"Feminine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... indicated by some mark of punctuation. A run-on line should be read closely with the following line with only a slight pause to indicate the line-unit. Monotony is prevented by the occasional use of a light or feminine ending—a syllable on which the voice does not ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... who direct the pen, which is said to be mightier than the sword, is enough to kill any one with a real sense of humour. Some of the literary productions which were to send the greatest of living men off the face of the earth are quite grotesque in their feminine, shrill advocacy of force towards the "eater of pigs"; the "Anti-Christ"; and the murderer of a kindly-disposed gentleman who was on an innocent visit to the frontier of France for the purpose of negotiating a few private matters that had no political significance; what if he were one of ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... near the door that to step out and step in again was the work of a second. In stepping in again he trod daintily, wriggling the back part of his person, better to simulate the feminine. In order that Letty should nowhere be caught unaware he put out his hand languidly, back upward, as princesses do when they expect it ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... have strongly prepossessed you in his favour. I am not ignorant that I have to plead against him before his friends, in the presence of his mother—a mother respected even in a higher degree than her son is beloved; respected for her feminine virtues—for her more than feminine endowments; who, had she no other claim upon your hearts, must, by the unfortunate situation in which she ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... day to enter the withdrawing room, while searching for Antonia, he found that he had lighted on a feminine discussion; he would have beaten a retreat, of course, but it seemed too obvious that he was merely looking for his fiancee, so, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... done. My furnishings were delivered. There were curtains to make, many feminine touches were needed to settle the rooms. Sarah did all that she could, but Dorothy Clayton had come. She was just a year younger than I, and of charming appearance and manner. We had become friends almost at once. She was with me daily, as we put the house in order for occupancy. Reverdy thought ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... that desire for change which possesses a heart tormented by an unsatisfied passion. To the deep grief of Amense, Hont-Reche, and Twea, his favourites, who had endeavoured to retain him in the Summer Palace by all the resources of feminine coquetry, he now inhabited the Northern Palace on the other side of the Nile. His fierce preoccupation was irritated by the presence and the chatter of his women; they displeased him because they were not Tahoser. He now thought ugly those beauties who had seemed ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... of faculties and cultivation it requires! What personal distinction it shows! Perhaps only a valetudinarian would have been capable of this morbidezza of touch, this marriage of virile thought and feminine caprice. If there is excess anywhere, it lies perhaps in a certain effeminacy of sentiment. Doudan can put up with nothing but what is perfect—nothing but what is absolutely harmonious; all that is rough, harsh, powerful, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... conversation of the girls turned chiefly on their encounter with Mr. Chance. Constance displayed an unusual amount of feminine curiosity, and asked a great many questions about him. Fan had nothing to tell, for she dared not tell what she knew. It was a peculiarity of her character, that if she knew anything to a person's disadvantage she ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... offended his niceness. He did it through sarcasm at your modern young women, who run about the world nibbling and nibbled at, until they know one sex as well as the other, and are not a whit less cognizant of the market than men; pure, possibly; it is not so easy to say innocent; decidedly not our feminine ideal. Miss Middleton was different: she was the true ideal, fresh-gathered morning fruit in a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... honest face; no one has ever called him handsome. A few prejudiced persons have decided that he has an interesting countenance; the propounders of this verdict have been, for the most part, feminine. Kirkwood himself has been heard to declare that his features do not fit; in its essence the statement is true, but there is a very real, if undefinable, engaging quality in their very irregularity. His eyes are brown, pleasant, set wide ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... is in this," said John Derringham. "Learned women are an awful bore. As a sex they were meant to be feminine, dainty, exquisite creatures as those I see to-night," and he bowed gallantly while Miss La Sarthe thrilled. She thoroughly approved ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... learn—that, if she looked down upon him with maternal pride and delight, she looked up to him with female ambition as the re-edifier of her husband's honours,— looked with reverence as to a column of the Roman grandeur and with fear and feminine anxieties as to one whose aspiring spirit carried him but too prematurely into the fields of adventurous strife. One slight and evanescent sketch of the relations which subsisted between Caesar and his mother, caught from the wrecks of time, is preserved both by Plutarch and ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... served as a bed by night; and the flowering plants at the window, the arrangement of artistic posters and sketches on the walls, and, above all, the neatness and orderliness of the room, proclaimed feminine occupancy. ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... in the cave of Spy[276] (Namur), or rather in a terrace some thirty-six feet long by nineteen and a half wide giving access to it, brought to light two human skeletons. One was that of an individual already advanced in life, probably of the feminine sex, the other of a man in the prime of life. These skeletons were imbedded in a very hard breccia containing also fragments of ivory and numerous flints of very small size. Some of them had very fine scratches on both sides. From what I could learn on the spot, the skeletons when found were ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... hospitality or in performing those little household offices which fall so gracefully on the young. Engrossed with her books and studies, pursuits noble and ennobling in themselves, but degraded from their high and holy purpose when cultivated to the exclusion of the lovely, feminine virtues, Mittie was almost a stranger ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... kindled—and timidity! was not the feeing it kindled. Lavretsky turned the conversation on the theater, on the performance of the previous day; she at once began herself to discuss Motchalov, and did not confine herself to sighs and interjections only, but uttered a few true observations full of feminine insight in regard to his acting. Mihalevitch spoke about music; she sat down without ceremony to the piano, and very correctly played some of Chopin's mazurkas, which were then just coming into fashion. Dinner-time came; Lavretsky would have gone away, but they made him stay: at ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... other Sov political divisions including Russia, were of the best, but the denizens of the West-world Embassy drank bourbon and Scotch, or at most the products of the vines of California. The styles of Budapest rivaled those of Paris and Rome, New York and Hollywood, but a feminine employee of the embassy wouldn't have been caught dead in local fashions. It was a home away from home, an oasis of the West in ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... hair was pretty in color and texture, but it was cut almost close, and just touched the collar of her covert coat. She wore a bowler hat, her gloves were on the table in front of her—thick, dogskin gloves, like a man's. She held a roll of paper in her hand, which was bare of rings, though feminine enough in size and shape. A pince-nez was balanced on her nose, and her chin—really a pretty chin—was held high ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... vaguely what it all meant, she was human and feminine enough to find a certain grim satisfaction in the thought that Giovanni was no more to be trusted by ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... Kyle, and I'll shoot you." In her tones there was none of the hysteria that usually spices feminine threats. She was angry, but her voice was grimly level. She had the poise of one who had learned to depend on her own resolute spirit. But she displayed something more than that. It was recklessness that was bravado. In the eyes of the State chairman, friend of Thornton, and accustomed to ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... and the Foresters retired to the shade of the scarlet oak to discuss the matter. Jack had meant nothing but a fling at the feminine fondness for telling things, and was astonished that his remark could be supposed to reflect upon Miss Celia; and as no one else found any objection to the new member, they returned presently to inform her that she was by unanimous consent ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... pleases, a series of distichs in iambic dimeters, alternately acatalectic and catalectic. He does not rhyme, but his work, in the couplet form which shows it best, exhibits occasionally the alternation of masculine and feminine endings. This latter peculiarity was not to take hold in the language; but the quantified or mainly syllabic arrangement was. It was natural that Ormin, greatly daring, and being almost the first to dare, ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... feminine. One should not attempt athletics unless she is sure that her physique will endure this. A strain may wreck one's health and looks. Most women are built like watches—one thing wrong upsets the ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... by the two big Flemish horses. Then Jacques, Jules, Andre, Francois, Chariot, Pierre, Joseph, Jean, and all the rest, in sabots, short trousers, and blue blouses, marching bareheaded with reverent air, and with them Julie, and Fifine, and Nana, and Adele, and other feminine relatives, all in their Sunday best, and all devout in mien. Then, at a little distance—the most astonishing and unlooked-for tail to all this ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... a "rear extension." Alfred invariably alluded to it as "her tail." Why he applied the feminine gender to the machine was another of those vagaries of which ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... the interior of the little house an extraordinary change was wrought; simple draperies and pictures relieved the bareness of the walls; shelves were built for the accommodation of many trinkets dear to the feminine heart; a rag carpet covered the centre of the floor; plain but appetising dishes peeked enticingly from behind the paper curtain that now clothed the bare ribs of the cupboard; and a sense of homeliness pervaded the atmosphere. The two men, in their own realm, had ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... paper. The action betokened only a languid interest, but when he caught sight of the first of the four subscribed lines he sat up straight in his chair with an ejaculation. At the bottom of Fisbee's page was written in a dainty, feminine hand, of a type he had not seen ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... the dim future, Mrs. Herbert," he laughed. "You see, since I first went on active service I have been removed altogether from feminine attractions. Of course I have been thinking it over, but for the present my inclination turns towards yachting. I have always been fond of the water, and had a strong wish to go to sea when I was a boy, but that ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... submitted to be away from her, because she commanded this submission; but for her influence, he would have declared his attachment before all England, and resisted, with unshaken constancy, his mother's opposition. Evadne's feminine prudence perceived how useless any assertion of his resolves would be, till added years gave weight to his power. Perhaps there was besides a lurking dislike to bind herself in the face of the world to one whom she did not love—not love, at least, with that passionate enthusiasm which her ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... Then he went to the Godavari, a river that falls directly into the sea. There he was freed from his sins. And he reached the sea in the Dravida land, and visited the holy spot passing under Agastya's name, which was exceedingly sacred and exceptionally pure. And the valiant king visited the feminine sacred spots. Here he listened to the story of that well-known feat which was achieved by Arjuna, chief of all wielders of the bow, and which was beyond the power of human beings to perform. And here he was praised ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... with his gaze, and emitting all the while a subdued hissing sound. The significance of this conduct I do not profess to have understood; it ended with his suddenly darting at the female, who took wing and was pursued. Not improbably the robin finds the feminine nature somewhat fickle, and counts it expedient to vary his tactics accordingly; for it is getting to be more and more believed that, in kind at least, the intelligence of the lower animals ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... and was silent. He was a beautiful youth, with a face almost feminine, to which anger and sunburn added charm. He wore a close-fitting coat with blue and white stripes, a kerchief of the same color behind his helmet, a gold chain around his neck, and a costly ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... of the easy money I was dispensing to the public, appeals from old associates for special allotments of the subscription, urgent petitions from capitalists and bankers with whom I had business relations that their bids for shares should have preference, perfumed notes on tinted paper in feminine handwriting begging aid, advice, my influence, on a hundred specious pleas. It seemed to me that all the world was in a conspiracy of dollars and I the one object of its plotting. For a moment there overcame me a sickening disgust at this universal greed, ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... still holds his peace. In long-drawn parallel verses Dionysus gradually assumes the friend, and—still warning the king that he is on the side of the god—insinuates into the mind of Pentheus the idea of visiting the scene, disguised in the feminine robes of the revellers. As the king retires to prepare, Dionysus proclaims that he is fallen into the net, and vengeance shall first deprive him of sense and ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... myself, begging grace that I intrude upon your busy minutes, with my only excuse that perhaps I may amuse you. For what the commercial sellers of my pictured version were pleased to blare as my handsome face, I ask your indulgence. My feminine audience of the pantomimes was undoubtedly graciously pleased at my personality and physical aspect. That I am "tall as a Viking of old"—and "handsome as a young Norse God"—is very pretty talk in the selling of my product. But I deplore its intrusion into the personality of this, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... short period he was in danger of falling into habits of movement and manipulation too dainty for a man, a fault happily none the less objectionable in the eyes of his instructress, that she, on her own part, carried the feminine a little beyond the limits of the natural. But here also she found him so readily set right, that she imagined she was going to do anything with him she pleased, and was not a little proud of her conquest, and the power she had over the young savage. She had yet to discover that Gibbie had his own ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... rights of her ever oppressed sex. From the point of view of literary art the immoderate formlessness of these partisan novels was an aberration; but meanwhile the writer has once more emancipated herself from such servitude to the cause. The finest understanding for feminine characters, all of which are children of her heart, cannot indeed compensate for imperfect comprehension of the masculine way of thinking. Strictly speaking, Helene Boehlau knows of only two sorts of feeling for men: hatred of the brutal beast and admiration for an ideal, which is born of longing ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... courageous bird—but his mother, Poll Doolin—married women here frequently preserve, or are called by, their maiden names through life—who learned it from her husband, was equally famous for this very feminine accomplishment. Poor Raymond, notwithstanding his privation, is, however, exceedingly shrewd in many things, especially where he can make himself understood. As he speaks, however, in unconnected sentences, in which there is put forth no more than one ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... the first, it has added not a few portraits to Bunyan's spiritual picture gallery we should be sorry to miss, and supplied us with racy sayings which stick to the memory. The sweet maid Mercy affords a lovely picture of gentle feminine piety, well contrasted with the more vigorous but still thoroughly womanly character of Christiana. Great-Heart is too much of an abstraction: a preacher in the uncongenial disguise of a knightly champion of distressed females and the slayer of giants. But the other new characters have generally ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... is the feminine of Kurmi, the name of a widely spread and most industrious agricultural caste, closely connected, at least in Bundelkhand, with the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... rector of the parish, and sometimes Mrs. Maxa, to avoid confusion with the wife of the present rector. It is as if there were two Mrs. John Smiths, one of whom is called Mrs. Helen; Maxa being, of course, a feminine Christian name. Of the five children the eldest is the high-spirited, impulsive Bruno, who is just of an age to go away to a city school. Next comes his sister Mea, whose fault is that she is too submissive and confiding. Kurt, the second boy, is the most enterprising and humorous ...
— Maezli - A Story of the Swiss Valleys • Johanna Spyri
... glanced with tender meaning at the young lady. Her feminine heart, I hoped, would interpret and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... saw the truth and watched it growing from day to day; for he was incapable of disguises. But often what effect has such watching upon the watcher, a watcher who is alone in the world? So that while she fathomed with many feminine soundings all that she was to David, Gabriella did not dream what David had become ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... But art is the feminine side of a man's nature; it is the woman in him . . . and the woman is superfluous to him, for she becomes the rival ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... partially corresponding to this distinction in nature; while there are but two sexes, there are in some languages, as in English and German, three genders. The French language has but two genders and makes the names of all inanimate objects either masculine or feminine; some languages are without the distinction of gender, and those that maintain it are often quite arbitrary in its application. We speak of the masculine or feminine gender, the ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... the stormy wind, came another sound—the loud jingling of sleigh-bells. Dimly through the fluttering whiteness of the snow-storm she saw the sleighs whirl up to the door, and their occupants, in a tumult of laughter, hurrying rapidly into the house. She could hear those merry laughs, those feminine tones, and the pattering of gaitered feet up the stairs. She could hear the deeper voices of the gentlemen, as they stamped and shook the snow off their hats and great-coats in the hall. She listened and looked out ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... Chopin in passional phrases, the public and critics were aghast. This was a transformed Chopin indeed, a Chopin transposed to the key of manliness. Yet it is the true Chopin. The young man's manners were a trifle feminine but his brain was masculine, electric, and his soul courageous. His Polonaises, Ballades, Scherzi and Etudes need a mighty grip, ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... and nervine. It soothes and strengthens the nerves and acts directly on the feminine organism in a way which fits it for the proper and regular performance of all ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... a pity that so brilliant a burst of light should only have flashed out from the gross darkness of heathenism. "However," he continued, "this good Father has made the vessels of the Egyptians into a tabernacle, lining it with the steel mirrors which had lent themselves to feminine vanity. Thus it is that to the pure all things are pure. This, indeed, is quite a different thing from the way of acting of those who make light of the holy words of Scripture, using them carelessly ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... lasted only for a moment in Florence. It is correct to say that Florentine art did not seem destined to speak the charms of feminine beauty. From its beginning, this school had been stamped by Giotto with the philosophic impress, and for two centuries its artists had been before everything else, thinkers, occupied more with moral ideas than with ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... invincible; had she married Petruchio, it may be doubted whether that arch wife-tamer would have been able to keep her legs out of those garments which are presumed by men to be peculiarly unfitted for feminine use. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... persisted Betty, who had her fair share of feminine curiosity with the additional excuse that interesting events were few and far between ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... In the whole category of feminine names was there ever one so pretty as Ruth? And surely never did a girl, in both form and ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... new centre for West End shopping, particularly feminine shopping, suggests the reflection, Do women ever really shop? Of course, it is a well-attested fact that they go forth shopping as assiduously as a bee goes flower-visiting, but do they shop in the practical ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... family. I feel myself, however, constrained in spirit to lift aside a small bit of the private curtain, just to show how Mrs Pawkie comported herself in the progressive vicissitudes of our prosperity, in the act and doing of which I do not wish to throw any slight on her feminine qualities; for, to speak of her as she deserves at my hand, she has been a most excellent wife, and a decent woman, and had aye a ruth and ready hand for the needful. Still, to say the truth, she is not without a few little weaknesses like her ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... the wedding—a real Cossack wedding with music, feminine bleating, and revolting drunkenness.... The bride is sixteen. They were married in the cathedral. I acted as best man, and was dressed in somebody else's evening suit with fearfully wide trousers, and not a single stud on my shirt. In ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... in their towns and cities. Of [6234]Cato's mind belike, that would have his servants (cum ancillis congredi coitus causa, definito aere, ut graviora facinora evitarent, caeteris interim interdicens) familiar with some such feminine creatures, to avoid worse mischiefs in his house, and made allowance for it. They hold it impossible for idle persons, young, rich, and lusty, so many servants, monks, friars, to live honest, too tyrannical a burden to compel them to be chaste, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... foe of moral order) that he can achieve an ambition by an unlawful path, the ambition itself being suggested along with the way to it and growing as the way opens. We see them both communicated to a feminine mind, narrower, more intent and practical; because narrower, because more intent and practical, for the moment more courageous. (It was Eve that the Serpent, wily enough, selected to tempt.) Both Macbeth and his lady move to the deed under a law which—for a while—has ...
— Poetry • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... THE RECRUITING FEMININE for 1914-1915 is a publication of unusual worth. "The Rose Supreme," by Coralie Austin, is a delicate little poem in which we regret the presence of one inexcusably bad rhyme. To rhyme the words "rose" and "unclosed" is to exceed the utmost limits of ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... paused before the table, that Berkeley had never heard or seen in him before; something that made the supple, childish, petulant, cowardly nature of the boy shrink and be silenced; something for a single instant of the haughty and untamable temper of the Royallieu blood that awoke in the too feminine softness and ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... his eyes. His whole expression was uncertain, and looking only at his face it was difficult at first sight to decide to which sex he belonged. This confusion of two natures, this indefinable mixture of feminine weakness without grace, and of abortive boyhood, seemed to stamp him as something exceptional, unclassable, and once observed, it was difficult to take one's eyes from him. Had he been endowed with physical strength he ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of the breed of the women he had recalled; she had no kinship with them or their modern prototypes, one of whom he vaguely supposed he should marry some day—when he went to live in the old Norfolk house. Hers was not a stately or a gracious or an all pervading feminine presence; she demanded no court, no care, no carpet for her way; she could come and go unnoticed and unattended; you could overlook her—though she never overlooked you or anything else. She had her points certainly, she was loyal to the core—she would be loyal to him, he was sure, in this ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... him a fortune in the world of musical comedy. His salary was a hundred a week; better comedians have earned less. On the present occasion he was in the midst of a double row of fashionable hats, and beneath the hats were the faces of fourteen feminine relatives and acquaintances. These hats performed the function of 'dressing' the house. The principal player endeavoured to behave as though under the illusion that he was alone in his glory, but ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... the traits accounted distinctively feminine, and the natural and ever-increasing result of steady suppression of all stronger ones stood in the way of any resistance. Intellectual qualities, forever at a discount, repressed development save in rarest cases. The mass of women had neither power nor ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... chaffing the Philosopher and poking fun at the phrase-mongers, hair-splitters, and other wasters of time. They took a childish delight in his broad smile of embarrassment at being teased in the Frau Major's presence, and she, out of feminine politeness, came to the Philosopher's rescue, while casting amorous looks at the others who could deal such pert ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... Letters, we see how the Mind infected with the complicated Distemper of Envy, Insolence and Malice, can blot the fair Paper, and poison it with its Venom. In Arabella Harlowe, the sly Insinuations of feminine Envy break forth in every taunting Word, and she could "speak Daggers, tho' she dared not use them." But, to imitate our Author, in turning suddenly from this detestable Picture, how does every Line of the good Mrs. Norton shew us a Mind inured to, and patiently submitting ...
— Remarks on Clarissa (1749) • Sarah Fielding
... acquaintance, could compare with herself in personal attractions; and, though it might suit her husband to marry a dozen wives, she knew of no one, beside Mabel, whose influence she could really dread. So keen an interest, however, had she taken in the beauty, winning manners, kindness, and feminine gentleness of our heroine, that when jealousy came to chill these feelings, it had rather lent strength to that interest; and, under its wayward influence, had actually been one of the strongest ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... his servants never express any alacrity in his business. In consequence of his affluence, the king succeeds in obtaining great honours. Indeed, affluence conceals his very sins, like robes concealing such parts of a feminine form as should not be exposed to the view. Those with whom the king has formerly quarrelled become filled with grief at the sight of his new affluence. Like dogs they once more take service under him, and though they wait only for ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... bestow upon this most intricate and masterly analysis of the great feminine revolution of the sixteenth century ... There are chapters that we find ourselves wishing everybody might read; the admirable essay, for instance, on the 'Embroidery of Life,' and that other chapter discussing the influence of ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... I should say, shows himself a psychologist in Strife, a character-drawer in The Silver Box and Justice. Sir Arthur Pinero, a character-drawer of great versatility, becomes a psychologist in some of his studies of feminine types—in Iris, in Letty, in the luckless heroine of Mid-Channel. Mr. Clyde Fitch had, at least, laudable ambitions in the direction of psychology. Becky in The Truth, and Jinny in The Girl with the Green Eyes, in so far as they are successfully drawn, really do mean ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... smooth cheek was begrimed and flushed, and the coal dust on his eyelids, like the black pencilling of a make-up, enhanced the liquid brilliance of the whites, giving to his youthful face something of a feminine, exotic and fascinating aspect. When the ship pitched he would with hasty movements of his hands screw ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... think the sex feminine has marriage on the brain," I exclaimed, somewhat heatedly. "My Aunt Jessica was worrying me about it the day before yesterday. As if it ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... few women, even of a low and reckless class, have been bigamists? It is because the feminine soul has a profound respect, a little less than religious veneration, for the institution of marriage; because it instinctively recoils from trampling upon the form which consecrates love; because in very ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... there are male nations and female nations, and that Germany was a male nation—certainly the German has less of that heaven-sent feminine quality of intuition than other peoples. The autocrat, never mingling with the plain people of all walks of life, finds the ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... gave an almost imperceptible shrug of her shoulders, expressing clearly her absolute indifference to other people's tastes so long as she satisfied her own. Mary was indeed decided in most of her opinions. Although essentially feminine in most respects, she and the set to which she had belonged at Girton, had established it as a principle to their own satisfaction, that feminine weaknesses were to be sternly discouraged as the main cause of the position ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... in the midst of other thoughts and feelings she could not help seeing that great changes had come over Miss Fortescue, as she called herself, in addition to those which were consequent upon her resumption of feminine attire. She was pale and thin, and looked ten years older than she used to look. Evidently she had undergone great suffering. There were marks of deep grief on her face. Much Edith marveled to see that one who had acted so basely was capable of suffering such ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... Grace on her own account, as I afterwards learned. It would be attaching too much credit to Clawbonny, to say that either of the girls had not improved by this association; though it was scarcely possible to make Grace more feminine and lady-like than she had been made by nature. The effect on Lucy was simply to put a little reserve on her native frankness, and sturdy honesty; though candour compels me to say, that mingling with ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... pink paper frills which were then invariably served at the suppers of the Lichfield German Club,—as acceptable enough, upon a conscious holiday, but wholly incongruous with the slippered ease of home. When you had an inclination for feminine society, you shaved and changed your clothes and thought up an impromptu or so against emergency, and went forth to seek it. That was natural; but to have a petticoated young person infesting your house, hourly, was as preposterous ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... Spanish-American countries, defeats its own ends to some extent. The men of these countries, whilst outwardly courteous and correcto towards their women, to an almost excessive degree, have not the real respect towards them which the less polite Anglo-Saxon entertains towards his feminine world. Nor does this too artificial barrier conduce to any rigid condition of morality. It rather tends to encourage clandestine courtship ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... the name Realonda. This latter name has been said to be an allusion to royal blood in the family, but other indications suggest that it might have been a careless mistake made in writing by Rosa Realonda, whose name sometimes appears written as Redonda. There is a family Redondo (Redonda in its feminine form) Alonzo of Ilokano origin, the same stock as their traditions give for Mrs. Rizal's father, some of whose members were to be found in the neighborhood of Binan and Pasay. One member of this family was akin in spirit to Jose Rizal, for he ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... carrying out the policy of the department, and their duties are wide. No man is allowed to visit a female licence-holder or supervisee, mainly for the reason that his identity might be suspected. So the women detectives take this in hand, and with feminine tact manage to know all about their protegees, to give a warning here, sympathetic advice there, in a way that would be difficult for ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... feminine sex, God loves it. A damsel of sixteen, who is not weighed down by armour and weapons, even though she be bred to endure hardness, is not that a matter beyond nature? The enemy flees before her. Many eyes ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... personal. The two land-lasses had come to supper in their tunics and breeches, while Rachel Henderson and Janet had now both put on the coloured overalls which disguised the masculine garb beneath, and gave them something of the usual feminine air. Rachel's overall, indeed, was both pretty and artistic, embroidered a little here and there, and showing a sunburnt throat ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... behooved their strange guardian to take some thought for their instruction. So far as little Elsie was concerned, however, he seemed utterly indifferent to her having any cultivation: having imbibed no modern ideas respecting feminine capacities and privileges, but regarding woman, whether in the bud or in the blossom, as the plaything of man's idler moments, and the helpmeet—but in a humble capacity—of his daily life. He sometimes bade ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Whittaker and other apologists for Mary, is to be found in their tone. A forger in those coarse days would have made Mary write in some Semiramis or Roxana vein, utterly alien to the tenderness, the delicacy, the pitiful confusion of mind, the conscious weakness, the imploring and most feminine trust which makes the letters, to those who—as I do—believe in them, more pathetic than any fictitious sorrows which poets could invent. More than one touch, indeed, of utter self-abasement, in the second letter, is so unexpected, so subtle, and yet so true to the heart ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... feminine intuition, comprehended her reserved lover, honored his motives and rested satisfied with being so deeply loved, trusting all their unknown ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... the equestrian seats and senatorial boxes had all filled, nowhere could I descry any feminine shape at all suggestive of Vedia. I was still peering and sweeping the senatorial seats with my eyes, hoping to espy her, when the bugles announced the Emperor's approach and the audience stood up. My eyes were on the Imperial ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... sat down like a great dog, watching this strange proceeding with mild interest, but the lioness, filled with feminine curiosity, followed sniffing at Higgs, who looked over his shoulder. Taking off his battered helmet, he threw it at the beast, hitting her on the head. She growled, then seized the helmet, playing ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... and fear lest Johnny fail and drop out of school, or Mary show unexpected weakness and have to take a grade over again; uncounted thousands of teachers would be saved much gnashing of teeth and uttering of mild feminine imprecations under their breath; and, best of all, the children themselves would be saved from pencil-biting, tears, worries, heartburns, arrested development, shame ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... you mean only a delicate, compact, penetrative nudge with the toe of a tight-fitting gaiter,—addressed rather to the conscience than the sole, to the sensibilities rather than the senses. The kick masculine is coarse, boorish, unmitigated, predicable only of Calibans. The kick feminine is expressive, suggestive, terse, electric,—an indispensable instrument in domestic discipline, as women will bear me witness, and not at all incompatible with beauty, grace, and amiability. But, right or wrong, after all this interval of rest and reflection, in full view of all the circumstances, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... only-begotten of the Father, full of grace." Meditate on those words. "Full of grace,"—of that spirit which we, like the old heathens, consider rather a feminine than a masculine excellence; the spirit, which, as St. James says of God the Father, gives simply and upbraideth not; gives gracefully, as we ourselves say—in the right and happy use of the adverb; does not spoil its gifts by throwing them in the teeth of the giver, but gives ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... impotent rage passed over the country when the nature and acceptance of the Japanese Ultimatum became generally known. The Chinese, always an emotional people responding with quasi- feminine volubility to oppressive acts, cried aloud at the ignominy of the diplomacy which had so cruelly crucified them. One and all declared that the day of shame which had been so harshly imposed upon them would never be forgotten and that ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... wanted to know the plan of campaign for the evening. This was a matter on which Mrs. Tibbs and the widow could not agree, but an adjournment to a box in the meantime was accepted as a compromise. Even there, however, the feminine warfare was continued, to the final triumph of Mrs. Tibbs, who, being prevailed upon to sing, not only distracted the nerves of her listeners, but prolonged her melody to such an extent that the widow was robbed of ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... the middle of the stream, he could see a bathing place well enclosed by bamboo. He could hear, merry laughter and feminine accents coming from that direction. Still further down the stream he could see a bamboo bridge and some men in bathing. In the meantime, a multitude of servants were bustling about the improvised fireplaces, some engaged in plucking ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... placing in the chief's hands an open jewel-box containing a variety of the choicest jewellery, I requested by signs his permission to offer them to the ladies. The elder ones imitated his example, and graciously accepted one or two tasteful feminine ornaments, of far less beauty and value than any of the few splendid jewels that adorned their belts and clasped their robes at the shoulder, or fastened their veils. The white-robed maidens shrank back shyly until the box was pressed upon them, ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... simplicity and be ruined; and then I'll marry him off to some nice well-bred pink-face, like Jeff Saxton's pretty cousin—who may turn him into a beastly money-grubber; and I'm monkeying with destiny, and I ought to be slapped, and I realize it, and I can't help it, and all my latent instinct as a feminine meddler is aroused, and—golly, I almost went off ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... pathetic touch of his old gallantry in the gesture which accompanied the words, and a bright flash of his eyes as Marishka came forward into the light and stood before him. Even today the Emperor was not immune from the charms of feminine beauty. Marishka did as she was bidden, sitting upon the edge of her chair before the old man, gazing at him ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... flesh is hollowed, not so much with the emaciation of monastic vigils as with the athletic exercise of wrestlings in the throes of prophecy. The face, on the whole, is ugly, but not repellent; and, in spite of its great strength, it shows signs of feminine sensibility. Like the faces of Cicero and Demosthenes, it seems the fit machine for oratory. But the furnaces hidden away behind that skull, beneath that cowl, have made it haggard with a fire not to be found in the serener ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... debonair of all her suitors; and she, with an engaging smile, swung a responsive tail at him. Crest she had none, and, of course, her tail could not compare with his in beauty. The higher we get in the natural orders, the more distinctly does decoration become a feminine necessity. Her coat was a pale olive green; her front light orange. Her ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... Newman under all conceivable circumstances was bound to be a priest. There was priestliness writ large upon his countenance. His manner, his tone, his beautiful style, with something at once pleading and threatening, and a kind of feminine attenuation in its vibrant periods, ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... an unbounded influence did this capable and high-spirited woman acquire over not only her devoted husband but the circle of the court, that she became the constant adviser in all important affairs; and that she might not be less thoroughly feminine, I am glad to see it recorded that she introduced improved modes of dress and manners among her ladies. The emperor told his priests one day that until he had married this paragon he had not known what marriage meant. But ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... arranged in a varied, eloquent harmony that is wholly indescribable. Its cones are purple, and hang free, in the form of little tassels two inches long from all the sprays from top to bottom. Though exquisitely delicate and feminine in expression, it grows best where the snow lies deepest, far up in the region of storms, at an elevation of from 9000 to 9500 feet, on frosty northern slopes; but it is capable of growing considerably higher, say 10,500 feet. The tallest specimens, growing in sheltered ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... creatures you men are!" said Mistress Elizabeth with feminine superiority. "Doubtless he will be along. Give him sufficient time. Now, do not worry, husband mine, but ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... Ramsbotham as a marriageable quantity would have occurred to few men. Endowed by Nature with every feminine quality calculated to inspire liking, she had, on the other hand, been disinherited of every attribute calculated to excite passion. An ugly woman has for some men an attraction; the proof is ever present to our eyes. ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... his years that made him feel old, for he was only sixty, and many men are hale and strong at that time of life; in all probability, it was that early injury to his spine which affected the constitution of his mind as well as his body, and predisposed him, in the opinion of some at least, to a feminine morbidness of conscience. He had shaken off somewhat of this since the affair with Mr Bradshaw; he was simpler and more dignified than he had been for several years before, during which time he had been anxious and uncertain in his manner, and ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Rnine had foretold, the duel had not lasted longer than a few minutes but it was she who had succumbed, thanks to her feminine nerves and at the very moment when she felt entitled to believe that ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... Her failing health, however, during the past year caused an entire cessation of social courtesies. A woman of remarkably strong character, dominant will, and unscrupulous as to methods, she is the most perfect example, in juxtaposition, of the masculine woman, as the Emperor is of the feminine man. ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... he seems to have loved her with an affection as genuine and as watchful as that which he showed to his parents. Like all his connections, this, too, was marred by strange pettinesses and curious contradictions; but one can scarcely grudge to his sickly sensitive nature the anodyne of feminine sympathy. Why so close and tender a friendship never ripened into marriage is an inquiry that may be consigned to the limbo of questions insoluble. It is enough that in the checkered chronicle of the loves of the poets, "blue-eyed Patty Blount" has an immortality almost ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... more delicate capacity. Queen Amitsi was the king's chief consort. Whether she had dabbled in some intrigue of the palace, or had been guilty of unfaithfulness in act or in intention, or had been mixed up in one of those feminine dramas which so frequently disturb the peace of harems, we do not know. At any rate, Papi considered it necessary to proceed against her, and appointed Uni to judge the case. Aided only by his secretary, he drew up ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... for this exuberance of feminine rapture, the warriors interposed, banished the women and children to a distance, and squatted on the ground around the French, row within row of swarthy forms and eager faces, "as if," says Cartier, "we were going to act a play." Then appeared a troop of women, each bringing a mat, with which they ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... dimple on the face of earth, The seal of beauty, and the shrine of mirth; Nature is delicate and graceful there, The place's genius feminine and fair: The winds are awed, nor dare to breathe aloud; The air seems never to have borne a cloud, Save where volcanoes send to heaven their curled And solemn smokes, like ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... no longer be mysterious words, "signifying nothing," but recognized signs, by which the children will understand and express definite ideas. The next thing you have to teach them is, the distinction betwixt singular and plural, and, if you think proper, masculine and feminine; but before you talk to the children about plural number and masculine gender, &c., let them be made acquainted with the realities of which these hard-sounding ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... thrown on the matter by them. But it was thought that Bucklaw's obstinate silence on the subject favoured the supposition of the chastisement having been inflicted by his rival. It is but fair to give the unhappy victim (who was by all accounts a most gentle and feminine creature) the benefit of an ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... a letter into Kennedy's hand, a dainty perfumed and monogramed little missive addressed in a feminine hand. It was such a letter as comes by the thousand to the police in the course of a year, though seldom from ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... on her bow might have produced. Preserved through her very weakness, ignorance, and simplicity of purpose, the dingey had all the security of a drifting boat, yet retained a certain gentle but persistent guidance. In this feminine fashion she made enough headway to carry her abreast of the Point, where she met the reflux current sweeping round it that carried her well along into the channel, now sluggish with the turn of the tide. After half an hour's pulling, she was delighted ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... these burdened sisters of mine, whom the world, the wise, white world, loves to affront and ridicule and wantonly to insult. I have known the women of many lands and nations,—I have known and seen and lived beside them, but none have I known more sweetly feminine, more unswervingly loyal, more desperately earnest, and more instinctively pure in body and in soul than the daughters of my black mothers. This, then,—a little thing—to their memory ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... person of Miss Charlotte Yonge we discover the same virtues, but in a softer and more feminine mould. Her heroes are for the most part refined and cultivated young men, actuated by ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... truth were known, that the maiden found the situation almost as trying as her lover, for there was a most tantalizing element of uncertainty in it, and uncertainty is especially grievous to the feminine heart. But at last her duty as hostess no longer severely holding her, she left the room, ostensibly to assist in clearing away the tea-things, and was no sooner out of sight than she skimmed like a swallow to her own chamber and there ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... their subject to bow cordially across to the father of Ruth, and when he endeavored to say something to them Mrs. Morris moved toward him. Isabel took a step or two more in the direction of the Winslow elm and its inviting bench, but then she also turned. She was of a moderate feminine stature and perfect outline, her step elastic, her mien self-contained, and her face so young that a certain mature tone in her mellow voice was often the cause of Ruth's fond laughter. As winsome, too, she was, as she was ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable
... quality in his songs to which we can not but direct attention—and this is their almost feminine purity. The propensities have had their laureates; and genius, alas! has often defiled its angel wings by contact with the sensual and the impure; but Morris has never attempted to robe vice in beauty; and as has been well remarked, his lays can bring to the cheek of purity no ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... opened and the admitted moonlight showed him the entrance of one—two feminine apparitions, followed by that of a man. For a moment they stood in the hall, speaking with one another in an undertone. What they said Mr. Morgan could not hear—their voices, too, were too low to be recognized—but he had no doubt at all regarding ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... ahead and be d—d,' and came away in high dudgeon." And so matters stood up to the last we had heard from Fort Phoenix, except for one letter which Mrs. Frazer wrote to Mrs. Turner at Sandy, perhaps purely out of feminine mischief, because a year or so previous Baker, as a junior second lieutenant, was doing the devoted to Mrs. Turner, a species of mildly amatory apprenticeship which most of the young officers seemed impelled to serve on first joining. "We are having ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... poem is Life; being only perfect in structure When with the masculine rhymes mingled the feminine are. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the sand-spit, crowded with heterogeneous piles of merchandise and buzzing with men, she stopped long enough to shake hands with her ferryman. And though such a proceeding on the part of his feminine patrons was certainly unusual, Del Bishop squared it easily with the fact that she ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... of fact, Isabella d' Este witnessed the sacking of Rome without so much as thinking of nervous prostration. This was nearly four hundred years ago, but it is the high-water mark of feminine fortitude. To live through such days and nights of horror, and emerge therefrom with unimpaired vitality, and unquenched love for a beautiful and dangerous world, is to rob the words "shock" and "strain" of all dignity and meaning. To resume at once the interrupted duties and pleasures of ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... up two ladies are discovered in the morning-room of Honeysuckle Lodge engaged in work of a feminine nature. Miss Alice Prendergast is doing something delicate with a crochet-hook, but it is obvious that her thoughts are far away. She sighs at intervals, and occasionally lays down her work and presses both ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... her a sort of miniature and feminine edition of the Luke Raeburn whom she remembered eight-and-twenty years before in their Scottish home. When Rose had gone into the back drawing room to fetch her crewels, she drew Erica toward her, and kissing her again, said in a low, almost ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... does, I must say words something like these. To tell the truth, my dear, I never admired Priscilla more than I did last night. I encouraged her to give up her classics for the present and to devote herself to modern languages and to those accomplishments which are considered more essentially feminine. As I did so I had a picture before me, in which I saw Priscilla crowned with love, the support and blessing of her three little sisters. The picture was a very bright one, Maggie, and your crown of bay looks quite tawdry beside the other crown which ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... stimulate her to fresh exertions; and, I fondly hope, may be the means of placing her name in the same rank by those of Lady Morgan, Madame Tussaud, Mrs. Glasse, the Invisible Lady, and other national ornaments of the feminine species.—[PUNCH. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... in good society to be educated. In 1817, the Couvent des Anglaises was in vogue, the very convent which had served as a prison for the mother and grandmother of Aurore. The three years she spent there in that "big feminine family, where every one was as kind as God," she considered the most peaceful and happy time of her life. The pages she devotes to them in her Histoire de ma vie have all the freshness of an oasis. She describes most lovingly ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic |
