"Illegitimacy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the day when I learn that I am to become a father without having intended it. Morality arises out of the proper or improper performance of social obligations; and I have sometimes wondered whether society's most insane treatment of illegitimacy would not have compelled me into a misalliance with my 'mistress,' as you call her, had ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... ones who evaded the sacred responsibility thus laid upon them, and left their offspring to remain under the badge of shame. When carefully looked at it was but a scant cure, and threw the responsibility of illegitimacy where it did not belong, but it was a mighty step nevertheless. The distance from zero to ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... with so small a matter. The word coach—let it be whose it would—or coach-man, or coach-horse, or coach-hire, could never be named in the family, but he constantly complained of carrying this vile mark of illegitimacy upon the door of his own; he never once was able to step into the coach, or out of it, without turning round to take a view of the arms, and making a vow at the same time, that it was the last time he would ever set his foot ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... Similarly, though the Eugenics Review, the organ of the society, frequently laments the 'selfishness' of the refusal of maternity by healthy and educated women of the professional classes, I have yet to learn that it has made any official pronouncement on the English illegitimacy laws or any organized effort toward defending the ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... ascertained very easily beforehand what would happen, or have contrived to keep her away from Dublin. It was understood when he took the Great Seal that he declined being made a peer, on account of the illegitimacy of his eldest son. Half the world had never heard of Lady Sugden, or knew anything of her history; and as she is an excellent woman, charitable and kind-hearted, I fancy she has moved without obstruction in his natural circle of society. He went to Ireland before any Lord-Lieutenant ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... Queen treacherously detaches Mendozo, who loves her, from Philip, and although the Moors are at first beaten back they now gain the advantage and Philip is captured. At a general assembly of the nobles the Queen relates the false tale of Philip's illegitimacy and asserts that the Cardinal is his father. She privately bids Mendozo acknowledge this and so gain the crown, but he refuses to support the lie and is promptly arrested as a traitor. Abdelazer now brings forward ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... Ptolemy, who was reigning in Cyprus, was not even so well treated. The Romans passed a law making that wealthy island a Roman province, no doubt upon the plea of the will of Alexander II. and the king's illegitimacy; and they sent Cato, rather against his will, to turn Ptolemy out of his kingdom. Ptolemy gave up the island without Cato being called upon to use force, and in return the Romans made him high priest in the temple of the Paphian Venus; ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... heraldry is the baton: this denotes illegitimacy. It is borne in the escutcheons of the dukes that assume the royal arms as the illegitimate descendants of King ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... the report that the birth of Demaratus was spurious. The Spartans attached the greatest value to legitimacy,—they sent to consult the Pythian—and Cleomenes, through the aid of Colon, a powerful citizen of Delphi, bribed the oracle to assert the illegitimacy of his foe. Demaratus was deposed. Sinking at once into the rank of a private citizen, he was elected to some inferior office. His enemy, Leotychides, now upon his throne, sent him, by way of insult, a message ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... have appeared since his death? Do you remember? I have just got 'Les Enfants de l'Amour,' by Sue. I suppose he will prove in it the illegitimacy of legitimacy, and vice versa. Sue is in decided decadence, for the rest, since he has taken to ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... large, justly dreading a disputed succession, with all its long-experienced evils, in the event of Henry's leaving behind him no offspring but a daughter whom he had lately set aside on the ground of illegitimacy, rejoiced in the prospect of a male heir to the crown. The populace of London, captivated, as usual, by the splendors of a coronation, were also delighted with the youth, beauty, and ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... illegitimacy," added Marindin, "is to be born into a family already containing the full number it is licensed for. This happens particularly in rich families, introductions into which are naturally most sought after. It is still a moot ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... tale is Gilbert Potter, a young farmer of Kennett, on whose birth there is, in the belief of his neighbors, the stain of illegitimacy, though his mother, with whom he lives somewhat solitarily and apart from the others, denies the guilt imputed to her, while some mystery forbids her to reveal her husband's name. Gilbert is in love with Martha, the daughter of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... another made your wife; but in a mistaken kindness you put this utterly beyond my power. Too much has been required, and I am found—wanting! If even the most miserable fate that can befall an innocent woman; if the curse of illegitimacy were upon me, I could bear that thought even, and acknowledge the justice and wisdom that did not consider me a fit associate for one whose birth is recognized by a parent's ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... population of sixty-six millions. He found the German woman not the mild and simple 'hausfrau' of folk lore, but a virile woman with a creed that the production of children was her first duty, not only to her husband and herself, but to her country. He knew that in Germany illegitimacy was no disgrace, and he saw Germany's population increase ten millions in the course ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... incompatible ends of rapidly accumulating gold while frantically pursuing pleasure, there is an amount of immorality unequalled in any capital in Europe. In the whole German Empire the average of illegitimacy is ten per cent. but in Berlin the average for the last few years is twenty per cent. Out of every five children born in Berlin each year one is illegitimate! It is questionable whether the increasing demands of the army and navy require such ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... large as might be imagined, because the people were well behaved. An official who had had police experience in the north of Japan declared that the south was more "moral and more civilised and had higher tastes." In Ehime, for example, there was very little illegitimacy and fewer children still-born than in any other prefecture. Nevertheless four offences against women had occurred in villages in Ehime within the preceding ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... three divisions—thirty years at Florence, nearly twenty years at Milan, then nineteen years of wandering, till he sinks to rest under the protection of Francis the First at the Chateau de Clou. The dishonour of illegitimacy hangs over his birth. Piero Antonio, his father, was of a noble Florentine house, of Vinci in the Val d'Arno, and Leonardo, brought up delicately among the true children of that house, was the love-child of his youth, with the keen, puissant nature such children ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... the race. This step lies in inculcating in our boys and girls high ideals of parenthood. This is more effective than legal prohibition of certain forms of marriage which cannot prevent matings, and adds the curse of illegitimacy to the other handicaps of the children of such unions. The first step in this process has already been reasonably well accomplished. Both our boys and our girls are in love with health. A good husband and a good wife ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... tenantry, the result might be a considerable benefit. For one thing, there might be an improved class of dwellings. I find a great want of proper arrangement in the dwellings here, and a proper division of the sexes, and to that I attribute in a great measure the amount of illegitimacy and immorality which prevails. I don't think the houses which are occupied by the common class of people here are equal to these occupied by people of the same rank of life in other parts of the country. I have seen several ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... over in his mind and had even taken the first steps to bring it about. It was the more difficult because the father of the Duc de Chartres was infinitely proud of his rank, and the mother belonged to a nation which abhorred illegitimacy and, misalliances, and was indeed of a character to forbid all hope of her ever ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... ban upon any woman who, in accordance with their religion and their country's laws, has formed this sacred alliance with a man and has lived with him for years. Nor can it be right to brand with illegitimacy the children born of such ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... Queen Elizabeth (Vol. ii., p. 393.; Vol. iii., p. 11.).—In Hubback on the Evidence of Succession, p. 253, after some remarks on the word "natural," not of itself in former times denoting illegitimacy, this passage occurs: ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various
... and acquiring much property, yet that ex-slaves, rather than the younger, educated set, formed the bulk of colored property-holders. Figures revealed among the colored population a frightful increase of illegitimacy and of flagrant crimes. It seemed that crimes against women, almost unknown before the war but now increasing at an alarming rate, proceeded not from ex-slaves, but from the smart new generation. Lynching for these ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... no right to the painful feeling of illegitimacy, for her mother was her father's wife, and therefore she has not, what indeed I can conceive to be, a bitter source of wounded pride and incessant rational mortification. The Duke of Sussex married Lady Augusta Murray, and that, I ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble |
