"Vis-a-vis" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... reached the spot, and had no difficulty in placing himself vis-a-vis to the French officer; for so terrible was his skill, that others willingly turned aside to attack less dangerous opponents. In ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... Dancing vis-a-vis were Giovanni and the Contessa Potensi. Nina did not know her name or anything about her, but she felt at first sight a subtle antagonism, and, following an instinct that she would have found difficult to account for, she ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... something had struck her about the manner her husband assumed. She could not get over it, and when at the table d'hote with her husband listened attentively to the conservation of two gentlemen who were sitting vis-a-vis. One enquired after the health of the lady who had taken so suddenly ill on the landing in the morning. The younger of the two gentlemen expressed his gratitude to the other for assisting his mother so kindly, who would have, but for his assistance, fallen ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... model of deportment, my glass of fashion. I see him now as we used to sit, vis-a-vis, at his study table. Samson's physical strength came from his hair. From the same source, it seemed to me, Mr. Pound derived that mental vigor with which he pulled down the temples of ignorance ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... found himself seated opposite a man who had boarded the train with him at Seattle. As the young captain plied his knife and fork he was aware that this person's gaze rested with something more than casual interest on his—Matt's—left forearm; whereupon the latter realized that his vis-a-vis yearned to see more of a little decoration which, in the pride of his first voyage, Matt had seen fit to have tattooed on the aforesaid forearm by the negro cook. So, since he was the best-natured young man imaginable, Matt decided ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... of my retreat from the whirl and bustle of Paris?" asked Marquis de Praille of his vis-a-vis, who was ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... in his pocket and turned to leave the room, with a nod to its only other occupant, an olive-skinned young man with lustrous eyes and a low collar, who sat on the other side of the table, perusing the Fanfulla di Domenica. This gentleman, his daily vis-a-vis, returned the nod with a Latin eloquence of gesture, and Wyant passed on to the ante-chamber, where he paused to light a cigarette. He was just restoring the case to his pocket when he heard a hurried step behind him, and the lustrous-eyed ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... pleasantest." She is seated at breakfast in her cottage at Summering-by-the-Sea. A heap of letters of various stylish shapes, colors, and superscriptions lies beside her plate, and irregularly straggles about among the coffee-service. Vis-a-vis with her sits Mr. Campbell behind a newspaper. "How prompt they are! Why, I didn't expect to get half so many answers yet. But that shows that where people have nothing to do but attend to their social duties they are always prompt—even the men; women, of course, ...
— A Likely Story • William Dean Howells
... at the side of her girl friend. It frequently happened that they were vis-a-vis in a quadrille, when Lady Rosamond indulged in exchanging playful sallies of mirthful character. In appearance, manners and companionship those lovely girls might be considered as sisters. On more than one occasion had such a mistake been of concurrence, while Mary ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... there were the other visits to be got through. It was the first two on the list—those marked as to be paid "WITHOUT FAIL"—that most alarmed me. Prince Ivan Ivanovitch was a commander-in-chief, as well as old, wealthy, and a bachelor. Consequently, I foresaw that vis-a-vis conversation between him and myself—myself a sixteen-year-old student!—was not likely to be interesting. As for the Iwins, they too were rich—the father being a departmental official of high rank who had only on one occasion called at our house during my grandmother's time. Since her death, ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... l'hotel aux Trois Allies, vis-a-vis de la maison paternelle du celebre Mozart, lequel est nouvellement fourni et offre tous les comforts ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... consoling still, this being my first appearance at a ball, I was sure to be closely watched by many a fair rival. Already the music for the opening dance was sounding. I was engaged for this one, and had for my vis-a-vis my step-mother and an imposing gentleman in heavy regimentals. My partner was an ordinary man of the period, of medium height, with common-place moustache and neatly trimmed side-whiskers, who made several differently worded remarks of the same ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... Sueur, in upper town and lower town, about a mile and a half apart. As soon as the stage stopped at upper town, the deputy sheriff handed me the handbill through the window, announcing the theft and describing the thieves. I read it right in the face of my vis-a-vis, and after congratulating myself that I had no responsibility for the lost money, I remarked to the sheriff: "Of course, you don't expect to find these fellows on the main thoroughfare. They are probably now going down the Missouri in a canoe." ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... these words: wise, wiseacre, wisdom, wizard, witch, wit, unwitting, to wit, outwit, twit, witticism, witness, evidence, providence, invidious, advice, vision, visit, vista, visage, visualize, envisage, invisible, vis-a-vis, visor, revise, supervise, improvise, proviso, provision, view, review, survey, vie, envy, clairvoyance. Perhaps the last six should be disregarded as too exceptional in form to be clearly recognized. And certainly some words, as prudence ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... the greatest care should be devoted to the selection of a topic, good taste demanding that one should sedulously avoid any subject of which one's vis-a-vis may be in ignorance. Nor are the mere words alone to be considered. In the art of conversation much depends upon manner. The true conversationalist must, in opening, invest himself with an atmosphere of interest and solicitude. He must, as we say in French, ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... want to go back to her riki-tiki?" asked Lily's father, lifting a little girl on each knee, so that they might be vis-a-vis, when certainly his own had the advantage in beauty, as she answered, leaning against him, ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... on mine eyes unfurled In the deep night. I saw, or seemed to see, Two Centuries meet, and sit down vis-a-vis Across the great round table of the world: One with suggested sorrows in his mien, And on his brow the furrowed lines of thought; And one whose glad expectant presence brought A glow and radiance from ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... each about a mile in length, were squarely abreast in less than five minutes from the time of firing the first gun; and by now the furious bombardment of the Argyll by eight ships had ceased, for each one found it more profitable to deal with its vis-a-vis. But there was yet a deafening racket in the Argyll's conning-tower as small projectiles from the rear battle-ship abreast impinged on its steel walls; and Captain Blake, his ears ringing, his eyes streaming, half stunned by the noise, almost blinded and suffocated by the smoke ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... conversed in whispers when they spoke at all, and in the intervals between the courses they crumbled their bread upon the tablecloth in a manifest embarrassment. Not a word was exchanged between Paul and his vis-a-vis until, towards the close of the meal, the lady's attendant brought to her a small tray of silver with a fine little flacon of transparent Venetian ware, and a liqueur-glass upon it She had drunk nothing but water throughout the repast, ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... his peace for a time, and ate and drank what was set before him. He was conscious that his was scarcely a dinner-table manner. He was too eager, too deeply in earnest. People opposite were looking at them, Ernestine talked to her vis-a-vis. It was some time before he spoke again, when he did he took up the thread of their conversation where he had ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... favor to tell the band to strike up a quadrille? Lord Vincent, I presume they expect us to open the ball. Bee, my dear, you are engaged to Mr. Worth for this set. Be sure when he returns to come to the same set with us and be our vis-a-vis," ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... if you flung a pair of trousers over it," a dear friend had said of her, and on the present occasion she was deriving a good deal of pleasure from the situation. The attitude of a young lady of nineteen, about to emerge into society, vis-a-vis with a youngster sprouting out of his first long trousers, particularly when he happens to be the brother of a best friend, is a fairly obvious one. There is no excitement to be derived but a certain amount of exercise. A fisherman is necessarily ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... slipping in and out morning and evening, sewing busily away behind the bars upon frocks that would have graced a court ball, and lunching in familiar sociability with the family, sometimes having a bey or a captain or a pasha for a vis-a-vis when the men in the family dropped ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... habit which wealthy Florentines then indulged of setting their mansions within a few feet of those opposite. Houses—or rather fortresses—that must have cost fortunes and have been occupied by families of wealth and splendour were erected so close to their vis-a-vis that two carts could not pass abreast between them. Side by side contiguity one can understand, but not this other adjacence. Every ground floor window is barred like a gaol. Those bars tell us something of the ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... of a still more appalling indifference to everything. The drawing among the Print-room series—"It is always well to be well informed"—is a good instance. It reveals a ballroom with couples dancing a quadrille. A lady asks her partner: "Who's my sister's partner, vis-a-vis, with the star and riband?" He: "Oh, he—aw—he's Sir Somebody Something, who went somewhere or othaw to look after some scientific fellaw who was murdered, or something, by someone—!" The word othaw in this legend is itself pictorial. ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... et le Vol, may be considered. In medieval times, there are always a multitude of other titles to property besides production and saving. The title which is held in highest esteem for the time being is always because of this very extreme vis-a-vis of all other titles, strengthened ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... addresse ordinaire, c'est-a-dire sans presque jamais en toucher aucun. Tout au milieu de ce bel exercise, je m'avisai de faire une espece de pronostic pour calmer mon inquietude. Je me dis —je m'en vais jeter cette pierre contre l'arbre qui est vis-a-vis de moi: si je le touche, signe de salut: si je le manque, signe de damnation. Tout en disant ainsi, je jette ma pierre d'une main tremblante, et avec un horrible battement de coeur, mais si heureusement qu'elle ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... soin de moi; ce qui ne leur est point ordinaire vis-a-vis des chretiens. Il me tint fidele compagnie, et me mena le soir passer la nuit dans un de leurs camps, qui pouvoit avoir quatre-vingts et quelques tentes, rangees en forme de rues. Ces tentes sont faites avec ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... Observer to his vis-a-vis, who was studying the bill-of-fare on the other side of the table, "did you ever stop to consider in what an advanced age we are living? Have you ever studied the laws of the universe and ...
— Said the Observer • Louis J. Stellman
... the Regent, and if after quaffing the ale of Bow-street, procured by caricatures of Old Baily reports, you have sipped your hockheimer, while standing, scarce yet unbewildered, in the gas-light splendor reflected from the 'vis-a-vis' mirrors of Almack's, yet do not exalt yourself above all that is fleshly. Reflect that you, so lately unrivalled, can now see a EUGENE SUE whose brow is umbraged by laurels of a more luxuriant and lovely green. Cease ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... as that's my impinion," returned our vis-a-vis, with a judicious tipping of the head to one side as she soused her dripping paste-brush over the strips. "Not but what 'Woven on Fate's Loom' is a good story in its way, either, for them that likes that sort of story. ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... Probably playing whist or euchre. And now we began with waltzes, which passed into polkas, which subsided into other round dances; and then in very exhaustion we fell back in a grave quadrille. I danced with Hosanna; Wolfgang and Sarah were our vis-a-vis. We went through the same set that Noah and his three boys danced in the ark with their four wives, and which has been danced ever since, in every moment, on one or another spot of the dry earth, going round ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... d'agir envers nous en toute occasion et a laquelle Vous nous trouverez toujours prets a repondre, bien convaincus que c'est le moyen le plus sur pour eloigner tout sujet de complication et de mesentendu entre nos deux Gouvernements vis-a-vis des graves difficultes que nous avons a ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... and ideal part of us. Here again was the picture of King Charles on horseback, which had interested me at Warwick. It had, however, a peculiar and romantic charm from its position at the end of that long, dim corridor, vis-a-vis with the masque of Cromwell, which did not accompany it here, where it was but one ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... still, looking at her vis-a-vis of life, and feeling very uneasily what she had never felt before. She began therewith to ponder sundry extraordinary propositions about the inequalities of social condition and the relative duties of man ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... made to Marie Francoise Chartier, widow of the Sieur de Soulanges. Her seigniory included the larger portion of Gagetown parish in Queens county, the central point being opposite her old residence or, as the grant expresses it, "vis-a-vis ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... her whom you address, through the rampagious gallopading and ladies-chaining of excited quadrillers; and, the next, be so raised in pitch, from the sudden hush that falls on band and dancers alike, between the figures, that your opposite vis-a-vis, and the neighbouring side couples, can hear every syllable of your frantic declaration—much to their amusement ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... about the way you handle a spoon, Hedrick," said Cora languidly, and with at least a foundation of fact. "It is not the proper implement for decorating the cheeks. We all need nourishment, but it is so difficult when one sees a deposit of breakfast-food in the ear of one's vis-a-vis." ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington |
