"Pique" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... elephants were killed in the battle. Of the Romans less than a thousand were killed. The next day was employed by both parties in burying their dead, under a tacit truce. Marcellus burnt the spoils of the enemy, in fulfilment of a vow to Vulcan. On the third day after, on account of some pique, I suppose, or in the hope of more advantageous service, one thousand two hundred and seventy-two horsemen, Numidians and Spaniards, deserted to Marcellus. The Romans had frequently availed themselves of their brave and faithful service in that war. ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... proceed no farther in the affair at present, and yet Mr. Guthrie's declining the king's authority in matters ecclesiastical here, was made the principal article in his indictment some ten years after, to give way to a personal pique Middleton had against this good man, the occasion of which ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... scarcely saw him eat a hearty meal during his whole stay. Both at Parker's hotel in Boston, and at the Westminster in New York, everything was arranged by the proprietors for his comfort, and tempting dishes to pique his invalid appetite were sent up at different hours of the day; but the influenza had seized him with masterful power, and held the strong man down till he ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... beauty; at three-and-thirty she was still unmarried, her looks on the wane, but her romance stronger than ever, not untinged perhaps with a little bitterness towards that sex which had not afforded one man of merit enough to woo and win her. Partly out of pique with a land so barren of all that could minister to imagination, partly in anger with her brother who had been urging her to a match she disliked, she went abroad to travel, wandered about for a year or two, and at last found herself ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... explanation to offer of "why she would be that cross wid poor Denis O'Meara." Her mother accounted for it by pique at the Carberys' ill-timed gossip about his imaginary courtship of Mary Anne Neligan; and Mrs. Kilfoyle was for a while inclined to the same opinion, until one day by chance she espied in the little ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... because of her supreme indifference to whatever did not affect her own personal affairs, would be easy to handle. Her son's marriage might pique her, momentarily, but less, on the whole, than the discovery that she had gained eight pounds, or that new wrinkles had appeared about her eyes. She would very probably choose the position of championing Harriet, if only to infuriate ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... much esteemed friend, for your kind letters; but why will you make me run the risk of being contemptible and mercenary in my own eyes? When I pique myself on my independent spirit, I hope it is neither poetic licence, nor poetic rant; and I am so flattered with the honour you have done me in making me your compeer in friendship and friendly correspondence, ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... at twelve pesos a yard, and you'll see if I put on these rags!" retorted the goddess in pique. "Heavens! You can talk when you have done something fine like that to give ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... his coat, and followed that with his collar and tie, he thought of his steamer trunk with its Tuxedo and dress-coat, its pique shirts and poke collars, its suede gloves and kid-topped patent leathers, and he felt the tips of his ears beginning to burn. He was sorry now that he had given the Missioner the check ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... to be gentlemen, but we teach them everything else; and they never pique themselves so much on all the rest, as on knowing how to be gentlemen. They pique themselves only on knowing the one thing they have ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... the Duke of Cambridge. "The newcomer," says this critic, "was recognised as Mrs. James by a Prince of the Blood and his companions in the omnibus-box. Her beauty could not save her from insult; and, to avenge themselves on Mr. Lumley, for some pique, these chivalrous English gentlemen of the upper classes hooted a ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... of times while post adjutant. But here it was different. I knew that from almost every window that looked out on the parade ground, eyes friendly and eyes envious were peering to see how the new regimental adjutant conducted himself, and I knew that there was one pair of eyes green from envy and pique, and that the least faux-pas by Faye would be sneered at and made much of by their owner. But Faye made no mistake, of course. I knew all the time that it was quite impossible for him to do so, as he is one of the very best tacticians in the regiment—still, it is ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... tents—nobody looked at me unpleasantly or spoke rudely to me, and when my first feeling of pique had subsided, I was not sorry to have an opportunity of examining more closely these strange and incomprehensible people who, during so many ages, have kept up their distinctive manners and customs, as ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... pique coat and short skirt, with pale blue blouse and pale blue hat—and at the extremity blue stockings and white tennis shoes. She picked up a tennis racket in its press, and prepared to leave the studio. She had bought the coat, the skirt, the blouse, the hat, the tennis shoes, ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... sharpened now, I could see that not by my young companions alone, but by every one of the four teachers, I was looked upon as a harmless little girl whose mother knew nothing about the fashionable world. I do not think that anything in my manner showed either my pique or my disdain; I believe I went out of doors just as usual; but these things were often in my thoughts, and taking by degrees more ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... broad shoulders of the frock coat he wore, to her mind, more than compensated for the "ready-made" scarf, and if the white waistcoat was not fashionably cut, she knew that she had never been able to afford a pique skirt of just ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... unnoticed by the most casual attendant, sentinel, or lord-in-waiting, and the very fact that special commands had been issued to guard all the doors of entrance to the Royal apartments on either hand, during her visit, only served to pique and inflame ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... inspiriting, opened before me, coming so soon after the late downfall of my hopes, was in itself a source of such true pleasure that ere long I listened to my friend, and heard his narrative with breathless interest. A lingering sense of pique, too, had its share in all this. I longed to come forward in some manly and dashing part, where my youth might not be ever remembered against me, and when, having brought myself to the test, I might no longer be looked upon ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... by father or sister. But when the wedding oration had been preached over those twelve bridal pairs, and the wedding benediction had been granted, it was not Gabriele, the boyish betrothed of Toinetta, who brought the blushing bride, partly in triumph and partly in pique, to her father's side, but Piero Salin, the handsomest gondolier on the lagoons, the most daring and dreaded foe of all the established traghetti. It had been impossible for the spectators from the body of the church to follow closely the movements ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... tone which surely denotes the raising of the drawbridge of pique; "you must rest until this evening. Who is the old gentleman who has been waiting two or three ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... an appeal to those cultivated persons who will read it "to overrule the dicta of judges who would sacrifice truth and justice to professional rule, or personal pique, pride, or prejudice"; meaning, the great mass of those who have studied the subject. But how? Suppose the "cultivated persons" were to side with the author, would those who have conclusions to draw and applications to make consent to be wrong ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... has been a constant record of disillusion, and many things that seem wonderful to most men are the every-day commonplaces of my business. But I have never been without some seeming marvel to pique my curiosity and challenge my investigation. In this book I have set down some of the stories of strange folk and unusual performers that I have gathered in many years of ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... wounded pride had caused her to do as she had done; but her husband's remark suggested other thoughts. It was possible that reports were in circulation calculated to injure her social standing, and that Mrs. Todd's conduct toward her was not the result of any private pique. ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... in Rose-Marie's cheeks. Mrs. Momeby clutched the genuine Erik closer to her side, as though she feared that her uncanny neighbour might out of sheer pique turn him into a ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... wear a simple tailored suit while traveling, with white waist or silk skirt to match. If the weather is warm, white duck, pique or linen skirts with white shirts are worn mornings; afternoons, foulard, or some of the fine and dainty fabrics suited to the season. For evening, nothing is prettier than white for the young—and, indeed, "everybody ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... M'lama to the greater freedom of the deck, and save for a shrill passage at arms between that lady and the corporal she had bitten, there was no sign of a return to her evil ways. She wore a white pique skirt and a white blouse, and on her head she balanced deftly, without the aid of pins, a yellow straw hat with long trailing ribbons of heliotrope. Alternately they trailed ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... heart still palpitates with the electrical touch of her fingers. You pocket your indignation, exchange one of your blandest smiles, and pass on, still striding to see what lovely features grace that exquisite chapeau. Half afraid, of course—for she is a lady evidently, and you pique yourself on being a perfect gentleman—you venture, as you pass, to let your eye just glance within the sacred enclosure of blonde and primroses;—pshaw! it's old Miss Thingamy, that you had to hand down to dinner the other day at Lady Dash's; and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... she did not say much to me, but had the kindness to allow me to lean back, and cry in quiet. She evidently thought that never had there been a girl so in love, or so broken-hearted before. She was very good-natured, but there was a shade of pique in her manner, which probably arose from my refusal to avail myself of her help for the secret marriage which had ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... rehearsal with the accompanist. He has a repertoire of seventy roles, some of them learned in two languages. Among the parts he has prepared but has never sung are: Othello, Fra Diavolo, Eugen Onegin, Pique Dame, Falstaff and Jewels of ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... amends she could offer him for having married him without love. It was her father who made the match; and Amelia had succumbed, not through the obedience claimed by parents of an elder day, but from hot jealousy and the pique inevitably born of it. Laurie Morse had kept the singing-school that winter. He had loved Amelia; he had bound himself to her by all the most holy vows sworn from aforetime, and then, in some wanton exhibit of power—gone home with another ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... words, he won't wait for the law, now that we've got this drift going. Don't you be deceived by what he may say now in—in pique. Give him a little chance to adjust himself to the new idea, that's all. Rome wasn't built in a day, Sam—as ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... free and just community." ... "The matters there debated (in town meetings) are such as to invite very small consideration. The ill-spelled pages of the town records contain the result. I shall be excused for confessing that I have set a value upon any symptom of meanness and private pique which I have met with in these antique books, as proof that justice was done; that if the results of our history are approved as wise and good, it was yet a free strife; if the good counsel prevailed, the sneaking counsel ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Lord Grey, who contended that there was no reason why they should not coalesce with Canning and Peel. What induced him to alter his opinion so decidedly and to become so bitter an enemy to the present arrangements does not appear, unless it is to be attributed to a feeling of pique and resentment at not having been more consulted, or that overtures were not made to himself. The pretext he took for declaring himself was the appointment of Copley to be Chancellor, when he said that it was impossible to support a ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... a word to each other; we kept the great pace Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place; I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight, Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right, Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the bit, Nor galloped less steadily ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... five hundred acres of the Tolliver plantation, which the school needed so sadly for its farm and community. But the owner was a hard and ignorant white man, hating "niggers" only a shade more than he hated white aristocrats of the Cresswell type. He had sold the school its first land to pique the Cresswells; but he would not sell any more, she was sure, even now when the promise of wealth ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... intelligence was of some advantage to Richard Waverley in the case before us; for, had the sum total of his enormities reached the ears of Sir Everard at once, there can be no doubt that the new commissioner would have had little reason to pique himself on the success of his politics. The Baronet, although the mildest of human beings, was not without sensitive points in his character; his brother's conduct had wounded these deeply; the Waverley estate ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... dragged her arm away in such a hurry that she scratched her hand on a pin that Agnes had stupidly left in my belt. "Voyez! vous avez fait saigner ma main," she said almost crying with fury. All I said was, "Qui s'y-frotte s'y pique," and as we had got to the door of my room, I went off in fits of laughter—she looked so like a cross monkey I could ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... could ever think of marrying. He seems to have made her want of vivid religious conviction the excuse for not proposing to her, but it is not easy to put aside the conviction that it was her want of a fortune which actuated him most strongly. Finally, he tries to pique her by telling her that he "knows of parties" in the city of Hanover "who might bring him much honour and comfort" were he "not afraid of losing (Catharine Trotter's) friendship." They write to one another with extreme formality, but that proves nothing. A young woman, ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... authority, to which the answer was, "We only know the prefect by his clothes." Now it had unfortunately happened that M. de Chamans having sent his trunks by diligence they had not yet arrived, and being dressed in a green coat; nankeen trousers, and a pique vest, it could hardly be expected that in such a suit he should overawe the people under the circumstances; so, when he got up on a bench to harangue the populace, cries arose of "Down with the green coat! ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... But the course of her true love could not have run very smooth and, knowing that Lennox was otherwise interested, she took up with Paliser out of pique. ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... and Vienna; and the Austro-German Alliance, which, in its origin, was defensive (as I have shown in this volume), became offensive, Italy parting from her allies when she discovered their designs. Drawn into the Triple Alliance solely by pique against France after the Tunis affair, she now inclines towards ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... tragedy, and made it a thing of the remoter past. An hour later he was playing with his little rain-gauge on the lawn. At afternoon teatime he appeared immaculately attired in the height of the fashion; brown boots, the palest of pale gray summer suitings, a white pique waistcoat, the least little luminous hint of green in his silk necktie, and he seemed the spirit ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... with further facts, he was obliged to rely on would-be philosophical dissertations which it is to be hoped were not obtained from his father's notebooks. Young Forster says that the appointment was first of all given to his father in a spirit of pique on the part of Lord Sandwich, and then the order forbidding him to write was made because the father had refused to give Miss Ray, Lord Sandwich's mistress, who had admired them when on board the ship, some birds brought home from the Cape of Good Hope as a present to the Queen. In ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... thirty was counted older than he {193} would not be reckoned, in an epoch when it was possible for a young man just come of age to lead the House of Commons. Lord George Gordon had led a somewhat varied life. He had been in the navy, and had left the service from pique, while the American war was still in its earliest stages, in consequence of a quarrel with Lord Sandwich concerning promotion. The restless energy which he could no longer dedicate to active service he ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... I kept my word. For more than a year I had not of myself opened my mouth thereon. If he was sometimes spoken to before me, and I could not keep quite silent without being suspected of sulking or pique, I carelessly said something indefinite, with as little meaning in it as possible, and calculated to ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the pique of the Chevalier at the mention of Philibert, but in that spirit of petty torment with which her sex avenges small slights she continued to irritate the vanity of the Chevalier, whom in her heart ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... the baby. She brooded over it all, and she thought to herself angrily that she would make him pay for all this some day. She could not reconcile herself to the fact that he no longer cared for her. She would make him. She suffered from pique, and sometimes in a curious fashion she desired Philip. He was so cold now that it exasperated her. She thought of him in that way incessantly. She thought that he was treating her very badly, and she did not know what she had done to deserve it. She kept on saying to herself ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... shoulders with a pretty air of pique. "As you will! I never trouble myself to court the friendship of any one. Le jeu ne vaut ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... when prodded by the pique of curiosity. And in spite of all that omens could foretell, in spite of the dull, gloomy life which had done its best to fashion a matter-of-fact brain for Robert Fairchild, one sentence in that letter had found an echo, had started a pulsating something within him that ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... pupil of his own in the divine right of monarchs to govern, and yet seemingly inspired by a keen sensitiveness to his people's wants and the spirit of the age,—could not endure his commanding ascendency and haughty dictation, and accepted his resignation offered in a moment of pique. He fell even as Wolsey fell before Henry VIII.,—too great a man for a subject, yet always loyal to the principles of legitimacy and the will of his sovereign. But he retired at the age of seventy-five, with princely estates, unexampled honors, and the admiration and gratitude of his countrymen; ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... linen petticoat wid tuckers at de hem, just a little long, to show good and white 'long wid de blue of de skirt and de red of de underskirt. Dese all come up to my waist and was held together by de string dat held my bustle in place. All dis and my corset was hid by de snow white pleated pique bodice, dat drapped gracefully from my shoulders. 'Round my neck was a string of green jade beads. I wore red stockin's and my foots was stuck in ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... saying it has managed to convey the fact that you are a monster of perfidy; and Lisbeth, poor child, is probably crying her eyes out, or imagining she hates you, is ready to accept the first proposal she receives out of pure pique." ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... Contemporary Review. She is an able woman, but not a philosopher, and she labors under the craze of thinking that she is a great force in European politics. She confesses that she hated Paul Bert, and she betrays that her aversion originated in pique and jealousy. We do not wish to be ungallant, but Gambetta had good reasons for preferring Paul Bert to Juliette Lambert, although the lady is ludicrously wrong in saying that "it was to Paul Bert ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... would put a high price on himself, and pique her pride, as she was too much accustomed to worship, to be won by flattering it. He might have done that by paying attention to some one else: but he was too wise to employ so coarse a method, which might raise indignation, or ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... she said sternly, leaning out toward him and looking Barney in the eyes, "don't be a fool. The man that would, from pique, willingly hurt a friend is a ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... his eyes wakened into a tell-tale glow of delight and admiration, and how easily any one looking on might have fallen into the egregious error of construing his attitude into one distinctly loverlike. All this while she continued to pique his curiosity by a sustained reserve as ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... was in his reach. In the conversation of Caroline Merton—shrewd, worldly, and ambitious—he found the sort of plaything that he desired. They were thrown much together; but to Vargrave, at least, there appeared no danger in the intercourse; and perhaps his chief object was to pique Evelyn, as well as to ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book I • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... unencumbered, and we surrender all our claims on Spain for damages not included in that five millions of dollars." He challenged the right of the President and Senate to alienate territory without the consent of the House. Behind Clay's opposition lay some personal pique against the President and his Secretary of State; but he voiced, nevertheless, the spirit of the Southwest, which already looked toward Texas as a possible field of expansion and resented ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... your position, and yet you—Oh! I suppose the real truth of the matter is, that you have heard of something better, and you are ready to give us the go-by in order to improve your own circumstances?" said Mr. Balderby, with a tone of pique; "though I really don't see how you can very well be better off anywhere than you are ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... you puzzle me, Mr. De Gex," I replied with pique. "It would be so much easier if you would be frank and open ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... at first were friends; But when a pique began, The dog, to gain some private ends, Went mad, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... and the stock elements can be counted upon in all his best fiction: salient personalities, the march of events, exciting situations, and ever that arch-romantic lure, the one trick up the sleeve to pique anticipation. Hence, in spite of descriptions that seem over-long, a heavy-footed manner that lacks suppleness and variety, and undeniable carelessness of construction, he is still loved of the ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... moments—or, perhaps, two soul-sides, one to face the world with, one to show his manuscripts when he's writing. You hint a fault, and hesitate dislike. That, indeed, is only natural, on the part of an old friend. But you pique my interest. What is the trouble with him? Is—is ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... machine. There was a loud hiss as it lay for a moment across the hot engine, and it whisked itself into the air again, while the huge flat body drew itself together as if in sudden pain. I dipped to a vol-pique, but again a tentacle fell over the monoplane and was shorn off by the propeller as easily as it might have cut through a smoke wreath. A long, gliding, sticky, serpent-like coil came from behind and caught me round the waist, dragging me out of the fuselage. I tore at it, my ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... think with Alexander, that the act Of eating, with another act or two, Makes us feel our mortality in fact Redoubled; when a roast and a ragout, And fish, and soup, by some side dishes back'd, Can give us either pain or pleasure, who Would pique himself on intellects, whose use Depends so much upon ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... began to separate herself in his mind as a good goer against the field, and he had a real desire to win her affection. The more indifferent she was to him, the keener was his desire to possess her. His unsuccessful wooing had passed through several stages, first astonishment, then pique, and finally something very like passion, or a fair semblance of devotion, backed, of course, since all natures are more or less mixed, by the fact that this attractive figure of the woman was thrown into high relief by the colossal fortune ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... man of more than national reputation said to one of her admirers, "I, for one, cannot endure your Maria Mitchell." At her solicitation he explained why; and his reason was, as she had anticipated, founded on personal pique. It seems he had gone up from New York to Poughkeepsie especially to call upon Professor Mitchell. During the course of conversation, with that patronizing condescension which some self-important men ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... who supported them. The nobles manage things much more daintily. For the rest, you saw yourself what happened at Avignon. If you had been told that, you would never have believed it, would you? Those gentlemen pillagers of stage coaches pique themselves on their great delicacy. They have two faces, not counting their mask. Sometimes they are Cartouche and Mandrin, sometimes Amadis and Galahad. They tell fabulous tales of these heroes of the highways. My mother told me yesterday ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... Sicilian tyrants,—palaces moved by oars, with statues, fountains and gardens. That which most interested him was the Mediterranean of the Middle Ages, that of the kings of Aragon, the Catalunian Sea. And the poor secretary would give long daily dissertations about them in order to pique the local pride of ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... was scarcely in so pleasant a humour. With Lewis she was undeniably cross, but of Mr. Stocks she was radically intolerant. A moment of pique might send her to his side, but the position was unnatural and could not be maintained. Even now Lewis was in her thoughts. Fragments of his odd romantic speech clove to her memory. His figure—for he showed to perfection in his own surroundings—was so comely ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... done. I had climbed the worst precipices in the Dungeon of Buchan, and looked into the nest of the eagle on the Clints of Craignaw. It was not likely that I would come to any harm so long as there was a foothold or an armhold on the face of the cliff. At least, my idiotic pique had now pledged me to the attempt, as well as my pride, for above all things I desired to stand well in the ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... my dear, tut, tut! You've made a marriage that is founded on suitability of position, property and education, and everything will come right by and by. Don't act on a fit of pique or spleen, and so destroy your happiness, and that of everybody about you. Think of your father. Remember what he has done to make this marriage. I may tell you that he has paid forty thousand pounds to discharge ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... was glad of the interruption. She had said just enough to pique curiosity. To tell more would have been bad policy all around. Betty Wales had arrived just in the nick ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... Secretary had told of those wretched people who apparently enjoy dying of overwork and phosphorus, and white-lead, who positively will die of them, unless the inspectors are always harrying them. He still held her hand, but she saw he was not thinking of her; and a sudden pique rose in her small mind. Generally, she accepted his love-making very coolly—just as it came, or did not come. But to-night she asked herself with irritation—for what had he led her into his silly ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... better; so those wretches paint lewdness, atheism, folly, ill-reasoning, and all manner of extravagancies amongst us, for want of understanding what we are. Oftentimes it so falls out, that they have a particular pique to some one amongst us, and then they immediately interest heaven in their quarrel; as it is an usual trick in courts, when one designs the ruin of his enemy, to disguise his malice with some concernment of the kings; and to revenge his own cause, with ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... temporary lodging-place, where they must sojourn in sugar and molasses till their mortgage's will let them live elsewhere. They call England their home, though many of them have never been there; they talk of writing home and going home, and pique themselves more on knowing the probable result of a contested election in England than on mending their roads, establishing a police, or purifying a prison. The French colonist deliberately expatriates himself; the Englishman never. If our colonies were to throw ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... side of your wild humour? The side a man would take, struck, as your Sandro was, by a nympholepsy, or, as Lorenzo was, by the rhymer's appetite for wherewithal to sonnetteer? If I understand you, it was never pique or a young girl's petulance drove you to Phryne's one justifiable act of self-assertion. It was honesty. Madonna, or I have read your grey eyes in vain; it was enthusiasm—that flame of our fire so sacred that though it play the incendiary there shall be no crime—or where would be now ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... the dancers. She had a good word for every one, and she drew her companion out to make the most of herself, as women less often do before women than in the presence of men. I am certain that her interest in Belle Treherne was real, and likewise certain that she cherished no pique against her because I had transferred my allegiance. Indeed, I am sure that she had no deep feeling of injured pride where I was concerned. Such after acidity as she sometimes showed was directed against the foolish part I had played with her and my action in subsequent ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... at the Pan-American Building. Postcards will have been sent out the day before by the Secretary, saying: "Please try to be present as there are several important matters to be brought up." This will so pique the curiosity of the members that they will hardly be able to wait until five o'clock. One will come at four o'clock by mistake and, after steaming up and down the corridor for half an hour, will go home ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... feeling corrected by the dictates of duty did not escape the Moslem, who, if he did not entirely understand all which it conveyed, saw enough to convince him with the assurance that Christians, as well as Moslemah, had private feelings of personal pique, and national quarrels, which were not entirely reconcilable. But the Saracens were a race, polished, perhaps, to the utmost extent which their religion permitted, and particularly capable of entertaining high ideas of ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... and with a little laugh; "how it would pique his vanity to know, if he might, that a poor panthan had won a higher place in the regard of Tara of Helium," and she laid her ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and much troubled with those phantoms of indigestion which are commonly called blue devils. He had been deceived in an early friendship: he had been crossed in love; and had offered his hand, from pique, to a lady, who accepted it from interest, and who, in so doing, violently tore asunder the bonds of a tried and youthful attachment. Her vanity was gratified by being the mistress of a very extensive, if not very lively, establishment; but all the springs ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... he saw any of those men who pique themselves on their estates, and who believe because they are men of high condition that they are above instruction, or have no need of it, because their riches alone are sufficient to gain them the esteem ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... verses. Everything she wore was put on carefully and with good taste. Her dress showed the quickest adaptability, and in correctness, and simplicity of line and color might have belonged to a college freshman "with every advantage." It was a little trim delft-blue linen frock with a white pique collar and a loose blue tie. She had tan stockings and low russet shoes. Fanny belonged to the Working-man's Circle. She said she went as often as she could possibly afford it to the theatre. And when she was asked ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... presently be seen, they were not even permitted to suffer any considerable pecuniary loss by reason of their breach of the law. Finding that their conduct led to their being made the subjects of a sort of hero-worship, it is not surprising that they soon came to pique themselves upon what they had done, and, so far from feeling any consciousness of shame or regret, to openly court publicity for their proceedings. Jarvis was especially culpable in this respect, and was not ashamed to write ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... have been jilted by Cynthia at the church-door and, two days afterwards, in a fit of pique marry Priscilla at sight (of course you can't always get a Priscilla to consent to this arrangement; but Mr. Bensley Stuart Gore had a young ward at school who wanted her freedom; so that was all right), you may think to persuade the Faithless One that you have given solid ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... rival in his affection made her absolutely outrageous. She had so little considered Claribel in that light, that she had not deigned to notice Lionel's attention to her, which indeed her vanity whispered was merely a feint to pique herself, and to give him an opportunity of still hovering near her. The gift of the fairy, which had operated so much to Claribel's disadvantage in the opinion of her lover, secured her from sharing the keen mortification of her ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... inculcating such a precept if all men were good; but as the generality of mankind are wicked, and ever ready to break their words, a prince should not pique himself in keeping his more scrupulously, especially as it is always easy to justify a breach of faith on his part. I could give numerous proofs of this, and show numberless engagements and treaties which have been violated by the treachery of princes, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... I shall see Mrs. Jones to-morrow, or at latest the day after," said Mrs. Townsend, resolving to pique the man by making him understand that she could easily learn all that she wished to learn from the woman: "a great comfort Mrs. Jones must ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... ridden, or raced at a man's side for days, with the object of getting the better of him at some sport or pastime, cannot reasonably hope to be connected in his thoughts with ideas more tender or more elevated than "odds" or "handicaps," with an undercurrent of pique if his unsexed companion ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... Fanny Wyndham had much too strong a mind—much too marked a character of her own, to be made Lady Anything by Lord Anybody. Lord Cashel might possibly prevent her from marrying Frank, especially as she had been weak enough, through ill-founded pique and anger, to lend him her name for dismissing him; but neither he nor anyone else could make her accept one man, while she loved another, and while that ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... an article of faith but a detail of economy. His attitude to socks had lacked in reverence and technique. He had not perceived that socks may be as sound a symbol of culture as the 'cello or even demountable rims. He had been able to think with respect of ties and damp pique collars secured by gold safety-pins; and to the belted fawn overcoat that the St. Klopstock banker's son had brought back from St. Paul, he had given jealous attention. But now he ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... proud assent as he stuck a biscuit in his mouth and looked at the lights with the greatest pleasure. I took off his new cap with its two blue bows over the ears, unbuttoned his little pique coat, which I had almost entirely built myself, and which was of excellent cut, and settled down to dine with him ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Penfer and on one little cottage on its shingle. And Roland's hasty glance into her resolute face convinced him that all parleying was useless. He was angry and could not quite control himself. His voice showed decided pique as he answered: ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... command hastily, but only if necessary, and shun prohibitions based on petulance or pique. Give the child what it wants if easily obtainable ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... advised by George Thomas, who had instigated them to this violence out of pique against the Begam for her preference of the Frenchman,[29] to set aside their puppet and reseat the Begam in the command, as the only chance of keeping the territory of Sardhana.[30] 'If', said he, 'the Begam should ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... deliberately a traitor, or was his conduct merely a result of jealousy and pique? There can be little doubt that he was guilty of premeditated bad faith. There is evidence that he knew the expedition to have passed the true mouth of the Mississippi, and that, after leaving La Salle, he sailed in search of it, found it, and caused ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... immensely lauded and decried as this great statesman and warrior; as, indeed, no man ever deserved better the very greatest praise and the strongest censure. If the present writer joins with the latter faction, very likely a private pique of his own may be the ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... and went home excited and wrought up to the resolve that nothing should interfere with the completion of his task. But it was the old story again—whims and postponements on Rachel's part, possibly temper and pique on his—until six months afterward, at the end of an angry conversation, he silently replaced the ring on her hand, and she did not resist. Four years later the compact was renewed, and although by this time De Musset had to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... to think of himself as a stoic, quite indifferent about his "carcase." His briefer black moods he might acknowledge had transitory causes. But his general and abiding conceptions of humanity were the result of dispassionate reflections. "You think," he cries in half-sportive pique, "that because I pass my life trying to make harmonious phrases, in avoiding assonances, that I too have not my little judgments on the things of this world? Alas! Yes! and moreover I shall burst, enraged at ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... a gradual change to lighter mourning may be made by discarding the widow's cap and shortening the veil. Dull silks are used in place of crape, according to taste. In warm weather lighter materials can be worn—as, pique, nun's ...
— The Book of Good Manners • W. C. Green
... that he had been engaged to marry Maria Fulton. Could it be that she still loved him, and that the engagement to Morley, her helping him financially, had been all a pretense, the pitiful product of pique toward Braceway to show him she cared nothing for him? And now she wanted to help ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... unfaithful to his brother Triumvir and friend, he attacks him in the accompanying letter to the Tuscan ruler with the withering sarcasm that "the satins, velvets, and brocades would perhaps have been better if Titian had received a few more scudi for working them out." If Aretino's pique had not caused the momentary clouding over of his artistic vision, he would have owned that the canvas now in the Pitti was one of the happiest achievements of Titian and one of the greatest things in portraiture. There is no ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... Wartburg," long before we were near it. It was raining hard when we reached Eisenach station, and engaged a carriage to take us to the Wartburg. The mist, which wreathed thickly around, showed us only glimpses as we wound slowly up the castle hill—enough, however, to pique the imagination, and show how beautiful it might be in ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... clothes having taken fire. As well as she could learn, the girl in whose charge she had left the children, and who, in the reduced circumstances of the family, was constituted doer of all work, had, from some pique, gone away in her absence. Thus left free to go where, and do what they pleased, the children had amused themselves in playing with the fire. When the clothes of the youngest caught in the blaze of a lighted stick, the two oldest, with singular presence of mind, threw around ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... admirable law was passed by the House of Representatives under the skilful and intelligent leadership of Hon. James A. Garfield, but it failed in the Senate because of the apathy of some and the personal pique of others. It seems incredible that in that dignified body so little attention was paid to this vast subject. Again and again its consideration was postponed because a sufficient attendance could not be secured to act upon the proposed law, which at last fell to the ground, a victim to the indifference ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... trouble yourself,", cried Lady Juliana, in extreme pique. "I believe I can get this done without your obliging interference; but I don't know whether I shall be ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... asked she, with as indifferent a tone as she could assume, but which yet had a touch of pique in it. His ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell |
