"Prude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his mania, and at last it took the form of action. He rang, and ordered up his man Harris, a close, discreet personage, and directed him to go over to Homburg, and bring back all the information he could about the new singer; her address in Homburg, married or single, prude or coquette. Should information be withheld, Harris was to fee the porter at the opera-house, the waiter at her hotel, and all the human commodities that knew anything about her. Having dismissed Harris, he lighted his seventh cigar, and said to himself, "It is all ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... have compensation commensurate for all these five years' chagrin. To elude him all this time, to laugh in his face, to defy him, and then to step deliberately into his power! He never could understand this woman. The little prude! But for her fool's conscience he would not have been riding the beggar's horse to-day. She was now too self-reliant, too intelligent, too cunning; she was her father over again, soldier and diplomat. Well, the mystery of her actions remained, but he was no longer the broken noble. ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... awhile to find what he would seek: Smiling he came, he smiled when he withdrew, And paid the same attention to the two; Meeting and parting without joy or pain, He seem'd to come that he might go again. The wondering girl, no prude, but something nice, At length was chill'd by his unmelting ice; She found her tortoise held such sluggish pace, That she must turn and meet him in the chase: This not approving, she withdrew, till one Came who appear'd with livelier hope to run; Who sought a readier way ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... tilled with his own hands, and otherwhiles a punnet of peascods or a bunch of chives or scallions, and whenas he saw his opportunity, he would ogle her askance and cast a friendly gibe at her; but she, putting on the prude, made a show of not observing it and passed on with a demure air; wherefore my lord priest could not come by his ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... and he thought more and more about the dance, he began to doubt his indignation. Wasn't he after all a prude to get so hot? Wasn't he perhaps a prig, a sissy? At times he thought that he was; at other times he was sure that he wasn't. He could be permanently sure of only one thing, that he ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... indulge in banter, and Sadie had a ringing laugh that young men liked, but there were limits that few who knew her overstepped. One or two had done so, but had been rebuked in a way they wished to forget. Sadie had the tricks of an accomplished coquette, but something of the heart of a prude. ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... You and I were babies once, though no one is old enough to remember that, and we shouldn't have liked our parents and friends to have blushed when they mentioned us. Georgie, you are a prude." ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... work is logical, instructive, impressive. It should result in the innocence of knowledge, which is better than the innocence of ignorance. It is a pleasure to see a woman handling so delicate a topic so well. Miss Morley deserves thanks for doing it so impeccably. Even a prude can find nothing to carp at in ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... theorize upon other worlds and conditions upon them that are similar to our own conditions: if his notions be presented undisguisedly as fiction, or only as an "interesting hypothesis," he'll stir up no prude rages. ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... a horrid, old-time, hoopskirt-minded prude. My first act of domestic tyranny is to make you find a sedate, prim place for my work and play, where I may know my own blushes when I see them in the mirror, and will have less occasion to ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... envy: only follow me to her apartment, either that, no longer trusting calumny and malice, you may honour her with a just preference, if I accuse her falsely; or, if my information be true, you may no longer be the dupe of a pretended prude, who makes you act so ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... on the dollars of American women under the leadership of modern culture. And, you know, the maiden follows mama. She is an apologist of sublime lewdness, of emancipated human caninity. Now I am no prude. I can stand a fairly strong touch of human nature. I can even put up with a good deal of the frankness of the cat and dog. But the frankness of some modern authors makes me sorry that Adam was a common ancestor of theirs and mine. It's a disgrace to Adam and the whole human brotherhood. We ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... from his book to worlds far removed from the English prude: to wanton peccadilloes and salacious practices condemned by the Church. He grew excited. The impotence of his mind and body which he had supposed final, vanished. Solitude again acted on his disordered nerves; he ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... rancour, for his wives were—fools, point blank. No man was ever so manageable. My diplomatist is getting liker and liker to him every day. Leaner, of course, and does not habitually straddle. Whiskers and morals, I mean. We must be silent before our prudish sister. Not a prude? We talk diplomacy, dearest. He complains of the exclusiveness of the port of Oporto, and would have strict alliance between Portugal and England, with mutual privileges. I wish the alliance, and think it better to maintain the exclusiveness. Very trifling; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... hers read "some chapters out of Rabelais," "which were enough," she declares, "to make us die with laughing." "I cannot affect," she says, "a prudery which is not natural to me." No, indeed, a prude this woman was not. She had the strong aesthetic stomach of her time. It is queer to have Rabelais rubbing cheek and jowl with Nicole ("We are going to begin a moral treatise of Nicole's"), a severe Port-Royalist, in one and ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... to begin the 'prune and prism' act," retorted the girl with a roguish wink. "Then"— suddenly straightening herself, drawing down the corners of her mouth, crossing her eyes, and assuming the air of a would-be prude—"the prospective infraction of law and order would have to be decorously stated something like this: ahem! 'Those irrepressible, irresponsible and notorious sophomores are secretly preparing to engage in exceedingly ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... it?" said the big man, brutally. "Well, you've brought it on yourself, being such a damn prude!" ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... madam, said the wench—And, Harriet, see the ill example of such a free behaviour before her: she presumed to prate in favour of the man's fit of fondness; yet, at other times, is a prude of a girl. ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... bright, and beautiful creature lay aside what became her so strangely? Mary Stanley was not made for the formalities of what is called high-breeding. Her light, easy, sinuous figure, did not lend itself to the rigid deportment of a prude; and her gay laughing eyes, and dimpled mouth, were ill calculated to grace a dignified position. The long ringlets of her profuse auburn hair were always out of order—either streaming in the wind, or straying ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... gesture, and swung to his daughter. "You hear him, the mealy-mouthed prude! Perhaps you'll believe at last that marriage with him would be the ruin of you. He would always be there the inconvenient husband—to mar ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... Argemone, sweet prude, thought herself bound to read Honoria a lecture that night, on her reckless exhibition of feeling; but it profited little. The most consummate cunning could not have baffled Argemone's suspicions ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... eugenics is too far-reaching in its beneficent purpose to be fettered by the querulous triflings of the ancient or intellectual prude; nor should it be belittled by the superficial insight of the habitual scoffer. It is not a fantasy nor an idle dream. It is not even an inspiration. The destiny of the race has brought us face to face with conditions unparalleled ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... swiftly went To the Place of the Orient, And the stout Queen sneered, "Ah, well! You are proud and prude, ma belle! But I think I will hazard a guess I shall see you one day playing chess ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... would make him be greatly upon the Reserve with you? And that you would think him insensible, tho' he was only immerst in Thought? Why did not you intice him? Come, come, be easy, I will engage to procure you another private Meeting; but take Care not to act the Prude again so unseasonably. Ply him with every alluring Art, and even make Use of a fond Violence to make him yield. He is not to be treated like common Lovers. These Injunctions cannot be disagreeable to you. Zeokinizul ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... are moments when you positively amaze. (Barbara, some PATE, if you please!) I beg you not to be a prude. All women, of course, are virtuous; but a prude is something I regard with abhorrence. The Cornet is seeing life, which is exactly what he wanted. You brought him up surprisingly well; I have always admired you for it; but let us admit - as women of the world, my dear - it was no upbringing ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... To hear the solemn prating Of the fossils who are stating That old Horace was a prude; When we know that with the ladies He was always raising Hades, And with many an escapade ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... sinners to save, And to make each a prig or a prude, If two thousand long years have not made us behave, It is time you began ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... was something to be stamped on. He would never allow himself comfortably to be that sort of man. Yet he was, it seemed, enough that sort of man to make friendship with Mrs. Chepstow difficult, perhaps impossible. If love had led him to such an inclination, he would, being no prude, have understood it as a perfectly natural and perfectly healthy thing. But he did not love Mrs. Chepstow. He would never love, really love, again. For years he had said that to himself, and had believed it. He said it again ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... Prince not to find it necessary to travel that long way to Doornward to see his dearly beloved one. She must be quite a pretty girl, the Princess Ludovicka Hollandine, and, moreover, of very tender complexion, and not at all disposed to play the prude with the young, handsome Electoral Prince, who seems particularly ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... crooked manager of the very unbusinesslike bank that is financing the P. and P. Film Co. harbours designs on the virtue of Rita, who has this commodity in a measure unusual with film vampires (or usual, I forget which), and is just a slightly adventurous prude out for a good time. He accordingly advances more money for The Guilty Dollar on condition that Rita be engaged, and yet more money on condition that she be not fired by any ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919 • Various
... mysteries, Resolv'd the church's welfare to ensure, And make her family a sine-cure: The theme divine at cards she'll not forget, But takes in texts of Scripture at picquet; In those licentious meetings acts the prude, And thanks her Maker that her cards are good. What angels would those be, who thus excel In theologies, could they sew as well! Yet why should not the fair her text pursue? Can she more decently the doctor woo? 'Tis ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... takes her some time to decide about. At the same moment he is saying to himself: "What sort of woman is this, and what on earth shall I talk to her about? I hope to heaven she isn't a girl of the period. She doesn't look like it—still less like a prude. How I hate a society dinner! I suppose I shall be bored to death, ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... works in literature and the epochs and persons in history.[1] Morally he should have been through many if not most forms of what parents and teachers commonly call "badness," and Professor Yoder even calls "meanness". He should have fought, whipped and been whipped, used language offensive to the prude and to the prim precisian, been in some scrapes, had something to do with bad, if more with good, associates, and been exposed to and already recovering from as many forms of ethical mumps and measles as, by having ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... both his brothers. He will be a great loss in these times; he knows his business, lets his Ministers do as they please, but expects to be informed of everything. He lives a strange life at Brighton, with tagrag and bobtail about him, and always open house. The Queen is a prude, and will not let the ladies come decolletees to her parties. George IV., who liked ample expanses of that sort, would not let them be covered. In the meantime matters don't seem more promising either here or abroad. In Ireland there is open ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... truth burst on me, by some wag laughing and thinking I had done it as a good joke. I was, of course, exceedingly annoyed to have been supposed capable of such a vulgar unmeaning piece of disrespect, and kept my feet as coyly under my petticoats as the veriest prude in the country till I should make my escape.' His circumstances were now improved, and though moralists, he said, thought property an evil, he declared himself happier every guinea he gained. He thanked God for his animal spirits, which received, unhappily, in 1829, a terrible shock ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... prude femme demoiselle Marguerite la Tournelle,' the widow of Rene de Bouligny. It was at her house at Bourges that Joan lodged after the coronation ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... persisted in the conventional view of Boswell, was not a Mid-Victorian prig but a common imbecile. It is true that he has been stupid enough to mangle and emasculate the letters that he was employed to publish; an officious prude unquestionably he was, but no ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... incident brought her turned Laura's head, making her so foolhardy in her inventions that Maria, who for all her boldness of speech was at heart a prude ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... Will. What a rank prude is woman, thus to disguise her inclination. They call thee Barbara—Bab! restrain not thy fancy. Come, hang round my neck and love me. What! wouldst thou be an ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... antipathies are always suspicious, and betray a secret affinity. The difference between the 'Great Vulgar and the Small' is mostly in outward circumstances. The coxcomb criticises the dress of the clown, as the pedant cavils at the bad grammar of the illiterate, or the prude is shocked at the backslidings of her frail acquaintance. Those who have the fewest resources in themselves naturally seek the food of their self-love elsewhere. The most ignorant people find most to laugh at in strangers: scandal and satire ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... this distress, which she declared she could not comprehend, but frankly agreed to remain with me; and promised, at my earnest desire, not to publish what I had confessed to her, lest I should gain, around Windsor, the character of a prude. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... that one might imagine him to be. A quiet, unobtrusive fellow, he seldom spoke except when he had something worth saying. Since childhood he had always been a leader among his fellows. Johnny was a good example to others, but no prude. He had played a fast quarter on the football team, and had won for himself early renown and many medals as a light weight, champion boxer. He never sought a quarrel, but, if occasion demanded it, Johnny went into action with a vim and rush that few men of twice ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... Ann was no prude, and she certainly was no saint. Twice a week there was the sound of fiddling and dancing feet in a certain wooden hall that stood near the river; and there, with the men and women of the worldly sort, Ann ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... by any manner of means an old maid or a prude, said it was nothing short of a crying scandal that ought to be put a stop to instanter to say that women of that stamp (quite apart from any oldmaidish squeamishness on the subject), a necessary evil, w ere not licensed and medically inspected by the proper authorities, a thing, he could truthfully ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... bowed the girl, blushing warmly. Then she hastened to add: "Still, I am not a prude, sir—don't think I mean that. In my profession one is obliged to be on friendly terms with a great many persons, both men and women. At the theater, for instance, I meet many men and form many acquaintances, both agreeable and ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... I conclude. I should not ask so much of others. You, Svanhild, I've learnt to fathom thro' and thro'; You are too sensible to play the prude. I watched expand, unfold, your little life; A perfect woman I divined within you, But long I only saw a daughter in you;— Now I ask of you—will you be my wife? [SVANHILD ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... call her liar, and charge her with the wickedness she has done and is doing. There is Mrs. Painter, who passes for a most respectable woman, and a model in society. There is no use in saying what you really know regarding her and her goings on. There is Diana Hunter—what a little haughty prude it is; and yet WE know stories about her which are not altogether edifying. I say it is best, for the sake of the good, that the bad should not all be found out. You don't want your children to know the history of that lady in the next box, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... servants knew, as a matter of domestic history, that Griffith and Kate lived together a happy couple; but this ardent prude was compelled by her position to see it, and realize it, every day. She had to witness little conjugal caresses, and they turned her sick with jealousy. She was Nobody. They took no more account of her than of the furniture. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... humbug, and goose, and prude," I said, laughing, as I released her. "What do you think of letting me kiss you like that, then? ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... bloody-haired; and Hercules, Whose soul was in his sinews; Pluto, blacker Than his own hell; Vulcan, who shook his horns At every limp he took; great Bacchus rode Upon a barrel; and in a cockle-shell Neptune kept state; then Mercury was a thief; Juno a shrew; Pallas a prude, at best; And Venus walked the clouds in search of lovers; Only great Jove, the lord and thunderer, Sat in the circle of his starry power And frowned ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... fiercely centered upon preservation for himself and certain destruction for other men. Perhaps because he had come back clean, having never wasted himself in complaisant liaisons overseas, the inevitable focusing of passion stirred him more profoundly. He was neither a varietist nor a male prude. He was aware of sex. He knew desire. But the flame Betty Gower had kindled in him made him look at women out of different eyes. Desire had been revealed to him not as something casual, but as an imperative. As if nature had pulled the blinkers off ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... as training Gertrude was a formalist and a prude, but she was human and she unconsciously obeyed a law of nature which ordains the union of the dissimilar. This was why, having met only men of her own kind hitherto, she had escaped the touch of passion and now felt drawn toward one who ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... Nancy was too deep in uneasy thought to care much what befell the hand. She began to plan changes, always her panacea in a dark mood. She would give up daytime playing, like Mary Ingram. And she would never play except at home, or in some other woman's home. Nancy was no prude, but she was suddenly ashamed. She was ashamed to have new-comers at the club pass by, and see that she had nothing else to do, this afternoon, ...
— Undertow • Kathleen Norris |
