"Virginal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mythology will demand of a myth so clearly destined for fructification an everlasting virginal inviolateness. From the start almost the two dogs of Yama are the brood of Saram[a]. Why? Saram[a] is the female messenger of the gods, at the root identical with Hermes or Hermeias; she is therefore the predestined mother of those other messengers, the two four-eyed dogs of Yama. ...
— Cerberus, The Dog of Hades - The History of an Idea • Maurice Bloomfield
... walls, ceiling, wooden beds, tables, the toilet service, the bookcases. For there were books here, too, books which Lucrezia examined with an awful wonder, not knowing how to read. In the window-seat were white cushions. On the chest of drawers were more red roses and geraniums. It was a virginal room, into which the bright, golden sunbeams stole under the striped awning outside the low window with surely a hesitating modesty, as if afraid to find themselves intruders. The whiteness, the intense quietness of the room, through whose window could be seen a space of far-off ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... no one to do it for them, then the authors as well as their admirers will soon learn the art of handling composing-sticks and type; they will know the pleasure of coming together—all admirers of the work to be printed—to set up the type, to shape it into pages, to take it in its virginal purity from the press. These beautiful machines, instruments of torture to the child who attends on them from morn till night, will be a source of enjoyment for those who will make use of them in order to give voice to the thoughts ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... prepared victim was I! A poor, shy, over-susceptible, virginal savage—Uncas, the son of Chingachgook, astray for the first time ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... was a virginal soul, but full-blooded. An unsuspected passion beat in her veins. Not for nothing did she have the deep, languorous eyes, the perfect scarlet lips, the sumptuous grace of an artist's ideal. Fires lay banked within her in spite of the fine ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... were now tall and stately, and all of them as beautiful as could be, and not a year's difference between them. As they grew up, and their virginal charms developed, Mr. Meyer's house became more and more noisy and frequented. The old luxury, frivolity, and extravagance returned, and a perpetual jollity took possession of it. The most select company, moreover, assembled there—counts, barons, gentlemen of ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... "The Carman's Whistle," "Watkin's Ale," "Chopping Knives," they were probably appropriated to the respective trades they indicate. The tune of the "Carman's Whistle" was composed by Bird, and the favourite tune of "Queen Elizabeth" may be found in the collection called "Queen Elizabeth's Virginal Book." One who has lately heard it played says, "that it has more air than the other execrable compositions in her Majesty's book, something resembling ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... began to exult, to boast, to call attention to the beauty of the lines spoken by Enid. "See how her simplicity and virginal charm are enhanced by the rugged, remorseless strength, and by the conscienceless greed of the men surrounding her, and yet she sees in them something admirable. They are like soldiers to her. They are the heroes who tunnel mountains and bridge cataracts. When she ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... [56] A virginal, says Mr. Malone, was strung like a spinnet, and shaped like a piano-forte: the mode of playing on this instrument was therefore similar ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... wide open, and full of a fear that was almost horror, and, as if to account for it, he seemed suddenly to hear, coming through the fragrant stillness of those virginal chambers, the dull heavy step of a man. She raised herself on one lovely bare arm, her hand went to her heart, then slowly her eyes were upraised as if in some dumb prayer for strength. A strange frozen calm came over the perfect features. The face ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... here indicated, than it was, for example, in Macready's impersonation of Virginius, where his scream in the camp-scene betrayed his instantaneous appreciation of the wrong meditated by Appius Claudius against the virginal purity of his daughter. As adroitly, in his way, as that great master of his craft, who was for so many years among his most cherished friends and intimates, Dickens kept within the indicated lines of demarcation, ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... malrespekti. Violation malrespekto. Violence perforto. Violent perforta. Violet violo. Violet color violkoloro. Violin violono. Violinist violonisto. Violoncello violoncxelo. Violoncellist violoncxelisto. Viper vipero. Virago (fig.) drakino. Virgin virgulino. Virginal virga. Virginity virgeco. Virgin, The Blessed La Sankta Virgulino, Dipatrino. Virile vira. Virility vireco. Virtue virto. Virtuous virta. Virtuoso virtuozo. Virulent venena, malboniga. Virus ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... burthens on their heads; of tropical effects, with canes and naked rock and sunlight; of the relief of cypresses; of the troubled, busy-looking groups of sea-pines, that seem always as if they were being wielded and swept together by a whirlwind; of the air coming, laden with virginal perfumes, over the myrtles and the scented underwood; of the empurpled hills standing up, solemn and sharp, out of the green-gold air of the east ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... beautiful in the temperate regions of the earth, and inhabited by a race once capable of the sternest patriotism and simplest purity of life, your modern religion, in the very stronghold of it, has reduced the song and dance of ancient virginal thanksgiving to the howlings and staggerings of men betraying, in intoxication, a nature sunk more than half-way towards the beasts; and you will begin to understand why the Bible should have been "illustrated" ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... curves over the ground she stood on, and hands that might floor you with a clench of them, were hers. Grey eyes looked out lucid and fearless under swelling temples that were lost in a ruffling copse of hair. Her nose was virginal, with hints of the Iron Duke at most angles. Square chin, cleft centrally, gave her throat the look of a tower with a gun protrudent at top. She was dressed for church evidently, but seemed no slave to Time. Her bonnet was pushed well back from her head, and ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... drifting through, A hundred voices arise to drown The river's whisper, and charm my ear With a sound I have often longed to hear,— A magical music, strange and new, The wild-rose ballad, the lilac-song, The virginal chant of the lilies' throng, Blue-bells silverly ringing, Pansies merrily singing,— For all the flowers have found their voice; And I feel no wonder, but only rejoice, While the river ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... meteoric passage kindles the imagination with the glow of an incorruptible flame. It is with them long enough to brand upon memory the image which, though never renewed before their bodily eyes, by its very severance from perception puts on an immortality of virginal grace. Love is understanding, said the poet of Heaven and Hell, and love ennobled through renunciant years shall at the last encompass the world. The sensuous glow that first quickened the heart of youth is transmuted into a purer fire akin to ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... where the morning service concludes with a prayer to the "Mother of God," in these words: "Most holy Virgin, I believe and confess thy most holy and immaculate care of man, pure and without stain. O most pure Virgin, through thy virginal purity, thy immaculate conception, thy glorious quality of Mother of God, obtain for me of thy dear Son, humility, charity, great purity of heart, of body and of mind, holy perseverance in my cherished ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... and gentle-looking, she was neatly though simply dressed in the English fashion, she was fair and small, and her budding breast could be seen outlined beneath the fine muslin of her dress. She had all the appearances of modesty and noble birth, and something of virginal innocence, which inspired one with attachment and respect ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... sir.' There was a virginal note in Beetle's voice as though he had been falsely accused of uttering indecencies. 'Shall I take the bracket ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... the height of two years of hansom-using, was touched, delighted, even impressed. The staggering fact increased her virginal charm and its protectiveness. He thought upon the simplicity of her existence. Of course she had never been in a hansom! Hansoms were obviously outside her scheme. He said nothing, but he sought for and found her hand beneath the apron. She did not resist. He reflected "Can she resist? ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... sedulously fostered the cultivation of his niece's voice. As she stood beside him, her slender figure was almost as tall as his. Her eyes were large in the cup and they went violet in the sunlight; at night they seemed lustrously black. She was in virginal white this evening, and her delicately modelled head was turned toward the door. Her uncle spoke ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... you did e'er in earnest Seek some virginal innocence to cherish, Touch not lewdly the mistress ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... She was still wearing her costume of the Swan-Maiden, and there was something frailly virginal and elusive about her as she drew away from him that set the hot, foreign blood in him on fire. In two strides he was at her side, his hands gripping her bare arms with a savage clasp that ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... the egg-cell divides just as though there had been! The whole progeny of cells, successively formed, are the pure offspring of the maternal egg-cell and its nucleus. The tadpoles and young frogs so produced are examples of what is called "parthenogenesis"—that is to say, virginal reproduction—reproduction without fertilisation by material derived from a male parent! The needle, which gives off no material, but simply makes a tiny break in the surface of the egg, does all ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... desire to be with him, this agitation possessing her so utterly that all day long she had dwelt in an unwonted state like a somnambulism: it must be love, though not resembling in the least the generally accepted, virginal ideal. She saw him as he was, crude, powerful, relentless in his desire; his very faults appealed. His passion had overcome his prudence, he had not intended to propose, but any shame she felt on ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... and yet I must write, I must speak, or else I shall cry out. Did I ever mention to you Father Domenico of Casoria, the confessor of our Convent of the Stigmata? A young man, tall, emaciated with fasts and vigils, but handsome like the monk playing the virginal in Giorgione's "Concert," and under his brown serge still the most stalwart fellow of the country all round? One has heard of men struggling with the tempter. Well, well, Father Domenico had struggled as hard as any of the Anchorites ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... to the room and shut the door, but could not shut out her image. The picture she had unwittingly supplied of herself took possession of his imagination: he saw her almost as a dream-figure—the virginal figure he knew—standing by the stream in the sunset, amid the elms and silver birches, with daisies in her hands and bluebells at her feet, inhaling the delicate scent that wafted from the white hawthorn bushes, and watching the water glide along till ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... dust in the canyon. The leaves and flowers were clean and virginal. The grass was young velvet. Over the pool three cottonwoods sent their scurvy fluffs fluttering down the quiet air. On the slope the blossoms of the wine-wooded manzanita filled the air with springtime odors, while the leaves, wise with experience, ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... language, and fate or instinct kept him from those writers who jested with uncleanness; so he was virginal, and pure in all his imaginings. Other lads exchanged confidences in forbidden things, they broke down the barriers and tore away the veils; but Thyrsis had never breathed a word about matters of sex to any living creature. He pondered and guessed, but ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... looking, yet something about her differentiated her from the majority of her sex. There was determination in her step, and overflowing health and vigour in her every movement. Her eyes had a trick of looking straight into any other eyes they met, not boldly, but with a kind of virginal fearlessness and enterprise that people often found embarrassing. Indeed she was extremely virginal and devoid of the usual fringe of feminine airs and graces, a nymph of the woods and waters, who although she was three and twenty, as yet ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... plombiere and cherries—how do you think I had shaped them, Madame Fribsbi? In the form of two hearts united with an arrow, on which I had laid, before it entered, a bridal veil in cut-paper, surmounted by a wreath of virginal orange-flowers. I stood at the door to watch the effect of this entry. It was but one cry of admiration. The three young ladies filled their glasses with the sparkling Ay, and carried me in a toast. I heard it—I heard ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... said, suddenly feeling a thousand years old as she saw Penelope standing, virginal and sweet, at the threshold of the gate through which she herself had passed with happy footsteps years ago—that gate which opens to the wondering fingers of girlhood, laid so tremulously upon love's latch, and which closes behind the woman, shutting ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... gazelle opposed against them in design, hold grace and elegance of feeling that Watteau would certainly have sanctioned. She brings up the same sense of exquisite gesture and simplicity of movement with a feeling for the romantic aspect of virginal life which exists nowhere else in modern painting. She eliminates all severities of intellect, and super-imposes wistful charm of idea upon a pattern of the most delicate beauty. She is essentially an original which means that she invents ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... are mystical ideas, but the mysticism is of a kind familiar to the imagination of medieval Europe and therefore quite permissible to a poet who had set out to romanticize. If, therefore, Schiller had made his heroine fall in love in human fashion, and had then connected this lapse from virginal ideality a little more clearly with the final catastrophe, there could be no reasonable objection to his fundamental idea, and we should have, probably, the best imaginative basis for a romantic tragedy on the story of Joan of Arc. ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... back on the pillow, and closed her eyes. A more noble, beautiful, virginal head it would be impossible to imagine. Phidias would have asked no ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... rested on his son—their eyes met, and in that instant they came to know each other as they never had before, to understand, to comprehend all that was in the tie of nature. He laid one hand on his son's shoulder, the other clasped the slim virginal figure, no longer a little girl, but whose girlhood and affectionate devotion ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... resemblances may find certain analogies between these adepts of "virginal virginity," or of "the great garden of the Tsar"—for both these names were applied to them—and the adamites or aryanists; for eager minds seeking supreme salvation are apt to meet upon the great road that ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... their bodies wholly—their warm bodies, that the bitter cold and the wind and the sightless death touch as with women's hands. In these contacts between living beings and force, there is something carnal, virginal, divine. ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... of Anne, arrayed in a frilly green gown, with the virginal curves of arms and throat slipping out of it, and white stars shining against the coils of her ruddy hair. The vision made him catch his breath. But he ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... greeted her as she entered his office the next day. He even affected not to notice that she had put on her best clothes, and he made no doubt appeared as when she had first attracted the mature yet faithless attentions of Deacon Hotchkiss at church. A white virginal muslin was belted around her slim figure by a blue ribbon, and her Leghorn hat was drawn around her oval cheek by a bow of the same color. She had a Southern girl's narrow feet, encased in white stockings and kid slippers, which were ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... unhindered by permanent domestics, she could receive lame ducks at any hour of day or night, and not seldom had a duck without studio of its own made use of June's. She enjoyed her freedom, and possessed herself with a sort of virginal passion; the warmth which she would have lavished on Bosinney, and of which—given her Forsyte tenacity—he must surely have tired, she now expended in championship of the underdogs and budding 'geniuses' of the artistic world. She lived, in ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... had opened up for the midnight train. She was desperately anxious and at a loss which way to turn. And yet through all her being there rolled a mighty undernote of joy. As to the dweller on the coast the voice of the sea is the undertone to all the sounds of man's activities, so beneath all her virginal hesitancies, her half terror of what she had done, surged and sang the knowledge that Creed was hers, her avowed lover. She, Judith, had him here safe; she had brought him away out of the mountains, from those who would have harmed ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... a virginal on The peritoneum, or caul wherein an organ. his bowels were wrapped, like His nails, like a gimlet. a billiard-table. His feet, like a guitar. His back, like an overgrown rack- His heels, like ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... church she would not believe herself married. She spoke of breaking off the engagement, and of going abroad with her mother, or of retiring into a convent. Then she became tender, weak, suppliant. She sighed, and everything in her virginal chamber sighed in chorus, the holy-water font, the palm-branch above her white bed, the books of devotion on their little shelves, and the blue and white statuette of St. Orberosia chaining the dragon of Cappadocia, that stood upon the marble ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... was just a bit haughty in virginal safety and pride; No rival too near her high throne, Prince FORTUNIO aye at her side; But now a poor PERDITA, prone at the feet of her foes she lies bound, And that melodramatic thud-thud draweth ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various
... for this passion of mankind for maidenheads. It is so wonderful to give the first lessons of voluptuousness to a pure and innocent heart, to feel under one's hand the first palpitations of the virginal breasts which arouses unknown delights, to dry the first tears of tenderness, to inspire that first mixture of fear and hope, of vague desires and expectant inquietude; whoever has never had that satisfaction has missed the most ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... Jones, whose libertinism (one particular omitted) is perhaps rendered but too amiable by his good qualities." To be sure Roderick does befriend "a reclaimed street-walker" in her worst need, but why make her the confidante of the virginal Narcissa? Why reward Strap with her hand? Fielding decidedly, as Scott insists, "places before us heroes, and especially heroines, of a much higher as well as more pleasing character, than Smollett was able ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... as tokens of betrothal—did this mean that the honeymooning question was already settled? If it were so, the fact would account for the girl's absence of embarrassment in his own company; all the same, he did not believe it, for there was in her manner a calm, virginal composure, an absence of sentimentality, which seemed to denote that the citadel had ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Physically I mean. That is the way in the west. Of course she was a great tom-boy, tall for her years, very frank in her speech and totally unconscious of her sex, as free and virginal as the young Artemis. The world of books to which Mr. Considine introduced her in her school-hours was wholly forgotten outside them. In the woods and on the mountains she throve as a magnificent young animal, moving with an ease and grace and freedom that civilised woman has lost. Her ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... least for that part of it that had passed before the "History" was written. Through the whole story it is Heloise who shines brightly as a curiously beautiful personality, unselfish, self sacrificing, and almost virginal in her purity in spite of her fault. One has for her only sympathy and affection whereas it is difficult to feel either for Abelard in spite of his belated efforts at rectifying his own sin and his life-long devotion to his solitary wife ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... youthful appearance; but that wasn't, he decided, so much because of her actual person— although since her marriage she had shown practically no change—as from a spirit of rigorous purity; she was, in spite of everything, Lee realized, completely virginal in mind. ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the apparently unmistakable surroundings of the thirty-second floor, while he was being quietly butchered by the floor-clerk on the thirty-third floor, an agent of the Green Claw (that formidable organisation); and all because the two floors looked exactly alike to the virginal Western eye. The original point of my own story was that the man to be entrapped walked into his own house after all, in spite of it being differently painted and numbered, simply because he was absent-minded ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... who is beautiful, she had never theretofore been especially physical in thought. That side of life had remained vague, as she had never indulged in or even been strongly tempted with the things that rouse it from its virginal sleep. But now she thought only of her body, because that it was, and that alone, that had drawn this prospective purchaser, and his eyes never let her forget it. She fell into the habit of looking at herself in the glass—at her face, ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... then and now. Doggie had made good; every man who came home wounded must have made good. Poor old Doggie. But how in the name of all that was meant by the word Love she could ever have contemplated—as she had contemplated, with an obstinate, virginal loyalty—marriage with Doggie, she ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... proceeds. The features of the unknown belonged, so to say, to the refined and delicate type of Prudhon's school, but had also the poetic sentiment which Girodet gave to the inventions of his phantasy. The freshness of the temples, the regular arch of the eyebrows, the purity of outline, the virginal innocence so plainly stamped on every feature of her countenance, made the girl a perfect creature. Her figure was slight and graceful, and frail in form. Her dress, though simple and neat, revealed neither wealth ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac
... falls with all its force upon this virginal robe without being able to make it shine. It preserves its dead whiteness. All this grandeur is austere; the air is chilled beneath the noonday rays; great, damp shadows creep along the foot of the walls. It is the everlasting winter and the nakedness of the desert. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... of them spoke. The woman looked out across the white spaces and the man watched the glimmering curve of her neck and the soft darkness of her rich hair. How virginal, how sacred, she looked! The thought of Tom ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Miss Anderson's face, figure and movements on the stage. But it is a brilliancy that is altogether natural and spontaneous—a natural gift, not acquisition; and it is a brilliancy which, while it is all alive with intelligence and sympathy, is instinct to the core with a virginal sweetness and purity. In 'Ingomar' the heroine comes very early and abruptly on the scene before the audience is interested in her arrival, or has, indeed, got rid of the garish realities of the street. But Miss Anderson's appearance spoke for itself without any aid from the playwright. ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... with sentimental fervor, and then went to work, i. e., the rummaging over the trunks, drawers, and portmanteaus of the poor little painter, Carmen de Haro, and even ripped up the mattress of her virginal cot. But they found not what ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... furnished apartments at the seaside, and the eye sought in vain for the graceful disorder of an elegant home. The dining-room was gorgeous with all the splendour of new mahogany and crimson morocco; the drawing-room was glorified by big looking-glasses, and the virginal freshness of gilt frames on which the feet of agile house-fly or clumsy blue-bottle had never rested. The crimsons, and blues, and greens, and drabs of the Brussels carpets retained the vivid brightness of the loom. The drops of the chandeliers twinkled like little stars in the sunshine; the brass ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... hotels, celebrated landscapes, notable art collections. The governess was supplemented with the best local teachers of music and languages; but it was Aunt Althea, with her proud fastidiousness, her eclecticism at once virginal and ardent, who set ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... invisible world, became more and more frequent. She was about to be called to a state with which she was herself but imperfectly acquainted, and in order to enter which she did nothing but submissively abandon herself to the will of God. Our Lord was pleased about this time to imprint upon her virginal body the stigmas of his cross and of his crucifixion, which were to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Gentiles folly, and to many persons who call themselves Christians, both the one and the other. From her very earliest childhood ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... at her, disturbed, and he hoped, disturbing, he thought of little Vera Walters, of her slender virginal body, of her small virginal face, smooth, firm, and slightly pointed like a bud, of her gray eyes, clear as water, and of the pale gold and fawn of her hair. He thought of her tenderness and of ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... Then she ran hastily up to her room, took the little coffer of carved oak clamped with iron, her treasury, which contained her lover's letters from first to last, unfastened from the mirror above her bed the white and virginal chaplet that hung there; put into her belt a watch her father had given her, and passed into her mother's bedchamber. There she stooped and kissed the pillow where her mother's head had lain, knelt before the Christ at the foot of the bed, began a thanksgiving she ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... ecstacy of prayer, it had even seemed to him to behold that day when his mistress—his mystical lady (now hardly in her ninth year, but whose solemn smile at meeting had already lighted on his soul like the dove of the Trinity)—even she, his own gracious and holy Italian art—with her virginal bosom, and her unfathomable eyes, and the thread of sunlight round her brows—should pass, through the sun that never sets, into the circle of the shadow of the tree of life, and be seen of God, and found good: and then it had seemed to him, that he, with many who, since his coming, had ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... bonnes, Maman having not yet emerged from the French mamma's chrysalis condition of morning crimping-pins, petticoat and short gown, and list slippers. The bonnes who thus serve as chaperons are often as young as or even younger than the demoiselles whose virginal modesty they are supposed to protect. That they are anything more than a mere form of guardian, a figment of the social fiction that a young French girl never leaves her mother's side till she goes to her husband's, it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... and looked at her, and the man in him felt the pity of it as do all men when such fresh, virginal youth as was Miss Dumont's turns an enraptured face toward that cloister door which never again ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... every day of his life has no right appreciation of the beverage, however much he may profess to relish it. It is only your habitual late riser who takes in the full flavor of Nature at those rare intervals when he gets up to go a-fishing. He brings virginal emotions and unsatiated eyes to the sparkling freshness of earth and stream and sky. For him—a momentary Adam—the world is newly created. It is Eden come again, with Eve in the similitude of ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... in state into their box. Mrs. Stuart, Miss Stuart Mr. Stuart, junior, and Miss Darrell. Miss Stuart dressed for some after "reception" in silvery blue silk, pearl ornaments in her hair, and a virginal white bouquet in her hand. Miss Darrell in the white muslin of last night, a scarlet opera cloak, and a bouquet of white and scarlet camellias. Charley lounging in the background, looking as usual, handsome of face, elegant of attire, and calmly and ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... The pity of this virginal heart must have been very sweet to the man on whom she looked it. His eyes worshipped her, as he answered her devoutly, "It was due to the truth in you that I should seem ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... and his hostess sat in silence. Toni had taken her favourite low chair, and her hands lay idly in her lap, the wedding-ring which was their sole ornament gleaming in the lamplight. To Barry's eyes her youthful prettiness had a slightly dimmed effect. Without losing anything of its virginal purity of outline there was a hint of weariness, of almost jaded fatigue, which startled Barry. He thought always of Toni as some joyous woodland nymph, a pagan it might be, a hedonist by nature and training; and while he had regretted, formerly, her lack of worldly and womanly ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... knows what hands pulled you away? I prayed; that was all I did. I prayed very hard that you might awake. If I had not, you might have died. I wonder what it all meant. The unicorns ... what did the French monk tell me ... strength they meant ... virginal strength, ...
— The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays • William B. Yeats
... darkness. The unpeopled woods closed about us, snatched with lean branches, and opened out again to a windy space. Once or twice the ground fell away, and there was, for a moment, the mysterious gleam and stir of water. Canadian stars are remote and virginal. Everyone slumbered. Arrival at the great concrete building and the little shacks of the power-station shook us to our feet. The Italian vanished into the darkness. Whether he found his sons or fell into the river no one knew, and no ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... gambling hell whose lower circles were dedicated to rites of nameless infamy. Elsie shrank back into the cloistered shadows of the cab. "Oh, father," she cried in hurt bewilderment, "what kind of place was that?" Smitten, apparently, with a certain remorse that he had suffered her virginal eyes to reflect so scabrous a spot, he put a sheltering arm around her and said, sadly: "That, little ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... with what we eat and wear, Our bread, the boots wherein we splosh 'Tis so with what I deemed most fair, Most virginal ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various
... and annoyed. He stepped out of his carriage and joined Mrs. Adams but kept Cornelia by his side, so that Hyde was compelled to escort Mrs. Smith. And Cornelia, beyond a very civil "Good-morning, sir," gave him no sign. He could watch her slight, virginal figure, and the bend of her head in answering Mrs. Adams gave him transient glimpses of her fair face; but there was no message in all its changes for him. In fact, in spite of Mrs. Smith's little rill of social complaining, he ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... unsavory death, [21] Grow, Soul! unto such white estate, That virginal-prayerful art shall be thy breath, Thy work, ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... othergates fashion, so once I get my claw into her back; by the very body of Christ, I will lead her such a dance that she will run after me, as the madwoman after her child.' 'Ay,' rejoined Bruno, 'I warrant me thou wilt rummage her; methinketh I see thee, with those teeth of thine that were made for virginal jacks,[433] bite that little vermeil mouth of hers and those her cheeks, that show like two roses, and after eat ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... resource of despair, the heroism of the animal driven to bay and fighting blindly to delay death's coming for a moment. No, it is heroism freely donned, deliberately and unanimously hailed, heroism on behalf of an idea and a sentiment, in other words, heroism in its clearest, purest and most virginal form, a disinterested and whole-hearted sacrifice for that which men regard as their duty to themselves, to their kith and kin, to mankind and to the future. If life and personal safety were more precious than the idea ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... Lysidice, amber-haired, slender-limbed, with eyes like sapphires, was wandering in the flower-market of Syracuse, seeking the loveliest blooms for her mistress. Lycabetta loved Lysidice above her fellows, for her slim, boyish body, for her quaint, virginal air; she had not yet tired of the morning sport when Lysidice came from the flower-market and pelted her with many colored blossoms. So as Lysidice, eager to please, went hither and thither, seeking ever the best, her attention ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... in fact, a charming, almost virginal delicacy and freshness of air and tone about the picture. The girl's simple, white dress, with only—the painter had so far prevailed over the milliner,—only a suggestion of bright ribands at throat and waist; the quaint chippendale chair, the sombre Spanish leather screen, which formed the background, ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... of aristocratic refinement, the grace and natural delicacy of virginal souls, in general eluded Balzac's observation. He found it hard to imagine a lady; still harder—though he tried and half succeeded—to conceive the mystery of a young girl's mind, in which the ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... physiological. She did not hate him for this news. Such hatred is abnormal. Nor did she love him. That would have been still more abnormal. But she must be in his house; she must sew for him, share his daily doings, sleep in the big four-poster, and not in the small virginal bed at the Mountain. It would be grievous to leave Edward. He was the shelter between her flickering spirit and the storms of life. She had hesitated, putting off the inevitable, feeling that Undern was always there, like an empty room, for her re-entry, so she had ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... state of innocence there would have been no corruption. But virginal integrity is corrupted by intercourse. Therefore there would have been no such thing in the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... Jesus and St. John, a signed work from the late Mr. Beckford's collection. The child Jesus stands, naked and upright, upon a stone balustrade, and plays with a lock of His mother's hair, who is herself of the pure virginal type imaged by Rafaelle in his earlier creations, notably the famous "Madonna del Granduca"; while the "Adoration," the master's last work, was removed from the Church of Fontignano in 1843. The landscape ...
— Perugino • Selwyn Brinton
... felt must have shone in his ardent eyes. Hers dropped, and a bright, virginal blush dyed for the first time cheek and brow. He vaulted off his horse and stood ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... unworthy of thy calling! ... How thou hast wantoned with the sacred Muse! ... how thou hast led her stainless feet into the mire of sensual hypocrisies, and decked her with the trumpery gew-gaws of a meaningless fair speech!—How thou hast caught her by the virginal hair and made her chastity the screen for all thine own licentiousness! ... Thou shouldst have humbly sought her benediction,—thou shouldst have handled her with gentle reverence and patient ardor,—from her wise lips thou shouldst have learned how best to ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... exalted above every one in the whole world, that man, instead of receiving the glory that was his due, was suddenly degraded and dishonored! What for? Who had judged him? Who could have decreed this? Those were the questions that wrung his inexperienced and virginal heart. He could not endure without mortification, without resentment even, that the holiest of holy men should have been exposed to the jeering and spiteful mockery of the frivolous crowd so inferior to him. Even had there been no miracles, had there been nothing ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... you are mistaken. Andrew responded with all the grace in the world to the invitation. It was a pleasant and refreshing act. He was grateful for her companionship, her sympathy, and her inspired counsel. She carried off her frank comradeship with such an air of virginal innocence, and at the same time with such unconscious exposure of her half fulfilled womanhood, that he suffered no temptations of an easy conquest. The kiss therefore evoked no baser range of emotion. As his head was whirling with an artist's sudden conception—and, mark you, an artist's conception ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... to the spot at which Reinecke disappeared. Old Virginal's stern flourishes; instantly her pace quickens. One whimper, and she is away full-mouthed through the wood, and the pack after ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... wanted to kiss him as she had never wanted to kiss a man. When it came, her face upturned to his, she realized that on his part it was an honest kiss. There hinted nothing behind it. Rugged and kind as himself, it was virginal almost, and betrayed no long practice in the art of saying good-bye. All men were not brutes after all, ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... the roses in her body's lieu. O, if the pleasures I have known in thee But my poor faith's poor first-fruits be, What quintessential, keen, ethereal bliss Then shall be his Who has thy birth-time's consecrating dew For death's sweet chrism retain'd, Quick, tender, virginal, and unprofaned! ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... befell her to be buried in the stained robe. And she is taken away amid flowers and white cloths to a white tomb, where incense is burning, and where the walls are hung with votive wreaths, and things commemorative of virginal life. But upon all these, upon the flowers and images alike, there is some small stain which none sees but she and the one in shadow, the one whose face she cannot recognise. And although she is nailed fast in her ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... in the village ideal of virginal vacuousness as the type of beauty which most captivated men, though every year she was more shrewdly doubtful of the divine superiority of these men. That a woman's business in life was to remain respectable and to secure a man, and consequent security, was her ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... were already familiar with the funereal splendours of Egyptian art. Thus lighted up, the Golden Hall flamed, and for the first time, perhaps, the colours of the paintings shone in all their brilliancy. Red and blue, green and white, of virginal purity, brilliantly fresh and amazingly clear, stood out from the golden background of the figures and hieroglyphs, and attracted the eye before the subjects which they formed could be discerned. ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... With his inshore greens and manifold mid-sea blues, Pearl-glint, shell-tint, ancientest perfectest hues Ever shaming the maidens, — lily and rose Confess thee, and each mild flame that glows In the clarified virginal bosoms of stones that shine, It is thine, ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... as she stood by her window that night; "and of course it is Elizabeth who makes him so." And that night Anna again wept and prayed for Malcolm—her dearest brother, as she called him—for deep down in her girlish heart there was buried the pure virginal love that she had unconsciously given him—a love that no touch or breath would ever ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... defacement of the virginal scene by an unlovely dwelling—the, imposition of a scar on the unspotted landscape? None, save that the arrogant intruder needed shelter, and that he was neither a Diogenes to be content in a tub nor a Thoreau to find in boards an ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... in white at her "coming-out party," as a rule; white being supposed to typify her virginal attitude in the social realm. The mother receives her guests with her daughter standing at her side. It is not uncommon for two girls of about the same age who are close friends to be introduced at the same function. The celebrant's friends ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... he. "Alas, thou poor, solitary, foolish, fearful maid, thou art sick with fear of me! So take now my dagger! Thus Fool offenceless shall lie defenceless at thy mercy and, so lying, sleep until joyous day shall banish thy so virginal fears!" Which saying, he tossed off belt and dagger and setting them beside her, rolled his weather-worn cloak about him, stretched himself beneath the dim willows and straightway fell a-snoring. And after some while she questioned him in ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... and noted the singular caprices of the Spring. Strange longings, freaks of the blood and brain, stirred within her at this bursting of the leaf. They led her into Camden Road, into the High Street, to the great shops where the virginal young fashions and the artificial flowers are. At this season Hunter's window blooms out in blouses of every imaginable colour and texture and form. There was one, a silk one, of so discreet and modest a mauve that ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... dimples given; the fingers were tapered, but the articulations were not generally indicated. In the male form the chest was high, arched, and prominent. In the female form, especially in that of goddesses and virgins, the form of the breasts is virginal in the extreme, since their beauty was generally made to consist in the moderateness of their size. They were generally a little higher than nature. The abdomen was without prominence. The legs and knees of youthful ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... She in her virginal beauty As pure as a pictured saint, How should this sinning and sorrow Have for her danger ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... these unvailed exposures of sentiments and of life offend that virginal modesty of soul, of which outward modesty is but an imperfect emblem? You show ourself unvailed, and you do not ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... played a considerable part, both giving and receiving hospitality; and it was the traditional pleasantry to chaff him as an inveterate bachelor, at whom all the young ladies of the place were setting their virginal caps. These jests he received very much as Tim Linkinwater received the allusions of Mr. Cheeryble to the "uncommonly handsome spinster," rather encouraging them as tributes to the fact that, though now advanced in years, he was well preserved, and, ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... for a greater delight, a greater sweetness, a greater glory. The profane love of woman presented itself to my fancy, clothed, not only with all its own charms, but with the sovereign and almost irresistible charms of the most dangerous of all temptations—of that which the moralists call virginal temptation—when the mind, not yet undeceived by experience and by sin, pictures to itself in the transports of love a supreme and ineffable delight immeasurably superior to all reality. Ever since I reached manhood—that is to say, for many ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... Moses. Too much of a bird's-eye view across the Promised Land to the shore. Come down, and walk across, old fellow. And you won't see all that milk and honey and grapes the size of duck's eggs. All the dear little budding infant with its tender virginal mind and various clouds of glory instead of a napkin. Not at all, my dear chap. No such luck ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... model for this female votary of Dionysus. Before he made this drawing, Michelangelo had not seen those frescoes of the dancing Bacchantes from Pompeii; nor had he perhaps seen the Maenads on Greek bas-reliefs tossing wild tresses backwards, swaying virginal lithe bodies to the music of the tambourine. We must not, therefore, compare his concept with those masterpieces of the later classical imagination. Still, many of his contemporaries, vastly inferior to him in penetrative insight, a Giovanni da Udine, a Perino del Vaga, a Primaticcio, not ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... he loved Turgenev, the singer of virginal love and purity, of youth, and of the melancholy Russian landscape; but he loved virginal love, not from knowledge but from hearsay, as something abstract, existing outside real life. Now he assured himself that he loved Anna Akimovna ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... of character which indicates beauty of soul—that superlative beauty which entitles its possessor to be alluded to as "sweet," rather than pretty or handsome. At the dawn of womanhood she was a lovely little girl, kind, affectionate, imaginative, distinctly virginal, ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... to drink and cigarettes to smoke. She was glad to have someone to chat with and while she talked he looked at Sally. She reminded him of the Psyche in the museum at Naples. Her features had the same dear purity of line, and though she had borne a child she had still a virginal aspect. ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... his chair and smiled at her. She looked handsomer and more Diana-like than ever. The moist English air seemed to have deepened the bloom of her cheeks and softened the slight hardness of her virginal features; or else it was simply the inner glow of happiness, shining through like a light ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... in its diligence by the lie that material good is better than spiritual good, that it is better to be a rich man and a successful merchant than to be a poor and humble and honest student; that it is better to have a balance at your bankers than to have great and pure and virginal thoughts in a clean heart; that a man has done better for himself when he has made a fortune than when he has God in his heart. And so we need, and God knows it was never more needed in Manchester than to-day, that we should preach and preach and preach, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... her body was hot with the same flush of shame which burned in her face. In her passion of disgust and anger, she hurried out into the storm. The chill of the east wind was friendly. She gave no other thought to the wind-driven rain, but ran through the woods like a wild thing, all virginal woman, unreasonable, insulted, angry as a child is angry—even her uncle was forgotten. She ran upstairs, the glory of her rain-soaked hair in tumbled disorder, and in her room broke into the open speech which passion confides ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... of perfection; since, according to Burney, she was herself greatly skilled in musical learning. "If her Majesty," says that eminent author, "was ever able to execute any of the pieces that are preserved in a MS. which goes under the name of Queen Elizabeth's Virginal-book, she must have been a very great player, as some of the pieces which were composed by Tallis, Bird, Giles, Farnaby, Dr. Bull, and others, are so difficult that it would be hardly possible to find a master in Europe who would ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... of blood appeared and trickled down her rounded shoulder, where an abrasion had cut the delicate satin skin. And, on the instant, seeing her so breathless, so divine, in her virginal slender height, with her tapering limbs, her supple arms, her slim body with its slender, firm throat, he released her. By a last effort he tore the package ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... the promise of early spring. A cold blue sky showed through the lattice work of twigs and branches; but, as yet, no fluttering leaf had crept out of its sheath to soften, with a hint of tender green, the virginal stiffness and straightness of the stems. Grey among the grey tree-trunks little Mary flitted about, gathering her precious windflowers. She was clad in the demure Puritan dress worn by young and old alike in the early days of the Society of Friends. A frock of grey duffel hung ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... daughter and a sweet girl—one so naturally pure that nobody can ever say an evil word or think an evil thought when she is near. We know the bridegroom for a real Manxman, simple and rugged and true, who says all he thinks and thinks all he says. God has been very good to them. Such virginal and transparent souls have much to be thankful for. It is not for them to struggle with that worst enemy of man, the enemy that is within, the enemy of bad passions. So we can wish them joy on their ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... peace, and to achieve The silver livery of advised age, And in thy reverence and thy chair-days, thus To die in ruffian battle?—Even at this sight My heart is turn'd to stone; and while 't is mine It shall be stony. York not our old men spares; No more will I their babes; tears virginal Shall be to me even as the dew to fire, And beauty that the tyrant oft reclaims Shall to my flaming wrath be oil and flax. Henceforth I will not have to do with pity; Meet I an infant of the house of York, Into as many gobbets will I cut it As wild Medea young Absyrtus did. In ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... to be still whether sitting or standing. However, I don't mean to say she was statuesque. She was too generously alive; but she could have stood for an allegoric statue of the Earth. I don't mean the worn-out earth of our possession, but a young Earth, a virginal planet undisturbed by the vision of a future teeming with the monstrous forms of life and death, clamorous with the cruel battles ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... constitutes a fully developed matron fit to play her proper part in the home and in the world. Yet with all these experiences, which undoubtedly are an important part of life, she may yet remain on the emotional side—and, as a matter of fact, frequently remains—quite virginal, as immature as a school-girl. She has not acquired an erotic personality, she has not mastered the art of love, with the result that her whole nature remains ill-developed and unharmonised, and that she is incapable of bringing her personality—having indeed ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... fell from his mental vision. What! Distrust Iris! Imagine for one second that riches or poverty, good repute or ill, would affect that loyal heart when its virginal font was filled with the love that once in her life comes to every true woman! Perish the thought! What evil spirit had power to so blind his perception of all that was strong and beautiful in her character. Brave, uncomplaining Iris! Iris of the crystal soul! Iris, whose innocence ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... hundred miles which lay before Rosendo and his little band stretched their rugged, forbidding length through ragged canons, rushing waters, and dank, virginal forest. Only the old man, as he trudged along the worn trail between Simiti and the Inanea river, where canoes waited to transport the travelers to the little village of Boque, had any adequate conception of what the journey ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... life, tempting and plump, white as a lily, loaded with the most charming wealth of beauty. Her drooping eyelashes seem like the points of the iron crown; her skin, which is as fresh as the calyx of a white camelia, is streaked with the purple of the red camelia; over her virginal complexion one seems to see the bloom of young fruit and the delicate down of a young peach; the azure veins spread a kindling warmth over this transparent surface; she asks for life and she gives it; she is all joy and love, all tenderness ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... which could never be settled between the two friends, and which came near to wrecking their friendship. Garrick loved books with the chilly yet imperative love of the collector. Johnson loved them as he loved his soul. Garrick took pride in their sumptuousness, in their immaculate, virginal splendour. Johnson gathered them to his heart with scant regard for outward magnificence, for the glories of calf and vellum. Garrick bought books. Johnson borrowed them. Each considered that he had a prior right to the objects of ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... Probably, that American in the toga and sandals, exiled from the island he loved so well, had a message for the Tahitians or others of the Polynesian tribes of the South Seas; Essenism, maybe, or something to do with virginal beards and long hair, or sandals and the simple life. I wished he ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... I can't kiss you to-night, father; sometime I will," the gentle voice replied. "I'm not strong enough to-night." There was infinite regret in the tone, which conveyed to Serviss, with singular vividness, a virginal charm, united to something very sweet, almost saintly. Every sentiment had been beautifully voiced—no actress could have ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... accepted a seat, she became, as Sir Wilfrid perceived in the intervals of his own conversation, the leader of the most animated circle in the room. The Duchess, with one delicate arm stretched along the back of Mademoiselle Le Breton's chair, laughed and chattered; two young girls in virginal white placed themselves on big gilt footstools at her feet; man after man joined the group that stood or sat around her; and in the centre of it, the brilliance of her black head, sharply seen against a background of rose brocade, the grace of her tall form, which was thin almost ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in 'Feverel' has given us scenes of young courtship which are beyond the praises of a writer like myself. The two young people on their magic island are amongst the real-ideal figures which haunt my mind with sweetness. Nature on either side is virginal. It flames and trembles with natural passion both in boy and girl, and they are as pure as a pair of daisies. Any workman in the school of Namby-Pamby could have kept their purity. Any writer of the Roman-candle-volcanic tribe could have heaped ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... the government of Henry Pelham and his brother, the Duke of Newcastle, have yielded their secrets, and given the information of the spies. The Stuart Papers at Windsor (partly published in Browne's 'History of the Highland Clans' and by Lord Stanhope, but mainly virginal of type) fill up the interstices in the Pelham Papers like pieces in a mosaic, and reveal the general design. The letters of British ambassadors at Paris, Dresden, Berlin, Hanover, Leipzig, Florence, ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... from a world which is, after all, so full of it. On one side sits enthroned, as some have thought, the Goddess of Death; on the opposite side the Goddess of Life, with her flowers and fruit. Towards her three young maidens are advancing—were they still alive thus, graceful, virginal, with their long, plaited hair, and long, delicately-folded tunics, looking forward to carry on their race into the future? Presented severally, on the other sides of the dark hollow within, three male persons—a young man, an old man, and ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... mendicants and of musicians flitting to and fro in the sun, like shabby butterflies, and the elegant Greek says "No" to them, not by sound of voice, but by the slightest elevation of the eyebrows and movement of the eye. He sits and looks occasionally at the wonderful hills above him, so fresh, so virginal; but he does not, as an Englishman might do, pay quickly and go out and go up. The modern Greek would never build so high ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... are more numerous, and they range through various degrees and kinds of failure. It is not death which can bring the sense of failure to love. In Evelyn Hope all the passion has been on the man's side; all possibilities of love in the virginal heart of the dead girl, all her warmth and sweetness, had been folded in the bud. But death, in the mood of infinite tenderness and unfulfilled aspiration which the poem expresses, seems no bar to ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... last wrote, fifteen chapters of DAVID BALFOUR have been drafted, and five TIRES AU CLAIR. I think it pretty good; there's a blooming maiden that costs anxiety - she is as virginal as billy; but David seems there and alive, and the Lord Advocate is good, and so I think is an episodic appearance of the Master of Lovat. In Chapter XVII. I shall get David abroad - Alan went already in Chapter XII. The book should be ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... could give me an answer, I opened the door and walked out in my dressing-gown, so suddenly that she almost pitched forward into the bath. Phyllis, heard from behind a cold, unsympathetic door, and Phyllis seen in all her virginal Burne-Jones attractiveness, might as well be two different girls. If you carried on a conversation with Miss Rivers on ethics and conventionalities and curates, and things of that kind from behind a door, without having first peeped ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... had gathered that she was of overwhelming respectability, but now he had his doubts about that also. She certainly seemed of a more oncoming disposition than he had thought, though there was something naive and virginal about her forwardness. Her acquaintance might prove more entertaining than he had supposed. He fixed his eyes on her uncovered throat; she blushed deeply, and ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith |
