"Vis-a-vis" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... feeds his—there, see—his horse on your 'trim parterre.' And now that I have done my duty as page and messenger without a word of assistance, Mr. Roscoe, will you go and encourage my father to hope that you will be vis-a-vis to his excellency?" She lightly beat the air with her whip, while I took a good look ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Darton's eyes, too, fell continually on the gown worn by Helena as if this were an added riddle to his perplexity; though to Sally it was the one feature in the case which was no mystery. He seemed to feel that fate had impishly changed his vis-a-vis in the lover's jig he was about to foot; that while the gown had been expected to enclose a Sally, a Helena's face looked out from the bodice; that some long-lost hand met his own from ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... further end I see In his old place our Poet's vis-a-vis, The great PROFESSOR, strong, broad-shouldered, square, In life's rich noontide, joyous, debonair. His social hour no leaden care alloys, His laugh rings loud and mirthful as a boy's,— That lusty laugh the Puritan forgot,— What ear has ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... a conversation, the greatest care should be devoted to the selection of a topic, good taste demanding that one should sedulously avoid any subject of which one's vis-a-vis may be in ignorance. Nor are the mere words alone to be considered. In the art of conversation much depends upon manner. The true conversationalist must, in opening, invest himself with an atmosphere of interest and solicitude. He must, as we say in French, be prepared to ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... was, indeed, the vis-a-vis of Miss Laura, and smiled most killingly upon her dearest friend, and nodded to her and talked to her, when they met during the quadrille evolutions, and patronised her a great deal. Her shoulders were the whitest in the whole room: and they were never easy in her frock for one single ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... His vis-a-vis, watching him with her keen dark eyes, read these thoughts as if his brain had been a printed page before her, and in spite of herself laughed outright; in his very teeth—a merry little peal as spontaneous ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... you do me the favor to tell the band to strike up a quadrille? Lord Vincent, I presume they expect us to open the ball. Bee, my dear, you are engaged to Mr. Worth for this set. Be sure when he returns to come to the same set with us and be our vis-a-vis," said ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... Florentines then indulged of setting their mansions within a few feet of those opposite. Houses—or rather fortresses—that must have cost fortunes and have been occupied by families of wealth and splendour were erected so close to their vis-a-vis that two carts could not pass abreast between them. Side by side contiguity one can understand, but not this other adjacence. Every ground floor window is barred like a gaol. Those bars tell us something of the perils of life in Florence in the great days of faction ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... seven o'clock, I was at Donna Cecilia's door. The phaeton was there as well as the carriage for two persons, which this time was an elegant vis-a-vis, so light and well-hung that Donna Cecilia praised it highly when she took ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the dice when the occasion offered; and I took care to make friends with this person, who, being a college tutor and an Englishman, was ready to go on his knees to any one who resembled a man of fashion. Seeing me with my retinue of servants, my vis-a-vis and chariots, my valets, my hussar, and horses, dressed in gold, and velvet, and sables, saluting the greatest people in Europe as we met on the course, or at the Spas, Runt was dazzled by my advances, and was mine by a beckoning of ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... myself in my corner after making a slight bow on perceiving the presence of women in the car, one of whom evidently merited the attention of every young commercial traveler and troubadour. I set myself to examine my vis-a-vis, dividing my attention between picturesque studies and ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... of this new arrival. The men conversed in whispers when they spoke at all, and in the intervals between the courses they crumbled their bread upon the tablecloth in a manifest embarrassment. Not a word was exchanged between Paul and his vis-a-vis until, towards the close of the meal, the lady's attendant brought to her a small tray of silver with a fine little flacon of transparent Venetian ware, and a liqueur-glass upon it She had drunk nothing but water throughout the repast, but she ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... had been said by the coachmaker, that Mrs. Luttridge would sport a most elegant new vis-a-vis on the king's birthday. Lady Delacour was immediately ambitious to outshine her in equipage; and it was this paltry ambition that made her condescend to all the meanness of the transaction by which she obtained Miss Portman's draft, and Clarence Hervey's ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth |
