"Pince-nez" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tall German professor with full blond beard; deep voiced; wears pince-nez with black tortoise shell ...
— Moral • Ludwig Thoma
... with a belt and in chamois leather shoes, was sitting in an armchair, and with a pince-nez with blue glasses he was reading a book that stood on a reading desk, while in his beautiful hand he held a half-burned cigarette daintily ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... been running down Macbeth, finding fault with the Lyceum production of it, and ridiculing SHAKSPEARE for having written it. When he had quite finished HENRY IRVING, 'laying low' in his chair at the table, adjusted his pince-nez, and, looking straight at the clever young gentleman, asked, in the mildest possible tone, 'My dear Sir, have you ever read Macbeth?' So," resumes the Baron, "I am inclined to ask Mr. BLACK'S young ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... little man with a fresh, well-fed face, bordered by a touch of old-fashioned, gray side-whisker, rather outstanding blue eyes, and he carried, and sometimes used as it was intended to be used, a heavy gold pince-nez, which more frequently, however, acted as a kind of lightning-conductor for the expression of his feelings. A pince-nez of many parts:—now it was a scalping-knife, slaughtering the hopes of some harried victim of the law; and ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... him and his wife driving past, with the proper escort of Life Guards, under a vista of quadrilingual mottoes, bowing acknowledgments to us. I wonder what he is like. I picture him as a small spare man, with a slightly grizzled beard, and pleasant though shifty eyes behind a pince-nez. I picture him frock-coated, bowler-hatted, and evidently nervous. His wife ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... intimate and unforgettable, as though I had never ceased to see them for all those intervening years. And bracing us both and holding back our emotion was, quite unmistakably, Miss Summersley Satchel, a blonde business-like young woman with a stumpy nose very cruelly corrugated and inflamed by a pince-nez that savagely did much more than its duty by its name. She remained seated, tilting her chair a little, pushing herself back from the ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... pretty well for a time. At first they were only mildly inconvenienced. Things used to disappear mysteriously, and turn up in unexpected places. Slipperton's pince-nez, for example, were lost, and found inside the piano. And Mrs. Slipperton's "false front" would be moved in the night from the dressing-table to the brass knob of the bed-post, even after she took to pinning it to the toilet cover. Things like that; irritating, ...
— The Psychical Researcher's Tale - The Sceptical Poltergeist - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • J. D. Beresford
... was an amazing dish. At table with them during those days was a very pale, very thin young man with gold pince-nez, fair hair and a painfully self-effacing manner, who had been quartered on the house by Judge Taylor for the purpose of documenting a vast accumulation of papers in Simon Varr's study. He took a mouthful of the pilau, ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... gas ring. Frances Carr was small and thirty-eight, and had a nice brown face and a merry smile. Pamela was a year older and tall and straight and pale, and her ash-brown hair swept smoothly back from a broad white forehead. Her grey eyes regarded the world shrewdly and pleasantly through pince-nez. Pamela was distinguished-looking, and so well-bred that you never got through her guard; she never hurt the feelings of others or betrayed her own. Competent she was, too, and the best organizer in Hoxton, which is to say a great deal, Hoxton needing and getting, one way ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... protege, "Lembka," as he always used to be called at school. And, what do you suppose? He did not at first recognise him, and stood still in surprise. Before him stood an irreproachably dressed young man with wonderfully well-kept whiskers of a reddish hue, with pince-nez, with patent-leather boots, and the freshest of gloves, in a full overcoat from Sharmer's, and with a portfolio under his arm. Lembke was cordial to his old schoolfellow, gave him his address, and begged him to come and see him some evening. ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... hands. In the middle a loud voice from the head of the Sixth Form table shouted out: "Silence! I want to see all new boys in my study at nine o'clock." It was Clarke, the head of the House, who spoke. He was tall, with pince-nez, one of those brilliant scholars who are too brilliant to get scholarships. He was a fanatic in many ways, a militarist essentially, a firebrand always. There was bound to be trouble during his reign. He could never let anything alone. He was ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... A young woman of 20, fast, tries to be mannish, wears a pince-nez, flirts and giggles. Speaks ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... gaunt, but it was not that so much as the colouring of her face and the fact that she was wearing pince-nez that made her an absolutely different being. This was the third time in her life that Judy was coming down to the West. Once it had been as a very young girl, full of dreams and questionings; once it had been as a woman who had already learned something of proportion; now it was as this elderly ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... turned round. It was a dark, foreign-looking face, the red face of a man who wore a black moustache and a little imperial, and whose bloodshot brown eyes simply glared through a pair of gold-rimmed pince-nez. There was something very ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... attracted attention anywhere; together they were doubly striking-looking. Arnold, tall and slight, carrying his head high, fair of complexion as a peachy-cheeked girl, was a peculiarly distinguished-looking man. The delicate pince-nez he wore emphasized slightly the elusive air of supercilious courtliness he always conveyed. Now, as he spoke to Ruth, who, although a tall girl, was some inches shorter than he, he maintained a strict perpendicular from the ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... his countenance, adorned with a black mustache, and small pointed beard, wore a cold and concentrated air of business—and he confronted the Jew millionaire without the slightest embarrassment or apology for having broken in upon his seclusion at so unseasonable an hour. He used a pince-nez, and was constantly putting it to his eyes, as though ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... pictures all painted under inspiration to my father, he carefully put on his pince-nez and studied them very closely. After that he said he must reserve his judgment. When they went to the Academy and were promptly refused, he drew a long face and said I had better have gone into the Indian Civil Service as he wished. Subsequently, ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... sort of thing won't do, you know, Mr Perceval,' said Sir Alfred fussily, adjusting a pair of gold pince-nez on his nose. The Head's name, which has not before been mentioned, was the Reverend Herbert Perceval, M.A. He had shivered at the sound of the 'O-o-o' which had preceded Sir Alfred's remark. He knew, ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... back to the chair where his uncle had been sitting. He found the glasses—gold pince-nez—but they were broken neatly in the middle, lying on the floor, as if they had dropped from someone's hand. He looked at them for a moment, puzzled, before he gave them back ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... the court, which had been broken when the foreman of the jury returned their verdict, was intensified as the Judge, with a quick glance over his pince-nez at the tall prisoner, marshalled his papers with the precision and method which old men display in tense moments such as these. He gathered them together, white paper and blue and buff and stacked them in a neat heap ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... interruption which came at that moment was welcome or otherwise. Caroline suddenly broke off in her speech and glanced warningly towards the larger room. A tall, grey-haired man, dressed in old-fashioned clothes and wearing a pince-nez, had lifted the curtains. He addressed the Duchess in ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... voice in a more or less violent altercation, and there was S. F. U., in a villainous old suit of gray flannels (I'll swear it was the same one that he had on last time I saw him), and a mackintosh, though it was a blazing hot day. His pince-nez were tacked onto his ears with wire as usual. He greeted me with effusive shouts, and drew me aside. Then after a few commonplaces of greeting, he fumbled in his pockets, ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... be seated on tenterhooks, even in the most comfortable of chairs. Her Spartan spine never consented graciously to the curves of cushions. She had smooth padded hair and smooth padded manners, and her eyes were magnified by thick pince-nez to a cow-like size. Most people, especially most women, were instinctively sorry for her, because she always looked a little clever and ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... some of the Oxford tradition in tone and manner. He had brown hair turning gray, a drooping mustache and wore pince-nez secured by a broad black cord. Being very short-sighted his eyes seen through the thick lenses ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... Ascher fumbled for his pince-nez, which he carries attached to a black silk ribbon. He fixed them on his nose and took a good ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... occasionally letting in an artery of new blood. Lilly's second year in High School such an infusion took place in the form of one H. Horace Lindsley, the young master of arts, his degree rather heavy upon him, dawning blondly and behind high-power pince-nez upon ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... just a trifle grumpily. So, to remove the false impression his surliness might produce on so benevolent a mind, I entered into conversation with the polite stranger. He was a man of middle age, and medium height, with a cultivated air, and a pair of gold pince-nez; his eyes were sharp; his voice was refined; he dropped into talk before long about distinguished people just then in Brighton. It was clear at once that he was hand in glove with many of the very best kind. We compared notes as to Nice, Rome, Florence, Cairo. Our new ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... character in spectacles—the pretentious tortoiseshell, the meek pince-nez of the school teacher, the twisted silver-framed glasses of the old villager. Babbitt's spectacles had huge, circular, frameless lenses of the very best glass; the ear-pieces were thin bars of gold. In them he was the modern ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... certain exuberant Spanish visitor at his house the other night." I looked into her brown eyes, but my own slipped off her velvety pupils without retaining anything. Then she reinforced her gaze with a pince-nez, ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... leather pumps; one had a riding-whip; the third was in motor-livery—buff and blue; another waddled with an air unmistakably French (feathers formed a boa about her neck); the next advanced firmly, a metronome swinging on a slender pince-nez chain; the last one of ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... of our sergeant bulged with wrath, pushing his pince-nez off his nose and causing them to clatter to the pavement. But a special constable is a man of more than ordinary courage. "Allow me," I murmured, and I stooped, picked them up and handed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various
... when he heard an automobile chugging through the capitol grounds and pause outside the main entrance. Half a minute later a man appeared at the head of the corridor and approached rapidly. As he came nearer Bob saw that he was about fifty years old. He wore a carefully trimmed imperial and a gold pince-nez and seemed to exude a general air of pomposity and power. He had glittering cold gray eyes and they snapped now with anger and apprehension as he half walked, half ran, down the corridor. Bob's keen glance, roving over the man for details, observed ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... haypie," Emma was saying, with adoring eyes on Miriam and her two arms outflung on the table. Miriam recoiled. This would not do—they must not all talk at once and go on like this. Minna's whole face was aflame. She sat up stiffly—adjusted her pince-nez—and desperately ordered the reading to begin again—at Minna. They all subsided and Minna's carefu blissfully-smiling face. The others sat back and attended. Miriam watched Minna judicially, and hoped she looked like a teacher. She knew her pince-nez disguised ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... than Mrs. Bridgeman's guests began to flock around them from all the four quarters of the mansion, deserting even the neighbourhood of the guitars and the inviting seclusion of the various refreshment-rooms. From all sides rose the hum of comment and the murmur of speculation. Pince-nez were adjusted, eyeglasses screwed into eyes, fingers pointed, feet elevated upon uneasy toes. Pretty girls boldly trod upon the gowns of elderly matrons in the endeavour to draw near to Mrs. Bridgeman and her group of celebrities; ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... The lady stepped out and paddled across the mud towards the Tortoise. Seen at close quarters she was, without doubt, fat, and had a round good-humoured face. Her eyes sparkled pleasantly behind a pair of gold rimmed pince-nez. ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... she was a small, fair-haired woman, with penciled dark eyebrows, a small aquiline nose, gold pince-nez, and an exquisite ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... had difficulty in restraining his impatience. It seemed possible that Esther might perish while these two medical men discussed the situation. He watched tensely while the little doctor got out various instruments and bottles, changed his thick pince-nez for a pair of spectacles with tortoiseshell rims exactly matching his eyebrows, and finally proceeded with a maddening deliberation to study the patient, listening at her heart, feeling her pulse, turning back her eyelids. At last he ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... sort of ... tramping person," said Sir Felix, putting on his pince-nez the better to see Patsy. "He has been in these parts before. A most unprepossessing person. Quite a bad lot, I ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... Henry Wimbush, pulling up a chair to the lamp. He put on his round pince-nez, rimmed with tortoise-shell, and began cautiously to turn over the pages of his loose and still fragmentary book. He found his place at last. "Shall I begin?" he ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... himself facing an elderly personage with an impressively pointed gray beard and keen eyes behind gold-rimmed pince-nez. ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... but smoothed into the semblance of sorrow and regret, with, however, something of the characteristic glance of irony which habitually distinguished him, though that may have been partly due to the pince-nez which glittered over his keen eyes. There was something of an art in Austin Turold's manner of wearing glasses; they tilted, superiorly, at the world in general at an acute angle on the high bridge of a supercilious nose, the eyes glancing through them downwards, ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... De glass of pince-nez kind, In mercy to de beoples, Less dey pe shdrucken blind. Und gazin in dem glasses, Reflected he pehold De Rhine, mit all de shdeam-poats, Und ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... corner, a white-calved footman crossing with a tea-tray; a number of hats on pegs; the green-baize board with its white rows of tapelike paper, and three members standing before it. One of them, a tall, stout, good-humoured-looking man in pince-nez and a white waistcoat, becoming conscious, removed his straw hat and took up a position whence, without staring, he could gaze at her; and Gyp knew, without ever seeming to glance at him, that he found her to his liking. She saw her father's unhurried ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Ltd., Mr. Augustus Tibbetts had purchased a small weekly newspaper called the Flame. Apart from the losses he incurred during its short career, the experience was made remarkable by the fact that he became acquainted with Mr. Jelf, a young and immensely self-satisfied man in pince-nez, who habitually spoke uncharitably of bishops, and never referred to members of the Government without causing sensitive people ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... boys please follow me," and he found himself, still struggling with sleep, blinded by the sudden light, following, with some ten others, a long and thin gentleman who wore a pince-nez. His strongest feeling was that he was very cold and that he hated everybody and everything. He heard many voices somewhere in the distance, doors were being continually opened and shut, and little ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... Pilgrimage of Tannhaeuser, the uncorking of bottles was heard. A big man sitting at the table next to Christophe beat time to the Merry Wives by imitating Falstaff. A stout old lady, in a pale blue dress, with a white belt, golden pince-nez on her flat nose, red arms, and an enormous waist, sang in a loud voice Lieder of Schumann and Brahms. She raised her eyebrows, made eyes at the wings, smiled with a smile that seemed to curdle on her moon-face, made exaggerated gestures which must certainly ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... shrewd eyes twinkling behind the pebbles of his pince-nez, straightened himself slowly, turned in the ponderous manner of a fat man, and readjusted the pince-nez upon his nose. He ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... would never, if she could help it, let him have one moment with her. His love-charged eye inspired in her the simple desire to flee. Singularly, this was, with one notable exception, beautiful Brenda's only conquest, while Leslie, who was just ordinarily pretty and wore a pince-nez, received tribute and proposals from almost every unattached young fellow who drifted inside the circle of her wide invisible net. Boys in particular had to pass through her hands, receive good advice from her, ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... the firm of Grimwood, Galton & Davy, insurance assessors, looked up from the list in his hand. He was a shrewd little man, with side-whiskers, pince-nez that would never sit straight upon his aquiline nose, and ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... highly-decorated hats, smooth-haired young men in coats that went in at the waist, a very few serious amateurs with longish hair, whose appearance did not quite come up to the standard of the Tailor and Cutter, and a small number of wistful professional feminine artists in no collars and pince-nez—in fact, the average fashionable, artistic crowd. The two young geniuses, George Ranger and Nevil Butt, had just given their rather electrifying performance, one playing the compositions of the other, and then both singing Faure together, and ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... the lane, before I had discharged one of my carefully considered sentences. I breathed more easily, and, looking up at our new friend as we stepped out together, remembered that we had been counting on something altogether more arid, scholastic, and severe. A boyish eager face and a petulant pince-nez,—untidy hair,—a head of constant quick turns like a robin's, and a voice that kept breaking into alto,—these were all very strange and new, but not ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... Saratoga's agent hard at work in his private office. He was a tall, thin man, slightly bald, wearing a pair of heavy gold pince-nez, and very ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... the doctor, removing his pince-nez and rubbing them. "Mackenzie seems to suspect some connection between Leithcourt's sudden disappearance and that mysterious affair. It seems very evident that the telegram was a warning to Leithcourt ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... found the head of the firm, a tall individual, with grizzled hair covering a fine square head, a hard, clean-shaven face, and a pince-nez—which pince-nez he invariably removed when about to make a disagreeable remark. He received the new employe with an air of cool detachment, and shook hands in a manner that implied, "You must not expect this sort of thing every day." ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... Mrs. Saltillo, who had reinforced her eyes with her old piquant pince-nez, but could detect no irony in them. She was prettily imperturbable, that was all. There was an awkward silence. Then it was broken by a bounding step on the stairs, a wide-open fling of the door, and Enriquez pirouetted into the room: ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte |
