"Coquette" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... looked at her sitting in his office, her perfect health, her slim boyishness, her exquisite lines and graceful turn of hand, arm and body, or the flower- like turn of the neck, were the very harmony and poetry of life. But she was terribly provoking too; and he realized that she was an unconscious coquette, that her spirit loved ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... reappearance of the gay child in Vere, grafted upon the comprehending woman whom he had seen looking out of her eyes on the day of his last visit to the island, had put the finishing touch to the amorous madness of the Marchesino. He dreamed Vere an accomplished coquette. He believed that her cruelty on the night of his serenade, that her coldness and avoidance of him on the day of the lunch, were means devised to increase his ardor. She had been using Emilio merely as an instrument. He had been a ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... tall figure out of sight. The encounter both astounded and thrilled her. She wondered if she were cheapening herself by meekly obeying his behest, wondered what Rose—that practised coquette—would have done under such circumstances; but to depart seemed so wholly out of the question that she dismissed the wonder as futile. She could only wait for the play to develop, and trust to her own particular luck, which had so favoured ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... afterwards he passed on to the University of Padua to study law, apparently to please his father, for in the charming autobiography prefixed to his collected poems he quotes his father as saying:—"My son, be not enamored of this coquette, Poesy; for with all her airs of a great lady, she will play thee some trick of a faithless grisette. Choose a good companion, as one might say, for instance the law: and thou wilt found a family; wilt partake of God's bounties; wilt be content in life, and die quietly and happily." In addition ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... held beauty to be a precious gem that should be richly set in gold—the gem was hers, but the golden setting was lamentably wanting, and poor de Sigognac could not possibly furnish it. So the accomplished coquette decided not to interfere with this newly-born love affair, which was "all very well for a simple-minded young girl like Isabelle," she said to herself, with a disdainful smile and ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... peculiar sevenpenny-moist-sugar tint which the poets of old were wont to call golden. Her voice was melodious; her notes in alt were equal to Grisi's: in short, she would have been a very desirable, loveable young lady, if she had not been a coquette. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... But Claudine had another lover, more nearly of her own condition of life; this was Claperon, the deputy-governor of the Rouen jail, with whom she had made acquaintance during one or two compulsory visits paid by her brother to that functionary. Claudine, who was a bit of a coquette, though she did not altogether reject his suit, gave him little encouragement, so that, betwixt hopes and fears and doubts and jealousies, poor Claperon led a very ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... picture her in a silken train smiling at gallants from behind her fan; and surely, I thought, no one in the whole world ever went tripping to a ball in such strange and monstrous headgear as she wore. Yet she had been a notable beauty in her day, and even in her old age was still something of a coquette. ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... but I instantly saw my mistake. What right had I to assume that Enriquez' attentions were any more genuine than her own easy indifference; and if I suspected that they were, was it fair in me to give my friend away to this heartless coquette? "You are not very gallant," she said, with a slight laugh, as I was hesitating, and turned away with her escort before I could frame a reply. But at least Enriquez was now accessible, and I should gain some information from him. I knew where to find ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... "Where is the coquette that cannot scream to the life? These she tavern-keepers do still ape the nobles. Some princess or duchess hath lain here a night, that was honestly afeard of a mouse, having been brought up to it. And this ape hath seen her, and said, 'I will ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... "'Coquette! nothing can frighten me. Tell me that you will cost me my whole future, that I shall die two months hence, that I shall be damned for ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... Copper (boiler) kaldronego. Copper (metal) kupro. Copse arbetaro. Copy kopii. Copy ekzemplero. Copybook kajero. Copy (a corrected) neto. Copyist skribisto. Coquet koketi. Coquetry koketeco. Coquette koketulino. Coral koralo. Cord sxnuro. Cordage sxnurajxo. Cordial kora. Core internajxo. Co-religionist samreligiano. Cork korko. Cork sxtopi. Corkscrew korktirilo. Corn (on foot, etc.) kalo. Corn greno. Corned salita. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... treat her as if she were an equivocal character. According to your idea, she has neither decided for nor against gallantry, and what you clearly see in her conduct is, that she is a more logical coquette than other women. What ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... demanded the auburn-haired coquette with sudden interest. As Shirley nodded, she caught his hand with an ardent glance, ogling him impressively, as she continued: "I've heard a lot of you. I'm just ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... she knew that when she had on the pretty plaid that had come from Fort Benton, and when her heavy black hair was done up just right, she had twice the sex confidence she felt in old togs. Jessie would have denied indignantly that she was a coquette. None the less she was intent on conquest. She wanted this quiet, ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... his boots. One of the immense saw-like discs he adjusted to mademoiselle's high heel, passing the strap twice around the silk-clad ankle. Jacqueline gazed down on the short-cropped, curly head, and she saw that the back of his neck was suddenly red. But the discovery awakened nothing of the coquette in her. Quite the contrary, there was something grateful, even gravely maternal, in the smile hovering on her lips for the rough trooper who took fright like a girl over a revealed instep. Still, the interest was not altogether maternal as she watched ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... Public Vendue, The Whole Estate of Isabella Sprightly, Toast and Coquette, (Now retiring ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... ordinary friendliness. There! God bless you for your patient kindness; I will not trespass on it longer. You have the best and kindest heart of any woman in the world. Why don't you exult a little over your conquest? It's complete enough to satisfy the most insatiable coquette. Don't look so sad. I'll be your merry-hearted ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... humanity seems to be that Laura was the most consummate coquette in history. She dressed to catch Petrarch's attention; wore the flowers he liked best; accepted his amorous poems without protest; placed herself in his way by running ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... take up the coquette's part for her; perhaps of the two, he was the more gratified by the curious glances directed at those little feet, shod with plum-colored prunella; at the dainty figure outlined by a low-cut bodice, filled in with an embroidered chemisette, which only partially concealed the ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... beating, and, pitying the half-starved child, buys her from the gipsies. Among the spectators of this scene are Laertes, the manager of a troupe of strolling players, and Philine, his leading lady. Philine is an accomplished coquette, and determines to subjugate Wilhelm. In this she easily succeeds, and he joins the company as poet, proceeding with them to the Castle of Rosenberg, where a grand performance of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' is to be given. Mignon, at her earnest request, accompanies him, disguised as a page. ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... hundred thousand francs a year? nonsense, you are crazy! Some people will persist in giving millions with the liberality of authors, to whom it doesn't cost a penny to dower their heroines. Madame Firmiani is simply a coquette, who has lately ruined a young man, and now prevents him from making a fine marriage. If she were not so handsome ...
— Madame Firmiani • Honore de Balzac
... of eloquence, but again it tolerates only the most perfect discourse. There is no character that is not an accomplished orator; with Corneille and Racine, with Moliere himself, the confidant, the barbarian king, the young cavalier, the drawing room coquette, the valet, all show themselves adepts in the use of language. Never have we encountered such adroit introductions, such well-arranged evidence, such just reflections, such delicate transitions, such conclusive summing ups. Never have dialogues borne ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... evening at her crayons. In Rome, with her youth, beauty, fascinating manners, and varied reading, she gained a wide circle of friends. Her face was a Greek oval, her complexion fresh and clear, her eyes deep blue, her mouth pretty and always smiling. She was accused of being a coquette, and quite likely ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... nymphs. Did you note that startled cry? It is the Oread Arethusa flying from the river-god Alpheus. He is imprisoned in the organ, where he is mightily bellowing, and whence he will presently burst forth. But Arethusa will slip away (coquette that she is), under ground and under sea to her Sicilian home; for fable and stream sing eternally the same story, ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... calls no man master," replied the newcomer as he bent over the pretty coquette's hand. "The humblest of your ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... an object of sentiment, in a few days' time became the joke of the school. His taste in literature was as impossible as his taste in candy. He ran to titles which are supposed to be the special prerogative of the kitchen. "Loved and Lost," "A Born Coquette," "Thorns among the Orange Blossoms." Poor Mae repudiated them, but to no avail; the school had accepted Cuthbert—and was bent upon eliciting all the entertainment possible from his British vagaries. Mae's life became one long dread of seeing the maid appear with a parcel. The last ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... the face on which the dead man used to spend hours, tending it, like an ancient coquette, with washes and cosmetics, dreading the faintest freckle or sunburn which might mar the smoothness of the delicate skin? No need of the surgeon there. Cover it up quickly. The mother that bore him, if she should recognize him, would recoil ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... of the parade of dress, and passed as many hours daily at his toilette as an elderly coquette. A tenth part of his day was spent in the brushing of his teeth and the oiling of his hair, which was curling and brown, and which he did not like to conceal under a periwig, such as almost everybody of that time wore. (We have the liberty ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... The butterflies are of his kind. The high mountain zone is for them a true ball-room: the flowers are light refreshments laid out in the vestibule. Their real business in life is not to gorge and lay by, but to coquette and display themselves and ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... thrown on a chair his damask napkin of Muscovite pattern, and instinctively glanced at himself in the mirror, just as a coquette might do before a rendezvous, smoothing out his flannel vest and spreading out his cravat that only half-fastened the blue foulard collar of ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... with the grace of the lily That sways on its slender fair stem, My love with the bloom of the rosebud, White pearl in my life's diadem! You may call her coquette if it please you, Enchanting, if shy or if bold, Is my darling, my winsome wee lassie, Whose birthdays are three, when ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... vice, only when it is extended to unworthy objects. The moment a woman's wish to please becomes discriminative, the moment she feels any attachment to a man superior to the vulgar herd, she not only ceases to be a coquette, but she exerts herself to excel in every thing that he approves, and, from her versatility of manners, she has the happy power of adapting herself to his taste, and of becoming all that his most sanguine wishes could desire." The proofs of this discriminative taste, and the first symptoms of ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... a turban! Surely not to gratify the Emperor of Russia, who is at war with the Turks!" "Rather, I think," replied the Queen, "to propitiate Rustan," rolling her large, full eyes toward the swarthy Mameluke behind his master's chair. She had the air, according to Napoleon's account, of an offended coquette. After the meal it was Murat who took the part filled the previous evening by the Emperor. "How does your Majesty pass the time at Memel?" "In reading." "What does your Majesty read?" "The history of the past." "But our own times afford actions worthy of commemoration." "It ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... the wide bed is smooth and cold. Above, in the firelight, winks the coronet of tarnished gold. The knight shivers in his coat of fur, and holds out his hands to the withering flame. She is always the same, a sweet coquette. He ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... was warm, a final caress of vanishing summer, he saw a fat, youngish woman knitting woolen hose. Two or three children sprawled about her knees. There was that petulance of lip and forehead which marked the dissatisfaction of the coquette married. ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... published in Boston a small volume entitled "Eliza Wharton, the Coquette. By a Lady of Massachusetts." It consisted of a series of letters said to be founded on fact. A young woman died at the Bell Tavern in Danvers in 1788, whose gravestone a few years ago might be seen in the old Danvers (now ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... has an interesting story, and is full of clever sketches of character. Jack, himself, is rather a weak personage, and scarcely deserves the good fortune which ultimately falls to his lot. After flirting with a born coquette, who treats him with a cruelty which is not altogether unmerited, he settles down with a thoroughly lovable little wife, and a seat in the House of Lords. From this it will be gathered that all ends happily. Jack's Secret will be let out by MUDIE's, and will be kept, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various
... Lucy smile too, and what a sweet smile! How it lighted up her fair cheek, and made her blue eyes darken and deepen till they looked like heaven's own vault. Yes, there is more poetry in a blue eye. But still Inez is a very lovely girl, and her foot never was surpassed. She is a coquette, too, about that foot and ankle,—I rather like a woman to be so. What a sensation she would make in England; how she would be the rage! And then I thought of home and Galway, and the astonishment of some, the admiration of ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... ruin with cool dissolute persistency. She deceived, lied, and wept with the felicity of a fanatic. She sought and found happiness at the cost of not only self-respect, but honour and virtue. She was not a shrew, but a born coquette, without morals rather than immoral, and, withal, a superb enigmatic who would have made the Founder of our faith shed tears of sorrow. It is by distorting facts that her eulogists make it appear that she was a loving and devoted ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... author, Hannah Foster, was the daughter of Grant Webster, a well-known merchant of Boston, and wife of Rev. John Foster, of Brighton, Massachusetts, whose pedigree, but few removes backward in the line of her husband,[A] interlinked, as has been already hinted, with that of the "Coquette." Thus did they hold towards each other that very significant relationship—especially in the past century—of "cousins" a relationship better heeded and more earnestly recognized and cherished than that of nearer kin at the present day. Therefore, ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... be sick, I am too happy just here. I long to see the ethereal horizon of my dreams again, those women without claws, those winged beings and their obliging ways. In short, I have found the grain of salt to put upon the tail of that bird that was always flying away: the coquette's feet are caught in the line. I ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... demonstrative; he hurries away or rises to a branch with an angry note, and flirts his wings in ill-bred suspicion. The Mavis, or Red Thrush, sneaks and skulks like a culprit, hiding in the densest Alders; the Cat-Bird is a coquette and a flirt, as well as a sort of female Paul Pry; and the Chewink shows his inhospitality by espying your movements like a Japanese. The Wood-Thrush has none of these under-bred traits. He regards me unsuspiciously, or avoids me with a noble reserve,—or, if I am quiet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... having reached a great height. A British officer known as Mad Archy Campbell was married at Goose Creek Church during the Revolution, under romantic circumstances. Miss Paulina Phelps, a young lady of the parish, was a great beauty and a great coquette, who amused herself alike with American and British officers. Campbell met and fell desperately in love with her, and it is said that she encouraged him, though without serious intent. One day he induced her to go horseback-riding with him and on the ride made love to her so vehemently ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... grand before, became the head of the Sphinx, encircled with a coronet of fire. She bestowed a look of rapturous gratitude on Staines, and then glided away, like the stately Juno, to admire herself in the nearest glass like any other coquette, black, brown, ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... history the reader is already acquainted. Early orphaned, she was thrown upon the care of an old aunt who, proud of her wondrous beauty, spared no pains to make her what nature seemed to will that she should be, a coquette and a belle. At seventeen we find her a schoolgirl in New Haven, where she turned the heads of all the college boys, and then murmured because one, a dark-eyed youth of twenty, withheld from her the homage she claimed as her just due. In a fit of pique she besieged a staid, ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... coming to?" Lord Evelyn said, with a laugh. "What! We already believe in England, and patriotism, and the love of freedom? And we are prepared to admit that there is one woman—positively, in the world, one woman—who is not a cheat and a selfish coquette? Why, where are ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... Fifine Dechaussee, would lead him on, if she had less of the saint and more of the coquette in her make-up, we might land him," the detective murmured to himself. "It's dirty work, but we've got to use the weapons in our hands. I must have another talk with her, before she considers herself affronted by his attentions, ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... a coquette than—" Again he checked himself at the sight of her trouble. He could not speak ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... object, my dear fellow; you know you're going to do it, so don't coquette with me, but ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... has written a book, in which, doubtless under the pain of some galling memory—she attacks Madame Recamier as a selfish coquette, enamored only of admiration, fame, and power. Her chief weapon, as this woman asserts, was a skilful application of deliberate unprincipled flattery to the pride and vanity of everybody she met. The conduct attributed to Madame Recamier in the odious examples fabricated by this slanderer, would ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... soumettre un coeur, En refusant son doux hommage, On peut traiter la coquette en vainqueur; De la ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... unsuccessful efforts to attract the attention of the fair enthusiast, Miss Pullet departed, and meeting an acquaintance immediately afterwards jocosely remarked that she had left Miss Rooster engaged with thirty-two men, whereby she acquired the reputation of being a dangerous coquette. To this thoughtless jest Miss Rooster ascribed the circumstance, that during the remainder of her life she walked ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... who had been snatched from his arms by that terrible disease, consumption, had sent her to live at a farm-house near Chene-Populeux. The little maid was not nine years old, and already she was a consummate actress—a perfect type of the village coquette, queening it over her playmates, tricked out in what old finery she could lay hands on, adorning herself with bracelets and tiaras made from the silver paper wrappings of the chocolate. She had not changed a bit when, later, at the ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... curls fluttering about her forehead, laughing lips, and bright eyes full of pleasant changes. Leaning opposite in the narrow stairway, Casimer had time to study the little tableau in many lights, and in spite of the dark glasses, to convey warm glances of admiration, of which, however, the young coquette seemed utterly unconscious. ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... neither of them adding very much to his reputation, appeared in 1836, to wit:—'The Stranger Gentleman, A Comic Burletta in Three Acts'; and 'The Village Coquette,' a comic opera in two acts. They were presented upon the stage towards the close of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... words, I admit. But there are other signs of assent strong as speech, or the hand-squeezings you speak of. Carmen Montijo may be cunning. Some call her a coquette. All I know is, that she has led me to believe she loved me; and if she's been playing a false game, she shall rue it, one way or the other. This day I'm determined to ascertain the truth, by offering her my hand, as I've said, and asking hers. If she refuse it, then I'll know how things ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... Individuality Friendship after Love Queries Upon the Sand Reunited What Shall We Do? "The Beautiful Blue Danube" Answered Through the Valley But One Guilo The Duet Little Queen Wherefore? Delilah Love Song Time and Love Change Desolation Isaura The Coquette Not Quite the Same New and Old From the Grave A Waltz-Quadrille Beppo Tired The Speech of Silence Conversion Love's Coming Old and New Perfectness Attraction Gracia Ad Finem Bleak Weather An Answer You Will Forget Me The Farewell ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... far more true to life than most sketches of heroines drawn from reality are. Black's mother, a kindly old Scotswoman, justly proud of her son, was another inmate of the house. It was from her I learned that Coquette, the bewitching creature who plays the chief part in "A Daughter of Heth," had for her original Black's first wife. I discovered for myself that the author was the original of "The Whaup," and when I taxed him with it he did not deny the fact. One evening, after ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... gone on the stage, you have developed into a brilliant but wayward coquette; you have for your friend a woman who has left her husband and thinks about marrying another. Is this not so, ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... cried Niel Andreevich insistently. "I am going to woo you in earnest. I need a housekeeper, a modest woman, who is no coquette, and has no taste for finery, who never glances at another man, ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... want to subdue the enemy utterly, use 'thee' and 'thou.' No man's heart could stand against such witchery. Thou wilt be a sad coquette ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... up in his face with just a hint of a little coquette that died in her twenty years before. She said "Good-night," and then ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... not protest this as a coquette might have done. On the contrary, she remained silent, and I was aware that while she liked and respected me, she was not profoundly moved by this farewell call. Nevertheless I hoped, and in that hope I repeated, "You will write ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... in proof of that I am going to take Moranges with me to-night. He is young and inexperienced, and it will be a good lesson for him to see how a gallant whose amorous intrigues did not begin yesterday sets about getting even with a coquette. He can turn it ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... would have thought that he was such a delicious old brick?" he thought. "I expected any quantity of cold water; and instead of that, he sends me straight to my darling with carte blanche to go in and win, if I can. If I can! Suppose Laura doesn't love me, after all. Suppose she's only a beautiful coquette, who likes to see men go mad for love of her. And yet I won't think that; I won't be down-hearted; I won't believe she's anything but what she seems—an angel of purity ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... she called them, "dust in the balance," carnal delights, and Satan's bird-lime, which kept the soul from flying to heaven; yet no miser ever clung to his gold with more tenacity than she to every earthly good, that could in any wise contribute to her own advantage. From a vain dissipated coquette, proud of making conquests, and wedded to a life of frivolity, she was changed to a rapturous enthusiast, certain of divine favour upon grounds equally inconsistent with reason and Scripture. With a still carnalized fancy, she adorned ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... of massing or of continuity in his productions—neither height nor breadth nor depth of capacity. There is no truth of representation, no strong internal feeling—but a continual flutter and display of affected airs and graces, like a finished coquette, who hides the want of symmetry by extravagance of dress, and the want of passion by flippant forwardness and unmeaning sentimentality. All is flimsy, all is florid to excess. His imagination may ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... allurements of luxury, wit, and beauty, but who have not a particle of either imagination or heart, although they fascinate by a display of the most refined fancies and the most vivid emotions. I led the life of a slave to the caprices of this soulless coquette for nearly six months, and learned that women of the fashionable world and women of "the half- world" are very much alike in point of worth. The former are intolerable on account of their lies, their assumption, ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... crest, which was constantly spread out, appeared very like that of a peacock's tail, though, as Ellen observed, it would be a very little peacock to have such a tail. On searching in our book, we found that the first of these humming-birds we had remarked was a tufted coquette (Lophornis ornatus), while the other, which we seldom saw afterwards, was the spangled coquette. These birds, with several others of similar habits and formation, are classed separately from the Trochilidae, and belong to ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... nothing. I will have no half loaves. Let us have an end of pretences and evasions. For once at least you shall listen, and be told the truth flowing at lava heat out of a man's heart." It was by no means a new experience to Winifred Anstice. As a younger girl, although no coquette, she had found a certain charm of romance in finding herself the heroine of a love-affair in real life; but as she grew older she felt more and more shrinking from such sentimental crises, and a more and more genuine regret as she saw the candid comradeship of ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... Uxmoor, and Vizard went on to explain, "That Lady Betty Gore is as heartless a coquette as any in the county; and don't you flirt with her, or you ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... all cases by u, and has usually the sound of kw, as in queen; but in a few words derived from the French, qu is sounded like k, as in coquette. ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... could not fail to attract the attention of the artists present, and as day after day went by, flattering remarks and undisguised admiration did not fail to strike home; attentions from the "gentry" were grateful to one who was a born coquette, and Eily's visits were ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... the responsive bosom of humanity. It chilled Uniacke in the pulpit, Sir Graham in the pew below. The one preached without heart. The other listened without emotion. All this was in the morning. But at evening nature stirred in her repose and turned, with the abruptness of a born coquette, to pageantry. A light wind got up. The waves were curved and threw up thin showers of ivory spray playfully along the rocks. The sense of fairyland, wrapped in ethereal silences, quivered and broke like disturbed water. And the grey womb of the sky swelled in the west to give up a ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... thoroughly dissatisfied with herself; especially so because she had fallen into those very difficulties which from early years she had resolved that she would avoid. She had made up her mind that she would not flirt, that she would never give a right to any man—or to any woman—to call her a coquette; that if love and a husband came in her way she would take them thankfully, and that if they did not, she would go on her path quietly, if possible, feeling no uneasiness, and certainly showing none, because the joys of a married life did not belong to her. But now ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... this. I grieve to say that she was a bit of a coquette. I tried to cure her of this serious defect, but for once I found that I had undertaken something I could not accomplish. In vain I lectured, Betty only laughed; in vain I gravely rebuked, Betty only flirted more vivaciously than before. Men might come and men might go, but Betty went ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... glass of her wardrobe, reflected, "I do not want to love Count Styvens. Then I ought not to want to be any more attractive to-night than usual. Am I a wicked girl? My cousin Maurice says, 'Coquetry is the cowardly woman's weapon, and I love you, little cousin, because you are not a coquette.'" ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... courtiers who surrounded her, and who still admired her, thanks to the combination of circumstances which we have indicated in the preceding chapter, the ravages, which were already visible, of the acute suffering to which she finally yielded a few years later. Madame, almost as great a coquette as Anne of Austria, and the queen, simple and natural as usual, were seated beside her, each contending for her good graces. The ladies of honor, united in a body, in order to resist with greater effect, and consequently with more success, ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Spring, So still the dew drops whispering Is loud upon the violets; Here in this garden of Pierrettes' Where Pierrot waits, ah, hasten Sweet, And hear; on dainty, tripping feet She comes—the little, glad coquette. "Ah thou, Pierrot?" "Ah thou, Pierrette?" A kiss, nay, hear—a bird wakes, then A silence—and they kiss again, "Ah, Mesdames, have you quite forgot—" (So laughs his music.) "Love's first kiss? Let this note lead you ...
— The Dreamers - And Other Poems • Theodosia Garrison
... Some one told me this morning. I couldn't have guessed it, could I?" Miss Iris Deane's large blue eyes surveyed him with innocent indifference to strict accuracy. Incidentally, she had obtained the information from her maid, a nose-tilted coquette who extracted ship's secrets ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... brilliant young coquette than Miss Newcome, in her second season, these eyes never looked upon, that is the truth. In her first year, being engaged to Lord Kew, she was perhaps a little more reserved and quiet. Besides, her mother ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... picture which he had cherished ever since her hand had wrote therein. Gazing upon those features with a world of tenderness, Ah, Monsieur, he said, had you but beheld her as I did with these eyes at that affecting instant with her dainty tucker and her new coquette cap (a gift for her feastday as she told me prettily) in such an artless disorder, of so melting a tenderness, 'pon my conscience, even you, Monsieur, had been impelled by generous nature to deliver yourself wholly into the hands of such an enemy or to quit the field ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... highly. He thought that the society of the Austrian court was after all a better school for a wife than the society of the Directory, and he had found in Marie Louise, a girl worthy of all regard, one invaluable blessing, one treasure which a widow, charming, it is true, but a coquette, lacked; ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... blow to her happiness, how completely was she caught in her own toils; she could but feel the retribution just. Of all men, she knew, George Graham to be one of the most fastidious, and that of all things he held the most despicable, she well knew, was a coquette. She loved him with passionate devotion, but knew, if the effort cost him his life, he would cast her from his affections. She was almost maddened with the thought. She did indeed feel that Mr. Barclay was amply revenged, ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... with her perfect face dividing their rippling flow she looked like some immaculate saint of legend being led to martyrdom. Rowland's eyes presumably betrayed his admiration, but her own manifested no consciousness of it. If Christina was a coquette, as the remarkable timeliness of this incident might have suggested, she was not a ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... now moved slowly away, and the princess heard no more, but she knew their voices; they were Madame von Brandt and Louise von Kleist, whom the king often called the "loveliest of the lovely." Louise von Kleist, the irresistible coquette, who was always surrounded by worshippers and adorers, confessed to her friend that all her tender glances had been unavailing; that she had in vain attempted to melt ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... Tommy sauntered in; but as we explained the situation he looked positively hopeful. For the chief quality in Tommy that made him so likable was his abiding love of danger. He would rather flirt with death than a ravishing coquette—though I will not deny his ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... Twenty-one days of rest. Three glorious weeks of smooth sailing over calm waters. Three weeks of warmth and sunshine by day, and of poetry and starlight by night. Three weeks of drifting in the romance which surrounds the name of that great sorceress, that wonderful siren, that consummate coquette, that most fascinating woman the world has ever known. Three weeks of steeping one's soul in the oldest, most complete and satisfactory ruins on the face of the earth. Here, in delving into the past, we would have no ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... you were always theatrically given, and played the coquette in youth; so in age the character of go-between befits you still: dearly do you love to dabble in, what you are pleased to ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... at him, a little sidewise. Keith caught his breath. For a fleeting instant this extraordinary woman deigned to exert her feminine charms for the first time the coquette looked from her eyes; for the first time he saw mysteriously deep in her veiled nature a depth of possibility, of rich possibility—he could not grasp it—it was gone. But in spite of himself his pulses leaped like a flame. But now she was gazing again at the ballroom door, cool, indolent, aloof, ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... said. "You should know, Mollie, of all others. You were with her when she played that miserable coquette's trick,—that pitiful trick, so unlike herself,—you were with her that night when she let Gowan keep her away from me, when I waited for her coming hour after hour. I saw you with them when ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... place in La Briere, tend to show that, like other poor fellows for whom life begins in toil and care, he had never yet been loved. Arriving at Havre overnight, he had gone to bed at once, like a true coquette, to obliterate all traces of fatigue; and now, after taking his bath, he had put himself into a costume carefully adapted to show him off to the best advantage. This is, perhaps, the right moment to exhibit a full-length portrait of him, if only to justify the last letter that ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... coquette, still this side of middle age, educated on novels and albums and on fussing with household affairs and servants. She is highly inquisitive and has streaks of vanity. Sometimes she gets the upper hand over her husband, and he gives in simply because at the moment he cannot find the right thing to ...
— The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol
... whole strength of my affection—with all the anger of a spurned admirer, with all the humility of a doting lover, but neither my anger nor my supplications were able to move her. And yet she asserts that she loves me; she dares to say that she shares my passion! Oh, she is a cold-hearted, cruel coquette; it gladdens her to behold my sufferings, and to play ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... and left him, all the coquette that was in her displayed to win him to a better mood. She had little hope of succeeding, but she was very sure that he should ride away with no promise of hers. There was another, by this time rapidly leaving Aylingford behind him she hoped, who bore with him, not her promise, ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... my delight, obtained a seat next to Miss Forrest, and soon I became oblivious to all else but her. I was sure, too, that she liked me. Her every word and action disclaimed the idea of her being a coquette, while her honest preference for my ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... not be able properly to judge of my administration till after five years. It will require at least so much time to reduce the empire to order. In the mean time I shall behave, with all the princes of Europe, like a finished coquette. I have the finest army in the world. I have a greater taste for war than for peace; but, I am restrained from war by humanity, justice and reason. I shall not allow myself, like Elizabeth, to be pressed into a war. I shall enter upon it when it will prove ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... down, looked upon a litter of perished rags of paper, and, lying in the midst of the rubbish, an ancient stained and cockled miniature of a powdered Louis Seize coquette. ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... you meet now and again, with no nonsense about him, and with a perfect trust in his young wife. He was delighted to see her enjoying her voyage so well, and proud of the universal court that was paid to her. It was quite evident to everybody on board but himself that Mrs. Tremain was a born coquette, and the way she could use those dark, languishing, Spanish-Mexican eyes of hers was a lesson to flirts all the world over. It didn't, apparently, so much matter as long as her smiles were distributed pretty evenly over the whole masculine portion of the ship. But by-and-by things began ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... the pleasure of some foreign royal personage passing through Paris, for one night to the stage, which she had left many years before, was extremely anxious to recover the pattern of a certain cap which she had worn in her young days in "La Coquette corrigee," the part she was about to repeat. The cap, as she wore it, had been a Parisian rage; she declared that half her success in the part had been the cap. The milliner who had made it, and whose fortune it ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... occupied, holds him back. If he is disturbed and urged onward by his senses, where will he find satisfaction? His horror of adultery and debauch keeps him at a distance from prostitutes and married women, and the disorders of youth may always be traced to one or other of these. A maiden may be a coquette, but she will not be shameless, she will not fling herself at the head of a young man who may marry her if he believes in her virtue; besides she is always under supervision. Emile, too, will not be left entirely to himself; both ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... silence. When he was fighting for her reputation, she was once more the coquette as he remembered her ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... pretty, and very clever coquette of Paris had not yet risen. Seated by her bed was one of her dearest friends. A letter arrived from another, a very impetuous fellow, to whom she had allowed the right of speaking to her like a master. The letter was in ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... this makes her careful of her appearance and fond of fair apparel; this makes the evidence of admiration from the other sex exceedingly agreeable to her; this causes her to adopt a manner towards them that induces jealous women to call her a coquette. She has had several offers of marriage, but she entertains peculiar ideas about the strength of passion and the sympathy of thought a man and woman ought to feel for each other before they decide to spend a life-time together. ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... pair! "What, Catherine?" cried the old man, "is it true that you have been a coquette? How! have I been only the foster-father of thy little poet?" "No! No!" replied the enraged mother; "he is all thine own! Console thyself, poor John; thou alone hast been my mate. And who is this 'Pollo, the humbug who has deceived thee ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... soul, to give it the value of speech, needs either the pressure of extreme servitude, or complete liberty. Adam, the Marquis du Rouvre, and Clementine did not observe this luminous by-play of the old coquette and the old diplomatist, but Paz, the faithful watchdog, understood its meaning. It was, we must remark, an affair of two seconds; but to describe the tempest it roused in the captain's soul would take far too much space in this ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... is not so good a leader of the House of Commons in opposition as he was when he was in office. He is too aggressive and not dignified enough. I fear that he will lose weight. He had better not coquette with the foolish and unpractical thing "Bimetallism," or write books on "Philosophic Doubt"; for there are many things which we must certainly believe, are there not? Quite enough either for the ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... an artist; says his say, and lets the moral take care of itself; and in his epistles he lets himself go in a very revelry of artistic abandon. He does not think of style—that fetich of barren minds—and style comes to him; for style is a coquette that flies the suppliant wooer to kiss the feet of him who worships a goddess; a submissive handmaiden, a wayward and moody mistress. But along with delicacy of diction, force and felicity of expression, pregnancy of phrase and pliancy of language, ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... turkey, and lets himself be governed by his wife. Madame Moutonnet is long past forty, but it is a settled affair that she is never to be more than thirty-six. She never was handsome, but she is large and tall, and her husband is persuaded she is superb. She is not a coquette, but she thinks herself superior to every body else in talents and beauty. She never cared a rush about her husband, but if he was untrue to her she would tear his eyes out. Madame Moutonnet, you perceive, is excessively jealous of her rights. A daughter is the sole issue of the marriage ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... up at the house of her friends in town. He might have delegated the call, but he chose to make it in person, and was struck by an added dignity, a finer beauty in the saddened face of the girl whom he remembered as a bit of a rustic coquette. ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... She was unquestionably the prettiest girl in Geneva; indeed she was as pretty as girls are made. With all her small-town limitations she was bright as a pin, and as sharp; fine of instinct and, withal, coy as a coquette. The first time Alac addressed her it was as a shop-keeper. Something she said kept turning over in his brain and he realized next morning, as he was shaving, that her reply had been impertinent. Piqued, he returned the day after to make another purchase, ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... all: towns are feminine, in the wise French idiom, that idiom so delicate in discerning qualities of sex in inanimate objects, as the Greeks before them were clever in discovering sex distinctions in the moral qualities. Trouville was so true a woman, that the coquette in her was alive and breathing even in this her moment of suspended animation. The closed blinds and iron shutters appeared to be winking at us, slyly, as if warning us not to believe in this nightmare of desolation; she was only sleeping, she wished us to understand; the ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... Welwood, a black-haired, black-eyed, evil-tempered little thing, who was the rage among the boys. She had smiled upon Grant Harlson, and smiled upon young Maitland, so early in her years is the female a coquette, and they looked askance upon each other, though they were the best of friends. Had they not together defied the big George Appleton, and vanquished him in running fight, and were they not sworn allies, come ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... sentinel on the margin of the creek, and there are groves of slim palms with narrow truncated leaves—palms which creep and sprawl over vegetation of independent character, and palm& which coquette with the sun with huge fans. Orchid& display sprays of yellowish-green flowers, which contribute a decided savour to the medley of scents, and palm-like Cycads meander from the low ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... own good, in fact, it was a most desirable move. The soul of loyalty and square dealing himself, Ray had never for a moment dreamed that anything other than a foolish escapade had occurred—a ride by moonlight, perhaps, demanded of her devotee by a thoughtless, thoroughbred coquette, whose influence over the young fellow was beginning to mar his usefulness, if not indeed his future prospects. Just what to think of Nanette Flower Ray really did not know. Marion, his beloved better half, was his unquestioned authority in all ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... schoolfellow and chosen chum of her brother's. He had shown unmistakable signs of affection for her, but had never spoken. He was a good fellow, according to common report, and she had a good deal of liking and respect for him, and a little pity, being a good girl, and no coquette. ...
— Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle Barfield - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... of the purple mountains we had passed slowly southwards back to the roar and the turmoil of the London streets. And many friends had said farewell to us. SHEILA with her low, sweet brow, her exquisitely curved lips, and her soft blue eyes had held us enraptured, and we had wept with COQUETTE, and fiercely cheered the WHAUP while he held WATTIE by the heels, and made him say a sweer. And we had talked with MACLEOD and grown mournful with Madcap VIOLET, and had seen many another fresh and charming face, and had talked Gaelic with gusto and discrimination. And ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 30, 1892 • Various
... the guardianship of the girl, sent her to school in France, finally brought her to Rome, and established her in an apartment on the Trinita de' Monti, under the care of an old aunt, poor as herself, and once a great coquette, but now a faded rose which has long since ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... others, but in the enthusiastic consciousness that we possess it ourselves. And yet these high accomplishments were mixed with an air of rusticity and harebrained vivacity, which seemed rather to belong to some village maid, the coquette of the ring around the Maypole, than to the high-bred descendant of an ancient baron. A touch of audacity, altogether short of effrontery, and far less approaching to vulgarity, gave as it were a wildness to all that she did; and Mary, while defending her from some ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... race, Lack they the simple skill To settle such a will?' This said, he undertook himself The task of portioning the pelf; And straightway gave each maid the part The least according to her heart— The prim coquette, the drinking stuff, The drinker, then, the farms and cattle; And on the miser, rude and rough, The robes and lace did Aesop settle; For thus, he said, 'an early date Would see the sisters alienate Their several shares of the estate. ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... Were the smiles and attention that had so captivated him to be equally shared by them? This was not to be borne. He could have endured her ignorance, even a fool might be tolerated, but an unfeeling coquette never could. From that moment Amaranthe, with all her beauty, was dismissed from ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... about at Aix, in Savoy, to run after some one who, perhaps, will laugh at me—one of those aristocratic women of whom you no doubt have a horror; one of those angelic beauties to whom one ascribes a soul; a true duchess, very disdainful, very loving, subtle, witty, a coquette, like nothing I have ever yet seen, and who says she loves me, who wants to keep me in a palace at Venice (for I tell you everything), and who desires I should write nothing, except for her; one ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... for a Whig, or a Puritan, or any other unimaginative blockhead, to cry out against all this as nauseous flattery, and assert that after all she was rather an unpoetical personage than otherwise—a coarse-minded old maid, half prude, half coquette, whose better part was mannish, and all that belonged to her sex a ludicrous exaggeration of its weaknesses. But meanwhile, they overlook the fact, that not the woman Elizabeth, but the Virgin-queen, the royal heroine, is the theme of admiration. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... afternoon mere mirages seen by an eye disordered by suspicion? They might be, but Mr. Hobhouse was prepared to stake his davy that they were real. And what then did they imply? Surely not that she suspected the truth. He could not read them into that. That she was simply a coquette and for want of more amusing game (such for instance as Mr. O'Brien) was prepared to have a little flirtation with his successor? This was, somehow or other, not a very agreeable solution, but I began ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... I'd like it. Too lonesome," she replied, without any attempt to coquette with the hidden meaning of his question. "I kind o' like this hotel business. I enjoy having new people sifting along every day. Seems like I couldn't bear to step out into private life again, I've got so used to this public thing. I only wish mother didn't have to work so hard—that's all that ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... he did not dare to look at her. Yes! It was the same coquette he had seen last night. His first ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... of her as a gay, light-hearted butterfly girl, who was a coquette, but who stopped short of a real flirtation; the women gave her such commendation as is rarely given them to their own sex, and declared that Miss Van Allen was a simple, kindly, generous nature without a trace of the disposition ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... condemned—nothing more than an ordinary flirtation, as common in society as idleness, love of excitement, and that power over others which ministers to vanity. He had no wish to be able to say anything worse of her than that under temptation she would be as vain and heartless a coquette as many others that he knew in what is regarded as good society. He would have cut off his right hand, as he then felt, rather than have sought to lead her ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... the Triumph of Nature—A Novel founded on truth and dedicated to the Young Ladies of America." It appeared in 1789. Four years later came "The Helpless Orphan, or The Innocent Victim of Revenge," and then "The Coquette, or the History ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... that she had fooled him, had lied to him. She did not intend to sail on the Wilhelm, at all. It was all very clear to him now, that strangeness in her manner, those odd occasional smiles What was she? An adventuress! That sweet-faced girl a little ordinary coquette, a liar? He turned cold with the thought. Nor was she alone in her duplicity. Had not her uncle and aunt been as ready to deceive him? Were they trying to throw him off their track for some subtle purpose? Had they done something for which they were compelled to fly the country ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... were lost, Yet still resolved to spare no cost; He could not answer to his fame The triumphs of that stubborn dame, A nymph so hard to be subdued, Who neither was coquette nor prude. I find, says he, she wants a doctor, Both to adore her, and instruct her: I'll give her what she most admires, Among those venerable sires. Cadenus is a subject fit, Grown old in politics and wit; Caressed by Ministers of State, Of half mankind ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... social creeds of Paris might be wrong—it was just possible! There might be women who were womanly,—there might be beautiful girls who were neither vain nor frivolous,—there might even be creatures of the feminine sex, besides whom a trained Parisian coquette would seem nothing more than a painted fiend of the neuter gender. These were new and startling considerations to the feather-light mind of the Frenchman,—and unconsciously his fancy began to busy itself with the old romantic histories of the ancient French ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... was now a rival in the field, and one by no means to be despised; but, although young de Vaux was good-looking, agreeable, and very much in love, Jane did not seem disposed to smile upon him. To do her justice, she was no coquette; she was too indolent by nature, to labour very hard to secure several conquests at the same time. Miss Graham was very much admired, however, and was generally proclaimed the beauty of the season; while Harry soon began to feel the ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper |
