"Feminine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... its trials and its sufferings to others. The true depth of feeling which is marked by this inbred modesty is most frequently found in men. The few women who possess it are without the communicative consolations of the feminine heart. They are the noblest—-and but too often the unhappiest ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... of golden hair that crowned her regal grace, and eyes that had stolen the tenderest blue from a turquoise sky beneath the shade of modest lashes. Appealing lotus-like lips, rosy- ripe and moist with the dew of promised bliss; sensuous curves and graceful feminine lines..... such a woman was Helen. And he! Six feet of Western manhood; a graduate of Yale, and still an athlete at 35. A man with the highest ideals of fine, clean, strong manhood. He had gone West shortly after leaving ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... quite confuse. [sic] Queen Victoria used the feminine form of the French adjective, "confus, e, confused, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... charming reliance on his own infallibility. His wife writes novels which have a SLIGHT leaning toward Zolaism,—she is an extremely witty woman sarcastic, and cold-blooded enough to be a female Robespierre, yet, on the whole, amusing as a study of what curious nondescript forms the feminine nature can adopt unto itself, if it chooses. She has an immense respect for GENIUS,—mind, I say genius advisedly, because she really is one of those rare few who cannot endure mediocrity. Everything ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... suddenly—the whole expression of his countenance was changed—the tears still rolled in large drops down his cheeks, but the proud, stern character which the features had assumed, seemed to deny the feelings which that feminine weakness had betrayed. ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... feminine logic. A man would have said that the size of a house determines the amount of ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... (deliberately locking it after her to make the thing more baffling), crossed over on that table, was helped into the other compartment by Murchison, and then as expeditiously as possible slipped on the loose feminine outer garments she carried with her in the brown portmanteau, the table was hauled up and taken in—nothing but wire rope for that, sir—and ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... Lady Anna,—who had lived all her life with tailors, and with a mother of whom up to quite a late date they had thought all manner of evil? The young lord had reported well of her, saying that she was not only beautiful, but feminine, of soft modest manners, and in all respects like a lady. The Earl, however, was but a young man, likely to be taken by mere beauty; and it might be that the girl had been clever enough to hoodwink him. ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... very masculine key, broke upon Andy's ear. It proceeded from the usually undemonstrative maiden Liberia, who was bringing a pail of water from the creek when her path was crossed by the flying pair. From that hour the tides of her feminine heart set in ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... and bent over the fragrant blossoms. The card still remained, and on the back of it, in a delicate feminine handwriting: ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and tranquillizing in Anna's immovable conviction; the prince felt his inability to oppose her, and was ashamed of his feminine fears in the ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... parallels the theme of Puss-in-Boots occurs in The Golden Goose where Dummling gets as his share only a goose, but having the best disposition makes his fortune out of his goose. Grimm's Three Feathers also contains a similar motif. D'Aulnoy's White Cat, the feminine counterpart of Puss-in-Boots, is a tale of pleasing fancy in which the hero wins the White Cat, a transformed Princess, who managed to secure for him, the youngest son, the performance of all the tasks his father ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... group extraordinarily radiant in attire. It was composed of very young men, some of whom had hardly yet acquired the beard required by the universal fashion. Even at a distance I could see that their cheeks were painted, could note their affectation of feminine attitudes, could smell the perfumes with which they had deluged their bodies. These were some of the favorites of the King, and more of the imitators of the favorites. No wonder that Bussy d'Amboise and the sturdy gentlemen of the King's ungainly brother, Anjou, ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... lull thee: yes, I am too flinty-hard for thy nice touch: My tenderest squeeze is but a giant's clutch. So, fairy-thing, it shall have lullabies Unheard of yet; and it shall still its cries Upon some breast more lily-feminine. 580 Oh, no—it shall not pine, and pine, and pine More than one pretty, trifling thousand years; And then 'twere pity, but fate's gentle shears Cut short its immortality. Sea-flirt! Young dove of the waters! truly I'll not hurt One hair of thine: ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... she had guarded the proprieties, had comported herself circumspectly, leaving her with not even a little rag of a claim that she had conducted herself with seemly decorum, she sprang from him and began to cry. Whatever the cause, Mr. Middleton could not look upon feminine unhappiness with composure and here where he was himself responsible, he was indeed smitten with keen remorse and hastening to comfort her, gathered her into his arms and there he was abasing and condemning ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... hides to be tanned and deerskins to be dressed and sewn into clothing. A married woman must also pass cold and weary hours in winter watching for seal and walrus, and in summer probe the depths of boredom by fishing with a line for "Tom cod." And from a feminine point of view, there is no reward for her labours, no balls or parties, nor smart hats or gowns to excite the envy of her neighbours; all the Tchuktchi spouse can hope for being a "quid" of tobacco, so rare a luxury that it only reaches her lips when her husband has extracted most of its ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... voice first, ascending through the skylight. It thrilled me. Not the words—she was but giving a direction to the Chinese steward—but the rich, sweet quality of the voice. I, the foc'sle Jack, whose ears' portion was harsh, bruising oaths, felt the feminine accents as a healing salve. They stirred forgotten memories; they sent my mind leaping backwards over the hard years to my childhood, and the sound of my mother's voice. No wonder; I had scarce once heard the mellow sound of a good woman's voice since I ran away to sea five years ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... Josephine's passion for dress, that after. having wept for a quarter of an hour she would dry her tears to give audience to milliners and jewellers. The sight of a new hat would call forth all Josephine's feminine love of finery. One day I remember that, taking advantage of the momentary serenity occasioned by an ample display of sparkling gewgaws, I congratulated her upon the happy influence they exercised over her spirits, when she said, "My dear friend, I ought, indeed, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Belle. There was something new about the silver-haired girl, Belle decided instantly. The difference was slight—Belle couldn't put her finger on it at first. She seemed—quieter? Softer? More subdued? No, definitely. More feminine? No; that would be impossible. More ... more adult? Belle hated to admit it, even to herself, but that was ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... Therefore, women will read with pleasure Miss Sanborn's choice collection of these dainties. There are, however, many new anecdotes in Miss Sanborn's collection, and, taken as a whole, it may fairly be said to establish the fact that there have been feminine wits not inferior to the best of ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... eyes and fair hair; the other was tall and pale, with full, blue eyes and a regular face, and lips that trembled with humor; very demure and yet very honest; very shy and yet very frank; there was something almost mannish in her essential honesty; there was nothing of feminine coquetry in her, though everything of feminine charm. She was a girl who looked like her father, Langbourne perceived with a flash of divination. She dressed simply in dark blue, and her hair was of a dark mahogany color. The smaller girl ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... new part of the world—a fourth continent. For this reason, the author recites, "quarta orbis pars, quam quis Americus invenit, Amerigen quasi Americi terram, sivi Americam nuncupare licit." And so the name America (for it was thought proper to give it the feminine form, "cum et Europa et Asia a mulieribus sua sortitae sint nomina") was probably first pronounced in the mountain-circled town of St. Die, where the scholars of the Vosges, shut away from the sea and its greedy rumors of India, conceived more accurately in their ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... a female, apparently a person of rank, visited in her carriage, towards the evening, a Silk Mercer's Shop, westward of Temple Bar, where she made choice, for purchase, of silks and other rich articles of feminine dress and decoration, to the value of above fifty pounds. Her manner was that of a perfectly well-bred gentlewoman, and her person displayed no small portion of attractive and elegant accomplishment. Having completed her selection, she expressed much regret ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... summer windie; a rainie harveste: therefore wee shall have overflowings: much fruite: plentie of honey: yet flesh shall be deare: cattell in general shall dye: great trouble; warres, etc.: with a licencious life of the feminine sexe. ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... and rumbling to the great mansion of the Wandrells on Prairie Avenue. The women are positive in their exclamations of reunion, and this undoubted feminine joy exhilarates, and entertains the men. The lights are brilliant, the music is far away and clever, the ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... Nanny goat, tabita; ewe, cow; lioness, tigress; vixen. gynecaeum^. estrogen, oestrogen. consanguinity &c 166 [Female relatives], paternity &c 11. lesbian, dyke [Slang]. V. feminize. Adj. female, she-; feminine, womanly, ladylike, matronly, maidenly, wifely; womanish, effeminate, unmanly; gynecic^, gynaecic^. Pron. she, her, hers.' Phr. a perfect woman nobly planned [Wordsworth]; a lovely lady garmented in white [Shelley]; das Ewig-Weibliche ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... hall;—familiar still, and yet changed and strange, and even beautified; with new soft hangings, and Persian carpets, and flowers, and books, and bibelots about; with a new aspect of luxury and elegance; with a strange new atmosphere of feminine habitation, that went a little to Anthony's head, that called up clearer than ever the dark-haired, strenuous-faced woman of the dog-cart, and turned his imagination to visions and divinings of intimate feminine things. One thought of chiffons, and faint, elusive perfumes, and the gleam ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... for this end they have whole colleges of courtesans in their towns and cities. Of [6234]Cato's mind belike, that would have his servants (cum ancillis congredi coitus causa, definito aere, ut graviora facinora evitarent, caeteris interim interdicens) familiar with some such feminine creatures, to avoid worse mischiefs in his house, and made allowance for it. They hold it impossible for idle persons, young, rich, and lusty, so many servants, monks, friars, to live honest, too tyrannical a burden to compel them to be chaste, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... courtier, the most presumptuous cavalier, approached her with only reverence; they ventured not in her presence to use such words and jests as but too well pleased the empress; there was something in Eleonore's glance that commanded involuntary respect and awe; an elevation, a mildness, a soft feminine majesty was shed over her whole being that enchanted even those who were inimical to her. Elizabeth had perceived that, with her eyes sharpened by jealousy; her envy was yet more mighty than her vanity, and her envy told her Eleonore Lapuschkin is handsomer than ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... and a very small atom in this seething whirlpool of Paris, churned by the strife of innumerable interests. His thoughts went back to the banks of his Charente; a craving for happiness and home awoke in him; and with the craving, came one of the sudden febrile bursts of energy which half-feminine natures like his mistake for strength. He would not give up until he had poured out his heart to David Sechard, and taken counsel of the three good angels still left to him ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... sighed, I glanced with tender meaning at the young lady. Her feminine heart, I hoped, would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... but a small space in the life of Louis XIII. Twice, however, in that interval of ten years which separated the plot of Montmorency from that of Cinq-Mars, did the minister believe himself to be threatened by feminine influence; and twice he used artifice to win the monarch's heart and confidence from two young girls of his court, Louise de La Fayette and Marie d'Hautefort. Both were maids of honor to the queen. Mdlle. d'Hautefort was fourteen years old when, in 1630, at Lyons, in the languors ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... naturally became more confidential, and in course of time (but this was not till towards evening) Randi ventured to ask Hans how it had all come about between him and Mildrid; Mildrid herself had been able to give no account of it. Possibly it was principally out of feminine curiosity that the mother asked, but the question was a very welcome one ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... think Nelly will hammer a love of music into the British workman, you err. Lots of them get their living by hammering, and they will most likely resent feminine competition. Bang! There she goes. Pity the sorrows of a poor old piano, and let us hope its trembling limbs ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... were much interested in the Monte de Piedad, the pawn shop which is run under State control. Here great bargains may sometimes be picked up in jewels left there by ladies of good family in reduced circumstances. Mrs. Stevenson had a very feminine liking for jewels, but they had to be different from the ordinary sort to attract her, and she was much pleased to pick up in Mexico some pieces of the odd and barbaric designs that ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... house at that hour of the night was not at all impossible; and this was the first thought that entered her mind. She recollected, too, that Vauquelas and Coursegol had just gone out, that the servants were in bed and that she was to all intents and purposes alone in the house. The feminine mind is quick to take fright; and night and solitude increased the terror which is so easily aroused by a fevered imagination. Her usual courage deserted her; she turned pale ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... earnestness so eager that Claire was fairly touched, until she discovered that here was no aching hunger for knowledge, no ungratified yearning "for to admire and for to see, for to be'old this world so wide," but just what looked like a perfectly feminine curiosity, ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... got by veneering. That makes one incline to think it was the colour that pleased people. In those days there was a word "trashy," now almost lost to the world. My dear Aunt Charlotte used that epithet when, in her feminine way, she swore at people she did not like. "Trashy" and "paltry" and "Brummagem" was the very worst she could say of them. And she had, I remember, an intense aversion to plated goods and bronze halfpence. The halfpence of her youth had been vast and corpulent red-brown ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... O'More, who was playing with the little Awk in the window, 'that the feminine mind loves expedients? It would be less commonplace to confide the parcel to the conductor, than merely let him receive it as guard of the mail bag ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... age of Woman; some day, it may be that it will be looked back upon as the golden age, the dawn, some say, of feminine civilisation. We cannot estimate as yet; and no man can tell what forces these new conditions may not release in the soul of woman. The modern change is that the will of woman is asserting itself. Women are looking for a satisfactory life, which is to be determined from ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... wildly waving and her arms extended. "Let it be as though it were unsaid," she exclaimed. John Eames had not the slightest objection; but, nevertheless, there was a difficulty even in this. Were he simply to assent to this latter proposition, it could not be but that the feminine nature of Miss Demolines would be outraged by so uncomplimentary an acquiescence. He felt that he ought at least to hesitate a little,—to make some pretence at closing upon the rich offer that had been made to him; only that were he to show any such pretence the rich offer would, no doubt, ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... addition to that of translator) for again bringing this subject before the public in so attractive a manner, by the elegance of the type, illustration, and binding of this volume, so agreeable to the eye; and for the addition of many of her own judicious remarks. So that, through this feminine grace and good sense, an interest and attention are awakened, which the bare recipes of Cennino Cennini would ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... was a mystery in the unravelling of which time and trouble would have to be expended freely. But he had a moment of genuine surprise that evening, when, as he sat in his private sitting-room at the Chancellor, he received a note, written in a delicate feminine hand on crested and scented paper, wherein he was requested, in somewhat guarded and mysterious fashion, to step round to the ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... passed over the country when the nature and acceptance of the Japanese Ultimatum became generally known. The Chinese, always an emotional people responding with quasi- feminine volubility to oppressive acts, cried aloud at the ignominy of the diplomacy which had so cruelly crucified them. One and all declared that the day of shame which had been so harshly imposed upon them would never be forgotten and that Japan ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... rouge-boxes, masks, gloves-all were there. We only helped each other with our hair, but when it was done we looked intensely stupid, with the exception of the young officer, who really might have been taken for a pretty woman; he had concealed his deficiency in feminine characteristics by false breasts and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... would be hard to say what motives prompted her to this apparently heartless action. Some women are heartless—we know that. But Anna Hethbridge was too impulsive, too excitable, and too much given to pleasure to be devoid of heart. Behind her action there must have been some strange, illogical, feminine motive, for there was a deliberation in every move—one of those motives which are quite beyond the masculine comprehension. One notices that when a woman takes action in this incomprehensible way her lady ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... cried a startled feminine voice from the doorway. Then Francesca, her eyes filled with fright, hastened across the porch. She would have thrown her arms around the neck of the manacled man had not the stranger caught her by one arm ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock
... the little dead fly, and (see) how it is pulling its feet out of the dish. Juana claims that Antonio has been worsted in the argument, and is now trying to crawl out of it. The masculine article is used purposely, although mosquita and its modifier muerta are feminine, in order to make the application to the man ...
— Ms vale maa que fuerza • Manuel Tamayo y Baus
... our schools, is strikingly seen in the church. Gulick holds that the reason why only some seven per cent of the young men of the country are in the churches, while most members and workers are women, is that the qualities demanded are the feminine ones of love, rest, prayer, trust, desire for fortitude to endure, a sense of atonement—traits not involving ideals that most stir young men. The church has not yet learned to appeal to the more virile qualities. Fielding ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... Irish, they had a love of feminine nature, and in all the river-coves Junia was known by sight at least, and was admired. She had the freshness of face and mind which is the heart of success with the habitants. With Eugene Grandois on his feet, she heard a speech which had in it the best spirit of Gallic eloquence, though ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Monatsbericht der Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin, 1881). The feminine form given to Baal in Rom. xi, 3 f., may refer to the disparaging term 'shame' (Heb. boshet, for which the Greek would be aischun[e]) often substituted by the late editors of the Old Testament for Baal. Saul's son Ishbaal ('man of Baal') is called Ishbosheth, Jonathan's ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... They of the feminine faction, on the other hand, consult with more direct authorities, and discover that the doors of Belen are in no wise closed to them, and that everything within those doors is quite at their disposition, saving and excepting the sleeping-apartments ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... off ashore to find canoes. Two were found; in one my mother and I were embarked with the two biscuit tins (my present to the feast), and the bag with our dry clothes, on which my mother was perched - and her cap was on the top of it - feminine hearts please sympathise; all under the guidance of Sale. In the other Belle and our guest; Tauilo, a chief-woman, the mother of my cook, were to have followed. And the boys were to have been left with the boat. But Tauilo refused. And the ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wonderfully fresh and lovely after eighty years and a voyage across the sea, the delicate flesh-tints being especially well preserved. Besides real beauty of feature, there is an enchanting softness in the character of the face that seems to belong only to temperaments the most feminine and refined. A pale pink gown falls back from her gracious neck and shoulders, liberally and innocently displayed according to the fashion of the time, and is tied about her waist with a broad sky-blue ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... M. A.] soon ceased to be surprised at any demonstration of feminine strength, skill, and independence, for everywhere the ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... kept by a common harlot merchant, happened to hear Theodorus, the atheist, arguing in the Lyceum, that if it were a good and honorable thing to buy the freedom of a friend in the masculine, why not also of a friend in the feminine, if, for example, a master, why not also a mistress? So putting the good argument and his passion together, he went off and purchased the girl's freedom. The death which was thus suffered by Phocion, revived ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... told the women that altogether he was a credit to his sex and his family—a remark which was passed about ribaldly in town for a dozen years, though Mortimer Conklin never knew that he was the subject of a town joke. Once he rebuked a man in the barber shop for speaking of feminine extravagance, and told the shop that he did not stint his wife, that when she asked him for money he always gave it to her without question, and that if she wanted a dress he told her to buy it and send the bill to him. And we are such a polite people that no one in the crowded ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... the purser and succeeded until nightfall. But then, when he was carrying an extra heavy trunk, Peter Polk got in his way and made him stumble and drop the piece of baggage. The trunk was split open at one end and some of the contents fell on the deck. It was a lady's trunk, filled with feminine wearing apparel, and a good ...
— Randy of the River - The Adventures of a Young Deckhand • Horatio Alger Jr.
... feeling of the impropriety of feminine interference in masculine duties, coupled with her attachment to France, both from principle and feeling, may be ascribed the neglect of her German connexions, which led to many mortifying reproaches, and the still more galling espionage to which she was subjected in her own palace by ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... created beings who are sentimentally supposed to be able to judge individuals at the first glance: women, children, and dogs. By virtue of a mystic gift with which rumour credits them, they are never mistaken. It is merely not true. Women are constantly quite wrong in the estimates based on their "feminine instinct"; they sometimes even admit it; and the matrimonial courts prove it passim. Children are more often wrong than women. And as for dogs, it is notorious that they are for ever being taken in by plausible scoundrels; the perspective of dogs is grotesque. Not seldom ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... called, is in the masculine gender, by which you are to understand that it was the father who gave this name to his son. In the former case the verb was feminine, because Eve gave to her son Seth his name. The expression in each case is different, which difference of gender in a verb the ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... looseness and languishing abandonment that we remarked just now in the costume of La belle Hamilton. The entire person is concealed, except the tip of one foot, the hands, the head and throat, and just enough of the bust to confess the existence of its feminine charms, without exposing them; both limbs and trunk are amply draped; and yet how plainly it can be seen that there is a well-developed, untortured woman underneath those tissues! The waist, girdled in at the proper place, neither just beneath the breasts, as it was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... and gazed at the feminine faces before him. "Go where? What makes Norris so sure he'll find life on any planet in this system? And incidentally where in ...
— The Long Voyage • Carl Richard Jacobi
... feminine of Kurmi, the name of a widely spread and most industrious agricultural caste, closely connected, at least in Bundelkhand, with the similar ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... party of friends, including several ladies, came on board the Roosevelt, and the dainty dresses of our feminine guests further accentuated the blackness, the strength, and the not over cleanly ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... pity that so brilliant a burst of light should only have flashed out from the gross darkness of heathenism. "However," he continued, "this good Father has made the vessels of the Egyptians into a tabernacle, lining it with the steel mirrors which had lent themselves to feminine vanity. Thus it is that to the pure all things are pure. This, indeed, is quite a different thing from the way of acting of those who make light of the holy words of Scripture, using them carelessly and even jestingly in idle conversation, a practice intolerable among Christians ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... a dozen miles or more, sleepily, down the Ticino valley, sitting opposite two fat priests in their feminine black. ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... inward conviction that a decisive trial of strength between them was at hand. Five or six years earlier she had engaged in a trial of this nature with her mother, and had emerged from it victorious. In that case, feminine weakness had yielded to feminine strength. But now the gloomy thought assailed her that her uncle, while closely resembling her mother in the matter of his liver, had in the depths of his torpid nature a substratum of brutal masculine resolution ...
— The Uncle Of An Angel - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... always on the eve of laughing at these aristocratic recollections of her aunt; and to her credit be it said, she always restrained herself, though with great difficulty. She, so wildly brought up, without rule or guidance in feminine matters, could not be brought to comprehend that prim line-and-rule life, of which her aunt was the very impersonation. Nevertheless, she heard what Miss Thornton had to say with respect; and if ever she committed an extreme GAUCHERIE, calculated to set her aunt's teeth on edge, she always ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... sandy soil a mournful pathway parallel with his back porch. It was after three, noted Private Mullins, of that first relief, when from the rear door of the major's quarters there emerged two forms in feminine garb, and, there being no hindering fences, away they hastened in the dim starlight, past Wren's, Cutler's, Westervelt's, and Truman's quarters until they were swallowed up in the general gloom about Lieutenant Blakely's. ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... signs of jealousy when he returned to the room where she was. She had schooled herself so as to look quite inscrutably, when she had a mind. Amongst her other feminine qualities she had that of being a ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... he was seized upon at once by a lot of feminine admirers, and the passage along the corridor was a perpetual gantlet. I realize now that this gave the dramatic finish to his day, and furnished him with proper appetite for his dinner. I did not again make the mistake of taking him around to the more secluded elevator. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... recollect best of him there: "Right reverend Fathers, date operam ut illa nefanda schisma eradicetur," exclaims Sigismund, intent on having the Bohemian schism well dealt with—which he reckons to be of the feminine gender. To which a cardinal mildly remarking, "Domine, schisma est generis neutrius (schisma is neuter, your Majesty)," Sigismund loftily replies: "Ego sum Rex Romanus et super grammaticam (I am King of the Romans, and above Grammar)!" For ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Christiana, and the maidenly qualities of Mercy, are alike pleasing and appropriate. There is a mixture of timidity and frankness in Mercy, which is as sweet in itself as it is artlessly and unconsciously drawn; and in Christiana we discover the very characteristics that can make the most lovely feminine counterpart, suitable to the stern and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... except that in cases where strength is of moment, as in the forced movements and the very hard rubbing needed for old articular adhesions, in which force must be exercised without violence, it is usually impossible to secure the necessary power in a feminine manipulator. ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... recognized the house as the Seymour residence, now the "Fair Harbor." He had strayed off the course and was trespassing upon his neighbors' premises. This fact was immediately brought to his attention. From somewhere at the rear of the gardens a shrill feminine ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... believed in a god who revealed himself in the sun, and whom he addressed as Baal or "Lord." By the side of Baal stood his colourless reflection, the goddess Baalath, who owed her existence partly to the feminine gender possessed by the Semitic languages, partly to the analogy of the human family. But the Baalim were as multitudinous as their worshippers and the high-places whereon they were adored; there was little difficulty, therefore, in identifying the gods and "spirits" ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... French term "chiffons" is the most important interest of a woman's life, he consoled himself with the reflection that Mademoiselle de Merrivale was deeply engrossed by a contemplation of Madame de Fleury's elaborate toilet, and that her absent manner had this very feminine, reasonable, and altogether to ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... concerning one merit of Goethe which seems to me not to have been sufficiently appreciated by even his admirers,—his loving skill in the delineation of female character; the commanding place he assigns to woman in his writings; his full recognition of the importance of feminine influence in human destiny. The prophetic utterance, which forms the conclusion of "Faust,"—"The ever womanly draws us on,"—is the summing up of Goethe's own experience of life. Few men had ever such wide opportunities ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... moment the door of the apartment opened, and a gentlewoman entered, who, from her resemblance to the General, although her features were soft and feminine, might be immediately recognised as his daughter. She walked up to Cromwell, gently but firmly passed her arm through his, and said to him in a persuasive tone, "Father, this is not well—you have promised me this should ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... myself can noun substantive stand, Impose on my Owners, and save my own land; You call me masculine, feminine, neuter, or block, Be what will the gender, sirs, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... day to enter the withdrawing room, while searching for Antonia, he found that he had lighted on a feminine discussion; he would have beaten a retreat, of course, but it seemed too obvious that he was merely looking for his fiancee, so, sitting down, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Inaugural Lecture, On the Value of Comparative Philology as a branch of Academic Study, delivered before the University of Oxford, 1868 1 Note A. On the Final Dental of the Pronominal Stem tad 43 Note B. Did Feminine Bases in take s in the Nominative Singular? 45 Note C. Grammatical Forms in Sanskrit corresponding to so-called Infinitives in Greek and ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... along the road and turned up a weed-grown lane, her face set and frowning. Despite her words to Benoix, at times like this she felt a very feminine need of a man, and ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... to meet him again in the evening, and then I saw I had done mischief. He was not made of common clay, not put together out of vulgar materials; while the outlines of his nature had been shaped with breadth and vigour, the details embraced workmanship of almost feminine delicacy: finer, much finer, than you could be prepared to meet with; than you could believe inherent in him, even after years of acquaintance. Indeed, till some over-sharp contact with his nerves had betrayed, by its effects, their ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... judgement we had formed from the report of preceding visitors; and though here and there was to be seen a young person who might be esteemed comely, we saw few who, in fact, could be called beauties; yet they possess eminent feminine graces: their faces are never darkened with a scowl, or covered with a cloud of sullenness or suspicion. Their manners are affable and engaging; their step easy, firm, and graceful; their behaviour free and unguarded; always boundless in generosity to each other, and to strangers; ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... Hamilton a fascinating woman?" he said, "I never thought her so. She was somewhat masculine, but symmetrical in figure, so that Sir William called her his Grecian. She was full in person, not fat, but embonpoint. Her carriage often majestic, rather than feminine. Not at all delicate, ill-bred, often very affected, a devil in temper when set on edge. She had beautiful hair and displayed it. Her countenance was agreeable,—fine, hardly beautiful, but the outline excellent. She affected sensibility, but felt none—was artful; and no ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... I hate the thought of bloodshed, and I will not countenance roughness in actions or speech. It is regrettable, of course, that sometimes men are stupid enough to oppose us, but ..." and again that almost feminine gesture. ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... ball advertisement and kindred amusements, heading both civic and military processions, white and black, in their outings and celebrations, or with bowed head and thoughtful countenance he has led the march to the grave. As I recollect Uncle Guy, he was the embodiment of neatness, feminine in build—it seemed that nature intended to form a woman instead of a man. Like a woman, he plaited his hair and drew it down behind his ears. His hands and feet were small, his fingers tapering; his face was black, his eyes small, his lips and nose thin, his voice fine, but harsh, and he slightly ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... rabbits," he said. "There, those are all nouns that end in us, feminine nouns. Look, tribus, acus, porticus. ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... behind the pines, Miss Dearborn began to practice mysterious feminine arts. She flew at Rebecca's tight braids, opened the strands and rebraided them loosely; bit and tore the red, white, and blue ribbon in two and tied the braids separately. Then with nimble fingers she pulled out little tendrils of hair behind the ears and around the nape ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... they were merry eyes, smiling, and deep with secrets no man could hope to solve. Perhaps she deemed it only fair that I should look at her as she had been observing me; perhaps it was but the coquetry of the "eternal feminine" conscious of her own attraction, but she sat there silent, the lashes shading her eyes, the clear light of the dawn upon her face. I cannot describe what I saw, only it was a young face, the skin clear and glowing with health, the nose beautifully moulded, the ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... 'The Lame Lover,'—such names as that she was aware would be useless now. 'Mary Jane Walker,' if she could be very simple, would do, or 'Blanche De Veau,' if she were able to maintain throughout a somewhat high-stilted style of feminine rapture. But as she considered that she could best deal with rapid action and strange coincidences, she thought that something more startling and descriptive would better suit her purpose. After an hour's thought a name did occur to her, and she wrote it down, and with considerable ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... this feminine excellence; this secondary and more valuable self; this woman who has appropriated to herself every desire, every emotion of my soul: what hope remains with regard to her? Shall ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... later when his fancy was caught by the dainty and attractive little Francoise Louise La Valliere. She was scarcely more than seventeen years of age when she became the favorite of the King. She was a delicate little creature, slightly lame, but most feminine in her appeal, and she caught the King by her very girlishness, as she played like a child with him in the parks of the palace. She was a simple maid of honor to Queen Marie Therese when she first attracted the notice of the King. A few years afterward she was created a duchess and, as ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... to have her reveries interrupted by the young urchin, who, appearing only to have been tickled, came up to her, and laying down his head on her lap, pulled up his coats, and cried, "More whipping, Ma; please, more whipping." So weak has been the wrist, whether it be feminine or not, that has applied the punishment, that I also feel inclined to exclaim with the child, "More whipping, (Miss Martineau?) ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... have I to think that any woman will suit me? or what chance is there that any woman will make me happy? Is it not all leather and prunella? She is pretty and clever, soft and feminine. Where shall I find a nicer toy to play with? You forget, Arthur, that I have had my day-dreams, and been roused from them somewhat roughly. With you, the pleasure ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... the wife of Seb and the mother of Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nephthys. Originally she was the personification of the sky, and represented the feminine principle which was active at the creation of the universe. According to an old view, Seb and Nut existed in the primeval watery abyss side by side with Shu and Tefnut; and later Seb became the earth and Nut the sky. These deities were supposed ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... daughter" is the fragment of Christian mythology preserved by Ophelia. The baker's daughter behaved rudely to our Lord, and was changed into the bird that looks not on the sun. The Greeks had a similar legend of feminine impiety by which they mythically explained the origin of the owl, the bat and the eagle-owl. Minyas of Orchomenos had three daughters, Leucippe, Arsippe and Alcathoe, most industrious women, who declined to join the ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... Aaron, and stepped aside to let his new employer do the speaking. They were admitted to the house by a thin, old man wearing a pink turban. As they followed this butler down a hallway, Aaron and Waziri heard the shrieks and giggles of feminine consternation that told of women being herded into the zenana. The Amishman glimpsed one of the ladies, perhaps Sarki Kazunzumi's most junior wife, dashing toward the female sanctuary. Her eyes were lozenges of antimony; her hands, dipped ...
— Blind Man's Lantern • Allen Kim Lang
... commanding presence; but never after he had approached near enough to behold her face. Every thought of artifice—of practised effect—or of haughty pretension, fled before the childlike innocence—the sweet feminine timidity—and the more than cherub loveliness of that countenance, which yet in its lineaments was noble, whilst its expression was purely gentle and confiding. A shade of pensiveness there was about her; but that was in her manners, scarcely ever in her features; and the exquisite fairness of ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... vigil to look after me and carry me to my destination. Why should I worry myself, who can only assist him by passive obedience? Why'—" But here he was interrupted by a headlong plunge of the Excelsior, a feminine shriek that was half a laugh, the rapid patter of small feet and sweep of flying skirts down the slanting deck, and the sudden and violent ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... aided in forming the literary element of the House of Commons in the Queen's first Parliament. Mrs. Gore, Mrs. Trollope, Miss Mitford, Mrs. S. C. Hail, and Harriet Martinean represented under very different aspects the feminine side of fiction. Macready remained the stage king, but he shared his royalty with the younger Kean. A younger Kemble had also played Juliet well, but the stage queen was Helen Faucit. In painting, Turner ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... need not conform to conventional rule, and where symbolic meaning, as common reality disappears, is mainly eminent. It is in this same spirit that the leading virtues of the race, of war or of peace, are typified by feminine figures. ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... at her. The fearless young Amazon and seeress, who kept a large family of the Kaulo Camloes in awe, was supposed to have nearly conquered the feminine weakness of tears; but she had not. There was a chink in the Amazon's armour, and I ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... beneath a gentle and calm exterior much of the romance or enthusiasm that had, at her own age, characterised her brother. But her enthusiasm was of a far purer order, and was restrained within proper bounds, partly by the sweetness of a very feminine nature, and partly by a strict and methodical education. She differed from him especially in a timidity of character which exceeded that usual at her age, but which the habit of self-command concealed ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... pleasant, I own it, to be in their company: pleasant, Whatever else it may be, to abide in the feminine presence. Pleasant, but wrong, will you say? But this happy, serene coexistence Is to some poor soft souls, I fear, a necessity simple, Meat and drink and life, and music, filling with sweetness, Thrilling with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... is the most subtle. It has more soul in one short street than you will find in the whole mass of Oxford Street and Piccadilly. There is something curiously feminine and intoxicating in the quality of its charm, something that evokes the silver-pensive mood. One visions it as a graceful spinster—watered silks, ruffles, corkscrew curls, you know, with lily fingers caressing the ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... looked at them with a sudden inspiration. Of course! Why had he not thought of that? He hurried into his sister's room to make a selection of a few necessities for the emergency—only to have his assurance desert him at the very threshold. The room was immaculate, with no feminine finery lying about. Cornelia Dunham's maid was well trained. The only article that seemed out of place was a hand-box on a chair near the door. It bore the name of a fashionable milliner, and across the lid was pencilled in Cornelia's large, angular hand, "To be returned to Madame ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill
... that production of this quantity cannot be in every instance of the first quality. But the average merit of Lawrence's work is nevertheless of a high order. Of feminine charm (like many of his time and many of his predecessors) he was a master; no one has ever succeeded better in giving a certain aristocratic bearing to his sitters than he. It can be accounted a fault that ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... but significantly, called rigmarole; in which, amidst an ostentatious exhibition of arts and artists, he talks of 'proportions of a column being taken from that of the human figure, and adjusted by Nature—masculine and feminine—in a man, sesquioctave of the head, and in a woman sesquinonal;' nor has he failed to introduce a jargon of musical terms, which do not seem much to correspond with the subject, but serve to make up the heterogeneous mass. To follow the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... husband, this royal lady was surrounded by officialdom, or, rather, by its complementary and feminine appendices—the wives and daughters of the aristocracy, of politicians, of ecclesiastical and military dignitaries: these to her represented the sphere, activity, and capacity of her own sex. Other women—pioneers ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... felt. There came with it an uncertain, half-delirious thrill of delight. To feel herself but a feather to his huge strength, swung, tossed, kissed, crushed, as he would. There was fear already, there was all her innocent maidenlike resistance, beating against him with might and anger, there was the feminine sense of injury by outrageous violence; but with it all there was also the natural woman's delight in the main strength of the natural man, that could kill her in an instant if he chose, but that could lift her to itself as a little child and surround her ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... is not merely praised there, but literally worshipped; and she who is gifted with it is called Devi, as one revealing in herself Woman, the Divine. That this has not been a mere metaphor to us is because, in India, our mind is familiar with the idea of God in an eternal feminine aspect. Thus the Eastern woman, who is deeply aware in her heart of the sacredness of her mission, is a constant education to man. It has to be admitted that there are chances of such an influence failing to penetrate the callousness ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... absent upon his hunting or trading expeditions, Ishmael visited Ramah a great deal and, as Rachel soon discovered, not without an object. Indeed, almost from the first, her feminine instincts led her to suspect that this man who, notwithstanding his good looks, repelled her so intensely, was falling in love with her, which in truth he had done once and for all at their first meeting. In the beginning he did not, it is ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... great painter. At least, he is certainly a very successful one. Whether or not he can make good as Anne Champneys's husband remains to be seen." Mrs. Vandervelde was not above the innate feminine cattiness. Hayden rose abruptly and began to pace the room. He was vaguely aware that he had been astrally scratched ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... that of man. I hold that there is no difference of any kind between the intellectual powers of the male and female human being. The comparative lack of mental achievement on the part of women in the past I believe to have been due to a natural, and, as I think, wholesome feminine disinclination to take up intellectual studies and scientific pursuits that until recently have been deemed the prerogative of men, and not to any innate ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... loss of time, rallied anew their forces. The Queen of Navarre soon saw thousands of strong arms and brave hearts collecting again around her banner. Accompanied by her son, she rode through their ranks, and addressed them in words of feminine yet heroic eloquence, which roused their utmost enthusiasm. But few instances have been recorded in which human hearts have been more deeply moved than were these martial hosts by the brief sentences which dropped from the lips of this extraordinary woman. Henry, ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... not been thought of. There were, to be sure, the "assembly-rooms" and the "supper-rooms," but there were many more establishments which catered to the pleasures of the masculine mind and taste than provided a fare of food and amusement which was acceptable to the feminine palate. ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... up, but in some fashion or degree, loved him, and to him all women were angels. He never, as boy or man, entertained a thought or wrote a line of one of them that was not reverent. He admired, in varying degree, all types of feminine loveliness, but Myra, though he liked her, was not the style that he most cared for. He had always thought her too "washed out." The soul that shone through her rather prominent, light-blue eyes was too transparent, too easily ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... 'life is a game at calculation; and he that plays the best of it is the cleverest fellow. Or, rather, calculation and action are husband and wife; married without a possibility of divorce. The greatest errors of Mrs. Action proceed from a kind of headstrong feminine propensity, which she has to be doing before her husband, Mr. Calculation, has given her proper directions. She often pours a spoonful of scalding soup into his worship's mouth, before the relative heat between the liquid ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... aged and snappy old gentleman clambered aboard the train that morning suddenly occurred to the station-master, only to be put aside in an instant; for it seemed impossible that he could have been an impostor. The girl, too, looked so natural, so feminine, ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... her in a matter of fact way. "He requests that I continue with it—unless, of course, you prefer that he treat you himself." He got up as he spoke, and Miss Willis decided that he was good-looking and young, and that he was tall and of a figure to appeal to the feminine eye. ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... others. Eventually it broke off from Juppiter and formed the abstract noun Fides, the goddess of good faith, where the sex of the deity as a goddess was entirely determined by the grammatical gender of abstract nouns as feminine. ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter |
