"Effeminate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was changed: the gay hat and feathers had been replaced by the battered steel morion; the long clustering effeminate curls were shorn away, and the poor fellow looked forlorn, degraded, and essentially an object for pity; his uniform showed every stain, and the places where the gold lace was frayed—and all through the working of a pair of shears among his locks. A short time before the ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... driver, one of the wisest of his set, seemed to comprehend the situation by instinct, and trod the halls and stairs as though his feet had been shod in velvet. He was a strong man, too, and between them they carried the slight effeminate form with ease and laid him upon the elegant bed in his elegant room, he still sleeping the heavy drunken sleep which Dora had ...
— Three People • Pansy
... no roundness to his frame. His nose was aquiline, perhaps a trifle too fine in lines; and his mouth might have been too large if uncovered by a silvery white mustache, whose training bespoke a minute, an almost effeminate, care. Now he looked every inch a gentleman going for a morning canter, except for the compact, high-powered rifle resting easily in ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... Desmond, cautiously evading a reply: "what I want to know is—what you see in Ryde. He is tall, certainly, but he is fat and effeminate, with 'a ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... times, I had a secret aversion to seeing so gentle a creature thrown even for an hour upon her own resources, though in situations which scarcely seemed to admit of any occasion for taxing those resources; and often I have felt anger towards myself for what appeared to be an irrational or effeminate timidity, and have struggled with my own mind upon occasions like the present, when I knew that I could not have acknowledged my tremors to a friend without something like shame, and a fear to excite his ridicule. No; if in anything I ran into excess, it was in this very point of anxiety as ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... nature, a craving desire for luxurious enjoyment and sudden wealth, which renders those who seek them dependent on those who supply them; to substitute for republican simplicity and economical habits a sickly appetite for effeminate indulgence and an imitation of that reckless extravagance which impoverished and enslaved the industrious people of foreign lands, and at last to fix upon us, instead of those equal political rights the acquisition of which was alike the object and supposed reward of our Revolutionary ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Martin van Buren • Martin van Buren
... the stamp of genius in its proportions than of physical voluptuousness. The hands, which now hastily resumed their neglected occupation, had all the fairness and well-moulded contour of a woman's, without that delicacy of size which would have stamped them as effeminate. Had he been aware of his own beauty, he might have copied his own graceful form for a personification of the lily-bearing angel in a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... this enormous wall, fortified by numerous towers at short distance; and I wondered at the grandeur of the ancients, exhibited even in their unreasonable caprices of despotism—that greatness to which the effeminate rulers of the East cannot aspire, in our day, even in imagination. The wonders of Babylon, the lake of Moeris, the pyramids of the Pharaohs, the endless wall of China, and this huge bulwark, built in sterile places, on the summits ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... pass, he laid hold on the opportunity, and by an exertion of his muscles, pitched upon the top of the carriage, which was immediately overturned in the kennel, to the grievous annoyance of the fare, which happened to be a certain effeminate beau, in full dress, on his way ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... that there were excuses for the old contempt of the study of Natural History. I have said, too, it may be hoped, enough to show that contempt to be now ill-founded. But still, there are those who regard it as a mere amusement, and that as a somewhat effeminate one; and think that it can at best help to while away a leisure hour harmlessly, and perhaps usefully, as a substitute for coarser sports, or for the reading of novels. Those, however, who have followed it out, especially on the sea- shore, know better. They ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... People; only with this Difference, that their Hearts must not be attach'd to these Things, and their grand Hope be in Futurity. This notable Proviso being once made, tho' in Words only, all is safe; and no Luxury or Epicurism are so barefac'd, no Ease is so effeminate, no Elegancy so vainly curious, and no Invention so operose or expensive, as to interfere with Religion or any Promises made of Renouncing the World; if they are warranted by Custom, and the Usage of others, who are their Equals in Estate ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... tire me?" asked Antonia, opening her big brown eyes in astonishment. "I travelled first-class from London, and drove out here in a landau; the whole journey was nothing short of effeminate. When I was in Paris I rose at four in the morning, and worked at my easel standing for five hours at a stretch; that was something like work. No, I'm not the least tired, thank you, and I don't want to be bothered tidying myself, for I may as well say frankly ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... selected, and at this time in Saul's Cardillac seemed to have no rival. He combined, to an admirable degree, the man of the world and the sportsman; he had an air that was beyond rubies. He was elegant without being effeminate, arrogant without being conceited, indifferent without being blase. He had learnt, at Eton, and at the knee of a rich and charming mother, that to be crude was the unforgivable sin. He worshipped the god of good manners and would have made an admirable son of the great Lord Chesterfield. Finally ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... the officers easy to distinguish from the men. A shade cleaner, perhaps; but they, too, were rough-bearded, hard bitten by long exposure and responsibility. How different from the exquisites of popular fancy! Gone the beauties of effeminate adornment. Gone the studied insolence of puppyhood—that arrogance of bearing traditional with the British officer in times of peace. These were the men who had been eyes and ears to French's magnificent cavalry, ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... get into trouble, then?" Lawrence ventured to say, but shrank back directly he had spoken, with his cheeks flushed and heart beating, for his long illness had made him effeminate. ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... since the dawn, no impression had yet been made. The Italians fought with a heroism which bade defiance to the numerical superiority of their assailants; for they were led on by a young chieftain who, beneath an effeminate exterior, possessed the soul of a lion. Clad in a complete suit of polished armor, and with crimson plumes waving from his steel helmet, to which no visor was attached, that youthful leader threw himself into the thickest ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... say, may be; for I cannot recollect any one instance in which I have a right to suppose it. But, surely, to have an exclusive pleasure in poetry, not being yourself a poet;—to turn away from all effort, and to dwell wholly on the images of another's vision,—is an unworthy and effeminate thing. A jeweller may devote his whole time to jewels unblamed; but the mere amateur, who grounds his taste on no chemical or geological idea, cannot claim the same exemption from despect. How shall he fully enjoy Wordsworth, who has never meditated on the truths which ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... were all borne backwards, fighting desperately, and when we could look round the Baronet was gone for ever. We heard afterwards that the King's troops found upon the field a body which they mistook for that of Monmouth, on account of the effeminate grace of the features and the richness of the attire. No doubt it was that of our undaunted friend, Sir Gervas Jerome, a name which shall ever be dear to my heart. When, ten years afterwards, we heard much of the gallantry of the young courtiers of the household of the French King, and of the ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... because England is a money-making country, and money-making is an effeminate pursuit, therefore all sedentary and spoony sins, like covetousness, slander, bigotry, and self-conceit, are to be cockered and plastered over, while the more masculine vices, and no- vices also, are mercilessly hunted down by your cold-blooded, ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... having been perhaps not above four hours in bed—(for we were no go-to-beds with the lamb, though we anticipated the lark ofttimes in her rising—we liked a parting cup at midnight, as all young men did before these effeminate times, and to have our friends about us—we were not constellated under Aquarius, that watery sign, and therefore incapable of Bacchus, cold, washy, bloodless—we were none of your Basilian water-sponges, nor had taken our degrees at Mount Ague—we were right toping Capulets, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... to the Black Sea, kept back the tide of barbarians, but the volume of force accumulated behind the barrier, and at length it poured in an overwhelming and destructive tide over the fair and fertile provinces whose weak and effeminate people offered but a feeble resistance to the robust armies of the north. The Romans, under the instruction of Caesar and Tacitus, had a faint idea of the usages of the people inhabiting the verge that lay around the Roman dominions, but they ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher
... it. They were packed almost solid with people, surging forward toward the thin cordon of police. The front of the mob looked like a checkerboard—a block in civilian dress, then a block in the curiously effeminate-looking uniforms of Zaspar Makann's People's Watchmen, then more in ordinary garb, and more People's Watchmen. Over the heads of the crowds, at intervals, floated small contragravity lifters on which were mounted the amplifiers that ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... wanted to step into it. But something within him, something that seemed obscure, hesitated, was perhaps afraid. In his restless mood, in his strong excitement, he wanted to crush that thing down, to stifle its voice. Caution seemed to him almost effeminate just then. He remembered how one day Charmian had said to him, after an argument about psychology: "Really, Mr. Heath, whatever you may say, your strongest instinct is a selfish one, ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... Ireland. Ladies were the spinners, weavers, surgeons, and readers of the day; they were great at interpreting dreams, and dearly loved flowers. The gentlemen looked upon reading as an occupation quite as effeminate as sewing, war and hunting being the two main employments of the lords of creation, and gambling the chief amusement. Priests and monks were the exceptions to this rule, until Henry First introduced a taste for somewhat more liberal ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... presence of the place where he had suffered, so overcame their fury, that they dissolved in tears, and bore the appearance of every soft and tender sentiment. So inconsistent is human nature with itself! and so easily does the most effeminate superstition ally, both with the most heroic courage and with ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... they diversified into various sorts of harmony, and altered into soft, strong, gay, sad, grave, or passionate, &c. Choice was always made of that which agreed with the majesty and purity of religion, avoiding soft and effeminate airs; in some churches they ordered the psalms to be pronounced with so small an alteration of voice, that it was little more than plain speaking, like the reading of psalms in our cathedrals, &c. at this day; but in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 403, December 5, 1829 • Various
... the Emperor Charles IV., King of Bohemia, was now emperor. It will be remembered that by marrying Mary, the eldest daughter of Louis, King of Hungary and Poland, he received Hungary as the dower of his bride. By intrigue he also succeeded in deposing his effeminate and dissolute brother, Wenceslaus, from the throne of Bohemia, and succeeded, by a new election, in placing the crown upon his own brow. Thus Sigismond wielded a three-fold scepter. He was Emperor of Germany, and King of Hungary ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... countenance of its intended rider met fully the gaze of the spectator. It was a countenance of singular loveliness and power. The lips and the moulding of the chin resembled the eager and impassioned tenderness of the shape of Antinous; but instead of the effeminate sullenness of the eye, and the narrow smoothness of the forehead, shone an expression of profound and piercing thought. On each side of the clear and open brow descended, even to the shoulders, the clustering locks of golden hair; while the eyes, large ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... young man, Besso?' exclaimed the Invisible, starting up, and himself exhibiting a youthful countenance; fair, almost effeminate, no beard, a slight moustache, his features too delicate, but his brow finely arched, and his blue ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... manners are as gross as they make it their boast to show their morals. Hence, some two or three pegs higher, and not more, are such very very fine scoundrels as the Pelhams, &c.; shallow, watery-brained, ill-taught, effeminate dandies—animals destitute apparently of one touch of real manhood, or of real passion—cold, systematic, deliberate debauchees, withal—seducers, God wot! and duellists, and, above all, philosophers! How could ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 397, Saturday, November 7, 1829. • Various
... dark-brown hair, classic features, and large, soft-blue eyes; too soft and too blue, perhaps. His was a manly face and figure, and his voice was a manly, a beautiful basso; but this masculine exterior contained an effeminate psychology. In my heart I pronounced him "a calf," and when I had discovered the English word "sissy," I thought that it ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... considerable change. Now it is certainly difficult to suppose that the Homeric poems could have suffered by this change, had written copies been preserved. If Chaucer's poetry, for instance, had not been written, it could only have come down to us in a softened form, more like the effeminate version of Dryden, than the rough, quaint, noble original. "At what period," continues Grote, "these poems, or indeed any other Greek poems, first began to be written, must be matter of conjecture, though there is ground for assurance that it was before ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... ["They proceeded effeminate debauchees from the school of Aristippus, cynics from that of Zeno." —Cicero, De Natura Deor., ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... him in most respects was the man who sat opposite him—a pale, finely-featured, almost effeminate-looking young fellow, with a small line of dark moustache, and a beard en Henri Quatre, to the effect of which a collar cut in Van Dyck fashion gave an especial significance. Cecil Walpole was disposed to be pictorial in his get-up, and the purple dye of his knickerbocker stockings, the slouching ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... what to men, is just at hand! What a destruction art thou preparing for the Trojan nation! Even now Pallas is fitting her helmet, and her shield, and her chariot, and her fury. In vain, looking fierce through the patronage of Venus, will you comb your hair, and run divisions upon the effeminate lyre with songs pleasing to women. In vain will you escape the spears that disturb the nuptial bed, and the point of the Cretan dart, and the din [of battle], and Ajax swift in the pursuit. Nevertheless, alas! the time will come, though late, when thou shalt defile thine adulterous ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... distaste for her position, and trifles with the ring, which she has strung upon her handkerchief, while a brisk and well-built young lawyer, who trims a pen, bends towards her with a whispered compliment. Meantime the Viscount—a frail, effeminate-looking figure, holding an open snuff-box, from which he affectedly lifts a pinch—turns from his fiancee with a smirk of complacent foppery towards a pier-glass at his side. His wide-cuffed coat is light blue, his vest is loaded with embroidery. He ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... a farce as Bebe, alias Betsy, but I soon found that, whatever it might be, it wasn't this. It is capitally acted by all, but especially, on "the Spear Side," by Mr. WEEDON GROSSMITH and F. KERR, the former as an effeminate Earl, and the latter as a manly Viscount. But, even from a burlesque point of view, Mr. ELLIOT overdoes the Frenchman, a part which belongs to a stage-family of Frenchmen, of which, in former times, ALFRED WIGAN was the best ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 29, 1893 • Various
... brought out with scrupulous fidelity. The Saite school was, in fact, divided into two parties. One sought inspiration in the past, and, by a return to the methods of the old Memphite school, endeavoured to put fresh life into the effeminate style of the day. This it accomplished, and so successfully, that its works are sometimes mistaken for the best productions of the Fourth and Fifth Dynasties. The other, without too openly departing from established tradition, preferred to study from the life, and thus drew nearer to nature than ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... leisure to look about him. It was a beautiful room, large and lofty; luxury was evident on every hand, but it was not the luxury that palls or offends. Each object was graceful, and possessed its own intrinsic value. The atmosphere was too effeminate to appeal to him, but he acknowledged the taste and artistic delicacy it conveyed. Almost at the moment of acknowledgment the door ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... the discharge of the workmen, when the speculators failed of their object. All this while the country was the sufferer;—for whoever gained, the result, being upon the whole a loss, fell on the nation, together with the task of maintaining a poor, rendered effeminate and vicious by over-wages and over-living, and necessarily cast loose upon society. I cannot but think that the necessity of making some fund beforehand, for the provision of those whom they debauch, and render only fit for the almshouse, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... honorable or amiable, the qualities for which you deserve to be praised will all be turned against you. Were you a Virgil, the pious and sensible singer par excellence, there are people who will call you an effeminate poet. Were you a Horace, there are people who will reproach you with the very purity and delicacy of your taste. If you were a Shakespeare, some one will call you a drunken savage. If you were a Goethe, more than one Pharisee will proclaim you the ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... that "their physical and mental characters are much the same from the Arctic Ocean to Fuegia." The tribes differ somewhat, some being devoted to hunting, according to the ancient, uncivilised way, others take to the tilling of the ground. One tribe may be warlike, another will be more effeminate, while both sexes appear to have a liking for athletic exercises. The following descriptive passage is ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... convenient she intended to disown him. Drake had no objection to being disowned, so he could teach the Spaniards to be more careful how they handled Englishmen. What came of it will be the subject of the next lecture. Father Parsons said the Protestant traders of England had grown effeminate and dared not fight. In the ashes of their own smoking cities the Spaniards had to learn that Father Parsons had misread his countrymen. If Drake had been given to heroics he might have left Virgil's lines inscribed above the broken arms ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... see this girl of the effete and effeminate upper class swoon with terror before him; but to his intense astonishment she but stood erect and brave before him, her head high held, her eyes cold and level and unafraid. And then she ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... port, demurely go behind a young man, unplait his pig-tail, teaze the hair, thin it of some of its lively inmates, braid it up for him, and retire. The women always wear two braided pig-tails, and it is by this they are most readily distinguished from their effeminate-looking partners, who wear only one.* [Ermann (Travels in Siberia, ii. p. 204) mentions the Buraet women as wearing two tails, and fillets with jewels, and the men as having one queue only.] When in full dress, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... flank of a wooden donkey, so contrived that it would kick when hit in the true spot. What a joy to observe the tendency of all these diversions! How characteristic of a high-spirited people that nowhere could be found any amusement appealing to the mere mind, or calculated to effeminate by ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... wrote to Temple on July 28, 1763:—'My departure fills me with a kind of gloom that quite overshadows my mind. I could almost weep to think of leaving dear London, and the calm retirement of the Inner Temple. This is very effeminate and very young, but I cannot help it.' Letters of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... in fact his self-proclaimed mission. In his versification he discards rhyme almost entirely, and metre as generally understood. And in his treatment of certain passions and appetites, and of unadulterated human nature, he is at war with what he considered the conventions of an effeminate society, in which, however, he adopts a mode of utterance which many people consider equally objectionable, overlooking, as he does, the existence through all the processes of nature of a principle of reserve and concealment. Amid much that is prosaic and ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... influence in ways well appreciated by Hughes and Arnold. It makes against degeneration, the essential feature of which is weakening of will and loss of honor. Real virtue requires enemies, and women and effeminate and old men want placid, comfortable peace, while a real man rejoices in noble strife which sanctifies all great causes, casts out fear, and is the chief school of courage. Bad as is overpugnacity, a scrapping boy is better than ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... and in which, notwithstanding, a keener eye cannot fail to detect the hidden purpose of the writer to sap the foundations of moral principle, and the veneration for whatever ought to be held sacred by man; while all this sentimentality is only to bribe to his purpose the effeminate soft-heartedness of his contemporaries [Footnote: The author it is supposed alludes to Kotzebue.—TRANS.]. On the other hand, if any person were to undertake the moral vindication of poor Aristophanes, who has such a bad name, and whose licentiousness in particular ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... he, "is as deceitful, it seems, as the fair show of his professions of friendship." As to the golden bracelets and necklaces, the king looked upon them with contempt. He thought that they were intended for fetters and chains, and said that, however well they might answer among the effeminate Persians, they were wholly insufficient to confine such sinews as he had to deal with. The wine, however, he liked. He drank it with great pleasure, and told the Icthyophagi that it was the only article among all their ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Irish, and the Russ by folly, Fury the Dane, the Swede by melancholy; By stupid ignorance, the Muscovite; The Chinese, by a child of hell, call'd wit; Wealth makes the Persian too effeminate; And poverty the Tartar desperate: The Turks and Moors, by Mah'met he subdues; And God has given him leave to rule the Jews: Rage rules the Portuguese, and fraud the Scotch; Revenge the Pole, and avarice ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... throat rose statuesque. The almond-shaped eyes, black as night, gleamed strangely beneath the low, smooth brow. The lank black hair appeared lustreless by comparison. His lips were very red. In his whole appearance there was something repellently effeminate. ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... followed up directly to the parent stock. Taking, for example, the mediaeval architecture of Spain, the brilliant 'Moresco,' we find it to be a combination of the vigorous Gothic of the North with the beautiful though effeminate Saracenic—the exotic of the South. And of these latter, each is traceable, though by different lines, to the same great prototype, the Roman. For when Rome was divided, the Dome fell to the inheritance of the ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... new fashionable friends there, I bade good-by for ever to my dear old father. I had begged my husband to take me by way of Heidelberg to his old castle in the Vosges; but I found an amount of determination, under that effeminate appearance and manner, for which I was not prepared, and he refused my first request so decidedly that I dared not urge it. 'Henceforth, Anna,' said he, 'you will move in a different sphere of life; and though it is possible that you may have the power of showing favour to your ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... themselves; or, if not, no discipline will better aid in their development than the bracing intercourse of a great English classical school. Even the selfish are there forced into accommodating themselves to a public standard of generosity, and the effeminate in conforming to a rule of manliness. I was myself at two public schools, and I think with gratitude of the benefits which I reaped from both; as also I think with gratitude of that guardian in whose quiet household I learned Latin so effectually. But the small ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... passed the fortified island of Corregidor at its entrance without a shot being fired to prevent them. And the same effects caused but a feeble resistance to be opposed to their arms, and the speedy surrender of Manilla by its priest-ridden and effeminate defenders. ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... would have coveted the pleasure of whipping three times his weight of any well-dressed, white-handed young men, who should presume to insult her. In imagination, he had done it times without number; and had contrived a private method to double up a number of effeminate antagonists in succession. But, in all his reveries, he had never anticipated peril to Miss Minford from a falling board; nor had it occurred to him that the supreme felicity of saving her from death or injury would ever be the lot of ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... morals—all and more was his beloved uncle. No thought of his heart but he had given him, and never once had he been misunderstood. He could put his arm about his uncle's neck as he would about his mother's and not be thought effeminate or childish. And the courtesy and dignity and fairness with which he had been treated; and the respect St. George showed him—and he only a boy: compelling his older men friends to do the same. Never letting him feel that any foolish act of his young life had been criticised, ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Prince Bernhardt, though an excellent man in his way, was very far from meeting the requirements of the "Prince Charmant" fit to be mated to a princess so gay and so brilliant as Charlotte of Hohenzollern. His appearance is effeminate, his manner finicky and old-maidish to a degree. He is neither stalwart nor good-looking; he excels neither as a dancer nor as a rider, nor yet as an athlete, and he gives one at first sight the impression of being an artist or a composer, ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... three years later than Sterne, had entered a year after him at Cambridge as a pensioner of Peterhouse, and the two students went through their terms together, though the poet at the time took no degree. There was probably little enough in common between the shy, fastidious, slightly effeminate pensioner of Peterhouse, and a scholar of Jesus, whose chief friend and comrade was a man like Hall; and no close intimacy between the two men, if they had come across each other, would have been very likely to arise. But it does not appear that they could have ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... of the triangular redness on either cheek, fixed and feverish. Ceased to remark how the angle of the jaw stood away from and beyond the sinewy, meagre neck, or note the rise and fall of Adam's apple so prominent in his throat.—No longer were annoyed by the effeminate character of the hands, their retracted nails and pink, upturned finger-tips, offering so queer a contrast to the rather inordinate size ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... considerable portion of Sunday morning. They might then be seen in groups, combing and brushing each other's hair, which hung down very long behind, and then tying up the tails with a bit of blue cotton tape. The captain was a young man, tall and slight, with a very effeminate air, and as unlike his first lieutenant as he well could be. Still his countenance was not bad, and he smiled in a pleasant way as he ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... advocated a change in scoring that replaced love, 15, 30, 40 with the more comprehensive 1, 2, 3, 4. The real reason for the proposed change was the belief that the word "love" in tennis made the uninitiated consider the game effeminate and repelled possible supporters. The loyal adherents of the old customs of the game proved too strong, and defeated the proposed change in ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... fie, Phantastes, so effeminate! for shame, leave off. Visus, your objects I must needs say, are admirable, if the house and instrument be answerable. Let's hear therefore ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... Riley. "Five or six of the men you met to-night were loath to come. When I pinned them down to their reason, it was I thought: they regard you as an effeminate being, a sissy." ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... Did you euer cure any so? Ros. Yes one, and in this manner. Hee was to imagine me his Loue, his Mistris: and I set him euerie day to woe me. At which time would I, being but a moonish youth, greeue, be effeminate, changeable, longing, and liking, proud, fantastical, apish, shallow, inconstant, ful of teares, full of smiles; for euerie passion something, and for no passion truly any thing, as boyes and women are ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... the honor of addressing Miss Dalton?" said the stranger, as he reached her. He spoke in a very pleasant but somewhat effeminate voice, lifting his hat, ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... crowne, and wieldeth the royall scepter. Albeit therefore the people of China (especially they that inhabit Southerly from the prouince of Paquin) are, for the most part, by reason of continuall ease and quiet, growen effeminate, and their courage is abated, notwithstanding they would prooue notable and braue souldiers, if they ioyned vse and exercise vnto their naturall fortitude. As a man may easily obserue in them, that maintaine continuall warres against the most barbarous and cruell Tartars. Howbeit ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... surveyor was a fat-cheeked, handsome man, with a silky brown beard, an effeminate voice, and prodigious self-conceit. He was pacing up and down the inside office, at the rear of the rough board building, when Van came in and found him. The horseman's business was one of maps and ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... emphasized this to a remarkable degree. Personally no two men could have been more opposite. One was the product of democracy, buoyant and self-made, while the other represented an intellectual, almost effeminate, aristocracy. Yet nearly from the start Frohman perceived the bigness of vision and the profound understanding that lurked behind Fitch's almost ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... in folio by Pope's publisher, Lawton Gilliver of Fleet Street, and has a frontispiece engraved by Gerard Vandergucht. This depicts a wide-skirted, effeminate-looking personage, carrying a long cane with a head fantastically carved, and surrounded by various objects of art. In the background rises what is apparently intended for the temple of a formal garden; and behind this again, a winged ass capers skittishly upon the summit of Mount Helicon. ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... Italian troops, that in his first campaign he destroyed five successive Austrian armies; broke up the alliances of that cluster of feeble and contemptible sovereignties which had so long disgraced Italy in the eyes of Europe; trampled on their effeminate and debauched population, with the sternness of an executioner rather than the force of a conqueror; and after sending the plunder of their palaces to Paris, in the spirit and with the pomp of the old Roman triumphs, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... were invented for effeminate courtiers; but toil, disquietude, and arms alone were designed for those whom the ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... bright and beautiful chestnut color, fell over shoulders that were the perfection of strength and grace. His face was bright with vivacity and intelligence. His large clear blue eyes and his long delicate white hands were like the eyes and hands of a beautiful woman. He would have looked effeminate but for the manly proportions of his throat and chest, aided in their effect by his flowing beard and long mustache, of a lighter chestnut shade than the color of his hair. Never had a magnificent head and body ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... born, having been trained as many a brave young man was then, to look upon profligacy not as a proof of manhood, but as what the old Germans, and those Gortyneans who crowned the offender with wool, knew it to be, a cowardly and effeminate sin. ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... own very limited notions and possessions. The Dame was a very homely, hard-featured lady, deaf, and extremely fat and heavy, one of the old uncultivated rustic gentry who had lagged far behind the general civilisation of the country, and regarded all refinements as effeminate French vanities. She believed, likewise, all that was said against Queen Mary, whom she looked on as barely restrained from plunging a dagger into Elizabeth's heart, and letting Parma's hell-hounds loose upon Tixall. To have such a guest ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... continued he, "I will carry my plans into effect, but you shall not have the honor of accompanying me. You shall remain at Susa with the women and children of the palace, and spend your time in the effeminate and ignoble pleasures suited to a spirit so mean. As for myself, I must and will carry my designs into execution. I could not, in fact, long avoid a contest with the Greeks, even if I were to adopt the cowardly and degrading policy which you ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... letter from my father, I was in tolerable bliss. Julia's kisses were showered on me for almost anything I said or did, but her admiration of heroism and daring was so fervent that I was in no greater danger of becoming effeminate than Achilles when he wore girl's clothes. She was seventeen, an age bewitching for boys to look up to and men to look down on. The puzzle of the school was how to account for her close relationship to old Rippenger. Such an apple on such a crab-tree ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... writer that the followers of Christ have done him far less than justice in insisting upon one aspect of his character disproportionately with another. They speak of him as the "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild "; they tend to describe him as almost or wholly effeminate; and the representations of him in art, with small, feminine and conspicuously un-Jewish features, with long feminine hair and the hands of a consumptive woman, join with sacred poetry in furthering this impression. Nothing can be truer than that ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... to the participation of civil rights which the Romans liberally communicated. The other mode of conquest, that pursued by the Northern nations, brought about its beneficial effects by the settlement of a hardy and vigorous people among the distracted and effeminate nations against whom their incursions were made. The conquerors transplanted with them their independent and ferocious spirit to reanimate exhausted communities, and in their turn received a salutary mitigation, till in process of time the ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... snarled. He pointed at the four beds in a row. I felt guiltily conscious of them. At the moment they appeared so unnecessarily clean and warm and soft. The silk coverlets at the foot of each struck me as being disgracefully effeminate. They ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... the Ilongot is peculiar and rather unlike that of any other Philippine people. The men are small, with long bodies and very short legs, weak, effeminate faces, occasionally bearded. The hair is worn long, but usually coiled upon the head and held by a rattan net. The color of the Ilongot is brown and a little lighter than that of Malayans exposed to the sun by life on the water or in the plain. ...
— The Negrito and Allied Types in the Philippines and The Ilongot or Ibilao of Luzon • David P. Barrows
... Linus felt something wild and passionate stir in his heart and rise in yearning for he knew not what. He looked round at the guests who sat or stood in little groups, and he felt again that he had not been wise to come. There were several persons there who were not well spoken of, luxurious and effeminate men, whom Linus knew only by repute; but at that moment his host came up and spoke so gently and courteously to Linus, asking him whether he was pleased with the unseen music, that Linus grew ashamed of his ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... humour which cannot last. It breeds weakness, anarchy, and at last ruin to society. And then the effeminate and luxurious, terrified for their money and their comfort, fly from an unwholesome tenderness to an unwholesome indignation; break out into a panic of selfish rage; and become, as cowards are apt to do, blindly ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... the point with much fervid eloquence and solid argument. Henry for a moment had seemed impressed, but such a vigorous proceeding was of course entirely beyond his strength, and he had sunk back into his effeminate languor so soon as the bold bishop's ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... astonished that the Sheikh of Bornou permits such barbarity, but imagine that the Sheikh is still afraid of his vassal, and shrinks from endeavouring to deprive him of this awful power. Here, then, we have a specimen of the negro character, with all its contradictions; soft and effeminate in its ordinary moods; cheerful, and pleasant, and simple, to appearance; but capable of acting, as it were without transition, the most terrible deeds of atrocity. Say what you will of the barbarism of the Tuaricks, such a mode of inflicting capital punishment ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... men to deal with as they please; since the mass of mankind, in the hope of being received into Paradise, think more how to bear injuries than how to avenge them. But should it seem that the world has grown effeminate and Heaven laid aside her arms, this assuredly results from the baseness of those who have interpreted our religion to accord with indolence and ease rather than with valour. For were we to remember that religion permits the exaltation and defence of our country, we would see ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... engagements, [481] the one near the Hellespont, the other in the narrow defiles of Cilicia, decided the fate of his Syrian competitor; and the troops of Europe asserted their usual ascendant over the effeminate natives of Asia. [49] The battle of Lyons, where one hundred and fifty thousand Romans [50] were engaged, was equally fatal to Albinus. The valor of the British army maintained, indeed, a sharp and doubtful contest, with the hardy discipline of the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... fled from his throne of Poland to take that of France as soon as he heard of the death of his brother, had not even the few good qualities of the latter. Depraved, prodigal, effeminate, capable only of the most puerile occupations, he excited the indignation of the Parisians by his dissolute manners, by his travesty of feminine apparel, his fine collars, his necklaces of pearls, his pourpoint opened to show his throat. D'Aubigne ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... decadent poets with their effeminate rhythms and their absurdities of speech.[238] He can mock the archaizer who goes to Accius and Pacuvius for his inspiration.[239] He can give an admirable summary of the genius ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... perform so great a deed, considering that which I am told; for such deeds, I think, are not apt to proceed from every man, but from one who has a brave spirit and manly vigour, whereas Telines is said by the dwellers in Sicily to have been on the contrary a man of effeminate ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... means so diversified as those of boys. It would be considered a trifle too effeminate were the little men to amuse themselves with their sisters' game of Chucks—an enchanting amusement, played with a large-sized marble and four octagonal pieces of chalk. Beds, another girlish game, is also played on the pavement—a piece of broken pot, china or earthenware, ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... see two men bruise each other almost to death could evince or inspire heroic sentiments or warlike dispositions. He observed, that the Romans were most eager for the fights of gladiators during the reigns of the most effeminate and cruel emperors, and in the decline of all public spirit and virtue. These arguments would have probably made but a feeble impression on an understanding like mine, unaccustomed to general reasoning, and on a temper ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... save in those tragic portraits of himself and of his wife, of which there are three here in the Pitti (188, 280, 1176). He has been called the faultless painter, and indeed he seems to be incapable of fault, to be really a little effeminate, a little vague, bewildered by the sculpture of Michelangelo, the confusion of art in Florence, the advent of the colourists, of whom here in Tuscany he is perhaps the chief. It is no intellectual passion you find in that soft, troubled work, where from every picture Lucrezia del Fede looks ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... beates) not without much ruth and sorrow prosecuted that lamentable massacre, yet drumms and trumpets sounding nothing but stearne reuenge in their eares, made them so eager, that their hands had no leasure to aske counsell of theyr effeminate eyes, theyr swords, theyr pikes, theyr bils, their bows, their caleeuers flew, empierced, knockt downe, shot thorough, and ouerthrew as many men euerie minute of the battell, as there fais eares of corne before ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... that they have so transformed themselves into the shapes of animals that they no longer appear to be men.... How vile, further, it is that those who have been born men are clothed in women's dresses, and by the vilest change effeminate their manly strength by taking on the forms of girls, blushing not to clothe their warlike arms in women's garments; they have bearded faces, and yet they wish to appear women.... There are some who on ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... experience of that most miserable and detested condition of living in slavery; no long descent having as yet invested the Assyrian with a right, nor any other title being for him pretended than a strong hand; the foolish and effeminate son of a tyrannous and hated mother could very ill hold so many great princes and nations his vassals, with a power less mastering, and a mind less industrious, than his father and mother had used ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... man of scientific training, indolent manners, effeminate appearance, hidden energy, and absolute courage, lounged through the doors of the Atlas Building. Since his rescue from the volcanic island that had witnessed the piratical murder of his old employer, Doctor Schermerhorn, the spectacular dissolution of the murderers, and his own imprisonment ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... there, which still disappointed me, because from Raphael I asked and expected more. I wished to feel his hand on my soul with a stronger grasp; these were too passionless in their serenity, and almost effeminate ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... taste. The vicomte had inherited from his parents a taste for Oriental things, and his study looked like a costly tent, while his bedroom was furnished with the simplicity of a convent cell. The Count of Monte-Cristo had taught his son to be strict to himself and not become effeminate in any way. Nice pictures and statues were in the parlors, the bookcase was filled with selected volumes and he spent many hours each day in serious studies. Spero was a master in all physical accomplishments. His father's ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... you know it," declared Harding. "I suppose you think just because I do nothing but build railroads and things that I've grown effeminate since you tackled me the last time. Come ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... This somewhat effeminate but decidedly comfortable attitude in which to keep one's watch on deck, was not invented until farther on in the cruise; and it seems odd that I should so long have continued to sit upright for hours together ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... aroused in him an appetite for worse. It was the street boy turned pickpocket, and a pickpocket turned garroter. He was genteel, effeminate, graceful, robust, sluggish, ferocious. The rim of his hat was curled up on the left side, in order to make room for a tuft of hair, after the style of 1829. He lived by robbery with violence. His coat was of the best cut, but threadbare. Montparnasse was a fashion-plate in misery ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... body, and Gnulemah stood in the doorway. Balder's first impulse was to motion her away from a spectacle so unsuited to her eyes. But though the shadow made her face inscrutable, the lines of her figure spoke, and not of weak timidity or effeminate consternation. Womanly she was,—instinct with that tender, sensitive power, the marvellous gift of God to woman only, which almost moves the sick man to bless his sickness. A holy gift,—surely the immediate influx of Christ's spirit. Man knows it not, albeit when he and ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... remain?" cried the prince, his eyes flashing. "Shall I here seek pleasure, with effeminate good nature, while the king, in spite of his age, exposes himself to all the fatigue of a campaign and the danger of battle? This war of the Bavarian succession is unfortunate, and no one knows whether the German ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... times that his whole life might be spent amid such scenes, it exercises a most enervating influence on those who are born to its enjoyment. It relaxes mental and physical energy, and disposes body and mind to dreamy inactivity. The Italians, as a race, are indolent and effeminate. Of the moral dignity of man they have little conception. Those classes who are engaged in active occupation seem even destitute of common honesty, practising all kinds of deceits in the most open manner and apparently without the least shame. The state of ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... slightly bowed and her eyes half-closed, she sang an Italian melody; she sang and smiled, and at the same time her face wore an expression of gravity, almost of sternness ... a token of perfect rapture! She smiled ... and Praxiteles' Faun, indolent, youthful as she, effeminate, and voluptuous, seemed to smile back at her from a corner, under the branches of an oleander, across the delicate smoke that curled upwards from a bronze censer on an antique tripod. The beautiful singer was alone. Spell-bound by the music, her beauty, the splendour and sweet fragrance of the night, ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... common observation, that the more solicitous any people are about dress, the more effeminate they are. I attribute it entirely to this idle adventitious passion for finery, that these people are become so over and above careful of their persons; they are for ever, and on every occasion, putting one another on their guard against catching cold; "you'll certainly ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... that was conveyed by a conformation that might be supposed to have been copied from some antique medal, more especially when illuminated by a smile that, at times, rendered the whole countenance almost as bewitching as that of a lovely woman. There was nothing effeminate in the appearance of the young stranger, notwithstanding; his manly, though sweet voice, well-knit frame, and firm look affording every ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... had chapped hands, and nearly every one had the skin worn off the knuckle of his middle finger from resting it on the ground when he shot. You could use a knuckle-dabster of fur or cloth to rest your hand on, but is was considered effeminate, and in the excitement you were apt to forget it, anyway. Marbles were always very exciting, and were played with a clamor as incessant as that of a blackbird roost. A great many points were always coming up: whether a boy took-up, or edged, beyond the very place where his toy lay ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... Janus, or even driveling Silenus, the god of abstruse mysteries. He resembles the whole family of them, however, in being a blackguard, and perhaps this is what is meant. To even the little manliness his classical prototypes possessed, though, he can lay no claim whatever, being a listless effeminate noodle, on the shady side of forty. But oh! the depth and strength of this elderly party's emotion for some bread-and-butter school-girl! Hide your heads, ye young Romeos and Leanders! this blase old beau loves with an hysterical fervor that requires four adjectives ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... practical counsels of Mme. Campan. Mistress of Charles Grandet before his father's death. Towards the close of 1819, a prey to suspicion, she must needs sacrifice her happiness for the time being, so she made a weary journey with her husband into Scotland. She made her lover effeminate and materialistic, advising with him about everything. He returned from the Indies in 1827, when she quickly brought about his engagement ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... consider whether there was not more grace and beauty in a Pas de trois, and would not proceed till he had resolved this question by a chain of metaphysical reasoning without end. Not so Mr. Godwin. That is best to him, which he can do best. He does not waste himself in vain aspirations and effeminate sympathies. He is blind, deaf, insensible to all but the trump of Fame. Plays, operas, painting, music, ball-rooms, wealth, fashion, titles, lords, ladies, touch him not—all these are no more to him than to the magician in his cell, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... that's so," commented Ames, quite at sea in such conversation. "But we solid business men have found that religious emotion never gets a man anywhere. It's weakening. Makes a man effeminate, and utterly unfits him for business. I wouldn't have a man in my employ who was ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... John a reposeful spirit. He was content to be lowly. He knew how to trust. His spirit was gentle. He was of a deeply spiritual nature. Yet we must not think of him as weak or effeminate. Perhaps painters have helped to give this impression of him; but it is one that is not only untrue, but dishonoring. John was a man of noble strength. In his soul, under his quietness and sweetness of spirit, dwelt a mighty energy. But he was a man of love, and had learned the lesson ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... pleased the fancy or suited best the skill, looking for the quarry, which horn and hound drove fast and frequent across the alleys. Such was the luxurious "summer-chase" of the Sardanapalus of the North. Nor could any spectacle more thoroughly represent that poetical yet effeminate taste, which, borrowed from the Italians, made a short interval between the chivalric and the modern age. The exceeding beauty of the day, the richness of the foliage in the first suns of bright July, the bay of the dogs, the sound of the mellow horn, the fragrance of the air, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... as his chosen successors. The young heirs were very coldly received on this occasion, for Helge was of a sombre and taciturn disposition, and inclined to the life of a priest, and Halfdan was of a weak, effeminate nature, and noted for his love of pleasure rather than of war and the chase. Frithiof, who was present, and stood beside them, was the object of many admiring glances ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... of the dark effeminate face—of its rare smile! The girl forgot all pride, all discretion. 'Try,' she whispered, and as his hand, stretching along the keyboard, instinctively felt for hers, for one instant—and another, and another—she gave ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and then set himself to qualify for the Bar. His personal appearance likewise indicated a mixture of races—tall and well-knit, he suggested a strong and determined nature; on the other hand, there was something almost effeminate in the regularity of his features, and his lips were somewhat sensuous. A passing stranger would be immediately attracted by him. Blue eyes, brown hair, and well-formed features, together with a sunny and kind-hearted disposition, had made him a popular man. While very ambitious, ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... their struggles with man rather than with nature. The wars of their ancestors, extending over nearly two centuries, did the most to make them the brave and proud people they are. It is through the effects of these chiefly that they have been kept from becoming indolent and effeminate. They are now strong, fearless, haughty, and independent. But the near future is to initiate a new epoch in their history, an era in which their career may be the reverse of what it has been. Man is becoming a factor of new importance in their environment. ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... though, when taken in excess, and without nourishing food, they themselves produce, temporarily at least, some of the more disagreeable consequences incident to the use of ardent spirits. In general, however, none but persons possessing great mobility of the nervous system, or enfeebled or effeminate constitutions, are injuriously affected by the moderate use of tea and coffee in connection ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... five o'clock on the evening of the day of Sheil's speech, Lord Ballindine and his friend, Walter Blake, were lounging on different sofas in a room at Morrison's Hotel, before they went up to dress for dinner. Walter Blake was an effeminate-looking, slight-made man, about thirty or thirty-three years of age; good looking, and gentlemanlike, but presenting quite a contrast in his appearance to his friend Lord Ballindine. He had a cold quiet grey eye, and a thin lip; and, though he was in reality ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... drain great tankards of ale or to peasants whose hands were hard with holding the plough. He disdains the implied charge of prudery, and indeed his language is what could not have been used by an effeminate or a coward. No braver man ever held a pen. Wood says {32} that "his deportment was affable, his gait erect, bespeaking courage and undauntedness," and he himself tells us that "he did not neglect daily practice ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... I having decided that a purely shikar expedition into the more difficult parts of the country was not suited to our prosaic habits, remained to enjoy the effeminate pleasures of Srinagar till the weather should ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... maintain the prosperity of the Kurus. (Surfeited with libations at the sacrifice of king Swetaketu), Agni will derive great gratification from the fat of all creatures dwelling in the Khandava woods (to be burnt down) by the might of this one's arms. This mighty hero, vanquishing all the effeminate monarchs of the earth, will, with his brothers perform three great sacrifices. In prowess, O Kunti, he will be even as Jamadagnya or Vishnu. The foremost of all men endued with prowess, he will achieve great fame. He will gratify in battle (by ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... She's soon to be married, THEY say (d—n 'they say,' however—the greatest scandal-monger, if not mischief-maker and liar, in the world!)—she is soon to be married to young Trescott—a clover lad who sniffles, plays on the flute, wears whisker and imperial on the most cream-colored and effeminate face you ever saw! A good fellow, nevertheless, but a silly! She is a good fellow, too, rather the cleverest of the twain, and perhaps the oldest. The match, if match it really is to be, none of the wisest for that very reason. ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... I tell you frankly, however, that I had no particular affection for her, though she seemed already to regard me as her victim. She seized every opportunity of pointing out to me the way in which we should have to steer, both in public and private life. When she wrote to me she never employed the effeminate style of the Kana,[42] but wrote, oh! so magnificently! The great interest which she took in me induced me to pay frequent visits to her; and, by making her my tutor, I learned how to compose ordinary Chinese poems. However, though ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... the complaint that the training of the modern child is left almost entirely to the mother or to the woman school teacher, and that as a result the boy is becoming effeminate. The indications are that this could not have been said of the colonial child; for, according to the records of that day, there was admirable co-operation between man and wife in the training of their little ones. Kindly Judge Sewall, who so indiscriminately mingled his accounts ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... be a mere old bachelor's whim of mine, but it always has appeared to me that ladies who have had the advantage of mixing much in society, and seeing something of human nature, are not peculiarly partial to that effeminate fairness of complexion that many fashionable gentlemen are so careful to preserve, when they have it by nature, or, when nature has been unkind, to obtain by artificial means; so that Dogberry's axiom, that "to be a well-favored man is the gift of fortune," is not altogether absurd. ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... to be vain of his person, how effeminate! If such a one happens to have genius, it seldom strikes deep into intellectual subjects. His outside usually runs away with him. To adorn, and perhaps, intending to adorn, to render ridiculous that person, takes up all his attention. All he does is personal; ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... took a more serious view of the affair, and, having sandbagged the cellar windows, posted notices stating that, in the event of shelling, customers could continue business in the cellar. And this was in a nation that we have always looked upon as effeminate ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... agreed that on that night Jos would propose to make Rebecca Sharp Mrs. Sedley. The parents at home had acquiesced in the arrangement, though, between ourselves, old Mr. Sedley had a feeling very much akin to contempt for his son. He said he was vain, selfish, lazy, and effeminate. He could not endure his airs as a man of fashion, and laughed heartily at his pompous braggadocio stories. "I shall leave the fellow half my property," he said; "and he will have, besides, plenty of his own; but as I am ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is it? Had not churchmen pray'd, His thread of life had not so soon decay'd: None do you like but an effeminate prince, Whom, like ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... anomaly that woman is not at the top and leading in all departments, compelling the other sex to play second fiddle, as she so frequently has done for a brief time in isolated cases in the past; not that the man is effeminate, but that the woman seems so nearly his match and equal, and so often proves even his superior. In no other nation, during times of popular excitement and insurrection or revolution, do women emerge ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... himself of it. He is always foolish if he does not make things as easy for himself as possible. The tenderfoot will not agree with this. With him there is no idea so fixed, and no idea so absurd, as that to be comfortable is to be effeminate. He believes that "roughing it" is synonymous with hardship, and in season and out of season he plays the Spartan. Any man who suffers discomforts he can avoid because he fears his comrades will think he cannot suffer ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... began to look like a leader of Amazons. Miss CHRISTINE SILVER'S Titania had a certain domestic sweetness, but even a queen of fairies might be a little more queenly. Mr. DENNIS NEILSON-TERRY as Oberon was a curiously effeminate figure for those who recalled the manly bearing of his mother in the same part. Of the two bemused Athenian lovers, Mr. SWINLEY, as Lysander, bore himself as bravely as could ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 18, 1914 • Various
... the place to describe the long struggle between the new and the old faith in the North; how kings and queens became the foster-fathers and nursing- mothers of the Church; how the great chiefs, each a little king in himself, scorned and derided the whole scheme as altogether weak and effeminate; how the bulk of the people were sullen and suspicious, and often broke out into heathen mutiny; how kings rose and kings fell, just as they took one or the other side; and how, finally, after a contest ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... new restraints, and as soon as he had gained the rank of lieutenant retired from the service to enjoy the freedom of country life. Shortly afterwards his father died, and he thereby became owner of an estate, with two hundred serfs. He did not, like his elder brother, marry, and "effeminate himself," but he did worse. In his little independent kingdom—for such was practically a Russian estate in the good old times—he was lord of all he surveyed, and gave full scope to his boisterous humour, his passion for sport, and his love of drinking and dissipation. Many of the mad pranks in ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... Next in line to his right had been a stranger. This latter was a slender, clean-cut youth, at first glance seemingly of delicate physique. Charley had looked upon him with the pitying contempt of strong youth for weak youth. He considered that the stranger's hands were soft and effeminate, he disliked his little trimmed moustache, and especially the cool, mocking, appraising glance of his eyes. But as the day, and the night, and the day following wore away, Charley raised his opinion. The slender body possessed unexpected reserve, the long, lean hands plied the tools unweariedly, ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... up his fox-shooting, not because in itself is a terrible crime, like fishing for salmon with herring roe, but for reasons which most of his countrymen would consider effeminate and absurd, he took to making expeditions, still in company with Juliette, for Madame stretched Continental conventions in his case, in search of certain rare flowers which grew upon the lower slopes of these Alps. In connection with one ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... ornaments, which height, what is beautifully translated, where figures are fit, which gentle, which strong, to show the composition manly; and how he hath avoided faint, obscure, obscene, sordid, humble, improper, or effeminate phrase; which is not only praised of the most, but commended (which is worse), especially for that ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... them the forementioned diet, while they had their souls in some measure more pure, and less burdened, and so fitter for learning, and had their bodies in better tune for hard labor; for they neither had the former oppressed and heavy with variety of meats, nor were the other effeminate on the same account; so they readily understood all the learning that was among the Hebrews, and among the Chaldeans, as especially did Daniel, who being already sufficiently skillful in wisdom, was very busy ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... doeth alter: For that he thinketh not meete to clothe with civell apparell him, who wil be redie, and promt to all kinde of violence, nor the civell customes, and usages maie that man have, the whiche judgeth bothe those customes to be effeminate, and those usages not to be agreable to his profession: Nor it semes not convenient for him to use the civill gesture and ordinarie wordes, who with fasing and blasphemies, will make afraied other menne: the whiche causeth in this time, suche ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... most severe punishment that could have been inflicted on him, and would willingly have given a part of his wages rather than this disgrace had happened; for there is a pride amongst "Old Voyagers," which makes them consider the state of being frost-bitten as effeminate, and only excusable in a "Pork-eater," or one newly come into the country. I was greatly fatigued, and suffered acute pains in the knees and legs, both of which were much swollen when we halted a little ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... after your decision," she replied. "Indeed, I do think it too effeminate for men, persons of high honour except, or them that are sick ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... Justitiarius and executor. He spoke of the harsh and violent character of the old nobleman, which seemed to be inherited by all the family, since even the present master of the estate, whom he had known as a mild-tempered and almost effeminate youth, acquired more and more as the years went by the same disposition. He therefore recommended me strongly to behave with as much resolute self-reliance and as little embarrassment as possible, if I desired to possess any consideration in the Freiherr's eyes; ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... could not! But wherefore waste I precious hours with thee! Thou art her darling mischief, her chief engine, Antony's other fate. Go, tell thy queen, Ventidius is arrived, to end her charms. Let your Egyptian timbrels play alone, Nor mix effeminate sounds with Roman trumpets, You dare not fight for Antony; go pray And keep your cowards' holiday ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... Xenophon, of Justin and Aelian, these served chiefly to confirm the suspicion that the Greeks themselves knew almost nothing more of the history of their famed Oriental forerunners. The current fables told of a first King Ninus and his wonderful queen Semiramis; of Sennacherib the conqueror; of the effeminate Sardanapalus, who neglected the warlike ways of his ancestors but perished gloriously at the last, with Nineveh itself, in a self-imposed holocaust. And that was all. How much of this was history, how much myth, no man could ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... Hickling Prescott tell us that, in the course of the seven centuries of the Moslem domination in Spain, the Moors had become soft and effeminate, that "the canker of peace" had sapped, if it had not destroyed, the virile qualities of the race, that luxury and learning had dried up at their source those primitive virtues of courage and hardihood ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... glory have I lost, And what has he acquired, by such a death! I should have fallen by Sebastian's side, My corps had been the bulwark of my king. His glorious end was a patched work of fate, Ill sorted with a soft effeminate life; It suited better with my life than his, So to have died: Mine had been of a piece, Spent in your service, dying at ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... in Copenhagen, laboring with an intensity of creative ardor which he had never known before. His striking appearance, the pithy terseness of his speech, and a certain naive self-assertion and impatience of social restraints made him a notable figure in the polite and somewhat effeminate society of the Danish capital. There was a general expectation at that time that a great poet was to come, and although Bjoernson had as yet published nothing to justify the expectation, he found the ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... combin'd in beauty's worthiness, Yet should there hover in their restless heads One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least, Which into words no virtue can digest. But how unseemly is it for my sex, My discipline of arms and chivalry, My nature, and the terror of my name, To harbour thoughts effeminate and faint! Save only that in beauty's just applause, With whose instinct the soul of man is touch'd; And every warrior that is rapt with love Of fame, of valour, and of victory, Must needs have beauty beat on his conceits: I thus conceiving, [268] and subduing both, That which hath stoop'd ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... for his years, was yet in the blossom of his youth. His face, which was so like his loving mother's, would have been effeminate, but for the savor of old Joe Robertson the pilot, which told in the marked nose and strong chin of the boy, but had no part in his great, clear, soul-lit eyes, or the flexible lines of his changing mouth. That mouth was now parted as if he would say more, but waited for some ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... a century in which such presentments of youth in its flower abounded. There is something androgynous, in the true sense of the word, in the union of the strength and pride of lusty youth with a grace which is almost feminine in its suavity, yet not offensively effeminate. It should be noted that a delight in portraying the fresh comeliness, the elastic beauty of form proper to the youth just passing into the man was common to many Venetian painters at this stage, and coloured their art as it had coloured the ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips |
