"Illegitimacy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... introduction. Not to mention the coarseness of these words of Gloucester, they are, farther, out of place in the mouth of a person intended to represent a noble character. One can not agree with the opinion of some critics that these words are given to Gloucester in order to show the contempt for his illegitimacy from which Edmund suffers. Were this so, it would first have been unnecessary to make the father express the contempt felt by men in general, and, secondly, Edmund, in his monolog about the injustice of those who despise him for his birth, would have mentioned such words ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... be noted, had, if we pass over his own illegitimacy, in the absence of direct male heirs of Earl Hakon since Erlend Haraldson's death in 1156, probably the best title to receive a grant of the jarldom of Orkney and Shetland and the earldom of Caithness of all the surviving descendants of ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray
... his temporary seizure of our property, and most unjust attempt to establish his own illegitimate line in the estate of Knockwinnock, gave rise to such family feuds and misfortunes, as strongly to found us in that horror and antipathy to defiled blood and illegitimacy which has been handed down to ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... as presumptive heir to the crown. The confederates, assembled at Burgos, declared this oath of fealty a compulsory act, and that many of them had privately protested against it at the time, from a conviction of the illegitimacy of Joanna. In the bill of grievances, which they now presented to the monarch, they required that he should deliver his brother Alfonso into their hands, to be publicly acknowledged as his successor; they enumerated the ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... Duke of Richmond was illegitimate in the strictest sense, but he had been bred as a prince; and I have shown that, in default of a legitimate heir, the king had thought of him as his possible successor. Mary and Elizabeth were illegitimate also, according to law and form; but the illegitimacy of neither the one nor the other could be pressed to its literal consequences. They were the children, each of them, of connexions which were held legal at the period of their birth. They had each received the rank of a princess; and the instincts of ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... that we all five more or less followed the law. At this rate, the talk was pretty certain to become technical. The Cigarette expounded the Poor Laws very magisterially. And a little later I found myself laying down the Scots Law of Illegitimacy, of which I am glad to say I know nothing. The collector and the notary, who were both married men, accused the Judge, who was a bachelor, of having started the subject. He deprecated the charge, with a conscious, pleased air, just like all the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not in fact as large as might be imagined, because the people were well behaved. An official who had had police experience in the north of Japan declared that the south was more "moral and more civilised and had higher tastes." In Ehime, for example, there was very little illegitimacy and fewer children still-born than in any other prefecture. Nevertheless four offences against women had occurred in villages in Ehime within the ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... seems to answer well enough. But only when women have the ability and the opportunity to support themselves is free marriage at all feasible from the economic standpoint, and even then there remains the serious question of illegitimacy. All right-minded persons must acknowledge that the attitude of society towards the illegitimate is unjust and cruel in the extreme, resulting as it does in punishing the perfectly innocent. But every grown man ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... what has been written—to say a word at this stage on the social position of bastards in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, to emphasize the fact that no stigma attached to Cesare Borgia or to any other member of his father's family on the score of the illegitimacy of their birth. ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... asked my advice," said Dr. Ravenshaw gravely, "I say that I entirely agree with Mrs. Pendleton. Your first duty is to Sisily. She should out-weigh all other considerations. If you make her illegitimacy public you may live to be sorry for having ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... Hunyadi John, called so after the great man. He would have been universally acknowledged as King of Hungary but for the illegitimacy of his birth. As it was, Ulaszlo, the son of the King of Poland, afterwards called Ulaszlo the Second, who claimed Hungary as being descended from Albert, was nominated king by a great majority of the Magyar electors. ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... in England, if of sufficiently ancient lineage, grows venial with the years and, if carried out with adequate ruthlessness or at least success, may quickly find itself invested with grandeur. No one boasts of his own illegitimacy, but most men like it to be known that an ancestress, whose memory is kept green, once enjoyed royal favour. No man tells his guests that they are eating stolen food from stolen plate in a stolen house; but many will admit, without imposing ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... which the original quarrel had broken out, and the revocation of the order of succession which was based on its rejection. In fact Gardiner's intention was to bring matters to this; being besides a great enemy and even persecutor of Elizabeth, he wished to see her illegitimacy pronounced in due form;[170] the resolutions passed seemed necessarily to lead to it. Men however did not proceed this time so logically in England. They did not wish to base the future state of the realm on Papal decrees, but on the ordinances once enacted by King and ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... years at Florence, nearly twenty years at Milan, then nineteen years of wandering, till he sinks to rest under the protection of Francis the First at the Chateau de Clou. The dishonour of illegitimacy hangs over his birth. Piero Antonio, his father, was of a noble Florentine house, of Vinci in the Val d'Arno, and Leonardo, brought up delicately among the true children of that house, was the love-child of his youth, with the keen, puissant ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... the crown shall be entailed to his majesty, and the sons or heirs males of his body; and in default of such sons to the lady Elizabeth (who is declared to be the king's eldest issue female, in exclusion of the lady Mary, on account of her supposed illegitimacy by the divorce of her mother queen Catherine) and to the lady Elizabeth's heirs of her body; and so on from issue female to issue female, and the heirs of their bodies, by course of inheritance according to their ages, as the crown of England hath been accustomed ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... Pure and holy in his own character, it was beyond his conception that a man of Colonel Dumont's lofty and Christian views could have lived so many years in the practice of this deception. He had no means of disproving the illegitimacy of Emily. The family had been unknown to him at the period of her birth. The house-servants, with the exception of Hatchie, were all younger than Emily. Then, the statement was made in the will, and was, therefore, the statement of Colonel Dumont himself,—for ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... him then, preserve him next your soul, for he is a jewel fit for such a cabinet: his form, his parts, and every noble action, shews us the royal race from whence he sprung, and the victorious Orange confesses him his own in every virtue, and in every grace; nor can the illegitimacy eclipse him: sure he was got in the first heat of love, which formed him so a hero—but no more. Philander is as kind a ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... candid infidel would throw on them. Yet, if there be any proposition which can with perfect confidence be affirmed touching the early Christians, it is this, that they never once refused obedience to any actual ruler on account of the illegitimacy of his title. At one time, indeed, the supreme power was claimed by twenty or thirty competitors. Every province from Britain to Egypt had its own Augustus. All these pretenders could not be rightful Emperors. Yet it does not appear that, in ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of Demaratus was spurious. The Spartans attached the greatest value to legitimacy,—they sent to consult the Pythian—and Cleomenes, through the aid of Colon, a powerful citizen of Delphi, bribed the oracle to assert the illegitimacy of his foe. Demaratus was deposed. Sinking at once into the rank of a private citizen, he was elected to some inferior office. His enemy, Leotychides, now upon his throne, sent him, by way of insult, a ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the change in the student's pulse when he heard the name of Holliday; of the resemblance of expression that I had discovered between his face and Arthur's; of the emphasis he had laid on those three words, "my own brother," and of his incomprehensible acknowledgment of his own illegitimacy—while I was thinking of these things, the reports I have mentioned suddenly flew into my mind, and linked themselves fast to the chain of my previous reflections. Something within me whispered, "It is best that those two young men should not meet again." I felt it ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... the imprimatur of Church and State. The thing, indeed, is so commonplace that I need not risk a scandal by uncovering it in detail. What I allude to, I need not add, is not that form of irregularity which curses innocent children with the stigma of illegitimacy, but that more refined and thoughtful form which safeguards their social dignity while protecting them against inheritance from their legal fathers. English philosophy, as I have shown, suffers by the fact that Herbert Spencer was too busy to permit himself any such romantic altruism—just as American ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... her title of granddaughter of Henry VII, in the event of the Queen of England's dying without posterity. Unfortunately, she had not always acted with like circumspection; for at the death of Mary Tudor, known as Bloody. Mary, she had laid claim to the throne of Henry VIII, and, relying on the illegitimacy of Elizabeth's birth, had with the dauphin assumed sovereignty over Scotland, England, and Ireland, and had had coins struck with this new title, and plate engraved ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... produced it. The nation at large, justly dreading a disputed succession, with all its long-experienced evils, in the event of Henry's leaving behind him no offspring but a daughter whom he had lately set aside on the ground of illegitimacy, rejoiced in the prospect of a male heir to the crown. The populace of London, captivated, as usual, by the splendors of a coronation, were also delighted with the youth, beauty, and affability ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... the so-called Dauphin in treaties signed by Charles and Isabeau his parents. If anyone knew, she knew; and was it possible that more powerful even than the English, more cruel than the Burgundians, this stain of illegitimacy was upon him, making all effort vain? There is no telling where the sensitive point is in any man's heart, and little worthy as was this King, the story we are here told has a thrill of truth in it. It is reported ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... become a father without having intended it. Morality arises out of the proper or improper performance of social obligations; and I have sometimes wondered whether society's most insane treatment of illegitimacy would not have compelled me into a misalliance with my 'mistress,' as you call her, ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... turmoil he realized that here alone was the only possible menace to his life's happiness. His mother-in-law's past was a bitter pill for a proud man to swallow, and there was even the possibility of his wife's illegitimacy, but, after all, those were matters belonging to the past, and the past quickly receded ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... that Charles had ever told Christina a word about the matter. These pious monarchs were far from being veracious. However, Christina's document would save the young man much trouble, on the point of his illegitimacy, when, on April 11, 1668, he entered St. Andrea al Quirinale as a Jesuit novice. He came in poverty. His wardrobe was of the scantiest. He had two shirts, a chamois leather chest protector, three collars, and three pairs of sleeves. He described himself as 'Jacques de la Cloche, ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... of adoptive parents was a very grievous sin, especially on the part of those who were children of parents who were forbidden to have children. Something worse than illegitimacy was their lot. The penalties of having the eye torn out, or the tongue cut out,(363) show the ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... But the illegitimacy, or at any rate the great doubtfulness, of many current geological inferences, is best seen when we contemplate terrestrial changes now going on; and ask how far such inferences are countenanced ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... Court. He might have ascertained very easily beforehand what would happen, or have contrived to keep her away from Dublin. It was understood when he took the Great Seal that he declined being made a peer, on account of the illegitimacy of his eldest son. Half the world had never heard of Lady Sugden, or knew anything of her history; and as she is an excellent woman, charitable and kind-hearted, I fancy she has moved without obstruction in his natural circle of society. ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... as a means of keeping neutrals out of British waters, Germany declared she would assume no responsibility for destruction of neutral ships within this zone. What this meant was to all intents and purposes a "paper" submarine blockade of the British Isles. Its illegitimacy arose from the fact that it was conducted surreptitiously over a vast area, and was only in the slightest degree effective, causing a destruction each month of less than one percent of the traffic. Had it been restricted to narrow limits, it would have ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... proceeded with a few neglected executions. This list was headed—or rather beheaded—by Lord Chamberlain Hastings, who tendered his resignation in a pail of saw-dust soon after Richard became "protector and defender of the realm." Richard laid claim to the throne in June, on the grounds of the illegitimacy of his nephews, and was crowned July 6. So was his queen. They sat on this throne for some time, and each had a sceptre with which to welt their subjects over the head and keep off the flies in summer. Richard could wield a sceptre ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... has been wondered why Fielding should have chosen to leave the stain of illegitimacy on the birth of his hero ... but had Miss Bridget been privately married ... there could have been no adequate motive assigned for keeping the birth of the child a secret from a man so reasonable and compassionate as ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... on the penal cases incident to marriage; he has even argued on the illegitimacy and the opportuneness of each form of indulgence; he has outlined all the duties, moral, religious and corporeal, of the married couple; in short his work would form twelve volumes in octavo if the huge folio entitled De Matrimonio ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac |
