"Piquancy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... when he finds it out!' said another. But, as Taylor had offended them, the suggestion added piquancy to the notion. And so before they separated each pledged himself to join the new swatting club. It was not an elegant name for a party of students to call themselves, but the object of the combination was good, and was warmly commended ...
— That Scholarship Boy • Emma Leslie
... Her gayety and piquancy had given place to a gentle shyness. Clay let the burden of conversation fall upon her. He knew that he had come to his hour of hours and his soul was wrapped ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... sense to the main doctrine, though he stated explicitly some reserves already implicitly involved. A writer must not be surprised if popular readers remember the unguarded and dogmatic utterances which give piquancy to a theory, and overlook the latent qualifications which, when fully expressed, make it approximate to a commonplace. The political bearing of his reasoning is significant. The application of Godwin's theories of equality would necessarily, as he urges, stimulate an excessive ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... to be the author of that strange letter, M. Bourget? Indeed I do not. I believe it to have been surreptitiously inserted by your amanuensis when your back was turned. I think he did it with a good motive, expecting it to add force and piquancy to your article, but it does not reflect your nature, and I know it will grieve you when you see it. I also think he interlarded many other things which you will disapprove of when you see them. I am certain that all the harsh names discharged at me come from him, not you. No doubt ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... deficiency of local colour and loss of effect in the grouping of the characters is more than compensated for by the racy piquancy of Dick Marston's vernacular, and the aspect, unrivalled in Australian literature, which his account affords of bushranging life from the bushranger's own point of view. In the truth with which this view is presented lies ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... quantity of strong, clear, highly-flavoured stock of a greenish-brown colour. The colour can be obtained by boiling some winter greens or spinach along with the other things. A few chopped gherkins, capers, or chillies will give the required piquancy. Have 4 ozs. tapioca soaked overnight, add to the boiling stock and cook gently till perfectly clear. Some small quenelles may be poached separately and put ...
— Reform Cookery Book (4th edition) - Up-To-Date Health Cookery for the Twentieth Century. • Mrs. Mill
... however, I could feel the warmth of her, could catch the delicacy of the perfume she used. I noted the play of her slender fingers, the trimness of her ankle, the piquancy of a nose revealed to ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... other can be separated from her. The Muse of Aristophanes and of Plautus can never be denied the honour of sprightliness, animation, and invention; nor that of Menander and Terence the praise of nature and of delicacy; to that of Moliere must be allowed the happy secret of uniting all the piquancy of the former, with a peculiar art which they did not know. Of these three sorts of merit, let us show to each the justice that is due, let us, in each, separate the pure and the true, from the false gold, without approving or condemning either the one or the other, in the gross. If we ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... the Devotee Prince (vol. v. iii) and the whole Tale of Azizah (vol. ii. 298), whose angelic love is set off by the sensuality and selfishness of her more fortunate rivals. A new note of absolutely tragic dignity seems to be struck in the Sweep and the Noble Lady (vol. iv. 125), showing the piquancy of sentiment which can be evolved from the common and the unclean. The pretty conceit of the Lute (vol. v. 244) is afterwards carried out in the Song (vol. viii. 281), which is a masterpiece of originality[FN294] and (in the Arabic) of exquisite tenderness and poetic melancholy, the wail ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... to me,—and, to say the truth, it added an indefinable piquancy to the scene,—what proportion of all these people, whether soldiers or civilians, were true at heart to the Union, and what part were tainted, more or less, with treasonable sympathies and wishes, even if such had never blossomed into purpose. Traitors there were ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... expeditions like a boy. They were his holidays, relished all the more because he kept a jealous account of them with his conscience. He sauntered along, now throwing a cunning and effectual fly, now resting, smoking, and chattering, as the fancy took him. He found a great deal of the old stimulus and piquancy in Langham's society, but there was an occasional irritability in his companion, especially towards himself personally, which puzzled him. After a while, indeed, he began to feel himself the unreasonably cheerful person which he evidently appeared ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... nights and things of that sort. In New York, the least snobbish of great cities, a man need have but a dress suit and car-fare—if he be the right kind of a man, of course—to go anywhere and hold up his head with the best. In a place so universally rich, there is even a certain piquancy in being a pauper. The Grossenstecks were overcome to think I shined my own shoes, and had to calculate my shirts, and the fact that I was no longer young (that's the modern formula for forty), and ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... wandering up through some strange and unfamiliar place, led by a sort of instinct which habit soon furnishes! In some of the French 'Guides,' minute directions are given for the explorer, who is bidden to take the street to right or to left, after leaving the station, etc. But there is a piquancy in this uncertainty as compared with the odious guidance of the laquais de place. I loathe the tribe. Here was to be clearly noted the languid, lazy French town where nothing seemed to be doing, but everyone appeared to be comfortable—'the ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... exaggerated form of statement, and is used to magnify or diminish an object. It is quite natural, under the impulse of strong emotion or imagination, to use exaggerated statements, and frequently it serves to lend piquancy and force to style. But this tendency is dangerous, and should be kept under restraint. As a rule it is best to see and describe things as they are. The following from "Julius Caesar" will serve as ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... discovering the old Chinese poetry and painting, we are finding that Natural Magic is really far more Chinese than Celtic—that where we Celts have vibrated to it minorly, the great Chinese gave it out fully and grandly—does it not add to the piquancy ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... it. Perhaps there was some pride in the confession,— the pride of poverty that will not be ashamed of itself. But if Maggie had been the queen of coquettes she could hardly have invented a means of giving greater piquancy to her beauty in Stephen's eyes; I am not sure that the quiet admission of plain sewing and poverty would have done alone, but assisted by the beauty, they made Maggie more unlike other women even than she had ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... slowly. "I don't quite say that, but it puts a new face on the question. You see, it will be awkward for me to oppose a man in politics whom, less than two years ago, I practically sent to gaol. Still, it gives a certain piquancy to the situation. Does he know much about politics, ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... better and followed the worse. His talents made him a welcome guest at great men's tables, where he paid for his dinner by amusing the company with a brilliant succession of witticisms and indecent anecdotes, which, to his hearers, derived an additional piquancy from the fact that they proceeded from the mouth of a divine. But although the man was in many respects contemptible, although he disgraced his priestly character by his profligacy, and his literary character by a shameless plagiarism,[189] he possessed in a high degree a ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... the bleak wind the walk on the crisp track was enjoyable enough; the "strange eyes," being now on a line with and not confronting her, were less embarrassing, and the slight awe she still felt of him only gave a piquancy to the companionship. ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... as attractive as those of Lucerne, and gave an air of modernity and civilisation to the little place, which would have been out of the picture, had it not contrived to suggest the piquancy of contrast. The Boy spent a hundred francs for a silver chamois poised upon the apex of a perilous peak of uncut amethysts, mounted on ebony, and I was witty at the expense of his purchase, likening it to the white elephant of Instantaneous Breakfasts et Cie., which I had ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... emotion, and with imploring eyes she jigged impatiently just in front of me. Her hair was tumbled bewitchingly on her shoulders, and even the loss of a front tooth—a loss incidental to her age—seemed but to add a piquancy to ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... practical, imaginative; the most profound and beautiful thoughts drop from them as things too common and familiar to be spoken with the least emphasis: they are strong, tender, and sweet, yet never without a sufficient infusion of brisk natural acid and piquancy to keep their sweetness from palling on the taste: they are full of fresh, healthy sentiment, but never at all touched with sentimentality: the soul of romance works mightily within them, yet never betrays ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... funds in the treasury upon which they are drawn. Colleges and good-for-nothing smoking-clubs are the places where these conversational fungi spring up most luxuriantly. Don't think I undervalue the proper use and application of a cant word or phrase. It adds piquancy to conversation, as a mushroom does to a sauce. But it is no better than a toadstool, odious to the sense and poisonous to the intellect, when it spawns itself all over the talk of men and youths capable of talking, as it sometimes does. As we hear flash phraseology, it is commonly the dishwater ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Imp was the one person whose presence he was ready to endure. Indeed there would perhaps be a piquancy ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... remembers one of Landor's pet grievances, and the unlucky Rousseau has to discuss a question for which few people could be more ludicrously unfit—the details of a plan for reforming the institution of English justices of the peace. The grave dignity with which the subject is introduced gives additional piquancy to the absurdity. An occasional laugh at Landor is the more valuable because, to say the truth, one is not very likely to laugh with him. Nothing is more difficult for an author—as Landor himself observes in reference to Milton—than ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... to see the hanging. In those days there were hangings so many after assizes that an execution could hardly be said to possess the interest of novelty. But there were circumstances enough attending the forthcoming show to give it quite a piquancy of its own in the eyes of the worthy Lancastrian burghers, who hurried with wives and children to the place of doom, anxious to secure sitting or standing room with a good view ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... self-denial was meant only for the simple poblanos and the simpler peons of the settlement. At the dinner-table it was occasionally assumed by one or the other, but only by way of joke,—to give point and piquancy to the relation of some adventure. In the midst of the conversation, which had grown somewhat general and confused, a name was pronounced which produced a momentary silence. That name ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... war he had enjoyed these last two years more than any of the ten since he built "Charmleigh" and settled down to semi-rural domesticity with his young wife. There had been a certain piquancy, a savour added to existence, by the country's peril, and all the public service and sacrifice it demanded. His chauffeur was gone, and one gardener did the work of three. He enjoyed-positively enjoyed, his committee work; even the serious decline of business and increase of taxation ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... she found herself when she awakened, stiff from her cramped position. She slipped at once to the floor and sat there drying her lace skirts, the sweet piquancy of her childish face set out by the leaping fire-glow that lit and shadowed her delicate coloring. Outside in the gray darkness raged the death from which he had snatched her by a miracle. Beyond—a million miles ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... germinated in his mind. It was only a seed at first, then it began to grow and had now assumed a definite shape. At first he had toyed with it, viewed it from different angles as something fantastic and irrelevant, but nevertheless having a piquancy of its own. Then his ill-luck and that necessary facing of the situation made him regard it more closely, compelled him to award it a serious consideration. He did not like it; it had almost no point of appeal; it was not the sort ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... the province, and the tone being thus determined, I betook myself to ordinary induction, with the view of obtaining some artistic piquancy which might serve me as a key-note in the construction of the poem—some pivot upon which the whole structure might turn. In carefully thinking over all the usual artistic effects—or more properly points, in the theatrical ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... at Chicago, are many pleasant people, drawn together from all parts of the world. A resident here would find great piquancy in the associations,—those he met having such dissimilar histories and topics. And several persons I saw evidently transplanted from the most refined circles to be met in this country. There are lures enough in the West for people of all kinds;—the enthusiast and the cunning ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... flannel shirt was laced up in front, and had a full, broad collar turned over a red necktie with long ends. His slouch-hat was set on the back of his head. The gleaming butts of two pistols that peeped out of his waistband gave a touch of piquancy to his appearance. His black eyes were restless and sparkling with excitement. He wavered slightly in his gait, and his speech was just thick enough to confirm what his appearance suggested, and what he was careful to declare somewhat superfluously, ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... piquancy was given to Mr. DU MAURIER'S part by his broken English. "Broken" is perhaps not quite the word, unless we may speak of a torrent as being broken by pebbles in its bed. There were momentary hesitancies, and a few easy French words, such ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... mind put an end to the jeremiads of the noblesse. Great natures are prone to make a virtue of misfortune; and there is something irresistibly attractive about well-doing when persisted in through evil report; innocence has the piquancy ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... The piquancy about natural or other forms thus reduced to angularity argues, of course, no affectation of quaintness on the part of the worker, but was the unavoidable outcome of her way of work. There is a pronounced ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... a hat," he continued, in language of matchless force and piquancy. "Bend her; she'll about fit you. I dropped across her one day ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... following instead of prophesying a storm. When it became absolutely necessary for one Madigan twin to be "mad" at the other, and yet that the business of playing be uninterrupted, the Smith twins invariably made their appearance. They were supposed to save one's dignity; in reality, they lent piquancy to games and rendered ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... far the result has been satisfactory. In Alsace-Lorraine no one can help being struck with the fine appearance of the people. The men are tall, handsome, and well made, the women graceful and often exceedingly lovely, French piquancy and symmetrical proportions combined with Teutonic fairness of complexion, blonde ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... read and what was the view before his bodily eyes. His first reading of 'Paul and Virginia' is associated with an inn at Bridgewater; and at another old-fashioned inn he tells how the rustic fare and the quaint architecture gave additional piquancy to Congreve's wit. He remembers, too, the spot at which he first read Mrs. Inchbald's 'Simple Story;' how he walked out to escape from one of the tenderest parts, in order to return again ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... There was a piquancy about these libels on the dead which we cannot understand, but which we may contrast with the less dishonourable process known to modern historians as "whitewashing." Just as Tiberius and Henry VIII. have been rescued ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... activities, and to welcome volume after volume from his prolific pen. Mr. Kegan Paul, essayist, critic, editor, and ex-clergyman, was always an interesting figure; and his successive transitions from Tractarianism to Latitudinarianism, and from Agnosticism to Ultramontanism, gave a peculiar piquancy to his utterances on religion. He deserves remembrance on two quite different scores—one, that he was the first publisher to study prettiness in the production of even cheap books; and the other, that he was an early and enthusiastic ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... often been regarded as merely a writer of doggerel, which is assuredly not lacking in his Hundred (later Five Hundred) Points of Husbandry (1557-1573). But he has some piquancy of phrase, and is particularly noticeable for the variety, and to a certain extent the accomplishment, of his prosodic experiments—a point of much importance for ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... an onion? Well, for the simple reason that though an onion is one of the most valuable of all vegetables, though it is the finest of relishes, though it has added piquancy to a thousand feasts, yet nobody praises the onion. Of course you know the author is right here. You may have read some great poetry in your time, poems on daffodils, violets, roses, daisies. Even you have known a great poet who could write about ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... Fontenelle," said one of his lady friends to him, placing her hand on his heart, "the brain is there likewise." Fontenelle smiled and made no reply. We see here, even with an academician, how truths are forced down, a drop of acid in a sugar-plum; the whole so thoroughly intermingled that the piquancy of the flavor only enhances its sweetness. Night after night, in each drawing-room, sugar-plums of this description are served up, two or three along with the drop of acidity, all the rest not less exquisite, but possessing ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... daughter of the duke, who, unfortunately for her own happiness, married my Lord Chesterfield at the Hague, when, a few months before the restoration, that nobleman fled to the continent to escape the consequences of Francis Woolley's murder. In Lely's picture of the young Countess of Chesterfield, her piquancy attracts at a glance, whilst her beauty charms on examination. Her cousin, Anthony Hamilton, describes her as having large blue eyes, very tempting and alluring, a complexion extremely fair, and a heart "ever open to tender sentiments," ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... with the contents of the letter she was reading. It was from a niece at a boarding-school, who proposed, in a brief and direct way, to visit this aunt during her coming vacation. The tableau was acted so well, and with such piquancy, that claps and peals of laughter from the audience, and finally calls for "Kate Underwood," who demurely makes her appearance from behind the curtain, drops a stage courtesy, and disappears. The poem had been (this audience constituting the judges) excellent, the very best ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... very little fellow then. One morning my father, lifting me upon his knees, as he was in the habit of doing, smiled at me with that slightly ironical smile which gave a certain piquancy to his perpetual gentleness of manner. As I sat on his knee, playing with his long white hair, he told me something which I did not understand very well, but which interested me very much, for the simple reason that it was mysterious to me. ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... piquancy to the sauce. How many very wantonly pleasant sports spring from the most decent and modest language of the works on love? Pleasure itself seeks to be heightened with pain; it is much sweeter when it smarts and has the skin rippled. ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... Rachel was a very handsome girl, rather like himself in feature, but with more refinement of aspect and more thoughtfulness of disposition. This thoughtfulness gave a depth to her eyes and a piquancy to her talk which Tom noted with surprise and admiration; and he was well pleased that both his home and his womenfolk pleased his friend ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... a little glow of natural fervour, which brought the colour to her cheek and the moisture to her eyes. She was not of the disposition to give either thanks or confidence by halves; and even the slight not unpleasant sense of danger which gave piquancy to this interview, made her resolute to express herself fully. She would not suffer herself to stint her gratitude because of the sweet suspicion which would not be quite silenced, that possibly Mr Wentworth looked for something better ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... the glance, as he admitted willingly enough afterward. She was the dainty type, with fluffy bright brown hair, eyes the color of wood violets, a nose tilted to the precise angle of bewitching piquancy, and the adorable mouth and chin familiarized to two continents by the artistic pen of the Apostle of the American Girl. How he could have ridden within arm's reach of her through all the daylight hours of a long summer day remained as ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... and through, and while her father-in-law might love her, and see her beauty and charm with all the rest of the world, Harriet knew that she must begin an actual campaign for his esteem on her wedding day. The prospect had an unexpected piquancy. She had little fear of its outcome. She would make Ward Carter a wife for whom his father must come to feel genuine gratitude and devotion. Every fibre of her being would be strained to make the Carter marriage a success. She knew what persons to cultivate, and what elements to weed out of ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... sensibilities of its auditors. One point which can be sacrificed without detriment to the music and at only a trifling cost to the comedy (even when it is looked upon from the viewpoint which prevailed in Europe at the period of its creation) is that which Beaumarchais relied on chiefly to add piquancy to the conduct of the Count. Almaviva, we are given to understand, on his marriage with Rosina had voluntarily abandoned an ancient seignorial right, described by Susanna as "certe mezz' ore che il diritto feudale," but is desirous of reviving the practice in the case of the Countess's ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... a model household; and rode, and drove, and walked, and fished, and sketched, as a large family of brothers and sisters might do - perhaps with a little more piquancy than is generally ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... making the deception an unintended one. John Tempest, who in the hardships of his escape has lost memory of his own identity, never ceases to protest that he is at least not the other John for whom the members of the Seneschal family persist in taking him—a twist that makes for piquancy if hardly for added probability. However, the inevitable solution of the problem provides a story entertaining enough, though not, I think, one that will obliterate your memory of others, incomparable, from hands to which we all owe a debt of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... History. Then warmed with her subject, delighting in all the political and historical details, she would take the book from their hands, and enter into long discussions, her strong whig principles startling the two bred and born tory girls into sufficient argument and opposition to give piquancy and eloquence to her words as they flowed rapidly from her lips. During these periods, Gatty, who only cared to get done as quick as possible what she was obliged to do, and thought all these digressions a great bore, employed her idle ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... mood, or one is not charmed even by great beauty. So your perfect room must not be kept too rigidly in one style. To have attraction it must have variety in both line and colour, and reflect the taste of generations of home lovers. The contents of dusty garrets may add piquancy to modern decorations, giving a touch of the unusual which ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... pious ecstasy (and subsequent dejection) over the spiritual light of her eyes. The habitual pose of her pretty fingers accounted for the awkward attentions of at least a score of young men, and the piquancy of her manner attracted, to their certain detriment, all the professional beaus who met her. And yet, a clear-headed literary Bostonian declared that she was better read than some of his distinguished confreres; while a member of Congress excused himself for monopolizing ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... thing, Harry, that to me a broonette has always more fascination than a blonde. It seems—I may be wrong—as though there's more piquancy, more character." ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... meet, you and I; but I'd be sorry to see you go the way you're going. 'Pon my honour I would. You're as pretty a piece of flesh as a man could find on this side of the Atlantic, and what's a sharp tongue but a touch of spice to it? Piquancy, begad, to a fellow like me! . . . And—what's best of all, perhaps—you'd ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... a 'dear little thing,' none of whom would, however, stand a comparison with Maurice; Gilbert was critical upon every one's beauty; and Genevieve was more animated than all, telling anecdotes with great piquancy, and rehearsing the comical Yankee stories she had heard from Captain Ferrars. She had enjoyed with the zest and intensity of a peculiarly congenial temperament, and she seemed not to be able to cease from working off her excitement in repetitions ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fear that had come to him when beneath the menhir's shadow he had watched the opening of her eyes, returned to him. It was not an unpleasant sensation. Rather it added a piquancy to their relationship. But it was distinctly real. She watched the feeding of the monster; and then he came again and stood beside her on ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... contrast with his usual self so bewildering as to banish all sense of proportion in estimating the splendour of his transformation but the singular nobility of his face, with its wise, youthful brow and deep, thoughtful eyes, also added such a curious piquancy to his fashionable attire, that the general effect was little short of startling. It is always so. Dress your scholar, your thinker, your poet, in clothes that Saville Row has carefully designed and carried out for a Society peacock, ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... burden of the war had borne most heavily, concealed hostility to the Constitution and a consolidated government. These were not reflections to be spoken of in debate, but they were not the less cherished, and gave to it piquancy and spirit. There was truth on both ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... were regarded as persons who afforded a certain amount of amusement in return for a certain amount of cash. And on any Wednesday afternoon, Henrick Ibsen and Arthur Roberts would have been equally welcome, as adding piquancy to the small gathering. Had I been compelled to pass my life in such a house, this Philistine attitude might have palled upon me; but, under the circumstances, it refreshed me, and I made use of my welcome, which I believe was ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... "Advertiser" was hardly less prominently displayed. His editorial was the "Courier's" leader, and it appeared verbatim et literatim. He viewed his work with pride and satisfaction; even his ironical editorial "briefs" had, he fancied, something of the piquancy he admired in the paragraphing of the "New York Sun." But his gratification at being able to write "must" matter for both sides of a prominent journal was obscured by the greater joy of being the chief adjutant of the "Courier's" ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... posthumous works in 1754. For though few persons will be inclined to agree with Horace Walpole's opinion that Bolingbroke's 'metaphysical divinity was the best of his writings,' yet the eminence of the writer, the purity and piquancy of his style, the real and extensive learning which he displayed, would, one might have imagined, have awakened a far greater interest in his writings than was actually shown. Very few replies were written to this, the last, and in ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... will, and, in spite of the change in her fortune, had made the first advances. Her doubts about her future interviews had affected him but little; still less, I fear, did he think of the other changes in her character and disposition, for he was of that age when they added only a piquancy and fascination to her—as of one who, in spite of her weakness of nature, was still devoted to him! But he was painfully conscious that this meeting had revived in him all the fears, vague uneasiness, and sense of wrong that had haunted his first ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... in the choice of the cacao beans but also in the selection of spices and essences, for, whilst the fundamental flavour of a chocolate is determined by the blend of beans and the method of manufacture, the piquancy and special character are often obtained by the addition of minute quantities of flavourings. The point in the manufacture at which the flavour is added is as late as possible so as to avoid the possible ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... though they be slovens by instinct. Her blouse was never clean, but she wore it with an air. Her skirt testified that skillets spit grease; but in it she somehow looked as trim as a trout fly. Even the hole in her stocking gave her piquancy; and she had wonderful black hair, which probably had not been combed properly for a month, and big, crackling black eyes. They told us that one day, a week or two before we came, she had been particularly ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... century: he was familiar with Villon, Pathelin, the Quinze Joies de Mariage, the Cent Nouvelles, the chronicles and the romances, and even earlier works, too, such as the Roman de la Rose. Their words, their turns of expression came naturally to his pen, and added a piquancy and, as it were, a kind of gloss of antique novelty to his work. He fabricated words, too, on Greek and Latin models, with great ease, sometimes audaciously and with needless frequency. These were for him so many means, so many elements of variety. Sometimes he did this in mockery, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... so agreeable, being calm and sunshiny, with a tranquil sea, and yet with a healthful piquancy and vigour in the air, that, contrary to custom, she was tempted forth a second time to walk. On this occasion she was accompanied by Northmour, and they had been but a short while on the beach, when I saw him take forcible possession of her hand. ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the above, echoed the sentiments of many others. There is no meat more "necessary" in the house than good ham. Not only is the meat there in all its nutriment but it is preserved—that is, cured and smoked—in such a way that there is given to it a piquancy which whets the appetite and gives a stimulus to the gastric juices, thus aiding—so the doctors ...
— Armour's Monthly Cook Book, Volume 2, No. 12, October 1913 - A Monthly Magazine of Household Interest • Various
... so agreeable, being calm and sunshiny, with a tranquil sea, and yet with a healthful piquancy and vigor in the air, that, contrary to custom, she was tempted forth a second time to walk. On this occasion she was accompanied by Northmour, and they had been but a short while on the beach, when I saw him take forcible possession of her hand. She struggled, and uttered a cry that was almost ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... the young plants declare these "greens" are as good as spinach. What sacrilege to reduce crisp, glossy, beautiful leaves like these to a slimy mess in a pot! The tender buds, often used in white sauce as a substitute for capers, probably do not give it the same piquancy where piquancy is surely most needed—on boiled mutton, said to be Queen Victoria's favorite dish. Hawked about the streets in tight bunches, the Marsh Marigold blossoms—with half their yellow sepals already dropped—and the fragrant, pearly, pink arbutus ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... greater numbers than usual. The episode of the breaking of Devil, the unexpected return of his Grace of Osmonde, the preparations for the union, had given an extra stimulant to that interest in her ladyship which was ever great enough to need none. Thereunto was added the piquancy of the stories of the noticeable demeanour of Sir John Oxon, of what had seemed to be so plain a rebellion against his fate, and also of my lady's open and cold displeasure at the manner of his bearing himself as a disappointed man who presumed to show anger against that to which he should ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... most familiar, and told for most in her own existence—although it is true that at first his very ignorance, real or assumed, his careless way of treating all intellectual subjects, his indifference to books and pictures, and even nature, had amused and pleased her, giving a piquancy to the physical strength and enjoying manhood, the perpetual activity and state of doing something in which he was. It was not a kind of life which she had ever known before, and it dazzled her with its apparent freedom and fulness, the variety ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... his personages we can still identify, and all of them were once as easily recognizable as those of Mademoiselle de Scudery. This, no doubt, added greatly to the immediate piquancy of the allusions. The interest they would excite may be inferred from the fact that King James, in 1596, wished to have the author prosecuted and punished for his indecent handling of his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, under the name of Duessa.[294] To suit the wider ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... I had fainted on first seeing her purely from the strong impression her person had produced on me. The most prosaic woman likes to believe herself the object of a violent, a poetic passion; and without a grain of romance in her, Bertha had that spirit of intrigue which gave piquancy to the idea that the brother of the man she meant to marry was dying with love and jealousy for her sake. That she meant to marry my brother, was what at that time I did not believe; for though he was assiduous in his attentions to her, and I knew well ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... were safely asleep, letting in the moonlight and a little breeze that smelled keenly of pine woods. Now and then a faint bird-note broke the hush, or the mournful quaver of a screech-owl. The situation was not without picturesque piquancy ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... solicitous about a woman's past than about her future. The point we are aiming at is to bring about a reversal of our system of manners. If we did so we should end, perhaps, by giving to faithful married life all the flavor and the piquancy which women of to-day ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... "How many things."—I have given four of John Maynard's "Twelve Wonders of the World" (cf. pp. 44-5, 69); and, if I am not mistaken, the reader will like to see the remaining eight. There is much freshness and piquancy in these quaint old rhymes, which were written by no less a ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... unusual amount of piquancy. Mr. Maxwell is very pleasant, strong, both physically and mentally, clever and upright, educated at Oxford and Lincoln's Inn, but brought up in the Straits Settlements, of which his father was chief-justice. He is able, combative, dogmatic, ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... after examining her wounds, had not given much hope of her recovery. It was not that de Jars was capable of a lasting love, but Charlotte was young and possessed great beauty, and the romance and mystery surrounding their connection gave it piquancy. Charlotte's disguise, too, which enabled de Jars to conceal his success and yet flaunt it in the face, as it were, of public morality and curiosity, charmed him by its audacity, and above all he was carried ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... some even coming from the shore of the Atlantic, a mile beyond, across the downs, whence other upland square church-towers could be viewed on the sky-line against the grey January heavens. The occasion was in a sense unique, and its piquancy strengthened by that rivalry which is the ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... vast bewildered chaos of Jewish history and biography; and most of the great events of the past, down to the period of the American Revolution, they instinctively attribute to Moses. There is a fine bold confidence in all their citations, however, and the record never loses piquancy in their hands, though strict accuracy may suffer. Thus, one of my captains, last Sunday, heard a colored exhorter at Beaufort proclaim, "Paul may plant, and may polish wid water, but it won't do," in which the sainted Apollos ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... portrait remains unfinished at his sudden departure. I sat for it in a walking-dress, made under his direction—a gown of a peculiar silken stuff, falling into an abundance of small folds, giving me "a certain air of piquancy" which pleases him, but is far enough from my true self. My old Flemish faille, which I shall always ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... gives him, we think, an advantage over any English translator, which more than counterbalances the trifling inaccuracies of phraseology that here and there betray the foreigner, and amount to nothing more than an accent, which is not without its merit of piquancy. In one respect we think he has acted with great discretion, namely, in now and then curtailing the reflections which Guerrazzi has interpolated upon the story to the manifest detriment of its interest and consecutiveness. If Signor Guerrazzi ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... her gaze, and she drew her brow into a little frown. It gave her a curious piquancy, and interested ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... we must suppose, for a brief moment, that Fyodor Pavlovitch, in spite of his parasitic position, was one of the bold and ironical spirits of that progressive epoch, though he was, in fact, an ill-natured buffoon and nothing more. What gave the marriage piquancy was that it was preceded by an elopement, and this greatly captivated Adelaida Ivanovna's fancy. Fyodor Pavlovitch's position at the time made him specially eager for any such enterprise, for he was passionately ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... come? The pines are gold with evening And breathe their old-time fragrance by the sea; You loved so well their spicy exhalation,— So smiled to smell it and old ocean's piquancy; And those weird tales of winds and waves' relation— Could you forget? Will ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... large number of mathematical treatises, the titles only of which are preserved. We gather from one of these titles, 'On irrational lines and solids', that he wrote on irrationals. Democritus realized as fully as Zeno, and expressed with no less piquancy, the difficulty connected with the continuous and the infinitesimal. This appears from his dilemma about the circular base of a cone and a parallel section; the section which he means is a section 'indefinitely near' (as the phrase ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... his presence she was more foolish by far than nature had made her; her piquancy forsook her, and the versatility that rendered her so charmingly absurd was quite gone. But D'Argenton relented, and suspended his ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... suppose Beethoven's name be mentioned. Here is a specimen brick from the sort of material Beethoven anecdotes are made. Call it, for the sake of piquancy, "Beethoven and Esterhazy." ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... had consented to engage this frail, pink-and-ivory biped for an enterprise which lay outside the suburbs of Manhattan. I glanced guiltily at my victim; she sat there, the incarnation of New York piquancy—a translated denizen of the metropolis—a slender spirit of the back offices of sky-scrapers. Why had I lured her hither?—here where the heavy, lavender-tinted breakers thundered on a lost coast; here ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... hand, nodding and smiling to friends-for all seemed friends. She looked very resolute and businesslike in her plain, dark dress, with a dull flame of color at the throat, while the broad hat she wore gave her face a touch of piquancy very charming. Evidently she was in excellent spirits, and laughed and chatted in ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... on the exact place marked in the stone pavement for the guillotine, it gave a sort of peculiar piquancy to the occasion. While the proprietors of the adjacent wine-shops and "zincs" grumbled at the new order of things, the young people were making the best of Mardi ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... barren of those elements of the social picturesque which give piquancy to anecdote. And without anecdote, what is biography, of even history, which is only biography on a larger scale? Clio, though she take airs on herself, and pretend to be "philosophy teaching by example," is, after all, but a gossip who has borrowed Fame's speaking-trumpet, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... weeks passed. Then, one day, a comet of amazing brilliancy shot suddenly into our social orbit, and things happened. That this interesting stellar phenomenon was a Russian grand duke, a nephew of the Czar, but added to the piquancy of ...
— Cupid's Understudy • Edward Salisbury Field
... report is to be taken as anonymous, being an unpublished document of the secret service. To the reader it is left to divine the nationality and personality of its author. Valuable for the light it throws on a great character in a trying situation, the report gains piquancy and interest from the fact that the veil of official secrecy has to be treated with due respect. My unnamed friend has my thanks and deserves those of ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... appearance than before, and will be welcomed by older readers as gladly as its predecessor was greeted by girls and boys. The lavish use the publishers have made of colored plates, woodcuts and photographic reproductions, gives an unwonted piquancy to the printed page, catching the eye as surely as the text engages the mind."—New ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... embarrassment to this pretty piquancy was so instantaneous and so charming that Wallace's face grew luminous with admiration and delight. A smile wreathed his lips, and there came a look into his eyes that made ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... so close to him that her exposed neck was within two feet of him bent in seeming innocence over the tray. With a mischievous laugh he reached over and flipped the hot ashes from his cigar upon her neck. She screamed affectedly and danced about shaking off the ashes. Then with feigned maidenly piquancy and many reproachful glances, she went out laughing ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... animated, of that marvelous sympathy that exists between all phases of life, whether in humanity or in external nature. His natural outbursts of feeling are rare, but delicious as caviare, with a certain quaver of piquancy. 'Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous. The dawn is my Assyria; the sun-set and moon-rise my Paphos and unimaginable realms of faerie; broad noon shall be my England of the senses and the understanding, and night shall be my Germany of mystic philosophy ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a thing, and a generation finds a name for it. The delicacy which prompts a later generation to reject that name is by no means necessarily a result of stricter habits, is far more often due to the flatness which comes of untiring repetition and to the greater piquancy of litotes. I am told that there are, or were, people in America who reject the word 'leg' as a gross word, but they must have found a synonym. So there is not a word in Congreve for which there is not some equivalent expression in contemporary writing. ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... which is only the outward sign of lack of reverence, is responsible for the death of many a fair friendship. Worse still, it is often blighted at the very beginning by the insatiable desire for piquancy in talk, which can forget the sacredness of confidence. "An acquaintance grilled, scored, devilled, and served with mustard and cayenne pepper, excites the appetite; whereas a slice of old friend with currant jelly is but a sickly, unrelishing meat." [2] Nothing is given ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... a moment, you will see that, while it is easy to choose what virtues we would have our wife possess, it is all but impossible to imagine those faults we would desire in her, which I think most lovers would admit add piquancy to the loved one, that fascinating wayward imperfection which ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... Prince des Iles. In the preface to the French translation of this pamphlet, which bears the title of Histoire secrete de la Duchesse de Portsmouth, it is stated that the author desired to give, by these changes of name, some additional piquancy to the revelations contained in his book. According to such chronicle, the father of Louise Querouaille was a wool merchant of Paris. After having realised a moderate fortune in trade, he retired into Brittany, ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... so unexpectedly upon him—had the piquancy of a vision, but its expression was one of confusion and guilt; there were tears on her cheeks; in her hand was a ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... is a kind of emotional pill; we measure it quantitatively, and say that we "know what we like." And doubtless there is something piquant in the quivering produced, for example, by the sight of white innocence fluttering helpless in a grey shadow of lust. So long as the Bible remained a god that piquancy was found in a Massacre of the Innocents; in our own time we find it in a Faust and Gretchen, in the Dore Gallery, or in the Royal Academy. It was a like appreciation of the certain effect of vivid contrasts as powerful ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... the subject of our present chapter. It was this same gift of genius which, whilst it enabled the artist to lend a sentient expression to such unpromising subjects as a barrel, a wig-block, a jug of beer, a pair of bellows, or an oyster, imparted to his drawings a piquancy which has elevated these apparently insignificant designs into perfectly sterling works of art. The reader who is fortunate enough to number amongst his books the first half-dozen volumes of "Bentley's Miscellany" ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... will be found to contain many valuable extracts from New and Costly Works, in almost every class of literature; and the piquancy of the Notes of a Reader may be turned to as a convenient little treasury, into which readers of all tastes may dip with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction—Volume 13 - Index to Vol. 13 • Various
... not to be amused; her repartee was always so unrestrained. She disarmed one by what would have been, in a man, insolent sang-froid: in her it was piquancy, daring. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... neighbor, regardless of all the rest of the guests, as if it were an evil to be silent, or an absurdity to expect that anybody could say any thing worth being listened to by all. Some one has said, with much piquancy, "Lectures are soliloquies reared on the ruins of conversation." Madame Mole suggestively remarks, "At the Hotel Rambouillet conversation was the all-sufficient amusement: we hear of neither cards nor music; for, wizen the habit of changing all thoughts ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... everywhere characteristic of his times, and nowhere more conspicuous than in France. "Soyez piquant, si vous ne pouvez pas etre vrai," was his advice to a fellow artist, Ducreux; and his own work too often shows evidence of the sacrifice of truth to piquancy. His single figures and heads are not, as a class, so true to nature as his compositions, although they are much better known to the public. Scattered far and wide through all the great art galleries of the ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... company was mixed. The establishment provided punch, strong waters and cordials and some of the visitors had indulged themselves without scruple. The effect was seen in the cheeks of matrons and damsels where they were not daubed. It added brilliancy to many an eye—it gave a piquancy and freedom to talk, greatly appreciated by the gallants. As for the dancing, in that crowded room owing to the space monopolised by the prodigious hoops and the general exhilaration, the stately minuet and sarabande were out of the question, and ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... somewhat nauseous-looking meat is disclosed; but no more objectionable in appearance than the substance of a fully ripe passion fruit. The flavour! Ah, the flavour! It surpasseth the delectable oyster. It hath more of the savour and piquancy of the ocean. It clingeth to the palate and purgeth it of grosser tastes. It recalleth the clean and marvellous creature, whose life has been spent in cool coral grottoes, among limestone and the salty essences of the pure and sparkling ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... he was in the pulpit, Dr. Tyng was the prince of platform orators. He had every quality necessary for the sway of a popular audience—fine elocution, marvelous fluency, piquancy, the courage of his convictions and a magnetism that swept all before him. His voice was very clear and penetrating, and he hurled forth his clean-cut sentences like javelins. A more fluent speaker I never heard; not Spurgeon or Henry ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... the glass as she fastened her yellow scrimp old white frock, and sighed. But she did not look so much amiss as she supposed: she was young, slight, and full of subtle character. And with her scarlet coral beads twisted among her dark little turret curls and bows, there was piquancy and attraction in Chrissy. But her first purely disinterested and unbounded pleasure in the gaiety was grievously chequered, and it was to be feared the account she would carry home of her first ball to ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... the last weeks for the arrival of this pale and demure star. Now that she had come their interest in her was keen. Her peculiar reputation for ingeniously tricking Mrs. Bowdler, secretary to Mrs. Grundy, rendered her very piquant, and this piquancy was increased by her ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... legend of the childhood of Moses with just enough mystery mixed in it to give it a perpetual piquancy, we learn that he was brought up an Egyptian, as the son of Pharaoh's daughter, and that it was she who ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... illness of Bishop Reese necessitated his resignation, the Diocese spontaneously turned to Frank Nelson as his successor. There is a certain piquancy in the contemplation of the change that by this time had come over the Diocese. A man who at one time had been distrusted, and branded as radical if not reckless, had so won the respect and affection of his associates ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... weeks had not sufficed to undo the mischief done in seven years, and she was writing simply from a spirit of perversity. There was ample time to do it during her hours of freedom, but the very fact of doing it when she knew full well that she ought to be at work on her German added piquancy to the act. Moreover, the letter was to a boy with whom she had become acquainted while at Miss Carter's, and had kept the acquaintance a most profound secret. Not that she cared specially for the boy, although he was a jolly sort of chap, and had been a pleasant companion during their ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... speech—the sensational arrest—these would of themselves have made excellent themes for reports and leaders. But the personality of the man arrested, and the Big Bow Mystery Battle—as it came to be called—gave additional piquancy to the paragraphs and the posters. The behaviour of Mortlake put the last touch to the picturesqueness of the position. He left the hall when the lights went out, and walked unnoticed and unmolested through pleiads of policemen to the nearest police station, where the superintendent ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... family relations, all couleur de rose,—as it would of course become us to write if we were dealing with the life of a living sovereign,—would not be interesting. No one on going to hear Thackeray lecture on the Georges expected that. There must be some piquancy given, or the lecture would be dull;—and the eulogy of personal virtues can seldom be piquant. It is difficult to speak fittingly of a sovereign, either living or not, long since gone. You can hardly praise ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... a further and worse difficulty is waiting for him when he comes to deal with the incompatibility of the sexes in the matter of moral standards. The thing, of course, has been done once for all by LOUIS STEVENSON in Virginibus Puerisque. But he did it in essay form; here we have the piquancy of personal narrative and dialogue. Husband and wife in turn are responsible for the story, each assuming a partial attitude towards facts and opinions; or else it is one of his old friends (a source of foolish jealousy to the wife) who takes up the tale without warning when ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various
... day before he had thought of Therese. He had all night dreamed and yearned over her image. He saw her again, delightful, but in another manner, and even more desirable than he had imagined in his insomnia; less visionary, of a more vivid piquancy, and also of a mind more mysteriously impenetrable. She was sad; she seemed cold and indifferent. He said to himself that he was nothing to her; that he was becoming importunate and ridiculous. This irritated him. He murmured bitterly in her ear: "I have reflected. ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... wondering how I am ever going to live without them. We shall not see their like again. The new lot—present lot—are splendid fellows. They are probably better soldiers. Certainly they are more uniformly trained. But there was a piquancy about our old scamps in 'K(1)' that was unique—priceless—something the world ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... unsuccessful attempts to obtain the vegetable I wished, I succeeded, by artificial means frequently employed, in growing a small vegetable, combining the flavour of a delicate cream with the piquancy of lemon. ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... eyes lowered and fixed on Clementine's pretty feet. "You do not know, countess, what charm, what unexpected piquancy of mind she has." Then, feeling his courage fail him, he added hastily, "There is not a woman in society, with her mincing airs, that is worth the honest nature ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac |
