"Prude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ventura, Anzi rinnuova come fa la luna:— So thought Boccaccio, whose sweet words might cure a 330 Male prude, like you, from what you now endure, a Low-tide in soul, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... To 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 Best ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... to talk to you with my customary frankness? You have fallen into an error which is common among men. They judge women from the surface. They imagine that a woman whose virtue is not always on the qui vive, will be easier to overcome than a prude; even experience does not undeceive them. How often are they exposed to a severity all the keener that it was unexpected? Their custom then, is to accuse women of caprice and oddity; all of you use the same language, and say: Why such equivocal conduct? ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... reminded her of them. She had bought Jane Addams' "Newer Ideals of Peace," and he had yawned over it undisguisedly. Then he had brought this novel, and—well, she had balked at the second chapter, and he had kissed her and called her his "little prude." She did not want to be a prude; she hated to seem so, and had for some time prided herself on emancipation from narrow New England prejudices. For example, she had not objected to wine at dinner; it had seemed indeed ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... conversation oscillated between physiology and rescue work, compelled Carmichael to sue for mercy on the ground that he had not been accustomed to speak about such details of life with a woman, and ever afterwards described him as a prude. It seemed to Carmichael that he was disliked by some women because he thought more highly of them than they ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... gallant, gay Lothario, who not only fails to lead astray the lovely Fanny Price, but is converted by her to worthier aims, and ends by becoming the best friend and benefactor of her and her rustic suitor. There is an impressive sketch of the elderly prude:— ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... apart 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 kites ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... "Prude!" exclaimed the collar; and then it was taken out of the washing-tub. It was starched, hung over the back of a chair in the sunshine, and was then laid on the ironing-blanket; then came the warm box-iron. "Dear lady!" said the collar. "Dear widow-lady! I ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... monsieur. In a few days I shall be eight-and-forty; I am no prude; I can hear whatever you ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... 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 play, With bony and unkerchief'd ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... you've invested. David likes to get away from the house at night—to see friends, and keep up with really good movies. Ruth prefers night clubs and gay parties. David thinks Ruth ought to be more careful about those white lies and those extremely decollete dresses; Ruth thinks David is rather a prude and mighty inconsiderate in the way he keeps picking on her. And then there is Junior. Ruth believes in loving one's children wholeheartedly and trusting that affection and understanding will bring them through all right in the long run; David thinks that right from the ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... indulge in banter, and Sadie had a ringing laugh that young men liked, but there were limits that few who knew her overstepped. One or two had done so, but had been rebuked in a way they wished to forget. Sadie had the tricks of an accomplished coquette, but something of the heart of a prude. ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... If she's the sort you want to marry, and not a prude, she'll understand, not at first, but after she gets used ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Lud, ma'am, I'll undertake to ruin the character of the primmest prude in London with half as much. Ha! ha! Did your ladyship never hear how poor Miss Shepherd lost her lover and her character last summer at Scarborough? this was the whole of it. One evening at Lady ——'s, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... the tale spread about through the busy parterre: Miss Columbine turn'd up her nose, And the prude Lady Lavender said, with a stare, That her friend, Mary-gold, had been heard to declare, The creature had ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari. Vol. 1, July 31, 1841 • Various
... much harm, who frankly fling away the idea of self-control, because repression has seemed such a disastrous method of self-control. You can see it in their faces also; in the gradual demoralization of their nature. The rake on one hand, the prude on the other, represent the ultimate consequence of the process I am trying to describe. Many people have marked on their souls, if not on their faces, one or other of these ways of life. They have not, perhaps, gone far, they may have gone but a little ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... had placed her views too high. She at first aimed at the peerage; and while she felt herself entitled to suit her taste as well as her ambition, had failed of her object by ill-concealed efforts to attain it. She had justly acquired the reputation of the reverse of a coquette or yet of a prude; still she had never received an offer, and at the age of twenty-six, had now begun to lower her thoughts to the commonalty. Her fortune would have easily obtained her husband here, but she was determined to pick amongst the lower supporters of the aristocracy of the nation. ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... Cartwright might be justified. It was very strange Shillito had gone. All the same, she did not mean to submit. Her mother's placid conventionality had long irritated her; one got tired of galling rules and criticism. She was not going to be molded into a calculating prude like Grace, or a prig like Mortimer. They did not know the ridiculous good-form they cultivated was out of date. In fact, she had had enough ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... who, showing an active bravery amidst her despair, had not been to bed at all, told him of what had taken place in the house during the night and early morning. Donna Serafina, prude that she was, had again made an attempt to have the bodies separated; but this had proved an impossibility, as rigor mortis had set in, and to part the lovers it would have been necessary to break their limbs. Moreover, the Cardinal, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... the shoulders of one was the visage of the smallest and most thorough-bred little Blenheim in the world. Upon her front was a white star, her nose was nearly flat, and her ears were tied under her chin, with the most jaunty air imaginable. She was an evident flirt; and a solemn prude of a spaniel, with a black and tan countenance, who seemed a sort of duenna, evidently watched her with no little distrust. The admirers of blonde beauties would, however, have fallen in love with a poodle, with the finest head of hair imaginable, and most ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli
... as a matter of domestic history, that Griffith and Kate lived together a happy couple; but this ardent prude was compelled by her position to see it, and realize it, every day. She had to witness little conjugal caresses, and they turned her sick with jealousy. She was Nobody. They took no more account of her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... utterly unworthy of acceptance as being a representation of what people with blood in them think or do on such occasions." Thus am I crushed between the upper millstone of the Mr Redford, who thinks me a libertine, and the nether popular critic, who thinks me a prude. Critics of all grades and ages, middle-aged fathers of families no less than ardent young enthusiasts, are equally indignant with me. They revile me as lacking in passion, in feeling, in manhood. Some of them even sum the matter up by denying me any dramatic power: a melancholy betrayal of ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... subject, except, of course, education itself—I venture to demur to the fairy method. Both a priori and from experience, I should say that unmixed Beauty would become intolerably vain; that Discretion would grow into a hypocritical and unpleasant prude; that Vivacity would develop into Vulgarity; and that the reincarnation of the twelve would be one of the most intolerable creatures ever known, if it were not that the impossibility of the concentrated essences being united in one person, after separation in several, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... 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 utter simplicity. She cried just as bitterly ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... enveloped him; he might have been thinking of the spiritistic triumphs of Mrs. Meeker or of Ena with her sweet curves. Whatever might be said of the latter, it was clear that she was no prude. McGeorge drew a deep breath; it was the only expression of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various |
