"Peccadillo" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that ride home from the magistrate's! The prince called, but I was not at home to him. He wrote many times, but I replied to none of his letters. He struck but one string; I was foolish to let a little peccadillo of bachelorhood stand in the way; all men were the same; the position I took was absurd. I never answered. I returned to Venice. I have seen him but twice since; once at Monte Carlo and that night at the Villa Ariadne. How he begged, ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... proposed to study music under the Fathers of the Oratory. To provide funds for the journey, he stole a sum of about the value of a dollar from his uncle, the priest. This act, which seems to have been a mere peccadillo of boyish levity, determined his future career. Finding himself in total destitution at Beaune, he wrote to his mother for money, and received in reply an order from his father to come home. Stung with the thought of being posted ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... does you so much good. that I will for the future lecture you for the most trifling peccadillo. You have written me a very entertaining letter, and wiped out several debts; not that I will forget one of them ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... people who would not, at some time or other, have wished to escape from the scrutinizing eyes of their parents. The contrary was the case in Bailly's family, for James used sometimes to say to his friends or to his servants, "Do not mention this peccadillo to my son. Sylvain is worth more than I am; his morals are very strict. Under the most respectful exterior, I should perceive in his manner a censure which would grieve me. I wish to avoid his tacit reproaches, even when he does ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... hair, slipped around her neck. "You nun; you saint.—Does that girlish peccadillo still ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... during the forty years which followed the Restoration, the whole body of the dramatists invariably represent adultery, we do not say as a peccadillo, we do not say as an error which the violence of passion may excuse, but as the calling of a fine gentleman, as a grace without which his character would be imperfect. It is as essential to his breeding and to his place in society that he should make love to the wives ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... middle-class family? Undoubtedly ethics and morality cannot change; they are one: but obligations vary in the different states of life. Just as the sun lights up a scene diversely and produces differences which we admire, so morality conforms social duty to rank, to position. The peccadillo of a soldier is a crime in a general, and vice-versa. Observances are not alike in all cases. They are not the same for the gleaner in the field, for the girl who sews at fifteen sous a day, for the daughter ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... friend Fidus? no, thank'ee; I am not, by many degrees, honest enough to suit his book. He would be down on some little public peccadillo of mine before I had swallowed my first egg. Besides, I would not for worlds break the ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope |
