"Prudish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... indeed that the English rely too much upon the cleansing power of innocence in their woman. And it is curious how public opinion among this prudish nation will permit exhibitions of unabashed flirtation which would be publicly tolerated in probably no other part of Europe and certainly not in Asia or Africa. In the light, graceful little boat ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... next he goes where statues are, we'll do our best to hide them, Since to prudes all things are prudish, lest his modesty take hurt. Though some one else, perhaps, may write, and say he can't abide them, When Apollo stands in trousers, or when Venus wears ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 9th, 1892 • Various
... Chatelet, "Mme. d'Espard is the more prudish and particular because she herself is separated from her husband, nobody knows why. The Navarreins, the Lenoncourts, the Blamont-Chauvrys, and the rest of the relations have all rallied round her; the most strait-laced women are seen at her house, and receive ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... which the interpolation was made, or the causes by which it was dictated, little or nothing can now be confidently affirmed; but the agreement of the manuscripts and the early editions in giving it, render it impossible to discard it peremptorily as a declaration of prudish or of interested regret, with which Chaucer himself had nothing whatever ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... substances that have fallen upon this earth, the endeavor to exclude extra-mundane origins is the dogma that all yellow rains and yellow snows are colored with pollen from this earth's pine trees. Symons' Meteorological Magazine is especially prudish in this respect and regards as highly improper all advances ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... and would not be comforted. Her purist's pride was wounded; her prudish maiden's modesty was outraged—that her own father should believe it of her! And she must not open the subject or try to alter his opinion, for fear of the ridicule which seared ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... so positive about that, Aunty. Let us not be prudish. If he saw me, he made no sign, and therefore he is a gentleman." She looked out of the window and smiled again. "There ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... repression prevails in everything. In the print-shops one never sees a picture which even verges on impropriety. The few female portraits exhibited in their windows are robed with an amount of drapery which would satisfy the most prudish "sensibilities." All books, which have the slightest amorous tendency, are scrupulously interdicted without reference to their political views. The number of wine-shops seems to me small in proportion to the size of the city, and in none of them, as far as I could learn, are spirits sold. ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... smart recruiting officer in the village of Kelso, the Weekly Chronicle of which he filled with his love verses. His Delia was a Miss Dickson, daughter of a shopkeeper in the same village—his Gloriana a certain prudish old maiden lady, benempt Miss Goldie; I think I see her still, with her thin arms sheathed in scarlet gloves, and crossed like two lobsters in a fishmonger's stand. Poor Delia was a very beautiful ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... By his, she was narrow, uncharitable, even bigoted; tried by the code of more orthodox circles she was simply high-minded, true and noble in her devotion to principle. She was neither bigoted nor prudish, however the alien circumstances in which she was placed made her appear so. To her it was a vital question of right and purity of which Arthur disposed with such contemptuous lightness. True as the sunlight herself, no pang could be more bitter than the knowledge ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... only a smile to this accusation, and soon afterwards said, "I do not quite know what to make of Miss Fanny. I do not understand her. I could not tell what she would be at yesterday. What is her character? Is she solemn? Is she queer? Is she prudish? Why did she draw back and look so grave at me? I could hardly get her to speak. I never was so long in company with a girl in my life, trying to entertain her, and succeed so ill! Never met with a girl ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... it and hated me. I was the sturdy oak, Frederic the tender ivy. I poured out my heart's blood for him, poured it into his music. He was a mere girl, I tell you—a sensitive, slender, shrinking, peevish girl, a born prudish spinster, and would shiver if any one looked at him. Liszt always frightened him and he hated Mendelssohn. He called Beethoven a sour old Dutchman, and swore that he did not write piano music. For the man who first brought his name before the public, the big-hearted German, Robert Schumann—here's ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... believe a word Charles said. She talked a great deal about aristocratic fashions; said she wouldn't be a slave to prudish ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... thought prudish or ill-natured, first extinguished the light, and then threw off her chemise. Joining her companion bedfellow also quite naked, they embraced each other warmly and Minette, placing her hand on Ethel's bottom, forced their cunts together. She trembled from head to foot, but when Minette asked ...
— The Power of Mesmerism - A Highly Erotic Narrative of Voluptuous Facts and Fancies • Anonymous
... big-sounding, ad captandum; canting, insincere. not natural, unnatural; self-conscious; maniere; artificial; overwrought, overdone, overacted; euphuist &c 577. stiff, starch, formal, prim, smug, demure, tire a quatre epingles, quakerish, puritanical, prudish, pragmatical, priggish, conceited, coxcomical, foppish, dandified; finical, finikin; mincing, simpering, namby-pamby, sentimental. Phr. conceit in weakest bodies strongest ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... sayings and doings would bear to be exactly chronicled. The literary diversions and poetic ideals of this circle, too, gave a certain color to the charge of affectation, among people of less refined instincts, who found its esprit incomprehensible, its manners prudish, and its virtue a tacit reproach; but the dignified and serious character of many of its constant habitues should be a sufficient guarantee that it did not greatly pass the limits of good taste and good sense. The only point upon which Mme. de Rambouillet seems to have been open to criticism was ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... man's dress for females). The popular magazines and the "great moral shows" religiously respect the standards of the crowd. That which is broad is funny, but there is always a limit of toleration. What is prudish, puritanical, fastidious, affected, pharisaical, etc.? These adjectives are in use, and they apply to things which are beyond a line which is undefined and indefinable. It depends on the codes and standards of the group. Realism presents everyday experience, no humbug, the ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... to see them, and he, poor fellow, is consoling himself with Emma. But the worst of all was the one who would make love in public and insisted on proposing in the middle of a dance. I seldom dance round dances except with our boys, but that night I did because the girls laughed at me for being so 'prudish,' as they called it. I don't mind them now, for I found I was right, and felt that I ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... what to make of Miss Fanny," he said to his sister. "Is she solemn? Is she queer? Is she prudish? I can hardly get her to speak. I never was so long in company with a girl in my life, trying to entertain her, and succeeded so ill! Never met with a girl who looked so ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... hand, with all its cunning, ne'er quilled so exquisitely. Those graceful, fragile Petunias (what a family of sisters!), in their delicate glaze silks (ratherish decollete!), and the Superbia, Empress 'Gladiolus,' in brocade of such daring hues, may call the Asters 'stiff and prudish' in their quilled muslins; but, what say the Asters in return? Ah! what ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... things as a background to my sermon, to show you that I have no prim, precise, prudish, or cast-iron theories on the subject of human apparel; but the goddess of fashion has set up her throne in this country and at the sound of the timbrels we are all expected to fall down and worship. Her altars ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... utterances of treachery sound like witticism; an act of infidelity seems the prompting of reason, a sacrifice to propriety; while she is never reckless, she is always lovable; she is seldom tender and never sincere; amorous by nature, prudish on principle; sprightly, prudent, dexterous though utterly thoughtless, varied as Proteus in her moods, but charming as the Graces in her manner; she attracts but she eludes. What a number of parts I have seen her play! Entre nous, what a number ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... Wasn't it dreadful, his carrying you?" asked Alice, with a sly glance at Betty. "You know you are so—so prudish, one may say. Did he take you in his arms? It must have been very embarrassing for you, considering your dislike of Mr. Clarke, and he so much in ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... sending her out of the room; then she speaks to Emile very seriously. "Sir," she says, "I think a young man so well born and well bred as yourself, a man of feeling and character, would never reward with dishonour the confidence reposed in him by the friendship of this family. I am neither prudish nor over strict; I know how to make excuses for youthful folly, and what I have permitted in my own presence is sufficient proof of this. Consult your friend as to your own duty, he will tell you there is all ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... equality in the sexes—yet he recognised that sudden changes were prejudicial before sufficient progress had been accomplished. "To destroy, you must replace." Justice he considered the sole guide, reason and duty the only law. His morality was not that of pharasaical tartuffes, nor of prudish knickerbockers, who with wide phylacteries, sit in the high places to be seen of men. He only combatted evil principles and fought hard in favor ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... description of the anatomy of reproduction. In this portion of the work especial pains has been taken to avoid anything like indelicacy of expression, yet it has not been deemed advisable to sacrifice perspicuity of ideas to any prudish notions of modesty. It is hoped that the reader will bear in mind that the language of science is always chaste in itself, and that it is only through a corrupt imagination that it becomes invested with impurity. The author has constantly endeavored to impart information in ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... save to her, he sups at her side, he is in boyish ecstasies over her taste in wines. And when, at four in the morning, he throws her mantle over her shoulders and carries her down the three flights of stairs to her carriage, even her prudish cousinly chaperon seems to accept this as but the natural manner in which the hero takes possession of his ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... determination about her tones that caused Agnes to be obeyed instantly, and in a few minutes Harkness was laid upon the bed. There was no prudish finicking about Agnes. Taking pen-knife from her pocket, she ripped the boots off George's feet, pulled off his socks, and in less than three minutes more was laving his feet and legs to the ...
— Angel Agnes - The Heroine of the Yellow Fever Plague in Shreveport • Wesley Bradshaw
... all confessed that it was a bold thing for Miss Josephine to be the third wife of a man—some of the more prudish pursed their lips and said they wondered how she could, and they wondered yet more how Mrs. Harrowby ever allowed it, and why, if Mr. Dundas must marry again (but they thought he might be quiet now), he had not taken a stranger, instead of one who had been mixed up as it were ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... his sister Artemis, or Diana, another exquisite conception of Greek thought. Not the cold and cruel Diana of the poets; not she who, in her prudish anger, turned Actaeon into a stag, who slew Orion, who slew the children of Niobe, and demanded the death of Iphigenia. Very different is the beautiful Diana of the sculptors, the Artemis, or untouched one, chaste as ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... not conceive that order and dutifulness could coexist with liveliness and great charms of mind and manners; and when the fact was out of sight, he went back to his old notion, that affectionate parents and dutiful daughters must be dull, prudish, and tiresome. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... opened, as the Emperor was wont! One of our Camillas,(795) but in a freer style, I hear, he saw (I fancy just before your arrival); and he must have wondered at the familiarity of the dame, and the nincompoophood of her Prince. Sir William Hamilton is arrived— his Nymph of the Attitudes!(796) was too prudish ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... thought for my convenience, I beg that, at least, you will take some for your good name. Thousand devils woman! Will you have it said in Paris that you were found locked in a room with me? What will your uncle—your virtuous, prudish, incorruptible uncle—say when he learns of it? If he does not demand a heavy price from you for so dishonouring him, he is not the man I deem him. Now be sensible, child, and open that door while there is yet time, and before anybody discovers us ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... governed feminine deportment and education when I was a girl, many of the precepts and admonitions penned by the authors I have mentioned are derided and repudiated as 'puritanical,' 'old-fashioned,' 'strait-laced,' 'stupid and prudish'; but if these indeed be faults, certainly in the light of modern innovations they appear 'to lean to virtue's side.' In fashionable society, such as you are destined to meet at Mr. Palma's, you will ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Helen, laughing. "Now, don't be prim and prudish about it, Ruthie. I won't have it in here ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... where a bull with mortal horns had caused some great misfortune, and baptized the soil with the blood it had spilt? Certes, this plan presented itself bristling with difficulties: but the greatest of all was Mademoiselle de Montalais herself. Capricious, variable, close, giddy, free, prudish, a virgin armed with claws, Erigone stained with grapes, she sometimes overturned, with a single dash of her white fingers, or with a single puff from her laughing lips, the edifice which had exhausted ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... follows that the grave will remain empty. No, my friends, if I am bound by marriage ties, I authorize you both to hunt on my ground, and it will give me pleasure if you score a success. Who knows? The countess is, perhaps, less prudish than she seems." ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... struggle to which she had looked forward so long had indeed begun, and most inauspiciously. Her rival had every advantage. The mood in which Graydon had returned predisposed him to prompt action, while she had lost her influence for the present by a course that seemed to him so unnatural as to be prudish. Miss Wildmere's manner gave all the encouragement that a man could wish for, and it was hard to view with charity the smiling, triumphant belle. Madge suddenly became conscious that Mr. Muir was observing her, and she remarked, quietly: "I never saw better ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... man whom he did not envy Never saw a man more regardful of negroes No man ever yet told the truth about himself No man more perfectly sensed and more entirely abhorred slavery Not possible for Clemens to write like anybody else Ought not to call coarse without calling one's self prudish Polite learning hesitated his praise Praised it enough to satisfy the author Reparation due from every white to every black man Shackles of belief worn so long Stupidly truthful The ornament of a house is the friends ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of William Dean Howells • David Widger
... part I will do what I can to bring my feelings into accord with yours. One thing, above all, I would beg of you. Spare me the annoyances to which the strangeness of our mutual position might give rise to our relations with others. I am neither whimsical nor prudish, and should be sorry to get that reputation; but I feel sure that I can trust to your honor when I ask you to keep up the outward ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... she said to herself, half in prudish dismay at his effrontery, and yet pleased that he did not sheepishly seek to conceal his preference. And although the men (there were but two or three and not half the province, as her horror of this publicity would seem ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Commonwealth we now turn to the debaucheries of the court,—from cropped heads and dark cloaks to plumes and velvet, gold lace and embroidery,—to the varied fashions of every kind for which Paris has always been renowned, and which Charles brought back with him from his exile;—from prudish morals to indiscriminate debauchery; from the exercisings of brewers' clerks, the expounding of tailors, the catechizing of watermen, to the stage, which was now loudly petitioned to supply amusement and novelty. Macaulay justly says: "The restraints of that ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... means. The sacred authors, the Fathers of the Church, who present their thoughts in living words, and ecclesiastical authors have not felt that silence was best. I have followed their example, and shall exclaim, with St. Augustine, 'If what I have written scandalizes any prudish persons, let them rather accuse the turpitude of their own thoughts than the words I have been ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... brother died before him. The Hollisters are not a marrying family, said society. But six or seven years after his return to England Lord Hartfield married Lady Florence Ilmington, a beauty in her first season, and a very sweet but somewhat prudish young person. The marriage resulted in the birth of an heir, whose appearance upon this mortal stage was followed within a year by his father's exit. Hence the Hartfield property, always a fine estate, had been nursed and fattened during a long minority, and the ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... proof of any higher qualities they may have possessed, but they were both right-minded, religious girls. Some of the officers pronounced them far too strict, others considered them haughty, and one or two even ventured to pronounce them prudish, because they showed no taste for the frivolous amusements in which the ordinary run of young ladies indulge; not that they objected to dance, or to join in a pleasant pic-nic; indeed, the few who ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... are recorded who have distinguished themselves for their achievements in the late war. As we were contemplating a painting upon a very large scale, in which, amongst other figures, is an uncovered whole length of a warrior, a prudish-looking lady, who seemed to have touched the age of desperation, after having very attentively beheld it with her glass for some time, observed to her party, that there was a great deal of indecorum in the picture. Madame ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... must maintain his place at the cost of all things, for the sake of all these men who leaned upon him. And it was certain that the King loved this lady. If he had sent her few gifts and given her no titles nor farms, it was because—either of nature or to enhance the King's appetite—she shewed a prudish disposition. But day by day and week in week out the King went with his little son in his times of ease to the rooms of the Lady Mary. And there he went, assuredly, not to see the glum face of the daughter that hated him, but to converse in Latin ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... a great deal of tact; with the other sex she was full of merriment and fond of joking, consequently a great favourite; towards her own sex her conduct was quite the reverse; she assumed a respectful, prudish air, blended with a familiarity which was never offensive; she was, therefore, equally popular with her own sex, and prospered in every sense of the word. Had her husband been the least inclined to have asserted his rights, the position which she had gained was sufficient to her reducing him ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... very much. Madame Holymead is frightened for fear the least breath of scandal should attach to her name, if the world knew that the police agent had visited her house on such an errand. Madame is innocent—it is not necessary to assure you of that; but the prudish dames ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... and happy father-in-law-to-be ought to have directed at a prospective relative. It was not, as a matter of fact, the sort of look which anyone ought to have directed at anybody, except possibly an exceptionally prudish judge at a criminal in the dock, convicted of a more than usually atrocious murder. Billie, not being in the actual line of fire, only caught the tail end of it, but it was enough ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... fast it is hard to keep up with them. Pat Valdo is dressed as a prudish old lady with an enormous bustle. Escorted by the clown policeman and the two amateurs, Pat sets out, fanning himself demurely. Hullo! the bustle has detached itself from the old lady, but she proceeds, unconscious. The audience shouts ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... introduce me to several of these daughters of rich bankers, which was very kind of him. The unrestrained quality of their speech at first struck me as being a little curious, such indeed as I was not accustomed to; but I found them extremely easy to become acquainted with, and in nowise prudish. They did, however, keep up a suspicious intimacy with a brilliantly lighted, though not very fragrantly scented, saloon on the left. In this I was assured there was nothing improper, inasmuch as it was sanctioned by the customs of the best society in New York, and ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... that was three years ago!" replied Crevel. "Well, you are handsomer now than ever I saw you!" he went on, taking the Baroness' arm and pressing it to his heart. "You have a good memory, my dear, by Jove!—And now you see how wrong you were to be so prudish, for those three hundred thousand francs that you refused so magnanimously are in another woman's pocket. I loved you then, I love you still; but just look back these ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... for any of the inferior ones which are usually necessary, as one must almost admit, for an alloy that will harden the finer metal for the practical purposes of success. With all his feeling for religion, he was seldom prudish; his amazing vitality never led him into excess or intemperance. His intense patriotism was all for peace; classical learning never made him dry or bumptious, nor the favour of kings servile. As fine a gentleman as Buckingham, he ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... Carey, a hardworking modiste about 45 years of age, rather sharp in manner, very prudish and a ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... Apollo; myrtle for Aphrodite (and is not the Love-Goddess the favorite?). To have a social gathering without garlands, in short, is impossible. The flower girls of Athens are beautiful, impudent, and not at all prudish. Around their booths press bold-tongued youths, and not too discreet sires; and the girls can call everybody familiarly by name. Very possibly along with the sale of the garlands they make arrangements (if the banquet is to ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... I have remarked that in the theatre a crowd exacts from the hero of the piece exaggerated virtues, and it is a commonplace observation that an assembly, even though composed of inferior elements, shows itself as a rule very prudish. The debauchee, the souteneur, the rough often break out into murmurs at a slightly risky scene or expression, though they be very harmless in ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... jewels, and flowers. She refused to know "bores" and "nobodies"; her lady friends must be pretty, piquant, or fashionable, any gentleman admitted into her charmed circle must have genius, wit, or talent to recommend him. Though grave matrons shook their heads and looked prudish when the Countess Rosali was mentioned, yet to belong to her set was to receive the "stamp of fashion." No day passed without some amusement at the villa—picnic, excursion, soiree, dance, or, what its fair mistress preferred, private ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... in her suddenly hardening face, but the quick anger in it pleased him. He had not expected her to be prudish, but it was clear that the situation did not ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... the tipsy crew at Bacchus's affected to treat her name with scorn:—"The girl had made much noise about being called a trull, as if many a better than she wasn't one; and, after all, what was the prudish wench? a sort of she-butcher; they had no ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... extremes meet, and prudish Manichaeism always ends in sheer indecency. Those Papists have forgotten what woman was made for, and therefore, they have forgotten that a woman's hair is her glory, for it was given to her for a covering: as says your friend, ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... sick of British women, with their knuckled hands, their splayed feet. Their abominable dressing, too, a bust and a brooch and a hooped skirt—their grocers' conventions, prudish, almost obscene, avoiding of the natural in word, deed, or thought.... He wanted Fenzile, with her eyes, vert de mer, her full childish face, her slim hands with the orange-tinted finger nails, her silken trousers, ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... decided, by the powers that had influence (and by public opinion also, at least in the middle-class sense), that certain verbal limits must be set to such literature. The novel must be what some would call pure and others would call prudish; but what is not, properly considered, either one or the other: it is rather a more or less business proposal (right or wrong) that every writer shall draw the line at literal physical description of things ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... a mother rather than a father, though startling, contain anything unseemly. Yet it is an undoubted fact that all the great religions except Hinduism, though they may admit a Goddess of Mercy—Kuan-yin or the Madonna—agree in rejecting essentially sexual deities. Modern Europe is probably prudish to excess, but the general practice of mankind testifies that words and acts too nearly connected with sexual things cannot be safely permitted in the temple. This remark would indeed be superfluous were it not that ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... charm of her firm skin and magnificent beauty had at first astonished and captivated Des Esseintes, he lost no time in terminating this liaison, for his impotence was prematurely hastened by the frozen and prudish caresses ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... against this. Libido is the life energy,—but all the Freudian analyses of actual cases published make libido sex, and usually "perverse." (I put the perverse in quotations because I fear to be called prudish by Freudians.) ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... little with this plain-looking bird, that one can scarcely regard it as belonging naturally to him, and fancies that he must lay it aside at night, as people do false teeth. It is an easy bird to take flying; for, on seeing you, it peaks its wings downward in a manner indescribably prim and prudish, and scales past, turning its stubby neck, and inspecting you with an air of comical, muddy gravity and curiosity. My comrade, Ph——, got two dozen to my eight; but I was consoled with a large Arctic falcon, which had been dining at fashionable hours on a full-grown puffin, having ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... Alsace, "our week was passed in promenading, in visiting the traces of Roman roads, in laughing a good deal, and even in dancing, for there were many people visiting the abbey, and especially talking over dresses." Near Sarrebuis, the canonesses of Loutre dine with the officers and are anything but prudish.[2177] Numbers of convents serve as agreeable and respectable asylums for widowed ladies, for young women whose husbands are in the army, and for young ladies of rank, while the superior, generally some noble damsel, wields, with ease and dexterity, the scepter ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... into your possession. No one will believe you, but my name, at least, will live. You will treat it brutally, I know you will. Some of it must go; the public are fools and prudish fools. I was their servant once. But do your mangling gently—very gently. It is a great work, and I have paid for ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... preceded Tess up the hill—a ladylike young woman, somewhat interesting, though, perhaps, a trifle guindee and prudish. Tess had nearly overtaken her when the speed of her brothers-in-law brought them so nearly behind her back that she could hear every word of their conversation. They said nothing, however, which particularly interested her till, observing ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... the facts regarding probable consequences, is it just to blame him if he infects his wife? It is certain no man would willingly subject his bride to the risk of infection, with all its horrible consequences. These conditions exist as a result of the prudish attitude of society in the past toward all questions affecting sex hygiene. We have not told all the truth to the boy. Whatever knowledge he may have had was gained from companions, or from individuals who knew the garbled facts only. There is of course ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... am going out for a little while, and in the meantime you must do your best to entertain Mr. Rogers.' He then whispered in my ear—'Let him do as he will with you, for he has paid me a good price; now don't refuse him, or be in the least degree prudish, or by G—— it shall be worse for you!' Scarcely had he taken his departure, when the old wretch, who had purchased me, clasped me in his palsied arms, and prepared to debauch me; in reply to my entreaties to desist, and my appeals to his generosity, he only shook his ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... Rue du Perron. Madame de Watteville, devout as a girl, became even more so after her marriage. She is one of the queens of the saintly brotherhood which gives the upper circles of Besancon a solemn air and prudish manners in harmony with the ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... later. After the heady Pramnian at the tavern, he roved away with Cimon and others to serenade beneath the lattice of a lady—none too prudish—in the Ceramicus quarter. But the fair one was cruel that night, and her slaves repelled the minstrels with pails of hot water from an upper window. Democrates thereupon quitted the party. His head was very befogged, but he could not expel one idea from it—that Themistocles had ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... historian has no such liberty to state the case against it. If he even asserts that he has counter-facts, but dare not state them, he is at once met with a praejudicium. The mere fact of his having ascertained the truth is imputed as a blame to him, in a sort of prudish cant. 'What a very improper person he must be to like to dabble in such improper books that they must not even be quoted.' If in self-defence he desperately gives his facts, he only increases the feeling against him, whilst the reactionists, ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... admitted, with a rueful grin. "I don't give a whoop how much fun they have; but you know as well as I do just how prudish public sentiment is. And Project Theta Orionis is squarely in the ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... they tell me, where the Young Spring runs wild and bare as a nymph through every dull brown wood and hay-gray meadow, the blas farmer-lad will not even lift his eyes from the plow to watch the pinkness of her passing. But here in the prudish brick-minded city where the Young Spring at her friskiest is nothing more audacious than a sweltering, winter-swathed madcap, who has impishly essayed some fine morning to tiptoe down street in her soft, sloozily, green, silk-stockinged feet, the whole hob-nailed ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... low upon the haunches that it seems to cling by accident. A sneeze, you think, and the lady must surely be left destitute. 'The perilous, hairbreadth ridi' was our word for it; and in the conflict that rages over women's dress it has the misfortune to please neither side, the prudish condemning it as insufficient, the more frivolous finding it unlovely in itself. Yet if a pretty Gilbertine would look her best, that must be her costume. In that and naked otherwise, she moves with an incomparable liberty and grace ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... would be amazed. The French always have been, and still are, very candid in the use of language; whilst we for a long time past have been prudish to an extent sometimes comic. Readers of Laurence Sterne can hardly deny that the English tongue enables one to be indelicate in idea whilst decent in expression, and it is noteworthy that this writer, ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... point.'—'Is this a dream?' said she, pushing her hair from her forehead, fifteen years before Malibran, with the gesture which Malibran has made so famous.—'Come, do not be childish, my angel,' said I, trying to take her hands; but she folded them before her with a little prudish and indignant mein.—'Marry him, you have my permission,' said I, replying to this gesture by using the formal vous instead of tu. 'Nay, better, I beg you to do so.'—'But,' cried she, falling at my knees, 'there is some horrible mistake; I ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... become more decorous than the sermons of the seventeenth century. At this day foreigners, who dare not print a word reflecting on the government under which they live, are at a loss to understand how it happens that the freest press in Europe is the most prudish. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... talked about than any woman in Orange County, yet, who could report anything of her beyond that she was a universal favorite, and danced, walked, possibly flirted with a dozen different cavaliers every day of her life? There were some few among her accusers, demure and most proper—even prudish—women, of whom, were the truth to be told, so ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... curious undertone of defiance in her voice. She had a paniclike impulse to begin to talk of Dory; but, though she cast about diligently, she could find no way of introducing him that would not have seemed awkward—pointed and provincially prudish. ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... pretty; fair as a lily, with blue eyes and rich auburn hair. But she had a good deal more than her beauty to recommend her. She was sweet-tempered, gentle, and high principled. Mrs Brigadier Bomanjoy declared that she was puritanical and prudish; but she was in reality truly religious and modest, without a particle of nonsense in her composition. Captain Hawkesford, generally supposed to be indifferent to female charms,—at least, to those of his own countrywomen,—paid her more attention than he ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... of our fair readers may be a little prudish, or exacting of character, and as we are peculiarly sensitive of the reputation some of the characters embodied in this history should bear to the very end, we deem it prudent here not to disclose the nature of the little forgery which ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... and I think a prudish one, of being thought too attentive to please your sex, they have acquired a certain distant manner to men, which borders on ill-breeding: they take great pains to veil, under an affected appearance of disdain, that winning sensibility of heart, that delicate tenderness, ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... highly educated woman with whom I had a frank talk about such a matter, said at the end of this very painful sitting, "Thank God, that you spoke frankly and without prudery—I was very much afraid that by foolish questions you might compel me to prudish answers and ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... impliable, rigorous, unyielding, inductile; strong, violent, forcible, inopposable; pertinacious, obstinate, tenacious, uncompromising, incompliant; constrained, formal, starched, affected, unnatural, precise, prim, ceremonious, prudish, punctilious; cramped, graceless, inelegant; (Slang) high, immoderate, large. Antonyms: ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... will be clearly and logically explained by the professors of the academies. They will further add that after the accession of the Stuarts the building art gradually declined, with only a few flashes of brilliant light in the works of Inigo Jones and Wren. The Commonwealth was prudish in art as in manners, and the Restoration was a reign of revel and wild license. The social worlds of William and Mary and of Queen Anne, stiff, starched, and formal, left their impress upon the buildings of their day, which were mostly of a domestic character. The Free Classic of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various |
