"Housewifely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fine black hair, and a good figure, and remained humble and submissive in all, the constable's wife desired for him the favour of women and of fortune, not to let his gallantry stand idle, and from a good housewifely idea, she fired his imagination according to her fantasies, by certain small favours and little looks which serpented towards him like biting adders, trifling with the happiness of this young life, like a princess accustomed to play with objects more precious than a simple knight. ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... for chief ideal types of human beauty and faith, the simple mother's and wife's heart of Andromache; the divine, yet rejected wisdom of Cassandra; the playful kindness and simple princess-life of happy Nausicaa; the housewifely calm of that of Penelope, with its watch upon the sea; the ever patient, fearless, hopelessly devoted piety of the sister and daughter, in Antigone; the bowing down of Iphigenia, lamb-like and silent; and, finally, the expectation of the resurrection, made clear to the soul of the Greeks ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... sailor, he will take my finger and the ring in this way, and deck it out with a housewifely touch and a tenderness of expression about his mouth, as sailors do: kiss it, perhaps, with a simple air, as if we were children playing an idle game, and not at the very height of observation and envy by a great crowd saying, "Ah! ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... we have mentioned washing, I would ask some good housewifely gentlewoman, if servant-maids wearing printed linens, cottons, and other things of that nature, which require frequent washing, do not, by enhancing the article of soap, add more to housekeeping than the generality of people would imagine? And yet these wretches cry out ...
— Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business • Daniel Defoe
... what we all have to come to, isn't it?—unless we go to that creature that finds some mischief still for idle hands to do. I don't expect to come to stone-cutting or cattle-driving, but I do expect to settle down into a tolerable housewifely little woman, and—" ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... thoughtful little wrinkle in her brow, she studied the face of this new companion who acted so strangely, and he, equally mystified, looked around the cave. A pile of nuts in a corner indicated her housewifely thrift and forethought. A bed of dry moss with an evenly packed elevation at the end—which could be nothing but a pillow—showed plainly the manner in which she had preserved the velvety softness of her skin. ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... longer a girl, but a mature and influential being. Her ancient diffidence before George Cannon had completely gone; she had no qualms, no foreboding, no dubious sensation of weakness. Indeed, she felt herself in one respect his superior, for his confidence in Sarah Gailey's housewifely skill, his conviction that it was unique and would be irreplaceable, struck her as somewhat naif, as being yet another example of the absurd family pride which she and her mother had often noticed in the Five Towns. She was not happy at ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... sit down without waiting for her, on the little squat, old-fashioned sofa, and Nan went about the room with her match and dotted it with candles. Raven looked after her in her housewifely progress; he was still concerned, still grave over her leaving his house for this. She had on her walking suit, whatever frills she might have discovered upstairs, and she looked ready for outdoor enterprise. What a hardy child she was, slender and supple, but taut for action in the homespun ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... to tell, the thread of romance inwoven with the composition of Mirpah Madgin was a very slender one. In so far she belied her own beauty. For a young woman she was strangely practical, and that in a curiously unfeminine way. She was her father's managing clerk and alter ego. The housewifely acts of sewing and cooking she held in utter distaste. For domestic management in any of its forms she had no faculty, unless it were for that portion of it which necessitated a watchful eye upon the purse-strings. Such ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... made cooking pots in the golden spring of her wedding year, when the quail went up two and two to their resting places about the foot of Oppapago. In this fashion she made them when, after pillage, it was possible to reinstate the housewifely crafts. Quail ran then in the Black Rock by hundreds,—so you will still find them in fortunate years,—and in the famine time the women cut their long hair to make snares when the flocks came morning and evening ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... her by singing her one of his sweetest songs, telling her how dearly he loved her, how highly he esteemed her, and how truly happy he was that he had so pleasant and agreeable, and at the same time so housewifely, a companion. She appeared quite as well pleased to be appreciated as any wife or housekeeper of my acquaintance, and it made her labour a labour of love. We ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various
... passionate self-reproach. Presently he managed to interrupt, reminding her that her dining-room windows commanded as comprehensive a view of the next house as did the front steps, and after a time her housewifely duty so far prevailed over her indignation at the man's unwholesome stolidity that she followed him down the hall to preside over the meal, not, however, to partake largely ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... we to do about supper?' returned Mollie with housewifely anxiety; 'we have such a nice supper, and Cyril will be so cold and hungry shut up in his room. We have made such a big fire, because he was going to spend the ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... He has written me a great deal lately about a certain Fraeulein Teresa, the daughter of one of his professors, who takes such excellent care of her younger brothers and sisters, and who is such a wonderfully economical, housewifely little body—just a new edition of Werther's Charlotte. I do not think that he really likes her," she continued after musing a little: "he just holds her up as a model for me to copy. I shouldn't wonder if she was only imaginary, to make me feel how far I ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... geraniums and roses, to which the girl's fingers wandered lovingly from time to time, in the effort to coax each blossom into the position in which it would make the bravest show. On one corner, near the waiter, stood a housewifely little basket of keys, through the handle of which was thrust a fresh ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... clean, with a cluttered kind of cleanliness that bespeaks many housewifely tasks under way. There were mixing bowls, and saucepans, and a kettle or so, and from the oven there came the sounds of sputtering and hissing. About the room there hung the divinely delectable scent of freshly baked cookies. ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... friendly fashion against his legs. They began to talk in the soft light and had forgotten almost that another guest was expected. Margaret hoped fervently that he would not come. She had never looked more lovely than on this afternoon, and she busied herself with the preparations for tea with a housewifely grace that added a peculiar delicacy to her comeliness. The dignity which encompassed the perfection of her beauty was delightfully softened, so that you were reminded of those sweet domestic saints who lighten here and there the passionate ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... weather; Reflect on mishaps in church and in state, Digest many things as well as good meat; And club each alike that no one may treat. This if you will grant without coach or chair, You may, in a trice, cross the way and be there; For Peg is your neighbour, as well as Delany, A housewifely woman full pleasing ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... into his shop, turned on all the lights, put the basket of ruddy apples on the counter, straightened the pile of old magazines and pulled out the carom board, the box of chess and checkers. He took a last housewifely look around, then put on his hat and coat and started out. There was pain and anger and a terrible determination in ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... complacent over the name. She had the greatest confidence in my judgment, and the characterisation pleased her housewifely pride, so much so that she flushed with pleasure as she said that if she 'ad 'er 'ealth she thought she could keep the place looking so that the passers-by would easily ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... to find a quiet boarding-place; but as soon as he mentioned his name, the keepers, male and female, suddenly discovered that they had no rooms. Night was near, and his courage was beginning to fail him, when he at last found a thrifty gentlewoman who gave far more attention to her housewifely cares than to the current news. She readily received the well-dressed stranger, and showed him to his room. Haldane did not hide his name from her, for he resolved to spend the night in the street before dropping a name which now seemed to turn people from him as if contagion lurked ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... and turning her broom right end up, in a spasm of housewifely care. "You better go to work and do yours over; that's in the bargain, ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... as though after the dreary stripping of the decorations used in some Watteau festival, moss-roses in loosened garlands. Elsewhere a corner seemed to be reserved for the commoner kinds of lily; of a neat pink or white like rocket-flowers, washed clean like porcelain, with housewifely care; while, a little farther again, were others, pressed close together in a floating garden-bed, as though pansies had flown out of a garden like butterflies and were hovering with blue and burnished wings over ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... went to the dining-room, where Julie, housewifely girl that she was, brewed golden coffee and made toast with no ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... pail, Kitty some glasses and Marjorie some napkins and forks, for she was of a housewifely nature, ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... sales he managed to support a wife and two pleasant children in reasonable comfort at Balham. Mrs. DABCHICK could not be accused by her best friends of over-refinement, but everybody agreed that she was just the homely, comfortable, housewifely person who would always make DABCHICK happy, and be a good and careful mother to his children. Often in the old days when I came down to Balham and took pot-luck with DABCHICK, while Mrs. DABCHICK beamed serenity and middle-class ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 11, 1891 • Various
... the sitting-room, and he betook himself thither, picturing the homely scene of Sylvia knitting socks for her husband or engaged upon some housewifely task. ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... to another, on whose career she had staked all her happiness. Having thus other interests she evinced to-day the ease of one who hazards nothing, and there was no sign of that preoccupation with housewifely contingencies which so often makes the hostess hardly recognizable as the charming woman who graced a friend's home the day before. In marrying Swithin Lady Constantine had played her card,—recklessly, impulsively, ruinously, perhaps; but she had played ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... having dressed herself in mourning at the death of Robespierre. These legislators remind me of one of Swift's female attendants, who, in spite of the literary taste he endeavoured to inspire her with, never could be divested of her original housewifely propensities, but would quit the most curious anecdote, as he expresses it, "to go seek an old rag in a closet." Their projects for the revival of their navy seldom go farther than a transposal in ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... threshold of Robert Burns; and as the women seemed to be merely straggling visitors, and nobody, at all events, had a right to send us away, we went into the back-door, and, turning to the right, entered a kitchen. It showed a deplorable lack of housewifely neatness, and in it there were three or four children, one of whom, a girl eight or nine years old, held a baby in her arms. She proved to be the daughter of the people of the house, and gave us what leave she could to look about us. Thence we stepped across ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... varied experiences, and trying to learn the best way to take care of her father's house and make it a real home for him. Sometimes she felt this responsibility very greatly, and longed for some motherly, housewifely friend ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... and flowered tester, the great fireplace with its shining dogs, and the Venus and Cupid mirror. Over and over again she had played that the house was hers, and to-day, through some heralding excitement in the air, it seemed doubly so. She sat in a dream of housewifely possession, conning idly over the pleasant things she might do before the day was over. There was cold tongue for her dinner, Ann had told her, and a clear soup, if she liked to heat it. She might cook vegetables if she chose. And there was the best of tea to be made out of the ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... a distant prison. This it was that saddened the souls of the two children with a gloom which no sunshine could dispel. When on Fridays Ephraim returned, fatigued and weary from his work, to the home over which Viola presided with such pathetic housewifely care, no smile of welcome was on her face, no greeting on his. Ephraim, 'tis true, told his sister where he had been, and what he had done, but in the simplest words there vibrated that tone of unutterable sadness which has its constant ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... still we behold her majestical stature, And the blue petticoat's ample plaits, that down from her bosom Hangs in abundant folds about her neatly shaped ankles, She without question it is; come, therefore, and let us discover Whether she honest and virtuous be, a housewifely maiden." ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... a "Thank you" which was not as meek as it sounded, and withdrew to rummage among the canned edibles drawn from the inexhaustible stock of Sears-Roebuck. Having laid out a selection, housewifely, and looked to the oil stove derived from the same source, she turned with some curiosity to the mental pabulum with which this strange young hermit had provided himself. Would this, too, bear the mail-order imprint and testify ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... unconsciously flinched as she heard the jug struck hard in the darkness against the tap. Her eye was fixed upon the jug as it was borne brimming and splashing back to her side. She could not help feeling such housewifely anxiety even amid the tremors of her other acute concern. As Alf knelt he lavishly sprinkled some more water upon Pa's face, and set the jug ready to Emmy's hand, working with a quiet deftness that ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... the vicarage garden, her spectacles on her nose, a large couvre-pied over her knees, and the Whinborough newspaper on her lap. The neighbourhood of this last enabled her to make an intermittent pretence of reading; but in reality the energies of her housewifely mind were taken up with quite other things. The vicar's wife was plunged in a housekeeping experiment of absorbing interest. All her solid preparations for the evening were over, and in her own mind she decided that with them there ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in delivering to Aldonza the message and token, when he overtook her on the stairs of the house at Chelsea, carrying up a lapful of roses to the still-room, where Dame Alice More was rejoicing in setting her step-daughters to housewifely tasks. ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Green, where so often she blest The return of a Husband or Son, Coming happily home to their rest, At night, when their labour, was done: Where so oft in her earlier years, She, with transport maternal, has seen (While plying her housewifely cares) Her Children all ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... where there'd ha' been victual for us all then," observed Mrs. Palfrey, regarding the matter in a housewifely light. ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... "which term I shall explain in the very words of Littleton: 'It seemeth that this word hotchpot is in English a pudding; for in a pudding is not commonly just one thing alone, but one thing with other things together.' By this housewifely metaphor our ancestors meant to inform us that the lands, both those given in frankmarriage, and those descending in fee-simple, should be mixed and blended together, and then divided in equal ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various
... in a vision, a picture of a quiet home amid green hedge-rows and sunny lanes, not a home such as Blanche's would be, with gorgeous surroundings and liveried servants everywhere, but such a home as makes a man better for living in it; a home where the housewifely Bessie was the presiding goddess, flitting about just as she was doing now, putting away the silver and china, brushing up the hearth, moving a chair here and another there, watering her pots of flowers in the conservatory, tea-roses and carnations and heliotrope and lilies ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... reverently raised her blue eyes—true Scottish eyes—limpid and clear as the dew on Scottish heather. Cheerful they were withal, for they soon began to flit hither and thither, following the motions of Jean's "eident hand" with most housewifely care. And Jean herself, a handmaid prim and ancient, but youthful compared to her mistress, seemed to watch the latter's faintest gesture with most affectionate observance. Of all the light traits which reveal character, none is more suggestive ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... eyes, I was heartily welcome to, if I were not too proud to accept them, as, in wearing them, she said, I should make her think that she yet had poor Ted to comfort her, and I would take his vacant place in her heart. The good woman, however, with housewifely care, brought up to the room a large tub with a plentiful supply of hot water and soap, so that I might have "a thorough wash," as she called it, before putting on the clean clothes. Thus, through the kind hospitality of brother and sister alike, before the day ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... silk, aprons trimmed with lace, that a uniform apron, of modest linen, with a small check pattern, blue and white, had been imposed on them. Nevertheless, in spite of this enforced simplicity, Raymonde, thanks to her freshness and her active, good-natured, housewifely air, had succeeded in making herself ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... just or not, is a bad cure of an ill disease; it is ruining the young man to make him sober, and making him a slave for life to make him diligent. Be it that the wife he shall marry is a sober, frugal, housewifely woman, and that nothing is to be laid to her charge but the mere necessary addition of a family expense, and that with the utmost moderation, yet, at the best, he cripples his fortune, stock-starves his business, and brings a great expense upon himself at first, before, by his success ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... Mrs. Joyce stood alone in her dark doorway to receive her guest, and, through all her flutter of hope, she felt a bitter twinge of housewifely chagrin at being discovered in such miserable quarters. The black earth flooring at her threshold gritted hatefully under her feet, and the gusts whistling through the many chinks of her rough walls seemed to skirl derisively. She was nevertheless resolved to put the best ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... some time. It was quite clear that she could not make head or tail of my announcement. She had put some order into the drawing-room by now, her housewifely instincts having got the better of her dismay; and it no longer bore that deserted look, like a furnished house long to let, which I had noticed on my first visit after the catastrophe. But now that I had seen Strickland in Paris it was difficult to imagine him in those ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... returned to her housewifely tasks, leaving Bostil thoughtfully stroking the hound and watching the fire. Presently Lucy returned—a different Lucy—one that did not rouse his rider's pride, but thrilled his father's heart. She had been a slim, lithe, supple, ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... this sudden turn about? I cannot escape the conjecture that here the death of her mother had a decisive influence and with it the necessity to take the place with her father of his wife. Her housewifely activity is noted first to be sure from her twelfth or thirteenth year. Yet I am of the opinion that she had already in her seventh year begun to play this rle—in which year the death of her mother would be placed—only because she was too small it had been under the eye of a maid ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... advantages of good society, too, when we are living apart, for I foresee entertainment after entertainment. We will give breakfasts, luncheons, teas, and dinners to one another; and meanwhile I shall have learned all the housewifely arts. Think, too, how much better you can paint with me out of ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and there was never any real danger of her losing that gentler attribute—there was too much in her of the little dead mother for that. Brownie, the ever watchful, had seen to it that she did not lack housewifely accomplishments, and Mr. Linton was wont to say proudly that Norah's scones were as light as her hand on the horse's mouth. There was no doubt that the irregular side of her education ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... on a household where the woman does not disdain housewifely work, and specially the practical superintendence of the kitchen, there we may be sure we shall find cheerfulness and content. There seems to be something in the life of a practical housekeeper that answers to the needs of a woman's best nature, and that makes her pleasant ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... immediate present to think of, and while Jean thawed his hands at the fire and Sara Lee was taking housewifely stock of ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... little puddles of water trailed along the carpet as Peterkin carried her into the sitting room, where he was about to lay her down upon the delicate satin couch, when his wife's housewifely instincts were roused, and ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... she brushed away her tears, and coming to the table with a little housewifely eagerness would not let me wait upon myself, but carved and poured for me, and then sat down opposite me and covered her eyes ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston |
