"Flounce" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her mother coming down the street, all in a flutter of hurry. Adeline is slender and nervous; her elbows jerked out, her chin jerked up, and her skirts switched her thin ankles; Mrs. Ketchum is very stout, and she walked with a kind of quivering flounce. Her face was blazing, and I knew her bonnet was on hindside before—I was sure that the sprig of purple flowers ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... purple is being worn. You notice it on the streets. Of course other colors are quite stylish as well—in fact, I saw a lovely thing the other day in olive green albatross, with a triple-lapped flounce skirt trimmed with insert squares of silk, and a draped fichu of lace opening over a shirred vest and double puff sleeves with a lace band holding two gathered frills—but you see lots of purple too. Oh, yes, you do; just take a walk down ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... to tend the fair; Not a less pleasing, though less glorious, care; To save the powder from too rude a gale, Nor let the imprisoned essences exhale. . . . Nay oft in dreams invention we bestow To change a flounce or add a furbelow." ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... these days, often in my greatest agonies, even flounce towards the promise, as the horses do towards sound ground that yet stick in the mire, concluding, though as one almost bereft of his wits through fear, on this I will rest and stay, and leave the fulfilling of it to the God of heaven ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... dress, flounce, and shawl, if there is no possibility of their being sold. Also all other fine articles return me, save the dresses which, with prices lowered, may be sold. ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... happened that on the 10th day of the first month that, sitting at her work and industriously cutting her scraps, her well-beloved sister Angelina proposed adding to the collection for the cushion two handsome lace veils, a lace flounce, and other laces, etc., which were accepted, and are accordingly in this medley. This has been done under feelings of duty, believing that, as we are called with a high and holy calling, and forbidden to ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... will!" cried Belle, whose conscience suddenly woke, and smote her for beating down the woman who did her plain sewing, in order that she might have an extra flounce on a new dress. "Belle has got a virtuous fit; pity it won't ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... ruffles, and trimmed with red ribbon; on the left arm, the Garter in diamonds, and, on the right, a diamond rosette. She wore the blue ribbon and diamond George as usual. The under petticoat was of white and silver tissue, trimmed with a deep flounce of rich point lace (which had belonged to Queen Charlotte), headed by a quilling of red satin ribbon and bows; above, a narrower flounce of point lace, trimmed like the other; in each ribbon ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... saw the valley he had remarked the evening before, with the streamlet winding like a silver ribbon in a green flounce. ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... halibut] for twenty years, and I can't say I've found it yet. But look here—you seem to have a fondness for talking to your betters—suppose you go to Walrus Islet and talk to Sea Vitch. He may know something. Don't flounce off like that. It's a six-mile swim, and if I were you I should haul out and take a nap first, ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... her making a pinafore for her doll out of a lace flounce of real old Venetian lace. Dilly said she found it on the floor. 'On the floor, indeed,' I said to her. 'You mustn't use real lace!' She said, 'Why not? It's a real doll!' Lately Dilly's got a way of answering back that I don't like ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... example of a fashionable woman, how low, how vulgar! With her the cut of a collar, the depth of a flounce, the style of a ribbon, is of more importance than the strength of a virtue, the form of a mind, or the style of a life. She consults the fashion-plate oftener than her Bible; she visits the dry-goods shop and the milliner oftener than the church. She speaks of Fashion oftener than of virtue, and ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... currents and counter-currents, we shall in the end, be driven back to the land from which we launched twenty years ago. Indeed, my dear Sir, we have been but a sturdy fish on the hook of a dexterous angler who letting us flounce till we have spent Our force, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... thrilling sweetness would sometimes pass upon her calm and thoughtful countenance, always beautiful—if such a term can be allowed in speaking of a brown, rosy, plump, and well-conditioned girl, of good stature, whose form had not been squeezed into shape, nor her linsey woolsey flourished into flounce and farthingale. Her hair hung in bright clusters on her brow; fresh from Nature's toilet, their wild untutored elegance was singular and bewitching. Indeed, Katherine, or "Kattern," as she was more generally called, was the cynosure of this clime—a jewel, that needed not the foil of its ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... ocean with a head, Like troubled table-beer—and make it bounce, And froth, and roar, and fling—but this, I've said, Surged in scarce rougher than a lady's flounce: But then, a grander contrast thus it bred With the wild welkin, seeming to pronounce Something more awful in the serious ear, As one would whisper that a ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... dress was more European than Chinese in cut. On their heads they wore the Tam o' Shanter-like cap of black stuff, common among these people, bound on with their long braids, and their coats were of the usual felt. Their skirts, homespun, were made with what we used to call a Spanish flounce. According to Baber, the Lolo petticoat is of great significance. No one may go among the independent Lolos safely save in the guardianship of a member of the tribe, and a woman is as good a guardian as a man. Before setting out she puts on an extra petticoat, and the traveller ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... blue flat feathers, pins, bought for Court, and a pair of pearl earings, the cost of them—no matter what—less than diamonds, however. A sapphire blue demi-saison with a satin stripe, sack and petticoat trimmed with a broad black lace; crape flounce, & leave made of blue ribbon, and trimmed with white floss; wreaths of black velvet ribbon spotted with steel beads, which are much in fashion, and brought to such perfection as to resemble diamonds; ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... could sweep the pavement, or lie in rich folds at the bottom of a carriage, unadorned by an imposing flounce that almost covered the robe; a little later, the one sober flounce was driven into obscurity by twenty coquettish small ones; and these were displaced by primly puffed bands; which gave way to fanciful "keys" running up the sides of the dress (where they seemed to have no possible right); and ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... has even a telegraph office on the premises, where a clerk is for ever flashing dollars and cents along the trembling wires. There were lace collars 40 guineas each, and flounces of Valenciennes lace, half a yard deep, at 120 guineas a flounce. The damasks and brocades for curtains and chairs were at almost fabulous prices. Few gentlemen, the clerk observed, give less than 3l. per yard for these articles. The most costly are purchased by the hotels. I saw some ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... discovery. Molly never thought of disputing those rights. She looked up to pretty, wayward, impulsive Bessie Raeburn as to a superior being,—an angelic deliverer. In her half-adoring gratitude and love, she could have "kissed the hem of her garment," or the lower flounce of her pretty organdie dress. She would often say, "O, where would I have been now, if it had not been for you, dear Bessie? In a pauper's grave,—or worse, in prison,—or worse still, on the streets, a wicked, lost girl, loving nobody, and only knowing ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... of his troubles was rapidly drawing nearer to the mill, and soon, to her inexpressible delight, she saw Bob coming to meet her. She had heard the flounce, and, feeling more secure from her pursuer, had dropped her pace to a quick walk. No sooner did she reach Bob than, overcome by the excitement of the moment, she flung herself into his arms. Bob instantly enclosed her in an embrace ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... "finishing off" was carried on for weeks. When her baby was asleep, or was good, or had its little ruffles all fluted, and its little sister's little ruffles were all fluted, then would she seize the opportunity to stitch, to plait, to flounce, to pucker, and to braid. Wherever a hand's breadth of the original material was left visible, some bow, or band, or queer device, was fashioned and sewed on. This zealous individual, by improving every moment, by sitting up nights, by working with the baby across her ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz
... if not carefully avoided. Our commander, therefore, as it approached nearer and nearer, ordered one of the ship's guns to be fired, to try if the percussion of the air would disperse it. This was no sooner done than we heard a prodigious flounce in the water, at but a small distance from the ship, on the weather-quarter; and after a violent noise, or cry in the air, the cloud, that upon our firing dissipated, seemed to return again, but by degrees disappeared. Whilst we ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... had been trying to eat with little success. Mr. Waverton's hat upon one chair, his whip upon another, and his cloak tumbled inelegantly over a third proved that he was not himself. For he was born to treat his clothes with respect. Mr. Waverton would be jumping up to look out of the window, flounce down again in his chair to drink wine and stare with profound meaning at the table, start up and stride to the hearth and glower down at its emptiness—and repeat the motions in a different order. He must be ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... handkerchief, your neck-cloth, anything?' she cried; and at the same moment, from her light muslin gown she rent off a flounce and tossed it on the floor. 'Take that,' she said, and for the first time ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a striped ground and was of that peculiar shade that people call "clean looking." It was made in a plain "bask" with buttons down the front, and a plain, full skirt, over which she wore a white, starched apron, with a row of insertion and a flounce ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... bright, we like not: wood that is green will rather smother, and sputter, and smoke, and crack, and flounce, than cast a brave light and a pleasant heat: wherefore great folks care not much, not so much for such kind of things, as for them that ...
— The Jerusalem Sinner Saved • John Bunyan
... imbued with the spirit of love. Oh, that it could have remained so forever! There was not a painted cheek in Eden, nor a bald head, nor a false tooth, nor a bachelor. There was not a flounce, nor a frill, nor a silken gown, nor a flashy waist with aurora borealis sleeves. There was not a curl paper, nor even a threat of crinoline. Raiment was an after thought, the mask of a tainted soul, born of original sin. Beauty was unmarred by gaudy rags; Eve was dressed in sunshine, ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... classic simplicity in a long blue cotton garment, decorated with many colors and smelling strongly of retouching varnish, that covered her from the white ruffle at her throat to the upper edge of her black alpaca flounce. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... of you to come," said Ishmael, taking the little hand that lay idle against a flounce. She made no motion to withdraw it or to move away, and glancing up at her he saw there were tears in her eyes. As he looked they slipped over her lashes and rolled down her cheeks. She made no effort to stay them, ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... lady with a flounce. 'I have no patience' (which indeed was the truth). 'Pray, Fanny,' said Mr Dorrit, raising his eyebrows, 'what do ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... his naked intelligence taught him to feel Was the shame of himself; and the wish to conceal Was the first step in art. From the apron which Eve In Eden sat down out of fig-leaves to weave, To the furbelow'd flounce and the broad crinoline Of my lady—you all know of course whom I mean— This art of concealment has greatly increas'd. A whole world lies cryptic in each human breast; And that drama of passions as old as the hills, Which the moral of all men in each man ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... matter? I told her not to bother her head about it, that when we got to New York, or even to Cincinnati or Louisville, I would buy her a whole shopful of dresses. She made no answer to that; but when I had the misfortune to tear her third flounce, she said, that if I went on in that way she would not have a whole gown left when she got to Louisville. 'With a whole one or none at all, Miss,' said I, 'you'll always be a charming creature.' That now was as pretty a compliment as ever was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... upstairs at once, to the elder ladies' room, and see what could be done with Caroline's pink satin. She had only worn it once, years ago. Nobody would remember it, and trimmed with some of her mother's lace, the big flounce and the fichu, it would be a different thing. Sophia ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... found my brooch! It was just sticking by its pin in the flounce of my brown silk, that I wore yesterday. I took it off in a hurry, and it must have caught in it; and I hung up my gown in the closet. Just now, when I was going to fold it up, there was the brooch! I'm very vexed, but I never dreamt ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... can afford to be in the fashion at very trifling charges. Miss Emily Ponto at the piano, and her sister Maria at that somewhat exploded instrument, the harp, were in light blue dresses that looked all flounce, and spread out like Mr. ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with a bouncing flounce and looking straight at the Major. "Marry Pennington! Why, she shan't, John. That's all there is of it. We object and that settles it. Why, what the deuce can she be ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... she is a lady, every inch of her, as I have said, was a complete contrast to your missionary. Her dress had three colors; blue satin in front, wreathed across with a wreath of rosebuds and leaves over each flounce. Running up each side were other wreaths, fastening down the edges of a long train of white silk, that was fastened in a wide box-plait at the back of the neck, and swept away to the carpet, where it fell and floated ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... be a great thing. Imagine going home every night without wondering if your room is locked and the landlady sitting on your trunks at the top landing. You can just flounce into your nest any old time and know that everything is right there, unless one crafty girl has bribed the chambermaid for the key. You can never tell about those people. Why, I know one girl who kept stealing hairs out of the different wigs in the dressing-rooms ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... righteousness worse, for my righteousness was Jesus Christ Himself, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever . . . Again, oh, what did I see in that blessed sixth of John: Him that cometh to Me I will in nowise cast out. I should in those days often flounce toward that promise as horses do toward sound ground that yet stick in the mire. Oh! many a pull hath my heart had with Satan for this blessed sixth of John . . . And, again, as I was thus in a muse, ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... her last remnant of restraint gone, she lay downright at his feet, abandoned to virulent grief, and in her naked agony a shapeless mass of frill and flounce, a horrible and not dramatic spectacle of abandonment; decencies gone down before desire, the heart ruptured and broken through its walls. In such a moment of soul dishabille and her own dishabille of bosom bulging above the tight lacing of her corset-line as she lay prone, her mouth sagging ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... not with acrimony, but with grave severity. Rebecca Ann Glynn gasped by way of assent. She sat in a wide flounce of black silk in the corner of the sofa, and rolled terrified eyes from her sister Caroline to her sister Mrs. Stephen Brigham, who had been Emma Glynn, the one beauty of the family. The latter was beautiful still, with ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... urgency had been in the stead of the constable's stronger measures, they eyed him askance as he stood and sought to listen, with his hand on the door. The old woman turned around, her arms falling to her sides with a sort of flounce of triumph, her eyes twinkling beneath the shining spectacles set upon her brow among the limp ruffles of her thrust-back sunbonnet, a laugh of satisfaction widening her wrinkled face. "Thar now!" she chuckled, "Nar'sa jes' set it down she wouldn't testify, ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... spending a great deal of money," he said one morning in his condemnatory manner. Rosalie looked up from the lace flounce which had just been delivered and gave the little nervous laugh, which was becoming entirely ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... sor'row sol'emn scrape chime launch dur'ing hire'ling strange whilst morgue gib'bet tres'pass greet smart pledge bod'kin shil'ling perch badge gourd gos'ling mat'tock champ dodge schist lob'by ram'part drench brawl flounce tan'sy tran'quil squeeze dwarf screech lock'et cun'ning grist yawl spasm van'dal her'ring shrink grant starve ex'tra drug'gist copse spunk scalp ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... square inch of cloth to be seen on any part. In the centre stood a magnificent finely spun barley-sugar windmill, two feet and a half high, with a spacious sugar foundation, with a cart and horses and two or three millers at the door, and a she-miller working a ball-dress flounce at a ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... Marjorie with a half sigh. "There, I guess that flounce will stay in place. I've sewed ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... of the past as do the cuffs of an old-fashioned coat, the flutings of a flounce, or the lacings of a bodice from out a quickly opened bureau drawer. Only when you follow the cuff along the sleeve to the broad shoulder; smooth out the crushed frill that swayed about her form, and trace the silken thread to the waist it tightened, can you determine the fashion ...
— The Little Gray Lady - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... pretty. A market-woman with her jolly brown face and laughing brown eyes—eyes all the softer for a touch of antimony—her ample form clothed in a lively print overall, made with a yoke at the shoulders, and a full long flounce which is gathered on to the yoke under the arms and falls fully to the feet; with her head done up in a yellow or red handkerchief, and her snowy white teeth gleaming through her vast smiles, is a mighty pleasant thing to see, and to talk to. But, ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... gown of soft white over a white satin slip. It should be cut low in the corsage, and have no sleeves. A touch of colour in the shape of loops of small pink roses at the foot, heading a triple flounce of white, and on the shoulders and around the top of the bodice. You know for a portrait, madame, you want no epoch-making effect. It should be quite simple, so that in the years to come it may still please the eye as a work of art and not a creation ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... of the room with a flounce of red draperies, and left James. He sat down beside a window and stared out blankly. The thought came to him, how many avowals of love and deathless devotion such a woman must have listened to. Her manner of receiving his made ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... away by her father, the M'Conifer of the Glands, looked exquisitely charming in a creation carried out in green mercerised silk, moulded on an underslip of gloaming grey, sashed with a yoke of broad emerald and finished with a triple flounce of darkerhued fringe, the scheme being relieved by bretelles and hip insertions of acorn bronze. The maids of honour, Miss Larch Conifer and Miss Spruce Conifer, sisters of the bride, wore very becoming costumes in the same ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... She was mentally, for the hundredth time, putting on the black gown with the pink roses stitched all about the flounce, and piling up her ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... disregards him. He gleefully chucks her under the chin, and, retreating a few steps, nods and beckons with fantastic grimaces, while the girl bestows a contemptuous and supercilious look upon his wrinkled visage. She turns away with a flounce, and the old gentleman trots after her with a toothless chuckle. The pantaloon ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... therefore agreed to accept of him as our guide; and we left our simple and promising friends with the assurance of a speedy return: as a pledge, we exchanged one of our cravats, well stiffened, and with the Petersham tie, for one of the collars worn by the male, and a flounce of the she-savage's petticoats; promising also to send them, on our arrival, a pattern of Lord H———h's beard, which approached nearer to savage life than any other object we could think of in the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 287, December 15, 1827 • Various
... turned with so quick a flounce that she nearly landed herself in the little gutter which I had made with my stick to carry off the drainage of ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... sociable" nor a hotel "hop," and not a President's "levee." There are fine ladies who have lived forty years in Washington without attending that pandemonium, the levee, where the crowd seizes one with a hundred hands till flounce and furbelow are crushed in its grasp, and where, while the court reigns in the Blue Room, the mob are disporting themselves in the magnificence of the East Room, the parlor of the people, where they have the reddest of red curtains, the broadest of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... to snatch his wig from between the apprentice's tongs, clap it on his head, ram his hat on the top of it, and flounce out at ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a hand moulded by nature to give elegance of form to a kid glove, is "stinted of its fair proportion" by grubbing toil. The foot which might have excited the admiration of a ball-room, peeping under a flounce of lace in a satin shoe, and treading the mazy dance, will grow coarse and broad by tramping in its native state over toilsome miles, bearing perchance to a market town some few eggs, whose whole produce would not purchase the sandal-tie of my lady's ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... Miss Flounce, the young milliner, blue-eyed and bright, In the front parlor over her shop, "Entertains," as the phrase is, a party to-night Upon peanuts ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... I was still clutching my basket, though all the mushrooms had fallen out, and my foot was through a torn flounce, and my hat hanging on my neck. My mouth was dry. For a moment I couldn't get a word off my tongue; and then, "He fell, he fell!" I ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... Micheline, whose partner was the mayor himself. An air of joyful gravity lit up the municipal officer's face. He was enjoying the honor which the Princess had done him. His pretty young daughter, dressed, in her confirmation dress, which had been lengthened with a muslin flounce, a rose in her hair, and her hands encased in straw-colored one-button kid gloves, hardly dared raise her eyes to the Prince, and with burning cheeks, answered in monosyllables the few remarks Serge felt forced to ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... "That flounce of your mother's out of the room was certainly as much like old times as if the thing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... twenty-five cents at the village milliner's. I cut it down and sewed it up again into another shape. Then I hunted through the old 'Semi-Annuals'; you don't know what those are, do you? I found a piece of velvet that had been a flounce. I steamed it and covered the shape. Then I had to have some trimming. It came from an old evening cloak of my Cousin Jeannette's—a bit of gilt, a silk rose, some ribbon from—I can't tell you what it came from, ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond |
