"Prude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hear the solemn prating Of the fossils who are stating That old Horace was a prude; When we know that with the ladies He was always raising Hades, And with many an escapade his ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... a prude, with the sublime inconsistency of most women whose lives are made the darker for drink; she did not identify herself with any movement toward prohibition, or refuse the cocktails, the claret, and the wine that were customarily served at her own ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... survive. For when the fair in all their pride expire, To their first elements their souls retire: The sprites of fiery termagants in flame Mount up, and take a Salamander's name. 60 Soft yielding minds to water glide away, And sip, with Nymphs, their elemental tea. The graver prude sinks downward to a Gnome, In search of mischief still on earth to roam. The light coquettes in Sylphs aloft repair, And sport and flutter ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... as much of a classic now and by the same right, the right of a universal appeal, to every type of child, as Mother Goose of the Nursery Rhymes. She had only to appear—this slender-legged, straight-haired, Early-Victorian little prude, to enter at once the inmost arcana of the temple of art. The book is a singular evidence of what the power of a desperate devotion can do—a devotion like this of Mr. Dodgson to all little girls—when a certain whimsical genius belongs to ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... gentleman's craftiness was a match for the hypocrisy of the lady, who, after playing the prude so long, showed herself such a wanton ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... gained my respect. Frankness in a Jesuit? Come; what has the Society come to that frankness replaces cunning and casuistry? Bah! There never was an age but had its prude to howl 'O these degenerate days!' Corrupt and degenerate you say? Yes; that is the penalty of greatness, richness, and idleness. It began with the Egyptians, it struck Rome and Athens; it strikes France to-day. Yesterday we wore skins and furs, to-day silks and woolens, to-morrow . . . rags, ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... moment when she makes her entrance into this history which we are relating, she was an antique virtue, an incombustible prude, with one of the sharpest noses, and one of the most obtuse minds that it is possible to see. A characteristic detail; outside of her immediate family, no one had ever known her first name. She was called Mademoiselle Gillenormand, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... a reaction set in. She wondered how she could have been so cold, called herself a prude and an idiot, questioned if any man could really care for her, and got up in the dead of night to try new ways of doing her hair. But as soon as he reappeared her head straightened itself on her slim neck and she sped her little shafts of irony, or flew her little ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... whole their continence was great; So that some disappointment there ensued To those who had felt the inconvenient state Of 'single blessedness,' and thought it good (Since it was not their fault, but only fate, To bear these crosses) for each waning prude To make a Roman sort of Sabine wedding, Without the expense and ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... formed a defensive alliance. The Cotillon Coalition of the Seven Years' War, formed for the destruction of Frederic II., and the parties to which were the Czarina Elizabeth, Maria Theresa, and Madame de Pompadour,—a drunkard, a prude, and a harlot,—brought Russia famously forward in Europe. In the Eighty-Seventh Letter of Goldsmith's Citizen of the World, published a century ago, are some very just and discriminating remarks on "the folly of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... And that you would think him insensible, tho' he was only immerst in Thought? Why did not you intice him? Come, come, be easy, I will engage to procure you another private Meeting; but take Care not to act the Prude again so unseasonably. Ply him with every alluring Art, and even make Use of a fond Violence to make him yield. He is not to be treated like common Lovers. These Injunctions cannot be disagreeable to you. Zeokinizul is perfectly handsome, and in ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... dark road, then set off again walking towards Beldover. Then suddenly, to show him she was no shallow prude, she stopped and held him tight, hard against her, and covered his face with hard, fierce kisses of passion. In spite of his otherness, the old ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... rustic daughter of Down East, who affected great contempt for all superior people, and declared the queen not a whit better than anybody else; the buxom Green-mountain girl, whose motion was as crude as her cheeks were rosy; the New Hampshire prude, lisping, regardless of Murray; the statue-like Baltimorean, with queenly figure and all lovely face, dazzling in her beauty, like a diamond among stones less brilliant; the flirting blonde of Washington; ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... Yon ancient prude, whose wither'd features show She might, be young some forty years ago, Her elbows pinion'd close upon her hips, Her head erect, her fan upon her lips, Her eyebrows arch'd, her eyes both gone astray To watch yon amorous couple in their ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... Argemone, sweet prude, thought herself bound to read Honoria a lecture that night, on her reckless exhibition of feeling; but it profited little. The most consummate cunning could not have baffled Argemone's suspicions more completely than her sister's ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... accomplished. Shortly he would have compensation commensurate for all these five years' chagrin. To elude him all this time, to laugh in his face, to defy him, and then to step deliberately into his power! He never could understand this woman. The little prude! But for her fool's conscience he would not have been riding the beggar's horse to-day. She was now too self-reliant, too intelligent, too cunning; she was her father over again, soldier and diplomat. Well, the mystery of her actions remained, but he was no longer ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath |
