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Pique   /pik/   Listen
Pique

noun
1.
Tightly woven fabric with raised cords.
2.
A sudden outburst of anger.  Synonyms: irritation, temper.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Pique" Quotes from Famous Books



... caressed by the perfumed hands of the beautiful Onoto, who had heard her this evening for the first time and had thrown herself with enthusiasm into her arms after the last number. Onoto was an artist too, and the pique she felt at first over Annouchka's success could not last after the emotion aroused by the evening prayer before the hut. "Come to supper," ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux

... risks we both run, you and I. My father will be always at me, and I shall not be able to insist on your prior claim; he will say you have abandoned it. Julia will take the huff, and you know beautiful women will do strange things—mad things—when once pique enters their hearts. She might turn round ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade

... they were not even permitted to suffer any considerable pecuniary loss by reason of their breach of the law. Finding that their conduct led to their being made the subjects of a sort of hero-worship, it is not surprising that they soon came to pique themselves upon what they had done, and, so far from feeling any consciousness of shame or regret, to openly court publicity for their proceedings. Jarvis was especially culpable in this respect, and was not ashamed to write letters to the papers on the subject, in one of which he ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... fall of Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell had by his astute policy succeeded in bringing about a religious state of things in England that approached very nearly to Lutheranism. Taking advantage of Henry's pique and anger at the Pope's refusal to grant him a divorce from Katharine of Arragon, Cromwell set about widening the breach between England and Rome. After weakening the power of the bishops and lower clergy, he was able ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone

... in on Mrs. Masters as you go down town to let her know that you are coming? Or if you wish I'll tell them—I'm going now—that way." Her tone gave the very slightest hint of pique; her attitude put a suggestion. The game, plain as day to Eleanor, raised up in her only a film of resentment. Mainly, she was enjoying the ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin

... defalcations, the cruelty of his conduct to her, the evidence of his never intending to marry her, the selfishness which makes him indifferent to her troubles, and unwilling to help her. Work on pride, on pique, on jealousy, on the love of comfort and luxury, and the horror of poverty and privation, which are always powerful in the minds of women like Madame Durski. Don't talk much to her at first about Douglas Dale, especially until he has come to ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... that his hero was lying, and that in his pique and hurt vanity he was inventing grievances which had no foundation, and offences which had never been committed. He only knew that, because of the hate which lay in Thornton Lyne's heart, justifiable hate from Sam's view, the death of this great ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace

... Paris society are obtained from the windows of a hotel on the Place Vendôme. In London or Rome she may be presented in a few international salons, but as she finds it difficult to make her new acquaintances understand what an exalted position she occupies at home, the chances are that pique at seeing some Daisy Miller attract all the attention will drive my lady back to the city where she is known and appreciated, nothing being more difficult for an American “swell” than explaining to the uninitiated in what way her position differs from that of the ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory

... [58] Probably in pique because Urdaneta's advice to colonize New Guinea had been disregarded, and because these islands were, as Urdaneta declared, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume II, 1521-1569 • Emma Helen Blair

... before he bade her good-bye three years ago. That was why she wore blue this night—to recall to Ian what it appeared he had forgotten. And presently she would dine alone with Ian in her husband's house—and with her husband's blessing. Pique and pride were in her heart, and she meant Ian Stafford to remember. No man was adamantine; at least she had never met one—not one, neither ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... to those cultivated persons who will read it "to overrule the dicta of judges who would sacrifice truth and justice to professional rule, or personal pique, pride, or prejudice"; meaning, the great mass of those who have studied the subject. But how? Suppose the "cultivated persons" were to side with the author, would those who have conclusions to draw and applications to make consent to be wrong ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

... year a gradual change to lighter mourning may be made by discarding the widow's cap and shortening the veil. Dull silks are used in place of crape, according to taste. In warm weather lighter materials can be worn—as, pique, nun's veiling, ...
— The Book of Good Manners • W. C. Green

... have on no occasion sanctioned the baser motives of private pique, envy, revenge, and love of detraction. At least I have not recommended harsh treatment upon any of these grounds. I have argued simply on the abstract moral principle which a Reviewer should ever have present to his mind: but if any of these motives ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe

... in a new direction. He saw that she was for the time utterly hopeless; utterly heedless what became of herself. That would not last; but his cunning told him that with returning sensibility would come pique, resentment, the desire to be avenged. In such a case one man was sometimes as good as another. It was impossible to say what she might not do or be induced to do, if full advantage were taken of a moment so exceptional. Fifty thousand pounds! And her fresh young beauty! What an opening it was! ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman

... the Cauldstaneslap party; then she lived at Cauldstaneslap. Here was Archie's secret, here was the woman, and more than that - though I have need here of every manageable attenuation of language - with the first look, he had already entered himself as rival. It was a good deal in pique, it was a little in revenge, it was much in genuine admiration: the devil may decide the proportions! I cannot, and it is very likely that ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... my dear, tut, tut! You've made a marriage that is founded on suitability of position, property and education, and everything will come right by and by. Don't act on a fit of pique or spleen, and so destroy your happiness, and that of everybody about you. Think of your father. Remember what he has done to make this marriage. I may tell you that he has paid forty thousand pounds to discharge ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... retorted Phillis, with a little heat, for the word "romantic," and the satirical droop of Mrs. Cheyne's lip made her decidedly cross. "But I must not detain you any more with our uninteresting affairs," dropping a little courtesy, half in pique and half in mockery, for her spirits were rising under this ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... cool freshness of the evening air to the damp and stifling atmosphere that he now breathed. What could be the cause of his seizure he was quite incompetent to guess. He could not recollect that he had either pique or grudge on his hands; and what should be the result he only bewildered and wearied himself ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... possible to elephantine nature—not in his insensitive hide nor in his clumsy foot, but in the way he will lift his foot if a child lies in his way, and in his sensitive trunk and still more sensitive mind and capability of pique on points of honor. Hence it will follow that one of the probable signs of high breeding in men generally, will be their kindness and mercifulness, these always indicating more or less firmness of make ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young

... more organic fusion of the different portions of a movement—Mozart's lines of demarcation being perfectly clear but not so rigid as in Haydn; the much greater richness of the whole musical fabric, due to Mozart's marvellous skill in polyphony. The time had not yet come when the composer could pique the fancy of the hearer by unexpected structural devices or even lead him off on a false trail as was so often done by Beethoven. Both Haydn and Mozart are homophonic composers, i.e., the outpouring of individual melodies is ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... down in the barouche, and I'll call for you, and we'll take Mr. Jones with us. And mind you're very civil to him, and only notice the other in a quiet, good-humoured way—for he mustn't think you do it out of pique—and before the whitebait is on the table you'll see he'll be a different man. But now you must go—there's a dear. I'll call for you at five. It's too bad to turn you out; but I'm never at home to any one between three and half-past ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville

... be a woman! to be left to pique and pine, When the winds are out and calling to this vagrant heart of mine. Whisht! it whistles at the windows, and how can I be still? There! the last leaves of the beech-tree go dancing down the hill. All the boats at anchor they are plunging to be free— O to be a sailor, and away across the ...
— The Fairy Changeling and Other Poems • Dora Sigerson

... serving to pique rather than satisfy; a series of hors d'oeuvres that I began to suspect must form the whole repast. On the verge of coherence the woman would break off to gloat over a herd of thoroughbred Durhams or a bunch of sportive Hereford calves or a field teeming with the prized fruits ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... she looked appealingly up at Latisan he was steadfastly staring past her. Her impulses were already galloping, but the instant prick of pique was the final urge which made the impulses fairly ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day

... colloquialisms, which we could not notice, his words began to thrill us like potent oratory. We felt all that ecstasy of buoyant and auspicious rebellion which animated Hotspur the night he could have plucked bright honor from the pale-faced moon. At Jim's final question, Cornish, forgetting his pique, sprang to the map, swept his finger along the line Elkins had described, followed the main ribs of Pendleton's great gridiron, on which the fat of half a dozen states lay frying, on to terminals on lakes and rivers; and as he turned his black eyes upon us, we knew from the fire in them ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick

... pinnacle of married experience. Fancy there being any need for anything else between us! they said. Their editor then supplied explanatory text: "Of course there may have been a soupcon of personal feeling in the case—bias, pique, whatever one likes to call it. You know, dear Mrs. Fenwick?" But Mrs. Fenwick waited for further illumination. "Well, you know ... I suppose it's rather a breach of confidence, only I know I shall be safe ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... esteemed by every one. Neither pique nor passion nor petty feelings could ever influence her mind. She is the most angelic, good woman I ever met—she is one to whom one may complain, and be a bore. She has such ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes

... advised by George Thomas, who had instigated them to this violence out of pique against the Begam for her preference of the Frenchman,[29] to set aside their puppet and reseat the Begam in the command, as the only chance of keeping the territory of Sardhana.[30] 'If', said he, 'the Begam should die under the torture of mind and body to which you are subjecting ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... Kilmeny had been brought too near the grim realities to hold any petty pique. He found this young woman still charming, but his admiration was tinctured with amusement. No longer did his imagination play upon her personality. He focused it upon the girl who had fought for his life against the ridicule and the suspicions of her friends. It was impossible for him to escape ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine

... made his breakfast he, however, became sensible of a certain pique against both Mrs. Hastings and the girl, which led him to remember that he had no hired man, and that there was a good deal to be done. He decided that it might be well to wait until the afternoon before he called on them, and for several hours ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... rolled up her sleeves, and began on vigorous ablutions. She had laughed, yes, and heartily, but in her complicated many-roomed heart a lively pique rubbed shoulders with her mirth, and her merriment was tinctured with a liberal amount of the traditional feminine horrified disgust at having been uncomely, at having unconsciously been subjected to an indignity. She was determined that no slightest ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... word to each other; we kept the great pace Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place; I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight, Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right, Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the bit, Nor galloped less steadily ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... received lessons of more than one kind—the passing admiration of Mr. Elliot had at least roused him, and the scene on the Cobb, and at Captain Harville's, had fixed her superiority. In his preceding attempts to attach himself to Louisa Musgrove (the attempts of anger and pique), he protested that he had continually felt the impossibility of really caring for Louisa, though till that day, till the leisure for reflection which followed it, he had not understood the perfect excellence ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh

... thinking of you," he rejoined, with a touch of pique that convinced me of his sincerity. "Of course I want you to stop, though I shan't be here many days; but I feel responsible for you, Cole, and that's the fact. Think you can find your way?" he continued, accompanying ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung

... her grey eyes flashing, and her whole dear little self roused into a fiery, impulsive little Min—she looked glorious in her pique!—"then, Mr Lorton, I will not seek to detain you further—let me pass, sir!" she added passionately, as, relenting of my behaviour, I tried to stop her and explain my conduct—"Let me pass, sir! I do not wish to ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson

... during its present session. In 1870 an admirable law was passed by the House of Representatives under the skilful and intelligent leadership of Hon. James A. Garfield, but it failed in the Senate because of the apathy of some and the personal pique of others. It seems incredible that in that dignified body so little attention was paid to this vast subject. Again and again its consideration was postponed because a sufficient attendance could not be secured to act upon the proposed law, which at last fell to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various

... persuade the mufti to appoint them, irrespective of whether they could read or write. The devout Moslem is, to the exclusion of everything else, a Moslem; but in these districts, where the faith was assumed in a moment of pique or as a protection, and where the Muhammedan clergy has been so negligent, the people are gladly cultivating their Christian relatives. In the district of Suva Rieka one hears of conversions to Christianity, and the functionaries bring no pressure to bear, unlike the misguided Montenegrin officials ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... house with attractive people, of harmonizing, of giving satisfaction, of rendering her guests at home with herself, of charming grave men and wise scholars, as well as gay young girls. It is true Violet has married him, but was not Floyd Grandon's regard brought about by a pique, an opportunity to retaliate the wrong once done to him? What if there were moments when ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... piece of news swept away the feeble barrier Genevra would have erected in her pique. Eagerly she joined in questioning the Persian girl, but Neenah would only reply that Selim was waiting for the sahib. The Princess was immeasurably consoled to find that the body-servant had destroyed the fuses and that they were ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon

... grateful to think that he was not engaged to Madeline. Undoubtedly, had he cared for her as she did for him, he would not have declined to marry her because of her accepting Charlie, more or less out of pique, or in despair. Yet, after having once really proposed he felt his emotions stirred, and almost as soon as he had sent her back (so to speak) to Charlie, he began to regret it—he began to be unhappy. Au fond he knew she would break it off with Charlie now, and would wait ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson

... them. True, they wore powder and pomatum then—but they never leant back; such a solace, and solecism in manners, was reserved for the privacy of the bedroom and the arm-chair covered with cotton pique or washing chintz. Under the new manners, and since the introduction of the graceful lounge, the antimacassar doubtless has saved many ancestral works, but nowadays we wear neither powder nor pomatum. On the contrary, we dye, dry, and frizzle our hair till it might ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... cares. You are not a man whom a woman can forget, though pique or ambition may lead her to try. I tell you, frankly, I believe that Providence sent your Royal Highness here at this moment, and my best hopes are now pinned on you. You—and no one as well as you—can save the Emperor for a nobler fate. Even when I supposed you ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson

... President cannot arrive in the field a moment too soon. As it is, while others are exulting in the conviction that Rosecrans will be speedily destroyed, I am filled with alarm for the fate of Bragg's army, and for the cause! I am reluctant to attribute the weakness of personal pique or professional jealousy to ——; yet I still hope that events will speedily prove that Bragg's plan was the best, and that he had really adopted and ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... fantastically loyal or shiveringly perfidious, savagely cruel or quixotically self-sacrificing, something that is primitive, non-moral and resolved to win at all costs. In the sex-gamble, zero is more than a thirty-six to one chance; it is Poushkin's DAME DE PIQUE and turns up thirty-six times to one. And man shews his indifference or his greatness of soul by continuing to play, by rising imperturbably triumphant over zero. . . . Or perhaps he shews that he is an eternal sex-amateur. . . ."—From the ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna

... episode, and mistook Lord Ranelagh for the Duke of Cambridge. "The newcomer," says this critic, "was recognised as Mrs. James by a Prince of the Blood and his companions in the omnibus-box. Her beauty could not save her from insult; and, to avenge themselves on Mr. Lumley, for some pique, these chivalrous English gentlemen of the upper classes hooted a ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... called it, and in consequence lived in a state of cruel uncertainty. Worse than that, she was no longer sought; and for this, too, she was wholly responsible. In a spirit of loyalty to Dickie Blue, who deserved nothing so devoted, she had repelled other advances; and when, once, in a wicked mood of pique, as she afterward determined, she had walked with Sandy Watt on the Squid Cove road, the disloyalty implied, mixed with fear of the consequences, made her too wretched to repeat that lapse from a faithful and consistent conduct. She was quite sure that Dickie Blue would be ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan

... "That will pique all the gossips in town, and nearly double our next issue," complacently muttered the local editor, as he carried the scrawl at the ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... Georgiana Stiles, the younger daughter, was almost invisible under a straw hat with feathers waving from its pinnacled crown. Miss Celandine, by no means a bad-looking young lady, wore her best black jersey, buttoned at the throat, over her cambric body, her best pique skirt, trimmed with torchon lace, her white silk mitts, and her blue-and-white bonnet. After settling Mrs. Stiles in a corner with Georgiana, Tecumseh Sherman, and Augustus, Celandine and Mr. Mecutchen disappeared, to go and stand on the door-step. Mrs. Tarbell guessed where they were going, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... statues, fountains and gardens. That which most interested him was the Mediterranean of the Middle Ages, that of the kings of Aragon, the Catalunian Sea. And the poor secretary would give long daily dissertations about them in order to pique the local pride ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... return to the inn, I found Mademoiselle at the breakfast table, which was set in a back room fronting a very pleasant garden. She rallied me pleasantly enough, but as I thought with an air of pique, upon my morning walk and my fair companion, and Felice happening to enter the room, asked her how she should like a foreign husband. "Very well, Mademoiselle," replied the girl with great innocence, "after I had taught him to talk in French: and I believe ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney

... blind to the fact that murder, like the religions of the Pagan world, requires a victim as well as a priest. Not being a genius, he had no enemies, and indeed he felt that this was not the time for the gratification of any personal pique or dislike, the mission in which he was engaged being one of great and grave solemnity. He accordingly made out a list of his friends and relatives on a sheet of notepaper, and after careful consideration, decided in favour of Lady Clementina Beauchamp, a dear old lady ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde

... remark suggested other thoughts. It was possible that reports were in circulation calculated to injure her social standing, and that Mrs. Todd's conduct toward her was not the result of any private pique. ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur

... place in their affections. This displeased him greatly, for he was not one who could contentedly take the second place. He could not have had a more excellent companion than the manly and upright Whalley; but in his close intimacy with him he had rather hoped to pique Walter, and show him that his society was not indispensable to his happiness. But Walter's open and generous mind was quite incapable of understanding this unworthy motive, and with feelings far better trained than those of Kenrick, he never felt the slightest qualm of this ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar

... stoic, quite indifferent about his "carcase." His briefer black moods he might acknowledge had transitory causes. But his general and abiding conceptions of humanity were the result of dispassionate reflections. "You think," he cries in half-sportive pique, "that because I pass my life trying to make harmonious phrases, in avoiding assonances, that I too have not my little judgments on the things of this world? Alas! Yes! and moreover I shall burst, enraged at not expressing them." And later: "Yes, I am susceptible to disinterested angers, ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert

... 'when I was at Eton, and Mr. Bland had set me on an extraordinary task, I used sometimes to pique myself upon not getting it, because it was not immediately my school business. What! learn more than I was absolutely forced to learn! I felt the weight of learning that; for I was a blockhead, and ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... know the prefect by his clothes." Now it had unfortunately happened that M. de Chamans having sent his trunks by diligence they had not yet arrived, and being dressed in a green coat; nankeen trousers, and a pique vest, it could hardly be expected that in such a suit he should overawe the people under the circumstances; so, when he got up on a bench to harangue the populace, cries arose of "Down with the green coat! We have enough of charlatans ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... Boarham have severally taken occasion by his neglect of me to renew their advances; and if I were like Annabella and some others I should take advantage of their perseverance to endeavour to pique him into a revival of affection; but, justice and honesty apart, I could not bear to do it. I am annoyed enough by their present persecutions without encouraging them further; and even if I did it would have ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... said Elmore, with the pique of a man who does not care to be quite trampled under foot. "I don't see that the theory is ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells

... displeasure. A letter seized in the post, and expressive of atheistical sentiments (possibly but a transient vagary of his youth) was the ostensible cause of his banishment from Odessa to his paternal estate of Mikhailovskoe in the province of Pskoff. Some, however, aver that personal pique on the part of Count Vorontsoff, the Governor of Odessa, played a part in the transaction. Be this as it may, the consequences were serious for the poet, who was not only placed under the surveillance of the police, but expelled from the Foreign Office ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

... do you at last know the name of the unknown?" asked Martial, with an air of pique, to the Countess when he ...
— Domestic Peace • Honore de Balzac

... metamorphosed with decorations of crinkled paper, they found, buttressed into a corner by the freshly tuned piano, the Rye Quartet, consisting of the piano-tuner himself, his wife, who played the 'cello, and his two daughters with fiddles and white pique frocks. At first the music was rather an embarrassment, for while it played eating and conversation were alike suspended, and the guests stood with open mouths and cooling cups of tea till Mr. Plummer's final chords released their tongues and filled ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith

... time, was she invariably styled,) after all due preliminaries, had taken quiet possession of the little vine-clad cot; and although she was not as "neighborly" as she might have been, and never communicative as to her previous history, still might the feeling of pique with which they at first received such a rebuff to their curiosity, have been a very evanescent one in the minds of the villagers, had it not chanced that Aberdeen was blessed (?) with two prim sister-spinsters, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various

... to you and Miss Nimmo for letting me know Miss Kennedy. Strange! how apt we are to indulge prejudices in our judgments of one another! Even I, who pique myself on my skill in marking characters—because I am too proud of my character as a man, to be dazzled in my judgment for glaring wealth; and too proud of my situation as a poor man to be biased against squalid poverty—I was unacquainted with Miss ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... for man's interest to live unless he can live in the spirit, because his spiritual capacity, when unused, will lacerate and derange even his physical life. The brutal individualist falls into the same error into which despots fall when they declare war out of personal pique or tax the people to build themselves a pyramid, not discerning their country's interests, which they might have appropriated, from interests of their own which ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... reign? When will the sun smile on the bloodless field, 45 And the stern warrior's arm the sickle wield? Not whilst some King, in cold ambition's dreams, Plans for the field of death his plodding schemes; Not whilst for private pique the public fall, And one frail mortal's mandate governs all. 50 Swelled with command and mad with dizzying sway; Who sees unmoved his myriads fade away. Careless who lives or dies—so that he gains Some trivial point for which he took the pains. What then are Kings?—I see the trembling crowd, 55 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... Kenilworth. Although twenty years have passed, memory still loves to linger about those days when she visited her favourite, the fascinating Earl of Leicester, on her royal progress, before state policy and private pique had combined to create ...
— Shakespeare's Christmas Gift to Queen Bess • Anna Benneson McMahan

... overcome, and was obliged, in fact, to write the letter myself, and dictate it to him. He made one or two changes; and at last signed and sealed it. But I had the greatest difficulty yet in inciting him to give it to the King. I had to follow him, to urge him, to pique him, almost to push him into the presence. The King received the letter very graciously; it had its effect; and the marriage ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... defence of Dole against Louis XIII., that the Capuchin Father d'Iche had the direction of the artillery; and when an officer of the enemy had seized the Brother Claude by the cowl, the Father Barnabas made the officer loose his hold by slaying him with a demi-pique. When Arbois was besieged by Henry IV., the Sieur Chanoine Pecauld is specially mentioned as proving himself a ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne

... adventurer, the cause of all the humiliations inflicted on the Austrian monarchy; and the splendor which surrounded the hero of Marengo, of Austerlitz, of Wagram, aroused in her a resentment all the keener because she was compelled to hide it. Napoleon in his pique determined to win over the step-mother ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... always fret, and say that I Am far too low or far too high. Although I try with all my might, I never seem to strike it right. Now I admit it seems to me They show great inconsistency. But they imply I am to blame; Of course that makes my anger flame, And in a fiery fit of pique I stay at ninety for a week. Or sometimes in a dull despair, I give them just a frigid stare; And as upon their taunts I think My spirits down to zero sink. Mine is indeed a hopeless case; To strive to please ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells

... sharpened now, I could see that not by my young companions alone, but by every one of the four teachers, I was looked upon as a harmless little girl whose mother knew nothing about the fashionable world. I do not think that anything in my manner showed either my pique or my disdain; I believe I went out of doors just as usual; but these things were often in my thoughts, and taking by degrees more room ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell

... sharp side glance at him and did not reply. Probably for the first time in her life she heard a young man declare with determination that he was in a hurry to leave her. Even a sensible young woman who is pretty must feel some sort of momentary pique because a young man can have engagements so summary and ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day

... suffered what the new psychologists call a 'psychic trauma'—a soul-wound. You were engaged, but your censored consciousness rejected the manner of life of your fiance. In pique you married Price Maitland. But you never lost your ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve

... of the Pigeons, Ducks, and Geese is obvious enough; we see them stream across the heavens, or hear their clang in the night; but these minstrels of the field and forest add to their other charms a shade of mystery, and pique the imagination by their invisible and unknown journeyings. To be sure, we know they follow the opening season north and the retreating summer south; but who will point to the parallels that mark the limits of their wandering, or take us to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... Malibran were to appear at one of the Philharmonic concerts. By chance Malibran heard that De Beriot was to receive a smaller sum than that which had been agreed upon for her services, and in a moment of pique she sent word that she was unable to appear on account of indisposition. De Beriot also declared himself to be suffering from ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee

... of a friend, making his habitual daily tour of the city. Like most middle aged, well-to-do bourgeois his attire was composed of a pair of light trousers, slightly baggy at the knee, and a bit flappy about the leg; a black cutaway jacket and a white pique waistcoat. This classic costume usually comports a panama hat and an umbrella. Now Monsieur S. had the umbrella, but in place of the panama he had seen fit to substitute a blue steel soldier's helmet, which amazing military ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard

... instructions are not to let myself be seen by anybody whatever but your Lordship.' The Earl answers on the same day: 'If you yourself know any safe way for both of us, tell it me. There was a garden belonging to a Mousquetaire, famous for fruit, by Pique- price, beyond it some way. I could go there as out of curiosity to see the garden, and meet you to-morrow towards five o'clock; but if you know a better place, let me know it. Remember, I must go with the footmen, and remain in coach as usual, so that the garden is best, because ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang

... fear, chagrin, pique, jealousy and indigestion, John rushed out of the house and went to the office. At the door of the office he met one of the typists. He held the door open for her. She simpered and refused to go in front of him. Being still mad with rage, hatred, ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various

... take a learned Meccan a week to decipher. Others, polluted by a license which calls itself liberty, squat gambling shamelessly with pegs stuck in the ground. Now and then fighting-looking fellows ride past us, with the Arabic ring-bit and the heavy Mandenga demi-pique. The nags are ponies some ten hands high, ragged and angular, but hardy and sure-footed. As most of the equines in this part of Africa, they are, when well fed, intensely vicious and quarrelsome. Like the Syrians, they have only three paces, ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... disposed to believe that, in his peculiar case, there are circumstances by which the woman is, if not justified, at least excused. Frank did put faith in his cousin's love for himself. He did credit her when she told him that she had accepted Lord Fawn's offer in pique, because he had not come to her when he had promised that he would come. It did seem natural to him that she should have desired to adhere to her engagement when he would not advise her to depart from it. And then her jealousy about Lucy's ring, and her ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... girls' play, full of girlish cleverness and girlish points and hits. No less a personage than Queen Elizabeth was introduced into it. In the course of the plot great stress was laid on the fact that the Queen had laughed at Lord Essex's expense, behind his back. This was done in order to pique the proud, spoilt young courtier to resent the laughter, and, in homely parlance, to give Her Majesty more to laugh at. The phrase "and the Queen laughed," had been emphatically repeated again and again in Lord Essex's hearing, with much ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler

... that, in spite of his agitation, he was by no means despondent as to the result of his wooing. He seemed more anxious to assure me of his devotion than to question me about mine, as if he imagined that my coldness was caused by pique or jealousy. I drew away my hands, and tried to stop him by vague murmurs of dissent, but it was no use, he only became more eager ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... dog and man at first were friends, But when a pique began, The dog, to gain some private ends, Went mad and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... should be read. Does not this prove that the stimulus of the one sex upon the other would act rather favorably than otherwise upon the profession? and would not the very best tonic that could be given to the individual be to pique his amour propre by the danger of being excelled by one of the opposite sex? Is not this natural? and would not this be the best and the surest reformation of humanity and its social condition, if left free to ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska

... dame continued, tossing her head with mingled pique and triumph. "'Tis a sad day for thee and thine, then! This Sir Guy of thine is as good as dead, girl! Thy popinjay is a traitor, and his crimes have ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye

... could—if he would. But would he? She was rich, but there were others richer. People said that he was wary. Yet he admired Miss Daisy, it was true, and if by her flirtation with Mr. Stokes she could pique him into a proposal, she ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... by the dictates of duty did not escape the Moslem, who, if he did not entirely understand all which it conveyed, saw enough to convince him with the assurance that Christians, as well as Moslemah, had private feelings of personal pique, and national quarrels, which were not entirely reconcilable. But the Saracens were a race, polished, perhaps, to the utmost extent which their religion permitted, and particularly capable of entertaining high ideas ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... They are making an exhibition of themselves on the beach. Just as well there is no one to see but some aborigines. Quite revolting. How can you bear to associate with such types, when you are so much above them yourself—but there, I must not pique you, must I, poor Claggett? I expect your wound smarts ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson

... wholly conceal, and Pizarro aware of the cause of it, neither forgot nor forgave it.43 The anecdote is reported not on the highest authority. It may be true; but it is unnecessary to look for the motives of Pizarro's conduct in personal pique, when so many proofs are to be discerned of a ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... yours and you are mine!" So lightly was the first stepping-stone passed on her reckless path of immorality and vice. Her fickle heart soon tired of the debonair Vibrato, and in a fit of satiated pique she had his ears cut off and his tongue removed and tied to his big toe. Thus was her ever-increasing lust for bloodshed apparent even at that early age. Her next affaire occured when she was travelling to Rome with her brother Pizzicato, ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward

... debate upon the Confederate Government and its military policy. Rhett made a remarkable address, which should of itself quiet forever the old tale that he was animated in his opposition solely by the pique of a disappointed candidate for the presidency. Though as sharp as ever against the Government and though agreeing wholly with the spirit of the state army plan, he took the ground that circumstances at the moment rendered the organization of ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... upon him. However, she found her attention very much divided between tumultuous joyance in the mountain grandeur, bathed in the marvelously life-exciting air, and concern for the outcome of the day. If a faint suggestion of pique at the manner in which the horseman ignored her presence crept subconsciously into all her meditations, she did not confess it ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... was, Helen really liked him. There could be no doubt about that. She liked him, and she would not leave him. Also, she was a young woman of exceptional common sense, and, being such, she would not risk the loss of a large fortune merely for the sake of indulging pique engendered by his refusal ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett

... added the baron, laughing, for he saw that his daughter spoke in sudden pique, rather than from her excellent heart. Adelheid, whose good sense, and quick recollections, instantly showed her the weakness of this little display of female feeling, laughed faintly in her turn, though she repeated his words as if to give ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... with the animals, during the few months of his experience as assistant, had been altogether phenomenal, his chief felt a qualm of pique upon being warned against the big puma. He had too just an appreciation of Hansen's judgment, however, to quite disregard the warning, and he turned it over curiously in his mind as he went to his dressing-room. Emerging a few minutes later ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts

... be trusted in a matter of this nature," put in Bulstrode, with a little pique, "Mr. Follock has every reason to be contented. Had I known, however, that the customs of New York allowed a lady who is present to be toasted, that gentleman would not have had the merit of being the ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... wounded pride struggled with John's relief; but then a glorious vision of what this admission of Mary's might mean to him swept away his pique. ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope

... the door Toni cast a rather wistful look at the jasmine-covered old house she had learned to love; and for a moment she felt as though she saw herself as those other women had seen her—the ignorant, frivolous, common little person whom Owen had married out of pique. ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes

... contain the same piece of intelligence and the same joke. She was very fond of writing marginal notes; and after annotating one copy of a book, would take up another and do the same. I have never detected a substantial variation in her narratives, even in those which were more or less dictated by pique; and as she generally drew upon the "Thraliana" for her materials, this, having been carefully and calmly compiled, affords an ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi

... Haute-Garonne, 87 m. S.S.W. of Toulouse, on a branch line of the Southern railway from Montrejeau. Pop. (1906) 3448. The town is situated at the foot of the central Pyrenees in a beautiful valley at the confluence of the One and the Pique. It is celebrated for its thermal springs and as a fashionable resort. Of the promenades the finest and most frequented are the Allees d'Etigny, an avenue planted with lime-trees, at the southern extremity of which ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... a cow. They will quarrel for straws, and stick a knife into a person's body as readily as they would fell an ox. It is a rare thing for a day to pass without brawls and bloodshed, and even murder. They all pique themselves on being men of mettle, and they observe, too, some punctilios of the bravo; there is not one of them but has his guardian angel in the Plaza de San Francesco, whom he propitiates with ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... not goaded by pique or any petty feeling. Indeed, his reproach to Fanny had touched her a little, and it was with the tear in her eye she came to the resolution, and handed him that line, which told him she knew her value, and, cost what it might, would part with any man forever ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... lot with the Chartists in that spirit of pique which makes a man marry the wrong woman because the right one will have none of him. At the Chester-le-Street meeting he had declared himself an upholder of moral persuasion, while in his heart he pandered to those who knew only of physical force and placed their reliance thereon. He had ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman

... only pecked at the viands as a bird might do, and I scarcely saw him eat a hearty meal during his whole stay in the country. Both at Parker's Hotel in Boston, and at the Westminster in New York, everything was arranged by the proprietors for his comfort and happiness, and tempting dishes to pique his invalid appetite were sent up at different hours of the day, with the hope that he might be induced to try unwonted things and get up again the habit of eating more; but the influenza, that seized him with such masterful powder, held the ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... first ages of the church, speak of the power which the Christian exorcists exercised over the possessed, so confidently and so freely, that we can doubt neither the certainty nor the evidence of the thing. They call upon their adversaries to bear witness, and pique themselves on making the experiment in their presence, and of forcing to come out of the bodies of the possessed, to declare their names, and acknowledge that those they adore in the pagan temples ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... all the energy that a man throws into his words when he is aware that it is his last time for speaking in favour of a thing which he has much at heart. He told her that he wondered that, as she always had a lofty mind for great things, it should be wanting to her on this occasion. He endeavoured to pique her jealousy as a monarch, by suggesting that the enterprise might fall into the hands of other princes. Then he said something in behalf of Columbus himself, and the queen was not unlikely to know well the bearing of a great man. He intimated to her ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps

... heads." He soon became popular, and was known under the name of Captain Needham, of Gray's Inn; and whatever he now wrote was deemed oracular. But whether from a slight imprisonment for aspersing Charles I. or some pique with his own party, he requested an audience on his knees with the king, reconciled himself to his majesty, and showed himself a violent royalist in his "Mercurius Pragmaticus," and galled the Presbyterians with his wit and quips. Some time after, when ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... about 5 P.M. yesterday, Russian at anchor, and went towards her, but were afterwards obliged to remove to some distance, as we had not water enough where she is. While we were going to our berth, the 'Pique' came in sight. So here we are—'Pique' 'Furious' and 'Slaney' (gunboat), in an open sea, land not even risible. Captain Osborn started off this morning, in the gunboat, to sound and find out what ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... best of him. We may say, in passing, that the bearing of Congress, under the temptations of the last few weeks, has been most encouraging, though we must except from our commendation the recent speech of Mr. Stevens of Pennsylvania. There is a pride of patriotism that should make all personal pique seem trifling; and Mr. Stevens ought to have remembered that it was not so much the nakedness of an antagonist that he was uncovering ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell

... of Glover's face, returning somewhat the ridicule heaped on him, was intended to pique the interest of the sightseers it was effective. He was restored, provisionally, to favor; his suggestion that after dinner they take horses for the ride up Pilot Mountain to where the Gap could be seen by moonlight was eagerly adopted, and Mrs. Whitney's objection to dressing again ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman

... of wearing the pretty gown which Bumble knew she had brought in her suitcase, was garbed in the complete costume of a trained nurse. A white pique skirt and linen shirt-waist of immaculate and starched whiteness, an apron with regulation shoulder-straps, and a cap that betokened a graduate of St. Luke's Hospital, formed her surprising, but not ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells

... is very much to be commended for having taken care, in giving a general idea of Aristophanes's writings, to throw a veil over those parts of them that might have given offence to modesty. Though such behaviour be the indispensable rule of religion, it is not always observed by those who pique themselves most on their erudition, and sometimes prefer the title of ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... it seemed to me, have been bitter to her. But I never saw even a shade of such a feeling in her face. There was nothing base or petty in Emma Long's nature, and, strange as it may seem, she did love Ellen. Only once did I ever see a trace of pique or resentment in her manner to John, and then I could not wonder at it. A large package had come from Ellen, just after tea one night, and we were all gathered in the library, reading our letters and ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson

... we part: even the 'servant' may presume to counsel his 'master' as he is quitting his service. The landlord within is not one of those landlords who pique themselves on courtesy: and the gentleman tourist, with submission be it said, is not one of those tourists who travel with four horses,—or even by the stage-coach: and foot-travellers in England, especially in the winter season, do not ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey

... the fact that you are a monster of perfidy; and Lisbeth, poor child, is probably crying her eyes out, or imagining she hates you, is ready to accept the first proposal she receives out of pure pique." ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol

... quickest adaptability, and in correctness, and simplicity of line and color might have belonged to a college freshman "with every advantage." It was a little trim delft-blue linen frock with a white pique collar and a loose blue tie. She had tan stockings and low russet shoes. Fanny belonged to the Working-man's Circle. She said she went as often as she could possibly afford it to the theatre. And when she was asked what plays she liked, she replied with an unforgettable ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt

... start Kerry or Sloane can constitutionally never have. You brushed three or four ornaments down, and, in a fit of pique, knocked off the rest of them. The thing now is to collect some new ones, and the farther you look ahead in the collecting the better. But remember, ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... into the air, like Piranesi's stairways, are called technically peak-ladders; and dear banished T.S.K., who always was puzzled to know why Mount Washington kept up such a pique against the sky, would have found his joke fit these ladders with great precision, so frequent the disappointment they create. But try them, and see what trivial appendages one's legs may become,—since the feet are not intended ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various

... riding-habit of dark unfinished material, shot with a faint admixture of gray; her boots were of shining black undressed leather, and she wore a pair of little silver-mounted spurs, the sight of which caused Pablo to exchange sage winks with his master. Her white-pique stock was fastened by an exquisite little cameo stick-pin; from under the brim of a black-beaver sailor-hat, set well down on her head, her wistful brown eyes looked up at Don Mike, and caught the quick glance of approval with which he appraised her, ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... her," replied my mother, with pique. "I'm very glad that she's going, for I have always protested at Virginia's being so intimate with her—a tobacco-shop is not a place for a ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... agreed Mother Blossom. "But bring me the white pique, dear, and let me help you into it. ...
— Four Little Blossoms at Brookside Farm • Mabel C. Hawley

... grudge against Chisum for years, and was more than once upon the point of killing him for a real or fancied grievance. He left Chisum and took service with J. H. Tunstall on his Feliz ranch late in the winter of 1877, animated by what reason we may not know. In doing this, he may have acted from pique or spite or hatred. There was some quarrel between him and his late associates. Tunstall was killed by the Murphy faction on February 18, 1878. From that time, the path of the Kid is very plain and his acts well known and authenticated. He had by this time killed several men, certainly at least ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough

... repetition it struck him as more cutting, more cruel, more unjust. His aunt had certainly intended a rebuke; but she hardly realized either the over-sensitiveness of Ivan's nature or the extent of his boyish feeling for his cousin, whom he concluded to be responsible, by some unfathomable pique, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... Serbs, fearing the spread of cholera, and the Allies are thinking that the Greeks want to be endangered by cholera any more than the Italians?... The history of the Balkan politics of the Allies is the record of one crass mistake after another, and now, through pique over the failure of their every Balkan calculation, they try to unload on Greece the results of their own stupidity. We warned them that the Gallipoli expedition would be fruitless and that the Austro-Germans would surely crush Serbia.... ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... humouredly "she is a splendid girl, and one that you need not be ashamed to own as a conquest. By heaven, she has a bust and hips to warm the bosom of an anchorite, and depend upon it, all that Cranstoun has said arises only from pique that he is not the object preferred. These black eyes of hers have set his ice blood on the boil, and he would willingly exchange places with you, at I honestly confess ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... rights of man, which is always a crime and leads to all manner of wickedness, is exercised by the Colonists with a cruelty that merits the abhorrence of everyone, though I have been told that they pique themselves upon it; and not only is the capture of the Hottentots considered by them merely as a party of pleasure, but in cold blood they destroy the bands which nature has knit between husband and wife, and between parents and their children. Does a Colonist at any ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler

... shoulders with a pretty air of pique. "As you will! I never trouble myself to court the friendship of any one. Le jeu ne vaut ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... continued she, after a short pause, as the lad leaned back upon his seat without deigning a reply. Then taking up the thin hand that lay upon his knee, she kissed it affectionately as if to atone for the momentary pique against him; but her eyes followed the poor boy until he was no longer visible among the crowd, and she was thinking of the pitiful expression, and contrasting it with the trustful, hopeful one that she had last seen from the lonely library, and wondering ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith

... Alexander, that the act Of eating, with another act or two, Makes us feel our mortality in fact Redoubled; when a roast and a ragout, And fish, and soup, by some side dishes back'd, Can give us either pain or pleasure, who Would pique himself on intellects, whose use Depends so much upon ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... in pique at the dubious character given him by Bob-Cat and half in thanks for the meeting at the station and the ride, he turned to the cowboy, ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... their voluptuous glow, and a fugitive blush flitted across her lily-white cheeks. She was more beautiful than ever. But who can fathom the follies of a young man who has got too hot blood in his head and heart? The bitter pique which the Baron had stirred up within me I transferred to the Baroness. The entire business seemed to me like a foul mystification; and I would now show that I was possessed of alarmingly good common-sense and also of extraordinary sagacity. Like a petulant child, I shunned ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... defiantly, as though with a personal grievance against the polling-clerk. He had a vote, not as lessee of the business premises, but as his father's lodger. He despised Labour; he did not care what happened to Labour. In voting for Labour, he seemed to have the same satisfaction as if from pique he had voted against it because its ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... have shown it. This is another perverse and suicidal inconsistency on a woman's part: she should never exhibit these small meannesses of pique, sullen tempers, jealousy, to her husband, since they place her wholly at a disadvantage, making her less attractive than the objects she ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... Caen in this matter has been severely commented on, as it was entirely due to his personal pique and jealousy in the affair that this indignity was put upon Flinders. The generous hospitality extended by the British settlement to the French navigators at Port Jackson found no response in this rough specimen of a soldier of the revolution, who throughout the period of Flinders' ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... Delafield not only watched, but easily detected, both the rapid transitions and the character of these opposite emotions. Under the sudden influence of passions, that probably will not escape our readers, he could not forbear uttering, in a tone in which pique might have been ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper

... of the commons with respect to the election of a burgess for Westminster were attended with some extraordinary circumstances, which we shall now record for the edification of those who pique themselves on the privileges of a British subject. We have already observed, that a majority appearing on the poll for lord Trentham, the adherents of the other candidate, sir George Vandeput, demanded a scrutiny, which was granted by the high bailiff ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... painter. One of his celebrated animal pictures is 'Daniel in the Lions' Den,' now at Hamilton Palace, in which each lion is a king of beasts checked in his fiercest have been painted by Rubens in a fit of pique at a false report which had been circulated that he could not paint animals, and that those in his pictures were supplied by the animal-painter, his ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler

... romanticist's natural affection for the appeal of the past and the stock elements can be counted upon in all his best fiction: salient personalities, the march of events, exciting situations, and ever that arch-romantic lure, the one trick up the sleeve to pique anticipation. Hence, in spite of descriptions that seem over-long, a heavy-footed manner that lacks suppleness and variety, and undeniable carelessness of construction, he is still loved of the young ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... to bed with a great thirst for revenge, I fell asleep thinking of it, and I awoke with the resolution of quenching it. I began to write, but, as I wished particularly that my letter should not show the pique of the disappointed lover, I left it on my table with the intention of reading it again the next day. It proved a useful precaution, for when I read it over, twenty-four hours afterwards, I found it unworthy of me, and tore it ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... amiable, frank, friendly, manly in private life, was seized with the dotage of age and the fury of a woman, the instant politics were concerned—who reserved all his candour and comprehensiveness of view for history, and vented his littleness, pique, resentment, bigotry, and intolerance on his contemporaries—who took the wrong side, and defended it by unfair means—who, the moment his own interest or the prejudices of others interfered, seemed to forget all that was due to the pride of intellect, to the ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... you knows him quite well, He comes upon deck and he cuts a great swell; It's damn your eyes there and it's damn your eyes here, And straight to the gangway he takes a broad sheer. —La Pique "Come-all-ye." ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... pique themselves on their politeness; but far from being the polish of a cultivated mind, it consists merely of tiresome forms and ceremonies. So far indeed from entering immediately into your character, and making you feel instantly at your ease, like the well-bred French, their over-acted ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... of poets heroic, If you'll believe two wits and a Stoic. Down go the Iliads, down go the AEneidos: All must give place to the Gondiberteidos. For to Homer and Virgil he has a just pique, Because one's writ in Latin, the other in Greek; Besides an old grudge (our critics they say so) With Ovid, because his sirname was Naso. If fiction the fame of a poet thus raises, What poets are you that have writ his praises? But we justly quarrel at this ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... board. "He'll do more too come another occasion." That occasion did occur before many days were over. Two days afterwards the "Blanche" was joined by the "Quebec" frigate, and together, when sailing by Guadeloupe, they discovered the French thirty-six-gun frigate "Pique" lying at anchor in the harbour of Pointe-a-Pitre, ready for sea. Not to deprive his brother captain of the honour he might obtain by engaging an antagonist so worthy of him, Captain Carpenter parted company, ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston

... haste, and were, of course, unanimous; though it is difficult to say how far they were influenced by sound argument and how far by pique and a desire to thwart the Englishman. While they sat, Captain Salt remained on deck cursing quietly and examining the approaching enemy with ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... Pique and disappointment smouldered also in the bosom of her fair daughter, who, if she had been less fair, might have been called sullen, since these emotions evidenced themselves in a scornful silence, which was not alleviated by the fact that ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... had inadvertently struck a vein of ore, Mrs. Cayley-Binns ventured to hint that the family of the Prince was known to her also. She was wisely a little mysterious about the acquaintance, and contrived to pique the interest of Miss Sutfield by vague and desperately involved allusions. When she begged the lady's good offices in the matter of a card for Lady Meason's next Casino tea, the favour was promised. The card came for mother and daughter, ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... insurance paper. No, that won't do. But Mutual comes pretty near the idea. If we could get something like that, it would pique curiosity; and then if we could get paragraphs afloat explaining that the contributors were to be paid according to the sales, it would ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... be before the other one did anything to divert the talk from herself. Some time, I fancy." He smiled rather grimly as he unbuckled his sword-belt. It is unlucky for a girl when she starts a train of reflection like this. Lilly's little attempt to pique her admirer had somehow missed ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge

... semi-conscious. Looked upon thoughtfully, it is a coincidence that we breathe; certainly it is a mighty coincidence that we speak to one another and comprehend; for these are true marvels. But what petty interlacings of human action so pique our sense of the theatrical that we call them coincidences and are astonished! That Julia should arrive during Noble's long process of buying a ticket to go to her was stranger than that she stopped to look at him, though still not comparable in strangeness to the fact that ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington

... replied with an accent of finality but with a shade of pique: "The best proof that M. Kittredge would not be jealous of me is ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett

... universal good he seeks to find a place even for this gipsy creature, who traffics "in just what we most pique us that we keep." Having, in the Ring and the Book, challenged evil at its worst as it manifests itself practically in concrete characters and external action, and having wrung from it the victory of the good, in Fifine and in his other later poems he meets it again ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones

... she could ever think of marrying. He seems to have made her want of vivid religious conviction the excuse for not proposing to her, but it is not easy to put aside the conviction that it was her want of a fortune which actuated him most strongly. Finally, he tries to pique her by telling her that he "knows of parties" in the city of Hanover "who might bring him much honour and comfort" were he "not afraid of losing (Catharine Trotter's) friendship." They write to one another with extreme ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse



Words linked to "Pique" :   cloth, temper, material, irritation, anger, offend, chafe, vexation, resent, fabric, annoyance, textile



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