"Bete" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their intimacy had been close, and questions such as that he had asked were common between them. And her answer was of the same nature. "Oh, such an odious woman!" she said. "Her name is Mrs Marsham; she is my bete noire." And then they were actually dancing, whirling round the room together, before a word had been said of that which was Burgo's settled purpose, and which at some moments was her ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... leaving the other two some distance in the rear. The ravishing beauty of the girl was more than the amorously-disposed stranger could resist, and suddenly throwing his arms around her he sought to kiss her. But the soft-eyed fawn of the desert soon showed herself in the guise of a petit bete sauvage. With a startling scream she bounded ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... the opinion of Degas that "le peintre en general est bete," and most people seem to think that Cezanne was no exception to the rule. Before agreeing, I should want to know what precisely they understood by the word "bete." Cezanne was silly certainly, but he was not stupid: he was limited and absurd, but not dull; ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... she will fulfill the varium et mutabile femina which we hitherto have had the folly to attribute to the feminine temperament. Diderot, in his desire to explain the mutations almost atmospheric in the behavior of women, has even gone so far as to make them the offspring of what he calls la bete feroce; but we never see these whims in a woman ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... dragon great and grymme, Full of fyre, and also venymme, Wyth a wyde throte, and tuskes grete, Uppon that knygte fast gan he bete, And as a lyon then was hys feete, Hys tayle was long, and full unmeete; Between hys head and hys tayle Was xxii fote withouten fayle; His body was lyke a wyne tonne, He shone ful bryght agaynst the sunne; Hys eyen were bryght as ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... criminals he had brought in from the down-river country were likable-looking men. There was Horrigan, for instance, who for seven long weeks kept him in good humor with his drollery, though he was bringing him in to be hanged. And there were McTab, and le Bete Noir—the Black Beast—a lovable vagabond in spite of his record, and Le Beau, the gentlemanly robber of the wilderness mail, and half a dozen others he could recall without any effort at all. No one called them liars when, like real men, they confessed their crimes when they saw their game ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... Mademoiselle de Coulanges, a young lady who, from the account given of her, might justify the description, assigned earlier to one of her official predecessors in a former reign, of being "belle comme un ange, et bete comme un panier."[255] At first the lovers (if we are to call them so) are lying, most beautifully dressed and quite decorously, on different sofas, both of them with books in their hands, but one asleep and the other yawning. Suddenly the lady ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... It is everything most bete what you say. You have many friends, and as for me, I do not care a straw for the money. Only if I had known I would not have ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... forms are in mythology as in dreams typical transmutations, with unlimited possibility of intro-determination. Dogs are often in dreams the representations of animal propensities. The beast is often "la bete humaine" in the dreamer's own inner life. We have become acquainted with the terrible lions, the bears, etc., as father types; here we get a new perspective which makes clear the one-sidedness ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... Deffand was an expert at tracing such affinities. For instance, there was Necker. It was clear that Necker was not a fool, and yet—what was it? Something was the matter—yes, she had it: he made you feel a fool yourself—'l'on est plus bete avec lui que l'on ne l'est tout seul.' As she said of herself: 'elle est toujours tentee d'arracher les masques qu'elle rencontre.' Those blind, piercing eyes of hers spied out unerringly the weakness or the ill-nature or the absurdity that lurked behind the gravest ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... feel in the mood to do much. I work in my garden intermittently, and the harvest bug (bete rouge we call him here) gets in his work unintermittently on me. If things were normal this introduction to the bete rouge would have seemed to me a tragedy. As it is, it is unpleasantly unimportant. I clean house intermittently; read intermittently; ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich
... successfully. Not a hint must get to Drummond that there was any change in the activities of the Junta. As for the Junta itself, there was no one of those who believed implicitly in Santos whom Constance need fear, except Gordon. Gordon was the bete noire. ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... whom do you tell that! Have not I tried to plant, sow, till, dig, with the GEORGICS in my hand? "But, Monsieur," said my man, "you are a fool (BETE), and your Book no less; it is not in that way one goes to work." Ah, MON DIEU, what a climate! Would you believe it, Heaven, or the Sun, refuse me everything? Look at my poor orange-trees, my olive-trees, lemon-trees: they are ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle |
