"Prude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his breast, and he took her in his arms, holding her across him—all her magnificent weight upon his knees. Oh, she was a lovely creature ... as he kissed her firm, shy mouth it seemed to him as if her whole body was a challenge. A queer kind of antagonism seized him—prude or rake, she should get her lesson ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... seemed to enjoy the equivoque, content to wait. So he kept her on tenterhooks; she felt a cheat, and what is worse, a detected cheat. This filled her deep with shame. It made her more coy and more a prude than she had ever need to be had she gone among them kirtled and coifed. At last came the day when that happened which she had darkly dreaded. A load of coals went off to Market Basing; to dinner ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... that is all, please permit me to retire. The less a young lady of my age thinks or talks about the other sex, the more time she has for her books and her needle;" and, having delivered this precious sentence, with a deliberate and most deceiving imitation of the pedantic prude, she departed, and outside the door broke instantly into a joyous chuckle at the expense of the plotters she had left looking moonstruck in one another's faces. If the new allies had been both Fountain, ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... with more gravity than she was prepared for, 'she is a prude; but I am not certain that in foreign society, where less liberties are tolerated than in our country, if such a bearing be not wiser.' What I was going to plunge into, heaven knows, for the waiter entered at ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... might be justified. It was very strange Shillito had gone. All the same, she did not mean to submit. Her mother's placid conventionality had long irritated her; one got tired of galling rules and criticism. She was not going to be molded into a calculating prude like Grace, or a prig like Mortimer. They did not know the ridiculous good-form they cultivated was out of date. In fact, she had had enough and meant ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... to repress a thrill of satisfaction; "of course you couldn't marry him." He understood now the meaning of Dunlavey's words to her in Dry Bottom. "If you wasn't such a damn prude," he had said. He looked at the girl with a sudden, grim smile. "He said something about running you and your brother out of the country," he said; "of course you won't ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... denial of her part in him, by her attitude of indestructible and unique possession. If she didn't know him she would like to know who did. But up till now she had meant to spare Mrs. Majendie her knowledge of him, for she was not ill-natured. She was sorry for the poor, inept, unhappy prude. ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... will count me over-modest, Deem me Victorian, dub me prude; I may have early views, the very oddest, On what is chaste and what is rude; Yet am I certain that my leg Would not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... it might be suggested either through resentment or envy. Only follow me to her apartment, either that, no longer trusting calumny and malice you may honour her with a just preference, if I accuse her falsely; or, if my information be true, you may no longer be the dupe of a pretended prude, who makes you act so unbecoming ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... the very unbusinesslike bank that is financing the P. and P. Film Co. harbours designs on the virtue of Rita, who has this commodity in a measure unusual with film vampires (or usual, I forget which), and is just a slightly adventurous prude out for a good time. He accordingly advances more money for The Guilty Dollar on condition that Rita be engaged, and yet more money on condition that she be not fired by any machinations ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919 • Various
... training Gertrude was a formalist and a prude, but she was human and she unconsciously obeyed a law of nature which ordains the union of the dissimilar. This was why, having met only men of her own kind hitherto, she had escaped the touch of passion and now felt drawn toward one who greatly ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... Madame de St. Cymon, over whom the present state of her affairs gave him command, to order her to set out immediately, and to take Blanche with her to Paris, without asking the consent of that fool and prude, her aunt ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... ground. Now, though I never was greatly given to the tender and sentimental, and have not had any tendencies that way greatly increased by the elegancies and courtesies of a midshipman's berth,—not to say that, as far as I recollect, Mdlle. Virginia was a bit of a prude, and M. Paul a pump,—yet were it but for old acquaintance sake, I determined on making a pilgrimage. Pamplemousses is a small village about seven miles from Port Louis, and the road to it is lined by rows of tamarind trees, ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... had naturally inherited the profound animosity that Lady Douglas bore to her mother, which had already come to light in the few words that the two women had exchanged. Besides, in ageing, whether from repentance for her errors or from hypocrisy, Lady Douglas had become a prude and a puritan; so that at this time she united with the natural acrimony of her character all the stiffness of the new religion she ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... see me, lends me books, walks up and down by the hour together with me, brings me fruit and flowers! You think I'm blind, I suppose! You're a nice person! and so particular too! and so fastidious in your conversation! Oh, trust a prude! But I tell you," he bawled, coming up close to her, and shaking his fist in her face, "I tell you I won't have it. ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... world. To be sure, upon the verge of seventy, an old maid may be permitted to dispense with the more rigid punctilio of her class, but Mrs. Sally had always been so tenacious on the score of character, so very a prude, so determined an avoider of the 'men folk' (as she was wont contemptuously to call them), that we all were conscious of something like astonishment, on finding that she and her little handmaid had taken up their abode in one end of a spacious farmhouse ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... Jack Stepney, from the depths of a neighbouring arm-chair. "Really, you know, I'm no prude, but when it comes to a girl standing there as if she was up at auction—I thought seriously ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... if M. de Bernard falls readily enough into the easy, matter-of-course tone in which his countrymen habitually discuss amatory peccadilloes—and he could hardly have attained his present popularity in France had he assumed the prude—he does not disdain or neglect to point a moral after his own fashion. In administering a remedy, a wise physician has regard to the idiosyncrasy of the patient as well as to the nature of the disease. A nation whose morality is unhealthy, must not be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... interrupt my writing, because Miss Neumann had come in. Today she has colored legs with patent-leather shoes—I find that exciting. I had promised myself to watch her no longer... lately she shown herself to be such a prude... in the afternoon she went into the city. She came back late. I met her on the staircase. But she broke away and said, excitedly, "Go to bed." And she went into her room. In the following days I did not see her. The servant Hermann ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... obscene nonsense. He forced himself to sit the play out, but he did not know whether he was more bored or nauseated. If that was what the theatre was coming to, then it was high time the police stepped in and closed the playhouses. He was no prude and could laugh as well as anyone at the witty immorality of a farce at the Palais Royal, but here was nothing but filth. With an emphatic gesture he held his nose and whistled through his teeth. It was the ruin of the ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... so? You and I were babies once, though no one is old enough to remember that, and we shouldn't have liked our parents and friends to have blushed when they mentioned us. Georgie, you are a prude." ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... haven't,' said he, and fixed a stare on me. 'Oh, I see what you mean. I'm drunk. . . . It's no use your pretending,' he caught me up argumentatively. 'I've taken too much t'drink. Tiring day. Hope you're not a prude?' ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... madrigal. "Un gran cervello di principessa," he says. Mary Stuart, less concerned with the church and more with the woman part of the question, had little respect for her sister Elizabeth, and wrote to her as queen to queen and coquette to prude: "Your disinclination to marriage arises from your not wishing to lose the liberty of being made love to." Mary Stuart played with the fan, Elizabeth with the axe. An uneven match. They were rivals, besides, in literature. Mary Stuart composed French verses; Elizabeth translated Horace. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... a little prude you are;' and Frank laughed uneasily. 'What possible harm is there in reading an address? The postmaster has to do it, and any one who took it to the office would ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... You confuse me!—But why should I play the prude? I will own there was a time, when I thought myself handsome. 'Tis past. Alas! the enchanting beauties of a female countenance arise from peace of mind—The look, which captivates an honourable man, must be reflected ...
— The Stranger - A Drama, in Five Acts • August von Kotzebue
... talks about the Puritans, and all that sort of thing. I know what she means. But there's no use talking about it. I'll do as you say—command, I mean. I'll try to be a prude. Heaven alone knows what a real prude is. I don't. All this tommy-rot about Bobby and me wouldn't exist if that wretched Chase man had been a little more affable. He never noticed us until you came. No wife to snoop after him and—why, my dear, he would ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... good friends with somebody like that! Of course Quillan must have some bit of Intelligence business in mind with Pluly, but there should be other ways of going about it. And later, when she'd been just a little stiff with him, Quillan had had the nerve to tell her not to be a prude, doll! ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... on a sterner and graver look than she had ever yet worn as she read on, and when at length she finished the epistle, she appeared the horrified prude to perfection. ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... one more proof of the theory I have put forward in her defence, for the excisions which Lady Burton made were only those which referred to the subject which was the theme of The Scented Garden. Lady Burton was no prude: she knew also that her husband did not write as "a young lady to young ladies"; but she drew the line at a certain point, and she drew it rigidly. By her husband's will she had full power to bring out any editions she might please of The Arabian Nights or any other book of his. She therefore ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... As why should I? I'll question not, nor answer. 'Neath your brow My sentence hunches, crawls, like cat to spring. Pah! there's no prude will match your virtuous wife ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q
... for a Whig, or a Puritan, or any other unimaginative blockhead, to cry out against all this as nauseous flattery, and assert that after all she was rather an unpoetical personage than otherwise—a coarse-minded old maid, half prude, half coquette, whose better part was mannish, and all that belonged to her sex a ludicrous exaggeration of its weaknesses. But meanwhile, they overlook the fact, that not the woman Elizabeth, but the Virgin-queen, the royal heroine, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... Hercules, Whose soul was in his sinews; Pluto, blacker Than his own hell; Vulcan, who shook his horns At every limp he took; great Bacchus rode Upon a barrel; and in a cockle-shell Neptune kept state; then Mercury was a thief; Juno a shrew; Pallas a prude, at best; And Venus walked the clouds in search of lovers; Only great Jove, the lord and thunderer, Sat in the circle of his starry power And frowned 'I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... "Prude!" exclaimed the collar; and then it was taken out of the washing-tub. It was starched, hung over the back of a chair in the sunshine, and was then laid on the ironing-blanket; then came the warm box-iron. "Dear lady!" said the collar. ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... a troop of Italian players who had got up a comedy called "The Pretended Prude." When I learnt they were going to represent it, I sent for them and told them not to do so. It was in vain; they played it, and got a great deal of money by it; but they were afterwards sent away in consequence. They then came to me and wanted me to intercede for them; but I said, "Why ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... son of hers read "some chapters out of Rabelais," "which were enough," she declares, "to make us die with laughing." "I cannot affect," she says, "a prudery which is not natural to me." No, indeed, a prude this woman was not. She had the strong aesthetic stomach of her time. It is queer to have Rabelais rubbing cheek and jowl with Nicole ("We are going to begin a moral treatise of Nicole's"), a severe Port-Royalist, in one and the same letter. But this is French; above all, it ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... that little Eve managed without difficulty to collect. It is but human to take a harmless interest in what our next-door neighbor is doing, has done, or may do. Primarily gossip was harmless; to-day it is still harmless in some quarters. The gossip of the present time is like the prude, always looking for the worst and finding it. The real trouble with the gossip lies in the fact that she has little else to do; her own affairs are so uninteresting that she is perforce obliged to look into the affairs of her neighbors. Then, to prove that she is well informed, she feels compelled ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... inclined to scold his imagination as a companion which led him into excesses, to rebel against his own instinct. Why should he refuse any pleasant temptation that came in his way? Why should he decline to go on the yacht? Was he not a prude, a timorous man to be so afraid for his own safety, not of body, but of mind and soul? Mrs. Shiffney's remarks about Continental artists stuck in his mind. Ought he not to fling off his armor, to descend boldly into the mid-stream of life, to let it take him on ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... which was too good to keep secret, and soon the "billet de la Chatre" became, in the mouth of everybody, a saying applied to things upon which it is not wise to rely. Voltaire, to preserve so charming an incident, has embalmed it in his comedy of la Prude, act I, scene III. Ninon merely followed the rule established by Madame de Sevigne: "Les femmes ont permission d'etre faibles, et elles se servent sans ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... disdain, Stern Tragedy rejects too light a vein: Like a grave Matron, destin'd to advance On solemn festivals to join the dance, Mixt with the shaggy tribe of Satyrs rude, She'll hold a sober mien, and act the prude. Let me not, Pisos, in the Sylvan scene, Use abject terms alone, and phrases mean; Nor of high Tragick colouring afraid, Neglect too much the difference of shade! Ut nihil intersit Davusne loquatur et audax Pythias emuncto lucrata Simone talentum, ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... and evening.[989] Elsewhere, if here and there a daily service was kept up, the congregation was sure to consist only of a few women; and the Bridget or Cecilia who was regularly there, was sure of being accounted by not a few of her neighbours, 'prude, devotee, or Methodist.'[990] At the end of the century, and on till the end of the Georgian period, daily public prayers became rarer still. In the country they were kept up only 'in a few old-fashioned ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... thriven on the dollars of American women under the leadership of modern culture. And, you know, the maiden follows mama. She is an apologist of sublime lewdness, of emancipated human caninity. Now I am no prude. I can stand a fairly strong touch of human nature. I can even put up with a good deal of the frankness of the cat and dog. But the frankness of some modern authors makes me sorry that Adam was a common ancestor of theirs and mine. It's a disgrace to Adam and the whole human brotherhood. ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... antipathies are always suspicious, and betray a secret affinity. The difference between the 'Great Vulgar and the Small' is mostly in outward circumstances. The coxcomb criticises the dress of the clown, as the pedant cavils at the bad grammar of the illiterate, or the prude is shocked at the backslidings of her frail acquaintance. Those who have the fewest resources in themselves naturally seek the food of their self-love elsewhere. The most ignorant people find most to laugh at in strangers: scandal and satire prevail most in country-places; ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... injunction of the mother he loved. When other men spoke lightly of women in his presence he showed disapproval, if their character was attacked he championed their cause, if confronted with proofs, he flatly refused to consider them. Yet he was neither a prig nor a prude. He enjoyed a joke as well as any one, but at the same time he did not let his mind run in only one channel, as some men do. He pitied rather than blamed the wretched females who frequented the miners' camps. More sinned against than sinning, was his humane judgment of these ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... Beer; for in troth, Betty, Strong-Waters will in time ruin your Constitution. You should leave those to your Betters.—What! and my pretty Jenny Diver too! As prim and demure as ever! There is not any Prude, though ever so high bred, hath a more sanctify'd Look, with a more mischievous Heart. Ah! thou art a dear artful Hypocrite.—Mrs. Slammekin! as careless and genteel as ever! all you fine Ladies, who know your own Beauty, affect an Undress.—But see, ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay
... my time, too, you know, for when I get to be a junior I'll have to begin the 'prune and prism' act," retorted the girl with a roguish wink. "Then"— suddenly straightening herself, drawing down the corners of her mouth, crossing her eyes, and assuming the air of a would-be prude—"the prospective infraction of law and order would have to be decorously stated something like this: ahem! 'Those irrepressible, irresponsible and notorious sophomores are secretly preparing to ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... knew, as a matter of domestic history, that Griffith and Kate lived together a happy couple; but this ardent prude was compelled by her position to see it, and realize it, every day. She had to witness little conjugal caresses, and they turned her sick with jealousy. She was Nobody. They took no more account of her than of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... a clove of garlic, which he had the finest of all the countryside in a garden he tilled with his own hands, and otherwhiles a punnet of peascods or a bunch of chives or scallions, and whenas he saw his opportunity, he would ogle her askance and cast a friendly gibe at her; but she, putting on the prude, made a show of not observing it and passed on with a demure air; wherefore my lord priest could not come by his will ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... pair of clear brown eyes upon his face, and the faintest trace of astonishment crept into them. She was a woman with high principles, but neither a fool nor a prude, and she saw no sign of dissolute living there. The man's gaze was curiously steady, his skin clear and brown, and his sinewy form suggested a capacity for, and she almost fancied an acquaintance with, physical toil. Yet he had ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... letter unconsciously into the bosom of her dress, and sat looking out of the window. It promised to be a glorious day, and London was stifling and gritty. Surely no one but an unwholesome-minded prude could jib at a walk across a park. Mrs. Phillips would be delighted to hear that she had gone. For the matter of that, she would tell her—when ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... all his darts were lost, Yet still resolved to spare no cost; He could not answer to his fame The triumphs of that stubborn dame, A nymph so hard to be subdued, Who neither was coquette nor prude. I find, says he, she wants a doctor, Both to adore her, and instruct her: I'll give her what she most admires, Among those venerable sires. Cadenus is a subject fit, Grown old in politics and wit; Caressed by Ministers of State, Of half mankind the dread and hate. Whate'er ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... wrinkled his face and he smote the table with his open hand. "Dull, are they? There, my hedge-minstrel from Valmy, is your welcome ready made. Bring your lute and make pretty Ursula's grey eyes dance to a love song, prude that she is." ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... Pictures so much to the Life, it being a Point to which the Heart alone can attain. When I say the Heart, I mean a tender Heart, and one that is in such Situations. The following is the Character of a Prude in Love. Being not to be depended upon in her Proceedings, she was a perpetual Mixture of Tenderness and Severity: She seem'd to yield only to be the more obstinate in her Opposition. If she thought she had, by ...
— Prefaces to Fiction • Various
... request. You insisted they would never make you jealous, and they rather bored you. So I did not say a word about this one. Of course Laura is anxious to further his cause. She thinks me a good woman and somewhat of a prude. Poor soul! She doesn't suspect the wedding ring with the diamond in it you've seen me sometimes wear! You know it's the sort of thing wicked women affect when they want to be cynical about the marriage tie. Well, ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... handsome Florentine. He found employment for every female tongue, and she who dared not to employ her tongue, made amends for the privation with her thoughts. Many a maiden now enjoyed less tranquil slumbers; many an experienced coquette sighed as she laid on her colour at the looking glass; many a prude forgot the rules which she had imposed upon herself, and daily frequented the gardens and walks in which report gave her the hope ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... are deserving of compassion. With all their vices, they have, after all, one less than many of their sex who pride themselves on chastity, without really possessing it; that is, hypocrisy. As they shew themselves to be what they really are, they cannot make the secret mischief which a detected prude not unfrequently occasions under the deceitful mask of modesty. Degraded in their own eyes, and being no longer able to reign through the graces of virtue, they fall into the opposite extreme, and display all the audaciousness ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... talk like a man of power, but model like a cursed niggling prude. You're bitten with the new madness. You're the Bryan of art. 'The dear people' is your cry. Damn the people! They don't know a good thing when they see it. Why consider the millions? Consider the few, those who have the taste and the dollars. That's the way all the big men of the past ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... the voice of the cicada seemed like the voice of an old obstinate woman, an old prude, accusing a young girl of some fault,—but to Freneau the cry of the little creature seemed rather to be like the cry of a little child complaining—a little girl, perhaps, complaining that somebody had been ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... and the Duke's both in my chamber. Was not that a pretty civil surprise? Yes, and they are in fine gilded frames, too. I am writing a letter to thank her, which I will send to-morrow morning. I'll tell her she is such a prude that she will not let so much as her picture be alone in a room with a man, unless the Duke's be with it; and so forth.(3) We are full of snow, and dabbling. Lady Masham has come abroad these three days, and seen the Queen. I dined with her t'other day at her sister ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... few of your people, go by night, and carry her off. What can be more simple? It would have been the proper way at first, with such a prude as she! Don't fear the result. It's not so terrible to them. I've known it tried before. Long ere the cibolero can return, she'll be perfectly ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... somewhat in years, employed by his court in a public function at that of Madrid, had put his charming young new-married wife under the controul and wardship, as I may say, of his insolent sister, an old prude. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... in conclusions,—yet irresistible and convincing to every woman in their illogical sincerity. There was not a word of love in it, yet every page breathed a wholesome adoration; there was not an epithet or expression that a greater prude than Mrs. Ashwood would have objected to, yet every sentence seemed to end in a caress. There was not a line of poetry in it, and scarcely a figure or simile, and yet it was poetical. Boyishly egotistic as it was in attitude, it seemed to be written less OF himself than TO ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... complain. It sounds like something with three legs. Not but what I'd rather be a biological freak than a grind—or a prude." ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... hand for you to run to," Bertie half sneered, half laughed, for he was keeping his hateful, teasing good nature. "And by the way, talkin' of him, since you're such a little prude, I'll just warn you in a friendly way to look out for that chap. You don't know his history—what? I'm sure the ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... attitude towards the man. The signs were slight, too slight for him to have recognized them as yet; but Sally's curious, pitiless eyes had discerned them. She had discerned and disapproved, and she had resolved that no squeamish delicacy should keep her from preventing Beatrix's playing the part of a prude. ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... looked down the dark road, then set off again walking towards Beldover. Then suddenly, to show him she was no shallow prude, she stopped and held him tight, hard against her, and covered his face with hard, fierce kisses of passion. In spite of his otherness, the old blood beat ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... Parsons, desirous all sinners to save, And to make each a prig or a prude, If two thousand long years have not made us behave, It is time you began ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... the prude. She received the sergeant-major's attentions very coolly, and cut short his conversational efforts so as to excite him the more. At the same time her mockingly triumphant and provocative glances would contradict the virtuous compression ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... such a prude, my dear Milly," said the first voice. "To me this kind of thing is like a ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... the speech of soldiers. Yet he not merely kept his own lips" clean, but he shrank, as from a blow, from every coarse or indecent speech in others. He did not go around correcting people. He was too sensible for that. He was not a prig or a prude. But he knew, as we know, that vile speech is hateful to God; and, as so many of us do not do, he ...
— For Greater Things: The story of Saint Stanislaus Kostka • William T. Kane, S.J.
... find what he would seek: Smiling he came, he smiled when he withdrew, And paid the same attention to the two; Meeting and parting without joy or pain, He seem'd to come that he might go again. The wondering girl, no prude, but something nice, At length was chill'd by his unmelting ice; She found her tortoise held such sluggish pace, That she must turn and meet him in the chase: This not approving, she withdrew, till one Came who appear'd with livelier hope to run; Who sought a readier way the heart ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... she said, quietly. "There is a perfectly delightful freedom about the Colonel's way of living. Only some horrid old Victorian prude could possibly take exception to it. ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... life, in their labors; and enjoyed its pleasures with truth and honesty. This over-nice, mincing delicacy, and sentimentality, in which their grand-daughters indulge, is but the off-throw of the boarding-school, the novelist, and the prude—mere "leather and prunella." Such remarks may be thought to lie beyond the line of our immediate labor. But in the discussion of the collateral subjects which have a bearing upon country life and residence, we incline to make a clean breast ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... Ann was no prude, and she certainly was no saint. Twice a week there was the sound of fiddling and dancing feet in a certain wooden hall that stood near the river; and there, with the men and women of the worldly sort, Ann and her sister danced. ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... and Flemming were delighted with the scene; and at the same time exceedingly amused with the countenance of an old prude in the next box, who seemed to look upon the wholemagic show, with such feelings as Michal, Saul's daughter, experienced, when she looked from her window and saw King David dancing and leaping with his ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... When he spoke Swedish, he called a spade a spade in a manner that gave Keith shock after shock. Always rather given to a certain aristocratic exclusiveness in his speech, Keith had through his association with Murray become something of a prude in this respect. He could still descend to obscenities when his "manliness" had to be proved, but ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... Lady Binks, who had been thwarted by this free-spoken young lady, both in her former character of a coquette and romp, and in that of a prude which she at present wore—"Miss Mowbray ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... acquaintance in the common social circle, and even on first introduction had been much pleased, not to say captivated, with her cordial address, frank unsophisticated manners, and winsome looks; he contrasted her to much advantage with the affected coquette, the cold formal prude, the flippant woman of fashion, the empty heads and hollow hearts wherewithal society is peopled. He had long been wearied out with shallow courtesies, frigid compliments, and other conventional hypocrisies, up and down the world; and wanted something better ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Argemone, sweet prude, thought herself bound to read Honoria a lecture that night, on her reckless exhibition of feeling; but it profited little. The most consummate cunning could not have baffled Argemone's suspicions more completely than her sister's utter simplicity. She cried ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... everything she has said and done to-day. My dear fellow," with a subtle change of tone, "God knows I am no prude." He smiled a bland smile. "But there are limits to what any husband can endure." His lips became thin and terrible; his eyes ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... saying that. Whether I have a heart or not I will leave you to find out for yourself; but I won't be called a prude by you. You know you were wrong to dance with that man. What has come of it? What have you told me yourself this morning? In order to preserve you from misery and destruction, Mr Palliser has given up all his dearest hopes. He has had to sacrifice ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... was a prude outlaw, Whyles he walked on grounde; So curteyse an outlaw as he was one Was ...
— Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Fourth Series • Frank Sidgwick
... a regular bad 'un, but now she professes to be as over-nice as her mistress; like master like man, they say. The princess herself, who is now so stiff and starched, knew how to carry on a lively game in her time. Fifteen years ago, she was no such prude: do you remember that handsome colonel of hussars, who was in garrison at Abbeville? an exiled noble who had served in Russia, whom the Bourbons gave ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... claws. That was the day of the Galland Indies. One of the sides of that century was delicate, the other was magnificent; and by the green cabbages! people amused themselves. To-day, people are serious. The bourgeois is avaricious, the bourgeoise is a prude; your century is unfortunate. People would drive away the Graces as being too low in the neck. Alas! beauty is concealed as though it were ugliness. Since the revolution, everything, including the ballet-dancers, has had its trousers; a mountebank dancer must be grave; your rigadoons ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... stared. "Mock-marriage?" she echoed. "Marriage? La!" And again she vented her unpleasant laugh. "Did she insist on that, the prude? ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... too far-reaching in its beneficent purpose to be fettered by the querulous triflings of the ancient or intellectual prude; nor should it be belittled by the superficial insight of the habitual scoffer. It is not a fantasy nor an idle dream. It is not even an inspiration. The destiny of the race has brought us face to face with ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... though not by any manner of means an old maid or a prude, said it was nothing short of a crying scandal that ought to be put a stop to instanter to say that women of that stamp (quite apart from any oldmaidish squeamishness on the subject), a necessary evil, w ere ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... him for; and that Francis, who saw these underlined manuscripts, and yet persisted in the conventional view of Boswell, was not a Mid-Victorian prig but a common imbecile. It is true that he has been stupid enough to mangle and emasculate the letters that he was employed to publish; an officious prude unquestionably he was, but no fool, ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... Will. What a rank prude is woman, thus to disguise her inclination. They call thee Barbara—Bab! restrain not thy fancy. Come, hang round my neck and love me. What! wouldst thou be an exception ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... hit, spoke resentfully. "Oh, I dare say they'd make a good team,—one's a prude and the other ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... in order again for another customer, which happened to be a famous prude, whom her parents after long threatenings, and much persuasion, had with the extremest difficulty prevailed on to accept a young handsome goldsmith, that might have pretended to five times her fortune. The fathers and mothers in the neighbourhood used to quote her for an example to their daughters. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... victory was believed to have cost the "prude" her virtue; but Miss Stuart had proved again and again that she was no such compliant maid. The only passport to her favours, though a King sought them, was a wedding-ring; and amid all the temptations of a dissolute ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... be a great loss in these times; he knows his business, lets his Ministers do as they please, but expects to be informed of everything. He lives a strange life at Brighton, with tagrag and bobtail about him, and always open house. The Queen is a prude, and will not let the ladies come decolletees to her parties. George IV., who liked ample expanses of that sort, would not let them be covered. In the meantime matters don't seem more promising either here or abroad. In Ireland there is open war between Anglesey and O'Connell, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... nothing, and could conceive of nothing more honourable, more dignified, or more desirable than a good business properly attended to. He was proud of the close and personal attention that he paid to his shop,—somewhat censoriously proud; he might be called a mercantile prude; or shopkeeping pedant; and when a near neighbour who had a country house at Kentish-town, to which he went down every Saturday, and from which he returned every Monday or Tuesday, came by a variety of unavoidable, or unavoided misfortunes to make his appearance ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... but there were limits that few who knew her overstepped. One or two had done so, but had been rebuked in a way they wished to forget. Sadie had the tricks of an accomplished coquette, but something of the heart of a prude. ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... were apart a reaction set in. She wondered how she could have been so cold, called herself a prude and an idiot, questioned if any man could really care for her, and got up in the dead of night to try new ways of doing her hair. But as soon as he reappeared her head straightened itself on her slim neck and she sped her little shafts of irony, or flew her little ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... I suppose, he is laughing up his sleeve at me for having taken him seriously, and thinks he is punishing me by ignoring me for being such a little prude!" said Myra. "Perhaps I did make rather a fool of myself, but I intend to get even with him. Yes, I'll get even with the conceited creature! Do you know what I have decided to do, aunt? I am going to make love to Don Carlos and make him fall in love with me in earnest, just to have the ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... a wide gesture, and swung to his daughter. "You hear him, the mealy-mouthed prude! Perhaps you'll believe at last that marriage with him would be the ruin of you. He would always be there the inconvenient husband—to mar your every chance, ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... critical. She was young, and lively, and unquestionably pretty; but was she worth all this planning and contriving? She was by way of being a prude too, and held serious notions of women's place in the scheme of things. At any rate, the day's hunting had not brought him far out of his path, Frankfort being his real objective, and he would make up his mind later. Perhaps she would remove all ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... although I missed his presence when he did not come. He prolonged his visit to the friend with whom he was staying at Carlsruhe, on purpose to woo me. He loaded me with presents, which I was unwilling to take, only Madame Rupprecht seemed to consider me an affected prude if I refused them. Many of these presents consisted of articles of valuable old jewellery, evidently belonging to his family; by accepting these I doubled the ties which were formed around me by circumstances even ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Honourable Mrs. M'Catchley. Mrs. M'Catchley was, moreover, the most elegant of women, the wittiest creature, the dearest. King George the Fourth had presumed to admire Mrs. M'Catehley; but Mrs. M'Catchley, though no prude, let him see that she was proof against the corruptions of a throne. So long had the ears of Mrs. Pompley's friends been filled with the renown of Mrs. M'Catchley, that at last Mrs. M'Catchley was secretly supposed to be a myth, a creature of the elements, a poetic fiction ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to me in this Siamese-twins arrangement of two so uncongenial. I am at one and the same time pupil and teacher, offender and judge, performer and critic, chaperone and protegee, a prim, precise, old maid and a rollicking schoolgirl, a tomboy and a prude, a saint and sinner. What can result from such a combination? That we get on tolerably is a wonder. Some days, however, we get on admirably together, part of me paying compliments to the other part of me—whole days being given to this—until each of us has ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... not to find it necessary to travel that long way to Doornward to see his dearly beloved one. She must be quite a pretty girl, the Princess Ludovicka Hollandine, and, moreover, of very tender complexion, and not at all disposed to play the prude with the young, handsome Electoral Prince, who seems particularly ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... said the wench—And, Harriet, see the ill example of such a free behaviour before her: she presumed to prate in favour of the man's fit of fondness; yet, at other times, is a prude of a girl. ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... arm, which has gained us a glorious victory, and slain the chief of our enemies. In short, I am undoubtedly Sosie, son of Dave, an honest shepherd; brother of Arpage, who died in a foreign land; husband of Cleanthis the prude, whose temper drives me wild; I, who received a thousand cuts from a whip at Thebes, without ever saying anything about it; and who was once publicly branded on the back for being ...
— Amphitryon • Moliere
... had still some hours to run, the hall lamps had been lighted and left burning. Plainly, then, guests were expected, and were not expected before night. For whom, I asked myself with indignation, were such secret preparations likely to be made? Although no prude, I am a woman of decided views upon morality; if my house, to which my husband had brought me, was to serve in the character of a petite maison, I saw myself forced, however unwillingly, into a new course of litigation; and, determined to return and know the worst, I hastened ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the lake was covered with tritons and nereids; the pages of the family were converted into wood-nymphs, who peeped from every bower; and the footmen gamboled over the lawns in the figure of satyrs. When her majesty hunted in the park she was met by Diana who, pronouncing our royal prude to be the brightest paragon of unspotted chastity, invited her to groves free from the intrusions of Acteon." The most elaborate of these entertainments of which we have any notice, were, perhaps, the games celebrated in her honor by the Earl of Leicester, when she visited him at ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers |
