"Simpering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hand-step and put his heart there in its place. But he could not do these things unintroduced. He hung back and watched her hug her mother and father in a brief wrestling-match while Arthur stood by in simpering homage. ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... national pride in comparing them with the instruments which the despots of other countries are compelled to employ, with the mutes who throng their ante-chambers, and the Janissaries who mount guard at their gates. Our royalist countrymen were not heartless dangling courtiers, bowing at every step, and simpering at every word. They were not mere machines for destruction dressed up in uniforms, caned into skill, intoxicated into valour, defending without love, destroying without hatred. There was a freedom in their ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... fellow want?" that gentleman was saying inwardly. "What does he come simpering and turning pink here for? Why doesn't he go and see some of his old women, and read tracts to them? That's his business." Octavia's manner toward her visitor formed a fresh grievance for Barold. She treated the curate very ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... that heart could wish. Before them a fountain played in the midst of blue, pink, and white lotus lilies, and in a flower-decked house the Seasons dispensed pot-flowers, bouquets, and button-holes; the Miss Simmondses and their friends with simpering graces, that made Geraldine glad to escape and leave them to the young men who were strolling up. At Carrara was the stall in which she was chiefly interested, and which had been arranged with a certain likeness to Italian gardens, the ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... went to the Prince de Wissembourg's, to the Prefecture, to Comte Popinot's, and the like, he held his hat in his hand in an airy manner taught him by Valerie, and he inserted the thumb of the other hand in the armhole of his waistcoat with a knowing air, and a simpering face and expression. This new grace of attitude was due to the satirical inventiveness of Valerie, who, under pretence of rejuvenating her mayor, had given him an added touch ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... was a sandy-complexioned woman, thin and angular—the type of the soldier's wife in all its unpleasantness; and what was odd, with a languishing air, which she owed to her perusal of romances. She was a simpering, but masculine creature. Old romances produce that effect when rubbed against the imagination of cook-shop woman. She was still young; she was barely thirty. If this crouching woman had stood upright, her lofty ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Upon my word, if she doesn't come, it would be the last straw. When I go every Wednesday to be bored to death in her salon with a crowd of affected, simpering women!" ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... in the silky hair. Juno Gibson reclined gracefully in a luxurious wicker chair, its gorgeous pink satin cushions a perfect background for her dark loveliness—which no one understood better than Juno herself. Helen Doolittle (most aptly named) was gazing in simpering adoration upon Stella from a pillow-laden ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... like no other woman he had ever seen; she was as far removed above common young-ladyhood as Raphael's Madonnas are beyond and above Greuze's simpering maidens; there could be no other like her—she was a queen, a goddess ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... more pleased than I expected, which is saying a good deal. It is a pet idea of mine that one gets more real truth out of one avowed partisan than out of a dozen of your sham impartialists - wolves in sheep's clothing - simpering honesty as they suppress documents. After all, what one wants to know is not what people did, but why they did it - or rather, why they THOUGHT they did it; and to learn that, you should go to the men themselves. ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... worthless little commodities; happy himself to see how easily others could purchase happiness. But the second would weep bitter tears to think what a rayless and barren life that must be which could extract enjoyment from the miserable flimsy wand that has such magic attraction for sauntering youths and simpering maidens. What a dynamometer of happiness are these paltry toys, and what a rudimentary vertebrate must be the freckled adolescent whose yearning for the infinite can be stayed even for a single hour by so trifling a boon from the venal hands of ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... grimaces; filling up parts in very various dramas. Our vanities differ as our noses do: all conceit is not the same conceit, but varies in correspondence with the minutiae of mental make in which one of us differs from another. Lydgate's conceit was of the arrogant sort, never simpering, never impertinent, but massive in its claims and benevolently contemptuous. He would do a great deal for noodles, being sorry for them, and feeling quite sure that they could have no power over him: he had thought of joining the ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... should think," this young lady said to Melissa, in a simpering rapture, "you'd be just too proud for anything, to know Mr. Stanton. It must be too lovely to know a ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... "Heavenly Joy," "Pearl of the Desert," and other things in bad English, worse French, and perfect Arabic. He was making promises that could not be redeemed if he lived a thousand years. In conclusion the gallant sheik drew a long breath, screwed his face into a simpering grin and played his trump card in unmistakable English. It sounded pathetically like "You're ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... skirts, on lifting them from the box, but the rustling sound could not be mistaken, and instantly she was aware that the girls on either side were mincing round in affected fashion, shaking out their own skirts, and simpering meaningly in ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... which had been struggling for expression at last seemed to dawn in his eyes. Something like a simpering blush crept over his face as he fumbled in his pocket. At last, drawing forth a twenty-dollar piece, he bashfully offered it to M'liss. In a twinkling the extended arm was stricken up, and the bright coin flew high in the air, and ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... a fool the moment I first laid eyes on her—as she stood courtesying and simpering to us on the lawn in front of Johnson Hall, her patched and raddled cheeks mocking the honest morning sunlight. I take no credit that my eyes had a clearer vision than those of my companions, but grieve instead that it ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... went well with Miss Philly Firkin in the shop and out She won favour in the sight of her betters by a certain prim, demure, simpering civility, and a power of multiplying herself as well as her little officials, like Yates or Matthews in a monopolologue, and attending to half-a-dozen persons at once; whilst she was no less popular amongst her equals in virtue of her excellent gift in gossiping. Nobody better ...
— Miss Philly Firkin, The China-Woman • Mary Russell Mitford
... Dop Doctor merry again, this scorching night in Gueldersdorp, five years later. But it was ugly mirth, especially when he recalled his agony of sympathy upon hearing, through her mother, that Mildred was ill in bed. Ah! how he hated the simpering, whispering, sneering, giggling women in Court when he pictured her, his innocent darling, his sweet girl, suffering for love of him and sorrow for him. David, detained by onerous duties at Regimental Headquarters throughout the whole ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... being wholly responsible for the present whist combination, of course could say nothing except to myself and the moon. What a hoard of personal reminiscences and heart to heart confessions the simpering old thing must have stored away behind her placid countenance. It is a wonder that no enterprising journal has syndicated her memoirs by wireless telegraphy for the exclusive use ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... noses, long eyes, round chins, short upper lips, just as they are ruled down for you in the drawing-books, as if the latter were the revelations of beauty, issued by supreme authority, from which there was no appeal? Why is the classical reign to endure? Why is yonder simpering Venus de' Medicis to be our standard of beauty, or the Greek tragedies to bound our notions of the sublime? There was no reason why Agamemnon should set the fashions, and remain [Greek text omitted] to eternity: and there is a classical quotation, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... couples revolving in obedience to the music of a piano and a violin. One of the Royal Sussex's Saturday Cinderellas was in progress. The self-satisfied gestures of men inspecting their cigars or lifting glasses, of simpering women glancing or the sly at their jewels, and of youths pulling straight their white waistcoats as they strolled about with the air of Don Juans, invigorated his contempt for the average existence. The tinkle ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... study of every trait of her lover's character, determined to weigh him by the truest standards of manhood. Certainly he was no weakling. The one abomination of her soul was the type of the city degenerate she saw simpering along Broadway and Fifth Avenue at times. Jim was brave to the point of rashness. No man with an ounce of cowardice in his being could handle a car in every crisis with such cool daring and perfect ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... marble heads of improvvisatori and crowned poetesses, and threw their beans, maize, and garden-tools into the corners of the desolate reception-rooms, from whose mildewed walls looked down a host of celebrities—brocaded doges, powdered princesses, and scarlet-robed cardinals, simpering drearily in their desolation," and "sad, haggard poetesses in sea-green and sky-blue draperies, with lank, powdered locks and meager arms, holding lyres; fat, ill-shaven priests in white bands and mop-wigs; sonneteering ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... reader, in his experience of society, never heard similar remarks by good-natured female friends; who always wonder what you CAN see in Miss Smith that is so fascinating; or what COULD induce Major Jones to propose for that silly insignificant simpering Miss Thompson, who has nothing but her wax-doll face to recommend her? What is there in a pair of pink cheeks and blue eyes forsooth? these dear Moralists ask, and hint wisely that the gifts of genius, the accomplishments of the mind, the mastery of Mangnall's Questions, and a ladylike knowledge ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of social heresies, and rapidly beginning to take rank as a religious heresy as well, I have no hesitation in placing modern Spiritualism. Those who associate this latest mystery only with gyrating articles of furniture, rapping tables, or simpering planchettes, are simply in the abyss of ignorance, and dangerously underrate the gravity of the subject. The later development of Spirit Faces and Spirit Forms, each of which I have examined thoroughly, and made the results of my observations public, ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... "This may not be an isolated phenomenon. Who knows? A search may disclose screaming squid, or simpering sharks, or ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... young man is at present the most popular physician of the day; and he still goes to the town of Morality to church. The road to his house is crowded more than ever, though the warning has been standing for two hundred years, that "notwithstanding his simpering looks, he is but a hypocrite,"—as well as another warning far older,—"Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom." [Job ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... lower door, Lanyard threw it back, stepped out, finding the lobby deserted but for a simpering group of coat-room girls, to one of whom he ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... that's wrong," said Mr. Smith, simpering; "it is indeed, to tell the lady's secrets.-But never mind him, Miss Biddy, for I won't ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... opinion of society about unequal unions is not so unsound as he used scornfully to suppose it to be. The vapidity of a polite woman is bad, but the vapidity of a woman who is not polite is decidedly worse. A simpering unthinking woman with good manners is decidedly better than an unthinking woman with imperfect manners; and if polish can spoil nature among one set of people, certainly among another set nature may be as much spoilt by lack of polish. It does not follow, from a ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... mixture of awkwardness, fatuity and stiffness the most curious and the most exhilarating.... In his general aspect," adds this merciless critic, "he recalls the circus-rider, minus the latter's flexibility: skin-tight garments, simpering mouth, smile of a dancing-girl, attempt to be impertinent and irresistible which culminates only in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... how she waited for a lull in the talk, and then she said with that silly, simpering, ...
— Dolly Reforming Herself - A Comedy in Four Acts • Henry Arthur Jones
... the year 1845. The copper-plate engravings of lovely ladies, who had flourished in that day, were yellow and spotted with mildew; the costumes grotesque and outlandish; the simpering beauties faded and commonplace. Even the little clusters of verses (in which the poet's feeble candle shed its sickly light upon the obscurities of the artist's meaning) had an old-fashioned twang; like music on ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... my mind how, in Edgar's time, when I was a girl, one was quartered in my father's house. He changed his raiment once a day and bathed every Sunday. I used to comb his yellow hair when I took in his ale, of a morning." Long after her voice had passed into a rattle, she stood in a simpering revery, her palsied hands resting heavily upon her stick, her blinking eyes fixed on the picturesque young foreigner musing ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... to dine at—at Fairoaks," said Mr. Smirke, blushing faintly and whisking the scented pocket-handkerchief, and his pony being in waiting, he mounted and rode away simpering down the street. No accident befell him that day, and he arrived with his tie in the very best ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the stranger, nothing daunted by this cold reception; "I have tarried at 'Edward' a week, and I should be dumb not to have inquired the road I was to journey; and if dumb there would be an end to my calling." After simpering in a small way, like one whose modesty prohibited a more open expression of his admiration of a witticism that was perfectly unintelligible to his hearers, he continued, "It is not prudent for any one of my profession to be too familiar with those he has to instruct; for which reason I follow ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... lace-capped mamma welcomed Lucian with heavy good nature and much simpering, for they also had an eye to a comely young man; but the cunning Lydia they kissed and embraced, and called "dear" with much zeal. Mrs. Vrain, on her part, darted from one to the other like a bird, pecking the red ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... Plessis, with much simpering and affectation, quite unworthy of the original, drew the working geologist out, and inspired him with hopes of securing her hand and property. Mr. Rawdon spoke very freely of the wealth he had in the hand and in the bush, of his readiness to make allowance for Madame Du Plessis, ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... at his companion's attempt at a simpering affectation. Then he watched with admiration while the cowboy sent his horse after the calf and, too quickly for an inexperienced eye to see just how it was done, the deft riata stretched the animal by the ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... pale, washed-out rag of a creature—but what can you expect from such a mother? No brains, no style, no conversation; always a simpering, weak-eyed rag baby. Oh, my ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... pretty—packed the children off to the beach with gentry-cakes in their hands. Well she did so, for every chair in the kitchen was occupied by some relative, and the display of best clothes was most alarming. Worst of all, one party had brought the family idiot—a simpering, lollopy creature, stiff in the wrong places, who could not feed himself properly. With a vigorous tapping of the forehead, he was pointed out to me. "He's a little deeficient, you know, sir—something lacking." The idiot, finding himself the centre of ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... Alderdene, "she's well rid of him if he's been choking her this long—the rank, rotten weed that he is, sapping the life from her so when she hung over toward another fellow's bush we thought she was frail in the stem—God bless us all for a simpering lot ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... They are cold and musty, indeed, with that touching smell of old furniture, as all apartments should be through which the insatiate American wanders in the rear of a bored domestic, pausing to stare at a faded tapestry or to read the name on the frame of some simpering portrait. ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... Mrs. Mangan!" said the priest simpering conventionally. "Wasn't it ministering to the afflicted that delayed him! Doctors mustn't be subjected to the rules that bind ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... of so antiquated a comedy as this, but, while I am wishful to make every allowance for its having been composed in a period of prehistoric barbarity, I would still hazard the criticism that it does not excite the simpering guffaw with the frequency of such modern standard works as exempli gratia, Miss Brown, or The Aunt of Charley, to either of which I would award the palm for pure whimsicality ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... young man," said a simpering damsel to a red-headed Lothario, with just brains enough to be jealous, and spirit enough ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 30, 1841 • Various
... temper in managing an argument. Any one else would perceive that the latent cause is not patience with his antagonist, but satisfaction with himself. I think this unmoved self-complacency, this cavalier, smooth, simpering indifference is more annoying than the extremest violence or irritability. The one shows that your opponent does care something about you, and may be put out of his way by your remarks; the other seems to announce that nothing you say can shake his opinion a jot, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... full of complaisance Ogle and leer, languish, cajole and glance; With luring tongues, and language wond'rous sweet, Follow young ladies as they walk the street, Ev'n to their very houses, nay, bedside, And, artful, tho' their true designs they hide; Yet ah! these simpering Wolves! Who does not see Most dangerous of Wolves ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... lament in vain, Their servile inmates gone to swell your train. Stout FERDINANDO, your obsequious slave, Once a rude ruffian, now a pliant knave, With Stentor's voice shall swell your pageant pride, And boldly thunder nonsense on your side: The gentle Colonel, simpering SELLWOOD too, His face with port and patriot-ardor blue, With vacant eye shall view your great intent, Shall scratch his empty head, and smile assent. There too my muse, with rough, tho' honest song, Shall chant your ...
— An Heroic Epistle to the Right Honourable the Lord Craven (3rd Ed.) • William Combe
... with vanity wherever it appears. Go into a school-room, and look around upon the appearance of the various pupils assembled there. You will perhaps see one girl, with head tossed upon one shoulder, and with a simpering countenance, trying to look pretty. You speak to her. Instead of receiving a plain, kind, honest answer, she replies with voice and language and attitude full of affectation. She thinks she is exciting your admiration. But, on the contrary, she is ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott
... to have frequent struggles at her toilet. If her soul would prosper better without them, was it really worth while to put on the rouge and the braids? But when she lifted up the hand-mirror and saw a sallow face with baggy cheeks, and crows'-feet that were not to be dissimulated by any simpering of the lips—when she parted her grey hair, and let it lie in simple Piagnone fashion round her face, her courage failed. Monna Berta would certainly burst out laughing at her, and call her an old hag, and as Monna Berta was really only fifty-two, she had a superiority which would ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... school. She cast at him what are commonly called sheep's-eyes. Ralph thought them more like calf's eyes. She changed the whole tone of her voice. She whined ordinarily. Now she whimpered. And so by ogling him, by blushing at him, by tittering at him, by giggling at him, by snickering at him, by simpering at him, by making herself tenfold more a fool even than nature had made her, she managed to convey to the dismayed soul of the young teacher the frightful intelligence that he was loved by the richest, the ugliest, the silliest, the coarsest, and the most entirely contemptible ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... racecourse, and draped, half-naked men and women walking in the streets and working in the fields, their ignorance was of the means of representation, not of the object represented. It is the hand, the tool which is at fault in those constrained, simpering warriors of the schools of AEgina, in those slim-waisted daemonic dancers of the Apulian vases; the eye is as familiar with the human body, the mind as accustomed to select its beauty from its ugliness, as the eye ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... dollars and cents with which was strangely intermingled a project for supplying the East Indies with ice by harnessing a team of whales to the polar icebergs. As for the widow Wycherly, she stood before the mirror courtesying and simpering to her own image and greeting it as the friend whom she loved better than all the world besides. She thrust her face close to the glass to see whether some long-remembered wrinkle or crow's-foot had indeed vanished; ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... describe the British soldier, I suppose, to suit the public too, much on the same lines. He is the most simpering, mild-mannered, and perfect gentleman. If you asked him to loot a farm, he would stare at you in shocked amazement. He is, of course, "as brave as a lion," his courage being always at that dead level of perfect heroism which makes the term quite meaningless. Except, however, when they are shining ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... illustrative phenomena and recent discoveries glanced at in the progress of the conversations. How much more profitable are such family recreations than sitting hours over spotted pieces of paper, counting the pips of dice, or simpering over fashionable novels and tales of scandal run mad. Bookish families are usually the happiest, at least if we rightly estimate the term. In an early number we shall endeavour to find some portion of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 343, November 29, 1828 • Various
... had neither parasol, nor lap-dog, nor fan. Her plain grey dress, made almost as simply as a nun's, contrasted oddly with the profusion of expensive bad taste displayed in her hostess's attire, as her serious white face and quiet noble eyes were strangely unlike Frau von Greifenstein's simpering, nervous countenance. The latter lady would certainly have been taken at first sight for the younger of the two, though she was in reality considerably older, but a closer examination showed an infinite number of minute lines, about the eyes, about the ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... Saint's procession, Now sat, equally united, Drinking the good wine before them, Or the golden foaming beer. Corks were popping, glasses ringing; Many huge and mighty goblets By the guests were emptied quickly, In St Fridolinus' honour. Simpering with delight, the landlord Counted all the empty barrels, And, with a devout expression, Chalked them all upon the blackboard. From the inn outside the gate, which By the peasants was frequented, Came gay music; ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... vogue—this was the burden of his reiterated rabid attacks; art watered down to suit the public's insipid palate, and he quoted Chamfort furiously: "Combien de sots faut-il pour faire un public?"—the art of simpering prettiness, without root or fruit in life, the art of absolute convention. He ran over a list of successful names with an ever-growing rancour—artistic hacks, the crew of them, the journalists of painting—with a side glance at Lightmark, ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... Wrench, senior, was an agreeable old dentist, always gay, generally humorous, sometimes witty; he could sketch characters as well as draw teeth; and, on occasions of this kind, was invaluable. The son was a mere donkey; a silly, simpering, well-dressed young gentleman, the owner of no more than the eighth of an idea, and of a very fine set of teeth, which he constantly exhibited like a sign or advertisement of his shop. Appended to everything he uttered were a preface ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... was at all times of a delicate constitution, I suffered less than any of us, being much less reduced in frame, and retaining my powers of mind in a surprising degree, while the rest were completely prostrated in intellect, and seemed to be brought to a species of second childhood, generally simpering in their expressions, with idiotic smiles, and uttering the most absurd platitudes. At intervals, however, they would appear to revive suddenly, as if inspired all at once with a consciousness of their condition, when ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... 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 ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... to a command of the occasion at once; there was no sense in men of their age behaving like schoolboys. "Oh, my, yes!" she hastened to say, as she rose with a simpering smile. "'T ain't as if 't was any kind o' consequence, you know; not but what I'm ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... said Markham hurriedly, "I told him to draw on me for a thousand dollars last time I saw him. No, sir; it ain't that. What gets me is this darned nagging and simpering around, and opening old sores, and putting on sentimental style, and doing the bereaved business generally. I reckon he'd be even horrified to see you and me here—though it was just a chance ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... himself and approached her, a little uneasy and decidedly annoyed. Her mouth was simpering, but her eyes had that sharp, predatory ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... merely a double but a treble and quadruple chin; he has a very large mouth with oily lips, and looks as if he would relish a good dinner with a bottle of wine after it. He came swimming into the room smiling, simpering, and bowing like a fat old lady, and sat down very demure in his chair and looked the picture of a sleek hypocrite. He was dressed in black like a bishop or dean in plain clothes, but wore scarlet gloves and a ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... fifteen, Sylvie Rogron, trained to the simpering of a saleswoman, had two faces,—the amiable face of the seller, the natural face of a sour spinster. Her acquired countenance was a marvellous bit of mimicry. She was all smiles. Her voice, soft and wheedling, gave a commercial charm to business. Her real face ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... Streets, cannot cancel these mighty obligations. And there are better ways of schooling the soul to recognize the magnitude and insistence of such obligations than by organizing ultra-select dancing-classes at Sherry's; giving "pink luncheons" to a bevy of simpering female snobs; uncorking eight-dollar bottles of Clos de Vougeot for a fastidious dinner company of men-about-town; squandering three thousand dollars on a Delmonico ball, or purchasing at vast prices the gowns and jewels of a deposed foreign empress. Yes, there are better ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... the superiors of princes, to that moral degradation and national decay in which they purchase the scurvy spawn of petty dukes as husband for our daughters. By the splendor of God, I'd rather be a naked Fiji Islander, dancing about a broiled missionary with a bull-ring in my nose, than a simpering "sawciety" simpleton, wearing my little intellectual apparatus to a frazzle with ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... a minuet-tune played on a bird-organ, approach the charmer, or rush from the false one daintily on their red-heeled tiptoes, and die of despair or rapture, with the most pathetic little grins and ogles; or repose, simpering at each other, under an arbour of pea-green crockery; or piping to pretty flocks that have just been washed with the best Naples in a stream of Bergamot. Gay's gay plan seems to me far pleasanter than that of Philips—his rival and Pope's—a serious and dreary idyllic Cockney; ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... be so ridiculous, and why did her mother ever allow her to dress herself like that?" thought Grace as she glanced at Marian, who was simpering at some remark that Mr. Henry Hammond was making to her in a voice too low for the others ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... 'Big Sam!' 'Pinckney!' 'Cal!' 'Peter!' 'Jule!' and a variety of names were shouted out, not by the owners of them. With a great deal of shyness and simpering and half-suppressed grinning, and real or affected modesty on the part of the women, and equal mirth and awkward self-consciousness on that of the aspirant bridegrooms, the candidates for matrimony—or at least such of them as were present, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... after I had talked with the very next sentinel, especially as they had never seen me in India-rubber clothing, and I can always disguise my voice. It was easy to distinguish those who did make the discovery; they were always conscious and simpering when their turn came; while the others were stout and irreverent till I revealed myself, and then rather cowed and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... reply I, simpering, "that our future benefac—, no! I really must give up calling him that, or I shall come out with it to his face, as Bobby did last night. Well, then, Sir Roger asked me why I did not appear yesterday. I suppose he thought that I looked so ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... wild and angry speech. Her face changed as if by magic. The flush died in it and the expression of her sparkling eyes became subdued. A simpering look overspread Ida May Bostwick's countenance that warned the other girl, at least, that another person had ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... speak of other than ourselves, Ser Agostino," she answered, all unmoved still by my scorn, or leastways showing nothing of what emotions might be hers. "It is of that simpering daughter of ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... looked aside, feeling she was being belittled. People were standing about in groups, some women were sitting in the shade of the walnut tree, with cups of tea in their hands, a waiter in evening dress was hurrying round, some girls were simpering with parasols, some young men, who had just come in from rowing, were sitting cross-legged on the grass, coatless, their shirt-sleeves rolled up in manly fashion, their hands resting on their white flannel trousers, their gaudy ties floating about, as they laughed ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... better than the world of dress And pompous dining, out, Better than simpering and finesse Is ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... old woman sat in a big arm chair. Near her was Andy's aunt, smiling and simpering up at Dewey. The latter, dressed "to kill," was bowing like a ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... cheeks and there was a light in her eyes. Shyly, yet gleefully, she drew a letter from her pocket. "I got a letter from him to-day with an awful cute motto in it. Look!" She showed it proudly to Pearl, Jose and Gallito. "It's on cream-tinted paper, with a red and blue border, an'," simpering consciously, "it says in black and gold letters, 'A Little Widow ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... unloverlike, and for all that she would he had been less self-possessed, her faith in him caused her, upon reflection, even to admire this which she conceived to be restraint. Yet, when at parting he did no more than courteously bend before her, and kiss her hand as any simpering gallant might have done, she was all but vexed, and not to be outdone in coldness, she grew frigid. But it was lost upon him. He had not a lover's discernment, quickened by anxious eyes that watch for each flitting change upon ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... no consulting with feebleness, as when one sets forth to walk with the everyday woman. What daring topics might come up in the course of a twenty-mile stretch across country! No Grundyism in Rhoda Nunn; no simpering, no mincing of phrases. Why, a man might do worse than secure her for his comrade through the whole ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... said about it. He got on the good side of Ursula. He praised her to Marget, confidentially, but speaking just loud enough for Ursula to hear. He said she was a fine woman, and he hoped some day to bring her and his uncle together. Very soon Ursula was mincing and simpering around in a ridiculous girly way, and smoothing out her gown and prinking at herself like a foolish old hen, and all the time pretending she was not hearing what Satan was saying. I was ashamed, for it showed us to be what Satan considered us, a silly race and trivial. Satan said his uncle entertained ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... for the narrow-minded Gobenheims, who measure life with a square rule. Please let us keep to the artistic and poetic life, papa. We young girls have only two ways to act; we must let a man know we love him by mincing and simpering, or we must go to him frankly. Isn't the last way grand and noble? We French girls are delivered over by our families like so much merchandise, at sixty days' sight, sometimes thirty, like Mademoiselle Vilquin; but in England, and Switzerland, and Germany, they follow very much ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... the girl angrily. "You men make me tired. Two kinds of ladies! And ten thousand kinds of men! You want me to dress like a doll, I suppose, and keep my hands soft and white and go around like a brainless, simpering fool! There are two kinds of ladies, my fine friend: the kind that can and the kind that can't! Thank God I'm none of your precious, sighing, hothouse ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... that opened into an immense room. All that I remember of it, as I saw it then, was a number of pastel portraits of weak, vacuous individuals, in dulled, gilt, oval frames. The heads stood out from the panelling and stared at me from between ringlets, from under powdered hair, simpering, or contemptuous with the expression that must have prevailed in the monde of the time before the Revolution. At a great distance, bent over account—books and pink cheques on the flap of an escritoire, sat my aunt, very small, very grey, very ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... sure," cried Mr. Brittle, simpering, and making a conceited bow, "your Ladyship does it and me too much honour. But here, as I was going to say, is the phoenix of all porcelain ware—the ne plus ultra of perfection—what I have kept in my backroom, concealed from all eyes, until your Ladyship shall ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... cause, but with all his haste his daughter had hurried to the scene of uproar before him. The landlord was followed by the landlady, who was followed by the bouncing bar-maid, who was followed by the simpering chambermaids all holding together, as well as they could, such garments as they had first lain hands on; but all in a terrible hurry to see what the devil was to pay in the ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... heroic passion, and tenderness, and generosity, and, if you will, temper. No, her mouth was not in the least like the pink shoe-button of romance and sugared portraiture; it was manifestly designed less for simpering out of a gilt frame or the dribbling of stock phrases over three hundred pages than for gibes and laughter and cheery gossip and honest, unromantic eating, as well as another purpose, which, as a highly dangerous topic, ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... bold, smart, vehement fashion. As she left the piano, Arthur said, 'Thank you; I have never heard the piece better rendered.' And Lady Hilda felt that that was a triumph which far outweighed any number of inane compliments from a whole regiment of simpering ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... was amazed at the fact that the beautiful strawberry which bloomed upon her chest had not been withered by the hand of Time. It was a birth-mark which was really very much like a strawberry. "It is that mark," said the old woman, simpering, "which gave me the name of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... this most selfish of royal or private personages has been drawn by a master hand. "To make a portrait of him," says Thackeray, "at first seemed a matter of small difficulty. There is his coat, his star, his wig, his countenance simpering under it: with a slate and a piece of chalk, I could at this very desk perform a recognisable likeness of him. And yet after reading of him in scores of volumes, hunting him through old magazines and newspapers, having him here ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... Impertinent, preposterous abortion! With vacant stare, And ragged hair, And every feature out of all proportion! Embodiment of echoing inanity! Excellent type of simpering insanity! Unwieldy, clumsy nightmare of humanity! ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... since I stood for the second time in the Pinacoteca of Verona and sought to read my fate in the simpering countenance of Morone's Miseratrix Virginum Regina. I met what might have been expected by a person of any sense—the self-same expression on the painted face as I had angrily found there two months ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... had a letter from him," said Mrs. Bowman, simpering. "Fancy, after all these years! Poor fellow, he has only just heard of my husband's death, and, ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... "You do not sit well there," said Noor ad Deen, "and we cannot have the honour of seeing you; pray come nearer, and sit you down by the lady; she will like it much." "I will obey you," replied Scheich Ibrahim, so coming forward, simpering, to think he should be seated near so beautiful a creature, he placed himself at some distance from the fair Persian. Noor ad Deen desired a song of her, in return for the honour Scheich Ibrahim had done them; and she sung ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... that excuse will satisfy your friend Gordon? He will fly for consolation to the stereotyped smile and delicious flattery of simpering Miss Maud." ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... unless, in spreading Vice's snares, She blunder'd on some virtue unawares; With all these blessings, which we seldom find Lavish'd by Nature on one happy mind, 140 A motley figure, of the Fribble tribe, Which heart can scarce conceive, or pen describe, Came simpering on—to ascertain whose sex Twelve sage impannell'd matrons would perplex. Nor male, nor female; neither, and yet both; Of neuter gender, though of Irish growth; A six-foot suckling, mincing in Its gait; Affected, peevish, prim, and delicate; Fearful It seem'd, though of athletic make, Lest brutal ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... parlor, my grandfather huddled in his chair by the table, with bright, roving eyes; the sorcerer surprisingly busy about the food for a person of his ethereal habits; and, on the wall beyond, old Admiral Pendarves simpering ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... and pilfered a little cockled cherry from between the very fingertips of her whose heart was doubtless like its—quite hard. And the bright lips never said a word. I sat down, rather clownishly I felt, beside an aged and simpering chancellor that once had seemed wise, but now seemed innocent, nibbling a biscuit crisp as scandal. For after all the horn would sound. Childhood had been quite sure of that—needed not even the author's testimony. They were alert to rise, scattering all dust, victors over ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... cheeks there is a vivid yet delicate color; and my really respectable eyes are emphasized and accentuated by the dark line beneath them. To tell you the truth, I cannot take my eyes off myself. It is delightful to be pretty! I am simpering at myself over my left shoulder, and heartily joining in my maid's encomiums on myself, when the door opens, and Roger enters. For the first instant I really think that he does not ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... bright Phoebus does retire, To Thetis' Bed to quench his fire. And do the thing we need not name, We Mortals by his influence do the same. Then then the blushing Maid lays by Her simpering, and her Modesty; And round the Lover clasps and twines Like Ivy, or the ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... Miss Chetwynd, simpering momentarily, came forward with that self- conscious, slightly histrionic air, which is one of the penalties of pedagogy. She lived under the eyes of her pupils. Her life was one ceaseless effort to avoid doing anything which might influence her charges for evil or shock ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... appearance of great dignity, as she hoped the lady was well. The merchant's wife felt the consciousness of rank too much to be repulsed in this manner, and believing that the dowager had merely forgotten her face, she added, with a simpering smile, in imitation of what she had seen better bred ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... me to look up at the mantel with which it seemed to be in some way connected, and thus I became aware of a wan old drawing hanging on the wall above it. Why this picture, which was a totally uninteresting sketch of a simpering girl face, should have held my eye after the first glance, I can not say even now. It had no beauty even of the sentimental kind and very little, if any, meaning. Its lines, weak at the best, were nearly obliterated and in some places quite faded out. Yet I not ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... all lack wit in the country, madame," said I, simpering as I supposed the Court gallants to simper, "nor, since the plague ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... you who have driven me to seek the seclusion of my own apartments, to be out of sight and hearing of the household of simpering idiots you insist upon keeping about you," he cried, angrily. "I came back to Whitestone Hall for peace and rest. Do I ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... to face this new development. Somehow this contingency had never occurred to him. Now for the moment it disarmed him, for it brought him down, like a wounded bird, to the level of Arsdale himself. As voiced by the latter the act expressed the climax of simpering cowardice. Donaldson, in the first shock of finding himself included in the same indictment with the very man for whom he had had so little mercy, felt the same powerlessness that had paralyzed this other. He was shorn of his strength. He blinked as stupidly at Arsdale ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... us walk to the window, Signor Salomon. And now, instead of the silly, simpering compliments repeated at introductions, let me assure you that you are the only man in Florence with whom I would willingly ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... knew the character of the man, whom in fact she both disliked and feared, could not help simpering at the personal address which he thought proper to make to her. She whispered to the Sub-Prior, "ony thing just to keep him quiet," and went into the tower to set before the soldier the food he desired, trusting betwixt good cheer and the power of her own charms, to keep ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... advocate that the Church lay hold of the photoplays as one more medium for reillustrating the stories of the Bible as they are given in the Sunday-school papers. It is not pietistic simpering that will feed the spirit of Christendom, but a steady church-patronage of the most skilful and original motion picture artists. Let the Church follow the precedent which finally gave us Fra Angelico, Botticelli, Andrea del Sarto, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... was quite splendid; for every sort of picture shone in the sun,—simpering ladies, tragic scenes, circus parades, labels from tin cans, rosy tomatoes, yellow peaches, and purple plums, funny advertisements, and gay bills of all kinds. None were perfect, but they were arranged with care; and the effect was very fine, ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... settle the case! Fortunately a marriage in England was not a marriage in France. I saw her last night, Francois"—with an insane look—"in the flesh and blood; as life-like as the night before we took the stage for Brighton!" Suddenly he shrieked and a look of terror replaced the vain, simpering expression. ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... in those of Minerva. And when he shall once find him begin to apprehend, and shall represent to him a Bradamante or an Angelica—[Heroines of Ariosto.]—for a mistress, a natural, active, generous, and not a viragoish, but a manly beauty, in comparison of a soft, delicate, artificial simpering, and affected form; the one in the habit of a heroic youth, wearing a glittering helmet, the other tricked up in curls and ribbons like a wanton minx; he will then look upon his own affection as brave and masculine, when he shall choose ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... of the world, with rosy face and simpering features, received me politely, nay kindly; listened with complacency to my remonstrances, though he scarcely heeded Mary's tears. I did not then suspect, that my eloquence was in my complexion, the blush of seventeen, ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... about; prints, sketches in oil and water-color stuck here and there lower down; a rickety table, with paint and palettes and bottles of varnish and siccative tossed comfortlessly on it; an easel, with a strip of some faded mediaeval silk trailing from it; a lay figure simpering in incomplete nakedness, with its head on one side, and a stocking on one leg, and a Japanese dress dropped before it; dusty rugs and skins kicking over the varnished floor; canvases faced to the mop-board; an open trunk overflowing with costumes: ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... they do it? To be attractive to men; and the reason they continue to do it is that it is successful. Many a woman has found that it pays to be foolish. Men like frivolity—before marriage; but they demand all the sterner virtues afterwards. The little dainty, fuzzy-haired, simpering dolly who chatters and wears toe-slippers has a better chance in the matrimonial market than the clear-headed, plainer girl, who dresses sensibly. A little boy once gave his mother directions as to his birthday present—he said he wanted "something foolish" and therein he expressed ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... simpering, and tottered drowsily to and fro. He was evidently very sleepy. Mr. Dumany took him up on his lap, unbuttoned his little boots, and pulled off the tiny socks. The mother stood there, looking on unconcerned, and presently she said, "Good-night!" and went out ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... in the expectant circle. The girl, in her turn, throws a favorable regard on some fortunate young man, offers her hand to lead him forth, makes him happy with a maidenly kiss, and withdraws to hide her blushes, if any there be, among the simpering faces in the ring; while the favored swain loses no time in transferring her salute to the prettiest and plumpest among the many mouths that are primming themselves in anticipation. And thus the thing goes on, till all the festive throng are inwreathed and intertwined into an endless and ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was Cromwell Biron," she simpered. Although Lucy Ellen was forty and, in most respects, sensible, she could not help simpering upon occasion. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... mistaking his attention for a compliment, and simpering a little, with a quick fluttering of her lids; "took all her stuff.—Hm!" Now she let her eyes play side-wise, toward that ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... really want to know, or that artists will stoop to our questionings. We would willingly go wrong over a thousand or two of those soldiers, if we might catch the language of just one of them as he waded into the river; and how many a simpering Venus would we grind into face-powder if we could follow for just one day the thoughts of a single priest who once guarded her temple! But, occupied with grandeur and beauty, the artists and historians move upon their own elevated plane, and it is only by furtive ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... he has the seedlings of poetry in his composition no one can deny, after the perusal of many of our extracts; that he employs them worthily, is more than can be advanced. His style, though disgraced by occasional puerilities, and simpering affectations, is in general bold, vigorous, and manly; but the disgraceful fault to which we object in his writings, is the scorn he every where evinces for all that is moral or religious. If he must be skeptical—if he must be lax in his human codes of excellence, let him ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... turned round, looked at him for a moment with an impatient scowl; but in the meaningless and simpering face before him he could read nothing but what appeared to him to be an impudent chuckle of satisfaction; and this, indeed, was no more than what Crackenfudge felt, who had altogether forgotten the nature of the communication he was about ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... rise to her," she said. "If I were you, I should try. You will be happier—far happier than if you attempt to use her for your own ends, as a contributor to your comfort and an auxiliary to your career. I was afraid—I confess it—that you had married an aspiring, simpering and empty-headed provincial like that Mrs. George Hutchins' whom I met once, and who would sell her soul to be at my table. Well, you escaped that, and you may thank God for it. You've got a chance, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... and, for that matter, Lon'on too, as I believe, at her feet!" says Mrs. Price, emphatically, to young Medlicot, whom she is patronizing for one night, because he knows somewhat of plays and players; and who, in spite of his allegiance to swimming, simpering Clarissa, would give a fortune to paint that pose. Belvidera need fear no lolling, no sneering, no snapping at ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... picture-gallery was the chief attraction; and beginning with Diane herself—a tall, simpering baggage, with a bow, hounds, crescent, and a blue sash for drapery—they were led through a rapid review of all sorts of worthies and unworthies, relics and rubbish, without end. Portraits are always interesting. Even Lavinia, who 'had no soul for Art,' as Mat said, looked ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... her eyes was sickening. But was Pat nauseated? Not he! The big goon was lapping it up like a famished feline. His simpering smirk stretched from ear to there as he murmured, "Now, ...
— Lighter Than You Think • Nelson Bond
... approached simpering, Andrew stopped and gazed at him. The smile went from the stranger's face; he blushed or looked fierce. When he turned round, Andrew still had his eye on him. ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... it would suit me!" cried Pauline, in a frenzy of disgust and irritation. "Me! For the stage and its triumphs a convent with simpering nuns! For Paris with its gay shops and drives, the town of Three Rivers, Province of Quebec, dans le Bas Canada! Oh! I see myself, thank you, in that galere, I assure you! No—no—that honourable ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... the housekeeper, simpering, "I never command my equals—I leave my betters to do that. I wanted you just to ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... simpering rakes Who kiss their hands (three miles away) To dainty beauties of Cathay Beside those ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... going on the damp grass, and to make them stand disgraced at the corner of a seat if they have been mad-dog or Mary-Annish. To be Mary-Annish is to behave like a girl, whimpering because nurse won't carry you, or simpering with your thumb in your mouth, and it is a hateful quality; but to be mad-dog is to kick out at everything, and there ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... conceited and patronizing and superior—and spoiled. I can just imagine this Mr. Ellery of yours strutting about in sewing circle or sociables, with Annabel and Georgianna Lothrop and the rest simpering and gushing and getting in his way: 'O Mr. Ellery, I did so enjoy that sermon of yours Sunday!' and 'O Mr. Ellery, it was SO good of you to come this afternoon!' Pooh! I'm glad I'm a Come-Outer. Not that I would simper over him if ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... you think, supposing I would love, I'ld bank in such a crazy safe as that Katrina? One of those soft shy-spoken maids, Who are only maids through fear? Whose life is all A simpering pretence of modesty? If it was love I wanted, 'twould not be A dish of sweet stewed pears, laced with brandy. But I can ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... very top of highest noon: so that then (and not till then) is the most healthful hour to be stirring. Do you require examples to persuade you? At what time do Lords and Ladies use to rise but then? Your simpering merchants' wives are the fairest lyers in the world: and is not eleven o'clock their common hour? they find (no doubt) unspeakable sweetness in such lying, else they would not day by day put it so in practice. In a word, mid-day slumbers are golden; ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... Stewart's appearance. Not one of them succeeded; but the peculiar shade of her hair, the low forehead and delicate line of the dark eyebrows, the outline of the mask, sometimes admired, sometimes criticised, made her portrait always recognized, whether simpering as a chocolate-box classicality, smiling sadly from the flowery circle of the Purgatorio, or breaking out of some rough mass of paint with the provocative leer of a cocotte of the ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... they all filed into the private and very expensive dining room, Eleanor looked indeed quite "stunning"; her shyness did not seem shyness, but only a sort of proud beauty of silence, which might cover Heaven knows what deeps of passion and of knowledge! Little Rose was glowing and simpering, and the two older ladies were giving each other significant glances. Maurice's "fellows," shepherded by their host, shambled speechlessly along in the background. The instant that they saw the bride they had fallen into dumbness. ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland |
