"Modish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... age, when words are so curiously refin'd and defin'd, modern critics and fashionable word-mongers have, in the abundance of their wisdom, made a very nice distinction between them—for my part, I always endeavour to reconcile modish pleasure with real comfort, and custom with reason, as much as is in any way consistent with the obligation one is under to conform a little to the perverse notions ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... staves as smooth 's a bead, Wi' virls and whirlygigums at the head. The Goth was stalking round with anxious search, Spying the time-worn flaws in every arch; It chanc'd his new-come neibor took his e'e, And e'en a vexed and angry heart had he! Wi' thieveless sneer to see his modish mien, He, down the water, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... this "quiet felicity" of the artist with the absurd travesties worn on our American stage, we can better understand the pleasure which filled Mr. James's heart. What, for example, would Madame Nathalie have thought of the modish gowns which Mrs. Fiske introduces into the middle-class Norwegian life of Ibsen's dramas? No plays can less well bear such inaccuracies, because they depend on their stage-setting to bring before our eyes their alien aspect, to make us feel an atmosphere with which we are wholly unfamiliar. The accessories ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... Jevne it might be said that she was real where Ray was artificial, and artificial where Ray was real. Everything that Miss Jevne wore was real. She was as modish as Ray was shabby, as slim as Ray was stocky, as artificially tinted and tinctured as Ray was naturally rosy-cheeked and buxom. It takes real money to buy clothes as real as those worn by Miss Jevne. The soft charmeuse in her graceful gown was real and miraculously draped. ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... her rounded pate Is blue, is heavenly blue with slate; She "wings the midway air" elate, As magpie, crow, or chough; White paint her modish visage smears, Yellow and pointed are her ears, No pendent portico appears Dangling beneath, for Whitbread's shears {51} Have cut ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... married my Jean. I had a long and much-loved fellow-creature's happiness or misery in my determination, and I durst not trifle with so important a deposit, nor have I any cause to repent it. If I have not got polite tittle-tattle, modish manners, and fashionable dress, I am not sickened and disquieted with the multiform curse of boarding-school affectation; and I have got the handsomest figure, the sweetest temper, the soundest constitution, and the kindest heart in the country.... A certain late publication of ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... William and Margaret, with the beautiful old ballad, There came a ghost to Marg'ret's door. There is indeed no comparison. The changes made are nearly all either tinsel ornaments or mutilations of the traditional text, which an eighteenth century poetaster had sought to dress up to please the modish taste of the period. Nothing can be more out of key with the simple, direct, and graphic style of the Scottish ballads, dealing with elemental emotions and the situations arising therefrom, than a style founded on that of Pope, unless it be the style of the modern poet ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... would have delighted the author of "Sartor Resartus." With his modish and correct clothes, his self-respect seemed to have returned. He carried himself differently, there was a confident ring in his tone. He studied the menu which Wingate passed him, through a well-polished eyeglass, and one could well have believed that he was a distinguished ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... two ladies at the table, one of venerable aspect, with short, white curls, held from her face by side-combs, a modish breakfast-cap, and a morning-gown of thin gray silk. The other was young enough to be her daughter, as indeed she was, dressed in deep mourning. Rising instantly from her place as hostess behind the silver service, she extended her ...
— The Phantom Of Bogue Holauba - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... these staid and decorous people looked straight before them in an attitude of quiet expectancy. A few little children turned on me their round, curious eyes, but no one else stared at the blundering stranger, whose modish coat, with a sprig of wild roses in its buttonhole, made him rather a conspicuous contrast to the other men ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... marvel much what periwigged phrase Won the heart of this sentimental Quaker, At what gold-laced speech of those modish days She listened—the mischief ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... of romance, perhaps; but I had a long and much-loved fellow-creature's happiness or misery in my determination, and I durst not trifle with so important a deposit. Nor have I any cause to repent it. If I have not got polite tattle, modish manners, and fashionable dress, I am not sickened and disgusted with the multiform curse of boarding-school affectation; and I have got the handsomest figure, the sweetest temper, the soundest constitution, and ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... she said simply: "I am, but how did you know? I don't remember ever seeing you," he took note of her modish blue riding-dress with divided skirts and patent-leather boots. There was a clean freshness about her person, a smiling candor in her eyes, and a fine, frank girlishness in her face that attracted him beyond measure. She appeared to be about twenty years of age, and was such ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... already well known in the modish world of town for his beauty and adventurous spirit. He was indeed already a beau and conqueror of female hearts. It was suspected that he cherished a private ambition to set the modes in beauties and embroidered waistcoats himself in time, and be as renowned abroad and as ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... bare feet, he flew at Ivan Petrovitch with his fists. The latter, as though by design, had that morning arranged his locks a la Titus, and put on a new English coat of a blue colour, high boots with little tassels and very tight modish buckskin breeches. Anna Pavlovna shrieked with all her might and covered her face with her hands; but her son ran over the whole house, dashed out into the courtyard, rushed into the kitchen-garden, into the pleasure-grounds, and flew across into the road, and kept running without looking round ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... you want from me?" Mrs. Feinermann gasped. Her hat was awry, and what had once been a modish pompadour was toppled to one side and shed hairpins with every palsied nod of her head. "I ain't done ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... ere he to manhood came, Song from celestial heights had wandered down, Put off her robe of sunlight, dew and flame, And donned a modish ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... old-fashioned looking gentleman, with hollow waist, high prow and stern, and which, seen lying among crowds of tight Yankee traders, and pert French brigantines, always reminded me of a cocked hat among modish beavers. ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... heretofore. For all that, she looked no older; her self-assertion, though more elaborate, was not a bit more impressive, and the phrases she used, the turn of her sentences, the colour of her speech, very little resembled anything that would have fallen from a damsel bred in the modish world. Her affectation was shot through with spontaneity; her impertinence had a juvenile seriousness which made it much more amusing than offensive; and a feminine charm in her, striving to prevail over ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... ravished, and beaten, in one quarter of an hour; my poor limbs smart, and my poor head aches: ay, do, do, smart limb, ache head, and sprout horns; but I'll be hanged before I'll pity you:—you must needs be married, must ye? there's for that; [Beats his own head.] and to a fine, young, modish lady, must ye? there's for that too; and, at threescore, you old, doting cuckold! take that remembrance;—a fine time of day for a man to be bound prentice, when he is past using of his trade; to set up an equipage ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... forgive the poet if he spins his thread too fine and does not substantiate his romance by the municipal virtues of justice, punctuality, fidelity and pity. I hate the prostitution of the name of friendship to signify modish and worldly alliances. I much prefer the company of ploughboys and tin-peddlers to the silken and perfumed amity which celebrates its days of encounter by a frivolous display, by rides in a curricle and dinners at the best taverns. The end of friendship ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... better reparation for the folly or injustice with which he might be charged, by writing another poem, called the Progress of a Freethinker, whom he intended to lead through all the stages of vice and folly, to convert him from virtue to wickedness, and from religion to infidelity, by all the modish sophistry used for that purpose; and, at last, to dismiss him by his own ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... So some would-be wit Dubbed the fair dame. The title may not fit With accurate completeness; It soars some shades too high, this modish mot, As 'Mrs. LYON-HUNTER' sinks too low; Both nick-names fail ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various
... grown so common a fashion, that a modish man condemns it; a man of garniture and feather is above ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... sloping; the nose, rather sharp; every curve of the mouth, clear cut and delicate; the eyes, black, bright and piercing. Such was the man who, attired in a suit of black broadcloth, with buff vest, ruffled shirt, and white stock, and with hair tied in a modish queue, revealed himself to the gaze of the throng in front ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... well-fitting mouse-coloured great- coat furred in black, a pair of tight trousers of fashionable cut, and a hat of inimitable curl. After all, it was more likely that I should have recognised our visitors, than that they should have identified the modish gentleman with the miserable ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... presentable; conventional &c (customary) 613; genteel; well-bred, well mannered, well behaved, well spoken; gentlemanlike^, gentlemanly; ladylike; civil, polite &c (courteous) 894. polished, refined, thoroughbred, courtly; distingue [Fr.]; unembarrassed, degage [Fr.]; janty^, jaunty; dashing, fast. modish, stylish, chic, trendy, recherche; newfangled &c (unfamiliar) 83; all the rage, all the go^; with it, in, faddish. in court, in full dress, in evening dress; en grande tenue [Fr.] &c (ornament) 847. Adv. fashionably ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... four-poster with a sheet spread over the lower part of her body. The ministrants had clothed it in the old black- silk dress, with its spreading seams and panels of different materials. It reminded Peter of the new dress he had meant to get his mother, and of the modish suit which at that moment molded his own shoulders and waist. The pitifulness of her sacrifices trembled in Peter's throat. He pressed his lips together, and nodded silently to the black ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... soft reproach in his voice, "I have been sore mistook in you if you are one to be guided by the rabble." And he waved a hand toward the modish throng. ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... the repository of seven eggs and| |a box of figs, and told how she and her husband | |happened to be arrested last evening as shoplifters.| | | |As she talked, her husband, Charles Ewart, | |thirty-one years old, sat disconsolately in a cell, | |his modish green overcoat somewhat wrinkled, the | |careful creases in his gray trousers a bit less | |apparent, and his up-to-the-minute gray fedora a | |trifle out of shape and dusty. Nevertheless, he | |still ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... absurd. Hear me. In the theatre properties is a fine dress for Lady Modish and two more for Peggy and Susan Careless. Not perhaps what such ladies might expect, but passable. And—I know men. There's not a man will look at their gowns for looking at their faces, though the suits are well enough when all's said. I vow, Madam, you have ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... take thee. We go to England by the first boat,—nay, lay back, calm thyself or I take my wagging tongue away; if thou dost so much as stir again, I leave thee. Thou art to go to a great house over there and see grand folks with fine airs and modish dress. Wilt be glad to see outside of convent walls? 'Tis nine years since I brought thee here a babe of six, and have nursed thee well to this hour, and thy strength and health and beauty show the care given thee." She suddenly arose and went to the window ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... of these few plain Words of Command, a Woman of a tolerable Genius, who will apply herself diligently to her Exercise for the Space of but one half Year, shall be able to give her Fan all the Graces that can possibly enter into that little modish Machine. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Her horizon was fast receding and expanding. Homage became nightly tangible in bouquets, rings, brooches—things acceptable and (luckier than their donors) accepted. Even Sunday was not barren for Zuleika: modish hostesses gave her postprandially to their guests. Came that Sunday night, notanda candidissimo calculo! when she received certain guttural compliments which made absolute her vogue and enabled her to command, thenceforth, whatever ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... the line of vehicular sensationalism, a modish wicker-bodied phaeton and a minute pony-cart were seen on a pleasant afternoon to issue from a driveway far up a street that now has a name, but which used to be adequately identified by saying "up toward the ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... I said, having gathered the previous day that this was a popular American toast. She stared at me rather oddly, but made no comment other than to announce her departure on a shopping tour. Her bonnet, I noted, was quite wrong. Too extremely modish it was, accenting its own lines at the expense of a face to which less attention should have been called. This is a mistake common to the sex, however. They little dream how sadly they mock and betray their own faces. Nothing I think is more pathetic than their ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... a work set forth of such perfection, Will praise it self, and doth not beg protection From flatter'd greatness. Industry and pains For gen'ral good, his aim, his Countrey gains; Which ought respect him. A good English Cook, Excellent Modish Monsieurs, and that Book Call'd Perfect Cook, Merete's Pastery Translated, looks like old hang'd Tapistry, The wrong side outwards: so Monsieur adieu, I'm for our Native Mays Works rare and new, Who with Antique could have prepar'd and drest The Nations ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... Meg Merrilies, standing on her rock, stretched on her bier with "her head to the east," and Dirk Hatterick (equal to Shakespear's Master Barnardine), and Glossin, the soul of an attorney, and Dandy Dinmont, with his terrier-pack and his pony Dumple, and the fiery Colonel Mannering, and the modish old counsellor Pleydell, and Dominie Sampson,[D] and Rob Roy (like the eagle in his eyry), and Baillie Nicol Jarvie, and the inimitable Major Galbraith, and Rashleigh Osbaldistone, and Die Vernon, the best of secret-keepers; and ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... enemies or praises of himself, and they only could be expected to peruse them, whose passions left them leisure for the contemplation of abstracted truth, and whom virtue could please by her native dignity without the assistance of modish ornaments.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Services, and the rest—Thou know'st my meaning—The old Business of the Silver-World, Ned; by Fortune, it's a mad Age we live in, Ned; and here be so many—wicked Rogues, about this damn'd leud Town, that, 'faith, I am fain to speak in the vulgar modish Style, in my own Defence, and railly ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... of their contemplation. It was the sense of ownership which thrilled him. Something of the same sensation was upon him now. She was the sort of woman he had craved for always—slim, elegant, and what to him, with his quick powers of observation, counted for so much, she was modish, reflecting in her presence, her dress and carriage, even her speech, the best type of the prevailing fashion. She excited comment wherever she appeared. People, as he knew very well even now, were envying him his companion. And beneath it all—she, the ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... hand, held fast in Guy's, rested on his knee; Nan's charming head, with its modish dressing, lay against her shoulder. What more could a mother ask? Across the fireplace, Sam Burnett, most satisfactory of sons-in-law, and Margaret, Guy's best beloved, who had made the year one long honeymoon to him—so he ...
— On Christmas Day In The Evening • Grace Louise Smith Richmond
... as venerable as civilization itself, and as transient as the fad of the hour. Democratic institutions and universal educational privileges have bred a social mass intelligent and responsive enough to be modish, but ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... though in this, also, I must in the outset acquit him of any practical respect for the rulings of courts rhetorical. For here, again, he has no set fashion, no preferred pattern, no oft-recurring form; nothing at all stereotyped or modish; but just ranges at large in all the unchartered freedom and versatility of the English colloquial idiom. You may find in him sentences of every possible construction; but, except in his early plays, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson |
