"Prudish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Rupts, with an immense garden stretching to the Rue du Perron. Madame de Watteville, devout as a girl, became even more so after her marriage. She is one of the queens of the saintly brotherhood which gives the upper circles of Besancon a solemn air and prudish manners in harmony with the ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... answer to this. He understood how to kiss, but he did not understand this. It all seemed very strange. Why had she sought him then, hung on his looks? Why had she immediately fallen into his arms like a ripe apple, which only requires a slight touch, if she had become so prudish all at once, as chaste as one whom you have to teach what love is? Why, even little Rosa could ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... was saying. "How graceful! On her lips the utterances of treachery sound like witticism; an act of infidelity seems the prompting of reason, a sacrifice to propriety; while she is never reckless, she is always lovable; she is seldom tender and never sincere; amorous by nature, prudish on principle; sprightly, prudent, dexterous though utterly thoughtless, varied as Proteus in her moods, but charming as the Graces in her manner; she attracts but she eludes. What a number of parts I have seen her play! Entre nous, what a number of dupes hang round her! What ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... name, a false silence, or misleading speech. The fact that syphilis is a disease spread to a considerable extent by sexual relations too often forces us into an attitude of veiled insinuation about it, a mistaken delicacy which easily becomes prudish and insincere. It is a direct move in favor of vulgar thinking to misname anything which involves the intimacies of life, or to do other than look it squarely in the eye, when necessity demands, without shuffling or equivocation. On this principle it is worth while to meet the problem ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... at the sunshine, listen to the birds, think of a whole day in the open! I'll take you to the loveliest place I know in this quaint little island, and I'll be your slave all day long. Oh, I promise you won't find me in the way. Now don't look prudish. Be a girl for once. Never mind the rest of creation. No one else will know anything about it. We leave Baronmead this morning in the motor, and who cares what time we reach the Manor? It can't matter to you or anyone. Say you'll ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... of British women, with their knuckled hands, their splayed feet. Their abominable dressing, too, a bust and a brooch and a hooped skirt—their grocers' conventions, prudish, almost obscene, avoiding of the natural in word, deed, or thought.... He wanted Fenzile, with her eyes, vert de mer, her full childish face, her slim hands with the orange-tinted finger nails, her ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... historian has no such liberty to state the case against it. If he even asserts that he has counter-facts, but dare not state them, he is at once met with a praejudicium. The mere fact of his having ascertained the truth is imputed as a blame to him, in a sort of prudish cant. 'What a very improper person he must be to like to dabble in such improper books that they must not even be quoted.' If in self-defence he desperately gives his facts, he only increases the feeling ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... faith lingered only in St. Petersburg and Berlin; but how weak and ineffective it had become! There was no talk now of interference, there would not be another campaign of Waterloo or of Valmy; there was only a prudish reserve; they could not, they did not dare, refuse diplomatic dealings with the new Emperor, but they were determined there should be no cordiality: the virgin purity of the Prussian Court should not be deflowered by intimacy with the man of sin.[5] If there could not be a fresh crusade against ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... So my very discreet, prudish little Harriet never lets man enter into her head; tho' it is pretty notorious somebody has enter'd into her heart ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... fast it is hard to keep up with them. Pat Valdo is dressed as a prudish old lady with an enormous bustle. Escorted by the clown policeman and the two amateurs, Pat sets out, fanning himself demurely. Hullo! the bustle has detached itself from the old lady, but she proceeds, unconscious. The audience shouts ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... behind in the city; of all the human passions, love alone has found an entrance into this wilderness, where it dictates the same language alike to the simple shepherd and the chivalrous youth, who hangs his love-ditty to a tree. A prudish shepherdess falls at first sight in love with Rosalind, disguised in men's apparel; the latter sharply reproaches her with her severity to her poor lover, and the pain of refusal, which she feels from experience in ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... Sobersides, with her dull, sleepy glance, her grave, slow walk, and dignified, prudish airs; who could ever think that once she was the blue-eyed, whirling, scampering, head-over-heels, mad little firework that we ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... "If Esther turns prudish, just let me know," said Carlos. "Nucingen must give her a carriage and horses; she will have to choose and buy everything herself. Go to the horse-dealer and the coachmaker who are employed by the job-master where Paccard finds work. ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... acquaintance with him his graphic touch was always allowing itself a freedom which I cannot bring my fainter pencil to illustrate. He had the Southwestern, the Lincolnian, the Elizabethan breadth of parlance, which I suppose one ought not to call coarse without calling one's self prudish; and I was often hiding away in discreet holes and corners the letters in which he had loosed his bold fancy to stoop on rank suggestion; I could not bear to burn them, and I could not, after the first reading, quite bear to look at them. I shall best give my feeling on this point by saying that ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... myrtle for Aphrodite (and is not the Love-Goddess the favorite?). To have a social gathering without garlands, in short, is impossible. The flower girls of Athens are beautiful, impudent, and not at all prudish. Around their booths press bold-tongued youths, and not too discreet sires; and the girls can call everybody familiarly by name. Very possibly along with the sale of the garlands they make arrangements (if the banquet is to be of the ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... were formerly nude, and the women wore only a leaf petticoat, but I gather that they were a decent people; now both sexes are prudish. A man would never go nude before me—only once or twice has it happened to me, and then only when they were diving.... Amongst themselves they are, of course, much less particular, but I believe they are becoming more so.... ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... but that was three years ago!" replied Crevel. "Well, you are handsomer now than ever I saw you!" he went on, taking the Baroness' arm and pressing it to his heart. "You have a good memory, my dear, by Jove!—And now you see how wrong you were to be so prudish, for those three hundred thousand francs that you refused so magnanimously are in another woman's pocket. I loved you then, I love you still; but just look back ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... intercourse spoilt for her. There are no dangers for men, but on the contrary there is very great help for men, in the society of girls who will meet them in a spontaneous, natural, and friendly way. It is when the girls who should be their natural companions are found to be prudish and stiff that men are all too apt to look for other girls who will at least be friendly and often much more than friendly. All that I want girls to know is that there are dangers on the horizon of this part ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... All this will be clearly and logically explained by the professors of the academies. They will further add that after the accession of the Stuarts the building art gradually declined, with only a few flashes of brilliant light in the works of Inigo Jones and Wren. The Commonwealth was prudish in art as in manners, and the Restoration was a reign of revel and wild license. The social worlds of William and Mary and of Queen Anne, stiff, starched, and formal, left their impress upon the buildings of their day, which were mostly of a domestic character. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... Crowne's City Politics (1683), and many another beside. As for the cavilling crew who carped at her during her life Mrs. Behn has answered them and she was thoroughly competent so to do. Indeed, as she somewhat tartly remarked to Otway on the occasion of certain prudish dames pleasing to take offence at The Soldier's Fortune, she wondered at the impudence of any of her sex that would pretend to understand the thing called bawdy. A clique were shocked at her; it was not her salaciousness they objected to but ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... matter; there was peace in the house, and papa came home, not to be burdened with complaints, by domestic irregularities, but to be solaced by the loving attentions of his two girls, and amused by the sententious sayings of little prudish Gertrude, or the high spirits and happy gleefulness ...
— Aunt Mary • Mrs. Perring
... cross!' exclaimed all the girls together, devoutly crossing themselves, while two or three of the most enthusiastic were half-minded to go forward and kneel to Philammon for his blessing; but hesitated, their Gothic lovers being heathenishly stupid and prudish on such points. ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... strong iced drinks through straws. But in reality Jacqueline had no power whatever to preserve propriety, and only compromised herself by her associations, though her own conduct was irreproachable. Indeed she was considered quite prudish, and the rest of the mad crowd laughed at her for having the manners of a governess. In vain she tried to say words of warning to Nora; what she said was laughed at or resented in a tone that told her that a paid companion had not the right to speak as ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... forward so long had indeed begun, and most inauspiciously. Her rival had every advantage. The mood in which Graydon had returned predisposed him to prompt action, while she had lost her influence for the present by a course that seemed to him so unnatural as to be prudish. Miss Wildmere's manner gave all the encouragement that a man could wish for, and it was hard to view with charity the smiling, triumphant belle. Madge suddenly became conscious that Mr. Muir was observing her, and she remarked, quietly: "I never saw better dancing than ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... One of our Camillas,(795) but in a freer style, I hear, he saw (I fancy just before your arrival); and he must have wondered at the familiarity of the dame, and the nincompoophood of her Prince. Sir William Hamilton is arrived— his Nymph of the Attitudes!(796) was too prudish to ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... her customers every day. My mother had a great deal of tact; with the other sex she was full of merriment and fond of joking, consequently a great favourite; towards her own sex her conduct was quite the reverse; she assumed a respectful, prudish air, blended with a familiarity which was never offensive; she was, therefore, equally popular with her own sex, and prospered in every sense of the word. Had her husband been the least inclined to have asserted his rights, the ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... the suspicion in her suddenly hardening face, but the quick anger in it pleased him. He had not expected her to be prudish, but it was clear that the situation ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... the supply," I ventured. "We may be prudish, but as yet the moral questions you speak of have not such a hold on our young republic that they need drastic measures. When we become more civilised, and society more cancerous, doubtless the public mind will permit these questions ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... from being a shrew at home. She founded a hospice—the Marie Therese Infirmary—visited the poor, succoured the sick, superintended creches, gave alms and prayed; at the same time she was harsh towards her husband, her relatives, her friends, and her servants, and was sour-tempered, stern, prudish, and a backbiter. God on high will ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... I don't like leaving girls alone with their lovers; but, with a prince, it would be so ill-bred to be prudish. [Exit. ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the architect went on, "there's no doubt we've become absurdly prudish in this country. We're afflicted with shame of the body which, in itself, is unhealthy. If art can help us to get back to a more normal attitude it will do a big service. All the more reason then why it should keep ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... finesse; and a polish of manners that injures the substance, by hunting sincerity out of society. And, modesty, the fairest garb of virtue has been more grossly insulted in France than even in England, till their women have treated as PRUDISH that attention to decency which brutes ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... years we are all more or less alike. We don't begin by being dowdy and angular, and dogmatic and prudish; we begin by being pretty and cheerful like you. I used to change my blouse every evening, and put on ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Pagellas' she was like a child of the house. She had the Spanish love of ceremony and magnificence, the ready repartee of the Parisian, and, like a well- brought-up girl, knew how to preserve the balance between friendliness and mirth. She was not in the least prudish, and she understood everything; but there was a certain sublimity ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... man is quite an expert at flattery. Every girl he meets, if she is at all attractive, is considered the most charming lady that he ever knew. He is sure she isn't prudish enough to refuse him a kiss, and if she is, she wins not only his admiration, but that which is vastly ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... fine!" continued Miss Day, "but if five pounds are lost out of your purse, some one has taken them! Some one, therefore, whether servant or student, is a thief. I am not narrow-minded or prudish, but I confess I draw ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... as she met the Baron's astonished eye, and she responded with a prudish dropping ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... citizens, become, through the financial undertakings and interests of these very same citizens, often the worst enemies of their own city. The German cities are spared also the confusion, which is injected into our politics by a fortunately small class of reformers, with the prudish peculiarities of morbid vestals; men who cannot work with other men, and who bring the virile virtues, the sound charities, ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... reached his intimacy and familiarity with his mistress were already the subject of whispered comments and shrugged shoulders. At a ball given in her honour at Rome by the banker Tortonia, the Princess shocked even the least prudish by the abandon of her dancing and the tenuity of her costume, which, we are told, consisted of "a single embroidered garment, fastened beneath the bosom, without the shadow of a corset and without sleeves." And ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... herself coloring. Though not prudish there were words she couldn't get used to. Besides which she had never thought that Steptoe.... But ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... she bore it well, for her manner was free from prudish alarm or coquettish submission. With sound sense, she had calmly acquiesced in the situation; but George found the latter pleasant. His companion was pretty, the swift motion had brought a fine warmth into her cheeks, and a sparkle into her eyes; and George was slightly vexed when Edgar, appearing ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... says, "I think a young man so well born and well bred as yourself, a man of feeling and character, would never reward with dishonour the confidence reposed in him by the friendship of this family. I am neither prudish nor over strict; I know how to make excuses for youthful folly, and what I have permitted in my own presence is sufficient proof of this. Consult your friend as to your own duty, he will tell you there is all the difference in the world between the playful kisses ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... decency, if we are simians we have done well, considering: but if we are something else—fallen angels—we have indeed fallen far. Not being modest by instinct we invent artificial ideals, which are doubtless well-meaning but are inherently of course second-rate, so that even at our best we smell prudish. And as for our worst, when .we as we say let ourselves go, we dirty the life-force unspeakably, with chuckles and leers. But a race so indecent by nature as the simians are would naturally have a hard time behaving as though they were not: and the strain of pretending ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... affirmed she had not even the looks of a gentlewoman: a third warranted she was no better than she should be; and, turning to the lady who had related the story in the coach, said, "Did you ever hear, madam, anything so prudish as her remarks? Well, deliver me from the censoriousness of such a prude." The fourth added, "O madam! all these creatures are censorious; but for my part, I wonder where the wretch was bred; indeed, I must ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... any of those pretty things were to be seen, and heard of nothing but regularity of hours, persevering industry, quaker neatness, attention to health, and the strictest observance of the rules of what she thought quite a prudish propriety. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... Madame Hulot's portrait as unnatural; and, herself being the contrary of prudish in sexual relations, the opinion cannot be called prejudiced. Balzac defended his treatment, while admitting there was force in what she said. Arguing with her on their respective methods, he replied: "You seek to paint man as he ought to ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... Chatelet, "Mme. d'Espard is the more prudish and particular because she herself is separated from her husband, nobody knows why. The Navarreins, the Lenoncourts, the Blamont-Chauvrys, and the rest of the relations have all rallied round her; the most strait-laced women are seen at her house, ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... parlor-propriety in the depths of ocean, where wild sea-monsters engender, where the million-tonned coral-rock rises to be crowned with palms, amid swaying tides and currents which cast up in a night leagues of sandy peninsulas. Little heed is taken of your prudish scruples or foul follies, where the screaming eagle chases his mate on the road of the mad North-wind; little care for your pitiful perversions of health and truth into scurvy jests or still scurvier blushes, wherever life takes new ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a low iron patent-pump, near a rustic seat, the Ritualistic organist, in his vast linen coat and imposing straw hat, looks not unlike an eccentric garden statue, upon which some prudish slave of modern conventionalities has placed the summer attire of a western editor. The great heat of the sun upon his back makes him irritable, and when Miss POTTS sharply smites with her fan the knuckles ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... the more ludicrous when we reflect that shift, i.e. change of raiment, is itself an early euphemism for smock; cf. Ital. mutande, "thinne under-breeches" (Florio), from a country and century not usually regarded as prudish. The fact is that, just as the low word, when once accepted, loses its primitive vigour (see pluck, p. 83), the euphemism is, by inevitable association, ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... into the rear. His master observed that Toussaint was rather romantic, and did not like jesting on domestic affairs. He was more prudish about such matters than whites fresh from the mother-country. Whether he had got it out of his books, or whether it really was a romantic attachment to his wife, there was no knowing; but he was quite unlike his ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... sort of look a proud and happy father-in-law-to-be ought to have directed at a prospective relative. It was not, as a matter of fact, the sort of look which anyone ought to have directed at anybody, except possibly an exceptionally prudish judge at a criminal in the dock, convicted of a more than usually atrocious murder. Billie, not being in the actual line of fire, only caught the tail end of it, but it was enough to create ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... incessantly)—there is a woody hill opposite, with a winding valley below, and the London road stretches out on either side. You may guess which way I oftenest walk. I have written two letters to S. L. and got one cold, prudish answer, beginning SIR, and ending FROM YOURS TRULY, with BEST RESPECTS FROM HERSELF AND RELATIONS. I was going to give in, but have returned an answer, which I think is a touch-stone. I send it you on the other side to keep as a curiosity, in case she kills ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... him an evasive reply. Doubtless it was much that she showed neither annoyance nor prudish reserve. He had won the right of addressing her on equal terms, but she was not inclined to anticipate that future ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... only turned her eyes from the encounter of your own lest their clearness should reveal too much; supposing, in short, your Mary had been not cold, but modest; not vacant, but reflective; not obtuse, but sensitive; not inane, but innocent; not prudish, but pure,—would you have left her to court another ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... propriety of drawing from the oblivion of forgotten literature such a story will be questioned. The decay of the chivalrous spirit of the middle ages, and the prudish, puritanical code of morality that has superseded the simple manners of our forefathers, render it hazardous to cast into the hands of the present generation the thrilling records of sin and repentance such as they were seen and recorded in days gone by. Yet in the midst of a literature ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... Arpington had been afllictingly demure on the theme of her presence at Calesford within her term of mourning. 'But I don't mourn, and I'm not related to the defunct, and I can't be denied the pleasure invented for my personal gratification,' Henrietta's happy flippancy pouted at the prudish objections. Moreover, the adored Columelli was to be her slave of song. The termination of the London season had been postponed a whole week for Calesford: the utmost possible strain; and her presence was understood to represent the Countess of Fleetwood, temporarily in decorous retirement. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... vexed with herself for her prudish weakness. An opportunity that might never be repeated was offered her, and she could not muster the courage to seize it. Blake, however, did ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... wishing to be thought prudish or ill-natured, first extinguished the light, and then threw off her chemise. Joining her companion bedfellow also quite naked, they embraced each other warmly and Minette, placing her hand on Ethel's bottom, forced their cunts ...
— The Power of Mesmerism - A Highly Erotic Narrative of Voluptuous Facts and Fancies • Anonymous
... thrive. Sand knew it and hated me. I was the sturdy oak, Frederic the tender ivy. I poured out my heart's blood for him, poured it into his music. He was a mere girl, I tell you—a sensitive, slender, shrinking, peevish girl, a born prudish spinster, and would shiver if any one looked at him. Liszt always frightened him and he hated Mendelssohn. He called Beethoven a sour old Dutchman, and swore that he did not write piano music. For the man who first brought his name before the public, the big-hearted German, Robert ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... enhanced an appreciative surprise at its singular merit. Finally she folded the sheet of paper with a delicate carefulness unusual to her, and placed it in her skirt pocket; then she went downstairs and out into the back yard. Her next action was straightforward and anything but prudish; she climbed the high wooden fences, one after the other, until she came to a pause at the top of that whereon the two journalists had lately made themselves so ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... easy,) the warbling of sacred phrases, and variations on the summoning trumpet, and imitated angelic praise, and the unfelt expressions of musical repentance, and unfearing despondency of guilt in recitative, are any thing but congenial to a mind properly attuned. I hope I am neither prudish, nor squeamish, nor splenetic, but speak only what many feel, and few care to express. Now, the cure in future for all this would be very simple: Why not have some lay oratorios? Protestants have appropriated the madrigal, and listen, delighted ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... plainly that he meant to be the master, and that he was of age, and should regulate his own life as he pleased, and he had expressed considerable disgust at the existence Folco had been leading in Paris and elsewhere; and Folco had always tried to laugh it off, calling Marcello prudish and hypersensitive in matters of morality, which he certainly was not. Once he had attempted an appeal to Marcello's former affection, recalling his mother's love for them both, but a look had come into the young man's eyes just then which even Corbario did not care to face again, and the ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... 'It's prudish,' said Phinny, disregarding this sentiment,— 'that's what it is. Do you suppose it's that old wretch of a guardian keeps her in leading strings? Now she talks of not staying to ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... with musical artworks that could enlighten him, so as to become educated enough to pull himself out of his misery. He felt immediate, strong disdain at any artistic statement that was not truly intelligent and artistic, such as, in his view, the music of Rossini. Although not prudish, he had high standards when it came to marriage, and was morally against "reproductory pleasure" for its own sake, or any form of adultery. He never married. Interestingly, experimental psychologists ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... flesh-pots all the while provoking their appetite; Mynheers very busy with the realities, and smoking as deliberately as if in a solitary lusthuys over the laziest canal in the Netherlands; squeaking chambermaids in the galleries above, and prudish dames below, half inclined to receive the golden solicitations of certain beauties for admittance, but positively refusing them the moment some creditable personage appears; eleven o'clock strikes; half the lights in the fair are extinguished; scruples grow less and less delicate; Mammon prevails, ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... right, too, that triumphant Jew with his insolent good humor. It is an absurd thing, after all, to be prudish and to thrust away the dish that is offered you. To be rich is, in fact, quite as good as to be powerful! Money remains! That is the only real thing in the world! It would be a fine sight to see a man refuse the ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... its calm. On my part I will do what I can to bring my feelings into accord with yours. One thing, above all, I would beg of you. Spare me the annoyances to which the strangeness of our mutual position might give rise to our relations with others. I am neither whimsical nor prudish, and should be sorry to get that reputation; but I feel sure that I can trust to your honor when I ask you to keep up the ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... into your possession. No one will believe you, but my name, at least, will live. You will treat it brutally, I know you will. Some of it must go; the public are fools and prudish fools. I was their servant once. But do your mangling gently—very gently. It is a great work, and I have paid for it ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... firm, unbending, inelastic, stark, impliable, rigorous, unyielding, inductile; strong, violent, forcible, inopposable; pertinacious, obstinate, tenacious, uncompromising, incompliant; constrained, formal, starched, affected, unnatural, precise, prim, ceremonious, prudish, punctilious; cramped, graceless, inelegant; (Slang) high, immoderate, large. Antonyms: ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... next he goes where statues are, we'll do our best to hide them, Since to prudes all things are prudish, lest his modesty take hurt. Though some one else, perhaps, may write, and say he can't abide them, When Apollo stands in trousers, or when ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 9th, 1892 • Various
... give me 'How shall I woo her?' Miss Harz?" a little embarrassed, I perceived, by my manner. "I have a fancy for the title, nevertheless, not having heard any more, and should be glad to hear the whole poem. But you are prudish to-day, ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... stocks never seem to sink lower. There are always fresh finds being made—seizures made officially by an officer or two with a few files of men so that there may be some reasonable excuse to offer to those who persist in remaining mulishly prudish. These new finds are, of course, called treasures-trove. They are good words. Looting has officially ceased; is, indeed, forbidden under the most severe penalties. That is why it is being systematised and made open and respectable. It is in the blood. You ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... Hartfield would die a bachelor, as his brother died before him. The Hollisters are not a marrying family, said society. But six or seven years after his return to England Lord Hartfield married Lady Florence Ilmington, a beauty in her first season, and a very sweet but somewhat prudish young person. The marriage resulted in the birth of an heir, whose appearance upon this mortal stage was followed within a year by his father's exit. Hence the Hartfield property, always a fine estate, had been nursed and fattened during a long minority, and the present Lord Hartfield ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... ad captandum; canting, insincere. not natural, unnatural; self-conscious; maniere; artificial; overwrought, overdone, overacted; euphuist &c 577. stiff, starch, formal, prim, smug, demure, tire a quatre epingles, quakerish, puritanical, prudish, pragmatical, priggish, conceited, coxcomical, foppish, dandified; finical, finikin; mincing, simpering, namby-pamby, sentimental. Phr. conceit in weakest bodies strongest ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... she, a curious undertone of defiance in her voice. She had a paniclike impulse to begin to talk of Dory; but, though she cast about diligently, she could find no way of introducing him that would not have seemed awkward—pointed and provincially prudish. ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... more decorous than the sermons of the seventeenth century. At this day foreigners, who dare not print a word reflecting on the government under which they live, are at a loss to understand how it happens that the freest press in Europe is the most prudish. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... virgin snows, with golden eye Mirroring the golden sun; to be her champion, And war with fiends for her; that were a 'quest'; That were true chivalry; to bring my Judge This jewel for His crown; this noble soul, Worth thousand prudish clods of barren clay, Who mope for heaven because earth's grapes are sour— Her, full of youth, flushed with the heart's rich first-fruits, Tangled in earthly pomp—and earthly love. Wife? Saint by her face she should be: with such looks The queen of heaven, perchance, slow pacing came Adown ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... the point at once. He trusted this handsome woman. His strength and his youth called to hers, expecting no prudish response. "It's very odd. It is that I'm Rickie's brother. I've just found out. I've ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... a direct proportion to strength of instinct. You like to discuss these matters, because you think lightly of them, and in that we Irish resemble you. Our great writers, such as Bernard Shaw, write thousands of paradoxes about marriage, because their thoughts are chaste. The English are far more prudish because their passions ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... throat was a bit dry and he could scarcely be expected to return at once to the humdrum life of camp without spending a bit of that $5 a day in slaking a tropical thirst. Indeed I question whether any but the prudish will loudly blame "Mac" even because he spent it a bit too freely and brought up in Empire dispensary. Word of his presence there soon drifted down to the wily plain-clothes man of Empire district. But it was a hot noonday, the dispensary lies somewhat up ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... Countesses with courtesans, all in eager quest of pleasure or conquest or gain. The Bath season was England's carnival, when cares and ceremonial alike were thrown to the winds, when the pleasure of the moment was the only ambition worth pursuing, and when even the prudish found a fearful joy ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... babe. Men together will examine a baby—if they must—with a bashful diffidence that pulls down the clothes each time the infant kicks; women dote upon each inch of its chubby person. And so with love. Men will discuss their love— if they must—with the most prudish decorum; women ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... bourgeoisie the bedchamber is often the cosiest of the whole suite of rooms, and whilst indoors, when not superintending her servant, it is in the bedroom that madame will spend most of her time. Here, too, she will receive friends of either sex, and, the French being far less prudish than ourselves, nobody considers that there is anything wrong or ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... with a profusion of lace, and afforded everybody an ample opportunity to appraise her neck and bosom. Lady Allonby had no reason to be ashamed of either, and the last mode in these matters was not prudish. ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... noblewomen who has travelled. Many Americans will remember the visit she made here with her mother some years ago, and the effect her girlish grace produced at that time. The de Noailles’ château of Maintenon is an inheritance from Louis XIV.’s prudish favorite, who founded and enriched the de Noailles family. The Duc and Duchesse d’Uzès live near by at Bonnelle with the old Duc de Doudeauville, her grandfather, who is also the grandfather of Mme. de Noailles, these two ladies being ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... no prudish notions, you will perceive, about a flirtation—provided it was carried on with the airs and graces of the Hotel Rambouillet. She merely, therefore, interposed a word here and there, to show that she was present. Daphne, who scarcely said a word to Hector, took good care to answer every ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... her to see us; I want her to know I think it's a compliment if you talk to me by the roadside. That's all. No, it isn't all," he went on. "I want you to decide something, and now it'll be easier for you to decide, because they did see us. I'm in earnest; I don't want any prudish weights on this conversation. If they think there's something wrong, so much the better. But the very first thing I want to say to you is, that I've been a pup. I want to be a man with you—as much of a man as you were a noble girl by coming over ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... and, while she enjoyed men's society, she had been so accustomed to it from her earliest days that she had nothing to fear from the novelty of their friendship, or the danger of their compliments. Not prudish, not morbid, not envious, not sentimental, and not indolent, she was perhaps especially endowed for the tantalising career which the stage offers to the ambitious of both sexes. Acting came to her as music comes to the true musician. She never considered whether she would become a great actress ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... which Dr. Napheys prepared his sanitary writings was one eminently calculated to reconcile those who were most opposed to instructing the general public in such branches. While he confidently believed that vastly more harm than good is done by a prudish concealment of the physiology of sex and its relations to health, he also clearly recognized that such instruction should be imparted at the proper age and under certain limitations; while the general facts common to the species ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... The sacred authors, the Fathers of the Church, who present their thoughts in living words, and ecclesiastical authors have not felt that silence was best. I have followed their example, and shall exclaim, with St. Augustine, 'If what I have written scandalizes any prudish persons, let them rather accuse the turpitude of their own thoughts than the words I have been ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... might be as well to understand them. He went so far as to say to himself that Janet was such a thoroughly nice girl as she was; and then he smiled inwardly at the thought of how angry she would be at the idea of his putting any prudish considerations on her account into the balance against an interesting acquaintance. He had, nevertheless, a distinct satisfaction in the fact that it was really circumstances, in the shape of the Decade article, that had brought them together, and that he could hardly charge himself with being ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... a false, or a prudish, refinement are these questions kept in the background, but more particularly are they diminished in view in order to confine the contents of this book to a resume of the facts which are the most agreeable. Even in those localities where there is little ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... tragedy, and, take it all in all, does rather less mischief. As to the thing in question, I know nothing about it: I dare say, it is not true; but, now, suppose it was—it is only a silly QUIZ, of a raw young officer, upon a prudish old dowager. I know nothing about it, for my part; but, after all, what irreparable mischief has been done? Laugh at the thing, and then it is a jest—a bad one, perhaps, but still only a jest—and there's an end of it; but take it seriously, ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... should you catch the prudish itch And each become a coward, Bring sometimes with you Lady Rich, And sometimes Mistress Howard; For virgins, to keep chaste, must go Abroad with such as are not so. ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... "No fooling, sir. You see this, and you know I shall not be trifled with. Once more let me remind you that a noise here would hardly be heard outside. But you are not serious. The prize for you is too great. Police? How could you marry the lady then? Do you think my proud, prudish little Myra would take you, knowing me to be alive? Stop, will you?" he cried with a savage growl like that of a wild beast, "or, by all that's holy—Here, what are you going ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... wise youth was soothing. "Somebody has kissed him, sir, and the chaste boy can't get over it." This absurd suggestion did more to appease the baronet than if Adrian had given a veritable reasonable key to Richard's conduct. It set him thinking that it might be a prudish strain in the young man's mind, due to the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... own strength, and Juan's youth, And of the folly of all prudish fears, Victorious virtue, and domestic truth, And then of Don Alfonso's fifty years: I wish these last had not occurr'd, in sooth, Because that number rarely much endears, And through all climes, the snowy and the sunny, Sounds ill in love, whate'er ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron |
