Intrigue

Intrigue is defined a complicated or clandestine plot or scheme intended to effect some purpose by secret artifice; conspiracy; stratagem. It also refers the plot of a play, poem or romance; the series of complications in which a writer involves their imaginary characters. Also refers to clandestine intercourse between persons; illicit intimacy; a liaison.

Mary Nickson:Don't be so condescending. Our village life is a hotbed of intrigue and drama.

Quotes

Shana Alexander:Ballet's image of perfection is fashioned amid a milieu of wracked bodies, fevered imaginations, Balkan intrigue and sulfurous hatreds where anything is likely, and dancers know it.

Randolph Bourne:Diplomacy is a disguised war, in which states seek to gain by barter and intrigue, by the cleverness of arts, the objectives which they would have to gain more clumsily by means of war.

• Ballet's image of perfection is fashioned amid a milieu of wracked bodies, fevered imaginations, Balkan intrigue and sulfurous hatreds where anything is likely, and dancers know it.
  • Shana Alexander, Nutcracker: money, madness, murder : a family album, Doubleday, 7 May 1985, p. 312.

• Error always addresses the passions and prejudices; truth scorns such mean intrigue, and only addresses the understanding and the conscience.
  • Azel Backus, in Charles Simmons A Laconic Manual and Brief Remarker: Containing Over a Thousand Subjects., C. Simmons, 1852, p. 525.

• Society bristles with enigmas which look hard to solve. It is a perfect maze of intrigue.
  • Honore de Balzac, Letters of Two Brides, The Floating Press, 1 July 2011, p. 39.

• You have to think of your brand as a kind of myth. A myth is a compelling story that is archetypal, if you know the teachings of Carl Jung. It has to have emotional content and all the themes of a great story: mystery, magic, adventure, intrigue, conflicts, contradiction, paradox.
  • Deepak Chopra, in Eric Schurenberg Deepak Chopra: The Two Questions Every Business Leader Has to Ask, CBSNews, 27January 2011.

• Muhammad is more human, more self-doubting, even self-tortured at times. His story is full of adventure, intrigue, betrayal.
  • Deepak Chopra, in Nicole Neroulias 10 Minutes with... Deepak Chopra, Beliefnet.

• What I would love is a crossover between 'Royal Pains' and 'Burn Notice,' that we could be involved in some sort of gun play intrigue. I would really love that because we have no guns. We have nowhere near enough explosions and guns on the set.
  • Paulo Costanzo, in Brian Gallagher Paulo Costanzo Prescribes 'Royal Pains', Movieweb, 8 Jul 2009.

• Your dexterity seems a happy compound of the smartness of an attorney's clerk and the intrigue of a Greek of the lower empire.
  • Benjamin Disraeli, in Ashley Montagu The Anatomy of Swearing, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1967, p. 98.

• A hack writer who would not have been considered a fourth rate in Europe, who tricked out a few of the old proven "sure-fire" literary skeletons with sufficient local color to intrigue the superficial and the lazy.
  • William Faulkner, in M. Thomas Inge Conversations with William Faulkner, Univ. Press of Mississippi, 1999, p. 79.

• Blimey, your little village is a hotbed of intrigue.
  • Patricia Horsley, in All about the Journey, Abbott Press, 29 October 2013, p. 83

Black Kettle: We were once friends with the whites but you nudged us out of the way by your intrigues, and now when we are in council you keep nudging each other.

• We were once friends with the whites but you nudged us out of the way by your intrigues, and now when we are in council you keep nudging each other.
  • Black Kettle, Chief of the Cheyennes, in Peter Cozzens Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, 1865-1890: Conquering the Southern Plains, Stackpole Books, 2001, p. 86.

• The United States is the world's best hope, but if you fetter her in the interests and quarrels of other nations, if you tangle her in the intrigues of Europe, you will destroy her power for good and endanger her very existence.
  • Henry Cabot Lodge, in David Welky America Between the Wars, 1919-1941: A Documentary Reader, John Wiley & Sons, 24 January 2012, p. 199.

• People respond to something which intrigues them instead of something that gives them all the information - particularly in pop, which is, like, the genre for knowing way too much about everyone and everything.
  • Lorde, in Lorde: The Billboard Cover Story, The Billboard, 6 September 2013.

• Effeminate men intrigue me more than anything in the world. I see them as my alter egos. I feel very drawn to them. I think like a guy, but I'm feminine. So I relate to feminine men.
  • Madonna, In Paula Munier On Being Blonde: Wit and Wisdom from the World's Most Infamous Blondes, Fair Winds, 1 September 2004, p. 53

Steve Martin:There's a lot of thought in art. People get to talk about important things. There's a lot of sex, you know, in art. There's a lot of naked women and men, and there's intrigue, there's fakery. It's a real microcosm of the larger world.

• There's a lot of thought in art. People get to talk about important things. There's a lot of sex, you know, in art. There's a lot of naked women and men, and there's intrigue, there's fakery. It's a real microcosm of the larger world.
  • Steve Martin, in Rita Braver Steve Martin on Objects of Beauty, CBS. News, 5 December 2010.

• There it stands, with a toss of curls and a flounce of skirts, a Carmen among the cities. the last of the Middle Eastern fleshpots. a junction of intrigue and speculation.
  • Jan Morris, A Writer's World, Faber & Faber, 17 February 2011, p. 45.

• Most governments do have inbuilt biases in favour of the rich and powerful, and most do contain plenty of manipulators who love intrigue, who have lost whatever moral compass they may once have had and who protect themselves with steely cynicism.
  • Geoff Mulgan, Good and Bad Power: The Ideals and Betrayals of Government, Penguin Books, Limited, 2006, p. 6.

• Don't be so condescending. Our village life is a hotbed of intrigue and drama.
  • Mary Nickson, in The Venetian House, Random House, 31 August 2010, p. 18.

• The semiology and phenomenology of hashtaggery intrigues me. From what I understand, it all began very simply: on Twitter, hashtags - those little checkerboard marks that look like this # - were used to mark phrases or names, in order to make it easier to search for them among the zillions and zillions of tweets.
  • Susan Orlean, Hash, New Yorker, 29 June 2010.

• To me, rock music was never meant to be safe. I think there needs to be an element of intrigue, mystery, subversiveness. Your parents should hate it.
  • Trent Reznor, in Randi Reisfeld This Is the Sound: The Best of Alternative Rock, Simon and Schuster, 30 June 2008, p. 98.

• My favorite subject probably was math. I love math. Figures just intrigue me. I was really good at math. English probably was my worst subject. But I used to write a lot of poetry. I used to write poetry all the time.
  • Herschel Walker, Herschel Walker Interview, American Academy of Achievement.

• When there are tiers of meaning in an ad it intrigues the audience and they look for it again and again.
  • William Shatner, Adweek, Volume 48, Issues 14-26, VNU Business Publications, 2007, p. 21

William Makepeace Thackeray:To endure is greater than to dare; to tire out hostile fortune; to be daunted by no difficulty; to keep heart when all have lost it; to go through intrigue spotless; to forego even ambition when the end is gained - who can say this is not greatness?

• To endure is greater than to dare; to tire out hostile fortune; to be daunted by no difficulty; to keep heart when all have lost it; to go through intrigue spotless; to forego even ambition when the end is gained - who can say this is not greatness?
  • William Makepeace Thackeray, in Nancy Williams Conquer the Fear of Death, Epitome Books, 01 January 2009, p. 58.

• Live for today. Multitudes of people have failed to live for today.... What they have had within their grasp today they have missed entirely, because only the future has intrigued them.
  • William Allen White , Forbes, Forbes Incorporated, 1953, p. 42.

• Tales of power and ambition and intrigue and betrayal and desire - when you're telling those in a big way, you automatically want to go to Shakespeare.
  • Beau Willimon, in Alson Willimore House of Cards' Showrunner Beau Willimon on Netflix, Ideal Politicians and Working With David Fincher] 29 January 2013, Indiewire.

• The Ambassador is sent abroad to lie for the good of his country remains a model of intrigue, in which he also plays an adscititious, nondescript game between the people of his country, and the government to which he is sent.
  • Sir Henry Wotton, in David Hoffman Miscellaneous Thoughts on Men, Manners, and Things, Coale, 1837, p. 187.