"Prude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... undressing completely while bathing right in the midst of a crowd of men known and unknown, a state of things which at first, in consequence of the power of prejudice, shocks the European, but to which even the former prude gets accustomed sooner than one would suppose. We even frequently see European ladies drawn in a jinrikisha by a youth completely naked with the exception of the blue girdle. Many, especially of the younger men, have besides so well-formed a body, that the sculptor who could accurately reproduce ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... her some time to decide about. At the same moment he is saying to himself: "What sort of woman is this, and what on earth shall I talk to her about? I hope to heaven she isn't a girl of the period. She doesn't look like it—still less like a prude. How I hate a society dinner! I suppose I shall be bored to ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... goods that Grivois! once she was a regular bad 'un, but now she professes to be as over-nice as her mistress; like master like man, they say. The princess herself, who is now so stiff and starched, knew how to carry on a lively game in her time. Fifteen years ago, she was no such prude: do you remember that handsome colonel of hussars, who was in garrison at Abbeville? an exiled noble who had served in Russia, whom the Bourbons gave a regiment ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... hand for you to run to," Bertie half sneered, half laughed, for he was keeping his hateful, teasing good nature. "And by the way, talkin' of him, since you're such a little prude, I'll just warn you in a friendly way to look out for that chap. You don't know his history—what? I'm ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... younger brother. Temperance soon grew scandalized, and Modesty herself coloured at some of the jokes; but Hospitality, who was now half seas over, called the one a milksop, and swore at the other as a prude. Away went the hours; it was time to return, and they made down to the water-side, thoroughly out of temper with one another, Economy and Generosity quarrelling all the way about the bill and the waiters. To make ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... un peu prude, Et n'avait pas l'habitude De coqueter, comme les autres demoiselles; Jusqu'a ce que le Lord Mayor (Homme brutal, comme tous les peres) L'eloigna ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... animosity that Lady Douglas bore to her mother, which had already come to light in the few words that the two women had exchanged. Besides, in ageing, whether from repentance for her errors or from hypocrisy, Lady Douglas had become a prude and a puritan; so that at this time she united with the natural acrimony of her character all the stiffness of the new religion ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... I suppose, he is laughing up his sleeve at me for having taken him seriously, and thinks he is punishing me by ignoring me for being such a little prude!" said Myra. "Perhaps I did make rather a fool of myself, but I intend to get even with him. Yes, I'll get even with the conceited creature! Do you know what I have decided to do, aunt? I am going ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... term English prudery, the accusation implied being part of the general charge of hypocrisy. It is said by observers among ourselves that the prudish habit of mind is dying out, and this is looked upon as a satisfactory thing, as a sign of healthy emancipation. If by prude be meant a secretly vicious person who affects an excessive decorum, by all means let the prude disappear, even at the cost of some shamelessness. If, on the other hand, a prude is one who, living a decent life, cultivates, either by bent or principle, a somewhat extreme ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... evening.[989] Elsewhere, if here and there a daily service was kept up, the congregation was sure to consist only of a few women; and the Bridget or Cecilia who was regularly there, was sure of being accounted by not a few of her neighbours, 'prude, devotee, or Methodist.'[990] At the end of the century, and on till the end of the Georgian period, daily public prayers became rarer still. In the country they were kept up only 'in a few old-fashioned town churches.'[991] How much they had dwindled away in London ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... Audran, representing the history of Venus in four tableaux, while the panels formed other episodes of the same history, all most graceful in outline and voluptuous in expression. This was the house which Noce, in the innocence of his heart, had designated as fit for a prude. ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... She looked as if the greases of her own kitchen stove had cooked into her skin, thought the girl, mercilessly. Didn't she know there was such a thing as a powder puff? Women like that brought their own troubles upon themselves, that's what they did. And she was an old prude, too. Anyone could see with half an eye that she didn't like the idea of Uncle Martin learning to dance—why, she didn't even like his getting the Victrola—when it was just what both he and Bill had been wanting. But for all that she was her aunt, her own mother's sister and, poor dear, she was ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... the medium of the Honorable Mrs. M'Catchley. Mrs. M'Catchley was, moreover, the most elegant of women, the wittiest creature, the dearest. King George the Fourth had presumed to admire Mrs. M'Catchley, but Mrs. M'Catchley, though no prude, let him see that she was proof against the corruptions of a throne. So long had the ears of Mrs. Pompley's friends been filled with the renown of Mrs. M'Catchley, that at last Mrs. M'Catchley was secretly supposed ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... old-time, hoopskirt-minded prude. My first act of domestic tyranny is to make you find a sedate, prim place for my work and play, where I may know my own blushes when I see them in the mirror, and will have less occasion ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... due rotation, our readers may be assured that those who were seated around the walls did not permit the time to pass without improving it. Many an attachment is formed at such amusements, and many a bitter jealousy is excited: the prude and coquette, the fop and rustic Lothario, stand out here as prominently to the eye of him who is acquainted with human nature, as they do in similar assemblies among the great: perhaps more so, as there is less art, and ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... must. I will not have you shrink, or frown, or make the prude. Let us thrust to the wall ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... such a foolish little prude," said the artful woman, affecting anger: "I invited you to go in hopes it would divert you, and be an agreeable change of scene; however, if your delicacy was hurt by the behaviour of the gentlemen, you need not go again; so there ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... women than about any other subject, except, of course, education itself—I venture to demur to the fairy method. Both a priori and from experience, I should say that unmixed Beauty would become intolerably vain; that Discretion would grow into a hypocritical and unpleasant prude; that Vivacity would develop into Vulgarity; and that the reincarnation of the twelve would be one of the most intolerable creatures ever known, if it were not that the impossibility of the concentrated essences being united in one person, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... Hussy. Do you drink as hard as ever? You had better stick to good wholesom Beer; for in troth, Betty, Strong-Waters will in time ruin your Constitution. You should leave those to your Betters. —What! and my pretty Jenny Diver too! As prim and demure as ever! There is not any Prude, though ever so high bred, hath a more sanctify'd Look, with a more mischievous Heart. Ah! thou art a dear artful Hypocrite. —Mrs. Slammekin! as careless and genteel as ever! all you fine Ladies, who know your own Beauty, affect an Undress. —But see, here's ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... swiftly went To the Place of the Orient, And the stout Queen sneered, "Ah, well! You are proud and prude, ma belle! But I think I will hazard a guess I shall see you one day playing chess ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... him in such spirits—quite like a boy out of school; and there were few days that we did not meet either at Greenwich or Richmond, or Windsor or Vauxhall; and of course wherever he went there was Lady Scapegrace. I must say that, although nobody can accuse me of being a prude, the way she goes on with Frank is rather too brazen-faced even for her—taking him everywhere in her carriage, setting him down at his club after the opera, walking with him in Kensington Gardens, his cab always at the door, and her ladyship 'not at home' ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... that she was enticing a lover away from handsome Lisa. This so diminished her feeling of triumph, that for a week or so her love for Florent abated. She consoled herself, however, with the story of the inheritance, no longer calling Lisa a strait-laced prude, but a thief who kept back her brother-in-law's money, and assumed sanctimonious airs to deceive people. Every evening, while Muche took his writing lesson, the conversation turned ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... see friends, and keep up with really good movies. Ruth prefers night clubs and gay parties. David thinks Ruth ought to be more careful about those white lies and those extremely decollete dresses; Ruth thinks David is rather a prude and mighty inconsiderate in the way he keeps picking on her. And then there is Junior. Ruth believes in loving one's children wholeheartedly and trusting that affection and understanding will bring them through all right in the long run; David thinks that right from the ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... whatever met the eye. One divorced woman could hardly draw her skirts away from another. The longer she reflected the more clearly she saw that she couldn't have done anything but what she had done without becoming in her own eyes a hypocrite or a prude, and so she had laid herself open to hearing those words, spoken ever so respectfully, with a sympathy ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... to repress a thrill of satisfaction; "of course you couldn't marry him." He understood now the meaning of Dunlavey's words to her in Dry Bottom. "If you wasn't such a damn prude," he had said. He looked at the girl with a sudden, grim smile. "He said something about running you and your brother out of the country," he said; "of course you won't ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... or more desirable than a good business properly attended to. He was proud of the close and personal attention that he paid to his shop,—somewhat censoriously proud; he might be called a mercantile prude; or shopkeeping pedant; and when a near neighbour who had a country house at Kentish-town, to which he went down every Saturday, and from which he returned every Monday or Tuesday, came by a variety of unavoidable, or unavoided misfortunes to make his appearance in the Gazette, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... we appear together it is accidental; I thought I had my mind made up to leave him, and soon; but what you say, coupled with doubts I had myself, have set me to thinking, till I don't know. I hate a scandal. You know how careful I always have been. All my closest friends have jeered me for a prude; there isn't a flaw he can find, there has ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... complain. It sounds like something with three legs. Not but what I'd rather be a biological freak than a grind—or a prude." ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... was a prude outlaw, Whyles he walked on grounde; So curteyse an outlaw as he was one Was never ...
— Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Fourth Series • Frank Sidgwick
... desire you to take my word for it. If you will follow me, you will no longer be the dupe of a false prude, who makes you act so ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... when she makes her entrance into this history which we are relating, she was an antique virtue, an incombustible prude, with one of the sharpest noses, and one of the most obtuse minds that it is possible to see. A characteristic detail; outside of her immediate family, no one had ever known her first name. She was called Mademoiselle ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... think that I am a prude," she said. "You can kiss me if you like, and yet I would very much rather that you did not. I do not know why. I like you well enough, and certainly it is not from any sense of right or wrong. I am like Andrea in that way. I make my own laws. To-night I do ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... this," said Mr. Crampton, in a great rage, when the letter was shown to him. "This same fellow, Scully, dissuades my nephew from taking a place, because Scully wants it for himself. This prude of a Lady Gorgon cries out shame, and disowns an innocent amiable girl: she a heartless jilt herself once, and a heartless flirt now. The Pharisees, the Pharisees! And to call mine a base ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... are moments when you positively amaze me. (Barbara, some pate, if you please!) I beg you not to be a prude. All women, of course, are virtuous; but a prude is something I regard with abhorrence. The Cornet is seeing life, which is exactly what he wanted. You brought him up surprisingly well; I have always admired you for it; but let us ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... me, lends me books, walks up and down by the hour together with me, brings me fruit and flowers! You think I'm blind, I suppose! You're a nice person! and so particular too! and so fastidious in your conversation! Oh, trust a prude! But I tell you," he bawled, coming up close to her, and shaking his fist in her face, "I tell you I won't have it. Now, do ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... Nailles gave a dry little cough which was meant to impose silence on the subject. She was not a prude, but she disapproved of anything that was bad form at her receptions. The Colonel's revelations had to be made in a lower tone, while his hostess endeavored to bring back the conversation to the charming reply made by M. Renan to the somewhat insipid ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... would alter his will, such was his intention, provided that his nephew did not upon mature reflection accede to his wishes. Newton once more enjoyed the society of Isabel, to whom he imparted all that had occurred. "I do not wish to play the prude," answered Isabel, "by denying that I am distressed at your uncle's decision; to say that I will never enter into his family without having received his consent, is saying more than my feelings will bear out; but I must and will say that I shall be ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... was great; So that some disappointment there ensued To those who had felt the inconvenient state Of 'single blessedness,' and thought it good (Since it was not their fault, but only fate, To bear these crosses) for each waning prude To make a Roman sort of Sabine wedding, Without the expense and the ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... nobler Applause, that they appear to think." [Footnote: Fielding occasionally refers to Hogarth for the pictorial types of his characters. Bridget Allworthy, he tells us, resembled the starched prude in Morning; and Mrs. Partridge and Parson Thwackum have their originals in the Harlot's Progress. It was Fielding, too, who said that the Enraged Musician was "enough to make a man deaf to look at" (Voyage to Lisbon, 1755, ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... manner—"Turned his back on me with a scowl, and didn't say another word," as a sporting fast married lady said to me, who had attempted to tell him an improper story. "I didn't mean to offend him; young men generally like it. I hate a young man to be a prude and a Puritan. Why, he isn't even going into the church, ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Yon ancient prude, whose wither'd features show She might be young some forty years ago, Her elbows pinion'd close upon her hips, Her head erect, her fan upon her lips, Her eyebrows arch'd, her eyes both gone astray To watch yon amorous couple in their play, ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... till I conclude. I should not ask so much of others. You, Svanhild, I've learnt to fathom thro' and thro'; You are too sensible to play the prude. I watched expand, unfold, your little life; A perfect woman I divined within you, But long I only saw a daughter in you;— Now I ask of you—will you be my wife? [SVANHILD ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... what she is: but if an agreeable height, a modest air, a virgin shame, and impatience of being beheld, amidst a blaze of ten thousand charms—The whole room flew out—Oh, Mr. Triplett! When Mrs. Lofty, a known prude, said she believed she knew whom the gentleman meant; but she was, indeed, as he civilly represented her, impatient of being beheld. Then turning to the lady next her—The most unbred creature you ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... given to the tender and sentimental, and have not had any tendencies that way greatly increased by the elegancies and courtesies of a midshipman's berth,—not to say that, as far as I recollect, Mdlle. Virginia was a bit of a prude, and M. Paul a pump,—yet were it but for old acquaintance sake, I determined on making a pilgrimage. Pamplemousses is a small village about seven miles from Port Louis, and the road to it is lined ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... gesture, and swung to his daughter. "You hear him, the mealy-mouthed prude! Perhaps you'll believe at last that marriage with him would be the ruin of you. He would always be there the inconvenient husband—to mar your every chance, ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... battle she is fighting with life has strengthened her powers as an artist. A young stenographer has been compelled to give up two positions because she would not allow the loverlike attentions of married employers. She was called a silly prude and discharged. Yet she is occupying an excellent position with a clean high-class ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... years one with whom any self-respecting woman would wish to be intimate. The thought of the Baroness Bonnar, fresh from contact with her, coming into Violet's presence was anything but agreeable. I am not much of a prude, and was never disposed to hound a woman down for an error in love; but the plain English of the matter was that no woman who would care to know Constance Pleyel had a right to exchange a word with Violet. My mind was a good deal exercised ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... supposed to be very good friends with somebody like that! Of course Quillan must have some bit of Intelligence business in mind with Pluly, but there should be other ways of going about it. And later, when she'd been just a little stiff with him, Quillan had had the nerve to tell her not to be a prude, doll! ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... clergyman, why, that of course explained the ascetic type, the nun-like profile of the girl, the skilled musician. Clergymen were apt to educate their children, even without much money. The girl would probably be a prude and bore, but there was a chance that she might be a princess in disguise and need a prince to show her a good time. He would take the chance ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... laughter of the chamber-maid Frederika, who, more easy going than she, gladly allowed the Baron to trifle wantonly with her and pinch her cheeks or play with her curls. The insolent wench looked at her derisively, and called out, "That will give you a good appetite for the kermess, Miss Prude." ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... somewhat in years, employed by his court in a public function at that of Madrid, had put his charming young new-married wife under the controul and wardship, as I may say, of his insolent sister, an old prude. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... a quiet, gentlemanly man with pleasant manners. Was it not her right to know him as I knew him now, as a drunken brawler, who in his cups had betrayed the unworthy motive of his devotion? These questions troubled me for many days. I was not a prude. I knew that all men have their foibles, that many great men have over-indulged in liquor, that a man's whole character is not to be damned by a single slip. I knew that did all women see the men whom they choose for marriage as others see them we should have a plague of spinsters. ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... informed as to his mother's means, would give him an easy discount. Usury and the deceptive help of renewals enabled him to lead a happy life for nearly eighteen months. Without daring to leave Madame de Serizy the poor boy had fallen madly in love with the beautiful Comtesse de Kergarouet, a prude after the fashion of young women who are awaiting the death of an old husband and making capital of their virtue in the interests of a second marriage. Quite incapable of understanding that calculating virtue is invulnerable, ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... with superiority on topics which are best left alone, until Wilmot wanted to kick him downstairs. Scupper, aware of Wilmot's dislike for him, and thoroughly cognizant of its causes, did his best to goad the "young prude" (as he chose to consider him) into open hostility. He strutted, boasted, puffed, and talked loosely without avail. Wilmot maintained a beautiful calm, and the more he raged internally the more Chesterfieldian and gorgeously ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... the honor of her husband and children is at stake, says to herself that this is not the time to play the prude. She abandons her hand, making just resistance enough for the old man (happily he is an old man) to ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... burst on me, by some wag laughing and thinking I had done it as a good joke. I was, of course, exceedingly annoyed to have been supposed capable of such a vulgar unmeaning piece of disrespect, and kept my feet as coyly under my petticoats as the veriest prude in the country till I should make my escape.' His circumstances were now improved, and though moralists, he said, thought property an evil, he declared himself happier every guinea he gained. He thanked God for his ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... greatest wonders, if death had not prevented him. This, joined to a reflection, which he makes as he returns to Aristophanes, shows that Aristophanes continued a long time to display his powers: for his poetry, says Plutarch, is a strumpet that affects sometimes the airs of a prude, but whose impudence cannot be forgiven by the people, and whose affected modesty is despised by men of decency. Menander, on the contrary, always shows himself a man agreeable and witty, a companion desirable upon the stage, at table, and in gay assemblies; an extract of all the treasures of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... own request. You insisted they would never make you jealous, and they rather bored you. So I did not say a word about this one. Of course Laura is anxious to further his cause. She thinks me a good woman and somewhat of a prude. Poor soul! She doesn't suspect the wedding ring with the diamond in it you've seen me sometimes wear! You know it's the sort of thing wicked women affect when they want to be cynical about the marriage tie. Well, Laura is doing her best to persuade me to be the instrument ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... accomplished. Shortly he would have compensation commensurate for all these five years' chagrin. To elude him all this time, to laugh in his face, to defy him, and then to step deliberately into his power! He never could understand this woman. The little prude! But for her fool's conscience he would not have been riding the beggar's horse to-day. She was now too self-reliant, too intelligent, too cunning; she was her father over again, soldier and diplomat. Well, the mystery ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... Bellario; his known Taste and Impartiality made all those who wished Reason instead of Prejudice might judge of the Subject before them, rejoice at his Presence. The Objections now arose so fast, it was impossible to guess where they would end. Clarissa herself was a Prude—a Coquet—all the Contradictions mentioned some Time ago in a printed Paper, with the Addition of many more, were laid to her Charge. She was an undutiful Daughter—too strict in her Principles of Obedience to such Parents—too ...
— Remarks on Clarissa (1749) • Sarah Fielding
... He forced himself to sit the play out, but he did not know whether he was more bored or nauseated. If that was what the theatre was coming to, then it was high time the police stepped in and closed the playhouses. He was no prude and could laugh as well as anyone at the witty immorality of a farce at the Palais Royal, but here was nothing but filth. With an emphatic gesture he held his nose and whistled through his teeth. It was the ruin of the ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... upon other worlds and conditions upon them that are similar to our own conditions: if his notions be presented undisguisedly as fiction, or only as an "interesting hypothesis," he'll stir up no prude rages. ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... anathematizing Elizabeth, malediction turned to madrigal. "Un gran cervello di principessa," he says. Mary Stuart, less concerned with the church and more with the woman part of the question, had little respect for her sister Elizabeth, and wrote to her as queen to queen and coquette to prude: "Your disinclination to marriage arises from your not wishing to lose the liberty of being made love to." Mary Stuart played with the fan, Elizabeth with the axe. An uneven match. They were rivals, besides, in literature. Mary Stuart composed French verses; Elizabeth translated Horace. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... impressive. It should result in the innocence of knowledge, which is better than the innocence of ignorance. It is a pleasure to see a woman handling so delicate a topic so well. Miss Morley deserves thanks for doing it so impeccably. Even a prude can find nothing to carp at in the ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... from his book to worlds far removed from the English prude: to wanton peccadilloes and salacious practices condemned by the Church. He grew excited. The impotence of his mind and body which he had supposed final, vanished. Solitude again acted on his disordered nerves; he was once more obsessed, not by religion ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... and Flemming were delighted with the scene; and at the same time exceedingly amused with the countenance of an old prude in the next box, who seemed to look upon the wholemagic show, with such feelings as Michal, Saul's daughter, experienced, when she looked from her window and saw King David dancing and leaping with his ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... very aggravating To hear the solemn prating Of the fossils who are stating That old Horace was a prude; When we know that with the ladies He was always raising Hades, And with many an escapade his Best productions ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... gates she threw back her hood and looked him full in the face, as if to dower him with all the splendour of her beauty. The sly, humorous face of the old fox twitched as his eyes caught the girl's. He looked a prude with a touch of freakishness in him; his pursed mouth seemed always to be strangling a smile, the issue of the strife always in doubt. Now, for instance, though Olimpia said to herself that she was satisfied, she could never have denied that he disapproved ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... art, which was extremely difficult and would greatly redound to his honor. Although he had met few women of her merit, he judged her correctly. He believed Madame de Tecle was not virtuous simply from force of habit or duty. She had passion. She was not a prude, but was chaste. She was not a devotee, but was pious. He discerned in her at the same time a spirit elevated, yet not narrow; lofty and dignified sentiments, and deeply rooted principles; virtue without rigor, pure and lambent ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... You stared at her. You behaved like a common rubber-neck, and you know it. I am no prude, James, but I feel compelled to say that I consider your conduct that of a libertine. Used she to ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... said the wench—And, Harriet, see the ill example of such a free behaviour before her: she presumed to prate in favour of the man's fit of fondness; yet, at other times, is a prude ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... Lady Sarah. What 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 she so ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... suspicious, and betray a secret affinity. The difference between the 'Great Vulgar and the Small' is mostly in outward circumstances. The coxcomb criticises the dress of the clown, as the pedant cavils at the bad grammar of the illiterate, or the prude is shocked at the backslidings of her frail acquaintance. Those who have the fewest resources in themselves naturally seek the food of their self-love elsewhere. The most ignorant people find most to laugh at in strangers: ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... a matter of domestic history, that Griffith and Kate lived together a happy couple; but this ardent prude was compelled by her position to see it, and realize it, every day. She had to witness little conjugal caresses, and they turned her sick with jealousy. She was Nobody. They took no more account of her than of the furniture. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... complexion and dazzling teeth. Her figure was round and supple as a twig, and was finished off with dainty hands and pretty Andalusian feet, arched and beautifully rounded. All her glances were smiles, and all her movements caresses. Add to this, that she was neither a fool nor a prude, nor even an ignoramus like girls brought up in convents. Her education, which was begun by her mother, had been completed by two or three respectable old professors selected by M. Renault, who was her guardian. She had a sound heart, and a quick mind. But I may reasonably ask myself why I have ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... was all that one might imagine him to be. A quiet, unobtrusive fellow, he seldom spoke except when he had something worth saying. Since childhood he had always been a leader among his fellows. Johnny was a good example to others, but no prude. He had played a fast quarter on the football team, and had won for himself early renown and many medals as a light weight, champion boxer. He never sought a quarrel, but, if occasion demanded it, Johnny went into action with a vim and rush that few men of twice his ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... rapidity. In 1724, for instance, a year of tremendous activity, she rushed into print no less than ten original romances, beside translating half of a lengthy French work, "La Belle Assemblee" by Mme de Gomez. At this time, too, her celebrity had become so great that "The Prude, a Novel, written by a Young Lady" was dedicated to her, just as Mrs. Hearne at the beginning of her career had put a romance, "The Lover's Week," under the protection of the famous Mrs. Manley. Between 1720 and 1730 Mrs. Haywood wrote, beside plays and translations, thirty-eight works of ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... motion: a cunning smile wrinkled his face and he smote the table with his open hand. "Dull, are they? There, my hedge-minstrel from Valmy, is your welcome ready made. Bring your lute and make pretty Ursula's grey eyes dance to a love song, prude that she is." ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... prude, with the sublime inconsistency of most women whose lives are made the darker for drink; she did not identify herself with any movement toward prohibition, or refuse the cocktails, the claret, and the wine that were ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... all impossible, as Stephen knew, and he turned away with a short good-night. He wondered whether his friend's wife were a prude. ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... horning onset, whom A truncheon-battered helmet caps . . . The creature is of earnest mien To plead a sorrow darker than the tomb. His Harp and Triangle, in tone subdued, He names; they are a rayless red and white; The dawn-hued libertine, the gibbous prude. And, if we recognize his Tambourine, He asks; exhausted names her: she has become A globe in cupolas; the blowziest queen Of overflowing dome on dome; Redundancy contending with the tight, Leaping the dam! He fondly calls, his girl, The buxom tripper with the goblet-smile, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Will. What a rank prude is woman, thus to disguise her inclination. They call thee Barbara—Bab! restrain not thy fancy. Come, hang round my neck and love me. What! wouldst thou be an ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... shy. "I hadn't meant to tell you. It's not quite for a lady." For, like most men who are rather animal, he was intellectually a prude. "He says he can't ever marry, owing to his foot. It wouldn't be fair to posterity. His grandfather was crocked, his father too, and he's as bad. He thinks that it's hereditary, and may get worse next generation. ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... then, we don't abhor This horrid little prude? Why don't we cast the foullest slur On such a Prussian character? Because, as I ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various
... Mavis was no prude; but this request, coming on top of all she had learned from Miss Allen, fanned the embers of resentment against the conditions under which girls, helpless as she, worked. The Marquis's demand, the circumstances in which it ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... might have been thinking of the spiritistic triumphs of Mrs. Meeker or of Ena with her sweet curves. Whatever might be said of the latter, it was clear that she was no prude. McGeorge drew a deep breath; it was the only ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... haven't,' said he, and fixed a stare on me. 'Oh, I see what you mean. I'm drunk. . . . It's no use your pretending,' he caught me up argumentatively. 'I've taken too much t'drink. Tiring day. Hope you're not a prude?' ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... rose, with shining limbs, above the housetops, and vanished toward her Garden Tower. The Lions looked disconcerted. "Old-fashioned, Victorian prude!" said one, "Brazen hussy!" said the other. And they climbed back on their Pedestals, resuming their supercilious expression. There I suppose they will stay, no matter what Diana may think ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... and lost track of him for several years. Then I heard that he had married a dear friend of mine—Lady Dagmar Cooper, one of the greatest beauties and perhaps the sternest prude in England. She wrote me, soon after that unbelievable mating: "I have married Cecil Grimshaw. I know you won't approve; I do not altogether approve myself. He is not like the men I have known—not at all English. But he intrigues me; there is a sense ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... he had not from some impropriety in her conduct seen reason to imagine it would not be ill received; and I am sure, added she, 'if such a thing was ever to befall me, it would convert me into a starched prude, for fear that hereafter innocent vivacity might be mistaken for vicious levity: I should take myself very severely to task, convinced the offence was grounded on my conduct; for I am well persuaded there is something so respectable in virtue that no man will dare to insult it, ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... manuscripts, and yet persisted in the conventional view of Boswell, was not a Mid-Victorian prig but a common imbecile. It is true that he has been stupid enough to mangle and emasculate the letters that he was employed to publish; an officious prude unquestionably he was, but no fool, ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... conclusions,—yet irresistible and convincing to every woman in their illogical sincerity. There was not a word of love in it, yet every page breathed a wholesome adoration; there was not an epithet or expression that a greater prude than Mrs. Ashwood would have objected to, yet every sentence seemed to end in a caress. There was not a line of poetry in it, and scarcely a figure or simile, and yet it was poetical. Boyishly egotistic as it was ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... as much to blame as you," observed Albert. "I went willingly, but after it was all over I was sorry I did. I am no prude, I enjoy a little excitement and don't mind a social evening with a few friends, but it doesn't pay to do things you despise ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... Italian players who had got up a comedy called "The Pretended Prude." When I learnt they were going to represent it, I sent for them and told them not to do so. It was in vain; they played it, and got a great deal of money by it; but they were afterwards sent away in consequence. They then came ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... Sense of his Duty, would make him be greatly upon the Reserve with you? And that you would think him insensible, tho' he was only immerst in Thought? Why did not you intice him? Come, come, be easy, I will engage to procure you another private Meeting; but take Care not to act the Prude again so unseasonably. Ply him with every alluring Art, and even make Use of a fond Violence to make him yield. He is not to be treated like common Lovers. These Injunctions cannot be disagreeable to you. Zeokinizul is perfectly handsome, and in the Prime of Life. You love him, and therefore ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... well as training Gertrude was a formalist and a prude, but she was human and she unconsciously obeyed a law of nature which ordains the union of the dissimilar. This was why, having met only men of her own kind hitherto, she had escaped the touch of passion and now felt drawn toward one who ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... oaths; said that he never liked man, woman, or beast, but what she was sure to be jealous of it; that Mohun was the prettiest fellow in England; that he hoped to see more of him whilst in the country; and that he would let Mohun know what my Lady Prude said of him. ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... prude. She received the sergeant-major's attentions very coolly, and cut short his conversational efforts so as to excite him the more. At the same time her mockingly triumphant and provocative glances would contradict the ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... Florentine. He found employment for every female tongue, and she who dared not to employ her tongue, made amends for the privation with her thoughts. Many a maiden now enjoyed less tranquil slumbers; many an experienced coquette sighed as she laid on her colour at the looking glass; many a prude forgot the rules which she had imposed upon herself, and daily frequented the gardens and walks in which report gave her the hope ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... did not betray her to the others; seemed to enjoy the equivoque, content to wait. So he kept her on tenterhooks; she felt a cheat, and what is worse, a detected cheat. This filled her deep with shame. It made her more coy and more a prude than she had ever need to be had she gone among them kirtled and coifed. At last came the day when that happened which she had darkly dreaded. A load of coals went off to Market Basing; to dinner ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... brought her turned Laura's head, making her so foolhardy in her inventions that Maria, who for all her boldness of speech was at heart a prude like ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... Parsons, desirous all sinners to save, And to make each a prig or a prude, If two thousand long years have not made us behave, It is time you ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... shameful things they said. One middle-aged female, whose conversation oscillated between physiology and rescue work, compelled Carmichael to sue for mercy on the ground that he had not been accustomed to speak about such details of life with a woman, and ever afterwards described him as a prude. It seemed to Carmichael that he was disliked by some women because he thought more highly of them than they thought ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... blacker Than his own hell; Vulcan, who shook his horns At every limp he took; great Bacchus rode Upon a barrel; and in a cockle-shell Neptune kept state; then Mercury was a thief; Juno a shrew; Pallas a prude, at best; And Venus walked the clouds in search of lovers; Only great Jove, the lord and thunderer, Sat in the circle of his starry power And ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... guests. She was very much diverted with this distress, which she declared she could not comprehend, but frankly agreed to remain with me; and promised, at my earnest desire, not to publish what I had confessed to her, lest I should gain, around Windsor, the character of a prude. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... of hers read "some chapters out of Rabelais," "which were enough," she declares, "to make us die with laughing." "I cannot affect," she says, "a prudery which is not natural to me." No, indeed, a prude this woman was not. She had the strong aesthetic stomach of her time. It is queer to have Rabelais rubbing cheek and jowl with Nicole ("We are going to begin a moral treatise of Nicole's"), a severe Port-Royalist, ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... with the realities of life, in their labors; and enjoyed its pleasures with truth and honesty. This over-nice, mincing delicacy, and sentimentality, in which their grand-daughters indulge, is but the off-throw of the boarding-school, the novelist, and the prude—mere "leather and prunella." Such remarks may be thought to lie beyond the line of our immediate labor. But in the discussion of the collateral subjects which have a bearing upon country life and residence, we incline to make a clean breast of it, and drop such ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... possession. If she didn't know him she would like to know who did. But up till now she had meant to spare Mrs. Majendie her knowledge of him, for she was not ill-natured. She was sorry for the poor, inept, unhappy prude. ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... I do," answered she, "for Mr Harrel has told me a thousand times, that however you played the prude, you would be his ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... In a few days I shall be eight-and-forty; I am no prude; I can hear whatever you ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... She was young, and lively, and unquestionably pretty; but was she worth all this planning and contriving? She was by way of being a prude too, and held serious notions of women's place in the scheme of things. At any rate, the day's hunting had not brought him far out of his path, Frankfort being his real objective, and he would make up his mind later. Perhaps she would remove all obstacles by ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... mind, unfettered by any respect for established reputations or orthodox standards." The titles of some of the articles—"The Dulness of Dante," "The Sloppiness of Scott," "George Eliot as Pedant," "Jane Austen the Prude"—indicate sufficiently the richness of the treat provided in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various
... Hamilton, this victory was believed to have cost the "prude" her virtue; but Miss Stuart had proved again and again that she was no such compliant maid. The only passport to her favours, though a King sought them, was a wedding-ring; and amid all the temptations of a dissolute Court, where virtue was as hard to seek as a needle ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... business, lets his Ministers do as they please, but expects to be informed of everything. He lives a strange life at Brighton, with tagrag and bobtail about him, and always open house. The Queen is a prude, and will not let the ladies come decolletees to her parties. George IV., who liked ample expanses of that sort, would not let them be covered. In the meantime matters don't seem more promising either here or abroad. ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... more question of fainting than of burning down the Conversation-house. But Madame de Cruchecassee, and Madame de Schlangenbad, and those horrid people whom the men speak to, but whom the women salute with silent curtseys, persisted in declaring that there was no prude like an English prude; and to Dr. Finck's oaths, assertions, explanations, only replied, with a shrug of their bold shoulders, "Taisez-vous, Docteur, vous n'ete qu'une ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Heaven preserve her to you a hundred years in health and with plenty of sons!" Then the new bride answered, "It is very clear that you are a simpleton, and would remain so were you to live a hundred years, acting the prude as you do, and refusing to kiss so handsome a youth, whilst I let a herdsman kiss me for a ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... mysteries from which the physiological Muse recoils. She has been quite willing to enter the nuptial chambers while they are occupied, but she is a virgin and a prude, and there are occasions on which she retires. For, since it is at this passage in my book that the Muse is inclined to put her white hands before her eyes so as to see nothing, like the young girl looking through the interstices of her tapering fingers, she will take ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... hands, and otherwhiles a punnet of peascods or a bunch of chives or scallions, and whenas he saw his opportunity, he would ogle her askance and cast a friendly gibe at her; but she, putting on the prude, made a show of not observing it and passed on with a demure air; wherefore my lord priest could not come by ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... may be they will count me over-modest, Deem me Victorian, dub me prude; I may have early views, the very oddest, On what is chaste and what is rude; Yet am I certain that my leg Would not look ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... Margaret, moving away. Mr. Bass watched her until she disappeared, and then entered in his notebook a phrase for future use, "The prosperous propriety of a pretty plutocrat." He was gathering materials for his forthcoming book, "The Last Sigh of the Prude." ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... were apart a reaction set in. She wondered how she could have been so cold, called herself a prude and an idiot, questioned if any man could really care for her, and got up in the dead of night to try new ways of doing her hair. But as soon as he reappeared her head straightened itself on her slim neck and she sped her ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... things and things in the irresistible splurge of the silly girl whose mind is full of adolescent impurity. Well, Sally knew all that. She knew all the things that boys said; and a few more things she had noticed and thought for herself. She was not a prude. May didn't know anything that Sally did not know; but she talked about it. Sally did not talk. Her sexual knowledges, so far as they went, were as close and searching as a small-tooth comb, and collected as much that was undesirable. She despised May. May was a fool. ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... Puritans, and all that sort of thing. I know what she means. But there's no use talking about it. I'll do as you say—command, I mean. I'll try to be a prude. Heaven alone knows what a real prude is. I don't. All this tommy-rot about Bobby and me wouldn't exist if that wretched Chase man had been a little more affable. He never noticed us until you came. No wife to snoop after him and—why, my ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... familiar and conventional images without disturbing the ideal—a good power for these days. The worst is that the moral atmosphere is bad, and that, though I am not, as you know, the very least bit of a prude (not enough perhaps), some of his poems must be admitted to be most offensive. Get St. Beuve's poems, they have much beauty in them you will grant at once. Then there is a Breton[17] poet whose name Robert and I have both of us been ungrateful enough ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... showing an active bravery amidst her despair, had not been to bed at all, told him of what had taken place in the house during the night and early morning. Donna Serafina, prude that she was, had again made an attempt to have the bodies separated; but this had proved an impossibility, as rigor mortis had set in, and to part the lovers it would have been necessary to break their limbs. Moreover, the Cardinal, who had interposed once before, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... me!—But why should I play the prude? I will own there was a time, when I thought myself handsome. 'Tis past. Alas! the enchanting beauties of a female countenance arise from peace of mind—The look, which captivates an honourable man, must be reflected from a ...
— The Stranger - A Drama, in Five Acts • August von Kotzebue
... even on first introduction had been much pleased, not to say captivated, with her cordial address, frank unsophisticated manners, and winsome looks; he contrasted her to much advantage with the affected coquette, the cold formal prude, the flippant woman of fashion, the empty heads and hollow hearts wherewithal society is peopled. He had long been wearied out with shallow courtesies, frigid compliments, and other conventional hypocrisies, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... uncongenial. I am at one and the same time pupil and teacher, offender and judge, performer and critic, chaperone and protegee, a prim, precise, old maid and a rollicking schoolgirl, a tomboy and a prude, a saint and sinner. What can result from such a combination? That we get on tolerably is a wonder. Some days, however, we get on admirably together, part of me paying compliments to the other part of me—whole days being given to this—until each of us has ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... displacing prudery so that the abolition of the office will not cause the ill-results announced by the managers, who regard the existence of the Censor as valuable to them, because it frees them from responsibility and enables them to gratify the taste of the prurient prude, the person who revels in and blushes at the indelicacy of ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... took on a sterner and graver look than she had ever yet worn as she read on, and when at length she finished the epistle, she appeared the horrified prude ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... pair of clear brown eyes upon his face, and the faintest trace of astonishment crept into them. She was a woman with high principles, but neither a fool nor a prude, and she saw no sign of dissolute living there. The man's gaze was curiously steady, his skin clear and brown, and his sinewy form suggested a capacity for, and she almost fancied an acquaintance with, physical toil. Yet he had already denied the truth ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... you! You think I ought to have come grovelling to you. It's not proper to ask you to come to me ... to believe you might come ... to have everything ready in case you might come. Prude, Jenny! That's what ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... widow'd Mother, heard him speak, And sought awhile to find what he would seek: Smiling he came, he smiled when he withdrew, And paid the same attention to the two; Meeting and parting without joy or pain, He seem'd to come that he might go again. The wondering girl, no prude, but something nice, At length was chill'd by his unmelting ice; She found her tortoise held such sluggish pace, That she must turn and meet him in the chase: This not approving, she withdrew, till one Came who appear'd ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... then, I have changed," she said, in a low, concentrated voice. "Think me a prude if you will. I know I am not. You are unjust to me, for you give me, in effect, no alternative. You say, 'Think of me as a brother; feel and act as if you were my sister,' when I am not your sister. It's like declaring that there is nothing in ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... to Hester while she was struggling into her sweater. "You see how it is," she whispered. Her eyes were snapping with anger and her voice fairly hissed. "You see what a little prude like you can do. If you would have sustained me, Renee's goal would have counted us two, and Louise would have had no chance to make a goal or foul. It would have been 8 to 7 in ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... done and is doing. There is Mrs. Painter, who passes for a most respectable woman, and a model in society. There is no use in saying what you really know regarding her and her goings on. There is Diana Hunter—what a little haughty prude it is; and yet WE know stories about her which are not altogether edifying. I say it is best for the sake of the good, that the bad should not all be found out. You don't want your children to know the history ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... eugenics is too far-reaching in its beneficent purpose to be fettered by the querulous triflings of the ancient or intellectual prude; nor should it be belittled by the superficial insight of the habitual scoffer. It is not a fantasy nor an idle dream. It is not even an inspiration. The destiny of the race has brought us face to face with conditions ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... of the story. But if M. de Bernard falls readily enough into the easy, matter-of-course tone in which his countrymen habitually discuss amatory peccadilloes—and he could hardly have attained his present popularity in France had he assumed the prude—he does not disdain or neglect to point a moral after his own fashion. In administering a remedy, a wise physician has regard to the idiosyncrasy of the patient as well as to the nature of the disease. A nation whose morality is unhealthy, must ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... handy trysting-place is miles from me. You must give me ample time; I cannot, I think, possibly be there before two. But as the bell beats two, your helper shall arrive: welcome, I trust. Stay - do you bring any one?' she added. 'O, it is not for a chaperon - I am not a prude!' ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... But, oh! the nymph that mounts above the skies, And, gratis, clears religious mysteries, Resolv'd the church's welfare to ensure, And make her family a sine-cure: The theme divine at cards she'll not forget, But takes in texts of Scripture at picquet; In those licentious meetings acts the prude, And thanks her Maker that her cards are good. What angels would those be, who thus excel In theologies, could they sew as well! Yet why should not the fair her text pursue? Can she more decently the doctor woo? 'Tis hard, too, she who makes no use but chat Of her religion, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... lighted and left burning. Plainly, then, guests were expected, and were not expected before night. For whom, I asked myself with indignation, were such secret preparations likely to be made? Although no prude, I am a woman of decided views upon morality; if my house, to which my husband had brought me, was to serve in the character of a petite maison, I saw myself forced, however unwillingly, into a new course of litigation; and, determined ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... Duke's both in my chamber. Was not that a pretty civil surprise? Yes, and they are in fine gilded frames, too. I am writing a letter to thank her, which I will send to-morrow morning. I'll tell her she is such a prude that she will not let so much as her picture be alone in a room with a man, unless the Duke's be with it; and so forth.(3) We are full of snow, and dabbling. Lady Masham has come abroad these three days, and seen the Queen. I dined with her ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... not even look at us,' said Coningsby, when she had quitted the room; 'and I dare say is only a prude.' ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... prettiest high-stepping piece you ever saw, Sir George—that I will swear!—and would do you no discredit in London. It would make your mouth water to see her. But he could never move her; never was such a prude. Two days ago he thought he had lost her for good and all—there was that accident, you understand. And now a little blood lost—and ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... thinks or talks about the other sex, the more time she has for her books and her needle;" and, having delivered this precious sentence, with a deliberate and most deceiving imitation of the pedantic prude, she departed, and outside the door broke instantly into a joyous chuckle at the expense of the plotters she had left looking moonstruck in one another's faces. If the new allies had been both ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... to time, he cast his eye, Lest this should quit his place, that step awry. Appearances to save his only care; So things seem right, no matter what they are. 300 In him his parents saw themselves renew'd, Begotten by Sir Critic on Saint Prude. Then came drum, trumpet, hautboy, fiddle, flute; Next snuffer, sweeper, shifter, soldier, mute: Legions of angels all in white advance; Furies, all fire, come forward in a dance; Pantomime figures then are brought to view, Fools, hand in hand with ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... what he could to exalt the character of the colored women. So, at every chance he got, he talked to the men who approached him, of virtue and integrity. He soon got the name of being a "virtuous prude" and the white men decided to corrupt him ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... abolished space; annihilated time. Like other queens, she had many of the failings and prejudices of her humanity. In spite of her own origin, she disliked Jews, and rarely neglected a chance to maltreat them. She was not in the least a prude. To her, sin was simply humanity, and she seemed often on the point of defending her arbitrary acts of mercy, by frankly telling the Trinity that if the Creator meant to punish man, He should not have ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... fling away the idea of self-control, because repression has seemed such a disastrous method of self-control. You can see it in their faces also; in the gradual demoralization of their nature. The rake on one hand, the prude on the other, represent the ultimate consequence of the process I am trying to describe. Many people have marked on their souls, if not on their faces, one or other of these ways of life. They have not, perhaps, gone ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... Soul. Genius, Wit, and Learning cannot draw Pictures so much to the Life, it being a Point to which the Heart alone can attain. When I say the Heart, I mean a tender Heart, and one that is in such Situations. The following is the Character of a Prude in Love. Being not to be depended upon in her Proceedings, she was a perpetual Mixture of Tenderness and Severity: She seem'd to yield only to be the more obstinate in her Opposition. If she thought she had, by what she said, disposed me to entertain any sort of Hopes, being on ...
— Prefaces to Fiction • Various
... slight for him to have recognized them as yet; but Sally's curious, pitiless eyes had discerned them. She had discerned and disapproved, and she had resolved that no squeamish delicacy should keep her from preventing Beatrix's playing the part of a prude. ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... when I was gay, the other with her sense when I was serious. But these qualities were never carried to excess in either, and I have often seen them exchange characters for a whole day together. A suit of mourning has transformed my coquet into a prude, and a new set of ribbands has given her younger sister more than natural vivacity. My eldest son George was bred at Oxford, as I intended him for one of the learned professions. My second boy Moses, whom I designed for business, received a sort of a miscellaneous education at home. But ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... human to take a harmless interest in what our next-door neighbor is doing, has done, or may do. Primarily gossip was harmless; to-day it is still harmless in some quarters. The gossip of the present time is like the prude, always looking for the worst and finding it. The real trouble with the gossip lies in the fact that she has little else to do; her own affairs are so uninteresting that she is perforce obliged to look into the ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... banter, and Sadie had a ringing laugh that young men liked, but there were limits that few who knew her overstepped. One or two had done so, but had been rebuked in a way they wished to forget. Sadie had the tricks of an accomplished coquette, but something of the heart of a prude. ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... Sand and Balzac had a discussion about the Contes droletiques during which she said he was shocking, and he retorted that she was a prude, and departed, calling to her on the stairway: "Vous n'etes qu'une bete!" But they were only ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... fact was a beast, was something to be stamped on. He would never allow himself comfortably to be that sort of man. Yet he was, it seemed, enough that sort of man to make friendship with Mrs. Chepstow difficult, perhaps impossible. If love had led him to such an inclination, he would, being no prude, have understood it as a perfectly natural and perfectly healthy thing. But he did not love Mrs. Chepstow. He would never love, really love, again. For years he had said that to himself, and had believed it. He said it again now. And even if he ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... from San Francisco, Grant tried to persuade Bridget to stop teasing him about the navigational foul-up and set him straight. He had put up with it as long as he did only because she had worn an off-shoulder yellow gown, snugly fitted, that made the uniform seem like the design of a Mid-Victorian prude. ...
— A Fine Fix • R. C. Noll
... "Hell's bells! I'm no prude. I like to overstep conventions, too. But this wholesale wrecking of the social structure would be ruinous ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... rancour, for his wives were—fools, point blank. No man was ever so manageable. My diplomatist is getting liker and liker to him every day. Leaner, of course, and does not habitually straddle. Whiskers and morals, I mean. We must be silent before our prudish sister. Not a prude? We talk diplomacy, dearest. He complains of the exclusiveness of the port of Oporto, and would have strict alliance between Portugal and England, with mutual privileges. I wish the alliance, and think it better to maintain the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... immediately set all in order again for another customer, which happened to be a famous prude, whom her parents after long threatenings, and much persuasion, had with the extremest difficulty prevailed on to accept a young handsome goldsmith, that might have pretended to five times her fortune. The fathers and mothers in the neighbourhood used to quote her for an example ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift |
