"Unfeminine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... then flowed out the bitterest inuendoes against the "pride of intellect." I was vaguely threatened with I know not what doom, if I ever trespassed the limits proper to my sex, and conceived a contraband appetite for unfeminine knowledge. Alas! I had no such appetite. What I loved, it joyed me by any effort to content; but the noble hunger for science in the abstract—the godlike thirst after discovery—these feelings were known to me ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... yet she too had a heart of her own, and had told herself in so many words, that she herself would have loved the man,—had it been fitting that she should burden him with such a love. She had rejected the idea as unfitting, impossible, and almost unfeminine. There was nothing in her to attract the man. The idea had sprung up but for a moment, and had been cast out as being monstrous. There was Ada, the very queen of beauty. And the gallant hero was languishing in her smiles. It was thus that her imagination carried her on, after the ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... ... the whole and sole inventor of the never-to-be-forgotten lingo grande (in which, by the bye, I purpose ere long to compose a second epistle), thought proper one day to call my daughter a great horsemangander, thinking, I suppose, that that appellation contained as much unfeminine meaning as could be put into any decent compound. From this substantive the verb has been formed to denote an operation performed by the said daughter upon the said aunt, of which I was an astonished spectator. The horsemangander—that is to say, Edith May—being ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... obliged to yield their exhausted frames to the labours of the day. Even female labour could not be dispensed with; the strong as well as the weak, the delicate and sickly, and (shame to their oppressors) even the pregnant, barefooted and scantily clothed, were obliged to join in those rugged, unfeminine labours. In one instance I saw the husband quarrying stones, and the wife and children dragging them along in an old cart to the building. Such were the building scenes of that period. The poor people had often to give the last morsel ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... it. Unless all analysis of the female heart is a delusion, and all history false, what women like most of all things in this world is a Man, virile, forceful, compelling, a solid rock of dependence, a substantial unfeminine being, whom it is some satisfaction and glory and interest to govern and rule in the right way, and twist round the feminine finger. If women should succeed in reducing or raising—of course raising—men to the feminine ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... pleasant possession. Miss Lillycrop had one. She was a strong-minded woman. We do not say this to her disparagement. A strong mind is as admirable in woman as in man. It is only when woman indicates the strength of her mind by unfeminine self-assertion that we shrink from her in alarm. Miss Lillycrop's bosom friend was a warm-hearted, charitable, generous, hard-featured, square-shouldered, deep-chested, large-boned lady of middle age and quick temper. She was also in what ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... or such a young woman, She is a bold and powerful reasoner—would it not be a little uncommon? Would it be received as a compliment? Would it not be regarded as a little out of the way—and, to coin a term, as rather unfeminine? ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... of Wolfe's Cove. On the inner surface of her eyelids she could see again the image of the Highlandman stooping to help her, his muscular legs and neck showing like a young god's in the early light. There she lost him, for he forgot her. The passion of women whom nature has made unfeminine, and who are too honest to stoop to arts, is one of the tragedies ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... well might be. Mrs. Meredith, who is very small, looked up brightly at a tall Maryland lady, who was congratulating her, and said, "I feel as tall as you." These two ladies looked just like other women and had developed no horns or hoofs or other unamiable and unfeminine characteristics in consequence of their having obtained the right to vote.... The Southern women have distinguished themselves in the national suffrage conventions during the last few years. This year, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... region. I remember one instance in which an Eskimo woman had a difference of opinion with her husband, and proved her right to independence by blackening the old man's eye; but I am afraid that the more conservative members of the tribe attributed this unfeminine behavior to the corrupting influence of ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... knew I should need them all. Most of our baggage was to be sent by water. We travelled in a private carriage, and consequently, could take little. Julia, unlike most women, was willing to believe with me that impediments are the true name for much luggage; and, with a most unfeminine habit, she could limit herself without reluctance to the merest necessities. We had no bandboxes, baskets, or extra bundles, to be stuffed here and there, filling holes and corners, and crowding every space, which should be yielded entirely to the limbs of the traveller. ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... months and seven in the winter. They work all day at the severest agricultural labor, wielding a heavy, clumsy hoe, digging potatoes, grubbing up stones from the soil, stooping on the ground in weeding, and compelled even to the unfeminine and offensive employment of spreading manure. For a day's work at what men alone should be required to do, they receive but a shilling! Then, worn out with fatigue, having eaten little more than the crust they brought ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... Necker. Germaine, as she was generally called, had, unluckily for her, inherited nothing of her mother's delicacy of form and feature; indeed, her most rapturous admirers never dared to claim much physical beauty for her, except a pair of fine, though unfeminine, eyes. She was rather short than tall; her figure was square-set and heavy; her features, though not exactly ill-formed, matched her figure; her arms were massive, though not ill-shaped; and she was altogether ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... the female cried, "Chack! chack!" but occasionally she tried to screech like her ebon consort, her voice breaking ludicrously in the unfeminine effort. The evening before, I had flushed a youngster about which a great hubbub was being made, but on the day of my long vigil in the meadow, I could not, by the most careful search, find a single bantling, either in or out of a nest. It is odd how effectually the young are able to conceal themselves ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... "how changed that mien! How changed these timid looks have been, Since years of guilt and of disguise Have steeled her brow, and armed her eyes! No more of virgin terror speaks The blood that mantles in her cheeks: Fierce and unfeminine, are there, Frenzy for joy, for grief despair: And I the cause—for whom were given Her peace on earth, her hopes in heaven! Would," thought he, as the picture grows, "I on its stalk had left the rose! Oh, ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... years to come, when little voices in the firelight (that's a pretty touch—who says the Army has made us unfeminine?) beseech me, "Tell us again how you won the War, Great-grandma," I shall retain sufficient perspective to reply, "Granny didn't do it all alone, darlings; there were a lot of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 1, 1919 • Various
... this speech was, and unfeminine as I trust every fair reader will deem it, I fear it pleased Mr. Oakhurst. Not but that he was accustomed to a certain frank female admiration; but then it was of the coulisse, and not of the cloister, with which he always ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... adorer at all, but for the circumstance that first dooms them both to a shocking death, and then sends them, with perfect warrant, from the stake to the altar. Clorinda is an Amazon, the idea of whom, as such, it is impossible for us to separate from very repulsive and unfeminine images; yet, under the circumstances of the story, we call to mind in her behalf the possibility of a Joan of Arc's having loved and been beloved; and her death is a surprising and most affecting variation upon that of Agrican in Boiardo. Tasso's enchantress Armida ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... carefully done up; but Laura did not stir. She had dropped her hands on her knees, and he, stooping, laid it upon them, when meeting her eyes for a moment, he observed with amazement and discomfiture that she was silent not from shame and compunction for what had seemed very unfeminine and heartless conduct, but from a rapture that seemed ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... from smiling, when she found how simply and naturally the conversation had come round to the very point at which she had aimed to bring it. Although far from unfeminine or forward, either in her feelings or her habits, the girl was goaded by a sense of wrongs not altogether merited, incited by the hopelessness of a future that seemed to contain no resting place, and still more influenced by feelings ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... movement displayed for an instant the seductive grace of her youthful figure, clad in the simplest of mourning. In the transparent shadow the hat rim threw on her face her grey eyes had an enticing lustre. Her voice, with its unfeminine yet exquisite timbre, was steady, and she spoke quickly, frank, unembarrassed. As she justified her action by the mental state of her mother, a spasm of pain marred the generously confiding harmony of her ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... attractive, she had grown to accept the general estimate of his character and ability. A man so gifted ought not to be judged as severely as poorer or less actively intelligent mortals; and as long as other men did not judge him, she felt no inclination to usurp so unfeminine a prerogative. He had always been kind to her, and she understood now from his manner that he meant to be still kinder. It occurred to her at once that he knew of George's infatuation for Florrie, and that ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... her nearest analogue in William Blake; but this "nearest" is far from identity. While tenderly feminine in her sympathy for suffering, her love of nature, her loyalty to her friends, she is in expression the most unfeminine of poets. The usual feminine impulsiveness and full expression of emotion is replaced in her by an extraordinary condensation of phrase and feeling. In her letters we find the eternal womanly in her yearning love for her friends, her brooding anxiety and sympathy ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... wheeled quickly and stood viewing me over with a bold, unwavering gaze that it seemed nothing might abash; and though her eyes were large and well-shaped, yet I remember thinking them excessively unfeminine, the eyes rather of an ill-natured, pugnacious boy; and now, because of the hard coldness of her look, the unmaidenly, calculating intensity of her regard, I grew very conscious of my disfiguring garments and felt ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... and there has been very much with which I must reproach myself. I know that I have behaved badly. Sometimes I have to undergo the doubly bitter self-accusation of having behaved in a manner which the world will call unfeminine. You must understand that I have not passed through this unscathed, and I must beg you to allow me some time for a cure. A perfect cure I may never expect, but I think that in twelve months from this time I may so far have recovered my usual spirit and ease of mind as to enable me to devote myself ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... girls were allowed a good deal of liberty—but I'd really no idea they went as far as this! I should be sorry indeed to see any girl of mine (here the glances instructively at three dumpy and dough-faced Daughters) acting in that forward and most unfeminine manner. (Reassuringly.) But I'm very sure there's no fear of that, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 9, 1892 • Various
... Connaisseurs, and Michel Angelo's fame, I would die in it at the stake: for instance, here is the Blessed Virgin, not the "Vergine Santa, d'ogni grazia piena," but a Virgin, whose brick-dust coloured face, harsh unfeminine features, and muscular, masculine arms, give me the idea of a washerwoman, (con rispetto parlando!) an infant Saviour with the proportions of a giant: and what shall we say of the nudity of the figures in the back-ground; profaning the ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... then out of public spirit to make up a foursome, but constantly and for pure selfish love of it. Woman may, if she likes, take it as a compliment to her sex that this proclivity—held to be wholly natural in a man—is called 'rather unfeminine' in a woman. But it was a defect like the rest, forgiven the Lady Sophia for her father's sake. Lord Borrodaile, held to be one of the most delightful of men, was much in request for parties of this description. One reason for his daughter's ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... Emilia, the soul of the piece, is called by the witty Balzac, when commending the work, "an adorable fury." Yet the Furies themselves could be appeased by purifications and expiations: but Emilia's heart is inaccessible to the softening influences of benevolence and generosity; the adoration of so unfeminine a creature is hardly pardonable even in a lover. Hence she has no better adorers than Cinna and Maximus, two great villains, whose repentance comes too late to be ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... man does for the same work. But, it is said, woman's sphere is at home. Would giving her the right to vote interfere with her home duties any more than it does with a man's business? Again it is said, that for her to vote would be unfeminine. Is it at all more indelicate for a woman to go to the polls, than it is for her to go to the court-house and pay her taxes? The truth is, woman occupies just the position that man has placed her in, and it ill becomes ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... equally favorable. The Ellsworth American said: "Her enunciation is very clear and remarkably distinct, yet there is nothing in it of the unfeminine character and tone which people had been led to expect from the usual criticisms of the press. The lecture itself, as an intellectual effort, was satisfactory as well to those who dissented as to those who sympathized with its positions ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... Spiewell as any anchorite of the Nitrian Sands to decline receiving a bevy of inquisitive European belles. If society rules like Russia or Turkey, then am I a candidate for knout and bastinado. I do not wish to be unwomanly, and honesty and candor are not necessarily unfeminine, because some coarse, rough-handed, bold-eyed woman has possibly rendered ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... got thinking about it and talking it over with Papum, and I should LOVE it. I'd do it, not because I would have to do it, but because it would interest me. Condy, you know that I'm not a bit strong-minded, and that I hate a masculine, unfeminine girl as much ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... or rather a love of change, "shifting right away," without the least regret, from one portion of the Union to another; a remarkable apathy as to the sufferings of others, an indifference to loss of life, a fondness for politics, all of which are unfeminine; and lastly, a passion for dress carried to too great an extent; but this latter is easily accounted for, and is inseparable from a society where all would be equal. But, on the other hand, the American women have a virtue which the men have not, which is moral courage, and one ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... brown as sole-leather, and the texture of the skin seemed leathery as well. There was a hawklike nose dominating the unfeminine face. The shallows below the cheekbones were deep, as though she had suffered the loss of her back molars. The eyebrows were straggly; the eyes themselves of a pale, watery blue; the mouth a thin line when her colorless lips were closed; and her chin was as square ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... horse, stallion; gibcat^, tomcat; he goat, Billy goat; ram, tup; bull, bullock; capon, ox, gelding, steer, stot^. androgen. homosexual, gay, queen [Slang]. V. masculinize Adj. male, he-, masculine; manly, virile; unwomanly, unfeminine. Pron. he, him, his. Phr. hominem pagina nostra sapit [Lat.] [Martial]; homo homini aut deus aut lupus [Lat.] [Erasmus]; homo vitae commodatus non ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... With unfeminine neglect of the chance for petty discussion, his wife left the room without replying, and descended to the hotel lobby. Here she was directed toward a very ragged, very woe-begone young black on the rear porch, who, at sight of her, began to fumble his hat ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach |
