"Parterre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the garden, and the Bird no sooner began to warble than he was surrounded by nightingales, chaffinches, larks, linnets, goldfinches, and every species of birds of the country. The branch of the Singing Tree was no sooner set in the midst of the parterre, a little distance from the house, than it took root and in a short time became a large tree, the leaves of which gave as harmonious a concert as those of the parent from which it was gathered. A large basin of beautiful ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... with the applause which had followed her and her sister through England, it appears she was put to flight by an English lady still more lovely in the eyes of the Parisians. A certain Mrs. Pitt took a box at the opera opposite the countess; and was so much handsomer than her ladyship, that the parterre cried out that this was the real English angel, whereupon Lady Coventry quitted Paris in a huff. The poor thing died presently of consumption, accelerated, it was said, by the red and white paint with which she plastered those luckless ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "I'll explore the gay parterre," said Dick. Then he turned to Cicely and took hold of her chin between his thumb and finger. "Look here, don't you worry any more, old lady," he said kindly. "You've been a little fool, and you've had a knock. Tell Muriel about ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... a species of wild mignonette with a perfume like that of commingled strawberries and lemon. Now and then we paused beneath the thick green foliage of the Magnolia grandiflora, as it towered in stately grandeur above its sister flowers, acknowledged queen of the parterre, and dispensing with genuine Oriental profusion its rare and delicious perfume. A step farther and our gaze was riveted by the modest purity of the spotless japonica, the fragrant tuberose and Cape jessamine, the graceful passion-flower, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... having many capacious recesses. Of these, three or four of the largest constituted the play-ground. It was level, and covered with fine hard gravel. I well remember it had no trees, nor benches, nor anything similar within it. Of course it was in the rear of the house. In front lay a small parterre, planted with box and other shrubs; but through this sacred division we passed only upon rare occasions indeed—such as a first advent to school or final departure thence, or perhaps, when a parent or friend having called for us, we joyfully took ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... 100 So proud, so grand; of that stupendous air, Soft and agreeable come never there. Greatness, with Timon, dwells in such a draught As brings all Brobdignag before your thought. To compass this, his building is a town, His pond an ocean, his parterre a down: Who but must laugh, the master when he sees, A puny insect, shivering at a breeze! Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around! The whole a labour'd quarry above ground; 110 Two Cupids squirt before: a lake behind Improves the ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... silent and confused in the parterre, near Joseph. There was a row of seats slightly elevated and made of common plank, called loges; one of these nearest the stage was adorned by a golden eagle, from which some pitiful drapery was suspended; this was called the king's loge, but, ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... natural one. Her complexion was beautifully fair, with the slightest tint of carnation suffused over the cheek. Her lips! sweet lips! "that make us sigh even to have seen such." Her glossy hair, which was bound with a kalemkeir or painted handkerchief, representing a whole parterre of flowers, fell in loose curls upon her shoulders, and down her back: she wore a short black velvet jacket, embroidered with gold lace; trowsers of sky blue silk; an under-jacket of pink crape, and one of those ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... was peering with quick, excited gaze, through the thick foliage of the park; his fine black eyes were sweeping the parterre ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... marvellous production like a parterre of flowers? It would be downright profanation to ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... mind resembled a fertile, but thin soil. There was a quick, but not a strong vegetation, of whatever chanced to be thrown upon it. No deep root could be struck. The oak of the forest did not grow there; but the elegant shrubbery and the fragrant parterre appeared in gay succession. It has been generally circulated and believed that he was a mere fool in conversation[1216]; but, in truth, this ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... opened showed her a table piled with heavy books; a vast wardrobe with glass doors showing a line of dresses coloured like autumn and of fabrics so exquisite that they might be imagined sentient; under a shelf beneath it a long straight line, regular as the border plants in a parterre, of glossy wooden shoe-trees rising out of rather large shoes made from many kinds of leather and velvets and satins; and in the carpets and the hangings a profound and vibrant blue. Accusingly she exclaimed into the emptiness, "Marion!" and darted into ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... playing "Hernani" at the Theatre-Francais since February 25. The receipts for each performance have been five thousand francs. The public every night hisses all the verses. It is a rare uproar. The parterre hoots, the boxes burst with laughter. The actors are abashed and hostile; most of them ridicule what they have to say. The press has been practically unanimous every morning in making fun of the piece and the author. If I enter a reading ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... Sontag. She has in her rendering some entirely new broderies, with which she produces great effect, but not in the same way as Paganini. Perhaps the cause lies in this, that hers is a smaller genre. She seems to exhale the perfume of a fresh bouquet of flowers over the parterre, and, now caresses, now plays with her voice; but she rarely moves to tears. Radziwill, on the other hand, thinks that she sings and acts the last scene of Desdemona in Othello in such a manner that nobody can refrain from weeping. To-day ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... "A parterre box," Undine corrected, ignoring the exclamation, and continuing to address herself to her father. "Friday's the stylish night, and that new tenor's going to sing again in 'Cavaleeria,'" ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... untruth; the grotesqueness of unmannerly conviction; truth and error have kissed each other in a sweet, serener sphere; this becomes that, and that is something else. The harmonious, the suave, the well bred waft the bright particular being into a peculiar and reserved parterre of paradise, where bloom at once the graces of Panthism, the simplicity of Deism, and the pathos of Catholicism; where he can sip elegances and spiritualities from flowerets of every faith!' Fancy my crass ignorance, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... her wonderful flowers. First the great moon-rose full blooming; the great bed of stars Touching with restful gold petals the woodland's dark bars; Then arc-lights like asters that blossom in street and in square, And lamps like primroses beyond them in planted parterre; Great tulips of crimson that rise from the factory towers; White lilies that drop from deep windows: all ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... their children; and among the largest seminaries in the city of Bombay are those belonging to this community. A Parsee school is an interesting sight. The children are decidedly pretty; and as they sit in rows, with glittering, many-colored dresses, and caps and jewels, they look like a gay parterre of flowers. ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... appropriateness, but with rhetorical force—with amplitude of thought and spontaneity of image. By the side of such a wonderful flower-show (as one of our poets said of a selection from a brother poet's lyrics), Lyttelton's trim parterre shows, no doubt, but dimly; nevertheless, to that accomplished nobleman there is due something more than the small credit of having been Landor's predecessor in this form of English composition. Of that form Lyttelton says, in the preface to ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... character than his less gayly-dressed cousin tends in some sense to commend him the less to you, since we all like the homage of the "inferior animals," birds or voters. You half dislike the independence of the robin, who is equally at home in the parterre or the forest, on the gravel-walk or in the upper air. On the other you have more hold. He is rarely seen higher than twenty feet above ground, and is strictly an appendage of the shrubbery and the orchard. Even in his unhappy voice there is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... would see him on some parterre of a platform beside my aunt's hurraying hat, amidst titles and costumes, "holding his end up," as he would say, subscribing heavily to obvious charities, even at times making brief convulsive speeches in some good cause before the most exalted audiences. "Mr. Chairman, your Royal Highness, ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... ourselves in examining a parterre of flowers, while the lady continued on her way, and entered the ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... tale spread about through the busy parterre: Miss Columbine turn'd up her nose, And the prude Lady Lavender said, with a stare, That her friend, Mary-gold, had been heard to declare, The creature had ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... overlaid with smooth molten gold—not forming a continuous flight, but broken into threes and fives, sixes and nines, with landings between the series, these from the top looking like a great terraced parterre of gold. It is thus an Assyrian palace in scheme: only that the platform has steps on all sides, instead of on one. The platform-top, from its edge to the golden walls of the house, is a mosaic consisting of squares of the glassiest clarified gold, and squares of the glassiest jet, ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... said in the most light-hearted and airy manner conceivable. Coronado waved and floated on zephyrs of fancy and fluency. A butterfly or a humming-bird could not have talked more cheerily about flying over a parterre of flowers than he about traversing the North American desert. And, with all this frivolous, imponderable grace, what an accent of verity he had! He spoke of the teamsters as if he had actually conversed with them, and of the overland route as if he ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... dust of a dozen richly caparisoned horses, formed a strange contrast in the middle of the night with the melancholy and almost funereal disappearance of the two shadows of Aramis and Porthos. Athos went towards the house; but he had hardly reached the parterre, when the entrance gate appeared in a blaze; all the flambeaux stopped and appeared to enflame the road. A cry was heard of "M. le Duc de Beaufort"—and Athos sprang towards the door of his house. But the duke had already alighted from his horse, ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... reasonable hours, when she might have a curiosity to see to learn the process. Sister Celestine had invented a new kind of comfit which she begged Euphrosyne to try, leaving a paper of sweetmeats on her table for that purpose. Old Raphael had gained leave to clear a parterre in the garden which was to be wholly hers, and where he would rear such flowers as she particularly admired. Father Gabriel himself, after pointing out to her the uncertainty of life, the sudden surprises ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... subscribed for Le Figaro), and as she knew Gisela to be a member of her own class, the new connection was harmonious; and Heloise at last experienced something like real liberty in the tiny garden house of the parterre apartment of Gisela Doering on ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... Twenty years earlier the charcoal-burners had made it their kiln, and the place still remained open, quite a large circumference having been burned over. But during those twenty years Nature had made herself a garden of flowers, a blooming "parterre" for her own enjoyment, just as an artist gives himself the delight of painting a picture for his own happiness. The enchanting spot was surrounded by fine trees, whose tops hung over like vast ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... themselves, they were unwilling to let their prey go until they had also ravished from him some specimens of the airy mintage whence they had issued. Accordingly the Catholic vagabonds seated themselves on the ground, a fuliginous parterre to look upon, and called upon G—— for a song. A rock which projected itself from the side of the hill served for a stage as well as the "green plat" in the wood near Athens did for the company of Manager Quince, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... had yet met with, and did full justice to them. The fruit and vegetables of Europe and America, of the temperate and torrid zones, meet here; nor are their flowers forgotten: over against the little parterre, an orange and a tamarind tree shade a pleasant bench; close to which, in something of oriental taste, the white stucco wall of the well is raised and crowned with flower-pots, filled with ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... and to forbid them entry to the concert-room; and the battle went on for a long time, and critics were drawn into it. But in spite of its ridiculous excesses, and the barbarism of the methods by which the parterre expressed its opinions, that quarrel is not without interest. It proved how a passion and enthusiasm for music had been roused in France; and the passion, though unjust in its expression, was more fruitful and of far ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... about three o'clock. The plaza was crowded, and the ladies in their boxes looked like a parterre of different-coloured flowers. But whilst the Senoras in their boxes did honour to the fete by their brilliant toilet, the gentlemen promenaded round the circle in jackets, high and low being on the same curtailed footing, and certainly in a style of dress more befitting the exhibition. ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... envied then the favored breeze That dallied with your flowing hair, Begrudged the songsters in the trees And longed to be a flow'ret fair— Some favorite blossom like heartease— Within your miniature parterre. ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... grin of happiness, Pinchas stumbled through the dim parterre, barking his shins at almost every step. Arrived at the orchestra, he found himself confronted by a chasm. He wheeled to the left, to where the stage-box, shrouded in brown ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill |
