"Persiflage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... always talking in the Row, everlastingly gossiping, bantering and sarcastically praising things, and going on in a style which was a curious commingling of earnest and persiflage. Col. Sellers liked this talk amazingly, though he was sometimes a little at sea in it—and perhaps that didn't lessen the relish of ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... again. Stephen Lorimer would never forget her first inspection of him. Nursemaids had done their worst on the subject of stepfathers; fairy tales had presented the pattern. He knew exactly what was going on in her mind, and—quite as earnestly beneath his persiflage as he had set himself to woo the widow—he set himself to win her daughter. It was a matter of moments only before he saw the color coming back into her square little face and the horror seeping ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... little harmless freedoms of manner with Dick Kearney and O'Shea were now completely given up. No more was there between them that interchange of light persiflage which, presupposing some subject of common interest, is in itself ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... took Salome's hand, and touched it lightly with his lips, while the grave dignity of his manner forbade the thought that affectation of gallantry or idle persiflage suggested the ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... lawyer, though he always relied rather upon his eloquence than his law, and there were few juries which could resist the force and fury of his speech, and not many lawyers could keep their equanimity in the face of his witty persiflage and savage sarcasm. When to all this is added a genuine love of every species of combat, physical and moral, we may understand the name Charles Sumner—paraphrasing a well-known epigram—applied to him in the Senate, ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... himself seated, by a singular chance, next to the very same youth whose ribs he had crushed on the Elevated a few hours before. The young man was in more amiable mood. He grinned. "Don't you flap again and spill me coffee, Mr. Chicken," he said, with delicate persiflage. ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... constantly on the stretch. They were always discovering odd, unexpected bits of knowledge in each other, and a great deal more accordance in views and opinions than appealed on the surface, for his enthusiasm usually veiled itself in persiflage on hers, though he was too good and serious to ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... ignorant young women; for when I ventured to ask questions about their subject their answer was—not always—but in so many cases a solemn owllike "yes-and-no" that I soon learned my place. They did not expect or want a woman to know anything and preferred light banter and persiflage. I like that, too, when it is well done; but I was accustomed to ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... almost ignored; and Hyde did not feel any desire to bring even her name into such a mocking, jeering, perfectly heartless conversation. He was content to laugh, and let the hour go past in such flim-flams of criticism and persiflage. He remembered when he had been one of the units in such a life, and he wondered if it were possible that he could ever drift back into it. For even as he sat there, with the memory of his wife and ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... celluloid toothpicks and gathered around the cigar stand. Orchestra music flickered. Young girls, the traditions of demure sixteen hanging by one-inch shoulder straps, and who could not walk across a hardwood floor without sliding the last three steps, teetered in bare arm-in-arm groups, swapping persiflage with pimply, patent-leather-haired young men who were full of nervous excitement and eager to excel in ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... entirely empty of anybody I knew. I asked for letters; and, getting none, went out and looked at the thermometer. To my surprise I discovered that there were thirty-seven degrees of frost. A little alarmed, I tapped the thing impatiently. "Come, come," I said, "this is not the time for persiflage." However, it insisted on remaining at five degrees below zero. What I should have done about it I cannot say, but at that moment I remembered that it was a Centigrade thermometer with the freezing point in the wrong place. Slightly disappointed that there were only five degrees of frost ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... — N. ridicule, derision; sardonic smile, sardonic grin; irrision^; scoffing &c (disrespect) 929; mockery, quiz^, banter, irony, persiflage, raillery, chaff, badinage; quizzing &c v.; asteism^. squib, satire, skit, quip, quib^, grin. parody, burlesque, travesty, travestie^; farce &c (drama) 599; caricature. buffoonery &c (fun) 840; practical joke; horseplay. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... goes off with her nose in the air, as she always does whenever I spring any of my punk persiflage ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... That's where you get off! I've lived in the trenches for fifteen months, froze in 'em, starved in 'em, risked my life in 'em, and I've saved other lives, too, by hauling men out of the trenches. And that's no airy persiflage, either!" ...
— The Deserter • Richard Harding Davis
... something I never told you before. I have never admired you so much, or loved you so dearly, as I do at this hour. You must believe me,' she continued, pushing her plate away and beckoning the maid with a slight backward gesture of the head, 'I hate this tone of persiflage, but what is there left for us if we would be blamelessly alone, and yet speak our hearts ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... that are to bind St. John to Quebec, and make Nova Scotia, Cape Breton, and Newfoundland only stepping-stones to Europe, we cannot say. Probably they will become like the rest of the world, and furnish no material for the kindly persiflage of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... frequently while they were breasting the breakers; and afterwards, as in their street attire they were returning on the boardwalk, she chatted brightly with him, revealing a certain cleverness in off-hand persiflage. ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens |
