"Ninon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nodded. "I think that they do not know their own minds, young people seldom do. I wish I had bought three yards more of that cerise ninon. It would have made up so well ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... affectation of intimacy, that one would have thought he had sat by Cleopatra as she melted her pearls, and stood amongst the audience of Pericles when he pronounced his funeral oration. "With the De Sable and the Chevreuse, Ninon and Marion, Maintenon and La Valliere, Anne of Austria and the great Mademoiselle of France, he seemed to have lived in daily companionship, so amply did he expatiate upon the smallest details of their existences, so tenderly did he ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... cerebral action is an evil is not perfectly clear. Men get fairly intoxicated with music, with poetry, with religious excitement,—oftenest with love. Ninon de l'Enclos said she was so easily excited that her soup intoxicated her, and convalescents have been made ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... to admit, however, that Walpole was an excitable creature where small things were concerned—a parroquet or the prospect of being able to print original letters of Ninon de l'Enclos at Strawberry, or the discovery of a poem by the brother of Anne Boleyn, or Ranelagh, where "the floor is all of beaten princes." What is not generally realized is that he was also a high-strung and eager spectator of the greater things. I have already spoken of his enthusiasm for ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... wickedness, and then Frederick would need supporting—on helping the poor. The parish flourished because, to take a handful at random, of the ill-behavior of the ladies Du Barri, Montespan, Pompadour, Ninon de l'Enclos, and even of learned Maintenon. The poor were the filter through which the money was passed, to come out, Mrs. Arbuthnot hoped, purified. She could do no more. She had tried in days gone by to think the situation out, to discover the exact right course for her to ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... led to an introduction, when he was but eleven years old, to Ninon de l'Enclos, who, in her nineteenth year, was the leader of a brilliant coterie of society. This unaccountable and marvellous woman was so pleased with the lad that she left him a legacy of two thousand livres "to buy ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... the personages whom one could meet at the house of a Ninon, in the centres of cultivation and learning, was nevertheless so modest and so well controlled that she was honored with the friendship of one of the noblest women of the time—Mme. de Sevigne. The Count, after his grandmother's death, had found in an ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... into the mould of sweet natural womanhood, by the cherubic beauty of her features. These it was—these features, so purely childlike—that reconciled me in a moment of time to great-grandmotherhood. The stories about Ninon de l'Enclos are French fables—speaking plainly, are falsehoods; and sorry I am that a nation so amiable as the French should habitually disregard truth, when coming into collision with their love for the extravagant. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... "Mirame," and stitched on to Buckingham's mantle those famous pearls which were destined to be scattered about the pavements of the Louvre. A man becomes easily notable who has made the dresses of a Duke of Buckingham, a M. de Cinq-Mars, a Mademoiselle Ninon, a M. de Beaufort, and a Marion de Lorme. And thus Percerin the third had attained the summit of his glory when his father died. This same Percerin III., old, famous and wealthy, yet further dressed Louis XIV.; and having no son, which was a great cause of sorrow to him, seeing ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... is sad, sire; of all other pain, the pain of looking back into the past is the most bitter. I see myself again a young man, the Arouet to whom Ninon de l'Enclos gave her library and a pension, and who was confined for twenty years to the Bastile because he loved God and the king too little, and the charming Marquise de Villiers and some other ladies of the court too much. Besides these exalted ladies, there was a beautiful young maiden whom ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... four plain daughters to an "At Home" one night, Medhurst, in evening dress, disguised as a waiter, followed them each round the room with obtrusive ices, to satisfy himself just how much of their complexion was real, and how much was patent rouge and Bloom of Ninon. He doubted whether Simpson, Sir Charles's valet, was not Colonel Clay in plain clothes; and he had half an idea that Cesarine herself was our saucy White Heather in an alternative avatar. We pointed out to him in vain that Simpson had often been present in the very same room with David ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... other extreme of opinion in the sculpture-room of David d'Angers; and closed that day at the house of Victor Hugo, by whom Dickens was received with infinite courtesy and grace. The great writer then occupied a floor in a noble corner-house in the Place Royale, the old quarter of Ninon l'Enclos and the people of the Regency, of whom the gorgeous tapestries, the painted ceilings, the wonderful carvings and old golden furniture, including a canopy of state out of some palace of the middle age, quaintly and ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... being a man, was therefore open to female flattery, whether it was the frank flattery of an infant Venus hugging a waxen Cupid or the more subtle overtures of a withered Ninon taking God ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... Everything depends on the number of drops of the elixir vitae which Nature mingled in the nourishment she administered to the embryo before it tasted its mother's milk. Think of Cleopatra, the bewitching old mischief-maker; think of Ninon de L'Enclos, whose own son fell desperately in love with her, not knowing the relation in which she stood to him; think of Dr. Johnson's friend, Mrs. Thrale, afterward Mrs. Piozzi, who at the age of eighty was full enough of life to be making love ardently ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... minor among the minor details of life, that a clever woman is able to keep up the reputation of charm and beauty among her closest intimates. She realises that Nature has given to very few people a "sneeze" which is not something of an offence, and that not even one possessing the loveliness of Ninon de l'Enclos can look anything but a monstrous spectacle when a crumb "goes down the wrong way." But there are other "pitfalls" which it is in the power of all of us to avoid, and the "pitfall" of eating ungracefully is not ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... smiling sarcastically, said, "I thought you had done that long ago." Poets sang her praises; painters eagerly desired to transfer her exquisite lineaments to canvas. All this flattery intoxicated her. She wished to be classed with Ninon, Lais, and Aspasia, and was proud to be the subject of the verses of Dorat, Bernard, Rulhiere, Marmontel, and Favart. Sophie's wit never hesitated to break a lance even on those she liked. "What are ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... at the same door, which an old woman immediately opened for her. The lady raised her veil as she entered; though no longer beautiful or young, she was still active and of an imposing carriage. She concealed, beneath a rich toilette and the most exquisite taste, an age which Ninon de l'Enclos alone could have smiled at with impunity. Hardly had she reached the vestibule, when the cavalier, whose features we have only roughly sketched, advanced towards her, ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... long after that peace of Oliva, getting tired of his unruly Polish chivalry and their ways, abdicated—retired to Paris, and "and lived much with Ninon de l'Enclos and her circle," for the rest of his life. He used to complain of his Polish chivalry, that there was no solidity in them; nothing but outside glitter, with tumult and anarchic noise; fatal want of one essential talent, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... where Nero hides behind a curtain to listen to Junia, he could not restrain a burst of laughter, which was echoed all over the house. Perhaps this bad play will furnish him with the materials for another 'Folle Querelle,'[3] which will make us laugh as much as the first. Ninon and the Prince sided with Despreaux. They defended the ground inch by inch, but without being able to cover the retreat of Britannicus. I am curious to know how the little rival of the great Corneille will take this failure, for it certainly ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... fresh, the ever free Bohemian Girl. Never was such a girl! Quite a NINON DE L'ENCLOS! Beautiful for ever! Still dreaming of Marble Halls (Music Halls nowadays) "with vassals and serfs by her si-i-ide," and no better Bohemian Girl to be seen just now than Madame ALBU as Arline. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various |
