Quotations about Flirtation and Coquetry
Coquetry, with all its pranks and teasings, makes the spice to your dinner — the mulled wine to your supper.
Girls, like flowers, are unconscious flirts. ~Herbert Dickinson Ward, Lauriel: The Love Letters of an American Girl, 1901
Women flirt to keep their stock high, men to get somewhere. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1963
As for the lady, her eyes sparkled, and her tongue talked such sweet nothings... ~"A Bachelor," letter to editor of The Lady's Monthly Museum, 1811
As low he bends o'er her he loves so dear
To whisper some sweet nothing in her ear—
Some dainty compliment that wakes, perchance,
The merry answering laugh, the blushing glance...
~Edwin Coller, "Black Sir Ralph: An Essex Legend," c.1874
The greatest miracle of love is the cure of coquetry. ~François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld
A born coquette, she was alluring from the top of her curly head to the tip of her slippers. The sight of her never failed to unlock Rex's heart... Midway, in her birdlike flight upstairs, Angela turned to dart him a look of pretty surprise. ~Marion Hill, The Pettison Twins, 1906
Beauty is power: a smile is its sword. ~Charles Reade
Women know not the whole of their coquetry. ~François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld
The coquets of both sexes are self-lovers, and that is a love no other whatever can dispossess.
Coquetry is the essential characteristic, and the prevalent humor of women; but they do not all practice it, because the coquetry of some is restrained by fear or by reason. ~François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld
Coquetry whets the appetite; flirtation depraves it. Coquetry is the thorn that guards the rose — easily trimmed off when once plucked. Flirtation is like the slime on water-plants, making them hard to handle, and when caught, only to be cherished in slimy waters.
Perfection is the greatest flirt of them all. ~Henry Stanley Haskins, "Marginalia," Meditations in Wall Street, 1940