"Pert" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Now, Miss Pert, I want you to listen to me!" That was Mrs. Ladybug's greeting to Betsy Butterfly on one of the most delightful days of the whole summer. "It's my unpleasant duty—" said Mrs. Ladybug, who by that time was enjoying herself thoroughly—"it's my unpleasant duty to tell you that ...
— The Tale of Betsy Butterfly - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... swore an oath that was half a prayer, and the pert secretary did the first thing that was familiar since he was seen with the company—he laid his hand on Don Ruy's shoulder and felt that the horse lost was as a brother lost, and Chico had a fancy of his own to caress it, and even burnish the ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... mature Venus of thirty-six, of middle height, and with the voluptuous figure of a true Viennese, with bright eyes, thick dark hair, and beautiful white teeth, while her daughter Ida, who was seventeen, had light hair and the pert little nose of the china figures of shepherdesses in the dress of the period of Louis XIV., and was short, slim, and full of French grace. Besides them and the Count, a son of twelve and his tutor were ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... is beautiful. I grieve sadly for Miss Wordsworth. We are all well again. Emma is with us, and we all shall be glad of a sight of you. COME ON Sunday, if you can; better, if you come before. Perhaps Rogers would smile at this.—A pert half chemist half apothecary, in our town, who smatters of literature and is immeasurable unletterd, said to me "Pray, Sir, may not Hood (he of the acres) be reckon'd the Prince of wits in the present day?" to which I assenting, he adds "I had always thought that Rogers had been ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... so in attendance who smoked his pipe or cigar and said little, but that little rather jocular. Girls tripped by, either pale with the heat, or flushed, or protected from extremes of temperature by a heavy layer of powder: and flappers with pert faces and fluffy hair swung gaily along, always with a generous display of fat neatly-stockinged leg. But it was all charming, particularly in the evening light, because there was about it all such an appealing atmosphere of ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... Lordship was bereaved of his splendid office, or that anything occurred, indeed, by which the uninitiated might have been led to suppose that the beams of his Lordship's consequence were shorn; but the Marquess's secret applications at the Treasury were no longer listened to, and pert under-secretaries settled their cravats, and whispered "that the Carabas interest was ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... pert criticism had on poor Scott was indeed a calamity. It produced an inconsiderate "Letter to the Critical Reviewers." Scott was justly offended at the stigma of Quakerism, applied to the author of a literary composition; but too gravely accuses the critic of his scurrilous ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... advancing hastily to meet Emilie. "Do you not know how to hold your horse in?—And there you leave me to compromise my dignity in order to screen your folly; whereas if you had but stopped, one of your looks, or one of your pretty speeches—one of those you can make so prettily when you are not pert—would have set everything right, even if ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... boat was called the "Ca et La." Rightly enough named it was, too. The French give singularly pert and appropriate names to their boats. "Va t'on," "Quand meme," and "Ca et La" certainly tell the stories of their missions ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... press'd through the yielding doors, High Lords, deep Statesmen, Dutchesses, and Whores; All ranks and stations, Publicans and Peers, Grooms, Lawyers, Fiddlers, Bawds, and Auctioneers; Prudes and Coquettes, the Ugly and the Fair, The Pert, the Prim, the Dull, the Debonnair; The Weak, the Strong, the Humble and the Proud, All help'd to form ...
— The First of April - Or, The Triumphs of Folly: A Poem Dedicated to a Celebrated - Duchess. By the author of The Diaboliad. • William Combe
... watchful spheres, Lead in swift round the months and years. The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove, Now to the moon in wavering morrice move; And on the tawny sands and shelves Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves. By dimpled brook and fountain-brim, The wood-nymphs, decked with daisies trim, Their merry wakes and pastimes keep: What hath night to do with sleep? Night hath better sweets to prove; Venus now wakes, and ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... fellows from London, Manchester and Liverpool, out for a holiday and magnificent in their uniforms of scarlet and gold, each with his beautiful and abundant hair done up in a queue, Mr. Binkus laughed and said they looked "terrible pert." He told the virile and profane Captain Lee of Howe's staff, that the first thing to do was to "make a haystack o' their hair ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... I admire the pert Blue-wren And his dainty little hen— Though she hasn't got a trace of blue upon her; But she's pleasing, and she's pretty, And she sings a cheerful ditty; While her husband is a ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... occupied the end of the bench, there sat beside her a distinctly lovely young woman. What struck Lavendar was the wealth of colour she brought into the picture: goldy brown hair, brown tweed dress, with a cape of blue cloth slipping off her shoulders, and a brown toque with a pert upstanding quill that seemed to express spirit and pluck, and a merry heart. His quick glance took in the little hands that held the withered old ones. Both heads were bowed and in the brown tweed lap was a child's shoe,—a wee, worn, fat shoe. Beside it lay an absurd bit of crumpled, tear-soaked ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... on April 6, 1773, at Northwater Bridge, parish of Logie Pert, Forfar. The bridge was 'on the great central line of communication from the north of Scotland. The hamlet is right and left of the high road.' Bain's Life of James Mill, p. 1. Boswell and Johnson, on their road to Laurence Kirk, must have ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... Jack was a very young fellow, by much the youngest of the three brothers, and people, indeed, wondered how such a young upstart jackanapes should grow so pert and saucy, and ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... plucked his sister's walking-hat, a pert piece of millinery froward in feathers, from the trunk of the headless Victory, where she had reposed it ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... would make him closely follow on Montigny, and the first of those denounced by the Prior to fall into the toils. We may suppose, at least, that it was not long thereafter; we may suppose him competed for between lay and clerical Courts; and we may suppose him alternately pert and impudent, humble and fawning, in his defence. But at the end of all supposing, we come upon some nuggets of fact. For first, he was put to the question by water. He who had tossed off so many cups of white Baigneux or red Beaune, now ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Cranston's, with whom I had danced, to whom I had made pretty speeches, and had given the bell button that was sewn just over my heart. She certainly was not the best of them, for I can see now that she was vain and shallow, with a pert boldness, which I mistook for vivacity and wit. Three years ago, at the age of twenty, my knowledge of women was so complete that I divided them into six classes, and as soon as I met a new one I placed her in one of these classes and created her according to the line of campaign ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... that these feathered choristers have their "revival seasons," and are terrible backsliders during the moulting period. When you looked out of the nursery-window, into the poultry-yard, and heard the noisy confabulation of the motherly hens and pert pullets, you should be prepared to state upon what theological principles it is that psalmody is not the wont of the Gallinacae. Are the Biddies given over to a reprobate mind, because you don't happen to like their vocalization? Is it only the Piccolomini and Linds of the feathered ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... pursue the homeless one from house to house—The Huguenot Lovers, The First Quarrel, The Wedding Breakfast, Psyche at the Fountain. The mantel's chastely severe outline was ingloriously veiled behind some pert drapery drawn rakishly askew like the sashes of the Amazonian ballet. Upon it was some desolate flotsam cast aside by the room's marooned when a lucky sail had borne them to a fresh port—a trifling vase or two, pictures of actresses, a medicine ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... of the library with Boag's Dictionary open in his hand. "'Minx: A pert, wanton girl. A she-puppy.' Do you hear that, Caroline? He calls his sister a wanton she-puppy." But Mamma had gone back into ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... the afflicted, or the aged. It was, however, always necessary that the person so signalized should be submissive. Now, Mrs. Carroll, Mr. Grey's sister, had long since shown that she was not submissive enough, nor were the girls, the eldest of whom was a pert, ugly, well-grown minx, now about eighteen years old. The second sister, who was seventeen, was supposed to be a beauty, but which of the two was the more odious in the eyes of their cousin it would ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... my child. You are up too early. Six o'clock, that pert little Breton told me, when I found her fumbling in our trunks. When I told her that I was going to complain of her she said, 'Oh! don't do that, Madame, my godfather, the Duke de ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... slowly. She never knew what to do, there came horrible gaps, when she was merely exposed to the children; and when, relying on some pert little girl for information, she had started a lesson, she did not know how to go on with it properly. The children were her masters. She deferred to them. She could always hear Mr. Brunt. Like a machine, always in the same hard, high, inhuman voice he ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... in Disraeli's unfortunate tragedy of Alarcos pathetically admits: "Ay! ever pert is youth that baffles age!" The youth of Disraeli was "pert" beyond all record, and those who cannot endure to be teased should not turn to his early romances, or, indeed, to any of his writings. Henrietta Temple is the boldest attempt he ever made to tell a great consecutive ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... admiring with distant awe and spectacle of virtue and purity; but if he does so sincerely, he must also do so with the profoundest feeling of the error of his own ways, and the resolution to amend them. His admiration must be humble and silent, not pert and loquacious. Mr. Hunt praises the purity of Wordsworth as if he himself were pure, his dignity as if he also were dignified. He is always like the ball of Dung in the fable, pleasing himself, and amusing by-standers with his "nos poma natamus." For the person ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Enfeebles all internal strength of thought, 270 And the weak soul, within itself unblest, Leans for all pleasure on another's breast. Hence ostentation here, with tawdry art, Pants for the vulgar praise which fools impart; Here vanity assumes her pert grimace, 275 And trims her robes of frieze[32] with copper lace; Here beggar pride defrauds her daily cheer, To boast one splendid banquet once a year; The mind still turns where shifting fashion draws, Nor weighs the solid worth of ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... then? Every foolish wench has feelings In these religious days, and thinks it carnal To wash her dishes, and obey her parents— No wonder they ape you, if you ape them— Go to! I hate this humble-minded pride, Self-willed submission—to your own pert fancies; This fog-bred mushroom-spawn of brain-sick wits, Who make their oddities their test for grace, And peer about to catch the general eye; Ah! I have watched you throw your playmates down To have the pleasure of kneeling for their pardon. Here's sanctity—to shame your cousin ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... tact, And they lisp out 'How do?' And they coo and they woo, And they smile, for a while, Their fair guests to beguile; Condescending and bending, For fear of offending, Though inert, And they spy, They exert, With their eye, To be pert, And they sigh And ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various
... to the palace amazement reigned throughout the Court at such a sudden and extraordinary change. Whereas formerly they had been accustomed to hear her give vent to silly, pert remarks, they now heard her express herself ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... to me of Nell, and would not speak too harshly, for Nell was Protestant. Yes, Nell, so please you, was Protestant. And other grave divines forgave her half her sins because she flouted most openly and with pert wit the other lady, who was suspected of an inclination towards Rome and an intention to charm the King into the true Church's bosom. I also could have forgiven her much; for, saving my good Darrell's presence, I hated a Papist worse ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... some value; if you do not know these, you are not entitled to give any opinion on the subject. Whenever any skeptic or bigot claims to be heard on the questions of intellect and morals, we ask if he is familiar with the books of Plato, where all his pert objections have once for all been disposed of. If not, he has no right to our time. Let him go and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... wuz — I never knew nothin' about it, nor how it got there. But there it wuz, lookin' me right in the face of my soul, kinder pert and saucy, sayin', "You'd better go to Saratoga next summer; ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... man at the desk was surrounded by the interior of vast industrial works. The moving figures around him slowed, and became more distinct. For an instant, the man in the chair grinned as he found himself looking into a big washroom, where a tall blond girl was taking a shower bath, and a pert little redhead was vigorously drying herself with a towel. The dome grew visible, coruscating with many-colored lights and then the humming died and the dome became a cold and inert mesh of fine white metal. A green light above flashed on and ...
— Police Operation • H. Beam Piper
... pert milliner saw nothing of all this; she did not stand abashed in the sacred precincts of a home where seven times the Angel of Death had hovered over a birth-bed. She looked into the face which Time's finger had anointed, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... fed the veins of earth and sky, That mortals miss the loyal heats, Which drove them erst to social feats; Now, to a savage selfness grown, Think nature barely serves for one; With science poorly mask their hurt; And vex the gods with question pert, Immensely curious whether you ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... discernible. It is most likely, however, that the bulk of the work was Young's, and that his colleague did little more than furnish the Preface, which is partly written in the first person, and betrays its origin by a sudden and not very relevant attack upon the "pretty, dapper, brisk, smart, pert Dialogue" of Modern Comedy into which the "infinite Wit" of Wycherley had degenerated under Cibber. It also contains a compliment to the numbers of the "inimitable Author" of the Essay ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... amours, and from breaking jests on the New Testament. His expensive debaucheries forced him to have recourse to the Jews. He was soon a ruined man, and determined to try his chance as a political adventurer. In Parliament he did not succeed. His speaking, though pert, was feeble, and by no means interested his hearers so much as to make them forget his face, which was so hideous that the caricaturists were forced, in their own despite, to flatter him. As a writer, he made ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... devilry as well. The rest of the face would have been quite unremarkable, but the laughter-loving mouth and pointed chin wholly redeemed it from the commonplace. She was a little brown thing like a woodland creature, and her dainty air and quick ways put Scott irresistibly in mind of a pert robin. ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... girl, And the witty girl, And the girl that bangs her hair; The girl that's a flirt, And the girl that is pert, And the ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... a man who had charge of my baggage, in the passage-way between the baggage-room and the colored passengers' apartment. I saw a white man with a pert, flurried manner and coarse look ascend the steps of the cars, and behind him a tall graceful black man, a little older than the other, with signs of gentleness and dignity in his appearance. As he stooped and turned, his air and carriage would have commanded ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... devotion is best described by the new favourite in his own words. Raleigh had now been made Captain of the Guard, and we have to imagine him standing at the door in his uniform of orange-tawny, while the pert and pouting boy is half declaiming, half whispering, in the ear of the Queen, whose beating heart forgets to remind her that she might be the mother of one of her lovers and the grandmother of the other. ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... Paris who wan so much be a slight promising the peaple to let them sy a horse wt its taille wheir its head sould be: that of on Martin Merry, who on a tyme pressing to win in to sie the King, the great Tresorier of England was at the door, who seing him so pert demanded him whither he would go; he replied, he would sie the King; the Thersorer told him he could not sie the King; then, he replied, I know what I'le do then; the thresorer thinking he was bravado'ing him, demanded him what can ye ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... reasoning. "In my opinion," says one of the characters in the Dialogue, (to be identified as the author,) "profound minds are the most likely to think lightly of the resources of human reason; and it is the pert superficial thinker who is generally strongest in every kind of unbelief. The deep philosopher sees changes of causes and effects, so wonderfully and strangely linked together, that he is usually the last person to decide upon the impossibility of any two series of events being independent of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction—Volume 13 - Index to Vol. 13 • Various
... quietly, "It 's a summerish day, and not feelin' just as pert as I oughter I reckon I 'll ride a right smart piece with you ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... pert reply. "No mistress shan't interfere with me and my work, as you've done this last week. If you was a real ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... Excellency from L'Orient the 11th instant. On my journey hither, I met the Marquis de Castries, and obtained a hasty conference with him, in which I insisted principally on the necessity of a constant naval superiority on the American coast. He observed on his pert, that the dispositions of the fleet were already made; that it was not in his power to alter them; that it was necessary at the present juncture to make naval exertions in more places than one; that the French ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... A jackdaw, empty, pert and vain, Who held his equals in disdain, One day some beauteous feathers found, Left by a peacock on the ground. When in the gaudy plumage dress'd, The shallow thing his fortune bless'd; With stately gesture strode along, And boldly join'd the peacock ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... said Father Francis, smiling, "thou art a pert varlet. I will do my best on Sunday to turn you to a ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... imagining that his discomposure was the consequence of guilty fear, called upon him to remember the duties which he owed to England, the benefits which he had received from himself, and the probable consequence of taking part in a pert boy's insolent defiance of the power of ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... Mark would have made to this pert speech was cut short by a loud cry of pain or terror from the old half-dismantled barn on the other side of the road. All eyes were at once turned in that direction, and beheld Joe Fairthorn rushing at full speed ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... going to be upon the high ropes, it seems I might as well have stayed away," was Afy's reply, given in the pert, but good-humored manner she had ever used to Joyce. "My hand won't damage ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... "You are a pert young lady, Miss Gatty," said Schillie, "and had better leave the Mother to settle with Madame; come with me and let us see what fish the boys have ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... the cows come home the milk is coming; Honey's made while the bees are humming; Duck and drake on the rushy lake, And the deer live safe in the breezy brake; And timid, funny, pert little bunny Winks his nose, and ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... wise expression. As for her knowledge of scripture, it is truly wonderful, and a decided improvement when contrasted with the meagre set-out of her table. Tea time having arrived, Lady Swiggs is invited down to a cup by a pert Irish servant, who accosts her with an independence she by no means approves. Entering the room with an air of stateliness she deems necessary to the position she desires to maintain, Sister Scudder takes her by the hand and introduces her to a bevy of nicely- conditioned, and sleek-looking gentlemen, ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... I masked my troubles, though quite unconsciously, under a camouflage of sarcasm and sallies of wit, or, at least, what seemed to pass for wit among my immature acquaintances. With grown-ups, I was at times inclined to be pert, my degree of impudence depending no doubt upon how ill at ease I was and how perfectly at ease I wished to appear. Because of the constant need for appearing happier than I really was, I developed a knack for saying things in an ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... gaunt city cats skulking about the yard, would retire to the rug, and curl herself up as if all hope of finding congenial society had failed; while little Nick would sing till he vibrated on his perch, without receiving any response except an inquisitive chirp from the pert sparrows, who seemed to twit him with his captivity. Yes, by the time the little teakettle had lost its brightness, Polly had decided that getting one's living was no joke, and many of her brilliant hopes had shared the fate ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... "'Spare your remarks, Miss Pert!' returned the fairy, 'and step in. I pledge my honour, and will give up my hope of salvation, if this bark of our master's do not carry thee safely over half the earth ball ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... special faults that arose from its author's accidental history; he was deprived of education, and therefore it was in some ways uneducated; he was confronted with the folly and failure of his natural superiors and guardians, and therefore it was in some ways pert and insolent. Nevertheless the main fact about the work is worth stating here for any reader who should follow the chronological order and read the Sketches by Boz before embarking on the stormy and splendid sea of Pickwick. For the ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... something odd about Sheridan. One day, at dinner, he was slightly praising that pert pretender and impostor, Lyttelton (the Parliamentary puppy, still alive, I believe). I took the liberty of differing from him; he turned round upon me, and said, 'Is that your real opinion?' I confirmed it. Then said he, 'Fortified by this concurrence, I beg leave to say that it, in fact, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... her first in an atmosphere Of tender and low-breathed sighs; But the pang of her laugh went cutting clear To the soul of the enterprise; "You beg so pert for the kiss you seek It reminds me, John," she said, "Of a poodle pet that jumps to 'speak' For a crumb or a crust ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... soldier, banker, lawyer, whatever you are, confess the facts to yourself: you were once as I. You have suffered the same feelings that I suffered. Perhaps with you it was not Della Fox.... Who then? Did saucy Marie Jansen awaken your admiration? Was pert Lulu Glaser the object of your secret but persistent attention? How many times did you go to see Marie Tempest in The Fencing Master, or Alice Nielsen in The Serenade? Was Virginia Earle in The Circus ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... me," said Fay. "She said we were pert, forward misses, and we must hold our tongues, for we should be whipped if we ever said you name, Cousin—Sister Aura, again; and she would not let us go to wish Brother Amyas good-bye ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... peculiar appropriateness. All the ladies, it may be observed in passing, had by this time lit their cigarettes. The men were smoking Toscani, Sellas, or Cavours, and the little boys were dancing round the table breathing smoke from their pert nostrils. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... (such was the vividness of the scene) that when he awoke the next morning he wondered what three amusing characters he had been in company with the evening before.' He was fond also of imitating old Mudford, of the Courier, a fat, pert, dull man, who had left the Morning Chronicle in 1814, just as Hazlitt joined it, and was renowned for having written a reply to 'Coelebs.' He would enter a room, fold up his great-coat, take out ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Lily's demeanour may be imagined. She gazed through Simon as though he did not exist, and passed magnificently onwards as soon as the throng permitted. She was Mrs. Albert Shawn, as neat as ninepence, as smart and pert as a French maid out for the day. She drove in hansoms, and she had a five-pound ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... pleased also at the way she nodded to him and said 'good evening' and looked him over from head to foot with such open curiosity and sincere friendliness." She sings too much to please the old housekeeper! "She is so pert and too straightforward with her speech." It is noteworthy too that she talks to ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... to London, I went to St. James's Church last Sunday, and there opposite me sat my beauty of the Wells. Her behaviour during the whole service was so pert, languishing and absurd; she flirted her fan, and ogled and eyed me in a manner so indecent, that I was obliged to shut my eyes, so as actually not to see her, and whenever I opened them beheld hers (and very bright they are) still staring ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... "Such a kid!" he murmured. "Why didn't you lay low, and not go butting down their door? Why didn't you lose the old man and snub up one of the girls—marry her? Big one's a rip-snortin' beauty; pert, by jingo! ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... cheeks, the members of the regimental band flung out their deafening, brazen notes upon the air, stimulated in their efforts by a smartly-dressed bandmaster who looked like a pert little sparrow, and who zealously flourished his baton. Grouped round the band-stand were clerks, shopmen, schoolboys in Hessian boots, and little girls wearing brightly-coloured handkerchiefs round their heads. In the main walks and side-walks, ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... echo that it is possible to conceive. It shouted the names of our fireside friends in the very tone in which William and Coleridge spoke; but it seemed to make a joke of me, and I could not help laughing at my own voice, it was so shrill and pert, exactly as if some one had been mimicking it very successfully, with an intention of making me ridiculous. I wished Joanna {41} had been there to laugh, for the echo is an excellent laugher, and would ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... are pert and deceitful, for you have kept secret from me that which I had a right to learn; also you have too good an opinion of your own looks, which as I tell you now for the last time, are nothing compared to mine at your age, or even to those of my daughter Suzanne, ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... windows of which looked upon the spray of the fountain—at which Ruth Pinch loved to gaze when its jet resembled a wagoner's whip. How all old and precious things pass away! The dear old 'wagoner's whip' has been replaced by a pert, perky squirt that will never stir the heart or brain ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... the letter as her voluntary act. But if she were really in love with Ferdinand as she has pretended to be, how easy it would be for her, without violating her oath, to put him on his guard against the trap that has been laid for him! In the scene with Lady Milford she appears as a pert little pharisee, caustic, sententious and philosophical beyond her years; so that one wonders why a girl that knows so much should not know more. She herself has just cast her lover off, after meeting his passionate entreaties with cool ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... open the door of difficulty." The king fasted for a whole week and was assiduous in his devotions. One night he prayed with peculiar earnestness and self-abasement till morning. The companion of his couch was one of his wives, fairer than the sun and the envy of a pert. He clasped her in his embrace, exclaiming, "There is no strength, no power, save in God!" and he felt assured in his heart that his prayer was granted. In due time a son was born to him, and, eager to show his gratitude, he bestowed ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... of. And with the flowers grow the weeds. My first weed shall sprout by Arno, in a cranny of the Ponte Vecchio, or cling like a Dryad of the wood to some gnarly old olive on the hill-side of Arcetri. If it bear no little gold-seeded flower, or if its pert leaves don't blush under the sun's caress, it shan't be ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... first time he had been seen this winter. He was working among the stumps of trees at the brink of the river, under the ice which had been left clinging to the trees when the high water receded. There was no mistaking his beautiful coat of cinnamon brown, his pert manner, his tail which was a little more than straight up, pointing towards his head; a little mite of a bird, how does he keep his little body from freezing in the furious winter storms? He seemed ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... of Quality and Estate resort to Will's, for really they make the best Figure there; an indifferent thing from 'em, passes for a Witty Jest, and sets presently the whole Company a Laughing. Thus we admire the pert Talk of Children, because we ...
— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay
... on the whole will read a work today, Of moderate sense, with any pleasure? And as regards the dear young people, they Pert and precocious are beyond ...
— Faust • Goethe
... that's wrong The dung-ball of his dirty thoughts along His tiny sphere of grovelling sympathies— Has knocked himself full-butt, with blundering trouble, Against a mountain he can neither double Nor ever hope to scale. So like a free, Pert, self-conceited scarabaeus, he Takes it into his horny head to swear There's no such ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... grave voice, like a judge's, and a quick, pert eye, like a jackdaw's. Outwardly he was as unlike Margaret as the haft of a pike is unlike a lily, but I already saw ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... is straight and handsome, her eyebrows lifted up; Her chin is very neat and pert, and smooth like a china cup; Her hair's the brag of Ireland, so weighty and so fine, It's rolling down upon her neck ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... clerks are not the pert and gum-chewing young persons that story-writers are wont to describe. The girls at Bascom's are institutions. They know us all by our first names, and our lives are as an open book to them. Kate O'Malley, who has been at Bascom's ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... like young men in general. They are either over-suave and polite, as if they condescended to remember that you are elderly and that it is their duty to make you forget it, or else they are pert and shallow and disgust you with their egotism. But this young man looked sensible and business-like, and I took to him at once, though what connection he could have with this affair I ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... may be the case; but still there is no excuse for your folly: and mark me, Sir Gilbert, I will not have that pert minx, Lucy Bargrove, closeted with my daughter Agnes. As to the boy, it is a downright puppy and fool, or, to speak less plebeianly, is a non ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... two here?" Mona could be very pert when she tried. "Jack and I are holding down the ranch just now; the boys are all on roundup, of course. Jack went to town today to ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... of view there are few towns more uninviting than Birmingham; for the houses are built of brick toned down to a grimy red by smoke, in long streets crossing each other at right angles,—and the few modern stone buildings and blocks of houses seem as pert and as much out of place as the few idle dandies who are occasionally met among the crowds of busy mechanics and anxious manufacturers. What neatness—cleanliness—can do for the streets, bell-pulls, and door-knockers, has been done; the foot- pavements are, for the most part ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... oneself forward; fish for compliments; give oneself airs &c. (assume) 885; boast &c. 884. render vain &c. adj.; inspire with vanity &c. n.; inflate, puff up, turn up, turn one's head. Adj. vain, vain as a peacock, proud as a peacock; conceited, overweening, pert, forward;, vainglorious, high-flown; ostentatious &c. 882; puffed up, inflated, flushed. self-satisfied, self-confident, self-sufficient, self-flattering, self-admiring, self-applauding, self-glorious, self-opinionated; entente &c. (wrongheaded) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... not, I would not willingly rob my neighbour of a rood of it. Now you have a pretty property of some thousand acres there, and when you have passed your present Inclosure Bill, your income will be doubled, (there's a metaphor, worthy of a Templar, namely, pert and low,) while my wild common is too remote to incommode you, and quite incapable of such fertility. I send you (which return per post, as the printer would say) a curious letter from a friend of mine[83], which will let you into ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... she answered him. Young, giddy, and inexperienced, Isabel followed the flippant impulse of the moment, without a thought of the consequences. "I'm sure it's very kind of Mr. Hardyman to speak favorably of me," she said, with a pert little laugh. "I hope you are not jealous of ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... with a pert air of show off and consequence, "I found the place, and I found the lady. Ain't I ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... and believe themselves able to pay for their wine with the mirth which it qualifies them to produce. Full of this opinion, they crowd with little invitation, wherever the smell of a feast allures them, but are seldom encouraged to repeat their visits, being dreaded by the pert as rivals, and hated by the dull as disturbers of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... Jenny's pert little nose seemed to turn up more than ever as she walked away, for she had not beaten her old playfellow quite as badly as usual. There were several sharp things on the very tip of her tongue, but she was ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... unsound. The religious demagogue belonged to a petty dissenting sect, no doubt; and he was trying for his wretched little Shibboleth. But you may have seen the like, even with leading men in National Churches. And I have seen a pert little whipper-snapper ask a venerable clergyman what he thought of a certain outrageous lay-preacher, and receive the clergyman's reply, that he thought most unfavorably of many of the lay-preacher's doings, with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... kingly-poor flout! Will they not, think you, hang themselves to-night? Or ever, but in vizors, show their faces? This pert Berowne was out of ...
— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... little amused by this free-and-easy invitation, Mr Hazlit entered a small apartment, which surprised him by its clean and tidy appearance. A pretty little Irishwoman, with a pert little turned-up nose, auburn hair so luxuriant that it could not be kept in order, and a set of teeth that glistened in their purity, invited him to sit down, and wiped a chair with her ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... laid the table were very graceful, in the pert style. She dropped forks into their appointed positions with disdain; she made slightly too much noise; when she turned she manoeuvred her swelling hips as though for the benefit of a soldier ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... with Chook's mother had been like a long honeymoon, and Pinkey had led the life of a lady, with nothing to do but scrub and wash and help Chook's mother keep her house like a new pin. So she had grown plump and pert like a well-fed sparrow, but the care and worry of the new shop had sharpened the angles of her body. Not that Pinkey cared. She had the instinct for property, the passionate desire to call something ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... topmost stone in the wall, or on the tallest stake in the fence, chipping up an apple for the seeds, his tail conforming to the curve of his back, his paws shifting and turning the apple, he is a pretty sight, and his bright, pert appearance atones for all the mischief he does. At home, in the woods, he is very frolicsome and loquacious. The appearance of anything unusual, if after contemplating it a moment, he concludes it not dangerous, excites his unbounded ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... keep it up. She was brought up by her father to hate her mother's family; and she'll look with no favour upon a working chap like you—a townish girl as she's become by now. I never cared much about her. A pert little thing, that's what she was too often, with her tight-strained nerves. Many's the time I've smacked her for her impertinence. Why, one day when she was walking into the pond with her shoes and stockings off, and her ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... friends and warnings from Mackaye, I started next day on my journey. I arrived in the midst of a dreary, treeless country, and a little pert, snub-nosed shoemaker met me, and we walked together across the open down towards a circular camp, the earthwork, probably, of some ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... kit?" burst out the third member of the party indignantly—a sprightly youth with a very short tunic and a pert expression. "Do they want you to return your small kit when you get the mitten? Watch me returnin' mine, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various
... a few moments, one of the owners, overcome by wren curiosity, will appear, clinging to a reed stalk and twitching his pert, upturned tail, the badge of his family. Soon he springs up into the air and, bubbling a jumble of liquid notes, sinks back into the recesses of the cat-tails. Another and another repeat this until the marsh rings with their ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... whirling by, Cissy unnecessarily large and bare, and Elsie intolerably pert and middle class, Morton regretted that he would have to ask them to dance. And, when he had danced with them and the three young ladies Madame Delacour had introduced him to, and had taken a comtesse into supper, he found that the fourteenth waltz was over. But Mildred bade him not to ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... a pert Bookseller give himself the Airs of Judging a Performance so far, as to Condemn the Correctness of what he knows nothing of these there's a pretender to Authorship in the City, who Rules the young Fry of Biblioples about ...
— A Vindication of the Press • Daniel Defoe
... mob crowded round Rusty Wren's door. And the pert gentleman who had just spoken thrust his head through ...
— The Tale of Rusty Wren • Arthur Scott Bailey
... more—that Agne would certainly disapprove of. The stranger whom she had tried to draw into a flirtation was a really chivalrous man. Gorgo might be proud of such a lover; and if now, he were to go to her and tell her, probably with some annoyance, how provokingly he had been delayed by that pert little singing-girl, it would be all her own fault. She felt as though there were something in her which forced her to seem much worse than she really was, and wished to be. Agne, Marcus, the young soldier—nay, even Gorgo, were loftier and nobler than she or her people, and she was conscious for ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that he was not content with the decree which the Chancellour proponed to him. But this stamp of Mr. Patrick's was so heavy upon his brother's foot, who had ane sair toe which was painful to him, wherefore he looked to him and said, 'Ye were over pert to stampe upon my foot; were you out of the King's presence I would overtake you upon the mouth.' Mr. Patrick, hearing the vain words of his brother, pled on his knees before the King and the Justice, and made his petition to them in this manner: 'Sir, if it will please your Grace and your ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... sunshine of the morn, A Butterfly, but newly born, Sat proudly perking on a rose, With pert conceit his bosom glows; His wings, all glorious to behold, Bedropt with azure, jet and gold, Wide he displays; the spangled dew Reflects his eyes, ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... on well; all goes well!" he crooned. "There's Douglas, gone for good! The boy is young and soft-like. He might fall into this pert minx's hands as young Douglas with Queen Mary of old. And, thank God, he knows nothing of the packet of jewels! Not a soul knows in the wide world! Why should I not save them for myself and turn them into gold? Yes, save them ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... millionnaire's ascendancy may be at present, that of the Knickerbocker was once hardly less so. Vulgar, brassy, and intolerable the "I'm-better-than-you" strut and swagger of plutocracy surely is; but in the smug, pert provincialism of those former New York autocrats who defined as "family" their descent of two or three generations from raw Dutch immigrants, there was very little comfort indeed. The present writer has seen something ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... empty—without robbery of the treasury of his master; fair dealing and even justice were a vain hope in Barbary, where every man who held office, from the heartless Sultan in his hareem to the pert Mut'hasseb in the market, must be only as a human torture-jellab, made and designed to squeeze the life-blood out of the ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... Oscar once, when the two were together at Forbes-Robertson's and a pert flash fell from the artist's lips. "I wish ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... I-talyan an' English. An' if I ever meets a lady with long soft hands like his'n, I'm for a pert ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... splendid genius in all Scotland! When I was at Ayr, a sister of Burns, Mrs. Begg, was still living, and I am always regretting that I did not call upon her. His widow, Jean Armour, had died but a few years before; and when a certain pert American who called upon the old lady had the audacity to ask her: "Can you show me any relics of the poet?" answered with majestic dignity: "Sir, I am the only ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... a 'minx'. I had the greatest curiosity about words, and as this was a new one, I looked it up in our large 'English Dictionary'. But there the definition of the term was this:—'Minx: the female of minnock; a pert wanton.' I was as much in the dark ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse |
