"Coquette" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... elle fait soumettre un coeur, En refusant son doux hommage, On peut traiter la coquette en vainqueur; De la beauty modeste ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... has a genius for it,—eh, boy? And then too, you have read my play; turned Horace's Satires into a lampoon upon the boys at school; been regularly to assizes during the vacation; attended the county balls, and been a most premature male coquette with the ladies. Ods fish, boy! it is quite curious to see how the young sparks of the present day get on ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wish to God it was a quarrel, for then I could look forward to reconciliation; the girl has refused to become my wife, after leading me to believe that she loved me. She is a heartless coquette." ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... fellow, for she is, without exception, the greatest coquette I ever came across. She always had crowds of admirers, many of whom she contrived to draw on until they came to 'the point,' and then laughed at them. By Jove she will make a fool of you, Everard, ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... said the young lady, with a smile—"I'm better, Mr. Archibald, now." And if the truth must be told, no greater coquette than Miss Morgiana existed in all Mayfair—no, not among the most fashionable mistresses of the fashionable valets who frequented the "Bootjack." She believed herself to be the most fascinating creature that the world ever produced; she never ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... me too thy griefs and cares; In all of thee sure thy Esopus shares. As thou at all mankind the flag unfurls, Who on my fair one Satire's vengeance hurls— Who calls thee, pert, affected, vain coquette, A wit in folly, and a fool in wit! Who says that fool alone is not thy due, And quotes thy treacheries to prove ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... followed in all cases by u, and has usually the sound of kw, as in queen; but in a few words derived from the French, qu is sounded like k, as in coquette. ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... a coquette," continued a third. "But she will have no chance. These strangers are poor, lean, broken-down, and badly dressed. They are not soldiers at all, like the men at the citadel. No lace, no gold tape, no epaulettes, ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... gavotte— Hark, 'tis the faintest dawn of 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 then, and this Back to that ...
— The Dreamers - And Other Poems • Theodosia Garrison
... "Coquet et coquette," muttered Lady Charlotte, observing them from a distance; and wondered whether her sex might be ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... satisfy the first of these she employed Mr. Smirk and company; to the second, Mr. Bagshot and company; and our hero had the honour and happiness of solely engrossing the third. Now, these three sorts of lovers she had very different ways of entertaining. With the first she was all gay and coquette; with the second all fond and rampant; and with the last all cold and reserved. She therefore told Mr. Wild, with a most composed aspect, that she was glad he had repented of his manner of treating her at their ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... anger, when her husband bounded out of the room in his heroics. At the time that he made the threat she was in no humour to regard it; but as her anger gradually subsided, so did her alarm increase. Notwithstanding that she was a coquette, she was as warmly attached to her husband as he was to her; if she trifled, it was only for her amusement, and to attract that meed of admiration to which she had been accustomed previous to her marriage, and which no woman can renounce on her first entry into that state. Men cannot easily pardon ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... reputation for her fogs; but little do they know how much a fog may add to natural scenery, who never witnessed its magical effects, as it has caused a beautiful landscape to coquette with the eye, in playful and capricious changes. Our opening scene is in one of these much derided fogs; though, let it always be remembered, it was a fog of June, and not of November. On a high head-land of the coast of Devonshire, stood a little station-house, which had been erected with ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... reached my seventeenth year, my friends were pleased to tell me that I was "a beauty," and they predicted that I would make sad work among the hearts of men. I always was a coquette, and to capture the affections of a man, I regarded as the greatest victory a woman could win. So I felt proud of my beauty and of my gifts, for I had a natural way of pleasing everybody, and resolved to make ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... 'twas a finished coquette, And now it's a raw ingenue.— Blond instead of brunette, An old wife doffed for a new. She'll bring him a baby, As quickly as maybe, And that's what he wants her to do, Hoo-hoo! And that's what he wants her ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... Bojardo's story, with the same hero. Bojardo leaves Orlando in love with Angelica, whom he fetched from Cathay and brought to Paris. Here, says Ariosto, Rinaldo falls in love with her, and, to prevent mischief, the king placed the coquette under the charge of Namus; but she contrived to escape her keeper, and fled to the island of Eb[u]da, where Rog[e]ro found her exposed to a sea-monster, and liberated her. In the mean time, Orlando ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... you are not such a fine coquette as you imagine. (Going close up to her.) Do you think I can't read those beautiful eyes of yours? You love me! Your love fills the air like the fragrance of a flower. (He clasps her ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter
... 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 of our hair back ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... time since my troubles began. Money, wickedly acquired, brings no good. On arriving home, I bought the wretched meadow for much more than it was worth; and the day I walked over it, feeling that is was actually mine, closed my happiness. Claudine was a coquette; but she had a great many other vices. When she realised how much money we had these vices showed themselves, just like a fire, smouldering at the bottom of the hold, bursts forth when you open the ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... say opening, for like a festering sore it has rankled in your bosom, and believe me, Adolphus, since it has been opened, you will experience relief and your heart will heal. It has befallen many another man to be caught in the snares of a coquette, and to have a few costly illusions dispelled. But consider, my son, each illusion lost is an experience gained, and experience is cheaply bought with the dreams of the heart. Experience, you know, brings knowledge of ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... little girl, and I will give you something,'—then when I go to them they try and kiss me. And I will not kiss them, because their mouths smell bad. They stroke my hair and pull it all the wrong way. And it hurts. And when I don't like my hair pulled the wrong way, they tell me I will be a great coquette. A coquette is to be like Diane de Poitiers. Shall I be like Diane ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... of a coquette there is not necessarily either cruelty or hardness. It cannot be a fine nature, and must be deficient in the tact which appreciates the feelings of another, and the sympathy that shrinks from injuring them. It may be called ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... only asked her to marry him the night before, and she had only refused! Impossible to suppose that it was the mere plotting of the finished coquette. This lover ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... successful stroke of business, the defeat of a social rival, the success of a philanthropic undertaking. There is no normal human being who does not exhibit such limited volitional units. The most idle and purposeless of vagrants, the most scatter-brained school-boy, the most volatile coquette, may, for a time, be dominated by some desire which calls into its service other desires and thus realizes some ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... would be indiscreet, Replied the king, more charms we often meet, Beneath a chambermaid or laundress' dress, Than any rich coquette can well possess. Besides, with those, less form is oft requir'd, While dames of quality must be admir'd; Their whims complied with, though suspicions rise; And ev'ry hour produces fresh surprise, But this sweet charmer of inferior birth A treasure proves; a source of bliss ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... room served as kitchen, dining-room, and parlor, the housewife cooked the evening meal, children sat at their bowls of mush and milk, and the men of the family, their day's work over, gathered about the fire, while perhaps some village coquette sat in the corner with fingers busy at the spinning-wheel, and ears intent on the stammered wooings of her rustic lover. Deerfield kept early hours, and it is likely that by nine o'clock all were in their beds. There was a ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... horse.' You don't suppose he would waste so much of his valuable time if he did not hope to get some entertainment out of Mrs. Meredith? She is such a coquette." This from ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... enviously observed that the handsomest fireman on the road had conquered the mo&t outrageous little coquette between New York and Buffalo. As a matter of fact, she had loved him from the start; the others served as thorns with which she delightedly pricked his ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... College Street we took our way, And there we met The beautiful Miss Mary Gray, That arch coquette, Who stole last spring my heart ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray
... however, was soon apparent. Upon investigation it is obvious that the plot of The Fatal Marriage; or, The Innocent Adultery has simply nothing in common with The Nun; or, The Perjur'd Beauty. Mrs. Behn's Ardelia is a mere coquette who through her trifling with three different men is responsible for five deaths: her lovers', Elvira's, and her own. Isabella, Southerne's heroine, on the other hand, falls a sad victim to the machinations of Carlos, her wicked brother-in-law. She is virtuous and constant; Ardelia ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... are thinking," she cried impulsively "You are wrong—very wrong, Mr. Chase. Lady Deppingham is a born coquette—a born trifler. It is ridiculous to think that she can ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... part of the mature coquette evinced a profound knowledge of mankind, and, above all, of him on whom she practised her arts. The profuse display of the bust and shoulders in those days, when the ladies of the court left so little to the imagination of the amorous monarch on whose ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... that, indeed, he had never the need to reassure himself; and in the knowledge of her love he became, almost in spite of himself, a better man. In her girlish self-abandonment Fetuao lacked the artifices which older women would have used; she never thought to guard herself, or to coquette with him. At night, as they walked hand in hand about the village, or sat close together on some log or boat, she would take his arm and draw it around her; she would lay her head against his breast; she would press ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... walked slowly to the window, and, making the smallest possible peephole through the curtain, looked out. The motionless figure of a horseman still lingered on the road, with an excess of devotion that only a coquette, or a woman very much in love, could tolerate. The "Rose," at that moment, was neither, and, after a reasonable pause, turned away, saying quite audibly that it was "too ridiculous for any thing." As she came back to her dressing-table, it was noticeable that she walked steadily and erect, ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... the manly virtues, for she must have been an untowardly female—a sour, lantern-jawed spinster, with all the inclinations but none of the qualities of a coquette." ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... by a plunge into a clear, cool spring. Besides, I have thought more about your advice in regard to the lady, you dissembling old rascal! For you know that in such matters you never mean what you say; and when you counsel me to fall in love with a coquette, you only wish me to be warned in time and make good my escape. If it were light enough, I should see that grizzly moustache of yours curl like a cat's, this minute. You can grin, you amiable Mephistopheles, but I know you! ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... now taking 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 ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... mind his father's words. He asked himself if indeed this old man, who had seen so much of courts, was not right; and if his own ideas were indeed those of a Puritan, and belonging to another land. This queen, so charming, so beautiful, and so friendly towards him, was she indeed only a terrible coquette, anxious to add one lover more to her list, as the entomologist transfixes a new insect or butterfly, without thinking of the tortures of the poor creature whose heart he is piercing? "Coigny, Vaudreuil," repeated he to himself, "they loved the queen, and were loved by her. ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... of musk, still faintly smelling, On Mistress Coquette's toilet lay; And there's a tale, too long for ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... him to her young friend. But then appearances might be deceitful. Her own indifference might have turned his attentions into another channel, without his heart being turned with them. She had seen nothing to show that Miss Niphet's feelings were deeply engaged in the question. She was not a coquette; but she would still feel it as a mortification that her hitherto unquestioned supremacy should be passing from her. She had felt all along that there was one cause which would lead her to a decided rejection of Lord Curryfin. But her ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... Dolly was a coquette by nature, and a spoilt child. She had no notion of being carried by storm in this way. The coachmaker would have been dissolved in tears, and would have knelt down, and called himself names, and clasped his hands, and beat his ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... chaperon for a young charge, let parents or guardians be very particular as to the past history of the lady. If she has ever been talked about, ever suffered the bad reputation of flirt or coquette, do not think of placing her in that position. Clubs have long memories, and the fate of more than one young heiress has been imperilled by an injudicious choice of a chaperon. If any woman should have a spotless record and admirable character it should be the chaperon. It will tell ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... me," she said, "as I see you are likely to do. You are inclined to think me a strange bold girl, half coquette, half romp, desirous, perhaps, of storming you into admiration. You never were more mistaken. I would show as much favour to your father, as readily make him my confidant, if he were here—and if I thought he were capable of understanding me. The truth ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... Chichester, viewing Barnabas through narrowed eyes, "gone, you say? But then, young sir," here he gently poked a dock-leaf into ruin, "but then, Cleone is one of your tempting, warm, delicious creatures! Cleone is a skilled coquette to whom all men are—men. To-night it is—you, to-morrow—" Mr. Chichester's right hand vanished into his bosom as Barnabas strode forward, but, on the instant, Billy ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... corner. I am glad the aunt could explain things so satisfactorily. I was wrong about that girl. Shows how careful one must be in judging of other people, doesn't it? I must say she looked to me like a regular little coquette." ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... 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 toss of ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... Kergarouet comes," said the chevalier, "keep her four or five months. How can you expect her to coquette with Calyste? She is never here long enough to undertake it. Whereas, if they see each other every day, those two children will fall in love, and you can marry them next winter. If you say two words about it to Charlotte she'll say four to Calyste, and a girl of sixteen ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... coquette, without the personal charm supposed to belong to that dangerous part of humanity. She toyed with an offer of marriage as does a cat with a mouse. She had never intended to marry Philip, but she kept him waiting so long ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... Flora Billingsgate, the greatest coquette and hardest rider in the country," said my companion, Ralph Mortmain, as we stood upon Dingleby Common ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... open for welcome! A poor welcome truly!—just an open door, a clean-swept floor, and a fire to warm your rain-sodden limbs! The household asleep, and the house-place swarming with the ghosts of ancient times,—the miser, the spendthrift, the profligate, the coquette,—for the good ghosts sleep, and are troubled with no waking like yours! Not one man, sleepless like yourselves, to question you, and be answered after the fashion ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... And the young coquette began to describe the lovers about whom all the women of her acquaintance raved; there was not a single man ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... most amusing, of all. It recounts, from the mouth of the neophyte himself, the "forming" of a very young man—almost a boy—to this strange kind of commerce, by an elderly, but not yet old, and still attractive coquette, Madame de Lursay, whose earlier life has scandalised even the not easily scandalisable society of her time (we are not told quite how), but who has recovered a reputation very slightly tarnished. The hero is flattered, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... secret left to tell, A worn and withered old coquette, Dreams sadly that she draws us yet, With antiquated ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... activity of a young girl; she was still the brown, lean, shrill grasshopper of old. Dressed elegantly now in black silk, she might still be taken, seen from behind, thanks to the slenderness of her figure, for some coquette, or some ambitious woman following her favorite pursuit. Seen in front, her eyes still lighted up her withered visage with their fires, and she smiled with an engaging ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... gentleman gladly accepted. And so it came about that Freddie sat face to face with the last resort, at the foot of the chaise-longue, gazing with serene adulation into the eyes of a woman who might have had a son as old as he—if she had had one at all. She had been a coquette in her salad days; there was no doubt of it. She had encountered fervid gallants in all parts of the world and in all stations of life. But it remained for the gallant Freddie Ulstervelt to bowl her over with surprise for the first time in her long and varied career. At the end of half an hour she ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... fur, and Quaker gowns, and breasts of doves, and a gray day, and a gentlewoman's hair; and horses must be gray....Now grey is for eyes, the eyes of a witch, with green lights in them and much wickedness. Gray eyes would be as tender and yielding and true as blue ones; a coquette ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... Woodville there was jealousy. Sylvia, discreet as she was—no sparkling, teasing coquette—had yet all the irresistible magnetism of a woman who is obviously made for tenderness. But she showed as much deftness in keeping back her admirers as most girls do in attracting them. She had curious ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... 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 ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... the pose of elegance which she had established for herself," say her French critics. "For the last time she applied the touch of rouge to her cheeks, by which she had hidden, for several years, the slow ravages of decay; set her lips in a final smile; and with the air of a coquette uttered to the priest, who extended to her the last rites of religion, this laughing quip (mot d'elegance): "Attendez-moi, monsieur le cure, nous partirons ensemble" ("Wait a moment, monsieur, and we will set ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... 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, self-contained ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... its relations with others than immediately. How comes Alceste to have chosen Philinte for a friend, a man whose principles were directly the reverse of his own? How comes he also to be enamoured of a coquette, who has nothing amiable in her character, and who entertains us merely by her scandal? We might well say of this Celimene, without exaggeration, that there is not one good point in her whole composition. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... jealousy the cruel coquette made me endure were horrible. Sometimes she would treat me as a child, sometimes as a man. She would always leave me if ever there came a stranger ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of good sense, and an easy, unaffected conduct can draw the line between prudery and coquetry. It would be no great departure from truth to say that it rarely happens otherwise than that a thorough-paced coquette dies in celibacy, as a punishment for her attempts to mislead others by encouraging looks, words, or actions, given for no other purpose than to draw men on to make overtures that they may be rejected.... Every blessing, among ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... 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 ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... wonderful height and grandeur, and good reason why, for emperors and kings lived there, princes in hundreds, noblemen and gentlemen in thousands, and a great many women of all grades. I could see many a horned coquette, like a full-rigged ship, strutting as if set in a frame with a fair store of pedlery about her, and pearls in her ears to the value of a good-sized farm: some were singing so as to be praised for their ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... the small coquette, and Teacher was only just in time to snatch Isidore's faultless writing from the deluge of his ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... impulsive cry on finding himself "thrown over." Why did she not leave him alone? Others tell him that that "fixing" of hers means nothing—that she is, simply, a coquette. But he "can't tell what her look said." Certainly not any "vile cant" about giving her heart to him because she saw him sad and solitary, about lavishing all that she was on him because he was obscure, and she the queen of women. ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... increase the warmth of his own feelings. There 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 vanity of the ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... hiding-place from domestic justice, where they were eventually betrayed by subterranean giggling that had once or twice brought bashful confusion to the hearts of Miss Sally's admirers, and mischievous security to that finished coquette herself. ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... affects the character of being rigid and severe, and the other of being brisk and airy. Men should beware of being captivated by a kind of savage philosophy, women by a thoughtless gallantry. Where these precautions are not observed, the man often degenerates into a Cynick, the woman into a coquette; the man grows sullen and morose, ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... the necessaries of life, and on the ever increasing difficulty to earn the needed cash. On the flaming altar, where the soup kettle bubbles, youth and mental ease, beauty and good humor are sacrificed; and who recognizes in the old care-bent cook, the one-time blooming, overbearing, coy-coquette bride in the array of her myrtle crown? Already in antiquity the hearth was sacred, near it were placed the Lares and patron deities. Let us also hold sacred the hearth at which the dutiful German bourgeois ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... 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
... minstrels seem far away. There is the very earliest cat-bird, mimicking the bobolink before the bobolink has come: what is the history of his song, then? is it a reminiscence of last year? or has the little coquette been practising it all winter, in some gay Southern society, where cat-birds and bobolinks grow intimate, just as Southern fashionables from different States may meet and sing duets at Saratoga? There sounds the sweet, low, long-continued ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... waters rimmed with velvety green. Every raindrop on the pines was a prism; the mountain a brocade of blossom. To the right Fuji, the graceful, ever lovely Fuji; capricious as a coquette and bewitching in her mystery, with a thumbnail moon over her peak, like a silver tiara on the head of a proud beauty; at her base the last fleecy clouds of the day, gathered like worshipers at the feet of some ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... more. If you knew her you will bear me out in the statement that she was something of a coquette in her way." ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton
... seemed to be showing some new developments. One would have said that the instincts of the coquette, or at least of the city belle, were coming uppermost in her nature. Her little nervous attack passed away, and she gained strength and beauty every day. She was becoming conscious of her gifts of fascination, and seemed to please herself with ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... state bedroom where the Countess lay. From the rumors that were current concerning this lady (monsieur, I should never end if I were to repeat all the tales that were told about her), I had imagined her a coquette. Imagine, then, that I had great difficulty in seeing her in the great bed where she was lying. To be sure, to light this enormous room, with old-fashioned heavy cornices, and so thick with dust that merely to see it was enough to make you sneeze, she had only an old Argand lamp. Ah! but you have ...
— La Grande Breteche • Honore de Balzac
... ill-natured as she is ill-bred, and is as presumptuous as ignorant; in short she is a fit mamma for the delectable Miss Dundas, whose description you shall have in two questions. Can you imagine Socrates in his wife's petticoats? Can you imagine a pedant, a scold, and a coquette in one woman? If you can, you have a foretaste of Diana Dundas. She is large and ugly, and thinks herself delicate and handsome; she is self-willed and arrogant, and believes herself wise and learned; and, to sum up all, she is the most ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... family. The secret is, that my constitution is good. I exert myself to the utmost, feeling none of that pride, so common to my sex, of being weak and ill. Delicacy and debility are sometimes fascinating when affected by a coquette, adorned with the freshness of health; but a pale, thin face; sunken, instead of languishing eyes; and a form, evidently tottering, not gracefully bending, never, I suspect, made, far less could they retain a conquest, or even please a friend. I therefore ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... the Repairs of Quality, and lay on Paint. —Dolly Trull! kiss me, you Slut; are you as amorous as ever, Hussy? You are always so taken up with stealing Hearts, that you don't allow yourself Time to steal any thing else. —Ah Dolly, thou wilt ever be a Coquette! Mrs. Vixen, I'm yours, I always lov'd a Woman of Wit and Spirit; they make charming Mistresses, but plaguy Wives— Betty Doxy! Come hither, 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 ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... that she could have her own way, she became less anxious for it, and several times made small concessions, which were apparently unconscious, but amusing, nevertheless. She had none of the wiles of the coquette; she was transparent, and her friendliness was disarming. If she wanted Winfield to stay at home any particular morning or afternoon, she told him so. At first he was offended, but afterward learned to ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... to lie Untended there beneath the heedless sky, As barbarous folk expose their old to die. Upon that generous-rounding side, With gullies scarified Where keen Neglect his lash hath plied, Dwelt one I knew of old, who played at toil, And gave to coquette Cotton soul and soil. Scorning the slow reward of patient grain, He sowed his heart with hopes of swifter gain, Then sat him down and waited for the rain. He sailed in borrowed ships of usury — A foolish Jason on a treacherous ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... charge to you?" Laura said, looking up into Mr. Pynsent's face, and dropping her eyes instantly, like a guilty little story-telling coquette. ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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 use for the comparative ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... a wet wooden seat. They were filled with love, sweet, profound, absurd. Everything else had vanished. No more egoism, no more vanity, no more reservation. Love, love—that is what their laughing, tearful eyes were saying. The cold coquette of a girl, the proud boy, were devoured with the need of self-sacrifice, of giving, of suffering, of dying for each other. They did not know each other; they were not the same; everything was changed; their hearts, their faces, their eyes, gave out a radiance of the most touching ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... indiscreet, foolish. I—I have not meant to be; I merely endeavored to prove kind and friendly, never once dreaming it would come to this. Now it must end, absolutely end; even if you despise me for a heartless coquette, there is no other way. My path is laid out for me, and I must walk in it. It may not be altogether pleasant, but I made my choice, and it is too late now for retreat. I want you to help me, not ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... vitreous optic at Editor Westbrook of the Minerva Magazine, and deflected him from his course. He had lunched in his favorite corner of a Broadway hotel, and was returning to his office when his feet became entangled in the lure of the vernal coquette. Which is by way of saying that he turned eastward in Twenty-sixth Street, safely forded the spring freshet of vehicles in Fifth Avenue, and meandered along the walks ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... but I certainly did bestow a more than common attention upon my toilet that morning. The senhora was nothing to me. It is true she had, as she lately most candidly informed me, a score of admirers, among whom I was not even reckoned; she was evidently a coquette whose greatest pleasure was to sport and amuse herself with the passions she excited in others. And even if she were not,—if her heart were to be won to-morrow,—what claim, what right, had I to seek it? My affections were already ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... affection and sense of right. She longed to recall her glance. If it had taken effect she must persevere. She could not endure the humiliation of having a third time trifled with a lover; she would not feel herself sunk into a mere coquette. ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a Boy Bullwhacker, Billy made his first trip across the plains, and months after, upon his return home, found that the Gobels had forgiven the past, and that Mary Hyatt had, little coquette that she was, ...
— Beadle's Boy's Library of Sport, Story and Adventure, Vol. I, No. 1. - Adventures of Buffalo Bill from Boyhood to Manhood • Prentiss Ingraham
... and observation with the material of mystery and terror. Fiction had been earlier attempted by Mrs Susanna Haswell Rowson, whose Charlotte Temple (1790) is remembered, and contemporaneously by Mrs Hannah Webster Foster in The Coquette (1797) and by Royall Tyler (1758-1826) in The Algerian Captive (1799); but to Brown properly belongs the title of the first American novelist, nor are his works without invention and intensity and a certain distinction that secure for them permanent remembrance. The drama formally ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... of the world! If I had not cajoled those three deputies they might have wanted La Billardiere's place themselves; whereas, now that I have invited them here, they will be ashamed to do so and will become our supporters instead of rivals. I have rather played the coquette, but—it is delightful that the first nonsense with which one fools ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... a finished coquette of ten, used to try her hand at flirting with the big schoolboy; and when she had him in a state of helpless adoration, and all his pocket-money was gone in presents to her, would turn him off in favour of his particular friend, who was spending ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... to those sacred centres where birth and wealth are considered all-important, and ignoring the supreme importance of living in one set, the plan of life that such a woman lays out for herself is exceedingly simple. She will coquette and dance and dream her pleasant dream until Prince Charming, who is to awaken her to a new life, comes and kisses away the dew of girlhood and leads his bride out into the work-a-day world. The simple surroundings and ambitions of her ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... vieillir: she dwells frequently but naturally on her age: she contemplates the approach of death with firmness and without self-deception: and her elasticity of spirit never for a moment suggests the image of an antiquated coquette. Of the seven letters in question, the one cited as most compromising is the sixth, in which Conway is exhorted to bear patiently a rebuff he had just received ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... directly or indirectly tend to their praise, and even not be liable to a malicious construction to their disadvantage. But here, too, great attention must be had to the difference of age, rank, and situation. A 'marechale' of fifty must not be played with like a young coquette of fifteen; respect and serious 'enjouement', if I may couple those two words, must be used with the former, and mere 'badinage, zeste meme d'un peu de polissonerie', is pardonable with ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... 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 to me, ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... way she receives it one would think he was right. Graydon, however, seems to be her favorite, and if he could remain long enough it is not hard to see what might happen. But she is a great belle and a coquette too, I should imagine, and she has a large enough following to turn any girl's head. I don't wonder at it either, for she is the most lovely creature I ever saw, and yet she doesn't make a pleasant impression on me. The men are ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... 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 will ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... all was happiness. The character of Marguerite de S. Martin had come out purified from the trials of the past two years, and the coquette-girl had grown into a woman, with but a lingering spice of mutinerie. Rose, happy in the restoration of her husband to all public honour and private joy, was anxious that her sister should partake in ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... "does Blue Beard coquette at the same time with a filibusterer, a buccaneer, and a ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... 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 ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... she had plighted her secret troth to him, and had broken it for three million pounds. Why not? She was a woman, she was beautiful, she was a siren who had lured him and used him and tossed him by. Why not? All her art was now used, the art of the born coquette which had been exquisitely cultivated since she was a child, to bring him back to her feet—to the feet of the wife of Rudyard Byng. Why not? For an instant he had the dark impulse to treat her as she deserved, and take a kiss "as ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... wilful and bewildering thing to deny him. I could not make it out: but wished, in the breeze and sunlight of that day, that the wound had not been dealt. 'Twas an unkind thing in Judith, thinks I; 'twas a thing most cruel—thus to coquette with the friendship of ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... dispose of the Malay girl; but his anxiety was removed when Captain Po-ho, in due form, offered to marry her, an arrangement to which she appeared to have no objection. Jack was at all events very glad to get her out of the ship, as, to say the best of her, she was a determined coquette, and had turned the heads of half the midshipmen, and, it was whispered, of more than one of the lieutenants, during the short time ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... language, and manner of Mary Almira, and he was borne out in his impression of her character by the admission of one brother that she was "a giddy, inconsistent, unprincipled girl," and by that of another that "she was a volatile coquette, who did not know her own mind from ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... because she is interested in herself, but because she is on the way to be one of the most agreeable objects in this lovely world. She may struggle against it; she may resist it by all the legitimate arts of the coquette and the chemist; she may be convinced that youth and beauty are inseparable allies; but she would have more patience if she reflected that the sunset is often finer than the sunrise, commonly finer than noon, especially ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... given to have seen its friendly rays! After climbing out and leaving the damp, cool subterraneous air, the atmosphere felt dry and warm, as we sat down to rest at the mouth of the cavern, surrounded by our Indian torch-bearers. Truly, nature is no coquette. She adorns herself with greater riches in the darkest mountain cave, than on the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... 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. Not the petty virtues, the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... doubt she wished me to see her thus. Every woman worth the winning is a bit of a coquette, and none can be utterly disdainful of the lesson their mirror tells. But even as I gazed upon her, my admiration deeper than my pain, the arch expression of her face changed; there came a sudden rush of pity, of anxiety into those clear, challenging ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... our own country dwells in our hearts as well as on our tongues." Ah! never may I lose the Border accent! "Love's Miracle! To cure a coquette." "Most honest women are tired of their task," says this unbeliever. And the others? Are they never aweary? The Duke is his own best critic after all, when he says: "The greatest fault of a penetrating wit is going beyond the mark." ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... 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 on ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... social relations they imagine that they shall always meet with deceptive smiles; and so at last the moment comes for them when the world leaves them bald, stripped bare, without fortune or worth, like an elderly coquette by the door of a salon, or a stray rag in ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... How do you mean, Colonel?" Judith Montmarte leaned a little eagerly toward him. In the ordinary way, alone with a man of his type she would have played the coquette. To-day she thought nothing of such trifling. There was something so different in his manner, as he spoke of the things that were engaging them, ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... nicknacks for sale. The younger, whose bare breast glowed like bronze, was of marvellous beauty, even the paint on her face could not destroy the natural grace of her fine features. Yet, beautiful as she was, she was as great a coquette. She had evidently determined to make an impression on the Russian. Stepping behind his chair, she held her glittering little wares before his face. Her manner became more and more intimate. At length she slipped ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... 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 ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... his life had bred in him an almost equal worship of the unattainable. If that first kiss had stirred his fancy, her subsequent repulse had established her influence. The stubborn virtue, which was a part of the inherited fibre of her race, had achieved a result not unworthy of the most finished coquette. Against his desire for possession there battled the instinctive chastity that was woven into the structure of Sarah Revercomb's granddaughter. Hardly less violent than the natural impulse against ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... trying to spy out the busy privacy within. Evening fell, and the hammering ceased. Then, precisely on the stroke of seven, the electric lights flashed out, the curtains were withdrawn, and the shop stood smiling like a coquette at her ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... character here as a coquette, but alas! how many envious prudes! Some days ago I walked into my Lord Kilcoubry's (don't be surprised, my lord is but a glover), [Footnote: William Maclellan, who claimed the title, and whose son succeeded in establishing the claim in 1773. The father is said ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... defiance. And now my dream is ended, and I awake to a blank, joyless life. A strange fatality seems to have attended Sir Oswald Eversleigh and the inheritors of his wealth. He died broken-hearted by a woman's falsehood; my brother Lionel bestowed his best affections on the mercenary, fashionable coquette, Lydia Graham, who was ready to accept another lover within a few weeks of her pretended devotion to him; and lastly comes my misery at the ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... garter, and she herself hanging like a beauteous exhalation among the elm-leaves in the morning sunshine. Oh, had Sir Timothy been there then, he would have found, instead of his imperious and tantalizing coquette, the tenderest and truest of disconsolate maidens, ready to melt into his arms between the delicious pause of a sigh and a kiss. "Naughty, cruel Sir Timothy! Horrid creature! to take all my nonsense for ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... said presently, "I'm not a girl. I give myself to you with a knowledge and a joy no girl could possibly have. I don't want to coquette and delay. I want to be your wife, and to learn your faults, and have you learn mine, and settle down into harness—one year, five years—ten years married! Oh, you don't know how I LONG to be ten years married. I shan't mind a bit being nearly forty. Forty—doesn't it sound SETTLED, and sedate— ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... 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 ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... eyes looked down, looked upon a litter of perished rags of paper, and, lying in the midst of the rubbish, an ancient stained and cockled miniature of a powdered Louis Seize coquette. ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... ordinary—were I to write a chapter on the subject I could not elucidate it further. Zephyrine was somewhat more distinguished in appearance and deportment than Pelagie and Suzette, but in character genuine Parisian coquette, perfidious, mercenary, and dry-hearted. A fourth maitresse I sometimes saw who seemed to come daily to teach needlework, or netting, or lace-mending, or some such flimsy art; but of her I never had more than a passing glimpse, as she sat in the CARRE, with ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... was gentle and she was cruel; she was generous and ungenerous; she was true as steel, and she was false as Judas—what would you?—she was a woman of the world, with several sweet natural impulses, and all a coquette's diplomacies. ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... we had passed did she show signs of noticing us at all. For, meeting our wake, the coquette, she suddenly began dropping us curtseys ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... changeful beauty in every window. She gazed out at him from brows weary with splendid barbaric jewels, her eyes bitter and disdainful, and hopelessly sad. She smiled at him in framework of blue and ermine and pearls—the bedecked, heartless coquette of the pleasure-seeking world. She stood in the shadow of gray walls, a grating over her head, with deep, soulful, girlish eyes lifted in piteous appeal; and in each of these characters an unfathomed depth remained to vex ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland |
