"Persiflage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... these visits, Blount remarked by way of airy persiflage, that that drink of wine that had been sent for was a long time coming. Anything as subtle as that was lost on our friend, for he walked solemnly away, only to reappear in a few minutes with a bottle and several glasses which ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... Steele brushes that little persiflage aside too. "He's no doubt an idealist of some sort," says he, "a man with high hopes, ambitions. If I only knew what ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... take sides, is in the position of the looker-on who sees most of the game," was truthfully written of me a propos of this letter—but why a propos of this letter? Why not of my serious work instead? No, my "airy persiflage" was only a cloak. I was seriously and instantaneously accepted as a serious political ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... rhyme and read rhyme, are yet attain'd, and on a scale of infinity. To-day, in books, in the rivalry of writers, especially novelists, success, (so-call'd,) is for him or her who strikes the mean flat average, the sensational appetite for stimulus, incident, persiflage, &c., and depicts, to the common calibre, sensual, exterior life. To such, or the luckiest of them, as we see, the audiences are limitless and profitable; but they cease presently. While this day, or any day, to workmen portraying interior ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... Dryden, Pope, and all their school is briefly this: their poetry is conceived and composed in their wits, genuine poetry is conceived and composed in the soul." The representative minds of the eighteenth century were such as Voltaire, the master of persiflage, destroying superstition with his souriere hideux; Gibbon, "the lord of irony," "sapping a solemn creed with solemn sneer"; and Hume, with his thorough-going philosophic skepticism, his dry Toryism, and cool contempt for "zeal" of any kind. The characteristic products of the era were satire, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Bailey, but the sight of her escort checked any familiarity. Covered with dust from their ride, guns on hip, the three musketeers did not encourage persiflage at the expense of their outfit and they passed unchallenged into the eating-house where a stubby man with a big paunch ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... whiskey whirled in Sansome's head. He was verging toward complete drunkenness, but in the meantime became amorous. His eyes burned, his lips fell apart. Nan tried in desperation to keep on a plane of light persiflage, to hold him to his chair and to the impersonal. Deep fear entered her. She urged more drink on him, hoping that he would be overpowered. It was like a desperate race between this man's passions and the deep oblivion that reached for them. Her mouth was dry, and her ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... him better you would know that under all that persiflage there is much depth of feeling and passion. I do not claim any unusual amount of intellectuality for him, but he has a wonderful supply of hard common-sense, and remarkably quick perceptions. And I have great respect ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... persiflage, "The Japans are the politest nation on the earth; they say cheatin' and lyin' hain't polite, and so they don't want to foller 'em; they hitch principle and politeness right up in one ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... there daily and have dined there weekly, and yet never have given the former object of his adoration the slightest idea that he cared a breath for her presence. According to etiquette, he should never have addressed her but in a vein of persiflage, and with a smile which indicated his perfect heartease and her bad taste. According to etiquette, he should have flirted with every woman in her company, rode with her in the Park, walked with her in the Gardens, chatted with ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... the G. E. and W., when they picked him up at the hotel, proved to be an entire human being with red whiskers and not a care in the world. Bobby was enjoying a lot of preliminary persiflage when Shepherd ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... of the year 1795 were 'The Partition of the Earth', wherein Zeus takes pity on the portionless poet by giving him a perpetual entree to the celestial court; the mildly humorous 'Deeds of the Philosopher', a bit of persiflage on the art of proving what everybody knows, and also several pieces ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... not take it!" she laughed richly. Bert thought for a second that this was more than mere persiflage, for the expression on the girl's face was new. Later he reminded himself that they all used curious forms of speech. "I just was too tired to get up this morning," a girl who had actually gotten up would say, or someone would comment upon a late train: "The old train actually ...
— Undertow • Kathleen Norris
... persiflage; now for cold facts. In all candor, I would cheerfully ignore the recent disgraceful occurrences in this city could I do so in justice to the South in general and to Texas in particular. I have no revenge to gratify, no more feeling in the matter than though the assaults had been made upon ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... truth. But he had hit upon a way of meeting the Rev. Bruno which promised greatly to diminish the suffering inherent in the situation. He would use the large-souled man deliberately for his mirth. Chilvers's self-absorption lent itself to persiflage, and by indulging in that mood Godwin tasted some compensation for the part he had ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... had been trained to believe that straws show which way the wind blows, and that there is no smoke without fire. He approached King in Common-room with a sense of injustice, but King was pleased to be full of airy persiflage that tide, and brilliantly danced ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... you something I never told you before. I have never admired you so much, or loved you so dearly, as I do at this hour. You must believe me,' she continued, pushing her plate away and beckoning the maid with a slight backward gesture of the head, 'I hate this tone of persiflage, but what is there left for us if we would be blamelessly alone, and yet speak our hearts to ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... Persiflage of this sort did not appear to be accomplishing anything. Hiram relieved his feelings by a smacking, round oath and stamped ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... her look, and saw the fierce demand through the softness and persiflage. He gave it no answer, but, turning to her, kindled into the man whom she was so proud to show as her capture,—a man far off from Stephen Holmes. Brilliant she called him,—frank, winning, generous. She thought she knew him well; held him a slave to her fluttering hand. Being ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... infinite wit and esprit, my dear," says my pleased kinswoman, "but she does not understand half you say, and the other half, I think, frightens her. This ton de persiflage is very well in our society, but you must be sparing of it, my ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... specimens of genuine American exaggerations, or graphic pictures of social and domestic life as it is more especially in the ruder districts and in the back settlements, or again sallies of broad humour, exhibiting those characteristics which form in the country itself the subject of mutual persiflage between the citizens of different States. The work will have a wide ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... Deity in a declamatory style, very much resembling the devotional rants of that rude blunderer, Mr. Thomas Paine, in his Age of Reason, and whispered in my ear, what damned hypocrism all Jesus Christ's business was. I dare aver, that few men have less reason to charge themselves with indulging in persiflage than myself. I should hate it, if it were only that it is a Frenchman's vice, and feel a pride in avoiding it, because our own language is too honest to have a word to express it by. But in this ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... umbrageous limb A hungry fox sat smiling; He saw the raven watching him, And spoke in words beguiling. "J'admire," said he, "ton beau plumage." (The which was simply persiflage.) ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... a Prophet to his Time. As he could, and as the Time could! Strangely through all that defacement, degradation and almost madness, there is in the inmost heart of poor Rousseau a spark of real heavenly fire. Once more, out of the element of that withered mocking Philosophism, Scepticism and Persiflage, there has arisen in that man the ineradicable feeling and knowledge that this Life of ours is true; not a Scepticism, Theorem, or Persiflage, but a Fact, an awful Reality. Nature had made that revelation to him; had ordered him to speak it out. He got it spoken out; if not well and clearly, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... and Hyde did not feel any desire to bring even her name into such a mocking, jeering, perfectly heartless conversation. He was content to laugh, and let the hour go past in such flim-flams of criticism and persiflage. He remembered when he had been one of the units in such a life, and he wondered if it were possible that he could ever drift back into it. For even as he sat there, with the memory of his wife and child in his heart, he felt the light charm of Lady Arabella's ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... in the case, but that, upon the whole, you make no doubt of the thing's being soon set right again; as, in truth, I dare say it will. Upon these delicate occasions, you must practice the ministerial shrugs and 'persiflage'; for silent gesticulations, which you would be most inclined to, would not be sufficient: something must be said, but that something, when analyzed, must amount to nothing. As for instance, 'Il est vrai qu'on s'y ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... chivalrous romance, with its tournaments, its crusaders, its valiant warriors, and distressed maidens. His youthful aversion for shams and conventionalities, his strong propensity toward burlesque and persiflage, his early life among cities and commonplace folk, seem to have obscured in some degree his appreciation of even such splendid compositions as Ivanhoe or The Talisman; or, at any rate, his sense of the ridiculous ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... persiflage and very manifest contempt of her, she sprang suddenly upon him, and caught at the lapels ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... Compensation is her great law; if her supplies are "short" in one direction they are "long" in another. And when we take the broader view we must conclude that there are no waste places. It is only when we take the extreme and narrow view that we voice the persiflage of the ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... perception, all sight, all hearing, all soul, all reason, all self." The popular notions of the gods are then reviewed, in the most supercilious tone, and their absurdities pointed out. A polite bow is made to the worship of the Emperors and its motives, the rest is little but persiflage. Not even Providence, which was recognised by the Stoics, is acknowledged by Pliny. The conclusion is like the beginning: "To imperfect human nature it is a special consolation that God also is not omnipotent (he can neither put himself to death, ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... who he is?" asked Raffles, returning that deadly look with smiling interest, but answering a tone as deadly in one that maintained the note of persiflage in ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... panacea, panegyric, panorama, paradoxical, paramount, parasite, parochial, paroxysm, parsimonious, parturition, patois, patriarchal, patrician, patrimony, peccadillo, pecuniary, pedantic, pellucid, pendulous, penultimate, penurious, peregrination, perfunctory, peripatetic, periphery, persiflage, perspicacious, perspicuity, pertinacious, pharmaceutic, phenomenal, phlegmatic, phraseology, pictorial, piquant, pique, plagiarize, platitudinous, platonic, plebeian, plenipotentiary, plethora, pneumatic, poignant, polity, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... cannot refuse hearty sympathy. And how masterly is his treatment on all occasions! How he turns about and rounds off every subject in his own mind before he expresses it! And then, when all is matured, what wit, spirit, irony, and persiflage, and what heartiness, naivete, and grace, are unfolded at every step! His songs have every year made millions of joyous men; they always flow glibly from the tongue, even with the working-classes, whilst they are so ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... marking. For one thing, he is permitted to remove as much clothing as he pleases, and to cover himself with stickiness and grime to his heart's content—always a highly prized privilege. He is also allowed to smoke, to exchange full-flavoured persiflage with his neighbours, and to refresh himself from time to time with mysterious items of provender wrapped in scraps of newspaper. Given an easy-going butt-officer and some timid subalterns, he can spend a very agreeable morning. Even when discipline ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... part of New York called Greenwich Village and wear a Russian blouse and your hair bobbed. Those are the kind of bon mots those people throw off in conversation. Light and airy persiflage, it is called," said Tom ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... happy. We had music and a little dancing, and enjoyed in others the buoyancy of spirit that we no longer possess ourselves. Yet I do not think the young people of this age so gay as we were. There is a turn for persiflage, a fear of ridicule among them, which stifles the honest emotions of gaiety and lightness of spirit; and people, when they give in the least to the expansion of their natural feelings, are always kept under by the fear of becoming ludicrous. To restrain your feelings and check your ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... but when you try to be smart you're absolutely insufferable. You're mentally incapable of recognizing the line of demarcation between legitimate persiflage and objectionable familiarity. An ignoramus of your particular class ought to confine his repartee to unqualified affirmation or the negative monosyllable." Whereupon he pulled his hat more firmly upon his ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... she had been so busy with her own thoughts that half the persiflage and gay bantering had passed above her head, "I was speaking of Mrs. Sanderson and her son. I thought that if we told her we were trying to find her Willie, she might consent to stay on with us a ...
— The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House • Laura Lee Hope
... Kronau, who rode at his side, and he rubbed his nose. Kronau had been a favorite of Albrecht's... How would he act? In truth, the Marshal's thoughts were not altogether pleasant. Some of these men surrounding him, exchanging persiflage, might never witness another sunset. For, while the world would look upon this encounter as one looks upon a comedy, for some it would serve as tragedy. Often he lent his ear to the gay banter of the young American, and watched the careless smile on his face. What was he doing here? Why was ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... offence'—by my proposition that members belonging to other societies should hold no official position in ours. I wanted to make it an art centre," continued Mr. Whistler, with a sudden vigour and an earnestness for which the public would hardly give credit to this Master of Badinage and Apostle of Persiflage; "they wanted it to remain a shop, although I said to them, 'Gentlemen, don't you perceive that as shopmen you have already failed, don't you see, eh?' But they were under the impression that the sales decreased under my methods and my regime, and ignored the fact ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... Hawtry, who was standing down center, Mildred Lindsey calmly entered and began the beautiful little bit of persiflage with Miss Herne, who had gone on before her with an agility unlike her usual slow gait. There was nothing for Miss Hawtry to do but retire to the wings, which she did, and with the nervous bomb exploded, she continued the rehearsals to ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... been an enormous expansion in the demands of the unions since the early days of the Philadelphia cordwainers; yet these demands involve the same fundamental issues regarding hours, wages, and the closed shop. Most unions, when all persiflage is set aside, are primarily organized for business—the business of looking after their own interests. Their treasury is a war chest rather than an insurance fund. As a benevolent organization, the American union is ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... you remember that passage, 'The poor ye have always with you, but Me ye have not always.' Now, Mr. Montague you have always with you, but me you have not always." So we resumed our conversation together, and kept up a brief interchange of persiflage which made us both laugh very much, and in which he showed a very ready use of English ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... or threw it over with keen wit that he kept constantly on the stretch. They were always discovering odd, unexpected bits of knowledge in each other, and a great deal more accordance in views and opinions than appealed on the surface, for his enthusiasm usually veiled itself in persiflage on hers, though he was too good and serious to ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... back to their rooms Harry and Frank were greeted by all sorts of calls and persiflage from the sophomores, who had gathered in ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... That's all. That's where you get off! I've lived in the trenches for fifteen months, froze in 'em, starved in 'em, risked my life in 'em, and I've saved other lives, too, by hauling men out of the trenches. And that's no airy persiflage, either!" ...
— The Deserter • Richard Harding Davis
... the women began a light, friendly chatter; smiles and laughter; little jests about Benedicks, about the servant question, about coming home late o' nights; antenuptial persiflage. There was little that was spontaneous; each jest was an effort; but it sufficed to relieve what ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... a grave American savant, being in London, observed at an evening party there, a certain coxcombical fellow, as he thought, an absurd ribbon in his lapel, and full of smart persiflage, whisking about to the admiration of as many as were disposed to admire. Great was the savan's disdain; but, chancing ere long to find himself in a corner with the jackanapes, got into conversation with him, when he was somewhat ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... entirely empty of anybody I knew. I asked for letters; and, getting none, went out and looked at the thermometer. To my surprise I discovered that there were thirty-seven degrees of frost. A little alarmed, I tapped the thing impatiently. "Come, come," I said, "this is not the time for persiflage." However, it insisted on remaining at five degrees below zero. What I should have done about it I cannot say, but at that moment I remembered that it was a Centigrade thermometer with the freezing point in the wrong place. Slightly disappointed that there were only five degrees of frost (Centigrade) ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... certainly made an impression that might have flattered the man to whom it belonged. Feversham's whole manner changed; the trivial air of persiflage that he had adopted hitherto was gone on the instant, and his brow ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... exigencies of etiquette prevented for more than an hour any nearer approach, but when Mr. Dunbar had rendered "Caesar's things" to social Caesar, and paid tribute of bows, smiles, compliments and persiflage into the coffer of custom, he made his way through the throng, to the spot where his betrothed stood ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Voltaire. It is simply incredible to me that human beings possessed of the same senses as ours could find satisfaction for their imagination in the sterile moralising, stilted sentiment, superficial wit, and tiresome persiflage of that queer generation. I suppose they didn't really. I suppose they used to go off on the sly, and read Rabelais and Villon. I suppose it was only the preposterous "social world" of those days who enjoyed nothing in ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... but he lives on the surface of everything! He is altogether shallow and blase. His good-nature is the fruit of want of feeling; between his gracefulness and his sneering persiflage he ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... them dealt with the same class of subject, they also dealt with others, while he did not. But, curiously enough, the reproach of sniggering, which lies so heavily on Laurence Sterne and Francois Arouet, does not lie on Crebillon. He has an audacity of grave persiflage[345] which is sometimes almost Swiftian in a lower sphere: and it saves him from the unpardonable sin of the snigger. He has also—as, to have this grave persiflage, he almost necessarily must have—a singularly clear and ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... typical American minds. Benjamin Franklin, for example, modelled his style and his sense of the humorous on the papers of the Spectator. He produced humorous fables and apologues, choice little morsels of social and political persiflage, which were perfectly suited, not merely to the taste of London in the so-called golden age of English satire, but to the tone of the wittiest salons of Paris in the age when the old regime went tottering, ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... are of the immutable East," said Mr. Jelnik, with a faint smile. "He is archaic." And dismissing this persiflage with a wave of ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... said of Maximus Grant; but Sunna was in a very merry mood, and Adam watched her, and listened to her in a philosophical way;—that is, he tried to make out amid all her persiflage and bantering talk what was her ruling motive and intent—a thing no one could have been sure of, unless they had heard her talking to herself—that mysterious confidence in which we all indulge, and in which we all tell ourselves the truth. ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... la! petite mere!" said the official in the same tone of easy persiflage which he had adopted all along, "but we do know how to concoct a pretty lie, aye! and so circumstantially too! Unfortunately it was Citizeness Desiree Candeille herself who happened to be standing just where you are at the present moment, along with her maid, Celine Dumont, both of ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... and a number of Radicals below the gangway, and the occupants of the Treasury Bench. Of Mr. Labouchere the saying may be used, which is often employed with regard to weak men—Mr. Labouchere is far from a weak man—he is his own worst enemy. His delight in persiflage, his keen wit—his love of the pose of the bloodless and cynical Boulevardier—have served to conceal from Parliament, and sometimes, perhaps, even from himself, the sincerity of his convictions, and the masculine strength and firmness of his will. ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... detectives stirred uneasily—he did not quite understand the American's light and easy manner, and he seemed to suspect him of persiflage. ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... into with some editors of his Magazine, and on Wilson's asking me to try my hand at some squibberies in his aid, I sat down to do so with as little malice as if the assigned subject had been the Court of Pekin. But the row in Edinburgh, the lordly Whigs having considered persiflage as their own fee-simple, was really so extravagant that when I think of it now the whole story seems wildly incredible. Wilson and I were singled out to bear the whole burden of sin, though there were abundance of other criminals in the concern; and by and ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... air and flakes. Ice swirled by its way to the sea, for the tide was going out. He peered; he began to hear all sorts of fine snow-muffled sounds; and suddenly, away out on the river, something was going on—boats whistling and signaling, chatting in their scientific persiflage, out in the dark and cold of the night. "Lonesome, too!" Cameron laughed, and, boyishly, he tossed a snow-ball into the space, as if he'd have something to say out there, too! "I'm soft!" he groaned, clutching his arm. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... derision; sardonic smile, sardonic grin; irrision^; scoffing &c (disrespect) 929; mockery, quiz^, banter, irony, persiflage, raillery, chaff, badinage; quizzing &c v.; asteism^. squib, satire, skit, quip, quib^, grin. parody, burlesque, travesty, travestie^; farce &c (drama) 599; caricature. buffoonery &c (fun) 840; practical joke; horseplay. scorn, contempt ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... amazement—often with anger. What right have they . . . however . . . as for myself I shall not reenter the world for any but the object I have just mentioned. Luncheons! Dinners! Balls! I was surfeited before the war. And I have forgotten persiflage, small talk. I am told that Americans avoid serious topics in Society. I, ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... reviving these memories of her random humour and kindly whimsicality. But I close on a word of tenderer gravity, which I am sure will affect you. She had been a little tyrannical, as usual, and perhaps thought the tone of her persiflage rather excessive; a few hours later came a second note, which began: "You have made my life happier for me these last years—you, and Lady Airlie, and dearest Winifred." From her who never gave way to sentimentality in any form, and who prided ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... then his manner changed. He growled a little and began swaying his head from side to side, and when I saw the green glint come into his eyes—the danger signal that all the carnivorae flash and all hunters heed—I knew the time was up for airy persiflage and that I was in for a 'scambling and unquiet time' unless I promptly took up the quarrel. It was an easy shot, through the throat to the base of the skull, and the ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... to react upon the sovereign. But when it was observed that the new minister of State, Mora's successor and bitter enemy, sitting on the government benches, seemed overjoyed at the rebuke administered to a creature of the defunct statesman, and smiled complacently at Le Merquier's stinging persiflage, all embarrassment instantly disappeared and the ministerial smile, repeated on three hundred mouths, soon increased to scarce-restrained laughter, the laughter of crowds dominated by any rod, by whomsoever held, which the slightest sign of approbation from the master causes to burst ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... buy a chicken or a cluster of eggs there must first be a prolonged shauri with much interchange of views and conversation and aerated persiflage. The native loves his shauri, and if he asks you a certain price for a chicken and you give the price without haggling he is greatly disappointed. In fact I have often seen them offer an article for a certain price and then refuse to accept the money if it is at once tendered. Later the native ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... which people would have called his quater-centenary if they had not been deterred by the terrific appearance of so huge a word, was the occasion of many preachments and much lecturing, besides a great deal of heroic talk in public and private. With so much to encourage cynicism and persiflage among us it was comforting to find that the instinct of hero-worship is not quite dead, and that the story of a great man's life still stirs the heart. It was inevitable that, among the many utterances with ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... elegantest grace of the perruquier's art, his dress fashioned to the very line of fastidious elegance and simplicity, yet a simplicity his Creole taste makes unique and attractive. He has the true French persiflage, founded on happy content, not the blank indifference of the Englishman's disregard. It becomes graceful self-forgetfulness, and yet his vanity is French and victorious. In the atmosphere of breathing music and faint perfume he looks around the glancing boxes, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... intimate with him, he liked him still better. Obscured though it was by airy, elderly persiflage, he began to come upon a background of stability and points of view wholly to be relied on in his new acquaintance. It had evolved itself out of long and varied experience, with the aid of brilliant mentality. ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... does he declare "But should you come to my home, you would be honored by all ... in that case I hope you may grace my bridal couch." And again in the fourth book he relates that he is taking Medea home to be his wife "in accordance with her wishes!" Without persiflage, his attitude may be summed up in these words: "I come to you because I am in danger of my precious life. Help me to get back the Golden Fleece and I promise you that, on condition that I get home safe and sound, I will condescend ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... else here who should know you?' M. de Rosny continued, in a tone almost of persiflage, and with the same change in his voice which had struck me before; but now it was more marked. 'If not, M. de Marsac, I am afraid—But first look round, look round, sir; I would ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... the Row, everlastingly gossiping, bantering and sarcastically praising things, and going on in a style which was a curious commingling of earnest and persiflage. Col. Sellers liked this talk amazingly, though he was sometimes a little at sea in it—and perhaps that didn't lessen the relish of the conversation ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... Englishman. Even Stewart, who had watched from the background, came forward with a warm and pleasant smile on his dark face. When Castleton went to his tent there was much characteristic cowboy talk, and this time vastly different from the former persiflage. ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... met with considerable success as a lawyer, though he always relied rather upon his eloquence than his law, and there were few juries which could resist the force and fury of his speech, and not many lawyers could keep their equanimity in the face of his witty persiflage and savage sarcasm. When to all this is added a genuine love of every species of combat, physical and moral, we may understand the name Charles Sumner—paraphrasing a well-known epigram—applied to him in the Senate, after his heroic death at Ball's ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... carry her head so high and "put on such airs," and Aileen could not understand how any one could be so lymphatic and lackadaisical as Lillian Cowperwood. Life was made for riding, driving, dancing, going. It was made for airs and banter and persiflage and coquetry. To see this woman, the wife of a young, forceful man like Cowperwood, acting, even though she were five years older and the mother of two children, as though life on its romantic and enthusiastic pleasurable side were all over was too much for her. Of course Lillian ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... "Eighteenth-Century Vignettes," and the like. But his particular ancestor among the Queen Anne wits was Matthew Prior, of whose metrical tales, epigrams, and vers de societe he has made a little book of selections, and whose gallantry, lightness, and tone of persiflage, just dashed with sentiment, he has reproduced with admirable spirit ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... realistic Audrey than Miss Fulton, I have never seen. Rosalind suffered a good deal through the omission of the first act; we saw, I mean, more of the saucy boy than we did of the noble girl; and though the persiflage always told, the poetry was often lost; still Miss Calhoun gave much pleasure; and Lady Archibald Campbell's Orlando was a really remarkable performance. Too melancholy some seemed to think it. Yet is not Orlando lovesick? Too dreamy, I heard it said. Yet Orlando is a poet. ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... himself by disappointment. The small dinner which he had carefully arranged for Orange and Castrillon took place, but Orange was not present. He had sent word from Almouth House that he could not leave Lord Reckage. His Excellency, therefore, was thoroughly annoyed, and Castrillon's persiflage fell heavily upon his ears. He tried to think that this nobleman's vivacity made him appear flippant, whereas he was, in reality, a Don Juan of the classic type—unscrupulous, calculating, and damnable. When he remarked that ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... strangers were inclined to do this. Her disapproval of Maynard arose chiefly from the feeling that his gallantry at such a time, with the dead and dying all about them, was "more shocking than a game of cards on Sunday." She regarded his attentions, glances, tones, as mere well-bred persiflage, indulged in for his own amusement, and she put him down as a trifler for his pains. That he, as she would phrase it, "was just smitten without any rhyme or reason" seemed preposterous. She had done nothing for him as she had for Scoville. ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... A chappie has to be a lot broader about the forehead than I am to handle a jolt like this. I strained the old bean till it creaked, but between the collar and the hair parting nothing stirred. I was dumb. Which was lucky, because I wouldn't have had a chance to get any persiflage out of my system. Lady Malvern collared the conversation. She had been bottling it up, and now it ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... "But I am," she assured him, pleased and flattered with the centering of their persiflage on herself. She made a gesture toward Lydia, disappearing down the stairs. "I'm as much married ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... his persiflage with an air of sad distraction. She was intent upon the procession as it approached from the other side of the Piazza, and she replied at random to his comments on the different ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... His welcome to the newcomer was always of the simplest and most unstudied. He had no mannerisms nor affectation of phrase. He would begin at once to talk on everyday topics; an intimate friend he would perhaps rally upon some standing subject of persiflage. But the subsequent course of conversation adapted itself to his company. Deeper subjects were reached soon enough by those who cared for them; with others he was quite happy to talk of politics or people or his garden, yet, whatever ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... perpetual entertainment, for the constant surprises of an unique species of wit, for happy and unexpected turns of phrase, for graphic characterisation and clever anecdote, for playfulness, pungency, irony, persiflage, there is nothing like his letters in English.' A collected edition of his works, edited by Mary Berry, under the name of her father, Robert Berry, was published in 1798 ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... greatly from Davis, but what he said was in short, trenchant sentences, interjected from time to time. Garfield treated the outburst as a sort of extravaganza, and in his position as host did not seriously debate, but rallied his friend with good-humored persiflage, met his outbursts with jovial laughter and prodded him to fresh explosions by shafts of wit. It was a strange and not altogether exhilarating experience for me; but I had afterward to learn that the belittling view of Lincoln was the common ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... failing in her solicitation to the inferior departments, she at last had recourse to the prime-minister, the Duke of Choiseul, himself. His answer, which Lord Hertford, no doubt, had communicated to Mr. Walpole, was admired for its polite persiflage of her theatric Majesty. "I am," said the Duke, "like yourself, a public performer, with this difference in your favour, that you choose the parts you please, and are sure to be crowned with the applause ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... the Morgante Maggiore ... the brusque transition from piety to ribaldry, from pathos to satire," the paradoxical union of persiflage with gravity, a confession of faith alternating with a profession of mockery and profanity, have puzzled and confounded more than one student and interpreter. An intimate knowledge of the history, the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... rose and led the way to the drawing-room, where they rejoined the ladies and the conversation took on a different colour and weight, by which it lost all value for those who knew not the art of twittering persiflage and found less joy in a handkerchief flirtation than in the nation's onward march. Rolf and Quonab enjoyed it now about as much as Skookum had ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... a further persiflage of the old song. Its reading, too, is changed. It is said there that age, with his stealing steps, as clawed the lover in his clutch [76] and shipped him into the land as if he 'never ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... when we took the Emma Jane Off th' heated coast uv India, near th' bendin' sugar cane. Yes, we did some privateerin', as wuz privateerin', sure, An' we scuttled many a schooner, it wuz risky business pure. But—stranger—we'd be laughin', jest filled with persiflage, If we hadn't had a ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... "Cut the persiflage, you two," Garlock ordered. "Consider three things. First, as you all know, I've been trying to figure out a generator that would give us intrinsic control, but I haven't got any farther with it than we did back on Tellus. Second, consider ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... persiflage around here," he said sternly. "We don't like it. We prefer to see young, unripe freshmen come in on their tiptoes and answer when they're spoken to. Young Stover, you've got in wrong. You're just about the freshest cargo we've ever had. You've got a lot to learn, and I'm going to ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... ride twenty miles on a day like this to pick a fight with me," he observed, leisurely singling one leaf out of his book of papers. "Left your horse to bake in the sun, too, I suppose, while you practice the art of persiflage on me." ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... in the following year, and rapidly ran through four editions, but Wieland had a genteel revenge. With that Lebensweisheit which Goethe long afterwards marked as his characteristic, he published in his review a notice of the burlesque, in which it is recommended as "a masterpiece of persiflage and of sophistical wit." "Wieland has turned the tables on me," was Goethe's own admission; "Ich bin ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... cleverly handled that we read with pleasure—and then at the end are disgusted with ourselves for being pleased, and enraged at the writer for deluding us; for we thought there would be something beneath his graceful manners and airy persiflage, and lo, there ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... case—his intimation bein' audible, and venomous. I denied it in kind, an' one word leadin' to another, he called me a liar. To which statement, although to a certain extent veracious, I took exception, an' in the airy persiflage that ensued, he took umbrage to an extent that it made him hostile. Previous to this little altercation, he an' I had been good friends, and deemin', rightly, that it wasn't a shootin' matter, he ondertook to back up his play with his fists, and he hauled off an' smote me ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... the godly that Mary should ratify the Book of Discipline was countered by the scoffs of Lethington. He and his brothers ever tormented Knox by persiflage. Still the preachers must be supported, and to that end, by a singular compromise, the Crown assumed dominion over the property of the old Church, a proceeding which Mary, if a good Catholic, could not have sanctioned. The higher clergy retained two-thirds ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... by lamplight, seated on benches on either side of the long table improvised from boards and cross-pieces of two-by-fours. There was no tablecloth and the dishes were of agate-ware as formerly. Kate ate hurriedly and in silence, but the usual airy persiflage went on between Bowers and ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... toy with his, but broke it. A man lacks delicacy in this kind of persiflage. "You mean I am loved by ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... a singular chance, next to the very same youth whose ribs he had crushed on the Elevated a few hours before. The young man was in more amiable mood. He grinned. "Don't you flap again and spill me coffee, Mr. Chicken," he said, with delicate persiflage. ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... suspicious or too proud to tell, set himself to ferret out the secret, and forgot all his sorrows for the time, as soon as he found a human being to whom he might do good. But Raphael was inexplicably wayward and unlike himself. All his smooth and shallow persiflage, even his shrewd satiric humour, had vanished. He seemed parched by some inward fever; restless, moody, abrupt, even peevish; and Synesius's curiosity rose with his disappointment, as Raphael went on obstinately declining ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... back to see. How did Miss Daisy Miller know that there was a charmer in Geneva? Winterbourne, who denied the existence of such a person, was quite unable to discover, and he was divided between amazement at the rapidity of her induction and amusement at the frankness of her persiflage. She seemed to him, in all this, an extraordinary mixture of innocence and crudity. "Does she never allow you more than three days at a time?" asked Daisy ironically. "Doesn't she give you a vacation in summer? There's no one so hard worked but they can get leave to go off somewhere at ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... deep impassable gulf between the man at the table and the man behind his chair. This democratic independence of external and adventitious circumstance sometimes gives a tone of irreverence to American persiflage, and the temporary character of class distinctions in America undoubtedly diminishes the amount of literary material "in sight" but when, as in the case of Browne and Clemens, there is in the humorist's mind a basis of reverence for things and persons that are really reverend, it ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... presiding conception of the modern phase of civilisation, as industrial and pacific. The next party of advance, when it is formed, will certainly borrow from Cobden and Bright their hatred of war and their hatred of imperialism. After the sagacity and enlightenment of this school came the school of persiflage. A knot of vigorous and brilliant men towards 1856 rallied round the late editor of the Saturday Review,—and a strange chief he was for such a group,—but their flag was that of the Red Rover. They gave Philistinism many a shrewd blow, but perhaps at the same time ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... away to resume lumber piling. Laban smiled slightly and closed the window. It may be gathered from this incident that when the captain was in charge of the deck there was little idle persiflage among the "fo'mast hands." They, like others in South Harniss, did not presume to trifle with Captain ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... adaptability which made him at ease in any society in which he found himself, he adjusted himself to the company of the evening, and, being perfectly master of the French language, could not only understand the light talk and persiflage, but even ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... folded in a style Le Gardeur recognized well, inviting him to return to the city. Its language was a mixture of light persiflage and tantalizing coquetry,—she was dying of the dullness of the city! The late ball at the Palace had been a failure, lacking the presence of Le Gardeur! Her house was forlorn without the visits of her dear friend, and she wanted his trusty counsel in an affair ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... state, in guarded language, that the boasted civilisation of the United States was not quite perfect, resulted in the former being called a snob and the latter a liar. English stolidity would only have smiled at the criticism even had it been couched in the language of persiflage. And when M. Max O'Rell traverses the statements of the two Englishmen and exaggerates American civilisation, we must bear in mind first that la vulgarite ne se traduit pas, and secondly, that the foes of our foemen are our friends. Woe be to the man who refuses to fall down and do worship before ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... up to Don Juan, and it is hard to say which is the cleverer satire of the two. In both, the wit is so unforced and natural, the fun so sparkling, the banter and the persiflage so bright and scintillating, that they seem, as Sir Walter Scott said, to be the natural outflow from the fountain of humour. Byron's earliest satire, English Bards and Scots Reviewers, is a clever piece of work, but compared with the great trio above-named ...
— English Satires • Various
... as the laureate said of his for the 'poet of the happy Tityrus,' 'I that loved thee since my day began.' It has been suggested that he owed to a clever farce-comedy of the early eighties the caption of the widely-read column of journalistic epigram and persiflage, which he filled with machine-like regularity and the versatility of the brightest French journalism for ten years. I prefer to think that he took it, or his cue for it, from a line of Dr. Phillips Francis's ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... questions about their subject their answer was—not always—but in so many cases a solemn owllike "yes-and-no" that I soon learned my place. They did not expect or want a woman to know anything and preferred light banter and persiflage. I like that, too, when it is well done; but I was accustomed to ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... Leonard did not excel. He was not an Italian, still less a Frenchman, in whose blood there runs the very spirit of persiflage and of gracious repartee. His wit was the Cockney's; it opened no doors into imagination, and Helen was drawn up short by "The more a lady has to say, ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... serious time of life than two-and twenty, and the damsel could not comprehend the possibility of thoughtlessness when there was anything to think about. The ass's bridge was nothing compared with Lucy! Moreover the habits of persiflage of a lively family often are confusing to one not used to the tone of jest and repartee, and Phoebe had as little power as will to take part in what was passing between the brother and sister; she sat like ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... may be your occupation, Mr. Bayham?" asks the Colonel, rather gloomily, for he had an idea that Bayham was adopting a strain of persiflage which the Indian gentleman by no means relished. Never saying aught but a kind word to any one, he was on fire at the notion that any should take a liberty ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... by depreciating the ministers of this religion. Let us declare open war on them, let us provoke suspicions on their devotion, on their private conduct, and by ridicule and persiflage we shall be right in the consideration attached to the state and the costume of ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein
... useless to waste time in persiflage," he began and then turning to Sam, "There is a place in ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... I will say. No matter how happy you should be, I should always want you to keep that tone of persiflage. You've no idea how perfectly intoxicating ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... story in the manner of Scudery, the plot of which, however, is drawn not from Scudery, but from Voiture,[364] and which is treated in a playful accent, and with an air of persiflage that reminds us of Byron's tone when relating the adventures of Don Juan. It is Voiture indeed, but Voiture turned inside-out. As with Byron, the raillery is from time to time interrupted by poetical flights, and, as with ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... the contrary it is a token of our virile independence, our scorn for the delicatessen of education, mere dilettanteism. And this has its practical side, for if we don't know how to pronounce the words "evanescent persiflage" we can call it "bunk" or "rot." We suspect all college graduates. We don't want them in our business. They slink through our lives like pickpockets fearful ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... of the American girl in books written about the United States, that of Charles I.'s head in Mr. Dick's memorial might perhaps be almost called casual. All down the literary ladder, from the weighty tomes of a Professor Bryce to the witty persiflage of a Max O'Rell, we find a considerable part of every rung occupied by the skirts appropriated to the gentler sex; and—what is, perhaps, stranger still—she holds her own even in books written by women. It need not be asserted that all the references to her are equally agreeable. ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... with airy persiflage. "No exact information obtainable, my friend. Likely to-day. Maybe not till to-morrow. The one dead-sure point is that I'll make my getaway ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... about the cream, adding that it is wanted for short-cake. The explanation does not seem to cheer him. He appears to be a very gloomy and reserved milkman. I fancy that he is in the habit of indulging in a little airy persiflage with Frieda o' mornings, and he finds me a poor substitute for ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... desire he now professes of applying himself to prose writing. He affects a sort of Johnsonian tone, likes very much to be listened to, and seems to observe the effect he produces on his hearer. In mixed society his ambition is to appear the man of fashion, he adopts a light tone of badinage and persiflage that does not sit gracefully on him, but is always anxious to turn the subject to his own personal affairs, or feelings, which are either lamented with an air of melancholy, or dwelt on with playful ridicule, according to the humour he ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... proceeded, undismayed, to make good his accusation. He had dropped back into his slightly listless air of thinly veiled persiflage, and he appeared to address the lady, to explain the situation to her, rather than to justify the ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... the hairy boy to the right of Whomsoever J. Opper, who afterwards became the father of a lad who grew up to be editor of the Persiflage column of the ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... Brassfield moved through the assembly like a conqueror. Those who, a short time ago, found him dull and moody, rejoiced now in his confident persiflage pitched safely in the restful key of mediocrity, but possessed withal of a species of brilliancy, like the skilful playing of scales. Elizabeth noted the return of that dash and abandon which she had lately so missed—but ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... for the mere purpose of hearing "a piece of her mind." This piece, large, solid, highly flavored with pepper, and as acid as mental vinegar could make it, was Louisa Banks's only contribution to conversation when she met her brother. She could not stop for any airy persiflage about weather, crops, or politics when her one desire was to tell him what she ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of that!" he gurgled in admiration. "What do you think of that? A-hangin' on all night, alive once in a while, maybe, but the best you could say for him the rest of the time was a hope that he wasn't dead. And now coming at us with the airy persiflage, the first regular breath he's drawed. Fat! It was me he meant to indicate, wasn't it? He was joshin' me! Say, Steve, ain't he the merry little joker? Me—fat! Now that's real funny—I'll leave it to you if ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... many dollars a day could afford a little persiflage with the cook in the kitchen where he was theoretically repairing the sink. The cook was plain-featured, but any diversion was welcome to speed the hours for which he drew pay. He made a strong impression on the cook, and when he took his departure, ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... forward, took Salome's hand, and touched it lightly with his lips, while the grave dignity of his manner forbade the thought that affectation of gallantry or idle persiflage ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... so far the immediate effect Was to restore him to his self-propriety, A thing quite necessary to the elect, Who wish to take the tone of their society: In which you cannot be too circumspect, Whether the mode be persiflage or piety, But wear the newest mantle of hypocrisy, On pain of much displeasing ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... after the night of offenses, she greeted him quite as if nothing had happened, challenging him gaily to a gallop with the valley head for its goal, and refusing to be drawn into anything more serious than joyous persiflage until they were returning at a walk down a boulder-strewn wood road at the back of the Dabney horse pasture. Then, and not till then, was the question of Nancy Bryerson's ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... lieutenant pack off about his business. Being an easy-going fellow, with no dislike for the people among whom the fortunes of his calling had cast him, and with a strong fondness for pretty maids, the young man deprecated the anger of the woman, but finding, after some persiflage, that it was of small use to try to make friends with her, he marched away toward his quarters, trolling a lively air and drumming with his fingers on his sword-hilt. On the next evening he was at Maumee Nina's again, and before the very nose of that indignant dame chaffed her daughter, whom ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... belief men have that they possess virtue. The fact is that fewer people are endowed with virtue than wish to be thought to be so. It is such people that take delight in flattery. When they are addressed in language expressly adapted to flatter their vanity, they look upon such empty persiflage as a testimony to the truth of their own praises. It is not then properly friendship at all when the one will not listen to the truth, and the other is prepared to lie. Nor would the servility of parasites in comedy have seemed humorous to us had there ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... brushed aside their crude attempts at persiflage with indifference. He had won out. The courted prize was his. For two weeks not a cloud obtruded on the clear sky of his content. Dolly bullied and bossed him. He did her errands. He fetched and ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... pictures which gave to the spot, naturally charming, a thousand novel features. We walked along the most extensive of these terraces, which was covered with a thick umbrage of trees. She had recovered from the effects of her husband's persiflage, and as we walked along she gave me her confidence. Confidence begets confidence, and as I told her mine, all she said to me became more intimate and more interesting. Madame de T——- at first gave me her arm; but soon this arm became ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... new views on art and original ideas. As a great artist he knew that "there never was an artistic period. There never was an Art-loving nation." Again and again he reached pure beauty of expression. The masterly persiflage, too, filled me with admiration and I declared that the lecture ranked with the best ever heard in London with Coleridge's on Shakespeare and Carlyle's on Heroes. To my astonishment Oscar would not admit the superlative quality of ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... Quebec, and make Nova Scotia, Cape Breton, and Newfoundland only stepping-stones to Europe, we cannot say. Probably they will become like the rest of the world, and furnish no material for the kindly persiflage of the traveler. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner |
