"Piquancy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was about the favourite law-breakers of fiction, but how they might give rise to the need of the highest courage in others and lead to romantic adventures of an exceedingly exciting kind. A certain piquancy is given to the story by a slight trace of nineteenth century malice in the picturing of eighteenth century ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... to be a big frost before the persimmons get sweet," she observed in a voice that was remarkably deep and full for a woman. With the faint light on her classic head and her milky skin, he found a delicious piquancy in the remark. Had she gossiped, had she even laughed, the effect would have been disastrous. Europa, he was vaguely aware, would hardly have condescended to coquetry. Her speech, like her glance, would be brief, ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... contrary, they seemed to add a zest to it by contrast, and were only sufficiently present to serve as an appetising sauce. That sauce was made up of contradictions and sufferings, of agonising inward analysis, and all these pangs and pin-pricks gave a certain piquancy, even a significance to my dissipation—in fact, completely answered the purpose of an appetising sauce. There was a certain depth of meaning in it. And I could hardly have resigned myself to the simple, vulgar, direct debauchery of a clerk and have endured all the filthiness ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... will add piquancy to the visit." Then he added, "Don't you see, Bulchester, that I dare not throw away an opportunity? Ship 'Number One' has foundered. 'Number Two' must come to land. That ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... game with a man who understood it. Youth she enjoyed, if it were not too inexperienced. Caelius's smile, for instance, boyish and inviting, had seemed to her full of promise. He was worth the winning and was close at hand. Catullus had introduced him, which would add piquancy to her letting the din of the Forum succeed the babbling of Heliconian streams. Suddenly she laughed aloud, cruelly, as another thought struck her. How furious and how impotent Cicero would be! If ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... he had enjoyed these last two years more than any of the ten since he built "Charmleigh" and settled down to semi-rural domesticity with his young wife. There had been a certain piquancy, a savour added to existence, by the country's peril, and all the public service and sacrifice it demanded. His chauffeur was gone, and one gardener did the work of three. He enjoyed-positively enjoyed, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... not help wondering why the handsome young student had made her the object of his attention. She was a well-shaped, fairly good-looking woman, with fair skin and large eyes; but she was of a grave and sober cast of countenance, and there was nothing about her which indicated the least of that piquancy which would be likely to attract the eyes of a youth. She seemed to me to be exactly what she said she was—the quiet and respectable lady of a quiet ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... fairer, and younger in her graceful gown, and her broad hat—which was in sharpest contrast to the sunbonnet which had so long been her disguise—lent a girlish piquancy to her glance. Mrs. Brinkley expressed in one short phrase the change of sentiment which swept almost instantly over the room. "Why, ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... Italian cutting, and we shall get the Northern type. If we make the original pyramid somewhat steeper, and instead of lightly incising, cut it through, so as to have the leaves held only by their points to the base, we shall have the English dogtooth; somewhat vulgar in its piquancy, when compared with French mouldings of a similar kind.[75] It occurs, I think, on one house in Venice, in the Campo St. Polo; but the ordinary moulding, with light incisions, is frequent in archivolts and architraves, as well ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... to make a fortune, incidentally my name, marry, and live happily ever after. There seemed last year nothing complex about that programme. It seemed almost too simple. I even, like a fool, thought to add an extra touch of piquancy to it by endeavouring to be a Bohemian. I then discovered that what I was attempting was not so simple as I had imagined. To begin with, Bohemians diffuse their brains in every direction except that where ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... the incompatibility of the sexes in the matter of moral standards. The thing, of course, has been done once for all by LOUIS STEVENSON in Virginibus Puerisque. But he did it in essay form; here we have the piquancy of personal narrative and dialogue. Husband and wife in turn are responsible for the story, each assuming a partial attitude towards facts and opinions; or else it is one of his old friends (a source of foolish jealousy to the wife) ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various
... to serious composition only; in other forms the writer must rely on his sense of values and the fitness of things. While it is true that some colloquialisms and, with less of license, even some slang, may be sparingly employed in light literature, for point, piquancy or any of the purposes of the skilled writer sensible to the necessity and charm of keeping at least one foot on the ground, to others the virtue of restraint may be commended as distinctly superior to the ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... was familiar with Villon, Pathelin, the Quinze Joies de Mariage, the Cent Nouvelles, the chronicles and the romances, and even earlier works, too, such as the Roman de la Rose. Their words, their turns of expression came naturally to his pen, and added a piquancy and, as it were, a kind of gloss of antique novelty to his work. He fabricated words, too, on Greek and Latin models, with great ease, sometimes audaciously and with needless frequency. These were for him so many means, so many elements of variety. Sometimes he did this in mockery, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... her in surprise. It was not like the Phebe McAlister he had known, to speak like this. At Quantuck she had been cocksure, aggressive; now she was gentler, more womanly. He missed something of the piquancy; yet after all he rather ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... eater, but not averse to wine, particularly such as combined piquancy with sweetness; and he always dressed in black. Manso's account is still more particular, and yet it does not tell all; for Tasso himself informs us that he stammered, and was near-sighted;[33] and a Neapolitan writer who knew him adds to ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... to herself. Jock brought her down half a dozen to choose from, and even the eye of Jock, who doubtless knew nothing about them, made Lady Randolph a little more scrupulous than usual in choosing her book. She was one of those women who like the piquancy and freedom of French fiction. She would say to persons of like tastes that the English proprieties were tame beside the other, and she thought herself old enough to be altogether beyond any risk of harm. Perhaps this was why she divined Sir Tom's motive in placing them at the ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... by the way . . . I was just forgetting. . . . In the kitchen just now, with that sturgeon . . . quite a little story! I went into the kitchen just now and wanted to look at the supper dishes. I looked at the sturgeon and I smacked my lips with relish . . . at the piquancy of it. And at the very moment that fool Vankin came in and said: . . . 'Ha, ha, ha! . . . So you're kissing here!' Kissing Marfa, the cook! What a thing to imagine, silly fool! The woman is a perfect fright, like all the beasts put together, ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... appetite for it amongst those who, unlike Lucas Morne in The Glass of Supreme Moments, plume themselves upon possession of "the finer perceptions." The Magic Morning is a "scrap" elaborately sauced and garnished; the fleeting flavour may possess a certain sub-acid piquancy, but such small dishes of broken meats are hardly nourishing ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 20, 1892 • Various
... me,—and, to say the truth, it added an indefinable piquancy to the scene,—what proportion of all these people, whether soldiers or civilians, were true at heart to the Union, and what part were tainted, more or less, with treasonable sympathies and wishes, even ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... putty with two Scotch pebbles stuck in it—Rebecca was always spoken of sarcastically, and it was a customary kind of banter with young ladies to recommend her as a wife to any gentleman they happened to be flirting with—her fat, her finery, and her thick ankles sufficing to give piquancy to the joke, notwithstanding the absence of novelty. Miss Rebecca, however, possessed the accomplishment of music, and her singing of 'Oh no, we never mention her', and 'The Soldier's Tear', was so desirable an accession to the pleasures of a tea-party that no one cared to ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... parching thirst for a perfection undemanded by their neighbors. Perhaps it would have been rash to say then that she was at all exceptional inwardly, or that the unusual in her was more than her rare grace of movement and bearing, and a certain daring which gave piquancy to a very common egoistic ambition, such as exists under many clumsy exteriors and is taken no notice of. For I suppose that the set of the head does not really determine the hunger of the inner self for supremacy: it only makes a difference sometimes as to the way in which the supremacy ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... of the time I did not know how to defend myself from her—at once so natural and so perfidious; and occasionally I allowed myself to love her with all my heart, so much did she seem to cherish me with all enthusiasm. She had depth of wit, a piquancy of expression, and knew how to disguise those interested adulations with turns so noble and beautiful that I have never met, neither before nor since, any woman worthy of being compared with her. She was, in her single self, a whole society; and certainly ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... essayist, critic, editor, and ex-clergyman, was always an interesting figure; and his successive transitions from Tractarianism to Latitudinarianism, and from Agnosticism to Ultramontanism, gave a peculiar piquancy to his utterances on religion. He deserves remembrance on two quite different scores—one, that he was the first publisher to study prettiness in the production of even cheap books; and the other, that he was an early and enthusiastic worker in the cause of National Temperance. ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... understates the case. The substitution of a top-hat for trousers would add a piquancy of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152. January 17, 1917 • Various
... of the great events of the past, down to the period of the American Revolution, they instinctively attribute to Moses. There is a fine bold confidence in all their citations, however, and the record never loses piquancy in their hands, though strict accuracy may suffer. Thus, one of my captains, last Sunday, heard a colored exhorter at Beaufort proclaim, "Paul may plant, and may polish wid water, but it won't do," in which the sainted Apollos would ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... Chicago, are many pleasant people, drawn together from all parts of the world. A resident here would find great piquancy in the associations,—those he met having such dissimilar histories and topics. And several persons I saw, evidently transplanted from the most refined circles to be met in this country. There are lures enough in the West for people of all kinds;—the enthusiast and ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... third or fourth class, (perhaps even some of the second,) it makes little or no difference who writes them—they are good enough for what they are; nor is it necessary that they should be actual emanations from the personality and life of the writers. The very reverse sometimes gives piquancy. But poems of the first class, (poems of the depth, as distinguished from those of the surface,) are to be sternly tallied with the poets themselves, and tried by them and their lives. Who wants a glorification of courage and manly defiance from a coward or a sneak?—a ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... duke, who, unfortunately for her own happiness, married my Lord Chesterfield at the Hague, when, a few months before the restoration, that nobleman fled to the continent to escape the consequences of Francis Woolley's murder. In Lely's picture of the young Countess of Chesterfield, her piquancy attracts at a glance, whilst her beauty charms on examination. Her cousin, Anthony Hamilton, describes her as having large blue eyes, very tempting and alluring, a complexion extremely fair, and a heart "ever open to tender sentiments," by reason ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... things."—I have given four of John Maynard's "Twelve Wonders of the World" (cf. pp. 44-5, 69); and, if I am not mistaken, the reader will like to see the remaining eight. There is much freshness and piquancy in these quaint old rhymes, which were written by no less a poet than ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... womanly. She was a beauty—yes, a beauty by any set rule of the world. Her large black eyes were neither slitted nor slanted in the Asiatic way. They were long, true, but set squarely, and with just the slightest hint of obliqueness that was all for piquancy. ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... deficiency of local colour and loss of effect in the grouping of the characters is more than compensated for by the racy piquancy of Dick Marston's vernacular, and the aspect, unrivalled in Australian literature, which his account affords of bushranging life from the bushranger's own point of view. In the truth with which this view is presented lies the strength and lasting merit of what ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... now the home of peace and joy; but there have been times when its history has been shrouded in tragic mystery, and even to-day there is the Druce claim to give piquancy to its story. ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... you not come? The pines are gold with evening And breathe their old-time fragrance by the sea; You loved so well their spicy exhalation,— So smiled to smell it and old ocean's piquancy; And those weird tales of winds and waves' relation— Could you forget? Will you ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... by its piquancy and grace; she is quite ready to meet you (a grave matter of surprise!) upon whatever subject you may suggest. You lapse easily and lovingly into the current of her thought, and blush to find yourself vacantly ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... had not the advantage of knowing Evadne's early history when they first became acquainted adds a certain piquancy to the flavour of his impressions, and the reader, better informed than himself with regard to the antecedents of his "subject," will find it interesting to note both the accuracy of his insight and the curious mistakes which ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... a way that gives piquancy and vigour to his conversation. He talks of others with a natural magnanimity which comes from the heart, like the expression of his eyes, and rings true, like the sound of his voice. And then again, he really need not envy any one. Have I not said ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... these "greens" are as good as spinach. What sacrilege to reduce crisp, glossy, beautiful leaves like these to a slimy mess in a pot! The tender buds, often used in white sauce as a substitute for capers, probably do not give it the same piquancy where piquancy is surely most needed - on boiled mutton, said to be Queen Victoria's favorite dish. Hawked about the streets in tight bunches, the marsh-marigold blossoms - with half their yellow sepals already dropped - and the fragrant, pearly-pink arbutus ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... accompanied the Prince; and while both seemed gay enough—even unnaturally gay, perhaps—I dare say they found that the situation had lost a certain interest; for every danger has its fascination, every hazard its piquancy. ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... vainglorious pedantry—but that shaft flies furthest which is drawn to the head, and he who desires to be understood in the twenty-fourth century will not be careless of the meanings that his words inherit from the fourteenth. To know them is of service, if only for the piquancy of avoiding them. But many times they cannot wisely be avoided, and the auspices under which a word began its career when first it was imported from the French or Latin overshadow it and haunt it to ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... variety. Thus we have those groups of pages, of maids-in-waiting, of shepherds, of deities, etc., which are so characteristic of Lyly's plays. There is no real distinction between page and page, and between nymph and nymph; but their merry conversations give a piquancy and colour to the drama which make up for, and in part conceal, the absence of character. All that was necessary for the creation of character was to fit these pieces of the moral type together again in a different way, and to breathe ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... he finds it out!' said another. But, as Taylor had offended them, the suggestion added piquancy to the notion. And so before they separated each pledged himself to join the new swatting club. It was not an elegant name for a party of students to call themselves, but the object of the combination was good, and was warmly commended by the parents, who were taken into the confidence ...
— That Scholarship Boy • Emma Leslie
... embarrassment to this pretty piquancy was so instantaneous and so charming that Wallace's face grew luminous with admiration and delight. A smile wreathed his lips, and there came a look into his eyes that made her flush ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... through and through, and while her father-in-law might love her, and see her beauty and charm with all the rest of the world, Harriet knew that she must begin an actual campaign for his esteem on her wedding day. The prospect had an unexpected piquancy. She had little fear of its outcome. She would make Ward Carter a wife for whom his father must come to feel genuine gratitude and devotion. Every fibre of her being would be strained to make the Carter marriage a success. She knew what persons to cultivate, ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... the day before he had thought of Therese. He had all night dreamed and yearned over her image. He saw her again, delightful, but in another manner, and even more desirable than he had imagined in his insomnia; less visionary, of a more vivid piquancy, and also of a mind more mysteriously impenetrable. She was sad; she seemed cold and indifferent. He said to himself that he was nothing to her; that he was becoming importunate and ridiculous. This irritated him. He murmured bitterly in her ear: "I have reflected. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... pardon," she said, not ungracefully, a slight color coming into her sallow cheek, which, in conjunction with the gold eye-glasses, gave her, at least in the eyes of the impressible Clint, a certain piquancy. "But my father said you were here in committee and I might consult you. I can come again, if you ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... have neither form nor colour; how shall I paint with them? It was not the beauty of mere form and colour, either, that struck Mrs. Barclay in Lois's face. You may easily see more regular features and more dazzling complexion. It was not any particular brilliance of eye, or piquancy of expression. There was a soundness and fulness of young life; that is not so uncommon either. There was a steadfast strength and sweetness of nature. There was an unconscious, innocent grace, that is exceedingly ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... welcomed by older readers as gladly as its predecessor was greeted by girls and boys. The lavish use the publishers have made of colored plates, woodcuts and photographic reproductions, gives an unwonted piquancy to the printed page, catching the eye as surely as the text ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... designated as Tirannides, and our English king as Prince des Iles. In the preface to the French translation of this pamphlet, which bears the title of Histoire secrete de la Duchesse de Portsmouth, it is stated that the author desired to give, by these changes of name, some additional piquancy to the revelations contained in his book. According to such chronicle, the father of Louise Querouaille was a wool merchant of Paris. After having realised a moderate fortune in trade, he retired into Brittany, his native country, with his two daughters; the youngest, Louise, ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... Beethoven's name be mentioned. Here is a specimen brick from the sort of material Beethoven anecdotes are made. Call it, for the sake of piquancy, "Beethoven and Esterhazy." ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... room must not be kept too rigidly in one style. To have attraction it must have variety in both line and colour, and reflect the taste of generations of home lovers. The contents of dusty garrets may add piquancy to modern decorations, giving a touch of the unusual which is ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... of brute beasts would give a piquancy and a pleasantry to moral design as well as to social ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... aspic, calves' foot jelly, iced humming birds, pickled edelweiss, or any of those things kept habitually in the cellars of families like ours. No dash of Jamaica ginger or Pain-killer or sloe gin or sarsaparilla to give it piquancy. Unless Julia can find a paper that gives more up-to-date advice to its country subscribers, we'll have to transfer her from the kitchen ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... she commanded. There was a piquancy, a gay impelling force in this girl that grief and hardship had not been strong enough to conquer. Her hours of sadness were spent alone—hours when she was supposed to sleep, but instead, lay awake and ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... the piquancy of these revelations, and portraits of Marie Louise in knickers and puttees, and armed with agricultural weapons, appeared in the pages of all the weeklies along with other aristocrats and commoners. Some ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... it would of course become us to write if we were dealing with the life of a living sovereign,—would not be interesting. No one on going to hear Thackeray lecture on the Georges expected that. There must be some piquancy given, or the lecture would be dull;—and the eulogy of personal virtues can seldom be piquant. It is difficult to speak fittingly of a sovereign, either living or not, long since gone. You can hardly praise such a one without flattery. You can hardly censure him without ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... the music and at only a trifling cost to the comedy (even when it is looked upon from the viewpoint which prevailed in Europe at the period of its creation) is that which Beaumarchais relied on chiefly to add piquancy to the conduct of the Count. Almaviva, we are given to understand, on his marriage with Rosina had voluntarily abandoned an ancient seignorial right, described by Susanna as "certe mezz' ore che il diritto feudale," ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... melancholy, mysterious hero in a setting of silver-rimmed sand hills and wide blue sweeps of ocean was something that ought to lend piquancy to ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the literature to which Verdi directed attention when he turned his thoughts to Victor Hugo, and composed "Ernani" and "Rigoletto." Hugo was the prince of those novelists and dramatists who utilized glaring contrasts and unnatural contradictions to give piquancy to their creations and compel sympathy for monsters by uniting monumental wickedness with the most amiable of moral qualities. The story of "La Gioconda" is drawn from "Angelo, Tyrane de Padoue." In transforming this tragedy into an opera ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... But father's controlling the country half an hour more than usual this evening, and I expect mamma was so angry about it she forgot to telephone you that dinner's moved accordingly. (With piquancy and humour.) I was rather surprised to hear when I got home from my Ministry that you'd sent word you'd ...
— The Title - A Comedy in Three Acts • Arnold Bennett
... the secret service. To the reader it is left to divine the nationality and personality of its author. Valuable for the light it throws on a great character in a trying situation, the report gains piquancy and interest from the fact that the veil of official secrecy has to be treated with due respect. My unnamed friend has my thanks and deserves those ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... been a fascinating girl; pretty, with the dash and piquancy of an oriole in a May apple-tree; clever and efficient in everything her swift hands touched; quite a spectacular housekeeper; and the sober, long-faced young downeasterner had married her with a sudden decision that he often wondered about in ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... woman, with the contents of the letter she was reading. It was from a niece at a boarding-school, who proposed, in a brief and direct way, to visit this aunt during her coming vacation. The tableau was acted so well, and with such piquancy, that claps and peals of laughter from the audience, and finally calls for "Kate Underwood," who demurely makes her appearance from behind the curtain, drops a stage courtesy, and disappears. The poem had been (this audience constituting the judges) excellent, the ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... legend of the childhood of Moses with just enough mystery mixed in it to give it a perpetual piquancy, we learn that he was brought up an Egyptian, as the son of Pharaoh's daughter, and that it was she who gave ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... couple of sheets of writing-paper," but would have covered at least ten pages—replaced it in the drawer, and "then, with a countenance of the utmost weariness, lighted his chamber candle and went upstairs to bed." And here, by the way, is one of the amusing oversights which give such a piquancy to "Pickwick." Before he began to read his paper, we are carefully told that Mr. Pickwick "unfolded it, lighted his bedroom candle that it might burn up to the time he had finished." It was Mr. C. Kent who pointed this out to him, when Boz seized the volume and humorously made as though he would ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... I said frivolously. But she assented with a depth of feeling which ignored my feeble attempt to be cheerful. "Yet," she continued, "there is a subtle, alluring difference in our thoughts; just enough to add piquancy, not irritation, to a discussion. I do not love white, and he does not love black, as so many husbands and wives do. We both love gray; different tones of gray, but still gray. It is very restful." The Percivals are not only restful ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... matter to his relations and even under some circumstances to his whole neighbourhood. Sometimes indeed, like some father in Moliere, I ignored the lover's feelings altogether and even refused to admit that a trace of the devil, perhaps a trace of colour, may lend piquancy, especially if ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... and the tone being thus determined, I betook myself to ordinary induction, with the view of obtaining some artistic piquancy which might serve me as a key-note in the construction of the poem—some pivot upon which the whole structure might turn. In carefully thinking over all the usual artistic effects—or more properly ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... posthumous works in 1754. For though few persons will be inclined to agree with Horace Walpole's opinion that Bolingbroke's 'metaphysical divinity was the best of his writings,' yet the eminence of the writer, the purity and piquancy of his style, the real and extensive learning which he displayed, would, one might have imagined, have awakened a far greater interest in his writings than was actually shown. Very few replies were written ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... appearance—dropped my glove—smiled when he picked it up and handed it to me—encouraged him to walk me home—invited him in, and made him, as well as myself, extremely happy by my kindness. I permitted him to call frequently, but of course I soon grew tired of him—the affair lacked zeal, romance, piquancy; so, this morning when he visited me, I suffered him to take a last kiss, and dismissed him forever, with a twenty-dollar bill and an intimation that we were in future entire strangers. Poor fellow! he ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... bee-bread these days, as patent hives furnish all the honey found in city stores and no bee-bread is sold. In remote country places, however, where the honey is removed en masse from the hive, there will be plenty of bee-bread to give piquancy to the children's bread and honey. Moreover, where bees are kept, the bee-keeper can usually be persuaded to take out a little bee-bread for the children to see and taste; for it is always present no matter what the kind of hive used, though ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... prone to action. Goodness is usually negative and inert. Dr. Primrose is a type of goodness. In order to invest him with piquancy and dramatic vigour Henry Irving gave him passion, and therewithal various attributes of charming eccentricity. The clergyman thus presented is the fruition of a long life of virtue. He has the complete repose of innocence, the sweet candour ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... to go out into the great, mysterious world. Never before had he shared a meal with the girls alone. The situation was indubitably unexpected, unforeseen; it was, too, piquant, and what added to its piquancy was the fact that Constance and Sophia were, somehow, responsible for Mr. Povey. They felt that they were responsible for him. They had offered the practical sympathy of two intelligent and well-trained young women, born nurses by reason of their sex, and Mr. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... and throttles and hangs it with chains of shakes." What, however, Rellstab and the "old musician"—for he, too, exclaims, "nothing but bravura and figuration!"—did not see, but what must be patent to every candid and unprejudiced observer, are the originality, piquancy, and grace of these fioriture, roulades, &c., which, indeed, are unlike anything that was ever heard or seen before Chopin's time. I say "seen," for the configurations in the notation of this piece are so different ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... accessions from other nations at later intervals, and also a strain of aboriginal blood, of which a more or less faint tinge is still discernible in some families, an admixture which many deplore and others consider as most serviceable, supplying a subtle piquancy for ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... Dr. Leete, beaming upon me, "you cannot have any idea of the piquancy your nineteenth century ideas have for us of this day, the rare quaintness of their effect. Know, O child of another race and yet the same, that the labor we have to render as our part in securing for the nation ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... what I had to say. And now, having made these declarations in all frankness, let us return to work with all speed. My preface will seem a little short, and the curious reader will seek in vain therein the anticipated piquancy. So much the worse for him. Brief as this page may be, it is three times too long for me. Prefaces have this disadvantage, that they prevent one ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... in March, and for winter requirements in July and August, in shallow drills 6 or 8 in. apart. Cut for use when 3 or 4 in. high. The tender tops and leaves are used in soups and stews, to which they impart a warm, aromatic flavour. They likewise give piquancy to mixed salads. ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink
... a child by each hand, nodding and smiling to friends-for all seemed friends. She looked very resolute and businesslike in her plain, dark dress, with a dull flame of color at the throat, while the broad hat she wore gave her face a touch of piquancy very charming. Evidently she was in excellent spirits, and laughed and chatted ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... frame wriggled with emotion, and with imploring eyes she jigged impatiently just in front of me. Her hair was tumbled bewitchingly on her shoulders, and even the loss of a front tooth—a loss incidental to her age—seemed but to add a piquancy to her face. ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... of mathematical treatises, the titles only of which are preserved. We gather from one of these titles, 'On irrational lines and solids', that he wrote on irrationals. Democritus realized as fully as Zeno, and expressed with no less piquancy, the difficulty connected with the continuous and the infinitesimal. This appears from his dilemma about the circular base of a cone and a parallel section; the section which he means is a section 'indefinitely near' (as the phrase is) to the base, i. e. the very next section, ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... countenance was perfect in its contour, her cheeks innocent of the Parisienne's usual aids to beauty, her lips red and well moulded, while two tiny dimples gave a piquancy to a face which was far more beautiful than any I had met ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... in great part, the movable embellishments of the seven chambers, upon occasion of this great fete; and it was his own guiding taste which had given character to the masqueraders. Be sure they were grotesque. There were much glare and glitter and piquancy and phantasm—much of what has been since seen in "Hernani". There were arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. There were delirious fancies such as the madman fashions. There were much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not ...
— The Raven • Edgar Allan Poe
... inscrutable; romantic, too, in his very detachment from the sentiment of romance that he provokes. Miss FREDA GODFREY, the new Wendy, would have seemed good if we had not known better ones. To be frank, she looked rather too mature for the part; she needed a more childlike air to give piquancy to her assumption of maternal responsibilities. It was pleasant to see Mr. HENRY AINLEY unbend to the task, simple for him, of playing Captain Hook and Mr. Darling. One admired his self-control in refusing to impose new subtleties upon ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 29, 1920 • Various
... was a liberal education in blended flavors, in the delights, the surprises of the Creole kitchen. Tall and slim, of a golden-brown complexion, neat to the point of austerity, trim and self-contained, sight of her somehow gave an added piquancy to her dishes. She did not make friends readily, but the comradery of cooking induced her to more than tolerate me. "I don't say I kin cook—but my mother can," she often told me—smiling proudly the while, ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... all very well for a little time. The contrast amuses by its piquancy. To write of wild and whirling things in your books, but in public life to be associated with nothing more wild and whirling than a shirt-fronted eye-glassed hansom; to be at heart an Alastor, but in appearance a bank-clerk, delights an age ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... Pendleton, and glanced in embarrassment at her nephew, whose face, to her surprise, was beaming with enjoyment. The truth was that John Henry, who would have condemned so unreasonable an accusation had it been uttered by a full-grown male, was enraptured by the piquancy of hearing it on the lovely lips of his cousin. To demand that a pretty woman should possess the mental responsibility of a human being would have seemed an affront to his inherited ideas of gallantry. His slow wit was enslaved ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... others, he himself continued blind to her guilt. At length, however, she began to grow more and more bold. She became satiated, as one of her historians says of her, with the common and ordinary forms of vice, and wished for something new and unusual to give piquancy and life to her sensations. At length, however, she went one step too far, and brought upon herself in consequence of it ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... world. So there were horse-races and cock-fights and bear-baitings, as well as dinners and suppers, at which much sack and aqua vitae was drunk to king, church, and reigning beauties. And if a quarrel sprung, full armed, from the heated brains of young gallants, crossed rapiers did but add a piquancy, a dash ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... beauty which her excitement called forth, added piquancy to her natural charms, and inflamed Santa Anna's wicked passions all the more. But more than any of them revenge. For now he knew how much the fair petitioner was interested in the man whose suit she had preferred. With a ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... echoed the sentiments of many others. There is no meat more "necessary" in the house than good ham. Not only is the meat there in all its nutriment but it is preserved—that is, cured and smoked—in such a way that there is given to it a piquancy which whets the appetite and gives a stimulus to the gastric juices, thus aiding—so the doctors ...
— Armour's Monthly Cook Book, Volume 2, No. 12, October 1913 - A Monthly Magazine of Household Interest • Various
... close to him that her exposed neck was within two feet of him bent in seeming innocence over the tray. With a mischievous laugh he reached over and flipped the hot ashes from his cigar upon her neck. She screamed affectedly and danced about shaking off the ashes. Then with feigned maidenly piquancy and many reproachful glances, she went out ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... meat is disclosed; but no more objectionable in appearance than the substance of a fully ripe passion fruit. The flavour! Ah, the flavour! It surpasseth the delectable oyster. It hath more of the savour and piquancy of the ocean. It clingeth to the palate and purgeth it of grosser tastes. It recalleth the clean and marvellous creature, whose life has been spent in cool coral grottoes, among limestone and the salty essences of the pure ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... iii) and the whole Tale of Azizah (vol. ii. 298), whose angelic love is set off by the sensuality and selfishness of her more fortunate rivals. A new note of absolutely tragic dignity seems to be struck in the Sweep and the Noble Lady (vol. iv. 125), showing the piquancy of sentiment which can be evolved from the common and the unclean. The pretty conceit of the Lute (vol. v. 244) is afterwards carried out in the Song (vol. viii. 281), which is a masterpiece of originality[FN294] and (in the Arabic) of exquisite tenderness and poetic melancholy, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... A piquancy of the contest was increased by the fact that it was led on either side by members of the Administration. Washington had early put forth a Declaration of Neutrality, drawn up by Randolph, who, though leaning if anything to Jefferson's side, took up a more or less intermediate position ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... the outer door. Standing outside cheerfully humming a tune is a large, forceful, breezy young man of twenty-eight. He is DERMOD GILRUTH. Splendid in physique, charming of manner, his slightly-marked Dublin accent lends a piquancy to his conversation. He has all the ease and poise of a traveled, polished young man of breeding. Dartrey's face brightens as he holds out ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... London had been waiting impatiently during the last weeks for the arrival of this pale and demure star. Now that she had come their interest in her was keen. Her peculiar reputation for ingeniously tricking Mrs. Bowdler, secretary to Mrs. Grundy, rendered her very piquant, and this piquancy was increased by her ostentatiously ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... roof. This lady, respecting whom I had received letters from my brother-in-law Mr. McMurray, a clergyman of Canada West, evinced a most familiar knowledge of artistic life and society in England and Germany. Her acquaintance with Goethe, and other distinguished writers, gave a life and piquancy to her conversation and anecdotes, which made us cherish her society the more. She is, herself, an eminent landscape painter, or rather sketcher in crayon, and had her portfolio ever in hand. She did not hesitate freely to walk out to prominent points, of which the island has many, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... of strong, clear, highly-flavoured stock of a greenish-brown colour. The colour can be obtained by boiling some winter greens or spinach along with the other things. A few chopped gherkins, capers, or chillies will give the required piquancy. Have 4 ozs. tapioca soaked overnight, add to the boiling stock and cook gently till perfectly clear. Some small quenelles may be poached separately and put ...
— Reform Cookery Book (4th edition) - Up-To-Date Health Cookery for the Twentieth Century. • Mrs. Mill
... and sweet, but it had none of the humour which gave piquancy to Betty's. It might soothe, caress, even reprimand, but it could never jest; for life to Mrs. Ambler was soft, yet serious, like a continued prayer to ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... preoccupied man takes his wife of four years' standing out to dinner he knows that he need not exert himself to talk, to shine, to please, as with a woman who holds the piquancy of a stranger; so while Osborn spoke spasmodically, or drifted into silence, Marie could look around her and think thoughts which chilled the ardour of her soul. It seemed to her, that evening of her twenty-ninth birthday, that a door was opened to her, revealing ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... whose nerves sprung secret fears upon him. There were sparks between the sweep of her lashes, but she managed to carry herself with the air of being as cool as a cucumber, which gave spice to the effort to "upset" her. If she did not prove suitably amenable, there would be piquancy in getting the better of her—in stirring up unpleasant little things, which would make it easier for her to go away than remain on the spot—if one should end by choosing to get rid of her. But, for the moment, he had no desire to get rid of her. He wanted to ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and largely satisfied by hope and even by some degree of present fruition. Even vice would be in many ways sauceless and insipid in the absence of faith. Who does not remember the old cynic's testimony (in the "New Republic") to the piquancy lent by Christianity to many a sin, otherwise pointless. If the moralist distinguishes between actions that are evil because they are forbidden, and those that are forbidden because they are evil, the libertine has a counter-distinction between those that are forbidden because ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... him an onion? Well, for the simple reason that though an onion is one of the most valuable of all vegetables, though it is the finest of relishes, though it has added piquancy to a thousand feasts, yet nobody praises the onion. Of course you know the author is right here. You may have read some great poetry in your time, poems on daffodils, violets, roses, daisies. Even you have known a great poet who could write about a louse and a field mouse, ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... Rose"; and thus a work, of which already the theme and first conception imply a great step forwards from the previous range of mediaeval poetry, became a favourite with all classes by reason of the piquancy of its flavour, and the quotable applicability of many of its passages. Out of a chivalrous allegory Jean de Meung had made a popular satire; and though in its completed form it could look for no welcome in many a court or castle,—though ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... represent life, he should keep within the bounds of natural laws. If he chooses to introduce time-honored personages, we shall not quarrel with him, although we certainly think it desirable that some fresh piquancy in their characters shall be the vindication of their reappearance. We may regret that a subtle, but palpable ridicule is cast upon foreign missions,—a cause which, whether successful or unsuccessful in its immediate objects, will forever stand recorded as one of the most ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... suffered to rest quietly in their graves. He further complains that I speak disrespectfully of the ——'s in Grandfather's Chair. He writes more in sorrow than in anger, though there is quite enough of the latter quality to give piquancy to his epistle. The joke of the matter is, that I never heard of his grandfather, nor knew that any Pyncheons had ever lived in Salem, but took the name because it suited the tone of my book, and was as much my property, for fictitious ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... were proper to the man, and neither to the past nor present age. Of his bons mots we have a sprinkling, and but a sprinkling, in this volume; but the celebrated one about language is not there, though others of less piquancy are. Did M. Colmache consider it of apocryphal authenticity? ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... unadulterated sweetness, of course. There were enough difficulties in the way to make it seem desirable; and a few stings of annoyance, now and then, lent piquancy to the adventure. But a good memory, in dealing with the past, has the art of straining out all the beeswax of discomfort, and storing up little jars of pure hydromel. As we look back at our six weeks in Norway, we agree that no period of our partnership in experimental honeymooning has ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke |
