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Maternal   /mətˈərnəl/   Listen
Maternal

adjective
1.
Characteristic of a mother.
2.
Relating to or derived from one's mother.
3.
Relating to or characteristic of or befitting a parent.  Synonyms: parental, paternal.
4.
Related on the mother's side.  Synonyms: enate, enatic.



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"Maternal" Quotes from Famous Books



... he could not get out of the box, he snuggled among the Kittens, and when they began to take their evening meal he very soon decided to join them. The old Cat was puzzled. The hunter instinct had been dominant, but absence of hunger had saved the Rabbit and given the maternal instinct a chance to appear. The result was that the Rabbit became a member of the family, and was thenceforth guarded and fed with ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton

... of the lake and of the cabins. This was harder for the aching hearts of the mothers than even the terrible parting from their little ones. To see the smoke of the cabins, to awake from their troubled dreams, thinking they heard the cry of their starving babes, to stifle the maternal yearnings which prompted them to turn back and perish with their darlings clasped to their breasts, were trials almost unbearable. The next day they traveled six miles. They crossed the summit, and the camps were no longer visible. They were in the solemn fastnesses ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan

... that primitive pioneer life kept her in the cabin, which was the castle, and, while her labor was doubtless not less than her husband's, it had the sanctity of its seclusion and its maternal ministries to life. In the new industrialism that has invited the daughters of the Polish women harvesters into the factories yonder there is this constant and increasing concern which is insisting upon a living wage, wholesome sanitary environment, and on shorter hours ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... Leon's maternal grandmother was Mencia Alvarez Osorio. From these circumstances, it appears possible that some relationship existed between the dedicatee of La Perfecta Casada and the author of that treatise. Luis de Leon had four maternal uncles, ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly

... Asmodeus for the gentleness with which she holds him in her power? Some of our bonds are light to bear. We glory in them, and hold up our gyves to show them to the world. Tommy may be a little shamefaced when his playmates jeer at the maternal tie; but he will walk forth, glowing with pride and joy, to parade his self-woven fetters ostentatiously in the sight of men. When you had done some such foolish thing yourself, did not your young mates gather round to view, with wondering and eager eyes, the result of your own handiwork at the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various

... the Countess respect his advice that she graciously waived her maternal rights so far as actually following the text with her eyes went; while her daughter, after a little demur, was induced to depart this one step further from her ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston

... induced by many causes due to the mother, father, and child. Among maternal causes may be mentioned any serious disease, especially fevers, when accompanied by a rash on the skin, such as smallpox, measles, scarlet fever. It is hard for a pregnant woman to go through one of these diseases, without having an abortion. Syphilis, ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... his book, from which most of the above facts are drawn, denies emphatically the statement so commonly made that Hindoo mothers throw their infants into the Ganges. He justly says that the maternal instinct is as strong with them as with others; and in addition to that, their religion teaches them to offer sacrifices for the life ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... vanity so infinitely hard and robust is exquisitely diverting. Mme. Recamier put herself so prodigiously out of her way; she who was indolent became active; she who was utterly insensible to children became maternal; she who was of delicate health underwent what only a vigorous constitution would undertake. But all in vain; she either did not or would not see that M. Guizot would not be second where M. de Chateaubriand was first. Besides, she split against another rock, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... filled second places, and filled them very contentedly. She had never known what it was to be absolutely first with any one. Her mother's death had occurred during her infancy, so that she had not even the most shadowy remembrance of that maternal love and tenderness which she used sometimes to try to imagine, although she ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay

... married her father's sister. Her father had been an officer in the army, and had sailed from England with the then Governor of New South Wales. After he had been in Sydney a few months he sent for his daughter, whom he had left behind him with a maternal aunt, her mother having died some years before. She reached Sydney to find her father dead. His Excellency was very kind to her, and she found very many sympathetic friends, but her home was in England, and to it she was returning in the White Star, under ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell

... crime!" he commented. "Saucer from your maternal ancestors' tea set used for a grease dish. I am afraid I'd better sink it in the lake. She'd feel worse to see it than never to know. Wish I could clean off the grease! I could do better if it was hot. I can set it on ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter

... by his wife; who, seated upon the sofa with a young infant of three years old in her lap, was calmly watching its sleeping face with inexpressible delight. She now left off her maternal studies; and looked up at her husband, ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie

... window. Manuel Rodriguez painted steadily. The Queen sat still, with lifted face and eyes strained into distance. She sighed and came back from wastes where she would be Christian, oh, where she would be Christian! and began with a tender, maternal look ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston

... instances which occurred to others; but I shall only state one more, as occurring to a defenceless woman. My maternal grandmother occupied at the time of that rebellion the castle of Dungulph, in the county Wexford, the family residence. It was an old stronghold regularly fortified and surrounded by a moat, with a drawbridge; and ...
— Facts for the Kind-Hearted of England! - As to the Wretchedness of the Irish Peasantry, and the Means for their Regeneration • Jasper W. Rogers

... babies on their backs instead of in their arms. A baby is, however, not so for very long in Japan. Very young Japanese girls may be seen carrying their little baby brothers and sisters behind their backs, and thus learning their maternal duties in advance. The position of women in Japan, married women, is not so satisfactory as it ought to be. The laws in regard to divorce are, I think, too easy, and a Japanese possesses facilities for getting rid of his wife which does not ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery

... days later the knowledge that she herself was to become a mother was forced upon her attention, and was a little irksome. Of necessity her new interests would be interrupted. Though she did not question that she would perform maternal duties fitly and fully, they seemed to her less peculiarly adapted to her than concerns of the intellect and the spirit. However, the possession of a little daughter was more precious to her than she had expected, and the consciousness that the tiny doll ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant

... had inflicted on the greater number of those who had become Protestants: having made his way to America with his wife, he had settled in this then remote region; but dreading persecution, he had not attempted to promulgate his opinions beyond his own family. My maternal grandfather, when he married Donna Teresina Serrano, had, through her instruction, become a Protestant. Thus, in the heart of South America, those principles were cherished which, as was fondly hoped, would spread around them when liberty should be ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston

... known to tell an untruth, but at the same time she would never confess to a fault. Imprisoned often for punishment in a room, she would steadfastly refuse to admit that she had done wrong, and, maternal patience exhausted, the mutinous little culprit had commonly to be released impenitent and unconfessed. Indeed her wildness acquired for her the name of "Little Mustang;" as, later on, her fondness for poring over books beyond her childish years that of "Little Newspaper." ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar

... are so nice," said Daisy, with such a funny mixture of maternal fondness and housewifely pride that Aunt Jo could only smile ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... occupation kept him away from home much of the time during my boyhood, and as a consequence I grew up under the sole guidance and training of my mother, whose excellent common sense and clear discernment in every way fitted her for such maternal duties. When old enough I was sent to the village school, which was taught by an old-time Irish "master"—one of those itinerant dominies of the early frontier—who, holding that to spare the rod was to spoil the child, if unable to detect the ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... to know. To her, sociology and evolution and all "isms" were new-fangled inventions and murky with offense; to touch them was defilement, and in disclosing them to John Mayrant I was a corrupter of youth. She gathered it all up into a word that was radiant with a kind of lovely maternal gentleness:— ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister

... prosperity, and happiness, will redound to the general good of the whole. As it now stands, its still miserable condition is as great and constant a danger to Great Britain as it is a reproach and a shame upon the maternal government which suffers the child, for whose session it would stake its all, to continue in a state of almost hopeless poverty, materially and intellectually, and to struggle unaided in its ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... the child without enthusiasm. The little stranger was indifferent to him; he would have preferred adopting a boy. The mistress was delighted. Her maternal instincts, so long stifled, developed fully. She made plans for the future. Her energy returned; she spoke loudly and firmly. But in her appearance there was revealed an inward contentment never remarked before, which made her sweeter and more benevolent. She no longer spoke of retiring ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... the Old Testament. They are all summed up in the eloquent tribute to motherhood in the words of King Lemuel in the last chapter of the Book of Proverbs. It must be remembered, however, that such ideals did not belong to the Jews alone, that Plutarch shows many pictures of maternal fidelity and wifely devotion, that Greek and Roman history have their Cornelia, Iphigenia, ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope

... the name of my maternal grandmother. What could the woman know of my maternal grandmother? It did not occur to me, I believe, to wonder what occasion George Washington could find to concern himself about my dying or my living. There stood the uncanny ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... her mother and her grandmother and her great-grandmother and the whole line of maternal ancestors had been under suppression and had attired themselves according to the directions of a religious Prophet, who had been ignorant concerning color effects. And yet, now that Kalora had escaped from the cage, the original instinct ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade

... Claverias; her word was worth quite as much as Don Antolin's, the Silver Stick was afraid of her, bending before the powerful protection that they all guessed stood behind the poor old woman. In the days when her father, Gabriel's maternal grandfather, was sacristan in the Cathedral the functions of acolyte were exercised by a small boy, nephew of one of the beneficiaries of the Cathedral, who ended by paying for his education in the seminary. This little acolyte of half a century before was now a prince ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... cannot speak to you any more of myself; not of my past life, nor of my character, nor of an affection almost maternal on one side, filial on mine, which you have already seriously changed—an effect upon my life which must explain my use of the word "sacrifice." You have already rendered me forgetful, if not ungrateful; does that satisfy you? Oh, speak! Say to me one word, and I will love you till ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac

... came home, a gay, young girl, who should have brought sunshine and happiness into her home. But from the hour she returned a strange anxiety seemed to possess the others. Mrs. Carrol watched over her with sleepless care, was evidently full of maternal pride in the lovely creature, and began to dream dreams about her future. She seemed to wish to keep the sisters apart, and said to Christie, as if ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott

... once the Indian mother dwelt, Cradling her infant on the blast-rocked tree, Feeling the vengeance that her warrior felt, And teaching war to childhood on her knee— Now dwells the christian mother: O! her heart Has learned far better the maternal part— Yet, in deep love, in passion for her child, Who has surpass'd thine own, wild ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas

... hope of receiving benefit from his native air."[9] No doubt the mercer was willing enough to cancel the indentures of an apprentice so unsatisfactory as Gay probably was. Anyhow, Gay returned to Barnstaple, and stayed awhile with his maternal ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville

... mound, which may contain many cartloads of material, but each bird appears to have a particular area in which to deposit her eggs. The chicks apparently earn their own living immediately they emerge fully fledged from the mound, and are so far independent of maternal care that they are sometimes found long distances from the nearest possible birthplace, scratching away vigorously and flying when frightened with remarkable vigour and speed, though but a few hours old. I come gladly to the conclusion that the megapode is a sagacious bird, not ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... of Stockport, one of the first samples sent up of municipal and representative reform achievement. Mr Cobden is an example of successful industry when translated to a proper sphere of action. Fortunate in the maternal relationship of a Manchester warehouseman, domiciliated in the classic regions of cotton and Cheapside, he was taken as an "odd lad" into the establishment. In process of time he was advanced to the more honourable grade of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... which is spiritual. The union of both these desires into one passion of thought, act and feeling is the fine quintessence of this kind of love; but the latter desire alone is the primal motive of all the other forms of love, from friendship and maternal love to love of country, of mankind, of ideas, ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... those worthy "select men," I imagine, were not much better informed than herself. Sure I am, that any protection they could offer me, would not, in the least degree, shield me from the secret intrigue, the affectionate, maternal ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson

... softened her tone a little with regard to her protestations of innocence. She probably reflected, that the obstinacy of Queen Catharine, and her opposition to the king's will, had much alienated him from the lady Mary: her own maternal concern, therefore, for Elizabeth prevailed in these last moments over that indignation which the unjust sentence by which she suffered naturally excited in her. She said that she was come to die, as she was sentenced, by the law: she would accuse none, nor say any thing of the ground upon which ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume

... are by no means uncheery reading; his books and study, most of all his friendships (with one fellow-captive especially), seem to have kept him contented and even happy. Of course some part of this may well have been coloured for the maternal eye; it is clear that he was greatly concerned that she should not be too anxious about him. A more impartial picture of the conditions at Ruhleben is given in the second part of the volume, and in a letter by Sir TIMOTHY EDEN, reprinted from The Times, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 7, 1917. • Various

... as Josiah Christmas, merchant of Bristol city, and his maternal uncle, walked into the office, whither the lad followed slowly, looking stubborn and ill-used, for Mike Bannock's poison was at work, and in his youthful ignorance and folly, he felt too angry to attempt a ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn

... sovereign of Quito. They were commanded by two officers of great consideration, both possessed of large experience in military affairs, and high in the confidence of the late Inca. One of them was named Quizquiz; the other, who was the maternal uncle ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott

... deportment; and left an impression on you at once kindly and royal. Portraits of her, as Queen at a later age, are frequent in the Prussian Galleries; she is painted sitting, where I best remember her. A serious, comely, rather plump, maternal-looking Lady; something thoughtful in those gray still eyes of hers, in the turn of her face and carriage of her head, as she sits there, considerately gazing out upon a world which would never conform to her will. Decidedly a handsome, wholesome ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle

... old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise; Regardless of others, ever regardful of others, Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man, Stuff'd with the stuff that is coarse, and stuff'd with ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler

... rejoice that thou hadst such a son; The mother of such a man should never sigh; Could longer life a nobler cause have won? Could longest age more gloriously die? Oh! lift thy heart, thy mind, thy soul on high With deep maternal pride, that from thy womb Came such a son to scourge hell's foulest lie Out of life's temple. Watchers by his tomb! He is not there, but risen: that grave is ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various

... glaring, glassy eyes meet you. Some lay as they fell, stretched full length on the ground; others show a desperate struggle for the last few remaining breaths. There lay the beardless youth with a pleasant smile yet lingering on his face as though waiting for the maternal kiss; the cold stern features of the middle aged as he lay grasping his trusty rifle, some drawn up in a perfect knot of agony, others their faces prone upon the earth, all dead, dead. Great pools of ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... liked you marrying so well, Peter," she finished with a backward motion of her head toward the room where the parlour set, banished long ago from the town house, symbolized for Ellen the brooding maternal presence. ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin

... her happy home, she told her children about this family, and particularly about the poor babe, who so increased her mother's cares and labours, yet repaying it all by the wealth of maternal love her coming had developed. It was pleasing to see Georgianna lay her face so softly on the infant's, and so gently rock her when ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various

... such a penalty ought to be abjured, not only by his father, but by the whole family. The law, then, should run as follows:—If any man's evil fortune or temper incline him to disinherit his son, let him not do so lightly or on the instant; but let him have a council of his own relations and of the maternal relations of his son, and set forth to them the propriety of disinheriting him, and allow his son to answer. And if more than half of the kindred male and female, being of full age, condemn the son, let ...
— Laws • Plato

... occasion requires, much more strongly towards persons of their own nation and neighbourhood, and especially when the objects of their compassion are endeared to them by the ties of consanguinity. Accordingly, the maternal affection (neither suppressed by the restraints, nor diverted by the solicitudes of civilized life) is every where conspicuous among them; and creates a correspondent return of tenderness in the child. An illustration of this has been given in p. 39. "Strike me," said my attendant, ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... this began to weigh upon the mind of Mrs. Merillia, despite the amazing cheerfulness of disposition which she had inherited from two long lines of confirmed optimists—her ancestors on the paternal and maternal sides. She did not know how to brood, but, if she had, she might well have been led to do so. And even as it was she had been reduced to so unusual a condition of dejection that, a week before the evening we are describing, she had been obliged to order a box at the Gaiety Theatre, ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens

... is a claimant comes from the maternal ancestor of Christian Meynell. I do not count upon her possession of it as a certain good in the future. If it comes we ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... more probably it would have been dead. The mare, it was evident, finding that the servant did not comprehend her wishes, had again and again sought her master, in whom she had learned from past experience to confide. Here was an example of strong maternal affection eliciting a faculty superior to instinct, which fully merits the name ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... in thee increased! But, knowing this, in knowledge's despite I fret against the law severe that stains Thy spirit with eclipse; When—as a nymph's carven head sweet water drips, For others oozing so the cool delight Which cannot steep her stiffened mouth of stone - Thy nescient lips repeat maternal strains. Memnonian lips! Smitten with singing from thy mother's east, And murmurous with music not their own: Nay, the lips flexile, while the mind alone A passionless statue stands. Oh, pardon, innocent one! Pardon at thine unconscious hands! "Murmurous with music ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson

... sincerity, and in a spirit of confiding respect. It happened, on one occasion, when a nursery-servant of ours was waiting in her anteroom for the purpose of taking her turn in consulting the prophetess professionally, that she had witnessed a scene of consternation and unaffected maternal grief in this Hungarian lady upon the sudden seizure of her son, a child of four or five years old, by a spasmodic inflammation of the throat (since called croup) peculiar to children, and in those days not very well understood by medical men. The poor Hungarian, who ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... child is born amid ceremony. At its birth only the maternal grandmother and two female doctors are present. After the birth of the child, the paternal grandmother enters, bearing as offerings to the new born babe a large pottery bowl and inside of it a tiny blanket. She then prepares warm suds of yucca root in the bowl, in which she bathes the infant, ...
— The Religious Life of the Zuni Child - Bureau of American Ethnology • (Mrs.) Tilly E. (Matilda Coxe Evans) Stevenson

... found the old woman always at the bed's head busy with her eternal knitting,—brooding over Veronique as she did when the girl had the small-pox, answering questions for her and often refusing to admit visitors. The maternal and filial love of mother and daughter was so well known in Limoges that these actions of Madame ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac

... told us much about his mother—a Frenchman is apt to regard his father simply as a necessary though often inconvenient appendage, possibly absorbing the idea from the maternal side of the house—but his mother is his solace, comforter and friend. The mother of Corot was intelligent, industrious, tactful; sturdy in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard

... all sorts of characters; and the curious who possess any of Gambouge's pictures will see her as Venus, Minerva, Madonna, and in numberless other characters: Portrait of a lady—Griskinissa; Sleeping Nymph—Griskinissa, without a rag of clothes, lying in a forest; Maternal Solicitude—Griskinissa again, with young Master Gambouge, who was by this time the offspring of ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... side, sheltered by her embracing arms, safe and happy in the quietude of her maternal care, he must have looked out upon the passing show with wonder and pleasure, while she instilled into him the lessons of wisdom and the ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke

... family through Dorothea, daughter and heiress of Edward, Earl and Marquis of Esmond, and Lord of Castlewood, which lady married, 23 Eliz., Henry Poyns, gent.; the said Henry being then a page in the household of her father. Francis, son and heir of the above Henry and Dorothea, who took the maternal name which the family hath borne subsequently, was made knight and baronet by King James the First; and, being of a military disposition, remained long in Germany with the Elector-Palatine, in whose service Sir Francis incurred both expense and danger, lending large ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... foreseen that the Queen's calculations would turn out to be erroneous by a whole month? Had those calculations been correct, Anne would have been back from Bath, and Sancroft would have been out of the Tower, in ample time for the birth. At all events the maternal uncles of the King's daughters were neither at a distance nor in a prison. The same messenger who summoned the whole bevy of renegades, Dover, Peterborough, Murray, Sunderland, and Mulgrave, could just ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... soul, to the mother that is a part of her spiritual nature—a call that gives her pleasant good-angel sensations, that soften her heart and flatter her self-esteem. To the Widow Clemm, with her self-reliance and her highly developed maternal instinct, the appeal was irresistible and between her and The Dreamer the ivy and oak relation was promptly established, while in the little Virginia he found a heartsease blossom to be loved and sheltered by both—the loveliest of heartsease blossoms whose beauty, whose purity and ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard

... England patriarchs were blessed with abundant families. Edwards' father had eleven children, his paternal grandfather thirteen, and his maternal grandfather had twelve children by a lady who had already three ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... door,—not thinking of that other mother's heart,—never dreaming that such a gaunt and pallid wight ever had a mother at all. For the idea that those long, lean hands, reaching far out of the short and split coat-sleeves, had been a baby's pure, soft hands once, and had pressed the white maternal breasts, and had played with the kisses of the fond maternal lips,—it was scarcely conceivable; and a delicate-minded matron, like Mrs. Gingerford, may well be excused for not ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... himself, that he may give. That is love. But from the woman's point of view? If she accept thinking only of herself, then it is a sordid bargain on her part. To understand her, to be just to her, we must look deeper. Not sexual, but maternal love is her kingdom. She gives herself not to her lover, but through her lover to the great Goddess of the Myriad Breasts that shadows ever with her guardian wings Life from the ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome

... of breaking to you what was a task upon me reluctantly enough undertaken to break to you. Then rising, she drew a chair near her own, and made me sit down by her, overwhelmed as I was with tears of apprehension of what she had to say, and of gratitude for her truly maternal goodness to me—sobs still ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... be termed a mystic who interprets the world in Indian terms. Exposure to such influences as the writings of Kroeber and Huxley has only confirmed his essentially Indian viewpoint. Both his parents were famous Indian doctors and his maternal uncle, who was also his mentor,(2) was a famous shaman. My informant implied that his uncle's spirit (wegeleyo), from which his power was derived, was the Water Baby, and his own carefully guarded statement implied that the creature was potentially his own spirit. His view of the Water Baby ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs

... the matter, she began to relent. The very completeness of the revenge which she had in prospect robbed her of her satisfaction. The man was so dependent on her, so deeply indebted to her, must suffer so much by reason of her, that the maternal instinct, which is said to be developed even in half-grown girls, took him under its protection; and when that scene occurred in the public room of the Castle Inn and he stood forward to shield her (albeit in an arrogant, ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman

... this, Enrico. Every time that you meet a feeble old man, a poor person, a woman with a child in her arms, a cripple with his crutches, a man bending beneath a burden, a family dressed in mourning, make way for them respectfully. We must respect age, misery, maternal love, infirmity, labor, death. Whenever you see a person on the point of being run down by a vehicle, drag him away, if it is a child; warn him, if he is a man; always ask what ails the child who ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis

... succeeding generations there was but one bond, the natural bond of motherhood. It was the first tie realised by mankind, a tie not felt as a concrete relationship between two individuals, but as a general, maternal, natural force. The presiding divinities were the "mothers," the eternal, incorporeal deities, enthroned outside time and space, and therefore immortal givers of life and preservers of mankind. Before ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... moment Mrs. Edmonstone and Laura hastened in. Then was the time for broken words, tears and smiles, as Amy leant against her mother, who locked her in a close embrace, and gazed on her in a sort of trance, at once of maternal pride and of pain, at giving up her cherished nestling. Poor Laura! how bitter were her tears, and how forced ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge

... was born at Petersburg on the 6th of September, 1817. At the age of six weeks he was taken away from the city to Little-Russia, by his mother and maternal uncle, who was distinguished in Russian literature under the pseudonym of Anton Perowskij. By this uncle he was brought up, enjoying a singularly happy and unclouded childhood. Being an only child he played ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi

... mind. Fastings and the severest forms of discipline henceforward made up the melancholy routine of the life of the "holy widow." Love for her child for a long time kept her from taking the veil, but at length, by prayer and fasting, she emancipated herself from this maternal weakness of the flesh, and was rapturously received by the Ursulines of Tours. Yet in spite of the vagaries of her devout mind, Madame de l'Incarnation possessed a singular aptness for practical affairs. Several of her early years ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... represent; there was something uncanny, not to say ghastly, in the doll existence and its mimicry of babyhood to me, and I had a nervous dislike, not unmixed with fear, of the smiling simulacra that girls are all supposed to love with a species of prophetic maternal instinct. ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... "An Apology for the Church of England in Canada, by a Protestant of the Established Church of England," the writer thus refers to this controversy:—"Our Methodist brethren have disturbed the peace of their maternal Church by the clamour of enthusiasm and the madness of resentment; but they are the wayward children of passion, and we hope that yet the chastening hand of reason will sober down the wildness of that ferment," etc. ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... to be so horrible,—the idea that a father should have robbed his son,—that the stern ferocity of the slow-moving eyes was forgiven, and they took him to their hearts, if not for love, at least for pity. Twenty thousand pounds ought to have become the property of Walter Marrable, when some maternal relative had died. It had seemed hard that the father should have none of it, and, on the receipt in India of representations from the Colonel, Walter had signed certain fatal papers, the effect of which was ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... thought that it was very hard upon the maternal hens—the hens which should have been maternal—that they should be thus robbed of the ...
— An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids • Anthony Trollope

... office, but in case of his death, the right of descent being in his mother, he would be succeeded, not by one of his male children, but by his brother; or failing in this then by the son of his sister, or by some direct, however remote, descendent of a maternal line. ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson

... gradation he disclosed all the mother through every image of pity and terror.' If this be so, I think the philosophical spirit has prevailed over the imaginative. The imagination never errs; it sees all that is, and all the relations and bearings of it; but it would not have confused the mortal frenzy of maternal terror, with various development of maternal character. Fear, rage, and agony, at their utmost pitch, sweep away all character: humanity itself would be lost in maternity, the woman would become the mere personification of animal fury or ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin

... "You remind me of your poor dear mother. The family spirit, Miss Vanstone. We all inherit our hot blood from my maternal grandfather." ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... of the Duke's at Streatham, derived from Mr. Howland, his maternal grandfather, from whom ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... rose, put on his boots, and summoned William to attend him. William had been too much accustomed to humour all his caprices to make any difficulty of obeying him; and as he had often ridden out with his young master before, he did not foresee the least possible inconvenience. But the maternal care of Mrs Merton had made it an indispensable condition with her son, that he should never presume to ride with spurs; and she had strictly enjoined all the servants never to supply him with those dangerous accoutrements. Tommy had long murmured in secret at this prohibition, which seemed ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day

... Miyazaki judged that her time was ripe. She summoned young Hoskin into her dowager presence, and, with a manner heavily maternal, she warned him against the lightness of his fiancee. When he refused to believe evil of her she produced a pathetic letter full of half-confessions, which the girl herself had written to her in a moment of expansion. A week later the young man's body was ...
— Kimono • John Paris

... about thirty years old at that time and had never loved a man, though she had had plenty of temporary and merely instinctive relations with the other sex. So it was her entire capacity for love, maternal and other, that she ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood

... The last anecdote related shews, that they have more patience, but less courage and resource, than the more lively companions with whom they are so frequently associated, and whom they so much resemble. In many instances, however, maternal instinct has called forth their powers to a degree which has caused surprise; and they have been known to traverse considerable distances to seek the assistance of their own kind, or of their shepherd, when their lambs have been in ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee

... there should be happiness, for them, for all. Kind Nature, ever mild, extends her fond arms to her truant children, and breathes her words of solace. As we weep on her indulgent and maternal breast, the exhausted passions, one by one, expire like gladiators in yon huge pile that has made barbarity sublime. Yes! there is hope and ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli

... expressed. On the other hand, can there be a more beautiful image of self-devoting, heroic magnanimity than Niobe, as she bends forward to receive, if possible, in her own body the deadly shaft? Pride and defiance dissolve in the depths of maternal love. The more than earthly dignity of the features are the less marred by the agony, as under the rapid accumulation of blow upon blow she seems, as in the deeply significant fable, already petrifying into the stony torpor. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... of the out-cropping rock on the south side of the ridge was occupied by lady gulls in all stages of their maternal duties. From the surprise they expressed at his intrusion, and the way they stuck to their nests, they were evidently quite unused to man and his ways, and it was all he could do to avoid stepping on them and their squawking families as he ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham

... had involved him. He did not seem to have had any relations, and of his wife nothing was known but that she was a Miss Otway, and that he had met her in some colonial quarters. The old lady, with whom the little girl had been left, was her mother's maternal aunt, and had lived on an annuity so small that on her death there had not been funds sufficient to pay expenses without a sale of all her effects, so that nothing had been saved for the child, except a few books with her parents' names in them-John Allen and Caroline Otway-which ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... when dressed in the Thomas livery, presented a highly-respectable appearance. She therefore determined to be magnanimous—to look over past events, and to show a Christian and forgiving spirit towards his delinquencies. She sent for Mrs. Ellis, with the intention of desiring her to use her maternal influence to induce him to apologize to aunt Rachel for his assault upon her corns, which apology Mrs. Thomas was willing to guarantee should be accepted; as for the indignities that had been inflicted ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb

... any marital cohabitation in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. How much blind, merciless cruelty—precisely not animal, but human, reasoned, far-sighted, calculated cruelty—there is in the sacred maternal instinct—and behold, with what tender colours this instinct is adorned! Then what about all these unnecessary, tom-fool professions, invented by cultured man for the safeguarding of my nest, my bit of meat, my woman, my child, these different overseers, controllers, inspectors, ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... might do a fugitive who had eaten of his salt, secreting him in the recesses of his tent whilst the pursuers scoured the desert in vain for their prey. Again, we read of His hiding them 'beneath the shadow of His wing'; where the divine love is softened into the likeness of the maternal instinct which leads a hen to gather her chickens beneath the shelter of her own warm and outspread feathers. But the metaphor of my text is more vivid and beautiful still. 'Thou shalt hide them in the secret of Thy face.' The light that streams from that countenance is the hiding-place for ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... were too kind and unselfish to throw cold water. Mrs. Dodd's own wedding had ended in a piteous separation, and now to part with her darling child and launch her on the uncertain waves of matrimony! She heaved many a sigh when alone: but as there were no bounds to her maternal love, so there were no exceptions to her politeness: over her aching heart she forced on a wedding face, subdued, but hopeful, for her daughter, as she would for any other young lady about to be ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... labor for years. The first part that he played at the Lyceum, Arthur St. Valery in "The Dead Heart," was good, and he went on steadily improving. The last part that he played at the Lyceum—Edward IV. in "Richard III."—was, maternal prejudice quite apart, a most ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... when Aja was eighteen, his father died. And immediately, his relations conspired against him, led by his maternal uncle. And they laid a plot, and seized him at night, and bound him when he was asleep: for they dared not attack him when he was awake, for fear of his courage and his prodigious strength. And they deliberated ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain

... Declaration of Independence, Thornton, Taylor, and Smith were natives of Ireland; McKean, Read, and Rutledge were of Irish parentage; Lynch and Carroll were grandsons of Irishmen; Whipple and Hancock were of Irish descent on the maternal side; and O'Hart (Irish Pedigrees) declares that Robert Treat Paine was a great-grandson of Henry O'Neill, hereditary prince of Ulster, who "changed his name to that of one of his maternal ancestors so as to ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... ah! indeed!" in a very unkind manner. And when breakfast was over, and she had done washing her age chins, she fluttered up to Clive with such an agitation of plumage, redness of craw, and anger of manner, as a maternal hen shows if she has reason to think you menace her chickens. She fluttered up to Clive, I say, and cried out, "Not in this house, Clive,—not in this house, I beg you ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... at as early a period as the rest of the maternal structure, Galton notices that it seems improbable that they would be correspondingly affected by subsequent modifications of parental structure. Of course it is not certain that this is a valid argument. We know that the paternal half of the ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball

... Pinkerton held in her news, and I left them. I dislike Lady Pinkerton, as I have said; but on this occasion I disliked her a little less than usual, for that maternal instinct which had ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay

... in Latin:—"The more suffering for Christ in this world the more glory with Christ in the next," &c. This is signed "Arundel, June 22, 1587." This was Philip Howard, son of Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, beheaded in 1573. Philip inherited from his maternal grandfather the earldom of Arundel in 1580. He was a staunch Roman Catholic and was constantly under suspicion of the Government, by which in 1584 he was confined in his own house for a short time. On his liberation he determined to quit the country, but was committed to the Tower ...
— Authorised Guide to the Tower of London • W. J. Loftie

... What a whirl!" She caught sight of her little daughter Irma, and felt that a touch of maternal solemnity was required. "Good-bye, darling. Mind you're always good, and ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster

... from her children. The eldest son, called the Chevalier de Bonnoeil, after a property near the Chateau of Donnay, in the environs of Falaise, supported the maternal yoke patiently; he was an officer in the Royal Dragoons at the time of the Revolution. His younger brother, Timoleon de Combray, was of a less docile nature. On leaving the military school, as his father was just dead he solicited from M. de Vergennes a mission in an uncivilised country and set ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre

... probably have shaken his head over his descendant's dangerous audacity, if one may judge by the solemn way in which he mentions poor Mrs. Hutchinson's unpleasant experience, which so grievously disappointed her maternal expectations. But people used always to be terribly frightened by those irregular vital products which we now call "interesting specimens" and carefully preserve in jars of alcohol. It took next to nothing to make ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... was not allowed her. The Baroness de Thaller discovered, one morning, that it was impossible for her to live without her daughter, and that her maternal heart was lacerated by a separation which was against the sacred laws of nature. She took her home, therefore, declaring that nothing, henceforth, not even her marriage, should separate them, and that she should finish ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau

... Dora to her bosom with a face full of maternal anxiety. But Susy, Lucy and Lizzie cried: "Let her go, do let her go, and if she is lost papa will ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... called me "Little one," I called her my little mother, and these names express the relation of our hearts. She sought always my good, never her own pleasure; she was deeply attached to me, and lavished on me her maternal caresses. I was now about nineteen years old, but was only occupied about the house in writing for her, or in helping her ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... Radiantly tender, aggressively solicitous, diffusing ineffable sweetness on the air, wreathed in seraphic smiles, beaming caressingly, and aglow with a sacred joy that I should be looking so well, he greeted me in a voice of honey and bowed me to my repast with an unconcealed fondness at once maternal ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington

... disastrously perplexing. For if you chance upon a man whom you have not met for some time, you can never be quite sure how to accost him. If you begin, "Well met, Green, how goes it?" as likely as not he replies, "Finely. But I am no longer Green; I have become Brown. I was adopted last month by my maternal grandfather." You of course apologize for your unfortunate mistake, carefully note his change of hue for a future occasion, and behold, on meeting him the next time you find he has turned Black. Such a chameleon-like ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell

... modest but essential duties—the drudgery, they call it—of mothers; they manage to be relieved of household cares, especially of child-bearing, and of the duty of bringing up children. They repress their maternal instincts, and the horrible crime of infanticide before birth now becomes so fearfully prevalent, that the American nation is actually threatened with extinction. If they condescend to have one or two children, they set them an ill ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller

... their height five feet ten inches and upwards. The dress of both sexes consists of a mantle like the Chilian pancho, and they wear hats made of reeds adorned with feathers. They still possess a great quantity of old clothes from the ship Bounty, but, with better taste than their maternal ancestors the Tahaitians, they never wear them. The island has a beautiful appearance, and is said to be extremely fruitful. Wild boars ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue

... Dict. of Biography etc. art. AEsopus. The first or eldest Lokman, entitled Al-Hakim (the Sage) and the hero of the Koranic chapter which bears his name, was son of Ba'ura of the Children of Azar, sister's son of Job or son of Job's maternal aunt; he witnessed David's miracles of mail-making and when the tribe of 'Ad was destroyed, he became King of the country. The second, also called the Sage, was a slave, an Abyssinian negro, sold to the Israelites during the reign of David or Solomon, synchronous ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... her sweet Son Jesus. 'Ave,' &c. Hail, Mary, most humble handmaid of the Trinity, &c. Hail, Mary, most prompt Comforter of the living and the dead. Be thou with me in all my tribulations and distresses with maternal pity, and at the hour of my death take my soul, and offer it to thy most beloved Son Jesus, with all them who have commended themselves ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler

... purchased teeth that shone in her upper jaw. She lived entirely with Sir George and Lady Monkton, having indeed given them every penny that would have enabled her to live elsewhere. Perhaps of all the many spites they owed their elder son, the fact that his iniquities had inflicted upon them his maternal aunt for the rest of her natural days, was the ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

... was granted, that he might be sworn. After Mr. Hutchinson had made his statement to the court the judge asked a few questions. "How is your memory?" said the judge. "Memory," replied the old man. "I remember the flavor of the milk at the maternal fountain." The judge concluded that Mr. Hutchinson was fully capable of managing ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore

... your absence for some weeks, to extricate myself from the dilemma in which I am placed. For this purpose I wished, in case your objections to the match continued insurmountable, to have sent you privately for a few months to the convent of your maternal aunt at Paris. By a series of mistakes you have been brought from the place of secrecy and security which I had destined for your temporary abode. Fate has baffled my last chance of escape, and I have only to give you my blessing, and send you from the castle with Mr. Ratcliffe, who now leaves ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott

... no Maurice made his, appearance; nor did he respond to his mother's heart-rending appeal. The young scamp had sneaked up the companion, unperceived by the mate, and was now on deck in high glee at his freedom from maternal thraldom, watching the battle of the elements and the struggle of the ship against the supremacy of the wind and waves, that were vying with ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... to the parlour, he angrily denounced the girl to her parents. Much to her surprise, she found that this latest enormity called forth less of an outburst than her previous misconduct, her father being quite staggered by its daring and seriousness; while Mrs. Meredith, with a sudden display of maternal tenderness that Janice had not seen for years, took the girl in her arms, and tried ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... Ladyship's Conduct, I might have defy'd the whole British Fair to have outshone my southern Gawry: For if, to a majestic Form and extensive Capacity, I had been qualified to have copied that natural Sweetness of Disposition, that maternal Tenderness, that Cheerfulness, that Complacency, Condescension, Affability, and unaffected Benevolence, which so apparently distinguish the Countess of Northumberland; I had exhibited in my Youwarkee a Standard for ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock

... was a matter of moment), or across the companion entrance, or the cabin skylight, or on the shaggy back of "Sailor," the Newfoundland, who positively abhorred him. But how touching it was to see him waddle up and down the deck after Mr. Wyse, whom he evidently regarded in a maternal point of view—begging for milk with the most expressive snorts and grunts, and embarrassing my good-natured master by demonstrative appeals to his ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... exaggerated maternal instinct in her that moved her to foster and champion Hildreth and me ... an instinct that made her gather in every stray cat she found on the road ... she is the only person I have ever known who could break through the reserve of the cat's nature, and make it as fond and sentimental ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... as the Cigale is absorbed in her maternal task a diminutive fly, also full of eggs, busily exterminates the Cigale's eggs as ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... seen your circular, and possibly the whole thing may be a mere newspaper fabrication; but it is stated so circumstantially as to carry with it an air of truth, and I have been induced to copy a brief memoir of my maternal grandfather, Lieut.-Colonel Joseph Robinson, in his own handwriting, now in my possession, and to enclose it to you herewith, to be made use of as you think fit in your intended publication. The memoir would appear, from a statement contained in it, to ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... first view of the falls. A short, ruddy, middle-aged gentleman, fresh from Old England, peeped over the rock, and evinced his approbation by a broad grin. His spouse, a very robust lady, afforded a sweet example of maternal solicitude, being so intent on the safety of her little boy that she did not even glance at Niagara. As for the child, he gave himself wholly to the enjoyment of a stick of candy. Another traveler, a native American, and no rare character among us, produced a volume of ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks

... civic duty, of the most complete and malignant individualism. 'The world may burn for aught I care, so long as I am all right,' and he was all right; he was content, he was eager to go on living in the same way for another twenty or thirty years. He swindled his own son and spent his money, his maternal inheritance, on trying to get his mistress from him. No, I don't intend to leave the prisoner's defense altogether to my talented colleague from Petersburg. I will speak the truth myself, I can well understand what resentment he had ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... case, the system adopted by the Romans could advantageously be applied to the married women who when they were girls used their liberty. Being exclusively engaged in the early education of their children, which is the most important of all maternal obligations, occupied in creating and maintaining the happiness of the household, so admirably described in the fourth book of Julie, they would be in their houses like the women of ancient Rome, living images of Providence, which reigns over ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... picked up out of the general progeny? That is an undetermined question. It would seem impossible that each turtle mother should know her own young, yet amidst this apparent confusion there may be some maternal instinct that guides her to distinguish her own offspring from all the rest. Who ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... independence alarmed rather than surprised her, such had been her sense of the unrest in the domestic atmosphere during the last month. Since the evening when she had found Thyme in foods of tears because of the Hughs' baby, her maternal eyes had not failed to notice something new in the child's demeanour—a moodiness, an air almost of conspiracy, together with an emphatic increase of youthful sarcasm: Fearful of probing deep, she had sought no confidence, nor had she divulged her ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... resorting hither, except Sir James Martin, on whom I bestowed a little notice, in order to detach him from Miss Mainwaring; but, if the world could know my motive THERE they would honour me. I have been called an unkind mother, but it was the sacred impulse of maternal affection, it was the advantage of my daughter that led me on; and if that daughter were not the greatest simpleton on earth, I might have been rewarded for ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... of two human traits earlier discussed: the fighting instinct, relatively much stronger in the male, and the nursing or mothering instinct, much stronger in the female. With this fact are associated important differences in the conduct of men and women in social relations. The maternal instinct is held by some writers, for instance, to be in large measure the basis of altruism, and is closely associated with sensitivity to the needs and ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... days of her married life to the present time the Baroness had loved her husband, as Josephine in the end had loved Napoleon, with an admiring, maternal, and cowardly devotion. Though ignorant of the details given her by Crevel, she knew that for twenty years past Baron Hulot been anything rather than a faithful husband; but she had sealed her eyes with lead, she had wept in silence, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... the death of William III. She died, August 1, 1714, in the fiftieth year of her age. She was not a woman of very great intellect; but was deservedly popular, throughout her reign, being a model of conjugal and maternal duty, and always intending to do good. She was honored with the title of 'Good Queen Anne', which showed the opinion entertained of her ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher

... were quite familiar with Topsy and Eva, and au fait in the fortunes of Uncle Tom; so that, being introduced as the maternal relative of these characters, I seemed to find favor in their eyes. And when one of the speakers congratulated them that they were born in a land where no child could be bought or sold, they responded with enthusiastic cheers—cheers which made me feel rather sad; but still I could ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe

... soft feathers from his breast to supply the deficiency. If the cruel robbery be again repeated, which in former times was frequently the case, the poor eider-duck abandons the spot, never to return, and seeks for a new home where she may indulge her maternal instinct undisturbed by the ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin

... John's eldest son, was born in London in the year 1628. He received his early education under his maternal uncle, was subsequently sent to school at Bishop-Stortford, and, at seventeen, began to reside at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where the celebrated Cudworth was his tutor. The times were not favourable to study. The Civil ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... prepared, but it was in no sense forced on either of the contracting parties by their elders who so desired it. Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg, second son of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, the Queen's maternal uncle, was nearly of an age with his royal cousin; he had already, young as he was, given evidence of a rare superiority of nature; he had been excellently trained; and there is no doubt that Leopold, king of the Belgians, his uncle, and the Queen's, did most earnestly desire to see ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling

... Tulliver had really made great efforts to induce Maggie to wear a leghorn bonnet and a dyed silk frock made out of her aunt Glegg's, but the results had been such that Mrs. Tulliver was obliged to bury them in her maternal bosom; for Maggie, declaring that the frock smelt of nasty dye, had taken an opportunity of basting it together with the roast beef the first Sunday she wore it, and finding this scheme answer, she had subsequently pumped on the bonnet with its green ribbons, so as to give it a general resemblance ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... individualities in my memory, Peter and Caesar and Will and Darby; merry old fellows they seemed to be,—I see no laborers so cheerful and gay now,—and very faithful and efficient workers. Peter and his wife, Toah (so was she called), had belonged to my maternal grandfather, and were much about us, helping, or being helped, as the case might be. They both lived and died in their own cottage, pleasantly situated on the bank of Skenob Brook. They tilled their own garden, raised ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey

... come to the direct study of abortion. Abortion, or miscarriage, strictly means the expulsion of the foetus before it is viable, i.e., before it is sufficiently developed to continue its life outside of the maternal womb. The period of arrival at viability is usually after the twenty-eighth week of gestation. When birth occurs later than that period, and yet before the full term of nine months, it is called premature birth, which is altogether different from abortion; for it may save the ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens

... record of was a friend of the family by the name of Higgins. This was in the eleventh century, when our people were living in Aberdeen, county of Cork, England. Why it is that our long line has ever since borne the maternal name (except when one of them now and then took a playful refuge in an alias to avert foolishness), instead of Higgins, is a mystery which none of us has ever felt much desire to stir. It is a kind of vague, pretty ...
— Quotations from the Works of Mark Twain • David Widger

... came, and the two or three days after that were a lively time. That the squire was yielding to his impulses—making up his mind—there could be no doubt. On Sunday Cornelius read the lessons, and Joshua preached. Mrs. Fellmer was quite maternal towards Rosa, and it appeared that she had decided to welcome the inevitable with a good grace. The pretty girl was to spend yet another afternoon with the elder lady, superintending some parish treat at the house in observance of Christmas, and afterwards to stay ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy

... is—for obvious reasons—the only member of the immediate family circle whom we do not meet in his writings. His maternal grandmother—the grandame who is to be met in his verses and in some of his essays—was for over half a century housekeeper at Blakesware in Hertfordshire, and with her, as a small boy, Charles ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold



Words linked to "Maternal" :   motherliness, matriarchal, mother, related, filial, motherlike, maternity, motherly



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