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More "Coquetry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... marriage when we were only seven years old? Did I not remember how I would pass her house on my way to school, and stand at the gate and whistle until she came shyly out, with her face as red as her little hood and tippet, and give me her books to carry, and protest with the ever present coquetry of girlhood that she thought I had gone long ago? Could I ever forget how I saved my coppers, one by one, until I had accumulated a sum large enough to buy a whole cocoanut, which I presented to her in the proudest moment of my life, and how the ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... geometric Lady, age now forty-two, with a Great Man who has scandalously ceased to love her, casts her eye upon St. Lambert: 'Yes, you would be the shoeing-horn, Monsieur, if one had time, you fine florid fellow, hardly yet into your thirties—' And tries him with a little coquetry; I always think, perhaps in this view chiefly? And then, at any rate, as he responded, the thing itself became so interesting: 'Our Ulysses-bow, we can still bend it, then, aha! 'And is not that a pretty stag withal, worth bringing down; florid, just entering his thirties, and with the susceptibilities ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... spoils, was by her side, and, having restored her nerves with champagne, proceeded to agitate them again with the warmest protestations of affection. The child with the day's experience before her, only half-believed him, but the spirit of coquetry woke up, and she resolved to try and make him care for her as much as he ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... proprietor of his wife In Rome justice and religion always rank second to politics Kings only desire to be obeyed when they command Laws will only be as so many black lines on white paper Love-affair between Mademoiselle de la Valliere and the King Madame de Montespan had died of an attack of coquetry Not show it off was as if one only possessed a kennel That Which Often It is Best to Ignore Violent passion had changed to mere friendship When women rule their reign is always stormy and troublous Wife: property or of furniture, useful to his house Won ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Court Memoirs of France • David Widger
... every thing successively, that she passed thus, almost in the same instant, from melancholy to gaiety, from profundity to grace—from conversation the most astonishing, by the knowledge and the ideas it displayed, to the coquetry of a woman who seeks to please, and desires to captivate; but there was, even in that coquetry, such perfect nobleness that it imposed as much respect as the ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... entirely unconscious how the incumbent regarded her soft eyes, meek pensiveness, motherly sweetness, and, above all, the refined graceful dignity that remained to her from the leading station she had occupied. Her gracious respect towards her clergyman was a contrast as much to the deferential coquetry of his admirers as to the abruptness of his foe, and her indifference to parish details had even its charm in a world of fussiness; he did not know himself how far a wish of hers would have led him, and she was the last person to guess. She viewed him, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... me?" she exclaimed. "The interest you take in me isn't really controversial—a bit. It's quite personal!" She was the most extraordinary girl; she could speak such words as those without the smallest look of added consciousness coming into her face, without the least supposable intention of coquetry, or any visible purpose of challenging the young ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... moment, and as she lifted her eyes to his something in their shining depths spoke witchingly to the youth of nineteen, untrained in ways of feminine coquetry. He was only a country boy, unskilled in social tactics, but a combination of timidity and good breeding shaped his ideals and ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... purpose on that wilful, high-strung young person, the pique that Gray's frank interest in Mavis brought to life within her, and he was not yet far enough along in the classics to suspect that Marjorie might weary of hearing Aristides called the Just. Nor could he know the spirit of coquetry that lurked deep behind her serious eyes, and was for that reason the ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... If to these she had not added the dangerous desire to please, and the wish to hold other hearts than the royal one she had enslaved, in thraldom, all might, perhaps, have been well. But, alas like many other beautiful women, she had a strong tendency to coquetry. How severely she suffered for it, it is the purpose of this history to relate. An excellent description of her has been given by a contemporary writer, the Comte de Chateaubriand, who, while somewhat disparaging her personal ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... him to make his heroine more true to nature than his theories have allowed him to make his hero. And his theories about girls are quite as good and quite as different from the fashionable practice of his day as those about boys. It is curious how his ideas approach the American customs. A certain coquetry, he says, is allowable in marriageable girls; amusement is their principal business. Married women have the cares of home to occupy them, and have no longer to seek husbands. Rousseau would let the girls appear in public, would take them to balls, entertainments, the theatre. ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... this woman of the East marvels at the women of the West, 'the beautiful worldly women of the West,' whom she sees walking in the Cascine, 'taking the air so consciously attractive in their brilliant toilettes, in the brilliant coquetry of their manner!' She finds them 'a little incomprehensible,' 'profound artists in all the subtle intricacies of fascination,' and asks if these 'incalculable frivolities and vanities and coquetries and caprices' are, to us, an essential part of their charm? And ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... burned. She had been wishing for the coming of a man who would not be clay in her hands. To Circe all men must have been swine, from the start, save the man who could pass by. Now, of a sudden, every wile of coquetry became a lost art to Mary Burton. She felt like an accomplished and intriguing diplomat, facing an adversary who has no secrets to conceal and no interest in the evasions of others. He roused a new eagerness because she knew intuitively that to mere fascination he would surrender ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... art go hand in hand, with little help from fine writing or imposing scenery. Everybody was in the happiest mood, especially 'little Dolly', who danced like a will-o'-the-wisp with light-footed Mercury and Apollo as he promenaded with the Marquise on his arm, who seemed to have left her coquetry in the green room ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... some fine day," Senor Ignacio would say to Leandro, incensed by the cruel coquetry of the maiden, "is to get her into a corner and take all you want.... And then give her a beating and leave her soft as mush. The next day she'd be following you ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... her victims her magnetic glances, commenced by attracting them, little by little, into the blazing whirlwind which seemed to emanate from her; then, seeing them lost, suffering every torment of a tantalized craving, she amused herself by a refinement of coquetry, prolonging their delirium; then, returning to her first instincts, she destroyed them in her homicidal embrace. This was ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... was, thought that she was an angel sent to me by sympathetic fate... Again I was mistaken; the love of a savage is little better than that of your lady of quality, the barbaric ignorance and simplicity of the one weary you as much as the coquetry of the other. I am not saying that I do not love her still; I am grateful to her for a few fairly sweet moments; I would give my life for her—only I am bored with her... Whether I am a fool or a villain I know not; but this is certain, I am also most deserving of pity—perhaps more than she. ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... had not ended in anything serious—except the establishing of a character for coquetry for Virginia—nor had several others which followed ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... I was haunted by the beauty and subtlety of your voice, the unconscious grace of your poses, your little tricks of coquetry, and the ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... most gracious salute to us all, and, glancing at me with a spice of coquetry, to which she was evidently not unaccustomed, was pleased to observe, that I ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... a double circuit of coquetry and slanted off with a suggestive glance at the massive doorway of the Hawker-Sponge mansion, one of the most aristocratically mortgaged ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... he were watching the capricious sparks which mark the progress of a slow match toward a powder-train. Bub Quinn, meanwhile, stood rooted before the girl, while Joe, having possessed himself of the fallen fan, met her coquetry with blandishments of the most undisguised nature. At length, hesitatingly, deprecatingly, she took Quinn's plate, but at the same time she moved along on the bench and offered Joe a seat. He promptly ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... the schools and free from all the guiles of heartless coquetry, an orphan girl in an Indian village, with neither prudery on the one hand, nor hothouse teachings on the other, which turn the heads of so many girls, Astumastao was to herself a riddle which she could not solve—a problem the most difficult ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... Dr. Leete. "There is no more pretense of a concealment of feeling on their part than on the part of their lovers. Coquetry would be as much despised in a girl as in a man. Affected coldness, which in your day rarely deceived a lover, would deceive him wholly now, for no one thinks of ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... sir," said Draxy, as she stepped from the last stair, and standing close in front of him, lifted the new, sweet, softened eyes up to his. Draxy was as simple and sincere in this as in all other emotions and acts of her life. She had no coquetry in her nature. She had no distinct thought either of a new relation between herself and the Elder. She simply felt a new oneness with him; and she could not have understood the suggestion of concealment. If Elder Kinney had been a man of the world, he would have folded ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... her lashes as she glanced at him, asking this question with her lips and a hundred others with her eyes, with her gay air of youth and happiness—with her very attitude of coquetry, as she stood in the spring sunshine, with the scent of the primroses ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... the coquetry of one who knows that his words are of interest, the driver began to look around him with an air of abstraction and to ...
— The Cabman's Story - The Mysteries of a London 'Growler' • Arthur Conan Doyle
... ladies how Huxter had elevated Fanny to the rank of wife, and what terrors he was in respecting the arrival of his father. He described the scene with considerable humour, taking care to dwell especially upon that part of it which concerned Fanny's coquetry and irrepressible desire of captivating mankind; his meaning being, "You see, Laura, I was not so guilty in that little affair; it was the girl who made love to me, and I who resisted. As I am no longer present, the little siren practises her arts and fascinations upon others. Let that transaction ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... father going to die?" said the seventh, laughing and throwing her bouquet to Don Juan with maddening coquetry. She was an innocent young girl who was accustomed to play with ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... house was done, Marius entered softly the room where Varia lay, tended by Nerissa. The old woman slipped away, and Varia held out a slim hand to him in one of her sudden and unaccountable moods of coquetry. He kissed it gallantly. ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... stranger; (Dick, who loved and understood dogs, devoting himself to the task of making himself agreeable to this gentle and beautiful creature;) and she seemed so far reconciled as to suffer his caresses, to lap a little milk when sure that nobody saw her, and even to bridle with instinctive coquetry, when Dash, head and tail up, advanced with a sort of stately and conscious courtesy to examine into the claims of the newcomer. For the first evening all seemed promising; but on the next morning, nobody knew how or when, Chloe eloped to ...
— The Widow's Dog • Mary Russell Mitford
... begun to make hollow her pallid cheeks, and if her abundant hair, in other times the delight and adornment of her person, was even yet simply and neatly arranged, though without pins or combs, it was not from coquetry ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... she was, and not merely because her shoes were off and she could not well get away, but because it was not in her nature not to wish every one to be happy and comfortable. She was as far as any woman can be from coquetry, but she could not see any manner of man without trying to please him. "I'm sorry he's isn't here," she said, and then, as there seemed nothing for him to answer, she ventured, "It's very cold out, ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... effects, of deliberately manipulating her public; and there must indeed have been a certain exhilaration in attaining results so considerable by means involving so little conscious effort. Mrs. Amyot's art was simply an extension of coquetry: she flirted with ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... manner, with eyes, gestures, and a profusion of compliments, till the Colonel's old head felt thirty years younger on his padded shoulders. Edna marveled, not comprehending. She herself was almost devoid of coquetry. ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... the first Sunday after our arrival, and found the rites homely and naked, very much like those of our own Presbyterians. There was a luxury about this building that you would hardly expect to meet among a people so simple, which quite puts the coquetry of our own carpeted, cushioned, closet-like places of worship to shame. This is the summer church of Vevey, another being used for winter. This surpasses the refinement of the Roman ladies, who had their summer and their winter rings, but were satisfied to use the same ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the lady said she did not know how that might be, and she went on toasting the experiment. In all this there is a fine contempt for everything but the spiritual aspect of literature; there is an aversion to the mere coquetry and display of morocco and red letters, and the toys which amuse the minds of men. Where ladies have caught "the Bibliomania," I fancy they have taken this pretty fever from the other sex. But it must be owned that the books they have ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... I went, after seeing her 'Rosiere de Salency,' with the most favourable disposition, but I could not like her.... And from time to time I saw, or thought I saw, through the gloom of her countenance a gleam of coquetry. But my father judges of her much more favourably than I do. She evidently took pains to please him, and he says he is sure she is a person over whose mind he could gain ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... thine eyelids show of Kohl and coquetry! * By what thy shape displays of lissome symmetry! By what thy liplets store of honey dew and wine! * By what thy mind adorns of gracious kindly gree! To me thy sight dream-visioned, O my hope! exceeds * The happiest escape from ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... her beauty which had enchanted him, though, like all Frenchmen, he was a passionate worshipper of the beautiful. The sweet soul in her eyes had touched his heart. Her ignorance had done more to strengthen it than anything she could have done. There was not a spark of coquetry in her whole nature. She listened to his poetic speeches, wondering but believing—wondering how they could be true of her, yet trusting him and all the world too seriously to accuse him ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... on a stem; And he asked that one of them be given him in marriage— He did not care which one it was, but left the choice to them. But, oh, the terror that they felt, their efforts to evade him, With careless art, with coquetry, with wile ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... had never seen such a bewildering disorder of feminine clothes. He had never had the opportunity of noting the pathetic difference existing between the toilette surroundings of a woman who is strong and well, and of one who is deprived of all natural coquetry by the cruel ravages of long sickness and disease. His sister, beautiful even in her incurable physical affliction, had always borne that affliction more or less in mind, and had attired herself with a severely simple taste,—her bedroom, where she had had to pass so many ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... gilliflowers, and Audrey gathered up her apron and filled it with the vivid blooms. The child that had thus brought loaves of bread to a governor's table spread beneath a sugar-tree, with mountains round about, had been no purer of heart, no more innocent of rustic coquetry. When her apron was filled she would have returned to the house, but Haward would not have it so. "They will call when dinner is ready," he said. "I wish to talk to you, little maid. Let us go sit in the shade of ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... and her laugh is silvery. She points to a gay mountaineer, who is tripping up to her merrily. Why does Glyndon feel jealous? Why, when she speaks again, does he shake his head no more? He offers his hand; Fillide blushes, and takes it with a demure coquetry. What! is it so, indeed! They whirl into the noisy circle of the revellers. Ha! ha! is not this better than distilling herbs, and breaking thy brains on Pythagorean numbers? How lightly Fillide bounds along! ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... open seemed all unconscious of what was going on so near them. Nick was gazing upon the woman, his heart laid bare in his eyes. And Aim-sa was smiling up into his face with all the arch coquetry of her sex, with that simple, trusting look which, however guileful, must ever appeal to the ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... charming coquetry!" said the Court ladies, and each tried to keep their mouths full of water so that they might gurgle like the Nightingale when they spoke to anyone. Even the footmen and the ladies' maids expressed their perfect satisfaction, and that was a great deal, for they are ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... unoccupied and uninterested girl into their excitements. Those whose minds are of too active and vivacious a nature to live on without an object, may too easily find one in the dangerous and selfish amusements of coquetry—in the seeking for admiration, and its enjoyment when obtained. The very woman who might have been the most happy herself in the enjoyment of intellectual pursuits, and the most extensively useful to others, is often the one who, ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... to the bedrooms—simpered down on him with encouraging benignity. Prim women, wearing enormously long waists, and their heads a good deal on one side, pointed their fans at him, while he washed his hands, with a coquetry irresistible, had their colours only stood, combining entreaty and command; while a jolly old boy in flowing wig, steel breast-plate, and the most convivial of noses, smiled in his face, as who should say, "Audaces Fortuna juvat!—Go ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... smoking a cigarette, and resting his bare feet upon the dashboard. Behind the curtain of a passing quilez you can catch a glimpse of brown eyes, raven hair, and olive-tinted cheeks, displayed with all the coquetry of a Manila belle. A Filipino family in a rickety cart, tilted at an impossible angle, are drawn by a moth-eaten pony, mostly bones. Public conveyances—if these are not indeed a myth—are most exasperating. You can never find one when you want ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... went into the house; her innocent coquetry more than sufficiently punished already. And we three looked at one another with blank faces, It was clear that we had made a dangerous enemy, and an enemy at our own gates. As the Vidame had said, ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... you, mademoiselle," said D'Artagnan, "what M. de Bragelonne said of you, at Antibes, when he already meditated death: 'If pride and coquetry have misled her, I pardon her while despising her. If love has produced her error, I pardon her, but I swear that no one could have loved her as I ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... marrying resigned his commission, at the earnest entreaties of his wife, and retired to one of her seats, to the enjoyment of ease and domestic love. The countess was enthusiastically attached to him; and as motives for the indulgence of coquetry were wanting, her character became gradually improved by the contemplation of the excellent qualities of ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... by coquetry to a woman who amused herself by playing with fire brought tears to Lucien's eyes; but her first kiss upon his forehead calmed the storm. Decidedly Lucien was a great man, and she meant to form him; she thought of teaching him Italian and German and perfecting his manners. That ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... discouraging either. But Bob Broadley, a literal man, found no warrant for fresh hope in any of the not very significant words which he repeated to himself as he rode home up the valley of the Blent. He suffered under modesty; it needed more than coquetry to convince him that he exercised any attraction over the rich and brilliant (brilliance also is a matter of comparison) Miss Iver, on whose favor Mr Tristram waited and at whose ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... coquetry in Zany's manner now. In a moment she was in Chunk's arms sobbing, "Tek me way off fum dis place. I go wid you now, dis berry minute, en I neber breve easy till we way, way off enywhar, I doan keer whar. Oh, Chunk, you doan know w'at ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... Lucy, with a look of surprise that sadly puzzled me whether to ascribe it to coquetry or ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... the sublime leads to inflation, and affectation of nobleness to preciosity, in the same manner affectation of grace ends in coquetry, and that of dignity ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... refine a little in these speculations, which he had drawn from what he observed himself, or had been told him by others; however, I could not reflect without some amazement, and much sorrow, that the rudiments of lewdness, coquetry, censure, and scandal, should have place by ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... them. Her eyes were fine, and full of coquetry. Her figure was all that a woman's should be. Yes, the camp liked the look of her, and so it set out to give Scipio ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... a flirtation. It behoves a girl then to choose her man carefully, and not to place herself in any false position towards him. If he is not chivalrous enough to take a delicately conveyed hint, he will only imagine that she is playing a more subtle game of coquetry, and by redoubling his attentions make himself the reverse of agreeable. No man with any regard for the most elementary rules of etiquette would either embarrass a lady by keeping up a tone that she had even indirectly ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... of Angle's fluttering farewells on the sidewalk. Josie was lingering on the doorstep in an agony of untrained coquetry. He lowered his tone for her benefit, thereby adding new weight to his bombardment of her ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... there was one, of course, who lagged behind his fellows, with a yearning tenderness in his face that a glance from the girl would have quickly turned to love. But Sara Lee had no coquetry. When, as occasionally happened, there was a bit too much fervor when her hand was kissed, she laid it where it belonged—to loneliness and the spring—and became extremely maternal and very, very kind. Which—both of them—are death blows ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Gallery, next day, she was not late by coquetry, but because she had changed her dress at the last minute, and because she was afraid of letting him think her eager. She saw him at once standing under the colonnade, looking by no means imperturbable, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... complexion be inexcusable, to be ill-painted is unforgivable; and, when the toilet is laden once more with the fulness of its elaboration, we shall hear no more of the proper occupation for women. And think, how sweet an energy, to sit at the mirror of coquetry! See the dear merits of the toilet as shown upon old vases, or upon the walls of Roman ruins, or, rather still, read Boettiger's alluring, scholarly description of 'Morgenscenen im Puttzimmer Einer Reichen Roemerin.' Read of ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... gentleman wore powder; the lady had her dark hair gathered away from her face, and a little cap, with a cherry-coloured bow, set on the top of her head—a coquettish head-dress, but the eyes spoke of sadness rather than of coquetry. ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... In a little while she will have put on the careworn look of the Southern summer. Many a plant now in splendid bloom, animated by the spirit of loveliness that presides over the law of reproduction, will soon be casting its seed and bringing its brief destiny to a close. Now all is coquetry, beauty, and ravishment. The rock-hiving bees, unconscious instruments of a great purpose, are yellow with pollen and laden with honey. They find more, infinitely more, nectar than they can carry away. The days are long, and every hour is full of joy. But already ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... stranger on the opposite side, dropped their garments (I should say garment, to be quite correct) over their limbs, which their occupation exposed somewhat too freely, and, with a shrill exclamation of 'Eh, sirs!' uttered with an accent between modesty and coquetry, sprung off ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... girl, the daughter of a rich general, who could speak three languages, gave away all that her rich brother sent her, and lived like the simplest working girl, and dressed not only simply, but poorly, paying no heed to her appearance. This trait and a complete absence of coquetry was particularly surprising and therefore attractive to Maslova. Maslova could see that Mary Pavlovna knew, and was even pleased to know, that she was handsome, and yet the effect her appearance had on men ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... often relieves me when suffering from that malady; and, on ascending the stairs, I met our landlord's eldest daughter, a tall, graceful girl of twenty. I found she was coming down backwards, which I took to be a mere girlish freak, or perhaps a piece of coquetry, practised on myself: but I afterwards found, that about the time the earth is at the full, the whole family pursued the same course, and were very scrupulous in making their steps in this awkward and inconvenient way, because it was one of the ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... It is full, however, of a grandeur which is more dazzling than genuine; and, indeed, we could expect nothing else from a cento of Lucan's hyperbolical antitheses. These bravuras of rhetoric are strung together on the thread of a clumsy plot. The intrigues of Ptolemy, and the ambitious coquetry of his sister Cleopatra, have a petty and miserable appearance alongside of the picture of the fate of the great Pompey, the vengeance-breathing sorrow of his wife, and the magnanimous compassion of Caesar. Scarcely has ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... and Ambition to Virtue, and become the Protector of that Innocence which he so long and so indefatigably labour'd to supplant: And all this without ever having entertain'd the least previous Design or Thought for that Purpose: No Art used to inflame him, no Coquetry practised to tempt or intice him, and no Prudery or Affectation to tamper with his Passions; but, on the contrary, artless and unpractised in the Wiles of the World, all her Endeavours, and even all her Wishes, tended ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... had been manifested an expression of mingled curiosity, coquetry and banter on Vaudrey's appearance in their midst. His presence in the manager's box had been noticed and his coming to the greenroom expected. Every one had hurried thither. Sulpice was pointed out. He was the cynosure of ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... smile held up his hand, so plainly interposing 'not for better taste', that Bella's colour deepened over the little piece of coquetry she was checked in. ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... "So lonely." And the coquetry faded from her eyes as her glance wandered waterward and became fixed on some object invisible and far ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... jealousy, pugnacity, clannishness, the hunting and predatory instincts, the migratory instinct, love of adventure and the unknown, superstition, the sex instincts, which express themselves in sex-love, vanity, coquetry, modesty; and, closely allied with these, the love of nature and of solitude, and the aesthetic, the religious, and the ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... a trifle appalled by it, if the truth must be told. If Richard had scattered his love-making through the month of her convalescence, or if he had made his avowal in a different mood, perhaps Margaret might have met him with some natural coquetry. But Richard's tone and manner had been such as to suppress any instinct of the kind. His declaration, moreover, had amazed her. Margaret's own feelings had been more or less plain to her that past month, and she ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... which she disregarded the discipline of his house, and grumbled at times over foreign ways and habits that he had no fancy to see under his roof. When she did appear, however, her winning manners, her grace, and a certain half-caressing coquetry she could practise to perfection, so soothed and amused him that he soon forgot any momentary displeasure, and more than once gave up his evening visit to the club at Moate to listen to her as she sang, or hear her sketch off some trait of that Roman society in which British pretension and ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... raising her eyes a moment to mine. The glance was brief, but hinted a coquetry whose natural play would have delighted—well, ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... like one of the old Council of Venice. You try hard to make me fear you," said Beatrice, seeking to escape from the graver kind of impression Harley had made on her, by the affectation partly of coquetry, partly of levity. ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to avoid the tone of indifference in which I discussed matters that were actually wringing my own heart at the moment. Yet such was the bitterness of my spirit, that I set down this conduct on her part as coquetry; and quite convinced myself that any slight encouragement she might ever have given my attentions, was only meant to indulge a spirit of vanity, by adding another to ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... takes a {"}Grande Passion{"}, It is a very serious thing indeed: Nine times in ten 'tis but caprice or fashion, Coquetry, or a wish to take the lead, The pride of a mere child with a new sash on. Or wish to make a rival's bosom bleed: But the {Tenth} instance will be a tornado, For there's no saying what they will or may do." {—Lord Byron, }Don ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... presence of Ellen Kingsbury, and she bethought her of a plan which would ensure her some amusement at the expense of these impertinent rustics, though in a manner different somewhat from her original more natural idea of simple coquetry. ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... o andaz"coquetry, in a half-honest sense. The Persian "Kaka Siyah," i.e. "black brother" (a domestic negro) ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... were asleep upon the piazzas, and the furniture was removed or broken. Some rustic cottages dotted the lawn, but these were now inhabited by officers and their servants. A few days were to finish the work of rapine, and a heap of ashes was to mark the scene of tournament, coquetry, and betrothal. I witnessed a review of troops in a field contiguous, at nine o'clock. The heat was so intense that many men fell out of line and were carried off to their camps. McDowell passed exactingly from man to man, examined muskets, clothing, and ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... Lusignan, King of Cyprus, in his Prise d'Alexandrie; the Voir dit relates in varying verse and prose the course of his sexagenarian love for a maiden in her teens, Peronne d'Armentieres, who gratified her coquetry with an old poet's adoration, and then ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... her. Hers was an almost childish coquetry, inevitable fruit of her intense femininity, craving ever the worship of the sterner sex and the incense of its flattery. And Samoval, after all, young, noble, handsome, with a half-sinister reputation, was something of a figure of romance, as a good many women ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... glad," she answered, without the slightest appearance of coquetry, and as simply and naturally as though she were talking about the weather. Paul was puzzled. He could not understand her, and not knowing how to proceed, an awkward silence followed. Presently she leaned her head upon her hand, ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... the wilds of America, and so sweet were their attentions to my chafed spirit. With them is my trusty Philip, whose trials are now over, while he basks in the favor of the Earl and the smiles of the pretty Prudence, his wife, undisturbed save by her occasional coquetry, which only serves, I suppose, to make his love ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... Lennox was not to blame. There was no false play on either side; he is as much above the meanness of coquetry, as—I must say it—as I am. His thoughts were all along taken up with you, even while he talked, and laughed, and quarrelled with me. While I, so strong in the belief that worlds could not shake my allegiance to Edward, could have challenged all mankind to win my love; and ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... a few steps in silence. Then she turned and spoke softly over her shoulder. There was not a touch of coquetry in her simple manner, yet it had an engaging ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... Leonore's exclamation as she entered Eva's chamber; and in fact nothing could be imagined more charming than that little abode of peace, adorned as it now was by the coquetry of affection. The most delicious odour of fruit and flowers filled the air, and the sun threw his friendly beams on a table near the sofa, on which a basket filled with beautiful fruit stood enticingly in the midst of many pretty ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... that the ladies here would frequently divert themselves by going a little aside with our gentlemen, as if they meant to be kind to them, and then would run away laughing at them. Whether this was chastity or coquetry, I shall not pretend to determine; nor is it material, since the consequences were ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... he won the right to do so. Madame, on her side, remained for some time plunged in a painful reverie. Her agitation could be seen by her quick respiration, by her drooping eyelids, by the frequency with which she pressed her hand upon her heart. But, in her, coquetry was not so much a passive quality, as, on the contrary, a fire which sought for fuel to maintain itself, finding anywhere ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... at the door. He had a handsome stone put up for his two children, which may be seen in Castlewood churchyard to this very day; and before a year was out his own name was upon the stone. In the presence of Death, that sovereign ruler, a woman's coquetry is scared; and her jealousy will hardly pass the boundaries of that grim kingdom. 'Tis entirely of the earth that passion, and expires in the cold blue air, beyond ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... much discernment, that I should think she could not be easily deceived. If my kinswoman knows your views, I should say that you have reason to be encouraged by her manner. There is nothing like coquetry about her; I am convinced she thinks highly ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... no meaning in those smiles. They may be the expressions of good-nature of simple friendship, perhaps of a little coquetry. For all that, you cannot behold them without envy—without suspicion If there be a meaning—if they be the smiles of love—if the heart of that simple girl has made its lodgement either upon the young apprentice or him of the smock—then are you fated to the bitterest pang that human ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... exceed the warmth of her feelings. She may, I think, be compared to a young bride, a sort of Mrs. Major Waddle; her independence is to her as a newly-won bridegroom; for him alone she has eyes, ears, or heart;—the honeymoon is not over yet;—when it is, America will, perhaps, learn more coquetry, and know better how to faire ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... courage of Tahoser. Then she regained confidence, and said to herself that her beauty, her youth, her love would surely at last move that insensible heart. She would be so sweet, so attentive, so devoted, she would use so much art and coquetry in dressing herself, that certainly Poeri would not be able to resist. Then she promised herself to reveal to him that the humble servant-maid was a girl of high rank, possessing slaves, estates, and palaces, and she foresaw, in her imagination, a life of splendid ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... to herself, glancing alternately at Zibeline and at her brother, between whom a tone of frank comradeship had been established, free from any coquetry on her side ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... friendly office of less delicacy to a European apprehension. At bimbangs the women often put on their dancing dress in the public hall, letting that garment which they mean to lay aside dexterously drop from under, as the other passes over the head, but sometimes, with an air of coquetry, displaying as if by chance enough to warm youthful imaginations. Both men and women anoint themselves before company when they prepare to dance; the women their necks and arms, and the men their breasts. They also paint each others faces; ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... the subtlety of their natures, and they think that they are understood. And what do all women wish but to be amused, understood, or adored? It is only after much reflection on the things of life that we understand the consummate coquetry of neglect of dress and reserve at a first interview; and by the time we have gained sufficient astuteness for successful strategy, we are too old to profit ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... colossal, half barbaric, trivial, and sublime. An Homeric hero struggles among the sneers of a stupid crowd, a herd of brawling and hobbling ninnies. A violin solo, in a sort of concerto, describes the seductions, the coquetry, and the degraded wickedness of woman. Then strident trumpet-blasts sound the attack; and it is beyond me to give an idea of the terrible charge of cavalry that follows, which makes the earth tremble and our hearts leap; nor can I describe how an iron determination leads to the storming of towns, ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... was no thought of coquetry in the declaration which Susan Barringer blurted out to her old lover under the sympathetic starlight of the May heaven. But Allen Golyer would have been a dull boy not to have taken heart and hope from it. He became, ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... sooner had I screwed myself into the commander's chair, which was fixed to the floor at the head of the narrow table, and found the tea-tray almost on my lap, than a wave of memory from our childhood came sweeping back on me, and I could not help giving way to the coquetry which lies hidden in every girl's heart so as to find out how much Martin had been ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... figure are of extraordinary physical beauty of type, of a breadth and nobility which contrast with the smaller, prettier, and less dignified forms of later art; the gesture, too, has not the conscious coquetry which we see in such a work as the Venus de' Medici. But, on the other hand, we must recognise that the statue represents the goddess under a human rather than a divine aspect, that even her mood and feeling of timidity are portrayed in a manner which, however charming in itself, is totally ...
— Religion and Art in Ancient Greece • Ernest Arthur Gardner
... ability made a great appeal to these men. They marveled at her industry. Thirty-four years old now, not handsome but wholesome, simply and neatly dressed, her brown hair smoothly parted and brought down over her ears, she had nothing of the scatterbrained impulsive reformer about her, and no coquetry. She was practical and intelligent, and men liked to discuss their work with her. William Henry Channing, admiring her executive ability and her plucky reaction to defeat, dubbed her the Napoleon of the woman's rights movement. Parker Pillsbury, the fiery abolitionist ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... around the unrepentant Eve,—for all the world like a modern husband fastening his wife's gown,—while she for the first time gathers up her long fair hair. Her attitude is full of innocent yet indescribable coquetry. The passion for self-adornment had already taken possession of her soul. Before her lies a future of many cares and some compensations. She is going to work and she is going to weep, but she is also going to dress. The price ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... and pitiful figure revolved several times, stamping on her heels, then stopped with the same grotesque coquetry. ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... science. Just see with what admirable stupidity girls lend themselves to reap the benefit of the education which is imposed upon them in France; we give them in charge to nursery maids, to companions, to governesses who teach them twenty tricks of coquetry and false modesty, for every single noble and true idea which they impart to them. Girls are brought up as slaves, and are accustomed to the idea that they are sent into the world to imitate their grandmothers, to breed canary birds, to make herbals, to water little Bengal rose-bushes, to fill in ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... have been too pronounced for a young girl, were admirably suited to the woman and harmonized beautifully with her tall and statuesque figure. Sometimes, in the poems of her youth, she spoke as an authority on the subject of "the happiness of being beautiful." It was not coquetry with her, it was the sentiment of harmony; her beautiful soul was happy in ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... obtain the esteem of the fair sex.... A plain close cap and a coarse cotton gown, virtue and good housewifery, are looked upon by the fair sex as sufficient ornaments for their persons; a flirting disposition, coquetry and paint would have very little effect in making conquests of young men brought up in so hardy a manner, and who have had so homely and artless an education as the youth in this place. In short, here, if anywhere in the world, one may lead an innocent, virtuous, ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... who belonged to the Society of Friends, and who was of course not much addicted to poetic comparisons, used to say he could never look at her without thinking of the clear pink and white of a beautiful conch-shell. She was scrupulously neat, and had something of that chastened coquetry in dress, which is apt to characterize the handsome women of her orderly sect. Her drab-colored gown, not high in the neck, was bordered by a plain narrow tucker of fine muslin, visible under her snow-white neckerchief. A white under-sleeve came just below the elbow, where it terminated in ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... half hour together on his door-step in winter evenings. Sally was a belle; she knew it and liked it, as every honest girl does;—and she would have been a belle without the aid of her father's wide farm and pine-tree shillings; for she was fresh and lovely, with a spice of coquetry, but a true ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... The staircase on which the rooms lay—a bare, dusty, unfurnished place—was deserted; and the girl herself opened the door to him, her finger on her lips. He looked for a blush and a glance of meaning, a little play of conscious eyes and hands, a something of remembrance and coquetry; and had his hat ready in his hand and a smile on his lips. But she had neither smile nor blush for him; on the contrary, when the dim light that entered the dingy staircase disclosed who awaited her, she drew back a pace with a look of ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... light does Lady Harriet appear, while she is displaying all that foolish coquetry! And how different a figure does she make, when she has got ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... for me?" she said, with the first touch of coquetry which I had seen in her lighting ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... substitution had been made prior to the ball and with Mrs. Fairbrother's full cognizance. The effectual way in which she had wielded her fan between the glittering ornament on her breast and the inquisitive glances constantly leveled upon it might at the time have been due to coquetry, but to them it looked much more like an expression of fear lest the deception in which she was indulging should be discovered. No one fixed the time where I did; but then, no one but myself had watched the scene with the eyes of love; besides, and ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... neither the philosopher whom he had provoked, nor the fine lady whom he had reproved, left him as an enemy. His nature with its varied riches had quite enough feminine coquetry to regain betimes the sympathy which he was on the eve of losing. A gracious word, an affectionate clasp of the hand, and ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... resumed Madame, pathetically. "Delphine is not an heiress. Delphine is proud. She will not stoop to charm. Her coquetry is that of an Amazon. Her kisses are arrows. She is Medusa!" ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... attentions with a finished coquetry that was far from childlike, a flush on her satin cheek, a dimple puckering the corner of her mouth, and silky lashes lowered over her satisfied eyes. She was inevitably precocious in many ways, but she was young enough ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... the power of woman, if she be Whole-souled and noble, free from coquetry - Her motives all unselfish, worthy, good, To make herself and feelings understood By nameless acts, thus sparing what to man, However gently answered, causes pain, The offering of his hand and heart ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... singularly gracious and winning. There is a frank fearlessness in the beautiful speaking eyes so full of poetry and soul, a mingled tenderness and decision in the mouth, with an utter absence of that self-consciousness and coquetry which often mar the charm of even the most beautiful face. This is the artist's study to which she flies back gladly, now and then, for a few weeks' rest and relaxation from the exacting life of a strolling player, whose days are spent wandering in pursuit of her profession over the vast ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... either face. She read condemnation in both pairs of eyes. For the first time in her life she felt daunted, humiliated. She knew nothing more beyond the fact that in deliberate coquetry she had pitted brother against brother, and that something cruel and tragical had happened for which she was being judged. Neither spoke. She summoned her outer dignity, tossed her pretty head, and went out by the end door ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... his face, to be mopped up by his bandanna. Such was the ordeal of talking hollow sentiment to a cool and self-possessed woman. She enjoyed the exhibition for a time,—as what woman would not? But the waves of her trouble rushed back upon her, and the spirit of mischief and coquetry was overwhelmed. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... goddess. The face and figure are of extraordinary physical beauty of type, of a breadth and nobility which contrast with the smaller, prettier, and less dignified forms of later art; the gesture, too, has not the conscious coquetry which we see in such a work as the Venus de' Medici. But, on the other hand, we must recognise that the statue represents the goddess under a human rather than a divine aspect, that even her mood and feeling of timidity are ...
— Religion and Art in Ancient Greece • Ernest Arthur Gardner
... a little of the spirit of coquetry yourself,—(what a native growth it is!)—and if she lift her eyes when you are gazing at her, you very suddenly divert your look to the cat at her feet, and remark to your friend Frank in an easy off-hand way—how still the cat ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... called, she at once grew lively and amiable, and used her eyes for saying things which I could not then understand. It was only later, when she one day informed me in conversation that the only thing a girl was allowed to indulge in was coquetry—coquetry of the eyes, I mean—that I understood those strange contortions of her features which to every one else had seemed a matter for no surprise at all. Lubotshka also had begun to wear what was almost a long dress—a dress which almost concealed her goose-shaped feet; yet she still ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... house, and grumbled at times over foreign ways and habits that he had no fancy to see under his roof. When she did appear, however, her winning manners, her grace, and a certain half-caressing coquetry she could practise to perfection, so soothed and amused him that he soon forgot any momentary displeasure, and more than once gave up his evening visit to the club at Moate to listen to her as she sang, or hear her sketch off some trait of that Roman society in ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... fatigues of hunting, and requested a draught of milk from her hands to allay his thirst, or a bunch of roses from her little flower plot to adorn his waistcoat, Elinor answered his demands with secret mistrust and terror; although, with the coquetry so natural to her sex, she could not hate him for the amiable weakness of ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... appeared to be painful to Seffy, but not to Sally. She frankly accepted the situation and promptly put into action its opportunities for coquetry. She begged him, first, with consummate aplomb, to aid her in adjusting her parcels more securely, insisting upon carrying them herself, and it would be impossible to describe adequately her allures. The electrical touches, half-caress, half-defiance; ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... wealthy farmer's wife to the poorest cottager who earns her black bread by labour in the fields, would as soon think of adopting male attire as of innovating on the immemorial mode du pays, yet the quality of the materials allows scope for wealth and female coquetry to show themselves. Thus the invariable mode de Broons, with its trifling difference in form, which in the eye of the inhabitants made it as different as light from darkness from the mode de St. Jouan,' was equally observable in the coarse linen coiffe of the maid, and the richly-laced and ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... rolled a double circuit of coquetry and slanted off with a suggestive glance at the massive doorway of the Hawker-Sponge mansion, one of the most aristocratically mortgaged dwellings ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... people obtained the least favour from any one of them. I have been told that the ladies here would frequently divert themselves by going a little aside with our gentlemen, as if they meant to be kind to them, and then would run away laughing at them. Whether this was chastity or coquetry, I shall not pretend to determine; nor is it material, since the consequences ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... uninterested girl into their excitements. Those whose minds are of too active and vivacious a nature to live on without an object, may too easily find one in the dangerous and selfish amusements of coquetry—in the seeking for admiration, and its enjoyment when obtained. The very woman who might have been the most happy herself in the enjoyment of intellectual pursuits, and the most extensively useful to others, is often the one who, from misdirected energies and feeling, ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... some town in the wars of the Fronde. The breach was scarcely practicable, and the best of the besieging army had recoiled from it with great loss. The Black Mousquetaires stood by in all the coquetry of scarf, and plume, and fringed scented gloves, laughing louder at each repulse of the Linesmen. The soldiers heard them and gnashed their teeth. At last there was a murmur, and then a shout—'En avant les Gants Glaces!' ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... thing successively, that she passed thus, almost in the same instant, from melancholy to gaiety, from profundity to grace—from conversation the most astonishing, by the knowledge and the ideas it displayed, to the coquetry of a woman who seeks to please, and desires to captivate; but there was, even in that coquetry, such perfect nobleness that it imposed as much respect ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... of the Minnesingers, loved a beautiful woman, named Sabina, who proved faithless to him, thereby causing the poet great mental suffering. He avenged his wrongs by writing poems on her coquetry and cruelty. Years later, Sabina, who had never forgiven him his satirical verses, became the favorite of the Tyrolese prince, "Frederick, of the Empty Purse", who also hated Oswald for opposing his political plans. Accordingly, Sabina plotted with her lover to induce ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... Colonel passes her gate a dozen times a day, but never goes in and never looks up. Is he indifferent then? I cannot think so. Perhaps he fears her caprices and disapproves of her coquetry. If that is so, she shall be my wife before he wakens to the knowledge that her coquetry hides ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... at the open door; the girl's expression is admirable. Another, the Coquette, after Chalon, is engraved in a light, sprightly style by Humphreys; a beautiful French flirt, at her toilet, is repelling with her fan—that wand of coquetry—a French Abbe on bended knee, whilst her other hand is rapturously seized by a second suitor, just peeping from behind a screen: if ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 399, Supplementary Number • Various
... "don't think I haven't seen his side of the case. I try to tell myself that I dealt with him frankly from the beginning. But then I ask was there ever a man I dealt with frankly? There was coquetry in the very clothes I wore! And now that we are so entangled, now that he loves me, what is my duty? I find I can't respect his love for me. A part of it is because my beauty fascinates him, but more of it seems to me just wounded vanity. I was the only woman ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... the Indian tongue, and once she muttered a retort that made the old man's fingers go groping over the blankets for a weapon; whereat the young squaw laughed contemptuously and went out, sending Casey a side glance and a fleeting smile as full of coquetry as ever white woman ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... said Daisy, sitting beside her. "When are you coming downstairs? The boys are moping all over the place. I believe you're staying up here for coquetry." ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... somewhat rounder, and much more womanly in an undefinable way. She was sweeter looking in all ways—-Dick recognized that much at a glance. Her eyes rested upon him, and then more briefly upon Greg, in utter friendliness free from coquetry. ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... the imprint of this tendency. What he desires to describe is the introduction of the Order into Germany and its early developments there, and he does it by enumerating, with a complacency which has its own coquetry, the names of a multitude of friars[3] and by carefully dating the events. These details, tedious for the ordinary reader, are precious to the historian; he sees there the diverse conditions from ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... honor of driving the girl home he had nothing to do but apply for it. He felt that it would hardly be the "square thing" to put Laurette to the embarrassment of inviting him right there before all the hands. Before he could catch her eye, however, Laurette had spoken what surely the devil of coquetry must have whispered in her ear. Undoubtedly, she had promised Jim Reddin that he should drive her home. But "let him show that he appreciates the favor," she thought to herself; and aloud, with a toss of her head, she exclaimed, "I'll take the one that cuts out the logs,—if ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... like lashing herself for having felt like that and for having replied, in a spirit of pure coquetry, in a voice of studied, cool, indifferent ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... this beautiful girl, the daughter of a rich general, who could speak three languages, gave away all that her rich brother sent her, and lived like the simplest working girl, and dressed not only simply, but poorly, paying no heed to her appearance. This trait and a complete absence of coquetry was particularly surprising and therefore attractive to Maslova. Maslova could see that Mary Pavlovna knew, and was even pleased to know, that she was handsome, and yet the effect her appearance had on men was not at all pleasing to her; she was even afraid of it, and felt an absolute ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... [Apart.] I'm afraid I know what has happened. A quarrel! and you are to part with each other so soon. Do not let a girl's coquetry trifle with her heart until it is too late. You remember the confession you ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard
... Broken Straw, Witch Hazel and Colored Daisy—"Your folly and coquetry have broken the spell ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... Interests into which the bourgeoisie is divided—Land and Capital—sought to restore its own supremacy and the subordinacy of the other. We speak of two bourgeois interests because large landed property, despite its feudal coquetry and pride of race, has become completely bourgeois through the development of modern society. Thus did the Tories of England long fancy that they were enthusiastic for the Kingdom, the Church and ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... me, should I be to live with you and to please you no longer. You can be pleased with nothing when you are not pleased with your wife. One of the "Spectators" is very just that says, "A man ought always to be upon his guard against spleen and a too severe philosophy; a woman, against levity and coquetry." If we go to Naples, I will make no acquaintance there of any kind, and you will be in a place where a variety of agreeable objects will dispose you to be ever pleased. If such a thing is possible, this will secure ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... she said, with that coquetry which somehow or other is in the heart of every young girl, "I have often been sorry that I am not able to read, but never so much so as when your housekeeper brought me your letter. I kept the paper in my hands, which spoke to other people, ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... father was governor. In the brilliancy of her youth, we find her in Paris among the early favorites of the Hotel de Rambouillet, and on terms of lifelong intimacy with its hostess and her daughter Julie. Beautiful, versatile, generous, but fastidious and exacting in her friendships, with a dash of coquetry—inevitable when a woman is fascinating and French—she repeated the oft-played role of a mariage de convenance at sixteen, a few brilliant years of social triumphs marred by domestic neglect and suffering, a period of enforced seclusion after the death of her unworthy husband, a brief return ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... indignantly, "it was the most shameful piece of coquetry I ever saw. She is a puzzle to me. To the children and the old people in the house she is consideration and kindness itself; but she appears to regard men of your years as legitimate game and is perfectly remorseless. So beware! She is dangerous, invulnerable as you imagine ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... hat; Milady gave him her hand to kiss. The young man felt her press his hand, and comprehended that this was a sentiment, not of coquetry, but of gratitude ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... renunciation; abjuration,abjurement[obs3]; defection &c. (relinquishment) 624; going over &c. v.; apostasy; retraction, retractation[obs3]; withdrawal; disavowal &c. (negation) 536; revocation, revokement[obs3]; reversal; repentance &c. 950- redintegratio amoris[Lat]. coquetry; vacillation &c. 605; backsliding; volte-face[Fr]. turn coat, turn tippet|; rat, apostate, renegade; convert, pervert; proselyte, deserter; backslider; blackleg, crawfish [U. S.], scab*, mugwump [U. S.], recidivist. time server, time pleaser[obs3]; timist|, Vicar of Bray, trimmer, ambidexter[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Within, all again was French in the design, the decoration and the furnishing. At that time there, was in fact no other taste, and Frederick, who despised and disused his native tongue, was resolved upon French taste even in his intimate companionship. The droll story of his coquetry with the terrible free spirit which he got from France to be his guest is vividly reanimated at Sans Souci, where one breathes the very air in which the strangely assorted companions lived, and in which they parted so soon to pursue each other with brutal annoyance on ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... a neatly-corsetted shape, in black, to set off a pair of dazzling pink cheeks, shone out behind rows of apricot tarts. There was also a cap that conveyed to one, through the medium of pink bows, the capacities of coquetry that lay in the depths of the rich brown eyes beneath them. The attractive shape emerged at once from behind the counter, to set chairs about the little table. We were bidden to be seated with an air of smiling grace, one that invested the act with the emphasis of genuine hospitality. Soon ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... the artist's brush. What thoughts occupied this stately figure, in what way ideas circulated in her kerchiefed head, we are left to divine. Her conduct is a little enigmatical. Had she any thought of marrying Olenin, or were her actions dictated by coquetry accompanied by a spice of mischief? We are inclined ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... enough, you could get in," she said perversely, with an alluring coquetry in her mien. "The door ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... down before the window of the house. The niece soon recognised me as the person whose dress and appearance I had so minutely described, one moment showing herself at the window, at another darting away with all the coquetry of her sex. I perceived that she was flattered with her conquest; and, after parading myself for ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... had been mentioned by no means favourably. Farley was far from prepossessing either in appearance or words or actions. As for Carmen, even the tender glances that he had surprised might be explained by the coquetry of ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... at once. Delgrado had none of the boulevardier's abounding self-conceit, or Joan would never have given him a second look, while Joan's frank comradeship was vastly more alluring than the skilled coquetry that left him cold. Physically, too, they were well mated, each obviously made for the other by a discriminating Providence. They were just beginning to discover the ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... "It is bad enough to take advantage of the young girl's coquetry, but worse to forget her brother as well as me, through whom ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... Dade tried not to hear it; for so had she laughed at him, a week ago, and set his blood leaping towards his heart. He was not skilled in the ways of women, yet he did not accuse her of deliberate coquetry, as a man is prone to do under the smart of a hurt like his; for he sensed dimly that it was but the seeking sex-instinct of healthy youth that brightened her eyes and sent the laugh to her lips when she faced a man who pleased ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... surprise. When he and I dwelt there together, the pavilion had been a temple of misogyny. And now, one of the detested sex was to be installed under its roof. I remembered one or two particulars, a few notes of daintiness and almost of coquetry which had struck me the day before as I surveyed the preparations in the house; their purpose was now clear, and I thought myself dull not to have perceived it ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... Bronte for instance, which would have seemed out of place to those of fifty years ago; but this is merely because the life they see around them is more "earnest." It presents to them scenes of sterner significance than were to be found among the coquetry and dissipation of the fashionable world or the dull courtesies of a country house. But that they do not transcend this outward life we have one crucial proof. Just in so far as each of us learns to regard ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green
... and the pert little dimples and the bold terrifying ideas, she who had so ploughed up the soul of Jimmie Higgins and almost broken up the Higgins' home—here she was, employing a new variety of coquetry, by which she compelled three soldiers with rifles and bayonets to devote their ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... her image by rote, and as I conned the traits in memory it seemed as if I read her very heart. She was dressed with something of her mother's coquetry and love of positive colour. Her robe, which I knew she must have made with her own hands, clung about her with a cunning grace. After the fashion of that country, besides, her bodice stood open in the middle, in a long slit, and here, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cultivation of the arts has contributed to the decline of States. She is severe on that style of dress which permits an indelicate exposure of the person, and on all forms of senseless extravagance. She despises children's balls, and ridicules children's rights and "Liliputian coquetry" with ribbons and feathers. She would educate women to fulfil the duties of daughters, wives, and mothers rather than to make them dancers, singers, players, painters, and actresses. She maintains that when a man of sense comes to marry, he wants ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... she was accompanied was not so tall, and of a much slighter form; her limbs delicately moulded, and her features more attractive than beautiful. There was that about her whole demeanour which is expressively termed coquetry, not the coquetry of action, but of feeling: her eyes were dark and brilliant, her mouth full and pouting; and the nose was only saved from vulgarity by that turn, to describe which we are compelled to use a foreign term—it was un peu retrousse: her complexion was of ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... if thinking. "Do you want me to call him in?" she said quietly, but without the least trace of archness or coquetry. "Would you rather he were here—or shall we go out now and meet him? I'll say you just came as I was ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... in the fashion of those days were very much exposed—and she seemed to bring the glamour of a ballroom with her as she moved toward Anna Pavlovna. Helene was so lovely that not only did she not show any trace of coquetry, but on the contrary she even appeared shy of her unquestionable and all too victorious beauty. She seemed to wish, but to be unable, to ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... you thinking, Cargill?" she asked, and for the first time I heard her voice sobered, without the coquetry, which must after all have been a very ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... that the youth chiefly obtain the esteem of the fair sex.... A plain close cap and a coarse cotton gown, virtue and good housewifery, are looked upon by the fair sex as sufficient ornaments for their persons; a flirting disposition, coquetry and paint would have very little effect in making conquests of young men brought up in so hardy a manner, and who have had so homely and artless an education as the youth in this place. In short, here, if anywhere in the world, one may lead an innocent, virtuous, ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... not venture to think out the thought. But this first sensation of strangeness over, he had found her more charming, more desirable, than even he had hoped; and what almost wrung a cry of pleasure from him as he remembered it, was that not the smallest trifle—no touch of coquetry, no insincerely spoken word—had marred the perfect impression of the whole. To know her, to stand before her, he recognised it now, gave the lie to false slander and report. Hardest of all, however, was it to grasp that the meeting had actually come to pass and was ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... a use for it one day. If I do—Well," said madame, drawing a breath and nodding her head with a stern kind of coquetry, "I'll use it!" ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... of such diversions as London afforded under the melancholy rule of the Puritans, or to giggle a little at a ridiculous sermon from a divine who was thought to be one of the great lights of the Assembly at Westminster; with a little turn for coquetry, which was yet perfectly compatible with warm and disinterested attachment, and a little turn for satire, which yet seldom passed the bounds of good nature. She loved reading; but her studies were not those of Queen Elizabeth and Lady Jane ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... Mud Creek; and chafed at the necessary delay that hindered me from gratifying my wish. Even the generous hospitality of Colonel Kipp—amiable under the influence of golden dreams—even the smiles of the simpering Alvina, and the more brave coquetry of Car'line—now become a decided admirer of my yellow buttons—were not sufficient to preserve my spirits from ennui. Only at meals did I make my appearance at the hotel—at all other times, seeking to soothe the impassioned pulsations of my heart in the dark depths of the forest. ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... is one of the most refined Parts of Coquetry, and is not to be attained in Perfection, by Ladies that do not Travel for their Improvement. A natural and unconstrained Behaviour has something in it so agreeable, that it is no Wonder to see People endeavouring after it. But at the same time, it ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... to me defilement decree after purity!" Then she went up to him and made a show of fondness for him and sat down by his side and coaxed him, saying, "O my lord, what is this aversion thou displayest to me? Is it pride or coquetry on thy part? But the current byword saith, 'An the salam-salutation be little in demand, the sitters salute those who stand."[FN4] So if, O my lord, thou come not to me neither accost me, I will go to thee and accost thee." Said he, "To ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... aware of Angle's fluttering farewells on the sidewalk. Josie was lingering on the doorstep in an agony of untrained coquetry. He lowered his tone for her benefit, thereby adding new weight to his bombardment of ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... and, indeed, we could expect nothing else from a cento of Lucan's hyperbolical antitheses. These bravuras of rhetoric are strung together on the thread of a clumsy plot. The intrigues of Ptolemy, and the ambitious coquetry of his sister Cleopatra, have a petty and miserable appearance alongside of the picture of the fate of the great Pompey, the vengeance-breathing sorrow of his wife, and the magnanimous compassion of Caesar. Scarcely has ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... should either be cut close up to the throat or low. It is, however, in bad taste to wear them very low on the shoulders and bosom: in youth, it gives evidence of the absence of that modesty which is one of its greatest attractions; and in maturer years it is the indication of a depraved coquetry, which ...
— The Jewish Manual • Judith Cohen Montefiore
... The weight of her father's words had stilled and solemnised her, removing every trace of coquetry. Her head was bowed as at the benediction; she was sobbing. Mitri patted her head and ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... hot walk and hotter indignation, and glowed less with anger and more with love. I laid my hand lightly on her shoulder, looking down on her mocking lips, and stooping, whispered something in her ear—in spite of female coquetry (in her person), and her uneasy pretexts to escape, in spite of Tommy Hayes, in spite of Rover, that marplot puppy, I had a moment's hearing, and used it manfully, and as I whispered, my heart beat thick with triumph, for she could not raise her eyes to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... almost sexless, because she had never thought, as most girls do, of love and the intrigue and coquetry of love. She was so simple as to be shameless, and at once, if he had asked her then in the street to marry him she would have said yes without hesitation or fear, or any analysis. She would like to look after him as well as herself—there were things she was sure that she could do for him—and ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... to—to do what you want me to?" she asked, and she was even able to summon a smile with a tinge of coquetry that served to draw the wily ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... in those smiles. They may be the expressions of good-nature of simple friendship, perhaps of a little coquetry. For all that, you cannot behold them without envy—without suspicion If there be a meaning—if they be the smiles of love—if the heart of that simple girl has made its lodgement either upon the young apprentice or him of the ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... of his weather-beaten domino, always, he just displays, with a sort of tragic coquetry, the toe of a stout and serviceable marble boot. And this, I have begun to believe, is all that I shall ever see of him. Else might I not be writing about him; for else had he not so haunted me. If I knew myself destined to see him—to see him steadily and see ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... as instruments learned at school, for when She sits down to it she cannot tell what tune she is about to play. That is because she has no notion of what the instrument is capable. Babbie's kind- heartedness, her gaiety, her coquetry, her moments of sadness, had been a witch's fingers, and Gavin was still trembling under their touch. Even in being taken to task by her there was a charm, for every pout of her mouth, every shake of her head, said, "You like me, and therefore you have given me ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... own riding horse, "Five Spot," for the sorry mule which the Duchess rode. But even this act did not draw the party into any closer sympathy. The young woman readjusted her somewhat draggled plumes with a feeble, faded coquetry; Mother Shipton eyed the possessor of "Five Spot" with malevolence, and Uncle Billy included the whole ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... his desire to amuse him, the "sulky boy," his substantial goodness and warm-heartedness. Knowing that every female in his circle was well informed of his ample fortune, still accumulating, he fancied art, deceit, coquetry in every smile and glance, (for suspicion of human hearts and motives ever besets the melancholic character;) and thus, it was natural that he should sometimes sigh over the idea of some fresh mountain beauty, not trained by parents in the art and to the task of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... and he had asked himself why he should not tell her the truth. And yet they were not all of it; her hearing the rest would depend upon the way she received this. She received it not only, as Rowland foresaw, without a shadow of coquetry, of any apparent thought of listening to it gracefully, but with a slight movement of nervous deprecation, which seemed to betray itself in the quickening of her step. Evidently, if Rowland was to take pleasure ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... Real love, great love, the love that poets sang, and privileged and tortured beings lived and died of, that love had its own superior expressiveness, and the sure command of its means. The petty arts of coquetry were no farther from it than the numbness of the untaught girl. Great love was wise, strong, powerful, like genius, like any other dominant form of human power. It knew itself, and what it wanted, and how to attain ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... time, her subtle criticism is alert, and this woman of the East marvels at the women of the West, 'the beautiful worldly women of the West,' whom she sees walking in the Cascine, 'taking the air so consciously attractive in their brilliant toilettes, in the brilliant coquetry of their manner!' She finds them 'a little incomprehensible,' 'profound artists in all the subtle intricacies of fascination,' and asks if these 'incalculable frivolities and vanities and coquetries and caprices' are, to us, an essential part of their charm? And she watches ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... There would be some plausibility in your argument, if it were not the very essence of this species of intercourse to exhibit them to each other under false colours. Here all is show, and varnish, and hypocrisy, and coquetry; they dress up their moral character for the evening at the same toilet where they manufacture their shapes and faces. Ill-temper lies buried under a studied accumulation of smiles. Envy, hatred, and malice, retreat from the countenance, to entrench themselves more ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... been made to her whole relations, from first to last, with Ladislaw. It is not easy to conceive anything more touchingly beautiful than these, more perfectly in harmony with her whole nature. Of anything approaching either coquetry or prudery she is incapable. The utter absence of all self-consciousness, whether of external beauty or inward loveliness; the ethereal purity, the childlike trustfulness, the instinctive recognition of all that is true and earnest and high ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... seeing mademoiselle again. I strove to conjure up before me as I mounted the stairs the exact expression of her face as I had last seen it bending from the window at Rosny; to the end that I might have some guide for my future conduct, and might be less likely to fall into the snare of a young girl's coquetry. But I could come now, as then, to no satisfactory or safe conclusion, and only felt anew the vexation I had experienced on losing the velvet knot, which she had given me ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... of his leanness, had beautiful hands, and he displayed them with a certain coquetry. As he grew stouter his hands became superb; he took the utmost care of them, and looked at them when talking, with much complacency. He felt the same satisfaction in his teeth, which were handsome, though not with the splendor of ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... burning blushes that covered her countenance. The manner in which the plans of Barnstable had become known to his foe was no longer a mystery. Her conscience also reproached her a little with some unnecessary coquetry, as she remembered that quite one-half of the dialogue between her lover and herself, under the shadow of that very wall to which Borroughcliffe alluded, had been on a subject altogether foreign to contention and tumults. As the feelings of Barnstable were by ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Evening had fallen, but the brilliancy of a full moon in a cloudless sky had prolonged the day. Through the open windows came the freshness of the woods and hills, and the candles flickered and flamed in coquetry ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... tact, address, and allurements of a woman. Though she was now forty years of age, she was beautiful, elegant, attractive, full of resources, and of grace in her conversation as well as her administration, endowed with all the means of pleasing, and skilful in availing herself of them with a coquetry which was occasionally more telling than discreet. The malcontents spread the most odious scandals about her. It so happened that one of the most considerable amongst the great vassals of France, Theobald IV., Count of Champagne, a brilliant ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... is trimmed, and curled, and brushed with exquisite neatness; and her whole dress arranged with that nice attention to the becoming, the suitable both in form and texture, which would be called the highest degree of coquetry, if it did not deserve the better name of propriety. Never was such a transmogrification beheld. The lass is really pretty, and Ned Miles has discovered that she is so. There he stands, the rogue, close at her aide, (for he hath ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 345, December 6, 1828 • Various
... observed a very graceful and elegantly-dressed female approach, and with an air of profound humility kneel in the accustomed place. As she drew back her veil she displayed a remarkably pretty face, and there was something quite enchanting in the coquetry with which she ignored the presence of a stranger. Of course she could have had no idea that any person of the opposite sex would dare to think of female loveliness in such a place, and the charming unconsciousness of her manner, as she adjusted the folds ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... He then tries to peruse the book, but the leaves have not been opened; he meets with some resistance, the living book must be read according to established rules, and the book-worm falls a victim to a coquetry, the monster which persecutes all those who make a business of love. As for thee, intelligent man, who hast read the few preceding lines, let me tell thee that, if they do not assist in opening thy eyes, thou art lost; I mean that thou art certain of being a victim to ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... salute to us all, and, glancing at me with a spice of coquetry, to which she was evidently not unaccustomed, was pleased to observe, that ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... is so amusing to tell the story afterward." Rossini does not dye his hair, but wears the most wiggy of wigs. When he goes to mass he puts one wig on top of the other, and if it is very cold he puts still a third one on, curlier than the others, for the sake of warmth. No coquetry about him! ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... to say of so much importance?" stammered Eve, trying to speak as if she was unconscious of the subject he was about to broach; and this from no coquetry, but because of an embarrassment so allied to that which Adam felt that if he could have looked into her heart he would have seen his answer in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... good is indeed foolish and chimerical, since their lives imply the negation of it: I mean to say the immense multitude of those who live in any kind of way, good easy people, refined possibly, from caprice, coquetry or laziness, but in complete ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... than Marian. In the light of this proximity he watched her with a new attention, and he saw that her father, too, studied her covertly, as though realizing that he had a grown daughter on his hands. Her way with Harwood was not without coquetry; she tapped his arm with her fan lightly when he refused to enter into a discussion of his attentions, of which she protested she knew much, to Miss Bosworth. He admitted having called on Miss Bosworth once; her brother was a ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... through to the end, and Faversham listened to the end. It told its own story. It was the letter of a girl who wrote in a frank impulse of admiration to a man whom she did not know. There was nowhere a trace of coquetry, nowhere the expression of a single sentimentality. Its tone was pure friendliness, it was the work of a quite innocent girl who because she knew the man to whom she wrote to be brave, therefore believed him to be honourable. She expressed ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... you no heart that you can refuse to repair a little of the harm that you have done? You are a cruel woman—I could almost say a wicked woman: hard, false, and cowardly; and I wish my words could blight your life as your coquetry ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... draw the characters of the women there, from those which he might meet with on board the ships in one of the naval ports, or in the purlieus of Covent-Garden and Drury-Lane. I must however allow, that they are all completely versed in the art of coquetry, and that very few of them fix any bounds to their conversation. It is therefore no wonder that they have obtained the character ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... Amelia assumed toward him what she imagined were very pretty airs of proprietorship. Eoger knew well that her manner would have been the same toward the youth with whom, from a sudden caprice, she had broken her engagement for the evening. Her habitual coquetry nevertheless unwittingly carried out his original programme with a success that made him grind his teeth with rage, for he supposed that Mildred would gain the idea that they were congenial spirits drawn ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... perhaps even to have tired our readers, we shall not repeat the dialogue that passed, when the Spaniard was indulged with an opportunity to explain his sentiments. Suffice it to observe, that the lady's days of coquetry were now over, and that she was too wise to trifle with the time, which every moment became more and more precious. It was agreed then, that Don Diego should settle his affairs in Spain, and return to England, in order to espouse Madam Clement, ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... again. Of late months she has been subject to moodiness, emotional variability, which has somewhat ruffled the smooth surface of our companionship. But to-day there has been no trace of "temperament." She has shown herself the pleasant, witty Judith she knows I like her to be, with a touch of coquetry thrown in on her own account. She even spoke amiably of Carlotta. I have not had so thoroughly enjoyable a day with Judith for ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... in the rocking-chair under the linden-tree and stretched out her pretty little feet clad in black open-work stockings and tan shoes. It was as if she had two natures; the one overwhelmed with modesty and shame, the other, full of self-conscious coquetry. The first nature prompted her to look with disgust upon ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... to your string?" As he thus wittily expressed himself, the gentleman took off his cap, and thrust his fingers through a very curling and comely head of hair; the young lady looked at him with evident coquetry, and said, "How you do ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... no intimation of coquetry in the remark; merely simple fact. But the words wrought a miracle in the face of the man ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... music, and the subtle picturesqueness which makes the Spanish people unique among the other Latin nations of Europe, came, not from her Gothic, nor her Roman, nor her Phenician ancestry, but from the plains of Arabia; and the guitar and the dance and the castanet, and the charm and the coquetry of her women, are echoes from that far-off land of poetry and romance. Not so the bull-fight! Would you trace to its source that pleasant pastime, you must not go to the East; the Oriental was cruel to man, but not to beast. He would have abhorred such a form of amusement, for the origin of which ...
— A Short History of Spain • Mary Platt Parmele
... Carlyle (Auto. p. 462) says:—'She did not take at Edinburgh. Lord Kames, who was at first catched with her Parnassian coquetry, said at last that he believed she had as much learning as a well-educated college lad here of sixteen. In genuine feelings and deeds she was remarkably deficient. We saw her often in the neighbourhood of Newcastle, and in that town, where there was no audience for such ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... therefore attained the object of her wishes. She had finally reached it by bribery and intrigue, by hypocritical tenderness, by the resignation of her maiden modesty and womanly honor, and by all the arts of coquetry. ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... wasting away either. He took great care of himself, measuring his stomach by the waist-board of his trousers, with the constant dread of having to loosen the buckle or draw it tighter; for he considered himself just right, and out of coquetry neither desired to grow fatter nor thinner. That made him hard to please in the matter of food, for he regarded every dish from the point of view of keeping his waist as it was. Even when there was not a sou in the house, he required eggs, cutlets, light and nourishing ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... elegant and graceful; entering with ardour into amusements, yet capable of deep feeling and serious reflection: fond of admiration and flattery, yet innocent and modest; full of petty artifice and coquetry, yet natural and unaffected in affairs of importance; capricious and giddy in appearance, but warm-hearted and affectionate in reality. It is a character to which there is a kind of approximation among many French women; and if it were as well supported by them in real life, ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... with her dearest girl friend for the time being, since none of the boys danced well enough to please either of them. And besides, boys rather bored Dolly, to whom dancing, as yet, was merely a particularly delightful form of exercise, and who had no precocious tendencies to coquetry. She deigned to dance once with Mark, after which he did his duty by trotting out a succession of calm and self-possessed little girls, who were as unchildlike as if they had been out for a season or two. Then he thought he might reward himself by going to look ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... gentle, frank, and even affectionate, that, if I had not known how much she has always disliked me for marrying Mr. Vernon, and that we had never met before, I should have imagined her an attached friend. One is apt, I believe, to connect assurance of manner with coquetry, and to expect that an impudent address will naturally attend an impudent mind; at least I was myself prepared for an improper degree of confidence in Lady Susan; but her countenance is absolutely sweet, and her voice and manner winningly mild. I am sorry it is so, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... solemn blue eyes, who had just gazed on Spiridion, and inspired him with such a feeling of tender awe, is a much more important personage than the reader might suppose at first sight. This beautiful, mysterious, dandy ghost, whose costume, with a true woman's coquetry, Madame Dudevant has so rejoiced to describe—is her religious type, a mystical representation of Faith struggling up towards Truth, through superstition, doubt, fear, reason,—in tight inexpressibles, with "a belt such as is ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... toilet with feminine coquetry, put on a white waistcoat, which suited him better with the coat, sent for the hairdresser to give him a finishing touch with the curling-iron, for he had preserved his hair, and started very early in order to show his eagerness to ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... was ennobling, and a deep thankfulness, though to whom or for what he had not the least idea, made more kindly and good the cheery warmth around his heart. The gray eyes had never sparkled on him in coquetry as they sometimes did on other men, and now they were grave and sweet. It was a phase of Jacqueline that ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... Lem felt as though he were watching the capricious sparks which mark the progress of a slow match toward a powder-train. Bub Quinn, meanwhile, stood rooted before the girl, while Joe, having possessed himself of the fallen fan, met her coquetry with blandishments of the most undisguised nature. At length, hesitatingly, deprecatingly, she took Quinn's plate, but at the same time she moved along on the bench and offered Joe a seat. He promptly took it, and ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... shapely she is; vivacity bids her arise, * But the weight of her hips says, 'Sit, or softly and slowly go.' Whenas her favours I seek and sue for my heart's desire, * 'Be gracious,' her beauty says; but her coquetry answers, 'No.' Glory to Him who made beauty her portion, and that * Of her lover to be the prate of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... very wrong in her if she deceives him, and let's him go on liking her," thought Lucy, who, having never before seen an instance of coquetry, did not know how venial many girls who might know better consider the sin of trifling with an affection which must, if ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... was speaking of grave matters, and many of her friends are in adversity. But you could not help seeing (both Robert and I saw it) that in all she said, even in her kindness and pity, there was an under-current of scorn. A scorn of pleasing she evidently had; there never could have been a colour of coquetry in that woman. Her very freedom from affectation and consciousness had a touch of disdain. But I liked her. I did not love her, but I felt the burning soul through all that quietness, and was not disappointed in George Sand. When we rose to go I could not help saying, 'C'est ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... in the right place?" and she looked at him with a glance exhibiting the most curious commingling of naivete and coquetry. ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... a certain coquetry of her own, using the usual methods with an individuality that was certainly fetching. For instance, when she lost her needle—and, another time, when we both, on hands and knees, hunted ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... Haughtiness Laurel, Glory Laurel, Common, Perfidy Laurel, Ground, Perseverance Laurel, Mountain, Ambition Lavender, Distrust Leaves, Dead, Sadness Lemon, Zest Lemon Blossom, Fidelity Lettuce, Cold-heartedness Lichen, Dejection Lilac, Field, Humility Lilac, White, Innocence Lily, Day, Coquetry Lily, Imperial, Majesty Lily, White, Purity Lily, Yellow, Falsehood Linden, Conjugal Love Lint, I feel my obligations Liverwort, Confidence Lobelia, Malevolence Locust, True, Elegance London, Pride, Frivolity Lote Tree, Concord Lotus, Eloquence Lotus Flower, ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... and excitement of his own. And he told the ladies how Huxter had elevated Fanny to the rank of wife, and what terrors he was in respecting the arrival of his father. He described the scene with considerable humour, taking care to dwell especially upon that part of it which concerned Fanny's coquetry and irrepressible desire of captivating mankind; his meaning being, "You see, Laura, I was not so guilty in that little affair; it was the girl who made love to me, and I who resisted. As I am no longer present, the little siren practises her arts ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... old? Did I not remember how I would pass her house on my way to school, and stand at the gate and whistle until she came shyly out, with her face as red as her little hood and tippet, and give me her books to carry, and protest with the ever present coquetry of girlhood that she thought I had gone long ago? Could I ever forget how I saved my coppers, one by one, until I had accumulated a sum large enough to buy a whole cocoanut, which I presented to her in the proudest moment ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... arising. Eustathius has availed himself of these opportunities for "raising his mother tongue to a higher power" to the very utmost. No translation can do justice to the elaborate foppery of even the first sentence,[186] with its coquetry of arrangement, its tormented structure of phrase, its jingle of sound-repetition, its desperate rejection of simplicity in every shape and form. To describe precisely the means resorted to would take a chapter at least. They are astonishingly ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... repeat, verse on the stage should lay aside all self-love, all exigence, all coquetry. It is simply a form, and a form which should admit everything, which has no laws to impose on the drama, but on the contrary should receive everything from it, to be transmitted to the spectator—French, Latin, texts of laws, royal oaths, popular phrases, comedy, tragedy, laughter, tears, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... eligible. The card of membership only costs 3 marks for a single member and 4 marks for a whole family. Some of the excursions are planned to include brother pilgrims, and their character is gay and cheerful, without flirting or coquetry, a genuine friendly intercourse between girls and boys, young men and maidens, a pure and beautiful companionship such as no dancing lesson and no ballroom can create, and which is nevertheless the best training for life." So nowadays gangs of girls, and even mixed gangs ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... his theories about girls are quite as good and quite as different from the fashionable practice of his day as those about boys. It is curious how his ideas approach the American customs. A certain coquetry, he says, is allowable in marriageable girls; amusement is their principal business. Married women have the cares of home to occupy them, and have no longer to seek husbands. Rousseau would let the girls appear in public, ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... the contradictoriness of his social attitude, his desire to make her a rich drone, his shame at his mother, his reclusive shyness—all the weaknesses of the man—came to obscure her sense of his literary idealism, if not, indeed, to reveal it as a mere coquetry with fine ideas and coarse clothes. And then for a moment the humour of being Mrs. Maper's daughter-in-law appealed to her, and she laughed to herself in ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... one?" she said, bending over her nosegay as if absorbed in its arrangement. "They are so rare that I hardly know how to spare any." Which was a bit of innocent coquetry on ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... remarkably noticeable today. In front of the glass Edith hesitated between her favourite plain sailor hat and a new black velvet toque, which shaded her eyes, contrasting with the fair hair of which very little showed, and giving her an aspect of dashing yet discreet coquetry. She looked younger in the other sailor hat (so she decided when she put it on again) and more as she used to look. Which was the more attractive? She decided on novelty, and went out, finally, in ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... to take a long walk, which often relieves me when suffering from that malady; and, on ascending the stairs, I met our landlord's eldest daughter, a tall, graceful girl of twenty. I found she was coming down backwards, which I took to be a mere girlish freak, or perhaps a piece of coquetry, practised on myself: but I afterwards found, that about the time the earth is at the full, the whole family pursued the same course, and were very scrupulous in making their steps in this awkward and inconvenient way, because it was one of the prescribed ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... Christy's melodies, she had sought the more juvenile element, and, when seen by the land baron, was circling around with fluttering skirts. Joyous, merry, there was no hint now in her natural, girlish ways of the capacity that lay within for varied impersonations, from the lightness of coquetry to the thrill ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... carefully, and not to place herself in any false position towards him. If he is not chivalrous enough to take a delicately conveyed hint, he will only imagine that she is playing a more subtle game of coquetry, and by redoubling his attentions make himself the reverse of agreeable. No man with any regard for the most elementary rules of etiquette would either embarrass a lady by keeping up a tone that she had even indirectly discouraged, or insult her by ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... me with your painstaking work; is it a coquetry? It does not seem labored. What I find difficult is to choose out of the thousand combinations of scenic action which can vary infinitely, the clear and striking situation which is not brutal nor forced. As for style, I attach less importance to ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... to me are very sensible, but that does not prevent you from being wrong. Like you, I used formerly to feel very indignant at the impoliteness of men, who, as I supposed, constantly treated me with neglect; but, as I grew older and reflected on everything, putting aside coquetry, and observing things without taking any part in them myself, I perceived this much—that if men are not always polite, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... summoned in sundry little waifs from the neighborhood, and had games and romps and laughter and merry voices. Later in the week there was a dinner at which the Cranstons and some fort friends appeared; there was a mistletoe bough that night and not a little coquetry and merriment, for Wells had invited the library girls and numerous young men to be present, and the customs of Old England were reproduced with characteristic American exaggeration. That mistletoe bough remained suspended from its chandelier, a reminder of the joys ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... meant domesticity and dignity to Sissy. In Split it bred and fostered a spirit of coquetry 223 ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... think so," she said, simply, frankly and with no touch of a coquetry that had been harshly at discord ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... her royal chum felt at least a passing interest in the handsome stranger. The Duchess made no immediate reply to her friend, but gazed resolutely in a direction opposite to the one from which she knew Carter was approaching. Even predestined queens are not averse to stately coquetry. ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... particular methods of banter, the precise shade of significance of their facial expressions and movements, the exact values of their phrases and catch-words; all of which was knowledge that, according to their notion, was the common stock-in-trade of breeding. Their atmosphere of coquetry did not appeal to him; and, as a rule, he remained supremely ignorant of the fact that they were coquetting with him. Thus it was they giggled and laughed and made fun of him, having attained to a vast feeling of superiority ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... to her wishes, offered his arm to lead her into the pleached walks of the illuminated garden. Angelique rose, gathered up her rich train, and with an air of royal coquetry took his arm and accompanied the Intendant on a promenade down the grand alley ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... along with himself—who found his Latin prose style elegant and masculine; and the terrible Joseph Scaliger, who was to pronounce him totally ignorant of Latinity, was at a comfortable distance in the next century. But when was the fatal coquetry inherent in superfluous authorship ever quite contented with the ready praise of friends? That critical supercilious Politian—a fellow-browser, who was far from amiable—must be made aware that the solid secretary showed, ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... were agreed. I think at least half the party were more than half in love with her when that race-week was over. In one sense it was not her fault if we were; for a girl more thoroughly free from every species of coquetry, and with less of that pitiful ambition of making conquests, which is the curse of half the sex, it was impossible to meet with. But she was to blame for it too, in another way; for to know her, and not love her, would have been ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... liking she did not, as a rule, return in any decided fashion. She had dreadfully little to say to the average woman, except to a few intimate friends, and frankly preferred the society of the average man, although she had not as yet developed a taste for coquetry, for which she had, however, many natural gifts. She was much taken up by Bruce, by Archie and Dilly, and was fond of losing herself in ideas and in books, and in various artistic movements and fads in ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... Luttrell, daughter of Simon Luttrell, Baron Irnham, who married, first, Christopher Horton, and, secondly, the Duke of Cumberland, brother of the king. Of her Walpole wrote: "There was something so bewitching in her languishing eyes, which she could animate to enchantment if she pleased, and her coquetry was so active, so varied, and yet so habitual that it was difficult not to see through it, and yet as difficult to resist it." And here was another widow who captivated royalty, Mrs. Fitzherbert, who was a daughter of Walter Smythe of ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... motherly sweetness, and, above all, the refined graceful dignity that remained to her from the leading station she had occupied. Her gracious respect towards her clergyman was a contrast as much to the deferential coquetry of his admirers as to the abruptness of his foe, and her indifference to parish details had even its charm in a world of fussiness; he did not know himself how far a wish of hers would have led him, and she was the last person to ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
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