“
Her face ... was a one-of-a-kind, a surprising variation on a familiar theme - a variation that made observers think, Yes - that would be another very nice way for people to look. What Beatrice had done with her face, actually, was what any plain girl could do. She overlaid it with dignity, suffering, intelligence, and a piquant dash of bitchiness.
”
”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (The Sirens of Titan)
“
What Beatrice had done with her face, actually, was what any plain girl could do. She had overlaid it with dignity, suffering, intelligence, and a piquant dash of bitchiness.
”
”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (The Sirens of Titan)
“
Her beauty satisfied [his] artistic eye, her peculiarities piqued his curiosity, her vivacity lightened his ennui, and her character interested him by the unconscious hints it gave of power, pride and passion. So entirely natural and unconventional was she that he soon found himself on a familiar footing, asking all manner of unusual questions, and receiving rather piquant replies.
”
”
Louisa May Alcott (A Long Fatal Love Chase)
“
The pain of love does not break hearts, it merely seasons them. The disappointed heart revives itself and grows meaty and piquant. Sorrow expands it and makes it pithy. The spirit, on the other hand, can snap like a bone and may never fully knit
”
”
Tom Robbins (Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates)
“
Even the piquant can forfeit popularity if tied to something intellectual.
”
”
Thomas Mann (Doctor Faustus)
“
Oh! A mystery is it?' I cried, rubbing my hands. 'This is very piquant. I am much obliged to you for bringing us together. "The proper study of mankind is man" you know
”
”
Arthur Conan Doyle (The Great Adventures of Sherlock Holmes)
“
No person of quality ever remembers social restrictions save when considering how most piquantly to break them.
”
”
James Branch Cabell (Beyond Life)
“
At last I have what I wanted. Am I happy? Not really, but what's missing? My soul no longer has that piquant activity conferred by desire. Oh, we shouldn’t delude ourselves, pleasure isn’t in the fulfillment, but in the pursuit
”
”
Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais
“
She had overlaid it with dignity, suffering, intelligence, and a piquant dash of bitchiness.
”
”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (The Sirens of Titan)
“
I was at once content and stimulated with what I saw: I liked what I had seen, and wished to see more. Yet, for a long time, I treated you distantly, and sought your company rarely. I was an intellectual epicure, and wished to prolong the gratification of making this novel and piquant acquaintance: besides, I was for a while troubled with a haunting fear that if I handled the flower freely its bloom would fade-the sweet charm of freshness would leave it. I did not then know that it was no transitory blossom; but rather the radiant resemblance of one, cut in an indestructible gem.
”
”
Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)
“
Americans, unhappily, have the most remarkable ability to alchemize all bitter truths into an innocuous but piquant confection and to transform their moral contradictions, or public discussion of such contradictions, into a proud decoration, such as are given for heroism on the field of battle.
”
”
James Baldwin (Notes of a Native Son)
“
Evil acts make me hard – I find in evil a charm piquant enough to awaken every sensation of pleasure in me, and I give myself to evil for evil alone, and without any other interest than evil alone.
”
”
Marquis de Sade (The 120 Days of Sodom)
“
In today's globalized world nothing is sure. Routines are falling; stereotypes are breaking. Life has never been as piquant as it is now. So go out of your way; leave your cocoon. Do that crazy thing and be happy you did it.
”
”
Ogwo David Emenike
“
Myself, I couldn't help think of anything in the world better than stirring sharp white cheddar, smoked Gouda, creamy Havarti, Monterey Jack, and a touch of piquant Maytag blue cheese into a bubbling hot white sauce, stirring it to a thick honey consistency, and pouring it over al dente macaroni to toast to a crispy deep golden on top.
”
”
Beth Harbison (When in Doubt, Add Butter)
“
Even as she was about to read the mysterious, tortured hero's declaration of undying passion to the piquant young heroine, Rosalind found herself obliged instead to look up into Marius's decidedly un-mysterious, non-tortured face.
”
”
Emma Clifton (Five Glass Slippers)
“
Impatiently I waited for evening, when I might summon you to my presence. An unusual– to me– a perfectly new character, I suspected was yours; I desired to search it deeper, and know it better. You entered the room with a look and air at once shy and independent; you were quaintly dress– much as you are now. I made you talk; ere long I found you full of strange contrasts. Your garb and manner were restricted by rule; your air was often diffident, and altogether that of one refined by nature, but absolutely unused to society, and a good deal afraid of making herself disadvantageously conspicuous by some solecism or blunder; yet, when addressed, you lifted a keen, a daring, and a glowing eye to your interlocutor’s face; there was penetration and power in each glance you gave; when plied by close questions, you found ready and round answers. Very soon you seemed to get used to me – I believe you felt the existence of sympathy between you and your grim and cross master, Jane; for it was astonishing to see how quickly a certain pleasant ease tranquilized your manner; snarl as I would, you showed no surprise, fear, annoyance, or displeasure, at my moroseness; you watched me, and now and then smiled at me with a simple yet sagacious grace I cannot describe. I was at once content and stimulated with what I saw; I liked what I had seen, and wished to see more. Yet, for a long time, I treated you distantly, and sought your company rarely, I was an intellectual epicure, and wished to prolong the gratification of making this novel and piquant acquaintance; besides, I was for a while troubled with a haunting fear that if I handled the flower freely its bloom would fade – the sweet charm of freshness would leave it. I did not then know that it was no transitory blossom, but rather the radiant resemblance of one, cut in an indestructible gem. Moreover, I wished to see whether you would seek me if I shunned you – but you did not; you kept in the school-room as still as your own desk and easel; if by chance I met you, you passed me as soon, and with as little token of recognition, as was consistent with respect. Your habitual expression in those days, Jane, was a thoughtful look; not despondent, fro you were not sickly; but not buoyant, for you had little hope, and no actual pleasure. I wondered what you thought of me– or if you ever thought of me; to find this out, I resumed my notice of you. There was something glad in your glance, and genial in your manner, when you conversed; I saw you had a social heart; it was the silent school-room– it was the tedium of your life that made you mournful. I permitted myself the delight of being kind to you; kindness stirred emotion soon; your face became soft in expression, your tones gentle; I liked my name pronounced by your lips in a grateful, happy accent. I used to enjoy a chance meeting with you, Jane, at this time; there was a curious hesitation in your manner; you glanced at me with a slight trouble– a hovering doubt; you did not know what my caprice might be– whether I was going to play the master, and be stern– or the friend, and be benignant. I was now too fond of you often to stimulate the first whim; and, when I stretched my hand out cordially, such bloom, and light, and bliss, rose to your young, wistful features, I had much ado often to avoid straining you then and there to my heart.
”
”
Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)
“
We naturally take in the catastrophes of our friends a pleasure which genuinely does not preclude friendship. This is partly but not entirely because we enjoy being empowered as helpers. The unexpected or inappropriate catastrophe is especially piquant.
”
”
Iris Murdoch (The Black Prince)
“
Sweet, salt, bitter, piquant - Sicilian cuisine is all-embracing and pleasurably involves all the senses in a single dish. A gelato must also be like this. Sweet as a whispered promise, the pistachio ice cream salty as sea air, the chocolate ice cream faintly bitter and a little tart like a lover's goodbye the next morning.
”
”
Mario Giordano (Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions (Tante Poldi #1))
“
Profanity is the chili pepper of language. If used by an idiot or a clod, it can overwhelm the discourse so the meaning is lost, but if used by a linguistic master chef, it can insert a piquant passion to the point where even though your ears may burn and you may want to rinse your mouth out, you cannot say it doesn’t sound delicious.
”
”
Aasif Mandvi (No Land's Man)
“
la vérité a ses côtés piquants, qu'on saisit quand on a du génie; mais quand on en manque ? - Quand on en manque, il ne faut pas écrire.
”
”
Denis Diderot (Jacques le fataliste et son maître)
“
Purity, a concept that recalled flowers, the piquant mint taste of a mouthwash, a child clinging to its mother’s gentle breast, was something that joined all these directly to the concept of blood, the concept of swords cutting down iniquitous men, the concept of blades slashing down through the shoulder to spray the air with blood. And to the concept of seppuku. The moment that a samurai “fell like the cherry blossoms,” his blood-smeared corpse became at once like fragrant cherry blossoms. The concept of purity, then, could alter to the contrary with arbitrary swiftness. And so purity was the stuff of poetry. For Isao, to die purely seemed easy. But what about laughing purely? How to be pure in all respects was a problem that disturbed him. No matter how tight a rein he kept upon his emotions, there were times when some trivial thing would arise to make him laugh. Once, for example, he had laughed at a puppy frolicking at the side of the road, with a woman’s high-heeled shoe, of all things, in its mouth. It was the kind of laugh that he preferred others not to see.
”
”
Yukio Mishima (Runaway Horses)
“
DOLMANCE — [...] One cannot always do evil; deprived of the pleasure it affords, we can at least find the sensation's equivalent in the minor but piquant wickedness of never doing good.
”
”
Marquis de Sade (Philosophy in the Boudoir)
“
It isn’t everyday that we want to see a syrupy Van Gogh or hear a piquant fugue by Bach, or make love to a succulent woman, but every day we want to eat; hunger is the recurring desire, the only recurring desire, for sight, sound, sex and power all come to an end, but hunger goes on, and while one might weary of Ravel for ever, one could only ever weary of ravioli for, at most, a day.
”
”
Luis Fernando Verissimo (The Club of Angels)
“
Besides, there is that peculiar voice of hers, so animating and piquant, as well as soft: it cheers my withered heart; it puts life into it.—What, Janet! Are you an independent woman? A rich woman?
”
”
Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)
“
your book is full of piquant ideas on how sexual assault is practiced by many people but in African countries the issue is pressurized by females themselves as they tend to dress on night attires as a result males are piquant ed
to commit an offense
”
”
Nicholas D. Kristof (Freedom of the high school press)
“
Without another word, we began to eat. I was hungry, but no appetite would excuse the way we set upon those dishes. We shoveled food into our mouths in a manner ill befitting our fine attire. Bears would have blushed to see us bent over our plates. The pheasant, still steaming from the oven, its dark flesh redolent with the mushroom musk of the forest floor, was gnawed quickly to the bone. It was a touch gamy - no milk-fed goose, this - but it was tender, and the piquant hominy balanced that wild taste as I had hoped it would. The eggs, laced pink at the edges and floating delicately in a carnal sauce, were gulped down in two bites. The yolks were cooked to that rare liminal degree, no longer liquid but not yet solid, like the formative moment of a sun-colored gem.
”
”
Eli Brown (Cinnamon and Gunpowder)
“
At first, the letters were arrayed in alphabetical order, an arrangement hinted at on modern keyboards by the sequences F-G-H, J-K-L and O-P, but the fact that no two other letters are alphabetical, that the most popular letters are not only banished to the periphery but given mostly to the left hand while the right is left with a sprinkling of secondary letters, punctuation marks and little-used symbols, are vivid reminders of the extent to which Sholes had to abandon common sense and order just to make the damn thing work. There is a certain piquant irony in the thought that every time you stab ineptly at the letter a with the little finger of your left hand, you are commemorating the engineering inadequacies of a nineteenth-century inventor.
”
”
Bill Bryson (Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States)
“
And criticism - what place is that to have in our culture? Well, I think that the first duty of an art critic is to hold his tongue at all times, and upon all subjects: C'EST UN GRAND AVANTAGE DE N'AVOIR RIEN FAIT, MAIS IL NE FAUT PAS EN ABUSER.
It is only through the mystery of creation that one can gain any knowledge of the quality of created things. You have listened to PATIENCE for a hundred nights and you have heard me for one only. It will make, no doubt, that satire more piquant by knowing something about the subject of it, but you must not judge of aestheticism by the satire of Mr. Gilbert. As little should you judge of the strength and splendour of sun or sea by the dust that dances in the beam, or the bubble that breaks on the wave, as take your critic for any sane test of art. For the artists, like the Greek gods, are revealed only to one another, as Emerson says somewhere; their real value and place time only can show. In this respect also omnipotence is with the ages. The true critic addresses not the artist ever but the public only. His work lies with them. Art can never have any other claim but her own perfection: it is for the critic to create for art the social aim, too, by teaching the people the spirit in which they are to approach all artistic work, the love they are to give it, the lesson they are to draw from it.
”
”
Oscar Wilde (The English Renaissance of Art)
“
The writing style which is most natural for you is bound to echo the speech you heard when a child. English was the novelist Joseph Conrad's third language, and much of that seems piquant in his use of English was no doubt colored by his first language, which was Polish. And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical. I myself grew up in Indianapolis, where common speech sounds like a band saw cutting galvanized tin, and employs a vocabulary as unornamental as a monkey wrench.
In some of the more remote hollows of Appalachia, children still grow up hearing songs and locutions of Elizabethan times. Yes, and many Americans grow up hearing a language other than English, or an English dialect a majority of Americans cannot understand.
All these varieties of speech are beautiful, just as the varieties of butterflies are beautiful. No matter what your first language, you should treasure it all your life. If it happens not to be standard English, and if it shows itself when you write standard English, the result is usually delightful, like a very pretty girl with one eye that is green and one that is blue.
I myself find that I trust my own writing most, and others seem to trust it most, too, when I sound most like a person from Indianapolis, which is what I am. What alternatives do I have? The one most vehemently recommended by teachers has no doubt been pressed on you, as well: to write like cultivated Englishmen of a century or more ago.
”
”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
“
Louis Quinze aimait peu les parfums. Je l'imite
Et je leur acquiesce en la juste limite.
Ni flacons, s'il vous plait, ni sachets en amour!
Mais, o qu'air naif et piquant flotte autour
D'un corps, pourvu que l'art de m'exciter se trouve;
(...)
Des lors, voudrais-je encore du poison etranger,
D'un fragrance prise a la plante, a la bete,
Qui vous tourne le coeur et vous brule la tete,
Puisque j'ai, pour magnifier la volupte,
Proprement la quintessence de la beaute.
L'emotion profonde du soir et le bonheur triste des coeurs fideles.
”
”
Paul Verlaine
“
The unmistaken identity of the persons in the Tiberiast du-plex came to light in the most devious of ways. The original document was in what is known as Hanno O’Nonhanno’s unbrookable script, that is to say, it showed no signs of punctua — tion of any sort. Yet on holding the verso against a lit rush this new book of Morses responded most remarkably to the silent query of our world’s oldest light and its recto let out the piquant fact that it was but pierced butnot punctured (in the university sense of the term) by numerous stabs and foliated gashes made by a pronged instrument.
”
”
James Joyce (Finnegans Wake)
“
Parmi les nombreuses maîtresses que vous avez troussées, avouez qu'il y en a une ou deux qui vont ont laissé des échardes dans le saignant. Il ne s'agit jamais de la plus belle, de la plus douce, de la plus prestigieuse, non, non... En général, ce serait plutôt une conquête de seconde catégorie, levée parce qu'elle était piquante, que vous avez prise pour l'aventure d'un soir. Et voici que la sournoise vous a ferré, en embuscade ! Elle vous a emmiellé dans une soie gluante de passion, la toquade a viré flambée de fièvre. Plus moyen de vous dépêtrer. Le pire, c'est que vous n'étiez même pas sûr de l'aimer, que vous ne compreniez rien à cette malédiction ! Cette liaison, c'était un naufrage dans une mer mauvaise, toute écumeuse de récifs.
”
”
Jean-Philippe Jaworski (Le Sentiment du fer)
“
The profane passion is something absurd, a kind of drug, a 'sickness of the soul', as the Ancients supposed, everybody is ready to grant, and moralists have said so ad nauseum; but in this age of novels and films, when all of us are more or less drugged, nobody will believe it, and the distinction is capital. The moderns, men and women of passion, expect irresistible love to produce some revelation either regarding themselves or about life at large. This is a last vestige of the primitive mysticism. From poetry to the piquant anecdote, passion is everywhere treated as an experience, something that will alter my life and enrich it with the unexpected, with thrilling chances, and with enjoyment ever more violent and gratifying. The whole of possibility opens before me, a future that assents to desire! I am to enter into it, I shall rise to it, I shall reach it in 'transports'. The reader will say that this is but the everlasting illusion of mankind, the most guileless and—notwithstanding all that I have said—the most 'natural'; for it is the illusion of freedom and of living to the dull. But really a man becomes free only when he has attained self-mastery, whereas a man of passion seeks instead to be defeated, to lose all self-control, to be beside himself and in ecstasy. And indeed he is being urged on by his nostalgia, the origin and end of which are unknown to him. His illusion of freedom springs from this double ignorance.
”
”
Denis de Rougemont (Love in the Western World)
“
It did not take long for the entire town of Beldingsville to learn that the great New York doctor had said Pollyanna Whittier would never walk again; and certainly never before had the town been so stirred. Everybody knew by sight now the piquant little freckled face that had always a smile of greeting; and almost everybody knew of the "game" that Pollyanna was playing. To think that now never again would that smiling face be seen on their streets—never again would that cheery little voice proclaim the gladness of some everyday experience! It seemed unbelievable, impossible, cruel. In kitchens and sitting rooms, and over back-yard fences women talked of it, and wept openly. On street corners and in store lounging-places the men talked, too, and wept—though not so openly. And neither the talking nor the weeping grew less when fast on the heels of the news itself, came Nancy's pitiful story that Pollyanna, face to face with what had come to her, was bemoaning most of all the fact that she could not play the game; that she could not now be glad over—anything. It was then that the same thought must have, in some way, come to Pollyanna's friends. At all events, almost at once, the mistress of the Harrington homestead, greatly to her surprise, began to receive calls: calls from people she knew, and people she did not know; calls from men, women, and children—many of whom Miss Polly had not supposed that her niece knew at all. Some came in and sat down for a stiff five or ten minutes. Some stood awkwardly on the porch steps, fumbling with hats or hand-bags, according to their sex. Some brought a book, a bunch of flowers, or a dainty to tempt the palate. Some cried frankly. Some turned their backs and blew their noses furiously. But all inquired very anxiously for the little injured girl; and all sent to her some message—and it was these messages which, after a time, stirred Miss Polly to action. First came Mr. John Pendleton. He came without his crutches to-day. "I don't need to tell you how shocked I am," he began almost harshly. "But can—nothing be done?" Miss Polly gave a gesture of despair. "Oh, we're 'doing,' of course, all the time. Dr. Mead prescribed certain treatments and medicines that might help, and Dr. Warren is carrying them out to the letter, of course. But—Dr. Mead held out almost no hope.
”
”
Eleanor H. Porter (Pollyanna (Pollyanna, #1))
“
A film, The Lost Continent, throws a clear light on the current myth of exoticism. It is a big documentary on 'the East', the pretext of which is some undefined ethnographic expedition, evidently false, incidentally, led by three or four Italians into the Malay archipelago. The film is euphoric, everything in it is easy, innocent. Our explorers are good fellows, who fill up their leisure time with child-like amusements: they play with their mascot, a little bear (a mascot is indispensable in all expeditions: no film about the polar region is without its tame seal, no documentary on the tropics is without its monkey), or they comically upset a dish of spaghetti on the deck. Which means that these good people, anthropologists though they are, don't bother much with historical or sociological problems. Penetrating the Orient never means more for them than a little trip in a boat, on an azure sea, in an essentially sunny country. And this same Orient which has today become the political centre of the world we see here all flattened, made smooth and gaudily coloured like an old-fashioned postcard.
The device which produces irresponsibility is clear: colouring the world is always a means of denying it (and perhaps one should at this point begin an inquiry into the use of colour in the cinema). Deprived of all substance, driven back into colour, disembodied through the very glamour of the 'images', the Orient is ready for the spiriting away which the film has in store for it. What with the bear as a mascot and the droll spaghetti, our studio anthropologists will have no trouble in postulating an Orient which is exotic in form, while being in reality profoundly similar to the Occident, at least the Occident of spiritualist thought. Orientals have religions of their own? Never mind, these variations matter very little compared to the basic unity of idealism. Every rite is thus made at once specific and eternal, promoted at one stroke into a piquant spectacle and a quasi-Christian symbol.
...If we are concerned with fisherman, it is not the type of fishing which is whown; but rather, drowned in a garish sunset and eternalized, a romantic essense of the fisherman, presented not as a workman dependent by his technique and his gains on a definite society, but rather as the theme of an eternal condition, in which man is far away and exposed to the perils of the sea, and woman weeping and praying at home. The same applies to refugees, a long procession of which is shown at the beginning, coming down a mountain: to identify them is of course unnecessary: they are eternal essences of refugees, which it is in the nature of the East to produce.
”
”
Roland Barthes (Mythologies)
“
Now, who and what is this minstrel in reality? Where does he come from? In what respects does he differ from his predecessors? He has been described as a cross between the early medieval court-singer and the ancient mime of classical times. The mime had never ceased to flourish since the days of classical antiquity; when even the last traces of classical culture disappeared, the descendants of the old mimes still continued to travel about the Empire, entertaining the masses with their unpretentious, unsophisticated and unliterary art. The Germanic countries were flooded out with mimes in the early Middle Ages; but until the ninth century the poets and singers at the courts kept themselves strictly apart from them. Not until they lost their cultured audience, as a result of the Carolingian Renaissance and the clericalism of the following generation, and came up against the competition of the mimes in the lower classes, did they have, to a certain extent, to become mimes themselves in order to be able to compete with their rivals. Thus both singers and comedians now move in the same circles, intermingle and influence each other so much that they soon become indistinguishable from one another. The mime and the scop both become the minstrel. The most striking characteristic of the minstrel is his versatility. The place of the cultured, highly specialized heroic ballad poet is now taken by the Jack of all trades, who is no longer merely a poet and singer, but also a musician and dancer, dramatist and actor, clown and acrobat, juggler and bear-leader, in a word, the universal jester and maître de plaisir of the age. Specialization, distinction and solemn dignity are now finished with; the court poet has become everybody’s fool and his social degradation has such a revolutionary and shattering effect on himself that he never entirely recovers from the shock. From now on he is one of the déclassés, in the same class as tramps and prostitutes, runaway clerics and sent-down students, charlatans and beggars. He has been called the ‘journalist of the age’, but he really goes in for entertainment of every kind: the dancing song as well as the satirical song, the fairy story as well as the mime, the legend of saints as well as the heroic epic. In this context, however, the epic takes on quite new features: it acquires in places a more pointed character with a new straining after effect, which was absolutely foreign to the spirit of the old heroic ballad. The minstrel no longer strikes the gloomy, solemn, tragi-heroic note of the ‘Hildebrandslied’, for he wants to make even the epic sound entertaining; he tries to provide sensations, effective climaxes and lively epigrams. Compared with the monuments of the older heroic poetry, the ‘Chanson de Roland’ never fails to reveal this popular minstrel taste for the piquant.
”
”
Arnold Hauser (The Social History of Art, Volume 1: From Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages)
“
To the young ones she would say bravely that her husband did not love her (how piquant an unloved wife, if she is beautiful), but that she could never, never hurt him.
”
”
Bel Kaufman (La Tigresse: And Other Short Stories)
“
Parmi les nombreuses maîtresses que vous avez troussées, avouez qu’il y en a une ou deux qui vous ont laissé des échardes dans le saignant. Il ne s’agit jamais de la plus belle, de la plus douce, de la plus prestigieuse, non, non… En général, ce serait plutôt une conquête de seconde catégorie, levée parce qu’elle était piquante, que vous avez prise pour l’aventure d’un soir. Et voici que la sournoise vous a ferré, en embuscade! (nouvelle "Le sentiment du fer")
”
”
Jean-Philippe Jaworski (Le Sentiment du fer)
“
I am rather interested in Millicent Drew's case myself. I never had a beau, much less two, and I do not mind now, for being an old maid does not hurt when you get used to it. Millicent's hair always looks to me as if she had swept it up with a broom. But the men do not seem to mind that." "They see only her pretty, piquant, mocking, little face, Susan." "That may very well be, Mrs. Dr. dear.
”
”
L.M. Montgomery (Rainbow Valley (Anne of Green Gables, #7))
“
Chorizo, tomatoes and eggs Feeds three to four as a snack or just you if you’ve had a crappy day and are wondering what the point of it all really is. INGREDIENTS One medium onion, chopped 250g cooking chorizo, skinned (piquant or not, depending on taste) Two 400g tins of chopped tomatoes. Buy the expensive ones if it makes you feel better about yourself, but the cheap ones will do the job 200g grated cheddar 100g torn-up mozzarella Three eggs Bunch of coriander 200g jar of pickled jalapeños Heat the oven to 200°C. Gently fry the chopped onion in olive oil in a deep-sided frying pan until soft. Break the chorizo into thumbnail-sized nuggets and fry with the onion. When the chorizo is browned, add the tomatoes, mix all the ingredients together, turn down the heat and let it simmer gently on the hob for twenty minutes or so until almost all the liquid has been boiled off. Stir occasionally to stop it sticking to the bottom of the pan. Decant half the mixture into an oven-proof casserole dish. Cover with half the mixed cheese. Add the rest of the tomato and chorizo mixture and cover with the remaining cheese. Put in the oven and leave until the cheese has started to brown and the liquid around the edges is bubbling. Take the dish out of the oven and turn on the grill. Meanwhile, crack the three eggs across the top. Put under the grill for about five minutes or until the eggs are cooked through. Scatter with the coriander and the pickled jalapeños. Eat this by scooping with tortilla chips.
”
”
Jay Rayner (My Last Supper: One Meal, a Lifetime in the Making)
“
d’autres ? La scène romantique ferait un mets piquant, varié, savoureux, de ce qui sur le théâtre classique est une médecine divisée en deux pilules.
”
”
Victor Hugo (Préface de Cromwell l'integrale (présenter et expliquer ) (French Edition))
“
T]he bond of union between themselves and their pastor was far from being indissoluble, and they contemplated this new aspirant to their favour with feelings stimulated and piquant, as a not inconsolable husband, likely to become a widower, might contemplate the general female public, out of which candidates for the problematically vacant place might arise.
”
”
Mrs. Oliphant (Salem Chapel (Chronicles of Carlingford, #3))
“
Ah mes bons amis, si nous avons eu tant de plaisir à commettre nos premiers péchés, c’est que nous avions des remords pour les embellir et leur donner du piquant, de la saveur ; tandis que maintenant…
”
”
Balzac (Honoré De)
“
Ah mes bons amis, si nous avons eu tant de plaisir à commettre nos premiers péchés, c’est que nous avions des remords pour les embellir et leur donner du piquant, de la saveur ; tandis que maintenant…
”
”
BALZAC (Honoré de).
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Ah mes bons amis, si nous avons eu tant de plaisirs a commettre nos premiers péchés, c’est que nous avions des remords pour les embellir et leur donner du piquant, de la saveur ; tandis que maintenant…
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BALZAC (Honoré de).
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Le gingembre est très intéressant pour apaiser les troubles digestifs, les spasmes, les coliques, les gaz intestinaux, les ballonnements, ainsi que pour compenser la perte d’appétit. Il possède des propriétés cholagogues (il augmente les sécrétions de la vésicule biliaire et facilite l’évacuation de la bile) et protectrices pour le foie. Il est très efficace pour réduire les nausées et les vomissements fréquents chez les femmes enceintes ou faisant suite à une intervention chirurgicale. On l’utilise aussi pour apaiser les symptômes liés au mal des transports et on le teste pour accompagner les personnes en chimiothérapie. Un antidouleur naturel Paradoxe de la nature, le gingembre à la saveur puissante, piquante, voire brûlante, développe en réalité des effets anti-inflammatoires, en inhibant les substances à l’origine des états d’inflammation. Il est donc conseillé pour soulager les douleurs avec une composante inflammatoire, en particulier menstruelles, musculaires (conséquence d’une lésion, d’un choc ou simplement d’une activité physique intense ou inhabituelle) ou encore arthritiques. En Asie, on fait infuser le gingembre pour réaliser un
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Nathalie Cousin (Les Super Aliments - Pour être au top et booster sa santé (Santé / Bien-être (hors collection)) (French Edition))
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To peruse Larry Flynt's flagship is to encounter laughable facets of necrophilia, dildo-strapped nuns, ambulatory turds, walking anuses, the perceived discrepancy in penis size between black and white males, vaginas large enough to envelop an entire man, physical intimacies with anthropomorphic pets, lesbian love rituals, the ills and quirks of male homosexuality, the corrosive effect of vaginal discharge upon automobile upholstery, the danger that freshly licked African-american lips will accidentally adhere to some glasslike surface, bar sluts, gang-bangs, wastebasket fetuses, flatulence anal and vaginal, the handicapped, Ku Klux Klansmen, lynching, anal sex, prison romance, naked females whose faces are covered by paper bags, sex crimes of the rich and famous, sex in full-body traction, retards as playthings, practical jokes committed by Saint Peter, suicide, consanguinity, animal husbandry in the connubial sense, erectile dysfunction, voyeurs, panty-sniffewrs, menstruation, STDs and philosopher houseflies delivering piquant sophistries while nibbling on corn-studded nuggets of shit.
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Allan MacDonell (Prisoner of X: 20 Years in the Hole at Hustler Magazine)
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Il y a une logique dans la succession de ces plaies. Le Nil devient rouge comme le sang. Sans doute une crue inhabituelle du Nil a drainé des argiles rouges polluant l’eau au point d’y tuer les poissons. Après ce phénomène, il y a une invasion de grenouilles. Ces gentils batraciens fuyaient sans doute le Nil pollué. Puis, autre plaie, les mouches et les moustiques pullulent. Les cadavres de poissons et autres animaux empoisonnés au bord du Nil y sont sans doute pour quelque chose. Après quoi, c’est le bétail qui est malade et les hommes qui attrapent des furoncles. Responsables, les insectes piquants. Parce qu’un malheur n’arrive jamais seul, après six plaies, la septième : la grêle. Là, c’est la météo qui se déchaîne. Cette grêle hache les cultures, et ce qu’il en reste est ensuite attaqué par l’invasion de sauterelles comme ces pays en connaissent parfois. Est-ce un vent venant d’Éthiopie qui amena les sauterelles avant d’amener des poussières telles que, durant trois jours, on n’y voyait plus rien ? Enfin, dernière et terrifiante plaie : la mort des premiers-nés mâles de chaque famille égyptienne ! Un écho affreux à tous ces garçons hébreux jetés dans le Nil.
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Eric Denimal (La Bible pour les Nuls (French Edition))
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I moved closer to him. He did not back away, but stood entranced in the dark. I pulled him towards me. I heard his palpitating heart booming through the quiet night. Yet, I encountered no resistance. As I reached to unzip his jeans, his sinewy body trembled. His awkwardness was a sign of inexperience in the gutsy game of seduction, and I was eager to entice this callow Caucasian into my web of sensual delight. Flashes of my Bahriji schooling rushed through my mind as my lips caressed the tautness of his comely mouth, teasing him open with my slithering tongue. Heartened by my gutsiness, his tension slowly melted to flames of sizzling arousal. I grabbed his wrist and led us deeper into the darken forest. Pinning him against a towering tree our twirling tongues coalesced wantonly. Our pent-up desires burst forth like torrid infernos, consuming our sanity to debaucherous lunacy. We tore at each other’s clothes, athirst to ravage our lusty lubriciousness within the stillness of this stifling forest. Fervent tongues caressed with yearning intimacy over, around and atop every desirous crevice of our fiery souls. Our pulsating hardness drummed in capricious potency, demanding satisfaction within our forbidden orifices, where only sacred mystics dared to venture. Throwing caution to the wind, I suckled at his bulging protuberance. Beguiled by my prowess, he jabbed his bulbous rosiness down my craving throat while my pleasuring hand evoked a rhythmic carnality that had wooed mankind since the dawn of humanity. The Caucasian unleashed his deliverance in a flourish of heaving crescendos. Jets of piquant liberation gushed down my yearning orifice, as I drank his nourishing fill with gusto. Not much coaxing was needed to spew my abundance onto Jules’ athletic frame. My seething virility coated his musculature. We amalgamated in a passionate kiss before the instructor returned alone to camp. I stayed to gather myself, to cherish an end to a licentious evening with a closeted homosexual. He had spoken no words after our frenzied indulgence. Little did I suspect a lurking snooper nearby when faint rustling sounds, muffled by the careening wind, tantalized the stillness of the night.
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Young (Turpitude (A Harem Boy's Saga Book 4))
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Her hair was a tangle. Her filthy clothes would make any self-respecting debutante shriek in horror. Dirt streaked her piquant face. And still he thought she was utterly irresistible. He was in a bad way indeed. Several
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Anna Campbell (Stranded with the Scottish Earl)
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Says John Updike, ‘Serifs exist for a purpose. They help the eye pick up the shape of the letter. Piquant in little amounts, sanserif in page-size sheets repels readership as wax paper repels water; it has a sleazy, cloudy look.
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David Ogilvy (Ogilvy on Advertising)
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Oui, les Parisiennes sont des emmerdeuses, mais elles sont monumentales.
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Layla Demay (Une vie de Pintade à Paris: Portraits piquants des Parisiennes)
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back step and bit into the French bread and the sliced onions and ham and tomatoes and mayonnaise and sauce piquante, and almost fainted at how good it was. Let’s face it. We’re talking about food that some people consider orgasmic.
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James Lee Burke (Clete: A Dave Robicheaux Novel)
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Then they began to pass around the dusky, piquant, Arlesian sausages, and lobsters in their dazzling red cuirasses, prawns of large size and brilliant color, the echinus with its prickly outside and dainty morsel within, the clovis, esteemed by the epicures of the South as more than rivalling the exquisite flavor of the oyster, — all the delicacies, in fact, that are cast up by the wash of waters on the sandy beach, and styled by the grateful fishermen "fruits of the sea.
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Joseph Conrad (50 Masterpieces you have to read before you die Vol: 1 (ShandonPress))
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A normal vagina should have a slightly sweet, slightly pungent odor. It should have the lactic acid smell of yogurt.” The contract is simple. We provide lactobacilli with food and shelter—the comfort of the vaginal walls, the moisture, the proteins, the sugars of our tissue. They maintain a stable population and keep competing bacteria out. Merely by living and metabolizing, they generate lactic acid and hydrogen peroxide, which are disinfectants that prevent colonization by less benign microbes. The robust vagina is an acidic vagina, with a pH of 3.8 to 4.5. That’s somewhat more acidic than black coffee (with a pH of 5) but less piquant than a lemon (pH 2). In fact, the idea of pairing wine and women isn’t a bad one, as the acidity of the vagina in health is just about that of a glass of red wine.
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Natalie Angier (Woman: An Intimate Geography)
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Willie trouvait que c'était assommant d'être normal et que je devrais être heureuse au contraire d'avoir un peu de piquant. Selon elle, personne ne s'intéressait aux gens normaux, c'est-à-dire ennuyeux, et lorsqu'ils mouraient, on les oubliait aussitôt, comme un bout de papier ou un mouchoir qui tombe à votre insu derrière une commode. Quelquefois, j'avais envie de glisser, moi aussi, derrière la commode.
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Ruta Sepetys (Out of the Easy)
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Psaume N°3
Que je suis seul, Seigneur, et à rebours !
Arbre en exil oublié en plein champ,
Le fruit saumâtre et le feuillage lourd,
Acharné, vif, hérissé de piquants.
Je voudrais tant qu'un passereau disert
S'arrête en ma ramenée
Et chante en moi, voletant à travers
Mon ombre de fumée.
J'espère, un peu de grâce et de douceur ;
Un pépiement, du moins, de martinet
Ou de moineau fluet,
Comme tout arbre aux fruits pleins de saveur.
Je n'ai pas de nectars roses et tendres,
Pas même la senteur du verjus frais.
Rivé par force entre éternel et brumes,
Nulle chenille par mon tronc ne se plaît.
Haut chandelier, sentinelle aux confins,
À chaque instant une étoile se dore
Sur mes rameaux tendus sur l'autel saint –
Et je te sers ; combien de temps encore ?
De voir ces feux sacrés, fleurs miennes, luire,
De ne mûrir que métaux, patiemment,
Selon tes rigoureux commandements
Devrait, Seigneur, peut-être me suffire.
Seul à ma tâche, abandonné par toi,
Je peine, et saigne, et force mes racines.
Au moins, de loin, ordonne que parfois
Quelque ange enfant, ouvrant son aile fine
S'éclaire, blanc, sous la lune au passage
Et me redise ta parole sage.
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Tudor Arghezi (50 poeme | 50 poèmes)
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As an adult with a job, I did not find the topic altogether piquant—but British men were resourceful, and found school not only interesting, but the most interesting thing they’d ever done.
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Naoise Dolan (Exciting Times)
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Andy liked to juxtapose contradictory flavors. Call it the cuisine of shock and awe. He craved both the treacly and the brackish and, if at all possible, one right after the other. It captivated him how the savory enhanced the sweet. He adored the way the piquant stung his tongue, especially when he could comfort his palate immediately with a bite of the insipid or the zestless. He salt and peppered his cantaloupe, though it had been three years since he had tasted any. He would drizzle honey on broccoli. He once put tabasco sauce on a glazed donut. Sifting through the garbage behind an Italian restaurant a week earlier, he scarfed down a slice of moldy tiramisu with half a tin of anchovies dumped on top.
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Steven Elkins (Nonesuch Man)
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Grand Prismatic Spring may as well be the poster child for the entire park. Larger than a soccer field, it takes on the appearance of an interdimensional oasis. An ethereal, deep-blue hue paints its pupil, while adventurous bacteria thriving in the piquant waters fleck its iris in shades of yellow, orange, and green. In the winter, the snow sizzles into steam as it drifts onto the spring’s rocky eyelid.
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Robin George Andrews (Super Volcanoes: What They Reveal about Earth and the Worlds Beyond)
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The long feud between them has a certain piquant irony, because their affinity of temperament is as striking as their antipathy. In both of them the ideas of the Enlightenment were uneasily at war with the emotions of the Romantic Movement. Both had genius, and both were supreme egoists who thought that genius and the pursuit of glory put them above the ordinary rules.
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Felix Markham (Napoleon)
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Une romance sans suspense, c'est comme un plat sans épices, ça manque de piquant !
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Nelly M.C.
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We all thirst for recreation. Even a modest person occasionally needs to take a piquant break from work to renew their salty internal drive. What I cannot understand was why a diet of simply surviving, peppered with some lowbrow form of amusement, proved inadequate to satiate my deepest angst. Why do I crave meaning in life? Why do I hunger for some essential substance in life beyond sampling a banquet of consumer pleasures? My entrenched state of ignorance precludes me from describing what garnish is missing from an unfilled life.
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Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
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No place in Haiti was easy to get to and to drive to their lodge would take a couple of hours, so they sent a van to pick us up. It was already evening and the sun had just set, as we made our way up into the mountains behind Port-au-Prince. As we bounced along the dirt road winding through the hills, I could distinctly hear the rhythm of drums and see fires on the distant mountains. Mrs. Allen, who was with us, explained that in the 1940’s devout members of the Catholic faith considered the Voodoo rites an abomination of their faith. They armed themselves and started to eradicate from Haiti what they considered a cult. The entire thing turned into a war! They burned voodoo temples and shrines, and killed some of the practitioners as well as voodoo priests. In the end, the Catholic hierarchy gave up and after a time reached a tacit understanding with them. They now allowed Voodoo drums and songs to be sung in Catholic Church services and ignored what they once called devil worship.
At the lodge, we were assigned rooms with real beds instead of the cots we were used to on the ship. Dinner consisted of chicken in a hot tomato and garlic sauce, over rice, with a heap of picklese on the side. Picklese is a pickled dish or Vinaigre Piquant, indigenous to Haiti consisting of peppers, shredded cabbage, onions, carrots, peas, vinegar, peppercorns and cloves. The dessert was Haitian Flan. It could not have been better and I was glad that I had availed myself of this generous offer. After dinner we went outside to where there was a large fire roaring, surrounded by benches made of split logs. We were warned that it gets cool in these mountains, and I was glad that I had brought along a sweater and jacket. We seated ourselves on the logs around the fire and listened to a gaunt-looking old Haitian woman explain what Voodoo was. She sounded convincing as she told of the Grand Voodoo Zombie rituals that were held at “Wishing Spot,” and how snakes slithered about the feet of the young women dancers. She spoke reverently about the walking dead in the Lower Artibonite Valley and the Spirits trapped in bottles near Cape Haitian. It was all very spooky and gave me something to think about that night. However before her talk ended, she came directly up to me and, looking deep into my eyes, said that I was to beware…. “I would witness death before leaving the island….” Ouch!
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Hank Bracker
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Here is good CS Lewis quote about reading and litterature generally:
"Literature enlarges our being by admitting us to experiences not our own. They may be beautiful, terrible, awe-inspiring, exhilarating, pathetic, comic, or merely piquant. Literature give the entree to them all. Those of us who have been true readers all our life seldom realize the enormous extension of our being that we owe to authors. We realize it best when we talk with an unliterary friend. he may be full of goodness and good sense but he inhabits a tiny world. In it, we should be suffocated. My own eyes are not enough for me. Even the eyes of all humanity are not enough. Very gladly would I learn what face things present to a mouse or a bee. (…) In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in a Greek poem, I see with a thousand eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself: and am never more myself than when I do."
C. S. Lewis An Experiment in Criticism. 1961 pp. 140-141 Cambridge U. Press
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C.S. Lewis
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Here is good CS Lewis quote about reading and literature generally:
"Literature enlarges our being by admitting us to experiences not our own. They may be beautiful, terrible, awe-inspiring, exhilarating, pathetic, comic, or merely piquant. Literature give the entree to them all. Those of us who have been true readers all our life seldom realize the enormous extension of our being that we owe to authors. We realize it best when we talk with an unliterary friend. he may be full of goodness and good sense but he inhabits a tiny world. In it, we should be suffocated. My own eyes are not enough for me. Even the eyes of all humanity are not enough. Very gladly would I learn what face things present to a mouse or a bee. (…) In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in a Greek poem, I see with a thousand eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself: and am never more myself than when I do."
C. S. Lewis An Experiment in Criticism. 1961 pp. 140-141 Cambridge U. Press
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C.S. Lewis
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He laughed again. “Well, I’ve seen life — I told you young fellows at Frestonhills, I trusted to my sauce piquante; and I must say it has used me very well hitherto, and I dare say always will as long as I keep away from the Jews. While a man has plenty of tin, all the world offers him the choicest dinner; though, when he has overdrawn at Coutts’s, his friends wouldn’t give him dry bread to keep him out of the union! Be able to dine en prince at home, and you’ll be invited out every night of your life; be hungry au troisième, and you must not lick the crumbs from under your sworn allies’ tables, those jolly good fellows, who have surfeited themselves at yours many a time! Oh yes, I enjoy life; a man always can as long as he can pay for it!
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Ouida (Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 26))
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Not a single way around this town is without thugs. Rakes, crooks, slants, dandies, ‘piquants’, swindlers: who does not line our roads? Each one has his eyes fixed on your purse. It is hard to miss them.
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Mukta Singh-Zocchi (The Thugs & a Courtesan)