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More "Effeminacy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... instructing and entertaining; but he was also a good man, a man of virtue and humanity. There is no character without some speck, some imperfection; and I think the greatest defect in his was an affectation in delicacy, or rather effeminacy, and a visible fastidiousness, or contempt and disdain of his inferiors in science. He also had, in some degree, that weakness which disgusted Voltaire so much in Mr. Congreve: though he seemed to ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... to hurry precipitously Like the leaf in a roaring whirlwind, like the smoke in a hurricane whirl'd. Lo the colony, there they rioted in the city of Cunobeline! There they drank in cups of emerald, there at tables of ebony lay, Rolling on their purple couches in their tender effeminacy. There they dwelt and there they rioted; there—there—they dwell no more. Burst the gates, and burn the palaces, break the works of the statuary, Take the hoary Roman head and shatter it, hold it abominable, Cut the Roman boy to pieces in his lust and voluptuousness, Lash the maiden into swooning, ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... however, the bitter pill of foreign animadversion, though distasteful to the palate, relieves the inflation of their stomachs, and leaves them better and lighter than before. But when will a native Aristophanes arise to purge the effeminacy of the American press, and show up the sausage-venders and Cleons of the Republic in their true light? How long will the richest field of national folly in the world remain unreaped, save by the crotchety sickles of dull moralists and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... hence it was his nightly custom, when released from the toils of the day, to proceed upstairs to his room and, slipping his braces from his shoulders, allow his nether garments to drop to the floor and, without further preparation, roll into bed. Of the effeminacy of a night robe Webster knew nothing except by somewhat hazy rumour. Once under the patchwork quilt he was safe for the night, for, heaving himself into the middle of the bed, he sank into solid and stertorous slumber, from which all Cameron's prods and kicks failed ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... The saying of Burke (so unworthy of a great man), that vice loses half its evil by losing all its grossness, is practically acted upon, and voluptuous and seductive figures, recommended only by a soft effeminacy, swarm our shop-windows and defile our drawing-rooms. It is impossible to over-state the extent to which they minister to, and increase the foul sins of, a corrupt and luxurious age. A school of artists who attempt to bring back the popular taste to the severe draperies ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... Sort of Gentlemen. Could you but once convince them, that to be civil at least is not beneath the Character of a Gentleman, nor even tender Affection towards one who would make it reciprocal, betrays any Softness or Effeminacy that the most masculine Disposition need be ashamed of; could you satisfy them of the Generosity of voluntary Civility, and the Greatness of Soul that is conspicuous in Benevolence without immediate Obligations; ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... was not in the least affected by the cold, scolded me, as if my shivering had been a paltry effeminacy, saying, 'Why do you shiver?' Sir William Scott,[1360] of the Commons, told me, that when he complained of a headach in the post-chaise, as they were travelling together to Scotland, Johnson treated him in the same manner: 'At your age, Sir, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... members of Parliament had at this time passed the age of twenty-one, and the latter was of extremely youthful appearance. Small of stature and slight in frame, his delicate aspect was redeemed from effeminacy by a head of classic contour, a penetrating and melodious voice, an address which always won attention. His superior social endowments were fully recognized by the companions of his leisure; nor was his influence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... our visible breath in the clear air, our strength and self-importance miraculously increase, and the whole frame begins to glow. The warmth and vigour thus acquired are inexpressibly delightful. As we re-enter the house, we are proud of our intrepidity and vigour, and pity the effeminacy of our less enterprising friends, who, though huddled together round the fire, like flies upon a sunny wall, still complain of cold, and instead of the bloom of health and animation, exhibit pale and pinched and discolored features, and hands ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... providence of God have been set forth by more striking examples, or the machinations of priestcraft been more truly and lucidly exposed, or the dangers which result to a nation when it abandons itself to effeminacy, and a rage for what is novel and ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... maintain a fair rivalship with the coaches, while, in the summer, the latter stood but little chance in the competition, but were almost entirely deserted. To this result the comfortable cabins of the coasters, designed for passengers (spacious and satisfactory for those times, however the refined effeminacy of the present generation might sneer at them), and the good fare they furnished, not a little contributed. The Calypso was one of the finest of the line of packets to which she belonged, and provided with every convenience that could be desired. ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... eloquent. He calls him omnium facile acutissimus, et sine ulla dubitatione doctissimus. [21] The qualities that shone out conspicuously in his works were, besides learning, a genial though somewhat caustic humour, and a thorough contempt for effeminacy of all kinds. The fop, the epicure, the warbling poet who gargled his throat before murmuring his recondite ditty, the purist, and above all the mock-philosopher with his nostrum for purifying the world, these are all caricatured by Varro in his pithy, good-humoured ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... and silver had once gained admittance into the Lacedaemonian commonwealth, it was quickly followed by avarice and baseness of spirit in the pursuit of it, and by luxury, effeminacy, and prodigality in the use. Then Sparta fell from almost all her former virtue and repute, and so continued till the days of Agis and Leonidas, who both together ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... to walk through a burn on his way home, and was pestered generally with sanitary precautions. It is right to add that the gudeman treated such advice with contempt, regarding it as suitable for the effeminacy of towns, but not seriously intended for Drumtochty. Sandy Stewart "napped" stones on the road in his shirt-sleeves, wet or fair, summer and winter, till he was persuaded to retire from active duty at eighty-five, and he spent ten years more in regretting his hastiness ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... early. The members of the family arose from the beds where they had slept in the garments worn by our first parents before the fall; for the effeminacy of sleeping in night-dresses had not yet been introduced, and it was only the excessively poor that made the clothes worn during the day serve in lieu ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... vigorous rule which secured rest for the country during these years of national union told on the growth of material prosperity. Commerce sprang into a wider life. Its extension is seen in the complaint that men learned fierceness from the Saxon of Germany, effeminacy from the Fleming, and drunkenness from the Dane. The laws of AEthelred which provide for the protection and regulation of foreign trade only recognize a state of things which grew up under Eadgar. "Men of the ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... praised the effective disposition of the rockery, and in the bedroom, of which Somerset had vainly endeavoured to defend the entry, she fairly broke forth in admiration. "How simple and manly!" she cried: "none of that effeminacy of neatness, which is so detestable in a man!" Hard upon this, telling him, before he had time to reply, that she very well knew her way, and would trouble him no further, she took her leave with an engaging smile, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of it so rarely found their way in to the fresh, vigorous, hard-working Colonial society. Remarkably tall, yet perfectly proportioned, the roughest backwoodsman might have envied his apparent physical strength; polished in manner to a degree which just, and only just, escaped effeminacy, the most spoiled beauty might have been proud of his homage. At present, however, he stood lazily enough, smiling a little at his hostess' vivacity, exchanging a word or two with her husband, or following the direction of her eyes along ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... indigence and equal liberty, the same advantages and disadvantages were common to both sides of the river. The Treveri [155] and Nervii [156] are ambitious of being thought of German origin; as if the reputation of this descent would distinguish them from the Gauls, whom they resemble in person and effeminacy. The Vangiones, Triboci, and Nemetes, [157] who inhabit the bank of the Rhine, are without doubt German tribes. Nor do the Ubii, [158] although they have been thought worthy of being made a Roman colony, and are pleased in bearing the name ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... 14-16, is supported by the Assyrian records. But it is evident that the history does not always rest upon contemporary sources, and that early events and personalities are touched with the colours of legend or romance. Much of the story of Solomon, e.g., is unmistakably historical—his luxury, his effeminacy, his commerce, his unscrupulousness. But there are stories of another sort which, on the face of them, must be decades, if not centuries, later than Solomon's reign. "There came no more," we are informed, "such abundance of spices as those which the queen of ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... tea drinking must render the frame feeble and unfit to encounter hard labour or severe weather, while, as I have shown, it deducts from the means of replenishing the belly and covering the back. Hence succeeds a softness, an effeminacy, a seeking for the fireside, a lurking in the bed, and, in short, all the characteristics of idleness for which, in his case, real want of strength furnishes an apology. The tea drinking fills the public-house, makes the frequenting of it habitual, corrupts boys as soon ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... this which, taken quite literally, produced the Biographia Dramatica's canard as to Baker's effeminacy (see above). ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... station. In the first place, nature has made them very much as she makes other people; and the only physical difference there is proceeds from habit and education. Then, as to the enervating effects of aristocracy, and noble effeminacy, I have seen ten times as much of it among your counter-jumpers and dealers in bob binet, as I have seen in the sons of dukes and princes; and, in my later days, circumstances have brought me much in contact with many of these last. Manliness of character is far more likely to be the ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... With all his effeminacy, he was beyond the least doubt desperately determined to possess himself of Cornelia. His passion was purely animal and unrefined, but none could doubt it. Cornelia feared to have him near her, and knew peace neither day nor ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... and little, to give a loose to the excesses of intoxication. His general simplicity of life was changed; he perfumed his apartments by burning the wood of the most aromatick fir, and commanded his helmet to be ornamented with beautiful rows of the teeth of the raindeer. Indolence and effeminacy stole upon him by pleasing and imperceptible gradations, relaxed the sinews of his resolution, and extinguished ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... gymnasium in a cloak and slippers, and that he gave his time to light books and the palaestra. That his whole staff were enjoying the delights which Syracuse afforded, with the same indolence and effeminacy. That Carthage and Hannibal had dropped out of his memory; that the whole army, corrupted by indulgence, like that at Sucro in Spain, or that now at Locri, was more to be feared by its allies than ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... not day nor night To storm me over-watch't, and wearied out. At times when men seek most repose and rest, I yielded, and unlock'd her all my heart, Who with a grain of manhood well resolv'd Might easily have shook off all her snares: But foul effeminacy held me yok't 410 Her Bond-slave; O indignity, O blot To Honour and Religion! servil mind Rewarded well with servil punishment! The base degree to which I now am fall'n, These rags, this grinding, is not yet so base As was my former ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... the praise, unless Spenser may divide it with him, of having first discovered to how much smoothness and harmony the English language could be softened. He has speeches, perhaps sometimes scenes, which have all the delicacy of Rowe, without his effeminacy. He endeavours indeed commonly to strike by the force and vigour of his dialogue, but he never executes his purpose better, than when he tries to sooth ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... and Cassius, in which the latter breaks the design of the conspiracy to the former, and partly gains him over to it, is a noble piece of high-minded declamation. Cassius's insisting on the pretended effeminacy of Caesar's character, and his description of their swimming across the Tiber together, 'once upon a raw and gusty day', are among the finest strokes in it. But perhaps the whole is not equal to the short scene which follows when Caesar ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... Giovanni, himself not lacking in effeminacy, was greatly taken by the wondrous raiment, the studied lisp and the hundred affectations of this peerless gallant. Had he not been overburdened at the time by the Papal business that impended, he might there and then ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... daughters of men of this stamp—and not half their effeminacy and baseness, as the honest rough old soldier Ammianus Marcellinus describes it, has been told here—the news brought from ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... same breath, from the most moving pathos to the bitterest satire. His clever but too deeply metaphysical romances are not only full of domestic sentimentality and domestic scenes, but they also imitate the over-refinement and effeminacy of Goethe, and yet his sound understanding and warm patriotic feelings led him to condemn all the artificial follies of fashion, all that was unnatural as well as ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... Than that my lord thro' me should suffer shame. Am I so bold, and could I so stand by, And see my dear lord wounded in the strife, Or maybe pierced to death before mine eyes, And yet not dare to tell him what I think, And how men slur him, saying all his force Is melted into mere effeminacy? O me, I fear that I am ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... 'from my very infancy I had an instinctive dislike of the maudlin way of looking at things,' and he remembers how in his fifth year he had declared that guns were not 'dreadful things.' They were good if put to the proper uses. I do not think that there was ever much real 'effeminacy' to be knocked out of him. It is too harsh a word for the slowness with which a massive and not very flexible character rouses itself to action. His health was good, except for a trifling ailment which made him for some time pass for a delicate child. But the delicacy soon passed off and ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... The taylor's trade having an appearance of effeminacy, has always been, among the rugged English, liable to sarcasms ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... understand you, gentlemen," warmly and quickly retorted Sir Everard, who, with all his dandyism and effeminacy of manner, was of a high and resolute spirit. "Do either of you fancy that I want courage to face a positive danger, because I may not happen to have any particular vulgar ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... quality, which make up the nobility of that parcel of the world. For while thus he lived retired, scarce visiting any one, or permitting any one to visit him, they charge him with a thousand crimes of having given himself over to effeminacy; as indeed he grew too lazy in her arms; neglecting glory, arms, and power, for the more real joys of life; while she even rifles him with extravagancy; and grows so bold and hardy, that regarding ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... thanks of the community, Mrs. Cox, for the businesslike way in which you suppressed this diabolical gang. Your method is in pleasing contrast with the ridiculous effeminacy of the previous witnesses. I have no doubt you would treat an adult bushranger in ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... city to Crotona, was as celebrated for luxury and effeminacy as Crotona for the reverse. The name has become proverbial. Lowell uses it in this sense in his charming little ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... effeminacy and want of courage in battle seems to be considered as better founded. Plutarch admits it fully. His foppery is matter of ridicule to AEschines, who, at the same time, in rather a remarkable passage in his speech on the Crown, gives us some clue to the ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... strength, they will readily attempt it. Thus a general at the head of his army will endeavour to dethrone the monarch, as Cyrus did Astyages, despising both his manner of life and his forces; his forces for want of action, his life for its effeminacy: thus Suthes, the Thracian, who was general to Amadocus, conspired against him. Sometimes more than one of these causes will excite men to enter into conspiracies, as contempt and desire of gain; as in the instance of Mithridates ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... says the General. "Such a devil of a twist! If I had had my way, I should have been at Argaum two months later. But, good Lard!—they wouldn't let me out of Hospital." The old soldier, roused by the recollection of a fifty-year-old grievance, still rankling, launched into a denunciation of the effeminacy and timidity of Authorities and Seniors, of all sorts and conditions. His youth was back upon him with its memories, and he had forgotten that he too was now a Senior. His torrent of thinly disguised execrations was of service to Lady Gwen; as the original subject of the conversation, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... had not individualized himself; he was simply charming, especially in correct summer costume, luxuriating in indolent conversation. He had the well- bred, fine-featured air of so many of the graduates from our Eastern colleges. The suspicion of effeminacy which he suggested might be unjust, but he certainly had not experienced what Oliphant would call "life." He had enough interest in music to dissipate in it. Marriage was an excellent settler, though, on a possible ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... and the great, a large number of philosophers and men of science. His treatment of Bahram was at once a folly and a crime—an act of black ingratitude, and a rash step, whereof he had not counted the consequences. To his other vices he added those of indolence and effeminacy. From the time that he became king nothing could drag him from the soft life of the palace; in no single instance did he take the field, either against his country's enemies or his own. Miserable as was his end, we can scarcely deem him worthy of our pity, since there ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... your nurse comes to feed you. If Hercules had sat loitering at home, what would he have been? You are not Hercules, to extirpate the evils of others. Extirpate your own, then. Expel grief, fear, desire, envy, malevolence, avarice, effeminacy, ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... to be the judgment of Heaven, was the signal to a revolt. The people rose and ran to arms; and Babylon, which had been so long immersed in idleness and effeminacy, became the theater of a bloody civil war. I was taken from the heart of my statue and placed at the head of a party. Cador flew to Memphis to bring thee back to Babylon. The Prince of Hircania, informed of these fatal events, returned with his army and made a third party in Chaldea. ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... said,—'Whence, O Arjuna, hath come upon thee, at such a crisis, this despondency that is unbecoming a person of noble birth, that shuts one out from heaven, and that is productive of infamy? Let no effeminacy be thine, O son of Kunti. This suits thee not. Shaking off this vile weakness of hearts, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... London to pursue his medical studies, and I went to Cheshunt College, A day or two after reaching college, I sent to Livingstone, asking him to purchase a second-hand carpet for my room. He was quite scandalized at such an exhibition of effeminacy, and positively refused to gratify my wish.... In the spring of 1840 I met Livingstone at London in Exeter Hall, when Prince Albert delivered his maiden speech in England. I remember how nearly he was brought to silence when the speech, which ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... Frazer and of MM. Hubert and Mauss. He says: "It is difficult to conceive of sympathy, and sympathy only, as the continuous, or even the originally efficient cause of the avoidance." Mr Crawley had called attention to the fact that savages fear womanly characteristics, that is, effeminacy, which is identified with weakness. While noting with great psychological insight the presence of other factors, such as the dislike of the different, he had gone so far as to express the opinion that the fear of effeminacy was probably the chief ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... which led to the more speedy conquest and settlement of South America by the Spaniards, were wanting. Gold and silver to tempt cupidity were not to be found, and the stern, though not inhospitable character of the Northern tribes was very different from the imbecile effeminacy of the Southern races. The opposition likely to be encountered was more formidable, and the prize to be won hardly proportioned to the hazard to be incurred. While, therefore, the atrocious Spaniards were enslaving the helpless natives of Peru and Mexico, and compelling them by horrid ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... velarium. This velarium was an awning that was stretched above the heads of the spectators to protect them from the sun. In earlier times the Romans had scouted at this innovation, which they called a piece of Campanian effeminacy. But little by little, increasing luxury reduced the Puritans of Rome to silence, and they willingly accepted a velarium of silk—an homage of Caesar. Nero, who carried everything to excess, went further: he caused a velarium of purple to be embroidered with gold. Caligula frequently ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... prosperous vice, the misery of persecuted virtue—tormented his mind and called forth his embittered words. He inveighed against the reprobates and fools, the crowds of monsignors who were as vain of their effeminacy as the Scipios of their deeds of valour; he combated abuses, and with indignant pen heaped scorn upon the fashionable vices of the age. The Pope and his Cardinals, stung by his shafts of satire, cruelly avenged themselves upon the unhappy poet, and, as we have said, doomed him to death in ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... opinion which it had been decided should be acted upon. It was, not to attack the Friars Minor openly, but to have recourse to artifice; to induce them to receive into their society nobles, learned men, and youths. Nobles, in order by their means to introduce effeminacy in which they had been brought up; learned men, who, proud of their learning, should have a contempt for humility; and youths, who, being weak and delicate, would greatly relax in ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... regards the astonishing perseverance in supporting the succession of these benefits, or as regards the ultimate event of these benefits. A great wrong has been done for ages; for we have all been accustomed to speak of the Byzantine empire with scorn,{B} as chiefly known by its effeminacy; and the greater is the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... enough. Tell your churls, if the money is not forthcoming they are lost men; yourself especially—you shall die. I have had enough of you: you have the heart of a woman; you are slack and sluggish. You shall die—you shall pay for your cowardice, your effeminacy. Stay; it makes but very small difference whether you go down now, or whether I keep you here. This is Sunday: right loudly would the folk yonder laugh to see you dangling your legs ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... an error of judgment," said Frank. "Bah! MIGHT be—it WAS; but with regard to running four miles—no. It is natural and right that a man at five-and-twenty should be both able and willing to run four miles, a parson above all others, as a protest against effeminacy. With regard to consciences, those very tender conscienced men oughtn't to want ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... astonished at the effeminacy engendered by provincial life. His old Bouvard was turning into a blockhead; in short, "he was no longer in ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... praised the effective disposition of the rockery, and in the bedroom, of which Somerset had vainly endeavoured to defend the entry, she fairly broke forth in admiration. 'How simple and manly!' she cried: 'none of that effeminacy of neatness, which is so detestable in a man!' Hard upon this, telling him, before he had time to reply, that she very well knew her way, and would trouble him no further, she took her leave with an engaging smile, and ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... average in resisting pains are soft or effeminate. The mass of men incline to both weaknesses. He that deliberately pursues excessive pleasures, or other pleasures in an excessive way, is said to be abandoned. The intemperate are worse than the incontinent. Sport, in its excess, is effeminacy, as being relaxation from toil. There are two kinds of incontinence: the one proceeding from precipitancy, where a man acts without deliberating at all; the other from feebleness,—where he deliberates, ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... that he does not know his business. Such aid as this Arthur Agar had sought. He had, as Dora suspected, written to his mother, with full particulars of the conversation beneath the Hurlingham trees. He had laid before her many arguments, which, by reason of their effeminacy, appealed to her illogical mind, proving that Dora could not do better than marry him. The arrangement, he argued, was satisfactory from whatever point of view it might be taken; and, finally, he begged his mother to try and succeed where he had failed. He ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... we have recommended, would questionless in less than half an age, produce of wonders, by introduction, if not of quite different, yet of better kinds, and such variety for pulchritude and sweetness; that when by some princely example, our late pride, effeminacy, and luxury, (which has to our vast charges, excluded all the ornaments of timber, &c. to give place to hangings, embroideries, and foreign leather) shall be put out of countenance, we may hope to see a new face of things, for the encouragement ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... of the house, as usual, turned the conversation upon the subject of politics. She inveighed with much warmth against the effeminacy and depravity of the modern times. We were slaves, and we deserved to be so. In almost every country there now appeared a king, that puppet pageant, that monster in creation, miserable itself, a combination of every vice, and invented for the curse of human kind. "Where ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... well of that valley had she done nothing more than to set that rugged, fearless figure in the heart of America, a perpetual foil to effeminacy and submission to softening luxury, to the arts that seek merely popularity, to drunkenness and other vices which he combated even in that wilderness, to sycophancy and demagogy—a perpetual example of the "vir" and virtue in the noblest sense in ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... said to the contrary notwithstanding. The whole expression of my countenance was very feminine, but not soft. It was always the seat of some sentiment or passion, and in its womanly refinement gave to me an appearance of constitutional delicacy and effeminacy, that I certainly did not possess. I was decidedly a very beautiful child, and a child that seemed formed to kindle and return a mother's love, yet the maternal caress never blessed me; but I was abandoned to the tender mercies of a number of he-beings, by many of whom my vivacity ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... cheated of his reward. That either Ford or Miriam would attempt this he did not believe, even if between them the worst, from his point of view, was at the worst; but that an absurd, elusive principle which called itself chivalry, but really was effeminacy of will, might try to disarm him by an appeal to scruples he contemned, was the possibility he feared. He feared it because he estimated at its worth the force of restraint a sentimental civilization ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... Rome was due not to luxury, effeminacy or corruption, not to Nero's or Caligula's wickedness, nor to the futility of Constantine's descendants. It began at Philippi, where the spirit of domination overcame the spirit of freedom. It was ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... ancestors defeated their enemies in so decisive a manner that they never fought again. We also would assuredly have saved the fatherland, for we have, we believe, marrow in our bones, and remain uncorrupted by modern luxury and effeminacy. But no one can escape the decrees of Providence. Oh, farewell, then, our father and king! Heaven grant you more faithful generals and more sagacious ministers for the remainder of your states! You are not omniscient, ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... effect on the generative function. In both Sweden, Norway, and other Northern countries the families are as large, if not larger, than in other countries. Cold undoubtedly imparts vigor, and, according to DeThou, Henry III lost his effeminacy and love of pleasure in winter and reacquired a spirit of progress and reformation. Zimmerman has remarked that in a rigorous winter the lubberly Hollander is like the gayest Frenchman. Cold increases ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... (A.D. 645) system, various administrative organs were created in accordance with Tang models, and a polity at once imposing and elaborate came into existence. But when the capital was overtaken by an era of literary effeminacy and luxurious abandonment, the Imperial exchequer fell into such a state of exhaustion that administrative posts began to be treated as State assets and bought and sold like commercial chattels, the discharge of the functions ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... hero, who had been always a tolerable pedestrian, declined the accommodation, and obviously rose in his guide's opinion by showing that he did not fear wetting his feet. Indeed he was anxious, so far as he could without affectation, to remove the opinion which Evan seemed to entertain of the effeminacy of the Lowlanders, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... commotions. Such a state of things, however, could not continue long without producing some evils; and we can hardly be surprised to find that the Imperial capital became a sort of centre of comparative luxury and idleness. Society lost sight, to a great extent, of true morality, and the effeminacy of the people constituted the chief feature of the age. Men were ever ready to carry on sentimental adventures whenever they found opportunities, and the ladies of the time were not disposed to disencourage them altogether. The Court ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... more noble school—and passes through the richer decoration of Padua and Vicenza to the full magnificence of the Venetian—distinguished by the introduction of the ogee curve without pruriency or effeminacy, and by the breadth and decision of moldings as severely determined in all examples of the style as those of any one ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... for rural life among the higher classes of the English has had a great and salutary effect upon the national character. I do not know a finer race of men than the English gentlemen. Instead of the softness and effeminacy which characterize the men of rank in most countries, they exhibit a union of elegance and strength, a robustness of frame and freshness of complexion, which I am inclined to attribute to their living so much in the open air, and pursuing so eagerly ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... and friendship. He makes me happy beyond flattery by permitting me to think that I add something to his life. You cannot fail to like him. He is a thorough Englishman, self-relying and self-contained; a well-bred gentleman without a jot of effeminacy. Plucky as a mastiff, high-blooded as a racer, enterprising but reflective, cool, keen, and as composed as daring. Few men talk less; few by manner and conduct suggest more. One fault you will pardon, a tendency to overrate the ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... subjected to the wholesome discipline equally of his schoolmates and his masters; in fact, sir, as you are probably aware, the most perfect democracy that we have yet known, in which the mere accidents of wealth, position, luxury, effeminacy, physical degeneration, and over-civilized stimulation, are not recognized. He was put into compulsory cricket, football, and rounders. As an undersized boy he was subjected to that ingenious preparation for future mastership by the pupillary state ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Danes thronged into the realm in new incursions, until 850,000 of them were settled in the North and East of England. The Danegelt or tribute, displaying at once the power of the invaders and the cowardice and effeminacy of the Saxon monarchs, rose to a large sum, and two millions[11] of Saxons were powerless to drive the invaders away. In the year 1016, after the weak and wicked reign of the besotted Ethelred, justly surnamed the Unready, who to his cowardice in paying tribute added the cruelty of a wholesale ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... accusations are implied both in his acknowledged and anonymous writings. The most ferocious of all his assaults, however, is the character of Sporus, that is Lord Hervey, in the epistle to Arbuthnot, where he seems to be actually screaming with malignant fury. He returns the taunts as to effeminacy, and calls his adversary a "mere white curd of asses' milk,"—an innocent drink, which he was himself ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... to a certainty I could descry the tall figure of Agnes, her gipsy hat, and even the peculiar elegance of her walk. Often I went so far as to laugh at myself, and even to tax my recent fears with unmanliness and effeminacy, on recollecting the audible throbbings of my heart, and the nervous palpitations which had besieged me; but these symptoms, whether effeminate or not, began to come back tumultuously under the gloomy doubts that succeeded almost before I had uttered this self-reproach. Still ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... necessary to manly beauty. It seems to me that I have never yet seen what I call a handsome man, whose features had not a certain sweet gravity, a sort of melancholy defiance, in them which neutralized the effect of any effeminacy which mere beauty must have had; and imparted to them a degree of character which compelled you to turn again and look, and made you remember them, even when they had disappeared from sight. Now, it may be the vanity of a wife, Edward, ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... to lie at rest by the Appian Way, before I require such feet!" Then, as his sharp eyes noted the flush upon Sergius' face, he added: "Fever, wounds, and death may pardon effeminacy; and, truly, I would beg you to accompany me as you came, were it not that a climb up the Palatine should bring new health to one who could run ten miles with a broken shoulder. Believe me, my friend, the dictator thought better of you than ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... His friends beheld him with horror go out on a dewy day: he would even step out in his slippers. In his own grounds he never wore a hat: he used to say, that on his first visit to Paris he was ashamed of his effeminacy, when he saw every meagre little Frenchman whom he could have knocked down in a breath walking without a hat, which he could not do without a certainty of taking the disease which the Germans say is endemical in England, and which they call to catch cold. The first trial, he ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... making his family happy and distinguished, the father brings it up in luxury and idleness, and this produces a very harmful result. The increasing refinement of modern life and its pleasures leads to effeminacy. It bears upon the whole of society and degenerates into an artificial desire for brilliancy and show, which makes it increasingly difficult to obtain a simple and sober education for the family. Men and women, especially the latter, do their best to eclipse each other in their table, ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... But more especially, and above all other reasons, the very luxury of the Soil and Riches, the extreme heat of those Countries, and influence of the Stars being such, as totally inclineth their bodies unto an infinite effeminacy ...
— The Pirates of Panama • A. O. (Alexandre Olivier) Exquemelin
... cross-lights fell through the wide columned space behind the high altar, was her withdrawing room, where the decorator and builder thought only of pleasing her. The very faults of the architecture and effeminacy of taste witness the artists' object. If the glassworkers had thought of themselves or of the public or even of the priests, they would have strained for effects, strong masses of colour, and striking ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... simple happiness that can be given by a single sunbeam, a flower, a sup of water from an earthen cup, or the summer time, would recognize in Tolstoy his faithful disciple, the only one, perhaps, who survives in this barbaric silence, where American comfort, a mixture of effeminacy and indigence, has made one forget the real purpose ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... appeared more strongly. Under the influence of governments at once dependent and tyrannical, which purchased, by cringing to their enemies, the power of trampling on their subjects, the Romans sunk into the lowest state of effeminacy and debasement. Falsehood, cowardice, sloth, conscious and unrepining degradation, formed the national character. Such a character is totally incompatible with the stronger passions. Love, in particular, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to discuss the character of Maximinus. He was a very warlike man, and the armies, being disgusted with the effeminacy of Alexander, of whom I have already spoken, killed him and elected Maximinus to the throne. This he did not possess for long, for two things made him hated and despised; the one, his having kept sheep in Thrace, which brought ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... woman, brown and veined like a tobacco leaf, ministered to his simple wants. But these wants had also been regulated by Dr. Duchesne. He found himself, with some grave doubts of his effeminacy, breakfasting on a single cup of chocolate instead of his usual bowl of molasses-sweetened coffee; crumbling a crisp tortilla instead of the heavy saleratus bread, greasy flapjack, or the lard-fried ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... There seemed to be nothing wanting to establish a perfect despotism in that house, but a few regiments of troops under the command of the crown.] It has actually taken place in Asia, where similar conquests have been made; and even without the ordinary opiates of effeminacy, or a servile weakness, founded on luxury, it has surprised the Tartar on his wain, in the rear of his herds. Among this people, in the heart of a great continent, bold and enterprising warriors arose; they subdued by surprise, or superior ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... shown so convincingly what dynamic force still belongs to the right kind of singing, and the poet in general seems to be winning back some of that serious respect from his fellow-citizens which, under a misapprehension of his effeminacy and general uselessness, he had lost awhile. The poet is not so much a joke to the multitude as he was a few years ago, and the term "minor poet" seems to have fallen ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... Scott says here: "Hardihood was in every respect so essential to the character of a Highlander, that the reproach of effeminacy was the most bitter which could be thrown upon him. Yet it was sometimes hazarded on what we might presume to think slight grounds. It is reported of old Sir Ewen Cameron of Lochiel, when upwards of seventy, that he was surprised by night on a hunting or military ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... vexation and misery in the house, and of waste and ruin on the farm; that the youth of the country are growing up with a contempt of steady industry as a low and servile thing, which contempt induces idleness and all its attendant effeminacy, vice, and worthlessness; that the waste of the products of the land, nay, of the land itself, is bringing poverty on all its inhabitants; that this poverty and the sparseness of population either ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... accustomed to it, and used it myself in speaking to the villagers. Farrar used to tell us at school, in one of the resounding phrases of which he was rather fond, that "All phonetic corruption is due to muscular effeminacy," which accounts for some of the words in use, but does not alter the fact that many so-called corrupt words are more correct ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... that the old fellows in some confusion sought comfort in each other. This Aoyama Shu[u]zen was a very devil of a fellow. He had a perspicacity in finesse that the plain, keen, and honest bluntness of former days could not deceive. Aoyama was not one to charge with effeminacy in any form. He had a wife—whom he neglected. He had a page, whom he favoured. He had all the harsh vices and capabilities of the warrior age. Turning to Endo[u] Saburo[u]zaemon—"Endo[u] Uji has seen the vision, not fox or tanuki. This has been the experience ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... and with some justice, a barbarian, it does not appear that his character would suffer in the comparison. His conquests were equally splendid; nor did he lead the forces of a brave and generous people, against a nation depressed by slavery, and relaxed with effeminacy. Under his banner Saracen encountered Saracen in equal strife; or the forces of the East were engaged with the firmer and more disciplined armies of the West. Like Alexander, he was liberal to profusion; and while all he possessed seemed the property of his friends, the monarch ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... man be stern as his Master and Mandatory is!—Understand too that except upon a basis of even such rigor, sorrowful, silent, inexorable as that of Destiny and Doom, there is no true pity possible. The pity that proves so possible and plentiful without that basis, is mere ignavia and cowardly effeminacy; maudlin laxity of heart, grounded on blinkard dimness of ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... who had been for years a byword for having sought the philosopher's stone. But I looked at him through the spectacles and saw a satisfaction in concentrated energies, and a tenacity arising from devotion to a noble dream which was not apparent in the youths who pitied him in the aimless effeminacy of clubs, nor in the clever gentlemen who cracked their thin jokes upon him ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... often mistake politeness for effeminacy, sensibility for weakness. Shad was a rough and tumble artist of a high proficiency, and he had a reputation for strength and combativeness. He was going to make short work of ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... They burst into loud lamentations, and were described by some children, who observed them, to be 'greeting and roaring like women.' This incident the lady of Drumakiln (who was a person of some capacity) afterwards told her neighbours as a strange instance of effeminacy in ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... form a large and brilliant class by themselves. The period when this style of poetry came into favor was the century after the fall of Granada, when the south, with its refinement and effeminacy, its magnificent and fantastic architecture, the foreign yet not strange manners of its people, and the stories of their warlike achievements, all took strong hold of the Spanish imagination, and made of Granada ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... bravery of a more generous sort, had they possessed self-denial enough to look the argument in the face, and abstained from procuring themselves pleasure at the expense of a needless infliction. The charge is not answered by the favorite retorts about effeminacy, God's providence, neighbors' faults, and doing "no worse." They are simple beggings of the question. I am not aware that anglers, or sportsmen in general, are braver than the ordinary run of mankind. Sure I am that a great fuss is made if they hurt ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... have been ignorant of Henri's character and vicious life. No one could have pretended that his employment of the kingdom's wealth to enrich unworthy favorites was anything but dishonorable, or have maintained that his flagrant effeminacy was beneficial to society. The fantastic superstition which the king indulged alternately with sensual extravagances, must have been odious to one whose spiritual mistress was divine Sophia, and whose religion was an adoration of the intellect for the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... they would not let me. Thousands of girls are born with mechanical fingers. Thousands of girls have a muscular development that could do the work of the world as well as men; and there are thousands of men born to effeminacy and weakness. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... it that Harry Bolton, who spite of his effeminacy of appearance, had evinced, in our London trip, such unmistakable flashes of a spirit not easily tamed—how was it, that he could now yield himself up to the almost passive reception of contumely and contempt? Perhaps his spirit, for the time, had been broken. But I will not ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... of his accession has yet to be decided by the electing voice of the Senabawdee, in whose judgment he may be ineligible, by reason of certain physical, mental, or moral disabilities,—as extreme youth, effeminacy, imbecility, intemperance, profligacy. Nevertheless, the election is popularly expected to result in the choice of the eldest son of the queen, though an interregnum or a regency is a contingency ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... cornice and roll mouldings to the level and ordinary lines of bases, whether of walls or shafts, I hold to be one of the worst barbarisms which the Roman and Renaissance architects ever committed; and that nothing can afterwards redeem the effeminacy and vulgarity of the buildings in which it prominently ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... the gods. For, in my opinion, night is a very convenient veil, spread over those that give themselves to that kind of pleasure; for it is not fit that day should be the time, lest modesty should be banished from our eyes, effeminacy grow bold, and such vigorous impressions on our memories be left, as might still possess us with the same fancies and raise new inclinations. For the sight (according to Plato) receives a more vigorous impression than any other bodily organ, and joining with the imagination, that lies ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... large and flaccid body, and allowed his head to tremble almost as if he were seized with palsy. Despite his breadth, his large limbs, and his beard, there was about his whole person an indescribable effeminacy, which seemed heightened, rather than diminished, by his bulk and his virile contours. A little way from him on the mattress a girl was sitting straight up, like an idol, with her legs and feet tucked away and completely ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... and exalted in them," and that he wanted "a due mixture of gravity and mildness, which are the chief political virtues and the fruits of reason and education." "He never dreamed that such obstinacy is rather the effect of the weakness and effeminacy of a distempered mind, which breaks out in violent passions like so many tumors." Nor apparently did Shakespeare ever dream of it either, altho he had Plutarch's sage observations before him. It is a pity that the great ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... are evidently the youngest of us, with "college" sticking out all over them, and so might naturally draw together. But there is a still more natural antagonism between them, of the thoroughbred for the mongrel. For young Farnham, in spite of his effeminacy, has the instincts of his ancestors; and Randall, in spite of a magnificent physique, carries round with him something that says to David, "Don't trust him!" What makes personality? I declare I cannot put my finger on the thing ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... always been the same. For one or two generations the warlike character and manly habits were maintained; and then the intruders, having adopted Chinese manners, ceremonies, literature, and civilization, sank into more than Chinese effeminacy and degradation. We see the custom of employing only female attendants ascribed in a later chapter (lxxvii.) to the Sung Emperors at Kinsay; and the same was the custom of the later Ming emperors, in whose time the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... French. He informed me that he was the Comte de Chavannes. But I must describe him. He was rather small in stature, but elegantly made; his features were, if anything, effeminate, but very handsome; they would have been handsome in a woman. The effeminacy, was, however, relieved by a pair of moustaches, soft, silky, and curling. His manners were peculiarly fascinating, and his conversation lively and full of point. I was much pleased with him during the half hour that we were together, during which ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... deserved to be placed on a level with the Christian virtues. The fine gentlemen of the Chesterfield era speak of fox-hunting pretty much as we speak of prize-fighting and bull-baiting. When all manly exercises had an inseparable taint of coarseness, delicate people naturally mistook effeminacy for refinement. When you can only join in male society on pain of drinking yourself under the table, the safest plan is to retire to tea-tables and small talk. For many years, Walpole's greatest pleasure seems to have been drinking tea with Lady Suffolk, and carefully piecing together ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... chins, might take to their tarpaulins again; they might renew their manhood on the capture of cod; headed by Harald and Hardiknut, they might roll surges to whelm a Dominant Jew clean gone to the fleshpots and effeminacy. Aldermen of our ancient conception, they may teach him that he has been backsliding once more, and must repent in ashes, as those who are for jewels, titles, essences, banquets, for wallowing in slimy spawn of lucre, have ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sweetness, their choice wording, their originality in epithet, name, and phrase, were novelties of Milton's own. His English masters were Spenser, Fletcher, and Sylvester, the translator of Du Bartas's La Sepmaine, but nothing of Spenser's prolixity, or Fletcher's effeminacy, or Sylvester's quaintness is found in Milton's pure, energetic diction. He inherited their beauties, but his taste had been tempered to a finer edge by his studies in Greek and Hebrew poetry. He was the last of the Elisabethans, and {154} his ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... of conscience, but of any of the restraints even of a wholesome personal conceit, than Sludge the Medium. He confesses not only fraud, but things which are to the natural man more difficult to confess even than fraud—effeminacy, futility, physical cowardice. And then, when the last of his loathsome secrets has been told, when he has nothing left either to gain or to conceal, then he rises up into a perfect bankrupt sublimity and makes the great avowal which is the ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... elusive quality of their regard. They were unlike any eyes that he had met with. It were folly to count their possessor a negligible quantity. Nevertheless, it was difficult, because of the fellow's scented effeminacy, to believe that women could find him attractive. But Harley, wise in worldly lore, perceived that the mystery surrounding Ormuz Khan must make a strong appeal to a certain type of female mind. He was forced to admit that some women, ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... makes my acquaintance, and opens the door to let me in, there enter unseen by my side Arrogance, Folly, Vainglory, Effeminacy, Insolence, Deceit, and a goodly company more. These possess his soul; he begins to admire mean things, pursues what he should abhor, reveres me amid my bodyguard of the insinuating vices which I have begotten, and would consent to anything ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... the Convention, according to reports of the time, was an appalling mixture of grandeur and effeminacy with respect to its architectural lines. Surrounding that portion where the legislators actually sat was the great amphitheatre which for three years was occupied by a curious, vociferous public, more demonstrative, even, than those that had attended the former ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... retires to the solitude of her loved chamber window, and reads of Aristides the Just, of Themistocles with his Spartan virtues, of Brutus, and of the mother of the Gracchi. Greece and Rome rise before her in all their ancient renown. She despises the frivolity of Paris, the effeminacy of the moderns, and her youthful bosom throbs with the desire of being noble in spirit and of achieving great exploits. Thus, when other children of her age were playing with their dolls, she was dreaming of the prostration of ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... homely enough, which his father sometimes gave him of the every-day occurrences which the latter had noticed in the woods and the fields. Osborne, on the contrary, was what is commonly called 'fine;' delicate almost to effeminacy in dress and in manner; careful in small observances. All this his father had been rather proud of in the days when he had looked forward to a brilliant career at Cambridge for his son; he had at that time regarded ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... was a prince, he was not brought up in habits of luxury and effeminacy. This would have been contrary to all the ideas which were entertained by the Greeks in those days. They had then no fire-arms, so that in battle the combatants could not stand quietly, as they can ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... farcical story of our adventures by the way, and the young Austrian was laughing at him as if he would burst his stays. I knew, of course, that he wore those feminine additions to the toilet, because within the last hour I had seen him take them off and put them on again; and the effeminacy of that trick, which was of course merely national and professional, and not in the least to be charged against him personally, added to the disgust I felt at him and at Brunow, and at the whole Austrian nation, and at myself, and at our ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... walk and crossed the grass. He seemed to be a year or two older than myself, and caught my eye immediately by his remarkable beauty, and by the depth of the mourning which he wore. His features were exquisitely cut, and, in a child, one was not disposed to complain of their effeminacy. His long fair hair was combed—in royal fashion—down his back, a style at that time most unusual; his tightly-fitting jacket and breeches were black, bordered with deep crape; not even a white collar relieved ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... without particular apprehension on the side of the drama. Hence its reasoning is much less interesting than its panegyric on the simplicity, robust courage, and manliness of the Genevese, and its invective against the effeminacy and frivolity of the Parisian. One of the most significant episodes in the discussion is the lengthy criticism on the immortal Misanthrope of Moliere. Rousseau admits it for the masterpiece of the comic ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... debilitation arising from opium-smoking, the universal usage of fans, the wearing of flowing garments and braided hair, and the discharging of domestic duties which in other countries fall to the lot of women, are probably largely accountable for the charges of effeminacy. ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... at the effeminacy engendered by provincial life. His old Bouvard was turning into a blockhead; in short, "he was no longer in it ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... blanket, lay down upon the bed. A habit of early rising, bringing with it, presumably, the proverbial accompaniment of health, wisdom, and pecuniary emoluments, had also brought with it certain ideas of the effeminacy of separate toilettes ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... into the realm in new incursions, until 850,000 of them were settled in the North and East of England. The Danegelt or tribute, displaying at once the power of the invaders and the cowardice and effeminacy of the Saxon monarchs, rose to a large sum, and two millions[11] of Saxons were powerless to drive the invaders away. In the year 1016, after the weak and wicked reign of the besotted Ethelred, justly surnamed the Unready, who to his ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... commencement of 1670, the splendour and corruption of the French Court had reached their acme. The seraglio of the great King recalled to mind that of Solomon, whilst his brother, enslaved by effeminacy and debauchery, had only to hold up his finger and the most important personages of the state were suitably provided with mistresses to such an extent that at length it became necessary to transfer occasionally ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... and soft, and, if not always smooth, susceptible of smoothness. A man's hair is shag. If he tries to make it anything else, he does not mend the matter. Ceasing to be shag, it does not become beauty, but foppishness, effeminacy, Miss Nancy-ism. A man is a brute by the law of his nature. Let him ape a woman, and he does not cease to be brutal, though he does become ridiculous. The only thing for him to do is to be the best ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... generous part, not "mannish," so let woman be urged to exercise a dignified and womanly bearing, not womanish. Let her cultivate all the graces and proper accomplishments of her sex, but let not these degenerate into a kind of effeminacy, in which she is satisfied to be the mere plaything or toy of society, content with her outward adornings, and the flattery and fulsome adulation ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... advocate one game more than the other; both to my thinking are excellent, and I have no sympathy with those who would suppress every pastime which is fraught with some roughness and danger. The tendency of civilisation is naturally towards softness, effeminacy, and a dread of pain or discomfort; and these evils are far more serious than bruises, sprains, broken collar-bones, or even ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... the head is tied a gaudily coloured handkerchief from the loom of Barcelona; light pumps and silk stockings complete the robber's array. This dress is picturesque enough, and well adapted to the fine sunshiny weather of the Peninsula; there is a dash of effeminacy about it, however, hardly in keeping with the robber's desperate trade. It must not, however, be supposed that it is every robber who can indulge in all this luxury; there are various grades of thieves, some poor enough, with ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... than by its own strength, did the Persian spear prevail against the Assyrian. Two centuries revolved, seven or eight generations, when Alexander found himself in the same position as Cyrus for building a third monarchy, and aided by the selfsame vices of luxurious effeminacy in his enemy, confronted with the self-same virtues of enterprise and hardihood in his compatriot soldiers. The native Persians, in the earliest and very limited import of that name, were a poor and hardy race of mountaineers. So were the men of Macedon; and neither one ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... one accustomed to command, of one having authority, and not fearing on occasion to use it. The hair swept carelessly away from the broad forehead and grew rather long behind, yet the length did not suggest, as it often does, effeminacy. He was masculine in everything—look, gesture, speech. Sparing of gesture, sparing of emphasis, careless of mere rhetorical or oratorical art, he had, nevertheless, the secret of the highest art of all, whether ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... mighty to avenge its disregarded sanctions—who, brought near to the city, was worshiped as Jupiter Capitolinus, majestic as the conservator of civil and social order. The charms of art, the graces of song, the effeminacy of festal pleasures were little recked of by the Roman of the Roman period—he who used his ancestral speech in the meanings imposed upon its terms by his fathers. Phoebus Apollo and Pallas Athene were not ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... in them those manly qualities which for centuries had lain dormant in their souls—would have imparted new strength to their frames, new vigor and energy to their modes of thought; their indolence and effeminacy would soon have passed away, and they would have constantly approached, instead of departing from the true Puritan type. While, on the other hand, the stern, rough, almost savage peculiarities of the Puritan would in like manner have been modified by the genial influences of a southern ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... love? And she who has in this very town[75] a temple and rites in common with Eros, and at Delphi stands in gold among kings and queens, by what dowry got she her lovers? But just as the lovers of Semiramis, Belestiche, and Phryne, became their prey unconsciously through their weakness and effeminacy, so on the other hand poor and obscure men, having contracted alliances with rich women of rank, have not been thereby spoilt nor merged their personality, but have lived with their wives on a footing of kindness, yet still kept their position as heads of the house. But ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... regarded as the act of an energetic people. We must be extremely humble, if we admit that a French army was held in check for two months by men wanting in energy. The assassinations which occur in the streets of Rome, prove rather the inefficiency of the police than the effeminacy of the citizens. I find, from an official return, that in 1853 the Roman tribunals punished 609 crimes against property, and 1,344 against the person. These figures do not indicate a faultless ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... make a man; an ancient and common saying, originating from the effeminacy of their employment; or, as some have it, from nine taylors having been robbed by one man; according to others, from the speech of a woollendraper, meaning that the custom of nine, taylors would make ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... lacking in effeminacy, was greatly taken by the wondrous raiment, the studied lisp and the hundred affectations of this peerless gallant. Had he not been overburdened at the time by the Papal business that impended, he might there and then have cemented the ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... should be acted upon. It was, not to attack the Friars Minor openly, but to have recourse to artifice; to induce them to receive into their society nobles, learned men, and youths. Nobles, in order by their means to introduce effeminacy in which they had been brought up; learned men, who, proud of their learning, should have a contempt for humility; and youths, who, being weak and delicate, would greatly relax in ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... inclined, irrespective of talent. To "play a piece" or sing a solo at a public gathering was the great ambition of every young lady in the place. Masculine performance on any instrument, except a mouth-organ or a fiddle, which last was distinctly worldly, was regarded as rather inclining to effeminacy. But the men all sang, for, of course, it went without saying that every one could sing bass. Tenors were scarce, there being only one at present—a young Englishman who had come out to learn farming at Sandy McQuarry's, and who suffered ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... matter for astonishment, therefore, that under these conditions effeminacy should take possession of a soul that has become the sport of all the weaknesses that are born of a desire to ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... countrywoman, and the conversation was carried on in French. He informed me that he was the Comte de Chavannes. But I must describe him. He was rather small in stature, but elegantly made; his features were, if anything, effeminate, but very handsome; they would have been handsome in a woman. The effeminacy, was, however, relieved by a pair of moustaches, soft, silky, and curling. His manners were peculiarly fascinating, and his conversation lively and full of point. I was much pleased with him during the half hour that we were together, during which we had kept up the conversation ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... a tender strain; but then they are languid through negligence, and often disfigured with false thoughts. The English had not in his time attained the art of correct writing. But his serious compositions exhibit a strength and vigour which could not have been expected from the softness and effeminacy of his other pieces. He wrote an elegy on Oliver Cromwell, which, with all its faults, is nevertheless looked upon as a masterpiece. To understand this copy of verses you are to know that the day Oliver died was remarkable for a great ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... several ways, to resist the one without relenting, and to be shook and subjected by the other. It may be true that to suffer a man's heart to be totally subdued by compassion may be imputed to facility, effeminacy, and over-tenderness; whence it comes to pass that the weaker natures, as of women, children, and the common sort of people, are the most subject to it but after having resisted and disdained the power of groans and tears, to yield to the sole reverence of the sacred image ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... a time had been proconsul in Bithynia, and, what is more, he had governed with energy and justice. This was a marvellous contrast in the character of a man noted for effeminacy and love of luxury; hence he was fond of mentioning those times, as they were a proof of what he had been, and of what he might have become had ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... the industry we have recommended, would questionless in less than half an age, produce of wonders, by introduction, if not of quite different, yet of better kinds, and such variety for pulchritude and sweetness; that when by some princely example, our late pride, effeminacy, and luxury, (which has to our vast charges, excluded all the ornaments of timber, &c. to give place to hangings, embroideries, and foreign leather) shall be put out of countenance, we may hope to see a new face of things, for the encouragement ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... unequal to the rugged expedition, begun fasting in the morning chill and concluded, likewise fasting, in the noonday heat. Still, it would scarcely have distressed those sturdy limbs, well developed and preserved by Roman training, never permitted by him to degenerate into effeminacy. And as his fine countenance and well- knit frame testified, Marcus AEmilius Victorinus inherited no small share of genuine Roman blood. His noble name might be derived through clientela, and his lineage had a Gallic intermixture; but the true Quirite predominated in his character and ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Who ever saw, but upon extraordinary occasions, Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Francis Drake ride in a coach? They made small use of coaches; there were but few in those times; and they were deadly foes to sloth and effeminacy. It is in the memory of many when, in the whole kingdom, there was not one! It is a doubtful question whether the devil brought tobacco into England in a coach, for both appeared at the same time." According to Stow, coaches were introduced here 1564, by Guilliam Boonen, who afterwards became ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... eyes are generally more indicative of weakness and effeminacy than brown or black. Certainly there are many powerful men with blue eyes, but I find more ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... not the fool you take me for.—You've thought me effeminate, de Windt, I suppose, because I have never—cared to go in for certain things. But it's not effeminacy, believe ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... feel as if he had now the right to consider only himself. He almost seemed absolved from any claims for pity which she might once have had upon him. Even the noblest of men, except the two or three in the history of the race who have shown themselves to be possessed of a certain divine effeminacy, instinctively feel that a disappointment in passion is an absolution from ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... kettle, a decanter, and empty tumblers told tales. Now the Doctor was a hardy and abstemious man, of a water-drinking generation; and his wife's influence had further tended to make him—indulgent as he was—scornful of whatever savoured of effeminacy or dissipation, so his look and tone were sharp, and ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... often, since his misfortunes, have I applauded myself for the education I have given him; for having taught him the principal modern languages; for having accustomed him to wait on himself; to despise all kinds of effeminacy; to sleep habitually on a wooden bed, with no covering but a mat; to expose himself to heat, cold, and rain; to accustom himself to fatigue by daily and violent exercise, by walking ten or fifteen miles with leaden soles to his shoes; and, finally, for having given him the taste and habit of travelling. ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... case of the rich and cultured the inverse phenomenon is produced. With the intention of making his family happy and distinguished, the father brings it up in luxury and idleness, and this produces a very harmful result. The increasing refinement of modern life and its pleasures leads to effeminacy. It bears upon the whole of society and degenerates into an artificial desire for brilliancy and show, which makes it increasingly difficult to obtain a simple and sober education for the family. Men and women, ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... the black velvet eyes under arched brows, that met in a thin, pencilled line, were long, and either dreamy or calmly calculating. A prominent chin and a full mouth, so determined as to suggest cruelty, certainly selfishness, preserved the face from effeminacy at the sacrifice of artistic perfection. Stephen noticed with mingled curiosity and disapproval that the Arab appeared to be vain of his hands, on which he wore two or three rings that might have been bought in Paris, or even given him by European women—for ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... went, mounted on camels, a band, arrayed as trumpeters and lictors, the lictors' rods having purses suspended to them, and the axes in their midst being crowned with the bleeding heads of Romans. In the rear followed a train of Seloucian music-girls, who sang songs derisive of the effeminacy and cowardice of the proconsul. After this pretended parade of his prisoner through the streets of the town, Surenas called a meeting of the Seleucian senate, and indignantly denounced to them the indecency of the literature which he had found ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... notwithstanding. The whole expression of my countenance was very feminine, but not soft. It was always the seat of some sentiment or passion, and in its womanly refinement gave to me an appearance of constitutional delicacy and effeminacy, that I certainly did not possess. I was decidedly a very beautiful child, and a child that seemed formed to kindle and return a mother's love, yet the maternal caress never blessed me; but I was abandoned to ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... weaknesses. He that deliberately pursues excessive pleasures, or other pleasures in an excessive way, is said to be abandoned. The intemperate are worse than the incontinent. Sport, in its excess, is effeminacy, as being relaxation from toil. There are two kinds of incontinence: the one proceeding from precipitancy, where a man acts without deliberating at all; the other from feebleness,—where he deliberates, but where the result of deliberation ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... regarding each other as they might regard a set of dangerously gesticulating automata, or, if they seek to get at the inner motivation, making the most horrible mistakes. Often all that the poor man can think of in the rich man is a cowardly greediness for safety, luxury, and effeminacy, and a boundless affectation. What he is, is not a human being, but a pocket-book, a bank-account. And a similar greediness, turned by disappointment into envy, is all that many rich men can see in the state ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... that its sovereigns could bring into the field an army of a hundred thousand men. [33] Many of these were drawn from the regions of the Alpuxarras, whose rugged inhabitants had not been corrupted by the soft effeminacy of the plains. The ranks were occasionally recruited, moreover, from the warlike tribes of Africa. The Moors of Granada are praised by their enemies for their skill with the cross-bow, to the use of which they were ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... honte,' he had none; indeed I am not sure that he had any kind of shame whatever, except possibly when detected with a coat that bore any appearance of newness, or if overpersuaded to wear gloves, which he ever considered as a special effeminacy. ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... the money for their ransoms he had them hanged from a tree, and if any unhappy woman came to plead for her destitute husband he dragged her by the hair at his horse's tail. He lived like a soldier without effeminacy. It is satisfactory to relate that his manner of life was pure. Not only did he not allow his kingdom to decline from its hereditary glory, but, even in his reverses he valiantly supported the honour of ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... preserve a man from a certain residue of savage violence and harshness than graceful beauty can secure him against a certain degree of effeminacy and weakness. As it is the effect of the energetic beauty to elevate the mind in a physical and moral point of view and to augment its momentum, it only too often happens that the resistance of the temperament and of the character diminishes the aptitude to receive impressions, ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... attendants suspected some snare. They burst into loud lamentations, and were described by some children, who observed them, to be 'greeting and roaring like women.' This incident the lady of Drumakiln (who was a person of some capacity) afterwards told her neighbours as a strange instance of effeminacy in these ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... Keats. Hazlitt shared the popular conception of Keats as an effeminate poet. He concludes the essay "On Effeminacy of Character" in "Table Talk" with a reference to Keats: "I cannot help thinking that the fault of Mr. Keats's poems was a deficiency in masculine energy of style. He had beauty, tenderness, delicacy, in an uncommon degree, but there was a want of strength ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... hand, and procure from it a fair amount of wholesome satisfaction both for himself and the people with whom he is concerned. Locke's treatise is one of the most admirable protests in the world against effeminacy and pedantry, and parents already moved by grave desire to do their duty prudently to their sons, will hardly find another book better suited to their ends. Besides Locke, we must also count Charron, and the amazing educator of Gargantua, and Montaigne before either, among the writers whom Rousseau ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... day, being Sunday, it rained very hard; and I must observe that the Corsicans with all their resolution, are afraid of bad weather, to a degree of effeminacy. I got indeed a drole but a just enough account of this, from one of them. "Sir," said he, "if you were as poor as a Corsican, and had but one coat, so as that after being wet, you could not put on dry cloaths, you would be afraid too."[88] Signor Antonetti would ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... defenders, which a heavy, discontented acquiescence never could produce. What a base and foolish thing is it for any consolidated body of authority to say, or to act as if it said, "I will put my trust not in my own virtue, but in your patience; I will indulge in effeminacy, in indolence, in corruption; I will give way to all my perverse and vicious humours, because you cannot punish me without the hazard ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... reactionary protest against philosophers, poets, men of letters, and all their works, without particular apprehension on the side of the drama. Hence its reasoning is much less interesting than its panegyric on the simplicity, robust courage, and manliness of the Genevese, and its invective against the effeminacy and frivolity of the Parisian. One of the most significant episodes in the discussion is the lengthy criticism on the immortal Misanthrope of Moliere. Rousseau admits it for the masterpiece of the comic muse, though with characteristic ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... charged upon itself by this age, in its character of censor morum, that effeminacy in a practical sense lies either amongst its full-blown faults, or amongst its lurking tendencies. A rich, a polished, a refined age, may, by mere necessity of inference, be presumed to be a luxurious one; and the usual principle, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... his primitive and severe life, and made himself ridiculous by wearing a long unfashionable beard—either in imitation of the Gauls, or of the ancient philosophers. It is probable that he persisted in this habit to discountenance the effeminacy of the times. He says that soon after he entered Constantinople, he had occasion to send for a barber. An officer, magnificently dressed, presented himself. "It is a barber," said the prince, "that I want, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... and since this sort of thing carries its own penalty, the designation which they shared with so many distinguished persons in history became a byword on the lips of envious persons and small boys, by which they wished to express effeminacy and the substantive of the "stuck-up." "D'ye take me fur a bank clurk?" was a form of repudiation among corner loafers as forcible as ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... abortion, but what is left of the organism suffers sadly. When this sort of arrest of development occurs in a man, it takes the element of masculineness out of him, and replaces it with adipose effeminacy. When it occurs in a woman, it not only substitutes in her case a wiry and perhaps thin bearded masculineness for distinctive feminine traits and power, making her an epicene, but it entails a variety ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... to be specious cowardice; modesty, the disguise of effeminacy; and being wise in everything, to be good ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... with the yellow curls that fell in profusion over his shoulders. It was a picture which the Italian maiden might love to look on. It was certainly not the picture of the warrior sheathed in the iron panoply of war. But the young Prince, in his general aspect, might be relieved from the charge of effeminacy by his truly chivalrous bearing and the dauntless spirit which beamed from his clear blue eyes. In his own lineaments he seemed to combine all that was comely in the ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... a mind not yet all destroyed by effeminacy and indulgence of the emotions. Something of the iron of his own brain got into the brain of the young man, who came to his feet trembling a little, and said: "I don't mind it so much, if you only stick to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... his own backyard, springs to the top of the fence with one easy bound, drops lightly down on the other side, trots across the right-of-way to a vacant allotment, and skips to the roof of an empty shed. As he goes, he throws off the effeminacy of civilisation; his gait becomes lithe and pantherlike; he looks quickly and keenly from side to side, and moves noiselessly, for he has so many enemies—dogs, cabmen with whips, ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... I am not sure that a certain portion of sternness is not absolutely necessary to manly beauty. It seems to me that I have never yet seen what I call a handsome man, whose features had not a certain sweet gravity, a sort of melancholy defiance, in them which neutralized the effect of any effeminacy which mere beauty must have had; and imparted to them a degree of character which compelled you to turn again and look, and made you remember them, even when they had disappeared from sight. Now, it may be the vanity of a wife, Edward, but it seems to me that this is the very sort of face ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... shake hands after the sermon, he was disappointed. But he did not relax his purpose. With that quiet fearlessness and determination which had won for him the respect of men who were too apt to regard piety as synonymous with effeminacy, he attacked Scott in his own house. What he said has not been recorded, but it is to be feared that it was part of his sermon. When he had concluded, Scott looked at him, not unkindly, over the ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... not in the least affected by the cold, scolded me, as if my shivering had been a paltry effeminacy, saying, 'Why do you shiver?' Sir William Scott,[1360] of the Commons, told me, that when he complained of a headach in the post-chaise, as they were travelling together to Scotland, Johnson treated him in the same manner: 'At your age, Sir, I had ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... of maize and the antlers of a buck. Stately she moved, as a wild swan on a calm lake, or a black cloud over the brow of a mountain; and the boldness of her demeanour, and the fierceness of her eyes, contrasted strongly with the softness and effeminacy of her that seemed her younger, and more ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... grant me to lie at rest by the Appian Way, before I require such feet!" Then, as his sharp eyes noted the flush upon Sergius' face, he added: "Fever, wounds, and death may pardon effeminacy; and, truly, I would beg you to accompany me as you came, were it not that a climb up the Palatine should bring new health to one who could run ten miles with a broken shoulder. Believe me, my friend, the dictator thought better of ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... ladies and young girls of Beorminster; but the men, one and all—even his clerical brethren—disliked and distrusted him, although there was no apparent reason for their doing so. Perhaps his too deferential manners and pronounced effeminacy, which made him shun manly sports, had something to do with his masculine unpopularity; but, from the bishop downward, he was certainly no favourite, and in every male breast he constantly inspired a desire ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... years went on,—one, two, three, four,—and Dandy Steve had become one of the most popular and best-known guides in the Adirondack country. His seeming effeminacy of attire had been long proved to mark no effeminacy of nature, no lack of strength. There was not a better shot, a stronger rower, on the list of summer guides; nor a better cook and provider. Every party which went out under ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... and committed many violences upon the inhabitants. These mercenaries had attained to such a height of luxury, according to the old English writers, that they combed their hair once a day, bathed themselves once a week, changed their clothes frequently; and by all these arts of effeminacy, as well as by their military character, had rendered themselves so agreeable to the fair sex that they debauched the wives and daughters of the English and dishonored many families. But what most provoked ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... he has not such a thing to his name." Kirsty's tone betrayed her thankfulness that her brother was free from the effeminacy of a night-shirt; but noting the dismay and confusion on Mrs. Murray's face, she suggested, hesitatingly, "He might have one of my own, but I am thinking it will be small for him ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... however, choose to establish himself at Kyoto amid the atmosphere of effeminacy which surrounded the court. After his official visit, during which every honor and rank which could be bestowed by the emperor were showered upon his head and all his family and friends, he returned to his own ...
— Japan • David Murray
... deliver others from their iniquity—not even Theseus, to deliver the soil of Attica from its monsters? Purge away thine own, cast forth thence—from thine own mind, not robbers and monsters, but Fear, Desire, Envy, Malignity, Avarice, Effeminacy, Intemperance. And these may not be cast out, except by looking to God alone, by fixing thy affections on Him only, and by consecrating thyself to His commands. If thou choosest aught else, with sighs and groans thou wilt be forced to follow a Might greater than ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... Churche, Mongol, or Manchu, has always been the same. For one or two generations the warlike character and manly habits were maintained; and then the intruders, having adopted Chinese manners, ceremonies, literature, and civilization, sank into more than Chinese effeminacy and degradation. We see the custom of employing only female attendants ascribed in a later chapter (lxxvii.) to the Sung Emperors at Kinsay; and the same was the custom of the later Ming emperors, in whose time the imperial palace was said to contain 5000 women. Indeed, the precise ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... but what an unquestionable fact, is the wayward irritability of some of the finest geniuses, which is often weak to effeminacy, and capricious to childishness! while minds of a less delicate texture are not frayed and fretted by casual frictions; and plain sense with a coarser grain, is sufficient to keep down these aberrations of their feelings. How ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... all a fallacy. Man, in the midst of all his effeminacy, is still male and nothing but male. And woman, though she harangue in Parliament or patrol the streets with a helmet on her head, is still completely female. They are only playing each other's roles, because the poles have swung into reversion. The compass is reversed. But that doesn't ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... different from that in which I had hitherto regarded them. Beneath all the carelessness of my exterior, my mind was close, keen, and inquiring; and under the affectations of foppery, and the levity of a manner almost unique, for the effeminacy of its tone, I veiled an ambition the most extensive in its object, and a resolution the most daring in the ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and is still a little tenacious on this point. He often rails against the universal use of carriages, and quotes the words of honest Nashe to that effect. "It was thought," says Nashe, in his Quaternio, "a kind of solecism, and to savour of effeminacy, for a young gentleman in the flourishing time of his age to creep into a coach, and to shroud himself from wind and weather: our great delight was to out-brave the blustering boreas upon a great horse; to arm and prepare ourselves to go with Mars and Bellona into the field was ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... village, if you will; I am about to give you men enough. Tell your churls, if the money is not forthcoming they are lost men; yourself especially—you shall die. I have had enough of you: you have the heart of a woman; you are slack and sluggish. You shall die—you shall pay for your cowardice, your effeminacy. Stay; it makes but very small difference whether you go down now, or whether I keep you here. This is Sunday: right loudly would the folk yonder laugh to see you dangling your legs ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... possible that in a handful of centuries the Christian character has fallen away from an imposing heroism that scorned even the stake, the cross, and the axe, to a poor little effeminacy that withers and wilts under an unsavoury smell? We are not prepared to believe so, the reverend Doctor and his friend ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... not continue long without producing some evils; and we can hardly be surprised to find that the Imperial capital became a sort of centre of comparative luxury and idleness. Society lost sight, to a great extent, of true morality, and the effeminacy of the people constituted the chief feature of the age. Men were ever ready to carry on sentimental adventures whenever they found opportunities, and the ladies of the time were not disposed to disencourage them altogether. The Court was the focus of society, and the utmost ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... just a little Jewish, and seemed at variance with his pale blue eyes that were still bright in spite of age. And yet, bearded as he was, there was a lurking expression about his features that bordered upon effeminacy, and made the treble of his voice sound even more thin and womanish as ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... exercises, not only on account of the health and vigour they inspire, but because I feel that they are the best safeguards on a nation's energies, and the best protection against luxury, idleness, debauchery, and effeminacy (cheers). The authority of all history informs us, that the energies of countries flourished whilst manly sports have flourished, and decayed as they died away (cheers). What says Juvenal, when speaking of the entry of ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... without a sense of shame. The poet came to be essentially the man who felt acutely, and anything that was a "feeling" came to have a sort of value of its own as denoting poetic sensitiveness. Hence the excessive softness, the indefiniteness, the languishing and the effeminacy which since the beginning of the nineteenth century have been tolerated in poetry because poetry was supposed to be the proper vehicle for such weakness. It is significant that the most admired poem of Keats begins ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... thorn in his flesh, oppressed by the feeling of loneliness in the very midst of a noisy, fraudulent activity, and filled with an ever-increasing detestation of the superfluity and consequent effeminacy of his daily existence, he had created out of the figure of his son ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... studying the arts that were one day to make him the scourge of the rich." Those exercises were, in the system of the Greeks, . . . considered as absolutely indispensable to a liberal education. That of Demosthenes was certainly neglected by his guardians, and the probability is that the effeminacy with which he was reproached meant nothing more than that he had not frequented in youth the palestra and the gymnasium, and that his bodily training had been ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... still seen the ring that held the pole of the velarium. This velarium was an awning that was stretched above the heads of the spectators to protect them from the sun. In earlier times the Romans had scouted at this innovation, which they called a piece of Campanian effeminacy. But little by little, increasing luxury reduced the Puritans of Rome to silence, and they willingly accepted a velarium of silk—an homage of Caesar. Nero, who carried everything to excess, went further: ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... and amorous reveries, in which young people—and especially the idle and the voluptuous, and the sedentary and the nervous—are exceedingly apt to indulge, are often the sources of general debility, effeminacy, disordered functions, premature disease, and even premature death, without the actual exercise of the genital organs! Indeed, this unchastity of thought—this adultery of the mind—is the beginning of immeasurable ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... awaking to the consciousness that she can no more hold up her head amongst her kind: but that a youth should experience a similar sense of degradation and loss, they would regard as a degree of silliness and effeminacy below contempt, if not beyond belief. But there is a sense of personal purity belonging to the man as well as to the woman; and although I dare not say that in the most refined of masculine natures it asserts ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... love of gold and silver had once gained admittance into the Lacedaemonian commonwealth, it was quickly followed by avarice and baseness of spirit in the pursuit of it, and by luxury, effeminacy, and prodigality in the use. Then Sparta fell from almost all her former virtue and repute, and so continued till the days of Agis and Leonidas, who both together were kings ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... tender and pathetic, I would not be understood to mean a passion that softens the heart into effeminacy, and which, to our reproach, is almost alone, or at least more than any other passion received upon our stage, though rejected by the ancients, and condemned by the nations around us of greatest reputation for their genius, and taste for the sciences and polite learning. The two great principles ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... Parliament had at this time passed the age of twenty-one, and the latter was of extremely youthful appearance. Small of stature and slight in frame, his delicate aspect was redeemed from effeminacy by a head of classic contour, a penetrating and melodious voice, an address which always won attention. His superior social endowments were fully recognized by the companions of his leisure; nor ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... their own beautiful land. The King of France and his men of war had not succeeded in conquering it, but they had been charmed with such an abode; they had displayed in their campaign knightly qualities more brilliant and more masterful than the studied duplicity and elegant effeminacy of the Italians of the fifteenth century, and, after the battle of Fornovo, they returned to France justly proud and foolishly confident, notwithstanding the incompleteness of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... were not ordinary things; few but the macaroni's of the day, as the dandies were then called, would venture to display them. For a long while it was not usual for men to carry them without incurring the brand of effeminacy; and they were vulgarly considered as the characteristics of a person whom the mob then hugely disliked—namely, a mincing Frenchman. At first a single umbrella seems to have been kept at a coffee-house for some extraordinary occasion—lent as a coach or chair in a heavy shower—but not commonly ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... contrary to the humour of those more sordid and slovenly men of quality, which make up the nobility of that parcel of the world. For while thus he lived retired, scarce visiting any one, or permitting any one to visit him, they charge him with a thousand crimes of having given himself over to effeminacy; as indeed he grew too lazy in her arms; neglecting glory, arms, and power, for the more real joys of life; while she even rifles him with extravagancy; and grows so bold and hardy, that regarding not the humours of the stingy ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... Dadka (A.D. 645) system, various administrative organs were created in accordance with Tang models, and a polity at once imposing and elaborate came into existence. But when the capital was overtaken by an era of literary effeminacy and luxurious abandonment, the Imperial exchequer fell into such a state of exhaustion that administrative posts began to be treated as State assets and bought and sold like commercial chattels, the discharge of the functions ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... explain, was but one remove above a smock-frock farmer, took a different line. He had unsavoury proverbs in which he put deep faith. "Muck was the mother of money," and also "Muck was the farmer's nosegay." He viewed it as an absolute effeminacy to object to its odorous savours; and as to the poor people, "they were an ungrateful lot, and had a great deal too much done for them," the small farmer's usual creed. Mr. Alison could do as he liked, ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... whole year, as well as to some points in military matters in which the Athenians excel, Pericles proceeds as follows: "In these respects, then, is our city worthy of admiration, and in others also; for we study elegance combined with frugality, and cultivate philosophy without effeminacy. Riches we employ at opportunities for action, rather than as a subject of wordy boast. To confess poverty with us brings no disgrace; not to endeavor to escape it by exertion is disgrace indeed. There exists, moreover, in the same persons an attention both to their domestic concerns and ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... enthusiasm with which a nobler age had longed for truth, and sought it as the highest good, has all disappeared, and now one sect seeks refuge from the storms and agitations of the age in Stoical indifference, the other in Epicurean effeminacy. ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... and disadvantages were common to both sides of the river. The Treveri [155] and Nervii [156] are ambitious of being thought of German origin; as if the reputation of this descent would distinguish them from the Gauls, whom they resemble in person and effeminacy. The Vangiones, Triboci, and Nemetes, [157] who inhabit the bank of the Rhine, are without doubt German tribes. Nor do the Ubii, [158] although they have been thought worthy of being made a Roman colony, and are pleased in bearing the name of Agrippinenses from their ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... With such a fund of knowledge, his conversation must have been equally instructing and entertaining; but he was also a good man, a man of virtue and humanity. There is no character without some speck, some imperfection; and I think the greatest defect in his was an affectation in delicacy, or rather effeminacy, and a visible fastidiousness, or contempt and disdain of his inferiours in science. He also had, in some degree, that weakness which disgusted Voltaire so much in Mr. Congreve: though he seemed to value others chiefly according to the progress that ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... best distinguishable by the general tone of its poetry, has been frequently remarked, and is a truth which does not admit of controversy; the soft songs of the Persian, and the bold and warlike ditties of the Dane are emblems of the effeminacy of the one, and the reckless heroism of the other.—In most instances the writer in the selection of pieces for this little work has been guided by a desire of exhibiting what is most characteristic of the people ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... different. The sneering, cutting insolence came from no ordinary person. It stung her. She thought she detected a slight foreign accent in the carefully articulated words, though the phraseology was distinctly western. The voice was high pitched without effeminacy, soft yet penetrating, polished yet conveying all the meaning of an insult. No Anglo-Saxon could express such mocking contempt by the voice alone—that accomplishment is almost exclusively a gift ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... under the conditions of modern life, a people must resign itself to a position of inferiority. Yet Canada had a vigor of her own. It was not in spiritual deference only that she differed from the country of her birth. Whatever she had caught of its corruptions, she had caught nothing of its effeminacy. The mass of her people lived in a rude poverty,—not abject, like the peasant of old France, nor ground down by the tax-gatherer; while those of the higher ranks—all more or less engaged in pursuits of war or adventure, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... rugged as is the oak, but it gives no impression of effeminacy or weakness. Its uprightness is forceful and strong, and its clean and shapely bole impresses the beholder as a joining of gently outcurving columns, ample in strength and of an elegance belonging to itself alone. If I may dare to compare man-made architectural ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... he is almost past comfort on the subject. I had a letter the other day from Dr. Shelton Mackenzie, whom I do not know personally, but who is about to publish a 'Living Author Dictionary,' and who, by some association, talked of the effeminacy of 'the American poets,' so I begged him to read your poems on 'Man' and prepare an exception to his position. I wish to write more and ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... settlement of this country have the people found LESS pleasure in the effusion of blood and scenes of brutality. Instead of the savage instinct becoming dominant, we are fairly open to the charge of effeminacy, of super-estheticism. Our very sports are becoming namby pamby as those of the Bengalese, the element of danger which gave zest to them in auld lang syne being all but eliminated. Bear-baiting, cocking- mains, shin-kicking, bulldog-fighting, ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... wording, their originality in epithet, name, and phrase, were novelties of Milton's own. His English masters were Spenser, Fletcher, and Sylvester, the translator of Du Bartas's La Sepmaine, but nothing of Spenser's prolixity, or Fletcher's effeminacy, or Sylvester's quaintness is found in Milton's pure, energetic diction. He inherited their beauties, but his taste had been tempered to a finer edge by his studies in Greek and Hebrew poetry. He was the last of the Elisabethans, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... obedience, gradually lost the esteem, of his subjects. The dress and manners, which, towards the decline of life, he chose to affect, served only to degrade him in the eyes of mankind. The Asiatic pomp, which had been adopted by the pride of Diocletian, assumed an air of softness and effeminacy in the person of Constantine. He is represented with false hair of various colors, laboriously arranged by the skilful artists to the times; a diadem of a new and more expensive fashion; a profusion of gems and pearls, of collars and bracelets, and a variegated flowing robe of silk, most ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... Stelle; men amusing themselves at a game called Pallamajo, something like our cricket, only that they throw the ball with a hollow stick, not with the hand, but it requires no small corporal strength; and I know not why our English people have such a notion of Italian effeminacy: games of very strong exertion are in use among them; and I have not yet felt one hot day ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... side of the North Pole there is another world peopled by giants; ten thousand millions at the very least; every giant of them a hundred feet high. Now about the time you have reduced your universe to complete effeminacy some fool with a pick-axe will break through the thin partition—the mere ice curtain—separating these giants from us, and then they will sweep through and swoop down and swallow you, sir, and the likes of you, with your topsy-turvy ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... room. Before the great fireplace, ablaze with logs, sat Henry Garnet. Scarce past middle age, the learned prelate was a striking figure, clad though he was in the simple, dark-hued garb of his Order. Beneath a brow white and smooth as a child's, shone a noble countenance, gentle almost to effeminacy, but redeemed by firm lines about the mouth, and the intensity of the steel-gray eyes. As Catesby entered, these eyes, which had been gazing abstractedly into the fire, lighted with a ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... Part of them escaped my particular Observation, by reason that my whole Attention was fixed on a very fair Youth who rode in the midst of them, and seemed to have been dressed by some Description in a Romance. His Features, Complexion, and Habit had a remarkable Effeminacy, and a certain languishing Vanity appeared in his Air: His Hair, well curl'd and powder'd, hung to a considerable Length on his Shoulders, and was wantonly ty'd, as if by the Hands of his Mistress, in a Scarlet Ribbon, which played like a Streamer behind him: He ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... The story is half legendary—differently told by different authors. Herodotus has one tale, Xenophon another. The first, at least, had ample means of information. Astyages is the old shah of the Median Empire, then at the height of its seeming might and splendour and effeminacy. He has married his daughter, the Princess Mandane, to Cambyses, seemingly a vassal-king or prince of the pure Persian blood. One night the old man is troubled with a dream. He sees a vine spring from his daughter, which overshadows all Asia. He sends for the Magi ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... replied, with an honourable frankness, "The Wezeet." Observed many of the men had their eyelids blackened, like the women, with Kohel[33], and also their finger-nails and toe-nails dyed dark-red with henna[34]. I confessed I was surprised at this monstrous effeminacy. One of these lady-gentlemen was the son of the powerful Ettanee family; he was brought up to the Church, and of great promise, bidding fair to be future Kady or Archbishop. He put a curious question to me, "How much is the expense of a journey from Malta ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... towards a loving and a tender Wife, would be of great Use to this Sort of Gentlemen. Could you but once convince them, that to be civil at least is not beneath the Character of a Gentleman, nor even tender Affection towards one who would make it reciprocal, betrays any Softness or Effeminacy that the most masculine Disposition need be ashamed of; could you satisfy them of the Generosity of voluntary Civility, and the Greatness of Soul that is conspicuous in Benevolence without immediate Obligations; could you recommend to ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... down in his appraisement, with a touch of scorn, the clean-shaven face and general neatness of the other, but as against this effeminacy he offset the steady-eyed fearlessness of gaze and the smooth power of shoulders and torso that ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... difficulties and privations, it was deemed justifiable to attempt to inure the constitution to the noxious influences of the climate, and to look down with contempt upon any act which had the least tendency to effeminacy, or a scrupulous attention to personal comfort. The constitution of Clapperton was well known to have been of an iron nature; it had already withstood the pestilential climate of some parts of Soudan, in his previous travels, and, with that impression upon his mind, he regarded, perhaps, with ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... one can be civil and polite if he sets himself to be so. Some suppose that it is unworthy of a robust character to be gentle in demeanor, that it indicates a certain amount of effeminacy, and that strength and gruffness go together. We hear men spoken of sometimes approvingly as "rough diamonds." But history tells us that the noblest and strongest have been the most tender and courteous. King Robert the Bruce was "brave as a lion, tender-hearted as a woman." ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... Scholiast explains, ekteinetai de kai systelletai pros ton katepeigonta kairon. [Footnote: "Are opened and shut as need requires."] For a man to carry one was considered a mark of effeminacy, as appears from the following ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... others; nor yet are you Theseus, able to drive away the evil things of Attica. But you may clear away your own. From yourself, from your own thoughts, cast away, instead of Procrustes and Sciron, [4] sadness, fear, desire, envy, malevolence, avarice, effeminacy, intemperance. But it is not possible to eject these things otherwise than by looking to God only, by fixing your affections on Him only, by being consecrated by ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... breath in the clear air, our strength and self-importance miraculously increase, and the whole frame begins to glow. The warmth and vigour thus acquired are inexpressibly delightful. As we re-enter the house, we are proud of our intrepidity and vigour, and pity the effeminacy of our less enterprising friends, who, though huddled together round the fire, like flies upon a sunny wall, still complain of cold, and instead of the bloom of health and animation, exhibit pale and pinched and discolored features, and hands cold, rigid, and of a deadly hue. Those who rise ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... ruler of the race of Mayura, which reigned 318 years, was Raja-pal. He reigned 25 years, but giving himself up to effeminacy, his country was invaded by Shakaditya, a king from the highlands of Kumaon. Vikramaditya, in the fourteenth year of his reign, pretended to espouse the cause of Raja-pal, attacked and destroyed Shakaditya, ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... any compunction to the most godless and foul? Would he not be worse than Eriphyle, who sold her husband's life for a necklace? And intemperance is the letting loose of the multiform monster, and pride and sullenness are the growth and increase of the lion and serpent element, while luxury and effeminacy are caused by a too great relaxation of spirit. Flattery and meanness again arise when the spirited element is subjected to avarice, and the lion is habituated to become a monkey. The real disgrace of handicraft arts is, that those who are engaged in them have to flatter, ...
— The Republic • Plato
... presence of a higher, namely, of the spiritual element is essential to its perfection. The high and divine beauty which can be loved without effeminacy, is that which is found in combination with the human will. Beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue. Every natural action is graceful. Every heroic act is also decent, and causes the place and the bystanders to shine. We are taught by great actions ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Weakness.— N. weakness &c. adj.; debility, atony[obs3], relaxation, languor, enervation; impotence &c. 158; infirmity; effeminacy, feminality[obs3]; fragility, flaccidity; inactivity &c. 683. anaemia, bloodlessness, deficiency of blood, poverty of blood. declension of strength, loss of strength, failure of strength; delicacy, invalidation, decrepitude, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... characteristic virtues, says that though of very honorable birth, yet, scorning earthly things as dross, he clothed himself in rags, and ate and drank only what chanty gave him. His shelter was the Coliseum or the doorways or desert places of Rome. He washed not, neither did he yield to the effeminacy of the comb; his hair and nails grew to what length Nature wished: in short (for some of the additional details are better fancied than described), he so utterly neglected his person that he became an object of avoidance to many or all. But his neglected body was after death ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... dress like fools, and look like fools, depend on't, they are not the fools you take them for: they are aware, that nothing so effectually throws off their guard and disarms the great, as a well-carried affectation of gentlemanly effeminacy, and "a still small voice, like a woman's." We happen to know that some of these people, for this very delicacy of air and manner picked out of the dirt, and carried into high places, who are au naturel, as we ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... language became delicate, brilliant, spangled with conceits. Simplicity was laid aside, and quaint expressions grew into fashion. Does the mind sink into languor, the body moves reluctantly. Is the man softened into effeminacy, you see it in his gait. Is he quick and eager, he walks with alacrity. The powers of the understanding are affected in the same manner. Having laid this down as his principle, Seneca proceeds to describe the soft delicacy of Maecenas, and he finds the same ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... youths (though they must not be immature) from 16 or 17 to about 25. The type which physically appeals to him most, and to which he appeals, is fair, smooth-skinned, gentle, rather girlish and effeminate, with the effeminacy of the ingenue, not the cocotte. His favorite to attract him must be submissive and womanly; he likes to be the man and the master. On this point he adds: "The great passion of my life is an exception, and stands on an utterly different ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... latter half of the text has to do with us, I will try to show you, while I tell you openly, that the first half of it, about rendering to Caesar the things which are Caesar's, has nothing to do with us, and never need, save through our own cowardice and effeminacy, or folly. ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... virtues. The fine gentlemen of the Chesterfield era speak of fox-hunting pretty much as we speak of prize-fighting and bull-baiting. When all manly exercises had an inseparable taint of coarseness, delicate people naturally mistook effeminacy for refinement. When you can only join in male society on pain of drinking yourself under the table, the safest plan is to retire to tea-tables and small talk. For many years, Walpole's greatest pleasure seems to have been drinking tea with Lady Suffolk, and carefully piecing together bits ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... the other day tell me that this Lord Anglesey hath said, within few days, that he would willingly give L10,000 of his estate that he was well secured of the rest, such apprehensions he hath of the sequel of things, as giving all over for lost. He tells me, speaking of the horrid effeminacy of the King, that the King hath taken ten times more care and pains in making friends between my Lady Castlemayne and Mrs. Stewart, when they have fallen out, than ever he did to save his kingdom; nay, that upon any falling out between my ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... insufferable as that of heat. And in relation to that subject, it is interesting to observe the way in which the ordinary use of language has accommodated itself to that feeling. Our northern way of expressing effeminacy, is derived chiefly from the hardships of cold. He that shrinks from the trials and rough experience of real life in any department, is described by the contemptuous prefix of chimney-corner, as if shrinking from the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 572, October 20, 1832 • Various
... a man makes my acquaintance, and opens the door to let me in, there enter unseen by my side Arrogance, Folly, Vainglory, Effeminacy, Insolence, Deceit, and a goodly company more. These possess his soul; he begins to admire mean things, pursues what he should abhor, reveres me amid my bodyguard of the insinuating vices which I have begotten, and would consent to anything sooner ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... gallish-looking creatur'" he addressed was a well-built young fellow of seventeen, with no more effeminacy in his appearance than is visible in a lad balanced by nature just on that edge of life where we rest for a short space uneasily, bidding good-bye to boyhood so eagerly, before stepping boldly forward, and with flushed face and flashing eyes feeling ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... If I had had my way, I should have been at Argaum two months later. But, good Lard!—they wouldn't let me out of Hospital." The old soldier, roused by the recollection of a fifty-year-old grievance, still rankling, launched into a denunciation of the effeminacy and timidity of Authorities and Seniors, of all sorts and conditions. His youth was back upon him with its memories, and he had forgotten that he too was now a Senior. His torrent of thinly disguised execrations was of service to Lady ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... Music has thus the power to form character; and the various kinds of music, based on the various modes, may be distinguished by their effects on character—one, for example, working in the direction of melancholy, another of effeminacy; one encouraging abandonment, another self-control, another enthusiasm, and so on through the series. It follows that music may be judged not merely by the pleasure it gives, but by the character of its moral influence; ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... unconscious note of grief and despair. He perceived, too, the debasing effects of slavery upon master and slave alike, crushing all semblance of manhood in the one, and in the other substituting passion for judgment, caprice for justice, and indolence and effeminacy for the more virile virtues of freemen. Doubtless the gentle hand of time will some time spread the veil of silence over this painful past; but, while we are still gathering its evil aftermath, it ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... relieved himself from any imputation of effeminacy by the conspicuous part he took in the long-distance rides between Berlin and Vienna, and by his magnificent horsemanship, yet he does not convey to people the impression of manliness that constitutes so distinguishing a characteristic ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... wives, widows, and daughters of men of this stamp—and not half their effeminacy and baseness, as the honest rough old soldier Ammianus Marcellinus describes it, has been told here—the news brought from Egypt ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... the most important moral bearings of the subject has not been duly impressed upon it. All that can be said of idleness generally might be fitly urged in support of this great practical truth. All nations which have prematurely passed away, buried in graves dug by their own effeminacy; all those individuals who have secured a hasty wealth by the chances of speculation; all children of fortune; all victims of inheritance; all social sponges; all satellites of the court; all beggars of the market-place—all these are living ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... itself in the veins on the hands and temples, the occasional quiver of the upper lip! His was the frame above all others the most alive to pleasure—deep-chested, compact, sinewy, but thin to leanness—delicate in its texture and extremities, almost to effeminacy. The indifference of the posture, the very habit of the dress—not slovenly, indeed, but easy, loose, careless—seemed to speak of the man's manner of thought and ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and you below among the people, among the young men, stirring them to life amid blood and tears. Our task, instead of being bloody and barbarous, would have been holy, perfect, artistic, and surely success would have crowned our efforts. But no intelligence would support me, I encountered fear or effeminacy among the enlightened classes, selfishness among the rich, simplicity among the youth, and only in the mountains, in the waste places, among the outcasts, have I found my men. But no matter now! If we can't get a finished ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... two danced alone without the song, but employed a ball, tossing it from one to the other, for the amusement of the spectators. A rhythmical movement of the body in the dance shows more internality than the athletic game, but it is less hardy, is more indicative of luxury and effeminacy. ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... said coldly, "when my hunger bids me, and I carry this one robe upon my person till it is worn out and needs replacement. The grossness of excessive banqueting, and the effeminacy of many clothes are attainments that never met my fancy. But I think we have talked here over long, and there seems little chance of our finding agreement. You have changed, Tatho, with the years, and perhaps I have changed also. These alterations creep imperceptibly ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... most was, that I had contradicted myself so openly and fully. After the severe principles I had just so publicly asserted, after the austere maxims I had so loudly preached, and my violent invectives against books, which breathed nothing but effeminacy and love, could anything be less expected or more extraordinary, than to see me, with my own hand, write my name in the list of authors of those books I had so severely censured? I felt this incoherence in all ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... might take to their tarpaulins again; they might renew their manhood on the capture of cod; headed by Harald and Hardiknut, they might roll surges to whelm a Dominant Jew clean gone to the fleshpots and effeminacy. Aldermen of our ancient conception, they may teach him that he has been backsliding once more, and must repent in ashes, as those who are for jewels, titles, essences, banquets, for wallowing in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... took no care of his health, as far as out-door exercise was concerned. His friends beheld him with horror go out on a dewy day: he would even step out in his slippers. In his own grounds he never wore a hat: he used to say, that on his first visit to Paris he was ashamed of his effeminacy, when he saw every meagre little Frenchman whom he could have knocked down in a breath walking without a hat, which he could not do without a certainty of taking the disease which the Germans say is endemical ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... seen before came down the walk and crossed the grass. He seemed to be a year or two older than myself, and caught my eye immediately by his remarkable beauty, and by the depth of the mourning which he wore. His features were exquisitely cut, and, in a child, one was not disposed to complain of their effeminacy. His long fair hair was combed—in royal fashion—down his back, a style at that time most unusual; his tightly-fitting jacket and breeches were black, bordered with deep crape; not even a white collar relieved his sombre attire, from which his fair face shone out ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... grace and rhythm and harmony is closely allied to an evil character." While it is true that the basis for this argument has been modified by our abandonment of the Greek aesthetic theories of "inspiration" and "imitation," Plato's moralistic objection to lyric effeminacy and lyric naturalism is widely shared by many of our contemporaries. They do not find the "New Poetry," lovely as it often is, altogether "manly." They find on the contrary that some of it is what Plato calls "dissolute," i.e. dissolving or relaxing ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... beds in the house, and deftly introducing this "article" between the sheets. Or was it only for the old people: or in chilly weather merely? On these points we must be unsatisfied. The practice, however, points to a certain effeminacy—the average person of our day would not care to have his bed so treated—with invalids the "Hot Water Bottle" has "usurped its place." We find this superannuated instrument in the "antique" dealers' shops, at a good figure—a quaint old world thing, of a sort of old-fashioned cut ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... of delirium, is quite peculiar to the Albertina bronze. It is just this which the portrait of the Capitol lacks for the completion of Caligula. The man who could be so represented in art had nothing wholly vulgar in him. The brutality of Caracalla, the overblown sensuality of Nero, the effeminacy of Commodus or Heliogabalus, are all absent here. This face idealises the torture of a morbid soul. It is withal so truly beautiful that it might easily be made the poem of high suffering or noble passion. If the bronze were plastic, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
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