"Metier" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the prefect of police, severely lectured, and admonished to abjure puns, if he would escape punishment. "Mais que voulez vous que je fasse," replied poor Brunet, in piteous accents, "c'est mon metier de faire des calembourgs, j'y gagne ma vie. Voulez vous donc que je scie du bois?"[15] And, in spite of menaces and imprisonment, he continued each evening to delight the audience of the Varietes with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... have said. You know yourself, Monsieur, whether or not I am devoted to Monsieur Calvert. For Madame de St. Andre I care less than nothing," he said, snapping his fingers carelessly. "But Monsieur Calvert loves her—it seems a pretty enough way of making them happy, though 'tis a strange metier for me—arranging love-matches among the nobility! However, stranger things than that are happening in France. Besides, it is necessary," he said, his light manner suddenly changing to one more serious. "I swear it is the only way of getting d'Azay ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... La Hoguette, writing to Louvois from Limerick, July 31/Aug 10 1690, says of Tyrconnel: "Il a d'ailleurs trop peu de connoissance e des choses de notre metier. Il a perdu absolument la confiance des officiers du pays, surtout depuis le jour de notre deroute; et, en effet, Monseigneur, je me crois oblige de vous dire que des le moment ou les ennemis parurent sur le bord de la riviere le premier jour, et dans toute ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... achieving every one of his great successes, and how scrupulously the sequence of "effects" was taken into account in the opera itself, people will begin to understand how bitterly Wagner was mortified when his eyes were opened to the tricks of the metier which were indispensable to a great public success. I doubt whether there has ever been another great artist in history who began his career with such extraordinary illusions and who so unsuspectingly ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... of such avowals, Heine's return to Judaism is an indubitable fact, and when one of his friends anxiously inquired about his relation to God, he could well answer with a smile: Dieu me pardonnera; c'est son metier. In those days Heine made his will, his true, genuine will, to have been the first to publish which the present writer will always consider the distinction of his life. The introduction reads: "I die in the belief in one God, Creator ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... rustling artifices were so innocent and obvious that the directness of her desire to be well with her observer became in itself a grace; it led Bernard afterward to say to himself that the natural vocation and metier of little girls for whom existence was but a shimmering surface, was to prattle and ruffle their plumage; their view of life and its duties was as simple and superficial as that of an Oriental bayadere. It surely could not be with ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... him a side glance to express her insidious friendship, for he was dumb with happiness sheer happiness through such nothings as these! Oh, the Duchess understood son metier de femme—the art and mystery of being a woman—most marvelously well; she knew, to admiration, how to raise a man in his own esteem as he humbled himself to her; how to reward every step of the descent to sentimental folly ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... be called in to help to finish it. Thus ladies might assist the art of needlework by their own original ideas, and give individual beauty to their homes, and an impetus to the occupation which helps to support so many of our struggling sisters. The frame or metier is always a pretty object in the drawing-room or boudoir. The French understand this well; and make it one of their most useful "properties" in their scenic ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... as well as I do that nothing can come of it. You must drop it, and you'd better do it at once. You don't want to be known as the girl who is dying for the love of a man she can't marry. That's not your metier." ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... versed in the niceties of the heart, and born with a faculty for willing compromise. The woman must be talented as a woman, and it will not much matter although she is talented in nothing else. She must know her METIER DE FEMME, and have a fine touch for the affections. And it is more important that a person should be a good gossip, and talk pleasantly and smartly of common friends and the thousand and one nothings of the day and hour, than that she should speak with the tongues of men and angels; ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... family were incessantly kneeling by the side of it, praying and weeping. The King so far mastered his feelings, that whenever he had official duties to perform, he was sufficiently composed to perform son metier de Roi. But when the painful task was done he would rush to the chapel, and weep over the dead body of his son, till the whole palace rang with his cries and lamentations. When the body was removed from Neuilly to Notre ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... of discord and dissonance are establishing, which require the police, the magistrate, and the riot act. Bravo! bravo! bravo! and the battle ceases, and the babble commences. Place for the foreign train, the performers par metier! Full of confidence are they; amidst all their smiles and obsequiousness, there is a business air about the thing. As soon as the pianist has asked the piano how it finds itself, and the piano has intimated ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... prosperous politician may be honest, but his honesty is at best a questionable quality. The moment that a thing is a metier, it is wholly absurd to talk about any disinterestedness in the pursuit of it. To the professional politician national affairs are a manufacture into which he puts his audacity and his time, and out of which he expects to make so much percentage for ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... Sentimentalism, and the Scarlet-woman. A spectacle indeed; over which saloons may cackle joyous; though Kaiser Joseph, questioned on it, gave this answer, most unexpected from a Philosophe: "Madame, the trade I live by is that of royalist (Mon metier a moi ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... Orbassan has but to wave his hand and an attendant advances boldly, stoops, picks up the gage of battle, and resumes his former position. That is thought to be a very simple duty. But to accomplish it without provoking the mirth of the audience is le sublime du metier—le triomphe de l'art!" ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... was by birth a Greek, by citizenship, an Austrian, and by occupation, a chemist; but his real metier, concealed under a most docile and law abiding exterior, was secret inquiry in behalf of the British government into all matters pertaining to its interests, either social, political, or military. He ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... December, 1897 number of the magazine, and Edison's Conquest of Mars began on the following January 12th—a scant six weeks later. For Serviss it was the initial excursion into the realm of fiction, and it is hard to conceive his so hastily adopting a new metier on personal impulse alone. These circumstances, in conjunction with the context of the novel itself, clearly stamp the entire business as clever capitalization on already existent publicity. Again, I doubt if he thought of it at first in that light; his name was well enough known so that ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... mon cher ami,' said he as he returned to his usual place in the line of march, 'que mon metier de prince errant est ennuyant, par fois. Mais, courage! c'est ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott |
