"Womanliness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... slight swelling quiver of her throat; and he became alive to its graceful contour, and to how full and pulsating it was, how nobly it set into the curve of her shoulder. Here in her quivering throat was the weakness of her, the evidence of her sex, the womanliness that belied the mountaineer stride and the grasp of strong brown hands on a rifle. It had an effect on Jean totally inexplicable to him, both in the strange warmth that stole over him and in the utterance he ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... a mother and a daughter—when you used to speak of her in Chicago, it seemed to me that I could see you together, and I liked the sweetness and womanliness of the thought; but I ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... of this portrait, Bettina turned to its companion. Here she encountered a face and form which were truly all womanly, if by womanliness is meant abject submission and self-effacement. The poor little lady looked patiently hopeless, and her deprecating air seemed the last in the world calculated to hold its own against such a lord. That she had not done so—of her own full surrender ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... sacrifice my best wishes to my sense of duty, a letter like your last would be more than I could bear. The obstacle you deal with is not the one which chiefly weighs with me, but it is a very real impediment, not altogether disposed of by the sweet and tender womanliness with which you put it aside. In that regard what troubles me most is the hideous inequality between what the man gives and what he gets, and the splendid devotion with which the woman merges her life in the life of the man she marries ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... to elevate them." Is not this in keeping with the profound practical wisdom which, notwithstanding the puerilities and small femininities which abound in some of the published writings of England's royal family, makes their pages still worth the reading, and lets us into the secret of the true womanliness which, despite all blemishes and foibles, Victoria, Empress Queen of England, has instilled into the mind of her daughter Victoria, Empress Dowager of Germany. There is hope for womankind, when "the fierce light which beats upon a throne" ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... in their warm winter furs, made a picture good to look upon. Natalie had ripened wonderfully since her marriage, and added to her rich dark beauty there was now an elusive sweetness, a warmth and womanliness which had been lacking before. As for Eliza, she had never appeared more sparkling, more freshly wholesome and ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... and that Gabriella was womanly to the core of her nature, in spite of her work in Brandywine's millinery department, it was impossible to doubt while he kissed her. There were times, indeed, when the exaltation of Gabriella's womanliness seemed to have left her without a will of her own; when, in a divine submission to love, she appeared to exist only for the laudable purpose ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... the 'buses seem healthy, though their work has been done only recently by women. I would make the influence of an occupation on woman's health—considering first and as most important her primary biological function as a potential mother—the test of its womanliness. But the health of women will never be protected while we are content to accept the valuations and suffer the defilements of ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... known many beautiful women, women splendid as animals are splendid, but never before one whose intense womanliness made me forget that she was beautiful. I can't explain; it is too subtle and holy a thing. I sat by her side, so near that we touched, and worshipped as I never worshipped at church. If but for this night alone, my ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... grey nightmare in the furthest smoke, The hag that gave these three abortions birth, Unmotherly mother and unwomanly Woman, that near turns motherhood to shame, Womanliness to loathing: no one word, No gesture to curb cruelty a whit More than the she-pard thwarts her playsome whelps Trying their milk-teeth on the soft o' the throat O' the first fawn, flung, with those beseeching eyes, ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... morning at the usual school hour her tall lithe figure, clad in gray hood and cloak, appeared at last walking along this path, stepping over or passing around the fallen boughs. She was pale and thin, but the sweet warm womanliness of her, if possible, lovelier. There was a look of religious gratitude in the eyes, but ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... heavily laden wheelbarrows in competition with men; or to watch them as helpers, mixing mortar and cement or carrying heavy loads of stone at the construction of houses; or in the coal pits and iron works. All that is womanly is thereby rubbed off from woman, her womanliness is trodden under foot, the same as, conversely, all manly attributes are stripped from the men in hundreds of other occupations. Such are the sequels of social exploitation and of social war. Our corrupt social conditions ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... has endeavored to follow such advice by bringing forward those qualities of colonial womanhood which have made for the refinement, the intellectuality, the spirit, the aggressiveness, and withal the genuine womanliness of the present-day American woman. As the book is not intended for scholars alone, the author has felt free when he had not original source material before him to quote now and then from the studies of writers on other phases of colonial life—such as the valuable books by ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... this class. It is said that men whose characters form a contrast are more likely to draw towards each other than those whose characters are similar. May the same principle not operate between man and the lower animals? Was it not the gentleness, tenderness, womanliness, softness of Manuela which caused her to dote upon and delight in her steed, though it was a huge, high stepping, arch-necked, rearing, plunging animal—something between an Irish ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... more bitter as he continued to recall the past. "Had you been a plain woman you would likely have found some attractions at your home; but the love of adulation and the greed of excitement and false flattery seem now to be so necessary to you that your true womanliness has been killed." ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... a wistfulness, so rarely in Martin's voice, that Rose had detected it instantly. After all, why should she keep him waiting when he needed her so much, she had thought tenderly, all the sweet womanliness in her astir with yearnings to lift the cloud of loneliness from ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... imagine a more insane state of things than that described in this letter? And yet this condition, which unsexes the man and takes from the woman all womanliness without being able to bestow upon the man true womanliness, or the woman true manliness—this condition which degrades, in the most shameful way, both sexes, and, through them, Humanity, is the last result of our much-praised ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... much, anyway. Perhaps I don't. I came out here because I fell out with a girl I thought I loved. She acted like a fool, and I made up my mind all women were fools. But that wife of Blizzer's has shown me more about true womanliness than all the girls I ever knew, and I'm going back to try ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... little woman was kind-hearted and conscientious, but she was not always pleasant. She wanted the grace and sweetness known genetically as womanliness, as do most women who hold the doctrine of feminine moral supremacy, with base man, tyrant, enemy and inferior, holding down the superior being by force of brute strength and responsible for all her faults. And she wanted the smoothness of manner known as good breeding. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... the carping necessity (which takes the physical form of a pressure deep down in the throat) for the sympathy of that one person whose presence is different from the presence of other people. And failing that particular woman another can, in a certain degree, by her mere womanliness, stay the pressure of ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... the luscious, perfect fruit, and the blush of the peach-bloom shows the flower coyly but triumphantly conscious that it will one day ripen into mouth-watering deliciousness,—so even then there were hints and prophecies in Margaret's budding womanliness that the time was approaching when she would not only awaken love but would herself know ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... was produced at the Empire Theater May 8, 1899, and was a distinguished artistic success. Miss Adams's Juliet was appealing, romantic, lovely. It touched the chords of all her gentle womanliness and gave the character, so far as the American stage was concerned, a new ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... sweet, strong, steady womanliness, although she did not know it. Caleb knew something extraordinary was going on inside of him, but under what impulse he was too puzzled ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the passion of his youth; she demanded service as her right, and he yielded it as her due. The unflinching shrewdness of his professional character, the hardness of his business beliefs, had never entered into the atmosphere of his home. Juliet possessed to a degree that pervasive womanliness which vanquishes mankind. After twenty years of married life in which Galt had learned her limitations and her minor sins of temperament, he was not able to face her stainless bosom or to meet her pure eyes without believing her to be a saint. In his heart he knew Sally Burwell to be a nobler ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... of this woman whom he loved, and in his heart was no thought of her faults as vital flaws. It seemed to him rather that circumstances had compelled her, and that through all the suffering of her life she had retained the more beautiful qualities of her womanliness, for which he reverenced her. In the closeness of their association, short as it had been, he had learned to know something of the tenderer depths within her, the kindliness of her, the wholesomeness. Swayed as he was by the loveliness of her, he was yet more enthralled by those ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... world-old struggle for liberty. The knitting women remember now with shame and sorrow that they have said hard things about the suffragettes, and thought they were unwomanly and hysterical. Now they know that womanliness, and peaceful gentle ways, prayers, petitions and tears have long been tried but are found wanting; and now they know that these brave women in England, maligned, ridiculed, persecuted, as they were, have been fighting every woman's battle, fighting for the recognition ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... said with a little laugh. She seemed to have suddenly overcome shyness as if, in her own domain, the first surprise of his visit over, her surroundings gave her confidence. Or, perhaps, the womanliness that had been called out to meet his passing weakness had set her on another plane. All signs of giddiness had left him and, with her usual intuition, she did not trouble him with questions. For the first time she found it easy to speak to him, ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... conceded, the tender womanliness of her sighing over the need. In the next moment she was all mother, ready to fight for her young. "Buddy, never, never ride ANYWHERE without your rifle! And a revolver, too—be sure that it is in perfect condition. And—have you a knife? You're so LITTLE!" she wailed. "But ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... the paso came nearer, were only white, waxen candles after all, but in their light the image of the Virgin gained a womanliness and beauty extraordinary. Her gorgeous trailing robe of gold-embroidered velvet, her under gown of satin scintillating with diamonds, her blazing crown of jewels, the sparkling rings on her delicate fingers, her necklaces, her bracelets, were such as the Mother of Christ never dreamed ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... cherishes the Dorcas ideal. The old, lingering notions of womanliness are not quite dispelled, but in this, as in other things, nothing sickens a man of his pet theory like seeing it ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... being neither a hero of ballad nor of old romance, he knew only that here was a girl different from the silken ladies who had ascended the stairs. Here was an air almost of frank boyishness, a smile of pleasant friendliness, with just enough of flushing cheek to show womanliness ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... every night, drinking after every dance, living in the fumes of liquor and tobacco, and in constant jangle of profanity and obscenity, how long is required to snuff out every spark of womanliness that a girl may bring with her to such ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... fully confess; and I ask them whether, considering only all that it means to have had, and to have continually, before one's eyes your debonair demeanour, your bewitching beauty and exquisite grace, and therewithal your modest womanliness, not to speak of having known the amorous kisses, the caressing embraces, the voluptuous comminglings, whereof our intercourse with you, ladies most sweet, not seldom is productive, they do verily marvel that I am fond of you, seeing that one ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... apparent before. Her brusqueness had softened down, and there had come into her and shone out of her, spite of all her natural uncomeliness of person, that beautiful, intangible something, common alike to peasant and queen, as clear to see and as sad to miss in both—womanliness. Added thereto was the gentle composure of mein which almost invariably accompanied it, which instinctively makes you fell that in great things or small, whatever the woman has to do, she will do it in the ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... woman with whom I celebrated my silver wedding two years ago, and certainly belonged to the same feminine genre, which I value and place as high above all others as Simonides von Amorgos preferred the beelike woman to every other of her sex: I mean the kind whose womanliness and gentle charm touch the heart before one ever ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... form the other side. You might cram a woman's head with all the wisdom of the ages, and while it would frighten every man who came near her into hysterics, it wouldn't keep her from going down abjectly before some man who had sense enough to know that higher education does not rob a woman of her womanliness. Depend upon it, Ruth, when it does, she would have been unwomanly and masculine if she hadn't been able to read. And it is the man who marries a woman of brains who is going to get the ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... his "old gal," whom I recognised at once as the woman who had so vehemently ill-used him in the court that memorable evening weeks ago. She was a sad spectacle, more than half drunk, with every trace of tenderness and womanliness stamped out of ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... and enlarges upon her own character and temperament. Chief among her ambitions at this time was that of being 'every inch a woman,' and she was a firm believer in the fashionable theory that true womanliness was incompatible with learning. 'I dropped the study of chemistry,' she tells her friend, 'though urged to it by, a favourite preceptor, lest I should be less the woman. Seduced by taste and a thousand arguments to Greek ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... was too weak with pain to talk; but, during all this time, Theodora was loyal to him, soothing him, cheering him up and bearing his ill-temper with a gentleness which surprised even herself, ministering to his comfort and content to an unmeasured degree, and at the same time gaining a quiet womanliness which she had never ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... that he is wanting to get rid of you, that he is only too glad of the excuse? Great God! have you no touch of womanliness in you, no sense ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... German spirit through all the changes in her life, with the same determination which made it possible, in her strenuous labors, to retain her gentle womanliness. Just before she died she desired to hear one of ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... the words aloud and felt warm tears over-brimming her eyes. She loved him for his extraordinary callow youth—which had carried the chaste chivalry of sixteen to the age of twice sixteen; she loved his little occasional tender gleams of womanliness. . . . And he was so easy to mystify and tease. She felt the warmth and the taut muscles of his arm round her body as he led her home across St. James' Park, her head on his shoulder, sleeping, ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... Hal went, if she did not create a sensation, at least she carried a dinstinction and pleasingness that were rarely overlooked. Her daily sojourn in the City, among the bread-winners, had made her large-hearted and generously tolerant, without hurting in any degree her own innate womanliness ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... the most eminent authors and artists in the country. She goes abroad yearly, and Maine levies a heavy claim on her by right of home ties and affection, for the 'Pine Tree State' is proud to claim this gifted daughter, not only for her genius but her beauty of character and true womanliness. ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... to see a woman have plenty Of new dresses," Claude replied. He was really enjoying the girl's rebellion and growing womanliness. ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... bear. I breathe again! Forth from those arms' enwinding leprosy At last I struggle—uncontaminate: Why must I leave you pressing to the breast That's all one plague-spot? Did you love me once? Then take love's last and best return! I think, Womanliness means only motherhood; All love begins and ends there,—roams enough, But, having run the circle, rests at home. Why is your expiation yet to make? Pull shame with your own hands from your own head ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... and subtle spell; but their worth is yours as well as mine. No other women on earth could have emerged from the hell of force and temptation which once engulfed and still surrounds black women in America with half the modesty and womanliness that they retain. I have always felt like bowing myself before them in all abasement, searching to bring some tribute to these long-suffering victims, these burdened sisters of mine, whom the world, the wise, white world, loves to affront and ridicule and wantonly to insult. ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... the prototype of the higher unfoldment of woman beyond her time. She stands for the point in human development when womanliness asserts itself and begins to revolt and to throw off the yoke of sensualism and of tyranny. Her revolt was not an overt act, or a criticism of the proceedings of the king. It was merely exercising her own judgment as to her own proceeding. She ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... Levin was a great woman, great even in her aberrations, while her satellites, shining by reflected light, and pretending to perpetuate her spirit, transgressed the bounds of womanliness, and opened wide a door to riotous sensuality. Certain opponents of the woman's emancipation movement take malicious satisfaction in rehearsing that it was a Jewess who inaugurated it, prudently neglecting to mention ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... might be bent or erected in truer relative proportion to either of the feet. The dejection of the right arm is a wonderful compromise between the valor of a queen who has fought her last and best, and the grief of a woman who has no further resource left to her womanliness. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... sweethearts in the service of masters who were reluctant to fee a married man. Is it to be wondered that these lads who could be faithful unto death drank soddenly on their one free day, that these girls, starved of opportunities for womanliness, of which they could make as much as the finest lady, sometimes woke after a Muckley to wish that they might wake no more? Our three brushed shoulders with the devils that had been let loose, but hardly saw ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... his face then blinded Joan with her tears. But when he caught her to him, in a violence that was a terrible renunciation, she gave her embrace, her arms, her lips without the vestige of a lie, with all of womanliness and sweetness and love and passion. He let her go and turned away, and in that instant Joan had a final divination that this strange man could rise once to heights as supreme as the depths of his soul ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... that, when she had been with him as the White Moll, she cared! It was unjust, unfair, to fling such a taunt at herself. It seemed as though she had lost nearly everything in life, but she had not yet lost her womanliness and her pride. ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... gentle as he stood there pleading in the pale moonlight, that Selah could have taken him to her bosom then and there and fondled him as one would pet a sick child, for pure womanliness; but the devil in her blood kept her from doing it, and she answered haughtily, instead: 'Ronald, if you wanted to marry me, you ought to have asked me for my own sake. Now that you've asked me for another's, you can't expect ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... Hall Caine saying about Roman Catholics what ordinary people would hesitate to impute to their relatives by marriage—or whether we be more suavely allured onward by Mrs. Florence Barclay, or Mr. Sydnor Harrison, with ingenuous indorsements of the New Testament and the inherent womanliness of women. ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... bound to smile; but that side of womanliness was one which her inexperience had no great ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... Duchesses were possessed of qualities in comparison with which beauty is deceitful and favour is vain—qualities which are calculated to wear well. Queen Adelaide's goodness and kindness, her unselfish, unassuming womanliness and devout resignation to sorrow and suffering, did more than gain and keep the heart of her bluff, eccentric sailor-prince. They secured for her the respectful regard of the nation among whom she dwelt, whether ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... majesty in which this Marquise moved; she, Kora—who had laughed in the face of a Princess whose betrothed was seen in Kora's carriage! No; it was not the rank, it was the gentle, yet slightly imperious womanliness, back of which could be felt a fund of sympathy new and strange to her; it appealed to her as the reasoning of a man would appeal; and man was the only compelling force ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... miss this ministry of ennoblement! We reap a harvest of insignificance from the seeds of sorrow sown in our hearts. We let our cares dishonour us. The little cares rasp and fret and sting the manliness and the womanliness and the godlikeness out of us. And the great cares crush us earthward till there is scarcely a sweet word left in our lips or a noble thought in our heart. A man cannot save his soul in the day of trouble. He cannot by himself make good the wear and tear of anxieties and griefs. He can hold ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth
... eye, wreathing itself occasionally into the lips, is the most powerful, if not absolutely the sole spell, which rivets my interest in woman. "Romance, provided my readers fully comprehended what I would here imply by the word—"romance" and "womanliness" seem to me convertible terms: and, after all, what man truly loves in woman, is simply her womanhood. The eyes of Annie (I heard some one from the interior call her "Annie, darling!") were "spiritual ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... he placed the pistol at the horse's head and as often withdrew it, reluctant, a man, as all who knew him wondered at, gentle to womanliness with a brute, though in a cause against men the most bitter and ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... the weighing proceeded, drawing on and on to Alston's basket and hers at the very end of the line. Would he have a hundred? would she fall behind? Would he be saved the flogging? would she have to suffer in his stead? She dreaded a flogging at the hands of that brutal overseer, and all her womanliness shrunk from the degradation of being stripped and flogged in Alston's presence, or even of having him know that she was to be cowhided. She bethought her of making an appeal to the overseer. She knew she had some power with him, for he had been enamored, in his brutish way, of her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... he was being carried over the threshold dwelt upon the graceful form of Crystal—clad all in white—all womanliness and gentleness now—her sweet face only faintly distinguishable in the gloom. St. Genis, whose nerves were still jarred with all that he had gone through to-day and irritated by Crystal's assiduity ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... have produced soldiers whose valor has reached world-wide reputation, poets, artists, teachers and professional men and women of recognized ability. There are hordes of others pursuing the humbler walks of life eager to acquire by education a higher ideal of manliness and womanliness, and to learn the ways of advanced civilization and approved citizenship. These achievements have been wrought by us under the most adverse conditions. We have wearily toiled by day and by night; have made bricks without straw; helped ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... sharp child you are, Polly. I should n't have thought you 'd mind things like that," said Fanny, beginning to understand that there may be a good deal of womanliness even in a ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... capability of man to evoke or to develop the totality of woman. There are feminine potentialities he is powerless to awake. There is a portion of womanliness always hidden from him. To her babe alone she opens the innermost recesses of her soul. For him she wears no masks, affect no accent, plays no part. Even her features take on a different and unique expression before the offspring of her ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... had never set eyes on Sylvia in such a costume before that day. Hitherto she had been a schoolgirl, a flapper, a straight-limbed, boyish young person in long frocks; but today she seemed to have put on a new air of womanliness, and he found it ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... the State at large. None of the prophecies of evil so freely made by the opponents of the measure have ever been fulfilled. Every arrangement was made in Mr. Sage's building to guard the health of the young women; and no one will say that the manliness of men or the womanliness of women has ever suffered in consequence of the meeting of the two sexes in classrooms, laboratories, chapel, or elsewhere. From one evil which was freely prophesied the university has been singularly free. It was declared ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... isolated man in the universe, claiming for the individual will a sovereignty which ignored the ensphering play of natural forces, and denying to the heart any outreach beyond the earthly and finite. If we may venture to summarize the defects of ancient philosophy in two words—it lacked womanliness and it lacked knowledge. ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... ebullition of emotion in Sandy-haired Jim was one so dimly defined, so little understood, and so absolutely pure in its nature, that had Miss Edwards been made aware of it, she could only have seen in it the touching tribute which it was to abstract womanliness—to the "wimmen nater," of which Jim was so frank an admirer. The gulf which was between them had never yet been crossed, even in imagination, though it is presumable; that, unknown to himself, Jim was trembling on the verge of it ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... which was so singularly inappropriate, rested upon the filmiest of black stuffs, exquisite as cobweb, through which were revealed the long perfect arms, and the tender curves of neck and shoulder. From this gracious figure was exhaled invisible radiations—the luxurious sense of refined womanliness. How gross and earthly, how fatally commonplace and prosaic seemed everyone about her. The violently high spirits of the other girls, their scramblings for flowers and shriekings at snakes, their too obvious ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... entertainment. Again I secured a place by Miss Trix—on her left, Newhaven being on her right, and her face was worth study when Jack Ives gave us a most eloquent description of the wonderful gift in question. It was, he said, the essence and the crown of true womanliness, and it showed itself—well, to put it quite plainly, it showed itself, according to Jack Ives, in exactly that sort of manner and bearing which so honorably and gracefully distinguished Mrs. Wentworth. The lady was not, of course, named, but she was ...
— Frivolous Cupid • Anthony Hope
... no sweeter words than these; and it was this loyalty in Miss Nussey which has marked her out in our day as a fine type of sweet womanliness, and will secure to her a lasting name as the friend of ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... womanliness she rearranged her slightly disordered hair as he drew up beside her. "I thought you were in ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... any other country. I represent a body of blameless, heroic ladies, whose glory it is to be above prejudice, and capable of self-judgment—ladies that are ladies, and wish to set an example of Christian womanliness to their own sex and the rest of mankind, feeling that "the eyes of ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... study of foreign languages now occupies in the education of women. The Italians of the Renaissance did not think that an acquaintance with the classics, that scientific knowledge destroyed the charm of womanliness, nor that the education of women should be less advanced than that of men. This opinion, like so many others prevalent in society is of Teutonic origin. The loving dominion of the mother in the family circle has always seemed to the Germanic races ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... about me. The lodgings were those I had taken at the Austrian Arms, yet much changed in little things. The vase of flowers there in the window, the neat-swept hearth, the cheerful fire, and that indefinable something which gives a touch of womanliness to ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... noiselessly together—that is, Sarah Walker did, with deft womanliness—carried it darkly along the hall to No. 27, and deposited it in Peters' bed, where it lay like a freshly opened oyster. We then returned hand in hand to my room, where we looked out of the window on the sea. It was observable that there was no lack of interest ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... made up the character of Bathsheba Everdene. It was almost foreign to her intrinsic nature. Introduced as lymph on the dart of Eros, it eventually permeated and coloured her whole constitution. Bathsheba, though she had too much understanding to be entirely governed by her womanliness, had too much womanliness to use her understanding to the best advantage. Perhaps in no minor point does woman astonish her helpmate more than in the strange power she possesses of believing cajoleries that she knows to be false—except, indeed, in that of being utterly sceptical on strictures ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... more. True it might be allied to madness; but is there a strong emotion that man or woman experiences that is not allied to madness? Still her mind was not clear enough to reflect the past. But if she never recalled that entirely, not the less were her love and tenderness—all womanliness—entire in her. ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... Her ears had been bored, but she wore no earrings. Her brown hair was drawn away from her forehead and bound in a heavy braid on the back of her neck. But it was her face that attracted one, a pale sad face that was stamped on every feature with the impress of a determined will and of an intense womanliness. From the pronounced jaw that melted its squareness of profile in the oval of the full face to the dark brown eyes that rarely veiled themselves beneath their long-lashed lids, everything told that the girl possessed ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... far night when I had seen two maidens in Grecian robes beside the Flat Rock in the "Moon of the Peach Blossom," had left no trace on Eloise St. Vrain, save to imprint the graces of womanliness on her girlish face. But the picturesque Indian maiden of that night looked aged and sorrowful in the pine forest of her native land, bent, as she was, with the dull existence of her own people; she, who had known and loved a different form of life. Only ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... principle and good faith, and deal with each other less honestly than the beasts of the field,—but for me there is a limit!—a limit you have passed! I think I could pardon your wrong to me more readily than I can pardon your callous desertion of the child you brought into the world—your lack of womanliness— motherliness!—your deliberate refusal to give Pierce Armitage the chance of righting the wrong he had committed in a headstrong, heart-strong rush of thoughtless passion!—he WOULD have righted it, I know, and been a loyal husband to ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... "religion," "womanliness," and the "holy fire of divine enjoyment" makes an unedifying melange: "The holiest thing in any human being is his own mind, his own power, his own will;" "You do all according to your own mind, and refuse to be swayed by what is usual and proper." Schleiermacher ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... or black, fell sick on the place, it was Patty herself who tended them. She knew the virtue of every herb in the big chest in the storeroom. And at table she presided over her father's guests with a womanliness that won her more admiration than mine. Now that the barrister was become a man of weight, the house was as crowded as ever was Carvel Hall. Carrolls and Pacas and Dulanys and Johnsons, and Lloyds and Bordleys and Brices and Scotts and Jennings and Ridouts, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... ladies are at home," and refined custom requires it. But to express the graces and endowments of a woman, it is her womanliness that is emphasized. "She is a gracious, sweet-tempered, kindly woman." The same distinction applies to the use of the ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... own soul to have him do it. During that interval Moret was greater than I; more chivalrous than I; for he remained loyal to his duty towards her, as he saw it, in spite of the terrible accusation I had made against her womanliness, and notwithstanding all the insinuations I had put forward, respecting her utter disregard ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... found a temporary home for her at the house of a kind-hearted widow woman who lived in the neighbourhood, and so long as we were in danger the girl and her grey-haired friend came often to offer their services in nursing. Aileen treated the baronet with such shy gentle womanliness, her girlish pity struggling through the Highland pride, forgetting in the suffering man the dastard who had wronged her, that he was moved not a little from his cynical ironic gayety. She was in a peculiar relation toward us, one lacking ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... a throb to one's heart—the defiance of it, the subtlety of it, and yet the intense womanliness of it! The people cheered her back to the palace. She went straight to the King's room—he was ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... whirl of conflicting emotions,—anger at Louis's interference, pleasure at his protecting care, annoyance at what he considered gross negligence on the doctor's part, and a sneaking pride, in defiance of his insinuations, over the thought that Kemp had trusted to her womanliness as a safeguard against any chance annoyance. She also felt ashamed at ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... moved as he had never been moved before by kindliness and womanliness. "Thank you.... Thank you," he said, tremulously. "I—you don't know what this means to me. You've—you've put a new face ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... could be of some use," he said eagerly. He liked Cicely, and he was surprised at the sudden womanliness that had come into her manner. For the hour, they met, not as man and child, ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... seek the originals of their Madonnas. Of exactly the same type in figure, face, and character was the Erlangen maiden whom Master Wacht had married; and Nanni was a most faithful copy of her mother. With respect to her genuine tender womanliness and with respect to that beneficial culture which is nothing but true tact under all conditions of life, her mother was the exact counterpart of what Master Wacht was with respect to his distinguishing qualities as man. Perhaps the daughter was less serious and ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... was not enough to satisfy her. She caught hold of his arm and clung to it. "Father," she said, in a tone which had in it, to his wonder, a firm womanliness—his own daughter seemed to speak to him as if she were his mother—"you are not telling me the truth. Something is the matter, or you wouldn't ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... such high degree of womanliness in her, and such tenderness, and what love! Lord! I did not know how to appreciate my happiness then. We would return after the theatre, and have a little supper together. It was never dull where she was, toujours gaie, toujours aimante. Yes, and I had never imagined what rare happiness ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... thing—Youth!—sitting there on Maurice's right, and felt herself withering in the dividing years. As a result, the annoyance which, when Edith was a child, she had felt at her childishness, began to harden into irritation at her womanliness. "I wish I could get her out of the house!" she used to ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... sweet, and gentle, and shy. What a marvel to meet a shy girl in these days of loud-voiced, smoking, tailor-made women! A man may appreciate the society of a twentieth-century damsel whom he designates as a "rattling good sort," but he wants a womanly woman for his wife. Elma was womanliness personified—a sweet pink-and- white, softly-curved creature, whose eyes regarded the masculine creature with an unspoken tribute of homage. "You are so big!" they seemed to say; "I am so little! Oh, please be kind to me!" Inspired by ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... of the twentieth-century progress has not swept away woman's influence, nor has it crushed out her womanliness. She lives in the hearts of men, a queen as royal as in the days of chivalry, and men shall do and dare for her dear sake as long as ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... Meanwhile"—he touched my arm as he led the way, and I fell into step beside him—"permit me to note a change in the lady since I last had the pleasure of meeting her—a distinct lessening of hauteur—a touch of (shall I say?) womanliness. Would it be too much to ask if you ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... here, that this is due partly to {381} its splendid rendering under Schuch's genial conductorship, and to the interpreters of the two principal roles in the drama. Frau Wittich as Penelope is the very incarnation of womanliness and queenliness, and no singer could be a truer and nobler Odysseus than Karl Scheidemantel. Whosoever had the advantage of hearing these two great singers in these roles, must for ever identify them with the grand ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... tendered his hilt to the girl, who took it with flaccid fingers. "I am in your hands now," he said, fixing his eyes on hers and endeavouring to convey his meaning to her. For surely, with such a face, she must have, with all her recklessness, some womanliness, some tenderness of ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... time at the store, or downtown somewhere, and so all of those long, delicious winter evenings were Flaxen's and Anson's. And his enjoyment of them was pathetic. The cheerful little sitting-room, the open grate, the gracious, ever-growing womanliness of Elga, the pressure of soft little limbs; and the babble of a liquid baby language, were like the charm of an unexpected Indian-summer day between two gray ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... had of shaking back the straying tresses of her dark, glossy hair, and, above all, that quick smile with which she greeted any flash of humor, and which produced a fascinating dimple in her cheek, all served to puzzle and stimulate him; while admiration of her so apparent womanliness began as instantly to replace the vague curiosity he had felt toward her as an actress. She was different from what he had imagined, with absolutely nothing to suggest the glare and glitter of the footlights. Until this time he had scarcely been conscious ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... sergeant,—dusty and splotched and torn. A small Testament was clasped convulsively in the fingers of his right band. The left sleeve was empty. Virginia lingered, whelmed in pity, thrilled by a wonderful womanliness of her who knelt there. Her face the girl had not even seen, for it was bent over the man. The sweetness of her voice held Virginia as in a spell, and the sergeant stopped ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... on the silver handle of the door—then she paused—looked back, all the womanliness, all the passion of her life stirred to its depths. It was good-by forever to Charley. There was a great sob, and pride bowed and fell. She rushed back—two impetuous arms went round his neck; she drew his face down, and ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... as she spoke. The white scarf was thrown back from her hair. The gracious womanliness of her struck Vera afresh with ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... description, however, there is none of this dynamic force. Womanliness, above all, and sympathy, poets ascribe to their mothers. [Footnote: See Beattie, The Minstrel; Wordsworth, The Prelude; Cowper, Lines on his Mother's Picture; Swinburne, Ode to his Mother; J. G. Holland, Kathrina; William Vaughan Moody, The Daguerreotype; ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... solve a doubt or to confide a secret, he could count on his mother's tenderness; she would explain, soothe, or sympathise, as the joys and sorrows of the growing youth became ever more serious. From this relation he retained a touch of womanliness in his character, even after he had left home to enter the regiment: a shrinking from everything coarse, a reserve before all that was unlovely. This instinctive feeling did not, indeed, altogether ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... at Newark, New Jersey, on the twenty-sixth of November, 1874. She has published three volumes of verse, of which perhaps the best known is The Joy of Life (1909). At present she is engaged in war work, where her high faith, serene womanliness, and overflowing humour ought to make her, in the finest sense of the word, efficient. Her short poem on the war is a good ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... unfortunate than to break the will of a child, for all manliness and womanliness is grounded in the will; but it is often necessary to control the desires and humors of children for their self- preservation. Hawthorne himself was not troubled with such fancies. Alcott, who was ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... anyone suggested to Frau Furst that her daughter should be a clerk, even a teacher, she would have flung up hands of horror; but music!—that was a different matter. It was, moreover, the single one of the arts, in which this staunch advocate of womanliness granted ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... assured of this, yet it was better she be buoyed up by all possible hope, so ventured upon no answer. There was that in the Queen's face as she gazed down upon us that made me doubt her womanliness; doubt if behind that countenance of wild beauty there did not lurk a soul as savage and untamed as any among her barbarous followers. What but a spirit of insatiate cruelty could animate and control ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... his with just a tinge of lofty scorn, tempered only by the womanliness of those melting lashes. "And you can think of THAT?" she murmured, gazing across at him half in tears. "O Alan, for my part I can think of nothing now but the truths of life and the magnitude of the issues. Our hearts against the world,—love ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... dancing academies, even in tenement house quarters, are reputable institutions, but to most of them the lowest of the low, both men and women, resort. There, as in the dance halls, the "White Slaver" plies his trade, and the destroyer of womanliness lays his nets. ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... them. Yet there is no room to question their attractiveness to men into whose scheme of life they fit as honorific items sanctioned by the requirements of pecuniary reputability. They are items of pecuniary and cultural beauty which have come to do duty as elements of the ideal of womanliness. ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... closing door she had glanced up, and then, at the sight of the king, she sprang to her feet and ran towards him, her hands out, her blue eyes bedimmed with tears, her whole beautiful figure softening into womanliness and humility. ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... he was certain that modern cities have no fine romance, no high tragedy; that you must go back to the Greeks for real feeling. He often aphorized, "Frightfully hackneyed to say, 'woman's place is in the home,' but really, you know, these women going to offices, vulgarizing all their fine womanliness, and this shrieking sisterhood going in for suffrage and Lord knows what. Give me the reticences of the harem rather than one of these office-women with gum-chewing vacuities. None of them clever enough to be tragic!" He was ever so whimsical about the ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... laid his hands upon her shoulders. At his look and touch her throat swelled, her bosom heaved, and the silken lids fluttered until she seemed choked by a very flood of sweet womanliness. She blushed like a little maid and laughed a timid, broken laugh; then pulling herself together, the merry, careless tone came into her voice and her cheeks grew ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... the imitation of Christ, and they approached their model as near as ever was done by man. In an age of courtesans, when convictions were subservient to the pleasure of power, they set a worthy example of strength of mind, firmness of will, purity, and womanliness. M. du ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... considered her a very pretty woman. She had a quantity of light chestnut hair, a good figure, a dazzling complexion, and a certain languid grace which passed easily for gentle-womanliness. She always dressed becomingly, and in what Fiddletown accepted as the latest fashion. She had only two blemishes: one of her velvety eyes, when examined closely, had a slight cast; and her left cheek bore a small scar left by a single ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... sea flowed between him and the Honourable John Ruffin. Pollyooly was at hand, and she was intelligent. No later than the next morning he began to talk to her of Flossie—her beauty, her charm, her sympathetic nature, her womanliness, and ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... criticisms of the church Dan had heard, and had already learned to think somewhat lightly of the kind of people who commonly make them. But this young woman—so wholesome, so good to look at in her sweet seriousness, so strong in her womanliness and withal so useful in what she called her ministry—this woman ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... added value to the world through the perfecting of her entire organism, she will desire to take good care of herself, and during these years of early young womanhood to develop into all that is possible of sweetness, grace, purity, and all true womanliness. ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... words called up in his mind sharp winter days; the pungent moth-bally smell of his mother's fur-coated bosom when she had kissed him good-bye that day he left for Chicago; comfort; womanliness. A mink coat. ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... "Just the old Squire over again," and if they sometimes added, as it must be owned they did, "It's a thousand pities she wasn't a boy," there was, in this reflection on the Creator, no reflection on Hetty's womanliness: it was rather on the accepted theory and sphere of woman's activities and manifestations. Nobody in this world could have a tenderer heart than Hetty: this also she had inherited or learned from her grandfather. Many a day the two ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... she was a woman, at any rate, and he loved her all the better for her womanliness. He knew very well that if God is a Figure of Speech with men, the losing of a soul is a figure of speech with women. The expression means only that they have lost the chance of drinking a number of cups of tea in drawing rooms whose doors are now shut to them. That was what ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... it makes the negro clean its boots and then proves the moral and physical inferiority of the negro by the fact that he is a shoeblack; but we ourselves throw the whole drudgery of creation on one sex, and then imply that no female of any womanliness or delicacy would initiate any effort in that direction. There are no limits to male hypocrisy in this matter. No doubt there are moments when man's sexual immunities are made acutely humiliating to him. When ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... natural grace in contradistinction from artificial grace. Moreover, she is a romanticist. There is an expression of romance, of unworldliness, in those deep-set eyes of hers, that sinks into my heart of hearts. 'Romance' and 'womanliness,' and the two terms appear to me to be convertible, are her distinguishing features. She is an artist, an idealist, and, over and above all—a woman! Hang it! I'm in love ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... beautiful; and age, which had left her form as straight and slender as one of her own forest pines, forgetting to place its customary burden upon her graceful shoulders, had touched her countenance with a loving hand. With all her womanliness, there was, nevertheless, a certain firmness in the finely- moulded chin that gave evidence of a line of ancestry that had never been too ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... poems were so wanting in restraint both of thought and language that I could not bear the idea of their being written by a woman. The letters that were shown to me made it still less possible for me to believe in the womanliness of the writer. But my doubts did not shake my friend's devotion and he went on with the worship of ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... him with a sudden radiance. She had risen to her feet, and with a quick, graceful movement leaned over him. This new womanliness which he had found so irresistible was alight once more in her face. Her eyes sought his fondly, she touched his lips with hers. The perfume of her clothes, the touch of her hair upon his cheek, were like a drug. He had ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that appealed to a mysterious sixth sense—a sense that only stirred at such quiet moments as this; something that was now a dim, sweet radiance, now a faint aroma, and now again a mere essence, an influence, an impression—nothing more. It seemed to him as if her sweet, clean purity and womanliness took a form of its own which his accustomed senses were too gross to perceive. Only a certain vague tenderness in him went out to meet and receive this impalpable presence; a tenderness not for her only, but for all the good ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... indifferently away. Bradley, a little irritated, he knew not why, at the scrutiny of this tall, handsome, gentlemanly-looking woman, who, however, in spite of her broad shoulders and narrow hips possessed a refined muliebrity superior to mere womanliness of outline, turned slightly towards Sir Robert. "Lady Canterbridge, Frank's cousin," explained Sir Robert, hesitatingly, as if conscious of some vague awkwardness. Bradley and Lady Canterbridge both bowed,—possibly the latter's salutation was the most masculine,—and Bradley, eventually forgetting ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... humble table, to join in the good old hymns, and finally to kneel among them while the gentle old man said the evening prayer. We would not notice their homely clothes, coarse hands and simple, unscholarly language, for their real manliness and womanliness would win ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... unhappily not necessary to describe the scene that followed. Mr. Blapton made a brave fight for his epaulettes, fighting chiefly with his cocked hat, which was bent double in the struggle. Mrs. Blapton gave all the assistance true womanliness could offer and, in fact, she boxed the ears of one of his assailants very soundly. The intruders were rescued in an extremely torn and draggled condition from the indignant statesmen who had fallen upon them by tardy but ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... the upright posture, tends to press the upper extremities of the thighs out laterally in females more than in males. Hence the former can stand less long with comfort than the latter. Miss C——, however, believed in doing her work in a man's way, infected by the not uncommon notion that womanliness means manliness. Moreover, she would not, or could not, make any more allowance for the periodicity of her organization than for the shape of her skeleton. When about twenty years of age, perhaps a year or so older, she applied to me for advice in consequence of neuralgia, ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... lodged at her ease, for she saw first to that, she ordered her prisoners to be brought before the Prince her son. She had the decency not to sit as judge herself; but, in outrage of all womanliness, she sat herself in the court, near the Prince's seat. She would have sat in the seat rather than have missed her end. The Prince was wholly governed by his mother; he knew not her true character; and he was but a lad of fourteen years. So, when the prisoners ...
— The Well in the Desert - An Old Legend of the House of Arundel • Emily Sarah Holt
... features were delicately shaped, her eyes rather deep-set. She had a long, graceful neck, and resting upon her throat, fastened by a thin platinum chain, was a single sapphire. There was about her just that same delicate femininity, that exquisite aroma of womanliness and tender sexuality which had impressed him so much upon their first meeting. She was more wonderful even than his dreams, this rather tired woman of fashion whose coming had been so surprising. He would ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... which has been carried overseas to America and the British dominions, probably began with the striking history of Mary Queen of Scots. Her brilliancy and boldness and beauty, and especially the pathos of her end, have made us see only her intense womanliness, which in her own day was the first thing that any one observed in her. So, too, with Charles I., romantic figure and knightly gentleman. One regrets his death upon the scaffold, even though his execution was necessary to the growth ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... with a certain wiry nervous strength about the muscles of the mouth and chin: it would have been a womanly, pleasant mouth, had it not been crossed by a white scar, which attracted more of one's attention than either the womanliness or pleasantness. Her eyes had light long lashes, and shone through ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... fixity, certainty, its unmatched generosity within a limit, its devotion to the family, and its family eye for the country. An immediate introduction to Ottilia would have won him to enjoy the idea of his grandson's marriage; but not having seen her, he could not realize her dignity, nor even the womanliness of a 'foreign woman.' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in the look of her eyes, dark, humid, with mysterious depths below the veil, Lane saw the truth; he felt it in the clasp of her hands, he divined it in all that so subtly emanated from the womanliness of her. Mel ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... Miss Vernon," said Bertram; "but I am inclined to think there is a latent depth of character, a womanliness in you that our ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... the beauty and sweetness of her spirit, when he was near her, when he touched her hand, nor even in that supreme moment when he crushed her close to his unquiet heart and pressed that hot kiss on her lips. It was the sheer flesh and blood womanliness of her that made his heart beat faster, the sweet curve of her lips, the willowy grace of her body, the odd little gestures of her hands, the melody of her voice and the gray pools of her eyes, eyes full of queer gleams and curious twinkles—all these things were ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... back at him. It was Evelina, at the noon of her girlish beauty, her face alight with love. Anthony Dexter looked long at the perfect features, the warm, sweet, tempting mouth, the great, trusting eyes, and the brown hair that waved so softly back from her face; the all-pervading and abiding womanliness. There was strength as well as ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... she was frightened, too. All the newly assumed womanliness was gone. It was the handsome, inexperienced, ignorant child Mollie she had known all her life who was clinging to her, Aimee felt,—the pretty, simple, thoughtless Mollie they had all admired and laughed at, and teased and been fond of. She seemed to have become a child ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... in him then what may be justly called the wonder of life. The thoughtful reader of these pages has ere this discerned enough to know that the young Jew in disposition was gentle even to womanliness—a result that seldom fails the habit of loving and being loved. The circumstances through which he had come had made no call upon the harsher elements of his nature, if such he had. At times he had felt the stir and impulses of ambition, but they had been like the formless dreams ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... brilliant spirit. Every instinct of the coquette, jealous of her own power and wretched from the sterile suffering of wounded pride, resented bitterly the unpardonable ease which he had appeared to enjoy in her society. Now, however, that he appealed to her womanliness by a humble surrender, her better, more generous nature asserted itself. Some of the old affection she had long felt for him revived. Where there had once been love, a kind of desperate fidelity still lingered, and, ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... grandmother of future Dukes of Omnium,—the ancestress, it was to be hoped, of all future Dukes of Omnium! By what she might be, by what she might have in her of mental fibre, of high or low quality, of true or untrue womanliness, were to be fashioned those who in days to come might be amongst the strongest and most faithful bulwarks of the constitution. An England without a Duke of Omnium,—or at any rate without any Duke,—what would it be? And yet he knew that with bad Dukes his country would be in ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... all things, for these cousins represented the two poles of womanhood. Miss Armytage without any of Lady O'Moy's insistent and excessive femininity, was nevertheless feminine to the core. But hers was the Diana type of womanliness. She was tall and of a clean-limbed, supple grace, now emphasised by the riding-habit which she was wearing—for she had been in the saddle during the hour which Lady, O'Moy had consecrated to the rites of toilet and devotions done before ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... long run, cannot fail to produce effects that are indistinguishable from disease. You will find some of them described at length in any handbook on psychoanalysis. The Viennese, Adler, and the Dane, Poul Bjerre, argue, indeed, that womanliness itself, as it is encountered under Christianity, is a disease. All women suffer from a suppressed revolt against the inhibitions forced upon them by our artificial culture, and this suppressed revolt, by well known Freudian means, ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... fascinated him in the city, but now he could not help comparing her hothouse beauty with the brown-skinned, outdoor desirability of Jerkline Jo. Jo could have picked up this frail, silk-garbed creature and thrown her overhead; yet in pure womanliness and tenderness Lucy was not her equal. Jerkline Jo was a queen—a ruler—a fearless woman with a purpose in life, big of body and soul and brain. Lucy Dalles was merely a pretty girl, with an ambition for money and life's frivolous ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... of this made him roar. But a man does not love a woman the less for being feminine, and when she thwarts him by a womanliness she ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... unpremeditated words, and as Klea—while he spoke them with quivering lips—had attempted with the exertion of all her strength, which was by no means contemptible, to wrench her hands from his grasp, he forced her—angry as he still was, but nevertheless with due regard for her womanliness—forced her by a gentle and yet irresistible pressure on her arms to bend before him, and compelled her slowly to sink down ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... is, I am convinced, better in health and happier in herself than the girl of the past generation. What are the objections to games for girls? It seems to me the chief arguments against them are (1) that they are injurious to health; (2) that they impair the womanliness of woman; (3) that they mar her appearance. There may be something to be said for these contentions, but to my mind the ...
— Lawn Tennis for Ladies • Mrs. Lambert Chambers
... made her one of the attractions of old Madam Wanton's midnight routs? However it came about, there was Mercy out on a series of morning calls with a woman twice her age, but a woman whose many years had taught her neither womanliness nor wisdom. "If you come in God's name, come in," a voice from the inside answered the knocking of Mrs. Timorous and Mercy, her companion, at Christiana's door. In all their rounds that morning the two women had ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... to fasten her collar and complete the minutiae of her dress with that careful neatness which was an instinct with Christian, as it is with all womanly women, though how this poor motherless girl had ever learned womanliness at all was a marvel. She answered chiefly in soft monosyllables to the perpetual stream of Mrs. Ferguson's talk, till at last the good soul could no longer ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... read the life of Mary Wollstonecraft without loving her, or follow her first bitter struggles without feeling honor, nay reverence, for her true womanliness which bore her bravely through them. She never shrank from her duty nor lamented her clouded youth. Without a murmur she left Walham Green and established herself as nurse and keeper to the poor mad sister. There could be no greater ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... and ways of saying things. "I suppose there is some sneering at her," said he, "among the girls who couldn't do anything if they tried. It seems to me, if there is any profession a woman could follow without losing her womanliness, it is that of doctor. Every woman ought to be a doctor, whether she ever tries to make a living out of ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... modern movement was abhorrent to you because your life had been passed in witnessing scenes of suffering nobly endured and sacrifice willingly rendered by womanly women and manly men and deuce knows what else. Is it at the Ibsen club that you see all this manliness and womanliness? ...
— The Philanderer • George Bernard Shaw
... her private audiences that this great woman's tact, womanliness, fascination and charm as a hostess appeared. Taking her guest by the hand, she would ask in the most solicitous way whether we were not tired with our journey to the palace; she would deplore the heat in summer or the cold in winter; ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... might perhaps have the courage and the womanliness to give it back to you. [JOHN has a brief dream.] Will you never hold it up against me in the future that I ...
— What Every Woman Knows • James M. Barrie
... at the farm, and the meeting with its homely folk, soon restored her equanimity. She at once warmed to Ma, whose gentle practical disposition displayed such a wealth of true womanliness as to be quite irresistible, and, in the confidence of her bedchamber, which she shared with Rosebud, she imparted her favorable impressions. She assured the girl she no longer wondered that she, Rosebud, with everything that money could purchase, still longed to return to the shelter of the ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... down corridor: "Well, if the way to restore women to womanliness is to make them do drudgery which they can hire somebody else ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... herself to the power of wealth and show at the price of all that women are believed to hold dear, was an undoubted blow to my pride and the confidence I had till now unconsciously reposed in her inherent womanliness and affection. That she had but made on a more conspicuous scale, the same sacrifice as myself to the god of Wealth and Position, was in my eyes at that time, no palliation of her conduct. I was a man none too good or exalted at the best; she, a woman, should have been superior ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... she wore! Even as Hermione she was always bunched out by layer upon layer of petticoats, in defiance of the fact that classical parts should not be dressed in a superfluity of raiment. But if the petticoats were full of starch, the voice was full of pathos—and the dignity, simplicity, and womanliness of Mrs. Charles Kean's Hermione could not have been marred by a far more ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry |
