"Piquant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stretched its brownish, shining limbs, and filled the whole room with the odor of the truffles with which it was stuffed. By its side shone, in crystal bottles, the most precious Rhine wine, looking like liquid gold, and a silent, still undisclosed pie gave a presentiment of a piquant enjoyment. ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... the entrance to the theatre by the appearance of Appleton. He was coming from within the building, and with him were two women, one elderly and unattractive, the other a plump young person with bright blue eyes in a saucy face that had more claim to piquant effrontery than to beauty. She was simply dressed and was all smiles ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... that now I wish they were not coming," acknowledged the host; "but they are young men of the loftiest genius, and some day it may provide a piquant anecdote to relate how you met them all in ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... the newspaper an elevating influence; the common and sweet life of society is much better fitted to entertain and instruct us than the exceptional and extravagant. I confess (saving the Mistress's presence) that the evening talk over the dessert at dinner is much more entertaining and piquant than the morning ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... her prejudice and dislike. He was too clever, too keen-sighted and appreciative. Had he been indifferent toward her, and not so observant, she would have soon learned to like him and enjoy his society, for he had a bright, piquant way of talking, and was seldom at a loss for words. In fact, he had plenty of ideas, and was fast gaining more. One reason why Mildred shrank from him in strengthening repulsion was because, in his absorbing interest and his quick comprehension of her thought and feeling, he came too ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... there, and also Beatrice Egerton, who, as exchange editor of the "Argus," Dorothy had come to know well and to like for her quick wit and her daring, piquant ways, while she thoroughly disapproved of her worldly, self-seeking attitude ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... grand monarque, when old French literature was so much despised, is certainly a curiosity. The Rabelais of Madame de Pompadour (in morocco) seems comparatively cheap at 60 pounds. There is something piquant in the idea of inheriting from that famous beauty the work of the ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... and I talked freely to each other now, and playfully said a great many things to Mona, who, though she did not understand them, laughed with us and gave us much pleasure with her easy, unembarrassed manner and piquant ways. And she not only jabbered away with hands and face in the manner we had taught her, but she did not cease also to make life bright for us by repaying us in our own coin and talking to us in her natural, delicious ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... extremes. He played even his own music; and played at his concert a composition for violin and orchestra, very well instrumentated, full of happy melodies, and where the principal part contained features of a character as ingenious as piquant. He possesses an extreme dexterity in the use of the bow, and makes the staccato with as much audacity as perfection. He has the tone agreeable, the style elegant, and the expression just, and not affected. Here he is, then, placed in the first ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... its beauty caress your soul. His colors are thin and very simple—there is no challenge in his work, as there is in the work of Turner. Greens and grays predominate, and the plain drab tones are blithe, airy, gracious, graceful and piquant as a beautiful young Quaker woman clothed in the garb of simplicity and humility—but a woman still. Corot coquettes with color—with pale lilac, silver gray, and diaphanous green. He poetizes everything he touches—quiet ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... Probably Vermont would have transformed the famous advice of Uriah Heep to "Always be obliging." Certainly, no pleasanter company could be found, whether for man or woman; whatever the hour, however mixed the company, Jasper Vermont had always a smile, a jest, or a new and piquant scandal. In the smoking-room he would rival Mortimer Shelton in apparently good-natured cynicism. In a duchess's boudoir he would enliven the afternoon tea hour with the neatest of epigrams and the ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... toward the woods," she suggested, with a smile which lay strangely on her piquant features. "It will look better than standing like posts on ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... of Meat, and if the gravy is required to be slightly thickened, add a small teaspoonful of potato-flour mixed smooth in cold water. For cutlets or other dishes requiring sharp sauce, make exactly as above, and just before serving add a little of any good piquant sauce, or pickles ...
— Nelson's Home Comforts - Thirteenth Edition • Mary Hooper
... she would make some tactful suggestion for his benefit, relieving him of the necessity of saying he was tired, yet bringing about the possibility of rest. And often with her own hands she would concoct some nourishing dish, hardly so piquant as Gertrudis' red-hot creations, but rather more healthful for a growing boy. Neither she nor Blue Bonnet voiced their fears to the other girls nor to any of the men, but, with a silent understanding, ministered quietly to the ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... favourite of hers; she is pretty, and she is piquant in manner and conversation; two very good things, which she thinks highly of in any young woman. Besides that, she knows that Helen loves her younger son; and, although she hardly understands how things are between them, nor how far Maurice himself is implicated, she believes ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... is worse, in rhymed prose, until he reaches the point which is to us of import. Khalid, in the winter of the first year of the Dastur (Constitution) writes to him many letters from Beirut, of which he gives us not less than fifty! And of these, the following, if not the most piquant and interesting, are the ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... grateful, son," said Hood; "yesterday you thought yourself a thief—now that load's off your mind, and you know yourself for an honest man. General rejoicing seems to be in order. Looks as though your parent had robbed himself—rather a piquant situation, I ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... grave thoughts which had perhaps been long fermenting in his mind; and then his intensity, his absorption in his theme, and his terrible gravity, disconcerted hearers who had expected a lighter touch. An illustration of this piquant maladroitness recurs to my memory as I write. In 1882 I was concerned with a few Radical friends in founding the National Liberal Club.[44] We certainly never foresaw the palatial pile of terra-cotta and glazed tiles which now bears that name.[45] ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... knowledge that Mr Sismondi possesses of Italy, of its history and antiquities, renders his communications of the utmost value to the traveller. Our supper was prolonged to a late hour and I question if the suppers and conversations of Scipio and Atticus, those nodes caenaeque Deum[100] were more piquant or afforded more variety than ours. Shakespeare, Schiller, Voltaire, Ariosto, Dante, Filangieri, Michel Angelo, Washington, Napoleon, all furnished anecdotes and reflexions ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... looking at her piquant head, black, unconsciously outlined against the lamp, as she sat working by the table. "Just keep still ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... this singular way; there was something piquant in not seeing his companion, her presence manifested only by her sweet breath, the slight rustling of the glazed cloth which afforded her such scanty room, and the prattle which ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... Martha would expatiate on the danger of boxing ears, quoting a reverend brother of Miss Wooler's. Among her school companions, Martha was called "Miss Boisterous," but was always a favourite, so piquant and fascinating were her ways. She was not in the least pretty, but something much better, full of change and variety, rudely outspoken, lively, and original, producing laughter with her own good-humour and ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... anticipations; a rich rhythmic life originating in the changing articulation of the twelve-eights in groups of three and two each. ... This etude is an exceedingly piquant composition, possessing for the hearer a wondrous, fantastic charm, if played with the proper insight." The metronomic marking is practically the same in all editions, 152 to the quarter notes. The study is one of the most charming of the composer. There is more depth in it than in the G flat and ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... native grace of character, his smiling geniality. If he yielded some credence to the most naive inventions, this does not mean that he was always and entirely their dupe. They simply gave him the utmost delight. He did not refrain from piquant allusions; and the commentary on the Pentateuch presents a number of pleasantries, some of which are a bit highly-spiced for modern taste. Fundamentally, they are a heritage of the old Midrashic spirit grafted ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... relating a piquant little anecdote told to me by a French colleague, who had occasion to make an arrest, and came unexpectedly on his man. Unfortunately he was unprovided with handcuffs and was somewhat at a disadvantage, but being a quick-witted ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... pine lured a young engineer through Kentucky to catch the trail, and when he finally climbed to its shelter he found not only the pine but the foot-prints of a girl. And the girl proved to be lovely, piquant, and the trail of these girlish foot-prints led the young engineer a madder chase than "the ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... the blight of that artificiality which was everywhere characteristic of his times, and nowhere more conspicuous than in France. "Soyez piquant, si vous ne pouvez pas etre vrai," was his advice to a fellow artist, Ducreux; and his own work too often shows evidence of the sacrifice of truth to piquancy. His single figures and heads are not, as a class, so true to nature ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... douches while nurse's duty was performed by one of her entertainers, and she smiled in proof that her faith was grounded on their righteousness. She was indeed a mere girl. Her short scarlet upper lip showed her teeth with piquant innocence. As much a creature of the woods as a doe, her lot had been that primitive struggle which knows nothing about the amenities and proprieties of civilization. This Brown could clearly see, and he addressed her with the same protecting patronage ...
— The Cursed Patois - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Lord is not illiterate beyond the rate of most noblemen of his age"). So also that famous garden of Moor-Park in Hertfordshire, laid out by the witty Duchess of Bedford, to whom Dr. Donne addresses some of his piquant letters, was a model of old-fashioned and stately graces. Sir William Temple praises it beyond reason in his "Garden of Epicurus," and cautions readers against undertaking any of those irregularities of garden-figures which the Chinese so much affect. He admires only stateliness and primness. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... through Bansemer's brain was the realisation that she was far more beautiful than he had expected her to be. There was a truly aristocratic loveliness in the rather piquant face, and she undeniably possessed "manner." Maturity had improved her vastly, he confessed with strange exultation; age had been kinder than youth. He forgot the play, seldom taking his eyes from the back which again had been turned to him. Calculating, he reached the conclusion that she was not ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... Ethel into conversation with the women who had them in charge. Several of the mothers were French—very French in the way they dressed, in the way they sewed, in their quick gestures, shrugs and smiles and their pretty, broken English. They lent a piquant novelty to ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... of this group would be impossible. Mino di Giovanni, called Da Fiesole, was characterised by grace that tended to degenerate into formality. The tombs in the Abbey of Florence have an almost infantine sweetness of style, which might be extremely piquant, were it not that Mino pushed this quality in other works to the verge of mannerism.[104] Their architectural features are the same as those of similar monuments in Tuscany:—a shallow recess, flanked by Renaissance pilasters, and roofed with ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... There was such piquant conviction in the manner of the speaker, who was also a very pretty girl, that they all turned towards her, and Kitty ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... young and slender. Her face was piquant but not intellectual, and scarcely beautiful. It pleased rather by its life and motion and oddity than by its beauty. She looked at her companion in a peculiar way—trustfully, almost reverently—and yet with a touch of coquetry ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... of saying things of this sort. She would lower her head and look out from under her head frizzles in a non-committal fashion, but with a suggestion of something that made her piquant, bewitching face irresistible. ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... trifled with the fringe on Shon's buckskin jacket, which was whisked from his fingers with smothered anger. For a few moments he was silent; but the eager looks of the Chief Factor and Lazenby encouraged him to continue. Besides, it was only Pierre's way—provoking Shon was the piquant sauce of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... merry doings of the famous people of this sweet and productive land, more fertile in cuckolds, dandies and witty wags than any other, and which has furnished a good share of men of renown in France, as witness the departed Courier of piquant memory; Verville, author of Moyen de Parvenir, and others equally well known, among whom we will specially mention the Sieur Descartes, because he was a melancholy genius, and devoted himself more to brown studies than to drinks and dainties, a man of whom all the cooks ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... fell forward into the mud, her skirt catching on all the barbs in the fence and rending itself horribly. Frieda, full of wild exclamations of pity and remorse, helped her up and wiped the thickest of the mud from her once piquant face. ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... frankness was the most piquant form of joke to the company at the Rainbow, and Ben Winthrop's insult was felt by everybody to have capped Mr. ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... we stumbled upon a pretty little secret of yours to-day, Miss Margaret," said Maudie, with her best company manner, as they walked along. Margaret raised her eyebrows. "Rebel and I," Maudie went on,—Rebecca was at the age that seeks a piquant substitute for an unpoetical family name,—"Rebel and I are wondering if we may ask you who Mr. ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... A piquant detail in this connection is worthy of mention.[115] It is affirmed that the Customs House authorities on the Russo-Swedish frontiers discovered to their dismay that for well over a year Germany had been receiving from Russia a large proportion of the raw materials ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... instant the piquant face and figure of Millicent Jaques rose before her mind's eye. She pictured to herself the cool effrontery with which the actress would crush these waspish women by creating a court of every eligible man in the place. It was not a healthy thought, but ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... "life is now stupid, dull, and monotonous. As you say, every one has become most honorable and virtuous. No scandals or piquant adventures occur; baptisms, marriages, and burials are the only events. This is really a miserable existence; for as I do not wish to be baptized or to marry, and as I am not yet ready for burial, I really do ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... was very beautiful, long and silken, its nut-brown tint contrasting exquisitely with the dazzling whiteness of her fine fresh complexion. At the commencement of her supreme power, the Empress still liked to adorn her head in the morning with a red madras handkerchief, which gave her a most piquant Creole air, and rendered her still ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... himself staring in a sort of amazement at that piquant face, which seemed here so out of place, and finding his stare returned, he shifted uncomfortably. He grew conscious of the sorry figure that he cut. Unwashed, with rank and matted hair and a disfiguring ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... fact that a form of secrecy had to be kept up till her Majesty should announce her marriage to the Council only added an additional piquant flavour to the general satisfaction. But this did not cause the Queen to fail in confidence towards the members of her family, for she wrote herself to the Queen-dowager and to the rest of her kindred announcing her intended marriage, and ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... at once by someone very different from what he had expected. It was a woman, young and singularly beautiful. She was of the German type, blonde and fair-haired, with the piquant contrast of a pair of beautiful dark eyes with which she surveyed the stranger with surprise and a pleasing embarrassment which brought a wave of colour over her pale face. Framed in the bright light of the open doorway, it seemed to McMurdo that he had never seen a more beautiful picture; ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... of wine-drinking. All would depend upon the tastes of the host and the nature of the company. The meal, it may be mentioned, begins with an invocation corresponding to our grace. The hors d'oeuvres are taken in the shape of shell-fish, such as oysters and mussels, snails with piquant sauce, lettuce, radishes and the like, eggs, and a taste of wine tempered ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... quote one or two piquant personal observations of a more specific nature as to the odd characters Edison drew around him in his experimenting. "Down at Menlo Park a man came in one day and wanted a job. He was a sailor. I hadn't any particular work to give him, but I had a number of small ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... of fresh cold water and cook until very tender. Add other ingredients and bring to boiling point. Slice thin, hard cooked egg and lemon from which seeds have been removed and serve with each portion. Do not remove lemon rind as this gives a piquant flavor. ...
— Foods That Will Win The War And How To Cook Them (1918) • C. Houston Goudiss and Alberta M. Goudiss
... water ten minutes (calves' livers will not need this). Drain dry, and put in the frying-pan with enough beef or pork drippings to prevent its sticking, and cook very slowly for eight minutes, turning constantly. Take up on a hot dish and pour a piquant sauce over ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa
... Judgment) released the virgin from her nominal husband. Prayer and self-mortification were the pleasures of his youth. The enchanting Jewesses of Smyrna, picturesque in baggy trousers and open-necked vests, had no seduction for him, though no muslin veil hid their piquant countenances as with the Turkish women, though no prescription silenced their sweet voices in the psalmody of the table, as among the sin-fearing congregations of the West. In vain the maidens stuck roses under their ear ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... said Allerdyke. He let his mind dwell for a moment on the picture which Mrs. Marlow had made as Fullaway led him through the office—a very well-gowned, pretty, alert, piquant little woman, still on the sunny side of thirty, who had given him a sharp glance out of unusually wide-awake eyes. "Aye, women are clever nowadays, no doubt—they'd show their grandmothers how to suck eggs in a good many new fashions. Well, now," he went on, ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... curiously but the face of a boy, his eyes but the fresh, inquiring, hurt eyes of a boy who has been misused for years threescore. Time has basely done all but age him. So much for the wastrel as Nature has left him. But Art has furthered the piquant values of him ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... about to say—"we were English in the beginning," but the sharp, satirical curves lurking around her mouth checked him. What an odd, piquant creature she was! ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... itself when she returned. She had surely seen Frank. No doubt she anticipated piquant ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... them; and as she did so Mr. Cannon turned and thanked her with a confidential smile, to which she responded. They were not now employer and employee, but exclusively in the social world; nevertheless, their business relations made an intimacy which it was piquant to feel in the home. Moreover, Sarah Gailey was opposite to them, and Hilda could not keep out of her dark eyes the intelligence: "If she is here, if you are all amicable together, it is due to me." Delicious and somehow perilous secret!... Going back to her seat, she arranged more safely the ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... of rocks, and beds of the earth itself. And to all these powerful imaginative reasons we have to add the merely ocular charm of interlineal opposition of color; a charm so great, that all the best colorists, without a single exception, depend upon it for the most piquant of their pictorial effects, some vigorous mass of alternate stripes or bars of color being made central in all their richest arrangements. The whole system of Tintoret's great picture of the Miracle of St. Mark is poised on the bars ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... praiseworthy. The windows of the cubicle in which he had been lodged—one of ten which sufficed for the demands of the itinerant Universe—not only overlooked the public square and its amusing life of a minor market town, but commanded as well a splendid vista of the valley of the Dourbie, with its piquant contrast of luxuriant alluvial verdure and grim scarps of rock that ran up, on either side the wanton, glimmering river, into two opposed and overshadowing pinnacles of crag, the Roc Nantais and the Roc de Saint Alban—peaks ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... and The Stubbornness of Geraldine are two original American plays, ingenious and novel in their employment of pictorial devices. These plays are funds of delightful sentiment, unhackneyed, piquant humor, and ...
— Her Own Way - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... them cut short all prolixity and reject all heaviness. When these womanly characteristics were brought into conversational contact with the materials furnished by such minds as those of Richelieu, Corneille, the Great Conde, Balzac, and Bossuet, it is no wonder that the result was something piquant and charming. Those famous habitues of the Hotel de Rambouillet did not, apparently, first lay themselves out to entertain the ladies with grimacing "small-talk," and then take each other by the sword-knot to discuss matters of real interest in a corner; they rather sought ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... Harley. He glanced across at me. "It's an awful nuisance, Knox, but just as I thought the decks were clear. Is it something really interesting, or does he want a woman watched? However, his name sounds piquant, so perhaps I had better see him. Ask him ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... train started Hillocks received the compliments of the third with much modesty, and added piquant details regarding the utter confusion ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... reach her out of her trunk, giving her the keys to that purpose, a bundle of papers, and pulls out a paper, a copy of what, a pretty while since, she had wrote in a discontent to me, which I would not read, but burnt. She now read it, and it was so piquant, and wrote in English, and most of it true, of the retiredness of her life, and how unpleasant it was; that being wrote in English, and so in danger of being met with and read by others, I was vexed at it, and desired her and then commanded ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... now become of the diary it is impossible to say, but judging by the excerpts used in the anonymous letters, it must have constituted a particularly piquant volume or series of volumes! Thus there was one remark about the emperor which ridiculed "his intolerable swagger." There were also some comical references to Princess Victoria of Prussia, who was jilted by the late ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... describing the packing, and how she grudged getting rid of the pretty things, and at last sighed and wept—whether for herself, or Valville, or the beautiful gown, she didn't know. But, alas! there is no more room, except to salute her as the agreeable ancestress of all the beloved coquettes and piquant minxes in prose fiction since. Could anything handsomer be said ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... collected works, in the same volume with Catherine. It is there preceded by another, from The Westminster Review, written fourteen years earlier, on The Genius of Cruikshank. This contains a descriptive catalogue of Cruikshank's works up to that period, and is interesting from the piquant style in which it is written. I fancy that these two are the only efforts of the kind which he made,—and in both he dealt with the two great caricaturists of his time, he himself being, in the imaginative part of a ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... persecutions which were at last ended by the Edict of Nantes issued after Henry of Navarre became Henry IV. of France. Besides the political bearing of the letters, they give a picturesque account of Court life at the end of the 16th century, the fashions and manners of the time, piquant descriptions, and amusing gossip, such as only a witty woman—as Marguerite certainly was—could inject into such subjects. The letters, indeed, abound in sprightly anecdote and small-talk, which yet have their value in lightening ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... private box, listening to the latest French farce at one or another of the theatres. Only one day, when they had driven out to the monastery at La Trappe de Staoueli, did a momentary cloud descend upon her piquant features, and she explained this by the frank confession that she had always wished to become a nun, but had been hindered from following her vocation by the necessity of earning money to support her aged parents. Mr. Greyne had never seen the Ouled since his first evening in Algiers, ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... good,' he said, 'and all you eat must be excellent.' I had a cap on my head, and another lay on the table; I questioned him on the value which he attached to the two articles, and asked which he preferred. 'Both are superb,' he replied, 'but the one you prefer is undoubtedly the best.' After this piquant specimen of the civility of the country, it may be supposed that I was not sorry to end the conference, and to get rid of such an excessively well bred child. I took care, however, to send a cup of tea to his mother, who, the tutor informed me, was young and pretty, and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... Piquant contrast to these obsessions, the well-known expression of Talbot Potter lifted him above the crowd to such high serenity his face might have been that of a young Pope, with a dash of Sydney Carton. His glance fixed itself, in its benign detachment, ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... sir, I've been followin' this case. It's what you might call piquant. And I should be very glad if it came about that this helped Captain Dancy. I take an interest, because, to tell you the truth, [Confidentially] I don't like—well, not to put too fine a point upon it 'Ebrews. They work harder; they're more sober; they're honest; ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... aggressive brown goats which he had marked out as the vandals that had wrought ruin amongst his well-kept beds, Devoy bearded the stranger and spoke of damages and broken heads, and his small son, Danny, a young Australian with a piquant brogue and a born love of ructions, moved round and ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... showed two or three water-coloured drawings of the graceful little head and piquant features. Edgar criticised, and promised a lesson; and the sitter, nothing loth, though rather coy, was caught. She blushed and smiled, and took exception at little personalities, and laughed her forgiveness, going through a play of countenance very perplexing to the pupil, but ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... tell the truth, a secret satisfaction peeped through his lugubrious accents. An ugly saint is an unmixed calamity to jolly fellows; but to be lord and master, and possessor, of a beautiful saint, was not without its piquant charm. His jealousy was dormant, not extinct; and Kate's piety tickled that foible, not wounded it. He found himself the rival of heaven,—and the successful rival; for, let her be ever so strict, ever so devout, she ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... fearlessly can the rich and well-born woo and be wooed, while such as we must steal away to happiness as to crime, and plight our vows under the chill and shadow of night!" But the next moment she felt that there was about her love a piquant sense of peril and lawlessness, a wild flavor infinitely more to her taste than would be any prudent, commendable affection grown in drawing-rooms, nourished by conventionalism, and propped by social fitness; and remembering the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... running down to the harbor, close to the Town Hall, I find wretched, half-putrid oranges, two for a sou, which I devour eagerly. The bluish, greenish shades on the mouldy parts sparkle like diamonds in my eyes, they are flowers to me; I forget the putrid odor, and find them delicious, with a piquant flavor, and stimulating as wine. My dear, they are the first love of my life! Your passion for Felipe is nothing to this! Sometimes I can slip out secretly and fly to Marseilles, full of passionate longings, which grow more intense as I draw near the street. I tremble lest ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... Marie-Antoinette's court who, obliged to fly in haste, without powder or hoops, or bedchamber women, were driven to all sorts of makeshifts, learning to wait upon themselves, and keeping up the frivolity of the French court, the piquant smile of the ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... a handsome girl, with beautiful teeth and neatly-braided hair and such a brilliant smile, attracting a crowd round her as she sang piquant songs in a sweet, deep-toned voice that ought to have made her fortune on the stage if it had been properly cultivated—sang them, too, with a look and manner that I have seen seldom rivalled by the cleverest actresses; and I thought ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... client without emotion. In behalf of the junior members of the Scottish bar I will say this, that they invariably fight tooth and nail when a pretty girl is concerned, and I have frequently heard bursts of impassioned eloquence poured forth in defence of a pair of bright eyes or a piquant figure, in cases where an elderly or wizened dame would have run a strong chance of finding no Cicero by her side. Tom accordingly approached the bar for the purpose of putting some questions to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... eminent French Statesman and writer, read a witty, piquant essay in reprehension of War and all other contrivances for shortening human life, which, being given first in French and then substantially in English, elicited very ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... Episcopalians, and Methodists hold services on alternate Sundays in the court-house. All the planters and many others near the lake shore keep a boat at their landing, and a raft for crossing vehicles and horses. It seemed very piquant at first, this taking our boat to go visiting, and on moonlight nights it was charming. The woods around are lovelier than those in Louisiana, though one misses the moaning of the pines. There is fine fishing and hunting, but ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... should be 'elegant and ingenious,'—these thronged the charming Mrs. Cosway's drawing-rooms. The elect of society, for the first time on the same floor and under the same roof, met and shook hands, deriving a curious piquant sort of pleasure from the proceeding, with—Bohemia; the word must be used, though not an agreeable one, much misused and liable to be misinterpreted, and above all, though in the Cosway period it was altogether unknown and unheard of. Especially were to be noted among the guests the Whig adherents ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... daughter, the last of the Melroses. Leslie had been a wide-eyed, sturdy little girl who carried a perpetually surprised, even a babyish expression into her teens, but her last pictures showed the debutante, the piquant and charming eighteen-year-old, whose knowingly tipped hat and high fur collar left only a glimpse of pretty and pouting ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... though I had to twist it about a little to bring her in guilty. Cleopatra, of course, I have taken from Shakespeare. What a wench she was! I could not quite make Julia a queen; but it was impossible to pass over so piquant a character. You will recognise in the two or three ladies of the empire how faithfully I have studied my Gibbon. Poor dear old Belisarius! I have done the best I could with Joanna, but I could not bring myself to care for her. In our days she would simply have gone to Broadmore. ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... this subterranean breakfast-room sat an elderly lady with a singularly high colour and almost startling silver hair. She had, as if designedly to relieve these effects, a pair of Mephistophelian black eyebrows and a very neat black dress. The glare of the gas lit up her piquant hair and face perfectly against the brown background of the shutters. The background was blue and not brown in one place; at the place where Rupert's knife had torn a great opening in the wood about ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... a familiarity with the scenes and subjects that she writes about that no one can doubt she has been among them taking notes, while her style indicates her femininity, though there are many who doubt it. There has nothing more piquant, spicy, and unconventional ever been published in Boston, and Peppermint ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... Turks, have a horror of Franks, and despise all other Asiatics who with them come under the general name of Hindi (Indians). The latter are abused on all occasions for cowardice, and a want of generosity, which has given rise to the following piquant epigram: ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... over it, the bunches of water flag growing here and there, and the scattered patches of broad lily pads with now and then a white blossom, made a most picturesque background for the girl who sat in the stern. Her piquant face, shaded by a broad sun-hat, was fairer to his eyes than any of the lilies she plucked, and as she drew one sleeve up a little to reach for them, the round arm and dimpled hand she thrust into the water looked tempting enough to kiss. The miller had shut the gate ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... entertains very pronounced ideas concerning President Arthur, Attorney-General Brewster and divers other people, which will be found presented herewith in characteristically piquant style. With his family, the eloquent advocate has a cottage here, and finds brain and body rest and refreshment in the tumbling waves. This noon, in the height of a tremendous thunder storm, I bumped against his burly figure in the roaring ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... before only in flashes to a vision astray in the confusion of the senses. He had felt that her response to his passion was far more vital and enduring than dwelt in the capacity of most women; he had appreciated her gifts of mind, her piquant variousness that scotched monotony, the admirable characteristics that would give a man repose and content in his leisure, and subtly advance his career. But in those long reveries, at the head of his forlorn caravan or in the desolate months of convalescence, ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... not discuss baseball performances in the cafes of Constantinople; but the latest story of how Von Bieberstein, the German Ambassador, bulldozed Haaki Pasha, the Grand Vizier, and sent the latter whining among his friends for sympathy, is far more piquant. The older residents among the ladies of the diplomatic corps, whose visiting list extends "beyond the curtain," have their own well-spiced tales to tell of "the great game" as it is played behind the latticed windows of the harem. It is not only in London and Berlin ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... were so fortunate as to be personally acquainted with Charles Lamb are lavish in their praise of his conversational powers. Hazlitt says that no one ever stammered out such fine, piquant, deep, eloquent things in a half-dozen half-sentences as he did. "He always made the best pun and the best remark in the course of the evening." Lamb was undoubtedly "matchless as a fireside companion," inimitable as a table-talker, "great at the midnight hour." The "wit-combats" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... to treat his guests to-day to some special amusement, and so he said to me last night, 'Robeckal, do you know of anything new and piquant!' ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... persons of distinction, greatly interested the translator of Plato, Thucydides, and Aristotle. Though he was not the kind of man to inflate himself with any idea that he was "Socrates redivivus" I have no doubt that he found the worldlywise malice of Lord Westbury as piquant as the Greek philosopher ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... as highly coloured as sacred pictures. He talked of Rossini, quoted Racine, and spoke of "the Bois" for the Bois de Boulogne. He talked of divine love in words which were somewhat disconcerting, of present-day vices with piquant details, and of society in society language. Occasionally, expressions which were in vogue and which had only recently been invented, expressions only known among worldly people, would slip into his spiritual consultations and had the same effect as extracts from a newspaper in an ascetic ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... had already been at the table for several hours, and were now in that comfortable and agreeable mood which epicures feel when they have found the numerous courses palatable and piquant, the Hock sufficiently cold, the Burgundy sufficiently warm, the oysters fresh, and the truffles well-flavored. They had got as far as the roast; the pheasants, with their delicate sauce, filled the room with an appetizing odor, and the corks of the champagne-bottles ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... open. The sound of laughter and merriment issued from it; but this was presently hushed, and two voices, accompanied by guitars, began to sing a lively seguidilla, of which, at the end of each piquant couplet, the listeners testified their approbation by a hum of mirthful applause. Before the song was over, Luis had sought and found a means of observing what was passing within doors. Grasping the lower branch of a tree which grew within a few feet of the corner of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... all stuff;' and if you have allowed yourself to be so dazzled by his quickness as to forget that the routed point is not, after all, the one in question, you suppose all is over with it. Moreover, he contrives to mingle up so many stinging allusions to so many piquant personalities that by the time he has done his mystification a dozen others are ready and burning to spring on their feet to repel some direct or indirect attack, all equally ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... heaven, and come down again here below, where we shall find nothing happy, nay, nothing tolerable, without my presence and assistance. And in the first place consider how providently nature has took care that in all her works there should be some piquant smack and relish of Folly: for since the Stoics define wisdom to be conducted by reason, and folly nothing else but the being hurried by passion, lest our life should otherwise have been too dull and inactive, that ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... Nora had calmly walked over them or around. Nora's mind was Celtic: French in its adroitness and Irish in its watchfulness and tenacity. And now she had set her arts of persuasion in motion (aided by a piquant beauty) to lift a corner of the veil from this ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... her arms and gazed after him with undisguised admiration. How well everything he did became him; his firing up—his brusquerie—the very movements of his body, all so piquant, charming, and unwomanly! As he vanished from her admiring eyes, she turned, with flaming cheeks, on Miss Maitland, and said, "Well, aunt, you have driven them both out at the window; now, say something pretty to Fanny and me, and drive us ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... does not seem aware that for several months before he became editor of the "New Monthly" he wrote the "Monthly Commentary" for that magazine,—a pleasant, piquant, and sometimes severe series of comments on the leading topics or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... perturbing and provocative. Eyes, skin, hair, she was all copper-browns and crimson-bronzes, all the high gloss of satiny surfaces. Every shape and contour was a variant from the regular. Her eyes took a bewildering slant. Her face showed a little piquant stress on the cheekbones. Her hair banded in a long, solid, club-like braid. In repose she bore a look a little sullen, a little heavy. When she smiled, it seemed as if her whole face waked up; but ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... his assertion of his rights reached her, she was terrified and undone by Colonel Ormonde's fury against Katherine, herself, her boys, every one. In short, that gallant officer thought he had done a generous and manly thing, when he married the piquant little widow who had attracted him, although she could only meet her personal expenses and those of her two sons, without contributing to the general house-keeping. This sense of his own magnanimity, backed by the consciousness that it did not cost him too dear, had kept Colonel Ormonde ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... seen life enough to wear out the earlier sensibilities of adolescence. He was tired of worshipping or tyrannizing over the bistred or umbered beauties of mingled blood among whom he had been living. Even that piquant exhibition which the Rio de Mendoza presents to the amateur of breathing sculpture failed to interest him. He was thinking of a far-off village on the other side of the equator, and of the wild girl with whom he used to play and quarrel, a creature of a different race from ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... superior loveliness should be assigned. There was a witchery in the magnificent black eyes of the latter—in her exquisitely-formed mouth and pearly teeth—in her clear nut-brown complexion—in her dusky and luxuriant tresses, and in her light elastic figure, with which more perfect but less piquant charms could not compete. Such seemed to be the opinion of Doctor Hodges, for as he gazed at her with unaffected admiration, he exclaimed, as if to himself— "I'faith, if I had to choose between the two, I know ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... any common man. No. He was at all times Douglas the peculiar and unique,—with his history in his face, and his genius on his tongue,—nay, and after a little, with his heart on his sleeve. This made him piquant; and the same character makes his writings piquant. Hence, too, he is often quaint,—a word which describes what no other word does,—always conveying a sense of originality, and of what, when we wish to be condemnatory, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... a piquant wench," said Stoss, as if he had divined Frederick's thoughts. "It would not seem at all strange to me if an inexperienced man were to fall into her toils. I think she resembles one of the younger Barrison sisters, who sing 'Linger Longer ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... by night, except when the full moon shone, was sombre, with nothing doing. The street lamps burnt but indifferent gas; people stayed indoors, and read the piquant paragraphs of The Pioneer Bushman, Timber Town's evening journal, or fashioned those gay dresses which by day helped to make the town so bright, and went to bed early and slept with a soundness and tranquillity, well-earned by the labour of playing so ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... sounds were sportive and jocund; they rippled like laughter; they were capricious as the merriment of a coquette. Then they merged into a sweet and warbling cadence—a cadence of inimitable tenderness, the very suavity of which was rendered more piquant by its lavish variations. The measure changed, with an abrupt fling of the treble-hand: it gushed into an air quaint and sprightly as the dance of Puck—comic—odd—sparkling on the ear like zig-zags: it threw out a shower of notes; it was the voice of agility ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... ugly, and benevolent; the beautiful Mrs. Sheridan; the lively, absurd, incisive Mrs. Cholmondeley; sprightly, witty Mrs. Thrale; and Hannah More, coiner of guineas, both as saint and sinner: a most piquant, trenchant, and entertaining society it was, and well might be, since the bullion of genius was so largely wrought into the circulating medium of small talk; but a society which, from sheer lack of vision, must have entertained its angels unawares. Such was the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... homely background the beauty of the young girl appeared in most striking contrast. Her curls peeped out from under the white Dutch cap she wore. Her eyes sparkled with indignant protest, her face was piquant and was just then flushed, and her nose had the least bit of a natural uptilt, giving her the air of a young woman who had a will of her own to ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... the Countess drives up to the Grand Balcon, the jewellers' shop in the Rue Vendome. Her dark eyes sparkle, the lovely, piquant ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... of forthcoming books. It is a capital study of girl-students from Boston, New York, and Chicago, exemplifying the most piquant characteristics of the respective phases of civilization and social criteria of the three cities. It is suited alike to old and young, being rich in beautiful passages of tender pathos, strong, simple and vivid, and full of sustaining interest. Nothing ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 1: Curiosities of the Old Lottery • Henry M. Brooks
... for, in addition to all that ordinarily makes up a first-chop dinner, had we not our antelope steak (the gormand who has not experienced this —bah! what does he know of the feast of fat things?) our delicious mountain-brook trout, and choice fruits and berries, and (sauce piquant and unpurchasable!) our sweet-scented, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the tone heterogeneous, it is merely a judicious mixture, in equal proportions, of all the other tones in the world, and is consequently made up of every thing deep, great, odd, piquant, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe |
