"Pertness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... elaborate chubbiness as in the Dombild. Wilhelm's Virgin was indeed less vulgar than the Virgin of the cathedral; but in feeling she was equally insipid, over-finished, and even more simperingly pretty. She was the triumph of delicate pertness, and had the look of a stage chamber-maid with her hair crimped over her forehead. And the child, twisted into an unnatural attitude, while he caressed his Mother's chin, turned his face round to ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... pertness, her Anglo-Saxon vivacity, were gone; her face was wooden, expressionless; her restless eyes slow-moving and dull; her cheek-bones, always noticeably high, looked higher, and her skin was murky ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... admiration for both parties to the tete-a-tete. Under ordinary conditions,—that is to say, if Vavasour's existence depended on his own exertions,—Helen's eyes would have dwelt on a gawky youth endowed with a certain pertness that might in time have brought him from behind the counter of a drapery store to the wider arena of the floor. As it was, a reasonably large income gave him unbounded assurance, and his credit ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... chance; that it can bite, pinch, or otherwise apply the mechanism of a pair of nut-crackers from the back of its head, with effect; that it has a little black tongue capable of much talk; above all, that it is mostly gay in plumage, often to vulgarity, and always to pertness;—all these characters should surely be represented to the apprehensive juvenile mind, in sum; and not merely ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... sensibility to derision and contempt, he took it for granted that all others were equally callous. He was not ashamed to exhibit himself to the whole world as a common spy, a common tattler, a humble companion without the excuse of poverty, and to tell a hundred stories of his own pertness and folly, and of the insults which his pertness and folly brought upon him. It was natural that he should show little discretion in cases in which the feelings or the honour of others might be concerned. No man, surely, ever published such stories ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... been ruled by duty, it now might be so by love. Of course, confusion dire was the consequence, chiefly with the younger boys, the scientific, cross-grained Maurice, and the high-spirited, turbulent Reginald, all the mischief being fomented by Jane's pertness and curiosity, and only mitigated by the honest simplicity and dutifulness of eight years old Phyllis. The remedy was found at last in the marriage of the eldest son William with Alethea Weston, already Lilias's favourite friend ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... large, and she Touched elbows with the exquisite, Gay Archibald, who took her wit And pertness all as meant for him; Who, thereby lifted some degrees Above less-favored devotees, With rainbow sails began to trim His craft of sweet felicity; So mirth in reckless afterlude Convulsed the merry ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... much occupied with his own dear self to attend to anything else, and so passed on without deigning to give her an answer. Killegrew came next, and the fair Jennings, partly encouraged by the other's pertness, advanced towards him, and offered him her basket, whilst Price, more used to the language, desired him to buy her fine oranges. "Not now," said he, looking at them with attention; "but if thou wilt to-morrow morning bring this young girl to my lodgings, I will ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... regularity—Vanburgh, who wrote with more nature and fire, though with less art and precision—Steele, who in his comedies successfully engrafted modern characters on the ancient drama—Farquhar, who drew his pictures from fancy rather than from nature, and whose chief merit consists in the agreeable pertness and vivacity of his dialogue—Addison, whose fame as a poet greatly exceeded his genius, which was cold and enervate; though he yielded to none in the character of an essayist, either for style or matter—Swift, whose muse seems ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... discontent and dyspepsia.' This is the type of child found by Mr. Trollope on Western steamboats; and we agree with him that beef-steaks, with pickles, produce a bad type of child; and it is unnecessary to confess to Mr. Trollope what he already knows, that pertness and irreverence to parents are the great faults of American youth. No doubt the pickles have much to do with ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... expressive digits. That she was disagreeable when she set herself out to be I do not doubt; in fact, she is the protagonist of a whole generation of disagreeable heroines in English fiction. Bernard Shaw did not overlook her pertness and malevolence, though all his girls are disagreeable, even—pardon the paradox—his agreeable ones. But they are as portraiture far too "papery," to borrow a word from painters' jargon, for my purpose. They are not alive, they only are mouthpieces ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... Howe to Clarissa.— Pathetically laments the illness of her own mother, and of her dear friend. Now all her pertness to the former, she says, fly in her face. She lays down her pen; and resumes it, to tell her, with great joy, that her mother is better. She has had a visit form her cousin ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... young lady with great pertness and a toss of her head. "I suppose they've got the money ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... noose, the door is open to the human "fare." Doubtless, this effects a very great saving, and, dispensing with a cad in this country might enable the fares to be lowered; but I question if there be not very many objections to our adopting the plan; and I should miss very much that personification of pertness and civility, with his inquisitive eye, and the eccentric and perpetual gyrations of his fore finger, which ever and anon stiffens in a skyward point, as though under the magic influence of some unseen electro-biologist whose decree had gone forth—"You can't move your ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... excessively vain. The character given of her by Cadenus is fine painting, but in general fictitious. She was fond of dress; impatient to be admired; very romantic in her turn of mind; superior, in her own opinion, to all her sex; full of pertness, gaiety, and pride; not without some agreeable accomplishments, but far from being either beautiful or genteel;... happy in the thoughts of being reported Swift's concubine, but still aiming and intending to be ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... not check a sort of groan or grunt; and Angela, whose pertness was defensive, quailed a little. She had driven him out of the due sequence of his discourse, but he resumed it. 'Angel, I must tell you; if anybody asks you to break ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wore a smart uniform and was called a page, but he had the pertness that generally marks ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... knotted into a frown. "Nay, let him go to Brittany with the others," said he harshly. "I wonder, John, that you should bring back to my memory this youth whose pertness is too fresh that I should forget it. But some one must go to Brittany in your stead, for the matter presses and our people are hard put to it to hold their own." He cast his eyes over the assembly, and they rested upon the stern features of Sir ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... he waged with him, for this plain reason—that the great poet accuses his adversary of dullness, which was not by any means one of his sins, instead of selecting one of the numerous faults, such as pertness, petulance, and presumption, of which ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... you, Helene Churchill! You never stop to consider whether anything's fun or not; all you care is whether it's 'nice'!" Excitedly she turned to meet the cheap little wink from Zillah's sainted eyes. "Bah! What's 'nice'?" she persisted a little lamely. Then suddenly all the pertness within her crumbled into nothingness. "That's—the—whole trouble with you, Zillah Forsyth!" she stammered. "You never give a hang whether anything's nice or not; all you care is whether it's fun!" Quite helplessly she began to wring her hands. "Oh, how do I know which one of you girls to ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... the secret reflexion that he liked her better lugubrious, as the note of pertness was not totally absent from her mode of emitting these few words. He was irritated, moreover, for in the brief conference he had just had with the young lady's introducer he had had to meet the rather difficult call of speaking ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... Your honour may call this jest or sport, or what you please; but indeed, sir, it is not a jest that becomes the distance between a master and a servant. Do you hear, Mrs. Jervis? said he: do you hear the pertness of the creature? I had a good deal of this sort before in the summer-house, and yesterday too, which made me rougher with her than perhaps I had ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... day, at an inn where he dined, complained very much that the plates and dishes were very dirty. The waiter, with a degree of pertness, observed, "It is said every one must eat a peck of dirt before he dies."—"That may be true," said Chesterfield, "but no one is obliged to eat it all at one meal, ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... foregone conclusion," said Florence, indulging in a little pertness as she saw that the situation would no more suit her than she it. She walked ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... time, thinking over this new episode. She had been rude to Farnsworth, and she had done it purposely. But she was accustomed to having young men laugh at her pertness and chuckle over ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... minute they stood without speaking. "Oh, good afternoon," Diantha said at last, and veiled her eyes from his fascinated stare. Formerly she had treated him with the free-and-easy pertness of a precocious child. Now the exquisite shyness of maidenhood enveloped her. Instinct drew her back from the man's inevitable advance. "I didn't know it was so late," she said to Persis, oblivious to Thad's gasping greeting. "I ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... asked him aloud before the whole Company, Why he must be used with less Respect than that Fop there? pointing to a well-dressed young Gentleman who was drinking Tea at the opposite Table. The Boy of the House replied with a [great [3]] deal of Pertness, That his Master had two sorts of Customers, and that the Gentleman at the other Table had given him many a Sixpence for wiping his Shoes. By this time the young Templar, who found his Honour concerned in the Dispute, and that the Eyes of the whole Coffee-house ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... nurtured, of our children are those usually seen by distinguished foreign visitors; for such foreigners are apt to be guests of the families to which these children belong. The spirit of frank camaraderie displayed by the children they mistake for "pertness"; the trustful freedom of their attitude toward their elders they interpret as "lack of reverence"; and their eager interest in subjects ostensibly beyond their years they misread ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... it all, and that the lad was palpably more Englishman than Scot—ay, and gloried in it—exasperated the little man, a patriot before everything, to blows. While, on top of it, David evinced an amazing pertness fit to have tried a ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... each lively dunce, Remembering she herself was Pertness once, And tinsel'd o'er in robes of varying hues, With self-applause her wild creation views. Sees momentary monsters rise and fall, And with her own ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... lawyer, had, as a boy of seven, rampaged on that identical Turkey hearthrug, when it was new, a quarter of a century earlier. He was now seated at the grand piano with the youngest child, Alicia, a gawky little treasure, always alternating between pertness and timidity, aged twelve. Jimmie and Johnnie, young bloods of nineteen and eighteen, were only present in their mother's heart, being in process of establishing, by practice, the right to go forth ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... admiration for Niagara and a regret for the Elevated Railway; and, unlike the men, they never bore us with Bunkers Hill. They take their dresses from Paris and their manners from Piccadilly, and wear both charmingly. They have a quaint pertness, a delightful conceit, a native self-assertion. They insist on being paid compliments and have almost succeeded in making Englishmen eloquent. For our aristocracy they have an ardent admiration; they adore titles and are a permanent blow to Republican ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... Almost Kenny could see him chirking up into insolence and the pertness of a bird. It was precisely as he had expected. When the door swung back, Adam was erect in his wheel-chair, electric with challenge. His eyes were once more ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... castigations.[287] His vein of pleasantry ran more freely in his attacks on the Royal Society than in his other literary quarrels. When Hill had not to banter ridiculous experimentalists, but to encounter wits, his reluctant spirit soon bowed its head. Suddenly even his pertness loses its vivacity; he becomes drowsy with dulness, and, conscious of the dubiousness of his own cause, he skulks away terrified: he felt that the mask of quackery and impudence which he usually wore was to be pulled off by the hands ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... noticeable among the rest for a certain jaunty pertness of gait and demeanour, who for a minute or so have been ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... "Of my father and mother," replied the youth. "But how earnest thou here?" "In my clothes." "From whence?" "From behind me." "Where art thou going?" "Before me." "Upon what dost thou travel?" "Upon the earth" Hyjauje, vexed at the pertness of the youth, exclaimed, "Quit this trifling, and inform me whence thou comest." "From Egypt." "Art thou from Cairo?" "Why askest thou?" said the boy?" "Because," replied Hyjauje, "her sands are of gold, and her river Nile miraculously fruitful; but her women are wanton, free ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... Dorothea rated the girl soundly for her pertness. "And I shall speak to Zeally," she threatened, "if anything of the kind happens again. If Mr. Endymion is to let you two have a house when you marry, and take in the Frenchmen as lodgers, he will want to know that you treat ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... her head and speaking with some pertness, "I can't do the washing. I didn't engage for any ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur
... or by what instruction, is this wonderful character to be formed? Is it found in the nurseries of affectation, pertness, and vanity, from which fashion is propagated, and the genteel is announced? In great and opulent cities, where men vie with each other in equipage, dress, and the reputation of fortune? Is it within the admired precincts of a court, ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... into a war of words with her, and enjoyed it extremely. Her brilliant colouring, her gestures as fresh and untamed as the movements of the leaping river outside, the mixture in her of girlish pertness and ignorance with the promise of a remarkable general capacity, made her a most taking, provoking creature. Mrs. Thornburgh—much recovered in mind since Dr. Baker had praised the pancakes by which Sarah had sought to prove to her mistress the superfluity ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Sir Humphry's experience in high circles (and in the plenitude of his fame he commanded any rank) never gave him ease of manner: he lacked the original familiarity with polished society, and his best efforts at pleasing were marred with a disagreeable bearing, which might sometimes be called pertness, sometimes superciliousness.—As in his dress he oscillated between a dandy and a sloven, so in his manners he vibrated from familiarity to hauteur. In all personal matters he missed the golden ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various
... Parlin, though somewhat amused by her little daughter's sharp speeches, thought it best to put an end to them by taking her away into a corner. She was too much inclined to pertness. ...
— Little Prudy's Dotty Dimple • Sophie May
... women of the rustic order, if only they were a trifle good-looking, had an old-established license to be pert to their male social superiors. But this young woman was not at all disposed to tremble before him, and was just as far removed from pertness as from humility. ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... learning, is not near so common a thing as is imagined. Let not therefore a young lady be alarmed at the acuteness of her own wit, any more than at the abundance of her own knowledge. The great danger is, lest she should mistake pertness, flippancy, or imprudence, for this brilliant quality, or imagine she is witty, only because she is indiscreet. This is very frequently the case, and this makes the name of wit so cheap, while its ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... to-o be sure," said the old man, no whit offended or displeased by the boy's pertness; for the spirit of bon camaraderie which existed between them was not easily disturbed. "Well, now, I'm jes' comin' to it right spang off. Well, ye see, I been over to Millville this mornin' in the boat, accordin' to custom, when the water ain't too rough, an' ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... answered, with playful pertness. "I guess Bartley can manage the sorrel colt! He's never had any ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... of Cicero, Quintilian, Valerius Maximus, and Pliny, seem to agree. And if, as the lecturer observes in a note, the painter is made to waste expression on inferior actors at the expense of a principal one, he is an improvident spendthrift, not a wise economist. The pertness of Falconet is unworthy grave criticism and the subject, though it is quoted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. He assumes that Agamemnon is the principal figure. Undoubtedly Mr Fuseli is right—Iphigenia is the principal ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... Here the little steno in the green tarn is Lais of Corinth, the dowager alighting from the electric is Zenobia. Illusions dress the entire procession. Semiramis, Leda, and tailored nymphs; dryad eyes gleam from powder-white masks. Or, if the classics bore you, Watteau and the rococo pertness of the Grand Monarch. And there are Gothic noses, Moorish eyebrows, Byzantine slippers. Take your pick, walk up and down and ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... beam Rated the Mule: "Why, sure you dream? Pray get on faster with the cart Or I shall sting you till you smart!" She answers: "All this talk I hear With small attention, but must fear Him who upon the box sustains The pliant whip, and holds the reins. Cease then your pertness—for I know When to give back, and when to go." This tale derides the talking crew, Whose empty threats are all ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... goes, but the red squirrel we have always with us. He will live where the gray will starve. He is a true American; he has nearly all the national traits—nervous energy, quickness, resourcefulness, pertness, not to say impudence and conceit. He is not altogether lovely or blameless. He makes war on the chipmunk, he is a robber of birds' nests, and is destructive of the orchard fruits. Nearly every man's hand is against him, yet he thrives, and long may ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... Matty!" he wrote, "what a blessing it is for one to think he is the greatest little fellow in the world. It would be cruel to compel this man to estimate himself correctly. Inflated with pride, flattered for his pertness, caressed for his assurance, and praised for his impertinence, it is not to be wondered that in a market where those qualifications pass for evidence of intrinsic merit he should think himself great." Williams, great and brilliant as he was, could not bear ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... shreds of equal fineness, although of different colours. It is a bundle of incoherent maxims and assertions, that frequently destroy one another. But still there is the same flatness of thought and style; the same weak advances towards wit and raillery; the same petulancy and pertness of spirit; the same train of superficial reading; the same thread of threadbare quotations: the same affectation of forming general rules upon false and scanty premises. And, lastly, the same rapid venom sprinkled over the whole; which, like the dying ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... have had grace (for his mind was graceful) if he had had any ear, or if his task had not been vitiated by the pursuit of wit; which, when it does not offer itself naturally, degenerates into tinsel or pertness. Pertness is the mistaken affection of grace, as pedantry produces erroneous dignity; the familiarity of the one, and the clumsiness of the other, distort or prevent grace. Nature, that furnishes samples of all qualities, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... regretted that he was going to see her again so soon. Her pertness, which had seemed fairly clever the previous night, would probably descend to triteness in the morning; he could even see her endeavouring to keep up the same exchange of short sentences. Bah! ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... is that of imagining that brusqueness and pertness are wit. There is no other error more common with girls from fifteen to eighteen; they generally choose a boy as the butt of their sarcastic remarks—and, to their shame be it said, they frequently select a lad who is too courteous to ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... as jugglers do by concealing their means. But Swedenborg is systematic, and respective of the world in every sentence; all the means are orderly given; his faculties work with astronomic punctuality, and this admirable writing is pure from all pertness ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... to you, sir," said Mary, with more pertness than logic; "which I'm only come to take leave, for to-morrow I go to ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... skill, and if you can hit the mark here's twenty silver pennies for you. But if you hit it not you are in for a sound drubbing for your pertness." ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... in the debate on the Westminster Scrutiny, Fox accused 'a person of great rank in this House'—Pitt I believe—'of adding pertness and personal contumely to every species of rash and inconsiderate violence.' Parl. Hist. xxiv. 924. Pitt, in reply, classed Fox among 'political apostates,' ib. p. 929. Burke, the same evening, 'sat down saying, "he little minded the ill-treatment of a ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... bit of it—I bear no malice—it is only my native and unconquerable pertness, which I sometimes fear may get me into a difficulty with some one yet. But I am not at all afraid of you, dear uncle; I know you understand that it's only ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... quiet and like order. In our drawing-rooms, on board our steamers, in our railway cars and stage coaches, they usually contrive to make themselves generally and particularly disagreeable by their familiarity, forwardness, and pertness. "Young America" can not brook restraint, has no conception of superiority, and reverences nothing. His ideas of equality admit neither limitation nor qualification. He is born with a full comprehension of his own ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... expression of countenance, seemed to body forth a vain, harebrained coxcomb, and small wit; while the rod he held, and an assumption of formal authority, appeared to express some sense of official consequence, which qualified the natural pertness of his manner. A perpetual blush, which occupied rather the sharp nose than the thin cheek of this personage, seemed to speak more of "good life," as it was called, than of modesty; and the manner in which he approached to the Earl ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... pertness had brought me this quite properly! And I received it properly. "I should never dream—" I hastened to say; "even without your warning. I find I'm expected to have seen the young lady of his choice," I now threw out. My accidental ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... their appearance; but before any conversation was suffered to pass between them and us, they had a long and most disagreeable dialogue with their father, to whose reprimands, though so justly incurred, they replied with the utmost pertness while their brother all the ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... daily food. They are like the pudding that was all raisins, because the cook had forgotten to put in the suet. Sensible people put in the suet pretty thick, and they find it fortifying. Here in England, for instance, it has been the standing sneer of upstart pertness that ordinary men and women always set out upon their conversations with the weather. Well, and why on earth should they not? In every part of the world the weather is the most important subject. India may suffer from unrest, but the Indian's ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... thankful for having an elegant moralist watching over us, and learn, if not too old, to imitate his high-bred politeness and catch his unobtrusive grace. If we are unwarrantably familiar, we know who is not. If we repel by pertness, we know who never does. If our language offends, we know whose is always modest. O pity! The vision has disappeared off the silver, the images of youth and the past are vanishing away! We who have lived before railways ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to know best about that, you or I?" said Oscar, with a pertness for which he was becoming a little too notorious. "I see Alf every day, but you don't know hardly anything about him. At my rate, I ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... Mind," a didactic poem written when I was seventeen or eighteen, and long repented of as worthy of all repentance. The poem is imitative in its form, yet is not without traces of an individual thinking and feeling—the bird pecks through the shell in it. With this it has a pertness and pedantry which did not even then belong to the character of the author, and which I regret now more than ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... is," said Margarita, her old pertness coming uppermost for a moment; "but I've got no more to say, now the Senorita's lying on her bed, with the face she's got. It's enough to break your heart to look at her. I could just go down on my knees to her for all I've said; and I will, and ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... Undine, who, in spite of her pertness, was exceedingly fearful, shrank from him, and moving tremblingly toward Huldbrand, asked him in a soft tone: "Are you ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... heart gladdened, quieted, sustained, by HIS presence. He felt sure there were elements in her heart which, transformed and purified by the gospel, would make her worthy the esteem and friendship of the world. A kind, affection- ate heart, native wit, and common sense, and the pertness she sometimes exhibited, he felt if restrained properly, might become useful in originating a self-reliance which would be of ser- vice to her in ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson
... she marks her image full exprest, But chief in Bayes's monster-breeding breast; Bayes, form'd by Nature's Stage and Town to bless, And act, and be, a coxcomb with success. Dulness with transport eyes the lively Dunce, Remembering she herself was Pertness once. Now (Shame to Fortune!) an ill run at play Blank'd his bold visage, and a thin third day; Swearing and supperless the hero sate, Blasphem'd his gods, the dice, and damn'd his fate; Then gnaw'd his pen, then dasht it on the ground, Sinking from thought to thought, a vast profound! Plung'd ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... was tolerable. The Collector, consulting with him, forgot the pertness of his address, the distressing twang of his accent. He had dismounted, and the pair were busy with a tape, calling out and checking measurements, when from the southward there was borne to the Collector's ears the distant crack ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... employed our ridicule to strip the foolish faces of Superstition, Fanaticism, and Dogmatical Pride of the serious and solemn masks with which they are covered, at the same time exerting all the sharpness of our wit to combat the flippancy and pertness of those who argue only by jests against reason and evidence in points of the highest and most serious concern, we should have much better ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... continued Mr. Silton, "there are two distinct sorts of what we call bashfulness; this, the awkwardness of a booby, which a few steps into the world will convert into the pertness of a coxcomb; that, a consciousness, which the most delicate feelings produce, and the most extensive knowledge cannot ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... colour, bright and soft when she was pleased, but full of pride and displeasure when her temper was ruffled, or her dignity offended. Her nose was slightly retrousse [23], but not so much so as to give to her that pertness, of which it is usually the index. The line of her cheeks and chin was very lovely: it was this which encouraged her to comb back that luxuriant hair, and which gave the greatest charm to her face. Her mouth was large, too large for a beauty, and therefore she ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... Lennox's face, and a qualm of mortal shame. She took an impetuous glide forward, and was just about to speak and tell the truth, whatever the consequences, and not be outdone in magnanimity by that child, when a young girl with a sickly but impudent and pretty face jostled her rudely. The utter pertness of her ignorant youth knew no respect for even the rich Miss Cynthia Lennox. "Here's your parcel, lady," she said, in her rough young voice, its shrillness modified by hoarseness from too much shouting for cash boys during ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... by the Muses, it is but Gratitude in us to encourage Poetical Merit wherever we find it. The Muses, contrary to all other Ladies, pay no Distinction to Dress, and never partially mistake the Pertness of Embroidery for Wit, nor the Modesty of Want for Dulness. Be the Author who he will, we push his Play as far as it will go. So (though you are in Want) I wish you ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... sharply, or saw any other servant grow cloudy at some imperious order of hers, he would show his trouble by a frown of displeasure that never darkened on his own account. He many a time spoke sternly to me about my pertness; and averred that the stab of a knife could not inflict a worse pang than he suffered at seeing his lady vexed. Not to grieve a kind master, I learned to be less touchy; and, for the space of half a year, the gunpowder lay as harmless ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... had a refined, coquettish, mincing walk, which alone was enough to bespeak the agreeable sense she had of her own charms. Perhaps a satiric observer of manners might have thought her more like a lady's-maid than a lady. A suggestion of pertness in her beady eyes, and a certain superciliousness of bearing were mingled with a coquetry not displeasing to one who surveyed her from the human height. To look important is pretty generally to feel important, but is, by no means, to be important. ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... with one unsteady hand while he peered into the shadows searching for the big-shouldered figure that stepped hesitatingly nearer the wheel. There was something birdlike in the brilliancy of the beady little eyes; something of sparrowlike pertness in the tilt of the old man's head, perked far ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... the very same young ladies! They were richly dressed, and well formed, and would no doubt have appeared handsome, but for the hostile passions which glared from their eyes, and gave their whole physiognomy a fury-like expression. They asked us, with great pertness, "what business we had there? The gentleman of the house," continued they, "is not at home, and there are no provisions here for you, and to be sure, you are too much of gentlemen to think of frightening a ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... those deities who inhabit the one shilling galleries of English and Irish theatres, and to receive, himself, vast gratification from worshipping at the shrine of Bacchus. The daughter having given early indications of quickness and pertness, came to be considered quite a genius by her family and friends, whose natural partiality soon induced her to entertain the same opinion. Determined, accordingly, not to hide her light under a bushel, she made her appearance before the world as an authoress, ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... her promise. She uttered no reproof either on her niece's awkward greeting, her abrupt conversation and its tendency to pertness, nor on the loudness of the unlucky game and the impropriety of climbing; nor even on what had greatly annoyed her, the asking for the subscription to the church. There was neither blame nor punishment; but she could not help a certain ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... before the portico. Miss Sophia received them in the hall, in a state of painful flutter and timidity. She had a constitutional terror of her aunt's sharp eyes, and, though she examined her young cousins wistfully, Madeleine's unconscious air of dignity repelled her as much as Molly's deliberate pertness. ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... not Phil's match in sense, learning, talents, self-command, and modesty, did not occur to me as lessening my chances with a woman. If I lacked real wit, I had pertness; and I thought I had a manner of dashing boldness, that must do one-half the business with any girl, while my converse trick of softening my voice and eyes to her on occasion, would do ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... wonders "with what kind of reasoning any one could be so far imposed upon, as to imagine that Shakespeare had no learning"; and lashes with much zeal and satisfaction "the pride and pertness of dunces, who, under such a name, would gladly shelter their own idleness ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... of Montagu, with a page's pertness, "I had rather have thine inches than Prince Richard's, and thy broad breast ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to rise, I have attempted to rise too: but through the greater part of this work I have been anxious, to use his own expression, to creep along the ground. No doubt there is danger in all this, the danger of triviality, pertness, and occasional vulgarity. Gifford's own work was attacked on its first appearance by a reviewer of the day precisely on those grounds: and though he seems to have made a vehement reply to his assailant, the changes which he made in ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... English by joking on this man's defeat—a behaviour that has nothing strange [in it] if we consider the times in which we live and the company he was accustomed to frequent; and it was in that notion of his, doubtless, that with much pertness of voice and air he asked him this question: 'And Bibi Lass,[119] where is she?' The Major and the officers present, shocked at the impropriety of the question, reprimanded him with a severe look and very severe expressions. 'This man,' they said, 'has fought ...
— Three Frenchmen in Bengal - The Commercial Ruin of the French Settlements in 1757 • S.C. Hill
... each she marks her image full expressed, But chief In Bays's monster-breeding breast; Bays, formed by nature stage and town to bless, And act, and be, a coxcomb with success. Dulness with transport eyes the lively dunce, Rememb'ring she herself was Pertness once. Now (shame to Fortune!) an ill run at play Blanked his bold visage, and a thin third day: Swearing and supperless the hero sate, Blasphemed his gods, the dice, and damned his fate; Then gnawed ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum |
