"Foppery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... your aspiring to the political principles of our old Cavaliers; but embrace them all fully, and not merely this and that feeling, whilst in other points you speak the canting foppery of the ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... Chesterfield's, is not incompatible with that of many of his cleverest contemporaries, including Sterne. He conceives of the typical Frenchman as regulating his life in accordance with the claims of impertinent curiosity and foppery, gallantry and ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... not entirely been bestowed in holding council with his confederates, for De Bracy had found leisure to decorate his person with all the foppery of the times. His green cassock and vizard were now flung aside. His long luxuriant hair was trained to flow in quaint tresses down his richly furred cloak. His beard was closely shaved, his doublet reached to the middle of his leg, and the girdle which secured it, and at the same time supported ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... dressed himself with scrupulous neatness in the fashion of a plain gentleman, as was his wont, without a trace of foppery. With his stout gold-headed cane in his hand, he was descending the stairs to go out as usual to the market, when Dame Rochelle accosted ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... turn. "I don't say it's the sort of nose one would wear out of mere foppery," he admitted. "This man, I think, wears it because his real nose is ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... peace should be concluded. He also made him a present of a piece of crimson velvet "thirty ells long." Such a gift as this of the crimson velvet was calculated, perhaps, in those days of military foppery, to please the herald even more than ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Like this odd vice, Are word-makers daily. Others in courtesy, Whenever they meet ye, With new fashions greet ye: Changing each congee, Sometime beneath knee, With, "Good sir, pardon me," And much more foolery, Paltry and foppery, Dissembling knavery: Hands sometime kissing, But honesty missing. God give no blessing To ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... Thy affectation all deride; These airs thy awkwardness impart, And show thee plainly as thou art. Among thy equals of the flock, Thou hadst escaped the public mock; And, as thy parts to good conduce, Been deemed an honest, hobbling Goose. Learn hence to study wisdom's rules; Know, foppery's the pride of fools; And, striving nature to conceal, You ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... a little pleased with the young gentleman himself, whose wine he had been drinking. He thought he discerned in him much good sense, though a little too much tainted with town-foppery; but what recommended him most to Jones were some sentiments of great generosity and humanity, which occasionally dropt from him; and particularly many expressions of the highest disinterestedness in the affair of love. On which subject the young gentleman delivered himself in a language which might ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... remain thus, I thought; the world is dead, and this squalid attire is a fitter mourning garb than the foppery of a black suit. And thus, methinks, I should have remained, had not hope, without which I do not believe man could exist, whispered to me, that, in such a plight, I should be an object of fear and aversion to the being, preserved I knew not where, but I fondly trusted, at length, ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... busy. In spite of the earliness of the hour the waiting-room was crowded, its benches full. The only place for Kedzie to sit was next to a couple of negroes, the man in Ethiopian foppery grinning up into the face of a woman who held his hat and cane, ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... clergymen in England. The services were performed thoroughly well; with a certain stateliness, which is not only allowable but necessary, in a colony where the majority of the congregation are coloured; but without the least foppery or extravagance. The very best sermon, perhaps, for matter and manner, which I ever heard preached to unlettered folk, was preached by a young clergyman—a West Indian born—in the Great Church of Port of Spain; and he had no lack of hearers, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... differed from him in opinion. But she coloured every compliance with his decrees with an idiosyncrasy so marked as to make them seem her own. Where he held that Rome pandered to the emotions, she laughed it to scorn as a forcing—house of spiritual foppery; where he saw in divorce a treason to the law of contract, she said that it tempted women to fall. Is it not easy enough to sin? Must we legalise it? Why put a tax upon marriage? Mr. Tompsett-King deprecated all dottings of iotas; when ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... end of Belarius's speech in Cymbeline (III. iii. 99 ff.), and even in the mature tragedies something of this kind may be traced. Let anyone compare, for example, Edmund's soliloquy in King Lear, I. ii., 'This is the excellent foppery of the world,' with Edgar's in II. iii., and he will be conscious that in the latter the purpose of giving information ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... with sad obsequies; I am not fashion'd for these amorous times, To court thy beauty with lascivious rhymes; I cannot dally, caper, dance, and sing, Oiling my saint with supple sonneting; I cannot cross my arms, or sigh "Ay me, Ay me, forlorn!" egregious foppery! I cannot buss thy fist,[571] play with thy hair, Swearing by Jove, "thou art most debonair!" Not I, by cock! but [I] shall tell thee roundly,— Hark in thine ear,—zounds, ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... the modest Defence of two plain Suits a Year: For being perfectly satisfied in Eutrapeluss Contrivance of making a Mohock of a Man, by presenting him with lacd and embroiderd Suits, I would by no means be thought to controvert that Conceit, by insinuating the Advantages of Foppery. It is an Assertion which admits of much Proof, that a Stranger of tolerable Sense dressd like a Gentleman, will be better received by those of Quality above him, than one of much better Parts, whose Dress is regulated ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... only man whose best-nursed and most valued part has proved to be destructive With a little more strength he might have kept all his delicacies, and have been a man to thank God for. As it is, he is the victim of an intellectual foppery. ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... florid complexion, the King struck terror into the hearts of the coward and miscreant. He despised extravagance in dress. French foppery was so hateful to him that he clothed the prison gaolers in Parisian style, trusting that this would bring contempt on ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... Poetic Vigils arrides me much more than A Volume of Verse, which is no meaning. The motto says nothing, but I cannot suggest a better. I do not like mottoes but where they are singularly felicitous; there is foppery in them. They are unplain, un-Quakerish. They are good only where they flow from the Title and are a kind of justification of it. There is nothing about watchings or lucubrations in the one you suggest, no commentary on Vigils. By the way, a wag ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... galloping about on a neutral ground, and attracting the admiration of both armies, but especially of the Cossacks, by his horsemanship, and the brilliant, if not fantastic, dresses in which it was at all times his delight to exhibit his fine person. But King Joachim never displayed his foppery so willingly as on the field of battle: he committed only, on a smaller scale, the same error which detained his master in ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... inseparable case of coxcombs, city born; the Gemini, or twins of foppery; that like a pair of wooden foils, are fit for nothing but to be practised upon. Being well flattered they'll lend money, and repent when they have done. Their glory is to invite players, and make suppers. And in company of better rank, to avoid the suspect of ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... fellow-scholars of the king—"quaint votaries of science" at first, afterwards "affection's men-at-arms"—three youthful knights, gallant, amorous, chivalrous, but also a little affected, sporting always a curious foppery of language, are, throughout, the leading figures in the foreground; one of them, in particular, being more carefully depicted than the others, and in himself very noticeable—a portrait with somewhat puzzling manner and expression, ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... Robert the Good would have frowned at the effrontery with which the women audaciously intensified the clinging fit of the garments, which moulded the form so precisely, and would have deplored the elegance, the effeminate foppery, which the comrades of the new King had imported with them as part and parcel of the Neapolitan inheritance. But the new-comers cared nothing for the opinion of the old-fashioned adherents of a dead king and a dead day; their desire was, as their master's, to renew the ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... excellent foppery of the world! that, when we are sick in fortune, (often the surfeit of our own behaviour,) we make guilty of our disasters, the sun, the moon, ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... If they can only be kind to us out of pity If they chop upon one truth, that carries a mighty report If they hear no noise, they think men sleep If to philosophise be, as 'tis defined, to doubt Ignorance does not offend me, but the foppery of it Impotencies that so unseasonably surprise the lover Ill luck is good for something Imagine the mighty will not abase themselves so much as to live Imitating other men's natures, thou layest aside thy own Immoderate either seeking or evading glory or reputation Impose them upon me as infallible ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne
... of Dorset. His parents, and family were all of the Romish persuasion, but they could not instil their principles into our author, who, as soon as he began to reason, was able to discover the errors, and foppery of that church. His father was a member of the society of Grays-Inn, and suffered much for the Royal cause. The first rudiments of learning Mr. Gildon had at the place of his nativity; thence his relations sent him to the English college of secular priests at Doway in Hainault, with a design of making ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... this, the other's looks imposed on the viscount an undefinable feeling, half fear, half hatred, although he had no serious reason to fear or hate him. Thus, in consequence of his resolute character, Saint Remy increased his insolence and habitual foppery of manner. The notary kept his cap upon his head; the viscount retained his hat, and cried from the door in a loud, ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... by ourselves, and can say what we like, explain to me why a man as superior as yourself—for you are superior—should affect to exaggerate a foppery which cannot be natural. Why spend two hours and a half in adorning yourself, when it is sufficient to spend a quarter of an hour in your bath, to do your hair in two minutes, and to dress! ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... settled in life, crosses my mind when I am in a serious mood. That she will marry well, there is little doubt, for she possesses beauty in a rare degree, and has been reared as an English girl should be, not to frivolity and foppery. She was trained by her mother, who save for the mad act she was persuaded into by me, was all goodness and refinement, for the first twelve years of her life, and since then by an admirable governess. No fear that she will be decamping to ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... self-inflation absolutely unique where he says, 'My kindness for a man of letters'; this, it seems, caused him to feel pain at seeing Gray descending to what he, the Doctor (as a one-sided opinion of his own), held to be a fantastic foppery. The question we point at is not this supposed foppery—was it such or not? Milton's having cherished that 'foppery' was a sufficient argument for detesting it. What we fix the reader's eye upon is, the unparalleled arrogance of applying ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... the principal feature in the robber foppery of Spain. Neither coat nor jacket is worn over the shirt, the sleeves of which are wide and flowing, only a waistcoat of green or blue silk, with an abundance of silver buttons, which are intended more for ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... crowd of gorgeously arrayed courtiers who stood in two compact groups on either side of her. Young and old alike, all these men of the sword and cloak seemed vying one with another for precedence in magnificence and foppery. The rarest silks of every hue peeped forth through slashed velvets and satins whose rustling masses bedecked men of every age and figure. Painted faces and ringed ears everywhere topped snowy ruffles deep and wide, while in every hand, scented gloves, fans, ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... unknown to any purist. "Ciceronem Allobroga dixit." He would not allow Addison, Bolingbroke, or Middleton to be a sufficient authority for an expression. He declared that he would use no word which was not to be found in Dryden. In any other person we should have called this solicitude mere foppery; and, in spite of all our admiration for Mr. Fox, we cannot but think that his extreme attention to the petty niceties of language was hardly worthy of so manly and so capacious an understanding. There were purists of this kind at Rome; and their fastidiousness ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Saxon. The story, which is one of the chivalrous days of Spain, while it is devoid of trick is full of thrilling interest, and its style, while it is eminently poetical, neither swells into bombast nor descends to the foppery so common among the verse-makers of our day. There is a stately, old-fashioned tread in the diction, as of a man in armor, who, should he attempt to gather flowers of mere prettiness, would crush them at the first touch of his iron gauntlet, and who, if he seems to move ungracefully at times, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... men with pale faces and emaciated figures, and he attributes the existence of the evil to the use of Cigars. The unreflecting servility with which men adopt new and foreign practices, is fully exemplified in the present case; for it is notorious that the practice of cigar-smoking, the modern foppery from Regent-street to Cheapside and Cornhill, was an importation of the Peninsular War; the imitation having been begun by the Spaniards, whose models are what are usually called the savages of America. The dietetic mischief, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 490, Saturday, May 21, 1831 • Various
... to be brought to a continual use of any one of them, upon a meer Conceit or Fancy, without some apparent Benefit they found thereby; especially, when we are sensible, they drink the Juices of Plants, to free Nature of her Burdens, and not out of Foppery and Fashion, as other Nations are oftentimes found to do. Amongst all the Discoveries of America, by the Missionaries of the French and Spaniards, I wonder none of them was so kind to the World, as to have kept a Catalogue of the Distempers they found the Savages capable ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... taken the country farmer's fancy the day before, as he had been gazing into the shops, but which, being too small for his purpose, he took the liberty of offering to Monsieur Pierre. Pierre, a French boy, inclined to foppery, was charmed, ravished by the beauty of the present and with monsieur's goodness, and he began to adjust them to his breeches immediately, as well as he could, at least, in his mother's absence. The Norman, whom Pierre kept carefully ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... had small regard for poetic justice, which Johnson thought ought to be observed. Addison praised old English ballads, which Johnson thought mean and foolish; and he guardedly commends[23] "the fairy way of writing," a romantic foppery that Johnson despised.[24] ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers |
