"Effeminate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... That descendant, however effeminate, of the ancient union between Song and Drama, when, after long obscurity and dethronement, it regained a punier sceptre, though a gaudier purple, by the banks of the Etrurian Arno, or amidst the lagunes of Venice, had chosen all its primary inspirations ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... taboo rules depend on this conception:[1019] the flesh of timid animals is avoided, that of courageous animals is eaten, under the belief that the man partakes of the character of the food he eats; association with women is sometimes supposed to make a man or a boy effeminate. It is to be expected that in the immense number of taboo prohibitions and precautions some should be found in which the association of ideas is the determining factor. But for the majority of taboo regulations this explanation does ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... Corea, even the stronger ones who survive, are extremely delicate until a certain age is attained, when they seem to pick up and become stronger. This weakness is hereditary, especially among the upper classes, of whom very few powerful men are to be found, owing to their dissolute and effeminate life. ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... common observation, that the more solicitous any people are about dress, the more effeminate they are. I attribute it entirely to this idle adventitious passion for finery, that these people are become so over and above careful of their persons; they are for ever, and on every occasion, putting one another on their guard against catching cold; "you'll certainly catch ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... already existed within his splendid make-up. As for Roswell Palmer and Frank Mansley, their excellent home training, not denying credit to the grim old miner for his wise counsel, had held them free from the bad habits which too often make boys effeminate and weak and old before their time. Gifted by nature with the best of constitutions, they had strengthened rather than undermined them. Neither had known an hour's illness throughout the long, laborious journey, and they were in the ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... features of the people of England have been totally changed, and that a frivolous effeminacy was become the national character. Nothing could be more popular than that work. It was thought a great consolation to us, the light people of this country (who were and are light, but who were not and are not effeminate), that we had found the causes of our misfortunes in our vices. Pythagoras could not be more pleased with his leading discovery. But whilst in that splenetic mood we amused ourselves in a sour, critical speculation, of which ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... principal writers of amorous tales. Heliodorus has treated the subject with due gravity and decorum. Iamblichus is not so unexceptionable on these points; and Achilles Tatius is still worse, in his eight books of Clitophon and Leucippe, the very diction of which is soft and effeminate, as if intended to relax the vigour of the reader's mind." This last denunciation of the patriarch, however, is somewhat too sweeping and indiscriminate, since, though some passages are certainly indefensible, they appear rather as interpolations, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... weak, it is true, and a little effeminate also, that is, lacking energy, letting himself be carried away by goodness and tenderness. This weakness made him commit a fault before his departure for America. I have kept it from you until this moment, but you must know it now. Loving a woman who controlled him and made him do what she wished, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... forget your hospitality, friends all," said he, in his slightly swaggering and yet withal effeminate way; "and see, in some measure of return for it, we leave you our Sherwood free from pestilent robbers and evil defiers of the law. When we came to Nottingham there were these and others; but now they are all driven out of our Royal forest—many slain with the ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... of the corvette. He had a smooth face with pink cheeks, whiskers curled to a nicety, and hair carefully brushed. His figure was slight and refined, and he wore lilac kid gloves, his appearance being certainly somewhat effeminate; indeed, he looked as if he had just come ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... allow men to make the laws, as God and nature planned. I think women should keep to the sphere God made them for—the home. Said Gladstone, 'Woman is the most perfect when most womanly.' There is nothing, I think, more despicable than a masculine, mannish woman, unless it be an effeminate, sissy man. Dr. Clarke voiced my sentiments when he said: 'Man is not superior to woman, nor woman to man. The relation of the sexes is one of equality, not of better or worse, of higher and lower. The loftiest ideal of humanity demands that each ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... figure and of middling height. Their features are strongly marked, their complexions fair and pale, and their hair is of the darkest black. The men are feeble and look prematurely old. Their countenances, though not devoid of dignity, have a sort of sensual expression. They are effeminate, and disinclined to any kind of active exertion. If they ride the distance of ten miles, they think they have performed a feat of heroism worthy to be recorded in the state archives. If the white Creoles are ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... looked into the far distance, while his face lost its changing expressions of cynicism, severity, gracious courtesy and keen scrutiny, and showed a nobility which Jean had never seen before. She noticed how it invested his somewhat effeminate ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... than that of either Persians or Greeks. It probably resembled that of Queen Esther more than that of Aspasia, in that dark richness and voluptuousness which to some have such attractions; but in grace and vivacity she was purely Grecian,—not like a "blooming Eastern bride," languid and passive and effeminate, but bright, witty, and intellectual. Shakspeare paints her as full of lively sallies, with the power of adapting herself to circumstances with tact and good nature, like a Madame Recamier or a Maintenon, rather than like a Montespan or a Pompadour, although ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... A budding painter, a sculptor, a musician, may be the boast of a proud family circle, but to give a youth the reputation of writing verses is at once to call down upon his head a storm of ridicule and patronising disdain! He is credited with being effeminate, sentimental, and feeble-minded; his failure is taken as a preordained fact; he becomes ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... little heart would impel him to the most active pity; and he liberally gave away whatever he had by him and thought he could dispense with. The Father, who, as above indicated, never could approve or even endure such unreasonable giving-up of one's feelings to effeminate impressions, was apt to intervene on these occasions, even with manual punishment,—unless the Mother were at hand to ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... walking-suit, over which he wore a long scarlet mantle. A gold cross was suspended from his neck by a massive chain of gold. He was delicately featured, with a little pointed beard, tiny mustachios, and long, fair hair that fell in waves about his effeminate face. He had the whitest of hands, very delicately veined in blue, and it was—as I soon observed—his habit to carry them raised, so that the blood might not flow into them to coarsen their beauty. ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... among them that might not have served as a model for a Hercules. Their huge bodies presented an appearance of massiveness and immense strength; and the enormous muscles had even more than the prominence we find in some statues, but so seldom meet with in men of these effeminate times. These particulars were the more easily noted, as their style of costume, in the daytime at least, approached very closely to nudity. But their size was as nothing to their appetites; and deep and vasty as their internal accommodations must have been, it remains a matter of perplexity ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... the elegant and effeminate clubman, in this corsair with broad shoulders, a skin the color of tan, with very red lips, who rolled a little in his walk; who seemed to be stifled in his black dress-coat, but who still retained the distinguished manners and bearing of a nobleman of the last century, one of those ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... Anthony as a cold-blooded, highly schooled person, absolutely devoid of sentiment. His face was stony, his eyes were cool, even his linen partook of his own unruffled calm. He seemed by no means effeminate, yet he was one of those immaculate beings upon whom one can scarcely imagine a speck of dust or a bead of perspiration. His hair—what was left of it—was parted to a nicety, his clothes were faultless, and he had an air of ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... of them— millions supplied their place. The only thing, in fact, that can protect one during the night (nothing can during the day) is a net of gauze hung over the bed; but as this was looked upon by the young men as somewhat effeminate, it was seldom resorted to. The best thing for their destruction, we found, was to fill our rooms with smoke, either by burning damp moss or by letting off large puffs of gunpowder, and then throwing the doors and windows open to allow them to fly out. This, however, did not put them ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... a handsome primo tenore. Rather than such cockney sentimentality as this as an education for the taste and sympathies, we prefer the most crapulous group of boors that Teniers ever painted. But even those among our painters who aim at giving the rustic type of features, who are far above the effeminate feebleness of the "Keepsake" style, treat their subjects under the influence of traditions and prepossessions rather than of direct observation. The notion that peasants are joyous, that the typical moment to represent a man in a smock-frock is when he is ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... said Riley. "Five or six of the men you met to-night were loath to come. When I pinned them down to their reason, it was I thought: they regard you as an effeminate ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... meeting anybody, literally anybody, who comes from "the old place." It may not last, neither does a flash of lightning, but it is very real while it lasts. And what if foreigners exhibit their emotions in ways that may seem effeminate to our phlegmatic temperaments? Are we always right—ordained by Providence to set the fashion to all the world in everything? How often does Virgil make the brave Trojans and others "weep"? Nevertheless, it would look funny to see a row of stalwart Grenadiers, each one mopping his ...
— The French Prisoners of Norman Cross - A Tale • Arthur Brown
... which still disappointed me, because from Raphael I asked and expected more. I wished to feel his hand on my soul with a stronger grasp; these were too passionless in their serenity, and almost effeminate in ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... touches. It is like a bee going from flower to flower, a teasing, plundering, wayward zephyr, an aeolian harp, a ray of furtive light stealing through the leaves. Taken as a whole, there is something impalpable and immaterial about him, which I will not venture to call effeminate, but which is scarcely manly. He wants bone and body: timid, dreamy, and clairvoyant, he hovers far above reality. He is rather a soul, a breath, than a man. It is the mind of a woman in the character ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... perpetually a-quiver. The soft, sparse, forked beard which closely followed the line of the lower jaw and pointed chin. The moustache, lightly shading the upper lip, while wholly exposing the fretful and rather sensuous mouth. The long, effeminate, and restless hands. The tall, slight figure. The clothes, of a material and pattern fondly supposed by their wearer to present the last word of English fashion in relation to foreign travel, the colour of them accurately ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... force of arms. The name of the Promaucians, which signifies free-dancers[56], had been given them on account of their fondness for every kind of amusement, and their peculiar attachment to dancing; yet the love of pleasure had not rendered them effeminate. With the assistance of their allies, they drew together a formidable army and fought the Peruvians with such heroic valour as to defeat them in a battle, which, according to Garcilasso, was ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... and sewing-silk—may be an expression of their patriotism and their religion. A noble-hearted woman puts a noble meaning into even the commonplace details of life. The women of America can, if they choose, hold back their country from following in the wake of old, corrupt, worn-out, effeminate European society, and make America the leader of the world in all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... Corregidor at its entrance without a shot being fired to prevent them. And the same effects caused but a feeble resistance to be opposed to their arms, and the speedy surrender of Manilla by its priest-ridden and effeminate defenders. ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... to Moreau, the Emperor talked a great deal respecting that general. "Moreau," he said, "possesses many good qualities; his bravery is undoubted; but he has more courage than energy; he is indolent and effeminate. When with the army he lived like a pasha; he smoked, was almost constantly in bed, and gave himself up to the pleasures of the table. His dispositions are naturally good; but he is too indolent for study; he does not read, and since ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... had had enough of the seal-hunt it took him all the next day to cleanse the clothes he had worn from the smell of the fat, and he felt himself to be effeminate in the fastidiousness that made ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... count on a reasonable profit on your investment. Besides, keeping the books and attending to the correspondence would supply you with a proper occupation. What might develop later on, we'll not discuss at present. But you would have to change, for I hate effeminate men.' I had jumped up and seized my hat. 'What's the matter? Where are you going?' she asked. 'To countermand everything!' I said breathlessly. 'Countermand what?' I then told her of my plan for the establishment of a copying ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... IV., King of Bohemia, was now emperor. It will be remembered that by marrying Mary, the eldest daughter of Louis, King of Hungary and Poland, he received Hungary as the dower of his bride. By intrigue he also succeeded in deposing his effeminate and dissolute brother, Wenceslaus, from the throne of Bohemia, and succeeded, by a new election, in placing the crown upon his own brow. Thus Sigismond wielded a three-fold scepter. He was Emperor of Germany, and King of Hungary and ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... Mauki had a nice face. It was really a pretty face, viewed by any standard, and for a Melanesian it was a remarkably good-looking face. Its one fault was its lack of strength. It was softly effeminate, almost girlish. The features were small, regular, and delicate. The chin was weak, and the mouth was weak. There was no strength nor character in the jaws, forehead, and nose. In the eyes only could be caught any hint of the unknown quantities ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... hard at the Count, and noted with sarcastic amusement the other's appearance—so foppish, so effeminate to English eyes; particularly did he gaze with scorn at the Count's yellow silk socks, which matched his lemon-coloured tie and silk pocket handkerchief. Fancy starting for a long night journey in such a "get-up." Well! Perhaps women liked ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... of Montrose were men not to be daunted by the sublime, yet terrible prospect before them. Many of them were of that ancient race of Highlanders, who not only willingly made their couch in the snow, but considered it as effeminate luxury to use a snowball for a pillow. Plunder and revenge lay beyond the frozen mountains which they beheld, and they did not permit themselves to be daunted by the difficulty of traversing them. ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... manner that the prisoner could neither rise to his feet nor lie down. Never have these wandering eyes of mine looked upon a figure more pathetic. For an instant I stood there, swaying upon my feet as though from sickness, staring at him incredulously. His thin, pale, effeminate face was rendered wonderfully piteous by the depth of suffering so plainly revealed within the great, black, appealing eyes. So peculiarly delicate were the features, so slender the fragile form, about which a ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... you a handsome suit of clothes: A woman's, true; but then there is a cause Why you should wear them.'—'What, though my soul loathes The effeminate garb?'—thus, after a short pause, Sigh'd Juan, muttering also some slight oaths, 'What the devil shall I do with all this gauze?' Thus he profanely term'd the finest lace Which e'er set off a ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... Algonquins, inhabiting the immense and fertile territory extending westward to the Great Lake, from which they take their name: they occupied themselves with a rude husbandry, which the fertile soil of the west repaid, by affording them an abundant subsistence; but they were more effeminate and luxurious than their neighbors, and inferior in savage virtue and independence. The above-named nations were those principally connected with the events of ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... straggling barns and cottages indicated their approach to the outskirts of a country town or settlement. Here the team halted, as if the belligerent-looking teamster had felt his appearance was inconsistent with an effeminate civilization, and the oxen were turned into an open waste opposite a nondescript wooden tenement, half farmhouse and half cabin, evidently of the rudest Western origin. He may have recognized the ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... two authors became warm friends and mutual admirers of each other's productions. In June, 1817, "Lalla Rookh" was just from the press, and Irving writes to Brevoort: "Moore's new poem is just out. I have not sent it to you, for it is dear and worthless. It is written in the most effeminate taste, and fit only to delight boarding-school girls and lads of nineteen just in their first loves. Moore should have kept to songs and epigrammatic conceits. His stream of intellect is too small to bear expansion—it spreads ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... pacts and compromises with them, and to befriend them with gifts so as to keep them out of the Imperial territories, had been the role of a palatinate on the western frontier, the duchy of Chou, while the court of China with its vicious emperor gave itself up to effeminate luxury. Chou-sin's evil practices had aroused the indignation of the palatine, subsequently known as Woen-wang, who in vain remonstrated with the emperor's criminal treatment of his subjects. The strength and integrity of Woen-wang's character had made him the corner-stone ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... it is unanimous; is too narrow, because it is too impossibly broad. Lamb, however, though it was often hard to say whether he were not secretly laughing, swore to the truth of all these old fables, and treated the liberalities of the present generation on such points as mere fantastic and effeminate affectations, which, no doubt, they often are as regards the sincerity of those who profess them. The bigotry, which it pleased his fancy to assume, he used like a sword against the Jew, as the official weapon of the Christian, upon the same principle that a Capulet would have drawn ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... the ceremonious and magisterial dignity, the natural yet elaborate majesty, which are essential parts of their character. The cadences are marked by chords, which fall upon the ear like the rattling of swords drawn from their scabbards. The soft, warm, effeminate pleadings of love give place to the murmuring of deep, fall, bass voices, proceeding from manly breasts used to command; we may almost hear, in reply, the wild and distant neighings of the steeds of the desert, as they toss the long manes around their haughty heads, impatiently pawing the ground, ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... philosophers, and those, too, of various sects; the head of whom, both in authority and antiquity, was Aristippus, the pupil of Socrates, who hesitated not to say that pain was the greatest of all evils. And after him Epicurus easily gave in to this effeminate and enervated doctrine. After him Hieronymus the Rhodian said, that to be without pain was the chief good, so great an evil did pain appear to him to be. The rest, with the exceptions of Zeno, Aristo, Pyrrho, were ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... not! But wherefore waste I precious hours with thee! Thou art her darling mischief, her chief engine, Antony's other fate. Go, tell thy queen, Ventidius is arrived, to end her charms. Let your Egyptian timbrels play alone, Nor mix effeminate sounds with Roman trumpets, You dare not fight for Antony; go pray And keep your cowards' holiday in ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... this for various reasons" replied Zeppa, in a soft musical voice, that one scarcely expected to issue from such a capacious chest. There was about the man an air of gentle urbanity and tenderness which might have induced a stranger to suppose him effeminate, had not his manly looks and commanding stature rendered the idea absurd. "In the first place," he continued, "my wife and I had hoped to show you some hospitality. You know we seldom have visitors to ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... whom Cannae, did not crush, what line of battle could crush? In truth, even should events have been favourable to him at first, he would have often wished for the Persians, the Indians, and the effeminate tribes of Asia, as opponents; and would have acknowledged, that his wars had been waged with women, as we are told was said by Alexander, king of Epirus, after receiving his mortal wound, when comparing ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... than his lost ward. His epistle, though I never read it, affected me most painfully. I seemed to see the Puritanic figure of my guardian standing among the fripperies of the theatre and pointing to the players,—the fantastic and effeminate men, the painted women, the giddy girl in boy's clothes, merrier than modest,—pointing to these with solemn ridicule, and eying me with stern rebuke. His image was a type of the austere duty, and they of the vanities ...
— Passages From a Relinquised Work (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... driveling Silenus, the god of abstruse mysteries. He resembles the whole family of them, however, in being a blackguard, and perhaps this is what is meant. To even the little manliness his classical prototypes possessed, though, he can lay no claim whatever, being a listless effeminate noodle, on the shady side of forty. But oh! the depth and strength of this elderly party's emotion for some bread-and-butter school-girl! Hide your heads, ye young Romeos and Leanders! this blase old beau loves with an hysterical fervor that requires four adjectives to every noun ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... rich man's feast. They are generally accompanied by a guardian, and usually nothing very serious takes place, for they know their value, and money will not always buy their expensive favors. They are very effeminate, luxuriously dressed and perfumed, and they seldom go on foot. There are, however, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... oratory could not effect, nor the arguments of sound and deliberate reason accomplish, was achieved in a moment by the administration of a small quantity of spirituous liquid, giving bravery to the coward, and daring to the effeminate. ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... ancient amphorae leaned Against the wall, like ships careened. There was dusky blue of Wedgewood ware, The carved, white figures fluttering there Like leaves adrift upon the air. Classic in touch, but emasculate, The Greek soul grown effeminate. The factory of Sevres had lent Elegant boxes with ornament Culled from gardens where fountains splashed And golden carp in the shadows flashed, Nuzzling for crumbs under lily-pads, Which ladies threw as the last of fads. Eggshell trays where gay beaux knelt, Hand on heart, ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... people that shall have a tangible, separate existence of its own; and where am I to look for it? Not in Hayti; for in Hayti they had nothing to start with. A stream cannot rise above its fountain. The race that formed the character of the Haytiens was a worn-out, effeminate one; and, of course, the subject race will be centuries ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... incredible elsewhere; and yet it is this lawlessness which has come to be accepted as part and parcel of what is called "policy" in China because in the fifty years preceding the establishment of the Republic a weak and effeminate mandarinate consistently sought safety in surrenders. It is this lawlessness which must at all costs be suppressed if we are to have a happy future. The Chinese people have so far contented themselves ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... and arch feminine ways receded to the background of his mind, replaced by her power and strength which had for him all the charm of masculinity. Compared with her, Des Esseintes seemed to himself a frail, effeminate creature, and he began to desire her as ardently as an anaemic young girl might desire some loutish Hercules whose arms could crush her in ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... refinements of the older nations, his uncouthness was softened: the rough barbarian cub was gradually mollified into the civil courtier. And as for giving one prudence and patience, never was such a mentor as travel. The tender, the effeminate, the cowardly, were hardened by contention with unwonted cold or rain or sun, with hard seats, stony pillows, thieves, and highwaymen. Any simple, improvident, and foolish youth would be stirred up to vigilancy by a few ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... galled with the yoke of foreign dominion, nor having ever had experience of that most miserable and detested condition of living in slavery; no long descent having as yet invested the Assyrian with a right, nor any other title being for him pretended than a strong hand; the foolish and effeminate son of a tyrannous and hated mother could very ill hold so many great princes and nations his vassals, with a power less mastering, and a mind less industrious, than his father and mother had ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... log," was seen to be true in Sparta alone of all cities under heaven. Men were not even allowed to dine previously at home, and then come to the public table, but the others, watching him who did not eat or drink with them, would reproach him as a sensual person, too effeminate to eat ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... Worm Vermicular Whale Cutaceous Wife Uxorious Word Verbal, verbose Weak Hebdomadal Wall Mural Will Voluntary, spontaneous Winter Brumal Wound Vulnerary West Occidental War Martial Women Feminine, female, effeminate ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... the most masculine and the most vigorous and the most intellectual of all our poets should devote his powers mainly to the representation of love. For love is the essence of force, and does not spring from effeminate weakness or febrile delicacy. Any painter can cover a huge canvas, but, as has been observed, only the strong hand can do the fine and tender work. To discuss at length the love-poems of Browning would take us far beyond the limits of this volume; but certain ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... and gentleman were walking on the sands at Coney Island beach. The lady was very handsomely attired, and by her side walked a young man, a perfect type in appearance of an effeminate dude. Three rough-looking men had been following the lady and gentleman at a distance, and when the latter stopped at a remote part of the beach far from any hotel the three men held a consultation, and one of them uttered the declaration with which ...
— Cad Metti, The Female Detective Strategist - Dudie Dunne Again in the Field • Harlan Page Halsey
... means keep your hair adjusted," his wife continued sarcastically. "The women are all in love with that blond hair. And it is so effective in the pulpit. If you were not six feet four it might be effeminate, but I assure you it is the secret of your strength. I trust you will be wiser ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... pursuing his victories over the effeminate people of Asia, a still more brilliant career in the West marked the rising fortunes of Julius Caesar. I need not dwell on the steps by which he arose to become the formidable rival of the conqueror of the East. He bears the most august name of antiquity. ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... Percival himself, every hour in the day. "My good Percival! how I like your rough English humour!"—"My good Percival! how I enjoy your solid English sense!" He puts the rudest remarks Sir Percival can make on his effeminate tastes and amusements quietly away from him in that manner—always calling the baronet by his Christian name, smiling at him with the calmest superiority, patting him on the shoulder, and bearing with him benignantly, as a good-humoured father bears ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... that could the Sakai look into some of our houses and palaces he would make haste to return to his own forest and if he were obliged or knew how to write his impressions he would certainly commence: "The men of the West are effeminate, lazy and indolent". ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... beginning I declared myself in favour of German opera; my choice was determined by the tremendous impression made on me by the two figures of Sassaroli and Weber. The Italian male-soprano, a huge pot-bellied giant, horrified me with his high effeminate voice, his astonishing volubility, and his incessant screeching laughter. In spite of his boundless good-nature and amiability, particularly to my family, I took an uncanny dislike to him. On account of this dreadful person, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... Effects of Tea are not all the Mischiefs it occasions. Did it cause none of them, but were it entirely wholesome, as Balm or Mint, it were yet Mischief enough to have our whole Populace used to sip warm Water in a mincing, effeminate Manner, once or twice every Day; which hot Water must be supped out of a nice Tea-Cup, sweatened with Sugar, biting a Bit of nice thin Bread and Butter between Whiles. This mocks the strong Appetite, relaxes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... Dalton?" demanded this immaculate youth, in a soft, rather effeminate voice that made Halstead regard him with ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... that the hair was thrown back from the high, narrow forehead, just as my great-grandfather's grey hairs were combed away from his brow. Children are great admirers of beauty too, especially, I think, of an effeminate style of good looks, and are very susceptible to the power of expression in faces. I had a romantic admiration for "the handsome man by the door," and his eyes haunted me ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... artificial simpering, and affected form; the one in the habit of a heroic youth, wearing a glittering helmet, the other tricked up in curls and ribbons like a wanton minx; he will then look upon his own affection as brave and masculine, when he shall choose quite contrary to that effeminate shepherd of Phrygia. ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... contend. We are charged with the undue luxury of supporting a town and country house for a public functionary; and, disproving the fact, our opponents turn upon us, with a pernicious subtlety, and show, to such a condensing point has the effeminate spirit reached among us, that we have compressed the essence of two such establishments into one! Mr. Harris might have carried out his argument, and shown also that to such a pass of self-indulgence have we reached, that Washington itself is so ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... commercial privileges, no local strife which cannot be settled by Arete. The poet has as nearly as possible succeeded in eliminating the negative element out of this society. An unwarlike folk, but not effeminate, happy in peace, with a childlike delight in play, which is the starting-point of art, and remains its substrate, according to Schiller; truly idyllic it must be regarded, a land on the way between nature and civilization, where life ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... to the parent stock. Taking, for example, the mediaeval architecture of Spain, the brilliant 'Moresco,' we find it to be a combination of the vigorous Gothic of the North with the beautiful though effeminate Saracenic—the exotic of the South. And of these latter, each is traceable, though by different lines, to the same great prototype, the Roman. For when Rome was divided, the Dome fell to the inheritance of the Eastern ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... the corpse, when organized life had gone. A great historical novel dealing with this time,—one not unworthy, it is said, of Scott,—remains to be translated. Then, by way of reaction, came another half-cycle (roughly) of reunion: an unwarlike period of timid politics and a super-refined effeminate court; it was, says Professor Harper Parker, "a great age of calligraphy, belles lettres, fans, chess, wine-bibbing and poetry-making." Then, early in the fourth century, China split up again: crafty ladylike Chinese houses ruling in the ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... indulge in it to excess; and effeminate dances, or extraordinary gesticulation, were deemed indecent in men of character and wisdom. Indeed, Herodotus tells a story of Hippoclides, the Athenian, who had been preferred before all the nobles of Greece, as a husband for the daughter of Clisthenes, king of Argos, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... various aspersions of an infamous character were heaped upon him. Sextus Pompey reproached him with being an effeminate fellow; and M. Antony, with earning his adoption from his uncle by prostitution. Lucius Antony, likewise Mark's brother, charges him with pollution by Caesar; and that, for a gratification of three hundred thousand ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... introduce such a number of ceremonies, shews, sacrifices, lustrations, and public processions, as must have employed the people almost constantly from one end of the year to the other. This continual dissipation must have been a great enemy to industry; and the people must have been idle and effeminate. I think it would be no difficult matter to prove, that there is very little difference, in point of character, between the antient and modern inhabitants of Rome; and that the great figure which this ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... and shrugs his shoulders. "For instance," says he, "this Gerald Webb seems to be one of those highly sensitive, delicately organized persons; somewhat effeminate in fact. He ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... 1526 there appeared a new lecturer on the platform at the University at Basel—a small, beardless, effeminate-looking person—who had already inflamed all Christendom with his peculiar philosophy, his revolutionary methods of treating diseases, and his unparalleled success in curing them. A man who was to be remembered in after-time by some as ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... believes, or claims, that two wrongs make a right. She does not believe that a man could, or should, take the place of a mother in dealing with children. She does not believe that he should become soft and effeminate, for the tender training of infants, but on the contrary, should be energetic and manly, for the ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... consequence a cuckold. The goddess, whom you shall not find propitious nor favourable unto you, is Minerva, a most redoubtable and dreadful virgin, a powerful and fulminating goddess, an enemy to cuckolds and effeminate youngsters, to cuckold-makers and adulterers. The god is Jupiter, a terrible and thunder-striking god from heaven. And withal it is to be remarked, that, conform to the doctrine of the ancient Etrurians, the manubes, for so did they call the darting hurls or slinging ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... hour upon her own resources, though in situations which scarcely seemed to admit of any occasion for taxing those resources; and often I have felt anger towards myself for what appeared to be an irrational or effeminate timidity, and have struggled with my own mind upon occasions like the present, when I knew that I could not have acknowledged my tremors to a friend without something like shame, and a fear to excite his ridicule. No; if in anything I ran into excess, it was ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... binds an only sister to an only brother, when they have been permitted to grow up together untrammelled by the heartless forms of fashion; unrivalled by alien claimants in their confiding affection; undivided in study, in sport, and in interest. Some object, that such union renders the boy too effeminate and the girl too masculine. In our case it did neither. He was the manliest, the hardiest, most decided, most intrepid character imaginable; but in manners sweet, gentle, and courteous, as they will be who are accustomed to look with protecting tenderness on ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... the brave, the noble-minded, the virtuous Messalla; you, whom I remember, my son-in-law Brutus has frequently extolled as the most promising youth in Rome, tutored by philosophy, trained up in arms, scorning all those soft, effeminate pleasures that reconcile men to an easy and indolent servitude, fit for all the roughest tasks of honour and virtue, fit to live or to die a ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... face, though somewhat sharp of feature. She possessed a powerful will, a shrill voice and a vigorous frame, and was afflicted with a short, violent temper. She was decidedly a masculine woman. We know not which is the more disagreeable of the two—a masculine woman or an effeminate man. ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... take the unit, with all his incidents and his organic qualities as they are. Take then, for instance, one naughty child in the reality of his life. He is but six years old, slender and masculine, and not wronged by long hair, curls, or effeminate dress. His face is delicate and too often haggard with tears of penitence that Justice herself would be glad to spare him. Some beauty he has, and his mouth especially is so lovely as to seem not only angelic but itself an angel. He has absolutely no self-control and his passions find ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... was now a handsome man of twenty-seven. The effeminate blush of youth had given place to an open and engaging animation that made him doubly attractive. Turning his gaze upon ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... Phantastes, so effeminate! for shame, leave off. Visus, your objects I must needs say, are admirable, if the house and instrument be answerable. Let's hear therefore in brief ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... rather bald," he replied. "You see, few people really understand Bones. I thought, the first time I saw him, that he was a fool. I was wrong. Then I thought he was effeminate. I was wrong again, for he has played the man whenever he was called upon to do so. Bones is one of those rare creatures—a man with all the moral ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... vice which I propose," said the third demon who came forward, "is involved in the general cultivation of music, which I contend would render men effeminate, indolent, voluptuous, and finally vicious and corrupt, so that whole nations might eventually be kept out of heaven and secured for hell through its ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... investigation of their property. At this investigation was present a wicked and merciless Jew, who rebuked the Christians for their tenderness to his brethren, and reproached the King's officers as gentle and effeminate. He gnashed his teeth, and, as each Jew appeared, declared that he could afford to pay twice as much as was exacted. Though he lied, he was useful in betraying their secret hoards to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... about upon his yacht, Or drove out with his footman through the park, His mamma, it was generally thought, Ought to have him in her keeping after dark! Oh, we ridiculed him then, We impaled him on the pen, We thought he was effeminate, we dubbed him "Sissy," too; But he nobly marched away, He is eating pork to-day, And heroically proving that the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... Mildmay. "This craft of yours is so confoundedly safe, Sir Reginald, that upon my word I have almost forgotten what danger is; so if you really think you can find a place where we may once more come within hail of it, pray take us there without loss of time. For my part, I am becoming positively effeminate, and unless I can speedily have a chance of getting my head broken I shall be utterly ruined for 'the service' when I go ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... describe the long struggle between the new and the old faith in the North; how kings and queens became the foster-fathers and nursing- mothers of the Church; how the great chiefs, each a little king in himself, scorned and derided the whole scheme as altogether weak and effeminate; how the bulk of the people were sullen and suspicious, and often broke out into heathen mutiny; how kings rose and kings fell, just as they took one or the other side; and how, finally, after a contest ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... and her pleasant voice, O fortunate youth, now recognize, And how much nobler than effeminate sloth Are manhood's tested energies. Take heed, O generous champion, take heed, If thou thy name by worthy thought or deed, From Time's all-sweeping current couldst redeem; Take heed, and lift thy heart to high desires! The amphitheatre's applause, the public voice, Now ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... going on, was chiefly divided between the pen and the baby. I have fed them and put them to sleep hundreds of times, though there were servants to whom the task might have been transferred. Yet, I have not been effeminate; I have not been idle; I have not been a waster of time; but I should have been all these if I had disliked babies, and had liked the porter pot and ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... touched the bell. Shortly the maid showed in a slim young fellow of a somewhat effeminate type. He was clean-shaven and wonderfully pale, with large dark eyes and curly black hair, worn rather long. He was dressed in a grey suit and wore a red scarf tied loosely in a bow. There was something foreign ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... outside. Oh, follow yer Dad to the Upper House, an' look sharp about it." He mumbles. I well recollect the youthful Member, so criticised, labouring through his maiden speech. The eldest son of a Peer, with a rather effeminate face, Saxon fairness of complexion, and with an apology for a moustache, it struck me that if petrified he would do very well as a dummy outside a tailor's establishment. Yet this youthful scion of a ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... commences the easy task of preaching. They collect a few ragged urchins of natives, whom they teach to read and write their own language—the English tongue being forbidden; and when these children return to their families, they are despised by them, as being effeminate and useless. ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... came to pay his respects to his old comrade in arms. Lawrence had travelled so much that it never took him long to settle down. Even at Wanhope he managed within a few hours to make himself at home. A trap sent over to Countisford brought back his manservant and an effeminate quantity of luggage, and by teatime his room was strewn from end to end with a litter of expensive trifles more proper to a pretty woman than to a man. Mrs. Clowes, slipping in to cast a housewifely glance to his comfort, held up her hands in mock dismay. "You ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... war, in storm and in battle,—for heroism and prowess unsurpassed. He shrinks from no danger, he dreads no foe, he yields to no superior. No shoals are too dangerous, no seas too boisterous, no climate too rigorous for him. The burning sun of the tropic cannot make him effeminate, nor can the eternal winter of the polar seas paralyze his ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... the cultivation of art—which usually ministers to luxury—has done so much for human progress as is generally supposed. It is even possible that its too exclusive culture may effeminate rather than strengthen the character, by laying it more open to the temptations of the senses. "It is the nature of the imaginative temperament cultivated by the arts," says Sir Henry Taylor, "to undermine the courage, ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... Nabopolassar, the work of breaking down the Assyrian empire (p. 48). He brought under his rule the Bactrians, and the Persians about Pasargadae and Persepolis, and made the Halys, dividing Asia Minor, the limit of his kingdom. His effeminate son, Astyages, lost what his father had won. The Persian branch of the Iranians gained the supremacy. Cyrus, the leader of the Persian revolt, by whom Astyages was defeated, is described as related to him; but this story, as well as ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... you euer cure any so? Ros. Yes one, and in this manner. Hee was to imagine me his Loue, his Mistris: and I set him euerie day to woe me. At which time would I, being but a moonish youth, greeue, be effeminate, changeable, longing, and liking, proud, fantastical, apish, shallow, inconstant, ful of teares, full of smiles; for euerie passion something, and for no passion truly any thing, as boyes and women are for the most part, cattle of this colour: would now like him, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... are beginning to be developed: or, if not, no discipline will better aid in their developement than the bracing intercourse of a great English classical school. Even the selfish are forced into accommodating themselves to a public standard of generosity, and the effeminate into conforming to a rule of manliness. I was myself at two public schools; and I think with gratitude of the benefit which I reaped from both; as also I think with gratitude of the upright guardian in whose quiet household I learned ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... and in her girdle there were gems for all to see. There were but a half-dozen men in the room. Two of these had a venerable air—they may have been traders journeying to Milan—whilst a third, who sat apart, was a slender, effeminate-looking youth. The remaining three were fellows of rough aspect, and when one of them—a black-browed ruffian—raised his eyes and fastened them upon the riches that Madonna Paola with such indifference displayed, I ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... life, he was obliged to admit that all the virtues of a good, industrious, and modest youth could not easily be so happily united in another as they were in Jonathan, albeit his handsome expressive face bore the impress of traits which were perhaps a little too soft, and almost effeminate, and his diminutive and weak but elegant bodily frame bespoke a tender intellectual spirit. When he reflected further that the two children had always been together, and how evident had been their mutual liking for ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... finds within me a nobility, That spurns the idle pratings of the great, And their mean boast of what their fathers were, While they themselves are fools effeminate, The scorn of all who know the worth ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... appreciate floral beauty is to be pitied, like any other man who is born imperfect. It is a misfortune not unlike blindness. But men who reject flowers as effeminate and unworthy of manhood ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... philosophic inquiry, since the reaction against the French Sensualism of the last century, and the application of more profound and religious theories to Literature, Society, and Art in recent times. With no effeminate yearnings for the return of the "inexorable Past," and with a masculine faith in the designs of Providence for the destiny of Humanity, Mr. Washburn is alive to the dangers incident to a condition of progress, and describes them with honest boldness and fidelity. Without pretending ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... Bornou permits such barbarity, but imagine that the Sheikh is still afraid of his vassal, and shrinks from endeavouring to deprive him of this awful power. Here, then, we have a specimen of the negro character, with all its contradictions; soft and effeminate in its ordinary moods; cheerful, and pleasant, and simple, to appearance; but capable of acting, as it were without transition, the most terrible deeds of atrocity. Say what you will of the barbarism of the Tuaricks, such a mode of inflicting capital punishment is ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... first to arrive, bringing with her her brother, an effeminate-looking young man, who played the violin moderately well, and her mother, who informed me that she never allowed her daughter to dine out without herself and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... When thus, at last, bold Diomede began. Atrides! foremost of the Chiefs I rise To contravert thy purpose ill-conceived, And with such freedom as the laws, O King! Of consultation and debate allow. 40 Hear patient. Thou hast been thyself the first Who e'er reproach'd me in the public ear As one effeminate and slow to fight; How truly, let both young and old decide. The son of wily Saturn hath to thee 45 Given, and refused; he placed thee high in power, Gave thee to sway the sceptre o'er us all, But courage gave thee not, his noblest gift.[2] Art thou ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... in the Cold," "Grandfather's Struggle for a Homestead," "The William Henry Letters," and a dozen others like them were first-class, good healthy stories, interesting in the first place, and in the next place teaching manliness, decency, and good conduct. At the cost of being deemed effeminate, I will add that I greatly liked the girls' stories—"Pussy Willow" and "A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life," just as I worshiped "Little Men" and "Little Women" and "An ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... Anglo-Saxons in particular, have always at the back of their minds a notion that there is something effeminate about the sense for beauty. That is reserved for decadent Southern nations. Tu regere imperio populos, Romane memento they would say, if they knew the tag; and translate it "Britain rules the waves"! But history gives the lie to this complacent theory. ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... fyery, as I have known, but the flame of it kept downe, for the most part, or soon allayed with thos moral endowments he had. He was naturally compassionate towards objects in distresse, even to an effeminate measure; though God had made him a heart, wherein was left little roume for any fear, but what was due to himselfe, of which there was a large proportion, yet did he exceed in tendernesse towards sufferers. A larger soul, I thinke, hath seldome dwelt in a house of clay than his ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... flaccid, from Khansbending inwards, i.e. the mouth of a water-skin before drinking. Like Mukhannas, it is also used for an effeminate man, a passive sodomite and even for a eunuch. Easterns still believe in what Westerns know to be an impossibility, human beings with the parts and proportions of both sexes equally developed and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... The countenance of its intended rider met fully the gaze of the spectator. It was a countenance of singular loveliness and power. The lips and the moulding of the chin resembled the eager and impassioned tenderness of the shape of Antinous; but instead of the effeminate sullenness of the eye, and the narrow smoothness of the forehead, shone an expression of profound and piercing thought. On each side of the clear and open brow descended, even to the shoulders, the clustering locks of golden hair; while the ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... at marriages, also a "night-cap" drunk before bed and lastly an effeminate; one who perambulavit omnium cubilia (Catullus). See Encolpius' pun upon the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... stairs come a fluting dwarf and an effeminate-looking slave playing a lute, preceded by others with lights; then SHALNASSAR, leaning on GUeLISTANE; finally a eunuch with a whip stuck in his belt. GUeLISTANE frees herself and comes forward, seeming to search the floor for something; the others come ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... vicomte had inherited from his parents a taste for Oriental things, and his study looked like a costly tent, while his bedroom was furnished with the simplicity of a convent cell. The Count of Monte-Cristo had taught his son to be strict to himself and not become effeminate in any way. Nice pictures and statues were in the parlors, the bookcase was filled with selected volumes and he spent many hours each day in serious studies. Spero was a master in all physical accomplishments. His father's iron muscles were his legacy, and the count often proudly ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... boy, frail-looking and slightly built, but with a handsome, rather effeminate-looking face, tried ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... Petersburgh have observed that, among the lower orders of the people in Russia, milk in the breasts of men is much more frequent than among the more southern nations: yet the Russians have never been deemed weak and effeminate. There is among the varieties of the human species a race of men whose breasts at the age of puberty acquire a considerable bulk. Lozano did not belong to that race; and he often repeated to us his conviction, that it was only the irritation of the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... rassled catch-as-catch-can, and you know it," declared Harding. "I suppose you think just because I do nothing but build railroads and things that I've grown effeminate since you tackled me the last time. Come on; ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... were. The vast continent then thrown open to the advance of civilisation, may be divided into two portions, the south and the north. The former was inhabited by a harmless effeminate race, who enjoyed many of the refinements of civilisation; their knowledge of the arts, for instance, as shewn to us in the ruins of their cities, was considerable; they possessed extensive buildings in a bold and ornate style of architecture; they made a lavish use of the ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... gave him no pleasure. The chase was his favourite recreation; and he loved it most when it was most hazardous. His leaps were sometimes such that his boldest companions did not like to follow him. He seems even to have thought the most hardy field sports of England effeminate, and to have pined in the Great Park of Windsor for the game which he had been used to drive to bay in the forests of Guelders, wolves, and wild boars, and huge stags ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... understood, gentle reader, the youth was of a tender and fair complexion, with little beard, save a slight blush on his upper lip. He was not ill-favoured, but there was altogether something boyish and effeminate throughout his appearance, which seemed not of the hue to win a lady's love. He could twang the guitar, and had at times made scraps of verse, which he trolled to many a damsel's ear, but to ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... worship of Astarte the prostitution of women, and of effeminate men, played the same part that child murder did in the worship of Baal. "This practice," says Dr. Doellinger,[11128] "so widely spread in the world of old, the delusion that no service more acceptable could be rendered a deity than ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... you expect your builder or constructor to design colored patterns in stone and brick, and your china-ware merchant to keep a separate body of workwomen who can paint china, but nothing else. By this division of labor, you ruin all the arts at once. The work of the Academician becomes mean and effeminate, because he is not used to treat color on a grand scale and in rough materials; and your manufactures become base, because no well-educated person sets hand to them. And therefore it is necessary to understand, not merely as a logical statement, but as a practical necessity, ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... sich ez they and the employers shel mutually agree; but that the negroes may not become luxurious and effeminate, wich two things is vices wich goes to sap the simplicity and strength uv a people, the sum shel never exceed $5 per month, but not less than enuff in all cases to buy him one soot uv close per annum, wich the employer ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... little girl-friends one of whom more particularly has left a profound impression upon me. From an early age I preferred the society of girls to boys, and the latter did not like me, as I was too effeminate for them. We could not play together, as they called me "Mademoiselle," and teased me in a variety of ways. On the other hand, I got on very well with girls of my own age, and they found me very sensible and steady. I was about twelve or thirteen, and I could not account for ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... that all his labors and savings would go for naught, for he was supremely disappointed in his son, the crown-prince Frederick. The stern father had no sympathy for the literary, musical, artistic tastes of his son, whom he thought effeminate, and whom he abused roundly with a quick and violent temper. When Prince Frederick tried to run away, the king arrested him and for punishment put him through such an arduous, slave- like training in the civil and military administration, from the lowest grades ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... Ireland. Ladies were the spinners, weavers, surgeons, and readers of the day; they were great at interpreting dreams, and dearly loved flowers. The gentlemen looked upon reading as an occupation quite as effeminate as sewing, war and hunting being the two main employments of the lords of creation, and gambling the chief amusement. Priests and monks were the exceptions to this rule, until Henry First introduced ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... slightly, took a measured pace or two right and left, and gave a furtive glance at his handsome, effeminate face and slight form in the glass. Then ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... is stereotyped from generation to generation; his goose is a perennial pun; and his habitual melancholy is derived to this day from the flatulent diet on which he will persist in living—cabbage. He is effeminate, cowardly, dishonest—a mere fraction of a man both in soul and body. He is represented by the thinnest fellow in the company; his starved person and frightened look are the unfailing signals for a laugh; and he is never spoken to but in ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... Petrovna's little dressing-table, Lavretsky found a small packet, tied up with black ribbon, sealed with black sealing wax, and thrust away in the very farthest corner of the drawer. In the parcel there lay face to face a portrait, in pastel, of his father in his youth, with effeminate curls straying over his brow, with almond-shaped languid eyes and parted lips, and a portrait, almost effaced, of a pale woman in a white dress with a white rose in her hand—his mother. Of herself, Glafira Petrovna had never allowed a portrait to be taken. "I, myself, little ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... side, her hand clasped in his. If Dick had been told a week earlier that he would ever go to sleep clinging to his mother's hand, he would have scouted the idea with indignation and scorn; and he remembered the act later with a blush as something shamefully effeminate or infantile, betraying a weakness in his character hitherto ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... backgammon or for field sports. He had an exquisite ear, and performed skilfully on the flute. His earliest instructors had been French refugees, and they had awakened in him a strong passion for French literature and French society. Frederic William regarded these tastes as effeminate and contemptible, and, by abuse and persecution, made them still stronger. Things became worse when the Prince Royal attained that time of life at which the great revolution in the human mind and body takes place. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... magnetic spell, they all turned their heads toward the platform where Lysia had just silently made her appearance,— and springing from their seats they broke into a boisterous shout of acclamation and welcome. One young man whose flushed face had all the joyous, wanton, effeminate beauty of a pictured Dionysius, reeled forward, goblet in hand, and tossing the wine in air so that it splashed down again at his feet, staining his white garments as it fell with a stain as ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... small and old as he passed into Victoria Street. There the Stores by night made him smile at the contrast, but in Ashley Gardens Westminster Cathedral made him frown. If he hated anything, it was that for which it stood. Romanism meant to him something effeminate, sneaking, monstrous.... That there should be Englishmen to build such a place positively angered him. He was not exactly a bigot or a fanatic; he would not have repealed the Emancipation Acts; and he would have said that if anyone wanted to be a Romanist, he had better be one. But he would not have ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... Hercules with the lion's-skin, "will teach him how to overcome Vice and quell evil passions, those poisonous monsters which like Hydras[15] are ever reborn in the heart. A foe to effeminate pleasures, he shall learn from me those too seldom trodden paths that lead to honour along the ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... is rapine under a beautiful name, but however perfect humanity may become, patriotism will always be a virtue among oppressed peoples, because it will at all times mean love of justice, of liberty, of personal dignity—nothing of chimerical dreams, of effeminate idyls! The greatness of a man is not in living before his time, a thing almost impossible, but in understanding its desires, in responding to its needs, and in guiding it on its forward way. The geniuses ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... solitude became intolerable—I placed my hand on the beating heart of Idris, I bent my head to catch the sound of her breath, to assure myself that she still existed—for a moment I doubted whether I should not awake her; so effeminate an horror ran through my frame.—Great God! would it one day be thus? One day all extinct, save myself, should I walk the earth alone? Were these warning voices, whose inarticulate and oracular sense forced belief ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... zeal of every knowing man Opprest with hills of tyranny, cast on virtue By the light fancies of fools, thus transported. Cannot but vent the Aetna of his fires, T'inflame best bosoms with much worthier love Than of these outward and effeminate shades; That these vain joys, in which their wills consume Such powers of wit and soul as are of force To raise their beings to eternity, May be converted on works fitting men: And, for the practice of a forced look, An antic gesture, or a fustian phrase, Study ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... once meant foolish, ignorant, weak, effeminate. It has now come to mean exact, fine, finished, exciting admiration on account of skill or exactness; as nice proportions, nice workmanship, a nice distinction in philosophy. It is loosely and colloquially used in application ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... and placed all their happiness in corporeal pleasure. When Paul was at Athens, he had conferences with the Epicurean philosophers. (Acts 17:18) The word Epicurean is used, at present, for an indolent, effeminate, and voluptuous person, who only consults ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward |
