"Childless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The Parentage of Mary. 7 Joachim her father, and Anna her mother, go to Jerusalem to the feast of the dedication. 9 Issachar, the high priest, reproaches Joachim for being childless. ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... which were housed the two gardeners and their wives. To be lodge-keeper to the Park was as great a guarantee of respectability in Norton as to be vicar of the parish church itself. Only middle-aged, married, teetotal, childless churchmen could apply for the posts, and among their scant ranks the most searching inquiries were instituted before an appointment was finally arranged. It is safe to affirm that no working couples on earth were more clean, ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... wish to flood the shore, as the gentleman describes the storm, or that it is easier to bear one's grief and the soul leaps over many sufferings when grief finds fellowship, or that Lear has become childless while I am fatherless, as Edgar says, or use similar unnatural expressions with which the speeches of all the characters in all ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... himself attended to the arrangement of my costume. He was a widower, and childless, but he had a niece, the child of a brother, whom he adopted. She was a clever, spirited girl, and gladly undertook to be my companion; indeed Minetta—that was her name—fully entered into the spirit of ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... surcease from our maladjustments: If we are denied power, influence, or love by society or by individuals, we can obtain these desiderata in our dreams. We can possess in dreams the things which we cannot have by day. In sleep the poor man becomes a Midas, the ugly woman handsome, the childless woman surrounded by children, and those who in daily life live upon a crust in their dreams dine like princes (after living upon canned goods for two months in the Dry Tortugas, the burden of my every dream ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... somewhat elaborate will—which has been previously hinted. Verner's Pride, with its rich lands, its fine income, was left to John Massingbird; in the event of John's death, childless, it went to Frederick; in the event of Frederick's death, childless, it passed to Lionel Verner. There the conditions ended; so that, if it did lapse to Lionel, it lapsed to him absolutely. But it ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... And when the morning broke like a great pink rose and shed its rosy light over the dimpling hills and lacy, misty woodlands the old town was a-flutter with banners, everybody was about through with breakfast and certain childless and highly efficient ladies were already taking their front and side hair out ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... who rapped out, "I presume in those days, a novel apposition of the quick and the dead." A certain peer was remarkable alike for his extreme parsimony and his unusual plainness of face. His wife shared these characteristics, both facial and temperamental, to the full, and yet this childless, unprepossessing and eminently economical couple were absolutely wrapped up in one another; after his death she only lingered on for three months. Some one commenting on this, said, "They were certainly the stingiest and probably the ugliest couple in England, yet their devotion to each ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... the mortal fall, Has fallen from the lips of all. Ye human wretches, give your heed; For your complaints there's little need. Let him who thinks his own the hardest case, Some widowed, childless Hecuba behold, Herself to toil and shame of slavery sold, And he will own the wealth of ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... The confinement mentioned here is that of Catherine de Medici, who, after remaining childless during ten years of wedlock, gave birth to a son, afterwards Francis II., in January 1543. The peace previously spoken of would appear to be that signed at Crespy in September 1544. Both M. de Montaiglon ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... unhappy. A studious man, cold, taciturn, and self-contained as a rule, caring little for general society and devoted to his profession, the want in his life, the blank in his wifeless and childless home, was not to him what it would have been to a more impulsive, less self-reliant nature. If sometimes he instituted an involuntary comparison between his contracted hoped and interests as contrasted with those of other men, books, his work, his studies, soon consoled him. He ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... reformation lie in the way of that lion; resignation also and humility; the crucifixion of our own will; the sacrifice of our own heart; in short, everything that is still lacking but is indispensable to our salvation lies through that den of lions. One man here is homeless and loveless; another is childless; another has a home and children, and much envies the man who has neither; one has talents there is no scope for; another has the scope, but not the sufficient talent; another must now spend all his remaining life in a place where he sees that anger and envy and jealousy and malevolence will ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... friend with great kindness. She was a good-natured, childless matron. She found Lizzie very ignorant and very pretty. She was glad to have so great a beauty and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... harm, yet because it is war, arranged by princes and kings, we must become murderers. And why should I kill him? because others would misconstrue my act of mercy if I did it not, and brand me a coward, aye and worse, a traitor. Why should I make that mother childless? why must I rob that loving wife of her husband? Why I be the means of making those little ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... children and manager of his household, as much of a technically capable individual as himself. He will be a father of several children, I think, because his scientific mental basis will incline him to see the whole of life as a struggle to survive; he will recognize that a childless, sterile life, however pleasant, is essentially failure and perversion, and he will conceive his honour involved ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... present at my death and closing my eyes and burying my body." Hereat came a Voice from Heaven which said, "Inasmuch as at first thou trustedst in graven images and offeredst to them victims, so shalt thou remain childless, lacking sons and daughters. However, get thee up and take to thee Nadan, thy sister's child; and, after taking this nephew to son, do thou inform him with thy learning and thy good breeding and thy sagesse, and demise to him that he inherit of thee after thy decease." Hereupon the Sage adopted ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... come Of slave-ships on Virginia's coast, Of mothers in their childless home, Like Rachel, sorrowing o'er the lost; The slave-gang scourged upon its way. The ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... Some childless couples, some aged ones with married children, many young men, a few confirmed old bachelors, and a few unmarried women roomed therein. On stormy days, or when their inclinations so prompted, the tenants ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... hath wife and children," says Lord Bacon, "hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men." I say the same of women. But, the welfare of society is not built on extraordinary exertions; and were it more reasonably organized, there would be still less need of great abilities, or heroic virtues. In the regulation of a family, in the education of children, understanding, in ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... proudest monument. There children set about their playmate's grave The pansy. On the infant's little bed, Wet at its planting with maternal tears, Emblem of early sweetness, early death, Nestled the lowly primrose. Childless dames, And maids that would not raise the reddened eye— Orphans, from whose young lids the light of joy Fled early,—silent lovers, who had given All that they lived for to the arms of earth, Came often, o'er the recent graves to ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... Thracian boy at play on the stiff ice Of Hebrus broke the waters with his weight And the swift current carried him away, Except that a smooth sherd cut off his head. The childless mother as she burned it said: "This for the flames I ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... although he was ten years her senior. When quite young he had married a very worthy woman, and their union was blessed by two children, a son and daughter; but they had laid them both in the grave at an early age; therefore they were now childless. I had never seen my aunt, but my heart turned toward them, and my resolution was soon taken to visit them. They resided about three miles from the village of ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... agha of the far south would bring his wife who was ill or childless to be blessed by the marabout; and in old days they had been introduced to the marabouta, but it was years now since she had been asked, or even allowed, to entertain strangers. She thought, without any active interest, as she looked at the nodding bassourahs, growing larger and larger, ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... are limits to my ability to serve him; but if you can detain the horse for two hours, he is assuredly safe. After what you have already done, I can believe you equal to any duty. God has denied to me children, young lady; but if it had been His blessed will that my marriage should not have been childless, such a treasure as yourself would I have asked from His mercy. But you are my child: all who dwell in this broad land are my children, and my care; and take the blessing of one who hopes yet to meet you in ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... had been a teacher for about twelve years, and she was so sick at heart of the work, was so anxious for a home of her own, that she decided to take the risk. And they got married. The marriage remained childless. The man developed general paresis (softening of the brain) three years later and died about a year afterward. The woman, now a widow, I understand, is not sorry for the step she had taken. This shows what things our social-economic ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... was born, when all the sons of George III. were childless, the Duke of Kent was urged to marry, so that he might have a family to continue the succession. In resenting the suggestion he said many things, and among them ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... the Hall. Lillian Earle lay nigh unto death. Many believed that the master of Earlescourt would soon be a childless man. He could not realize it. They told him how she lay with the cruel raging fever sapping her life, but he seemed to forget the living child in mourning for the ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... to have carried his inquiries further, but desisted. His heart was full of compassion for this childless old man, doomed to have his choicest memories disturbed by cruel doubts which possibly would never be removed ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... perceive that verified of Samuel to Agag, 1 Sam. xv. 33. "Thy sword hath made many women childless, so shall thy mother be childless amongst other women." It shall be done to them as they have done to others. Conradinus, that brave Suevian prince, came with a well-prepared army into the kingdom of Naples, was taken prisoner ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... cousins, all married, and all got boys! The first three wives my father had only produced two daughters, who died before their mothers. You can understand that those six big men took it badly there were no sons. When the third wife died, childless, my father had given up the sea for a while and had invested in a ship-yard at St. John, New Brunswick. It was there ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... account of himself, in contrast, was very brief. All he had to report was that his marriage had remained childless and his wife, a physician, overwhelmed with a sort of midwife practice, had to fight against the climate and was sick with longing for her father and mother ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... though childless married life, Mr. and Mrs. Botha's home was about to be blessed with an infant child, and it was the thought of the expectant mother's anguish and despair that took ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... Gonzaga, dated February 19, 1488, we learn that this new marriage of Vannozza's was not childless. In this epistle, the Bishop of Mantua asks his agent in Rome to act as godfather in his stead, Carlo Canale having chosen him for this honor. The letter gives no further particulars, but it ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... manner suddenly became cold,—so suddenly that she felt assured the reason was not that which a childless wife might have reason to fear. Unable to discover the real cause, she tried to persuade herself that she had been remiss in her duties; examined her innocent conscience to no purpose; and tried very, very hard to please. But he remained unmoved. He spoke no unkind words,— ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... and the fiddler," began the flute-player, "was, as I have already told you, a boy. The woodcutter who took pity on him was old and childless. He brought the baby to his hut, and gave it over to the care of his wife. At first she pretended to be angry, and said that nothing would persuade her to have anything to do with the child, and that it was all they could do to feed themselves without picking up waifs ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... to her house they talked of other things. Randolph learned something of her life in Callao: that she was an orphan like himself, and had been brought from the Eastern States when a child to live with a rich uncle in Callao who was childless; that her aunt had died and her uncle had married again; that the second wife had been at variance with his family, and that it was consequently some relief to Miss Avondale to be independent as the guardian of Bobby, whose mother was a sister of the first wife; ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... led to suspicion, how fortuitous the inspiration by which I had chanced on discovery. The delay of a single day, the occurrence of the slightest mishap, might have been fatal not to him only but to the best interests of France; which his death at a time when he was still childless must have plunged into the ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... his examinations in his first year, and now in his second, when he should have retrieved himself, he had gone under altogether. And the worst of it all was that Uncle William, who was paying his college bills, and who was rich and childless and would never miss the money, was making a dreadful fuss. Wallace wrote him apologising deeply, and explaining just how it all happened, the inconvenient examinations having come on just when he was labouring ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... We are, however, somewhat in the dark as to the basis of his claim. There is a story that he had visited the court of Edward the Confessor and had become his vassal on condition that, should Edward die childless, he was to designate William as his successor. But Harold, Earl of Wessex, who had consolidated his power before the death of Edward by securing the appointment of his brothers to three of the other great earldoms, assumed the crown and paid no ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... and Jews, excessive reproduction was the Lord's mark of favor. In India there has been a special hell provided for childless women, and with Jewesses no curse was equal ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... distance (there were few railways then) prevented them from entering into my daily life, still less my secret life. Fred's mother was nearest to us, and as the episodes show, she and her family were most mixed up with my affairs. An aunt in London, childless and rich, gave me most money, and afterwards left me a good sum. I cared but little about those living at a distance. With a cousin from the North I had some rousing debauches, which were at the time known to many of ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... only child. Oh, monsieur, what joy have you brought to me, what thankfulness do I feel, how deeply am I indebted to you! I had thought that there remained to me but to do my duty to God, and His cause; and then, if I lived to see the end of the war, to live out my days a childless old man. Now I seem to live again. Claire is alive; I have still something ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... for other women, as you neglected Zinita for Nada the Beautiful, Nada the witch. I am childless, as are all your wives because of the curse that this Nada left behind her. I demand that this curse should be lifted from me. For your sake I abandoned Lousta the Chief, to whom I was betrothed, and this is the end of it, that ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... marred the otherwise perfect serenity of their happiness. Olivia was childless. To have children to perpetuate the name of which he was so proud, to write it still higher on the roll of honor, had been his dearest hope. His disappointment had been proportionately keen. A few months ago this dead hope had revived, and altered the whole aspect of their lives. But as ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... is at the home of her father in New York. Her husband has disappeared. His name was on the passenger list of a wrecked steamer; and no other word of him or of the child has been heard. If he had left the little girl in the care of others, it is unknown to whom or where. So Lilian is a widow and childless. She is fading, day by day, and is hardly expected to live. Her mind, tortured by the suspense, which, worse than certainty, is gradually yielding to hallucinations which keep her little one ever present to her fancy. ...
— The Autobiography of a Play - Papers on Play-Making, II • Bronson Howard
... to sally forth to buy them presents, and to get some sweets for the children of a poor invalid cousin to whom for years he had been a generous friend. For children he had a profound love, and if he had married, he would not have been content with a childless home—with a childless home like that of Rudyard Byng. That news also had come to him from Alice Tynemouth, who honestly lamented that Jasmine Byng had no "balance-wheel," which was the safety and the anchor of women "like her and me," ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Heiresses, to old Kur-Pfalz; married, one of them to Duke Clement of Baiern, Karl Albert's nephew, which is well enough: but married, the other and elder of them, to Theodor of Deux-Ponts, who will one day—could we pierce the merciful veil—be Kurfurst of Baiern, and succeed our own childless ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... as we could learn by questions and observation, about one quarter of the Quichuas are childless. In families which have children the average number is three or four. Large families are not common, although we generally learned that the living children in a family usually represented less than half of those which had been born. Infant ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... disposal, to secure so imposing a representative as this prosperous gentleman, who is decorated with sundry grand-crosses and the title of privy councillor, and is a member of the oldest patrician family of Frankfort. The nearest relations of Herr von Holzhausen, who is himself unmarried and childless, are in the service of Austria. Moreover, his family pride, which is developed to an unusual degree, points back with all its memories to the imperial city patriciate that was so closely associated with the glorious era of the Holy Roman Empire; and Prussia's entire position ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... a moment's silence, "would not my father's brother, of whom I heard you speak, help you? It is dreadful to ask, but he is so near a kinsman, and childless." ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... isn't a centipede. Considering the way they move us about in those horrid jungle stations, without a decent bungalow to set one's foot in, I consider I've got a hearthless child, rather than a childless hearth. Thank you for your sympathy all the same. I dare say it was well ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... attempted to see her—this in the interests of her reputation every bit as much as in those of my own. For her station in life she was a woman of remarkable qualities and character. She had made an ugly, a repulsive marriage, and she was childless.—More than this it is not seemly I ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... amounted to but 1600 men-at-arms and from 800 to 900 archers, while Charles of Blois had 4000 men-at-arms and a proportionate number of infantry. De Montford tried to negotiate. He offered to divide the dukedom, and to agree that in case he died childless it should revert to the family of Charles. Charles, however, refused all terms, even to grant his adversary's request to put off the battle until the morrow, so as to avoid violating the Sabbath; and having given orders that ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... all, the "beloved Kate" held him in highest honor. The ripples that disturbed the smooth flow of their early life had died away and left an unruffled current. To the childless wife, he was child, husband, and lover. No sphere so lofty, but he could come quickly down to perform the lowliest duties. The empty platter, silently placed on the dinner-table, was the signal for his descent from Parnassus to the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... his sister's approaching connection with one of its members, and his own views on another (circumstances of which he boasted with almost equal openness), seemed sufficient vouchers for his truth; and to these were added the absolute facts of the Allens being wealthy and childless, of Miss Morland's being under their care, and—as soon as his acquaintance allowed him to judge—of their treating her with parental kindness. His resolution was soon formed. Already had he discerned a liking towards Miss Morland in ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... as effusively as she had addressed her. Lady Poynter was forty-eight years of age, daily increasing in bulk, masculine in voice, intellectual through vanity and childless by preference. Her husband was rich, patient, stupid and self-indulgent, bearing with her literary passions and in self-defence displaying that care for household comfort which it was Lady Poynter's ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... Friedrich at the top of them, kept silence in Weverlingen, and conformed to Papa; having nothing to live upon elsewhere. But they had their own thoughts; especially as their Cousin of Baireuth was more and more likely to die childless. And at length, being in the Kaiser's service as soldiers some of them, and having made what interest was feasible, they, early in Friedrich Wilhelm's reign, burst out. That is to say, appealed to the REICHSHOFRATH ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... reputation of being childless," observed Cuffe, in an undertone. "Doubtless this girl's father has been the consequence ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... time to time some one, envious of her happiness, pitied her for being childless, Madame de Nailles would say: "What do you mean? I have one daughter; ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... want it, sir.... I am not a young man. I have not been in the best of health—owing, perhaps, to worries which I should not have been compelled to bear.... I am childless. With me Bonbright Foote, Incorporated, comes to an end. Upon my death these mills close, the business is to be liquidated and discontinued. Do I make myself clear?... I am not interested ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... boy in the hands of enemies! What curse am I under? As if I'd begotten children so as to be left childless! (to Aristophontes) This way, you. (going toward brother's house) Back you go where you were before. I am determined to pity no one, since ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... jealous twinge, soon lost this time in the motherliness of a childless woman for her husband. He must not be troubled! He should not be troubled. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of a malady is of sufficient weight to excuse the visits of the most intimate friends. The prospect of gain will urge a rich and gouty senator as far as Spoleta; every sentiment of arrogance and dignity is suppressed in the hope of an inheritance or legacy, and a wealthy, childless citizen is the most powerful of the Romans. The distress which follows and chastises extravagant luxury often reduces the great to use the most humiliating expedients. When they wish to borrow, they employ the base and supplicating style of the slaves in the comedy; but when ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... was childless. His brother Charles and himself had married sisters, princesses of the house of Savoy. These ladies were amiable nonentities, and died during the exile of their husbands; but Charles's wife had left him two sons,—Louis Antoine, known as ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... years since he took up his residence at Baskerville Hall, and it is common talk how large were those schemes of reconstruction and improvement which have been interrupted by his death. Being himself childless, it was his openly expressed desire that the whole countryside should, within his own lifetime, profit by his good fortune, and many will have personal reasons for bewailing his untimely end. His generous donations ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... together with the duchy and county of Burgundy, came to him from his father, John the Fearless, in 1419. In 1421, he bought Namur. In 1430, he declared himself heir to his cousins in Brabant and Limbourg when Duke Anthony's second son followed his equally childless brother into a premature grave, and the claims were made good in spite of all opposition. Holland, Zealand, and Hainaut became his through the unwilling abdication of his other cousin, Jacqueline, in 1433. To save the life of her husband, Frank van Borselen, the last representative ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... his country residence; and certainly the venerable groves that surrounded it justified the application. While his own fortune was handsome and abundant, he married the orphan of a rich banker, who survived her father only a short time and died leaving Mr. Murray childless. After a few years, when the frosts of age fell upon his head, he married a handsome and very wealthy widow; but, unfortunately, having lost their first child, a daughter, he lived only long enough to hear the infantile prattle of his son, ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... years of age was taken from a benevolent institution in Boston, and given to a childless sailor, on his way from a voyage to his home in Maine on the Penobscot River. The sailor knew not from what institution the child was taken, nor whence he came. He carried it home, without a name, or the least clue to his ancestry. The sailor's wife was a Christian ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... musical niece—so Sophy was sent; anyway, her sister is engaged to be married and was not available. My friend, Mrs. Leigh, was very sorry to lose her girl—even for a year or so, but it seemed such a chance for Sophy to see the world, and make friends with her rich and childless relatives." ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... Mrs. Collingwood, childless as they were, felt real happiness in having such a companion—such an adopted daughter, yet they were sure that some of Dean Stanley's great friends and acquaintance in high life would ask his niece to spend ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... it happened, the Chief had no boy that trip. The previous one had been adopted after the last trip by a childless couple who had liked the shape of his nose and the way his eyelashes curled on his cheek. The Chief looked at the Red Un; it was perfectly clear that no one would ever adopt him for the shape of his nose, and he apparently lacked lashes ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... father: because of anxiety for her he cannot sleep at night; when she is young, for fear she should be seduced; in her virginity lest she play the harlot; in her marriageable age, lest she should not get married; and when married, lest she should be childless; and when grown old, lest she ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... devil's magic of the sorceress of Marienfliess, but also induce him to look graciously upon his Grace's dear spouse, whom this evil dragon had bewitched, as all the world saw plainly, so that she remained childless, as well as all the other dukes and duchesses of dear Pomerania land, who were rendered barren and unfruitful ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... because, to use her own words, "she prayed tastily"), had herself begun the conversation, and had invited her to come to her for a cup of tea. From that day forth, she had never parted with her. Nastasya Karpovna was a woman of the merriest and gentlest disposition, a childless widow, member of a poverty-stricken family of the petty nobility; she had a round, grey head, soft white hands, a soft face, with large, kindly features, and a rather ridiculous snub nose; she fairly worshipped ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... may die childless—that when my hour comes I may turn my face to the wall saying, I have not increased the great evil of human life—then, though I were murderer, fornicator, thief, and liar, my sins shall melt even as a cloud. But he who dies with children ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... and five years afterwards found herself be-Gedged out of existence. They were struggling people in those days, and before her death my wife used to employ her, when she could, for household sewing and whatnot. And tiny Phyllis, in a childless home, became a petted darling. When my great loneliness came upon me, it was a solace to have the little dainty prattling thing to spend an occasional hour in my company. Gedge, an excellent workman, set up as a contractor. He took my modest home under his charge. A leaky ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... was lame from ingrowing nails,—deviations that, however, did not tend to correct the original angularities of his frame. His wife, on the other hand, had a pretty figure, which still retained—they were childless—the rounded freshness of maidenhood. Her features were irregular, yet not without a certain piquancy of outline; her hair had the two shades sometimes seen in imperfect blondes, and her complexion the sallowness of combined exposure ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... saying, she gave him her hand, and as Barnabas stooped to kiss those small, white fingers, she looked down at his curly head with such an expression as surely few had ever seen within the eyes of this ancient, childless ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... of Ulster remembered Cuchulain's divine origin, they would fain have him married, so that he might not die childless; and for a year they searched all Erin for a fit bride for so great a champion. Cuchulain, however, went wooing for himself, to the dun of Forgall the Wily, a Druid of great power. Forgall had two daughters, of whom the younger, Emer, was the most lovely and virtuous maiden to ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... the work begun, 'Well done, my little Wench; 'twas nobly done!' Then said, with looks more cheering than the fire, And feelings such as Pity can inspire, 'My house has childless been this many a year; While you deserve it you shall tarry here.' The Orphan mark'd the ardor of his eye, Blest his kind words, and ...
— Rural Tales, Ballads, and Songs • Robert Bloomfield
... was the last surviving descendant of the poet. In April 1626 she married her first husband, Thomas Nash of Stratford (b. 1593), who studied at Lincoln's Inn, was a man of property, and, dying childless at New Place on April 4, 1647, was buried in Stratford Church next day. At Billesley, a village four miles from Stratford, on June 5, 1649, Mrs. Nash married, as a second husband, a widower, John Bernard or Barnard of Abington, ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... and syphilis. To gonorrhea is attributed 80 per cent. of the blindness of children born blind; it is declared to be the cause of 75 per cent. of all the surgical operations for female disorders and of 45 per cent. of involuntary sterility in childless women. Syphilis is the chief cause of feeble-mindedness, paresis, or softening of the brain, and of most ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... one, her brothers and sister died; and her mother, with the exception of her neglected daughter, was left childless. The conscience of the woman was troubled; she began to think that the deaths of her favourites was a judgement from heaven to chastise her partiality. She was a Roman Catholic; and I believe her confessor confirmed the idea which she had conceived. Accordingly, a few months after your ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... the Sire de Tillay's word. He is in debt to every merchant of the place—a smooth-tongued deceiver. Belike he is bribed to defame the poor lady, that the Dauphin may rid himself of a childless wife.' ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Severac was fifty-nine years old, and a childless widower. Mother and daughter listened, therefore, with devout admiration to all that he told ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... his employer followed. The lonely, childless old man, who owned so many houses, wanted a home; and one of these houses he offered to Mrs. Hampton, with ample support for herself and children if she would also make ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various
... of Cambridge, the Princess Augusta of Hesse; the Duke of Kent, the Princess Victoria Mary of Saxe-Coburg. The Duke of Sussex was already married, but not with the necessary consent of the crown, and the Duke of Cumberland was childless, having married three years earlier a divorced widow whom the queen, for private reasons, declined to receive. It is a striking proof of the discredit into which the royal family had fallen, since the old king virtually ceased to reign, that parliament, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... resembled his father most closely in appearance, and, also, he was the one to whom Jacob transmitted the instruction and knowledge he had received from his teachers Shem and Eber.[3] The whole course of the son's life is but a repetition of the father's. As the mother of Jacob remained childless for a long time after her marriage, so also the mother of Joseph. As Rebekah had undergone severe suffering in giving birth to Jacob, so Rachel in giving birth to Joseph. As Jacob's mother bore two sons, so also Joseph's mother. Like Jacob, Joseph was born circumcised. As the father ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... distinctly immoral to sterilize healthy women, who become possessed with the old Roman passion for a childless life, or who simply wish to limit their families for any ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... to begin this work,—and with the highest,—with no less a personage than Gaston, Duke of Orleans,—favorite son of Mary,—brother of the King. He who thinks shall come to a higher idea of Richelieu's boldness, when he remembers that for many years after this Louis was childless and sickly, and that during all those years Richelieu might awake any morning to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... had been very much vexed at her dismissal. The Browns were a childless couple and the arrangement had suited them perfectly. Their resentment was very bitter. Mrs Brown had to remain ashore alone with her rage, but the steward was nursing his on board. Poor Flora had no greater enemy, the aggrieved mate had no greater sympathiser. And Mrs Brown, with a woman's ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... middle age of Mrs Blair had been more free from trial than is the common lot; but the last few years had been years of great vicissitude. She was now a widow and childless; for though it might be that her youngest son was still alive, she did not know that he was; and his life had been the cause of more sorrow than the death of all ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... hour when most men turned for the placid joys of the fireside, the love of devoted and faithful wife, the homage and affection of children, the prattle and playful sports of children's children—homeless, wifeless, childless he stood at the border of the boundless sea, soldier duty pointing the way to far distant, unknown and undesired regions, content to follow that flag to the end of the world, if need be, and owning no higher hope or ambition than to uphold it to ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... table, where sat Mr. and Mrs. Jones, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Mr. and Mrs. Bennett, Babbit, and so on, I looked sharply for Mr. and Mrs. Lewis. But neither was there the first day. All the people were childless and desolate-looking, though much bedecked with braids and curls, which ladies wore at that time without stint. Nobody looked as if she could be Mr. Lewis's wife. However, the ladies all treated me with so much ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... was this prophetic promise made to Abraham. At the time it was given Abraham had, by command, offered his only son Isaac, which offering, to all human appearance, would leave the old patriarch again childless; but his faith staggered not, for human incompetence does not circumscribe the bounds of Divine sufficience. The God who commanded Abraham to offer, recalled the command at a certain stage of the fulfilment, ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... endured by our forefathers when they were dragged into bondage from Africa, will be again renewed, and with increased anguish. The shores of America will, like the sands of Africa, be watered by the tears of those who will be left behind. Those who shall be carried away will roam childless, widowed, and alone, over the burning plains ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... but wherever there are human beings there are the little histories. I have come home realizing anew how happy I am, how much I have been spared, and how many of life's blessings are mine. Poor Mrs. Louderer, childless and alone, openly envying Mrs. O'Shaughnessy her babies! In my bedroom there is a row of four little brown heads asleep on their pillows. Four precious kiddies all my own. And not the least of my blessings, ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... grace, than the usual rounded lines of earthly beauty; and her face was beaming more with the sentiments of the soul within, than with the ordinary charms of complexion and features. It was precisely that kind of youthful loveliness that a childless husband would pause to contemplate as the reality of the visions which his thoughts had often portrayed, and which his nature coveted as the only treasure wanting to complete the sum of his earthly bliss. It truly ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... hour of birth, "custom" requires that they shall not be fed until a night has passed. They are not weaned until they are at least three years old. Boys are preferred to girls, but both are highly valued, and a childless wife ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... infant rebel was afterwards the wife of the emperor Gratian but she died young, and childless. See Ducange, Fam. Byzantin. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... wrought into the constitution and character of his daughter Judy is all that matters of his life and work. Keats, having no children, contributed nothing to the world. George Washington, childless, was of no social service. Lincoln is to be measured by the number and quality of his offspring. Florence Nightingale, in lifting the grade of nursing for the world, accomplished nothing. Uncle Tom's Cabin was of no service except as ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... War, c. 71) states that Mithridates invaded Bithynia, for King Nikomedes had just died childless and left his kingdom to the Romans. Cotta fled before him and took refuge in Chalkedon, a city situated on the Asiatic side of the Thracian Bosporus opposite to the site of Constantinople. The consul would not go out to meet the enemy, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... clothed and fed; Nor shall you go from hence again to roam While God in love provides for us a home." And as the weeks and months roll on apace, The deacon held the lad in love's embrace; And being childless did on him confer The ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... none of their number had ever heard, to come from Omaha and take the domestic management of his hearth and home. All he knew of her was what he heard there. She was the widow of a volunteer officer who had died of disease contracted during the war. She was childless, almost destitute, accomplished, and so devoted to her church duties. She was interesting and refined, and highly educated. He heard the eulogiums pronounced by the good priest and some of his flock, and Mrs. Fletcher, a substantial person of some forty years at least, ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... pondering that here again was something mysterious in this honest octogenarian's mood. There was an undercurrent of sorrow which, he was sure, was wholly distinct from the anxieties of his mistress and her household, and he wondered what it might be. Surely, for an old man, though wifeless and childless he had much to make him happy. The devotion of the family in which he had lived for so long, his comfortable home, his freedom from care concerning his future—to the young man struggling amidst a crowd of competitors ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... fascination with animals, which form the subjects of many of his graphical works. He reveled in portraying men of learning and/or high stature as well as peasants, believing that portraits of the latter could be as instructive as those of the former. His marriage to his wife Agnes was childless and banal, apparently because Drer was too preoccupied with intellectual matters to be much ...
— Memoirs of Journeys to Venice and the Low Countries - [This is our volunteer's translation of the title] • Albrecht Durer
... sad and meek. Perhaps a partial appreciation of what she missed by being childless came to her. What thrills she might have known if happy children ran to her with shouts of "Granny!" But she did not carry the thread of thought far enough to analyze her own actions and discover that, though childless, she could attract the love of other people's ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... they would thereby be saved from the rack, and put out of their misery at once. Some confessed that they had had children by the devil; but no one who had ever been a mother gave utterance to such a frantic imagining, even in the extremity of her anguish. The childless only confessed it, and were burned instanter ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... Borah gets through showing what he thinks it means, and Senator Reed gets through thinking what HE thinks it means, understand me, that League of Nations covenant will have as many different meanings as the contested last will and testament of a childless millionaire who has married a telephone operator on his death-bed to spite ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... the ages. Eunice, he informed me, was nearly two years older than Helena. If she outwardly showed her superiority of age, any person acquainted with the circumstances under which the adopted infant had been received into Mr. Gracedieu's childless household, need only compare the so-called sisters in after-life, and would thereupon identify the eldest-looking young lady of the two as the offspring of the woman who had been hanged for murder. With such a misfortune as this presenting itself as a possible prospect, the Minister was bound to ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... the various sources from which he might look for help and co-operation—"of learned men beyond the seas"—"to begin first in France to print it"—"laying for a place to command wits and pens;" he has his eye on rich and childless bishops, on the enforced idleness of State prisoners in the Tower, like Northumberland and Raleigh, on the great schools and universities, where he might perhaps get hold of some college for "Inventors"—as we should ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... of all, it is served in simple shapes, but with a great variety of Unfortunate Persons,—such as lonely people from lodging-houses, poor people of all grades, widows and childless in their affliction. This is the kind most preferred; in fact, never abandoned by ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... choose not to make a formal will. I shall die, probably in the near future, by my own hand, of poison. I wish to emphasise this statement in event the circumstances surrounding my demise should appear to attach suspicion of murder upon any person or persons whatever. I am a widower and childless. What relations may survive me are distant and will never appear to claim what estate I may leave—this I know. I therefore desire that my body-servant, Henry Doggott, an English citizen, shall inherit and appropriate to his own use all my property ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... an acre) according to the quality of the land, or the favour of the Pasha when granting it. This tenancy is hereditary to children only—not to collaterals or ascendants—and it may be sold, but in that case application must be made to the Government. If the owner or tenant dies childless the land reverts to the Sultan, i.e. to the Pasha, and if the Pasha chooses to have any man's land he can take it from him on payment—or without. Don't let any one tell you that I exaggerate; I have known it happen: I mean the without, and the man received ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... had taken it into her head that she, a childless wife, had no right to be here. And so she persuaded herself that her duty to you was to give ...
— Rosmerholm • Henrik Ibsen
... though doubtless a decent dose; and had only made her usual to match it—usual, that is, as Boston went. She had lost first her husband, and then her mother, with whom, on her husband's death, she had lived again; so that now, childless, she was but more sharply single than before. But she sat rather coldly light, having, as she called it, enough to live on—so far, that is, as she lived by bread alone: how little indeed she was regularly content with that diet appeared from the name she had made—Susan Shepherd Stringham—as a ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James |
