Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Virile   /vˈɪrəl/   Listen
Virile

adjective
1.
Characterized by energy and vigor.  "A new and virile leadership"
2.
Characteristic of a man.  Synonyms: male, manful, manlike, manly.  "Manly sports"
3.
(of a male) capable of copulation.  Synonym: potent.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Virile" Quotes from Famous Books



... healthful. She encouraged him besides in drawing-room interests. But in other points her influence was manlike. Filled with the spirit of thoroughness, she taught him to make of the least of these accomplishments a virile task; and the teaching lasted him through life. Immersed as she was in the day's movements and buzzed about by leading Liberals, she handed on to him her creed in politics: an enduring kindness for Italy, and a loyalty, like that of many clever women, to the Liberal party with ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson

... completeness, as well as the unity of its fine architectural features, which makes such a great castle as this so impressive. As a feudal stronghold it can hardly fail to appeal to the imagination. As the modern palatial home of an English nobleman, it appeals to something more virile—to the sense that behind the medieval walls the life of its occupants is still representative, is still deep and national in importance and significance. Pictorially, there is nothing—unless it be a great cathedral, which brings up quite ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various

... whole sober and industrious; but when he breaks away from sobriety and industry he becomes a vicious element in the general organism. Yet his vices are of the surface, and do not destroy the foundations of his social and domestic scheme. A French Canadian pony used to be considered the most virile and lasting stock on the continent, and it is fair to say that the French Canadians themselves are genuinely hardy, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... these papers, about which her grandmother had spoken so angrily, frightened her a little; while a curiosity that grew with every moment awoke within her. And then, dominated though she was by the virile authority which had just constrained and subjugated her, she did not yet yield. But might she not listen to him, read with him? Did she not retain the right to refuse or to give herself afterward? He ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola

... will give a little rapidity to the blood; of the pleasures preferring those that are mild and without violence—the love of gain and the pursuit of money; hence, there was absence of soul. Another phase was the cultivation of the body, the body and its beauty uniquely cared for by virile treatment and a rigid regime which is the guardian of life—not weakly adored as by women who kill themselves by excessive self-love." M. Saint-Amand continues, after quoting the above: "At all seasons of the year, Diana plunges into a cold ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme

... dazzling for his thirty years of intimate triumphs and mundane glories. His adventures followed him like a procession. He had captivated three generations of women, and had left in the heart of all those whom he had loved an imperishable memory. His virile grace, his quiet elegance, and his habit of pleasing had prolonged his youth far beyond the ordinary term of years. He noticed particularly the young Countess Martin. The homage of this expert flattered her. She thought of him now with pleasure. He had a marvellous art of conversation. He amused ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... difficulty in the part for which he had cast himself. He had expected to condescend upon an elderly inept and give him sharp instructions; instead he found himself faced with a jovial, virile figure which certainly did not suggest incompetence. It has been mentioned already that he had always great difficulty in looking any one in the face, and this difficulty was intensified when he found himself confronted ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan

... advice. Well! Without that power to decide and hold to decision in spite of misgiving, one would never have been fit for one's position at the Bar, never have been fit for anything. The longer he lived, the more certain he became of the prime necessity of virile and decisive action in all the affairs of life. A word and a blow—and the blow first! Doubts, hesitations, sentiment the muling and puking of this twilight age—! And there welled up on his handsome face a smile that was almost devilish—the tricks of firelight are so ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... terata, by their intense interest to the natural bent of the curious mind, have always elicited much discussion. To many of these cases have been attributed exaggerated function, notwithstanding the fact that modern observation almost invariably shows that the virile power diminishes in exact proportion to the extent of duplication. Taylor quotes a description of a monster, exhibited in London, with two distinct penises, but with only one distinct testicle on either side. He could exercise ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... make a confidant of a boy in his teens, and positively smelling of the nursery? And when had I cause to repent it? There is none so apt as a boy to be the adviser of any man in difficulties such as mine. To the beginnings of virile common sense he adds the last lights of the child's imagination; and he can fling himself into business with that superior earnestness that properly belongs to play. And Rowley was a boy made to my hand. He had a high sense of romance, and ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson

... hotel and reclaim the note, before Hugh could get it. Could anything have happened to her? Marishka wanted her—the sound of a voice, the touch of a feminine hand, her airs and graces—the foibles of a child perhaps, but intensely virile in their childishness and intensely human. It seemed that even Yeva was ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs

... altogether, being inconsistent, no doubt, with the austere manners of Milford Corners, Mass. In one of the recent French versions, on the other hand—M. Bernstein's Samson—the aristocratic lover is almost as important a character as the virile, masterful, plebeian husband. It appears from this survey—which might be largely extended—that there are several ways of handling the theme; but there is no way of renewing and deconventionalizing it. No doubt it has a long life before it on the plane of popular melodrama, but scarcely, one ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... V. ascended the throne of Spain he had no beard. It was not to be expected that the obsequious parasites who always surround a monarch, could presume to look more virile than their master. Immediately all the courtiers appeared beardless, with the exception of such few grave old men as had outgrown the influence of fashion, and who had determined to die bearded as they had ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... word "people" threw Herr Bismarck into hysterical frenzy! He determined upon resisting the heresy with all the virile courage of his ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel

... years, he was a healthy and virile man, capable of undergoing hardships if the necessity arose, but, above all, he had a plan ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace

... entertaining characters, and some very unconventional situations. Her people were virile; her hero was strong if not always grammatical; her heroine did and said things not common in real life, and yet that were quite reasonable when her peculiar nature and ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter

... went to make up John Adams; but their enumeration does not furnish a complete picture of him, or reveal the virile, choleric, masterful man. And he was far more lovable and far more popular than his equally great son, also a typical Adams, from the same cause which produced some of his worst blunders and misfortunes,—a generous impulsiveness of feeling which made it impossible for him to ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... I entered the bedchamber of the general, and there I overtook my friend. He was inspecting, with much attention, an article of the great man's wardrobe which he held in his hand. It was precisely that virile habiliment to which a well-known gallant captain alludes in his conversation with the posthumous appearance of Miss Bailey, as containing a Bank ...
— The Relics of General Chasse • Anthony Trollope

... family. There are sixteen women in the group, representing fifty-six persons, most of whom are children in school. Think what it means to those children to have mothers who are vitally interested in seeing them grow up to be strong, virile men and women. "Knowledge makes Power," aye, the knowledge of the mothers of today makes for the powerful ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various

... and manifested itself, with growing force, in varied and widespread activity worthy of a literature that had grown out of the needs of a national group. On the field of poetry, there is, first of all, Constantin Shapiro, the virile lyricist, who knew how to put into fitting words the indignation and revolt of the people against the injustice levelled against them. His "Poems of Jeshurun" published in He-Asif for 1888, alive with emotion and patriotic ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz

... by bringing into full evidence to him the force of his affections and the probable importance of their place in his future, developed in him generally the more human and earthly elements of character. A singularly virile consciousness of the realities of life pronounced itself in him; still however as in the main a poetic apprehension, though united already with something of personal ambition and the instinct of self-assertion. There were days when he ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater

... had prescribed a course of light literature for Miss Quincey and seemed to think it necessary to supply his own drugs. To be sure he brought a great many medicines that you cannot get made up at the chemist's, insight, understanding, sympathy, the tonic of his own virile youth; and Heaven only knows if these things were ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair

... seldom, perhaps, been such an absence of complexity in genius of a high order as there was in Dickens's character. But though there was no complexity, there were two very different aspects—acute sensibility was not incompatible with a virile and buoyant spirit. And so Dickens's associations with the country which he loved best and knew most intimately were, on the one side, those of a dreamy childhood, on the other, of a lusty zest in ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin

... that the Russian bourgeoisie was so thoroughly infected with the ills of the bureaucratic system that it was itself decadent; not virile and progressive as a class aiming to possess the future must be. Since it was thus corrupted and weakened, and therefore incapable of fulfilling any revolutionary historical role, that became the immediate task of the ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo

... have said to minimize the disadvantages and discouragements under which we are to-day doing our work. My only plea is for the hopeful and optimistic outlook which, I maintain, is richly justified by the progress that has already been made and by the virile character of the forces that are operating in ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley

... done a thing at once so foolhardy and so wise as to make a confidant of a boy in his 'teens, and positively smelling of the nursery? And when had I cause to repent it? There is none so apt as a boy to be the adviser of any man in difficulties such as mine. To the beginnings of virile common-sense he adds the last lights of the child's imagination; and he can fling himself into business with that superior earnestness that properly belongs to play. And Rowley was a boy made to my hand. He had a high sense ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... succeeds, the young girl is declared 'bonne a marier.'" MM. Hanoteau and Letourneau state that among the Kabyles of Algeria a similar measurement is made of the male sex. In Kabylia, where the attainment of the virile state brings on the necessity of paying taxes and bearing arms, families not infrequently endeavour to conceal the puberty of their young men. If such deceit is suspected, recourse is had to the test of neck-measurement. Here again, as in ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... later day. Essentially he was the worshipper of the lip of flower, of dust upon the moth wing, of the throat of young girl, or brow of young boy, of the sudden flight of bird, the soft going of light clouds in a windless sky. These were the gentle stimulants to his most virile expression. Nor did his pictures ever contain more; they never struggled beyond the quality of legend, at least as I know them. He knew the loveliness in a profile, he saw always the evanescences of light upon light and purposeless things. The action or incident in his pictures was never ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley

... established, and ascertained for ever, and shall, at no time hereafter, be questioned or questionable.' 3rd. That we are determined to make use of any powers we have, or may have at any time in the future, to work for our own advancement, and for the creation of a prosperous, virile, and ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard

... surgeon, a vignette worthy of Smollett. Alfred Yule, the worn-out veteran, whose literary ideals are those of the eighteenth century, is a most extraordinary study of an arriere—certainly one of the most crusted and individual personalities Gissing ever portrayed. He never wrote with such a virile pen: phrase after phrase bites and snaps with a singular crispness and energy; material used before is now brought to a finer literary issue. It is by far the most tenacious of Gissing's novels. It shows that on the more conventional lines of fictitious ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... when she first heard Larbi's flute. It was as if a shutter, which had closed a window in the house of life, had been suddenly drawn away, giving to her eyes the horizon of a new world. Was that shutter now drawn back for him? No doubt the supposition was absurd. Men of his emotional and virile type have travelled far in that world, to her mysterious, ere they reach his length of years. What was extraordinary to her, in the thought of it alone, was doubtless quite ordinary to him, translated into act. Not ignorant, she was nevertheless a perfectly ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... had a sudden vision of Hartley Parrish, one of his long, black Partagas thrust at an aggressive angle from a corner of his mouth, virile, battling, strong. ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine

... because it had so long been ruddy with the florid hues of a Rubens; and now a certain discoloration and the deep tension of the wrinkles betrayed the efforts of a passion at odds with natural decay. Hulot was now one of those stalwart ruins in which virile force asserts itself by tufts of hair in the ears and nostrils and on the fingers, as moss grows on the almost eternal monuments ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... into a chair and stared into the fire. Carlisle glanced at his face in profile; a virile and commanding face it was, and to her, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... him physically weaker; indeed, so much so that she was fain, even in her embarrassment, to assist him back to the bench from which he had ceremoniously risen. But she was so struck with the change in his face and manner, a change so virile and masterful, in spite of its gentle sadness of manner, that she recoiled with a slight timidity as if he had been a stranger, although she was also conscious that he seemed to be more at his ease than she was. He began in a low ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte

... the close connection of sexual thoughts with the most sacred mysteries of faith. In polytheisms, the divinities are universally represented as male or female, virile and fecund. The processes of nature were often held to be maintained ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton

... was good, but 'The Sky Pilot' is better. The matter which he gives us is real life; virile, true, tender, humorous, pathetic, spiritual, wholesome. His style, fresh, crisp and terse, accords with the Western life, which he understands. Henceforth the foothills of the Canadian Rockies will probably ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles

... altogether. We Pagans neither agree with your morality nor admire those whom you claim as your successes. If you were less holy and more natural, less idealistic and more practical, you would be of a greater service to the world which you desire to help. Religion should be a sturdy, virile growth; not the delicate hot-house blossom which you ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson

... case he was incapable of doing so. I could not decide until I had seen other work of his. To-day I know he is as capable with his chisel as Musgrave is with his brush. You have only to study the standing and crouching figures in the group to see how virile and full of insight ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner

... weaknesses and dangers of early life he had been shielded with loving vigilance. His mind and taste had been fostered with untiring care, and yet every new development praised as unstintedly as if all were of native growth. Fortunately he abounded in virile force and good sense, and so gradually passed from self-complacency and conceit to the self-reliance and courage of a strong man, who, while aware of his ability and vantage-ground, also recognizes the fact ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... are all flowers and romance, like the picture in the Tate Gallery. 'Spring in the Austrian Tyrol' is to our minds a vision of pristine loveliness. It contains also this Christ of the heavy body defiled by torture and death, the strong, virile life overcome by physical violence, the eyes still looking back bloodshot in ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence

... that picture of herself, stooping from place and power, to bind up the wounds of the people, in which she had once delighted, was to her now a mere flimsy vulgarity. She had been shown other ideals—other ways—and her pulses were still swaying under the audacity—the virile inventive force of the showman. Everything she had once desired looked flat to her; everything she was not to have, glowed and shone. Poverty, adventure, passion, the joys of self-realisation—these she gave up. She ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... to-day! Did Jews really conceive it as a contemporary possibility? Barstein went hot and cold. The idea was absolutely novel to him; evidently as a boy he had not understood his own prayers or his own people. All his imagination was inflamed. He conjured up a Zion built up by such virile hands as Sir Asher's, and peopled by such beautiful mothers as his daughter: the great Empire that would spring from the unity and liberty of a race which even under dispersion and oppression was one of the most potent peoples on the planet. And thus, when the ladies at ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... deeper point of view that dispelled as by magic the disenchantment that had chilled these first days of my return. I stood here in this old-world garden, but I stood also in the heart of that beauty, so carefully hidden, so craftily screened behind the obvious, that strong and virile beauty which is England. Within call of my voice, still studying by lamplight now the symbols of her well-established strength, burning, moreover, with the steady faith which does not easily break across restraint, and loving the ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood

... stood there like a rock, head up, revolver ready, every muscle tense and ready for whatsoever might befall. And through the girl flashed a thrill of admiration for this virile, indomitable man, coping with every difficulty, ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... we were in action with these virile ardent fellows. Two of their Divisions took part in the great battle which at 5.30 A.M. opened on a 35-mile front—ten days of bloody victorious fighting, by which three armies shattered the last and strongest of the enemy's fully-prepared positions, and struck ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)

... More vigorous, capable, and virile than the Lepchas are the Nepalese, who, migrating from Nepal, are found in great numbers in this region. They are more given to agriculture than the Lepchas, and are thrifty, industrious, and resourceful. Though excitable and aggressive, they ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband

... is simply a backward eddy in the tide, and significant only as a temporary reaction against ultra civilization—like Thoreau, though in a different way. But with all his mistakes in art there is a healthy, virile, tumultuous pulse of life in his lyric utterance and a great sweep of imagination in his panoramic view of times and countries. One likes to read him because he feels so good, enjoys so fully the play of his senses, and has such a lusty ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... mystics and they themselves enjoyed times of direct refreshment from an inward Source of Life, but {xxx} they were, most of them, at the same time, devoted Humanists. They shared with enthusiasm the rediscovery of those treasures which human Reason had produced, and they rose to a more virile confidence in the sphere and capacity of Reason than had prevailed in Christian circles since the days of the early Greek Fathers. They took a variety of roads to their conclusion, but in one way or another they all proclaimed ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... shame.[58] This is an even closer mimicry of the sexual act than the exhibitionist attains, for the latter fails to secure the consent of the woman nor does he enjoy any intimate contact with her naked body. The difference is connected with the fact that the active flagellant is usually a more virile and normal person than the exhibitionist. In the majority of cases the exhibitionist's sexual impulse is very feeble, and as a rule he is either to some degree a degenerate, or else a person who is suffering from an early stage of general paralysis, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... from childhood to all physical exercises, sharing the pleasures and dangers of the knights around her. Feudal life, fertile in surprises and in risks, demanded even in women a vigorous temper of soul and body, a masculine air, and habits also that were almost virile. She accompanied her father or her husband to the chase, while in war-time, if she became a widow or if her husband was away at the Crusades, she was ready, if necessary, to direct the defences of the lordship, and in peace time she was not afraid ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis

... officiumque virile Defendat, neu quid medios intercinat actus, Quod non proposito conducat, et haereat apte. Ille bonis faveatque, et concilietur amicis, Et regat iratos, et amet peccare timentes. Ille dapes laudet mensae ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... wore that antique garment, but that he was in rough costume unbrushed and stained, with thick shoes and coarse stockings, and a workman's cap. But of all who gathered round the table at which M. Lebeau presided, he had the most distinguished exterior,—a virile honest exterior, a massive open forehead, intelligent eyes, a handsome clear-cut incisive profile, and solid jaw. The expression of the face was stern, but not mean,—an expression which might have become an ancient baron as well as a modern workman; ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... to me, for moral as for physical support. I could see, too, that the hair of the feebler man was white, while that of his companion was jet black. The younger man's face appeared so dark that I suspected he wore a beard, and his figure was erect and vigorous, in the prime of life, virile and full of power. ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson

... nothing in him of the courtier-like grace employed in the good-humored reproof of unimportant vices, of the indulgent, condescending admonition to the "gentle reader," particularly of the fair sex. In Hazlitt's hands the essay was an instrument for the expression of serious thought and virile passion. He lacked indeed the temperamental balance of Lamb. His insight into human nature was intellectual rather than sympathetic. Though as a philosopher he understood that the web of life is of a mingled yarn, he ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... George Pendle,' said Graham, who knew that the father was more virile than the son, and therefore needed the tonic of words rather than the soothing anodyne of medicine. 'If you believe in what you preach, if you are a true servant of your God, call upon religion, upon your Deity, for help to bear your troubles. Stand up manfully, my friend, ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... Still, it is true, she wrote to disciples near and far long, tender letters of spiritual counsel—analyses of the religious life tranquilly penetrating as those of an earlier time. But her political correspondence grew in bulk. It is tense, nervous, virile. It breathes a vibrating passion, a solemn force, that are the index of a breaking heart. Not for one moment did Catherine relax her energies. From 1376, when she went to Avignon, she led, with one or two brief intermissions only, the life of a busy woman of affairs. But within this ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa

... now consider the poem itself by the help of Professor Stephens' admirable translation. Essentially a Christian composition, it preserves all the Gothic strength and virile beauty of the old pagan forms. The modern words, Saviour, Passion, Apostles, etc., do not once appear. Christ is the "Youthful Hero," He is the "Peace-God," the "Atheling," the "Frea of mankind." He is even identified ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone

... charge to do, . . TO REDEEM HIS PAST. To use and expend whatever force was in him for the good, the help, the consolement, and the love of others, ... NOT to benefit himself! This was his task, . . and the very comprehension of it gave him a rush of vigor and virile energy that at once lifted the cloud ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... without angers and bitterness. I am one of those who hope from that unknown future, but only on condition that we make use from the first of every means of pacification that is in our power. Let us act with the virile ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... Madame de Hell's intended visit, she hastened to meet her, and received her with an unaffectedly cordial welcome. Her guest could not look at her, however, without a feeling of astonishment. Attired in a long brown petticoat, and a vest which concealed her figure, she wore a manly virile aspect, according thoroughly with the character of the life she ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams

... could have been made through which to introduce him to the American public. It is a strange, sweet tale, this story of an isolated forest community civilized and regenerated by the life of one man. The translator has caught the spirit of the work, and Rosegger's virile style ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post

... cher petit bebe—our dear little baby was born a week ago. Almost I died, knowing you were far away, and perhaps forgetting the fruit of our perfect love. But the child comforted me. He has the smiling eyes and virile air of his English father. I pray to the Mother of Jesus to send me the dear father of my child, that I may see him with my child in his arms, and that we may be united in holy family love. Ah, my Alfred, can I tell you how I miss you, how I weep for you? My thoughts ...
— Wintry Peacock - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • D. H. Lawrence

... road the Virile Benedict of the Libraries came bicycling, treadling easily from the ankles. He rode boldly, with only one hand on the handle-bars, the other in the pocket of his white flannel cricketing trousers. His footballing tie, with his college arms embroidered upon it, flapped gently in the breeze. ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne

... diverse breeds of men. The Soudanese are of many tribes, but two main races can be clearly distinguished: the aboriginal natives, and the Arab settlers. The indigenous inhabitants of the country were negroes as black as coal. Strong, virile, and simple-minded savages, they lived as we may imagine prehistoric men—hunting, fighting, marrying, and dying, with no ideas beyond the gratification of their physical desires, and no fears save those engendered by ghosts, witchcraft, the worship of ancestors, and other forms of ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill

... beloved and loving." Donne was curious of adventures of many kinds, but in nothing more than in love. As a youth he leaves the impression of having been an Odysseus of love, a man of many wiles and many travels. He was a virile neurotic, comparable in some points to Baudelaire, who was a sensualist of the mind even more than of the body. His sensibilities were different as well as less of a piece, but he had something of Baudelaire's taste for hideous and ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd

... finer than that of Mr. Roosevelt. He is, therefore, more interested in the refinements, the luxuries, and the delicacies of life than is Mr. Roosevelt. He is also less vigorous, less virile, and less insistent upon reform and the right of the people to rule. It is an interesting fact that most of the great friends of the people, most of those who are eager in demanding the rights of the proletariat, are men of medium or ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb

... his calculating eye still on Garrison, then proceeded with much forensic ability and virile imagination to lay the full beauties ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson

... newspaper altogether than to have permitted the license of accusation, political incitement, and personal rancor which characterized so largely the journals of thirty years ago. [Applause.] But they were virile hands which held editorial pens in those days and the faults were doubtless faults of the period rather than of the men themselves. It was a splendid galaxy—that company which included George D. Prentiss, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... duality and contradiction were proclaimed in the hands—strong, tenacious, virile hands; small, fine, delicate hands; hands with the powerful and purposeful thumb of the West; hands with the supple artistic fingers and delicate ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren

... despair. He perceived, too, the debasing effects of slavery upon master and slave alike, crushing all semblance of manhood in the one, and in the other substituting passion for judgment, caprice for justice, and indolence and effeminacy for the more virile virtues of freemen. Doubtless the gentle hand of time will some time spread the veil of silence over this painful past; but, while we are still gathering its evil aftermath, it is well enough that we do not forget the origin of so many of ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... his chin with a safety pin of the brassiest; and a broad-brimmed black slouch hat, so broad of brim that he walked forever in its shadow. This hat he kept on all the time. His hands were long and clean and white—the virile, sensitive hands of a poet, I thought. The eyes were the fascinating feature of the man. I said to myself right away, "This man is a mystic." Though they burned brightly in their sockets, they had a trick of turning abruptly dim; a sort of film or veil, closed over them. "Druid or old Celt," ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... enimvero pro deum atque hominum fidem[116] victoria in manu nobis est, viget aetas, animus valet; contra illis annis atque divitiis omnia consenuerunt. Tantummodo incepto opus est; cetera res expediet. Etenim quis mortalium cui virile ingenium est, tolerare potest, illis divitias superare,[117] quas profundant in extruendo mari et montibus coaequandis, nobis rem familiarem etiam ad necessaria deesse? illos binas aut amplius domos continuare, nobis larem familiarem[118] nusquam ullum esse? Quum tabulas, ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)

... that carried with it his sincere and revivifying spirit, left in the tomb of our decimated divisions an evidence of the necessity for reform. When our warlike institutions were perishing from the lack of thought, he represented in all its greatness the true type of military thinker. The virile thought of a military thinker alone brings forth successes and maintains victorious nations. Fatal indolence brought about the invasion, the loss of two provinces, the bog of moral miseries and social evils which ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq

... community to which his abilities and character entitle him, is itself the negation of class. Human beings are not equal in these qualities. But a society that is based upon a constant flux of individuals in the community, upon the basis of ability and character, is a moving virile mass; it is not a stratification of classes. Its inspiration is individual initiative. Its stimulus is competition. Its safeguard is education. Its greatest mentor is free speech and voluntary organization for public good. Its expression in legislation is the common ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg

... true that some of the most characteristic products of his genius are closely akin to the insanity which clouded his later years. Yet it is impossible to read his writings without recognising his penetrating insight as well as his abundance of virile passion. Besides, in spite of all his extravagances—or, perhaps, because of them—he is symptomatic of certain tendencies of the age. Nietzsche's demand is for nothing less than a revision of the whole moral code and ...
— Recent Tendencies in Ethics • William Ritchie Sorley

... what has been well called le sentiment du fer, the sentiment of deadly steel, had then the disposition of refined existence. It was, indeed, very different, and is, in Merimee's romance. In his gallant hero, Bernard de Mergy, all the promptings of the lad's virile goodness are in natural collusion with that sentiment du fer. Amid his ingenuous blushes, his prayers, and plentiful tears between-while, it is a part of his very sex. With his delightful, fresh-blown air, he is ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... and early training, and his final position the slow elaborate outcome of his own sustained efforts to live, a woman, from the age of sixteen onward—as the world goes now—is essentially adventurous, the creature of circumstances largely beyond her control and foresight. A virile man, though he, too, is subject to accidents, may, upon most points, still hope to plan and determine his life; the life of a woman is all accident. Normally she lives in relation to some specific man, and until that man is indicated her preparation for life must be of ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... One had to go to the smoking room where there was wassail on lemon squash and insipid English beer until after midnight. But there the talk was good. Of course it sometimes bore a strong smell of man about it, but it was virile and wise. A rug dealer from Odessa, a dealer in mining machinery from Moscow, a Chicago college professer returning from Petrograd, a cigarette maker from Egypt, a brace of British naval officers going over to return with Canadian transports, ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White

... the liberties he securely enjoys. The general social interest is equally well protected, because the liberties enjoyed by one or by a few are enjoyed by all. Thus the individual and the social interests are automatically harmonized. The virile democrat in pursuing his own interest "under the law" is contributing effectively to the interest of society, while the social interest consists precisely in the promotion of these individual interests, in so far as they can be equally exercised. The divergent demands of the individual ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... them only where they fit."[7] As it is in action through life, so it is in writing; the conclusions arrived at by reason are apt to be more valuable than those which we accept on authority. The reasoned literary style is more virile than that based on the dictionary. A judgment arrived at by argument sticks in the memory, while it is necessary for the user of the dictionary constantly to invoke authority, so that the writer who reasons out the meaning of words may constantly accelerate ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes

... "Wobbly" one frequently encounters in our mid-western and western cities, is very unlike the hideous and repulsive figure conjured up by sensational cartoonists. He is much more likely to be a very attractive sort of man. Here are some characteristics of the type: figure robust, sturdy, and virile; dress rough but not unclean; speech forthright, deliberate, and bold; features intelligent, frank, and free from signs of alcoholic dissipation; movements slow and leisurely as of one averse to over-exertion. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... longer even attempting to fight. He was bringing to bear upon her all his virile strength, all his spite, all his fears, all the threats expressed in his furious gestures and on his features, which were both ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc

... new parties have risen to demand justice in government and improvement in the economic situation. One such movement defeated but makes way for another. Proof, this, that the spirit of true reform is virile and the heart of the nation pure. The progress made, in numbers and organization, before the seeds of decay were sown in the United Labor party, the Union Labor party, the Greenback-Labor party, the People's party of 1884, and various third-party movements, ...
— Direct Legislation by the Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum • James W. Sullivan

... agenestic, infecund, unprolific, unprocreant; unproductive, unfruitful, unfertile, effete, desert; unprofitable, fruitless, unremunerative, empty; stupid, dull, unimaginative, prosaic, devoid, uninspiring, uninteresting. Antonyms: prolific, fecund, virile, fruitful, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... though in precisely what manner I have no very clear idea. But the end came at a gathering where the Prince played psychic music, and a chance union of hands between hero and heroine transmuted the former from "a dilettante" and "polished ladies' man" to "a virile male filled with the blasting vehemence of primary passions." Incidentally it proved altogether too much both for the Professor and his inoculated rabbits, all of whom expired on the spot. Just about here that most pertinent question became more acute than ever. Fortunately it was the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 19, 1917 • Various

... that for nearly three hundred years his descendants sat on the throne of China, and ruled over what was for a great portion of the time the largest empire on earth. Nurhachu, the real founder of the Manchu power, was born in 1559, from a virile stock, and was soon recognised to be an extraordinary child. We need not linger over his dragon face, his phoenix eye, or even over his large, drooping ears, which have always been associated by the Chinese with intellectual ability. He first came into prominence in 1583, when, at ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles

... of other countries. Then a sacred thrill (heiliger Schauer) of deep understanding will come over your heart." For the German sportsman "takes more pleasure in the life that surrounds him and which he protects, than in the shot which only the last hot virile craving (Mannesgier) wrings from him, and which he fires only when he knows that he will kill, painlessly kill. For this is the root principle of German sportsmanship: 'God grant me one day ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various

... crumpled heap, with a tiny wound upon his hand? But that could not be—Grady and Simmonds had been with him all the evening! And could that aged Frenchman with the white, fine, wrinkled skin be also the bronzed and virile personage whom I had known as Felix Armand? My reason reeled before the seeming impossibility of it—and yet, somehow, I knew that ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... a soul to the objects of sense and a body to the abstractions of philosophy," we can at any rate claim for it that it is a musical and vigorous speech. Full of vowel-sounds, entirely without sibilants, but rich in guttural and chest notes, it may be made at will to sound liquid or virile, soft or ringing. ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... raised his head, once more the light that flickered in his face transformed him into some semblance of a virile man. ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... deserves the recognition it has attained, but this is undoubtedly the most artistic, the most virile, and the most heartrendingly ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips

... vaguely had she dreamed that Drene could be such a man, such a friend, never had she imagined there was in him such kindness, such patience, such gentleness, such comprehension, such virile sense and sympathy. ...
— Between Friends • Robert W. Chambers

... and knees, and permit her to lift herself, at least her hips, by the help of her arms around his waist. This is no hardship for the husband, if he be a true lover. For is he not strong, and what is his strength for but to delight his sweetheart? A true, devoted, virile and manly lover is always at the service of his sweetheart! To delight her, is to doubly delight himself. This is another point of which mere animals know nothing. There is nothing in all their nature which responds to the like of this, in ...
— Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living • H.W. Long

... to fling open the window, amidst a shower of malodorous missiles, to vault over the balcony, and slide down one of the pillars to the ground, baring his steely biceps in the process, and shying the "castor" from his curly looks with all the virile grace of the Great Earl, was the work of exactly ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 30, 1891 • Various

... that such a partnership with woman in government as obtains in Australia and New Zealand is sufficiently unreal to be endurable, there cannot be two opinions on the question that a virile and imperial race will not brook any attempt ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright

... certain uneasiness hung about his mind all the morning. Dyce had his ideal of manly independence; it annoyed him that circumstances made the noble line of conduct so difficult. He believed himself strong, virile, yet so often it happened that he was constrained to act in what seemed rather a feeble and undignified way. But, after all, it was temporary; the day of his emancipation from paltry necessities would surely ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing

... and Norway to the mouth of the Thames, and to the Rhine, the Seine, and to the Straits of Gibraltar, are abroad again, landing on the shores of America, circumnavigating Africa, and bringing home tales of Indians in the west, and Indians in the east. This virile stock that had been hammered and hewn was now to be polished; and in Italy, France, England, and Germany grew up a passion for translating the rough mythology, and the fierce fancy of the north, into painting, ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... type of a city man; David—"What a man he is!" she was forced to admit as he stood, head uplifted in the white glare under the chandelier, the brilliant light shining upon his dark hair, and his eyes glowing like stars. His lithe figure, perfect in poise and balance, of virile strength that was toil-proof, wore the look of the outdoor life. His smile banished everything that was ordinary from his face and transmuted it into a glowing personality. His eyes, serious with that insight of the observer who knows what is going on ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... terms they censure the abdication of the Swiss soul at the time when Belgium was being invaded, noting with pain the absence of any national and public protest. But now there is a change of spirit. "We have a young and virile movement, the movement of those who are not satisfied with the mere existence of Switzerland, but who desire that Switzerland should prove herself worthy to exist, by her moral greatness and by helping to bring salvation to other peoples" ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland

... principle of technical perfection, without falling into a certain physical coarseness so much in evidence in most of our modern work. His sense of design is keen, without being too apparent, and the impression one gains from his works is that they are honest transcriptions of nature by a strong, virile personality. Winter subjects predominate in his pictures, and he expresses them probably more convincingly than others - though his Autumn is marvelous in its richness of colour, and in the two night effects of New York he shows his acute power of observation in ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus

... tale full Of monsters and mysteries, full of the most touching omens and auguries—a helpless questioner, something bewitched and in need of rescue. Here the artist distinctly heard the command that concerned him alone—to recast myth and make it virile, to break the spell lying over music and to make music speak: he felt his strength for drama liberated at one stroke, and the foundation of his sway established over the hitherto undiscovered province ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche

... still raining when they awoke, a weary, whining drizzle. And Father was still virile with desire of heroism. He scampered out to see what he could ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis

... self-conscious moments, he shambled when he walked. Only moderately tall, clothed in ill-cut garments which he wore as uneasily as possible, his immature young figure was not one to call out much admiration on the score of its virility. Indeed, the one really virile thing about Scott Brenton was his hair, which sprang out strongly from his scalp, fine, but thick and just a little wavy where it lay across his crown. His head was well-shaped, only that it was a bit too high above the ears, the brow a bit too salient; the eyes alone, though, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... of mixed blood jabbered in French, Cree, and Chipewyan chiefly, but when they wanted to swear, they felt the inadequacy of these mellifluous or lisping tongues, and fell back on virile Saxon, whose tang, projectivity, and wealth of vile epithet evidently supplied a long-felt want in the Great Lone Land of the ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton

... of Modern Painters" we read: "All her pictures are softly tender and full of fresh light. But the execution is downright and virile. It is only in little touches, in fine and delicate traits of observation which would probably have escaped a man, that these paintings are recognized as the ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement

... in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, before the Renaissance had grown powerful enough to influence European life. Even during those palmy days he exercised a power that for the most part was not virile, but crushing and inhuman. It has been set forth in Dr. Paul Carus's History of the Devil. In the light of such a history as that I doubt much whether even Professor Stanley Hall himself would lift a finger to bring the Devil back ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis

... grace of a woman. Although it was evident that she was accustomed to govern and command, there was nothing in her look, gesture, or voice which betrayed any assumption of masculinity. She remained a young girl while in the very act of playing the virile part of head of the house. But what astonished Julien quite as much was that she seemed to have received a degree of education superior to that of people of her condition, and he wondered at the amount of ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet

... appreciation of gold. He comes out squarely for the gold standard and places bimetallism of any and all sorts under a common ban. But alas! what a sorry appearance he makes. Nowhere in our political history do I find quite so pathetic a figure as that presented by this once strong and virile champion of the people's rights in his contrasted role of defender of their oppressors. Where now is that compact and cogent argument, that sincere and moving eloquence, which made his forensic style so singularly effective; which marked him the parliamentary darling of his party, ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various

... nation such as ours, a virile, highly-civilised nation with an age-long tradition of mastery behind it, cannot be held under for ever by a few thousand bayonets and machine guns. We must surely rise up one day and drive ...
— When William Came • Saki

... advertisement, all democratically smoke the same kind of tobacco. 'You know 'em all, the great fun-makers of the daily press, agile-brained and nimble-witted, creators of world-famed characters who put laughter into life. Such live, virile humans as they must have a live, virile pipe-smoke.' There are, to be sure, some who find in this agile-brained and nimble-witted mirth an element of profound melancholy; it seems often a debased coin of humor, which rings false on the counter of intelligence; yet even at ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren

... for a golden time in false tranquillity and independence. The princes who shared his culture and his love of art were gradually passing into modern noblemen, abandoning the savage feuds and passions of more virile centuries, yielding to luxury and scholarly enjoyments. The castles were becoming courts, and despotisms won by ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... it the miraculous power ... of seeing things steadily and seeing them wholly, with relentless humor and pitiless pathos. The book is crowded with types, and they are all etched in with masterly fidelity of vision and sureness of touch, with feminine subtlety as well as virile audacity."—James Douglas in The ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... birth witnessed that of another American poet, more virile, but of a narrower appeal—John Greenleaf Whittier. Whittier's birthplace was the old house at East Haverhill, Massachusetts, where many generations of his Quaker ancestors had dwelt. The family was poor, and the boy's life was a hard and ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson

... he seemed a prince born to lead a democratic people. With his tall, virile figure, and a handsome face in which strength and dignity were happily blended with simplicity, he had a manner of address which was very engaging: his words, few, simple, soldier-like, produced a wonderful effect; they were the words of one who meant and felt what ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott

... themselves taking a share in mortal contests. On such pretext he will tell a new story, or bring to its last perfection by his manner of telling it, his pregnancy and studied beauty of expression, an old one. The tale of Castor and Polydeukes, the appropriate patrons of virginal yet virile youth, starred and mounted, he tells ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... that of the heroes of the Nibelungen, the blond Burgundian giants who had forced the Romans to share with them a portion of their conquered territories, was destined to add height and virile force to the Celto-Roman people of this country. Strangely differing from their ancient enemies the merciless Teutons, these mighty Burgundians, most human of all the vandal hords, in an epic of tragic grandeur rivaling the classic tales of mythology, for a century maintained an ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven

... affair; even that healthier and happier Bohemian, Peacock. With these, in one sense at least, goes De Quincey. He was, unlike most of these embers of the revolutionary age in letters, a Tory; and was attached to the political army which is best represented in letters by the virile laughter and leisure of Wilson's Noctes Ambrosianae. But he had nothing in common with that environment. It remained for some time as a Tory tradition, which balanced the cold and brilliant aristocracy of the Whigs. ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton

... another, of paying flattering, monopolizing, brief attention to each in turn, and then disappearing, very early! His bold rather florid countenance radiated energy and quizzical good humour; his tight, closely curled hair crisped with virile alertness; he carried himself taut and eager—altogether a figure to engage the curiosities of women ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White

... and spring, But powerful as the poison-drop, once sped, That creeps, corrupts, and leaves its victim—dead! As the asp's fang could turn to pulseless clay The Pride of Egypt, so this Worm can slay If left long covert for its crawling course. Up, up against it every virile force, And every valorous virtue! By its hiss 'Tis known hostis humani generis, Let Civilisation snatch St. Michael's sword, And slay this Dragon, of a tribe abhorred The meanest and the most malignant Worm Which can spill venom, but, attacked, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 16, 1892 • Various

... she gazed upon him in her turn, even as he had first looked upon her, pleased to find his face so young and handsome, to note the breadth of his shoulders, the graceful carriage of his limbs, his air of virile strength and latent power, yet doubting too, because of her sex, because of the loneliness, and because he was a man; thus she lay blushing a little, sighing a little, fearing a little, waiting for him to turn. True, he had been almost ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al

... wars of the world there were camp followers, Women of ancient sins who gave themselves for hire, Women of weak wills and strong desire. And, like the poison ivy in the woods That winds itself about tall virile trees Until it smothers them, so these Ruined the bodies and the souls of men. More evil were they than Red War itself, Or Pestilence, or Famine. Now in this war - This last most awful carnage of the world - All the ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... not care to have anything unless he got it by skill at subtlety. She noted their dress. Brent was wearing his clothes in that elegantly careless way which it was one of Freddie's dreams—one of the vain ones—to attain. Brent's voice was much more virile, was almost harsh, and in pronouncing some words made the nerves tingle with a sensation of mingled irritation and pleasure. Freddie's voice was manly enough, but soft and dangerous, suggestive of hidden danger. She compared the two men, as she knew them. She wondered how they would seem ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... Second Empire, instead of that of London in the earlier Victorian time." Where Dickens emulated the farces and the melodramas of forgotten British playwrights, Daudet was influenced rather by the virile dramas of Dumas fils and Augier. But in "Fromont and Risler," not only is the plot a trifle stagy, but the heroine herself seems almost a refugee of the footlights; exquisitely presented as Sidonie is, she ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... of brain and soul. He had seen her often, and usually alone, because he shunned meetings with strangers. Until his education had advanced further, he wished to avoid social embarrassments. He knew that she liked him, and realized that it was because he was a new and virile type, and for that reason a diversion —a sort of human novelty. She liked him, too, because it was rare for a man to offer her friendship without making love, and she was certain he would not make love. He liked her for the same many reasons that every one else did—because she ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... with him since that night; but she had had two long letters superscribed: "In Camp, Headquarters, Dalgrothe Mountain," and these had breathed only patriotism, the love of a cause, the warmth of a strong, virile temperament, almost a poetical abandon of unnamed ambitions and achievements. She had read the letters again and again, for she had found it hard to reconcile them with her later knowledge of this man. He wrote to her as to an ally, frankly, warmly. She felt the genuine thing in ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... virile novel with the lumber industry for its central theme and a love story full of interest as a ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest

... the nearness of death, was strong on her. He had been kind to her in his way, and the inevitable closeness of their relationship, repugnant as it had been to her, made its claims felt. An hour ago he had been standing here, the strong and virile ruler over thousands. Now he lay stiff and cold, all his power shorn from him without a second's warning. He had kissed her good-by, solicitous for her welfare, and it had been he that had been in need of care rather ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine

... but a young fellow, with face beardless; only two darkish streaks of down along the upper lip. But the absence of virile sign upon his cheeks has full compensation in a thick shock covering his crown, where the hair of Shem struggles for supremacy with the wool of Ham, and so successfully, as to result in a profusion of curls of which Apollo ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... offensive against the Portuguese; and still later to defeat them. King Henry, brother of Queen Isabella, had in fact taken possession of the treasures of that town. During her entire life, whether in time of war or in time of peace, the Marchioness de Moia displayed virile resolution, and it was due to her counsels that many great deeds were done in Castile. The wife of Pedro Arias, being niece of this marchioness, and inspired by courage equal to that of her aunt, ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt

... and did they see the praefect of Rome standing virile and powerful before them, they would fall on their knees and acclaim him princeps, imperator, greater ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... dark coquettings of Miss Elizabeth Robins' "Woman's Secret" with the virile common sense of that most brilliant young writer, Miss Rebecca West, in her bitter onslaught on feminine limitations in the opening chapters of "The World's Worst Failure." The former is an extravagance ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells

... established usages of her contemporaries, without putting in jeopardy her peace of mind, her honor, nay even her social existence; and she finds the energy required for such an act of submission in the firmness of her understanding and in the virile habits which her education has given her. It may be said that she has learned by the use of her independence to surrender it without a struggle and without a murmur when the time comes for making the sacrifice. But no American woman ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... hard-living parents would think their struggles to bring up their large (ten to twenty) families worth while when they see how their group is strengthening its position. If a race comes to find no instinctive pleasure in children it will probably be swept away by others more virile. One man will live where another will starve; prudence and ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland

... parching sultriness, And Winter's freezing cold, From sapling youth To virile growth. And Age's rigid mould, His energetic axe hath ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... the riders, with their horses, made the most striking, and somehow affecting picture of virile and graceful beauty he ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson

... Washington, In midnight marching at the head Of ragged regiments, his army led To Princeton's victory of the rising sun; Here in this liberal land, by battle won For Freedom and the rule Of equal rights for every child of man, Arose a democratic school, To train a virile race of sons to bear With thoughtful joy the name American, And serve the God who heard their father's prayer. No cloister, dreaming in a world remote From that real world wherein alone we live; No mimic court, where titled names denote A dignity that only worth can ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke

... was at once—as she told Louise later—"desperately interested." Dr. Marshall saw in Overland a new and exceedingly virile type. Even gentle Aunt Eleanor received the irrepressible with unmistakable welcome. She had heard much of his history from Collie. Overland was as irresistible as the morning sun. While endeavoring earnestly to "do the genteel," ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... comment, leaning back in her corner, white and tired. It was difficult to imagine anything ever being splendid again just then; or any man ever seeming other than tame, after Sir Edwin's clever, virile, interesting personality. ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... in his strongest attachments, is ever prone to maintain the imperative mood, and to consult his own heart rather than that of the woman he loves. While in Laura's nature there was unusual gentleness and a tendency to respect and admire virile force, she was too highly bred in our Western civilization not to resent as an insult any such manifestation of this force as would make the quest of her love a demand rather than a suit, after once recognizing such a spirit. She was now confused, however, ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... matter of degree. Faith, in the abstract, the element of it, is inborn in every soul; and while dormant, until put to a crucial test along any given line, is boundless and unlimited—a sort of tacitly accepted, existing state, unquestioned. Faith in many is a sturdy, virile thing—to a certain point. It is the fire ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard

... electrifying force. But if he gave his audiences precious gifts, he also learned much from them. For thirty years his lecturing trips to the West brought him, more widely than any New England man of letters, into contact with the new, virile America of the great Mississippi valley. Unlike many of his friends, he was not repelled by the "Jacksonism of the West"; he rated it a wholesome, vivifying force in our national thought and life. The "Journal" reveals the essential soundness ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry

... real Fox, not an ideal statesman—to see a man as he lived, not only a political figure. Looking back for more than a century we may very well appreciate to the full Fox's great qualities and yet be aware of his weaknesses and his vices, in which he showed the strength of a passionate and virile character in contact with certain characteristics of the society of the age. Instead, therefore, of blaming Selwyn for repeating to correspondents the minor incidents of the time, we ought to be thankful to him for ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue

... corpse of Harald Kaas had been laid out, the face shaved, and the eyes closed, the distortion was less apparent. They could trace signs of suffering, but the expression was still virile. It seemed a handsome ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... philosopher's story accurately described the dominant trait in the factory man's character. To him business was a sport, a game, a contest of absorbing interest. He entered into it with all the zest and strength of his virile manhood. Mind and body, it absorbed him. And yet, he knew nothing of that true sportsman's passion which plays the game for the joy of the game itself. McIver played to win; not for the sake of winning, but for the value of the winnings. ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright

... virile; it is virulent. Life here hammers in the blood with something of the insistence of ragtime. The people—men, women, and children—are alive, spitefully alive. You feel that they are ready to do you damage, ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... since the days of Tegnr been prolific in the creation of virile and wholesome literary masterpieces, but Fritiofs Saga by Tegnr is still quite generally accorded the foremost place among the literary products of the nation. Tegnr is still hailed as the prince of Swedish song by an admiring people and Fritiofs Saga remains, in ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner

... virile little woman to me, "a wesh'll do him no harm. I've got the biggest gorby of a mon," she went on, "between Mow Cop and the Cocklow o' Leek. He's gone trapesing off, with our young Ted on his shoulders, to see yow chaps march into Leek. There's about a dozen on 'em gone, as brisk as if they were ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough

... to him the only possible releasement of soul and conscience to the undivided care of one who had no other refuge in life save that offered by his devotion? The horror of this self-probing was still upon him as he followed Hazen's slight and virile figure across the rocks, but it fled as he felt the spray of the tossing waters dash its chilling reminder ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green

... of taste, and in barrenness of imagination or invention, which leads him to repeat his plots and incidents with slight variations. In all his work sincerity is perhaps the most marked characteristic. Fielding likes virile men, just as they are, good and bad, but detests shams of every sort. His satire has none of Swift's bitterness, but is subtle as that of Chaucer, and good-natured as that of Steele. He never moralizes, though some of his powerfully drawn scenes suggest a deeper moral lesson ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... well begun. Where was the old buoyant spirit he had brought with him into the fight? Gone forever, and in its place he found his maimed and trembling hands, and limbs weakened by starvation as by long fever. His virile youth was wasted in the slow struggle, his energy was sapped drop by drop; and at the last he saw himself burned out like the battle-fields, where the armies had closed and opened, leaving an impoverished and ruined soil. He had given himself for four years, and yet when the ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... driving their ancient tunnels into the soft clay banks, and robins singing on the spruce-garbed islands. Overhead the woodpecker knocked insistently, and in the forest depths the partridge boom-boomed and strutted in virile glory. ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London



Words linked to "Virile" :   manly, virility, impotent, manful, male, strong, potent, masculine



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com