"Virginal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was hot with the same flush of shame which burned in her face. In her passion of disgust and anger, she hurried out into the storm. The chill of the east wind was friendly. She gave no other thought to the wind-driven rain, but ran through the woods like a wild thing, all virginal woman, unreasonable, insulted, angry as a child is angry—even her uncle was forgotten. She ran upstairs, the glory of her rain-soaked hair in tumbled disorder, and in her room broke into the open speech which passion confides to ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... dreamed. It was hard to believe that this eager girl in a striped blue and yellow and purple skirt, and rough white crash hat, was the bored, the remote, the much-feared Mrs. Clarence Breckenridge. Something free and sweet and virginal had come back to her, or been born in her. She was like no phase of the many phases in which he had known her; she was a Rachael who had never known the sordid, the disillusioning side of life. Even her seriousness had the confident, ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... most beautiful—heads and half-length figures which represent the Virgin alone, looking up with a devout or tender expression, or with the head declined, and the hands joined in prayer, or crossed over the bosom with virginal humility and modesty, belong to this class of representations. In the ancient heads, most of which are imitations of the old Greek effigies ascribed to St. Luke, there is often great simplicity and beauty. When she wears the crown ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... said Courtney, waking up at length to a full glow of interest. "That's why I don't want to go and stare at pictures. In the spring, to see the fresh, virginal, delicious green of a bush against an old dry brick wall, gives a keener pleasure than the best ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... Andersen's acquaintance, "The Fairy Tale of My Life" impressed me unpleasantly. After I had by personal intercourse possessed myself of the clew to the man's character, I judged differently. Andersen remained, until the day of his death, a child. His innocence was more than virginal; his unworldliness simply inconceivable. He carried his heart on his sleeve, and invited you to observe what a soft, tender, and sensitive heart it was. He had the harmless vanity of a child who has a new frock on. He was fidgety and unhappy if anybody but himself ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Britannia, queen, however, not of the waves but of the woodland, poor yet noble, and innocent of every mean ambition of gentility, faithful, valiant, and proud,—as she stands pale and commanding, in the sunshine at the dingle's mouth, in all her virginal dignity, is she not a figure worthy to rank with the queens of Beauty and Romance, with Dido "with a willow in her hand," with the deeply-loving Rebecca as with a calm and tender dignity she bids for ever adieu to the ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... of the piece is the struggle between the feverish passion of Aminta and the virginal coldness of Silvia. Of this motive and of the manner in which it is treated it is not altogether easy to speak, and this less from any inherent element in the subject or from the difficulty of accurately apprehending the peculiarities of sentiment ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... the refusal of Sim Gage himself to think of marriage. He had said he was not good enough for her. How could she then marry him, even if she so wished? Must she woo him and persuade him, argue with him? All her own virginal soul, all the sanctity of her life, rebelled against that ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... conformity with the indispensable criteria of classic art. Under the broadening influence of its persistent nationalism, he became more deeply, more profoundly, imbued with the comprehensive ideals of American democracy. He never lost the first fine virginal spontaneity of his native style, never weakened in the vigour of his thought or in the primitiveness of his expression. His contact with the East compassed the liberation of that vast fund of stored—up early experiences, acquired through ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... with a divided heart. The fresh, unforgettable, virginal love for her bridegroom was hers; the treasured, sacred, honored memory of her first choice filled half her soul. She leaned to that pure feeling. Honor and faith and sweet, abiding romance bound her to it. But the other half of her heart and soul was filled with ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... appeared and trickled down her rounded shoulder, where an abrasion had cut the delicate satin skin. And, on the instant, seeing her so breathless, so divine, in her virginal slender height, with her tapering limbs, her supple arms, her slim body with its slender, firm throat, he released her. By a last effort he tore the package ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... on one of these virginal days, when there was a restless stirring among the young bucks, who smelled the wide waters, the pines and the wild shrubs; who heard the cry of the loon on the lonely lake and the whir of the wild duck's wings, who answered to the phantom ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... bear, that out of so much grieving and aspiring I have gained no assured knowledge of the woman herself, but must perforce become lachrymose over such perished tinsels as her quivering red lips and shining hair! Of youth and love is there no more, then, to be won than virginal breasts and a small white belly yielded to the will of the lover, and brief drunkenness, and afterward such puzzled yearning as now dies into acquiescence, very much as the long low sobbing of that violin yonder dies into stillness now the song ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... remained dumb with admiration, although they were already familiar with the funereal splendours of Egyptian art. Thus lighted up, the Golden Hall flamed, and for the first time, perhaps, the colours of the paintings shone in all their brilliancy. Red and blue, green and white, of virginal purity, brilliantly fresh and amazingly clear, stood out from the golden background of the figures and hieroglyphs, and attracted the eye before the subjects which they formed could be discerned. At first glance ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... for once she had had it touched by Saint Catherine.[1529] And that the Saint should have actually touched it was not incredible, seeing that some years before, in 1413, Sister Colette, who was vowed to virginal chastity, had received from the Virgin apostle a rich golden ring, as a sign of her spiritual marriage with the King of Kings. Sister Colette permitted the nuns and monks of her order to touch this ring, and she confided it to the messengers she sent to distant lands to preserve them from perils ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... exult, to boast, to call attention to the beauty of the lines spoken by Enid. "See how her simplicity and virginal charm are enhanced by the rugged, remorseless strength, and by the conscienceless greed of the men surrounding her, and yet she sees in them something admirable. They are like soldiers to her. They are the heroes who tunnel mountains and bridge cataracts. When she looks from her slender, white ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... Algiers.... And mixed with the men, they were constantly finding bodies of women so disfigured that it was almost impossible to judge of their age: mothers who had their arms arched as though putting forth their utmost efforts to guard the babe that had disappeared. Many whose virginal modesty had been violated by the sea, showed naked limbs swollen and greenish, with deep bites from flesh-eating fishes. The tide had even tossed ashore the headless body of a ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... activities, or of death for all. It seemed to brood over her like the violet sky, and to quiver with radiance as the crisp air quivered with the moonlight. It was wide and restful and bracing. She was walking toward it, she was walking into it, as she walked over this virginal ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... gone—her child gone, and with that man! Her child, her little delicately bred, finely nurtured girl, who had been wrapped in all the refinements of life from her cradle, and had never heard a rough word, never been allowed to know anything that would disturb her virginal calm!—yet now in a moment passed away beyond her mother to the unceremonious wooer who had no reverence for her, none of the worship her mother expected. How strange it was! Yet a thing that happened every day. Mrs. Dennistoun sat over the fire, though it was not cold, ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... she is a picture, as her companions are pictures; she is a charming piece of descriptive writing, rather than a dramatic exhibition. But she is described, like her companions too, so subtly and lovingly that we enter into her virginal old heart and stand with her behind her abominable little counter. Clifford Pyncheon is a still more remarkable conception, though he is perhaps not so vividly depicted. It was a figure needing a much more subtle touch, however, and it was of the essence of his character to be ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... and her virginal air, Eyes and teeth in the flash of a musical smile, Come to me out of the past, and I see her there As I saw her once for ...
— Silhouettes • Arthur Symons
... invisible world, became more and more frequent. She was about to be called to a state with which she was herself but imperfectly acquainted, and in order to enter which she did nothing but submissively abandon herself to the will of God. Our Lord was pleased about this time to imprint upon her virginal body the stigmas of his cross and of his crucifixion, which were to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Gentiles folly, and to many persons who call themselves Christians, both the one and the other. From ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... permitted the intended bride to be "deposited" away from parental custody, whilst the parents were called upon to show cause why the union should not take place. However, it often happens that when Cupid has already shot his arrow into the virginal breast, and the betrothed foresee a determined opposition to their mutual hopes, they anticipate the privileges of matrimony, and compel the bride's parents to countenance their legitimate aspirations to save the honour of the family. Honi soit qui mal y pense—they simply ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... sanguine men of business, who in England call themselves 'Press-Cutting Agencies,' in America 'Press-Clipping Bureaux,' and, as each successive child of his invention comes to birth, unbecomingly presume in him an almost virginal trepidation. 'Your book,' they write falsely, 'is exciting much comment. May we collect and send you notices of it appearing in the World's Press? We submit a specimen cutting with our terms; and are, dear ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... from hence The Adriatic breaks in a warm bay Among the green Illyrian hills, and there The sunshine in the happy glens is fair, And by the sea and in the brakes The grass is cool, the sea-side air Buoyant and fresh, the mountain flowers More virginal ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... mythology will demand of a myth so clearly destined for fructification an everlasting virginal inviolateness. From the start almost the two dogs of Yama are the brood of Saram[a]. Why? Saram[a] is the female messenger of the gods, at the root identical with Hermes or Hermeias; she is therefore the predestined mother of those other messengers, the two ...
— Cerberus, The Dog of Hades - The History of an Idea • Maurice Bloomfield
... in the Way of Business, and at the Bar; but once, after he was in the King's Business, he dined with his Lordship, and no more. And then he shewed another Qualification he had acquired, and that was to play Jigs upon an Harpsichord; having taught himself with the Opportunity of an old Virginal of his Landlady's; but in such a Manner, not for Defect but Figure, as to see him were a Jest. The King, observing him to be of a free Disposition, Loyal, Friendly, and without Greediness or Guile, thought of him to be the Chief Justice of the King's ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... laughed. One hand off the steering wheel, he took her hand—a fresh, cool, virginal hand, snuggling into his, suddenly stirring him. He wanted to hold it tighter. The lamenting historian of love's pilgrimage must set down the fact that the pilgrim for at least a second forgot the divine tread ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... found it, as Rose Hawthorne says, very hot—much too hot to enjoy the city as it should be enjoyed. Her reminiscences of their life at Florence, and especially of the Villa Manteuto, have a charming freshness and virginal simplicity, although written in a somewhat high-flown manner. She succeeds, in spite of her peculiar style, in giving a distinct impression of the old chateau, its surroundings, the life her family led there, and of the wonderful view from Bellosguardo. One feels that beneath the ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... around her forehead, the little neck was bent, she had folded her hands in her lap. The piteous child-like chest and limbs revealed by the tight white gown, brought tears to my eyes. There was something solemn, terrible, in this virginal decay. ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... went on a visit to Halberton House. During their stay there Lady Barbara conceived a sudden and violent passion for Gabrielle, that culminated in Gabrielle being taken solemnly to her cousin's virginal bedroom and hearing the story of an old unhappy love-affair. All the time that she listened to Lady Barbara's plaintive voice Gabrielle was wondering what had happened at Overton, and whether Arthur was keeping to the solemn undertaking that he had given her. She wondered if it were possible that ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... appears that Moore was not a seeker after wealth, thereby giving some real basis to the common belief that he possessed that rare thing—a virginal spirit of adventure. He cemented this queer friendship by conveying messages, indited in Chinese script, which he did not read, between Ching Gow Ong and his brother, Lo Ong, officially dead, who conducted a vile-smelling haunt in ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... sheltered the Holy Family. I gazed on the same walls Our Lord had looked on. I trod the ground once moistened with the sweat of St. Joseph's toil, and saw the little chamber of the Annunciation, where the Blessed Virgin Mary held Jesus in her arms after she had borne Him there in her virginal womb. I even put my Rosary into the little porringer used by the Divine Child. ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... flowers of the human race, magnificent to behold against the mass of other faces, worn, old, wrinkled, and grimacing. So women, too, admire such young people with that eager pleasure which men take in watching a pretty girl, elegant, gracious, and embellished with all the virginal charms with which our imagination pleases to adorn the perfect woman. If this hurried glance at the population of Paris has enabled us to conceive the rarity of a Raphaelesque face, and the passionate admiration which such an one must inspire at the first sight, the ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... He did not think of trying to draw close to her or of winning her love. He looked at her as one might look at a star or across a country of low hills in October when the leaves of the trees are all red and yellow gold. "She is a pure, virginal thing," he thought vaguely. "What can she be thinking about as she sits there by the window ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... walls where it bevelled off a corner. And in the middle of the otherwise bare apartment stood a broad and heavy table, giving support to a miscellaneous array of books, open or closed, sundry philosophical instruments, and papers in orderly disorder; some still in their virginal freshness, most, however, bearing marks ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... abhorrent to him. In local society he played a considerable part, both giving and receiving hospitality; and it was the traditional pleasantry to chaff him as an inveterate bachelor, at whom all the young ladies of the place were setting their virginal caps. These jests he received very much as Tim Linkinwater received the allusions of Mr. Cheeryble to the "uncommonly handsome spinster," rather encouraging them as tributes to the fact that, though now advanced in years, ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... was nought save the deep, soft voice of Beltane, and his eyes, and the new, sweet ecstasy that thrilled within her. Surely nowhere in all the world was there such another man as this, so strong and gentle, so meet for love and yet so virginal. Surely life might be very fair here in the green solitudes, aye, ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... and fro in the sun, like shabby butterflies, and the elegant Greek says "No" to them, not by sound of voice, but by the slightest elevation of the eyebrows and movement of the eye. He sits and looks occasionally at the wonderful hills above him, so fresh, so virginal; but he does not, as an Englishman might do, pay quickly and go out and go up. The modern Greek would never build ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... but his abstraction did not lift. By this time his imagination was hard at work. He pictured the girl in the mirror as stretched on her virginal cot in the final exhaustion of starvation; and the successful effort to keep away from the studio building till four o'clock called for all his will power. Suppose the boy blundered, or wasn't in time. Suppose the girl really ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... man shall come, no psychic, nor fleshly man, ... but it is kept under watch for the Spiritual alone—where, when they come, they must cast away their garments, and all become bridegrooms, obtaining their true manhood through the Virginal Spirit. For this is the Virgin big with child, conceiving and bearing a Son—not psychic, not fleshly, but ...
— The Gnosis of the Light • F. Lamplugh
... was a virginal soul, but full-blooded. An unsuspected passion beat in her veins. Not for nothing did she have the deep, languorous eyes, the perfect scarlet lips, the sumptuous grace of an artist's ideal. Fires lay banked within her in spite of the fine purity of her nature. Nature ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... Ever virginal and stainless, howsooften they embrace, Always young, and loved, and loving, these are. Neither is ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... Florence,—and the joy of coming motherhood in these two women's hearts spoke from each to each like a bell and its echo. Would the birth of Jesus, the character of Jesus, have been possible unless there had been the virginal and expectant soul of such a woman as Mary, ready to welcome His coming with her song? "My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour." Does not the advent of a higher manhood always wait for the hope and ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... but be with any woman who is beautiful, she had never theretofore been especially physical in thought. That side of life had remained vague, as she had never indulged in or even been strongly tempted with the things that rouse it from its virginal sleep. But now she thought only of her body, because that it was, and that alone, that had drawn this prospective purchaser, and his eyes never let her forget it. She fell into the habit of looking at herself in the glass—at her face, at her shoulders, at her whole person, not in vanity but in a ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... till she was almost beside herself. She could not get the idea out of her mind. It was as if some haunting challenge prompted her, and she had not enough courage to take it up. So again she drifted into the green-houses, looking at the lovely roses in their pots, and at the virginal cyclamens, and at the mystic white clusters of a creeper. The beauty, oh the beauty of them, and oh the paradisal bliss, if she should have a perfect bouquet and could give it to Gudrun the next day. Her passion and her complete indecision almost ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... Too much of a bird's-eye view across the Promised Land to the shore. Come down, and walk across, old fellow. And you won't see all that milk and honey and grapes the size of duck's eggs. All the dear little budding infant with its tender virginal mind and various clouds of glory instead of a napkin. Not at all, my dear chap. No such ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... preserve sacred melody in a high state of perfection; since, according to Burney, she was herself greatly skilled in musical learning. "If her Majesty," says that eminent author, "was ever able to execute any of the pieces that are preserved in a MS. which goes under the name of Queen Elizabeth's Virginal-book, she must have been a very great player, as some of the pieces which were composed by Tallis, Bird, Giles, Farnaby, Dr. Bull, and others, are so difficult that it would be hardly possible to find a master in ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... resemblances may find certain analogies between these adepts of "virginal virginity," or of "the great garden of the Tsar"—for both these names were applied to them—and the adamites or aryanists; for eager minds seeking supreme salvation are apt to meet upon the great road that leads ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... London National Gallery, where is also his charming Virgin with the little Jesus and St. John, a signed work from the late Mr. Beckford's collection. The child Jesus stands, naked and upright, upon a stone balustrade, and plays with a lock of His mother's hair, who is herself of the pure virginal type imaged by Rafaelle in his earlier creations, notably the famous "Madonna del Granduca"; while the "Adoration," the master's last work, was removed from the Church of Fontignano in 1843. The ...
— Perugino • Selwyn Brinton
... look, without having actually ceased to be virtuous, she might deem that she had lost her flower of purity. You promise, indeed, to feel no resentment against me; but who can ensure me against the wrath of Nyssia, she who is so reserved and chaste, so apprehensive, fierce, and virginal in her modesty that she might be deemed still ignorant of the laws of Hymen? Should she ever learn of the sacrilege which I am about to render myself guilty of in deferring to my master's wishes, what punishment would ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... not understanding the terms of her invective, had sat up on his haunches and turned his one eye mildly upon the bristling tufts of grey hair which formed a sort of halo around Mrs. Gammit's virginal nightcap. Then Mrs. Gammit, realizing that the time for action was come, had rushed downstairs to the kitchen, seized the first weapon she could lay hands upon—which chanced to be the broom—flung open the kitchen door, and dashed across the yard, ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... maiden-goddess into Death's Kingdoms, when pink almond blossoms blew about her in the gloom, and those shadowy people were stirred with faint longings for meadows and the shepherd's life. Nor was there anything more virginal and fresh in wood or orchard than the shimmer of young foliage, which, in May, dimmed with delicate green all the ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... cigar, clipped off the end, and lit it from a silver spirit lamp by his side. He blew out the first exquisite puff—the smoker's paradise would be the one first full and fragrant, virginal puff of an infinite succession of perfect cigars—looked anxiously at the glowing point to see that it was exactly lighted, and ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... sea's all news, With his inshore greens and manifold mid-sea blues, Pearl-glint, shell-tint, ancientest perfectest hues Ever shaming the maidens, — lily and rose Confess thee, and each mild flame that glows In the clarified virginal bosoms of stones that shine, It ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... enthroned, as some have thought, the Goddess of Death; on the opposite side the Goddess of Life, with her flowers and fruit. Towards her three young maidens are advancing—were they still alive thus, graceful, virginal, with their long, plaited hair, and long, delicately-folded tunics, looking forward to carry on their race into the future? Presented severally, on the other sides of the dark hollow within, three male persons—a young man, an old man, and a boy—seem to be bringing ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... her beauty; my admiration has never made her vain. Heaven knows that I have made no secret of it. You must have observed the singular transparency of her expression, the lovely modesty of her glance. And was there ever such a truly virginal brow, such a natural classic elegance in the wave of the hair and the arch of the forehead? I have studied her; I may say I know her. I have absorbed her little by little; my mind is stamped and imbued, and I have determined now to clinch the impression; I shall at last ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... blue-coated, virginal member of the Kingdom of Heaven sped homeward at the top of her speed. She was conscious of immense upheaval. Never had she felt so alive, so on the spot. The portals of highest drama swung wide before her. She hastened to enter and pour forth ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... But if virginal pride had urged her to flee all appearance of expectation, an equally sharp masculine reaction was withholding Johnny Byrd from any ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... out of life with only human consolation. The father stood in awe of an affection, which at the same time humbled and exalted him; she had never loved man or woman like him; he was next to God in that virginal heart, for with all her love of country, the father had the stronger hold on her. Too spiritual for him, her sublime faith did not cheer him. Yet when they looked straight into each other's eyes with the consciousness of what was coming, mutual anguish terribly ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... fakir, past saving, could he have withstood her in that vein. Her nearness, her tenderness, revived the mood of sheer bewitchment, when he could think of nothing, desire nothing but her. She had a genius for inducing that mood in men; and Roy's virginal passion, once roused, was stronger than he knew. With his arms round her, his heart against hers, it was humanly impossible to wish her other than she was—other than ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... Year's Night, and they were all to be his, as never before.... Julie. What, then, was she? She was his bride, his wife, coming to him consecrate—not by any State convention, not by any ceremony of man-made religion, but by the pure passion of human love, virginal, clean. It was human passion, perhaps, but where was higher love or greater sacrifice? Was this not worthy of all his careful preparation, worthy of the one centre of his being? Donovan, indeed! He wished he had stopped and told him the ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... tippets, or those quilted petticoats! Mrs. Allison, may my maid come down to-morrow while we are at dinner and take the pattern of those ruffles? No—no! she sha'n't! Sacrilege! You pretty thing!" she said, addressing a figure—the figure of a girl in white with thin virginal arms and bust, who seemed to be coming out of the picture, almost to be already out of it and in the room. "Come and talk to me. Don't think any more of your father and mother there. You have been curtsying to them for a hundred years; ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... machine shuddered with delicate clinkings. "Therefore, we of Puffyloaf are taking today what may be the ultimate step toward purity: we are aerating our loaves with the noble gas helium, an element which remains virginal in the face of all chemical temptations and whose slim molecules are eleven times lighter than obese carbon dioxide—yes, noble uncontaminable helium, which, if it be a kind of ash, is yet the ash only of ...
— Bread Overhead • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... cannot we get our girls to help us here more than we do, without being crippled by the fear of initiating them too much in the evil of the world or destroying that unconscious virginal purity which is, even as things are, so strong and pathetic an influence ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... thou poor, solitary, foolish, fearful maid, thou art sick with fear of me! So take now my dagger! Thus Fool offenceless shall lie defenceless at thy mercy and, so lying, sleep until joyous day shall banish thy so virginal fears!" Which saying, he tossed off belt and dagger and setting them beside her, rolled his weather-worn cloak about him, stretched himself beneath the dim willows and straightway fell a-snoring. And after some while she questioned him in ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... last night, was the idea that she could never marry Cyril Waring. And if Cyril Waring could have seen her just then! her cheeks burned yet a brighter scarlet at that thought than even before. One virginal blush suffused her face from chin to forehead. The maidenly sense of shame consumed ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... decided, so much because of her actual person— although since her marriage she had shown practically no change—as from a spirit of rigorous purity; she was, in spite of everything, Lee realized, completely virginal in mind. ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Don't fool yourself, chick. Temple Bells looks and acts sweet and innocent and virginal. Maybe—probably—she is. But she isn't showing a fraction of the stuff she's really got. She's heavy artillery, Sandy. And ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... you would wish to see. She had the tender, dragging smile of a Luini Madonna; grave, twilight eyes, full of compassionate understanding; very dark eyebrows, very long lashes, like the fringe of rain over a moorland landscape. She had a virginal shape, and liked her clothes to cling about her knees. Long fingers, longish, thin feet. But her humorous sense was acute and very delightful, and all children loved her. Such charms as these must have been as obvious to herself as they were to everybody else. She had a modest ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... voluptuousness of a devout young heart whose pulsations had never learned to beat for earthly objects. M. de Molins is preparing a volume of these manuscripts; but I am glad to present one of the seguidillas here, as an illustration of the tender and ardent fantasies of virginal passion this Christian Sappho embroidered upon the theme of ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... She was too young and shy and virginal. The accents of her candor rebuked his skepticism. He merely told himself these things because the last vestige of his expiring common ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... you. Who knows what hands pulled you away? I prayed; that was all I did. I prayed very hard that you might awake. If I had not, you might have died. I wonder what it all meant. The unicorns ... what did the French monk tell me ... strength they meant ... virginal strength, ...
— The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays • William B. Yeats
... on in her indignant strain, but he was not following her. He was smiling to himself as he looked up into her virginal face, so innocent, so penetratingly innocent, that its purity seemed always to enter into him, driving out of him all dross and bathing him in some ethereal effulgence that was as cool and soft and velvety as starshine. We know there are nasty things in the world! ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... she half sang, half hummed the jewel song from "Faust." She had looked beautiful enough in her old riding-habit and hat, but she seemed a vision of loveliness as she stood in the moonlight with the old house for a background. There was something bewitchingly virginal in the rapt and dreamy face with its dark eyes and long lashes, in the soft, delicately cut lips, the pure ivory pallor; at the same time something equally bewitching in the modernness of her dress, which was of soft cream cashmere, made rather long and in accord with the present ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... sex. There was determination in her step, and overflowing health and vigour in her every movement. Her eyes had a trick of looking straight into any other eyes they met, not boldly, but with a kind of virginal fearlessness and enterprise that people often found embarrassing. Indeed she was extremely virginal and devoid of the usual fringe of feminine airs and graces, a nymph of the woods and waters, who although she was three and ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... delight of seeing our men so pleased. Forty bedsteads and beds complete we found in that district, until the bare white-washed walls of the jail were transformed. White paint, too, we discovered in plenty, and soon our wards were virginal in their whiteness. And when I tell you that at one time I had no less than thirteen gunshot fractures of thigh and leg alone and other wounds in proportion, in the hospital, you may judge how ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... do it for them, then the authors as well as their admirers will soon learn the art of handling composing-sticks and type; they will know the pleasure of coming together—all admirers of the work to be printed—to set up the type, to shape it into pages, to take it in its virginal purity from the press. These beautiful machines, instruments of torture to the child who attends on them from morn till night, will be a source of enjoyment for those who will make use of them in order to give voice to the thoughts of their ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... an exquisite morning, too virginal for June, too richly warm for May. When the two exchanged the sunny road for the factory office, a north room none too light, it was a moment before their dazzled eyes perceived no one was present. This was Bailey's private office, and its owner ...
— The Flying Mercury • Eleanor M. Ingram
... a Saracen mounted on a horse came up with him. In the course of the conversation mention was made of the Blessed Virgin. The stranger remarked that though he admitted that the Mother of Christ had conceived without detriment to her virginal purity, yet he could not believe that after the conception of her divine Son she was still a virgin. He was so obstinate in holding this opinion, that no amount of reasoning on the part of Ignatius could force him to abandon it. Shortly afterward the Saracen rode on, leaving the pilgrim ...
— The Autobiography of St. Ignatius • Saint Ignatius Loyola
... a-tremble; and yet I must write, I must speak, or else I shall cry out. Did I ever mention to you Father Domenico of Casoria, the confessor of our Convent of the Stigmata? A young man, tall, emaciated with fasts and vigils, but handsome like the monk playing the virginal in Giorgione's "Concert," and under his brown serge still the most stalwart fellow of the country all round? One has heard of men struggling with the tempter. Well, well, Father Domenico had struggled as hard ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... them had. The shimmering sheath of silver and chiffon she wore to-day, as it happened, rejoiced in the name of "First Love." It was all white. She was being very careful of its virginal purity; but it occurred to her that unless the sea's passion died, the frock would soon have to be renamed "Second Love," or even "Slighted Affection," if ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... field and restricted it to a few wild-eyed steers, halting between the hills and the shambles, many old habitues of the field have come back to their haunts. The willow and brown birch, long ago cut off by the Indians for wattles, have come back to the streamside, slender and virginal in their spring greenness, and leaving long stretches of the brown water open to the sky. In stony places where no grass grows, wild olives sprawl; close-twigged, blue-gray patches in winter, more ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... fearing contamination, symbolised the aloofness of her spirit. The solitary enjoyment of a great impression of art made her den a sanctuary, absolving her from commoner or shared pleasures. And in a manner the Saint was the type of the ultra-virginal quality she had retained through much contact with books and life. For her to sell the St. Michael, Dennis felt, would be a sort of vending of her soul, to give it away in the present instance would imply, he insisted, ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... popular performer, though not in any sense a great one. He met the slim, golden-haired daughter of the manse at the house of a college friend she was visiting in Toronto, and fell straightway in love with her. Margaret had loved him with all her virginal heart in return, and married him, despite her father's disapproval. It was not to Martin Moore's profession that Mr. Leonard objected, but to the man himself. He knew that the violinist's past life had not been such as ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... French Ordinary in York County, whose widow, before 1679, married Charles Hansford, of York, owned two violins. It is reasonable to conclude, therefore, that guests at his hostelry were frequently entertained with music from that instrument. The virginal (a small rectangular spinet without legs) was the most common of instruments known to have been in possession of the colonists, while they also owned and played the fiddle, both small and large, the cornet, the recorder (a flageolet or old type of flute), the flute and the hautboy. ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... too, an expression of something so purely American that it seems that it must be as uncomprehended by one not familiar with the scene as the beauty of Greece or Italian glows; it is poetry locked in its own land. This presence of the pure, the pristine, the virginal in the verse, this luminousness, spaciousness, serenity in the land, this immemorialness of natural things, is the body and spirit of the true wild, such as Bryant's eyes had seen it and as it had possessed his soul. In no other American poet is there this nearness to original awe in the presence ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... had opened up for the midnight train. She was desperately anxious and at a loss which way to turn. And yet through all her being there rolled a mighty undernote of joy. As to the dweller on the coast the voice of the sea is the undertone to all the sounds of man's activities, so beneath all her virginal hesitancies, her half terror of what she had done, surged and sang the knowledge that Creed was hers, her avowed lover. She, Judith, had him here safe; she had brought him away out of the mountains, ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... country made by God's hand the most beautiful in the temperate regions of the earth, and inhabited by a race once capable of the sternest patriotism and simplest purity of life, your modern religion, in the very stronghold of it, has reduced the song and dance of ancient virginal thanksgiving to the howlings and staggerings of men betraying, in intoxication, a nature sunk more than half-way towards the beasts; and you will begin to understand why the Bible should have ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... being merrily disposed, they did exchange some arrows from either quiver; ever since young men die, and oftentimes old men dote—[5525]Sic moritur Juvenis, sic moribundus amat. And who can then withstand it? If once we be in love, young or old, though our teeth shake in our heads, like virginal jacks, or stand parallel asunder like the arches of a bridge, there is no remedy, we must dance trenchmore for a need, over tables, chairs, and stools, &c. And princum prancum is a fine dance. Plutarch, Sympos. 1. quaest. ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... my bet if I had been overtopped, on the strength of the riddle on this paste-board. I would have done it if you had topped me even by three inches, but when it comes to feet—yards— miles, I am not the man to shirk the biggest drink that ever made the travellers'-joy palm blush with virginal indignation, or the orang- outang and the perambulating dyak howl with envy. Set them up and continue till the ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... up their bodies wholly—their warm bodies, that the bitter cold and the wind and the sightless death touch as with women's hands. In these contacts between living beings and force, there is something carnal, virginal, divine. ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... quiet directness of Billy's narrative was disturbed by a whiff of inner tumult. "Whew! what eyelashes! Honey, did you ever come across a lonely mountain lake with high reeds growing around the edge? You know how pure and unspoiled and virginal it seems. That was her eyes. They sort of hypnotized me. My eyes closed and—when I awoke it was broad daylight. What do ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... death, [21] Grow, Soul! unto such white estate, That virginal-prayerful art shall be thy ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... once ardent and pure. It is true that they generally marry old, ugly, and corrupted men, and make up for it by taking two or three lovers six months after. But Adrienne felt instinctively how much of virginal and celestial freshness there is in the equal innocence of two loving and passionate beings—what guarantees for the future in the remembrance which a man preserves ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... with all its force upon this virginal robe without being able to make it shine. It preserves its dead whiteness. All this grandeur is austere; the air is chilled beneath the noonday rays; great, damp shadows creep along the foot of the walls. It is the everlasting winter and the nakedness of the desert. The sole inhabitants ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... therefore the queen of the air becomes to them at once the queen of bodily strength in war; not mere brutal muscular strength,—that belongs to Ares,—but the strength of young lives passed in pure air and swift exercise,—Camilla's virginal force, that "flies o'er the unbending corn, and ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... fell from his mental vision. What! Distrust Iris! Imagine for one second that riches or poverty, good repute or ill, would affect that loyal heart when its virginal font was filled with the love that once in her life comes to every true woman! Perish the thought! What evil spirit had power to so blind his perception of all that was strong and beautiful in her character. Brave, uncomplaining Iris! Iris of the crystal soul! Iris, whose innocence and candor ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... just within the hair's breadth here indicated, than it was, for example, in Macready's impersonation of Virginius, where his scream in the camp-scene betrayed his instantaneous appreciation of the wrong meditated by Appius Claudius against the virginal purity of his daughter. As adroitly, in his way, as that great master of his craft, who was for so many years among his most cherished friends and intimates, Dickens kept within the indicated lines of demarcation, beyond which no impersonator, whether upon the stage or upon ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... stood speechless, trying to formulate the lie he could utter most boldly, until he was struck with the double thought that to defend Diane's honor with a falsehood would be to defame it further, while a lie to this pure, trusting, virginal spirit would be ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... tempting and plump, white as a lily, loaded with the most charming wealth of beauty. Her drooping eyelashes seem like the points of the iron crown; her skin, which is as fresh as the calyx of a white camelia, is streaked with the purple of the red camelia; over her virginal complexion one seems to see the bloom of young fruit and the delicate down of a young peach; the azure veins spread a kindling warmth over this transparent surface; she asks for life and she gives it; she is all joy and love, all tenderness and candor; she loves her husband, ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... some reasons for this passion of mankind for maidenheads. It is so wonderful to give the first lessons of voluptuousness to a pure and innocent heart, to feel under one's hand the first palpitations of the virginal breasts which arouses unknown delights, to dry the first tears of tenderness, to inspire that first mixture of fear and hope, of vague desires and expectant inquietude; whoever has never had that satisfaction has missed the most pleasurable of all the delights ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... to have someone to chat with and while she talked he looked at Sally. She reminded him of the Psyche in the museum at Naples. Her features had the same dear purity of line, and though she had borne a child she had still a virginal aspect. ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... nonsensical lyricism. It failed, honestly; and even when the action descended from song to banal dialogue, it was not reassured. 'Silly' was the unspoken epithet on a hundred tongues, despite the delicate persuasion of the music, the virginal charm of the maidens, and the illuminated richness of costumes and scene. The audience understood as little of the operatic convention as of the aestheticism caricatured in the roseate environs of Castle ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... it. Let solitude reign in it and you will feel heaven there. A sanctuary deserted and in ruins, like Jumieges, like St. Bertin, like Villers, like Holyrood, like Montrose Abbey, like the temple of Paestum, like the hypogeum of Thebes, becomes almost an element, and possesses the virginal and religious grandeur of a savannah or of a forest. There something of the real Presence is to ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... then and now. Doggie had made good; every man who came home wounded must have made good. Poor old Doggie. But how in the name of all that was meant by the word Love she could ever have contemplated—as she had contemplated, with an obstinate, virginal loyalty—marriage with Doggie, she could ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... he loved Turgenev, the singer of virginal love and purity, of youth, and of the melancholy Russian landscape; but he loved virginal love, not from knowledge but from hearsay, as something abstract, existing outside real life. Now he assured ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... comes that she is buried in the stained robe, and she is carried amid flowers and white cloths to a white marble tomb, where incense is burning, and where the walls are hung with votive wreaths and things commemorative of virginal life and its many lovelinesses. But, strange to say, upon all these, upon the flowers and images alike there is some small stain which none sees but she and the one in shadow, the one whose face she cannot recognise. And ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... with sentimental fervor, and then went to work, i. e., the rummaging over the trunks, drawers, and portmanteaus of the poor little painter, Carmen de Haro, and even ripped up the mattress of her virginal cot. But they ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... river from Astoria, we had always in view the snow-white cone of St. Helen's, one of the principal peaks of the Cascade Range. Nothing can be conceived more virginal than this form of exquisite purity rising from the dark fir forests to the serene sky. Mount Baker's symmetry is much marred by the sunken crater at the summit; Mount Rainier's outline is more complicated: ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... kind familiar to the imagination of medieval Europe and therefore quite permissible to a poet who had set out to romanticize. If, therefore, Schiller had made his heroine fall in love in human fashion, and had then connected this lapse from virginal ideality a little more clearly with the final catastrophe, there could be no reasonable objection to his fundamental idea, and we should have, probably, the best imaginative basis for a romantic tragedy on the story of Joan of Arc. One has no right to play the rationalist ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... her as she had been, he only knew her as she was now. That, however, fully satisfied his critical taste. The marvel of her alabaster skin, fleckless and flawless, the glory of her glittering red hair, the sea-depths of her cool, gray-green eyes, the reserve of her expression, the virginal curve of her lip, enchanted him. He liked the tall, slender strength of her, the lightness of her step, her grace when she danced, her spirited pose when she rode. Here was the woman, the one woman, to bear his name, to be the mistress of his house. She was the only woman he ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... strides on towards the grotto, the other by his side, like two Tarquins about to invade the sleep of virginal innocence. ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... young virgin, however, is more modest and shy than the young man of the same age, the experienced married woman is usually less so than her husband, and in a woman who is a mother the shy reticences of virginal modesty would be rightly felt to be ridiculous. ("Les petites pudeurs n'existent pas pour les meres," remarks Goncourt, Journal des Goncourt, vol. iii, p. 5.) She has put off a sexual livery that has no longer any important part ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... silence followed these revelations; but soon a German clergyman, Dzierzon, discovered parthenogenesis, i. e. the virginal parturition of queens, and contrived the first hive with movable combs, thereby enabling the bee-keeper henceforth to take his share of the harvest of honey, without being forced to destroy his best colonies and in one instant annihilate the work of an entire ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... thus it was, when like an omen drear That summoned all her kindred to the grave, The cruel mandate reached Sophronia's ear, Who, brave as bashful, yet discreet as brave, Mused how her people she from death might save; Courage inspired, but virginal alarm Repressed the thought, till maiden shyness gave Place to resolve, or joined to share the harm; Boldness awoke her shame, shame ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... this mean that the honeymooning question was already settled? If it were so, the fact would account for the girl's absence of embarrassment in his own company; all the same, he did not believe it, for there was in her manner a calm, virginal composure, an absence of sentimentality, which seemed to denote that the citadel ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... and Frau Christine had told her husband that she had been attacked while on her way to show him a delightful scene in the midst of all this terrible misery, he angrily exclaimed: "A magnificent picture! Balm for the eyes and ears of your own brother's virginal daughter! The saints be praised that you both escaped so easily. Can there be in the worst hell anything more horrible than what has just been witnessed here? Really, where ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Carman's Whistle," "Watkin's Ale," "Chopping Knives," they were probably appropriated to the respective trades they indicate. The tune of the "Carman's Whistle" was composed by Bird, and the favourite tune of "Queen Elizabeth" may be found in the collection called "Queen Elizabeth's Virginal Book." One who has lately heard it played says, "that it has more air than the other execrable compositions in her Majesty's book, something resembling ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... instruments, in 1770, Dr. Burney says, were exceedingly inferior to those of the North of Europe. "Throughout Italy, they have generally little octave spinets to accompany singing in private houses, sometimes in a triangular form, but more frequently in the shape of an old virginal; of which the keys are so noisy and the tone is so feeble, that more wood is heard than wire. I found three English harpsichords in the three principal cities of Italy, which are regarded by the Italians ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... however, has treated the subject in such a way as to show that there yet remains new presentations of the world-old theme. To-day the painter has to retain the sentiment of his subject through a network of technical difficulties, and the gracious virginal figure which Monsieur Dagnan-Bouveret has painted does this measurably well; while he has triumphed technically in painting a figure in white, lit by reflected light filtered through a network of green leaves. Another picture of the Virgin ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... weight of maternity or the continual pull against ill health and genteel poverty. Or they would have been smothered in the plump content of Mrs. Hilmer. Helen Starratt's slenderness had still a virginal quality and she knew every artifice that heightened this effect. To-day she was a trifle startled at quite the lengths she had gone to strike a note of sophisticated youth. She had long since ceased dressing consciously for her husband, and dressing ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... to the goddess. Every woman must have her head shaved in mourning for Adonis, or sacrifice herself under this custom.[1907] Tanith has been identified with Artemis, and the later cults of Punic Africa give great prominence to the "celestial virgin," or "virginal numen." "The identification of the mother-of-the-gods with the heavenly virgin, that is, the unmarried goddess, is confirmed, if not absolutely demanded, by Augustine.[1908] At Carthage she seems also to be identical with Dido."[1909] "The ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... fear he might misunderstand. And yet she wanted to kiss him as she had never wanted to kiss a man. When it came, her face upturned to his, she realized that on his part it was an honest kiss. There hinted nothing behind it. Rugged and kind as himself, it was virginal almost, and betrayed no long practice in the art of saying good-bye. All men were not brutes after all, was ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... advised age, And in thy reverence and thy chair-days, thus To die in ruffian battle?—Even at this sight My heart is turn'd to stone; and while 't is mine It shall be stony. York not our old men spares; No more will I their babes; tears virginal Shall be to me even as the dew to fire, And beauty that the tyrant oft reclaims Shall to my flaming wrath be oil and flax. Henceforth I will not have to do with pity; Meet I an infant of the house of York, Into as many gobbets will I cut it As wild ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... passed each other daily, he had never had a good look at the "pretty girl at Lark's." But one morning the white-faced heifer broke away and bolted up the ditch-bank, and in a cloud of sun-smitten dust Nancy followed, a figure of virginal wrath with scarlet cheeks and wind-blown hair. Reining her pony on the narrow bank, she called across to Travis in a voice as clear and fresh as ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... silver river small In sweet accents Its music vents; The warbling virginal To which the merry birds do sing, Timed with stops of gold the silver ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... I ever again catch at her lovely virginal hands? [he lifts one very gently] Her hands have the sudden beauty and strange fragrance of flowers that bloom among shadows. How can I ever press my lips against them again without bruising their dear shy softness by this weight of unworthiness ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange
... with needlework which it is a wonder to see. Not always can even Agnes bear to look upon the face of this angel, whom God has taken from her. She has worked the little curtain with lilies, with white and virginal flowers; and no hand, not even mine, ever draws it aside. What did I see? The veil was boldly folded away; the face of the child looked at me across her mother's bed, and upon the frame of the picture was laid a branch of olive, with silvery leaves. ...
— A Beleaguered City • Mrs. Oliphant
... high-minded and well-meaning men and women have been trying to abolish this double standard and to introduce a single standard of morality. That is, they are demanding that the man going to the marriage bed should be just as chaste, just as virginal as his wife is. Whether or no the efforts of these good men and women will ever be crowned with success we will leave open. Whether or no it is even desirable that their efforts should be crowned with success we will also leave open. A complete discussion of these questions ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... both astonished and annoyed. He stepped out of his carriage and joined Mrs. Adams but kept Cornelia by his side, so that Hyde was compelled to escort Mrs. Smith. And Cornelia, beyond a very civil "Good-morning, sir," gave him no sign. He could watch her slight, virginal figure, and the bend of her head in answering Mrs. Adams gave him transient glimpses of her fair face; but there was no message in all its changes for him. In fact, in spite of Mrs. Smith's little rill of social complaining, he felt quite "out" of the inner circle ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... since she was too high in the seneschal's chair. This foot was of narrow proportions, delicately curved, as broad as two fingers, and as long as a sparrow, tail included, small at the top—a true foot of delight, a virginal foot that merited a kiss as a robber does the gallows; a roguish foot; a foot wanton enough to damn an archangel; an ominous foot; a devilishly enticing foot, which gave one a desire to make two new ones just like ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... choice less by the external charms than by the interior excellence of his sposa; for although she has now got herself a new front and vamped herself up a little, thus looking a trifle younger than she must have done three hundred years ago, still she has any thing but a bridal or virginal aspect. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... further evidenced around the eyes, in their corners, and about the temples, by pearly tints threaded with blue, the special privilege of these delicate complexions. The face, whose oval Raphael so often gave to his Madonnas, was remarkable for the sober and virginal tone of the cheeks, soft as a Bengal rose, upon which the long lashes of the diaphanous eyelids cast shadows that were mingled with light. The throat, bending as she worked, too delicate perhaps, and of milky whiteness, recalled those vanishing ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... at her, disturbed, and he hoped, disturbing, he thought of little Vera Walters, of her slender virginal body, of her small virginal face, smooth, firm, and slightly pointed like a bud, of her gray eyes, clear as water, and of the pale gold and fawn of her hair. He thought of her tenderness and of her cruelty. He caught himself frowning ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... backed up, guided right and left, and started forward or halted under perfect control. What had she been afraid of in him? She ventured to glance around, and, encountering a warmly personal interest in his gaze, instantly assumed that cold, blank, virginal mask which the majority of young girls ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... prepared to go. They would shrink from saying that he was the Infinite and Eternal, from whom all things derive their being; they see no necessity for believing in the story of his miracles, or the legendary account of his appearance in this world; above all, his virginal conception and birth they often repudiate in terms. They are coming to see—these open-minded men and women of the Anglican body—that the pre-eminence of Jesus must rest, not upon miracles, but on morals; that it is not his mystic ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... in one, See the wealth of your son. Forests primeval, and virginal sod, Wheat-fields golden and splendid: Riches of nature and opulent God For the use of his children intended. A courage that dares, and a hope that endures, ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... tormenting bootblacks had told Gringoire about meeting her that same evening near the Pont Saint-Michel, going off with an officer; but this husband, after the fashion of Bohemia, was an incredulous philosopher, and besides, he, better than any one else, knew to what a point his wife was virginal. He had been able to form a judgment as to the unconquerable modesty resulting from the combined virtues of the amulet and the gypsy, and he had mathematically calculated the resistance of that chastity to the second power. Accordingly, he was at ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... by no means framed for gallantry; but he had wit, and a mind fertile in intrigues, with a measureless ambition that was sometimes pushed to madness. His wife was pretty, not clever, quarrelsome, and under a virginal appearance; mischievous to the last degree. As daughter of a man for whom Madame de Bourgogne had much gratitude for the part he had taken in negotiating her marriage, and the Peace of Savoy, she was easily enabled to make her way at Court, and her husband with her. He soon sniffed what ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... persuaded that the talent of Madame Sand has some of its roots in corruption; in becoming modest she would become commonplace. It would have been otherwise had she always remained in that sanctuary not frequented by men; her power of love, restrained and concealed beneath the virginal fillet, would have drawn from her heart those decent melodies which belong at once to the woman and the angel. However that may be, audacity of ideas and voluptuousness of manners form a spot not before cleared up by a daughter ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... walked in Camden Town and noted the singular caprices of the Spring. Strange longings, freaks of the blood and brain, stirred within her at this bursting of the leaf. They led her into Camden Road, into the High Street, to the great shops where the virginal young fashions and the artificial flowers are. At this season Hunter's window blooms out in blouses of every imaginable colour and texture and form. There was one, a silk one, of so discreet and modest a mauve that you could have called it lavender. To say that it caught Miss Quincey's eye would ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... master's bidding when she replied "His reward be upon the Almighty." Then the Wazir returned and reported the woman's prayer to the Commander of the Faithful, who cried, "Hie thee to her and enquire an she be married or virginal; and, if she be unwedded, do thou ask her an she be willing to wive with me."[FN94] So Ja'afar fared to her and questioned her, whereat she answered, "A spinster." Quoth he, "The Youth who sent the dinar to thee desireth to mate with thee;" and quoth she, "An he can pay me my dower and my ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... breeze that came along with her stirred her skirts, and fluttered her scarlet ribbons, and the curls about her temples. You might think Spring herself had paused for a lovely moment in the Parish House garden and stood before you in this gracious and virginal shape, at once delicate ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... surroundings of the thirty-second floor, while he was being quietly butchered by the floor-clerk on the thirty-third floor, an agent of the Green Claw (that formidable organisation); and all because the two floors looked exactly alike to the virginal Western eye. The original point of my own story was that the man to be entrapped walked into his own house after all, in spite of it being differently painted and numbered, simply because he was absent-minded and used to taking a certain number of mechanical ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... second edition of which was issued in 1610. In the following year he published Psalmes, Songs and Sonnets; some solemne, others joyfull, framed to the life of the Words. Probably in the same year was issued Parthenia, a collection of virginal music, in which Byrd was associated with Bull and Orlando Gibbons. The last work to which he contributed was Sir Thomas Leighton's Teares or Lamentations of a Sorrowfull Soule (1614). His death took place on the 4th of July ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... after all. Her pique at Byrne had passed with the reading of his note, and the sensation of his protection and nearness had been almost physical. In the virginal little apartment in the lodge of Maria Theresa the only masculine presence had been that of the Portier, carrying up coals at ninety Hellers a bucket, or of the accompanist who each alternate day ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... being abashed by the fact that they were city girls, became disgusted with them. He was a stickler for propriety of behaviour among girls; his mother had taught him to despise anything like carrying-on among them, and at twenty he was as severely virginal in his morality as if he had ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... virginal daughter of cold Espingo! Hail, Naiad, whose realm is the cloud and the snow; For o'er thee the angels have whiten'd their wings, And the thirst of the seraphs is quench'd at thy springs. What hand hath, in heaven, ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... on the point of insinuating that a proper use of her charms might accomplish much in certain quarters, but there was something so calmly virginal and pure about the girl as she sat there in her half-sacred costume that instinct conquered cynicism and he refrained. Unattached and unchaperoned as she was, or appeared to be, the girl commanded respect even in Paris. Instead of answering ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... since the inauguration of the delaine, Mrs. Marmaduke Splurge had been less alive to the necessity of improving the minds of her girls; and that virginal ten-dollar investment had provided Josephine, Adelaide, and Madeline with supplies of small arms and ammunition enough for a protracted campaign of epistolary belligerence, interrupted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... the integrity of the flesh would seem to consist in the seal of virginal purity. Yet sometimes the seal is broken without loss of virginity. For Augustine says (De Civ. Dei i, 18) that "those organs may be injured through being wounded by mischance. Physicians, too, sometimes do for the sake ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... daughter," protested the major, "such knowledge would have a terrible effect upon young girls!" He rose and began to pace the floor again. "Daughter, you are letting yourself run wild! The sweetness, the virginal innocence of young and pure women—if you take that from them, there'd be nothing left to keep men from falling to the level ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... these unvailed exposures of sentiments and of life offend that virginal modesty of soul, of which outward modesty is but an imperfect emblem? You show ourself unvailed, and you do not blush! Who ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various |
