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Virginal   Listen
adjective
Virginal  adj.  Of or pertaining to a virgin; becoming a virgin; maidenly. "Chastity and honor virginal."
Virginal generation (Biol.), parthenogenesis.
Virginal membrane (Anat.), the hymen.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Virginal" Quotes from Famous Books



... and coarse, and low, and animal, they are dragging you down; if they are frivolous and foolish, they are making you a poor butterfly of a creature that is worth nothing and will be of no good to anybody; if they are pure, and chaste, and lofty, and virginal and white, they will make your souls good and gracious and tender with the tenderness and beauty ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... young pigeon's blood resembles the virginal discharge is universal; but the blood most resembling man's is that of the pig which in other points is so very human. In our day Arabs and Hindus rarely submit to inspection the nuptial sheet as practiced by the Israelites and Persians. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... so, no. Don't fool yourself, chick. Temple Bells looks and acts sweet and innocent and virginal. Maybe—probably—she is. But she isn't showing a fraction of the stuff she's really got. She's heavy artillery, Sandy. And ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith

... purely physiological. She did not hate him for this news. Such hatred is abnormal. Nor did she love him. That would have been still more abnormal. But she must be in his house; she must sew for him, share his daily doings, sleep in the big four-poster, and not in the small virginal bed at the Mountain. It would be grievous to leave Edward. He was the shelter between her flickering spirit and the storms of life. She had hesitated, putting off the inevitable, feeling that Undern was always there, like ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb

... the room and shut the door, but could not shut out her image. The picture she had unwittingly supplied of herself took possession of his imagination: he saw her almost as a dream-figure—the virginal figure he knew—standing by the stream in the sunset, amid the elms and silver birches, with daisies in her hands and bluebells at her feet, inhaling the delicate scent that wafted from the white hawthorn ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill

... country made by God's hand the most beautiful in the temperate regions of the earth, and inhabited by a race once capable of the sternest patriotism and simplest purity of life, your modern religion, in the very stronghold of it, has reduced the song and dance of ancient virginal thanksgiving to the howlings and staggerings of men betraying, in intoxication, a nature sunk more than half-way towards the beasts; and you will begin to understand why the Bible should have been "illustrated" by ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin

... sins! If it is thou who punishest; but rather It is that, when we slacken in perceiving The world's intent towards us, and fatally, Enticed out of suspicion by fair signs, Go from ignoring its proposals, down To parley,—thou our weakness dost permit. In all my days I from the greed of the world Virginal have kept my spirit's dwelling,— Till now; yea, all my being I have maintained Sacredly my own possession; for love But made more beautiful and more divine My spirit's ownership. And yet no warning, When I infatuate went down ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie

... here, too, books which Lucrezia examined with an awful wonder, not knowing how to read. In the window-seat were white cushions. On the chest of drawers were more red roses and geraniums. It was a virginal room, into which the bright, golden sunbeams stole under the striped awning outside the low window with surely a hesitating modesty, as if afraid to find themselves intruders. The whiteness, the intense quietness of the room, through whose window could be seen a ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens

... popular performer, though not in any sense a great one. He met the slim, golden-haired daughter of the manse at the house of a college friend she was visiting in Toronto, and fell straightway in love with her. Margaret had loved him with all her virginal heart in return, and married him, despite her father's disapproval. It was not to Martin Moore's profession that Mr. Leonard objected, but to the man himself. He knew that the violinist's past life had not been such as became a suitor for ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... with the matter, whether it were in the shape of a vague loan, or else under some pretext of publicity, puffery, or advertising, for Hunter had acted with extreme adroitness so as to give no offence to the susceptibilities of even the least virginal consciences. ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... listener took on a pathetic droop, and her voice quivered as she spoke with an effective semblance of virginal terror. ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana

... unvailed exposures of sentiments and of life offend that virginal modesty of soul, of which outward modesty is but an imperfect emblem? You show ourself unvailed, and you do not ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... her father was the Calvinist minister of Crassier, her mother a French Huguenot who had preferred her religion to her country. She had received a liberal and even learned education from her father, and was as attractive in person as she was accomplished in mind. "She was beautiful with that pure virginal beauty which depends on early youth" (Sainte-Beuve). In 1757 she was the talk of Lausanne, and could not appear in an assembly or at the play without being surrounded by admirers; she was called La Belle Curchod. Gibbon's curiosity was piqued to ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison

... one in the whole world, that man, instead of receiving the glory that was his due, was suddenly degraded and dishonored! What for? Who had judged him? Who could have decreed this? Those were the questions that wrung his inexperienced and virginal heart. He could not endure without mortification, without resentment even, that the holiest of holy men should have been exposed to the jeering and spiteful mockery of the frivolous crowd so inferior ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... at her, disturbed, and he hoped, disturbing, he thought of little Vera Walters, of her slender virginal body, of her small virginal face, smooth, firm, and slightly pointed like a bud, of her gray eyes, clear as water, and of the pale gold and fawn of her hair. He thought of her tenderness and of her cruelty. He caught ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair

... woman might have resented his masterly ways, but Margaret had too firm a grip of life to make a fuss. She was, in her own way, as masterly. If he was a fortress she was a mountain peak, whom all might tread, but whom the snows made nightly virginal. Disdaining the heroic outfit, excitable in her methods, garrulous, episodical, shrill, she misled her lover much as she had misled her aunt. He mistook her fertility for weakness. He supposed her "as clever as they make 'em," but ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster

... from America. "Young woman" was how he thought of her; she didn't correspond to anything so prim and restrained and extensively reserved and withheld as a "young lady "; and though he judged her no older than five and twenty, the word "girl" with its associations of virginal ignorances, invisible purdah, and trite ideas newly discovered, seemed even less appropriate for her than the word "boy." She had an air of having in some obscure way graduated in life, as if so far she had ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells

... fifteen chapters of DAVID BALFOUR have been drafted, and five TIRES AU CLAIR. I think it pretty good; there's a blooming maiden that costs anxiety - she is as virginal as billy; but David seems there and alive, and the Lord Advocate is good, and so I think is an episodic appearance of the Master of Lovat. In Chapter XVII. I shall get David abroad - Alan went already in Chapter XII. The book should be about the length of KIDNAPPED; this ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Motive, — Laborer Heat: Yea, Artist, thou, of whose art yon sea's all news, With his inshore greens and manifold mid-sea blues, Pearl-glint, shell-tint, ancientest perfectest hues Ever shaming the maidens, — lily and rose Confess thee, and each mild flame that glows In the clarified virginal bosoms of stones that shine, It is ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... had ever trampled those pure snows. It was a virginal mountain, distant from human inquisitiveness as a marble goddess is from human loves. Yet there was nothing unsympathetic in its isolation, or despotic in its distant majesty. Only the thought of eternal ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams

... better looking, yet something about her differentiated her from the majority of her sex. There was determination in her step, and overflowing health and vigour in her every movement. Her eyes had a trick of looking straight into any other eyes they met, not boldly, but with a kind of virginal fearlessness and enterprise that people often found embarrassing. Indeed she was extremely virginal and devoid of the usual fringe of feminine airs and graces, a nymph of the woods and waters, who although she was three and twenty, as yet recked little of men save as ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard

... renewal of life, drawn from a world which is, after all, so full of it. On one side sits enthroned, as some have thought, the Goddess of Death; on the opposite side the Goddess of Life, with her flowers and fruit. Towards her three young maidens are advancing—were they still alive thus, graceful, virginal, with their long, plaited hair, and long, delicately-folded tunics, looking forward to carry on their race into the future? Presented severally, on the other sides of the dark hollow within, three male persons—a young man, ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... AEgydius Place a shudder suddenly ran through his body. He was forced to cover his eyes with his hands and stand still for a moment; he thought he would die from longing for a precious virginal possession which he had been so foolish as ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... Marie. It is covered with a veil, embroidered with needlework which it is a wonder to see. Not always can even Agnes bear to look upon the face of this angel, whom God has taken from her. She has worked the little curtain with lilies, with white and virginal flowers; and no hand, not even mine, ever draws it aside. What did I see? The veil was boldly folded away; the face of the child looked at me across her mother's bed, and upon the frame of the picture was laid a branch of olive, with ...
— A Beleaguered City • Mrs. Oliphant

... woman's magazine, with the result that it gave somehow the impression of a baby's bassinet, being largely dotted Swiss and ribbon. Yet in a way it was a perfect setting for Sara Lee herself. It was fresh and virginal, and very, very neat and white. A resigned little room, like Sara Lee, resigned to being tucked away in a corner and to having no particular outlook. ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... that she is buried in the stained robe, and she is carried amid flowers and white cloths to a white marble tomb, where incense is burning, and where the walls are hung with votive wreaths and things commemorative of virginal life and its many lovelinesses. But, strange to say, upon all these, upon the flowers and images alike there is some small stain which none sees but she and the one in shadow, the one whose face she cannot recognise. And although she is nailed fast in her coffin, she sees these ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore

... the school That he scarcely could spell, He read but a bit, And he figured not well. A bare-footed fool, Shod only with grace; Long hair streaming down Round a wind-hardened face; He smiled like a girl, Or like clear winter skies, A virginal light Making stars of his eyes. In swiftness and poise, A proud child of the deer, A white fawn he was, Yet a fawn without fear. No youth thought him vain, Or made mock of his hair, Or laughed when his ways Were most curiously fair. A mastiff at fight, He could strike to ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay

... on the point of insinuating that a proper use of her charms might accomplish much in certain quarters, but there was something so calmly virginal and pure about the girl as she sat there in her half-sacred costume that instinct conquered cynicism and he refrained. Unattached and unchaperoned as she was, or appeared to be, the girl commanded respect even in Paris. Instead of answering ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter

... war, sir.' There was a virginal note in Beetle's voice as though he had been falsely accused of uttering indecencies. 'Shall I take the bracket ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling

... queen, however, not of the waves but of the woodland, poor yet noble, and innocent of every mean ambition of gentility, faithful, valiant, and proud,—as she stands pale and commanding, in the sunshine at the dingle's mouth, in all her virginal dignity, is she not a figure worthy to rank with the queens of Beauty and Romance, with Dido "with a willow in her hand," with the deeply-loving Rebecca as with a calm and tender dignity she bids for ever adieu to the land of ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow

... beautiful relic of the olden time was lately presented to the museum of the Northern Institution, by William Mackintosh, Esq. of Milbank—an ancient virginal, which was in use among our ancestors prior to the invention of the spinnet and harpsichord. Mary, Queen of Scots, who delighted in music, in her moments of "joyeusitie" as John Knox phrases it, used to play ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various

... charming, almost virginal delicacy and freshness of air and tone about the picture. The girl's simple, white dress, with only—the painter had so far prevailed over the milliner,—only a suggestion of bright ribands at throat and waist; the quaint chippendale chair, the ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... refinements of the best society, these courageous women leave their houses, pressing their lips to the virginal cheeks of their daughters, pure as the angels of heaven, and go to the gloomy prisons to brave the gross indifference, or the criminal conversation, ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... them on to the spot at which Reinecke disappeared. Old Virginal's stern flourishes; instantly her pace quickens. One whimper, and she is away full-mouthed through the wood, and the pack ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... aspect. It reminds you of a friend who has been suddenly placed in new circumstances, in whom there is much that you recognise, and much that is entirely strange. How purely, divinely white when the last snowflake has just fallen! How exquisite and virginal the repose! It touches you like some perfection of music. And winter does not work only on a broad scale; he is careful in trifles. Pluck a single ivy leaf from the old wall, and see what a jeweller he is! How he has silvered over the dark-green reticulations with his frosts! The ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... the temples, by pearly tints threaded with blue, the special privilege of these delicate complexions. The face, whose oval Raphael so often gave to his Madonnas, was remarkable for the sober and virginal tone of the cheeks, soft as a Bengal rose, upon which the long lashes of the diaphanous eyelids cast shadows that were mingled with light. The throat, bending as she worked, too delicate perhaps, and of milky whiteness, ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac

... the presence of these zoophyte and mollusk specimens, the fine lad was classifying his head off. Polyps and echinoderms abounded on the seafloor: various isis coral, cornularian coral living in isolation, tufts of virginal genus Oculina formerly known by the name "white coral," prickly fungus coral in the shape of mushrooms, sea anemone holding on by their muscular disks, providing a literal flowerbed adorned by jellyfish from the genus ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... moment he stood speechless, trying to formulate the lie he could utter most boldly, until he was struck with the double thought that to defend Diane's honor with a falsehood would be to defame it further, while a lie to this pure, trusting, virginal spirit would ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King

... this passion of mankind for maidenheads. It is so wonderful to give the first lessons of voluptuousness to a pure and innocent heart, to feel under one's hand the first palpitations of the virginal breasts which arouses unknown delights, to dry the first tears of tenderness, to inspire that first mixture of fear and hope, of vague desires and expectant inquietude; whoever has never had that satisfaction has missed the most pleasurable ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... the flowers of the human race, magnificent to behold against the mass of other faces, worn, old, wrinkled, and grimacing. So women, too, admire such young people with that eager pleasure which men take in watching a pretty girl, elegant, gracious, and embellished with all the virginal charms with which our imagination pleases to adorn the perfect woman. If this hurried glance at the population of Paris has enabled us to conceive the rarity of a Raphaelesque face, and the passionate admiration which such an one must inspire at the first sight, the ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac

... the other, the art through which those who choose to learn and practise it may share in some fragmentary degree, according to their measure, the special experience of the mystic and the poet. By it they may achieve that virginal outlook upon things, that celestial power of communion with veritable life, which comes when that which we call "sensation" is freed from the tyranny of that which we call "thought." The artist is no more and no less than a contemplative ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill

... Rafael saw strange things, impossible things. Then there was the mystery of the seven young virginal girls of Huascan. ...
— Where the World is Quiet • Henry Kuttner

... since, according to Burney, she was herself greatly skilled in musical learning. "If her Majesty," says that eminent author, "was ever able to execute any of the pieces that are preserved in a MS. which goes under the name of Queen Elizabeth's Virginal-book, she must have been a very great player, as some of the pieces which were composed by Tallis, Bird, Giles, Farnaby, Dr. Bull, and others, are so difficult that it would be hardly possible to find a master in Europe who would undertake ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... two years of hansom-using, was touched, delighted, even impressed. The staggering fact increased her virginal charm and its protectiveness. He thought upon the simplicity of her existence. Of course she had never been in a hansom! Hansoms were obviously outside her scheme. He said nothing, but he sought for and found her hand beneath the apron. She did not resist. ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... the time when the Investigator passed the head of the Bight, the whole of the coast-line traversed was virginal to geographical science. With a clean sheet of paper, Flinders began to chart a new stretch of the earth's outline, and to link up the undiscovered with the known portions of the great southern continent. ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott

... and pretty a woman as you would wish to see. She had the tender, dragging smile of a Luini Madonna; grave, twilight eyes, full of compassionate understanding; very dark eyebrows, very long lashes, like the fringe of rain over a moorland landscape. She had a virginal shape, and liked her clothes to cling about her knees. Long fingers, longish, thin feet. But her humorous sense was acute and very delightful, and all children loved her. Such charms as these must have been as obvious to herself as they were ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... spruce wood and entered the orchard his heart gave a sudden leap, and he felt that the blood rushed madly to his face. She was there, bending over the bed of June lilies in the centre of the garden plot. He could only see her profile, virginal and white. ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... spiritual voluptuousness of a devout young heart whose pulsations had never learned to beat for earthly objects. M. de Molins is preparing a volume of these manuscripts; but I am glad to present one of the seguidillas here, as an illustration of the tender and ardent fantasies of virginal passion this Christian Sappho embroidered upon the theme ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... paternal, was not less chaste than if she had been his daughter. He was a man, it is true, and recognized her as a woman. She was his only representative of womankind. He took unfailing note of every charm that appertained to her sex, and saw the ripeness of her lips, and the virginal development of her bosom. All her little womanly ways, budding out of her like blossoms on a young fruit-tree, had their effect on him, and sometimes caused his very heart to tingle with the keenest thrills of pleasure. At such moments,—for the effect was seldom ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... against the frame of a mirror, a girl, some eighteen years of age at the outside, was leaning motionless in front of her empty glass as though she had been benumbed by long and fruitless waiting. Under the natural curls of her beautiful gray-gold hair a virginal face looked out at you with velvety eyes, which were ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola

... but of pleasing aspect. A face of placid sweetness, expressive features, soft, dove-like-blue eyes, and very abundant, wavy, flaxen hair, made up a highly agreeable ensemble, while the slender figure was full of grace. There was an air of virginal simplicity and modesty in every movement which set her apart among her stage sisters. To this her character answered in every line; for, moving in the midst of a world which had watched every action, not the faintest breath of scandal ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris

... and thirtyfold fruits do not differ as various species of virtuous acts, but as various degrees of perfection, even in the same virtue. Thus continency of the married state is said to be signified by the thirtyfold fruit; the continency of widowhood, by the sixtyfold; and virginal continency, by the hundredfold fruit. There are, moreover, other ways in which holy men distinguish three evangelical fruits according to the three degrees of virtue: and they speak of three degrees, because the perfection of anything is considered with respect to its ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... VIRGINAL BOOK. Ed. by Fuller Maitland and Barclay Squire. Butler subscribed for this at the instigation of Fuller Maitland. He had the parts bound and ...
— The Samuel Butler Collection - at Saint John's College Cambridge • Henry Festing Jones

... associated with Middleton is well written and well contrived, and fairly diverting—especially to an idle or an uncritical reader: though even such an one may suspect that the heroine here represented as a virginal virago must have been in fact rather like Dr. Johnson's fair friend Bet Flint; of whom the Great Lexicographer "used to say that she was generally slut and drunkard; occasionally whore and thief" (Boswell, May 8, 1781). The ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... with long ago in Paris would grow into such a being. The clean delicate lines of her figure, the exquisite pure colouring of hair and skin, the charming young arrogance of the eyes—this was beauty, he reflected, a miracle, a revelation. Her virginal fineness and her dress, which was the tint of pale fire, gave her the air of a ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan

... morning late in May. The season was perhaps a little late, for the apple trees were still in bloom, and the village looked fair and virginal as a bride on her wedding-day. I walked along the wide pleasant streets with a curious pain. The years that lay between me and the last day I had paced these broad walks under the pale greenery of the elms seemed legendary and dreamlike. There was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... be, the Duchess, when she dismissed him, was seen running to the garden, where she talked earnestly with the boy Antonio about the new clove-carnations; and the rest of the day she sat indoors and played sweetly on the virginal. Now Nencia always had it in mind that her grace had made a mistake in refusing that request of the chaplain's; but she said nothing, for to talk reason to the Duchess was of no more use than praying for rain ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton

... world of aristocratic refinement, the grace and natural delicacy of virginal souls, in general eluded Balzac's observation. He found it hard to imagine a lady; still harder—though he tried and half succeeded—to conceive the mystery of a young girl's mind, in which the airs of morning are nimble and sweet. The gross bourgeois world, which he detested, ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... a footstool, since she was too high in the seneschal's chair. This foot was of narrow proportions, delicately curved, as broad as two fingers, and as long as a sparrow, tail included, small at the top—a true foot of delight, a virginal foot that merited a kiss as a robber does the gallows; a roguish foot; a foot wanton enough to damn an archangel; an ominous foot; a devilishly enticing foot, which gave one a desire to make two new ones just like it to perpetuate in this lower world the glorious works of God. The ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... that untrained voice, with its incorrect breathing and labored transitions, was sounding, even the connoisseurs said nothing, but only delighted in it and wished to hear it again. In her voice there was a virginal freshness, an unconsciousness of her own powers, and an as yet untrained velvety softness, which so mingled with her lack of art in singing that it seemed as if nothing in that voice could be ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... virginal beauty As pure as a pictured saint, How should this sinning and sorrow Have for ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner

... resolution was held motionless, neither advancing nor receding; it was veritably the slack water of her resolution. She was afraid to go on. Not afraid in sense of fear as it is usually understood, but with the opposition of virginal instincts; those instincts which are natural, but whose uses as well as whose powers are unknown ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker

... well advanced and the Casa de Limas was a veritable paradise of tender virginal green and delicate mystically perfumed blossoms, when Willa, a frail shadow of herself, ventured for the first time to the veranda, on ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant

... woman, energetic and virginal however, characterising the youth and the audacies of the ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley

... more incomprehensible, have attached the wolf to the lamb? For the wolf loved the lamb, for the fierce creature adored the feeble one, for, during the space of nine years, the angel had had the monster as her point of support. Cosette's childhood and girlhood, her advent in the daylight, her virginal growth towards life and light, had been sheltered by that hideous devotion. Here questions exfoliated, so to speak, into innumerable enigmas, abysses yawned at the bottoms of abysses, and Marius could no longer bend over Jean Valjean without ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... little. When Madame de Sevigne saw Louise de La Valliere some months later at court, she likened her to a modest violet, hiding beneath its leaves; but not so completely as to evade the eyes of royalty. And if Louise was lovely in her gown of virginal white, the King was a no less pleasing object to gaze upon. At all times courteous and graceful, at twenty-three Louis is described as handsome, well-formed, with deep blue eyes, and a profusion of curling hair which fell over his shoulders. ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton

... business, rumour, action; but everywhere, none the less, there was the ineffable peace of early morning, of the hours when man—the peace-destroyer?—is still at rest. And everywhere, everywhere, there was the wonderful pristine air, the virginal air, that seemed to penetrate beyond the senses, and to reach the imagination, a voice whispering untranslatable messages, waking mystic surmises of things unknown ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland

... felt must have shone in his ardent eyes. Hers dropped, and a bright, virginal blush dyed for the first time cheek and brow. He vaulted off his horse ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming

... were, during the state of the law of nature, in the faith of the patriarchs; He was like flour in the doctrine of the Law of the prophets; and He was like perfect bread after He had taken human nature; baked in the fire, i.e. formed by the Holy Ghost in the oven of the virginal womb; baked again in a pan by the toils which He suffered in the world; and consumed by fire on the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... from his mental vision. What! Distrust Iris! Imagine for one second that riches or poverty, good repute or ill, would affect that loyal heart when its virginal font was filled with the love that once in her life comes to every true woman! Perish the thought! What evil spirit had power to so blind his perception of all that was strong and beautiful in her character. Brave, uncomplaining ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... might misunderstand. And yet she wanted to kiss him as she had never wanted to kiss a man. When it came, her face upturned to his, she realized that on his part it was an honest kiss. There hinted nothing behind it. Rugged and kind as himself, it was virginal almost, and betrayed no long practice in the art of saying good-bye. All men were not brutes after all, was ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... fair altar, like a priest, I'd tend, Trimming the tapers to a constant blaze, And to each lovely and beloved friend Garlands I'd bring, and virginal soft sprays From April's bodice, and moon-breasted May's, And there should be a sound for ever of streams And birds 'mid happy leaves in that still place,— Kneeling within that cloister of ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne

... itself, and, secondly, must itself receive a title to originality and spontaneity. As the Catholic dogma added the immaculate conception of the mother to that of the Son, so Leibnitz transfers the (virginal) origin of rational concepts, independent of external influence, to sensations. The monad has no windows. It bears germinally in itself all that it is to experience, and nothing is impressed on it from without. The intellect should not be compared to a blank tablet, but to a block ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... little the room filled with a brilliant crowd. Within the large circle of armchairs were Madame de Wesson, about whom people told frightful stories, and who kept, after twenty years of half-smothered scandal, the eyes of a child and cheeks of virginal smoothness; old Madame de Morlaine, who shouted her witty phrases in piercing cries; Madame Raymond, the wife of the Academician; Madame Garain, the wife of the exminister; three other ladies; and, standing easily against the mantelpiece, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... beautiful, he saw and knew. He even admitted unconsciously that if she had been an old woman he could not have 'venerated' her as he did, though veneration, as such, is the due of the old rather than of the young. Her spiritual eyes and virginal face were often before him in his dreams and waking thoughts. There was a maidenlike modesty, as it were, even about her graceful bodily self, which belonged, in his imagination, to a saint upon an altar, rather than to a ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford

... an exquisite morning, too virginal for June, too richly warm for May. When the two exchanged the sunny road for the factory office, a north room none too light, it was a moment before their dazzled eyes perceived no one was present. This was Bailey's private office, ...
— The Flying Mercury • Eleanor M. Ingram

... permanent domestics, she could receive lame ducks at any hour of day or night, and not seldom had a duck without studio of its own made use of June's. She enjoyed her freedom, and possessed herself with a sort of virginal passion; the warmth which she would have lavished on Bosinney, and of which—given her Forsyte tenacity—he must surely have tired, she now expended in championship of the underdogs and budding 'geniuses' ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... back; by the very body of Christ, I will lead her such a dance that she will run after me, as the madwoman after her child.' 'Ay,' rejoined Bruno, 'I warrant me thou wilt rummage her; methinketh I see thee, with those teeth of thine that were made for virginal jacks,[433] bite that little vermeil mouth of hers and those her cheeks, that show like two roses, and after ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... any tears in Miss Flora's blue eyes, Or blushes, or transports, or such silly actions, It was one of the quietest business transactions, With a very small sprinkling of sentiment, if any, And a very large diamond imported by Tiffany. On her virginal lips, while I printed a kiss, She exclaims, as a sort of parenthesis, And by way of putting me quite at my ease, "You know I'm to polka as much as I please, And flirt when I like—now, stop, don't you speak— And you must not come here more than twice in the week, Or talk to me either at party ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various

... before 1679, married Charles Hansford, of York, owned two violins. It is reasonable to conclude, therefore, that guests at his hostelry were frequently entertained with music from that instrument. The virginal (a small rectangular spinet without legs) was the most common of instruments known to have been in possession of the colonists, while they also owned and played the fiddle, both small and large, the cornet, the recorder (a flageolet or old type of flute), the flute and the hautboy. These ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester

... touch you. Who knows what hands pulled you away? I prayed; that was all I did. I prayed very hard that you might awake. If I had not, you might have died. I wonder what it all meant. The unicorns ... what did the French monk tell me ... strength they meant ... virginal strength, a rushing, lasting, ...
— The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays • William B. Yeats

... cords of youth slackened by the weight of maternity or the continual pull against ill health and genteel poverty. Or they would have been smothered in the plump content of Mrs. Hilmer. Helen Starratt's slenderness had still a virginal quality and she knew every artifice that heightened this effect. To-day she was a trifle startled at quite the lengths she had gone to strike a note of sophisticated youth. She had long since ceased dressing consciously for her husband, ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie

... supplies evidence of the increased attention devoted to decorative furniture. In the Appendix will be found a short notice of the different phases through which the ever-present piano has passed, from the virginal, or spinette—of which an illustration will be found in "A Sixteenth Century Room," in Chapter III.—down to the latest development of the decoration of the case of the instrument by leading artists of the present ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield

... a sudden vision of Anne, arrayed in a frilly green gown, with the virginal curves of arms and throat slipping out of it, and white stars shining against the coils of her ruddy hair. The vision made him catch his breath. But he ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... Whether that quick transition from pensiveness to a dancing gaiety was the cause, or whether it only helped her beauty, this is certain. Young men went down before her like ninepins in a bowling alley. There was something singularly virginal about her. She had, too, quite naturally, an affectionate manner which it was difficult to resist; and above all she made no effort ever. What she said and what she did seemed always purely spontaneous. For the rest, she was a little over the general height of women, and ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason

... she to a convent, and of his care for her during her conventual life, or at least for that part of it that had passed before the "History" was written. Through the whole story it is Heloise who shines brightly as a curiously beautiful personality, unselfish, self sacrificing, and almost virginal in her purity in spite of her fault. One has for her only sympathy and affection whereas it is difficult to feel either for Abelard in spite of his belated efforts at rectifying his own sin and his life-long devotion to his solitary wife in her ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard

... sweetness, a greater glory. The profane love of woman presented itself to my fancy, clothed, not only with all its own charms, but with the sovereign and almost irresistible charms of the most dangerous of all temptations—of that which the moralists call virginal temptation—when the mind, not yet undeceived by experience and by sin, pictures to itself in the transports of love a supreme and ineffable delight immeasurably superior to all reality. Ever since I reached manhood—that is to say, for many years ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera

... But if virginal pride had urged her to flee all appearance of expectation, an equally sharp masculine reaction was withholding Johnny Byrd from any ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley

... blue-coated, virginal member of the Kingdom of Heaven sped homeward at the top of her speed. She was conscious of immense upheaval. Never had she felt so alive, so on the spot. The portals of highest drama swung wide before her. She hastened to enter and pour forth ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... sobbed as it told of a woman insensible to his sighs, and as he compared her whiteness with the flower of the almond, they turned their eyes to Margalida, who remained impassive, with no sign of virginal flushing, being accustomed to this tribute of crude poesy which was a sort ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... shoulders, and especially the severe yet tender expression of her long dark eyes which were darkly shadowed beneath their black brows, and for the gentle expression of her mouth and smile. She rarely smiled, but her smile was always striking. She seemed to radiate virginal strength and health. All the girls were good-looking, but they themselves and Beletski, and the orderly when he brought in the spice-cakes, all involuntarily gazed at Maryanka, and anyone addressing the girls was sure to address her. She ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy

... the floodgates of the weirs of hell. And what hast thou to do with sin? Hath he Whose sin was thine not given thee there and then God's actual absolution? Mary lived God's virgin, and God's mother: mine art thou, Who am Christlike even as thou art virginal. And if thou love me or love me not God knows, And God, who made me and my sire and thee, May take the charge upon him. I am I. Somewhat I think to do before my day Pass from me. Did I love thee not at all, I would not ...
— The Duke of Gandia • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... for very love; there was room enough for all, but they crushed their leaves into all manner of strange shapes only to be nearer each other. There was the wood anemone, star after star, closing every now and then into nebulae; and there was the oxalis, troop by troop, like virginal processions of the Mois de Marie,[162] the dark vertical clefts in the limestone choked up with them as with heavy snow, and touched with ivy on the edges—ivy as light and lovely as the vine; and, ever and anon, a blue ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... finest lawn, trimmed with stiffened lace pleated in flat folds, deserves description, it was so dainty and simple. The light coming through the texture and the lace produced a partial shadow, the soft shadow of a light upon the skin, which gave her the virginal grace that all painters seek and Leopold Robert found for the Raffaelesque face of the woman who holds a child in his picture of "The Gleaners." Beneath this fluted frame of light sparkled a white and rosy and artless face, glowing with vigorous health. The ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac

... he loved Turgenev, the singer of virginal love and purity, of youth, and of the melancholy Russian landscape; but he loved virginal love, not from knowledge but from hearsay, as something abstract, existing outside real life. Now he assured himself that he loved Anna Akimovna platonically, ideally, though he did not know what ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... this was not so. I was beloved by this amiable Young Person, to whom Ambassadors were proud to go on their knees, and whom Gentlemen of the Chamber would have covered with Diamonds. With a charming frankness, blushing and stammering, yet with Virginal Pride, she confessed that she was enamoured of me, and, if Fortune were propitious, would gladly be my Wife. I could at first scarcely realize the possibility of such great and unmerited Happiness; for well did I know the disparity in Age that existed between us—how Rough and Weather-beaten ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... perforta. Violet violo. Violet color violkoloro. Violin violono. Violinist violonisto. Violoncello violoncxelo. Violoncellist violoncxelisto. Viper vipero. Virago (fig.) drakino. Virgin virgulino. Virginal virga. Virginity virgeco. Virgin, The Blessed La Sankta Virgulino, Dipatrino. Virile vira. Virility vireco. Virtue virto. Virtuous virta. Virtuoso virtuozo. Virulent venena, malboniga. Virus veneno. Visage vizagxo. Vis-a-vis ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... what we eat and wear, Our bread, the boots wherein we splosh 'Tis so with what I deemed most fair, Most virginal of all—the Wash. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various

... was a virginal soul, but full-blooded. An unsuspected passion beat in her veins. Not for nothing did she have the deep, languorous eyes, the perfect scarlet lips, the sumptuous grace of an artist's ideal. Fires lay banked within her in spite of the fine purity of her nature. Nature ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine

... formed, trembling with life, tempting and plump, white as a lily, loaded with the most charming wealth of beauty. Her drooping eyelashes seem like the points of the iron crown; her skin, which is as fresh as the calyx of a white camelia, is streaked with the purple of the red camelia; over her virginal complexion one seems to see the bloom of young fruit and the delicate down of a young peach; the azure veins spread a kindling warmth over this transparent surface; she asks for life and she gives it; she is all joy and love, all tenderness and candor; she loves her husband, ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... finally, note the delight with which Giovanni has dwelt, though without exaggeration, on the muscles of the breast and ribs in the Adam; while he has subdued all away into virginal severity in Eve. And then note, and with conclusive admiration, how in the exact and only place where the poor modern fool's anatomical knowledge should have been shown, the wretch loses his hold of it! How he has entirely missed and effaced the grand Greek pectoral muscles of Giovanni's ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin

... steers, halting between the hills and the shambles, many old habitues of the field have come back to their haunts. The willow and brown birch, long ago cut off by the Indians for wattles, have come back to the streamside, slender and virginal in their spring greenness, and leaving long stretches of the brown water open to the sky. In stony places where no grass grows, wild olives sprawl; close-twigged, blue-gray patches in winter, more translucent greenish gold in spring than any aureole. ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin

... shamed recoil came automatically. Incredulous, almost exasperated, she raised her head to confront him; the red lips parted in outraged protest—parted and remained so, wordless, silent—the soundless, virginal cry dying unuttered on a mouth that had ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers

... accompanied her daughter. I was very young then, and ready to accept for myself the easy morality of the age. I remember, however, the contempt and disgust which awoke in me at the sight of this scandalous chaperoning. Her face, too, was inexpressibly virginal in its expression of innocence and of melancholy suffering. She was ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils

... exquisite as that with which one reads an inspiring book in the solemn freshness of early morning. One's nerves seem peculiarly strung for exquisite impressions in the first dewy hours of the day, there is a virginal sensitiveness and purity about all our senses, and the mere delight of the eye in the printed page is keener than at any other time. "The Muses love the morning, and that is a fit time for study," said Erasmus to ...
— The Guide to Reading - The Pocket University Volume XXIII • Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Asa Don Dickenson, and Others

... as cold as ice. And they had lashes—" For a moment the quiet directness of Billy's narrative was disturbed by a whiff of inner tumult. "Whew! what eyelashes! Honey, did you ever come across a lonely mountain lake with high reeds growing around the edge? You know how pure and unspoiled and virginal it seems. That was her eyes. They sort of hypnotized me. My eyes closed and—when I awoke it was broad ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore

... glorious struggle for independence which was the first upheaving of mankind's heart roused to self-conscious life. Even by that first effort she gloriously achieved the national independence of America. Though gifted with all the blessings of nature's virginal vitality, you would never have succeeded to achieve this wonderful growth which we see, if you had employed your conquered national independence merely to take a new ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth

... rendered "virgin" means in Hebrew a young woman, and this passage merely deals with the approaching birth of a son to the king or the prophet himself. This error of the Septuagint is one of the sources of the legend relating to the virginal birth of Jesus. As early as the second century A.D. the Jews perceived it and pointed it out to the Greeks, but the Church knowingly persisted in the false reading, and for over fifteen centuries she has clung ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... apply this name directly to Quetzalcoatl, and this seems the correct version),[2] had an only daughter of surpassing beauty, whom many of the Toltecs had vainly sought in marriage. This damsel looked forth on the market where Tezcatlipoca stood in his nakedness, and her virginal eyes fell upon the sign of his manhood. Straightway an unconquerable longing seized her, a love so violent that she fell ill and seemed like to die. Her women told her father the reason, and he sent forth and had the false Toveyo brought before him. ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton

... skirts of solemn black, and looked more gloomy than ever; but Daisy, the elderly sylph, brightened the room with a dress of white muslin adorned with many little bows of white ribbon, so that—sartorially speaking—she was very young, and very virginal, and quite angelical in looks. Both ladies were pleased to see their visitor and received him warmly in their several ways; that is, Mrs Pansey groaned ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... death, [21] Grow, Soul! unto such white estate, That virginal-prayerful art shall be thy breath, ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... their heads; of tropical effect, with caves and naked rock and sunlight; of the relief of cypresses; of the troubled, busy-looking groups of sea-pines, that seem always as if they were being wielded and swept together by a whirlwind; of the air coming, laden with virginal perfumes, over the myrtles and the scented underwoods; of the empurpled hills standing up, solemn and sharp, out of the green-gold air of the east at evening. There go many elements, without doubt, to the making of one such moment of intense perception; and it is on the happy agreement of these ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... gentle-looking, she was neatly though simply dressed in the English fashion, she was fair and small, and her budding breast could be seen outlined beneath the fine muslin of her dress. She had all the appearances of modesty and noble birth, and something of virginal innocence, which inspired one with attachment and respect at the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... her, and the man in him felt the pity of it as do all men when such fresh, virginal youth as was Miss Dumont's turns an enraptured face toward that cloister door which never again opens ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers

... and he was struck, as he was so often, by Fanny's youthful appearance; but that wasn't, he decided, so much because of her actual person— although since her marriage she had shown practically no change—as from a spirit of rigorous purity; she was, in spite of everything, Lee realized, completely virginal in mind. ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer

... come, no psychic, nor fleshly man, ... but it is kept under watch for the Spiritual alone—where, when they come, they must cast away their garments, and all become bridegrooms, obtaining their true manhood through the Virginal Spirit. For this is the Virgin big with child, conceiving and bearing a Son—not psychic, not fleshly, but a ...
— The Gnosis of the Light • F. Lamplugh

... mixed with the men, they were constantly finding bodies of women so disfigured that it was almost impossible to judge of their age: mothers who had their arms arched as though putting forth their utmost efforts to guard the babe that had disappeared. Many whose virginal modesty had been violated by the sea, showed naked limbs swollen and greenish, with deep bites from flesh-eating fishes. The tide had even tossed ashore the headless body of a ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... a basket which lay near her, and, taking from it a pair of garden scissors, knelt beside Paul, and began to snip his bonds. He woke to find her thus engaged, and a virginal sweet sense of shame filled him. Her fingers touched his skin at times, and he tingled with a ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... unique character of the Sussex Downs is their virginal security, their unassailable independence. They stand, a silent undiscovered country, between the seething pleasure towns of the seaboard plain and the trim estates of the Weald. Londoners, for whom Sussex has a special attraction by reason of its proximity (Brighton's beach is the nearest to the ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... from Astoria, we had always in view the snow-white cone of St. Helen's, one of the principal peaks of the Cascade Range. Nothing can be conceived more virginal than this form of exquisite purity rising from the dark fir forests to the serene sky. Mount Baker's symmetry is much marred by the sunken crater at the summit; Mount Rainier's outline is more complicated: this is a pure, beautiful cone. It is so perfect a picture of ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton

... mind. It was as if some haunting challenge prompted her, and she had not enough courage to take it up. So again she drifted into the green-houses, looking at the lovely roses in their pots, and at the virginal cyclamens, and at the mystic white clusters of a creeper. The beauty, oh the beauty of them, and oh the paradisal bliss, if she should have a perfect bouquet and could give it to Gudrun the next day. Her passion and her complete indecision almost ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... virginal, says Mr. Malone, was strung like a spinnet, and shaped like a piano-forte: the mode of playing on this instrument was therefore similar to that ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... called the spindle-tree, (euonymus, or fusanum) commonly growing in our hedges, which bears a very hard wood, of which they sometimes made bows for viols, and the inlayer us'd it for its colour, and instrument-makers for toothing of organs, and virginal-keys, tooth-pickers, &c. What we else do with it, I know not, save that (according with its name, abroad) they make spindles with it. I also learn, that three, or four of the berries, purge both by vomit, and siege, and the powder ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... were entitled to respect. He dreamed of other tickets, in original shapes, with original legends. In brief, he achieved, in regard to tickets, the rare feat of ridding himself of preconceived notions, and of approaching a subject with fresh, virginal eyes. When he indicated the nature of his wishes to Mr. Chawner, the wholesale stationer who supplied all the Five Towns with shop-tickets, Mr. Chawner grew uneasy and worried; Mr. Chawner was indeed shocked. For Mr. Chawner there had always been certain well-defined genera of tickets, ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... then to read criticism afterwards. I think that in reprints of the classics the customary "critical introduction" ought to be put at the end, and not at the beginning, of the book. The classic should be allowed to make his own impression, however faint, on the virginal mind of the reader. But afterwards let explanatory criticism be read as much as you please. Explanatory criticism is very useful; nearly as useful as pondering for oneself on what one has read! Explanatory criticism ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett

... elegant Greek says "No" to them, not by sound of voice, but by the slightest elevation of the eyebrows and movement of the eye. He sits and looks occasionally at the wonderful hills above him, so fresh, so virginal; but he does not, as an Englishman might do, pay quickly and go out and go up. The modern Greek would never build so high as ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham

... her had fallen a little aside, and showed a gleam of white neck emerging from snowy drapery underneath—it was, to his fancy, as though a white rose- petal had been suddenly and delicately unfurled. He longed to kiss that virginal whiteness, and trembled at the audacity of ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli

... to the Rationale of Durand of Mende, the sacristy is the very bosom of the Virgin, we will represent it by virginal plants such as the anemone, and trees such as the cedar, which Saint Ildefonso compares to Our Mother. And now, if we are to furnish the instruments of worship, we shall find in the ritual of the liturgy and in the very form ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... in form to the piano were in use several hundred years ago. The virginal, shaped like an old-fashioned square piano, was a favorite instrument at the time of Queen Elizabeth of England, and by some authorities is supposed to have been named in honor of the Virgin Queen, as she was called. The harpsichord, much in ...
— Harper's Young People, April 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... Ramy's shop. Never before had she felt so old, so hopeless and humble. She knew she was bound on a love-errand of Evelina's, and the knowledge seemed to dry the last drop of young blood in her veins. It took from her, too, all her faded virginal shyness; and with a brisk composure she turned the ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton

... heard, her youthful blood, drawn by Nature's magnetic force, as the moon draws the tides, rose in her veins like the sap in the budding trees, and stirred her virginal serenity. All the bodily natural part of her caught the tones of Nature's happy voice that bade her break her bonds, live and love, and be a woman. And lo! the spirit within her answered to it, flinging wide her bosom's doors, and of a sudden, as it were, something quickened and lived in her heart ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard

... Hale kept a secret tryst with Ana after the village slept. Sweet, virginal Ana, who knew less of the world than a civilized child of twelve—what a sensation she would create in New York with her beauty, her culture, her natural fascination! With her in his arms and an orange ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various

... loss which way to turn. And yet through all her being there rolled a mighty undernote of joy. As to the dweller on the coast the voice of the sea is the undertone to all the sounds of man's activities, so beneath all her virginal hesitancies, her half terror of what she had done, surged and sang the knowledge that Creed was hers, her avowed lover. She, Judith, had him here safe; she had brought him away out of the mountains, from those who would have harmed him—and those who would have loved him too well. In all ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan

... she Who left the roses in her body's lieu. O, if the pleasures I have known in thee But my poor faith's poor first-fruits be, What quintessential, keen, ethereal bliss Then shall be his Who has thy birth-time's consecrating dew For death's sweet chrism retain'd, Quick, tender, virginal, and unprofaned! ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore

... Death by a thunderbolt had always a meaning, which was sometimes hard to find; but here the gods had not left the inquiring votary utterly in doubt. The nakedness of the stricken maiden was a riddle that the priests could read. It was a manifest sign that a virginal vow had been broken, and that some of the keepers of the eternal fire were tainted with the sin of unchastity. The destruction of the horse seemed to portend that a knight would be found to be a partner in the crime.[832] Evidence was invited and was soon forthcoming. The slave of a certain ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... he must have more room. He must get out into the dawn—out where he could share these emotions which now surged in upon him with some virginal passion as big and fresh as the new-born day. He crossed to the window and looked out upon the dormant city. The morning light was just beginning to wash out the dark and to sketch in the outlines of buildings and the gray path of the road between ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... adverse. The corpse is the icicle of man. The nakedness of her breasts was pathetic. They had fulfilled their purpose. On them was a sublime blight of the life infused into one being by another from whom life has fled, and maternal majesty was there instead of virginal purity. At the point of one of the nipples was a white pearl. It was a drop of ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... that cannot but be with any woman who is beautiful, she had never theretofore been especially physical in thought. That side of life had remained vague, as she had never indulged in or even been strongly tempted with the things that rouse it from its virginal sleep. But now she thought only of her body, because that it was, and that alone, that had drawn this prospective purchaser, and his eyes never let her forget it. She fell into the habit of looking at herself in the glass—at her ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips

... most beautiful—heads and half-length figures which represent the Virgin alone, looking up with a devout or tender expression, or with the head declined, and the hands joined in prayer, or crossed over the bosom with virginal humility and modesty, belong to this class of representations. In the ancient heads, most of which are imitations of the old Greek effigies ascribed to St. Luke, there is often great simplicity and beauty. When she wears the crown over her veil, or bears a sceptre in her hand, she figures ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson

... have been more open and declared her sentiments. Yet would that have been modest in a lady who was not formally engaged? She was puzzled. She had no experience to guide her: only her high breeding and her virginal instincts. ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... the mysterious secret goal of desire, a splendid creature, virginal, savage, as certainly designed for man as Eve. The men's eyes fastened upon her, moved ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt

... looked like the blue-eyed man who had been refused passage to my destination. Probably, that American in the toga and sandals, exiled from the island he loved so well, had a message for the Tahitians or others of the Polynesian tribes of the South Seas; Essenism, maybe, or something to do with virginal beards and long hair, or sandals and the simple life. I wished he were ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... to exult, to boast, to call attention to the beauty of the lines spoken by Enid. "See how her simplicity and virginal charm are enhanced by the rugged, remorseless strength, and by the conscienceless greed of the men surrounding her, and yet she sees in them something admirable. They are like soldiers to her. They are the heroes who tunnel ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... mourning for Adonis, or sacrifice herself under this custom.[1907] Tanith has been identified with Artemis, and the later cults of Punic Africa give great prominence to the "celestial virgin," or "virginal numen." "The identification of the mother-of-the-gods with the heavenly virgin, that is, the unmarried goddess, is confirmed, if not absolutely demanded, by Augustine.[1908] At Carthage she seems also to be identical with Dido."[1909] "The Arabian ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... of mythology will demand of a myth so clearly destined for fructification an everlasting virginal inviolateness. From the start almost the two dogs of Yama are the brood of Saram[a]. Why? Saram[a] is the female messenger of the gods, at the root identical with Hermes or Hermeias; she is therefore the predestined mother of those other messengers, the two four-eyed dogs of Yama. ...
— Cerberus, The Dog of Hades - The History of an Idea • Maurice Bloomfield

... hands in the largesse of her pale gold hair, seen their souls' reflection in the cornflower innocence of her eyes, drunk forgetfulness from the poppy-petals of her mouth and gone away to die, believing she was wholly theirs. How little of her was theirs now! She was almost virginal—as though she had never been touched by their passion. And yet there seemed to be one of them whose memory had outstayed the rest, for she had said, "You know, my man's out there." Was she merely a light, predatory woman or—— Or very loving ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson

... my Lady Summer lies Adream beneath cool April skies; About her blossoms fall On her long limbs and secret eyes. Still she sleeps, virginal; Then—hark! June's clarion call! She lifts her wistful wilful eyes, Springs light afoot and away she flies. But her ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various

... The virginal revealment, Your bosom's wavering slope, Concealment, 'Neath fainting heliotrope, ...
— Silhouettes • Arthur Symons

... immediately followed Lord Walterton's tirade, Editha de Chavasse beckoned to the florid woman—who seemed to be her henchwoman—and drew her aside to a distant corner of the room, where there were no tables nigh and where the now subdued hum of the voices, mingling with the sound of music on virginal and stringed instruments, made a murmuring noise which effectually drowned the talk between ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy

... first man who thought consecutively in the German vernacular, and who made this philosophically still virginal language a medium for expressing profound thought. In addition he wrote Latin treatises which were discovered a short time ago; I have not read them, but I have no doubt that his profoundest convictions were expressed in the German ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... clock, automaton figure that strikes the hour; Jack-a-lent, puppet thrown at in Lent JACK, key of a virginal JACOB'S STAFF, an instrument for taking altitudes and distances JADE, befool JEALOUSY, JEALOUS, suspicion, suspicious JERKING, lashing JEW'S TRUMP, Jew's harp JIG, merry ballad or tune; a fanciful dialogue or light comic act introduced at the end or during an interlude of a play ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson

... passed on to the young girl's portrait—the girl in white muslin, turning away her graceful head from the spectator, and showing thereby the delicacy of her profile, the wealth of her brown hair, the beauty of her young and virginal form. Suddenly, his eyes clouded; he turned abruptly away, left the room without looking at another picture, and was soon hurrying through the crowded streets northward towards the ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... be too ready, O exponent of tolerant hearthstone chivalry, to smile at the triumph! V—l, whom Margarita detested, practically refused to sing Siegfried to her Bruenhilde, because, he said, she made him ridiculous with her virginal strugglings and got him out of breath besides! And he could lift and carry ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell

... gazelle opposed against them in design, hold grace and elegance of feeling that Watteau would certainly have sanctioned. She brings up the same sense of exquisite gesture and simplicity of movement with a feeling for the romantic aspect of virginal life which exists nowhere else in modern painting. She eliminates all severities of intellect, and super-imposes wistful charm of idea upon a pattern of the most delicate beauty. She is essentially an original which means that she invents ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley

... their bodies wholly—their warm bodies, that the bitter cold and the wind and the sightless death touch as with women's hands. In these contacts between living beings and force, there is something carnal, virginal, divine. ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... a Pope to draw lines from pole to pole, and across the deep of the sea. Yet the poles sleep still in their icy virginal sanctity, and the blue waves through which that papal line passes shift and shimmer and roll in their free salt loneliness, unaffected by his demarcation; the heathen also, it appears, since that distant day, have ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... past saving, could he have withstood her in that vein. Her nearness, her tenderness, revived the mood of sheer bewitchment, when he could think of nothing, desire nothing but her. She had a genius for inducing that mood in men; and Roy's virginal passion, once roused, was stronger than he knew. With his arms round her, his heart against hers, it was humanly impossible to wish her other than she ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver



Words linked to "Virginal" :   virginity, virginal membrane, virgin, harpsichord, chaste, pure, cembalo, virtuous, pair of virginals



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