"Maidenhood" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... photograph—one of my father—in a silver frame on the dressing-table. This, too, was a fine countenance, possessed of well-cut features and refined expression. This was the prince who had won Lucy Bossier from her home. I looked around my pretty bedroom—it had been my mother's in the days of her maidenhood. In an exclusive city boarding-school, and amid the pleasant surroundings of this home, her youth had ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... cold waves. Part of the heritage of youth—its gay and adventurous longing for experience—had been filched from her before she was old enough to know its value. In time she would perhaps recover her self-esteem, but she would never know in its fullness that divine right of American maidenhood to rule its environment and ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... death speedily did. And thus it is that both Christiana's best life, all our interest in her, and all our information about her, dates, sad to say, not from her espousal, nor from her marriage day, nor from any part of her married life, but from her husband's death. Her maidenhood has no interest for us; all our interest is fixed on her widowhood. This work of fiction now in our hands begins where all other works of fiction end; for in the life of religion, you must know, our best is always before us. Well, scarcely was her husband dead ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... said, a faint sad smile flitting across her pallid lips. "Why I should feel abased and self-degraded, I can well comprehend. I, who have fallen from the high estate, the purity, the wealth, the consciousness of chaste and virtuous maidenhood! I, the despised, the castaway, the fallen! But thou, thou!—from thee I looked but for reproaches—the just reproaches I have earned by my faithless folly! I thought, indeed, to have found you wretched, writhing in the dark bonds which I, most miserable, cast around you; and cursing ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... could give Philip the attention with which his stepmother's social duties might interfere. It was hardly likely that her aunt entertained any hope of marriage; indeed, Miss Laura had long since professed herself resigned to old maidenhood. ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... would be undisturbed even by the bloodiest war; and, best of all, those thousands upon thousands of our Northern girls, whose proper mates will perish in camp-hospitals or on Southern battle-fields, would avoid their doom of forlorn old-maidenhood. But, no doubt, the plan will be pooh-poohed down by the War Department; though it could scarcely be more disastrous than the one on which we began the war, when a young army was struck with paralysis through ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and after it had been settled that he should attend to the matter for her he took up the illustrated volume of Longfellow—for, as the sisters had learned, his culture soared beyond the newspapers—and read aloud, with a fine confusion of consonants, the poem on "Maidenhood." Evelina lowered her lids while he read. It was a very beautiful evening, and Ann Eliza thought afterward how different life might have been with a companion who read poetry ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... method, no understanding of how to ingratiate themselves in youthful favour, save when they find virtue in the toils. If, unfortunately, the fly has got caught in the net, the spider can come forth and talk business upon its own terms. So when maidenhood has wandered into the moil of the city, when it is brought within the circle of the "rounder" and the roue, even though it be at the outermost rim, they can come forth and use ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... thing it would have been! Whoever heard of a girl on this side of the Maros being married without her farewell to maidenhood. I am paying for the supper and for everything because I want my bride's farewell to be finer and grander than anything that has ever been seen for many kilometres round. I have stinted nothing—begrudged nothing. I have given an ox, two pigs and a calf to be slaughtered for the ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... with fatal serpents, and fastened with Gorgonian cold, turning men to stone; physically, the lightning and hail of chastisement by storm. Then in her fortitude she wears the crested and unstooping hemlet;** and lastly, in her temperance, she is the queen of maidenhood—stainless as ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... enthusiasm for Goethe first manifested itself as an elemental force. From another passage we learn that this was three years before her first meeting with the poet in 1807, "in the heyday between childhood and maidenhood." The "Child" of the first letters of the Correspondence was, accordingly, just nineteen. German authorities have accepted 1788 as Bettina's birth-year, but English publications, including the Encyclopaedia ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... more than a respectable landed estate in Connemara. For these reasons the amateur will do well to have new books of price bound "uncut." It is always easy to have the leaves pared away; but not even the fabled fountain at Argos, in which Hera yearly renewed her maidenhood, could restore margins once clipped away. So much for books which are chiefly precious for the quantity and quality of the material on which they are printed. Even this rather foolish weakness of the amateur ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... pilot should be her own conscience, hedged about with the learning, the good breeding, the fine character that she herself, under proper guidance, must cultivate through the impressionable years of childhood and maidenhood. If she so wills it, beauty and grace and true worth are all hers. And let her greet and go forth in the freshness of each golden day, as indeed, she must greet life, itself, ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... agent for the ruin of those she loves. I cannot remember the time when I did not love the only man for whom I ever entertained any affection. He was the playmate of my earliest years,—the betrothed of my young maidenhood,—and just before my poor father died, he joined our hands and left his blessing on my choice. Poverty was the only barrier to our union, but I took a situation as teacher, and hoarded my small gains in the hope of aiding my lover, who went abroad with a ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... or not she was unusually good to look at had hardly ever before occurred to her. She flushed slightly, pleased and wondering, with a new seed of gentle vanity planted in her simple nature, a child on the threshold of the womanly inheritance of maidenhood. ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... promised me. I took his name then, as we do in the Cold Country. They still call me Tara! Years I have waited, true to my promise—with even my name of maidenhood relinquished. His name—Tara! And now he tosses me aside—because you, only an Earth woman, have ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... maplewood, and there, on white sheets spread over a mattress of fine sheep's wool, and protected from the cold by bright blue coverlets's, lay a graceful, lovely girl asleep; this was Rhodopis' granddaughter, Sappho. The rounded form and delicate figure seemed to denote one already in opening maidenhood, but the peaceful, blissful smile could only belong to a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... am about to tell thee is unknown to the very gods. Listen to me, O mighty-armed one, as it befell in former days. How all the Kshatriyas, cleansed by weapons should attain to regions of bliss, was the question. For this, a child was conceived by Kunti in her maidenhood, capable of provoking a general war. Endued with great energy, that child came to have the status of a Suta. He subsequently acquired the science of weapons from the preceptor (Drona), that foremost descendant of Angirasa's race. Thinking of the might ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... how Her fate I have fixed? Far from your side Shall the faithless sister be sundered; Her horse no more In your midst through the breezes shall haste her; Her flower of maidenhood Will falter and fade; A husband will win Her womanly heart, She meekly will bend To the mastering man The hearth she'll heed, as she spins, And to laughers is left for ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... between the expression of her lineaments and that of the countenances around her was not a little surprising, and was productive of hypotheses without measure as to how she came there. She was, in fact, emphatically a modern type of maidenhood, and she looked ultra-modern by reason of her environment: a presumably sophisticated being among the simple ones—not wickedly so, but one who knew life fairly well for her age. Her hair, of good English brown, neither light nor dark, ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... sent upon me from heaven, and the utter marring of my person, whence it suddenly came upon me, a wretched creature! For nightly visions thronging to my maiden chamber, would entice me with smooth words: "O damsel, greatly fortunate, why dost thou live long time in maidenhood, when it is in thy power to achieve a match the very noblest? for Jupiter is fired by thy charms with the shaft of passion, and longs with thee to share in love. But do not, my child, spurn away from thee the couch of Jupiter; but go forth to Lerna's fertile mead, to the folds and ox-stalls ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... relations of the various ranks to one another. Great Britain is essentially the home of the chaperon. We pride ourselves, as a nation, upon the extreme care with which we protect our young gentlewomen from contaminating influences. But the fastidious attention which we bestow upon our national maidenhood is as nothing in comparison with the protective commotion with which we surround that shrinking sensitive plant, Mr. ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... young and innocent girl married to this remorseless gambler, scarred with the gun and the knife, was a profanation of maidenhood—and yet, as he fell now and then into a dream, he took on a kind of savage beauty which might allure and destroy a woman. Whatever else he was, he was neither commonplace nor mean. The visitors to whom he ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... mind, being now a loving and reasonable woman. It was just a year since she had saved the life of Robin; and patience, and loneliness, and opposition, had enlarged and ennobled her true and simple heart. No lord in the land need have looked for a purer or sweeter example of maidenhood than this daughter of a Yorkshire farmer was, in her simple dress, and with the dignity of love. The glen was beginning to bestrew itself with want of light, instead of shadows; and bushy places thickened with the imperceptible growth of night. Mary went on, with ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... entertained them all. Then began King Malcolm to yearn after the child's sister, Margaret, to wife; but he and all his men long refused; and she also herself was averse, and said that she would neither have him nor any one else, if the Supreme Power would grant, that she in her maidenhood might please the mighty Lord with a carnal heart, in this short life, in pure continence. The king, however, earnestly urged her brother, until he answered Yea. And indeed he durst not otherwise; for they were come into his kingdom. So that then it was fulfilled, as God had long ere foreshowed; ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... My liege, it chances The Archon Lamachus is old and spent. He has an only child, a daughter, Gycia, The treasure of his age, who now blooms forth In early maidenhood. The girl is fair As is a morn in springtide; and her father A king in all but name, such reverence His citizens accord him. Were it not well The Prince Asander should contract himself In marriage to this girl, and take the strength Of Cherson for her dowry, and the power Of ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... the cool whiteness of her face was untinged by any flush of young maidenhood. At seventeen she was a slender sprite of a girl, to reach whose unearthly aloofness the warm human hands of her companions strained unavailing. Each winter she descended to the valley and to school and church, a silent, remote ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... welfare is not wholly attributable to an uncle's and guardian's solicitude in behalf of an orphaned niece. A much closer bond, the bond between husband and wife, united them, for when Esther had grown to maidenhood, Mordecai had espoused her. (79) Naturally, Esther would have been ready to defend her conjugal honor with her life. She would gladly have suffered death at the hands of the king's bailiffs rather than yield herself to ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... OR JUSTICE.—As has been already said, Artegal, or Justice, makes conquest of Britomartis or Elizabeth. It is no earthly love that follows, but the declaration of the queen that in her continued maidenhood justice to her people shall be her only spouse. Such, whatever the honest historian may think, was the poet's conceit of what would best please his ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... men void of understanding," to their common degradation. This human wastage is worse upon the race than war; and all the more pathetic because it consists of girls scarcely past the threshold of their maidenhood. When we consider further the indescribably horrible cruelty of the "white-slave trade," which the insatiable lust of men has brought into being, we may begin to realize to what the absence of restraint upon this appetite ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... at the open casement, illumined, with its clear radiance, the chamber which had been, during the years of her maidenhood, Mora de Norelle's ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... and with every people, the arcana of life and death, the mysteries of birth, childhood, puberty, adolescence, maidenhood, womanhood, manhood, motherhood, fatherhood, have called forth the profoundest thought and speculation. From the contemplation of these strange phenomena sprang the esoteric doctrines of Egypt and the East, with their horrible accompaniments of vice and ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... enormously. He had had a hopeless feeling, of late, that life was too complex an affair for him to grapple with. Now, as by a flash, order was restored in his chaotic universe. He stood gazing in rapture at Miss Jones's blushing face, which seemed angelic in its purity and its dignified maidenhood. That there dwelt a sweet young soul behind those blameless features he felt ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... and darkens in a vessel over the fire. It remained, persisted. Time but steadied the focus as the wise oculist, seeking for his patient the perfect image, drops lenses in the frame through which the vision chart is viewed. In a little the perfect image is found. There was that Rosalie, come to maidenhood, come to the dizzy edge of leaving school, with the perfect image of her persistent obsession; with the belief no longer that men were magicians having the world for their washpot and women for their footstool, but unquestionably that they "had a better time" than women and that ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... come once more, But bringing young ones of our brood— One boy (Salopian), and four Girls, blooming into maidenhood. ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... reconnoitring took place, that he appeared sad and much depressed. The truth was that, by a strange freak of destiny, it had come to pass that the stronghold he was set to reduce was the home of his own sister, whom he had tenderly loved during her maidenhood, and whom he loved now, in spite of the estrangement which had resulted from hostilities with her husband's family. He believed, too, that, notwithstanding this cruel division, she still was sincerely ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... scene, but she was not to be found amongst the governesses. No one in Polchester had learnt yet to cycle in rational costume, it was several years before the publication of "The Heavenly Twins," and Mr. Trollope's Lilys and Lucys were still considered the ideal of England's maidenhood. Mrs. Cole, therefore, had to choose between idiotic young women and crabbed old maids, and she finally chose an old maid. I don't think that Miss Jones was the very best choice that she could have made, but time was short. Jeremy, aided by Hamlet, was growing terribly ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... one early example of the wizard-legend where the magician is saved from his pact with Satan not so much by the counter-charms of the Church as by the purity and steadfastness of Christian maidenhood, and for this reason I think the poet Shelley is right in regarding this legend as 'the true germ of Goethe's Faust.' It is the story of Cyprian and Justina, who were among the many victims of the persecution of the Christians by Diocletian, about 300 A.D. Cyprian ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... unconscious lethargy of her maidenhood's untroubled dreams the soul of Vera had awakened at length to the realization of the strong, passionate woman's ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... parents-in-law. If the negotiations go off smoothly, the marriage contract is written, presents are exchanged between the engaged couple, through their respective parents, and all that is left the girl of her maidenhood is a period of busy preparation for ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... And all the light upon her silver face Flowed from the spiritual lily that she held. Lo! these her emblems drew mine eyes—away: For see, how perfect-pure! As light a flush As hardly tints the blossom of the quince Would mar their charm of stainless maidenhood.' ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... in a meditation. "Poor Kate! poor Kate! We were bairns together, M. Montaiglon, innocent bairns, and happy, twenty years syne, and I will not say but what in her maidenhood there was some warmth between us, so that I know her well. She was compelled by her relatives to marriage with our parchment friend yonder, and there you have the start of what has been hell on earth for her. The man has not the soul of a louse, and as for her, she's the finest gold! You would see ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... much ado to conceal her chagrin; she had started out with bright hopes of securing a brilliant match, and now, though not yet twenty, began to be haunted with the terrible, boding fear of old maidenhood. ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... child's way of caring For only the present enjoyment shall pass; When she'll learn to take thought of the dress that she's wearing, And grow rather fond of consulting the glass? Well, never mind; nothing really can change her; Fair childhood will grow to as fair maidenhood; Her unselfish, sweet nature is safe from all danger; I know she will always be charming ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... seemed that these colors were an image of the soul that was disclosed to him. He would have been at a loss for words to describe the extraordinary sense of purity that Corydon gave to him; it was not simply her maidenhood—it was something far more rare than that. Here was an utterly perfect human soul; a soul without speck or blemish—without a base idea, with no trace of a vanity, unaware what a pretense might be. The joy and wonder of life welled spontaneously in her, ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... born of murmuring sound" may enhance the charms of maidenhood, is it too much to expect that sunburn, fervently desired, may not only permanently darken the complexion, but affect the mien of the race? And thus in years to come the white Australian may be of the past—transformed physically by the supremacy of soil ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... stars, Welshwomen's hats, and rosaries pendent from the gas brackets. As for Florinda's story, her name had been bestowed upon her by a painter who had wished it to signify that the flower of her maidenhood was still unplucked. Be that as it may, she was without a surname, and for parents had only the photograph of a tombstone beneath which, she said, her father lay buried. Sometimes she would dwell upon the size of it, and rumour had it that Florinda's father had died from the growth of ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... As for Smellie, trembling with weakness and depressed in spirits as he was after his recent sharp attack of fever, he completely broke down, and, laying his head upon my shoulder, sobbed like a child. Poor Daphne! it seemed hard that she should thus, in the first bright flush and glory of her maidenhood, be struck down, and the light of her life extinguished by the ruthless hand of a murderer; and yet, perhaps, after all, it was better so, better that she should enjoy the bliss of laying down her life for the sake of the man she loved, rather ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... and other disease. The first thing the child learns is that it is its duty to be pretty—to look its best. It is taught to value dress and show as the great necessities of existence, and is trained in the most extravagant habits. As the girl advances towards maidenhood, she is forced forward, and made to look as much like a woman as possible. Her education is cared for after a fashion, but amounts to very little. She learns to play a little on some musical instrument, to sing a little, to paint a little—in short she acquires ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... those eyes as he had first seen them in the pale light that had preceded the dawn. Then they had been full of curiosity, like a young animal's. Now surely they were changed. Once they had asked a question. They delivered a summons to-night. What was in them to-night? The mystery of young maidenhood, southern, sunlit, on the threshold of experience, waking to curious knowledge, to a definite consciousness of the meaning of its dreams, of the truth ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... man, who have not destroyed your innocency, you alone are invited, to proclaim anew before the Sun and the Earth, before your companions and in the sight of the Great Mystery, the chastity and purity of your maidenhood. Come ye, all who ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... months gone, when he had waited her coming in those very rooms. Not yet six months, and he seemed to have lived years since then! He recalled her as she appeared before him that night in all the grace and witchery of lovely maidenhood just opening into womanhood. How beautiful, how joyous she had been! without a thought ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... did not expect to find it there. For an instant, however, he saw with new eyes that primary eloquence of woman life, the unspent splendour of youth, the warm joy of the material being, the mystery of maidenhood in all its efflorescence. It was the emergence of his own youth again, as why should it not be, since he had never married and had never dallied! But in a moment ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Gerard might be hesitating in uncertain humility before the delicate maidenhood that invested her like a fine atmosphere forbidding approach. She was not even dimly aware that her averted face controlled to soft impassivity, the intent gaze on her work which veiled her eyes beneath their ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... away, like echo of old age Sighing and dying in the heart that fails. Ah! the cruel beauty ... how it creeps Into my home, into my waiting heart! Who am I that I wait to-night?... Alas, Where is the old content of maidenhood, The calmness and the laughter and the song, The patient hands unshaken as the needle Plied to the gentle rhythm that my lips Murmured, untroubled girlhood at ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... this terrible fact is the other, that woman must marry in India anyhow. No disgrace and misfortune can befall a woman, according to Hindu ideas, equal to that of spending her whole life in maidenhood. This, of course, is connected with the idea that she has no social status or religious destiny apart from man. Hence it is that a host of loving parents, who are unable to find a suitable match for their daughters, rather than leave them unmarried, stupidly join them ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... Morgan, though not at all a sentimental person, had hoarded up her ideal so much after the ordinary date, that it came all the harder upon her when everything thus merged into the light of common day. She walked very fast up Grange Lane, which was another habit of her maidenhood not quite in accord with the habit of sauntering acquired during the same period by the Fellow of All-Souls. When Mrs Morgan was opposite Mr Wodehouse's, she looked across with some interest, thinking of Lucy; and it shocked her greatly ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... lawn, open at the rounded throat, she saw with woman's unerring eye the unspoken approval if not open admiration in his face. Not yet nineteen, she had lived a busy, earnest, thoughtful life. The Cranstons had known her from early maidenhood. She was a child in the Southern garrison in the days of the great epidemic, when the young captain owed his life to the doctor's skill and assiduous care. It was this that led to the deep friendship between the two men, and to Cranston's ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... has Amalia to do with Luis' marriage?" asked Jovita, to whose maidenhood simplicity seemed befitting in spite of ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... heart— The prim coquette, the drinking stuff, The drinker, then, the farms and cattle; And on the miser, rude and rough, The robes and lace did Aesop settle; For thus, he said, 'an early date Would see the sisters alienate Their several shares of the estate. No motive now in maidenhood to tarry, They all would seek, post haste, to marry; And, having each a splendid bait, Each soon would find a well-bred mate; And, leaving thus their father's goods intact, Would to their mother pay ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... but with evidence of unbending character behind it, in some way conjured something out of the past, and he saw her again, the greying locks restored to their youthful glory and the careworn cheek abloom with the colour of young maidenhood as they had been in the gathering shadows that night when they swore to build their own home, and live their own lives, and love each other, always, only, for ever and ever...And yet, to let her defiance go unchecked, to have his authority challenged ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... life; how, oft she stood, Sweet in her guileless maidenhood, By dying bed, in hovel lone, Whose sorrow she had ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... clasping the hand of the daughter of one of his scullions, is grotesque and humiliating. At the time the thought never presented itself to me at all, and had it done so it would have troubled me no whit. She was my first glimpse of fresh young maidenhood, and I was filled with pleasant interest and desirous of more acquaintance with this phenomenon. Beyond that I ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... from the arrival of at "Powhatan," the country seat of the Mayo family, just below Richmond, of a fair guest—Miss Louisa Patterson, of Philadelphia. This lady was no longer young, according to the severe standards of that time of early marriages and correspondingly early "old-maidenhood," but so much the better, as she was therefore of suitable age for the elderly though spruce and prosperous widower. She was, withal, a decidedly personable woman with the elegant manners and conversation of the inner ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... how she spent the entire evenings sitting alone by the window in the dark—assuredly not on Olya's account, but because she was dying; all her life she had been dying, as the town was dying where Kozlov was read; as he, Agrenev, was dying; as the maidenhood of Olya had died. How powerful is the onward rush of life! What tragedy lay in those evenings by the window ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... lie spoken that converted all her frank, proud maidenhood to a memory. In its place there was now something false and sullied. While Dubova was dressing herself, Sina glanced furtively at her from time to time. Her friend seemed to her bright and pure, and she herself as repulsive as a crushed reptile. ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... since the body's maidenhood Alone were neither rare nor good Unless with it I gave to you A spirit still untrammeled, too, Take my dreams and take my mind That were masterless as wind; And "Master!" I shall say to you Since ...
— Love Songs • Sara Teasdale
... much-disputed question of her masculine attire, she said she would wear woman's dress only when she heard Mass, and woman's clothing at her execution, if it came to that. The judges were perfectly well aware of her proved maidenhood, and of the real reason for her dress, but they persisted—without result—in trying to trap her into dangerous replies. She was far too direct and simple to be caught, just because she saw no "heresy" in an act of ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... cease to resist (O Maid!) such bridegroom opposing, Right it is not to resist whereto consigned thee a father, Father and mother of thee unto whom obedience is owing. Not is that maidenhood all thine own, but partly thy parents! Owneth thy sire one third, one third is right of thy mother, Only the third is thine: stint thee to strive with the others, Who to the stranger son have yielded their dues with a dower! 65 Hymen O Hymenaeus: ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... fearlessly as some undaunted child She met his eyes that searched her own for truth, She who had scorned the tempest dark and wild, Feared not the chidings of his hasty youth. And undismayed she moved to where he stood, With blushing, beauteous charms of maidenhood, And there with rapt eyes looking up to him, She told him of those visions never dim; Of that wild spirit born amid the storm Whose restless strength had swayed her fragile form. Before his own she laid her very soul, That he might there its ...
— Love or Fame; and Other Poems • Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
... her close intercourse with the Garthowen family from babyhood. Did she feel anything more? She thought she did. From childhood she had been promised to Will; the idea of marrying him when they were both grown to manhood and maidenhood had been familiar to her ever since she could remember. It caused no excitement in her mind, no tumult in her heart. It was in the nature of things—it was Will's wish—it was her fate! She did ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... the stream of time flow by And leave each year a richer good, And matron loveliness outvie The nameless charm of maidenhood. ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... examining witnesses from Domremy, and the Queen of Sicily and other great ladies to whom Joan was intrusted, the clergy found nothing in her but "goodness, humility, frank maidenhood, piety, honesty and simplicity." As for her wearing a man's dress, the Archbishop of Embrim said to the king, "It is more becoming to do these things in man's clothes, since they have to be done ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... the tale of crime, long and intricate; but I will briefly follow its argument. Her husband was Sychaeus, wealthiest in lands of the Phoenicians, and loved of her with ill-fated passion; to whom with virgin rites her father had given her maidenhood in wedlock. But the kingdom of Tyre was in her brother Pygmalion's hands, a monster of guilt unparalleled. Between these madness came; the unnatural brother, blind with lust of gold, and reckless of his sister's love, lays Sychaeus low before the altars with ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... in the superstition of her old-maidenhood concerning love, really thought it cold-blooded and shocking; but she said, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... less frequent, her dress lighter; her conversation, toned by the ideas of pride and self-love reflected from the society she moved in, was profane and irreligious; and soon the roses of Christian virtue that bloom in the cheek of innocent maidenhood became sick and withered in the heated, feverish air of perverse influences that tainted ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... her youth and maidenhood had gone by in silent and fanciful dreamings, whilst one of the greatest conflicts the world had ever known was raging between men of the same kith and the same blood. The education of women—even of those of rank and wealth—was avowedly upon ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... and drawing back to escape the disturbing eloquence of his eyes, she discovered the presence of his encircling arm. The discovery brought her to her feet—flushed, palpitating, aquiver with anger at this first shadow of insult to her maidenhood. ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... a legend that the love of God So quickened under Mary's heart it wrought Her very maidenhood to holier stuff.... However that may be, the birth befell Upon a night when all the Syrian stars Swayed tremulous before one lordlier orb That rose in gradual splendor, Paused, Flooding the firmament with mystic light, And dropped upon the breathing hills A sudden music Like a distillation ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... really true of chastity? she would ask herself. She might prove it false if she could veil bygones. The recuperative power which pervaded organic nature was surely not denied to maidenhood alone. ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... stared at her with the story of relentless years; at the corners of her lips the artistic fingers of Time had chiselled lines, delicate, it is true, but clearly defined—a line that did not dent the cheeks of early maidenhood, a line that had found no place near her own lips ten years ago; and above her eyes—she had not discerned that, at first—there was a lack of fullness, you could not name it hollowness; that was new, at least new to her, others with ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... the poets and romancists for nothing. Perhaps Broussard would say more to her—at that thought a lovely light came into Anita's innocent eyes. Perhaps he had forgotten everything. Then Anita's eyes were troubled. The pride of maidenhood was born, as it should be, with love, and Anita no longer ran to the window to see Broussard, but when he was present he filled the room; when he spoke she heard ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... is that no value was, or is, attached to maidenhood in all Polynesia, the young woman being left to her own whims without blame or care. Only deep and sincere attachment holds her at last to the man she has chosen, and she then follows his wishes in matters of fidelity, though still to a large ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... and their kings' daughters are now become sons of the Master and handmaidens of the Anointed. And one nobly born lady among them, a beautiful woman whom I baptized myself, came soon after to tell me that she was divinely admonished to live in maidenhood, drawing nearer to Him. Six days later she entered the grade that all the handmaidens of the Anointed desire, though their fathers and mothers would hinder them, reproaching and afflicting them; nevertheless, they grow in number, so that I know not how many they are, besides widows and continent ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... the night, And sleep under a bush; and she could eke Wrestle by very force and very might With any young man, were he ne'er so wight;* *active, nimble There mighte nothing in her armes stond. She kept her maidenhood from every wight, To no man deigned she for ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... thing in the least emotional way. In the whole of the two centuries prior to that date there were five first-born girls out of a total of seven generations of the family. Each of these girls grew up to maidenhood and each became engaged, and each one died during the period of engagement, two by suicide, one by falling from a window, one from a 'broken heart' (presumably heart failure, owing to sudden shock through fright). The fifth girl was killed one evening in the ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... sunshine years yet, little one, and think not of the bonds and cares of marriage. How could these little hands lift the heavy kettles, wash the blankets, and do the thousand tasks of a household? You are mistaken, child. It is not love you feel, but the changing fancies of maidenhood. Play in the sun with Loup and wait for the real prince. He will come some day with great beauty and you will give no more thought to me. He must be young, little one, a youth of twenty; not one like me, nearer the mark of another decade. It ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... from her very cradle Lovely and witty and good; And at last, in the course of years, had blossomed Into full sweet maidenhood. ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... is my prayer.... They come into a house: they are all strife And hate to any child of the dead wife.... Better a serpent than a stepmother! A boy is safe. He has his father there To guard him. But a little girl! (Taking the LITTLE GIRL to her) What good And gentle care will guide thy maidenhood? What woman wilt thou find at father's side? One evil word from her, just when the tide Of youth is full, would wreck thy hope of love. And no more mother near, to stand above Thy marriage-bed, nor ...
— Alcestis • Euripides
... that she wilfully deceived thee, that she abused thy belief and denied to thy question and profaned maidenhood to stealth,—all this might have galled thee; but to these wrongs old men are subjected,—they give mirth to our farces; maid and lover are privileged impostors. But to have counted the sands in thine hour-glass, to have sat by thy side, marvelling when the worms should have ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... personified. Parthenia is sister of Agnei'a (3 syl.), or wifely chastity, the spouse of Encra't[^e]s, or temperance. Her attendant is Er'ythre, or modesty. (Greek, parth[)e]nia, "maidenhood.")—Phineas Fletcher, The ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... daughter's wedding was sent with the others, and the remaining days of Rachel's maidenhood slipped away in a whirl of preparation and excitement in which her mother reveled, but which was ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the kindly voice of age, who can hold cheerful converse with one whom years have deprived of charms. Show me the man of generous impulses, who is always ready to help the poor and needy; who treats unprotected maidenhood as he would the heiress surrounded by the protection of rank, riches and family; who never forgets for an instant the delicacy, the respect, that is due a woman in any condition or class. Show me such a man and you show me a gentleman—nay, more, ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... she was in spite of the long years of trouble and disappointment! True, the first blush of maidenhood was gone, for she was only four years younger than I, but she was beautiful beyond description. Little of stature, yet perfectly moulded, her great, grey eyes still possessed their old charm, while her brown hair made a fitting crown for so beauteous ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... common lands and it urges these principles upon the public, praying that the time may speedily come when no human being shall be condemned without due process of law; and when the unspeakable outrages which have so often provoked such lawlessness shall be banished from the world, and childhood, maidenhood and womanhood shall no more be the victims of ...
— The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... very pretty. Excitement seems to put the match to the flickering taper of beauty, hidden behind the self-control of healthy maidenhood. Her cheeks were aflame and her eyes sparkled so like Jack's when he was sure ...
— The Motor Girls on a Tour • Margaret Penrose
... had come in their place; knowledge was hers, but faith had rotted. Time was when the sight of a drunken man filled her with terror; now the one beside her scarcely awakened disgust. Bad women had seemed unreal—phantoms of another world. Now she brushed shoulders with them daily, and her own maidenhood was soiled by the contact. She was a girl only in name; in reality she was a woman of the streets, or so she viewed herself in ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... blown of death's dark horn The marriage moonlight withers, that the morn For two made one may find three made by death One ruin at the blasting of its breath: Clothed with heart's flame renewed And strange new maidenhood, Faith lightens on the lips that bloomed for hire Pure as the lightning of love's first-born fire: Wide-eyed and patient ever, till the curse Find where to fall and pierce, 110 Keen expiation whets with edge more dread A father's wrong to smite a ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... was past thirty-five, and had no regrets. She was a close student of the Bible, and brought one text from it into her own life. "When I was a child I played as a child, but now that I am old I have put aside childish things." She often quoted this in defence of her industrious maidenhood. ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... Among the other pictures are full-length portraits of the Queen and Prince Albert in their youth, taken soon after their marriage— like the natural good end to the various pictures of her Majesty in her fair English childhood and maidenhood, with the blonde hair clustering about the open innocent forehead, the fearless blue eyes, the frank mouth. The child, long a widow in her turn, a mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, must look with strange mingled feelings on these shadows of ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... these busy days Ume-ko moved as one but little interested. Kano and Uchida noticed nothing unusual. To them she was merely the conventional nonenity of maidenhood that Japanese etiquette demanded. It never entered their heads that she would not have agreed with equal readiness to any ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... receipts which fell to the minor members was small—but it was full of variety and sometimes of excitement. If the work did not entirely drive away the remembrance of Lancelot Vane it enabled her to look upon the romance of her early maidenhood with equanimity. Her love affair had become a regret tinged ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... Kore. M. Martin ('Hist. France,' i. 63) thinks there is here a confusion between the Greek Kore (Proserpine) and Koridwen, the White Fairy, the Celtic Goddess of the Moon and also (as amongst the Greeks) of maidenhood. But ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare |
