"Coquette" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... darts were lost, Yet still resolved to spare no cost; He could not answer to his fame The triumphs of that stubborn dame, A nymph so hard to be subdued, Who neither was coquette nor prude. I find, says he, she wants a doctor, Both to adore her, and instruct her: I'll give her what she most admires, Among those venerable sires. Cadenus is a subject fit, Grown old in politics and wit; Caressed by Ministers of State, ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... mean time Myrtle seemed to be showing some new developments. One would have said that the instincts of the coquette, or at least of the city belle, were coming uppermost in her nature. Her little nervous attack passed away, and she gained strength and beauty every day. She was becoming conscious of her gifts of fascination, and seemed to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... was equally grand as Semiramide and as Arsace, and sang the music of both parts superbly. Touching, profoundly melancholy as Desdemona, she was gay and graceful in Rosina; she drew tears as Ninetta, and, throwing off the coquette, could produce roars of laughter as Fidalma. She had never taken lessons in poses or in declamation, yet she was essentially, innately graceful. Mme. Malibran was in person about the middle height, and the contour of her figure was rounded to an enchanting ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... and Vizard went on to explain, "That Lady Betty Gore is as heartless a coquette as any in the county; and don't you flirt with her, or ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... mend all that," says he, but so lovingly, and with such unaffected tenderness, that she quails beneath his glance. Coquette as undoubtedly Nature has made her, she has still so gentle a soul within her bosom that she shrinks from inflicting actual pain. A pang or two, a passing regret to be forgotten the next hour—or at all events in the next change of scene—she is not above imparting, ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... humanity seems to be that Laura was the most consummate coquette in history. She dressed to catch Petrarch's attention; wore the flowers he liked best; accepted his amorous poems without protest; placed herself in his way by ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... consequence. A capricious or whimsical character, swaying with unlimited power, is certainly the most dangerous guardian of the prerogatives of sovereignty, as well as of the rights and liberties of the people. That Bonaparte is as vain and fickle as a coquette, as obstinate as a mule, and equally audacious and unrelenting, every one who has witnessed his actions or meditated on his transactions must be convinced. The least opposition irritates his pride, and he determines and commands, in a moment ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... a shame to talk at this rate!—Did the lady set up a contention with you? All nobly sincere, and plain-hearted, have I heard Miss Clarissa Harlowe is: above art, above disguise; neither the coquette, nor the prude!—Poor lady! she deserved a better fare from the man for whom she took the step which ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... had only asked her to marry him the night before, and she had only refused! Impossible to suppose that it was the mere plotting of the finished coquette. This lover required neither ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Montague Shirley?" demanded the auburn-haired coquette with sudden interest. As Shirley nodded, she caught his hand with an ardent glance, ogling him impressively, as she continued: "I've heard a lot of you. I'm just ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... over men perfectly. I had that white and regular beauty combined with animation and great sex-magnetism which always convinces men that under the snow volcanic fires are burning. I was experienced, under the frankest exterior, in all the subtle arts of the coquette. Men to me were a sort of musical instrument from which I could evoke any harmony ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... as he was actually a dignitary of the Church, he turned his thoughts entirely to the stage! In compliance with the request of Mademoiselle Quinaut, the new Abbe of Jard wrote a series of dramatic pieces, among which may be cited, La Coquette fixee, Le Reveil de Thalie, Les Mariages assortis, and Le Jeune Grecque, little drawing-room comedies, which have not kept possession of the stage, and to which French literature knows not where to give a place at the present day, so far are ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... Phillis all vile Jilts are met, Foolish, uncertain, false, Coquette. Love is her constant welcome Guest, And still the newest pleases best. Quickly she likes, then leaves as soon; Her ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... know very well how I must appear to you,' she exclaimed; 'a coquette, with a new pastime—a vulgar coquette, besides, who tries to pique your interest by an air of mystery. Believe me, monsieur, I am forbidden to unmask. Think lightly of me if you must—I have no right to complain—but believe as much as that! I do not give you my name, simply because ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... if war was a matter of experiment! As if you could take it up or lay it down as an idle frolic! As if the dire goddess that presides over it, with her murderous spear in her hand and her Gorgon at her breast, was a coquette to be flirted with! We ought with reverence to approach that tremendous divinity, that loves courage, but commands counsel. War never leaves where it found a nation. It is never to be entered into without a mature deliberation,—not ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... jarred. She was too naive to coquette. Yet it was difficult to believe this. But she was an unusual creature, modestly asleep. A fugitive aloofness. Yes, what she said must be true. There was nothing unreasonable about its being true. She made an impression ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... "Maman says I coquette too much," she said plaintively, and Price wondered if a slight movement under the hem of Madame Delano's long skirts meant that the toe of a little gray shoe were boring into one of the massive plinths of his mother-in-law. "But tell him, maman, that ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... looked down, looked upon a litter of perished rags of paper, and, lying in the midst of the rubbish, an ancient stained and cockled miniature of a powdered Louis Seize coquette. ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... I could know how many men will be made wretched when I get married," said the languishing coquette to her most ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... however, singularly feminine; she never affected to be a superior woman. She never reasoned, did not read much, though her literary taste was fine and fastidious. Though she required constant admiration and consequently encouraged it, she was not a heartless coquette. Her sensibility was too quick, and as the reign of her favourites was sometimes brief, she was looked upon as capricious. The truth is, what seemed whimsical in her affections was occasioned by the subtlety of her ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... trying to instruct the 'Fair Sex' as he likes to call them, apparently regarded its members as an inferior order of beings. He delights to dwell upon their foibles, on their dress, and on the thousand little artifices practised by the flirt and the coquette. Here is the view the Queen Anne moralist takes of the 'female world' he ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... consult with her and tell her his ideas of her part. But Thyrsis soon discovered that what she really wanted was to have him listen to her ideas. Miss Lewis was at war with Thyrsis' portrayal of Helena—it was incomprehensible to her that Lloyd should not be pursuing her, and she playing the coquette, according to all romantic models. Particularly she could not see how Lloyd was to resist the particularly charming Helena which she was going to make. She was always trying to make Thyrsis realize this incongruity, and to persuade him to put some "charming" ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... motive that kept Woodville there was jealousy. Sylvia, discreet as she was—no sparkling, teasing coquette—had yet all the irresistible magnetism of a woman who is obviously made for tenderness. But she showed as much deftness in keeping back her admirers as most girls do in attracting them. She had curious deep delicacies; she disliked nothing so much as to feel or show her power ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... coquette by nature, and a spoilt child. She had no notion of being carried by storm in this way. The coachmaker would have been dissolved in tears, and would have knelt down, and called himself names, and clasped his hands, and beat his breast, and tugged wildly at his cravat, and done all kinds of poetry. ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... ever want to be a coquette. You want to be your sweet little self, and make a good wife to that handsome soldier Saito, with all his gold braid and dingle-dangles. But what about breakfast? You see, my train leaves in an hour. If you don't give me something to fill my honorable insides, ...
— Little Sister Snow • Frances Little
... is followed in all cases by u, and has usually the sound of kw, as in queen; but in a few words derived from the French, qu is sounded like k, as in coquette. ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... elusiveness was only a shrewd scheme to delay and thwart him rather than a positive and reasonable disposition to deny his suit. In short, Emsden began to realize that instead of a damsel of eighteen he had to court a coquette rising sixty, of the sterner sex, and deafer than an adder when he chose. His artful quirks were destined to try the young lover's diplomacy to the utmost, and Emsden appreciated this, but he reassured ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... accustomed to meeting flippancy with flippancy? For if that isn't the reason then how would you explain my—my persistent tendency toward frivolity with you? Because it exists, you know. Truly it does! If I yielded to the impulse that is always with me, I—I'd coquette with you, disgracefully. Doesn't that—even surprise you? Now you are laughing at me . . . why, you weren't listening ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... Almost immediately on his return, he made acquaintance with the Lambs, and, as Mr. W. C. Hazlitt, his grandson and biographer, thinks, with Miss Stoddart, his future wife. Miss Stoddart, there is no doubt, was an elderly coquette, though perfectly "proper." Besides the "William" of her early correspondence with Mary Lamb, we hear of three or four other lovers of hers between 1803 and 1808, when she married Hazlitt. It so happens that one, and only one, letter of his to her has been preserved. His biographer seems ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... company; and our hero had the honour and happiness of solely engrossing the third. Now, these three sorts of lovers she had very different ways of entertaining. With the first she was all gay and coquette; with the second all fond and rampant; and with the last all cold and reserved. She therefore told Mr. Wild, with a most composed aspect, that she was glad he had repented of his manner of treating her at their last interview, where his behaviour was so monstrous that she had resolved ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... were watching now as he followed her to her seat, dropped to the one beside her, and bent absorbedly over her again, pale, agitated, and they saw her speaking, saw him vehemently pleading, saw him prevailing, for his pallor and emotion lent force to his impassioned words. Practised belle, coquette, flirt she might have been, but the woman is rare indeed who can utterly disbelieve, in face of such a combination, that she at least is loved. Stella's impassioned letters once lay in unbroken packages upon his mantel. Another star had risen and set, and sent its missives only to ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... had passed did she show signs of noticing us at all. For, meeting our wake, the coquette, she suddenly began dropping us ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... or whether she meant to leave her friend anything (as was indeed expected, all things considered, not without reason), nobody knows—for she never breathed a syllable on the subject herself, and died without a will. The accomplished coquette of twenty, who had pampered hopes only to kill them, who had kindled rapture with a look and extinguished it with a breath, could find no better employment at seventy than to revive the fond recollections and raise up the drooping hopes ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... provincial coquette, still this side of middle age, educated on novels and albums and on fussing with household affairs and servants. She is highly inquisitive and has streaks of vanity. Sometimes she gets the upper hand over her husband, and he gives in simply because at the moment he cannot find the right ...
— The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol
... a tale. It would appear, from all the current but unpublished records of social Louisiana, that Agatha had gone about shattering hearts in a most unintentional but effective fashion up to the time Mr. Jimmy Cannable refused to be routed. Certainly it is no blot upon this fair young coquette's fame to admit that she had plighted herself to at least four ardent suitors in days gone by, and it was equally her own affair if she took every woman's privilege of shifting her fancy before she ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... the player seemed to frolic over the keys, as though they toyed with the vibrations of the strings. The sounds were sportive and jocund; they rippled like laughter; they were capricious as the merriment of a coquette. Then they merged into a sweet and warbling cadence—a cadence of inimitable tenderness, the very suavity of which was rendered more piquant by its lavish variations. The measure changed, with an abrupt fling of the treble-hand: ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... leaving Paris he had had an intrigue with a certain Mile. M———, a somewhat frivolous and unscrupulous beauty, who had bled his not overfilled purse with the avidity of a leech. Berlioz heard just before returning to Paris that the coquette was about to marry, a conclusion one would fancy which would have rejoiced his mind. But, no! he was worked to a dreadful rage by what he considered such perfidy! His one thought was to avenge himself. He provided himself with three ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... thunderstruck; here was a blow to her happiness, how completely was she caught in her own toils; she could but feel the retribution just. Of all men, she knew, George Graham to be one of the most fastidious, and that of all things he held the most despicable, she well knew, was a coquette. She loved him with passionate devotion, but knew, if the effort cost him his life, he would cast her from his affections. She was almost maddened with the thought. She did indeed feel that Mr. Barclay ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... and a gentlewoman's hair; and horses must be gray....Now grey is for eyes, the eyes of a witch, with green lights in them and much wickedness. Gray eyes would be as tender and yielding and true as blue ones; a coquette ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... window. She gazed out at him from brows weary with splendid barbaric jewels, her eyes bitter and disdainful, and hopelessly sad. She smiled at him in framework of blue and ermine and pearls—the bedecked, heartless coquette of the pleasure-seeking world. She stood in the shadow of gray walls, a grating over her head, with deep, soulful, girlish eyes lifted in piteous appeal; and in each of these characters an unfathomed depth remained to vex and to ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... which does not wear out, a street which leads to the abbey of Grand-mont, and to a trench, which works very well with the bridge, and at the end of which is a finer fair ground. A street well paved, well built, well washed, as clean as a glass, populous, silent at certain times, a coquette with a sweet nightcap on its pretty blue tiles—to be short, it is the street where I was born; it is the queen of streets, always between the earth and sky; a street with a fountain; a street which lacks nothing to be celebrated among streets; and, in fact, it is the real street, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... life, knowing nothing of its depths, he floats gracefully through its shallows. His blood, quickened by praise, flushes his face, his eye sparkles, his features play, but his heart is empty, his soul void, his intellect without expansion; he is as vain, weak, and selfish as an old coquette. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... grown a little out of humour at finding that we are not so much pleased with all the Russians and Hessians that he has hired to recover the Ohio. We are an ungrateful people! Make a great many compliments for me to my Lady Ailesbury; I own I am in pain about Missy. As my lady is a little coquette herself, and loves crowds and admiration, and a court life, it will be very difficult for her to keep a strict eye upon Missy. The Irish are very forward and bold:—I say no more but it would hurt you both extremely ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... back of the box. I prefer to listen like that, in the shadow, unseen. Is not the attention of a woman who is anything of a coquette, that slight, fitful attention, always affected a little by the thought, however unconscious, of the effect which ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... do," Steve said, with sudden honesty. It was a relief to be as brutal and uncomplimentary as possible; it offset the silver-covered prayer books, the breakfast tray, the bejewelled Pom, the whole studied, inane effect of a discontented woman trying to play coquette up to the ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... is your cold coquette, who can't say "No," And won't say "Yes," and keeps you on and off-ing On a lee-shore, till it begins to blow— Then sees your heart wrecked, with an inward scoffing. This works a world of sentimental woe,[lq] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... a baby's cooing chuckle that arrested the little brown shoes upon the verge of a deep sand hollow. Lynette looked down. A pearly-pale cup fringed with blazing poppies held the lost treasure of some weeping mother—a flaxen-headed coquette of some eighteen months old, arrayed in expensive, diaphanous, now sadly crumpled whiteness, the divine human peach served up in whipped cream of muslin and frothy Valenciennes. Absorbed in delightful sand-dabbling, Miss Baby crowed and gurgled; then, as a little cry of womanly delight ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... our own country dwells in our hearts as well as on our tongues." Ah! never may I lose the Border accent! "Love's Miracle! To cure a coquette." "Most honest women are tired of their task," says this unbeliever. And the others? Are they never aweary? The Duke is his own best critic after all, when he says: "The greatest fault of a penetrating ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... The Coquette; or, The Life and Letters of Eliza Wharton. A Novel founded on Fact. By a Lady of Massachusetts. With a Historical Preface, and a Memoir of the Author. Philadelphia. T. B. Peterson & ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... impulsive cry on finding himself "thrown over." Why did she not leave him alone? Others tell him that that "fixing" of hers means nothing—that she is, simply, a coquette. But he "can't tell what her look said." Certainly not any "vile cant" about giving her heart to him because she saw him sad and solitary, about lavishing all that she was on him because he was obscure, and she the queen of ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... knows nothing of the world! If I had not cajoled those three deputies they might have wanted La Billardiere's place themselves; whereas, now that I have invited them here, they will be ashamed to do so and will become our supporters instead of rivals. I have rather played the coquette, but—it is delightful that the first nonsense with which ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... in her anger, when her husband bounded out of the room in his heroics. At the time that he made the threat she was in no humour to regard it; but as her anger gradually subsided, so did her alarm increase. Notwithstanding that she was a coquette, she was as warmly attached to her husband as he was to her; if she trifled, it was only for her amusement, and to attract that meed of admiration to which she had been accustomed previous to her marriage, and which no woman can renounce on her first entry ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... not protest this as a coquette might have done. On the contrary, she remained silent, and I was aware that while she liked and respected me, she was not profoundly moved by this farewell call. Nevertheless I hoped, and in that hope I repeated, "You will ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... her as a gay, light-hearted butterfly girl, who was a coquette, but who stopped short of a real flirtation; the women gave her such commendation as is rarely given them to their own sex, and declared that Miss Van Allen was a simple, kindly, generous nature without a trace of the disposition ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... must not think that she still feared Dow. I felt McKenzie's clutch on any arm for hours after he left me, but she was far braver than I; indeed, dangers at which I should have shut my eyes only made hers gleam, and I suppose it was sheer love of them that first made her play the coquette with Gavin. If she cried now, it was not for herself; it was because she thought she had destroyed him. Could I have gone to her then and said that Gavin wanted to blot out the gypsy wedding, that throbbing little breast would have ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... which had all the airs and graces of a village coquette, together with the bashfulness of a school miss, seemed to Katie and Dolores, but especially Katie, a very rich and wondrous thing. She always knew that Mrs. Russell was a gushing, sentimental creature, but had never before ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... he was busy, but if he so much as laid a hand upon her she was gone in a flash like a whirling insect, not to return till he was too absorbed to pay any attention to her. And often as those daring red lips mocked him, they were never offered to his even in jest. Yet was she so finished a coquette that the omission was never obvious. It seemed the most natural thing in the world that she should evade all approach to intimacy. They ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... women. Their affections are not to be gained by a bit of sparkling lace, or a tawdry set of liveries. Their deportment is rather grave and reserved; and, on the whole, they have much more of the prude than the coquette in their composition. Being more confined at home, and less engaged in business and pleasure, they take more care of their children than the French, and have a becoming tenderness in their disposition to all animals, except ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... nothing more. If you knew her you will bear me out in the statement that she was something of a coquette in her way." ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton
... finished coquette of ten, used to try her hand at flirting with the big schoolboy; and when she had him in a state of helpless adoration, and all his pocket-money was gone in presents to her, would turn him off in favour of his particular friend, who was spending the holidays at Bromley Towers. ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... with the dew on the green hill-slopes, her garments quaintly fashioned for her by the civilization that had brought her into being, her slippers the lustrous waters of the Bay itself. Later I came to know that she, too, was a goddess of moods, and dangerous moods; a coquette to some, a love to others, and to many a heartless vampire that sucked from them their hard-wrung dust, scattered their gold to the four winds of avarice that ever circled enticingly about the vortex of shallow joys that the City harbored, and, after intoxicating ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady
... relationship; or to refuse to grant as something requested; as, his mother could not deny him what he desired. To discard is to cast away as useless or worthless; thus, one discards a worn garment; a coquette discards a lover. Revoke (L. re, back, and voco, call), etymologically the exact equivalent of the English recall, is to take back something given or granted; as, to revoke a command, a ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... What a charming coquette she would make, if she were not so innocent. But the long fringe of lashes ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... possibly want of him? To explain the past? To justify herself? He knew enough already, and desired to know no more. Could she hope—natural coquette that she was—to regain her hold upon him? The man smiled grimly, confident of his own strength. Yet why should she care for such a conquest, the winning of a common soldier? There must be some better reason, some ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... too desperately," said Nan, not without cause, for pretty Petty was by nature a coquette, and as she had many admirers she ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... wide-spread reputation for her fogs; but little do they know how much a fog may add to natural scenery, who never witnessed its magical effects, as it has caused a beautiful landscape to coquette with the eye, in playful and capricious changes. Our opening scene is in one of these much derided fogs; though, let it always be remembered, it was a fog of June, and not of November. On a high head-land of the coast of Devonshire, ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... did love me it looked very like it a month ago, unless you have turned coquette, and I can't quite believe that," he ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... looked out through the wizened branches of his stunted trees, to the white-flecked sea rolling in below. The Princess was right. He knew that she was right. Those other thoughts were little short of madness. Jeanne was no coquette at heart, but she was a child. She had great responsibilities. She was turned into the world with a heavy burden upon her shoulders. It was not he or any man who could help her. She must fight her own battle, win or lose her own happiness. A few ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... her blue eyes darken and deepen till they looked like heaven's own vault. Yes, there is more poetry in a blue eye. But still Inez is a very lovely girl, and her foot never was surpassed. She is a coquette, too, about that foot and ankle,—I rather like a woman to be so. What a sensation she would make in England; how she would be the rage! And then I thought of home and Galway, and the astonishment of ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... took our way, And there we met The beautiful Miss Mary Gray, That arch coquette, Who stole last spring my heart away And has ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray
... afraid of myself at fifty-two. Camerino was thirty-four—and then the others! She was always at home in the evening, and they all used to come. They were old Florentine names. But she used to let me stay after them all; she thought an old English name as good. What a transcendent coquette! . . . But basta cosi as she used to say. I meant to go tonight to Casa Salvi, but I couldn't bring myself to the point. I don't know what I'm afraid of; I used to be in a hurry enough to go there once. I suppose I am afraid of the very look of the place—of ...
— The Diary of a Man of Fifty • Henry James
... decoy him to her bungalow for what she called "a quiet tea and a motherly little chat," cornered him one afternoon when he was on his way to the Residency and spoke very openly to him of the risk he ran of being entangled in the coils of such an outrageous coquette as "that Mrs. Norton," as she termed her. Frank was so indignant at her abuse of his friend that for the first time in his life he was rude to a woman and snubbed Mrs. Trevor so severely that she went in a rage to her husband and insisted on his ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... was not altogether pleased with the numbers and the frequency of the victims; a fact which added distinctly to Jacqueline's pride in them. But she never allowed her duties as hostess nor her instincts as coquette to interfere with any ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... as he read the account in the Weekly Times he was sick and frightened, such was his youthful awe of print. He wanted to beat the mossy-whiskered editor of the Times, who always had white food-stains on his lapels. When he raised his eyes the coquette Mae Thurston tried to cheer him: "It 'll all come out in the wash, Eric; don't worry. These editors have to have something to write about or they ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... his young mannishness he was quite sure there was no danger of falling in love; of course such a thing would be wildest folly. But Lily was very fascinating and very flattering. She put it on the score of old friendship; but, with a coquette's ardour, she did enjoy the young fellow's struggles to keep himself on a firm footing. And when he saw Gaynor's attentions, and listened to Weir's rhapsodies, a passion of boyish jealousy sprang ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... the nymph called country dance— (Whom folks, of late, have used so ill, Preferring a coquette from France, That mincing ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... duel, fought for her while she was still a girl, and that she had worn only white or black since that day—she who was now well over eighty. She had known love; a man had died for her; it was said that she had been a famous coquette in the 'thirties; and now she stood there, grotesque and sexless, with her eyes empty of dreams and of memories, and her face as gray and sinister as the face ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... of Bojardo's story, with the same hero. Bojardo leaves Orlando in love with Angelica, whom he fetched from Cathay and brought to Paris. Here, says Ariosto, Rinaldo falls in love with her, and, to prevent mischief, the king placed the coquette under the charge of Namus; but she contrived to escape her keeper, and fled to the island of Eb[u]da, where Rog[e]ro found her exposed to a sea-monster, and liberated her. In the mean time, Orlando went in search of his lady, was decoyed ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... observed, knocking the top off her egg, "who will develop into a nervous invalid or an advanced coquette, and it entirely depends upon how much admiration she gets which she does. I hear she's religious, too, in a silly, egotistical way. She ought to have ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... walked slowly to the window, and, making the smallest possible peephole through the curtain, looked out. The motionless figure of a horseman still lingered on the road, with an excess of devotion that only a coquette, or a woman very much in love, could tolerate. The "Rose," at that moment, was neither, and, after a reasonable pause, turned away, saying quite audibly that it was "too ridiculous for any thing." As she came back to her dressing-table, it was ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... part he was playing, hid himself in the thicket, and with his hair dishevelled, his features distorted, and his heart distressed, hurried to the house and shut himself up in his own room. His despair was indeed great; he fancied he had been laughed at by a coquette, while he thought he had been the suitor of an innocent girl. Why did she not tell me the truth yesterday, when I asked her? said he. Why did she not avow her love of young Brignoli? She dared ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... meantime she considered herself free as the wind, and permitted herself all the innocent gaieties which that "chartered libertine," a coquette, can take. She flirted with all the bachelors, widowers, and married men, in a manner which did extraordinary credit to her years: and let not the reader fancy such pastimes unnatural at her early age. The ladies—Heaven bless them!—are, as ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in the field, and one by no means to be despised; but, although young de Vaux was good-looking, agreeable, and very much in love, Jane did not seem disposed to smile upon him. To do her justice, she was no coquette; she was too indolent by nature, to labour very hard to secure several conquests at the same time. Miss Graham was very much admired, however, and was generally proclaimed the beauty of the season; while Harry soon began to feel the vanity ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... as woman always sees the man she loves,—noble, great, and good;—for when did a loving woman ever believe a man otherwise?—too noble, too great, too high, too good, she thinks, for her,—poor, trivial, ignorant coquette,—poor, childish, trifling Virginie! Has he not commanded armies? she thinks,—is he not eloquent in the senate? and yet, what interest he has taken in her, a poor, unformed, ignorant creature!—she never tried to improve herself till since she knew him. And he is so considerate, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... women, and as a frank confession of his own inability to sustain any relation of the kind? How often had he maintained an opposite opinion—seeming contemptuous, indolent, invulnerable, unconscious of her beauty, amused rather than attracted by her brilliant spirit. Every instinct of the coquette, jealous of her own power and wretched from the sterile suffering of wounded pride, resented bitterly the unpardonable ease which he had appeared to enjoy in her society. Now, however, that he appealed to her womanliness by a humble ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... the Sphinx, encircled with a coronet of fire. She bestowed a look of rapturous gratitude on Staines, and then glided away, like the stately Juno, to admire herself in the nearest glass like any other coquette, black, brown, ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... really a coquette, carrying herself steadily along between two lovers, that she smiled just as pleasantly on David, giving him never a cold word, even while the blushes kindled by the soft speeches of Warren Luce still burned ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... she is a 'speculator'; and from the attention she receives and the way she receives it one would think he was right. Graydon, however, seems to be her favorite, and if he could remain long enough it is not hard to see what might happen. But she is a great belle and a coquette too, I should imagine, and she has a large enough following to turn any girl's head. I don't wonder at it either, for she is the most lovely creature I ever saw, and yet she doesn't make a pleasant impression on me. The men ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... Vesta, "I am to keep, at least, my mind maiden and chaste, instead of playing the unstable coquette with that. I will not let him begin to think ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... coming in," he answered; "and I will have a hundred kisses for every look and smile you bestowed on the conte! You little coquette! You would flirt ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... "What, Catherine?" cried the old man, "is it true that you have been a coquette? How! have I been only the foster-father of thy little poet?" "No! No!" replied the enraged mother; "he is all thine own! Console thyself, poor John; thou alone hast been my mate. And who is this 'Pollo, the humbug who has ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... but I have always had the courage to confess my weakness, in order to destroy the suspicion of a vice which I have not. I have the finesse to attain my end and to remove obstacles; but I have none to penetrate the purposes of others. I was born tender and sensible, constant and no coquette. I love retirement, a life simple and private; nevertheless I have almost always led one contrary to my taste. Bad health, and sorrows sharp and repeated, have given a serious cast to my character, ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... raid, successful or otherwise, would once more promote the manufacture of the brush whisky. The managers of the moon-shining interest had taken measures to guard Wyatt's aged father from this fantasy of woe, but they had not dreamed that the mountain coquette might care. He himself stood appalled that this ghastly fable should delude his heart's beloved, amazed that it should cost her one sigh, one sob. Her racking paroxysms of grief over this gruesome figment of a grave he was humiliated to ...
— His Unquiet Ghost - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... look up at him through her screen of blossoms. It was not the look of a coquette, but—far worse to the watching girl—of a woman fearful lest that look should say ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... was, however, no conscientious scruple which occasioned her hesitation. She was a Frenchwoman, a beauty, and a little—a very little—of a coquette. To add to her attractions by the slight supercheries of the toilet was, she thought, a very venial sin; it was a thing which, in the society that surrounded her, was looked upon as necessary, and sometimes even considered as a virtue. She was a strange ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... he came to the conclusion that she had fooled him, had lied to him. She did not intend to sail on the Wilhelm, at all. It was all very clear to him now, that strangeness in her manner, those odd occasional smiles What was she? An adventuress! That sweet-faced girl a little ordinary coquette, a liar? He turned cold with the thought. Nor was she alone in her duplicity. Had not her uncle and aunt been as ready to deceive him? Were they trying to throw him off their track for some subtle purpose? Had they done something for which they were ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... be telling me a thousand times a day to beware of the men who pay particular attention to Hortense. Some there are who do so whom you do not like, and whom you seem to fear she may prefer. Set your mind at rest. She is a bit of a coquette, is pleased with her success, and torments her victims, but her heart is free. I am the confidante of all her thoughts and feelings, which have hitherto been just what they ought to be. She now knows that when she thinks of marrying, it is not my consent alone she ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... Elizabeth was a coquette, without the personal charm supposed to belong to that dangerous part of humanity. She toyed with an offer of marriage as does a cat with a mouse. She had never intended to marry Philip, but she kept him waiting so long for her decision, and so exasperated ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... After various unsuccessful efforts to attract the attention of the fair enthusiast, Miss Pullet departed, and meeting an acquaintance immediately afterwards jocosely remarked that she had left Miss Rooster engaged with thirty-two men, whereby she acquired the reputation of being a dangerous coquette. To this thoughtless jest Miss Rooster ascribed the circumstance, that during the remainder of her life she walked in meditation ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... features are the same, but the expression is quite different. But you don't see this, because your own picture of her creeps in between your eyes and this one. Look at it now as a painter, without giving a thought to the original. What does it represent? Nothing, so far as I can see, but an affected coquette inviting somebody to come and play with her. Do you notice this cynical line around the mouth which you are never allowed to see? Can you see that her eyes are seeking out some man who is not you? Do you observe that her dress is cut low at the neck, that her hair ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... coquette than—" Again he checked himself at the sight of her trouble. He could not speak harshly ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... indifference might have turned his attentions into another channel, without his heart being turned with them. She had seen nothing to show that Miss Niphet's feelings were deeply engaged in the question. She was not a coquette; but she would still feel it as a mortification that her hitherto unquestioned supremacy should be passing from her. She had felt all along that there was one cause which would lead her to a decided rejection of Lord Curryfin. But her Orlando had not seized the golden forelock; perhaps he never ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... understand. Her eyes downcast, her foot tapping the floor gently, Margaret was all one blush. She, too, was trembling a little, and she was a little afraid and quite unutterably happy; and outwardly she was very much the tiny lady of Oberon's court, very much the coquette quintessentialised. ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... Street school. She could walk farther up the street with the boys, and watch out for them when they went. Ben liked her better than he did Lily or Rosa, but Jim was quite divided. He, like the other poor man with two charmers, sometimes wished there was only one of them. But Lily was a born coquette, and jealous at that. She had a way of calling back her admirers, while Dele didn't care a bit for admiration, but just ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... presence of their female relatives, though they are master hands at sailing a boat and knocking down obtrusive foreigners, Mr. Black has not since 'A Daughter of Heth' done so dramatic a piece of writing as the story of the Earl's death and Coquette's flight. The "Daughter of Heth," with her friendly simplicity and innocent wiles, and Madcap Violet, the laughter-loving, deserve perhaps a kinder fate than a broken heart and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... misjudge me," she said, "as I see you are likely to do. You are inclined to think me a strange bold girl, half coquette, half romp, desirous, perhaps, of storming you into admiration. You never were more mistaken. I would show as much favour to your father, as readily make him my confidant, if he were here—and if I thought he were capable of understanding me. The ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... 'music, sunshine, a few grapes.' The butterflies are of his kind. The high mountain zone is for them a true ball-room: the flowers are light refreshments laid out in the vestibule. Their real business in life is not to gorge and lay by, but to coquette and display themselves and ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... done to the young girl, under the name of prudence or worldly wisdom, by breaking down her ideal of life, and especially her ideal of the possible partner of her future life. Tennyson speaks of one form of this, in addressing the vain coquette ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... saw in the pink confusion of her lovely face the dawning challenge of a coquette saluting her adversary in gay acknowledgment of his fleeting moment of success. And as his face fell, then hardened into brightness, instantly she divined how he rated her, and in a flash realized her weapons ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... subject illustrate his remark in the foregoing letter regarding the fugitive nature of the various things which he threw off at this time.[204] There are four characters,—Olimpia and her daughter Elmire, Bernardo, a friend of the family, and Erwin, Elmire's lover. Elmire plays the part of capricious coquette with such effect that she drives her despairing lover to hide himself from the world and to retreat to a hermitage which he constructs for himself in the neighbouring wilds. Elmire now realises her hard-heartedness, and exhibits such symptoms of distress as to waken the concern of her ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... "A born coquette!" he muttered with his hat pulled over his eyes. "Ebling's a fool: Ruth Stanley is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... saw that Ratcliffe was steadily pushing his advances; that he flattered all Mrs. Lee's weaknesses by the confidence and deference with which he treated her; and that in a very short time, Madeleine must either marry him or find herself looked upon as a heartless coquette. He had his own reasons for thinking ill of Senator Ratcliffe, and he meant to prevent a marriage; but he had an enemy to deal with not easily driven from the path, and quite capable of routing ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... of the most comely that was to be met with on the island; a circumstance that aided much indifferent wine in finding a market. Benedetta bore a reasonably good name, nevertheless, though it was oftener felt, perhaps, than said, that she was a confirmed coquette. She tolerated 'Maso principally on two accounts; because, if he were old and unattractive in his own person, many of his followers were among the smartest seamen of the port, and because he not only drank his full proportion, but paid with punctuality. These ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... did not wish to be married to him,—at least, not so soon)—what could I do but hang my head, and silently consent to the rapid enunciation of the only course which now remained for me if I would not be esteemed a heartless coquette all the ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... court, as is the business of young fellows, to tell her what love is, and she listened with a noble frankness, having, indeed, the friendliest face for all engaged in this pursuit that can ever have sat on woman. I have heard ladies call her coquette, not understanding that she shone softly upon all who entered the lists because, with the rarest intuition, she foresaw that they must go away broken men and already sympathised with their dear wounds. All wounds incurred for love were dear to her; at every true utterance about love she exulted ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... "I CANNOT think why you are so tantalizing. Why do you disappoint me so? You seem almost like a coquette, upon my life you do—a coquette of the first urban water! They blow hot and blow cold, just as you do, and it is the very last sort of thing to expect to find in a retreat like Talbothays. ... And yet, dearest," he quickly added, observing now ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy |
