"Piquant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... give way, and let its beauty caress your soul. His colors are thin and very simple—there is no challenge in his work, as there is in the work of Turner. Greens and grays predominate, and the plain drab tones are blithe, airy, gracious, graceful and piquant as a beautiful young Quaker woman clothed in the garb of simplicity and humility—but a woman still. Corot coquettes with color—with pale lilac, silver gray, and diaphanous green. He poetizes everything he touches—quiet ponds, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... of all these national youths are alike. They are pleasingly picturesque—simperingly amiable; with a pretty and piquant dash of paradox. What they propose is not new birth, or dashing out into new systems, and taking advantage of new ideas; but reverting to old systems, and furbishing them up so as to look as good as new. Re-juvenescence is their aim; the middle ages their motto. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... Could anything be finer than that? An ordinary mystery is not, of course, as good as a scandal, but when it relates to dark and dreadful practices— to the exercise of unearthly powers—could anything be more piquant? It explains, too, the singular influence the man has upon me. It is the undefinable in his art—black art. Seriously, dear, I quite tremble when he looks me full in the eyes with those unfathomable orbs of his, which I have already vainly attempted to describe to you. How ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... clothes—all were dazzling. She carried her splendor with an air of complete sureness as if she was accustomed to the supremacy it won for her and expected it. Yet the audacity of her pose had in it a certain fitness and was piquant rather ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... at the little metal table while he served the little brown cakes and the dark-red soup and the fragrant amber drink. Mildred got up and brought a great metal bowl filled with tiny purple fruits that had a delicious, piquant tang. ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... hers) in the greatest city of the United States. To augment an income rendered small through the misfortune and death of her father, she became a journalist. Her papers were favourably received, being pointed and piquant. Her talents were chiefly directed to the support of women's rights; and she became a leader of the class of strong-minded women, still seeking to assert their rights in politics, ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... the stinging savours of the garlic and the leeks of Egypt, loathed the light bread. And so Jesus Christ comes into the world in lowly form, like the barley loaf or the light bread from which men whose tastes have been vitiated by the piquant savours of more earthly nourishment turn away as insipid. And yet He in His lowliness, He in His savourlessness, is that which meets the deepest wants of humanity, and is every man's fare because He will be ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... Commons is dwindled into a very dialogue between Pitt and Fox-one even begins to want Admiral Vernon again for variety. Sometimes it is a little piquant; in which though Pitt has attacked, Fox has generally had the better. These three or four last days we have been solely upon the Pennsylvanian regiment, bickering, and but once dividing, 165 to 57. We are got ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... a piquant contrast to her surroundings. As she sat there in her soft grey dress, with her eyes cast down under her little town hat, with her quiet voice, and languid, noiseless movements, anything more unlike the average farmer's wife of the district was difficult to imagine. ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... slender. Her face was piquant but not intellectual, and scarcely beautiful. It pleased rather by its life and motion and oddity than by its beauty. She looked at her companion in a peculiar way—trustfully, almost reverently—and yet with a touch of coquetry which seemed perfectly native to every turn ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... head upon his hand, and spoke no word. Drilled to conceal his emotions, he seemed outwardly calm, though it cost him a pang to relinquish the captivating young creature, who he felt would have made his life musical, though by piquant contrast rather than by harmony. After a brief, troubled silence, he rose and walked toward the window, as if desirous to avoid looking the lady in the face. After a while, he said, slowly, "Do you deem it quite right, Mrs. Delano, to pass such ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... What do you mean, sir? I think you are forgetting yourself!" and Miss Sibyl Merridew lifted up her graceful head with a little air of hauteur that was by no means unbecoming to her piquant beauty. ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... general, more severe than refined; and it is perilous to differ with such a critic on such a point; for much of it, unfortunately, is lost to a foreign reader, in consequence of its dependance on the piquant old Tuscan idiom, and on popular sayings and allusions. Yet I should think it impossible for Pulci in general to be severe at the expense of some more agreeable quality; and I am sure that the portion of his wit most obvious to a foreigner may claim, if ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... Parker's, and there found all those whom Bertram had named, and many others. Mr. Parker was, it is believed, a pastrycook by trade; but he very commonly dabbled in more piquant luxuries than jam tarts or Bath buns. Men who knew what was what, and who were willing to pay—or to promise to pay—for their knowledge, were in the habit of breakfasting there, and lunching. Now a breakfast or a lunch at Parker's generally ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... at the window looking listlessly out. If she heard Grace's light knock she paid no attention to it. It was not until Grace said rather diffidently, "We heard you were ill and thought we'd come in to see you," that the girl at the window turned toward Grace. Her piquant little face was drawn and pale, and her eyes looked suspiciously red. She eyed Grace almost sulkily, then said slowly, "It was kind of you to come, but I shall be all right to-morrow." Under Grace's serious glance her eyes fell, ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... common man. No. He was at all times Douglas the peculiar and unique,—with his history in his face, and his genius on his tongue,—nay, and after a little, with his heart on his sleeve. This made him piquant; and the same character makes his writings piquant. Hence, too, he is often quaint,—a word which describes what no other word does,—always conveying a sense of originality, and of what, when we wish to be condemnatory, we call egotism, but which, when it belongs ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... calls up at once a string of flashing, barbaric pictures—Moorish magnificence and Christian chivalry, bull-fights, boleros, serenades, tattered pride and cruel pleasure. All these things go to form that piquant whole, half Eastern, half European, which is the Spain of our imaginations. Our associations with the western part of the Peninsula are, on the other hand, vague and incomplete. Vasco da Gama, the earthquake of Lisbon, port wine and Portuguese plums are the Lusitanian ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... family of aggressive brown goats which he had marked out as the vandals that had wrought ruin amongst his well-kept beds, Devoy bearded the stranger and spoke of damages and broken heads, and his small son, Danny, a young Australian with a piquant brogue and a born love of ructions, moved round and incited him ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... now. I think so too, but I know the man, and I know that all this madman's whims are ruthless and irresistible. Living, Duke Alessandro's appetites are merely whetted by opposition, so much so that he finds no pleasures sufficiently piquant unless they have God's interdiction as a sauce. Living, he will make of you his plaything, and a little later his broken, soiled and castby plaything. It is therefore necessary that ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... melody, as principal or accompanying figures. Aside from this closer view that makes clear the tissue of themal discussion, the first phrase is the main melodic motto, that is instantly echoed in violins with piquant harmony. In the intricate path of deep musing we feel the mantle of a Schumann who had himself a kind of heritage from Bach. And thus we come to see the national spirit best and most articulate through the medium ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... Maggie had been neglected. Miss Lee was going through a course of training at St. Benet's College for Women at Kingsdene. She was an uncommon girl in every sense of the word. The expression of her lovely face was as piquant as its features were beautiful; her eyes were dark as night; they also possessed the depth of the tenderest, sweetest summer night, subjugating all those who came in contact with her. Annabel Lee won Maggie's warmest affections at once; she determined to join ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... tone heterogeneous, it is merely a judicious mixture, in equal proportions, of all the other tones in the world, and is consequently made up of every thing deep, great, odd, piquant, pertinent, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... sharply. Evelyn Howard had been right then, and I experienced a sharp twinge of disgust, as I thought of Alfred Inglethorp's liberality with another woman's money. Had that piquant gipsy face been at the bottom of the crime, or was it the baser mainspring of money? Probably a ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... epigram and repartee, and, most of all, by their offhand way of talking and their ease of manner. The material luxury of Paris had alarmed him that morning; at night he saw the same lavish expenditure of intellect. By what mysterious means, he asked himself, did these people make such piquant reflections on the spur of the moment, those repartees which he could only have made after much pondering? And not only were they at ease in their speech, they were at ease in their dress, nothing looked new, nothing ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... emulation by this striking example of journalistic enterprise, correspondents in all parts of the world are composing piquant descriptions of similar ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various
... don't think quite so bad as that, dear," said a gay voice at that moment; and turning, Alice saw the piquant and beautiful face of the girl she loathed. "I guessed, of course, that you must be alluding to me," said Kathleen. "I am bad, but I have my own principles—and a good old-fashioned set, worth ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... was the most piquant form of joke to the company at the Rainbow, and Ben Winthrop's insult was felt by everybody to have capped ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... undulate, wave on wave, from Newhaven all along the coast to Brighton. This young lady was tall for her age; slim of form; and she had a graceful carriage; her face was fair and markedly freckled; her nose was piquant rather than classical; her hair, which was of a ruddy gold hue, was rebellious, and strayed about her ears and neck in accidental wisps and rings: her grayish or gray-blue eyes were reserved and thoughtful rather than shrewd and observant. No, she was not beautiful; but she had a face that attracted ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... and piquant she was with her brilliant complexion and her black eyes, and how stylish she looked in the Paris gown of embroidered linen, which fitted her perfectly, and the big hat, which turned up just enough on the side ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... to give up dancing and buggy ridin' Sundays—and you're just mad because I didn't. Yes, mad—just mean, baby mad, Mr. Maddy Wayne, for all your CHRISTIAN resignation! That's what's the matter with you." Yet she looked very pretty and piquant in her small spitefulness, which was still so general and superficial that she seemed to shake it out of her wet petticoats in a vicious flap that disclosed her ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... antagonists, leaned neither to one side nor to the other. At intervals, however, the legend of the feud was embroidered with new and effective detail in the mouth of some inventive gossip, and by degrees it took high place among those piquant social histories which illustrate the real life of a town, and which parents recount to their children with such ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... guests there was a dance of nuptial unveiling and a bout between half-a-dozen Turkish boxers. But it was a decadent and blaze company, and something more piquant was needed for their titillation. This was supplied in the shape of an original dance by the fifteen-year-old Joseph, whom my guide describes as "graceful, wild and pungent." He was introduced in a recumbent posture, and asleep, on a covered stretcher, and at first ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various
... a Merry Andrew, took my hand, and said, I had the most piquant wit he had met with that night: "And, friend," said he, "let us be ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... millionaire's seamed and yellow face looked like nothing so much as a magnified section of a walnut. Whilst the girl, with her cloud of copper-dusted brown hair trapped within an Oriental head-dress, her piquant beauty enhanced, if that were possible, by the softly shaded lights, and the bewitching curves revealed by her evening gown borrowing a more subtle witchery from their sombre environment of black-coated plutocrats, justified the most inspired panegyric that ever had poured from the ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... danger for which there was no remedy, and which saddened life, depriving the bread of its relish, the liquid of the grape of its merry sparkle, the white cheese of its succulency, the open fig of its sweetness, and the roasted sausage of its piquant strength, overshadowing and embittering all the good things that God has put on the island for the enjoyment of worthy people. "Ah, ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... gifted young Southern woman, will appeal to all that is best in the natures of the many admirers of her graceful and piquant style. ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... were better than the arguments at the second. Even when the toasts began to grow old as sarcasms, they were washed down with still older pricked election Port; then the acid of the wine made some amends for the want of anything piquant in the wit. But when his Grace gave them a second transformation, and brought out the vapid stuff which had wearied the clubs and disgusted the courts, the drug made up of the bottoms of rejected bottles, all smelling so wofully of the cork ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... only through the mystery of creation that one can gain any knowledge of the quality of created things. You have listened to Patience for a hundred nights and you have heard me only for one. It will make, no doubt, that satire more piquant by knowing something about the subject of it, but you must not judge of aestheticism by the satire of Mr. Gilbert. As little should you judge of the strength and splendour of sun or sea by the dust that dances in the beam, or the bubble that breaks on the wave, as take your critic for any sane ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... the table slightly embarrassed, and wanted to answer him in rather a piquant or witty way—but I could not find anything to say, and remained there confused ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... the scene by the variety of their expressions, their attitudes, and the differences in their toilets. The strong shadows cast by the green serge curtains, arranged according to the needs of each easel, produced a multitude of contrasts, and the piquant effects of light and shade. This group was the prettiest of all the ...
— Vendetta • Honore de Balzac
... only a pink blossom here and there. But the bright winter sun shone through them, and fell upon Luis and Isabel. For she had also seen him coming, and had gone to meet him, with a little rainbow-tinted shawl over her head. She looked so piquant and so happy. She seemed such a proper mate for the handsome youth at her side that a word of dissent was not possible. The doctor said only, "She is so like you, Maria. I remember when you were still more lovely, and when ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... her seat, and, with hands on the edge of the table, advanced her piquant little face close to Doc Madison's, staring at ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... to reach her out of her trunk, giving her the keys to that purpose, a bundle of papers, and pulls out a paper, a copy of what, a pretty while since, she had wrote in a discontent to me, which I would not read, but burnt. She now read it, and it was so piquant, and wrote in English, and most of it true, of the retiredness of her life, and how unpleasant it was; that being wrote in English, and so in danger of being met with and read by others, I was vexed at it, and desired ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... charming wife of a successful counsel ('advocaat en procureur')—Mr. Walraven, let us call him—settled in a large and prosperous provincial town. She is a typical Dutch lady, with bright complexion, kind, clear blue eyes, rather dark eyebrows, which give a piquant air to the white and pink of the face, and a mass of fair golden hair, simply but tastefully arranged, leaving the ears free, and adorning but not hiding the comely shape of the head. She wears ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... the reader is kept in the dark until he comes to this postscript: "In great haste, owing to business affairs, I add a sort of lexicon of indistinctly written words, which I have placed within brackets. This will probably make the letter appear very picturesque and piquant. The idea is not so bad. Adio, clarissima Cara, cara Clarissima." Then follows the "lexicon" of twenty words, including ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... owned, we have a very great share. We ought to premise that the framework of the satire is a visit of the Court Cards to our metropolis, a pretty considerable hit at some recent royal visits. Of course, they see every thing worth seeing, and some of their remarks are truly piquant. The spirit, or fun, of the article would evaporate in an abridgment, so we will endeavour to give a few of the narrator's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various
... which the war has brought forth, one of the most piquant is a little pamphlet entitled, Southern Hatred of the American Government, the People of the North, and Free Institutions, recently published by R.F. Wallcut, of Number 221 Washington street, Boston. It consists entirely of selections from the columns of Southern newspapers—all ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... slowly softened to a smile compound both of humor and grimness. He was a man to appreciate a piquant situation, none the less because it was at his expense. The spark that gleamed in his bold eye held some spice of ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... thing that flashed through Bansemer's brain was the realisation that she was far more beautiful than he had expected her to be. There was a truly aristocratic loveliness in the rather piquant face, and she undeniably possessed "manner." Maturity had improved her vastly, he confessed with strange exultation; age had been kinder than youth. He forgot the play, seldom taking his eyes from the back which again had been turned to him. Calculating, ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... Nance and Dan had reported to Mrs. Purdy, rumor traveled from house to house and from room to room that the rent man was putting the Lewises out. The piquant element in the situation lay in the absence of the chief actor. "Mis' Lewis" herself had disappeared, and nobody knew where she was or when ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... the lazy Johnson from his bed an hour sooner than he wished to rise. The subject, like the flesh of that 'melancholy' creature the hare, may be dry, but, as with that, an astute cookery prevails to make it exceedingly piquant; the sauce is better than the substance. Burton's melancholy is not, like Johnson's, a deep, hopeless, 'inspissated gloom,' thickened by memories of remorse, and lighted up by the lurid fires of feared perdition; it is not, like Byron's, dashed with the demoniac element, and fretted ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... fact, through a devious channel, received the assurance that if I do not resume this character (of D.V.W.) nothing more will be said. What, then, have I to fear? My mother s'est bien rangee. She leads a life of the most respectable. If they challenge her, she can counter with some of the most piquant scandals of the ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... grows piquant; an adventure with all the flavor of the eighteenth instead of the nineteenth century. A real adventure, and you ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... populace, headed by a brass band and incited, doubtless, by pure love of art, had arrived to do honor to the great singer. There was music—a serenade—followed by shoutings of the lady's name. She seemed a trifle nervous, but I led her to the balcony, where she made a very pretty little speech, piquant with her most charming accent. When the tumult and shouting had died we re-entered her apartment to resume our conversation. Would it please monsieur to have a glass, of wine? It would. She left the room for a moment; then came the wine and glasses ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... in this singular way; there was something piquant in not seeing his companion, her presence manifested only by her sweet breath, the slight rustling of the glazed cloth which afforded her such scanty room, and the prattle ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... two other narrative poems of Wordsworth, such as Michael, will be different from the sensations produced in you by reading an ordinary, or even a very extraordinary, short story in prose. They may not be so sharp, so clear and piquant, but they will probably be, in their mysteriousness and their vagueness, more impressive. I do not say that they will be diverting. I do not go so far as to say that they will strike you as pleasing sensations. (Be it remembered that I am addressing ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... its name was a tall tree that stood in solitary splendor on a mountain top. The fame of the pine lured a young engineer through Kentucky to catch the trail, and when he finally climbed to its shelter he found not only the pine but the foot-prints of a girl. And the girl proved to be lovely, piquant, and the trail of these girlish foot-prints led the young engineer a madder chase than "the trail of ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... immense period his ardent passion had not subsided, - our hero was daily to be seen purchasing articles for which he had no earthly use, but fully recompensed for his outlay by the artless (ill-natured people said, artful) smiles, and engaging, piquant conversation of mademoiselle. Our hero, when reminded of this at a subsequent period, protested that he had thus acted merely to improve his French, and only conversed with mademoiselle for educational purposes. But we have our ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... a great quoter. His book is not "stuffed," as Franck jealously alleged, but it is certainly well sauced with piquant references to other writers, as early as the author of the Book of Job, and as late as John Dennys, who betrayed to the world THE SECRETS OF ANGLING in 1613. Walton further seasoned his book with fragments of information ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... She was piquant enough of face, quick-eyed, and with little pointy features enhanced by a psyche worn as emphatically as an exclamation point on the very top of her head. On eucher or matinee days her bangs, at the application of a curling iron, were ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... master of the house. But only an echo came back, and returning to the fire, I sat down before the cheering blaze, in quiet acceptance of a situation too lonely for comfort, yet not without a certain piquant interest for a man of free mind and adventurous disposition ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... rare flower, as dainty as the rose, as piquant as the daisy. The unmistakable mark of the high bred glowed in her face, the fine traces of blue blood graced her every movement, her every tone and look. At the time that she, as well as every one else in Tinkletown, for that matter, was twenty years older than when ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... Hamworthy, with their many industries and busy wharves, form a piquant contrast to spick-and-span Bournemouth with her tidy gardens and well-dressed crowds; but whatever the port of Poole may lack in other ways she has an abundance of history, although her claim to figure as ...
— Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch • Sidney Heath
... not altogether escape the blight of that artificiality which was everywhere characteristic of his times, and nowhere more conspicuous than in France. "Soyez piquant, si vous ne pouvez pas etre vrai," was his advice to a fellow artist, Ducreux; and his own work too often shows evidence of the sacrifice of truth to piquancy. His single figures and heads are not, as a class, so true to ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... urgent, convincing, conclusive; ardent, eager, zealous, strenuous, stanch, unwavering, determined; spirituous, intoxicating, alcoholic; vivid, dazzling, intense, glaring; effective, drastic, potent; racy, pungent, piquant; tough, tenacious; rank, strong-smelling; valid. Antonyms: weak, vulnerable, frail, fragile, delicate, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... and denunciations of the Caillaux murder trial, the trial of the wife of her ex-prime Minister for the murder of a blackmailing journalist. It was a case full of the vulgarest sexual violence. Before so piquant a spectacle France it seemed could have no time nor attention for the revelation of M. Humbert, the Reporter of the Army Committee, proclaiming that the artillery was short of ammunition, that her infantry had boots "thirty years old" ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... boasted were being fashioned for her; and the contrast between a tiara showing under a sunbonnet, a scarf of rose-point covering a cotton belt, and diamond-buckled shoes slipped on to torn stockings, made her beauty more piquant, as she sat watching the work of her lovers, on her throne by the sea. No wonder that the men who adored such a woman were brave as she! generous and reckless as she, and on fire with energy ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... charming she may be, a man can never enjoy being outplayed at his own game by a woman. The piquant face fronting me swam in a mist as a sudden rush of anger swept from me all admiration. I had been played with, outwitted from the start, every movement checkmated—even now she was actually laughing at my helplessness. My first wild impulse was to spring forward, and wrest the revolver ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... and heedless colored people, who, once in the midst of their crazy religious exercises, totally forgot that they owed any duty whatever to those who employed them. Lawrence and Annie did not say much, but there was something peculiarly piquant in the way in which Annie brought and poured out the tea she had made, and which, with the exception of the old lady's remarks, was the only warm part of the repast; and there was an element of buoyancy in the manner of Mr Croft, as he took his ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... huff, and she thought she could employ him better. So she coughed first and then stepped out into the yard. Hugh presently came sauntering down the walk, and Lucy sang among the clothes-lines as blithely and unconcerned as though her lips had never tasted any flavor more piquant than bread ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... who, on the fourth morning, brought to the office the inner history of the truce. His version was brief and unadorned, as was the way with his narratives. Such things as first causes and piquant details he avoided, as tending to prolong the telling excessively, thus keeping him from the perusal of his cowboy stories. He gave the thing out merely as an item of general interest, a bubble on the surface of the life of a great city. He did not know how nearly interested were his employers ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... my face. "Not at all, I sit here as safe as if I were at White's, and a devilish deal better satisfied. Situation piquant! Company of the best! Gad's life, ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... middle of this discussion came a ring at the front door bell, immediately followed by the announcement of the Misses Chipchase; and the rector's two daughters entered the room, accompanied, to Lady Mary's horror, by one of the most piquant and brilliant brunettes she ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... table; I questioned him on the value which he attached to the two articles, and asked which he preferred. 'Both are superb,' he replied, 'but the one you prefer is undoubtedly the best.' After this piquant specimen of the civility of the country, it may be supposed that I was not sorry to end the conference, and to get rid of such an excessively well bred child. I took care, however, to send a cup of tea to his mother, who, the tutor informed me, was young ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... subjects; we find they produce shocks and tremors; we think it braces us to shudder, and we think that Art is a kind of emotional pill; we measure it quantitatively, and say that we "know what we like." And doubtless there is something piquant in the quivering produced, for example, by the sight of white innocence fluttering helpless in a grey shadow of lust. So long as the Bible remained a god that piquancy was found in a Massacre of the Innocents; in our ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... in German to Colonel Grau, who had been uneasy during the conversation in English, because he failed to understand it. His expression of piquant surprise was intensified as he now ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... with prayer and ending in a more worldly fashion. Madame Recamier's entrance always caused distraction, and Madame de Kruedener commissioned Benjamin Constant to write and beseech her to be less charming. As this piquant note will lose its flavor by translation, we give it in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the old heading to this letter. It is piquant to contemplate Catherine writing to that picturesque gentleman, Sir John Hawkwood. Her attitude of friendly and almost sisterly sympathy with the audacious free- lance appears in her unwonted addition of the word "glory" to her usual formula, "The honour of God ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... Donne saw that Ruth would not answer him, he became only the more determined that she should hear what he had to say. What that was he did not exactly know. The whole affair was most mysterious and piquant. ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... The piquant tone in which Mrs. Greyfield uttered her observations always provoked a smile. But I caught at an intimation in her speech. "Sometimes," I said, "you speak as if you acknowledged Mr. Seabrook as your husband, and it ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... in the park. Nothing loath—for he was good-natured as he was clever, and a great enthusiast withal in the study of plants—he allowed the merry, talkative girls to lead him where they would. He delighted them in turn by his agreeable, instructive conversation, which was rendered still more piquant by the odd medley of French, Latin, and Swedish in ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... SHOULD POSSESS A DECIDED CHARACTER; and whether sharp or sweet, savoury or plain, they should carry out their names in a distinct manner, although, of course, not so much flavoured as to make them too piquant on the one hand, or too mawkish ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... though I had to twist it about a little to bring her in guilty. Cleopatra, of course, I have taken from Shakespeare. What a wench she was! I could not quite make Julia a queen; but it was impossible to pass over so piquant a character. You will recognise in the two or three ladies of the empire how faithfully I have studied my Gibbon. Poor dear old Belisarius! I have done the best I could with Joanna, but I could not bring myself ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... had a very nice evening wedding, with dancing and a supper. She was very well looking, but not as handsome as Margaret, or as pretty and piquant as Dolly. She did not seem to come close to their hearts, as Dolly had; though Mrs. Underhill was very well satisfied, and knew she would make John happy. John was a sort of solid, sober-going fellow, quite different ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... country dressmaker baffled him for the moment. Her heated defense of his picture would have suggested a conclusion flattering to his vanity had it not been for the incongruous fact that seemingly her anger was directed against himself. There was a piquant flavor to the situation gratifying to his ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... the women they love. He was not very demonstrative. He never wore his heart upon his sleeve, but deep within him was that true affection which caused him to worship her as his idol. To him she was peerless among women, and her beauty was unequalled. Her piquant mischievousness amused him. As a girl, she had always been fond of tantalising him, and did so now. Yet he knew her fine character; how deeply devoted she was to her afflicted father, and how full of discomfort ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... Baptists, Episcopalians, and Methodists hold services on alternate Sundays in the court-house. All the planters and many others near the lake shore keep a boat at their landing, and a raft for crossing vehicles and horses. It seemed very piquant at first, this taking our boat to go visiting, and on moonlight nights it was charming. The woods around are lovelier than those in Louisiana, though one misses the moaning of the pines. There is fine fishing ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... which had brought the children across the Channel, Cecile's piquant and yet pathetic face had won the captain's good favor. He had not only given all three their passage for nothing, but had got the little girl to confide sufficiently in him to find out that she carried money with her. He asked her if it was French ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... gives them eleven," said Lady St Julians; "and that would satisfy me; and we will say eleven. But I have a list here," and she slightly elevated her brow, and then glanced at Lady Deloraine with a piquant air, "which proves that they cannot have more than nine; but this is in the greatest confidence: of course between us there can be no secrets. It is Mr Tadpole's list; nobody has seen it but me; not even Sir Robert. Lord Grubminster ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... to help out. She had about her the air of the needle drudge, with shoulders bowed in and the pricked, scored fingers of a seamstress, and a permanent pucker at one corner of her mouth from holding pins there. The daughter showed trim, slender limbs and a bodily grace and a piquant face which generations of breeding and wealth so very ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... Egypt is treated in a fresh and piquant manner. But the painter has not known how to make the best of his idea. The Virgin passes in the background of the picture, bearing the infant Jesus in her arms. She is followed by Joseph and the ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... themselves to be duped. One alone was really pretty, said nothing, and gave pleasure by her very lack of artificiality. To her I might have been favourably inclined because of her ignorance, had she not gloried in this, and tried to emphasize her difference from the others by a piquant ingenuousness. One day I discovered that she had plenty of wit, ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... girls, who had most of them pretty and spiritual or pretty and piquant faces, ate a great many bon bons and chattered a great deal in high unmodulated voices about the parties their sisters and other relatives went to and the dresses they wore. Some of them were nice little souls, who in the future would ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... really was. Her profuse hair, of dark, chestnut brown, hung in thick curls to her waist; her complexion was dark, cheeks round and red as apples, her forehead low, her nose perfection, her teeth like pearls, her eyes small, bright and hazel. Very pretty, very sparkling, very piquant, and ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... toilet appears indeed to be the only one they study, as their education does not always proceed so far as reading and writing, although they are not deficient in natural capabilities; their conversation is often as graceful and piquant as that of European ladies. Nor is general information much more extended among the gentlemen, as the following anecdote will testify. When, in 1817, the Russian frigate Kamschatka anchored in the Port of Rio Janeiro, it was visited by many Brazilians of rank, and amongst others ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... all much more alike than we confess," was one of his favourite speeches. As a speech it sounded very well, and his wife had applauded; but when it resulted in hard work, evenings in the reading-rooms, mixed-parties, and long unobtrusive talks with dull people, she got bored. In her piquant way she declared that she was not going to love her husband, and succeeded. He took it quietly, but his brilliancy decreased. His health grew worse, and he knew that when he died there was no one to carry on his work. He felt, besides, that he ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... with Catherine. It is there preceded by another, from The Westminster Review, written fourteen years earlier, on The Genius of Cruikshank. This contains a descriptive catalogue of Cruikshank's works up to that period, and is interesting from the piquant style in which it is written. I fancy that these two are the only efforts of the kind which he made,—and in both he dealt with the two great caricaturists of his time, he himself being, in the imaginative part of a caricaturist's ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... is the right sort of memories to put into print; memories that are fresh and bright, piquant, and yet never ill-natured, crowded with personal lights and anecdotes; in fine, a volume of which one says: 'I would have liked to meet all those people and write about them as ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge
... were congregated and talked of her faults and beauties, more was said of her charms than her sins. They fell into relating their stories of her, even the soberest of them, as if with a sense of humour in them, as indeed the point of such anecdotes was generally humorous because of a certain piquant boldness and lawless wild spirit shown in them. The story of the Chaplain, Roxholm heard again, and many others as fantastic. The retorts of this young female Ishmael upon her detractors and assailers, on such rare occasions as ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of dishes were now brought upon the table; most of them new to us, but all piquant, pleasant to the ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... Mr. Hope's books, "A Man of Mark" is the one which best compares with "The Prisoner of Zenda." The two romances are unmistakably the work of the same writer, and he possesses a style of narrative peculiarly seductive, piquant, ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... full sleeves; a red flannel bodice embroidered with white, black, and silver, and glittering with brass saucer-shaped ornaments; and a waistbelt adorned with metal buttons. The effect is neat, bright, and decidedly piquant. The girls plait their fair hair in two long tails, wearing a handkerchief as a head-dress; but the married women have a most elaborate coiffure, something of the sister-of-mercy type, consisting of the so-called skaut, or hood, and the lin, or ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman |
