"Unmaidenly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have said nothing. He hated the recesses of the heart being revealed, particularly those special recesses of a woman's heart; he had thought her unmaidenly. But he was sorry for her; he took her to the play, a rousing farce, for he was one of those who naively consider that two hours of laughing can compensate for months of misery, and even be a remedy. He gave her a brooch also, and said to his mother, "I think ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... that it was imputed to her that she had been forward and unmaidenly. Mrs. Edmonstone saw her extreme distress, and, grieved at the pain she had inflicted, tried to reassure her as much as ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... closed the door, drew the bolt softly. Truth was, she thought the girl had gone mad through grief and love for her son. Believing, as she did, that the love was all unsought and unreturned, and being also shocked in all her delicate decorum by such unmaidenly violence and self-betrayal, she regarded Madelon with a strange mixture of scorn and ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... had accused her of unmaidenly presumption, a flush, that was like the rosy dawn upon the eastern sky, suffused her fair face, neck, ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... longer able to keep up her affected displeasure, put her arms around the young girl, and kissed her forehead. "I certainly ought to reprove you," said she, "for your conduct has been almost unmaidenly, but I have not the heart to chide you for indiscretion that springs from the overflowing of a generous nature. You have violated every rule of etiquette and decorum; but what would you? I am the least conventional of beings ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... no part in anything that was unjust. This girl, he heard, was beautiful and soft and pleasant, and now they told him that the evil things which had been reported against her had been slanders. He was assured that she was neither coarse, nor vulgar, nor unmaidenly. Two or three old men, of equal rank with his own,—men who had been his father's friends and were allied to the Lovels, and had been taken into confidence by Sir William,—told him that the proper ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... above, or whatever you call it on a ship, and everything had been made beautiful with flags and bunting; but nothing was as beautiful as those sailor men themselves, especially the middies. I felt like their mother (I hope that's not unmaidenly?) and should have loved to smooth their hair and pat them on the cheek—of which, by the way, they ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... performances that Epstein arranged for the Children's Hospital, and the letter declared that the writer had been so touched by the wonderful ability displayed by William that she felt she might be forgiven if she did so unmaidenly a thing as to ask for a personal interview. William got the letter—the over-grown boys saw to that—read it through carefully, stowed it away in one of his pockets, and—well, as Tommy Watson says, he just ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... sacre of the regenerator, the liberator, have full possession of you. How I should blame myself if I were to distract you from the aims to which you have devoted your life. I have no one to advise me; but this I know is right. You will, I think, not misunderstand me—you will not think it unmaidenly of me—if I confess to you that I have written these words with some pain, some touch of regret that all is not possible to you that you may desire. But for one soul on devotion. Do I express myself clearly?—you know English is not my native tongue. If we may not go through life together, ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... thought!—gone with her to the Guinigi Tower—then rejected her! A mist seemed to gather about Nobili as he thought of this. He grew stupid in long vistas of speculation. Had Enrica not dared to meet him—Nobili—clandestinely? Was not this very act unmaidenly? (Such are men: they urge the slip, the fall, then judge a woman by the force of their own urging!) Had Enrica met Marescotti in secret also? No—impossible! The scared, white face was before Nobili, now plainer than ever. No—he hated himself for ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... her lover. Ah,—there was the worst of it all! She had given her heart and had got nothing in return. She conned it all over in her own mind, striving to ascertain whether there was any real cause for shame to her in her own conduct. Had she been unmaidenly? Had she been too forward with her heart? Had it been extracted from her, as women's hearts are extracted, by efforts on the man's part; or had she simply chucked it away from her to the first comer? Then she remembered ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... who have already suffered such unspeakable cruelty at the hands of others. You are not selfish; you are not base; you are nothing that is bad and everything that is good; you are a very king among men! Oh, Dick," she continued, taking his hand in hers, "do not think me forward or unmaidenly in speaking thus to you, dear; I am not. But do you think I do not know what your feeling is toward me; do you think I do not know that you love me? You poor, simple-hearted fellow, you are far too honest and straightforward ever to be able to deceive a woman, especially in such ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... Kittie told him she knew all, and how sorry she was for him, and that if he would wait till she grew up she would marry him herself. The poor child was so young, you see, that she did not know how unmaidenly this was. And of course at St. Catharine's when they taught us how to enter and leave rooms and how to act in society and at the table, they didn't think to tell us not to ask young men to marry us. I can add with confidence that Kittie James was ...
— Different Girls • Various
... so it might be. But the truth is, it's unmaidenly truth. For I am Mrs. Harry Boyce. ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... no longer. Had it not been that Alexander of Lorne begged that we would not be harsh with you, steps would long since have been taken to bring you to reason; but we can no longer permit this advocacy of rebellion, and the last unmaidenly step which you took of setting at defiance your friends and relatives, and even of sending messages hence, must be punished. The abbess bade me reason with you and try and turn your obstinate will. Your cousins of Badenoch here have appealed to you in vain. This can no longer be tolerated. ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... I would have you know that no ease shall you have all the days of your life, for I know that you love me, and as to that, there is no living man in all this world that I love as I love you. If ye think it unmaidenly in me to say that—then my own wretched heart ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... touched me, Herbert, until I met you, and I sometimes think that you have brought back with you the eastern sorcery of which I have heard—at least such may perhaps make excuse for my unmaidenly behaviour. Herbert, I am Beatrix of Gudenfels, Countess von Falkenstein, who is and ever will be, if you refuse to pardon her, a ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... all her woman's beauty she tempted him. If beauty were aught, it must win her now what she held dear. Afterward, when she should tell him why, he would forgive her the unmaidenly strategy. She had noted with a passionate joy that the lines of his face were tightly drawn, were even haggard, that his breath came short; in a word, that he suffered. It told her that his gruff manner was not indifference, but the rugged front of self-control. What a will the man had! Knowing ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... standards—even the ideals of civilisation change—have changed since your youth—are changing every hour. In your youth the word actress had a dubious significance; to-day it signifies only what the character of her who wears the title signifies. In your youth it was immodest, unmaidenly, reprehensible, for a woman to be anything except timid, easily abashed, ignorant of vital truths, and submissive to every social convention; to-day women are neither ignorant nor timid; they are innocent because they choose to be; ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... had this consolation left, that "the world was all before them where to choose." Was she not a free woman—without even a guardian to trouble her with advice? She had no excuse to act ignobly!—But had she any for being unmaidenly?—Would it then be—would it be a very unmaidenly thing if? The rest of the sentence did not take even the shape of words. But she answered it nevertheless in the words: "Not so unmaidenly as presumptuous." And alas there ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... the master felt it his professional duty to protest against this most unmaidenly and frivolous treatment of the matrimonial engagement, but a second glance at the significant face of his youthful auditor made him conclude that her instinctive knowledge of her own sex could be better trusted than his imperfect theories. He turned towards his desk without speaking. Octavia ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... believe that you loved me," continued Frances, unmindful of the interruption. "And now since you would not come to me, nor send me word in all this long weary time, I could not restrain myself, but, all unmaidenly, have come to you because I can in no way put my love from my heart, pray and ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... I did but joke! You do not think I would accuse you of an unmaidenly partiality; if it grieves you we will not mention Henri's name again, though I remember when you did not spare me so easily; when Charles' name was always in my ear, when you swore that every dress I wore was his choice, ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... points of its indecency, and blends the whole into a wild whirl that dizzies and dazes one; but the uncompromising afternoon, pouring in through manifold windows, tears away every illusion, and reveals the whole coarseness and commonness and all the repulsive details of this most alien and unmaidenly revel. The very POSE of the dance is profanity. Attitudes which are the instinctive expression of intimate emotions, glowing rosy-red in the auroral time of tenderness, and justified in unabashed freedom only by a long and faithful habitude of unselfish devotion, are here openly, deliberately, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... hotly. For the first time she permitted the searchlight of reason to play on the events of the night, and it occurred to her now that she had been guilty of a monstrous breach of convention, an unprecedented, unmaidenly action. She felt like crying now, with the thought that she had held herself so cheap. Bob McGraw saw the flush and the pallor that followed it. He read the unspoken thought behind the changing rush ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... wouldst thou call on me to live? Alone, alone, utterly alone, save thee! Wilt thou bid me hence, and leave thee to meet thy fate alone—thee, to whom my mother gave me—thee, without whom my very life is naught? Nigel, oh, despise me not for these wild words, unmaidenly as they sound; oh, let me speak them, or my heart ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... your only reason, you can have no objection to see him no more, now that scandal is abroad. Will you promise me that you will not? Recollect, dear Melissa, how imprudent and how unmaidenly it is." ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... have not sent for you that you should grow presumptuous, because I was unmaidenly enough to dream of so badly behaved a person as yourself. It—it was because it—I thought you should know, so that the ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... reluctant obedience to the will of Phidias. I am not surprised that Philaemon is offended at your dancing with Alcibiades; assuredly a practice, so boldly at variance with the customs of the country, is somewhat unmaidenly." ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... aches!" she said, wearily—"to say nothing of my poor heart! But it is due to you to know my story, unmaidenly as it must seem. I am called Blanche de Maletroit; I have been without father or mother for—oh! for as long as I can recollect, and indeed I have been most unhappy all my life. Three months ago a young captain began to stand near me every ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... no sympathy in her aspirations. She had once timidly ventured a few words, and discovered quickly that she would meet with no help at home. Lady Enville was shocked at such notions; they were both unmaidenly and communistic: had Clare no sense of what was becoming in a knight's step-daughter? Of course Lysken Barnevelt was nobody; it did not matter what she did. Rachel bade her be thankful that she was ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... which she had seen the Princess place the packet of letters, and taking them out, she drew another sheet of paper along with them, which she read with wide-opening eyes, then with her pretty lips pursed, she actually whistled, which unmaidenly performance merely gave sibilant expression to her astonishment. Taking both the packet of letters and the sheet of paper with her, she ran swiftly up the stair and along the corridor to the room where the Prince was ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... face in England, or in the world!" cried her lover; and now he was close at her side. Her hand, she knew not how, rested in his own. Something of the honesty and freedom from coquetry of the young woman's nature showed in her next speech, inconsequent, illogical, almost unmaidenly in its swift sincerity ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... Miss Hathaway would ever be married abroad," she said. "I think she should have waited until she came home. It would have been more delicate to let him follow her. To seem to pursue a gentleman, however innocent one may be, is—is unmaidenly." ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... the governor's lady and all the burgesses, and the churchwarden half starting up as if to exercise his authority, and the parson swelling with a vast expanse of sable robes over the Book, with no abashedness and yet no boldness nor unmaidenly forwardness. There was an innocent gayety on her face like a child's, and an entire confidence in good will and loving charity for her tardiness which disarmed all. She looked out from that gauze love-hood of hers as she came up the aisle, and ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... confused. So had it never been; No one of me could any evil say. Alas, thought I, he doubtless in thy mien, Something unmaidenly or bold hath seen? It seemed as if it struck him suddenly, Here's just a girl with whom one may make free! Yet I must own that then I scarcely knew What in your favour here began at once to plead; Yet I was angry with myself indeed, That I more ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... "Does that sound unmaidenly, Ormonde? I don't care whether it does or not, nor whether it is or not. I love him, and he loves me. I am his friend. Could I stay here in luxury if it would make him happier to marry me? Am I a terribly abandoned female? ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... tinged with shocked surprise, for she had been educated in the theory that it was unmaidenly to think about the opposite sex. True, experience had proved that this was an impossibility, for thoughts took wing and flew where they would, and dreams grew of themselves—dreams of someone big, and strong, and tender; someone who would understand, and fill the void ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... declared that she could not believe her ears that a child of hers should venture on making such objections—so unmaidenly, so undutiful to a parti selected by the queen and approved ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... last she went back again to the parlour, and sat without moving and without seeing. She was in an agony lest she had been unmaidenly in determining to go so soon as she heard that Robin was to ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... that knows no obstacles. Although Hillsboro held up hands of horror, and implored John Sherwin to assert his parental authority and forbid his girl such a rash, unmaidenly, bold undertaking, the end of it was that Hannah got her father's permission. He loved his daughters dearly, did John Sherwin, and, although he could not see how the thing was to be managed, he told Hannah she might ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... for a little time, that he might think. The smart of the disappointment caused by the non-appearance of Miss March was beginning to subside a little. Looking at it more quietly and reasonably, he could see that, in her position, it would be actually unmaidenly for her to come to him by herself. It was altogether another thing for this other girl, and, therefore, perhaps it was quite proper to send her. But, in spite of whatever reasonableness there might have been in it, he chafed under this propriety. It would have ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... especially is so daring; he is always risking his life for some one else—and no one seems able to tell me anything about either of them." The lady paused, blushing violently, as she realized what she had been saying. "Really you must not suppose me unmaidenly, Lieutenant," she explained, her eyes shyly lifting, "but you know those gentlemen were my very earliest acquaintances here, and they have been so kind. I was so shocked when Naida kissed you, Lieutenant; ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... remembered all the way?—that the last time she visited the spot it was in company with Penn. Now she had come to meet him again—how unmaidenly the act! In darkness, in loneliness, far from the village and its twinkling lights, to meet an attractive and a very good looking young man! What would the world say? Virginia did not care what the world would say. But ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... kindlier heart—even he, hurt by her neglect, had judged her for a while too harshly—he discerned that at her wildest and loudest, in the act of bandying cryptic jests with the buckeens, and uttering much that was thoughtless—Flavia did not suffer one light or unmaidenly word to ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... it is perchance best that he is going, for were I to see him often I do fear me that my heart might become so pitched and set upon him, that I should in time most rashly and inconsiderately fall in love, which were a bold and unmaidenly thing to do, and I mind that you once said that no virtuous woman would allow her affections to conduct themselves thus insubordinately until the Church had by the sacrament of marriage given her good and ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... except a slight contretemps arising from the behaviour of my daughter, who, suddenly remembering that the junior bridesmaid but one had not yet passed any opinion on her new shoes, suddenly sat down on the bride's train, and, thrusting the shoes into unmaidenly prominence, audibly invited that giggling damsel's approbation of the same. However, the ever-ready organ drowned her utterance with a timely Amen, and Dicky and Dilly completed the plighting of their troth with becoming shyness ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... I. I say what I mean. There's an unmaidenly trick. And, faith, I am here to rifle you, ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... any girl could care for a man until he had shown that he cared for her—it was the unmaidenly, impossible thing. And now—how beautiful he was, how dear! A wistful smile trembled around her lips. All that had gone before with other men suddenly became as nothing, forgotten and out of mind, and she herself made clean by this purifying ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... stone railing, Yetive looking on in amazement. Diligently she searched the ground below for the man who had sent the red message, but he was nowhere in sight. Then came the sudden realization that she was revealing a most unmaidenly eagerness, to him as well as to the princess, for she did not doubt that he was watching from the shadows below. She withdrew from the rail in confusion and fled to her bed-chamber, followed by her curious companion. There were explanations—none of which ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... The gigolo resisted Mary's unmaidenly advances, and yet, when he was with her, he seemed sometimes to forget to look sombre and blank and remote. They seemed to have a lot to say to each other. Mary talked about America a good deal. About her home town ... "and ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... remark by some commentator to some such effect as this: that it would be somewhat difficult to excuse the unwomanly violence of this demand. Doubtless it would. And doubtless it would be somewhat more than difficult to extenuate the unmaidenly indelicacy ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... life." So nowadays gangs of girls, and even mixed gangs of boys and girls, are to swarm through the pleasant forests of Germany, ascend the easy pathways of her mountains, and fill her country inns to overflowing. How horrified the little Backfisch would have been at such a suggestion, how unmaidenly her excellent aunt would have deemed it, how profoundly they would both have disapproved of any exercise that heightens the colour or disturbs the neatness of a young lady's toilet. I myself have heard German men become quite violent ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... rebuke Lady Jim had come to give her while she was undressing. No doubt she deserved it. She had been unmaidenly, and all for love of this light-hearted vagabond who did not care the turn of a hand for her. All day her thoughts had been in chaotic ferment. At times she lashed herself with the whip of her own scorn because ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... Jane, forgetting her dignity, commenced a tirade against both Bessie and her mother, the latter of whom she cordially despised. Of the girl she knew nothing, she said, but it was fair to suppose she was like her mother, and she did not blame Blanche for feeling shocked at such unmaidenly advances in public to a ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... nearer, puffing and blowing, strong though he was, beneath the mighty weight. He was about to lay it at Thor's feet (for he thought it so heavy that no maiden could lift it or hold it in her lap), when suddenly Thor's heart swelled, and he gave a most unmaidenly shout of rage and triumph. With one swoop he grasped the hammer in his iron fingers; with the other arm he tore off the veil that hid his terrible face, and trampled it under foot; then he turned to the frightened king, who cowered beside him ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... of it, if you please," she said, impatiently. "Your talents make you modest! No doubt you consider it unmaidenly in me to have referred to the serenade before you spoke of it; but I am not one to cast down my eyes and let it pass. No, nor one too sweet to face the truth, either!" she cried with sudden passion. "To sing that song in the way you did, meant—oh, you thought ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... no one to whom I may turn for kindness. If you will not do this for me, uncle, if you will not bring him—them—to me, I give you my sacred word I will go to them at the inn. If you force me to do an act so unmaidenly, I'll leave you and will not return to your house. I shall know that you ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major |
