"Simper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... take my eyes off her; my very heart stood still. And in an instant she opens her eyes and up she sits, and spins herself round, and down wi' her, wi' a clack on her two tall heels on the floor, facin' me, ogglin' in my face wi' her two great glassy eyes, and a wicked simper wi' her wrinkled lips, and lang ...
— Madam Crowl's Ghost and The Dead Sexton • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... much honour,' cried Dame Hobson, with a simper. 'I shall go down into the cellars and bring a flask ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... low and somewhat melancholy tone, (his eyes had mechanically followed these latter proceedings,) "Mollee! that is ponch!" —"La, sir! and why not?" replied the damsel, almost playfully. "Why not be comfortable and cheery? I am sure"—and here she meant to look encouraging, her usual simper spreading to a smile—"I am sure Betty and I would do our best ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... urged that she was much prettier than Thea, and had a much "sweeter disposition." Nobody denied these facts. But there was nothing in the least boyish about Lily, and she sang all songs and played all parts alike. Lily's simper was popular, but it seemed not quite the right thing for the ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... and gay. She laughed overmuch. Vivie was tall and sentimental,—a brunette. They came once to the West Laurence Avenue house for Sunday supper. Horatio did not like the sisters; he called them in his simple way "Giggle" and "Simper." The Nortons lived not far from the Lake on East Acacia Street, and that became for Milly the symbol of the all-desirable. She spoke firmly of the advantages of East Acacia Street as a residence—she had even picked out the house, the last but one in the same row of stone-front boxes where ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... solitude. I stood to-day before the mutilated fresco of Morone, my rapture of six years ago, and hated it with unreasoning hatred. The Madonna belied the wreath-supported inscription above her head, "Miseratrix virginum Regina nostri miserere," and greeted me with a pitiless simper. The unidentified martyr on the left stared straight in front of him with callous indifference, and St. Roch looked aggravatingly plump for all his ostentatious plague-spot. The picture was worse ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... rose up, and dressed in a long white morning gown, slid over the end of the bed, and with two or three swift noiseless steps, stood behind me, with a death-like scowl and a simper. Preternaturally tall and thin, he stood for a moment almost touching me, with the white bandage pinned across his forehead, his bandaged arm stiffly by his side, and diving over my shoulder, with his long thin hand he snatched the Bible, and ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... contrasted with the expression which, in the performance of such a duty, and at such a time, it might have been supposed proper for it to have worn. There was a look from his eyes of most vacant and elevated beatitude; a simper sat upon his lips, which parted ineffectually with the speech that he endeavored to make. A still lingering consciousness of something to be done, prompted him to rise, however, and stumble toward the landlord, who, while scuffling with ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... separate the features as frequently as did that ancient people, but we conventionalize them as often. Nine-tenths of the actors have faces as fixed as the masks of the Greek chorus: they have the hero-mask with the protruding chin, the villain-frown, the comedian-grin, the fixed innocent-girl simper. These formulas have their place in the broad effects of Crowd Pictures and in comedies. Then there are sudden abandonments of the mask. Griffith's pupils, Henry Walthall and Blanche Sweet, seem to me to ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... Viscountess never drinks under your Beer-glass, your Citizens Wives simper and sip, and will be drunk without doing Credit to the Treater; but in their Closets, they swinge it away, whole Slashes, i'faith, and egad, when a Woman drinks by her self, Glasses come thick about: your Gentlewoman, or your little Lady, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... back to the light, stood in the embrasure of a window, deeply engaged in examining his features in a small hand-glass which he held daintily before him. The survey seemed to please monsieur, for he showed his teeth in a simper of satisfaction, and began to curl his black moustache between the forefinger and thumb of his disengaged hand. So engrossed was he that he never observed me coming up to him, and it was not until I was at his elbow that he suddenly ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... entertainment and assert your delight at revamping the fatuous acquaintanceship. Her facetiousness is elephantine, but the relief of conversation is such that you laugh loudly at her witticisms and simper knowingly at her platitudes—both of which have now ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... who class the prophet and the drunkard in the same category as the fools of their own fancies. But what this love is, he who thinks he knows least understands. Let foolish maidens and vulgar youths simper and jest over it as they please, it is one of the most potent mysteries of the living God. The man who can love a woman and remain a lover of his wretched self, is fit only to be cast out with the broken potsherds ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... and the modest reserve of young ladies, and a hundred other such saint-like terms, when all the time she is doing all she can to catch husbands for her three great gawky daughters, who in mamma's presence are all simplicity and simper—sweet girls just introduced; when I am very much mistaken if the youngest is not nearer thirty than twenty. And as for Lady St. Aubyn, you know very well, mamma, papa declared I should never go out with her ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... long time why those three Sans should have taken it upon themselves at all to meet our train. We have a clear idea now of why it was. Tonight, at the celebration, I'll hold forth on the subject. Let us not mar the sweet joy of meeting by gossiping," she ended with an irresistibly funny simper. ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... And the lady must simper and smirk and tap Pierre Radisson with her fan, with a glimmer of ill-meaning through her winks and nods that might have brought the blush to a woman's ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... a belle there," she observed. "I'd have a train o' beaux and macaronis at my heels, I warrant you! The foppier, the more it would please me. Think, cousin—ranks of them all a-simper, ogling me through a hundred quizzing-glasses! Heigho! There's doubtless some deviltry in me, as Sir ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... at least sincere," returned Elfreda, with an affected simper. "I hope those flowers haven't loitered along the way. I must call on my fair lady and see if she has received hers. I'm beginning to feel excited. I'm going to eat my dinner post haste. I want to get dressed and practice my bow before the mirror ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... up from her novel here, and turned her face towards the stranger who was passing, and then blushing turned it down again. Schnabel looked at me with a scowl, Klingenspohr with a simper, the dog with a yelp, the fat lady in blue just gave one glance, and seemed, I thought, rather well pleased. "Silence, Lischen!" said she to the dog. "Go on, darling Dorothea," she added, to her ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was flattered by finding her attire a matter of acknowledged importance to her rival, and replied, with a simper,— ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... scarecrow is the thing to look at. It took you six months to chisel it, and you can't sell it for a hundred dollars. No, sir! Show me fifty thousand dollars and you can have my daughter —otherwise she marries young Simper. You have just six months to raise the money in. Good ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that a wife's having a separate allowance would prevent disputes. So Miss Hunter thought, of course, for she had been prepared to be precisely of Mr. Beaumont's opinion; but reasons she had none in its support. Indeed, she said with a pretty simper, she thought that women had nothing to do with reason or reasoning; that she thought a woman who really loved any body was always of that person's opinion; and especially in a wife she did not see of what use reasoning and all that could be, except to make a woman contradict, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... now, such certainty, such courage. It seems as if Fate were giving me one more chance. I have often run very close to making a definite decision—to dare everything rather than await this fool's disaster. But then comes that everlasting feminine humility, sneaking up with its simper: 'Is not this presumptuous, selfish, mistaken, wrong? What business have you, one out of so many, to break roughly through the delicate web that has been spun for your kindly detention?' Of course my retort is: 'What business have they to spin the web?' But one can never get up ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... is, over ladies To lean, and flirt, and stare, and simper, Till all that is divine in woman Grows cruel, courteous, smooth, inhuman, 195 Crucified 'twixt ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Miss Agnes. Good morning! "Bon jour!" Now, isn't that vision alarming? Silk with panier, and puffs, and lace Decking a figure of corsetted grace; Her words are minced, and her spoiled young face Wears a simper ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... women simper, at least. No need but of the most delicate hints to them. A man who is gross in a woman's company, ought to be knocked down with a club: for, like so many musical instruments, touch but a single wire, and the dear souls ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... Graham, who were also in the Sixth—the two last below him in form order—had already received their prefects' caps). Not being a prefect, it would have been officious in him to have stopped the game. So he was passing on with what Mr Hurry Bungsho Jabberjee, B.A., would have termed a beaming simper of indescribable suavity, when a member of one of the opposing teams, in effecting a G. O. Smithian dribble, cannoned into him. To preserve his balance—this will probably seem a very thin line of defence, ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... hands begin to take liberties, and the hard work falls on the most willing, and they then suddenly haul up, and there is six times more flogging and desertion than in a strict ship, and she soon becomes a regular hell afloat. I hate your honey-mouthed, easy-going skippers, who simper out, 'Please, my good men, have the goodness to brace round the foreyard when the ship's taken aback.' No, no—give me a man who knows how to command men. Depend on it. Duff, you'll like Captain Fleetwood before you've sailed with him a week, if you ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... James,[82] Simper James, Leave the fair Killie dames, There's a holier chase in your view; I'll lay on your head That the pack ye'll soon lead. For puppies like you there's ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... water, or more, make your Syrupe first, and let it stand till it be cold, then take your Rose leaves, having first clipt off all the white, put them into the cold Syrupe, then cover them, and set them on a soft fire, that they may but simper for two or three hours, then while they are hot put them into pots ...
— A Book of Fruits and Flowers • Anonymous
... justly popular) as much because they were the only attainable reflection of the prettiness, as because they were the only sympathizing records of the humors, of English girls and boys. Of our oil portraits of them, in which their beauty is always conceived as consisting in a fixed simper—feet not more than two inches long, and accessory grounds, pony, and groom—our sentence need not be "guarda e passa," but "passa" only. Yet one oil picture has been painted, and so far as I know, one only, representing the deeper loveliness of English youth—the portraits ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... that far out-shone Henley's gilt tub,[292] or Flecknoe's Irish throne,[293] Or that where on her Curlls the public pours,[294] All-bounteous, fragrant grains and golden showers, Great Cibber sate: the proud Parnassian sneer, The conscious simper, and the jealous leer, Mix on his look: all eyes direct their rays On him, and crowds turn coxcombs as they gaze. His peers shine round him with reflected grace, New edge their dulness, and new bronze their face. 10 So from the sun's broad beam, in shallow urns Heaven's twinkling ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... cause of it," she cried impatiently. "Canst do naught but stare? Am I the mother of a fool? Wilt thou simper and gape and trifle away thy days whilst that dog-descended Frank tramples thee underfoot, using thee but as a stepping-stone to the power that should be thine own? And that be so, Marzak, I would thou hadst been strangled in ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... with their wives and daughters, wits of both sexes, women of the most exclusive ton, thronged the spacious salons. Each in their turn was greeted with a smirk of ecstatic glee. To Gripstone the courtesy seemed invested with a proprietary interest. A nod was receipted with a simper, a grasp of the hand with a scrape, the most distant recognition by the most obsequious acknowledgment. There appeared to be no doubt in his mind it was all bought and paid for, but it did no harm to be polite for once; and comically ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... began to smile. No one must know her heart was broken, for fear the question might arise, "What broke it?" Of course her smile was a make-believe, nothing more nor less than a simper. The large boy across the table looked at her in surprise. "Handsome as a picture," thought he, "but ...
— Prudy Keeping House • Sophie May
... Like a grim rendezvous of the dead. All day I have sat here repeating The commonplace things that we said. They sounded so oddly when uttered— They sound just as odd to me now; Was it we, or our two ghosts who muttered Last evening, with simper and bow? ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... think it's likely,' said Miss Phoebe, with a little simper and a knowing look, which sate oddly on her kindly innocent face. 'You see a great deal of Mr. Preston, don't ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... cannot fail to produce a feeling of discomfort. The disorder is catching; and do what you will you cannot resist the general infection. You struggle against it; you make spasmodic efforts to be lively; but none of your sallies or your good stories do more than raise a simper or a forced laugh: intellect and feeling are alike asphyxiated. And when, at length, yielding to your disgust, you rush away, how great is the relief when you get into the fresh air, and see the stars! How you "Thank God, that's over!" and half resolve to avoid ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... Durfey, Mrs. Trimmer's little Primer, Buckram binding, touch and try— Nothing bid—who'll buy, who'll buy? Here's Colley Cibber, Bruce the fibber, Plays of Cherry, ditto Merry, Tickle, Mickle, When I bow and when I wriggle, With a simper and a giggle, Ears regaling, bidders nailing, Ladies utter in a flutter— "Mister Smatter, how you chatter, Dear, how clever! well, I never ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... I must stop, lest you both be tired. In my next paper I shall begin again, and teach you, 4. To talk to the person you are talking with, and not simper to her or him, while really you are looking all round the room, and thinking of ten other persons; 5. Never in any other way to underrate the person you talk with, but to talk your best, whatever that may be; and, 6. To be brief,—a point which I shall have to ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... forensic enemy, who had fought many a hard battle against Gildersleeve, with scant interchange of courtesy, when both were members of the junior Bar together; but now Sir Gilbert's look moved even HIM to pity. "I think, my lord," the Q.C. suggested with a sympathetic simper, "your lordship's too ill to open the court to-day. Perhaps the proceedings had better be adjourned for ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... their sense is this: that these symposia of rustic vanity were kept entirely within the family, like some secret ancestral practice. To the world their serious faces were never deformed by the suspicion of any simper of self-contentment. Yet it was known. "They hae a guid pride o' themsel's!" was the word ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... complaisant Librarian, calling to a lad at the other end of the shop, "reach down the Old Maids for the gentleman. They won't appear to advantage, I'm afraid, a little dusty or damaged, with having laid so long upon the shelf," he added, with a simper, which was not lost upon any one present. A melancholy looking man, in whose countenance meekness and insipidity were alike plainly depicted, now came forward, inquiring, in an under, and what might almost be designated an alarmed tone ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... "And then he'll simper. You do not know what a vile creature he can be. I can take care of myself. You needn't be a bit afraid about that. I fancy I could give him a slap on the face which would startle him a little. And if we came to blows, ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... in the least help this young statesman in his designs upon Newcome and the Newcomites. After she came into Barnes's hands, a dreadful weight fell upon her. She would smile and simper, and talk kindly and gaily enough at first, during Sir Brian's life; and among women, when Barnes was not present. But as soon as he joined the company, it was remarked that his wife became silent, and looked eagerly towards him whenever he ventured to speak. She blundered, her ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... which were but coldness in comparison with the love for her which filled his soul. A year ago would have sealed his doom, but that night witnessed another scene. Death had claimed it for his own. The hand which he held was not withdrawn, neither did a simper mark her reply. With eyes meekly turned upward, she answered in a calm, low voice,—"My dear father is in heaven; if he is looking down, I feel that he will smile upon me, when, with my mother's consent, she shall give me away to you. I have long ago given ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale |
