"Coquetry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Jenneh would not be true to their sex if they did not show some marks of coquetry. Those who aim at fashion pass a ring or a glass ornament through the nostrils, whilst their poorer sisters content themselves with a bit ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... deliberately manipulating her public; and there must indeed have been a certain exhilaration in attaining results so considerable by means involving so little conscious effort. Mrs. Amyot's art was simply an extension of coquetry: she flirted ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... her beautiful eyes alight with sympathy, interest and frank liking in search of the sorely disappointed young officer. "There he is!" she cried, though too far away for him to hear, and then, with no more thought of coquetry than a kitten, with no more motive in the world than that of conveying to him an idea of her sorrow, her sympathy, her perhaps pardonable and exaggerated indignation at what she deemed an act of tyranny on part of his commander, with only an instant in which to express it all—her sweet face flushed, ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... offend his fastidious taste. She was wholly artless in her love of books and of discussing them; and nothing in their contents had disturbed the sweetest innocence he had ever met. Of the little arts of coquetry she was mistress by inheritance and much provocation, but her unawakened inner life breathed the simplicity and purity of the elemental roses that hovered about her in his thoughts. Her very unsusceptibility made the game more dangerous; if it piqued him—and he aspired to ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... felt like lashing herself for having felt like that and for having replied, in a spirit of pure coquetry, in a voice of studied, cool, ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... years ago, I took a simple child of twelve: to-day I bring back a young lady of nineteen—a woman, in point of fact—who, I have no doubt, understands more of flirtation than she does of French, and would rather graduate in coquetry than in crochet-work." ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... She was cheered, and cheered, and cheered; but treated the applause, when she retired, with great indifference. Fortunately, Sidonia had a rose in his button-hole, and he stepped forward and presented it to her. This gratified Carlotta, who bestowed on him a glance full of coquetry. ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... acceptable than the paint which hides it. He then tries to peruse the book, but the leaves have not been opened; he meets with some resistance, the living book must be read according to established rules, and the book-worm falls a victim to a coquetry, the monster which persecutes all those who make a business of love. As for thee, intelligent man, who hast read the few preceding lines, let me tell thee that, if they do not assist in opening thy eyes, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... one?" she said, bending over her nosegay as if absorbed in its arrangement. "They are so rare that I hardly know how to spare any." Which was a bit of innocent coquetry ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Valette, whose rank and expectations would have rendered an alliance equal, and, in many respects, advantageous. Mad. de la Tour also, favored the connexion; and, though Lucie had invariably discouraged their wishes, her aversion was considered as mere girlish caprice or coquetry, which would eventually yield to their solicitations and advice. De Valette's religion was the only obstacle which Mad. la Tour was willing to admit, and he possessed so many desirable qualifications, she was ready to pass that over, as a matter of minor ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... There was coquetry in every glance, as she watched him, from behind the carved bars of her low window, drop contentedly down on the bench beneath a scarred old cocoanut that stood directly before the door. She thought almost ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... and the line-back steer had many rivals. Almost daily he fought other steers of his own age and weight, who were paying altogether too marked attention to his crony. Although he never outwardly upbraided her for it, her coquetry was a matter of no small concern with him. At last one day in April she forced matters to an open rupture between them. A dark red, arch-necked, curly-headed animal came bellowing defiance across ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... whether Aniela is conscious of this, or whether it be her womanly instinct. Maybe she has heard so much about me from my aunt that she deems every word I say an oracle. She is decidedly not without coquetry. To-day I asked her what she wished for most in life. She answered, "To see Rome;" then her eyelashes fell, and she looked indescribably pretty. She sees that I like her, and it makes her happy. Her coquetry is charming, because it comes straight from a delighted heart, and tries to please the ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... labouring. "Do you love me? You have acknowledged it now and then, but always as if you did not mean it. Now you acknowledge that you may some day, and this time as if you did mean it. What is the truth? Tell me, without coquetry or dissembling, for I am in dead earnest, and—-" He paused, choked, and turned toward the window where but a few minutes before he had taken that solemn oath. The remembrance of it seemed to come back with the movement. Flushing with a new agitation, he wheeled upon ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... air of gaucherie, and impeded the even flow of conversation; but it is a fact capable of an amiable interpretation that ladies are not the worst disposed toward a new acquaintance of their own sex because she has points of inferiority. And Maggie was so entirely without those pretty airs of coquetry which have the traditional reputation of driving gentlemen to despair that she won some feminine pity for being so ineffective in spite of her beauty. She had not had many advantages, poor thing! and it must be admitted there was no pretension about her; her abruptness ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... the woman in her awoke. In an ecstasy of tenderness her arms crept around his neck, and she clung to him. A distant sea surf roared in her ears. For the first time in her life passion had drowned coquetry. ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... Laurel, Glory Laurel, Common, Perfidy Laurel, Ground, Perseverance Laurel, Mountain, Ambition Lavender, Distrust Leaves, Dead, Sadness Lemon, Zest Lemon Blossom, Fidelity Lettuce, Cold-heartedness Lichen, Dejection Lilac, Field, Humility Lilac, White, Innocence Lily, Day, Coquetry Lily, Imperial, Majesty Lily, White, Purity Lily, Yellow, Falsehood Linden, Conjugal Love Lint, I feel my obligations Liverwort, Confidence Lobelia, Malevolence Locust, True, Elegance London, Pride, Frivolity Lote Tree, Concord Lotus, Eloquence Lotus Flower, Estranged Love ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... she was still up and why she was alone. She had been visiting a school friend, and the maid who called for her wanted to get a loaf of bread from the bakery before going up stairs. She related the story of her meeting with the dog with so much coquetry and detail that Daniel was delighted at the contrast between this rodomontade and the quaking anxiety in which he first ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... artless creature in whom nature lives and smiles. Woman restores us to communication with the eternal spring in which God reflects Himself. The candour of a child, unconscious of its own beauty and seeing God clear as the daylight, is the great revelation of the ideal, just as the unconscious coquetry of the flower is a proof that Nature adorns ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... of succeeding to Evelyn in his affections had stifled the very germs of coquetry, and my manner to him was unmistakable; nor was it without evident dissatisfaction that Mr. Basil Bainrothe surveyed the ruin of ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... Full of dangerous coquetry he knew her to be—she had been so from a child; and though this was culpable in a way, he and most others had made more than due allowance, because mother-care and loving surveillance had been withdrawn so soon. For years she had been the spoiled ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... how profound an impression this strange scene made upon my mind, so different from any former experience of my life,—its freedom from conventionality, the lack of all false modesty, the absolute absence of any touch of coquetry or conscious allurement. ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... pleased them. Her eyes were fine, and full of coquetry. Her figure was all that a woman's should be. Yes, the camp liked the look of her, and so it set out to ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... him the lemons with a little gesture expressing amusement, triumph, and a dash of coquetry. Laurie's eyes glowed as he looked at her. For the second time, in her actual presence, a sharp thrill shot through him. Oh, if she were always like this!—gay, happy, without that incredible, unbelievable background of tragedy and mystery! He turned his mind resolutely ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... Rossini does not dye his hair, but wears the most wiggy of wigs. When he goes to mass he puts one wig on top of the other, and if it is very cold he puts still a third one on, curlier than the others, for the sake of warmth. No coquetry about him! ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... hand, few can find objection to the natural, friendly and even affectionate letter from a young girl to a young man she has been "brought up" with. It is such a letter as she would write to her brother. There is no hint of coquetry or self-consciousness, no word from first to last that might not be shouted aloud before her whole family. Her letter may begin "Dear" or even "Dearest Jack." Then follows all the "home news" she can think of that might possibly interest ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... Ghunj" for which we have no better word than "coquetry." But see vol. v. 80. It corresponds with the Latin crissare for women and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... known the girl for several years, had danced with her on many a feast day, and never lost an opportunity to whisper the old, old story in her willing ear. Others had done the like, but the dark-eyed senorita is an adept in the art of coquetry, and there you are. But Enrique swore a great oath he would know. Yes, he would. He would lay siege to her as he had never done before. He would become un oso grande. Just wait until the branding was ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... found the rites homely and naked, very much like those of our own Presbyterians. There was a luxury about this building that you would hardly expect to meet among a people so simple, which quite puts the coquetry of our own carpeted, cushioned, closet-like places of worship to shame. This is the summer church of Vevey, another being used for winter. This surpasses the refinement of the Roman ladies, who had their summer ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... proprietor of his wife In Rome justice and religion always rank second to politics Kings only desire to be obeyed when they command Laws will only be as so many black lines on white paper Love-affair between Mademoiselle de la Valliere and the King Madame de Montespan had died of an attack of coquetry Not show it off was as if one only possessed a kennel That Which Often It is Best to Ignore Violent passion had changed to mere friendship When women rule their reign is always stormy and troublous Wife: property or of furniture, useful to his house Won for himself ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Court Memoirs of France • David Widger
... live with you and to please you no longer. You can be pleased with nothing when you are not pleased with your wife. One of the "Spectators" is very just that says, "A man ought always to be upon his guard against spleen and a too severe philosophy; a woman, against levity and coquetry." If we go to Naples, I will make no acquaintance there of any kind, and you will be in a place where a variety of agreeable objects will dispose you to be ever pleased. If such a thing is possible, this will secure our everlasting ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... made to him for the return of different emigrants: in this way he left me, in the midst of my disgrace, the pleasure of being useful, and I retain a most grateful recollection to him for it. It must be confessed, that in the actions of women, there is always a little coquetry, and that the greater part of their very virtues are mixed with the desire of pleasing, and of being surrounded by friends, whose attachment to them is heightened by the feeling of obligation. In this ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... the men was often a mass of effeminate curls, their chins were always shaven, and many of them had flushed or coloured cheeks. Many of the women were very pretty, and all were dressed with elaborate coquetry. As they swept by beneath, he saw ecstatic faces with eyes ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... much need. Their jealous hatred was displayed on every occasion; and the amiable Josephine, whose only fault was being too much of the woman, was continually tormented by sad presentiments. Carried away by the easiness of her character, she did not perceive that the coquetry which enlisted for her so many defenders also supplied her implacable enemies with weapons to use ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... well that her woman's heart must have told her ere this how dear she was to him, and it was no egotism or conceit that prompted him to the belief that she would not show such pleasure in his coming if he were utterly indifferent to her. Coquetry was something Nellie Bayard seemed deficient in; she was frank and truthful ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... Probably five years afterwards. By that time he must have got tired of his desert and she of her coquetry.' ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... parting from him in the gardens had been decidedly abrupt, and possibly it signified more serious offence than at the time he attributed to her. It was so difficult to be sure of anything in regard to Miss Nunn. If another woman had acted thus he would have judged it coquetry. But perhaps Rhoda was quite incapable of anything of that kind. Perhaps she took herself so very seriously that the mere suspicion of banter in his talk had moved her to grave resentment. Or again, she might be half ashamed to meet him ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... Luigi and began a tale, first about Vittorio and his escapades and then about Loretta and her coquetry, which Luigi strangled with a look, and which he did not discuss or repeat to me, except to remark—"They have started in to bite, Signore," the meaning of which I could but guess at. At another time he and his associates concocted a scheme by which Vittorio's ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... (1684-1721), the melancholy youth from French Flanders, who began by painting St. Nicholases at three francs a week and his board, but who soon invented a new manner and became famous as the Peintre des Scenes Galantes. These scenes of coquetry, frivolity and amorous dalliance, with their patched, powdered and scented ladies and gallants, toying with life in a land where, like that of the Lotus Eaters, it seems always afternoon, he clothes with a refined and delicate vesture of grace and fascination. He has a poetic touch ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... womanly in an undefinable way. She was sweeter looking in all ways—-Dick recognized that much at a glance. Her eyes rested upon him, and then more briefly upon Greg, in utter friendliness free from coquetry. ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... French comedy; lively and playful, yet elegant and graceful; entering with ardour into amusements, yet capable of deep feeling and serious reflection: fond of admiration and flattery, yet innocent and modest; full of petty artifice and coquetry, yet natural and unaffected in affairs of importance; capricious and giddy in appearance, but warm-hearted and affectionate in reality. It is a character to which there is a kind of approximation among many French women; and if it were as well supported by them ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... fixing on him an eager gaze, made him sit by her side. On touching that much-loved hand, the young man started, and a sudden shivering ran through his veins. The maiden perceived it, and a gleam of satisfaction, and almost coquetry, sparkled in her eyes. Poor woman's heart! Even in the most solemn moments she is always a coquette. Such is ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... queen. A greater contrast to Mrs. Vrain than her stepdaughter can scarcely be imagined: the one was a frivolous, volatile fairy, the other a dignified and reserved woman. She also was arrayed in black garments, but these were made in the plainest manner, and showed none of the coquetry of woe such as had characterised Mrs. Vrain's elaborate costume. The look of sorrow on the face of Diana was in keeping with her mourning apparel, and she welcomed Lucian with a subdued courtesy which prepossessed ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... so! I fear that hard old man!" whispered the timid woman, as she dropped her eyes before Alan Hawke's ardent glances. He had noted the growing touch of coquetry in her dress; he measured the tell-tale quiver of her voice, and he smiled tenderly when she shyly showed him the diamond bracelet, securely hidden ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... like Mr. Bopp, than she began to discover that she did; and so far from desiring "to slap him," a tendency to regard him with peculiar good-will and tenderness developed itself, much to her own surprise; for with all her coquetry and seeming coldness, Dolly had a right womanly heart of her own, though she had never acknowledged the fact till August Bopp looked at her with so much love and longing in his honest eyes. Then she found a little fear mingling with her regard, felt a strong desire ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... Medicean park along with himself—who found his Latin prose style elegant and masculine; and the terrible Joseph Scaliger, who was to pronounce him totally ignorant of Latinity, was at a comfortable distance in the next century. But when was the fatal coquetry inherent in superfluous authorship ever quite contented with the ready praise of friends? That critical supercilious Politian—a fellow-browser, who was far from amiable—must be made aware that the solid secretary showed, in his leisure hours, a pleasant fertility in verses, which indicated pretty ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... Candide could not help making encomiums upon their beauty and graceful carriage. "The creatures are well enough," said the senator. "I make them my companions, for I am heartily tired of the ladies of the town, their coquetry, their jealousy, their quarrels, their humors, their meannesses, their pride, and their folly. I am weary of making sonnets, or of paying for sonnets to be made, on them; but, after all, these two girls begin to grow ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... the fashion of men, with a cloth cap, rusty pea-jacket and sea-boots (the last, for some mysterious reason, being slit up the sides, as a brief skirt disclosed); and her grizzled hair was cut short, in the manner of men, but yet with some of the coquetry of women. In truth, as we soon found it was her boast that she was the equal of men, her complaint that the foolish way of the world (which she said had gone all askew) would not let her skipper a schooner, which, as she maintained in a deep bass voice, she was more capable ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... him straight in the eye without sign of coquetry or softness, "you know very well you could never be to me what your father is to your mother; and one of the biggest reasons is that I am not to you what your mother is to your father and never could be. You are not in love with me nor am I in love with you. I have liked you a ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... freely and forever chosen." This is an old German instinct. The soul in this race is at once primitive and serious. Women are disposed to follow the noble dream called duty. "Thus, supported by innocence and conscience, they introduce into love a profound and upright sentiment, abjure coquetry, vanity, and flirtation; they do not lie, they are not affected. When they love they are not tasting a forbidden fruit, but are binding themselves for their whole life. Thus understood, love becomes almost ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... for me?" she said, with the first touch of coquetry which I had seen in her lighting up ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... is it in the right place?" and she looked at him with a glance exhibiting the most curious commingling of naivete and coquetry. ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... his first appreciable concern for her comfort, and she gave him full credit. Coquetry was no part of Miss Alicia's equipment, but no woman likes to be utterly neglected on the care-taking side, or to be transformed ruthlessly into a man-companion whose well-being may be brusquely ignored. And ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... courage of Tahoser. Then she regained confidence, and said to herself that her beauty, her youth, her love would surely at last move that insensible heart. She would be so sweet, so attentive, so devoted, she would use so much art and coquetry in dressing herself, that certainly Poeri would not be able to resist. Then she promised herself to reveal to him that the humble servant-maid was a girl of high rank, possessing slaves, estates, and ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... feminine coquetry, put on a white waistcoat, which suited him better with the coat than a black one, sent for the hairdresser to give him a finishing touch with the curling iron, for he had preserved his hair, and started very early in order to show his ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... leaving my lady, somewhat silenced and shamefaced, at the door. He had a handsome stone put up for his two children, which may be seen in Castlewood churchyard to this very day; and before a year was out his own name was upon the stone. In the presence of Death, that sovereign ruler, a woman's coquetry is scared; and her jealousy will hardly pass the boundaries of that grim kingdom. 'Tis entirely of the earth that passion, and expires in the cold blue ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... time other dangerous resources which may tempt the unoccupied and uninterested girl into their excitements. Those whose minds are of too active and vivacious a nature to live on without an object, may too easily find one in the dangerous and selfish amusements of coquetry—in the seeking for admiration, and its enjoyment when obtained. The very woman who might have been the most happy herself in the enjoyment of intellectual pursuits, and the most extensively useful to others, is often the one who, from misdirected energies and feeling, will pursue most ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... It is an extraordinary work, drunken with heroism, colossal, half barbaric, trivial, and sublime. An Homeric hero struggles among the sneers of a stupid crowd, a herd of brawling and hobbling ninnies. A violin solo, in a sort of concerto, describes the seductions, the coquetry, and the degraded wickedness of woman. Then strident trumpet-blasts sound the attack; and it is beyond me to give an idea of the terrible charge of cavalry that follows, which makes the earth tremble ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... been made to her whole relations, from first to last, with Ladislaw. It is not easy to conceive anything more touchingly beautiful than these, more perfectly in harmony with her whole nature. Of anything approaching either coquetry or prudery she is incapable. The utter absence of all self-consciousness, whether of external beauty or inward loveliness; the ethereal purity, the childlike trustfulness, the instinctive recognition of all that is true and earnest and high in ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... wrote every week. Raphael, Esther never met nor heard from directly. She found Addie a sweet, lovable girl, full of frank simplicity and unquestioning piety. Though dazzlingly beautiful, she had none of the coquetry which Esther, with a touch of jealousy, had been accustomed to associate with beauty, and she had little of the petty malice of girlish gossip. Esther summed her up as Raphael's heart without his head. It was unfair, for Addie's own head was by no means despicable. ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... in the wars of the Fronde. The breach was scarcely practicable, and the best of the besieging army had recoiled from it with great loss. The Black Mousquetaires stood by in all the coquetry of scarf, and plume, and fringed scented gloves, laughing louder at each repulse of the Linesmen. The soldiers heard them and gnashed their teeth. At last there was a murmur, and then a shout—'En avant les Gants Glaces!' They ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... suspected it, though heaven knows he did not lack for self-esteem. Perhaps it was this very self-esteem that blinded him here to the appalling truth. Yet in the end understanding came to him. When the precise significance of the fond leer of that painted harridan's repellent coquetry was borne in upon him he felt the skin of his body creep and roughen But he dissembled craftily. He was a venal scamp, after all, and in the court of Hanover he saw opportunities to employ his gifts and his knowledge of the great world in such a way as to win to eminence. ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... poor dear. He's very good; but women do not fall in love with him. You, on the contrary, are rich and attractive. You'll just have to take my word for that," she added without a trace of coquetry. "And so—and so—and so, if I were you, my dear Cousin Max, I should give orders to have my bag packed at once, and take a very slow, tiresome train that leaves here at twelve-forty-something, and not even wait for ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... so gentle with him! No scorn, no offended dignity, no displeasure even. She, who could punish insolence with anybody, was never hard upon the humble admirer—only too soft, in fact, with all her basic firmness, and incapable of the hard-hearted coquetry that so commonly makes beauty vile. "Face of waxen angel, with paw of desert beast"—that ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... gently, there was something she wished to say. She would not deny her love, her great love for him. She realized that she had loved him from the first. Her resistance had been part of her illness—it was not coquetry, he must not think that. Now her eyes were opened and her heart was singing with joy. She was the happiest woman in the world at the thought that she was ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... most of the houses was that nearly all, although old and badly built of brick or wood, affected an air of coquetry, at least in the painting that embellished the doors and windows. This attracted the eye like a sign. And in truth it was a sign, for in default of other preparations, the bright paint gave a promise of cleanliness ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... conduct to be pursued by Reubon. The note of Celeste is one of those trifling incidents which are too small for calculation, which may have arisen from the trifling motive assigned. Perhaps from a little spirit of coquetry, perhaps a mere piece of sport. He shall, therefore, take no further notice of it; not even to go out this morning to see her, as he had solicited and engaged; and, when he shall next meet her, make some slight apology. Thus the thing ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... the grace of her head, and attracts admiration for them. A certain harmony between her manners and her dress made her seem so much younger than she was that Madame du Gua thought herself beyond the mark in supposing her over twenty. The coquetry of her apparel, evidently worn to please, was enough to inspire hope in the young man's breast; but Mademoiselle de Verneuil bowed to him, as she took her place, with a slight inclination of her head and without looking at him, putting him aside with an apparently light-hearted carelessness which ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... lit either face. She read condemnation in both pairs of eyes. For the first time in her life she felt daunted, humiliated. She knew nothing more beyond the fact that in deliberate coquetry she had pitted brother against brother, and that something cruel and tragical had happened for which she was being judged. Neither spoke. She summoned her outer dignity, tossed her pretty head, and went out by the end door which Austin in cold politeness held open ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... the invalid in her caressing tones, drooping her head with a motion full of coquetry. "Monsieur is to me a deputy from the world. Since I was twenty years old, monsieur, I have not seen a salon, or a party, or a ball. And I must tell you that I love dancing, and adore the theatre, especially the opera. I imagine everything by thought! I read a great ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... like coquetry. In any other girl it would have been coquetry, Pendleton decided. But, looking into the face before him now, Pendleton knew that it was not coquetry. He knew, too, suddenly, why Pollyanna had seemed so different ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... light coquetry, wholly French, and she exercised it indiscriminately, much to the delight of the old beaux, for she loved to please, to be admired; she had an innocent desire that all men should think her quite beautiful and irresistible. Even her husband had never seen her in an unbecoming deshabille; she coquetted ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... farmer's wife to the poorest cottager who earns her black bread by labour in the fields, would as soon think of adopting male attire as of innovating on the immemorial mode du pays, yet the quality of the materials allows scope for wealth and female coquetry to show themselves. Thus the invariable mode de Broons, with its trifling difference in form, which in the eye of the inhabitants made it as different as light from darkness from the mode de ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... be missed only by the over-sophisticated. Those young-men, who are sniggering over some bad joke in the corner, for instance, are positively vulgar, as is that young lady who is indulging in practical coquetry; but, on the whole, there is little of this; and, even our hostess, a silly woman, devoured with the desire of being what neither her social position, education, habits nor notions fit her to be, is less obtrusive, bustling, ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... woman may be able to keep a cook, may be finely educated, may possess the sentiment of coquetry, may have the right to pass whole hours in her boudoir lying on a sofa, and may live a life of soul, she must have at least six thousand francs a year if she lives in the country, and twenty thousand if she lives at ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... peculiar softness of her disposition and her pre-eminent femininity. There was that about her which suggested the luxury of love. He felt as if somehow she could be reached why, he could not have said. She did not bear any outward marks of her previous experience. There were no evidences of coquetry about her, but still he "felt that he might." He was inclined to make the venture on his first visit, but business called him away; he left after four days and was absent from Cleveland for three weeks. Jennie thought he was gone for good, ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... the room, however, instinct decided for her that any approach to coquetry would be a mistake, if she sought to make a good impression at the beginning. It was with an air of amiable candour, then, that she said, 'Monsieur desire to speak with me.' She added ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... such a story might mean to Reggie, for he had never made any secret of his whole-hearted devotion to Gertrude, but certainly she did not spare Gertrude, and to do Reggie's aunt justice, she fully believed most of the stories of flirtation and coquetry. ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... alert, and this woman of the East marvels at the women of the West, 'the beautiful worldly women of the West,' whom she sees walking in the Cascine, 'taking the air so consciously attractive in their brilliant toilettes, in the brilliant coquetry of their manner!' She finds them 'a little incomprehensible,' 'profound artists in all the subtle intricacies of fascination,' and asks if these 'incalculable frivolities and vanities and coquetries and caprices' are, to us, an essential ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... thorough. She realized with gratitude that Constance, whom she suspected of knowing more than she indicated, had given her a wonderful opportunity of renewing her appeal to her husband, and she was determined to use it to the full. Incapable—as are all women of her type—of coquetry, Mary yet knew the value of her beauty, and was too intelligent not to see that both it and she had been at a grave disadvantage of late. She understood dimly that she was confronted by one of the fundamental problems of marriage, the difficulty of making an equal success of love and motherhood. ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... with her large, clear eyes, and that absence of coquetry or changed expression in her beautiful face which might have stood for indifference or dignity as she said: "I don't know. I ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... the charm we feel in stretches of untrodden snow, in hiding wood-flowers, in disappearing pathways that seem to lead to horizons without bourn. The world is so made that the engines of labor, the most active agencies, are everywhere concealed. Nature affects a sort of coquetry in masking her operations. It costs you pains to spy her out, ingenuity to surprise her, if you would see anything but results and penetrate the secrets of her laboratories. Likewise in human society, the forces which move for good remain invisible, and even in ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... good graces, either by surprising them into laughter and good-humour, or appeasing them by submissive and an artful humility. She had been a coquette from her earliest days; had long learned the value of her bright eyes, and tried experiments in coquetry upon rustics and country 'squires until she should have opportunity to conquer a larger world in ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... While this coquetry or shyness is exhibited by John Shark, the whole after-part of the ship is so clustered with heads that not an inch of spare room is to be had for love or money. The rigging, the mizen-top, and even the gaff, out to the very peak, the hammock-nettings and the quarters, ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... need your kindness more than I might seem to need it. Good night!" and even then she gave me a rose, with the same coquetry, I doubt not, that had once made Colonel Jere Lansdale quick to think of his pistols when another evoked it. Only now it masked her weariness, her sense of desperate desolation. I took the rose and kissed her hand. ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... frequently, almost every evening, to sit with the invalid. Miss Broadhurst accompanied her mother, for she did not like to go out with any other chaperon—it was disagreeable to spend her time alone at home, and most agreeable to spend it with her friend Miss Nugent. In this she had no design, no coquetry; Miss Broadhurst had too lofty and independent a spirit to stoop to coquetry: she thought that, in their interview at the gala, she understood Lord Colambre, and that he understood her—that he was not inclined to court her for ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... to dance, mademoiselle—learn to dance 'superbly'?" repeated the danseur after his applicant. "Well, I should say no, most decidedly—never. You have not a particle of chic, coquetry: you were made for tragedy, mademoiselle, and not for the airy, indefinable graces of my art. You should devote yourself to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... with surprise. When he and I dwelt there together, the pavilion had been a temple of misogyny. And now, one of the detested sex was to be installed under its roof. I remembered one or two particulars, a few notes of daintiness and almost of coquetry which had struck me the day before as I surveyed the preparations in the house; their purpose was now clear, and I thought myself dull not to have ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... reply through his teeth. "God has given you women a plentiful supply of coquetry to start with, and on the top of that you have the milliner and the jeweller to help you; but do not think we men ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... which would have seemed out of place to those of fifty years ago; but this is merely because the life they see around them is more "earnest." It presents to them scenes of sterner significance than were to be found among the coquetry and dissipation of the fashionable world or the dull courtesies of a country house. But that they do not transcend this outward life we have one crucial proof. Just in so far as each of us learns to regard his own individual being from within, and not from without, does ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green
... to her wish, Hob Miller arrived on his strong-built mare, bearing on a pillion behind him the lovely Mysie, with cheeks like a peony-rose, (if Dame Glendinning had ever seen one,) spirits all afloat with rustic coquetry, and a profusion of hair as black as ebony. The beau-ideal which Dame Glendinning had been bodying forth in her imagination, became unexpectedly realized in the buxom form of Mysie Happer, whom, in the course of half an hour, she settled upon as the maiden who was to fix the ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... calm, the magnitude of the offer she was making stunned me so that I could scarcely speak. There was such an extraordinary simplicity and generosity in her manner that it appeared to me more enthralling and bewildering than the most finished coquetry I had ever known. She gave me opportunities that the most ardent lover could in his wildest dream desire, and with the remoteness in her eyes and her still voice she deprived them of all hope. It kindled in me a flame that made my throat dry when I ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... subject of modesty, it may perhaps be necessary to inquire whether there is such a thing. Is it anything in a woman but well understood coquetry? Is it anything but a sentiment that claims the right, on a woman's part, to dispose of her own body as she chooses, as one may well believe, when we consider that half the women in the world go ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... dashed in pieces the ship that was black with men, women, and children. But what shall we say of those billows of human life, of which we are ourselves a part, that surge over the graves of its own dead with dances and laughter and many a coquetry, with panting chase for gain and preference, and pious regrets and tender condolences for the thousands that died yesterday—and need not ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... threw at most present, and the manner in which he showed his teeth, would not be likely to permit to a stranger. The belt was opened, and Maso laid a glittering necklace of precious stones, in which rubies and emeralds vied with other gems of price, with some of a dealer's coquetry, under the strong light ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... up in its own glory; hair of the colour of the reflection from a furnace; a gallantry of adornment producing in herself and in others a tremor of voluptuousness, the half-revealed nudity betraying a disdainful desire to be coveted at a distance by the crowd; an ineradicable coquetry; the charm of impenetrability, temptation seasoned by the glimpse of perdition, a promise to the senses and a menace to the mind; a double anxiety, the one desire, the other fear. He had just seen these things. He had just ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... brightness and its suavity; its pretty shallowness and sunshine; its white, and blue, and yellow, and red, and green and orange; all very trim and fanciful, all very smart and delicate; full of finesse and laughter, and breathing out to me of the twentieth century the coquetry of a woman in 1500 B.C. After the terrific masculinity of Medinet-Abu, after the great freedom of the Ramesseum, and the grandeur of its colossus, the manhood of all the ages concentrated in granite, the temple at Deir-el-Bahari ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... want of comprehension, I may call it, in reference to propriety of conduct. A certain nobleness, and freedom from all that was petty and cold, kept her from coquetry. At the same time she had a womanish vanity about her admirers, and entire freedom in speaking of them. In vain I endeavored to insinuate the unpleasant truth, that the fervency of her adorers was no compliment to her. She could not understand ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... Anna began. She had stopped just within the door, her body and her face stiff with repression, her teeth closed hard and the white lights flashing sharply in the pale, clean blue of her eyes. Her bearing was full of the strange coquetry of anger and of fear, the stiffness, the bridling, the suggestive movement underneath the rigidness of forced control, all the queer ways the passions have to show ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein
... of Gertie, so pretty, so girlish, so understandable, so full of innocent winning coquetry. I softened. Could any one help preferring her to me, who was strange, weird, and perverse—too outspoken to be engaging, devoid of beauty and endearing little ways? It was my own misfortune and nobody's fault that my singular individuality excluded me from the ordinary run of youthful joyous-heartednesses, ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... the letter proved that Randolph had intruded on her acquaintance, and she had objected from coyness or coquetry; and that when he persisted, she was so enraged that she flew into a passion and wilfully ended ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... mademoiselle," said D'Artagnan, "what M. de Bragelonne said of you, at Antibes, when he already meditated death: 'If pride and coquetry have misled her, I pardon her while despising her. If love has produced her error, I pardon her, but I swear that no one could have loved her as I ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... that coquetry which somehow or other is in the heart of every young girl, "I have often been sorry that I am not able to read, but never so much so as when your housekeeper brought me your letter. I kept the paper in my hands, ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... retired to the gaming tables. Anne had never dreamed that the genus man could be so little stirring, and although she was flattered by their attentions, particularly by those of Mr. Abergenny, and her natural coquetry was often responsive, for mere youth must have its way, she was appalled by her general sense of disappointment and wondered what her future was to be. She had no desire to return to her manor, and for a season in London she cared as little. She would have been glad to remain on Nevis, but ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... particular pains with her toilette, and looking at herself in the tall glass of her wardrobe, reflected, "I do not want to love Count Styvens. Then I ought not to want to be any more attractive to-night than usual. Am I a wicked girl? My cousin Maurice says, 'Coquetry is the cowardly woman's weapon, and I love you, little cousin, because you are not ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... certainly looked beautiful in her glittering accoutrements, set off by her jet-black shining coat. With an air of demure abstraction she permitted me to mount her, and even for a hundred yards or so indulged in a mincing maidenly amble that was not without a touch of coquetry. Encouraged by this, I addressed a few terms of endearment to her, and in the exuberance of my youthful enthusiasm I even confided to her my love for Consuelo and begged her to be "good" and not disgrace herself ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... called, she at once grew lively and amiable, and used her eyes for saying things which I could not then understand. It was only later, when she one day informed me in conversation that the only thing a girl was allowed to indulge in was coquetry—coquetry of the eyes, I mean—that I understood those strange contortions of her features which to every one else had seemed a matter for no surprise at all. Lubotshka also had begun to wear what was almost a long dress—a dress which ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... without a trace of coquetry, rather with a certain timidity that feared possible rebuff. "That's always been my difficulty," she went on, "till now. Everybody spoils me. I always get my own way. In the convent I was indulged and flattered, ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... really controversial—a bit. It's quite personal!" She was the most extraordinary girl; she could speak such words as those without the smallest look of added consciousness coming into her face, without the least supposable intention of coquetry, or any visible purpose of challenging the young ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... Authority. Camellia Spotless purity. Cissus Changeable. Centaurea Your looks deceive me. Cineraria Singleness of heart. Daisy, Field I will think of it. Dahlia Dignity. Daffodil Unrequited love. Dandelion Coquetry. Everlasting Always remembered. Everlasting Pea Wilt thou go with me. Ebony Blackness. Fuchsia Humble love. Foxglove Insincerity. Fern Sincerity. Fennel Strength. Forget-me-not For ever remembered. Fraxinella Fire. Geranium, Ivy Fond of dancing. Geranium, Oak ...
— Your Plants - Plain and Practical Directions for the Treatment of Tender - and Hardy Plants in the House and in the Garden • James Sheehan
... his feeling was the very sublimity of maiden innocence if it were real; if not, well, the coquetry was ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... The question with her, now, was how best to voice herself—the self that Jude in no wise knew. Womanlike, she did not want to plunge into what might prove an abyss. She wanted to take her own way, but with a half-unconscious coquetry she desired to drag her captives ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... nomenclature of Oceania into a veritable litany. One island visited may be especially noticed; it was named the island of la Gente Hermosa on account of the beauty of its inhabitants, and of the fair colour and coquetry of its women, who, as the Spaniards declared, even bore away the palm for grace and attractiveness from their own fellow-countrywomen of Lima, whose beauty is proverbial. This island, according to Quiros, was situated upon the same parallel as Santa Cruz, to ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... only on rare occasions when the river is very low, and till lately it was a popular superstition that these rocks were placed there by Providence, anxious to impart a moral to young women addicted to coquetry and practical jests. To this day many boatmen on the Rhine regard these rocks with awe, and it is told that now and then seven wraiths are to be seen there; it is even asserted that sometimes these apparitions sing in strains as delectable as ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... little of one another; you will be shooting most of the time," she said—with the very faintest hint of challenge—too delicate, too impersonal to savour of coquetry. But the germ of ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... had the air of a Queen-Mother, was in dark dress studiously arranged to be a little older, a little more massive and magnificent than a woman of the Contessa's age required to wear (and which, accordingly, threw up all the more, though this, to do her justice, was a coquetry more or less unintentional, her unfaded beauty); and the other, an impersonation of youth, contemplated the world by her side with that open-eyed and sovereign gaze, proud and modest, but without any of the shyness ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... a thin-veiled mockery in her look? Why, poor fool, has she not mocked you from the first? You dream of her lips. Were not their smiles but coquetry and derision? ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... this obvious patter; but I had under-estimated the average human capacity for swallowing flattery. Instead of dismissing his fulsome nonsense with a contemptuous smile, Lady Georgina perked herself up with a conscious air of coquetry, and asked for more. 'Yes, they were delightful days in Vienna,' she said, simpering; 'I was young then, Count; I enjoyed life ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen |
