"Debutante" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... department stores, in which young girls worked for two dollars and a half a week, and eked out their existence by prostitution. And this was the summer that Warfield's youngest daughter was launched, and for her debutante dance they built a ballroom which cost thirty thousand dollars—and was ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... stolid invincible red-faced lines of German infantry; furious and bloody grapplings in the streets of little villages of northeastern France. There was one thing at least of which he could still feel the spirit of a debutante. In this matter of war he was not, too, unlike a young girl embarking upon her first season of opera. Walkely, the next morning, saw this mood sitting quaintly upon Coleman and cackled with astonishment and glee. Coleman's ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... "The debutante, be she whom she may, should feel flattered by such an unexampled assemblage of all the ton ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... parents of several young women who had taken part in his amateur theatricals had been concerned for their daughters' safety. And now Phil interested him—this new Phil in city clothes. The antics of Phil, the tomboy of Main Street, had frequently aroused his indignation; Phil, a debutante in an evening gown that he pronounced a creation of the gods, was worthy of serious attention. She was, he averred, Hermione, Rosalind, Portia, Beatrice, combined in ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... started flitting from Bud to Debutante to Ingenue to Fawn to Broiler to Kiddykadee back in 1880, he was a famous Beau with skin- tight Trousers, a white Puff Tie run through a Gold Ring and a Hat lined with Puff Satin, the same as a ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... today are somewhat more elaborate than those of three or four decades ago, possibly as a response to increasing awareness and pride in the fact of Indianness. Certainly every girl expects to have her dance, just as a debutante expects to have a coming-out party. When death in the family made it inadvisable to hold a dance on a girl's first menstrual period, everyone agreed that it was indeed a shame. The girl went through her ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... other self responded, "as when in the german the fair debutante sees the leader advancing toward her with a splendid and costly favor, only to have him veer abruptly off to bestow it on some fat elderling who is going to give the next ball. But Mr. Pulitzer, though he has these spare ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... both conventional successes. I was an utterly devastating debutante and you were a prosperous musician just commissioned in ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Selwyn's first encounter with the Ruthvens. A short time afterward at the opera Gerald dragged him into a parterre to say something amiable to one of the debutante Craig girls—and Selwyn ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... was very evident that much of the magnificent performance of the debutante and her companion, in the thrilling scene between the Duke and Duchess of Ferrara and the young Captain Gennaro, was lost to ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... to one or two dances during the week—a thing he had not done lately. Then he went to several more; also to a number of debutante theatre parties and to several suppers. He rather liked being with his own sort again; the comfortable sense of home-coming, of conventionalism, of a pleasant social security, appealed to him after several ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... heard us, leaving the young man standing alone at the piano. He was of an age perhaps a year or two older than Reginald Blake. It was evident that, whatever Miss Betty might think, he had eyes for no one else but the pretty debutante. He even seemed to be regarding Kennedy sullenly, as if he were a ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... in one phrase of all he could have done for the ill-starred debutante who had been hungry in the wrong place, Cecil lounged out of the club to drive with half a dozen of his set to a water-party—a Bacchanalian water-party, with the Zu-Zu and her sisters for the Naiads and ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... is no goddess, but Circe, masquerading at the dance given in honour of the fair debutante, Summer, puts the kibosh on ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... himself to be an adept in his art. Rachel did not in the least doubt his skill, and obeyed him in everything as faithfully as she would have done, had he been personally a favourite with her. "Allow me to express my great delight and my strong admiration for the young debutante. As far as Miss O'Mahony is concerned the word failure may be struck out of the language. And no epithet should be used to qualify success, but one in the most superlative degree. Allow me to—" And ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... which intellectual London gravitated. When he had done this, that, and the other to make his bachelor days memorable to a host of friends, he wound up by marrying one of England's fairest women, our great actress, Kate Terry. It was in those early days that Ellen, the debutante, was introduced to the dramatic world as "Kate Terry's sister." Since then Kate, having elected to rest on her laurels, is proud to be referred to by the younger generation ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... and why thrill over blue eyes and neglect the brown ones? What is the rationale for the admiration of slimness as against stoutness? Indeed, there are races who would turn with scorn from our slender debutante[1] and worship their more buxom heavy-busted and wide-hipped beauties. The only "rational" beauty in face and figure is that which stands as the outer mask of health, vigor, intelligence and normal procreative function. The standards set up in each age and place usually ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... in the store almost every day, as her husband had been before her, to advise and be available for consultation, whether it was the buying of a gold teething ring for the newest member of the family, an engagement ring for the latest debutante, a watch for "son," attaining his majority, or perhaps new gold glasses ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele
... girl forgot all her three years of training, and her success as a debutante, and became the grave, shy thing she had been to him when he first saw her, looking up with awed delight into the face she had seen in her dreams for so long, and yet might not ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... tall and beautiful, not merely because such physical gifts added to the colour and agreeableness of life, but because hers gave comfort and happiness to her mother. To Mrs. Vanderpoel, to introduce to the world the loveliest debutante of many years was to be launched into a new future. To concern one's self about her exquisite wardrobe was to have an enlivening occupation. To see her surrounded, to watch eyes as they followed her, to hear her praised, was to feel something of the happiness she ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the court who had been pleased to show their patronage by attendance, did not in the least eclipse her own less pretentious self. People besieged Madame Dulac for introductions, and to her own surprise the debutante found herself enjoying all the gay nothings, the jests, the bright sentences tossed about her and forming a foundation for compliments delicately veiled, and the flattering by word or glance that was as the breath of life to those people ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... trail she picked her way as daintily as any debutante tiptoeing down a great stairway to the ballroom. Life had been easy for Mary since that thousand-mile struggle to overtake Canby, and now her sides were sleek from good feeding and some casual twenty miles a day, which was no more to her than a canter through ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... was Mr. John De Puyster Hepplewhite. The chief reason for his niceness was his entire satisfaction with himself and the padded world in which he dwelt, where he was as protected from all shocking, rough or otherwise unpleasant things as a shrinking debutante from the coarse universe of fact. Being thus shielded from every annoyance and irritation by a host of sycophants he lived serenely in an atmosphere of unruffled calm, gazing down benignly and with a certain condescension from the rarefied altitude of ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... Gard answered. "Haven't had time to bother. By the way, Mahr, what sort of a girl is the little debutante daughter of Mrs. Marteen—you know her, don't you?" He was watching Mahr keenly, and fancied he detected a shifty glance at the mention of the name. But ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... affects the fair debutante at a court presentation, he beheld the confusing labyrinth of counters, department aisles and shelves, which combine in such a depressing suggestion of intellectual plethora and transient futility in ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... While it seemed to him that the average debutante spent every hour of her day thinking and talking about what the great world had mapped out for her to do during the next hour, any girl who made a living directly on her prettiness ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... another; Grandmother because she was eighty, and it's a strenuous matter to live eighty years; my Aunt because she had been desperately ill; C. C. because she had nursed my Aunt back to comparative health, and I because I had been a debutante that winter, and every one knows that that is the hardest work of all. We went as far south as the train would take us, and settled ourselves at Coronado to bask in the sunshine until the tiredness was gone and we became ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... half dozen women trailed out, Natalie in white, softly rustling as she moved, Mrs. Haverford in black velvet, a trifle tight over her ample figure, Marion Hayden, in a very brief garment she would have called a frock, perennial debutante that she was, rather negligible Mrs. Terry Mackenzie, and trailing behind the others, frankly loath to leave the men, Audrey Valentine. Clayton Spencer's eyes rested on Audrey with a smile of amused ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... big little hoss made good all over. He ain't never started yet, but he's been propped for two months. He's by Edgemont. First dam, Cora, by Musketeer. Second dam, Debutante, by Peddler. Third dam, Daisy Dean, by Salvation. Fourth dam, Iole, by Messenger. He's registered as Hamilton, 'n' ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... the Ferrises gave me a beautiful dinner, and I wore evening dress for the first time in two years, and was as thrilled as a debutante at her first ball! It was so good to see cut glass and silver, and to hear dear silly worldly chatter that I grew terribly frivolous. Plates were laid for twenty, and who do you suppose was on my right? The severe young purser who was ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... this social side of life. The other part is the night-life—not the night-life of gambling saloons and their kind: of that dark underground existence Society has no knowledge, though he who left it at daybreak and will go back to it at midnight clasps the last debutante in his arms and whirls with her to the sweet waltz-music—but the night-life of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... The Debutante lifted her big blue eyes a little towards the ceiling, with the upward glance that stands for innocence. She said nothing, waiting for a cue as to what ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... what character?—to whose genius is she to give embodiment and form? Ah, there is the secret! Rumours go abroad that the inexhaustible Paisiello, charmed with her performance of his "Nel cor piu non me sento," and his "Io son Lindoro," will produce some new masterpiece to introduce the debutante. Others insist upon it that her forte is the comic, and that Cimarosa is hard at work at another "Matrimonia Segreto." But in the meanwhile there is a check in the diplomacy somewhere. The Cardinal is observed to be out ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... no conscience. She began to gad about the bush. In her girlish days she wore short frocks, as it were, having had her wings clipped, but the next spring she went into society, was a debutante, wore a dress of black and white satin which shone in the sun, and she grew so vain and flighty, and strutted about so, that it was really ridiculous to watch her. She began also to stay out late in the evening, which was very improper, and ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... ceiling, the most exalted of the land in the boxes and the stalls, leaned indulgently forward, to be swept by this sweet storm of song. They yielded themselves utterly to the power of the triumphant debutante who was making "Manassa" the musical feast of the year, renewing to Covent Garden a reputation which recent lack of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... She is powerfully built, and her muscles are master of coordination, such as would be the envy of multitudes of men, and with all this power, she is as simple in her manner and appearance as is the young debutante at her coming out function. You are impressed with her sweetness and refinement, first of all, and the utter lack of show about her, as also with her brother who is a dapper young man of the very English type, ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... stepped up to the footlights and awaited the verdict. Had she made good, or not? In a moment, however, she knew that all was well, for a storm of applause and clapping of hands filled the air. Lumley, from his place in the wings, beamed approval. His enterprise was to be rewarded. The debutante was a success. No doubt about it. She should have a contract from him before any other manager should step ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... a lunatic asylum. Many of the most intricate troubles and most annoying episodes of his life and his reign have been in a large measure due to the press, inasmuch as they were either originated or envenomed by the newspapers. William is as nervous about what the papers will say as a young debutante on the stage. Not only does he keep an anxious watch upon the utterances of all German editors, but he ordains a vigilant scrutiny of the articles printed in foreign countries from the pens of correspondents stationed in Berlin, who, if any unfriendly mention of his name is brought home to them, ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... to 1917 each oncoming debutante was taught by her mother to give unto the genus, married man, her most impersonal manner, lest she provoke his "undesirable attentions." If poaching was done, it was from behind a tree. Unmarried girls knew that their ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... down arm-in-arm—James with Imogen, the debutante, because his pretty grandchild cheered him; Soames with Winifred; Emily with Val, whose eyes lighting on the oysters brightened. This was to be a proper full 'blowout' with 'fizz' and port! And he felt in need of it, after what he had done that ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to take off her riding-habit. Quickly she dressed Clara, superintending all the details of her disguise as carefully as though she were the costumer of a new debutante. When Clara was dressed she was so nearly of the same size and shape of Capitola that from behind no one ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... my bow to society at an "At Home" which Alicia gave for that purpose. She drilled me well beforehand, and I think I acquitted myself decently. Charlie Vankleek, whose verdict makes or mars every debutante in his set, has approved of me. He called me a beauty, and everybody now believes that I am one, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... was not only an authority on musical comedies and pony ballets, but he was equally well posted on dogs, and a debutante across the table appealed to him for advice in breeding an Airedale bitch she had purchased at the last show. The discussion that followed was sufficiently frank to embarrass the aristocratic Airedale herself had she been present, but ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... in upon my speculation, but as usual I was compelled to wait for the talk I wanted. For some moments she would be only the tired owner of the Arrowhead Ranch—in the tea gown of a debutante and with too much powder on one side of her nose—and she must have at least one cup of tea so corrosive that the Scotch whiskey she adds to it is but a merciful dilution. She now drank eagerly of the fearful brew, dulled the bite of it with smoke from a hurriedly built cigarette, and relaxed ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... Miss Mary Taylor; and it was at Brougham's, not at Burton's, that we rendered her that tribute—reserved for her performance of the fond theatrical daughter in the English version of Le Pere de la Debutante, where I see the charming panting dark-haired creature, in flowing white classically relieved by a gold tiara and a golden scarf, rush back from the supposed stage to the represented green-room, followed by thunders ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... free for the past month or two, and watching this pretty debutante of love going from table to table, I asked myself the question whether it would not be worth my while to make a bargain with her to live with me for some time. I am here relating to you one of those ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... hasn't had time to upset anything over here, mother. It's only been going on a couple of weeks. You ought to go away, dearest, for a good long snooze in the country. You'll be as young as a debutante by the time ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... made only desirable acquaintances and that you will forget the Camp Fire Girls, at least this winter. You will be seventeen soon and I shall give you a debutante's party. I have saved considerable money during ...
— How Ethel Hollister Became a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... present, says: "The night was rendered memorable, not only by the massacre attending the general execution, but also by the debut of Mlle. Lind in this country, who appeared as Alice. With the exception of the debutante, such a disgraceful exhibition was never before witnessed on the operatic stage. Mendelssohn was sitting in the stalls, and at the end of the third act, unable to bear any longer the executive infliction, he left ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... professor of European History was almost precisely Sylvia's age, but now, when Sylvia was laboring over her books in the very beginning of her college life, Eleanor Hubert was a finished product, a graduate of an exclusive, expensive girls' boarding-school in New York, and a that-year's debutante in La Chance society. Her name was constantly in the items of the society columns, she wore the most profusely varied costumes, and she drove about the campus swaying like a lily beside the wealthiest undergraduate. Sylvia's mind was naturally too ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield |
