"Vis-a-vis" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... table's further end I see In his old place our Poet's vis-a-vis, The great PROFESSOR, strong, broad-shouldered, square, In life's rich noontide, joyous, debonair. His social hour no leaden care alloys, His laugh rings loud and mirthful as a boy's,— That lusty laugh the Puritan forgot,— ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... is the most exciting part of the whole affair, and the pleasantest." She is seated at breakfast in her cottage at Summering-by-the-Sea. A heap of letters of various stylish shapes, colors, and superscriptions lies beside her plate, and irregularly straggles about among the coffee-service. Vis-a-vis with her sits Mr. Campbell behind a newspaper. "How prompt they are! Why, I didn't expect to get half so many answers yet. But that shows that where people have nothing to do but attend to their social duties they are always prompt—even the men; women, of course, ...
— A Likely Story • William Dean Howells
... Virginal virga. Virginity virgeco. Virgin, The Blessed La Sankta Virgulino, Dipatrino. Virile vira. Virility vireco. Virtue virto. Virtuous virta. Virtuoso virtuozo. Virulent venena, malboniga. Virus veneno. Visage vizagxo. Vis-a-vis kontrauxulo. Viscera internajxo. Viscuous gluanta. Visible videbla. Visibly videble. Vision (sense) vido. Vision (apparition) aperajxo. Visit viziti. Visiting-card vizitkarto. Visitor vizitanto. Visor viziero. Visual vida. Vital vivema. Vital necesega. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... his muddy boots on the fauteuils, did mon ami Thomas; he fell in love with a gay woman of the Boulevards whose skin was all plastered up like an old cathedral; he ate oysters with a hair-pin at dinner; he offered his toothpick to his vis-a-vis, and altogether conducted himself in such a manner that one was forced to say to him (chorus), Ah, my friend Thomas! at Paris that's hardly done. Ah, mon ami Thomas! at Paris that is not done at all. The audience is in ecstasies of delight at this ill-bred ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... at her vis-a-vis of life, and feeling very uneasily what she had never felt before. She began therewith to ponder sundry extraordinary propositions about the inequalities of social condition and the relative ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... a better authority gives it, The King said to Loudon himself, on Loudon's entering, "Mettez-vous aupres de moi, M. de Loudon; j'aime mieux vous avoir a cote de moi que vis-a-vis." He was very kind to Loudon; "constantly called him M. LE FELDMARECHAL [delicate hint of what should have been, but WAS not for seven years yet]; and, at parting, gave him [as he did to Lacy also] two superb horses, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... summer evenings, and of a sly throw of the dice when the occasion offered; and I took care to make friends with this person, who, being a college tutor and an Englishman, was ready to go on his knees to any one who resembled a man of fashion. Seeing me with my retinue of servants, my vis-a-vis and chariots, my valets, my hussar, and horses, dressed in gold, and velvet, and sables, saluting the greatest people in Europe as we met on the course, or at the Spas, Runt was dazzled by my advances, and was mine by a beckoning of the ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... partly amused, partly provoked. The large young man had been her vis-a-vis at dinner the day before and at breakfast that morning. He had evinced a yearning for conversation each time, but it had been diplomatically confined to salt and other condiments, the weather and the scenery. Miss Benton had no objection to young men in general, ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Crayford during the lieutenant's absence in the Arctic regions. She is now dancing, with the lieutenant himself for partner, and with Mrs. Crayford and Captain Helding (commanding officer of the Wanderer) for vis-a-vis—in ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins
... to leave the room, with a nod to its only other occupant, an olive-skinned young man with lustrous eyes and a low collar, who sat on the other side of the table, perusing the Fanfulla di Domenica. This gentleman, his daily vis-a-vis, returned the nod with a Latin eloquence of gesture, and Wyant passed on to the ante-chamber, where he paused to light a cigarette. He was just restoring the case to his pocket when he heard a hurried step behind him, and the ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... his vis-a-vis, he simulated interest in his book for a moment, and then exclaimed ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... (going). Then tell my woman she need not come to me, and let nobody INTERUDE on me—do you 'EAR? (Aside.) Oh, what will become of me? and the Talbots will soon know it! And the ponies, and the curricle, and the vis-a-vis—what will become of them? and how shall I make my appearance at the Montem, ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... countenance. I wiped the glasses very deliberately, and put them on quite as deliberately; adjusting them so as not to hurt the bridge of my nose or get entangled in my short tufts of dun hair. I was sitting in the window-seat, with my back to the light, and I had him VIS-A-VIS; a position he would much rather have had reversed; for, at any time, he preferred scrutinizing to being scrutinized. Yes, it was HE, and no mistake, with his six feet of length arranged in a sitting attitude; with ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... c'est-a-dire sans presque jamais en toucher aucun. Tout au milieu de ce bel exercise, je m'avisai de faire une espece de pronostic pour calmer mon inquietude. Je me dis —je m'en vais jeter cette pierre contre l'arbre qui est vis-a-vis de moi: si je le touche, signe de salut: si je le manque, signe de damnation. Tout en disant ainsi, je jette ma pierre d'une main tremblante, et avec un horrible battement de coeur, mais si heureusement qu'elle va frapper au beau-milieu de l'arbre: ce qui veritablement ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... smallest glance in his direction. Instead, for the most part, she talked earnestly to the man opposite, who had evidently ordered his dinner of dishes ready to be served, and was hastily consuming them, while she had given more time to her order, and did not really begin her dinner until her vis-a-vis had disposed of his. Then, with a final and hasty glance at his watch, the gray and elderly man arose, bowed awkwardly and formally to her and ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... from France, and I have seen her in a vis-a-vis with that idiot Lord Cholm(ondeley); so I suppose that is to ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... about during the whole evening and danced either with her or vis-a-vis. He devoured her with his eyes, sighed, and wearied her with prayers and reproaches. After the third quadrille she had ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... would suspect what was in my mind. Our first words were polite and insignificant. I thanked him for his kindness in bringing letters to Madame Pierson; I told him that upon leaving France we would ask him to do the same favor for us; and then we were silent, surprised to find ourselves vis-a-vis. ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... painters are standing in the doorway talking to a young woman who, beginning with newspaper work, has stepped suddenly into a niche of fiction. The tall, loose-jointed man at the left of the group, the editor of a conservative monthly, has for his vis-a-vis the artist who has had so much to do with the redemption of American architecture and decoration from the mongrel period of the middle century. Another night you may not see a single one of these faces, but another set, yet ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... one on the other with the squared faces together and then drove in a big wedge at the butt ends which separated them three or four inches. Then we placed live coals in this opening and watched the fire run rapidly the whole length of the squared faces vis-a-vis. ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... horsemen. There was the carriage of the Princess Esterhazy, with twenty outriders in the livery of the prince; that of the new Prince Palm, whose four black horses wore their harness of pure gold; there was the gilded fairy, like vis-a-vis of the beautiful Countess Thun, its panels decorated with paintings from the hands of one of the first artists of the day; the coach of the Countess Dietrichstein, drawn by four milk-white horses, whose delicate pasterns were encircled by jewelled ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... heavily drooping eyelids, Houston regarded his vis-a-vis with concealed amusement, for he was an apt student of human nature, and possessed an unusual degree of insight into the characteristics of those with whom he was thrown ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... the gown worn by Helena as if this were an added riddle to his perplexity; though to Sally it was the one feature in the case which was no mystery. He seemed to feel that fate had impishly changed his vis-a-vis in the lover's jig he was about to foot; that while the gown had been expected to enclose a Sally, a Helena's face looked out from the bodice; that some long-lost hand met his own from ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... Brissot's Recherches philosophiques sur le Droit de Propriete et le Vol, may be considered. In medieval times, there are always a multitude of other titles to property besides production and saving. The title which is held in highest esteem for the time being is always because of this very extreme vis-a-vis of all other titles, strengthened and ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... dark as pitch. But Fuzl Khan was spared, that we know. No man can trust his vis-a-vis. No man is now so bold to ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... two-headed birds." Sicilian silks, and many others of the contemporary textiles, display variations of the "tree of life" pattern. This consists of a little conventional shrub, sometimes hardly more than a "budding rod," with two birds or animals advancing vis-a-vis on either side. Sometimes these are two peacocks; often lions or leopards and frequently griffins and various smaller animals. Whenever one sees a little tree or a single stalk, no matter how conventionally treated, with a couple of matched animals strutting ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... une fois que le Gouvernement Marocain aura accepte le principe en question, et pris vis-a-vis des Puissances etrangeres l'engagement de s'y conformer, si ces Puissances, d'accord avec l'Espagne, dont les relations avec le Maroc presentent un caractere tout special, voulaient prendre une attitude semblable a celle qu'elles ont adoptee en Orient, on pourrait avec raison esperer ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... dinner, Mr. Rosenbaum crossed the street slowly, entered the restaurant and with a pre-occupied air seated himself at the same table with Mr. Mannering. After giving his order, he proceeded to unfold the evening paper laid beside his plate, without even a glance at his vis-a-vis. His thoughts, however, were not on the printed page, but upon the man opposite, whom he had followed from city to city, hearing of him by various names and under various guises; hitherto unable to obtain more than a fleeting ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... at this moment Bathilde had found herself vis-a-vis with D'Harmental, instead of being embarrassed and blushing, as a young girl would who had just received her first love-letter, she would have taken him by the hand and said to him, smiling—"Be satisfied, I will pray for you." ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... lease of the former tenant had lapsed, some he had gathered in by sub-hiring. He had tried to buy the building, since it served his purpose well, but came against a deed of trust and the Court of Chancery, and had wisely refrained from going any further into a matter which must bring him vis-a-vis with a Master in Chancery, with all the publicity which such ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... the European Parliament and the Council, of acts of the Council, of the Commission and of the ECB, other than recommendations and opinions, and of acts of the European Parliament intended to produce legal effects vis-a-vis third parties. It shall for this purpose have jurisdiction in actions brought by a Member State, the Council or the Commission on grounds of lack of competence, infringement of an essential procedural requirement, ...
— The Treaty of the European Union, Maastricht Treaty, 7th February, 1992 • European Union
... and new love, in all its living bloom, Sat vis-a-vis, while tender twilight hours Went softly by us, treading as on flowers. Then suddenly I saw within the room The old love, long since lying in its tomb. It dropped the cerecloth from its fleshless face ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... he was asking Essie Tisdale to marry him—this old Edouard Dubois with the bullet-shaped head and the brutal face that Van Lennop had found so objectionable upon each occasion that he had been his vis-a-vis in the dining-room? ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... word, Dunny," I assured my vis-a-vis. "I was just wondering if Huns and pirates had quite a neutral sound. You know I have to go via Rome to spend a week with Jack Herriott. He has been pestering me for a good two years—ever ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... Frenchman, Grasset—dances that suited her, the rose coquette!—gay dances, where the petticoat reveals a pretty limb discreetly; where fans play, opening and closing like the painted wings of butterflies alarmed; where fingers touch, fall away, interlace and unlace; where a light waist-clasp and a vis-a-vis leaves a moment for a whisper and its answer, promise, assent, or low refusal as partners part, dropping away in low, slow reverence, which ends the frivolous figure ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... afforded by a bertha of applique lace trimmed with pink ribbon, with hair a la madonna, and fastened low on her neck. Is she not handsome as she stands fronting the folding doors, her hand in tall Mr. Trezevant's, just as she commences to dance, with the tip of her black bottine just showing? Vis-a-vis stands pretty Sophie, with her large, graceful mouth smiling and showing her pretty teeth to the best advantage. A low neck and short-sleeved green and white poplin is her dress, while her black hair, combed off from her forehead carelessly, is caught by a comb ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... too, did Mr. Winslow and his vis-a-vis. Standing at the top of the ridge was another officer. He was standing there looking down upon them and, although he was not smiling, Jed somehow conceived the idea that he was much amused about something. Now he descended the ridge and walked ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of deportment, my glass of fashion. I see him now as we used to sit, vis-a-vis, at his study table. Samson's physical strength came from his hair. From the same source, it seemed to me, Mr. Pound derived that mental vigor with which he pulled down the temples of ignorance and slew the thousand devils of unorthodoxy which sprang ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... absent-mindedly lighted his pipe, and smoked in silence. As the tobacco died low, he gazed about for a convenient utensil to use in pushing the ashes down in the bowl of his pipe. Looking down he saw the lady's hand resting upon his knee, and he straightway utilized the forefinger of his vis-a-vis. A suppressed feminine screech followed, but the fires of friendship were not quenched by so slight an incident, which Mrs. Vincent knew grew out of temperament, and not ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... "Naturally so," said my vis-a-vis. "Because, save to my father, my grandfather, and myself, the details are unknown to anybody. Not even my mother knew of the incident, and as for Dr. Watson and Bunny, the scribes through whose industry the adventures ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... key-syllable. Consider these words: wise, wiseacre, wisdom, wizard, witch, wit, unwitting, to wit, outwit, twit, witticism, witness, evidence, providence, invidious, advice, vision, visit, vista, visage, visualize, envisage, invisible, vis-a-vis, visor, revise, supervise, improvise, proviso, provision, view, review, survey, vie, envy, clairvoyance. Perhaps the last six should be disregarded as too exceptional in form to be clearly recognized. And certainly some words, as prudence ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... dictionary? Ah!" Mr. Scogan raised his hand and let it limply fall again in a gesture which implied that words failed him. "Read his biography of Helen; read how Jupiter, disguised as a swan, was 'enabled to avail himself of his situation' vis-a-vis to Leda. And to think that he may have, must have written these biographies of the Great! What a work, Henry! And, owing to the idiotic arrangement of your library, it can't ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... length, were squarely abreast in less than five minutes from the time of firing the first gun; and by now the furious bombardment of the Argyll by eight ships had ceased, for each one found it more profitable to deal with its vis-a-vis. But there was yet a deafening racket in the Argyll's conning-tower as small projectiles from the rear battle-ship abreast impinged on its steel walls; and Captain Blake, his ears ringing, his eyes streaming, half stunned by the noise, ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... aux Trois Allies, vis-a-vis de la maison paternelle du celebre Mozart, lequel est nouvellement fourni et offre tous les comforts a Mrs. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... I had met first in Prussia, where we had happened to sit vis-a-vis in a railway train in which I was travelling to overtake our party; while, later, I had run across him in France, and again in Switzerland—twice within the space of two weeks! To think, therefore, that I should suddenly encounter ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... think of my retreat from the whirl and bustle of Paris?" asked Marquis de Praille of his vis-a-vis, who was a dashing sort ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... more appalling indifference to everything. The drawing among the Print-room series—"It is always well to be well informed"—is a good instance. It reveals a ballroom with couples dancing a quadrille. A lady asks her partner: "Who's my sister's partner, vis-a-vis, with the star and riband?" He: "Oh, he—aw—he's Sir Somebody Something, who went somewhere or othaw to look after some scientific fellaw who was murdered, or something, by someone—!" The word othaw in this ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... the side of her girl friend. It frequently happened that they were vis-a-vis in a quadrille, when Lady Rosamond indulged in exchanging playful sallies of mirthful character. In appearance, manners and companionship those lovely girls might be considered as sisters. On more than one occasion had such a mistake been of concurrence, while Mary Douglas was recognized ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... of an unripe greenish yellow, that puckered up your mouth like persimmons. One of them was speechless from good behavior, and the other—well! the other was so energetic she called out the figures before the fiddler did, and shrieked to my vis-a-vis to dance up to the entire stranger—meaning ME, ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... and courtier of the Renaissance should be represented in the guise of a Roman warrior, is an anomaly, irreconcilable as that of pagan gods and the personification of Christian attributes here placed vis-a-vis. Perhaps the grief-stricken wife, who was, as it appears, of a highly romantic and adventuresome turn, wished thus to commemorate the heroic qualities of her husband; she might also have wished to dissociate him altogether from his own time, a period of which, in her eyes, he ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... myself in my corner after making a slight bow on perceiving the presence of women in the car, one of whom evidently merited the attention of every young commercial traveler and troubadour. I set myself to examine my vis-a-vis, dividing my attention between ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... devilled partridge, the truffled salad, the fine yellow cheese, and the long bottle of good red Beaune, revealed when the cover was off, I could almost have forgiven the old rascal for his scandal- mongering. As for my vis-a-vis, she pronounced it ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... with its muster Of flags festooned over the wall; Of the candles that shed their soft lustre And tallow on head-dress and shawl; Of the steps that we took to one fiddle, Of the dress of my queer vis-a-vis; And how I once went down the middle With the man that shot ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... lady, something had struck her about the manner her husband assumed. She could not get over it, and when at the table d'hote with her husband listened attentively to the conservation of two gentlemen who were sitting vis-a-vis. One enquired after the health of the lady who had taken so suddenly ill on the landing in the morning. The younger of the two gentlemen expressed his gratitude to the other for assisting his mother so kindly, who would have, but for his assistance, fallen down stairs, ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... John was made to Marie Francoise Chartier, widow of the Sieur de Soulanges. Her seigniory included the larger portion of Gagetown parish in Queens county, the central point being opposite her old residence or, as the grant expresses it, "vis-a-vis la maison ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... movie-maker, again leaning toward his vis-a-vis. "We're making these pictures now because when the first man or men come back from other planets our science fiction cycle is finished. It will cease to be escape. We will then be faced with the reality of what they really find—and that's bound to be a great deal different ...
— Reel Life Films • Samuel Kimball Merwin
... but cold in comparison of what I do wish, and of what you ought to wish. Your friend Clairant interposed, and said, 'Mais je vous assure qu'il est fort poli'; to which I answered, 'Je le crois bien, vis-a-vis des Lapons vos amis; je vous recuse pour juge, jusqu'a ce que vous ayez ete delaponne, au moins dix ans, parmi les honnetes gens'. These testimonies in your favor are such as perhaps you are satisfied with, and think sufficient; but I am not; they are only ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... Lily want to go back to her riki-tiki?" asked Lily's father, lifting a little girl on each knee, so that they might be vis-a-vis, when certainly his own had the advantage in beauty, as she answered, leaning against him, "Granny's ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Dancing vis-a-vis were Giovanni and the Contessa Potensi. Nina did not know her name or anything about her, but she felt at first sight a subtle antagonism, and, following an instinct that she would have found difficult to account for, she turned her attention away toward a second personality, which fascinated ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... not a pleasant vis-a-vis. He wore the same picturesque ruffianliness of apparel as his fellows, but the resemblance stopped there. He lacked their dusky bloom, their clearness of eye, the suppleness and easy flow of muscle that is the hall-mark of these frontiersmen. ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning |
