"Coquette" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... him that all this was at an end—that she foreswore the world henceforth, and was quite his own. All this was expressed with an elegance which I was not quite prepared to find in the fair one, and with a tone of sincerity for which I was still less prepared; yet with the coquette ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... is to make someone happy, and her endeavour carries with it a train of incident, solving a mystery which had thrown a shadow over several lives. A charming foil to her grave elder sister is to be found in Miss Babs, a small coquette of five, whose humorous ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... amateur theatricals, she was always to the fore, besides being the leader in every new fashion, and in every new extravagance. Although eccentric—she was the first member of her sex to show herself astride on horseback in the Thiergarten—and in spite of her being famed as a thorough-paced coquette, and as a flirt, yet no one ventured to impugn her good name, until the disgraceful anonymous letter scandal; and both her husband and herself naturally resent most keenly that without any hearing or explanation they ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... small store, Annette did much of the clerking. She was unquestionably the prettiest girl in Geneva; indeed she was as pretty as girls are made. With all her small-town limitations she was bright as a pin, and as sharp; fine of instinct and, withal, coy as a coquette. The first time Alac addressed her it was as a shop-keeper. Something she said kept turning over in his brain and he realized next morning, as he was shaving, that her reply had been impertinent. Piqued, he returned the day after to make another purchase, and made the greater ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... "Coquet et coquette," muttered Lady Charlotte, observing them from a distance; and wondered whether her sex might be strongly ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... girl, Fifine Dechaussee, would lead him on, if she had less of the saint and more of the coquette in her make-up, we might land him," the detective murmured to himself. "It's dirty work, but we've got to use the weapons in our hands. I must have another talk with her, before she considers herself affronted by his attentions, and throws him down hard—that is, ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... between Effie and Kate, rather to Effie's disadvantage, I had to confess, and Kate's affected expressions of intense feeling, rather served to heighten Effie's natural coldness of manner. Why waste words—the conclusion is already divined. The coquette succeeded—and ere a week had passed Lucien was her infatuated, devoted admirer; Effie was quite forgotten. Lucien's two friends, wretched, and completely maddened by the cool, contemptuous rejections they received ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... her more than that," said Mrs. Scudder, with a flash of her old coquette girlhood for a moment lighting her eyes and straightening her lithe form. "I guess, if I should show a letter he wrote me once——But what am I talking about?" she said, suddenly stiffening back into a sensible woman. "Miss Prissy, do ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... Constanze. I never met with such diversity of dispositions in any family. The eldest is idle, coarse, and deceitful—crafty and cunning as a fox; Madame Lange (Aloysia) is false and unprincipled, and a coquette; the youngest is still too young to have her character defined,—she is merely a good humoured, frivolous girl; may God guard ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... joy did not allow him to see anything of the coquette in that confession. It all seemed to be consecrated by the love he felt for her—a love which was so honest that he perceived no boldness in the attitude of this girl who had come so far to meet him. He took her into his arms again, and she ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... the daughter of a shoe-maker. The royal history was scarcely more profligate, than it was ridiculous. His Majesty, though the husband of a respectable queen, had seemed to regard every abomination of life as a royal privilege. He had first adopted the society of a Madame de Mailly, a clever coquette, but with the disqualification of being the utter reverse of handsome. Madame, to obviate the known truantry of the King, introduced her sister, Madame de Vintinsille, as clever, but as ordinary as herself. The latter died in child-birth, supposed to have been ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... picture which he had cherished ever since her hand had wrote therein. Gazing upon those features with a world of tenderness, Ah, Monsieur, he said, had you but beheld her as I did with these eyes at that affecting instant with her dainty tucker and her new coquette cap (a gift for her feastday as she told me prettily) in such an artless disorder, of so melting a tenderness, 'pon my conscience, even you, Monsieur, had been impelled by generous nature to deliver yourself wholly into the hands of such an enemy ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... I should fear her anger, if she knew what I say! She is the most terrible coquette in the city—worshipped by the men, and hated, of course, by the women, who all imitate her in dress and style as much as they possibly can, because they see it takes! But every woman fears for either husband or lover when Angelique des Meloises is ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... his doors, singing her amorous ditty, putting garlands on his statues, and wrestling and boxing with her rivals in his affections? For all these are what people in love do. And let her lower her eyebrows, and give up the airs of a coquette, and assume the appearance of those that are deeply smitten. But if she is modest and chaste, let her decorously stay at home and await there her lovers and sweethearts; for any sensible man would be disgusted and flee from a woman who took the initiative ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... yours, must proceed from the man, to render it permanent and valuable; and nothing short of good sense and an easy, unaffected conduct, can draw the line between prudery and coquetry. It would be no great departure from truth to say that it rarely happens otherwise than that a thorough-paced coquette dies in celibacy, as a punishment for her attempts to mislead others, by encouraging looks, words, or actions, given for no other purpose than to draw men on to make overtures, that they may ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... of a race which has given to the world many heroes, one philosopher, and several celebrated beauties—that of Somerset; and, as the descendant of the defenders of Raglan Castle, might be expected to combine various noble qualities with personal gifts. But she was cold, although a coquette. In the Duchess of Devonshire it was the besoin d'aimer, the cordial nature recoiled into itself from being linked to an expletive, that betrayed her into an encouragement of what offered her the semblance of affection—into ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... trying to instruct the 'Fair Sex' as he likes to call them, apparently regarded its members as an inferior order of beings. He delights to dwell upon their foibles, on their dress, and on the thousand little artifices practised by the flirt and the coquette. Here is the view the Queen Anne moralist takes of the 'female world' he was so eager ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... take up the coquette's part for her; perhaps of the two, he was the more gratified by the curious glances directed at those little feet, shod with plum-colored prunella; at the dainty figure outlined by a low-cut bodice, filled in with an embroidered chemisette, which only partially ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... weather had changed with the unpleasant capriciousness of an elderly coquette, a warm, close-fitting black coat and skirt and a small black toque. Round her neck clung to its own tail, as if in a despairing attempt to find out what had happened to its own anatomy, a little sable boa. She had a dressing-case ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... beauty to be a precious gem that should be richly set in gold—the gem was hers, but the golden setting was lamentably wanting, and poor de Sigognac could not possibly furnish it. So the accomplished coquette decided not to interfere with this newly-born love affair, which was "all very well for a simple-minded young girl like Isabelle," she said to herself, with a disdainful smile and toss of ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... Ratcliffe was steadily pushing his advances; that he flattered all Mrs. Lee's weaknesses by the confidence and deference with which he treated her; and that in a very short time, Madeleine must either marry him or find herself looked upon as a heartless coquette. He had his own reasons for thinking ill of Senator Ratcliffe, and he meant to prevent a marriage; but he had an enemy to deal with not easily driven from the path, and quite capable of routing ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... little way to walk. He was not repulsed by this refusal, the nature of which he perfectly understood; nor was she sorry to see him persevere in his determination: he therefore accompanied them in their return, and made divers efforts to speak with Emilia in particular; but she had a spice of the coquette in her disposition, and being determined to whet his impatience, artfully baffled all his endeavours, by keeping her companion continually engaged in the conversation, which turned upon the venerable appearance and imperial situation of the place. Thus tantalized, he ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... husband, and a most accomplished coquette, the Marquise was recovering from a serious love-affair, when she summoned Balzac to afford her amusement and distraction. Delicate and fragile, her face was rather too long for perfect beauty, but there was something spiritual and slender ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... off a snowy Cherokee rose and, bending at his slim, sashed waist, present the blossom with the courtly air inbred through many generations; and he saw a ragged mountaineer girl accept it with all the dainty and fastidious mockery of a coquette of the golden age, and fasten it where her faded bodice edged the creamy ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... Harry had only asked her to marry him the night before, and she had only refused! Impossible to suppose that it was the mere plotting of the finished coquette. This lover required neither teasing ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... were a coquette," she said, flushing a little under the very open admiration of his eyes, "which ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... and paused on the stairs to light it; then, pouching flint and tinder-box, I emerged upon the roof, to find myself face to face with a young girl I had never before seen—the Hon. Miss Grey, no doubt—and very dainty in her powder and one coquette patch that emphasized the slow color ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... selfish. Deprived of her dressmaker, she was gaunt and unsightly. Separated from her position, she would have been unbearable. Arabella had many offers, of course, but she was too fond of her power and too suspicious of an attempt on her purse to yield easily. She was enough of a coquette not absolutely to destroy the hopes of an admirer, but managed to keep him dangling in her train. She had never absolutely discouraged young De Silver, but she would not commit herself even to Mrs. de S., who still fondly hoped that the money of the industrious plumber would ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... I'd like it. Too lonesome," she replied, without any attempt to coquette with the hidden meaning of his question. "I kind o' like this hotel business. I enjoy having new people sifting along every day. Seems like I couldn't bear to step out into private life again, I've got so used to this public thing. I only wish mother didn't have to work ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... pearls; in short, everything is faultless. She looks particularly well when dressed as a man. But she is cold: I got my nose almost frozen in the stalls. In "Othello" she delighted me more than in the "Barber of Seville," where she represents a finished coquette instead of a lively, witty girl. As Sextus in "Titus" she looks really quite splendid. In a few days she is to appear in the "Thieving Magpie" ["La Gazza ladra"]. I am anxious to hear it. Miss Woikow pleased me better as Rosina in the "Barber"; ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... because your own picture of her creeps in between your eyes and this one. Look at it now as a painter, without giving a thought to the original. What does it represent? Nothing, so far as I can see, but an affected coquette inviting somebody to come and play with her. Do you notice this cynical line around the mouth which you are never allowed to see? Can you see that her eyes are seeking out some man who is not you? Do you observe that her dress is cut low at ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... in the empire of a Frenchwoman—she is coquette, then deist, then devote. The empire during these is never lost—she only changes her subjects. When thirty-five years and more have unpeopled her dominion of the slaves of love she repeoples it with slaves of infidelity, and, then with ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... with a perfect trust in his young wife. He was delighted to see her enjoying her voyage so well, and proud of the universal court that was paid to her. It was quite evident to everybody on board but himself that Mrs. Tremain was a born coquette, and the way she could use those dark, languishing, Spanish-Mexican eyes of hers was a lesson to flirts all the world over. It didn't, apparently, so much matter as long as her smiles were distributed pretty evenly over the whole masculine portion of the ship. But by-and-by things began to ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... appearance of Miss Kingsley likewise created an impression that reacted on the philosopher. She was very much overdressed, and made a marked effort to carry the assembly by storm. She played the double role of a would-be arch coquette and hero-worshipper, and while chanting the talent of the lecturer, omitted no effort to secure admiration on her own account. There are always a few men who are amused for the moment by this sort of thing, but ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... to which we especially refer at the present writing, was a coquette of the first class, beautiful in the extreme, and richly meriting the name that her owners had placed in golden letters on her stern—the "Sea Witch." She was one of that class of vessels known as flat upon the floor, a model that caused her to draw but little ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... was, however, no conscientious scruple which occasioned her hesitation. She was a Frenchwoman, a beauty, and a little—a very little—of a coquette. To add to her attractions by the slight supercheries of the toilet was, she thought, a very venial sin; it was a thing which, in the society that surrounded her, was looked upon as necessary, and sometimes even considered ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... bosom of humanity. It chilled Uniacke in the pulpit, Sir Graham in the pew below. The one preached without heart. The other listened without emotion. All this was in the morning. But at evening nature stirred in her repose and turned, with the abruptness of a born coquette, to pageantry. A light wind got up. The waves were curved and threw up thin showers of ivory spray playfully along the rocks. The sense of fairyland, wrapped in ethereal silences, quivered and broke like disturbed water. And the grey womb of the sky swelled in the ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... life. With great care I recovered, but the violence of the distemper left such a weakness on my body that the disturbance of my mind was greatly assuaged; and now I began to comfort myself in the reflection that this gentleman's being a finished coquette was very likely the only thing could have preserved me; for he was the only man from whom I was ever in any danger. By that time I was got tolerably well we returned to Paris; and I confess I both wished and feared to see this cause of all my pain: however, ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... too much question of kissing in the comedies of Moliere's time. Champagne, in the comedy of "La Mere Coquette" by Quinault, asks kisses of Laurette; she says to him—"You are not content, then; really it is shameful; I have kissed you twice." Champagne answers her—"What! you keep account of your kisses?" ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... court was after all a better school for a wife than the society of the Directory, and he had found in Marie Louise, a girl worthy of all regard, one invaluable blessing, one treasure which a widow, charming, it is true, but a coquette, lacked; namely, innocence. ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... consult with her and tell her his ideas of her part. But Thyrsis soon discovered that what she really wanted was to have him listen to her ideas. Miss Lewis was at war with Thyrsis' portrayal of Helena—it was incomprehensible to her that Lloyd should not be pursuing her, and she playing the coquette, according to all romantic models. Particularly she could not see how Lloyd was to resist the particularly charming Helena which she was going to make. She was always trying to make Thyrsis realize this incongruity, and to persuade him to put some "charming" lines into her part. ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... a trench, which works very well with the bridge, and at the end of which is a finer fair ground. A street well paved, well built, well washed, as clean as a glass, populous, silent at certain times, a coquette with a sweet nightcap on its pretty blue tiles—to be short, it is the street where I was born; it is the queen of streets, always between the earth and sky; a street with a fountain; a street which lacks nothing to be ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... reputation for her fogs; but little do they know how much a fog may add to natural scenery, who never witnessed its magical effects, as it has caused a beautiful landscape to coquette with the eye, in playful and capricious changes. Our opening scene is in one of these much derided fogs; though, let it always be remembered, it was a fog of June, and not of November. On a high head-land of the coast of Devonshire, stood a little station-house, which had been ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... conduct had always been very cool to her. She deemed her a self-sufficient coquette. However, the Comtesse Diane was a constant attendant at the gay parties which were then the fashion of the Court, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 4 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... when it is extended to unworthy objects. The moment a woman's wish to please becomes discriminative, the moment she feels any attachment to a man superior to the vulgar herd, she not only ceases to be a coquette, but she exerts herself to excel in every thing that he approves, and, from her versatility of manners, she has the happy power of adapting herself to his taste, and of becoming all that his most sanguine wishes could desire." The proofs of this discriminative ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... upon him as a second Darwin, but when a professorship was almost within his reach he had suddenly discontinued his studies and turned his whole attention to chemistry. Here his researches upon the spectra of the metals had won him his fellowship in the Royal Society; but again he played the coquette with his subject, and after a year's absence from the laboratory he joined the Oriental Society, and delivered a paper on the Hieroglyphic and Demotic inscriptions of El Kab, thus giving a crowning example both of the versatility and of the ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Her hair was a beautiful flaxen—not a drab—but that peculiar sevenpenny-moist-sugar tint which the poets of old were wont to call golden. Her voice was melodious; her notes in alt were equal to Grisi's: in short, she would have been a very desirable, loveable young lady, if she had not been a coquette. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... said presently, "I'm not a girl. I give myself to you with a knowledge and a joy no girl could possibly have. I don't want to coquette and delay. I want to be your wife, and to learn your faults, and have you learn mine, and settle down into harness—one year, five years—ten years married! Oh, you don't know how I LONG to be ten years married. I shan't mind a bit being nearly forty. Forty—doesn't ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... thrown on a chair his damask napkin of Muscovite pattern, and instinctively glanced at himself in the mirror, just as a coquette might do before a rendezvous, smoothing out his flannel vest and spreading out his cravat that only half-fastened the blue foulard collar ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... The Common Lot Individuality Friendship after Love Queries Upon the Sand Reunited What Shall We Do? "The Beautiful Blue Danube" Answered Through the Valley But One Guilo The Duet Little Queen Wherefore? Delilah Love Song Time and Love Change Desolation Isaura The Coquette Not Quite the Same New and Old From the Grave A Waltz-Quadrille Beppo Tired The Speech of Silence Conversion Love's Coming Old and New Perfectness Attraction Gracia Ad Finem Bleak Weather An Answer You Will Forget Me The Farewell of ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... fishes talk like whales." No man surely ever had so little talent for personation as Johnson. Whether he wrote in the character of a disappointed legacy-hunter or an empty town fop, of a crazy virtuoso or a flippant coquette, he wrote in the same pompous and unbending style. His speech, like Sir Piercy Shafton's Euphuistic eloquence, bewrayed him under every disguise. Euphelia and Rhodoclea talk as finely as Imlac the poet, or Seged, Emperor ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... they should be made so absolutely. The sedentary life to which they are condemned weakens them, and then their weakness is accepted as an inherent, instead of an artificial, quality. Rousseau concludes that a woman is naturally a coquette, and governed in all matters by the sexual instinct, because her earliest amusements consist in playing with dolls, dressing them and herself, and in talking. These conclusions are almost too ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... time. The extent to which this influences him may be gathered from the reply which he made to Dr. Doellinger whilst that learned divine was discussing with him the question of Church and State. Dr. Doellinger was expressing his surprise that Mr. Gladstone could possibly coquette in any way with the party that demanded the severance of Church and State in either Wales or Scotland. It was to him quite incomprehensible that a statesman who held so profoundly the idea of the importance of religion could make his own a cause whose avowed object was to cut ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... all was now over between him and Frau Kahle. His acquaintance with women of her stamp had never been extensive, and to read the soul of one so utterly false and grossly sensual as this inveterate coquette, was quite beyond the ability of Lieutenant Pommer, analysis of his own or anybody else's character ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... not protest this as a coquette might have done. On the contrary, she remained silent, and I was aware that while she liked and respected me, she was not profoundly moved by this farewell call. Nevertheless I hoped, and in that hope I repeated, "You will ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... calm waters. Three weeks of warmth and sunshine by day, and of poetry and starlight by night. Three weeks of drifting in the romance which surrounds the name of that great sorceress, that wonderful siren, that consummate coquette, that most fascinating woman the world has ever known. Three weeks of steeping one's soul in the oldest, most complete and satisfactory ruins on the face of the earth. Here, in delving into the past, we would have no use for the ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... who was dressed in the highest style of fashion, and looked like a fashionable milliner's doll. This little spoiled child was accustomed to spend an hour at her toilette every morning, and to be tricked out in all the ephemeral decoration of the haut ton. This little coquette already looked out for admiration, and its foolish mother expressed the greatest satisfaction, when any one, out of politeness to her, paid attentions to the pert premature nursling. Our entertainment concluded with a handsome ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... be telling me a thousand times a day to beware of the men who pay particular attention to Hortense. Some there are who do so whom you do not like, and whom you seem to fear she may prefer. Set your mind at rest. She is a bit of a coquette, is pleased with her success, and torments her victims, but her heart is free. I am the confidante of all her thoughts and feelings, which have hitherto been just what they ought to be. She now knows that when she thinks of marrying, it is not my consent alone ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... you knew her you will bear me out in the statement that she was something of a coquette ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton
... well known at the cafe, and they did not detain Lisette, but it was a most ignominious position for a young woman. And there was no wedding next day, and everybody knew why. The little coquette, who had mocked suitors by the dozen, was jilted almost on the threshold of the Mairie. She smacked Tricotrin's face in the morning, but her humiliation was so acute that it demanded the salve of immediate ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... turned away with a little smile. She liked this big man with his halting tongue and quiet ways. She liked his awkward attempts to conciliate the coquette Xantippe—to extract a smile from the grave Nestorius, and she liked his manner towards herself. She liked the poised pipe and the jerky voice as ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... words that Allen distinguished out of the merry war in which they seemed engaged were spoken in the tone of pretty petulance such women use—a coquette's defence. ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... did she show signs of noticing us at all. For, meeting our wake, the coquette, she suddenly began dropping us curtseys ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... Her own were as clear and deep as mountain springs. Was Miss. Genevieve Ryan the most absolutely honest and outspoken young woman that had ever lived, or was she some subtle and unusual form of Pacific Slope coquette? ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... Her movement first was to go to the table and take off her bonnet and lay down her shawl and right herself a little. Yet Prim was nothing of a coquette, not the least in the world, and never thought about her dress but to have it respectable. Neither did she think about it now; for there was no glass in the room, and the movement with which she pushed the hair further back from her brow assuredly had no origin in regard to appearances. However ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... now, the lady to whom Marc Antony said: "I am dying, Egypt, dying," and then refrained from doing so for about nineteen more stanzas. Cleo or Pat—she was known by both names, I hear—did fairly well as a queen, as a coquette and as a promoter of excursions on the river—until she fleshened up. Then she flivvered. Doctor Johnson was a fat man and he suffered from prickly heat, and from Boswell, and from the fact that he couldn't eat without spilling most of ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... dancing, in which he so far succeeded as to be able to skip about with the most regular agility, though he never had a sufficient share of good sense to be able to dance with gracefulness. Thus accomplished, he excited the admiration of every silly coquette, and the envy of every fluttering coxcomb; but by all young gentlemen and ladies of understanding he was heartily despised as a mere civilized monkey. He performed every thing by imitation; and he imitated nothing ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... all I am to get from you, after all? is that all the regard you have for me? very well, Annot—it is well at any rate we should understand each other. They were right, I find, when they told me that you were such a coquette, you would have a dozen ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... behalf. Even his entertainments were neglected; when he appeared at any private or public assembly, the ladies, instead of glowing with pleasure, as formerly, now tittered or regarded him with looks of disdain; and a certain pert, little, forward coquette, with a view to put him out of countenance, by raising the laugh at his expense, asked him one night, at a drum, when he had heard from his relations in Poland? She succeeded in her design upon the mirth of the audience, but was disappointed in the other part of her aim; ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... angrily following Clancy and Miss Ainsley. "Well," she said, with a scornful laugh, "that renegade Southerner has found his proper match in that Yankee coquette. I doubt whether he gets her though, if a man ever does get a born flirt. When she's through with Charleston she'll be through with him, if all I hear of her ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... lost in the feeble light. It at once created a sort of confidence between them, and the discourse was continued on the part of the hunter, without the lively consciousness of the character of this coquette of the wilderness, with ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... Just now it seems an easy matter. He has a horror of pronounced freedoms; they look silly and vulgar, yet he cannot resist clasping the little bare hand. The warm touch thrills her. She turns just enough to let him catch the shy, pleased, irresistible light in her eye; no finished coquette could have done it better, but with her ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Moliere, could conjecture, that one skilled in the workings of our nature would have ventured on the perilous experiment of equalizing sixteen years against forty—weighing roses against grey locks—to convert a wayward coquette, through her capricious womanhood, into an attached wife? Yet, although Mademoiselle could cherish no personal love for the intellectual being, and hastened to change the immortal name she bore for a more terrestrial man, she seems to have ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... Myrtle seemed to be showing some new developments. One would have said that the instincts of the coquette, or at least of the city belle, were coming uppermost in her nature. Her little nervous attack passed away, and she gained strength and beauty every day. She was becoming conscious of her gifts of fascination, and seemed to please ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... all his darts were lost, Yet still resolved to spare no cost; He could not answer to his fame The triumphs of that stubborn dame, A nymph so hard to be subdued, Who neither was coquette nor prude. I find, says he, she wants a doctor, Both to adore her, and instruct her: I'll give her what she most admires, Among those venerable sires. Cadenus is a subject fit, Grown old in politics and wit; Caressed by Ministers ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... wounding my conscience. But I must try to tell it all to you in the mildest way possible, and to spare people as much as I can. If I were to tell you that this girl leads a bad life, it would be going too far. I must find some milder term to explain myself. The word coquette does not come up to the mark; that of downright flirt seems to me to answer the purpose pretty well, and I can make use of it to tell you honestly what ...
— Monsieur de Pourceaugnac • Moliere
... desolate and lone. No more shall the merry rattle of the wheels, as the frisky four-in-hand careers in the morning mist, summon the village beauty from her toilet to the window-pane to catch a passing nod of gallantry; no more shall they loiter by the way to trifle with the pretty coquette in the bar, or light up another kind of flame for the fragrant Havannah fished from amongst the miscellaneous deposits in the depths of the box-coat pockets. True, the race were always a little fond of raillery, and therefore they die by what they love—we speak of course ...
— Hints on Driving • C. S. Ward
... he said. "You should know, Mollie, of all others. You were with her when she played that miserable coquette's trick,—that pitiful trick, so unlike herself,—you were with her that night when she let Gowan keep her away from me, when I waited for her coming hour after hour. I saw you with them when ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... with sudden honesty. It was a relief to be as brutal and uncomplimentary as possible; it offset the silver-covered prayer books, the breakfast tray, the bejewelled Pom, the whole studied, inane effect of a discontented woman trying to play coquette up ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... coxcombs? Were the smiles and attention that had so captivated him to be equally shared by them? This was not to be borne. He could have endured her ignorance, even a fool might be tolerated, but an unfeeling coquette never could. From that moment Amaranthe, with all her beauty, was dismissed from his heart ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... first. "I know you are quite justified in your notion of me," she said. "I have given you every reason to call me coquette, flirt, or anything of ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... in," he answered; "and I will have a hundred kisses for every look and smile you bestowed on the conte! You little coquette! You ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... excellent effect), both take their troubles to Ernestine. And a young French aviator (this is a pre-War story), guest at Hatchways, analyses and discusses situations and characters from his coign of privilege—a device adroitly handled by the discreet author, who adds two charming girls, coquette Lise, Iveagh's first love, and wise, loyal, perceptive Bess, whom he found at last. To those who appreciate subtle portraiture let me commend this study.... I feel just as if I had been for a long week-end at Hatchways, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... boat replied coldly to her friendly advances. She had spoken to a nice girl, her own age or thereabouts, and the girl's mother or aunt or chaperon, whoever it was, had taken her away. It had puzzled her at the time. Now she knew. The crowd that had seen her off, from the Pretty Coquette Company—that had queered her, she ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... changed since you knew her. Perchance She yet seeks to renew her youth's broken romance. When women begin to feel youth and their beauty Slip from them, they count it a sort of a duty To let nothing else slip away unsecured Which these, while they lasted, might once have procured. Lucile's a coquette to the end of her fingers, I will stake my last farthing. Perhaps the wish lingers To recall the once reckless, indifferent lover To the feet he has left; let intrigue now recover What truth could not keep. 'Twere ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... much like her, within, to be an earnest admirer, and perhaps he suspected the clouds. He, being deep and surly and always uncomfortably in earnest, of course preferred the lively Katrinka, whose nature was made of a hundred tinkling bells. She was a coquette in her infancy, a coquette in her childhood, and now a coquette in her school days. Without a thought of harm she coquetted with her studies, her duties, even her little troubles. She coquetted with her mother, her pet lamb, her baby brother, even with her own golden curls—tossing them back as if ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... fire through my veins, and the most glowing wishes and ardent longings, be it love or be it hate, must be stirring within me in order to poetize successfully. And this cannot be comprehended by delicate and discreet people; this low Roman populace even venture to call me a coquette, only because I constantly need a new glow, and because I constantly seek new emotions and ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... contemptuous, conveyed the deep wrath which he still felt whenever his mind reverted to Larry. Maggie reserved to herself the privilege of thinking of Larry just as she pleased; but being the kind of girl she was, she could not help being also a bit of a coquette. ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... hat and his cane on the table, and as he did so he recorded a mental resolution not to be led away by the apparent innocence and sweetness of this woman. What a fool he had been, to expect her to appear in the guise of some forward and giggling coquette, as if Frank Lavender, with all his faults, could have suffered anything like coarseness of manners! But was this woman any the less dangerous that she was refined and courteous, and had the speech and bearing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... ["La Coquette corrigee. Comedie par Mr. Delanoue, 1756." In his journal of February 15, 1851, after quoting the couplet, Macaulay adds: "Odd that two lines of a damned play, and, it should seem, a justly damned play, should have lived near a ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... in charge to you?" Laura said, looking up into Mr. Pynsent's face, and dropping her eyes instantly, like a guilty little story-telling coquette. ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... objected to Robin that he is noisy and demonstrative; he hurries away or rises to a branch with an angry note, and flirts his wings in ill-bred suspicion. The thrasher, or red thrush, sneaks and skulks like a culprit, hiding in the densest alders; the catbird is a coquette and a flirt, as well as a sort of female Paul Pry; and the chewink shows his inhospitality by espying your movements like a detective. The wood thrush has none of these underbred traits. He regards me unsuspiciously, or avoids ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... head of Ucatella, grand before, became the head of the Sphinx, encircled with a coronet of fire. She bestowed a look of rapturous gratitude on Staines, and then glided away, like the stately Juno, to admire herself in the nearest glass like any other coquette, black, brown, ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... seriously," cried Niel Andreevich insistently. "I am going to woo you in earnest. I need a housekeeper, a modest woman, who is no coquette, and has no taste for finery, who never glances at another man, and ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... with our best attempts at civility: the master himself avoided offending him, knowing why he came; and if he could not be gracious, kept out of the way. I rather think his appearance there was distasteful to Catherine; she was not artful, never played the coquette, and had evidently an objection to her two friends meeting at all; for when Heathcliff expressed contempt of Linton in his presence, she could not half coincide, as she did in his absence; and when Linton evinced disgust and antipathy to Heathcliff, she dared not treat his sentiments with ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... scientific hypotheses, artistic methods, scholarly attainments—to the Divine. The Pornic fair has become the Venice carnival, and this has grown to the vision of man's life, in which the wanton and coquette named a philosophy or a theology has replaced the gipsy in tricot. The speaker misapplies to love and the truths obtained by love Browning's doctrine concerning knowledge. And yet, even so, he is forced to confess, however inconsistent his action may be with his belief, that the permanent—which ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... silver one, which had belonged, ages ago, to some coquette of Memphis—denied this uncomplimentary thought, for Mrs. Jasher did not look a day over thirty, although her birth certificate set her down as forty-five. In the lamplight she might have passed for ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... teasing the girl about her popularity, assuming, as an old friend, a whimsically injured tone. She could never be sure how much or little his speeches meant, but, being an outrageous little coquette herself, she seldom put much confidence in ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... feelings. There was now a rival in the field, and one by no means to be despised; but, although young de Vaux was good-looking, agreeable, and very much in love, Jane did not seem disposed to smile upon him. To do her justice, she was no coquette; she was too indolent by nature, to labour very hard to secure several conquests at the same time. Miss Graham was very much admired, however, and was generally proclaimed the beauty of the season; while Harry soon began to feel the vanity of the ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... yearning tenderness, for whenever his children were in trouble, it always seemed to him that his fair young wife stood at his elbow inciting him to gentleness. "I don't understand, but I must. Why should two heady young fools quarrel over my little girl? She is no coquette, I'm sure." ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... her perfect face dividing their rippling flow she looked like some immaculate saint of legend being led to martyrdom. Rowland's eyes presumably betrayed his admiration, but her own manifested no consciousness of it. If Christina was a coquette, as the remarkable timeliness of this incident might have suggested, she was not ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... own country dwells in our hearts as well as on our tongues." Ah! never may I lose the Border accent! "Love's Miracle! To cure a coquette." "Most honest women are tired of their task," says this unbeliever. And the others? Are they never aweary? The Duke is his own best critic after all, when he says: "The greatest fault of a penetrating wit is going beyond the mark." Beyond the mark he frequently ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... the coquette, you mean, as my dear aunt did before me," answered Bertha, merrily. "No, indeed, aunt, that may have done in your day, but it does not suit ours. We, of the present time, do not wear nets for the express purpose of ensnaring the admiration of young ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... watching now as he followed her to her seat, dropped to the one beside her, and bent absorbedly over her again, pale, agitated, and they saw her speaking, saw him vehemently pleading, saw him prevailing, for his pallor and emotion lent force to his impassioned words. Practised belle, coquette, flirt she might have been, but the woman is rare indeed who can utterly disbelieve, in face of such a combination, that she at least is loved. Stella's impassioned letters once lay in unbroken packages upon his mantel. Another star had risen and set, and sent its missives only to ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... the pioneer, champion, incomparable coquette of the ancient world, and as such deserves our ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... displaying it to others, but in the enthusiastic consciousness that we possess it ourselves. And yet these high accomplishments were mixed with an air of rusticity and harebrained vivacity, which seemed rather to belong to some village maid, the coquette of the ring around the Maypole, than to the high-bred descendant of an ancient baron. A touch of audacity, altogether short of effrontery, and far less approaching to vulgarity, gave as it were a wildness to all that she did; and Mary, while defending her ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... found himself day after day more and more bewildered by Hetty. She had adopted towards him a uniform manner of cordial familiarity, which had in it, however, no shade of intimacy. If Hetty had been the veriest coquette living, she could not have devised a more effectual charm to a man of Eben Williams's temperament. He had come out unscathed from many sieges which had been laid to him by women. He knew very well the ordinary methods, the atmosphere of the ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... gone he felt lonely, and began to tire of his lady-love. "She has no conversation," he said, "and I am afraid that she is a coquette, for she is always flirting with the wind." And certainly, whenever the wind blew, the Reed made the most graceful curtseys. "I admit that she is domestic," he continued, "but I love travelling, and my wife, consequently, should love ...
— The Happy Prince and Other Tales • Oscar Wilde
... A coquette loves by calculation, Tattiana's love was quite sincere, A love which knew no limitation, Even as the love of children dear. She did not think "procrastination Enhances love in estimation And thus secures the prey we seek. His vanity first ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... pretty, and the brown line, so clearly traced, gave such a pleasing idea of her youth and charm, that the observer, seeing her bent over her work, and unmoved by any sound, was inclined to think of her as a coquette. Such inviting promise had excited the interest of more than one young man, who turned round in the vain hope of seeing ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... young coquette began to describe the lovers about whom all the women of her acquaintance raved; there was not a single man of intellect ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... fair Daphne, the village coquette, As women to splendour were never blind yet, He resolved with his grandeur to strike her; So he bought a new buggy, where, girt in a wreath, Were his arms, pills, and pestle—this motto beneath— "Ego opifer per ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various
... objected to Robin that he is noisy and demonstrative; he hurries away or rises to a branch with an angry note, and flirts his wings in ill-bred suspicion. The Mavis, or Red Thrush, sneaks and skulks like a culprit, hiding in the densest Alders; the Cat-Bird is a coquette and a flirt, as well as a sort of female Paul Pry; and the Chewink shows his inhospitality by espying your movements like a Japanese. The Wood-Thrush has none of these under-bred traits. He regards me unsuspiciously, or avoids me with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... brisk and airy. Men should beware of being captivated by a kind of savage philosophy, women by a thoughtless gallantry. Where these precautions are not observed, the man often degenerates into a Cynick, the woman into a coquette; the man grows sullen and morose, the ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... je sais vieillir: she dwells frequently but naturally on her age: she contemplates the approach of death with firmness and without self-deception: and her elasticity of spirit never for a moment suggests the image of an antiquated coquette. Of the seven letters in question, the one cited as most compromising is the sixth, in which Conway is exhorted to bear patiently a rebuff he had just received ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi |
