"Bete" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at table, assisted by a dark-faced and very surly-looking maid, in whom Harley thought he recognized the housekeeper's bete noire. ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... sans moi l'on ne fait jamais fete: J'embellis quelquefois, quelquefois, j'enlaidis. Je dedaigne tantot, tantot j'applaudis; Pour m'avoir en partage, il faut n'etre pas bete. ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... her arrival, and such a commotion is forthwith excited as had never been seen even in that city of commotions, since the time the Giraffe made her entree into it, and said to the gaping multitude, "Mes amis, il n'y a qu'une bete de plus." Perhaps the sensation might be excepted which was created by "Messieurs les Osages," the American deputation whose "France" has not yet, we believe, appeared in either hemisphere. The Rue de Rivoli was instantly crowded with "old friends" and "intimate acquaintances," ne plus ultras ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... therefore, were sometimes interrupted by the passionate exclamations of the crowd. At a drama lately represented on the stage of the Comedie Francaise, one of the audience astonished his neighbours by crying: "Mais signe donc! Est-elle bete!..." In the open air of the public place, at a time when manners were less polished, many such interjections interrupted the performance; many insulting apostrophes were addressed to Eve when she listened to the serpent; ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... mon ami. It is everything most bete what you say. You have many friends, and as for me, I do not care a straw for the money. Only if I had known I would not have left ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... shall take, where we shall leve, Where we shall abide behynde; Where we shall robbe, where we shall reve, Where we shall bete and bynde.' ...
— Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Fourth Series • Frank Sidgwick
... hovel where three would seem a crowd yielded up more than a dozen inmates, many of whom, being at work, must be looked for later—the "back-calls" that is the bete-noire of the census enumerator. West Indians, however, are for the most part well acquainted with the affairs of friends and room-mates, and enrolment of the absent was often possible. Occasionally I ran into a den of impertinence that must be frowned ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... turn. For the days are gone by when the Seigneur ruled and profited. "Le Seigneur," says the old formula, "enferme ses manants comme sous porte et gonds, du ciel a la terre. Tout est a lui, foret chenue, oiseau dans l'air, poisson dans l'eau, bete au buisson, l'onde qui coule, la cloche dont le son au loin roule." Such was his old state of sovereignty, a local god rather than a mere king. And now you may ask yourself where he is, and look round for vestiges of my late lord, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... medicyne,' Quod she, 'and coude in every wightes care 660 Remede and reed, by herbes he knew fyne, Yet to him-self his conning was ful bare; For love hadde him so bounden in a snare, Al for the doughter of the kinge Admete, That al his craft ne coude his sorwe bete." ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer
... God if you shoud, For men mought Get their Bread a great many ways Without taking ourn,—aye, and Moor to your Prays You might go and skim the creme off Mr. Muck-Adam's milky ways—that's what you might, Or bete Carpets—or get into Parleamint,—or drive Crabrolays from morning to night, Or, if you must be of our sects, be Watchmen, and slepe upon a poste! (Which is an od way of sleping, I must say,—and a very hard pillow at most,) Or you might be any trade, as we are not on that I'm awares, ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... the towne well acquoyntyd with thys yeman told him that suche a carter hadde layne by his wyfe. To whome this yeman of the garde sware by Goddes body, if he mette with hym it should go harde but he wolde bete him well. Hey, quod the yonge man, if ye go streyght euen nowe the right way, ye shall ouertake him dryuyng a carte laden with haye towarde London; wherfore the yeman of the garde incontynent rode after this carter, and within shorte space overtoke him and knewe him well ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... defende; Bot if the povere Schep offende In eny thing, thogh it be lyte, They ben al redy forto smyte; And thus, how evere that thei tale, The strokes falle upon the smale, And upon othre that ben grete Hem lacketh herte forto bete. So that under the clerkes lawe Men sen the Merel al mysdrawe, 430 I wol noght seie in general, For ther ben somme in special In whom that alle vertu duelleth, And tho ben, as thapostel telleth, That god of his eleccioun Hath cleped to perfeccioun In the manere as Aaron was: Thei ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... it is only by endeavoring to appear what he is not, that a man ever can become so, properly speaking, our true-witted Continental neighbors, who shrink from John Bull as a brute, never laugh at him as a fool. "Il est bete, il ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... theories, were in art and in life, it would not be very easy to say; but in the Saturday Press they came to violent expression, not to say explosion, against all existing forms of respectability. If respectability was your 'bete noire', then you were a Bohemian; and if you were in the habit of rendering yourself in prose, then you necessarily shredded your prose into very fine paragraphs of a sentence each, or of a very few words, or even of one word. I believe ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... rede you in the devil's name, Ye come not here to make men game; By Termagaunt that maketh grame, I shall to-bete thine head. Hic Diabolus capiat ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... you!" She gave a shrill, agonized laugh. "So that is the end of it all! What did you think of my child when you forced your way into my life, when you made me think of you—ah, quel bete—what a coward and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker |
