"Old-maidish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... At Southampton she "waved" to Frieda: Frieda was on her way down to join them at Swanage, and Mrs. Munt had calculated that their trains would cross. But Frieda was looking the other way, and Margaret travelled on to town feeling solitary and old-maidish. How like an old maid to fancy that Mr. Wilcox was courting her! She had once visited a spinster—poor, silly, and unattractive—whose mania it was that every man who approached her fell in love. How Margaret's heart had bled ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... the old-maidish anxiety. "Do you think you shall see me at his feet before the evening is over? But I should like to see him at mine for a moment, and to have the chance of ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... Lisbeth had contracted some rather strange old-maidish habits. For instance, instead of following the fashions, she expected the fashion to accept her ways and yield to her always out-of-date notions. When the Baroness gave her a pretty new bonnet, or a gown in the fashion of the day, Betty remade it completely at home, and spoilt it by producing ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... was a shallower or more short-sighted criticism than that which has held that science is the enemy of romance. Ruskin, with all the April showers of his rhetoric, discredited himself as an authoritative thinker when he screamed his old-maidish diatribes against that pioneer of modern romantic communication, the railroad. Just as surely his idol Turner proved himself a romantic painter, not by his rainbows, or his Italian sunsets, but by that picture of Storm, Rain, and ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... had been already half-adorned. "Why, bless me, Molly!" she cried, "you are not going to put on that handsome white satin bow, are you?"—"Why, yes! I think I shall," replied Molly, "for now I look at your cap, with that there yellow riband upon it, mine seems to me quite old-maidish." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... to kings; and mine had dropped "aitches." His father had been a European celebrity, mine a ship-chandler in Boston, U.S.A. Yet here we two were; and he might have been a high-spirited and most beautiful little boy picnicking with a sedate and old-maidish little girl. ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... wrong, Dolly," replied the kind-hearted sailor, repenting of his sudden burst of passion; "but you do so provoke me by your ill-humor, your eternal contradiction, and your old-maidish ways, that it is impossible for a man always to keep his temper. It's a hard thing for a fellow's wife to have the command of the ship, but it seems deucedly unnatural for him to be ruled ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... bear it, and as he retreated she pressed forward. Of course there was work. And it would be very good for her, it would stir her up to take a pupil; it was just her old-maidish ways—it had startled ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... her most old-maidish manner). Miss Fanny, Miss Henrietta, it is time I spoke plainly to this gentleman. Please leave him to me. Surely ...
— Quality Street - A Comedy • J. M. Barrie
... was very nice, but I did not half like leaving my things—I was rather old-maidish in my ways, and never liked half measures; but I remembered reading once about "the lust of finishing," and what a test of unselfishness it was to put by a half-completed task cheerfully at the call of another duty. Perhaps it was my duty to leave my unpacking ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... is plain, and a little old-maidish but I found her afterwards sensible, well read, and well bred but not quite immediately did she appear so, as you will soon see. The youngest is many years her junior, and fat and handsome, good-humoured, and ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... least Frs. 17.00 to 25.00. The better Rucksacks have straps fixed outside for carrying one's coat or possibly sealskins. (Sohms skins should be carried inside the sack.) I advise people to carry the various contents of their sacks in different bags, or tied up in handkerchiefs. This may sound old-maidish, but it is a trick I learnt from Swiss climbers and I am very thankful. Anyone who has hurriedly searched his sack for some particular bit of gear knows the sort of haystack which results, while if first-aid ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse |
