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More "Piquancy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the young man under his breath. Then the girl finished the song and bowed with such pretty piquancy that everybody demanded ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose
... and throttles and hangs it with chains of shakes." What, however, Rellstab and the "old musician"—for he, too, exclaims, "nothing but bravura and figuration!"—did not see, but what must be patent to every candid and unprejudiced observer, are the originality, piquancy, and grace of these fioriture, roulades, &c., which, indeed, are unlike anything that was ever heard or seen before Chopin's time. I say "seen," for the configurations in the notation of this piece are so different from those ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... father-in-law might love her, and see her beauty and charm with all the rest of the world, Harriet knew that she must begin an actual campaign for his esteem on her wedding day. The prospect had an unexpected piquancy. She had little fear of its outcome. She would make Ward Carter a wife for whom his father must come to feel genuine gratitude and devotion. Every fibre of her being would be strained to make the Carter marriage a success. She ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... Leaves large, five-lobed, with large sinuses, light in color, coarsely toothed. Bunches large, long, cylindrical, heavily shouldered, sometimes not well filled, often loose and scraggly; berries small, round, firm and crisp, golden-yellow, sweet with considerable piquancy; quality good. ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... not luxurious living from the reluctant soil. And yet those women—the sweet and gracious ornaments of a self-respecting society—were full of spirit, of modest pride in their position, were familiar with much good literature, could converse with piquancy and understanding on subjects of general interest, were trained in the subtleties of a solid theology, and bore themselves in any company with that traditional breeding which we associate with the name of lady. Such strong ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... wilt do wrong to me? * Who was it bade thee not belong to me? With outer charms thou weddest inner grace * Comprising every point of piquancy: Passion thou hast infused in every heart, * From eyelids driven sleep by deputy: Erst was (I wet) the spray made thin of leaf. * O Cassia spray! Unlief thy sin I see:[FN115] The hart erst hunted I: how is 't I spy * The hunter hunted (fair my hart!) by thee? Wondrouser still I ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... piebald horses and dark brown chariot of the Amadors drew up before the gateway. The young people were delighted with Dona Felipa, and thought her blue eyes and tawny hair gave an added piquancy to her colorless satin skin and otherwise distinctively Spanish face and figure. Aunt Viney, who entertained Donna Maria, was nevertheless watchful of the others; but failed to detect in Dick's effusive greeting, or the Dona's coquettish ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... repeat. Look here, missy. We spar a bit when we meet, you and I; but I'd be sorry to see you go the way you're going. 'Pon my honour I would. You're as pretty a piece of flesh as a man could find on this side of the Atlantic, and what's a sharp tongue but a touch of spice to it? Piquancy, begad, to a fellow like me! . . . And—what's best of all, perhaps—you'd pass ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... matters even by reducing his expenditure. It was winter, and the severity of the weather would have ruined him in coal alone had he not abandoned the superstition of a fire. With an oil-stove there was always some slight danger of asphyxia, but Rickman loved the piquancy of danger. By many such ingenious substitutions he effected so prodigious a saving that three-fifths or more of his salary went into the tobacco-jar and thence into Dicky Pilkington's pocket. He rejoiced to see it go, ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... spinach. What sacrilege to reduce crisp, glossy, beautiful leaves like these to a slimy mess in a pot! The tender buds, often used in white sauce as a substitute for capers, probably do not give it the same piquancy where piquancy is surely most needed - on boiled mutton, said to be Queen Victoria's favorite dish. Hawked about the streets in tight bunches, the marsh-marigold blossoms - with half their yellow sepals already dropped - and ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... blind to her guilt. At length, however, she began to grow more and more bold. She became satiated, as one of her historians says of her, with the common and ordinary forms of vice, and wished for something new and unusual to give piquancy and life to her sensations. At length, however, she went one step too far, and brought upon herself in consequence of it ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... phial—thrown upon her by one of her own jealous sex, that reached the pretty face it was intended to mar. But when the observer had studied the eyes sufficiently to notice this defect, he was generally incapacitated for criticism; and even the scar on her cheek was thought by some to add piquancy to her smile. The youthful editor of THE FIDDLETOWN AVALANCHE had said privately that it was "an exaggerated dimple." Colonel Starbottle was instantly "reminded of the beautifying patches of the days of Queen ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... story ends with the return of Cherubina to real life, where she is eventually restored to her father and to Stuart. The incidents, which follow one another in rapid succession, are foolish and extravagant, but the reminiscences they awaken lend them piquancy. The trappings and furniture of a dozen Gothic castles are here accumulated in generous profusion. Mouldering manuscripts, antique beds of decayed damask, a four-horsed barouche, and fluttering tapestry rejoice the heart of Cherubina, for each item in this curious medley revives moving ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... Theaters, which were to give piquancy to American drama three or four years later, were only in embryo. But of this fast coming revolt Carol had premonitions. She knew from some lost magazine article that in Dublin were innovators called The Irish Players. She knew confusedly that a man named Gordon Craig ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... being calm and sunshiny, with a tranquil sea, and yet with a healthful piquancy and vigour in the air, that, contrary to custom, she was tempted forth a second time to walk. On this occasion she was accompanied by Northmour, and they had been but a short while on the beach, when I saw him take forcible possession of her hand. She struggled, ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the first advances. Her doubts about her future interviews had affected him but little; still less, I fear, did he think of the other changes in her character and disposition, for he was of that age when they added only a piquancy and fascination to her—as of one who, in spite of her weakness of nature, was still devoted to him! But he was painfully conscious that this meeting had revived in him all the fears, vague uneasiness, and sense of wrong that had haunted his first boyhood, ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... he finds it out!' said another. But, as Taylor had offended them, the suggestion added piquancy to the notion. And so before they separated each pledged himself to join the new swatting club. It was not an elegant name for a party of students to call themselves, but the object of the combination was good, and was warmly ...
— That Scholarship Boy • Emma Leslie
... beside the invalid chair and Nell accompanied the Prince; and while both seemed gay enough—even unnaturally gay, perhaps—I dare say they found that the situation had lost a certain interest; for every danger has its fascination, every hazard its piquancy. ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... accompany the child to and from school. Whether or not he had been induced to this display by the excitement did not transpire. Enough that the effect was a success. The riding skirt and her mustang's fripperies had added to Concha's piquancy, and if her origin was still doubted by some, the child herself was accepted with enthusiasm. The parents who were spectators were proud of this distinguished accession to their children's playmates, and when she dismounted amid the acclaim of her little companions, ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... pungency, piquance, piquancy, poignancy haut- gout, strong taste, twang, race. sharpness &c. adj.; acrimony; roughness &c. (sour) 392; unsavoriness &c. 395. mustard, cayenne, caviare; seasoning &c. (condiment) 393; niter, saltpeter, brine (saltiness) 392a; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... unusual amount of piquancy. Mr. Maxwell is very pleasant, strong, both physically and mentally, clever and upright, educated at Oxford and Lincoln's Inn, but brought up in the Straits Settlements, of which his father was chief-justice. He is able, combative, ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... onion? Well, for the simple reason that though an onion is one of the most valuable of all vegetables, though it is the finest of relishes, though it has added piquancy to a thousand feasts, yet nobody praises the onion. Of course you know the author is right here. You may have read some great poetry in your time, poems on daffodils, violets, roses, daisies. Even you have known a great poet who could write ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... dress makes a much finer appearance than before, and will be welcomed by older readers as gladly as its predecessor was greeted by girls and boys. The lavish use the publishers have made of colored plates, woodcuts, and photographic reproductions, gives an unwonted piquancy to the printed page, catching the eye as surely as the text engages ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... years so remarkable. Natural bent is shown in what a man assimilates. Not an item of all the personal traits and anecdotes of writers and publishers brought out in Bradley's unreserved talk had escaped him, and years afterward he could use Bradley's funny stories to give piquancy ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... and this habit of narration, of talking with her mistress like a sort of companion, of describing people and drawing silhouettes of them, had eventually developed in her a facility of animated description, of happy, unconscious characterization, a piquancy and sometimes an acrimony in her remarks that were most remarkable in the mouth of a servant. She had progressed so far that she often surprised Mademoiselle de Varandeuil by her quickness of comprehension, her promptness at grasping things only half said, ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... they were in their box at Covent Garden listening to the sensuous music of "Carmen," and comparing the sauciness of the charming little devil who sang the habanera, with the piquancy of the last Carmen but three, and with the refinement of the one who had made so great a success at Munich. They agreed that the savagery of the newest was very fascinating,—Stephen Linton called it womanly,—but they thought they should like to hear ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... a very little fellow then. One morning my father, lifting me upon his knees, as he was in the habit of doing, smiled at me with that slightly ironical smile which gave a certain piquancy to his perpetual gentleness of manner. As I sat on his knee, playing with his long white hair, he told me something which I did not understand very well, but which interested me very much, for the simple ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... consulted but strength and security, the rude, massive logs, covered with their rough bark, the projecting roof, and the form, would contribute to render the building picturesque in almost any situation, while its actual position added novelty and piquancy to ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... in his glory! On this occasion the joke of the evening was an English traveller. The ideal Englishman on the Continent is a never-failing source of merriment. The presence of five Americans gave additional piquancy to the show. The corpulent, double-chinned, red-nosed Englishman, with knee-breeches, shoe-buckles, and absurd coat, stamped, swore, frowned, doubled up his fists, knocked down waiters, scattered gold right and left, ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... right, and that this is the best possible of worlds, were to Mrs. Widesworth propositions which her perfect health and unmitigated prosperity continually proved. That, in a theological point of view, everything was wrong, she considered an esoteric condiment to add piquancy to the loaves and fishes which Providence had set ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... advanced Sunna's letters grew bright and more and more like her, and she described with admirable imitative piquancy the literary atmosphere and conversation which is Edinburgh's native air. In the month of November, little Eric went away suddenly, in a paroxysm of military enthusiasm, dying literally the death of a soldier "with tumult, with shouting, and ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... province, and the tone being thus determined, I betook myself to ordinary induction, with the view of obtaining some artistic piquancy which might serve me as a key-note in the construction of the poem—some pivot upon which the whole structure might turn. In carefully thinking over all the usual artistic effects—or more properly points, in the ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... storm. When it became absolutely necessary for one Madigan twin to be "mad" at the other, and yet that the business of playing be uninterrupted, the Smith twins invariably made their appearance. They were supposed to save one's dignity; in reality, they lent piquancy to games and rendered "making ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... self-assured, while affecting to smile, have in their eyes and their voices the hesitation of absent-mindedness, that feeling of apprehension of the battle before the footlights which will always be one of the most potent attractions of the actor's profession, its piquancy, its ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... of writing-paper," but would have covered at least ten pages—replaced it in the drawer, and "then, with a countenance of the utmost weariness, lighted his chamber candle and went upstairs to bed." And here, by the way, is one of the amusing oversights which give such a piquancy to "Pickwick." Before he began to read his paper, we are carefully told that Mr. Pickwick "unfolded it, lighted his bedroom candle that it might burn up to the time he had finished." It was Mr. C. Kent who pointed this out ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... condensed version of the tale, Browning has used a poet's licence to heighten the effect and increase the piquancy of the narrative. The poem is written in ottava rima, but, very singularly, there is not one double rhyme from beginning to end. It is difficult to see why Browning, a finer master of grotesque compound rhymes than Byron, should have so ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... much of its real eloquence. Thus the first theme, of a folk-dance character, is a typical violin melody; only strings—with their incisiveness and power of subtle phrasing—can fully express its piquancy. For private study or for class-room work, a practical version is that for four hands; or better still, when possible, the arrangement for two pianofortes.[119] The second phrase of the first theme is considerably expanded by repetition, as if unable to stop from sheer exuberance, ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... to sit silent, lulled by the rising and falling murmur of the stream, and by that agreeably cruel memory. . . . He had no inclination to recall it to Val, but it lent an emotional piquancy to their intercourse. He had the whip hand of Val through the past, and perhaps the present also. Lawrence had been struck by Val's allusion to Mrs. Clowes. He was the friend of the house, was he? Now the position of a friend of the house who shields a wife ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... worth the glance, as he admitted willingly enough afterward. She was the dainty type, with fluffy bright brown hair, eyes the color of wood violets, a nose tilted to the precise angle of bewitching piquancy, and the adorable mouth and chin familiarized to two continents by the artistic pen of the Apostle of the American Girl. How he could have ridden within arm's reach of her through all the daylight hours of a long summer day remained as one of Ford's unanswered enigmas; but it required an accident ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... our childhood. But we should expect the fable, in company with other and more important literary forms, to be more and more loosely, or at least largely, comprehended as time went on, and so to degenerate in conception from this original type. That depended for much of its piquancy on the very fact that it was fantastic: the point of the thing lay in a sort of humorous inappropriateness; and it is natural enough that pleasantry of this description should become less common, as men learn to suspect some serious ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thought that the loss of Deventer and, with it, the almost ruinous condition of three out of the seven Provinces, might excuse on their part a little piquancy of phraseology, nor was it easy for them to express gratitude to the governor for his grave and gentle admonitions, after he had, by his secret document of 24th November, rendered himself fully responsible ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the higher happiness are steadily raised and largely satisfied by hope and even by some degree of present fruition. Even vice would be in many ways sauceless and insipid in the absence of faith. Who does not remember the old cynic's testimony (in the "New Republic") to the piquancy lent by Christianity to many a sin, otherwise pointless. If the moralist distinguishes between actions that are evil because they are forbidden, and those that are forbidden because they are evil, the libertine has a counter-distinction between those that are forbidden because they are pleasant, ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... often occurred to me,—and, to say the truth, it added an indefinable piquancy to the scene,—what proportion of all these people, whether soldiers or civilians, were true at heart to the Union, and what part were tainted, more or less, with treasonable sympathies and wishes, even ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... exception of the orange, the fruits of Ceylon have one deficiency, common, I apprehend, to all tropical countries. They are wanting in that piquancy which in northern climates is attributable to the exquisite perfection in which the sweet and aromatic flavours are blended with the acidulous. Either the acid is so ascendant as to be repulsive to the European ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... they be slovens by instinct. Her blouse was never clean, but she wore it with an air. Her skirt testified that skillets spit grease; but in it she somehow looked as trim as a trout fly. Even the hole in her stocking gave her piquancy; and she had wonderful black hair, which probably had not been combed properly for a month, and big, crackling black eyes. They told us that one day, a week or two before we came, she had been particularly cheerful—so ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... to this pretty piquancy was so instantaneous and so charming that Wallace's face grew luminous with admiration and delight. A smile wreathed his lips, and there came a look into his eyes that made ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... deficiency of local colour and loss of effect in the grouping of the characters is more than compensated for by the racy piquancy of Dick Marston's vernacular, and the aspect, unrivalled in Australian literature, which his account affords of bushranging life from the bushranger's own point of view. In the truth with which this view is presented lies the strength and lasting ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... and wrote letters. He showed me one of these, addressed to a friend of Margaret's. In it he extolled Flora's beauty, piquancy, and supremacy; related how she made all the women jealous and all the men mad; and hinted at my triumph. I knew that that letter would meet Margaret's eyes, and was vain enough ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... could not help falling in love with Daisy, who was the only girl he ever saw except the high-bred, milk-and-water misses whom he sometimes met in Lady Jane's drawing-room, and who, in point of beauty and grace and piquancy, could in no degree compare with ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... reckless part of the adventure would be over with this day—and she was rather sorry. After all, she did not much regret the wave of fate which had swept her and her maid-chaperon temporarily apart. There was a certain piquancy in travelling ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... restorative, especially during a journey, and as a harmless narcotic which it would be hard to replace. The addition of tobacco intensifies this narcotic effect considerably, other additions such as cinnamon serving only to soften the astringency and the piquancy of the leaf and to impart ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... and the company was mixed. The establishment provided punch, strong waters and cordials and some of the visitors had indulged themselves without scruple. The effect was seen in the cheeks of matrons and damsels where they were not daubed. It added brilliancy to many an eye—it gave a piquancy and freedom to talk, greatly appreciated by the gallants. As for the dancing, in that crowded room owing to the space monopolised by the prodigious hoops and the general exhilaration, the stately minuet and sarabande ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... picked it up and handed it to me—encouraged him to walk me home—invited him in, and made him, as well as myself, extremely happy by my kindness. I permitted him to call frequently, but of course I soon grew tired of him—the affair lacked zeal, romance, piquancy; so, this morning when he visited me, I suffered him to take a last kiss, and dismissed him forever, with a twenty-dollar bill and an intimation that we were in future entire strangers. Poor fellow! he shed tears—but I only laughed, and rang the bell for the servant to show him out. ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... shack she was still bareheaded. She loved the feel of the sun, and the few freckles it brought only added a piquancy to ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... the National Gallery, but the galleries of France and Italy, and even Germany herself. Perhaps Germany first of all, for there would be a piquancy in thus employing the cherished possessions of the foe. Could not something be done, for example, with the famous wax bust, the glory of the Kaiser Friedrich Collection, into which LEONARDO DA VINCI, as a finishing touch, crammed an early Victorian waistcoat before delivering the masterpiece ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 12, 1917 • Various
... piquancy about these libels on the dead which we cannot understand, but which we may contrast with the less dishonourable process known to modern historians as "whitewashing." Just as Tiberius and Henry VIII. have ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... the grand vibrations of the pahu filled the air with their solemn tremor, the lighter and sharper tones of the pu-niu gave a piquancy to the effect, adding a feature which may be likened to the sparkling ripples which the breeze carves in the ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... others. There is no meat more "necessary" in the house than good ham. Not only is the meat there in all its nutriment but it is preserved—that is, cured and smoked—in such a way that there is given to it a piquancy which whets the appetite and gives a stimulus to the gastric juices, thus aiding—so the doctors tell us—the process ...
— Armour's Monthly Cook Book, Volume 2, No. 12, October 1913 - A Monthly Magazine of Household Interest • Various
... fashion, of youth, and her Parisian dress clung over her wasted figure and well-bred bones artistically if not gracefully; the younger lady, evidently her daughter, was crisp and pretty, and carried off the aquiline nose and aristocratic emaciation of her mother with a certain piquancy and a dash that was charming. The gentleman was young, thin, with the ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... day before he had thought of Therese. He had all night dreamed and yearned over her image. He saw her again, delightful, but in another manner, and even more desirable than he had imagined in his insomnia; less visionary, of a more vivid piquancy, and also of a mind more mysteriously impenetrable. She was sad; she seemed cold and indifferent. He said to himself that he was nothing to her; that he was becoming importunate and ridiculous. This irritated ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... of piquancy was given to Mr. DU MAURIER'S part by his broken English. "Broken" is perhaps not quite the word, unless we may speak of a torrent as being broken by pebbles in its bed. There were momentary hesitancies, and a few easy French words, such ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... spheroid body, and a somewhat nauseous-looking meat is disclosed; but no more objectionable in appearance than the substance of a fully ripe passion fruit. The flavour! Ah, the flavour! It surpasseth the delectable oyster. It hath more of the savour and piquancy of the ocean. It clingeth to the palate and purgeth it of grosser tastes. It recalleth the clean and marvellous creature, whose life has been spent in cool coral grottoes, among limestone and the salty essences of the pure and sparkling sea, and if ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... again; and spent the morning where the vines grew, looking down upon the golden ship which was built for a 'South American Republic.' That tale I never believed, for the man's face marked it as a lie as he gave it to me; but the mere telling of it added piquancy to the dish I had tasted of, and I resolved in that hour to devote myself heart and soul to the work of unravelling the slender threads, even if I lost my common employment in the business. The reverie held me long. I was roused from it by the ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... of mathematical treatises, the titles only of which are preserved. We gather from one of these titles, 'On irrational lines and solids', that he wrote on irrationals. Democritus realized as fully as Zeno, and expressed with no less piquancy, the difficulty connected with the continuous and the infinitesimal. This appears from his dilemma about the circular base of a cone and a parallel section; the section which he means is a section 'indefinitely ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... ought to be. Such food requires little or no force of digestion, a little gentle heat and motion being sufficient to dissolve it into its integral particles: so that, in a vegetable diet, though the sharp humors, in the first passages, are extended, relaxed stomach, and sometimes a delightful piquancy in the food, may tempt one to exceed in quantity; yet rarely, if spices and sauces—as too much butter, oil, and sugar—are not joined to seeds[9] and vegetables, can the mischief go farther than the stomach and bowels, to create a pressed load, sickness, vomiting, or purging, by ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... often given at first nights and things of that sort. In New York, the least snobbish of great cities, a man need have but a dress suit and car-fare—if he be the right kind of a man, of course—to go anywhere and hold up his head with the best. In a place so universally rich, there is even a certain piquancy in being a pauper. The Grossenstecks were overcome to think I shined my own shoes, and had to calculate my shirts, and the fact that I was no longer young (that's the modern formula for forty), and next-door ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... vitality. Like her mother she had a quantity of hair, as dark as hers, but finer; dark eyes, not without meaning; irregular but very pleasing and delicate features; and an unusually white rather than pale complexion, with a sort of sallow glow under the diaphanous skin. There was not a little piquancy in the expression of her countenance, and Richard felt ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... it, for a very pleasant little performance it was. The songs had a thrill of either pathos or piquancy in every word and note, and the audience found they were listening ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... proverbial phrases of his native country gives him, we think, an advantage over any English translator, which more than counterbalances the trifling inaccuracies of phraseology that here and there betray the foreigner, and amount to nothing more than an accent, which is not without its merit of piquancy. In one respect we think he has acted with great discretion, namely, in now and then curtailing the reflections which Guerrazzi has interpolated upon the story to the manifest detriment of its interest and consecutiveness. If Signor Guerrazzi should profit by these silent criticisms, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... but his rigid temperance, and his regularity were proper to the man, and neither to the past nor present age. Of his bons mots we have a sprinkling, and but a sprinkling, in this volume; but the celebrated one about language is not there, though others of less piquancy are. Did M. Colmache consider it of apocryphal authenticity? We ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... perfection undemanded by their neighbors. Perhaps it would have been rash to say then that she was at all exceptional inwardly, or that the unusual in her was more than her rare grace of movement and bearing, and a certain daring which gave piquancy to a very common egoistic ambition, such as exists under many clumsy exteriors and is taken no notice of. For I suppose that the set of the head does not really determine the hunger of the inner self for supremacy: it only makes a difference sometimes as to the way in which the supremacy is held ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... eccentric, yet lofty nature, with a nervous organization and all that it entails of torment and delight, the craving for perfection becomes morbid. Intellectually he is akin to Sterne, though he is not a literary worker. There is an indescribable piquancy about his epigrams and sallies of thought. He is eloquent, he knows how to love, but the uncertainty that appears in his execution is a part of the very nature of the man. The brotherhood loved him for the very qualities which the philistine would ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... moment, you will see that, while it is easy to choose what virtues we would have our wife possess, it is all but impossible to imagine those faults we would desire in her, which I think most lovers would admit add piquancy to the loved one, that fascinating wayward imperfection which ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... building, they had trooped in; some even coming from the shore of the Atlantic, a mile beyond, across the downs, whence other upland square church-towers could be viewed on the sky-line against the grey January heavens. The occasion was in a sense unique, and its piquancy strengthened by that rivalry which is the ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... deserved, his uncle must be proportionably reviled, and though Humfrey did not imply a word save in commendation of the young missionary's devotion, she went indoors feeling almost injured at his not understanding it; but Honora's petulance was a very bright, sunny piquancy, and she only appeared the more glowing and animated for it when she presented herself at the breakfast-table, with a preposterous ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... composed by Father Duponcet, a Jesuit, in two vols. 12mo, Paris, 1714. Though an ambitious, it is a bungling performance, most unskilfully put together, and contains quite as much of what its hero did not do, as of what he did. The prolixity of the narrative is not even relieved by the piquancy of style, which forms something like a substitute for thought in many of the lower order of French historians. It is less to history, however, than to romance, that the French public is indebted for its conceptions ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... comes to deal with the incompatibility of the sexes in the matter of moral standards. The thing, of course, has been done once for all by LOUIS STEVENSON in Virginibus Puerisque. But he did it in essay form; here we have the piquancy of personal narrative and dialogue. Husband and wife in turn are responsible for the story, each assuming a partial attitude towards facts and opinions; or else it is one of his old friends (a source of foolish jealousy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various
... insignificant. Though the Spaniards have been described as not a cleanly people, this man is most carefully got up, and his hands are whiter than his face. He stoops a little, and has an extremely large, oddly-shaped head. His ugliness, which, however, has a dash of piquancy, is aggravated by smallpox marks, which seam his face. His forehead is very prominent, and the shaggy eyebrows meet, giving a repellent air of harshness. There is a frowning, plaintive look on his face, reminding one of a sickly ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... account for its position there, by proving appositeness and either originality or indispensability, then cast it aside. The conscientious performance of this rite will soon give a wonderful freshness and piquancy ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... symbol]) give to the musical phrase a piquancy that is admirably in keeping with the gay and careless character of the page, Oscar, who sings it. In fact, as regards Style, Musical accent is particularly valuable in song for the purpose of setting forth the true character of the music. Hence, it may ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... Chicago, are many pleasant people, drawn together from all parts of the world. A resident here would find great piquancy in the associations,—those he met having such dissimilar histories and topics. And several persons I saw evidently transplanted from the most refined circles to be met in this country. There are lures enough in the West for people of all kinds;—the ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... to him. He had even offered, when he had more time, to give her a few lessons. Lady Conroy told her a hundred interesting stories about him and Dulcie found a tinge of romance about him that helped to give piquancy to ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... of beauty which her excitement called forth, added piquancy to her natural charms, and inflamed Santa Anna's wicked passions all the more. But more than any of them revenge. For now he knew how much the fair petitioner was interested in the man whose suit she had preferred. With a cold cynicism—which, however, cost ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... marriage, the Count de Witt obtained leave of absence, and, accompanied by his wife, he visited the different courts of Europe. Sophia's beauty, which derived piquancy from a certain Oriental languishment of manner, was every where the theme of admiration. The Prince de Ligne, who saw her at the Court of France, mentions her in his Memoirs, in terms of eulogy, which I cannot think exaggerated; for when I knew her at Tulczin, though she was then upwards ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 379, Saturday, July 4, 1829. • Various
... losing her guard, never missing her thrust or parry, and yet never inflicting anything like a wound, filled him with a sort of rapture. It united the innocence of a child to the cleverness of a woman of the world, giving an exquisite piquancy to both. In this young creature, who could have had no experience of anything of the kind, it was the very essence of ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... with their own. But was it possible? A certain Diana-like coldness had been apparent to those who had the eyes to see it, even in her most voluptuous movements. They knew that it was not assumed for the sake of adding piquancy to her performance—it was there indeed. But side by side with it there were unprobed depths of passion in her soft, deep eyes; a slumbering passion even in the sinuous, graceful movements of every limb. Some day the struggle would come, even if it ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that now, as we are discovering the old Chinese poetry and painting, we are finding that Natural Magic is really far more Chinese than Celtic—that where we Celts have vibrated to it minorly, the great Chinese gave it out fully and grandly—does it not add to the piquancy ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... missionary strode in, and after the preliminary greetings Diana asked with charming piquancy, "O! are you really and ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... sweet, but it had none of the humour which gave piquancy to Betty's. It might soothe, caress, even reprimand, but it could never jest; for life to Mrs. Ambler was soft, yet serious, like a continued prayer to a ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... filled with animation their charming faces, on which the late fading rose had begun once more to bloom. Their faith in the future gave to their countenances something resolute and decisive, which added a degree of piquancy to the beauty of ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... iced humming birds, pickled edelweiss, or any of those things kept habitually in the cellars of families like ours. No dash of Jamaica ginger or Pain-killer or sloe gin or sarsaparilla to give it piquancy. Unless Julia can find a paper that gives more up-to-date advice to its country subscribers, we'll have to transfer her from the ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Teutonic sage who evolved the ideal portrait of an elephant from his "inner consciousness" was a commonplace, matter-of fact person compared with the daring visionary who conjures up a complete system of language from the same fertile but untrustworthy source. The piquancy of Senhor Pedro Carolino's New Guide of the Conversation in Portuguese and English is enhanced by the evident bona fides and careful compilation of "the little book," or as Pedro himself gravely expresses it, "for ...
— English as she is spoke - or, A jest in sober earnest • Jose da Fonseca
... much more solicitous about a woman's past than about her future. The point we are aiming at is to bring about a reversal of our system of manners. If we did so we should end, perhaps, by giving to faithful married life all the flavor and the piquancy which women of to-day find ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... A piquancy of the contest was increased by the fact that it was led on either side by members of the Administration. Washington had early put forth a Declaration of Neutrality, drawn up by Randolph, who, though leaning if anything ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... the absolute nature of man; piquancy and charm to that which serves and modifies this. Infinitude and immortality are of the one; the strictest finiteness belongs to the other. In the first you can never be too deep and rich; in the second never too delicate and measured. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... usually manage to excite interest for a few weeks, even though the prospects of the household ways and means are cloudy. There is a certain piquancy about her situation, and her manner to her acquaintance at the sense of it, which carries off the gloom of facts, and renders even the humblest bride independent awhile of the real. Mrs. Jude Fawley was walking in the streets of Alfredston one market-day ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... good-for-nothing smoking-clubs are the places where these conversational fungi spring up most luxuriantly. Don't think I undervalue the proper use and application of a cant word or phrase. It adds piquancy to conversation, as a mushroom does to a sauce. But it is no better than a toadstool, odious to the sense and poisonous to the intellect, when it spawns itself all over the talk of men and youths capable of talking, as it sometimes does. As we hear flash phraseology, it is commonly the dishwater ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... life, he is correct, exemplary, generous, just. We never heard a single impropriety laid to his charge; and if he has many enemies, few men can boast more numerous or stauncher friends.—The variety and piquancy of his writings form a striking contrast to the mode in which they are produced. He rises early, and writes or reads till breakfast-time. He writes or reads after breakfast till dinner, after dinner till tea, and from ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... care he had placed her, after examining her wounds, had not given much hope of her recovery. It was not that de Jars was capable of a lasting love, but Charlotte was young and possessed great beauty, and the romance and mystery surrounding their connection gave it piquancy. Charlotte's disguise, too, which enabled de Jars to conceal his success and yet flaunt it in the face, as it were, of public morality and curiosity, charmed him by its audacity, and above all he was carried away by the bold and uncommon character of the girl, who, not content with a prosaic ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... cause a separation between any entire mass of ornament and its background. If portions are thus relieved almost to complete detachment, but visibly reconnect themselves in another place, a certain piquancy is gained which adds charm without destroying character. A curious use is made of undercutting in the bunch of leaves given in Plate XI from a Miserere seat in Winchester Cathedral; it may be said to be completely undercut in so far that the ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... a picture of Russian interior life, we pass to Gretch, an author of some European reputation. His "Trip to Germany" describes, with singular piquancy, the manners of a very curious race—the Germans of St Petersburg; and "Tchernaia Jenstchina," "the Black Woman," presents a picture of Russian society, which was welcomed with great eagerness ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... the trees were red glimmering cigarettes and pipes. The odour of tobacco mingled with the fresh, nocturnal coolness and gave it a sweet piquancy. Piquant also, in the nocturnal stillness, were the sounds of the young, eager voices. And these people had no concern with the mystery of the wood made audible in the silence. The people behaved as ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... raptures about many a 'dear little thing,' none of whom would, however, stand a comparison with Maurice; Gilbert was critical upon every one's beauty; and Genevieve was more animated than all, telling anecdotes with great piquancy, and rehearsing the comical Yankee stories she had heard from Captain Ferrars. She had enjoyed with the zest and intensity of a peculiarly congenial temperament, and she seemed not to be able to cease from working off her excitement in repetitions of her ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... but words have neither form nor colour; how shall I paint with them? It was not the beauty of mere form and colour, either, that struck Mrs. Barclay in Lois's face. You may easily see more regular features and more dazzling complexion. It was not any particular brilliance of eye, or piquancy of expression. There was a soundness and fulness of young life; that is not so uncommon either. There was a steadfast strength and sweetness of nature. There was an unconscious, innocent grace, that is exceedingly rare. And a high, noble expression of ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... Devil, the unexpected return of his Grace of Osmonde, the preparations for the union, had given an extra stimulant to that interest in her ladyship which was ever great enough to need none. Thereunto was added the piquancy of the stories of the noticeable demeanour of Sir John Oxon, of what had seemed to be so plain a rebellion against his fate, and also of my lady's open and cold displeasure at the manner of his bearing himself as a disappointed man who presumed to show anger against that to which ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the burden of the war had borne most heavily, concealed hostility to the Constitution and a consolidated government. These were not reflections to be spoken of in debate, but they were not the less cherished, and gave to it piquancy and spirit. There was truth on both sides ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... latest mode. Thus occupied, she revealed a certain petulant beauty. Like the majority of shop-girls, she was small, but her figure was good, her skin white; her discontented mouth gave her the touch of piquancy apt to play havoc with the work of the world. In winter breakfast was eaten by the light of a rococo metal lamp set in the centre of the table. This was to save gas. There was usually a rump steak and potatoes, bread and "creamery" ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... disappointments and unsuccessful attempts to obtain the vegetable I wished, I succeeded, by artificial means frequently employed, in growing a small vegetable, combining the flavour of a delicate cream with the piquancy of lemon. ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... presence of mind put an end to the jeremiads of the noblesse. Great natures are prone to make a virtue of misfortune; and there is something irresistibly attractive about well-doing when persisted in through evil report; innocence has the piquancy of ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... now the home of peace and joy; but there have been times when its history has been shrouded in tragic mystery, and even to-day there is the Druce claim to give piquancy to its story. ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... the piquancy to the sauce. How many very wantonly pleasant sports spring from the most decent and modest language of the works on love? Pleasure itself seeks to be heightened with pain; it is much sweeter when it smarts and has the skin ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... we'll have a tiffin of talk; some cloves of adventure, with a capsicum or two of tragic story, shall stand for the curry; the customs of the country may represent the familiar rice; a whiff of freshness and fragrance from the Mofussil will be as the mangoes and the dorians; in the piquancy and grotesqueness of the first pure Orientalism that may come to hand we shall recognize the curious chow-chow of the chutney; and as for the beer,—why, we will be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... great courtesy to the Duc de—, I bowed my way to the Duchesse de B—. That personage, whose liveliness and piquancy of manner always make one wish for one's own sake that her rank was less exalted, was speaking with great volubility to a tall, stupid looking man, one of the ministers, and smiled most graciously ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... face was full of wild eagerness, and Mr. Belknap was not insensible to the piquancy of ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... surprise. It was not like the Phebe McAlister he had known, to speak like this. At Quantuck she had been cocksure, aggressive; now she was gentler, more womanly. He missed something of the piquancy; yet after all he ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... (perhaps even some of the second,) it makes little or no difference who writes them—they are good enough for what they are; nor is it necessary that they should be actual emanations from the personality and life of the writers. The very reverse sometimes gives piquancy. But poems of the first class, (poems of the depth, as distinguished from those of the surface,) are to be sternly tallied with the poets themselves, and tried by them and their lives. Who wants a glorification of courage and manly defiance from a coward or a sneak?—a ballad of benevolence ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... was so agreeable, being calm and sunshiny, with a tranquil sea, and yet with a healthful piquancy and vigor in the air, that, contrary to custom, she was tempted forth a second time to walk. On this occasion she was accompanied by Northmour, and they had been but a short while on the beach, when I saw him take forcible possession of her hand. She ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... boldly than any other figure we know—a figure curiously compounded of cynical hardness, blind love, and broken-hearted pathos.... A strong and interesting study of Georgia characteristics without depending upon dialect. There is just sufficient mannerism and change of speech to give piquancy to ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... parlor manners were somewhat less decorous and elegant, owing to the fact that Reginald and Willie had been industriously circulating the episode of the morning, with such additions as they thought would add point and piquancy, among the rest of the boys, and there was no end of innuendo and witticism indulged in, that caused the young gentlemen to retire in groups and laugh; and we could hear such remarks as, "Dick, there was a whale hooked on this coast this afternoon, did you know ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... terse, spirited Cardinal de Retz, to the fine, penetrating, and exquisitely finished Sainte-Beuve, the prince of modern critics and literary artists. It was this skill in vivid delineation that gave such point and piquancy to the memoirs of the period, which are little more than a series of brilliant and vigorous sketches of people outlined upon a shifting background of events. In this rapid characterization the French have no rivals. It is the charm ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... poignancy, acuity, acuteness, edge; asperity, acrimony, impatience; acumen, sagacity, shrewdness, astuteness, aptness; pungency, piquancy. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... usual self so bewildering as to banish all sense of proportion in estimating the splendour of his transformation but the singular nobility of his face, with its wise, youthful brow and deep, thoughtful eyes, also added such a curious piquancy to his fashionable attire, that the general effect was little short of startling. It is always so. Dress your scholar, your thinker, your poet, in clothes that Saville Row has carefully designed and carried out for a Society peacock, ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... overhears; and this is doubly the case when he alludes to Joseph as a suitor for the hand of Maria. So, too, with the following scene between Joseph and Charles; in itself it would be flat enough; the fact that Sir Peter is listening lends it a certain piquancy; but this is ten times multiplied by the fact that Lady Teazle, too, hears all that passes. When Joseph is called from the room by the arrival of the pretended Old Stanley, there would be no interest in his embarrassment if we believed the person ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... war he had enjoyed these last two years more than any of the ten since he built "Charmleigh" and settled down to semi-rural domesticity with his young wife. There had been a certain piquancy, a savour added to existence, by the country's peril, and all the public service and sacrifice it demanded. His chauffeur was gone, and one gardener did the work of three. He enjoyed-positively enjoyed, his committee work; ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... talk, in which the clock tinker indulged so freely, afforded his young friend no little amusement. His tongue had long obeyed the lilt of classic diction; his thought came easy in Elizabethan phrase. The slight Celtic brogue served to enhance the piquancy of his talk. Moreover he was really a ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... him that his Queen had borne a maid- babe, but when the Eunuchs gave this message, his breast was narrowed and he was bewildered in his wits, and rising without stay or delay he went to his wife. Here they brought to him the new-born when he uncovered her face and, noting her piquancy and elegancy and beauty and brilliancy and size and symmetry, his vitals fluttered and he was seized with yearning sorrow for her fate; and he named her Al-Hayfa[FN180] for her seemlihead. Then he gifted the midwife'"—And Shahrazad was surprised by the dawn of day and ceased to say her ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... before the great Italian. It seems, however that De Beriot continued to meet with success even after the advent of Paganini. His playing was distinguished by unfailing accuracy of intonation, great neatness and facility of bowing, grace, elegance, and piquancy. ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... All the evening the sound of his low, deliberate voice was unceasing, and his calm announcements to his two little cousins were each one more startling than the last; while James, to whom it was likewise all sunshine, was full of vivacity, and a shrewd piquancy of manner that gave zest to all he said, and wonderfully enlivened the often rather dull ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thicken with flour and butter, or if a little cold boiled rice is handy it may be substituted for the flour, and should be added with one ounce of butter to the sauce five minutes before it is strained. A teaspoonful of lemon juice added the last thing will give additional piquancy ...
— New Vegetarian Dishes • Mrs. Bowdich
... with a soft, sibilant voice, and dainty to her finger-tips, she did not look more than nineteen, though her age was twenty-four. How shall I describe her save to say that her oval, well-defined features were perfect, her dark, arched brows gave piquancy to a countenance that was remarked wherever she went, a merry face, with a touch of impudence in her smile—the face of ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... look the great lady. Her undoubted beauty, aided by a touch of Western piquancy, had captivated the Paris salons of an earlier generation, and those same salons repaid their debt by conferring the repose, the dignity, the subtle aura of distinction, that constitute the aristocrat in outward bearing. For this reason, Princess ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... yesterday upon the keep when she tried to find Dacre! I never saw such eyes in my life! I must speak to Lawrence immediately. I think I must have her face painted in four positions, like that picture of Lady Alice Gordon by Sir Joshua. Her full face is sublime; and yet there is a piquancy in the profile, which I am not sure—and yet again, when her countenance is a little bent towards you, and her neck gently turned, I think that is, after all—but then when her eyes meet yours, full! ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... Standing outside cheerfully humming a tune is a large, forceful, breezy young man of twenty-eight. He is DERMOD GILRUTH. Splendid in physique, charming of manner, his slightly-marked Dublin accent lends a piquancy to his conversation. He has all the ease and poise of a traveled, polished young man of breeding. Dartrey's face brightens as he holds out ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... little later, rather amused by the skill with which he had been held off. He admired the piquancy of spirit with which she took advantage of the altered positions. For him tameness was the great disillusionizer; his undefined ideal was a woman who must be won anew every day. Still, he had been rubbed a little the wrong way by the new-woman catch-phrases ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... vivacity, good-nature, and amiability, are duly appreciated. Her lively sallies and naive remarks are very amusing; and the frankness and simplicity she has preserved in a profession and position so calculated to induce the reverse, add to her attractions and give piquancy ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... after his marriage, the Count de Witt obtained leave of absence, and, accompanied by his wife, he visited the different courts of Europe. Sophia's beauty, which derived piquancy from a certain Oriental languishment of manner, was every where the theme of admiration. The Prince de Ligne, who saw her at the Court of France, mentions her in his Memoirs, in terms of eulogy, which I cannot think exaggerated; for when I knew her at Tulczin, though she ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 379, Saturday, July 4, 1829. • Various
... superior success of the former in flirtation. The latter were not consoled by their experience that no flirtation lasted beyond the period of rustication. Dr. Price usually had several young men fitting for college also, which fact added more piquancy to the provincial society. In the summer riding parties were fashionable, and in the winter county balls and cotillion parties; a professor came down from Boston at this season to set up a dancing school, which was always ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... serving cauliflower is with milk and butter, after the manner of cabbage, but a more elaborate white sauce generally accompanies it. This is the familiar drawn butter sauce, to which may be added a little vinegar or lemon juice, to give piquancy of flavor. Sometimes this sauce is varied by adding milk or cream to the flour and butter, when it is ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier
... chaos of Jewish history and biography; and most of the great events of the past, down to the period of the American Revolution, they instinctively attribute to Moses. There is a fine bold confidence in all their citations, however, and the record never loses piquancy in their hands, though strict accuracy may suffer. Thus, one of my captains, last Sunday, heard a colored exhorter at Beaufort proclaim, "Paul may plant, and may polish wid water, but it won't do," in which the sainted Apollos would hardly ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... coarsely toothed. Bunches large, long, cylindrical, heavily shouldered, sometimes not well filled, often loose and scraggly; berries small, round, firm and crisp, golden-yellow, sweet with considerable piquancy; quality good. ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... there was true piquancy in the thought that one was travelling in company with a thug who had already had two tries for one's life and would not hesitate to essay a third; in the same coach, separated only by the thin partition between the compartments, safe only in the thug's unconsciousness of one's proximity! ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... delighting in all the political and historical details, she would take the book from their hands, and enter into long discussions, her strong whig principles startling the two bred and born tory girls into sufficient argument and opposition to give piquancy and eloquence to her words as they flowed rapidly from her lips. During these periods, Gatty, who only cared to get done as quick as possible what she was obliged to do, and thought all these digressions a great bore, ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... as at Chicago, are many pleasant people, drawn together from all parts of the world. A resident here would find great piquancy in the associations,—those he met having such dissimilar histories and topics. And several persons I saw evidently transplanted from the most refined circles to be met in this country. There are lures enough in the West for people of all kinds;—the enthusiast and the cunning man; ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... finding so captivating in the demure governess. He evidently thought so still, and played his part with spirit; for, while apparently enjoying a conversation which contained no allusion to the past, the memory of it gave piquancy to that ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... attentive to Elinor, who appeared to great disadvantage in his eyes, when placed in constant contrast with Mrs. Creighton. He scarcely regretted now, his little prospect of favour with the heiress, for the poorer widow had completely fascinated him by her graceful flatteries, the piquancy of her wit, and her worldliness, which, with Mr. Stryker, passed for her wisdom. Even Mary Van Alstyne, though prejudiced against her, was obliged to confess, as she watched Mrs. Creighton, that she admired her. The lady had thrown herself ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... door. Standing outside cheerfully humming a tune is a large, forceful, breezy young man of twenty-eight. He is DERMOD GILRUTH. Splendid in physique, charming of manner, his slightly-marked Dublin accent lends a piquancy to his conversation. He has all the ease and poise of a traveled, polished young man of breeding. Dartrey's face brightens as he holds ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... tells us, had as little sympathy with the gospel of Basedow as with that of Lavater, but, always attracted to originals, Basedow's personality amused and interested him. What gave point to his curiosity was the piquancy of the contrast between the two prophets. Lavater was all grace, purity, and refinement; "in his presence one shrank like a maiden from hurting his feelings." In appearance, voice, manner, on the other hand, ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... inner substance. The slow movements (with exception of those of the 1st and 2nd Sonatas, which have somewhat of a dramatic character) and Finales are satisfactory, per se, as music: the former have charm, refinement; the latter, elegance, piquancy, brilliancy. Now, in these sonatas, the opening movements seem like the commencement of some tragedy: in No. 2 there is nobility mixed with pathos; in No. 3, fierce passion; and in No. 4, still passion, albeit of a tenderer, more melancholy kind. But in the Finales it is as though we ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... balmy evening. Edouard was to leave them for a week the next day. They were alone: Rose was determined he should go away quite happy. Everything was in Edouard's favor: he pleaded his cause warmly: she listened tenderly: this happy evening her piquancy and archness seemed to dissolve into tenderness as she and Edouard walked hand in hand under the moon: a tenderness all the more heavenly to her devoted lover, that she was not one of those angels who cloy a man ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... until clear. Choose rather pears like the Seckle for preserving, both on account of the flavor and size. A nice way is to stick a clove in the blossom end of each pear, for this fruit seems to require some extraneous flavor to bring out its own piquancy. Another acceptable addition to pear preserves may be found instead, by adding the juice and thinly pared rind of one lemon to each five pounds of fruit. If the pears are hard and tough, parboil them until tender before beginning to preserve, and from the same water ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... a Jesuit, in two vols. 12mo, Paris, 1714. Though an ambitious, it is a bungling performance, most unskilfully put together, and contains quite as much of what its hero did not do, as of what he did. The prolixity of the narrative is not even relieved by the piquancy of style, which forms something like a substitute for thought in many of the lower order of French historians. It is less to history, however, than to romance, that the French public is indebted for its conceptions of the character of Gonsalvo de Cordova, as depicted by the gaudy pencil of ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... of the orange, the fruits of Ceylon have one deficiency, common, I apprehend, to all tropical countries. They are wanting in that piquancy which in northern climates is attributable to the exquisite perfection in which the sweet and aromatic flavours are blended with the acidulous. Either the acid is so ascendant as to be repulsive to the European ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... woman's past than about her future. The point we are aiming at is to bring about a reversal of our system of manners. If we did so we should end, perhaps, by giving to faithful married life all the flavor and the piquancy which women of to-day find in acts ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... voluntary, are nothing other than the arbitrary thickening and distention of certain ideas. And it is only the spiciness of the thematic material, the nimbleness and suavity of the composition, and, chiefly, the piquancy of the orchestral speech, that saves the music of Rimsky-Korsakoff from utter brittleness, and gives ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... conceived (so it was said) the gravest fears. The correspondence was languishing. The more Octavie displayed her wit, the cooler grew the royal lover. At last Octavie discovered the cause of her decline; her power was threatened by the novelty and piquancy of a correspondence between the august scribe and the wife of his Keeper of the Seals. That excellent woman was believed to be incapable of writing a note; she was simply and solely godmother to the efforts of audacious ambition. Who could be hidden behind her petticoats? ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... order to admire Owen as he deserved, his uncle must be proportionably reviled, and though Humfrey did not imply a word save in commendation of the young missionary's devotion, she went indoors feeling almost injured at his not understanding it; but Honora's petulance was a very bright, sunny piquancy, and she only appeared the more glowing and animated for it when she presented herself at the breakfast-table, with a ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... incompatibility of the sexes in the matter of moral standards. The thing, of course, has been done once for all by LOUIS STEVENSON in Virginibus Puerisque. But he did it in essay form; here we have the piquancy of personal narrative and dialogue. Husband and wife in turn are responsible for the story, each assuming a partial attitude towards facts and opinions; or else it is one of his old friends (a source of foolish jealousy to the wife) who takes up the tale without warning when they meet at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various
... give the piquancy to the sauce. How many very wantonly pleasant sports spring from the most decent and modest language of the works on love? Pleasure itself seeks to be heightened with pain; it is much sweeter when it smarts and has the skin rippled. The ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... verdure, flowers, and light. An orchestra, half concealed in the foliage, breathed forth music, by turns plaintive and gay. Add to this the richness of the costumes, the brilliancy of the diamonds, the piquancy of the masks, and the charm of intrigue, and you will see that it would have needed the soul of an ancient Stoic to resist the intoxication ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... and well-bred bones artistically if not gracefully; the younger lady, evidently her daughter, was crisp and pretty, and carried off the aquiline nose and aristocratic emaciation of her mother with a certain piquancy and a dash that was charming. The gentleman was young, thin, with the ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... to live without them. We shall not see their like again. The new lot—present lot—are splendid fellows. They are probably better soldiers. Certainly they are more uniformly trained. But there was a piquancy about our old scamps in 'K(1)' that was unique—priceless—something the world ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... formal and grand I shall never enjoy your delicious dishes any more, with Hubert adding to their piquancy ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... features lived in his eyes, even an almost indistinguishable scar there was on the girl's right cheek near the temple. It was not a flaw, that faint scar; it seemed somehow to heighten her loveliness, as an accent over a word sometimes gives it one knows not what of piquancy. ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... and a somewhat nauseous-looking meat is disclosed; but no more objectionable in appearance than the substance of a fully ripe passion fruit. The flavour! Ah, the flavour! It surpasseth the delectable oyster. It hath more of the savour and piquancy of the ocean. It clingeth to the palate and purgeth it of grosser tastes. It recalleth the clean and marvellous creature, whose life has been spent in cool coral grottoes, among limestone and the salty essences ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... Brooks took up again her life at her father's home. To the little girl she had carried on her flight to Michigan and to the boy whose hair had the copper-red of the father, she devoted herself. The girl had been named Mary, and she inherited the piquancy and wit that had made her mother the belle of the valley, and as she grew to womanhood the mountaineers saw again the Nancy Brooks they had loved before war had come with its ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... unfinished at his sudden departure. I sat for it in a walking-dress, made under his direction—a gown of a peculiar silken stuff, falling into an abundance of small folds, giving me "a certain air of piquancy" which pleases him, but is far enough from my true self. My old Flemish faille, which I shall ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... the form and size of the Scarlet Turnip-rooted; skin white; flesh white and semi-transparent. It possesses less piquancy than the Scarlet, ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... that Stephen should know that; Maggie need not have mentioned it. Perhaps there was some pride in the confession,— the pride of poverty that will not be ashamed of itself. But if Maggie had been the queen of coquettes she could hardly have invented a means of giving greater piquancy to her beauty in Stephen's eyes; I am not sure that the quiet admission of plain sewing and poverty would have done alone, but assisted by the beauty, they made Maggie more unlike other women even than ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... blue; her skin was clear and healthy, and her white dress—happy coincidence!—had been laundered that very morning. Her half-suppressed excitement at the sudden duty of welcoming the great aristocrat of the county, gave a piquancy to her prettiness. ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... an idea, in writing, of the pleasant manner he has of relating these things—a manner that receives additional piquancy from his English, which, though good, is necessarily broken. He usually prefers the English ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... his history. At the same time he lacks the naiivete which makes Corio, Allegretti, Infessura, and Matarazzo so amusing. He gossips as little as Machiavelli, and has no profundity to make up for the want of piquancy. The interest of his chronicle is greatest in the part which concerns Savonarola, though even here the peculiarly reticent and dubitative nature of the man is obvious. While he sympathizes with Savonarola's ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... soft, sibilant voice, and dainty to her finger-tips, she did not look more than nineteen, though her age was twenty-four. How shall I describe her save to say that her oval, well-defined features were perfect, her dark, arched brows gave piquancy to a countenance that was remarked wherever she went, a merry face, with a touch of impudence in her smile—the face of an essentially ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... more to fear from Conward as a suitor for the hand of Mrs. Hardy than as a rival for that of Irene. On the latter score he had no misgivings; he was confident of his ability to worst any adversary in that field, and competition would lend a piquancy to his courtship not altogether without advantages; but he had no such confidence in the case of an assault upon the heart of the elder woman. He could not become Conward's rival in such a case, and, repugnant as the idea was to him, ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... strings of alternate red and white beads. Others limited the decoration to two rats' tails depending from the temples, where phrenologists localize our "causality." Many had faces of sufficient piquancy; the figures, though full, wanted firmness, and I noticed only one well-formed bosom. The men wore red feathers, but none ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... dinner an idea had germinated in his mind. It was only a seed at first, then it began to grow and had now assumed a definite shape. At first he had toyed with it, viewed it from different angles as something fantastic and irrelevant, but nevertheless having a piquancy of its own. Then his ill-luck and that necessary facing of the situation made him regard it more closely, compelled him to award it a serious consideration. He did not like it; it had almost no point of appeal; it was not the sort of thing, had chance been kinder, he would ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... fit for election to council, and even to be prime ministers competent to indite governors' messages, the pigment under our epidermis dooms us to eventual disappointment and a life-long condition of contempt. Even so is it [183] desired by Mr. Froude and his clients, and not without a spice of piquancy is their opinion that for a white ruler to preside and rule over and accept the best assistance of coloured men, qualified as above stated, would be a self-degradation too unspeakable for toleration by any Englishman—"even a bankrupt peer." Unfortunately ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... for a hat," he continued, in language of matchless force and piquancy. "Bend her; she'll about fit you. I dropped across her one day ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... me,—and, to say the truth, it added an indefinable piquancy to the scene,—what proportion of all these people, whether soldiers or civilians, were true at heart to the Union, and what part were tainted, more or less, with treasonable sympathies and wishes, even if such had never blossomed into purpose. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... were safely asleep, letting in the moonlight and a little breeze that smelled keenly of pine woods. Now and then a faint bird-note broke the hush, or the mournful quaver of a screech-owl. The situation was not without picturesque piquancy ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... fruit, and soon we had a feast of luscious pineapples, juicy mangoes, bananas, and oranges, with the dew still upon them. The mango is certainly the king of fruit. Its flavour is a combination of apricot and pineapple, with the slightest possible suspicion of turpentine thrown in, to give a piquancy to the whole. I dare say it sounds a strange mixture, but I can only say that the result is delicious. To enjoy mangoes thoroughly you ought not to eat them in company, but leaning over the side of the ship, in the early morning, with your sleeves tucked up to your elbows, ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... little scene was making a deep impression upon Penrod. What that impression was, he could not possibly have stated; but he had a sense of the imminence of a tender crisis, and he perceived that the piquancy of affairs in the library had reached a point which would brand an intentional interruption as the act of a cold-blooded ruffian. Suddenly it was as though a strong light shone upon him: he decided that it was Mr. Blakely who had told Margaret that her eyes ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... were to give piquancy to American drama three or four years later, were only in embryo. But of this fast coming revolt Carol had premonitions. She knew from some lost magazine article that in Dublin were innovators called The Irish Players. She knew confusedly ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... with it—and yet it had chiefly affected him in his personal homelessness. For his wife was a Southerner, a born slaveholder, and a secessionist, whose noted prejudices to the North had even outrun her late husband's politics. At first the piquancy and recklessness of her opinionative speech amused him as part of her characteristic flavor, or as a lingering youthfulness which the maturer intellect always pardons. He had never taken her politics seriously—why should he? With her head on his shoulder he had listened to her extravagant ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... hope of winning her until he was sure that her indifference was not an affectation. He had read of women who used it as a lure. If it were Charlotte's special weapon he was quite willing to be brought to submission by it. After all, there was piquancy in the situation; for to most men, love sought and hardly won is far ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... woman, with the contents of the letter she was reading. It was from a niece at a boarding-school, who proposed, in a brief and direct way, to visit this aunt during her coming vacation. The tableau was acted so well, and with such piquancy, that claps and peals of laughter from the audience, and finally calls for "Kate Underwood," who demurely makes her appearance from behind the curtain, drops a stage courtesy, and disappears. The poem had been (this audience constituting the judges) excellent, the very best thing Kate ever wrote; ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... year advanced Sunna's letters grew bright and more and more like her, and she described with admirable imitative piquancy the literary atmosphere and conversation which is Edinburgh's native air. In the month of November, little Eric went away suddenly, in a paroxysm of military enthusiasm, dying literally the death of a soldier "with ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... brute beasts would give a piquancy and a pleasantry to moral design as well as to ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... travelling-companion, looked on, and wrote letters. He showed me one of these, addressed to a friend of Margaret's. In it he extolled Flora's beauty, piquancy, and supremacy; related how she made all the women jealous and all the men mad; and hinted at my triumph. I knew that that letter would meet Margaret's eyes, and was vain enough ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... value on the simple ground that any kind of continence is of higher spiritual worth than any kind of sexual relationship belongs to the past, except for those who adhere to ancient ascetic creeds. The mystic value of virginity has gone; it seems only to arouse in the modern man's mind the idea of a piquancy craved by the hardened rake;[83] it is men who have themselves long passed the age of innocence who attach so much importance to the innocence of their brides. The conception of life-long continence as an ideal has also gone; at the best it is ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... agreeable, being calm and sunshiny, with a tranquil sea, and yet with a healthful piquancy and vigour in the air, that, contrary to custom, she was tempted forth a second time to walk. On this occasion she was accompanied by Northmour, and they had been but a short while on the beach, ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... contrary, it will add piquancy to the visit." Then he added, "Don't you see, Bulchester, that I dare not throw away an opportunity? Ship 'Number One' has foundered. 'Number Two' must come to land. That is the ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... never altogether understand," she replied. "Nothing requires a little artificial aid so much as nature. It is the piquancy of the contrast, you see. That is why the decorations of Watteau are the most wonderful in the world. He knew how to combine the purely, exquisitely artificial with the entirely simple. Now to break the news to ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... up a little in the miscellany called (not without a touch of piquancy) La Tyrannie des Fees Detruite, by a Mme. d'Auneuil, whom persons of a sceptical turn might imagine to be a sort of factitious rival to Mme. d'Aulnoy.[231] It returns to the Greek or pseudo-Greek names of the heroic romance, and to its questionable device of histoires stuck like plums ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... eyes lowered and fixed on Clementine's pretty feet. "You do not know, countess, what charm, what unexpected piquancy of mind she has." Then, feeling his courage fail him, he added hastily, "There is not a woman in society, with her mincing airs, that is worth the honest nature ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... girl's clear, scrutinizing eyes softened; her red resolute lips trembled slightly and then parted, the upper one hovering a little to one side over her white teeth. It was Nelly's own peculiar smile, and its serious piquancy always thrilled him. But she drew a little farther back from his brightening eyes, her hands still curled behind her, and said, with the faintest coquettish toss of her head toward the hill: "If you want to see ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... temperance, and his regularity were proper to the man, and neither to the past nor present age. Of his bons mots we have a sprinkling, and but a sprinkling, in this volume; but the celebrated one about language is not there, though others of less piquancy are. Did M. Colmache consider it of apocryphal ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... colour; how shall I paint with them? It was not the beauty of mere form and colour, either, that struck Mrs. Barclay in Lois's face. You may easily see more regular features and more dazzling complexion. It was not any particular brilliance of eye, or piquancy of expression. There was a soundness and fulness of young life; that is not so uncommon either. There was a steadfast strength and sweetness of nature. There was an unconscious, innocent grace, that is exceedingly rare. And a high, noble expression ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... the province, and the tone being thus determined, I betook myself to ordinary induction, with the view of obtaining some artistic piquancy which might serve me as a key-note in the construction of the poem—some pivot upon which the whole structure might turn. In carefully thinking over all the usual artistic effects—or more properly points, in the theatrical sense—I did not fail to perceive immediately that no one had been ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... cometh not from wit so much as from choler, which furnisheth the lowest inventions with a kind of pungent expression, and giveth an edge to every spiteful word: so that any dull wretch doth seem to scold eloquently and ingeniously. Commonly also satirical taunts do owe their seeming piquancy, not to the speaker or his words, but to the subject, and the hearers; the matter conspiring with the bad nature or the vanity of men who love to laugh at any rate, and to be pleased at the expense of other men's repute; conceiting themselves extolled by the depression ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... public law and social honor, as well as of personal esteem and avowed identification of interests. Whatever necessitates secrecy, or compromises the fullness and frankness of self respect, even if it give piquancy and fire, takes away moral health, steady integrity; and inserts an insidious element, either of devouring fever or of slow decay. Other things being equal, affection, wedded under every legal and moral sanction, reaches the highest climax and is the most complete and enduring. Every ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... 298), whose angelic love is set off by the sensuality and selfishness of her more fortunate rivals. A new note of absolutely tragic dignity seems to be struck in the Sweep and the Noble Lady (vol. iv. 125), showing the piquancy of sentiment which can be evolved from the common and the unclean. The pretty conceit of the Lute (vol. v. 244) is afterwards carried out in the Song (vol. viii. 281), which is a masterpiece of originality[FN294] and (in the Arabic) of exquisite tenderness and poetic ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... you to be the author of that strange letter, M. Bourget? Indeed I do not. I believe it to have been surreptitiously inserted by your amanuensis when your back was turned. I think he did it with a good motive, expecting it to add force and piquancy to your article, but it does not reflect your nature, and I know it will grieve you when you see it. I also think he interlarded many other things which you will disapprove of when you see them. I am certain that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... bent in seeming innocence over the tray. With a mischievous laugh he reached over and flipped the hot ashes from his cigar upon her neck. She screamed affectedly and danced about shaking off the ashes. Then with feigned maidenly piquancy and many reproachful glances, she ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... you? But father's controlling the country half an hour more than usual this evening, and I expect mamma was so angry about it she forgot to telephone you that dinner's moved accordingly. (With piquancy and humour.) I was rather surprised to hear when I got home from my Ministry that you'd sent word ...
— The Title - A Comedy in Three Acts • Arnold Bennett
... replied the young man under his breath. Then the girl finished the song and bowed with such pretty piquancy that everybody ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose
... this contrast, which gives a piquancy to all our pleasures," said Mad. de la Tour; "no sky is so serene, as that which succeeds a tempest; and a slight alloy of sorrow or disappointment gives a ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... was the one person whose presence he was ready to endure. Indeed there would perhaps be a piquancy in that. ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... well worth the glance, as he admitted willingly enough afterward. She was the dainty type, with fluffy bright brown hair, eyes the color of wood violets, a nose tilted to the precise angle of bewitching piquancy, and the adorable mouth and chin familiarized to two continents by the artistic pen of the Apostle of the American Girl. How he could have ridden within arm's reach of her through all the daylight hours of a long summer day remained as one of Ford's unanswered enigmas; but it required an accident ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... national System, she had had an apprenticeship; the heart-blood of Algernon Cartwright and many others had not been shed in vain. And the fact that she was playing with real fire, that this was a duel with the buttons off, lent a piquancy and zest to the pastime ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... a large number of mathematical treatises, the titles only of which are preserved. We gather from one of these titles, 'On irrational lines and solids', that he wrote on irrationals. Democritus realized as fully as Zeno, and expressed with no less piquancy, the difficulty connected with the continuous and the infinitesimal. This appears from his dilemma about the circular base of a cone and a parallel section; the section which he means is a section 'indefinitely ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... depths of the breast than in the scantily-gifted many who merely count and are nothing. Cicero had no conviction and no passion; he was nothing but an advocate, and not a good one. He understood how to set forth his narrative of the case with piquancy of anecdote, to excite, if not the feeling, at any rate the sentimentality of his hearers, and to enliven the dry business of legal pleading by cleverness or witticisms mostly of a personal sort; his better orations, though they are far from coming up to the free gracefulness and the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... "A hard subject for the student's knife he'll make, won't he?" To add to the comical appearance of the reverend gentleman, Marston, rising from his seat, approached him, drew the spectacles from his pocket, and placed them on the tip of his nose, adding piquancy ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... embroidered with seed pearls. Her face, slightly flushed in confusion at finding herself in the presence of the Prince, was pale of complexion as my own, her clear eyes a deep blue, her cheeks dimpled, her chin just sufficiently pointed to give a touch of piquancy to a decidedly handsome countenance. Her hair, of almost flaxen fairness, fell in profusion about her shoulders and breast, almost hiding the necklets of gold and gems ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... visible. It will be audible. I snuff it in the wind. I taste it already. I feel it in every sense; and so will you hereafter." This letter certainly wants the polish of Junius, but it has the power of bitter thought, and it sneers with practised piquancy. Of course, a broad line is to be drawn between a work of study and the work of the moment—between the elaborate vigour which prunes and purifies every straggling shoot away, and exhibits its production for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... his earlier career, and probably by force of his temperament, has naturally taken the position of a popular composer, he has done so almost entirely in consequence of the inherently popular character of the music he has turned out, which, for striking rhythm and melodic piquancy, has taken the ear not alone of the United States but of the whole world, his marches being widely played in all foreign countries, where they are received with the liveliest demonstrations of approval. In fact, very much the same kind of mild ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... graces of face and figure were equaled only by the qualities of her mind. She had relatives of strong Northern tendencies, and she had been known to express such sympathies herself; but they only lent piquancy to her conversation. She had appeared at one of the President's receptions; and further on Prescott saw the name of Mr. Sefton. There was nothing by which he could tell with certainty, but he inferred that ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... laughable passage, it is scarcely credible that he believed himself to be penning the truth. The most reasonable explanation of the matter appears to be, that tickled by Swift's venomous lines, the sarcastic Frenchman in malice and gaiety adopted them, and added to their piquancy by the assurance that the Chancellor's book was not only published, but was preserved by connoisseurs as ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... capacities for the higher happiness are steadily raised and largely satisfied by hope and even by some degree of present fruition. Even vice would be in many ways sauceless and insipid in the absence of faith. Who does not remember the old cynic's testimony (in the "New Republic") to the piquancy lent by Christianity to many a sin, otherwise pointless. If the moralist distinguishes between actions that are evil because they are forbidden, and those that are forbidden because they are evil, the libertine ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... her own, and she had a heart all womanly. She was a beauty—yes, a beauty by any set rule of the world. Her large black eyes were neither slitted nor slanted in the Asiatic way. They were long, true, but set squarely, and with just the slightest hint of obliqueness that was all for piquancy. ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... might love her, and see her beauty and charm with all the rest of the world, Harriet knew that she must begin an actual campaign for his esteem on her wedding day. The prospect had an unexpected piquancy. She had little fear of its outcome. She would make Ward Carter a wife for whom his father must come to feel genuine gratitude and devotion. Every fibre of her being would be strained to make the Carter marriage ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... well for a little time. The contrast amuses by its piquancy. To write of wild and whirling things in your books, but in public life to be associated with nothing more wild and whirling than a shirt-fronted eye-glassed hansom; to be at heart an Alastor, but in appearance a bank-clerk, ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... not only in the choice of the cacao beans but also in the selection of spices and essences, for, whilst the fundamental flavour of a chocolate is determined by the blend of beans and the method of manufacture, the piquancy and special character are often obtained by the addition of minute quantities of flavourings. The point in the manufacture at which the flavour is added is as late as possible so as to avoid the possible loss of aroma in handling. The flavours used include cardamom, ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... suppose Beethoven's name be mentioned. Here is a specimen brick from the sort of material Beethoven anecdotes are made. Call it, for the sake of piquancy, ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... yet animated, of that marvelous sympathy that exists between all phases of life, whether in humanity or in external nature. His natural outbursts of feeling are rare, but delicious as caviare, with a certain quaver of piquancy. 'Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous. The dawn is my Assyria; the sun-set and moon-rise my Paphos and unimaginable realms of faerie; broad noon shall be my England ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... fairer, and younger in her graceful gown, and her broad hat—which was in sharpest contrast to the sunbonnet which had so long been her disguise—lent a girlish piquancy to her glance. Mrs. Brinkley expressed in one short phrase the change of sentiment which swept almost instantly over the room. "Why, she's ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... mistress like a sort of companion, of describing people and drawing silhouettes of them, had eventually developed in her a facility of animated description, of happy, unconscious characterization, a piquancy and sometimes an acrimony in her remarks that were most remarkable in the mouth of a servant. She had progressed so far that she often surprised Mademoiselle de Varandeuil by her quickness of comprehension, her promptness at grasping things only half said, her good fortune and facility in ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... not come? The pines are gold with evening And breathe their old-time fragrance by the sea; You loved so well their spicy exhalation,— So smiled to smell it and old ocean's piquancy; And those weird tales of winds and waves' relation— Could you forget? Will ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... she was a liberal education in blended flavors, in the delights, the surprises of the Creole kitchen. Tall and slim, of a golden-brown complexion, neat to the point of austerity, trim and self-contained, sight of her somehow gave an added piquancy to her dishes. She did not make friends readily, but the comradery of cooking induced her to more than tolerate me. "I don't say I kin cook—but my mother can," she often told me—smiling proudly the while, with the buzzing praises of gourmets sounding in her ears. She could never ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... some of the second,) it makes little or no difference who writes them—they are good enough for what they are; nor is it necessary that they should be actual emanations from the personality and life of the writers. The very reverse sometimes gives piquancy. But poems of the first class, (poems of the depth, as distinguished from those of the surface,) are to be sternly tallied with the poets themselves, and tried by them and their lives. Who wants a glorification of courage and manly defiance from a coward or a sneak?—a ballad of benevolence ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... course of the following day Scawthorne's report received official confirmation. Joseph pondered deeply with himself whether he should tell his wife the truth or not; there were arguments for both courses. By Tuesday morning he had decided for the truth; that would give more piquancy to a pleasant little jest he had in mind. At breakfast he informed her, as if casually, and it amused him to see that ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... was full of wild eagerness, and Mr. Belknap was not insensible to the piquancy of ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... side-glance of her eyes, the proud curve of her neck, the color on her cheeks delicate as the first peach- blossom in spring. That he had no right thus to be thinking of a woman perhaps added a certain piquancy to his thought; but he quieted his conscience with the reflection that he was in the path of duty, and of a duty, moreover, which was likely to prove sufficiently hard ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... she commanded. There was a piquancy, a gay impelling force in this girl that grief and hardship had not been strong enough to conquer. Her hours of sadness were spent alone—hours when she was supposed to sleep, but instead, lay awake ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... of all sorts of things more than of her, and growing stupid, as husbands in French romances generally do. She thought of her handsome Cousin Harry, the only man that she ever came anywhere near being in love with; and the image of his dark, handsome eyes and glossy curls gave a sort of piquancy to the story. ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... dreadfully barren of those elements of the social picturesque which give piquancy to anecdote. And without anecdote, what is biography, of even history, which is only biography on a larger scale? Clio, though she take airs on herself, and pretend to be "philosophy teaching by example," is, after all, but a gossip who ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... There was a piquancy about these libels on the dead which we cannot understand, but which we may contrast with the less dishonourable process known to modern historians as "whitewashing." Just as Tiberius and Henry VIII. ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... not, however, be wholly silent on the general impressions left by the little I have seen of the society of Paris; and, occasionally, when it is characteristic, an anecdote may be introduced, for such things sometimes give distinctness, as well as piquancy, to a description. ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... expression between French, English, and German ivory carvings is quite interesting. The French faces and figures have always a piquancy of action: the nose is a little retroussee and the eyelids long. The German shows more solidity of person, less transitoriness and lightness about the figure, and the nose is blunter. The English carvings are often ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... tired and preoccupied man takes his wife of four years' standing out to dinner he knows that he need not exert himself to talk, to shine, to please, as with a woman who holds the piquancy of a stranger; so while Osborn spoke spasmodically, or drifted into silence, Marie could look around her and think thoughts which chilled the ardour of her soul. It seemed to her, that evening of her twenty-ninth birthday, that ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... now filled with animation their charming faces, on which the late fading rose had begun once more to bloom. Their faith in the future gave to their countenances something resolute and decisive, which added a degree of piquancy to the beauty of ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... sweet countenance was perfect in its contour, her cheeks innocent of the Parisienne's usual aids to beauty, her lips red and well moulded, while two tiny dimples gave a piquancy to a face which was far more beautiful than any I had met in ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... things she said and did were far more irritable at this moment—possibly far less just—than a stranger's would have been. Often and often he would try to recall to himself the old sense of charm, of piquancy. In vain. It was all gone—he could only miserably wonder at the past. Was it that he knew now what charm might mean, and what divinity may breathe ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... doubtless thought that the loss of Deventer and, with it, the almost ruinous condition of three out of the seven Provinces, might excuse on their part a little piquancy of phraseology, nor was it easy for them to express gratitude to the governor for his grave and gentle admonitions, after he had, by his secret document of 24th November, rendered himself fully responsible for the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... found herself when she awakened, stiff from her cramped position. She slipped at once to the floor and sat there drying her lace skirts, the sweet piquancy of her childish face set out by the leaping fire-glow that lit and shadowed her delicate coloring. Outside in the gray darkness raged the death from which he had snatched her by a miracle. Beyond—a million miles away—the world whose claim had loosened on them was going through ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... at her in surprise. It was not like the Phebe McAlister he had known, to speak like this. At Quantuck she had been cocksure, aggressive; now she was gentler, more womanly. He missed something of the piquancy; yet after all he ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... Stella had reserved for her at the office, and, aside from the purpose which was rapidly taking shape in her mind, she enjoyed the play very much. Stella Larue, as the "Grass Widow," played her part with a piquancy which Constance knew was not wholly ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... fight down her growing coldness, and reciprocate as it deserved the affection with which he was so lavish. The result of these mental exercises was to impart a humility and constrained cordiality to her air very opposite to its usual piquancy and impulsiveness, and, by a sense of her own shortcomings, to distract her mind from speculation, which she might otherwise have indulged, over the sudden development of so many unpleasant qualities ...
— Potts's Painless Cure - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... the morning where the vines grew, looking down upon the golden ship which was built for a 'South American Republic.' That tale I never believed, for the man's face marked it as a lie as he gave it to me; but the mere telling of it added piquancy to the dish I had tasted of, and I resolved in that hour to devote myself heart and soul to the work of unravelling the slender threads, even if I lost my common employment in the business. The ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
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