"Demure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... opportunity from the porch, and cut in where there was a place next the wall! And to see one man with an umbrella (brought on purpose, for it was a fine day) hoisting himself, unlawfully, from stair to stair! And to observe a demure lady of fifty-five or so, looking back, every now and then, to assure herself that her ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... she is a well, a fountain, a geyser, a Niagara, reversed, of information, misinformation, knowledge, ignorance, modesty, audacity, in captivating breeches or in modest demure caps or in flowing evening robe. Wise Vera, wise Creel— they know their business! The English snooper, with typewriter in hand, will have a generous swig of the Scotch whiskey of the vintage of '56, and ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... about his expectations, and quizzed him about Rosalind. They laughed at his rustic simplicity, and amused themselves by putting him to the blush. They plied him with wine and cigars, and rallied him on his pure demure face. One or two toadies sidled up and professed a sympathy which was ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... and smiled pleasantly at Margaret standing on the threshold with an expression of demure defiance in her face. Did Mr. Shackford want anything more in the way of pans and pails for his plaster? No, Mr. Shackford had everything he required of the kind. But would not Miss Margaret walk in? Yes, she would step in for a moment, but with a good deal ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... do!" Mrs. Lunn fluttered a little on her perch at the sight of him, and then settled herself quietly, as trig and demure as ever. ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... final descent brought them to the shore of a demure little river flowing softly between high banks—Musquasepi, that they were to know so well. Off to the left it merged into the muddier waters of the "big" river. On the further shore stood the Warehouse they had heard of ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... days when my heart is so full of love for young girls that as I pass them on the street I feel myself smiling as one does to walk by a garden of daffodils. And when I see how careful some of them are to be circumspect and demure, I think to myself how fine a thing it is, to be sure, to have good manners! How happy the parent whose young daughter knows just how to hold her hands in company, just how and when to smile, just how to enter a room or gracefully leave it. ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... Eva, whose real name was Edith. She was a demure looking little girl, who came in every afternoon at four o'clock for her breakfast. She usually came to Jimmy's table when it was vacant, and at four o'clock she always ate alone. Later in the evening she would come in again with a male escort, ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... was thinking that never in his life had he seen a girl so amazingly pretty. What it was that she had done to herself was beyond him; but something, some trick of dress, had given her a touch of the demure that made her irresistible. She was dressed in sober black, the ideal background for ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... bewitching—often both. Her voice was gentle and childish, her tread light and soft as that of a cat:—but her manners more frequently resembled those of a pretty playful kitten, that is now pert and roguish, now timid and demure, according to its ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... had known well and loved inadvertently the Hon. Lucy Gray, who kept a kind of social kindergarten for confiding man, whose wisdom was as accurate as her face was fair, her manners simple, and her tongue demure and biting. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Vere de Vere stuff is bla now. Too phony. There's no class to that kind of a monicker any more. And, believe me, you can't afford to overlook any bets, nowadays; you got to have class in everything. Something simple—something demure, that's what they want. You got to ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... manual in the knitted brows and the tightly pressed lips. Then she smiled and the dark eyes grew softly radiant. "The dear old saint!" she whispered; "the dear, dear old saint!" And when Broffin came down a few minutes later, she went to open the hall door for him, serenely demure and with honey on her tongue, as befitted the ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... spavined pony you were compelled to borrow—do pray tell us how he carried you?" interposed Frank, looking as demure and innocent ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... couch of juniper wood, inlaid with precious stones and surmounted by a canopy of red satin, looped up with pearls as big as hazel-nuts or bigger. Thereon sat a lady of radiant countenance and gentle and demure aspect, moonlike in face, with eyes of Babylonian witchcraft and arched eyebrows, sugared lips like cornelian and a shape like the letter I. The radiance of her countenance would have shamed the rising sun, and she resembled one of the chief stars of heaven or a pavilion ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... resolve to break off upon the first favourable Opportunity of making her angry. When he was in this Thought, he saw Robin the Porter who waits at Will's Coffee-House, passing by. Robin, you must know, is the best Man in Town for carrying a Billet; the Fellow has a thin Body, swift Step, demure Looks, sufficient Sense, and knows the Town. This Man carried Cynthio's first Letter to Flavia, and by frequent Errands ever since, is well known to her. The Fellow covers his Knowledge of the Nature of his Messages with the most exquisite low Humour imaginable: The first he obliged Flavia ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... called into a more sober chamber to drink ceremonious toasts in champagne with their officers. In the street another of us—I would not give even his initial—selecting the leading representative of young, demure, and ornamental maidenhood, embraced her in the middle of the most admiring crowd I have ever seen, while the rest of us explained to a half-angry mother that her daughter should be proud and happy—as indeed she was—to represent the respectable and historic town ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... are very good women," the girl ventured, and Angelica thought that she detected a note of derision, levelled at the clerical exponent of these reprehensible ideas, beneath the demure remark. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Elsie, a demure, sedate little damsel, who always did as she was told and was a pattern child after Mrs. Neville's own heart, discharged her commission and came back with the letter, which she handed to her sister without ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... publicly flout me, defiantly sweeping with their tails the air, as an Irishman, "blue mouldy for want of a bateing," sweeps the floor with his coat, and chattered and scolded in every tone of elated bravado. The bibacious drongo can be as demure as any. When he comes to dart among the eddying insects, glorying in the first cool gleams of the sunshine, he will take his ease on a mango branch, make jerky bows and flick the fine feathers of his tail, and "cheep" in timorous accents. He is sober then, quite ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... maiden so demure She will not let her one true lover's hands In playful fondness touch her soft brown bands, So dainty-minded is she, and ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... di, come along, then, and show your beautiful brown eyes, and your pretty white curls. Here we are, Mr. Ellis; will we do?" and, holding up her white frock, she made a demure little curtsey to the two young men, while Shoni, also arriving on the scene, looked at her with amused ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... Havre glittering in the distance against her background of chalk cliffs. People come on deck in strangely conventional clothes and with demure citified airs. Passengers of whose existence you were unaware suddenly make their appearance. Two friends meet near me for the first time. “Hallo, Jones!” says one of ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... over her left shoulder, her turban set all askew on her bright, black hair, her cheeks flushed from the jumping of fences and running of races that had been going on since she left the house, and that saucy twinkle in her eyes. Joy was always somewhat more demure, but she looked, too, that morning, as if she were quite as ready to have a good time as any ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... this little lamb; how demure he is and how simple and innocent, and how foolish and how tractable. Yet observe!' With that he whipped the cassock from his arm where he was carrying it and threw it all over the lamb, covering his head and body; and the lamb began plunging and kicking and bucking ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... undignified galloping dance, round and round her from branch to branch! Hardly less ridiculous—to our eyes—is the elaborate performance of our most common woodpecker, the flicker, or high-hole. Two or three male birds scrape and bow and pose and chatter about the demure female, outrageously undignified as compared with their usual behaviour. They do everything save twirl ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... and provokingly suggestive of kisses. The whole face was of the type which comes so near to the ideal that the least sentimentality of expression would have spoiled it. Happily the big eyes and the ripe, red mouth were both suggestive of demure humor. There was a mirthful air about the dimple which came and went in the left cheek like Cupid peeping mischievously from the folds of his mother's robe. A boa of long-haired black fur lay carelessly about her neck, pushed ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... the quiet Quaker neighborhood from which he came, and contrasted these singular and powerfully defined personalities with the "men of weight" and the demure maidens of his acquaintance, Ben's blood tingled with a sense of the bigness and strangeness of the greater America. The West was no longer a nation; it was a world. To be in it at last was a delight ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... heads, a sallyport, loopholes and a little spire. I stopped in to talk to Mr. Hammond, and he greeted me graciously. He says that people have come all the way from California to see his shop, and I can believe it. It is the work of a delightful and original spirit who does not care to live in a demure hutch like all the rest of us, and has really had some fun out of his whimsical little castle. He says he would rather live in Camden than in Philadelphia, ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... with Janet. He felt as if he were in a strange, unreal dream. It was all at once so like and so unlike what he had expected to find it. All these quiet, demure-looking young strangers, instead of the jolly, familiar children he had left nine years ago—and, as he realised with a sharp pang—no George. He had not known till to-night how much he had counted on seeing George, or at least on hearing all about him. Instead, here was Jack, ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... Inari.' It is very small, but very famous; and it has been recently presented with a pair of new stone foxes, very large, which have gilded teeth and a peculiarly playful expression of countenance. These sit one on each side of the gate: the Male grinning with open jaws, the Female demure, with mouth closed. [17] In the court you will find many ancient little foxes with noses, heads, or tails broken, two great Karashishi before which straw sandals (waraji) have been suspended as votive offerings by somebody with sore feet who has prayed to the Karashishi-Sama that ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... Mueller's step outside caused all the girls to scramble to their seats, so that when he entered they sat as quiet and demure as though they had not stirred during his absence. He took his seat, and opened his book again at the lesson, when the girls saw him suddenly flush up to the roots of his hair, and run his fingers nervously through his long curls. He next removed a small package that had evidently been lying ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... retorted Jack, good-naturedly; "a man who has not the faculty of making a fool of himself occasionally is only half a man. You would be a better fellow, too, Harry, if you were not so deucedly respectable; a slight admixture of folly would give tone and color to your demure and rigid propriety. For a man so splendidly equipped by fortune, you have made a poor job of existence, Harry. When I see you bestowing your sullen patronage upon the great masterpieces of the past, I am ashamed of you—yes, by Jove, ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... knight, all armd in harnesse meete, That from his head no place appeared to his feete, His carriage was full comely and upright; His countenance demure and temperate; But yett so sterne and terrible in sight, That cheard his friendes, and did ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... Dalahaide affair. The man couldn't believe, against a mountain of evidence; nevertheless, he did what he could for his friend, guilty as he thought him. All this happened four years ago, when you were a demure little schoolgirl—if you ever could have been demure!—in your own Virginia, not allowed even to hear of, much less read, the great newspaper scandals of the moment. I can't remember every detail of the affair, but it was said to be largely ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... As a substitute for him I was a dreadful failure. They would not believe in me in the least. I felt that I was as flat as water after champagne. I could not address them from the stairs, nor push them about, nor prophesy to the anaeemic women. I was much too solemn and demure after what they had been accustomed to. However, I held the thing together as best I could, and I don't think that he found the practice much the worse when he was able to take it over. I could not descend ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... that it would not be displeasing to Cornelia to be opposed, and even out-argued upon the question of Mr. Bressant's probable attendance at the party, and qualifications to make himself agreeable when there. She enjoyed the amusement, in Her demure way, and was besides interested to hear something about ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... found the large room deserted and the windows thrown open to the sun and the garden. He was selecting a table, when a step on the verandah made him look up. Standing in the window, framed, as it were, by sunshine and trees, was Marguerite Wade, in a white dress, with demure lips, and the complexion of a wild rose. She was the incarnation of youth—of that spring-time of life of which the sight tugs at the strings of older hearts; for surely that is the only part of life which is really ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... presume, since with the Turk obesity is the chief element of comeliness. As the carriages passed along in review, every now and then an occupant, unable or unwilling to repress her natural promptings, would indulge in a mild flirtation, making overtures by casting demure side-glances, throwing us coquettish kisses, or waving strings of amber beads with significant gestures, seeming to say: "Why don't you follow?" But this we could not do if we would, for the Esplanade throughout its entire length was lined with soldiers, put there especially to guard the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... thought up to that moment, but now it came back to him with added cumulative force. He recollected that he had often wondered at the child's unconscious adaptation of mood to the clothes she happened to be wearing; he recalled how he had seen her demure and distant in misty, pastel-tinted party frocks or quaintly, infantilely dignified in soberer Sunday morning garb. But that Saturday morning he realized what the woman was to be like, when the hem ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... friar "of orders grey"), the infant and its nurse. However we may suspect Bartholomew of wishing to provide a text in his account of the bad boy, it is consoling to find that the "enfant terrible" had his counterpart in the thirteenth century, as well as the maiden known to us all, who is "demure and soft of speech, but well ware of ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... addressing a woman worn out with admiration, but a girl just beginning a woman's life; and it did him no harm, at any rate, to speak in the character of master of Thorpe Ambrose. The penitential expression on Miss Milroy's face gently melted away; she looked down, demure and smiling, at the flowers ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... her companion, a girl of some four or five and twenty years old, with one of those rounded and supple figures which combine strength and delicacy, endurance and elasticity, and are very slow in yielding to the attacks of Time. A demure hood tied under the chin framed a round face, whose firm fair skin had defied the tarnish of the sea, and only gained a somewhat warmer glow in cheek and lip than its native tone. Little tendrils of sunny brown hair pushed their laughing ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... subject as we go—[Exit AMANDA.]. Ah, poor Amanda! you have led a country life. Well, this discovery is lucky! Base Townly! at once false to me and treacherous to his friend!—And my innocent and demure cousin too! I have it in my power to be revenged on her, however. Her husband, if I have any skill in countenance, would be as happy in my smiles as Townly can hope to be in hers. I'll make the experiment, come what will on't. The woman who can forgive ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... it the more difficult to return to this humble roof again, after once leaving it for Don Jose's hospitality," said Poindexter, with a demure glance at Mrs. Tucker. But the innuendo seemed to lapse equally unheeded by his fair client and the stranger. Raising her eyes with a certain timid dignity which Don Jose's presence seemed to have called out, she ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... of Pauline enthralled Baskinelli. He had never before seen a woman like her—innocent but astute, daring but demure, brilliant but opalescent. When at last they strolled away together into the conservatory his drawing room obeisances became direct declarations ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... listening to Belding's talk with the cowboys, Dick was hard put to it to dictate any kind of a creditable letter. Nell met his gaze once, then no more. The color came and went in her cheeks, and sometimes, when he told her to write so and so, there was a demure smile on her lips. She was laughing at him. And Belding was talking over the risks involved ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... at that name my cold muse waxes hot, And swears that thou art such a one as he, Warm, laughter-loving, with a touch of madness, Wild, glee-provoking, pouring oil of gladness From frank heart without guile. And, if thou be The pure reverse of this, and I mistake— Demure one, I will like ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... sat conversing with him, sometimes at the window, sometimes in the room, until the candles came. He made her his companion, though she was some years younger than Florence; and she could be as staid and pleasantly demure, with her little book or work-box, as a woman. When they had candles, Florence from her own dark room was not afraid to look again. But when the time came for the child to say 'Good-night, Papa,' and go to bed, Florence would sob and tremble as she raised ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... waiting patiently for some time, however, he knocked again, and at length the door was opened by a very pretty servant girl, about seventeen, who, upon his inquiring if her master was at home, replied in a sighing voice, and with a demure ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... bookshop. Gissing Street was bright and demure in the crisp quietness of the forenoon. Mifflin's house showed no sign of life. It was as he had last seen it, save that broad green shades had been drawn down inside the big front windows, making it impossible to look ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... as you enter the room at the neatness of the table, dazzling by reason of its silver and crystal and linen damask. Life is here in full bloom; the young fellows are graceful to behold; they smile and talk in low, demure voices like so many brides; everything about them looks girlish. Two hours later you might take the room for a battlefield after the fight. Broken glasses, serviettes crumpled and torn to rags lie strewn about among the nauseous-looking remnants of food on ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... the lonely hours of evening by potations, seemed greatly to enjoy the bustle, till a remark of mine, on the unsuitableness of the scene to one of his order, acted like magic on him, and he ceased the swearing and encouraging exclamations in which he had before indulged, and became as meek and demure as he probably passed for, being amongst those whose eyes he knew to be on him. He was of the order of Christian Brothers: a community by no means remarkable for the edification of ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... sight. In an instant, every dimpling smile vanished; their countenances were again enshrouded in the odious linen masks; their ample veils dropt around them, and making a hasty sign for us to depart, our talkative and merry friends were again as demure and discreet, as any "magnificent three-tailed bashaw" in the empire ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... one is inclined to do something outrageous from sheer happiness. These long, open cars, where people can see from end to end what every one is doing, are hateful inventions. It is perfectly absurd, when one finds one's self the happiest fellow living, that one is obliged to look as demure and solemn as if one was ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... when they showed her, with the Baby, gossipping among a knot of sage old matrons, and affecting to be wondrous old and matronly herself, and leaning in a staid demure old way upon her husband's arm, attempting—she! such a bud of a little woman—to convey the idea of having abjured the vanities of the world in general, and of being the sort of person to whom it was no novelty at all to be a mother; yet, in the same breath, they showed her laughing at the Carrier ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... playing tag in the yard, and retreat into the kitchen. We had begun to roll popcorn balls with syrup when we heard a knock at the back door, and Tony dropped her spoon and went to open it. A plump, fair-skinned girl was standing in the doorway. She looked demure and pretty, and made a graceful picture in her blue cashmere dress and little blue hat, with a plaid shawl drawn neatly about her shoulders and a clumsy pocketbook in ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... countryside. Probably, Hugh thought, there was something sexual beneath it all, and the insolence of the group was in some dim way concerned with the instinct for impressing and captivating the female heart. Perhaps the more demure village maidens who met them felt that there was something dashing and even chivalrous about these ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... one but Beth, no matter how promising her voice, he must have been bored to extinction. No. He had to admit that it was Beth that interested him, Beth the primitive, Beth the mettlesome, Beth the demure. For if now demure she was never dull. The peculiarity of their situation—of their own choosing—lent a spice to the relationship which made each of them aware that the other was young and desirable—and that the world was very ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... had been very silent and demure, and her betrothed had also been silent. There had been no words about the tea-making, and Lady Ball had been silent also. As far as she knew, Margaret was to go on the following day, but she would say nothing on the subject. Margaret, indeed, had commenced her packing, ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... unnatural and inconsistent sound when the demure old woman-servant appeared in the doorway and ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... daring to linger he went into his office, closed the door, and sat down with a sensation akin to weakness, somewhat appalled by his discovery, considerably amazed at his previous stupidity. He had thought of Janet—when she had entered his mind at all—as unobtrusive, demure; now he recognized this demureness as repression. Her qualities needed illumination, and he, Claude Ditmar, had seen them struck with fire. He wondered whether any other man had been ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Judge, with a demure smile; "thank you for remembering my church so kindly; but what did my ward say ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... Decay, decompose, putrefy, rot, spoil. Deceit, deception, double-dealing, duplicity, chicanery, guile, treachery. Deceptive, deceitful, misleading, fallacious, fraudulent. Decorate, adorn, ornament, embellish, deck, bedeck, garnish, bedizen, beautify. Decorous, demure, sedate, sober, staid, prim, proper. Deface, disfigure, mar, mutilate. Defect, fault, imperfection, disfigurement, blemish, flaw. Delay, defer, postpone, procrastinate. Demoralize, deprave, debase, corrupt, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Clement answered, smiling, and quite delighted to find such an unexpected vein of grave pleasantry about the demure-looking church-dignitary; for the Deacon asked his question without moving a muscle, and took no cognizance whatever of the young man's tone and smile. First-class humorists are, as is well known, remarkable for the immovable solemnity of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... and grand and handsome he looks!" said Laura, a prim and demure little miss of thirteen: "in his presence, I am sure I could never speak ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... cool gray light of morning 'gins to peer Ere yet the household stirs, or chanticlere Calls hinds to labour but hints not the glee Nor full-flood glory of the day to be When round about the hill the sun shall swim And burn a sea-path—so demure and slim Went Helen on her business with swift feet And light, yet recollected, and her sweet Secret held hid, that she was loved where need Called her to mate, and that she loved indeed— Ah, sacred calm of wedlock, passion white Of lovers knit in Here's holy ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... setting of which compelled Egyptian local colour; and I was therefore dying to get to Egypt, if chance so willed it. I submitted a few of my picked manuscripts accordingly to Mr. Elworthy, in fear and trembling. He read them, cruel man, before my very eyes; I sat and waited, twiddling my thumbs, demure but apprehensive. ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... visitors. English and Americans were admiring a pretty singing girl about fifteen years of age, who was beautifully dressed, and sitting with four very demure and ugly Orientals ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... bore; His daughter she; in Saturn's reign Such mixture was not held a stain: Oft in glimmering bowers and glades He met her, and in secret shades Of woody Ida's inmost grove, Whilst yet there was no fear of Jove. Come, pensive nun, devout and pure, Sober, steadfast, and demure, All in a robe of darkest grain Flowing with majestic train, And sable stole of cypres lawn Over thy decent shoulders drawn: Come, but keep thy wonted state, With even step, and musing gait, And looks commercing ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... it?" said Patty, who caught her cousin's eye in the mirror and looked very demure, ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... flowers, to lie And feel you helpless while he grips and bruises Your weak protesting breasts! You'll die in bliss, Panting your fragrance out.— Wh'st! Hush, poor fool! I have unlearned love's very alphabet. Men like us coy, demure ... Then I'll coquet And play Madam Disdain—but not to-day. To-morrow I'll be shrewish, shy, perverse, Exacting, cold—all April in my moods: We'll walk the forest, and I'll slip from him, Hide me like Dryad 'mid the oaks, and mark His hot dark face pursuing; or I'll couch ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q
... have seen me looking a great deal more frightened if you had been with us at Miss Colishaw's," said Candace; and she proceeded to relate what had happened, in a quiet, demure way which was particularly funny, throwing in a little unconscious mimicry which made the scene real to her audience. Miss Colishaw's grim indignation, Mrs. Joy's cool audacity, her own compunctious helplessness,—all were indicated in turn. Before she had done, they ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... wardrobe. A nicer dressed old lady, or a more becoming black silk gown, you shall not see on a Sunday morning making her way to any country church in England. While she was looking so pleasant and demure,—one may say almost so handsome, in her old-fashioned and apparently new bonnet,—what could have been her thoughts respecting the red-nosed, one-legged warrior, and her intended life, to be passed in fetching two-penn'orths of gin for him, and her endeavours to get for him a morsel of wholesome ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... a little Italian town, as we have said, is no very grand thing, and as a mere question of fun it is no doubt amusing only to people who are ready to be amused. And yet there is a quaint fascination in it as a whole, in the rows of old women with demure little children in their laps ranged on the stone seats along the bridge, the girls on the pavement, the grotesque figures dancing along the road, the harlequins, the mimic Capuchins, the dominoes with big noses, the carriages rolling along amidst ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... gentlemen, morning cigars afire, gradually formed ranks in arm-chairs under the colonnade; people passing and repassing began to greet each other with more vivacity; veranda and foyer became almost animated as the crowd increased. And now a demure bride or two emerged in all the radiance of perfect love and raiment, squired by him, braving the searching sunshine with confidence in her beauty, her plumage, and a kindly planet; and, in pitiful contrast, ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... the front door behind her. The wide street was almost empty; a milkcart bearing the legend, 'Sales Hall Dairy,' was being drawn at an easy pace by a demure pony, his harness adorned with jingling bells. The milkman whistled and, as the cart stopped here and there, she missed the London milkman's harsh cry, and missed it pleasurably. This man was in no hurry, there was no impatience in his ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... she had the upper hand, both physically and morally. The doctor had called and done his work, and given a very reassuring report. She left Louis to Mrs. Tams, as was entirely justifiable, merely informing him that she had necessary errands, and even this information she gave through her veil, a demure contrivance which she had adapted for the first time on her honeymoon. It was his role to ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... 'I have observed Tischbein regarding me; and now'—note the demure pride!—'it appears that he has long cherished the idea of painting my portrait.' Earnest sight-seer though he was, and hard at work on various MSS. in the intervals of sight-seeing, it is evident that to sit for his ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... say nothing at all about Valmy, just that a wandering minstrel be so rich that he can make presents to a Dauphin of France! Sing me a song, Master Homer the blind, and I will give you—let me see: no, not what you think—a silver livre!" But she did not wait for his music. Dropping him a little demure, mocking curtsy she turned and ran down the box-edged path, singing as she went, and the air she sang was Stephen La Mothe's "Heigh-ho! love is my life; Live I in loving and love I to live!" and the lilt of the music set Master Homer's ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... Kit and Tabby really did regard Laura with admiration and complacency, it was more than I can say for Mrs. Jaynes, in whose heart a secret rage was burning, though her aspect and demeanor were as placid and demure as if the butter she held in her hand would not have melted in her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... is swung forward, with a passive pride which forbids a resistance to the force of circumstance. Look at the pretty pout on the mouths of that family there, retaining no traces of being arranged beforehand, so well is it done. Look at the demure close of the little fists holding the parasols; the tiny alert thumb, sticking up erect against the ivory stem as knowing as can be, the satin of the parasol invariably matching the complexion of the face beneath it, yet seemingly by an accident, which makes the thing so attractive. ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... freedom to themselves: the which, though done by stealth, they make as bad as may be: and yet hardly any man, tho he had the eyes of Argolus can attrap them; for if by chance you should perceive any thing, they will find one excuse or another to delude you, and look as demure as a dog in a halter, whereby the good man is easily pacified and ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... find that Madame would be absent until dinner. Fitzgerald could not tell exactly why he was disappointed, and he was angry with himself for the vague regret. Maurice, however, found consolation in the demure French maid who served them. Every time he smiled she made a courtesy, and every time she left the ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... of use, merely as they affect their hearers. And all the passion poetry of men and of angels could not have thrilled Link Ferris as did Dorcas's correct and demure assent to his frenziedly gabbled plea. It went through the lovesick man's brain and heart like the breath ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... you loiter, flowing-gowned And hugely sashed, with pins a-row Your quaint head as with flamelets crowned, Demure, inviting—even so, When merry maids in Miyako To feel the sweet o' the year began, And green gardens to overflow, I loved you ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... come there, she took me into the great hall, and made a very dainty and impudent bow, mocking me. And so made me known to another lady, who sat there, upon her task of embroidering, which she did very demure, and as that she had also a dainty Mischief ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... never wavered in her gaze upon him. But whereas there was something bold in his homage there was a half-shy way with her. He was facing her squarely, but she looked at him a little sideways, and a little curiously, in demure dubiousness. One could see that she was enormously intrigued, but her interest was not expressed by any movement. In fact neither moved; they remained some twenty yards apart all the time I observed them: each, I suppose, leaving it to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 14, 1917 • Various
... an assignation with Tom Tortoiseshell, the feline phenomenon, they two sit curmurring, forgetful of mice and milk, of all but love! How meekly mews the Demure, relapsing into that sweet under-song—the Purr! And how curls Tom's whiskers like those of a Pashaw! The point of his tail—and the point only is alive—insidiously turning itself, with serpent-like seduction, towards ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... He did not know much about women, but he had read somewhere that they were capable of injustice. She had plenty of spirit, anyhow, for all that she looked so demure and shy. ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... would you had but the wit: 'twere better than your dukedom. Good faith, this same young sober-blooded boy doth not love me; nor a man cannot make him laugh; but that 's no marvel, he drinks no wine. There 's never none of these demure boys come to any proof; for thin drink doth so over-cool their blood, and making many fish-meals, that they fall into a kind of male green-sickness; and then, when they marry, they get wenches: they are generally fools and cowards; which some of us should be too, but for inflammation. ...
— King Henry IV, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Chiswick edition]
... to see that he was staring with singular intentness at the lady's profile. Surprise and satisfaction were both for an instant to be read upon his eager face, though when she glanced round to find out the cause of his silence he had become as demure as ever. I stared hard myself at her flat, grizzled hair, her trim cap, her little gilt earrings, her placid features; but I could see nothing which could account for ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... "A Nun demure—of lowly port; Or sprightly maiden—of Love's court, In thy simplicity the sport Of all temptations. A Queen in crown of rubies drest, A starveling in a scanty vest, Are all as seems to suit thee best,— ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... hands. Observe her rushing, scissors in hand, thread in mouth, to the drawers where her daughters' Sabbath clothes were kept. Or go to church next Sunday, and watch a certain family filing in, the boy lifting his legs high to show off his new boots, but all the others demure, especially the timid, unobservant- looking little woman in the rear of them. If you were the minister's wife that day or the banker's daughters you would have got a shock. But she bought the christening robe, and when I used ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... my next question, Lon McFane, I swear, was off to sleep. He always went to sleep that way—just crawled into the blankets, closed his eyes, and was off, a demure little heavy breathing rising on ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... is a rather old-fashioned custom, and is appropriate only for a very young bride of a demure type; the tradition being that a maiden is too shy to face a congregation unveiled, and shows her face only when ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... think Felicity was quite well pleased that Cyrus should have passed over her rose-red prettiness to set his affections on that demure elf of a Cecily. She did not want the allegiance of Cyrus in the least, but it was something of a slight that he had not wanted her ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Thackeray, for instance, and of course, Shakespeare. The poets of the Decadence (when was not the world in decadence?), in their protests against materialism, have, to a certain extent, also opened the way to Teaism. Perhaps nowadays it is our demure contemplation of the Imperfect that the West and the East can meet in ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... with dimpled cheek and chin, Before an ancient mirror stood, and viewed her form within; She wore a gown of sober grey, a cape demure and prim, With only simple fold and hem, yet dainty, neat, and trim. Her bonnet, too, was grey and stiff; its only line of grace Was in the lace, so soft and white, shirred ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... known from one end of the National League circuit to the other as one of the most solid and substantial of the writing force, and also as one of the most demure and modest. In addition to his great fund of information on Base Ball topics he is an author, and "The Sword of Bussy," a book which was published during the winter, is even more clever than some of the author's best Base Ball yarns, and that is saying a great deal in behalf ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster |
