"Pique" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Illuminationism, a movement, conspicuously of the present time, the members of which pique themselves on ability to disperse the darkness of the world, if they could only persuade men to forego reason, and accept sense, common-sense, as the only test of truth, and who profess to settle all questions of reason, that is, of faith, by appeal ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Laurent Goussard, who had not made much by his purchase, went to see the good abbess, and proposed to her to buy back the former property of her convent. Very shrewd in business, Laurent Goussard, whose niece Mother Marie-des-Anges had educated gratuitously, seemed to pique himself on the great liberality of his offer, the terms of which were that the sisterhood should reimburse him the amount of his purchase-money. The dear man was not however making a bad bargain, for the difference in the value of assignats with which he had paid and the good sound money ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... utterly unworthy of her loyalty either to Giovanni's love or to Jack's friendship. Jack was her best friend, almost her brother, and she had no right to feel so limp because—she did not finish the sentence even to herself; yet she was swept into such a turmoil of emotion—friendship, love, pique, doubt—that she could restore nothing to order. She knew Derby thought Giovanni wanted her money—instinctively her mouth hardened as she thought of it—but then—every one wanted it except Jack! And at once, with an unaccountable ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... and Boarham have severally taken occasion by his neglect of me to renew their advances; and if I were like Annabella and some others I should take advantage of their perseverance to endeavour to pique him into a revival of affection; but, justice and honesty apart, I could not bear to do it. I am annoyed enough by their present persecutions without encouraging them further; and even if I did it would have precious little ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... among the tents—nobody looked at me unpleasantly or spoke rudely to me, and when my first feeling of pique had subsided, I was not sorry to have an opportunity of examining more closely these strange and incomprehensible people who, during so many ages, have kept up their distinctive manners and customs, as much a mystery now as when they ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... he adds, 'when I was at Eton, and Mr. Bland had set me on an extraordinary task, I used sometimes to pique myself upon not getting it, because it was not immediately my school business. What! learn more than I was absolutely forced to learn! I felt the weight of learning that; for I was a blockhead, and pushed above ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... if there be not many imperfections as well in those schemes and precepts he has given for the direction of others, as well as in that sample of Tragedy which he has written to shew the excellency of his own Genius. If he had a pique against the man, and wrote on purpose to ruin a reputation so well establish'd, he has had the mortification to fail altogether in his attempt, and to see the world at least as fond of Shakespear ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... The second pique they had against him was his opposing the law by which the city was to be divided; for the tribunes of the people brought forward a motion that the people and senate should be divided into two parts, one of which should remain at home, the other, as the lot should decide, remove ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... peculiar circumstances of the case, the first letter conveying intelligence so likely to pique the pride of Elizabeth, should have been a letter from Leicester. On the contrary, it proved to be a dull ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... explanation than that afforded by the unconscious girl over whom Clancy watched. He had heard of the young man's devotion to Miss Ainsley, and, from what he had seen, believed that they were affianced. He was too just and large in his judgment to think Mara's course toward him was due to pique and wounded pride, and he was not long in arriving at a very fair explanation of her motives and action. Keenly intelligent and mature in years he was beyond the period of passionate and inconsiderate resentment. Moreover his love for the orphan girl was so true, ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... leave you here, Dorothy," he said, in his most winning voice—"here, at this strange parsonage? I should say not! If you object to marrying me now, I know it is only through pique; but still I say that I shall await your own good time; and, as the song goes, 'When love has conquered pride and anger, you will call me back again.' Do get in, Dorothy, darling; do not make a scene here. See! they are watching us from the window. Get in, and we will drive on ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... by any implication, involved. The author was known, indeed, to have been warmly, strenuously, and affectionately, against all allurements of ambition, and all possibility of alienation from pride or personal pique or peevish jealousy, attached to the Whig party. With one of them he has had a long friendship, which he must ever remember with a melancholy pleasure. To the great, real, and amiable virtues, and to the unequalled abilities of that gentleman, he shall ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... him, her arms crossed and her head slightly thrown back, the weight of her body supported on one leg, and a mischievous, daring look on her face which lent additional grace to her slightly masculine dress. She was wearing a high collar of pique with a cravat of black ribbon, and the revers of her white front turned back over her jacket bodice of cloth. There were pockets on the ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... wisdom she had despaired of in her son. In the course of years he would understand her. And Christine? She rested bitterly secure in her daughter's inevitable physical need of her. Christine was a born parasite. She had no true pride; she was capable merely of pique which would wear itself out and pass ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... Mordaunt to Charles, dated Feb. 17, 1659-60, or four days before the Restoration of the Secluded Members (Clar. State Papers, III. 683). Speaking of Monk, Mordaunt writes thus:—"The visible inclination of the people; the danger he foresees from so many enemies; his particular pique to Lambert; the provocation of the Anabaptists and Sectaries, with whom I may now join the Catholics; the want of money to continue standing armies; the divisions of the chief officers in those respective armies; the advices of those near him—I mean, in particular, Clobery ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... for the library.' Peter Le Neve spent his life in gathering important papers about coat-armour and pedigrees. He had intended them for the use of his fellow Kings-at-Arms; but it was said that he had some pique against the Heralds' College, and so 'cut them off with a volume.' The rest went to the auction-room: 'The Earl of Oxford,' said Oldys, 'will have a sweep at it'; and we know that the cast was successful. ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... last are the only ones which the elector would like to avow. The best side of their character is that which people are anxious to show, even to those who are no better than themselves. People will give dishonest or mean votes from lucre, from malice, from pique, from personal rivalry, even from the interests or prejudices of class or sect, more readily in secret than in public. And cases exist—they may come to be more frequent—in which almost the only restraint upon a majority of knaves consists in their involuntary respect for ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... cheerful and the brisk. And he that understands these things is much more able to preserve quietness and order, than one that is perfectly ignorant and unskilful. Besides, I think none will doubt but that the steward ought to be a friend, and have no pique at any of the guests; for otherwise in his injunctions he will be intolerable, in his distributions unequal, in his jests apt to scoff and give offence. Such a figure, Theon, as out of wax, hath my discourse framed for the steward ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... came the verdict, delivered from rolling clouds: 'If you were only a mass of blathering vanity, Dick, I wouldn't mind,—I'd let you go to the deuce on your own mahl-stick; but when I consider what you are to me, and when I find that to vanity you add the twopenny-halfpenny pique of a twelve-year-old girl, then I bestir myself in ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... she looked appealingly up at Latisan he was steadfastly staring past her. Her impulses were already galloping, but the instant prick of pique was the final urge which made the impulses fairly ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... certain occasion, when the then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Earl of Carlisle, was making some sort of progress through Ireland, he proposed stopping at the hotel at Maam, a hotel under the thumb of the late Lord Leitrim, who had some pique at the Lord Lieutenant, which determined him to order under pain of the usual penalty that there be no admittance to the Viceroy of Ireland at this hotel. His Lordship for once felt the power of a text of Scripture, and sent orders that from the highways and hedges they ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... the apartment deserted. His shout of welcome wasn't answered: his whistle, in the private code which everybody uses, met with dead silence. Henry hung up his hat with considerable pique, and lounged into the living-room. What excuse had Anna to be missing at the sacred hour of his return? Didn't she know that the happiest moment of his whole day was when she came flying into his arms as soon as he crossed the ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... sense of pique which I did not trouble to conceal, and walked to the other end of the raft. I turned my back upon the girl and stood looking out upon the leaden waters of the Caribbean Sea. The ocean was now calm. There was ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... he was indignant at these Lords having been summoned (as his secretary told Lennard[6]), and said 'he was sure it was all Leach's doing.' What a man! how wonderful! how despicable! carrying into the administration of justice the petty vanity, personal jealousy and pique, and shuffling arts that would reflect ridicule and odium on a silly woman of fashion. He has smuggled his Privy Council Bill through the House of Lords without the slightest notice ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... made for a hundred years or so anywhere under the sun; and do we kindle bonfires, thank the gods? Not at all. We, taking due counsel of it, set the man to gauge ale-barrels in the Burgh of Dumfries, and pique ourselves on our 'patronage of genius.'" "George the Third is Defender of something we call 'the Faith' in those years. George the Third is head charioteer of the destinies of England, to guide them through the gulf of French Revolutions, American Independences; and Robert ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... were not excellent—very far from it; but as it is well known, the Puritans did not pique themselves ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... thing in the same light. He is disposed to believe that, in his peculiar case, there are circumstances by which the woman is, if not justified, at least excused. Frank did put faith in his cousin's love for himself. He did credit her when she told him that she had accepted Lord Fawn's offer in pique, because he had not come to her when he had promised that he would come. It did seem natural to him that she should have desired to adhere to her engagement when he would not advise her to depart from it. And then her jealousy about Lucy's ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... consented to walk with Mr. Ashley, partly so that she might have the freedom of open air and sunshine in which to express a belated opinion to Mr. Ashley concerning his new manner and tone, and partly in hopes that she would encounter Lord Farquhart and pique his jealousy by appearing ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... Donald and Thomas Webster Pierre scrupulously declines any offers of personal assistance. This is not through pique or pride. ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... Design, I question if there be not many Imperfections as well in those Schemes and Precepts he has given for the Direction of others, as well as in that Sample of Tragedy which he has written to shew the Excellency of his own Genius. If he had a Pique against the Man, and wrote on purpose to ruin a Reputation so well establish'd, he has had the Mortification to fail altogether in his Attempt, and to see the World at least as fond of Shakespear as of his Critique. But I won't believe a Gentleman, and a ...
— Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespear (1709) • Nicholas Rowe
... That's all one, 'tis my Recreation; I serv'd a Woman so the other night, to whom my Mistress had a Pique. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... comfortable and dignified torpidity. A snake at the Zoo has even been known to live eighteen months in a voluntary fast, refusing all the most tempting offers of birds and rabbits, merely out of pique at her forcible confinement in a strange cage. As this was a lady snake, however, it is possible that she only went on living out of feminine obstinacy, so that this case ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... dress and manners, she concluded that in a few years she would be the most dashing. It is astonishing how soon the eye of even a child can discriminate, in that particular which has been rendered the sole subject of its studies and the grand object of its wishes; so that people who pique themselves upon being men of the world, or women of fashion, are rivalled in all their boasted knowledge and discernment by young creatures, whose faculties they may deem very inefficient, and which are indeed so in all ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... few and, as Miles was necessarily busy with his social duties to her guests, I was, after the first hurried greeting, left unattended for a time. Not being accustomed to such functions, I resented this as a covert insult and, in a fit of jealous pique, I blush to own that I took the revenge of a peasant maid and entered into a marked flirtation with Fred Currie, who had paid me some attention before my engagement. When Miles was at liberty to seek me, he found me, to all appearances, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... natural rights of man, which is always a crime and leads to all manner of wickedness, is exercised by the Colonists with a cruelty that merits the abhorrence of everyone, though I have been told that they pique themselves upon it; and not only is the capture of the Hottentots considered by them merely as a party of pleasure, but in cold blood they destroy the bands which nature has knit between husband and wife, ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... stories lies in their originality of conception, their well-defined local color, and the chaste richness of their literary style. The power to pique one's interest to the last page belongs to Mr. Harte above all other writers of stories of American life. His latest book has all the good qualities of its predecessors. It tells a perfectly natural story of life in California. The hero ...
— The Writer, Volume VI, April 1892. - A Monthly Magazine to Interest and Help All Literary Workers • Various
... must be interpreted by men who, like the Dais, had a special knowledge of this science. The initiate was bound to absolute secrecy concerning the truths to be revealed to him and obliged to pay in advance for these revelations. In order to pique his curiosity, the Dai would suddenly stop short in the middle of a discourse, and should the novice finally decline to pay the required sum, he was left in a state of bewilderment which inspired him with the desire to ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... monsieur!" cried the two Parisiennes in one breath; "whiskey! jamais! ca pique et c'est ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... To provoke, literally to call out or challenge, is to begin a contest; one provokes another to violence. To affront is to offer some defiant offense or indignity, as it were, to one's face; it is somewhat less than to insult. Compare PIQUE. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... festivities in her honour at Kenilworth. Although twenty years have passed, memory still loves to linger about those days when she visited her favourite, the fascinating Earl of Leicester, on her royal progress, before state policy and private pique had combined to ...
— Shakespeare's Christmas Gift to Queen Bess • Anna Benneson McMahan
... repeated with a very positive nod of her head. "He has not been the same man since the Lord Proprietor took over the presidency of the Court and he refused, upon pique, to be elected an ordinary member. Say what you like, a man cannot be virtual Governor of the Islands one day and the next a mere nobody without its preying ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... advantage or personal gratification. The celebrated Pericles, in compliance with the resentment of a prostitute,1 at the expense of much of the blood and treasure of his countrymen, attacked, vanquished, and destroyed the city of the SAMNIANS. The same man, stimulated by private pique against the MEGARENSIANS,2 another nation of Greece, or to avoid a prosecution with which he was threatened as an accomplice of a supposed theft of the statuary Phidias,3 or to get rid of the accusations prepared to be brought against him for dissipating the funds of the ...
— The Federalist Papers
... these butchers make no more of killing a man than a cow. They will quarrel for straws, and stick a knife into a person's body as readily as they would fell an ox. It is a rare thing for a day to pass without brawls and bloodshed, and even murder. They all pique themselves on being men of mettle, and they observe, too, some punctilios of the bravo; there is not one of them but has his guardian angel in the Plaza de San Francesco, whom he propitiates with ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... his affection made her absolutely outrageous. She had so little considered Claribel in that light, that she had not deigned to notice Lionel's attention to her, which indeed her vanity whispered was merely a feint to pique herself, and to give him an opportunity of still hovering near her. The gift of the fairy, which had operated so much to Claribel's disadvantage in the opinion of her lover, secured her from sharing the keen mortification of ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... on trivial impulses, a trivial resistance might have intercepted them. If a man has once persuaded himself, that long, costly, and bloody wars had arisen upon a point of ceremony, upon a personal pique, upon a hasty word, upon some explosion of momentary caprice; it is a natural inference, that strength of national will and public combinations for resistance, supposing such forces to have been trained, organized, and, from the ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... a hearty meal during his whole stay in the country. Both at Parker's Hotel in Boston, and at the Westminster in New York, everything was arranged by the proprietors for his comfort and happiness, and tempting dishes to pique his invalid appetite were sent up at different hours of the day, with the hope that he might be induced to try unwonted things and get up again the habit of eating more; but the influenza, that seized him with such ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... daughter Marguerite, all clad in fur, lace, and velvet to astonish the inhabitants, who instead of being impressed, so outshone the visitors, by their own and their wives' magnificence of apparel, that Marguerite was reported to have left the banquet hall in pique. The belfry quite dominated the square at the eastern angle, where were the ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... he resumed his former habits, and totally neglected his wife. She at first tried to win him back by increased tenderness, but he spurned it; then by tears and entreaties, but he derided them. As a last effort, she tried to pique him by coldness—this pleased him best, for it relieved him from her presence. He made no attempt to conceal his dislike and contempt for his unhappy helpmate, or to throw a veil over his irregularities and dissipation. He had been much disappointed in the discovery that he could not obtain ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... came. Now all the hurt, and pique, and shame, and jealous disappointment rushed together to mingle and disguise themselves with a swell and pang that always rose in her at the name of her little dead sister,—dead six years ago, when she was nine ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... armed with a long whip, which he uses at discretion; and it is a fact, well known to persons who have visited slave countries, that punishments are more frequently inflicted to gratify the private pique or caprice of the driver, than for crime ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... to Cicero alone, ardent, impassioned, yet bland, clement, easy; liberal both of hand and council; averse to Cicero from personal pique, as well as from party opposition; an eager candidate for popular applause and favor, it was most natural that he should take side ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... voluptuous glow, and a fugitive blush flitted across her lily-white cheeks. She was more beautiful than ever. But who can fathom the follies of a young man who has got too hot blood in his head and heart? The bitter pique which the Baron had stirred up within me I transferred to the Baroness. The entire business seemed to me like a foul mystification; and I would now show that I was possessed of alarmingly good common-sense and also of extraordinary sagacity. Like a petulant ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... as anxious as I had been for this friendship of ours. My conscience stung me at this last reflection; and there came upon me all of a sudden a sense of the utter desolation of this awful place without a single friend! No, I determined it should take more than a little pique to make me cast away my only friend. And with the thought, though it must have been far on in the night, I slipped from my bed and crawled ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... emotions from external objects, rather than from the heart or understanding, both of which they reserve for actions and not for company. Besides, as they are in general very ignorant, they find very little pleasure in serious conversation, and do not at all pique themselves on shining by the wit they can exhibit in it. Poetry, eloquence and literature are not yet to be found in Russia; luxury, power, and courage are the principal objects of pride and ambition; all other methods of acquiring distinction appear as ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... Gobert, nick-named Pique-Vinaigre (Sharp Vinegar, to prevent mistakes), formerly a juggler, and a prisoner for the crime of passing counterfeit money, was accused of breaking the terms of his ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... farrier." "Let us prick (piquons) go us more fast, never I was seen a so much bad beast; she will not nor to bring forward neither put back." "Strek him the bridle," cries the horsedealer, "Hold him the rein sharters." "Pique stron gly, make to marsh him." "I have pricked him enough. But I can't to make marsh him," replies the indignant client. "Go down, I shall make marsh," declares the dealer; upon which the incensed equestrian rejoins "Take care that he not give you a foot kicks," and the "coper" sardonically ...
— English as she is spoke - or, A jest in sober earnest • Jose da Fonseca
... of marrying. He seems to have made her want of vivid religious conviction the excuse for not proposing to her, but it is not easy to put aside the conviction that it was her want of a fortune which actuated him most strongly. Finally, he tries to pique her by telling her that he "knows of parties" in the city of Hanover "who might bring him much honour and comfort" were he "not afraid of losing (Catharine Trotter's) friendship." They write to one another ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... word, he seemed desirous of hinting, that his list of man-of war friends was already made up, complete, and full; and there was no room for more. But observing that the only man he ever consorted with was Lemsford, I had too much magnanimity, by going off in a pique at his coldness, to let him lose forever the chance of making so capital an acquaintance as myself. Besides, I saw it in his eye, that the man had been a reader of good books; I would have staked my life on it, that he seized ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... Easterfield has explained everything, and that you agree with her and with me that it is a sensible thing for a girl in my position to marry, and, having no one to attend wisely to such a matter for me, that I should endeavor to attend to it myself as wisely as I can. Also, that a little bit of pique, caused by the fact that I am to have an old schoolfellow for a ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... particular about who it was," said Polly, with her air of pique and propriety, "well, it's a boy. So you needn't ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... cracked an ocean of champagne at fifty dollars a quart; who, with the bottom of his gold-sack in sight, had cornered the egg-market, at twenty-four dollars per dozen, to the tune of one hundred and ten dozen, in order to pique the lady-love who had jilted him; and he it was, paying like a prince for speed, who had chartered special trains and broken all records between San Francisco and New York. And here he was once more, the "luck-pup of hell," as Daylight called him, throwing ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... expression of Glover's face, returning somewhat the ridicule heaped on him, was intended to pique the interest of the sightseers it was effective. He was restored, provisionally, to favor; his suggestion that after dinner they take horses for the ride up Pilot Mountain to where the Gap could be seen by moonlight was eagerly adopted, and Mrs. Whitney's objection to dressing again was put down. ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... of you," he rejoined, with a touch of pique that convinced me of his sincerity. "Of course I want you to stop, though I shan't be here many days; but I feel responsible for you, Cole, and that's the fact. Think you can find your way?" he continued, accompanying me to the ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... General de Caen in this matter has been severely commented on, as it was entirely due to his personal pique and jealousy in the affair that this indignity was put upon Flinders. The generous hospitality extended by the British settlement to the French navigators at Port Jackson found no response in this rough specimen of a soldier of the revolution, who throughout the ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... at the old major; to look at his wife, to see that the blow would blast them. She had had youth to help her, and even she had been blasted. What chance had they? And so she said that Garrison and she had quarreled seriously and that in sudden anger, pique, he had left. Oh, yes, she knew he would return. She was quite sure of it. It was all so silly and over nothing, and she had no idea he would take it that way. And she was so sorry, ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... consists of a double-breasted frock coat of soft cheviot, vicuna, or diagonal worsted with either waistcoat to match—single-breasted or double-breasted—of fancy cloth, Marseilles duck or pique; trousers of different material, usually cashmere, quiet in tone, with a striped pattern on a dark gray, drab, or blue background; boots of patent leather, buttoned, not tied; a white or colored shirt with straight standing white collar; a four-in-hand, puffed Ascot, or small club tie; silk hat ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... it implies Doubt. If I doubted? Pshaw! I'll walk awhile And let the cool air fan me. 'Twas not wise. 'Tis only Folly with its cap and bells Can jest with sad things. She seemed earnest, too. What if, to pique me, she should overstep The pale of modesty, and give bold eyes (I could not bear that, nay, not even that!) To Marc or Claudian? Why, such things have been And no sin dreamed of. I will watch her close. There, now, ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... herself. But as he saw the elasticity leave her steps, the color fade from her cheeks, the resolute mouth relax, and the wistful eyes dim once or twice with tears of weariness and vexation, pity got the better of pique, and he relented. His steady tramp came to a halt, and stopping by a wayside spring, he pointed to a mossy stone, saying with no hint ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... subject, and it continued between him and the Ambassador, till the Count de Vergennes came in. The Marquis told the Ambassador among other things, that it would not be consistent with the dignity of France, for her ally to treat otherwise than as independent. This remark appeared to me to pique the Count d'Aranda ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... revenge? Mr. Bowles calls names, and he is answered. But Mr. Gilchrist and the Quarterly Reviewer are not poets, nor pretenders to poetry; therefore they can have no envy nor malice against Mr. Bowles: they have no acquaintance with Mr. Bowles, and can have no personal pique; they do not cross his path of life, nor he theirs. There is no political feud between them. What, then, can be the motive of their discussion of his deserts as an editor?—veneration for the genius of Pope, love ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... early last year, which you still have? I don't wish (like Mr. Fitzgerald, in the Morning Post) to claim the character of 'Vates' in all its translations, but were they not a little prophetic? I mean those beginning, 'There's not a joy the world can,' &c. &c., on which I rather pique myself as being the truest, though the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... interruption we can only explain by resuming the adventures of another set of our characters; for, like old Ariosto, we do not pique ourselves upon continuing uniformly to keep company with any ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... no doubt, very sensible to your good opinion," remarked the captain, with evident pique; "but, Winnebeg, as I am sure you never allow a white man to interfere with you, when you find fault with your young chiefs, you must let me ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... been out in company of a friend, making his habitual daily tour of the city. Like most middle aged, well-to-do bourgeois his attire was composed of a pair of light trousers, slightly baggy at the knee, and a bit flappy about the leg; a black cutaway jacket and a white pique waistcoat. This classic costume usually comports a panama hat and an umbrella. Now Monsieur S. had the umbrella, but in place of the panama he had seen fit to substitute a blue steel soldier's helmet, which amazing military headgear made a strange combination with the remainder of his civilian ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... those good souls who live by the light of a few small shrewdities (often proverbial), and pique themselves on sticking to them to such a point, as if it were the greater virtue to abide by a narrow rule the less it applied. The kernel of his domestic theory was, "Never yield, and you never will have ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... engine at work to make things up again, supposing Emily to have determined from pique, not from the real feelings of her heart: he is frighted to death lest I should counterwork him, and so jealous of my advising her to continue a conduct he so much disapproves, that he won't leave us a moment together; he even observes carefully that each goes into her respective ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... or, if so you please, Cossacques— (I don't much pique myself upon orthography, So that I do not grossly err in facts, Statistics, tactics, politics, and geography)— Having been used to serve on horses' backs, And no great dilettanti in topography Of fortresses, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... unfinished material, shot with a faint admixture of gray; her boots were of shining black undressed leather, and she wore a pair of little silver-mounted spurs, the sight of which caused Pablo to exchange sage winks with his master. Her white-pique stock was fastened by an exquisite little cameo stick-pin; from under the brim of a black-beaver sailor-hat, set well down on her head, her wistful brown eyes looked up at Don Mike, and caught the quick ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... would offer, has for its object to abate the pique and vexation under which the ablest volunteer advisers of the Minister are apt to suffer, on his disregard of their counsels, and sometimes to revenge themselves by bitter and indiscriminate censure of his general policy. They ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... and the rubies men saw on her. At last, here was the youth who would not bow down to her; whom, looking up to him, she could adore. She ate and drank automatically, never taking her gaze from him. She felt not one touch of pique at his behaviour. She was tremulous with a joy that was new to her, greater than any joy she had known. Her soul was as a flower in its opetide. She was in love. Rapt, she studied every lineament of ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... tea on the horn, and a canteen of water round his waist. I had on my coarse Australian hat which serves the double purpose of sunshade and umbrella, Mrs. Thompson's riding costume, my great rusty New Zealand boots, and my blanket strapped behind a very gaily ornamented brass-bossed demi-pique Mexican saddle, which one of the missionary's daughters had lent me. It has a horn in front, a low peak behind, large wooden stirrups with leathern flaps the length of the stirrup-leathers, to prevent the dress ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... opinion in public at a time of life when an English schoolboy could scarcely return an answer to a question beyond the limits of his grammar or syntax, which he has learned by rote. It is not a little unaccountable that this people, who hold the art of speaking in such high esteem, and evidently pique themselves on the attainment of it, should yet take so much pains to destroy the organs of speech in filing down and otherwise disfiguring their teeth; and likewise adopt the uncouth practice of filling their mouths with betel whenever they prepare to hold forth. We must conclude ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... last, the sort of pique with which George Sand's hero apostrophises la derniere Aldini. Yet I could not think her stupid. The universal instinct honours beauty. It is so difficult to believe it either dull or base. In virtue of some mysterious harmonies it is 'the image of God,' and must, we feel, enclose the God-like; ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... all his men were stung with sudden pique And worked as never a worker worked before; They decorated madly for a week And then the last one tottered from the door, And I was left, still working day and night, For I have found a way of keeping warm, And putting paint on everything in sight Is surely Art's most satisfying ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... believe it at first, perhaps, but when she gets no more letters from him she will. Of course, I shall never mention his name, but I make one of my tools hang gaol over old Merton. Susan thinks George married. I strike upon her pique and her father's distress. I ask him for his daughter; offer to pay my father-in-law's debts and start him afresh. Susan likes me already. She will say no, perhaps, three or four times, but the fifth ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... you at last know the name of the unknown?" asked Martial, with an air of pique, to the Countess ...
— Domestic Peace • Honore de Balzac
... occupations in the world. It was all that her little heart could do to keep from papa and mamma the wonderful secret. Every evening she would bustle about her father with an air of such great mystery, and seek to pique his curiosity by most skilful hints, ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... attitude seemed to change. I could see her lovely shape brace itself up, as it were, beneath her robes and felt in some way that her mind had also changed; that it had rid itself of mockery and woman's pique and like a shifting searchlight, was directed ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... Cambridge. "The newcomer," says this critic, "was recognised as Mrs. James by a Prince of the Blood and his companions in the omnibus-box. Her beauty could not save her from insult; and, to avenge themselves on Mr. Lumley, for some pique, these chivalrous English gentlemen of the upper classes hooted ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... of the commons with respect to the election of a burgess for Westminster were attended with some extraordinary circumstances, which we shall now record for the edification of those who pique themselves on the privileges of a British subject. We have already observed, that a majority appearing on the poll for lord Trentham, the adherents of the other candidate, sir George Vandeput, demanded a scrutiny, which was granted by the high bailiff ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... that in such cases cruelty must be proved. A hasty word, a cross look, a black brow would not suffice. Nor could she plead that she hated the man, that she had never loved him, that she had married him in wounded pique, because her lover—he whom she did love—had thrown her off. There was no ground, none as yet, on which she could claim her freedom. She had sold herself as a slave, and she must abide her slavery. She had given herself to this beast with the face of brass and the feet of clay, ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... each other; we kept the great pace Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place; I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight, Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right, Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the bit, Nor galloped less ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... mutual understanding on a pinnacle of married experience. Fancy there being any need for anything else between us! they said. Their editor then supplied explanatory text: "Of course there may have been a soupcon of personal feeling in the case—bias, pique, whatever one likes to call it. You know, dear Mrs. Fenwick?" But Mrs. Fenwick waited for further illumination. "Well, you know ... I suppose it's rather a breach of confidence, only I know I shall ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... departure from a policy of strict neutrality. On the one side Russell was being berated by pro-Southerners as weakly continuing an outworn policy and as having "made himself the laughing-stock of Europe and of America[799];" on the other he was regarded, for the moment, as insisting, through pique, on a line of action highly dangerous to the preservation of peace with the North. October 23 Palmerston wrote his approval of the Cabinet postponement, but declared Lewis' doctrine of "no recognition of Southern ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... endorsed the bloody document, and the last signature of the endorsement is that of him, who had resigned a post in his youth rather than be a party to putting a man to death. As was observed at the time, Robespierre in doing this, suppressed his pique against his colleagues, in order to take part in a measure, that was a sort of complement to his Law ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... was still unmarried, her looks on the wane, but her romance stronger than ever, not untinged perhaps with a little bitterness towards that sex which had not afforded one man of merit enough to woo and win her. Partly out of pique with a land so barren of all that could minister to imagination, partly in anger with her brother who had been urging her to a match she disliked, she went abroad to travel, wandered about for a year or two, and at last found herself one winter ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... "Indeed! you pique my curiosity, and we women are dear lovers of romance in real life, you know," said the charming widow, with an arch smile. "Would it be betraying confidence to tell me a little about it?" she ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... youngest with one of its arms and the side of its face badly burned in consequence of its clothes having taken fire. As well as she could learn, the girl in whose charge she had left the children, and who, in the reduced circumstances of the family, was constituted doer of all work, had, from some pique, gone away in her absence. Thus left free to go where, and do what they pleased, the children had amused themselves in playing with the fire. When the clothes of the youngest caught in the blaze of a lighted stick, ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... won't wait for the law, now that we've got this drift going. Don't you be deceived by what he may say now in—in pique. Give him a little chance to adjust himself to the new idea, that's all. Rome wasn't built in ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... as a Persian kitten—but developing rapidly a coquettish instinct for the value of a red ribbon in her dark curls, and the set of a bracelet on her plump arm. Beside her curves and curls and pretty frilled frocks, Dorothea, in her straight, blue flannel playing suit or stiff afternoon pique', with her cropped blonde head, suggested nothing so much as wire opposed ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... a poet next,—not because a great poet, for he was not, nor yet because he wrote "The English Garden,"[D] for there is sweeter garden-perfume in many another poem of the day that does not pique our curiosity by its title. But the Reverend William Mason, if not among the foremost of poets, was a man of most kindly and liberal sympathies. He was a devoted Whig, at a time when Whiggism meant friendship for the American Colonists; and the open expression ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... being right; it practically means being wrong. All this can mean one thing, and one thing only. It means that people care less for whether they are philosophically right. For obviously a man ought to confess himself crazy before he confesses himself heretical. The Bohemian, with a red tie, ought to pique himself on his orthodoxy. The dynamiter, laying a bomb, ought to feel that, whatever else he is, at ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... thrown in his lot with the Chartists in that spirit of pique which makes a man marry the wrong woman because the right one will have none of him. At the Chester-le-Street meeting he had declared himself an upholder of moral persuasion, while in his heart he pandered to those who knew only of ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... presence, which because of my assignments, failed to reach me for some time. So engrossed was I in the events surrounding the victory over the grass I could not conceive why any broker would want to see me and so put off my visit several times, till the urgency of the calls began to pique my curiosity. ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... apartment was numbered 48—by the way, who ever saw No. 1 in a hotel, or upon a watch?—and next door—that is, at No. 49—dwelt a very dignified-looking gentleman, always addressed as M. Jerome. I often take occasion to say, that I pique myself on being something of a physiognomist; and as I have been several times right in my judgment of character and position from inspection of the countenance, the occasions in which I have been mistaken may be set ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... these it would be superfluous to claim indulgence. This is sure to be granted by those who know their Horace well. With those who do not, these translations will not be wholly useless, if they serve to pique them into cultivating an acquaintance with the original sufficiently close to justify them in ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... many other matters which words could but indifferently say, and it was one of her favourite ways of turning aside a question to which she did not think fit to give any reply. And Bice swallowed her pique and asked no more. The lamps were all shaded like the windows in this bower of beauty. There was scarcely a corner that was not draped with some softly-falling, richly-tinted tissue. A delicate perfume breathed through ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... be watched, girls," said Kitty. "White linen drawn-work on a camping-trip! Next she'll be slipping in white pique skirts and dancing slippers." ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... sarcastic letters when your offerings are rejected. You may need the good-will of that editor some day. Although personal pique seldom actuates him, he may be frail enough to be annoyed when his ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... his defalcations, the cruelty of his conduct to her, the evidence of his never intending to marry her, the selfishness which makes him indifferent to her troubles, and unwilling to help her. Work on pride, on pique, on jealousy, on the love of comfort and luxury, and the horror of poverty and privation, which are always powerful in the minds of women like Madame Durski. Don't talk much to her at first about Douglas Dale, especially until he ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... pretended, how happens it that the only notice we have of the fact is contained in a few numbers of a monthly Magazine published at London? How happens it that no intelligence about the matter has come out directly to this country? We pique ourselves here in New England upon knowing at least as much of what is going on in the literary way in the old Dutch Mother-land as our brethren of the fast-anchored Isle; but thus far we have no tidings whatever of the 'extensive close-printed ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... are compared with those in "Lavengro" "the illusion in Borrow's narrative is disturbed by the uncolloquial vocabulary of the speakers." For Borrow's dialogues do produce an effect of some kind of life; those of Hindes Groome instruct us or pique our curiosity, but unless we know Gypsies, they produce no ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... Christminster has much that is glorious; though I was resentful because I couldn't get there." He spoke gently, and resisted his impulse to pique her ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... joke?" Prudence asked, again and again, smiling,—but still feeling a little pique. She had counted on ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... at twelve pesos a yard, and you'll see if I put on these rags!" retorted the goddess in pique. "Heavens! You can talk when you have done something fine like that to give you ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... instant Raffles had seized the clubs, and was whirling them about his gray head in a mixture of childish pique and puerile bravado which I should have thought him ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... relief. If anybody could see through the puzzle, I knew that Godfrey could. I had met him first in connection with the Holladay case, when he had deserted the force temporarily to accept a place as star reporter on the yellowest of the dailies; but he had resigned that position in a moment of pique, and the department had promptly gobbled him ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... Mark began to show a little pique, "you have remarkable curiosity about what isn't ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... at court, and to have totally ruined her reputation in London, had she not been, upon the present, as well as upon a former occasion, supported by the duchess: her royal highness pretended to treat the whole story as romantic and visionary, or as solely arising from private pique: she chid Miss Temple, for her impertinent credulity: turned away the governess and her niece, for the lies with which she pretended they supported the imposture; and did many improper things in order to re-establish Miss Hobart's honour, which, however, ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... Amsterdam. "Elles s'en raffolent, but Ned, incredible as it may seem, is far from being grateful for such a doubtful blessing! His stoical indifference and unvarying courtesy to the fair sex are genuine and sublime and pique the women incredibly. Indeed, 'tis almost more than I can stand without laughing," went on Mr. Morris, "to see the manly forbearance with which he treats the advances of some of these grandes dames, who ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... Mister Macliver, you knows him quite well, He comes upon deck and he cuts a great swell; It's damn your eyes there and it's damn your eyes here, And straight to the gangway he takes a broad sheer. —La Pique "Come-all-ye." ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day |
