"Ci-devant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... greatly given to sophisms and logic, but allowing himself to be beaten in argument with the utmost good nature, though always believing himself in the right; a thoroughly good fellow with all that, and a great connoisseur of antiquities. The other was a young student, More, from the ci-devant department of Mt. Tonnerre, who devotes himself entirely to the natural sciences, and has chosen the career of traveling naturalist. You can easily imagine that this attracts me to him, but as he is only a beginner I am, as it ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... Loriotte, which sailed with us from Santa Barbara, coming slowly in with a light sea-breeze, which sets in towards afternoon, having been becalmed off the point all the first part of the day. We took several fish of various kinds, among which cod and perch abounded, and Foster (the ci-devant second mate), who was of our number, brought up with his hook a large and beautiful pearl-oyster shell. We afterwards learned that this place was celebrated for shells, and that a small schooner had made a good voyage by ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... interview of my seeking?" he asked. "It is your brother I am awaiting. Name of a name, Citoyenne, do you think my patience inexhaustible? The ci-devant Vicomte promised to attend me here. It was the boast of your order that whatever sins you might be guilty of you never broke your word. Have you lost even that virtue, which served you as a cloak for untold vices? And is your brother fled into the ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... activity, to make half-a-dozen more introductions, and the Americans of the less trained class were already using them as freely as if they were old acquaintances. We say Americans, for the cabins of these ships usually contain a congress of nations, though the people of England, and of her ci-devant colonies, of course predominate in those of the London lines. On the present occasion, the last two were nearly balanced in numbers, so far as national character could be made out; opinion (which, as might be expected, had been busy the while,) being suspended in reference to Mr. ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... his thoughts being occupied by the single image of the fascinating hostess, of course it no more occurred to him to remark that his self-constructed coat was detaching itself at every step from its linings, whilst the pockets of the ci-devant surtout still displayed their original enormity of outline—than in general it would ever have occurred to him that the tout ensemble of his costume was likely to make, and had, in fact, made ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... proportionate to their descent, and therefore sought to draw all the strength they could from a bygone grandeur, easily forgotten by their neighbors in their moderate circumstances at a later day. Still later, when all ci-devant aristocrats were suspects in France, and when the taint of nobility sufficed to destroy those on whom it rested, Napoleon denied his quality: the usual inquest as to veracity was not made and he went free. This escape he owed partly to the station he ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... a good talker, a man of honor and a gallant man, but who held as to women the most detestable opinions; he loved them, and he despised them. Their honor! their feelings! Ta-ra-ra, rubbish and shams! When he was with them, he believed in them, the ci-devant "monstre"; he never contradicted them, and he made them shine. But among his male friends, when the topic of the sex came up, he laid down the principle that to deceive women, and to carry on several intrigues at once, should be the occupation of those young men who were so misguided as ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... send to him; too glad in that, as in everything else, to find an occasion of proving to him that no one is with such perfect veneration and respect as his very humble, and very obedient servant, L. de Beloz, ci-devant Captain in the regiment of his Serene Highness the late Prince Alexander of Wirtemberg, and his Aid-de-Camp, and at this time first Captain of grenadiers in the regiment of Monsieur the ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... ministere d'Angleterre aura une certaine consistance; sans cela, avec l'opposition de my Lord Temple, l'ineptie de M. Conway, la jeunesse et peut-etre l'etourderie de my Lord Shelburne quoique gouverne par M. Pitt, il ne sera pas plus fort qu'il ne l'etoit ci-devant. My Lord Chatham a pris une charge trop forte d'etre le gouverneur de tout le monde et le protecteur de tous." At this critical point, the mosaic administration (as Burke felicitously nicknamed it) just ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various |
