"Flirtation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their preliminaries, so much so that my cages, which were kept well-stocked for two summers, provided me with numerous batches of eggs without giving me a single opportunity of catching the males in the least bit of a flirtation. Let ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... whoso opened upon it. In the midst it had a broken fountain, with a marble naiad standing on a shell, and looking saucier than the sculptor meant, from having lost the point of her nose, nymphs and fauns, and shepherds and shepherdesses, her kinsfolk, coquetted in and out among the greenery in flirtation not to be embarrassed by the fracture of an arm, or the casting of a leg or so; one lady had no head, but she was the boldest of all. In this garden there were some mulberry and pomegranate trees, several ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... the ghost of a flirtation. She's all intellect and ambition. I enjoy going there for I'm almost as much at home with her as I ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... through her pocket-holes, went clattering about the dairy, cheese-room, and yard, in high pattens. Charity was some sort of niece of the old lady's, and was consequently free of the farmhouse and garden, into which she could not resist going for the purposes of gossip and flirtation with the heir-apparent, who was a dawdling fellow, never out at work as he ought to have been. The moment Charity had found her cousin, or any other occupation, Tom would slip away; and in a minute shrill cries would be heard from the dairy, "Charity, Charity, ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... faint, of Christ's love for His Church, there must be no unworthiness connected with it; "no inner baseness we would hide;" no marrying for the sake of being married, for the dignity and position, or the worldly advantages it may bring; and there must be no matchmaking or flirtation that a woman need be ashamed of afterwards. "Let the wife see that she reverence her husband," says St. Paul, and the husband must be able to reverence her. And there must be no selfishness, no getting entangled in engagements that must bring ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... which Flint, in his self-satisfied musings, had failed to keep a lookout for. It had struck "The Aquidneck" full (or vice versa, which amounts to the same thing); and here was a pretty pickle. Navigation is like flirtation: all goes smoothly till the shock comes, and then everything capsizes, ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... paint you in this light!" he said, all at once. "That is the dress I love best. Don't wear it often." The remark was slight enough as a pretty speech within the bounds of flirtation, but the tone in which he uttered it meant more, and the girl's womanly instinct told her that the dangerous limit in their "friendship" had been reached. He saw her turn pale. She looked away from him, and swallowed ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... is no need to disguise the fact, since we have it in cold print, that the acquaintance of the couple, begun at Naples in 1794 as a flirtation, developed rapidly, on the lady's side, into a love affair which was only ended by her death. In 1794, when it all began, Lady Bessborough was thirty-two, had been married for fourteen years, and had four children. Granville ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... is the fiancee of Mr. Carysbroke,' said I, very cleverly; 'and I think it was very wicked of you to try and involve me in a flirtation with ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... I, "or miss, there are few things I hold in such abhorrence as flirtation." As I said this I looked at her severely, and she looked at me quizzically. She had gray eyes, which were capable of a great variety of expressions, and her face, suffused by the light of a bantering jocularity, ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... with this, that, or the other man—and the curious thing is that, while she was thus utterly careless, people never did accuse her of flirting. But now she felt in her own heart that she was conscious of some emotion far more deep and serious than a wish for a flirtation; she found that she was in love—in love—in love, and with a man who did not seem to have the faintest thought of being in love with her. She felt, therefore, as if she had to go through this part ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... What had come over her? Jenny asked. Her quick mind realised that Mario Escobar was not answerable for the change since Mario Escobar was miles away at Midhurst. Besides, according to Mr. Harper, this flirtation with Escobar had been going ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... Gertrude had not even allowed her little sister to witness, and the stories grew and grew on that foundation, till every picnic or tennis party that Gertrude had attended that summer, was transformed into a separate flirtation or supplied an ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... thought me and my comrades good enough for a flirtation," said the commercial traveller. "But she looks higher in these days, especially since her namesake in the Spahis joined his regiment at Bel-Abbes. She told me they had found ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... herself with other people's secrets, and kept her own to herself. Yet, after two months of assiduities, she saw with a vague dread in the depths of her soul that M. de Montriveau understood nothing of the subtleties of flirtation after the manner of the Faubourg Saint-Germain; he was taking a Parisienne's ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... duty. There is one question I must ask you, though, and since you refuse to discuss this with me privately you must take the consequences. In justice to yourself I will say that I do not believe you capable of carrying on a vulgar flirtation or intrigue, but remember we knew practically nothing of you when we took you into our home. If you are interested in anyone, if you are secretly engaged, you should tell us and your fiance must present himself here. Willa, is there ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... graceful half-caste, and they danced the maxixe. David glided with Margaret, Landers led out Lucy, and soon the room was filled with whirling couples. A score looked on and sipped champagne, the serving girls trying to fill the orders and lose no moment from flirtation. On the camphor-wood chest four were ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... Krumm! I will abolish Krumm! I will extinguish Krumm!' Now, madame, who is responsible for this? Who had been praising Franziska night and day as the sweetest, gentlest, cleverest girl in the world, until this young man determines to have a flirtation ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... that he and May got no nearer to one another; if the break referred to existed somewhere, its effect was very plain; how could it display itself more strikingly than in making the lady prefer Quisante's weaselly flirtation to the accomplished and enviable homage of Weston Marchmont? And preferred it she had, for one hour of life at least. Fanny felt the anger which we suffer when another shows indifference towards what we should consider great ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... one of the grooms in the stable yard, when the coachman, who had just driven my mother home, announced the historic news. In a few minutes four or five servants - maids and men - came running to the stables to learn particulars, and the peg-top, to my sorrow, had to be abandoned for gossip and flirtation. We were a long way from street criers - indeed, quite out of town. My father's house was in Kensington, a little further west than the present museum. It was completely surrounded by fields and hedges. I mention the fact merely to show to what age definite memory can be authentically assigned. ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... futures, and conducted themselves piously for a week. That is to say, Lew started a flirtation with the Colour-Sergeant's daughter, aged thirteen—'not,' as he explained to Jakin, 'with any intention o' matrimony, but by way o' keepin' my 'and in.' And the black-haired Cris Delighan enjoyed that flirtation more than previous ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... she said, seating herself on the opposite edge of the table, so that she was sufficiently adjacent, and at the requisite angle at which to carry on her flirtation satisfactorily. "Say," she went on, with a down drooping of her eyelids, "why ain't you in there playin' poker? Guess you're missin' heaps o' fun. I wish I was a 'boy.' I wouldn't miss such fun by ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... summer that they do in winter. The rooms of this house are all sunny, and each has a charming ocean or mountain view. It is easy to get there; hard to go away. Arriving from Coronado Beach, I was reminded of the Frenchman who married a quiet little home body after a desperate flirtation with a brilliant society queen full of tyrannical whims and capricious demands. When this was commented on as surprising, he explained that after playing with a squirrel one likes to take a cat in his lap. Really, it is so restful that the building suggests a big yellow tabby purring ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... pause to Russia, Bismarck even indulged in a passing flirtation with England. At the close of 1879, Lord Dufferin, then British ambassador at St. Petersburg, was passing through Berlin, and the Chancellor invited him to his estate at Varzin, and informed him that Russian overtures had been made to France through ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... in the conversation. She held her breath as she awaited his answer. She knew he was no adept at the half-meanings and near-confessions of flirtation, and that she could depend upon his words and actions to ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... to solace his pain by a flirtation with Lady Dumbello on his left. The earl's smiles and the earl's teeth, when he whispered naughty little nothings to pretty young women, were phenomena at which men might marvel. Whatever those naughty nothings were on the present occasion, Lady Dumbello took them all with ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... fallen into one of his reasoning moods, he asked himself whether it was fair to carry the flirtation any further with the girl snuggled beside him. He knew that the hearts of Oriental girls open somewhat more widely to the touch of affection than their Western sisters. And it was not in the nature of women of the East to indulge extensively in the Western form of idle ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... me at the ball, in spite of his protestations at first. Then I saw how easily he was deluded into the belief that I was some other woman, and so the temptation to cozen him further was irresistible. Am I not a good actress? I asked him. I went on to say, with some show of anger, that a quiet flirtation in the gallery was all very well in its way, but when it came to a young man rushing in a frenzy bare-headed into the street after a respectable married woman who had just got into her carriage and was about to drive away, it was too much altogether, and ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... indescribably odious, reminding Sofia of the creature Sturm; he had a laugh like that for her, on the rare occasion when chance propinquity encouraged the Boche to begin one of his uncouth essays in flirtation. ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... she was again settled at the Eyrie, Langdon appeared in Saint X, alleging business at the National Woolens' factories there. He accepted her invitation to stay with her, and devoted himself to Gladys, who took up her flirtation with him precisely where she had dropped it when they bade each the other a mock-mournful good-by five months before. They were so realistic that Pauline came to the satisfying conclusion that her sister-in-law was either in earnest with Langdon or not ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... early Bourbons was in them, they were trained by the same precocious successes, only six years apart in age, and beginning with that hearty mutual aversion which is so often the parent of love, in impulsive natures like theirs. Their flirtation was platonic, but chronic; and whenever poor, heroic, desolate Clemence de Maille was sicker than usual, these cousins were walking side by side in the Tuileries gardens, and dreaming, almost in silence, of what might be, while Mazarin shuddered at the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... Scheveningen lassie entered and greeted me. Alas! I knew but five words of Dutch, and when I thought the matter over I concluded that they were not very appropriate for carrying on a mild flirtation. Still, it's wonderful how much you can do with facial expression. Just before the train started a man entered. He knew English, and with more kindness than knowledge of humanity he offered to act as interpreter. The ass! as if a fellow can tell a girl through an interpreter that ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... cloth disappeared, with a view I believe of putting everybody at ease, and to render the conversation more general. He was desired to set the example, and immediately gave "Miss Markham," who, as I was told, was a single lady of forty, with whom he had carried on a little flirtation. Anneke's turn came next, and she chose to give a sentiment, notwithstanding all Bulstrode's remonstrances, who insisted on a gentleman. He did not succeed, however; Anneke very steadily gave "The Thespian corps of the ——h; may it prove as successful in the arts of peace, ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... all, but I need hardly remind you, Myra, that in England that sort of thing simply 'isn't done.' Besides, yours was no mere flirtation. You set out to fascinate and captivate Don Carlos, to make him fall madly in love with you, and you seem to have succeeded. You admit you ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... well enough what you have been about; it is an old device of young gentlemen who wish to revenge themselves just a little for what they think a slight. Of course you have never given a thought to Miss Doran, who, as you say, would never dream of carrying on a flirtation, for she knows how things are between you and Madeline, and she is a young lady of very proper behaviour. In no case, as you of course understand, could she be so indelicate as anything of this kind would imply. No; but you are vexed with Madeline about some silly little difference, and ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... Madame de Verre, and took his brother back. She was delighted to see him again, and on his part it was evident that he was resolved to make amends for his past neglect and his prolonged absence. Nevertheless, during his stay at the family mansion, he found time to indulge in a flirtation—if nothing worse—with a pretty girl named Anne Allard. Soon after his arrival intelligence reached Saumur of the death of the Madlle de Dauple whom Claude had married in Normandy—an occurrence which seemed to give him the utmost sorrow, but which did not prevent him from marrying ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... wooing: thus I am disposed of. Without a shadow of previous flirtation with any man born of woman—without any of the ups and downs, the ins and outs of an ordinary love-affair, I place my fate in Sir Roger's hands. Henceforth I must have done with all girlish speculations, as to ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... in strict seclusion. One never sees a native woman except heavily veiled under her chudder, much less can a European talk to her. The laws of Persia are so severe that anything in the shape of a flirtation with a Persian lady may cost the life of Juliet or Romeo, or both, and if life is spared, blackmail is ever after levied by the police or by the girl's parents or ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... are wrong. Have I chosen this place for a flirtation? Before, I could not speak; now you must know. There have been many men in my life, Paul; some fools, some not so, but none like you. I have never said, 'I love you.' I say it now. Once you held my hand—you have ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... among the convivial middle class, the undistinguished and over merry, where nobody thought it too great humility to refer to Allan Ramsay and Fergusson as his models. It must be recollected, however, that his second visit to Edinburgh, and what seems in the telling a foolish and almost vulgar flirtation, produced one of the most impassioned and exquisite songs of love and despair which has ever ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... of whisky and boredom. Some day, perhaps, the iniquity of fastening up a small world of people in a ship for six weeks with nothing compulsory to do will dawn upon shipping companies, and the passengers will be forced to work, for their own salvation. On board ship people drift; they drift into flirtation which rapidly becomes either love-making or a sex-problem; they drift into drinking or, if they have no such native weakness, they become ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... music appeared exquisitely tedious in its superficiality. He could rot remain in the hall because of the incorrectness of his attire, and the staircase was blocked, to a timid man, by elegant couples apparently engaged in the act of flirtation. He turned, through a group of attendant waiters, into the passage leading to the small smoking-room which adjoined the discreetly situated bar. This smoking-room, like a club, warm and bright, was empty, but in passing he had caught sight of two mutually affectionate dandies drinking at the splendid ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... to Hycy the accomplished, that he is obliged to propose either match or marriage to every girl he makes love to? What a prosaic world you'd have of it, my dear Mrs. Burke. This, ma'am, is only an agreeable flirtation—not but that it's possible there may be something in the shape of a noose matrimonial dangling in the background. She combines, no doubt, in her unrivalled person, the qualities of Hebe, Venus, and Diana—Hebe in youth, Venus in beauty, and Diana in wisdom; so it's said, but ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... a foolish virgin among the damsels—and there were some foolish ones in those days, though not so many as now—Palmer would begin a flirtation, kept up until he departed. This was only one of the many mean traits of the man that lessened ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... a cigarette, and tried to think of other things. He would send her money, without ever letting her see him. But memories came again. He remembered—it was not so very long ago, for she was more than twenty then—her beginning a flirtation with a boy of fourteen, a cadet of the Corps of Pages who had been staying with them in the country. She had driven the boy half crazy; he had wept in his distraction. Then how she had rebuked her father severely, coldly, and even rudely, when, to put an end to this stupid affair, ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... the object of his affections standing or sitting contentedly with another man and neither of them saying as much as "Boo" to the other. He may, with more equanimity, regard and countenance a genuine flirtation, full of laughter and eye-making. The first time Mr. Blagdon saw them together he thought; the second time he felt; the third time he came forward graciously smiling. The web might be in danger from the beetle; the fly at the point of kicking up her heels and flying gayly ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... what might have happened had the outcome of the day's effort been the reverse of what it was. This is but the account of the race and what the sequel was when Ab swam so far and furiously and well. It was his first flirtation. It was yet to come to him that he should be really in love in the cave ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... heavily veiled, their faces jealously hidden from the eyes of men, except when some giddy girl with a taste for flirtation allowed her veil to slip down as if by accident, and one then, as a general thing, beheld ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... her master drive off that morning she felt as if she must call out to him, "Stop! Don't go!" But she had held her tongue; what business was it of hers? If he were such a fool, well, it would be his own fault. Then her flirtation with Jendrek had made her entirely forget her master, until it all occurred to her again when she saw her mistress in ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... a nice little quiet flirtation with somebody," Martin said, with a significant and warning smile. ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... gathered in the lounge, as had become the custom, to spend an hour or so before bedtime in reading, conversation, dancing, light flirtation and even lighter drinking. Most of the girls, and many of the men, drank only soft drinks. Hilton took one drink per day of avignognac, a fine old brandy. So did de Vaux—the two usually making a ceremony ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... the word for the 'Anniversary day' of a female school—O scion of the male school, I submit). It was, then, the 'anniversary of 'the mill.'' A clergyman from abroad, of superior abilities, was expected to address the graduating class. Row upon row of white-robed maidens smiled in sly flirtation upon rows of admiring eyes in the audience below. Grave school-trustees, ponderous-browed lawyers, the united clergy (the aforesaid Athens boasts some fifteen churches), and last, but not least, the professors and the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... necking, petting, sporting, sparking, hanky-panky; caressing. embrace, salute, kiss, buss, smack, osculation, deosculation^; amorous glances. courtship, wooing, suit, addresses, the soft impeachment; lovemaking; serenading; caterwauling. flirting &c v.; flirtation, gallantry; coquetry. true lover's knot, plighted love; love tale, love token, love letter; billet-doux, valentine. honeymoon; Strephon and Chloe^. V. caress, fondle, pet, dandle; pat, pat on the head, pat on the cheek; chuck under ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of Mosaic creation, The last is the best, and the last shall be first. Through Eve, sayeth Moses, old Adam was cursed; But I cannot agree with you, Moses, that Adam Sinned and fell through the gentle persuasion of madam. The victim, no doubt, of Egyptian flirtation, You mistook your chagrin for divine inspiration, And condemned all the sex without proof or probation, As we rhymsters mistake the moonbeams that elate us For flashes of wit or the holy afflatus, And imagine we ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... proud of it; but immediately afterwards, his mood veered round again to one of bitter resentment. To illustrate the injustice she had been guilty of, and his own long-suffering, he related, at length, the story of his flirtation with Ephie, and the infinite pains he had been at to keep Louise in ignorance of what was happening. He grew very tender with himself as he told it. For, according to him, the whole affair had come about without any assistance of his. "What the ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... with the comedy before we are introduced to this paragon, who enters just after Lady Easy and the maid, Edging, have discovered fresh proofs of his flirtation with Lady Graveairs. Charles is inclined to be philosophical in a blase, tired way, and he says: "How like children do we judge of happiness! When I was stinted in my fortune almost everything was a pleasure to me, because most things then being out of my reach, ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... chiefly at least, for the health of their child Winnie that Guy Bassett was forced to let her and his wife abide permanently in Kensington while he himself continued his Eastern career as a grass-widower. Very naturally, the result was all sorts of trouble. This first took the form of a flirtation, only half serious, with an artful young woman of the type with which Mr. KIPLING has made us familiar. Unfortunately poor Bassett escapes from this emotional frying-pan only to plunge into the fire of a much more scorching attachment. But I will not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 14, 1917 • Various
... Camillo took fright, and, in order to ward off suspicion, began to make his visits to Villela's house more rare. The latter asked him the reason for his prolonged absence. Camillo answered that the cause was a youthful flirtation. Simplicity evolved into cunning. Camillo's absences became longer and longer, and then his visits ceased entirely. Into this course there may have entered a little self-respect,—the idea of diminishing his obligations to the ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... be paid to the man who saw it coming, anticipated it, and determined its fortunes by the creation of such a number of feminine characters from every class in the social scale. And if it be true that he only gave us "their outward husk of wit and raillery and flirtation," if it be true that his interpretation of woman was superficial, that he had no understanding for the soul behind the social mask, for the emotional and passionate current, now a quiet stream, now a raging torrent, beneath the layer of etiquette, his ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... mature couples. Should it happen that a man no longer cares for his wife or a woman for her husband (which seldom befalls) or should they have met with somebody else that they like better, no demoralizing love-intrigue, or guilty flirtation is the consequence; they simply announce their change of feeling to their conjugal half and if the latter still cherishes a sincere attachment for the faithless partner in wedlock he or she will hasten to make the other ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... happy marriages sprang from the acquaintance at Brook Farm. There, in a few weeks or months, a better knowledge could be formed, a truer and more absolute and certain estimate of character, than by years of fashionable flirtation. And here let me add, that the women were always well dressed: there were no party dresses, all shine, lace and glitter, and household wrappers all slouched, torn and drabbled. The situation of woman ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... been general, separated into groups of two or three persons; and in more than one of those composed of the former number, the flashing eye, coquettish smile, and rapidly significant motions of the fan, bespoke the existence of an animated flirtation. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... it," said her sensible friend briskly. "After all, my dear, you don't want to start a flirtation with a sergeant—I mean, it's hardly the ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... commission-merchant, she could not see that her time had been better employed than when in former days she had passed it in flirting with a very agreeable young stock-broker; indeed, there was an evident proof to the contrary, for the flirtation might lead to something—had, in fact, led to marriage; while the philosophy could lead to nothing, unless it were perhaps to another evening of the same kind, because transcendental philosophers are mostly elderly men, usually married, and, when engaged in business, somewhat apt to be sleepy ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... counterbalance these accusations, fables had to be interwoven into history, and history became romance. Moses was thus identified with Hermes, and made out to be the father of Egyptian wisdom. But, if the close acquaintanceship of Hebraism and Hellenism began with a mere flirtation, encouraged by the rulers of the land and kept up by the Jews, who wished to gain the favour of the conquering race and to show themselves and their history in as favourable a light as possible, it soon ended in a serious attachment. The Hebrews made themselves acquainted with ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... no such motives for abstaining from a flirtation with the young girl as those which ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... happened to be tied to men they could not "hold." Isabelle, remembering on one occasion the flashing eyes of the Kentuckian, his passionate denunciation of mere commercialism in public life, felt that there might be some defence for poor Tom Darnell,—even in his flirtation ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... velvet cuffs, and light blue silk lining, is quite a demi-official, small-and-early arrangement. It is compatible with a patronising and somewhat superb flirtation in the verandah; nay, even under the pine-tree beyond the Gurkha sentinel, whence many-twinkling Jakko may be admired, it is compatible with a certain shadow of human sympathy and weakness. An ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... which the family of Colonel Mannering are waiting for the carriage which may or may not arrive by night to bring an unknown man into a princely possession. Yet almost the whole of that thrilling scene consists of a ridiculous conversation about food, and flirtation between a frivolous old lawyer and a fashionable girl. We can say nothing about what makes these scenes, except that the wind bloweth where it listeth, and that here the ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... of this moral coarseness is pointed out in the passage where Capt. Hall says, he never saw a flirtation all the time ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... she behave, Emma?" pursued Mrs. Castleton, who had been absent from the city during the rise and progress of this flirtation, and was now anxious for as much information as could be obtained ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... greatest beauties I 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 ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... head and gave a meaning smile. Her friendship with the signorino had begun when he was a lad and she a charming married woman; like many another friendship, it had begun with a flirtation, and perhaps (who knows?) she thought the ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... men. The conventions of the society in which she moves seem to require that she should be attended during her visits by a cavaliere servente, who is therefore always invited with her. Their pastime is to imitate a flirtation, and to burlesque love, but neither of them is ever deceived into attributing the least reality to this occupation, which is often as harmless as it is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various
... glorified the game of chess as an aid to quiet conjugal love-making. But so far as I know no one has suggested that Canfield—it was Mrs. Ascher's favourite kind of Patience—has ever been used as an excuse for flirtation. No woman, not even if she has eyes of Japanese shape, can look tenderly at a man when she has just buried a valuable two under a pile of kings and queens in her ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... better if you would not be so hypocritical, Captain Wybrow. I am confident there has been some flirtation between you. Miss Sarti, in her position, would never speak to you with the petulance she did last night, if you had not given her some ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... and lively as a flower garden, and fiery, forward, confident young men on the other. In spite of its being a meeting house, we could not swear that glances were never given and returned, and that there was not often as much of an approach to flirtation as the distance and the sobriety of the place would admit. Certain it was, that there was no place where our village coquettes attracted half so many eyes or led ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the woman, even including herself. She knew that what she had seen last night was not the evidence of a mere flirtation or passing fancy, and reproached herself bitterly because she ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... understanding; Nature unkindly frustrated that ambition in rendering her a model of feminine grace. Graham was intimately acquainted with Colonel Morley; and with Mrs. Morley had contracted one of those cordial friendships, which, perfectly free alike from polite flirtation and Platonic attachment, do sometimes spring up between persons of opposite sexes without the slightest danger of changing their honest character into morbid sentimentality or unlawful passion. The Morleys stopped to accost Graham, but the lady had scarcely said three ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... when she thought like Ladislaw than when she thought like Casaubon. It also betrayed her on a matter specially requiring common sense; I mean sex. There is nothing that is so profoundly false as rationalist flirtation. Each sex is trying to be both sexes at once; and the result is a confusion more untruthful than any conventions. This can easily be seen by comparing her with a greater woman who died before the beginning of our present problem. Jane Austen was ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... double meaning in his words. She did not trouble to analyze them. All she knew was that the man's voice conveyed a subtle acknowledgment of her feminine divinity. The resultant thrill of happiness startled, even dismayed her. This incipient flirtation must be put a stop ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... agreeable, Mrs. Creighton engaged in making a conquest of the two gentlemen between whom she rode. Yes, we are obliged to confess the fact; on her part at least, there was nothing wanting to make up a flirtation with Mr. Wyllys. The widow belonged to that class of ladies, whose thirst for admiration really seems insatiable, and who appear anxious to compel all who approach them to feel the effect of their charms. Elinor would have been frightened, ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... had as frequently declined them; she was older than her years; to inexperience she certainly had no claim: and from the very first it was clear to me—if conceited, I cannot pretend that I was also blind—that flirtation was not her object and that marriage was. Yet it was marriage with a purpose that she desired, and that purpose had to do, I felt, with sacrifice. She burned to give her very best, her all, and for my highest welfare. It was in this sense, I got ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... most kind, Mr. Frere, really you are," says Mrs. Vickers, a recollection of her flirtation with a certain young lieutenant, six years before, tinging her cheeks. "It is really most considerate of you. Won't it be nice, Sylvia, to go with Mr. Frere and mamma to ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... amount of information from this book. Born at Charlottetown (Prince Edward Island) in 1798, she was left fatherless at the age of four, and brought up in Scotland by her aunt. Between 1818 and 1820 she may have had a love-affair or flirtation with Carlyle; and in 1824 she married Mr. Bannerman, a commonplace, good-humoured business-man from Aberdeen, who became a Member of Parliament. Mr. Bannerman speculated, lost his fortune, and was consoled with a colonial ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... polo to golf and gossip until the group broke up into flirtation couples. As Sommers was about to stroll off to the beach, Lindsay came out of the dining room and sat down by him with the amiable purpose of giving his young colleague some good social doctrine. He talked ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... relatives. But how came 'the Wanderer' into her circle? Was it by the humid vehicle of AEsthetic Tea, or by the arid one of mere Business? Was it on the hand of Herr Towgood; or of the Gnaedige Frau, who, as ornamental Artist, might sometimes like to promote flirtation, especially for young cynical Nondescripts? To all appearance, it was chiefly by Accident, and the grace ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... my part, utterly refuse to absolve him, even when extenuating circumstances plead in his favor, even when he is carrying on a dangerous flirtation, in which a man tries in vain to keep his balance, not to exceed the limits of the game, any more than at lawn tennis; even when the parts are inverted and a man's adversary is some precocious, curious, seductive ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... painful to observe what bitterness will creep into the heart and manner of really kind girls where a lover is in the case, or even where a common-place dangling sort of flirtation is going forward; this depreciating ill nature, one of the other, is not confined by any means to the fair sex. Young men pick each other to pieces with even more fierceness, but less ingenuity; they deal in a cut-and-hack sort of sarcasm, and do not hesitate to use terms ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... and confined creature in the world! I have been fighting my way up for the last four years, and have not allowed myself the liberty of one flirtation;—not often even the recreation of a natural laugh. And now I shouldn't wonder if I don't find myself falling back a year or two, just because I have allowed you to come and see me on a Sunday morning. When I told Lotta that you were coming, she shook her head at me in dismay. ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... She evidently had a keen sense of the romantic, and hoped for something more tragic than a mere flirtation begotten ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... had so many anxieties that her youthful love of "larks" had been crushed out, she would have "adored" a flirtation with Nelson Smith. It would have been "great fun" to steal him from the pretty beanpole of a girl who would not know how to use her claws in a fight for her man; but as it was, Connie thought only ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... first and hoped that the gleam from her many jewels would light up the path in his search for Truth and a few other things, or whether the Seeker was sought, I do not know. However the flirtation which seems to have no age limit has flourished like a bamboo tree. For once the man was too earnest. Dolly gave heed and promptly attached herself with the persistency of a barnacle to a weather-beaten junk. By devices worthy a finished fisher of men, she holds him to his job of suitor, ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... was acting with duplicity, departing from the line of truth to which, even in her childhood, in the midst of many other faults, she had beautifully and strictly adhered, she might have shrunk back in horror; but where was the harm of a little innocent flirtation? Annie would repeatedly urge, if she fancied a doubt of the propriety of such conduct was rising in her friend's mind, and she was ready with examples of girls of high birth and exemplary virtues who practised it with impunity: it gave a finish to the character of a woman, proved ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... that Lumley Ferrers, flushed with the success of his schemes and projects, entered the room; and his quick eye fell upon that corner, in which he detected what appeared to him a very alarming flirtation between his rich cousin and Ernest Maltravers. He advanced to the spot, and, with his customary frankness, extended ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... go out and shake his hand," muttered Steele. "I'd like to tell him that he isn't the only man who's had an idol broken, and that Mrs. B.'s little flirtation isn't a ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... to his room at the hotel with many conflicting emotions struggling in his heart. Jack Smeaton was evidently a man of strong character, and a flirtation such as he had carried on with Thursa would mean nothing to him—he had probably forgotten it by this time. Couldn't he honestly go back and tell Thursa that one of the church-wardens, to whom the clergyman had sent him for information, ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... Charles's future. No doubt his present suffering was keen, but there was hope for him. Secondly, it was a decidedly "pretty" speech for a ghost, and I am not at all sure that Mivanway was the kind of woman to be averse to a little mild flirtation with the spirit ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... an ingenious talent for original composition. I don't think those entertainments are dangerously exciting to her now; and Heaven forefend that she should write poetry! One shudders to think of what it would he. Well, she was returning to the house after a moonlight flirtation (if you can call it so when it was all on one side). She had been trying to fascinate a stupid, sullen, commercial Orson—a boy not clever, but cunning, who calculated on his share in the bank as a means of procuring him these ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... I couldn't get up a flirtation with her to-night, if I happened to sit next her?" ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... dinner turned upon family topics, to which I was a stranger. There was, however, a great deal of rallying of Master Simon about some gay widow with whom he was accused of having a flirtation. This attack was commenced by the ladies, but it was continued throughout the dinner by the fat-headed old gentleman next the parson with the persevering assiduity of a slow hound, being one of those long-winded jokers who, though rather ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... a loud ironical laugh, a laugh which froze the blood of all the seventeen-year-old pupils who were not without fear or reproach upon the subject of clandestine glances, little notes, or girlish carryings-on in the flirtation line. ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... of unusual vanity as the mainspring in her motives, but if it were only her passion for conquest that made her seek Liszt, she was punished bitterly. In 1834 she captured him, and the preliminary formalities of flirtation were hastily overpassed. But once they were embarked on the maelstrom of passion, they seem to have been of exquisite torment and terror to each other. Liszt fell into a period of atheism which, to his constitutionally religious soul, was agony. As for the comtesse, death ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... no women and no wine! If this city is like the usual Arab towns, there will be neither in sight. But if not, and temptations arise, remember my orders! No drop of any kind of liquor—and no flirtation. I'll deal summarily with any man who forgets himself. There's everything at stake now, in the next hour or two. We can't jeopardize it all for ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... cajoled Mrs. Adams into promising that she would ride to the Hopi ruins with them, as the journey there and back could be made in a day. Alice Weston was aglow with excitement. Of course the young cowboy would be included in the invitation, and Alice premeditated a flirtation, either with that good-looking Mr. Waring or Mrs. Adams's son. It didn't matter much which one; ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... with her three daughters, one of whom was teaching music, and the other two were school-mistresses. A frank, free, mirthful daughter of the landlady, about twenty-four years old, between whom and myself there immediately sprang up a flirtation, which made us both feel rather melancholy when we parted on Tuesday morning. Music in the evening, with a song by a rather pretty, fantastic little mischief of a brunette, about eighteen years old, who has married within a year, and spent the last summer ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... developed from a boy into a young man, and the handsomest young man in Italy; her affection for him became sisterly; she was nearly in love with him. She had no cause for jealousy, for Fabrice, although prone to flirtation, had no affairs of the heart. The word love, as yet, had no meaning ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... across the tombs at the glow in the western sky. Ramblin' Peter—no longer a beardless boy, but a fairly well-grown and good-looking youth—was a constant visitor at the Row. Aggie Wilson had taught him the use of his tongue, but Peter was not the man to use it in idle flirtation—nor Aggie the girl to listen if he had done so. They had both seen too much of the stern side of life to condescend ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... tell you that I attend St. Orgul's evvvv'ry Sunday, and have a husband and child, and am not at all, really, you know. I hope that there has been nothing I said that has given you the idea that I have been looking for a flirtation." ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... took her there so much, for it wasn't. She is just mashed with Harold, while he—well, what can a young man do when a pretty girl—and Mamie is pretty—when she gushes at him all the time? It is a regular flirtation, and everybody knows about it except mother and ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... Stael showed an aptitude for this ignoble aggressiveness towards Napoleon after she had exhausted every form of strategy to allure him into a flirtation with her. She was frequently a sort of magnificent horse-marine who bounced herself into the presence of prominent individuals, thrusting her venomed points on those who had been flattered into listening; at other times she was feline in her methods. ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... actors, and to be moderate in dress. Then, as ever, preachers expressed their horror of the ruinous extravagance of women, their false hair, their rouge, and their dresses that were too long or too short. They also reprobated their love of flirtation. It was, however, in those days a young girl's recognised duty, when a knight arrived in the household, to exercise the rites of hospitality, to disarm him, give him his bath, and if necessary massage him to help him to go to sleep. It is not surprising ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... round the further angle. Paying no heed to this phenomenon, Aristide lit a cigarette and walked, in anticipation of enjoyment, to the great Avenue des Plantanes where the revelry of the Carnival was being held. Aristide was young, he loved flirtation, and flirtation flourished in ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... showed no disinclination, and after breakfast they were to be seen together in the gardens. Hubert was a great catch, and there were other young ladies eager to be agreeable to him; but he did not seem to desire flirtation with any. So they came to speak of him as a very clever man, no doubt; but as they knew nothing about plays, he very probably did not care to talk to them. Hubert was not attractive in general society, and he would soon have ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... met a young lady at the Everett House, where he lived, whose acquaintance was destined to have a marked influence over his subsequent career. This bright, handsome girl attracted his attention so unmistakably that Miss Miller noticed it. A little flirtation took place which ripened into a mutual affection, and they were married without waiting for the parents' approval, probably Gould knew better, as the young lady, at the time was far above his station in life as society would say, hence acted in this ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... watered, that I shall not describe it in detail. Most of the passengers on the steamer were old Californians and assisted in endeavoring to make the time pass pleasantly. There was plenty of whist-playing, story telling, reading, singing, flirtation, and a very large amount of sleeping. So far as I knew, nobody quarreled or manifested any disposition to be riotous. There was one passenger, a heavy, burly Englishman, whose sole occupation was in drinking "arf and arf." He took it on rising, ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... of her stately Southern type. Those big Northern business fellows had often shown a preference for Southern women. Many of them had married poor girls of the South and they had become the leaders of their set. Nan's opportunity for intrigue and flirtation had been boundless, but so far not a whisper about her had ever found its way into the gossip of the scandalmongers of ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... makes each new kiss the first kiss, each new love the only love. This gift was Vernon's, and he had cultivated it so earnestly, so delicately, that except in certain moods when he lost his temper, and with it his control of his impulses, he was able to bring even to a conservatory flirtation something of the fresh emotion ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... sprung up about the manner in which he gained his experience. Of these, most are pure fiction. As a matter of fact, Ibsen was shy with women, and unless they took the initiative, he contented himself with watching them from a distance: and noting their ways in silence. The early flirtation with Miss Rikke Hoist at Bergen, which takes so prominent a place in Ibsen's story mainly because such incidents were extremely rare in it, is a typical instance. If this young girl of sixteen had not taken the matter into her own hands, running up the steps of the hotel and flinging ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... eyes of favor. He saw that her eyes were bright and keen. He was used to judging faces. He saw that she was as yet unspoiled, with a face of refinement far beyond the general run of the girls who applied to him for positions. And he was not beyond a friendly flirtation with a pretty new girl himself; so she was engaged at once, and put on duty ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill |
