"Bete" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... feel in the mood to do much. I work in my garden intermittently, and the harvest bug (bete rouge we call him here) gets in his work unintermittently on me. If things were normal this introduction to the bete rouge would have seemed to me a tragedy. As it is, it is unpleasantly unimportant. ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich
... sound when their intimacy had been close, and questions such as that he had asked were common between them. And her answer was of the same nature. "Oh, such an odious woman!" she said. "Her name is Mrs Marsham; she is my bete noire." And then they were actually dancing, whirling round the room together, before a word had been said of that which was Burgo's settled purpose, and which at some moments was her ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... the Vicomte found great difficulty in getting a third wife—especially as he had no actual land and visible income; was, not seamed, but ploughed up, with the small-pox; small of stature, and was considered more than un peu bete. He was, however, a prodigious dandy, and wore a lace frill and embroidered waistcoat. Mr. Love's vis-a-vis was Mr. Birnie, an Englishman, a sort of assistant in the establishment, with a hard, dry, parchment face, and a remarkable talent for silence. The host himself was a splendid ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ou quatre amis, honnetes gens, incapables de gauchir en quoique ce soit, pour n'avoir pas fleche devant la bete, aient ete qualifies de cabalistes."—De Goutin au Ministre, 4 ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... number of dear friends than any one I ever knew. To some of these female darlings she began presently to write about my unworthy self, and it was with a sentiment of extreme satisfaction I found at length that the widow was growing dreadfully afraid of me; calling me her bete noire, her dark spirit, her murderous adorer, and a thousand other names indicative of her extreme disquietude and terror. It was: 'The wretch has been dogging my chariot through the park,' or, 'my fate pursued ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "Va t'en, bete, forban, meurtrier! Skin out f'om here! beast, robber, murderer!" he cried, in his keen screech-owl voice. "I'll git thet scelp o' your'n afore sundown, see 'f I don't! Ye onery gal-killer an' ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... fossil, moi,—je respire encore! J'ai des idees,—voyez mon intelligence! Vous ne croyiez pas, vous autres, que je savais quelque chose de cela! Ah, nous avons un peu de sagacite, voyez vous! Nous ne sommes nullement la bete qu'on pense!"—Le faiseur de questions donne peu d'attention aux reponses qu'on fait; ce n'est pas la dans ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... by when the Seigneur ruled and profited. 'Le Seigneur,' says the old formula, 'enferme ses manants comme sous porte et gonds, du ciel a la terre. Tout est a lui, foret chenue, oiseau dans l'air, poisson dans l'eau, bete an buisson, l'onde qui coule, la cloche dont le son au loin roule.' Such was his old state of sovereignty, a local god rather than a mere king. And now you may ask yourself where he is, and look round for vestiges of my late lord, ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... an "es-tu bete!" and ministered to my wants as I sat down to my meal at a corner of the kitchen table. She loved this. Great as was her pride in the speckless and orderly salon, she never felt at her ease there. In the kitchen she was herself, at ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... medicyne,' Quod she, 'and coude in every wightes care 660 Remede and reed, by herbes he knew fyne, Yet to him-self his conning was ful bare; For love hadde him so bounden in a snare, Al for the doughter of the kinge Admete, That al his craft ne coude his sorwe bete." ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer
... points of the clique. ——- is a very much hated man, and there will be no difficulty." On the 8th, in reference to the opposing "clique," Burton writes: "In my own case I should encourage a row with this bete noire; but I can readily understand your having reasons for wishing to keep it quiet." Naturally, considering the tactics that were being employed against them, the Villon Society, which published Mr. Payne's works, had no wish to draw the attention of the authorities to the moral question. Indeed, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... where three would seem a crowd yielded up more than a dozen inmates, many of whom, being at work, must be looked for later—the "back-calls" that is the bete-noire of the census enumerator. West Indians, however, are for the most part well acquainted with the affairs of friends and room-mates, and enrolment of the absent was often possible. Occasionally I ran into a den of impertinence that must ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck |
