at me with a bit of her own individual coquetry. ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... the brazen creature tap Davidge's elbow and smile, putting out her hand with coquetry. She saw her debarrass herself of her companion, a French officer whose exquisite horizon-blue uniform was amazingly crossed with the wound and service chevrons of three years' warfaring. Nevertheless, Lady Clifton-Wyatt dropped him for the civilian Davidge. Mamise, flitting ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... the putting-up of some thick blond locks that had escaped, and the rolling-up of her sleeves over a pair of strong, rounded arms, Rand lingered near her. All trace of the "Pet's" previous professional coquetry was gone,—perhaps it was only replaced by a more natural one; but as she looked up, and caught sight of Rand's interested face, she laughed again, and colored a little. Slight as was the blush, it was sufficient to kindle a sympathetic fire in Rand's own cheeks, ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... nostrils, as I held the braid. Who could the woman be who brought that costly fragrance into a deserted farmhouse? For so exquisite and unique a fragrance could only be the work of a master perfumer. There was youth in that vigorous hair, coquetry in the individual perfume, panic in her useless sacrifice of the braid I held; yet strangest self-possession in the telling of that fanciful tale of sorcery ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... experiment on Dutch paper. But the lady said she did not know how that might be, and she went on toasting the experiment. In all this there is a fine contempt for everything but the spiritual aspect of literature; there is an aversion to the mere coquetry and display of morocco and red letters, and the toys which amuse the minds of men. Where ladies have caught "the Bibliomania," I fancy they have taken this pretty fever from the other sex. But it ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... was blackened. Nor is the extravagance of the methods, which the militant lady follows to put over her program, so foreign to her nature as it may seem. The suffragette adapts to her needs a form of feminine coquetry as old as the world. To defy and denounce the male has always been one of woman's most successful ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... distinguished by her air of high supremacy, than by her beauty. She sat loftily in a lofty phaeton, which was emblazoned with arms, and covered with coronets; and she played with her long whip, as ladies of old managed their fans, with grace and coquetry. She was dressed in a rich habit, whose facings and epaulettes spoke her the lady of the noble colonel of some provincial corps of volunteers. A high military cap, surmounted with a plume of black feathers, well became her bright, bold, black eyes, and her brow that looked as ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 284, November 24, 1827 • Various
... of this ornamentation, and displayed much coquetry in attracting our notice to it. Wealthier women in Tibet have quite a small fortune hanging down their backs, for all the money or valuables earned or saved are sewn on to the Tchukti. To the lower end of the Tchukti one, two or three rows of small brass or silver bells are attached, ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... whispering at their expense. Dolly had never known the sensation of being a wallflower, and for the first time her natural wit deserted her. At first she had deployed all the instinctive arts of her challenged coquetry. She had openly flaunted her affection for Skippy, smiling into his fascinated eyes, laughing uproariously at the inanities he had to offer. Then her spirits suddenly evaporated and she listened with a cold creepy feeling in her back, while Skippy, in desperation for a topic ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... either the habit or the power of analyzing her own sensations,—even if she had seen her soul from without, as she certainly did not within,—she would have recoiled from the thought of deliberate coquetry. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... if thinking. "Do you want me to call him in?" she said quietly, but without the least trace of archness or coquetry. "Would you rather he were here—or shall we go out now and meet him? I'll say you just came as I was ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... the Toomeys. While Hugh did not resent it or defend Kate, he did not join in their ridicule of her. She was "green," he could not deny that, yet not in the sense the Toomeys meant. Naive, ingenuous, he felt were better words. She knew nothing of social usages, and she was without a suspicion of the coquetry that he looked for in girls before they had begun to do up their hair. She spoke with startling frankness upon subjects which he had been taught were taboo. He admired and was accustomed to soft, helpless, clinging femininity, and it grated upon him to ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... than a suspicion that he had led her on to say these very words. And in admitting that she cared to have the conversation proceed upon this footing, she realised that she was sheering towards unequivocal coquetry. She saw the false move now, knew that she had lowered her guard. On all accounts it would have been more dignified to have shown only a mild interest in what Corthell wished. She realised that once more she had acted ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... might never have been dreamed of in the studio of the painter, but is not unworthy of the boudoir of the belle. It is the young Englishwomen at Vienna who, if we may believe Eugene Chapus, have taken the initiative in this new refinement of coquetry, which employs not only a greater variety and quantity of perfume than in previous years, but employs it according to a certain scientific system. At balls, perfumes are especially de rigueur, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... is it in the right place?" and she looked at him with a glance exhibiting the most curious commingling of naivete and coquetry. ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... inflame the passion it was meant to chill. The favors of the marchioness had hitherto been sought with avidity, and accepted with rapture; and the repulsive insensibility which she now experienced, roused all her pride, and called into action every refinement of coquetry. ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... she had just used to her cousin now addressed to herself, she turned upon him a look of love, her first look of loving womanhood,—a glance in which there is nearly as much of coquetry as of inmost depth. He took her hand ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... entitled, if he could, to win Junia for himself, to the mind of Denzil the stain of his brother's past was on Tarboe's life. He saw Tarboe and Junia meet; he knew Tarboe put himself in her way, and he was right in thinking that the girl, with a mind for comedy and coquetry, was drawn instinctively ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... letter proved that Randolph had intruded on her acquaintance, and she had objected from coyness or coquetry; and that when he persisted, she was so enraged that she flew into a passion and wilfully ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... animating his wife, annoyed her; his protestations wearied her; his vows gave her the headache; and his caresses were a colic that made her blood run cold. Of course, the prince perceived nothing, being lost in wonder and admiration of the beauty's coyness and coquetry. And as women must give away their hearts, whether asked or not, so the lovely Dangalah Rani lost no time in lavishing all the passion of her idle soul upon Mahi-pala, the handsome ambassador of peace and war. By this means the three were happy and were ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... occupied this stately figure, in what way ideas circulated in her kerchiefed head, we are left to divine. Her conduct is a little enigmatical. Had she any thought of marrying Olenin, or were her actions dictated by coquetry accompanied by a spice of mischief? We are inclined ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... perhaps it was better for their reputation with their neighbors that they had not been BEHOLDEN to the "No'th." Seeing a cloud pass over Courtland's face, the young lady added with an affected sigh, and the first touch of feminine coquetry which had invaded their ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... dancing-master, she is almost the last of a school that nursed but the single aim of subjugating man. To-night, at seventy-something, she is a bit of pink bisque fragility, bubbling tirelessly with reminiscence, her vivacity unimpaired, her energy amazing, and her coquetry faultless. From which we should learn, and be grateful therefor, that when a girl is brought up in the way she ought to go she will never be able to depart ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... replied Dr. Leete. "There is no more pretense of a concealment of feeling on their part than on the part of their lovers. Coquetry would be as much despised in a girl as in a man. Affected coldness, which in your day rarely deceived a lover, would deceive him wholly now, for no one ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... England might, with equal justice, draw the characters of the women there, from those which he might meet with on board the ships in one of the naval ports, or in the purlieus of Covent-Garden and Drury-Lane. I must however allow, that they are all completely versed in the art of coquetry, and that very few of them fix any bounds to their conversation. It is therefore no wonder that they have obtained ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... laugh is silvery. She points to a gay mountaineer, who is tripping up to her merrily. Why does Glyndon feel jealous? Why, when she speaks again, does he shake his head no more? He offers his hand; Fillide blushes, and takes it with a demure coquetry. What! is it so, indeed! They whirl into the noisy circle of the revellers. Ha! ha! is not this better than distilling herbs, and breaking thy brains on Pythagorean numbers? How lightly Fillide bounds along! How her lithesome waist supples itself ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... out his reply through his teeth. "God has given you women a plentiful supply of coquetry to start with, and on the top of that you have the milliner and the jeweller to help you; but do not think we men are ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... you let me send my coach for you? Mr. Soame Jenyns has been dying with impatience; some of us thought you would not come; others thought it only coquetry; but come, let us repair the time as we can, and introduce you to ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... conservatories and in back drawing-rooms, in lobbies while she waited for her carriage—had looked at her piteously with tenderest declarations trembling on their lips; but she had contrived to keep them at bay, to strike them dumb by her coldness, or confound them by her coquetry; for all these were ineligibles, whom Lady Lesbia Haselden did not want to ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Cicero and prove the right of my cause, and I will be your Caesar and carry it through," Frederick wrote to Jordan after the invasion of Silesia. Gaily, with light step as if going to a dance, the King entered upon the fields of his victories. There was still cheerful enjoyment of life, sweet coquetry with verse, and intellectual conversation with his intimates on the pleasures of the day, on God, nature, and immortality, which he considered the spice of life. But the great task upon which he had entered began to have its effect upon his soul even in the early weeks, even ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... her in astonishment. There was not the slightest trace of coyness, coquetry, or even raillery in her clear, honest eyes, and yet it would seem as if she had taken his proposition in its fullest sense as a matrimonial declaration, and actually referred him to her father. He was pleased, ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... a rebuff, and Rita's coquetry deserted her, leaving her mortified and piqued. She stared at ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... the dilemma; she had not written either out of coquetry or because she did not really care for him. If the former were the true reason, she was cruel; if the latter, she ought to tell him so at once, and he would try to master himself. On no hypothesis was she justified in leaving him without a word. Tortured alternately by fear, ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... in a provincial town, under the shelter of her own native purity and innocence, no such idea could find countenance. Even the thought which sometimes dimly presented itself, that by some harmless coquetry she might perhaps excite her husband's jealousy, and thereby chance to win back his love, was one which she always stifled in its beginning as weak ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... my folly of uncovering, nor venture by even so much as too long a look to manifest an interest in her; yet my heart was beating audibly. I trembled and consciously colored as she turned her big black eyes upon me with a look of obvious recognition entirely devoid of boldness or coquetry. ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... difficult a problem as that," she said, with a slight toss of the head, a bit of antique coquetry which impressed him with a new sense of her thorough self-possession, and imposed itself upon his untrained mind as the air of a true woman of the world; "I fancy I can solve. Leave him to me. I'll find out what can be done ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... only seven years old? Did I not remember how I would pass her house on my way to school, and stand at the gate and whistle until she came shyly out, with her face as red as her little hood and tippet, and give me her books to carry, and protest with the ever present coquetry of girlhood that she thought I had gone long ago? Could I ever forget how I saved my coppers, one by one, until I had accumulated a sum large enough to buy a whole cocoanut, which I presented to her in the proudest moment ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... strained, but most of them contain a capital hit and are usually founded on the facts. It is a well authenticated fact that the beaver has but one mate; and, that they live together a loving couple, as if husband and wife. As to their liaisons, coquetry, flirting and so forth, doubtless the society in some parts of the human family will bear a faithful resemblance in these respects also. As an example of industry the world will look in vain for a better one than is afforded by the little beaver of the ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... look at your poor girls, many of them fading around you, dropping off in consumption or decline; or, what is worse, degenerating to sour old maids—envious, back-biting, wretched, because life is a desert to them; or, what is worst of all, reduced to strive, by scarce modest coquetry and debasing artifice, to gain that position and consideration by marriage which to celibacy is denied. Fathers! cannot you alter these things? Perhaps not all at once; but consider the matter well when it is brought before you, receive ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... vicinity of Forbes Gurney. Why, she could scarcely say. It was not coquetry. She just drew near, talked to him of stage work and her plays and her ambitions. She sketched him as she had Cowperwood and others, and one day Cowperwood found three studies of Forbes Gurney in her note-book idyllicly done, a note ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... and shall have all you ask," said I, giving him the letter. "It is the language of the heart, and of a heart strongly attached to you. I can see affection in every line of it. Of course she mingles a little coquetry with her sentiment; but was there ever a pretty woman, who was not more or less a coquette? She is a gem: never think it the less pure because it sparkles. Rely upon your ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... young, you promised to have power by your charms, renewing those she had never forgotten in her lost Iza. No one consulted the Almanack de Gotha when you were launched on an admiring society as one of the Vieradlers. You soon won a great reputation for freshness of wit and coquetry in all South Germany. In plain words, you could not see a man come into the drawing-room without wishing to make him fall in love with you. We want to monopolize genius—you to monopolize the love of man. You ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... elevated Fanny to the rank of wife, and what terrors he was in respecting the arrival of his father. He described the scene with considerable humour, taking care to dwell especially upon that part of it which concerned Fanny's coquetry and irrepressible desire of captivating mankind; his meaning being, "You see, Laura, I was not so guilty in that little affair; it was the girl who made love to me, and I who resisted. As I am no longer present, the little siren practises ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... looked beautiful in her glittering accoutrements, set off by her jet-black shining coat. With an air of demure abstraction she permitted me to mount her, and even for a hundred yards or so indulged in a mincing maidenly amble that was not without a touch of coquetry. Encouraged by this, I addressed a few terms of endearment to her, and in the exuberance of my youthful enthusiasm I even confided to her my love for Consuelo and begged her to be "good" and not ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... persons of her rank, suffering is one of the greatest virtues. People were apt to fancy that she was patient to a degree of indolence. In a word, they expected wonders from her; and Bautru used to say she had already worked a miracle because the most devout had forgotten her coquetry. The Duc d'Orleans, who made a show as if he would have disputed the Regency with the Queen, was contented to be Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom. The Prince de Conde was declared President of the Council, and the Parliament ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... so irresistibly innocent in the boy's serious, wondering tone as he said these words that a smile, in spite of herself, broke out amongst the thousand dimples round Helen's charming lips. Perhaps the little witch felt a touch of coquetry for the first time. ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... trace of her mission; usually with no child in her arms or even in sight; a mere figurine, calculated perhaps to entice, but not to bear; incidentally degrading the artist who depicts her to a fashion-plate painter, perhaps with suggestions of the arts of toilet, cosmetics, and coquetry, as if to promote decadent reaction to decadent stimuli. As in the Munchausen tale, the wolf slowly ate the running nag from behind until he found himself in the harness, so in the disoriented woman the mistress, virtuous ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... The child had no coquetry in her nature, else would have noticed the earnest look in the boy's brown eyes that accompanied his significantly spoken words. As it was, ...
— That Old-Time Child, Roberta • Sophie Fox Sea
... of his weather-beaten domino, always, he just displays, with a sort of tragic coquetry, the toe of a stout and serviceable marble boot. And this, I have begun to believe, is all that I shall ever see of him. Else might I not be writing about him; for else had he not so haunted me. If I knew ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... indeed, we could expect nothing else from a cento of Lucan's hyperbolical antitheses. These bravuras of rhetoric are strung together on the thread of a clumsy plot. The intrigues of Ptolemy, and the ambitious coquetry of his sister Cleopatra, have a petty and miserable appearance alongside of the picture of the fate of the great Pompey, the vengeance-breathing sorrow of his wife, and the magnanimous compassion of Caesar. Scarcely has the conqueror paid the last honours to the reluctant shade of ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... so much discernment, that I should think she could not be easily deceived. If my kinswoman knows your views, I should say that you have reason to be encouraged by her manner. There is nothing like coquetry about her; I am convinced she thinks ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... this effect was the result of the Spanish mode rather than of individual sophistication; just as the succession of lazy poses and bendings were the result of a racial feminine instinct rather than of conscious personal coquetry. Certainly we four red-shirted tramps were poor enough game. Nevertheless, whatever the motive, the effect was certainly real enough. She was alluring rather than charming, with her fan and her rebosa, her veiled glances, her languorous, bold poses, and the single red flower in ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... without her inevitable Dormilly!'—And the Viscount, as he spoke, pointed towards a tall and slender young woman, who, gliding rather than walking, met the ladies by whom she passed, with a graceful and modest salute, and replied to the looks of the men BY BRILLIANT VEILED GLANCES FULL OF COQUETRY ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Marquis d'Esgrignon, General Montriveau, the Marquis de Ronquerolles and d'Ajuda-Pinto, Prince Galathionne, the young Ducs de Grandlieu and de Rhetore, the Vicomte de Serizy, and the handsome Lucien de Rubempre, had all been treated with the utmost coquetry of brush and pencil by celebrated artists. As the princess now received only two or three of these personages, she called the book, jokingly, the ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... (Auto. p. 462) says:—'She did not take at Edinburgh. Lord Kames, who was at first catched with her Parnassian coquetry, said at last that he believed she had as much learning as a well-educated college lad here of sixteen. In genuine feelings and deeds she was remarkably deficient. We saw her often in the neighbourhood of Newcastle, and in that ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... most commonly to be found in a French comedy; lively and playful, yet elegant and graceful; entering with ardour into amusements, yet capable of deep feeling and serious reflection: fond of admiration and flattery, yet innocent and modest; full of petty artifice and coquetry, yet natural and unaffected in affairs of importance; capricious and giddy in appearance, but warm-hearted and affectionate in reality. It is a character to which there is a kind of approximation among many French women; and if it were as well supported by them in real ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... Who knows thy favour'd haunts to name? Whether at Paris you prepare The supper and the chat to share, While fix'd in artificial row, Laughter displays its teeth of snow: Grimace with raillery rejoices, And song of many mingled voices, Till young coquetry's artful wile Some foreign novice shall beguile, Who home return'd, still prates of thee, ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... already been made to her whole relations, from first to last, with Ladislaw. It is not easy to conceive anything more touchingly beautiful than these, more perfectly in harmony with her whole nature. Of anything approaching either coquetry or prudery she is incapable. The utter absence of all self-consciousness, whether of external beauty or inward loveliness; the ethereal purity, the childlike trustfulness, the instinctive recognition of all that is true and earnest and high in Ladislaw, ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... ebony;—where could Drowne, in his sober walk of life, have beheld the vision here so matchlessly embodied! And then her face! In the dark eyes, and around the voluptuous mouth, there played a look made up of pride, coquetry, and a gleam of mirthfulness, which impressed Copley with the idea that the image was secretly enjoying the perplexing admiration ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... While this coquetry or shyness is exhibited by John Shark, the whole after-part of the ship is so clustered with heads that not an inch of spare room is to be had for love or money. The rigging, the mizen-top, and even the gaff, out ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... you not beheld a thin-veiled mockery in her look? Why, poor fool, has she not mocked you from the first? You dream of her lips. Were not their smiles but coquetry and derision? ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... The eyes of this woman magnetized him in the same way. The words she caught in regard to leaving France struck a chill to her heart. A funereal gloom settled over the room. Additional dismay overwhelmed her as D'Argenton wound up with a vigorous tirade against French women,—their lightness and coquetry, the insincerity of their smiles, and the venality of ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... at once primitive and serious. Women are disposed to follow the noble dream called duty. "Thus, supported by innocence and conscience, they introduce into love a profound and upright sentiment, abjure coquetry, vanity, and flirtation; they do not lie, they are not affected. When they love they are not tasting a forbidden fruit, but are binding themselves for their whole life. Thus understood, love becomes almost a holy thing; the spectator no longer wishes to be malicious ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... among her guests; her tall, slender form, so full of dignity, she was the "observed of all observers." Her winning smile, so dangerous to those gallants in attendance who had never realized the true sense of coquetry, was unusually fascinating, and every one who had been honored by Miss Winnie's notice, pronounced her decidedly the belle of the season; but as they turned to the gentle creature at her side, their thoughts gradually assumed a different ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... object of her wishes. She had finally reached it by bribery and intrigue, by hypocritical tenderness, by the resignation of her maiden modesty and womanly honor, and by all the arts of coquetry. ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... generally in the absence, not in the presence, of the beloved object. For otherwise we might possibly complain of their ingratitude and deafness, with the same reason as Pasiphae doth of her bull, whom she endeavoured to engage by all the coquetry practised with good success in the drawing-room on the much more sensible as well as tender hearts of ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... on every occasion; and the amiable Josephine, whose only fault was being too much of the woman, was continually tormented by sad presentiments. Carried away by the easiness of her character, she did not perceive that the coquetry which enlisted for her so many defenders also supplied her implacable enemies with ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... do," responded Miss Nellie, without the least trace of coquetry. "Is the wedding or the hanging to take place first, or together, so ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... every possible and impossible factory. Unpractical and reserved as she was on ordinary occasions, she could be full of artifice and coquetry whenever she wished to gain access to a steam bakery and particular as she generally was about her toilette, she would come away again sooty and grimy if thereby she could procure for Rafael some insight into mechanics. She shrank from foul air as from ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... the means to regain that proud heart," said Count Mantcuffel, shrugging his shoulders. "With tears and languishing she will lose her influence, and only gain contempt. You who are the mistress of love and coquetry should understand that, and instruct your beautiful pupil. Now, however, comes the most important question. What of the marriage of the Prince ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... and I chose—very well, too. Then my second marriage: it was even then not the same thing. People had commented on the singular death of my first husband, and suitors had already begun to reflect before declaring themselves. However, as I am not stupid, thanks to determination, cajolery and coquetry, I succeeded in getting a second husband. Alas! it was not without trouble. But the third. Oh, you have no idea all the trouble I had; truly I was ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... face. She read condemnation in both pairs of eyes. For the first time in her life she felt daunted, humiliated. She knew nothing more beyond the fact that in deliberate coquetry she had pitted brother against brother, and that something cruel and tragical had happened for which she was being judged. Neither spoke. She summoned her outer dignity, tossed her pretty head, and went out by the end ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... where yesterday they dashed in pieces the ship that was black with men, women, and children. But what shall we say of those billows of human life, of which we are ourselves a part, that surge over the graves of its own dead with dances and laughter and many a coquetry, with panting chase for gain and preference, and pious regrets and tender condolences for the thousands that died yesterday—and ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... superfluity—a private half-sovereign lay in the inmost compartment of her purse; this coin was destined to recompense Mr. Cannon. Her free hand went up to the heavy chignon that hung uncertainly beneath her bonnet—a gesture of coquetry which she ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... answer. And why had she not volunteered the assurance he wanted so eagerly and dared not ask for? The beastly answer to that question was that she had enjoyed the thrill of his uncertainty—a miserable sort of feline coquetry. ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... with a woman's sweet and placid dignity of love, never failing, never tiring, yet invisible as a rivulet that runs through deep green bushes, scarcely heard and never seen. Sybilla's arts—the only arts she knew—were the whole armoury of girlish coquetry, or childish wile, passionate tenderness and angry or sullen reproach, alternating each other. Her husband was equally unmoved by all. He seemed a very rock, indifferent to either sunshine or storm. And yet it was not so. He had in his nature deep, earnest, abiding tenderness; but he ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... pleasant vices of the age, yet not of them, was Antoine Watteau (1684-1721), the melancholy youth from French Flanders, who began by painting St. Nicholases at three francs a week and his board, but who soon invented a new manner and became famous as the Peintre des Scenes Galantes. These scenes of coquetry, frivolity and amorous dalliance, with their patched, powdered and scented ladies and gallants, toying with life in a land where, like that of the Lotus Eaters, it seems always afternoon, he clothes with a refined and delicate ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... corresponded no longer to my imaginary picture of her. When we met in the dance she pressed my hand, which made me indignant, as though it were an immodest thing. She was no longer a fairy. She had broad shoulders, a budding bust, warm hands; there was youthful coquetry about her—something that, to me, seemed like erotic experience. I soon lost sight of her. But I retained a sentiment of gratitude towards her for what, as a ten-year-old child, she had afforded me, this naturally supernatural impression, ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... shared her husband's voyaging, kept the ship's accounts, was known to all on board as "The Bos'un," and when battened under hatches in foul weather spent her time in trimming the most wonderful bonnets. Her coquetry stopped short at bonnets. To-day indeed—the weather being warm—in lieu of bodice she had slipped on a grey ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... show of Kohl and coquetry! * By what thy shape displays of lissome symmetry! By what thy liplets store of honey dew and wine! * By what thy mind adorns of gracious kindly gree! To me thy sight dream-visioned, O my hope! exceeds * The happiest ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... several years, had danced with her on many a feast day, and never lost an opportunity to whisper the old, old story in her willing ear. Others had done the like, but the dark-eyed senorita is an adept in the art of coquetry, and there you are. But Enrique swore a great oath he would know. Yes, he would. He would lay siege to her as he had never done before. He would become un oso grande. Just wait until the branding was over and the fiestas of ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams |
