"Feminine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their infancy, and when that painful process is completed, intelligent philosophers come and smile upon the victims, and point to them as proofs of the intentions of Nature regarding our sex, admirable examples of the unvarying instincts of the feminine creature. In fact," Hadria added with a laugh, "it's as if the trainer of that troop of performing poodles that we saw, the other day, at Ballochcoil, were to assure the spectators that the amiable animals were inspired, from birth, by a heaven-implanted ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... base robber of a crown read aloud, called it a clever bit of feminine strategy, and rubbed his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... after he had done play, 'life is a game at calculation; and he that plays the best of it is the cleverest fellow. Or, rather, calculation and action are husband and wife; married without a possibility of divorce. The greatest errors of Mrs. Action proceed from a kind of headstrong feminine propensity, which she has to be doing before her husband, Mr. Calculation, has given her proper directions. She often pours a spoonful of scalding soup into his worship's mouth, before the relative heat between ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... of hospitality or in performing those little household offices which fall so gracefully on the young. Engrossed with her books and studies, pursuits noble and ennobling in themselves, but degraded from their high and holy purpose when cultivated to the exclusion of the lovely, feminine virtues, Mittie was almost a stranger beneath her ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... of fact, Isabella d' Este witnessed the sacking of Rome without so much as thinking of nervous prostration. This was nearly four hundred years ago, but it is the high-water mark of feminine fortitude. To live through such days and nights of horror, and emerge therefrom with unimpaired vitality, and unquenched love for a beautiful and dangerous world, is to rob the words "shock" and "strain" of all dignity and meaning. To resume at once the interrupted duties and ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... carry out the behest could see the effect of their callousness, they might either be frightened or filled with remorse and pity. But they cannot see it, and the poor fellows are often too sensitive about showing what would appear to them as feminine weakness, and so the thing in some cases drifts on, each not knowing the ugly consequences that are being inflicted on the other, until the climax inevitably comes and it is found the wreck cannot be repaired. I have drawn an extreme case, but there are such cases, and it is ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... Albernspiel had truly pointed out, "the Christian Church had never enjoyed the eminent advantage of women's ministration. Even the Greeks had been wiser than this. And thus much of an essential character in all true religion had always been absent from Christianity, owing to this proscription of feminine influence." (The Doctrine of the Inner Light, Vol. ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... always constituted himself chief spokesman, unless driven from the rostrum by some one possessed of a nimbler tongue. 'I only hope your feminine togs are ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... there are certain trades in which women can compete successfully with men, and certain others in which they cannot. And these are not quite the same as in the West. We usually consider sewing to be a feminine occupation. In Burma, there being no elaborately cut and trimmed garments, the amount of sewing done is small, but that is usually done by men. Women often own and use small hand-machines, but the treadles are always used by men only. As I am writing, ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... rabbits," he said. "There, those are all nouns that end in us, feminine nouns. Look, tribus, acus, porticus. ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... speaking of Fanny Kemble, said: "Although she was very stout and short, and had a very red face, yet she impressed me as the supreme embodiment of majestic attributes. I never saw so commanding a personality in feminine form. Any type of mere physical beauty would have paled ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... indeed!—There is a sense of life, bustle, mirth, and happiness, in the very air of the dwelling. To be greeted with smiles at your going forth and coming in—to know that there is at least one who serves you without a self-interest—to hear the joyous, feminine laugh, delicate and temperate in the very whirlwind of its ecstacy, ring through the mansion from hour to hour—to hear the little foot pattering about you as you sit at your philosophic studies—to have a friend with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 275, September 29, 1827 • Various
... helped me greatly; but for some time so busy were we that neither of us spoke. On my own part I experienced a strange hesitancy in addressing her upon terms of equality. Ordinarily not easily embarrassed in feminine society, I felt in this instance a definite barrier between us, which prevented my feeling at ease. Now and then as we sat opposite each other, eating amid a silence most unpleasant, I would catch ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... profusely adorned with small brown cones. The flowers also are peculiarly beautiful and effective; the female dark rich purple, the male blue, of so fine and pure a tone. What the best azure of the mountain sky seems to be condensed in them. Though apparently the most delicate and feminine of all the mountain trees, it grows best where the snow lies deepest, at a height of from 9000 to 9500 feet, in hollows on the northern slopes of mountains and ridges. But under all circumstances, sheltered ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... thus alluringly. It was there for effect. It enhanced her considerable charm. In the midst of his interested survey she turned and caught his eye. He began to study his boots with an embarrassed blush. When he ultimately stole another glance at this wealth of feminine beauty he found she was busily engaged in similar scrutiny—of himself. They both smiled. Then she stood up, languidly, and ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... myself?" he asks somewhere; and then pat comes the answer, the best answer ever given in print, worthy of a sage, or rather of a woman: "Very well, then, I contradict myself!" with this addition, not so feminine and perhaps not altogether so satisfactory: "I am large - I contain multitudes." Life, as a matter of fact, partakes largely of the nature of tragedy. The gospel according to Whitman, even if it be not so logical, has this advantage over the gospel according to Pangloss, ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... atom in this seething whirlpool of Paris, churned by the strife of innumerable interests. His thoughts went back to the banks of his Charente; a craving for happiness and home awoke in him; and with the craving, came one of the sudden febrile bursts of energy which half-feminine natures like his mistake for strength. He would not give up until he had poured out his heart to David Sechard, and taken counsel of the three good angels still left to him ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... male patients, except that in cases where strength is of moment, as in the forced movements and the very hard rubbing needed for old articular adhesions, in which force must be exercised without violence, it is usually impossible to secure the necessary power in a feminine manipulator. ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... superscription was in a very delicate feminine handwriting; and the seal was a wounded falcon, drawing the arrow from its own ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... to the kitchen door. At that moment the door was partially opened and a brisk feminine voice from behind it inquired: "How about eatin'? Are you ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... affection of his wife and Mrs. Bowes, Knox, at this time, needed more of feminine society. On November 19, 1556, he wrote to his friend, Mrs. Locke, wife of a Cheapside merchant: "You write that your desire is earnest to see me. Dear sister, if I should express the thirst and languor which I have had for your presence, ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... who was thin, short, and of colorless complexion, wiped her eyes on a soiled apron. The scant knot of brown hair at the back of her head seemed a pathetic badge of feminine destitution. The eyes, peering from their red and swollen sockets, held an appeal that would have shaken sympathy from ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... and round, and tempting, with the most tantalizing curves ever built to torment a man. Her hair was soft and brown, and it waved up from the nape of her neck without those short, straggling locks and thin growth at the edge which mar so many feminine heads; and the sharp contrast of shimmery brown against ivory white was simply irresistible. Had her face been less full of charm, Keith might have been content to gaze and gaze at that lovely hair line. As it was, his eyes wandered to her brows, also distinctly marked, ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... as if chiselled out of the purest Parian marble, just flushed with the glow of morn, and cut in those perfect lines of proportion which nature only bestows on a few chosen favorites at intervals to show the possibilities of feminine beauty, Amelie de Repentigny added a figure which, in its perfect symmetry, looked smaller than it really was, for she was a tall girl: it filled the eye and held fast the fancy with the charms of a thousand graces as she moved or stood, suggestive of the beauty ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... watered by the river Finn. This is the right wood for the manufacture of clogs for the people of Lancashire and Yorkshire. Captain Ricky sends tons of these interesting articles to the sister isle. Men are turning out these favourite instruments of feminine correction, in a rough state, by boat loads. When the coster's done a-jumping on his mother, he should thank Ireland for his clogs. When the festive miner rejoices, his dancing would lack the distinguishing clatter which is its richest charm, without alder grown ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... which he could have sworn he had just shown an elderly spinster who had taken at least half an hour of his time and then left without making a purchase. His back was toward his counter when his attention was attracted by a feminine voice asking if he was busy. As he turned about he recognized her instantly—the girl for whom he had changed a wheel a month before and who unconsciously had infused new ambition into his blood and saved him, temporarily at ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... there was the Club de Vingt and similar agreeable asylums; there was also a telephone to ring, and unpremeditated suggestions to make to friends, either masculine or feminine. ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... a long existence Through the dust, the mud, the rain, Great is feminine persistence, She ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 9, 1892 • Various
... is, as I have already pointed out, the feminine counterpart to the imagination, is found, with regard to this particular problem, uttering so frequent and impressive an oracle that to neglect its voice, would be to nullify and negate the whole activity of the intuition ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... regretted that a word, used in the days of Charles II. and still intelligible in our times, should have become obsolete; viz. the feminine for intriguer—an intriguess. See the Life of Lord Keeper North, whose biographer, in speaking of Lord Keeper Bridgeman, says, "And what was worst of all, his family was no way fit for that place (of Chancellor), his lady being a ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... groan of execration from the interior of the vehicle, a hysterical little shriek, and one or two shrill expressions of feminine disapprobation, but the driver moved not. At last a masculine head expostulated from the window: "Look here; you agreed to take us to the house. Why, it's ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... that starts may go. Oh, my dear, know the answer before it ever is suggested. Sacrifices! It is sacrifice for the children that you profess to mean. Well, let us call it that. Have you ever heard of a father sacrificing himself for his children? There's no such phrase. There's only the feminine gender for that. 'Sacrificed himself for his wife and children.' It's a solecism. If grammar means good sense, it isn't grammar because it's meaningless. It can't be said. It's grotesque. But 'Sacrificed herself for her husband and her children,'—why, that the commonest of cliches. It's written ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... took down their feet from the benches where they were resting. That was as far as their etiquette led them. Most of them continued to smoke their pipes, and all of them stared at her unreservedly. Such a sight of exquisite feminine beauty had not come to their eyes in many a long day. Even in the dim light of the smoky lanterns, and with the dust and weariness of travel upon her, Margaret ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... him to gain time. An increasing unwillingness to leave Pianura had replaced his former impatience to be gone. The reluctance to desert his friends was coupled with a boyish desire to stay and see the game out; and behind all his other impulses lurked the instinctive resistance to any feminine influence ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... go to sleep. It is not surprising that the young girl sometimes made love to the knight under these circumstances, nor is it surprising that he, engaged in an arduous life and trained to disdain feminine ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... to the Home, but showers of plenty. Some of these came in the form of fresh fish and clams left at the back door; some in luscious fruits; some in barrels of clothing. And the barrels of clothing solved another problem; for no longer did their contents consist solely of articles of feminine attire. "Biled shirts" poured out of them; socks and breeches, derby hats, coats and negligees; until Aunt Nancy with a humorous twist to her thin lips inquired if there were thirty men in this ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... and a moment later stood in their midst, looking even more bewitching than usual in her dishevelled condition. Then as she drew a long breath, inhaling the fresh woodland air, and realising all the joy of her restored freedom, the eternal feminine reasserted itself, and, seizing both of Spotts's hands, she cried impetuously: "Look at me, Alvy, and tell me if my ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... familiar nod and "How d'ye do?" and holding sweet discourse among their fragrant selves upon the pursuits of the haute classe, the merits of the last new novel, or the fortune of the last unmarried feminine 330arrival. To these may be added reminiscences of the last night's card-table and remarks upon the Balls ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... the lines deformed to its ungainly warble, but like heavenly poetry, where the rhythm is beyond the conscious and into the subconscious, where it inspires a feeling of quaint remembrance of itself, as if it were there and not there at the same time. And while it was soft and pleasant, it was not feminine, for it was a strong baritone, reinforced by its own superiority and strengthened by its wit ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... love, how proudly she owned her sovereignty! Not even before the feet of her haughty mistress, in her prayerful entreaties for her dear Walter's life, did she so eminently shine forth in all the majesty of feminine excellence as when she guided his counsels in the dungeon, and nerved his mind to the trials of the scaffold, where, in his manly fortitude, his noble self-reliance, the people, who mingled their tears with his triumph, saw how much the patriot was ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... silent, and each stood looking at the other. Never had she been more beautiful than then. Her old self-possession had gone; there was a feminine weakness in her attitude, or quiver of the limbs, a heaving of the breast that made her seem different from the Mrs. Carey of late years, and beneath the long, trembling lashes he saw her eyes glorious ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... throw over our shoulders for a moment that mantle of allegory which none but Bunyan could wear long and successfully, we should represent Reason and Faith as twin-born beings,—the one, in form and features the image of manly beauty,—the other, of feminine grace and gentleness; but to each of whom, alas! was allotted a sad privation. While the bright eyes of Reason are full of piercing and restless intelligence, his ear is closed to sound; and while Faith has an ear of exquisite delicacy, on her sightless orbs, as she lifts them towards ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... had realized, his smile more interesting, his manners more attractive, his eyelashes longer; in a word, he had suddenly grown desirable. A month ago she could have observed, with idle and alien curiosity, the spectacle of his thumb drawing nearer to another (feminine) thumb, on the page of the Watts and Select Hymn book; now, at the morning service, she had wished nothing so much as to put Mark's thumb back into his pocket where it belonged, and slap the girl's thumb smartly and ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... before the Belgian had succeeded in convincing himself that the captive not only had every reason for having conceived sentiments of love for him; but that she had by various feminine methods acknowledged her ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... considered strictly masculine," he said. "To appreciate beauty or to try to be just commonly decent is not exclusively feminine. You must remember there are painters, poets, musicians, workers in art along almost any line you could mention, and no one calls them feminine, but there is one good thing if I am. You need no longer fear me. If you should see me, muck covered, grubbing in the earth or on ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... turned toward the door, after a friendly pat on Cronin's shoulder. The bell rang, and the Captain reached for it, to sink back exhausted upon the bed. Shirley answered, to be greeted by a pleasant feminine voice. ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... displease, but rather pleases me that you should have roses to grow and violets to care for and that you should make chaplets and dance and sing, and I would well that you should so continue among our friends and those of our estate, and it is but right and seemly thus to pass the time of your feminine youth, provided that you desire and offer not to go to the feasts and dances of too great lords, for that is not seemly for you, nor suitable to ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... the old doctor snapped; his manner towards me in an instant changed. "You're a frequent visitor there, I forgot. Feminine attraction and all that sort of thing. Dangerous, Boyd! Dangerous to run after a woman of her sort. I'm an older man than you. Why haven't you taken the hint I gave you ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... the faint swish of feminine movement. She came and stood demurely at the top of the wide steps, a little hoop overflowing soft, white embroidered stuff ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... s'posed you'd go an' worry! I thought—I thought you'd jus' be pur-roud." Actually, Evangeline was crying now. Miss Theodosia's disapproval vanished instantly. With a sweep of her arms, she gathered a forgiven Evangeline in. The Man Person stood outside the little zone of feminine emotion, but he ...
— Miss Theodosia's Heartstrings • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... the policy of the department, and their duties are wide. No man is allowed to visit a female licence-holder or supervisee, mainly for the reason that his identity might be suspected. So the women detectives take this in hand, and with feminine tact manage to know all about their protegees, to give a warning here, sympathetic advice there, in a way that would be difficult for ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... flush that I had seen in her face, flower-like at a short distance, was a tan that was almost a man's tan. Her eyes were of a deep blue and as clear as the sky; but in them, too, there was a strength that was not altogether feminine. There was strength in her face, strength in the poise of her firm neck, strength in every movement of her limbs and body. When she spoke, it was in a voice which, like her hair, was adorable. I had never heard a sweeter voice, and her ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... a frown she closed the book sharply, got up and tossed it into the chair. No daintier or more desirable incarnation of the eternal feminine could have been imagined than she presented as she walked slowly across the lawn to meet the man whom the Law of Selection had designated as her natural mate, and whom her father, for reasons presently to be made plain, ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... just inside the door. Apart from anything else, the room itself had a certain awe-inspiring quality for her. She had never before been in a lawyer's office. She was fully possessed with the rural and feminine ignorance and holy fear of all legal appurtenances. From all her traditions, this office door should have displayed a grinning man or woman trap, which she ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... to a studio inhabited by two Americans," continued the girl serenely, "and I often see them pass. They seem to need a great many models, mostly young and feminine—" ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... This girl's hair was really brown, a rich sepia interwoven with strands of raw, ruddy gold, admirably harmonious with her eyes. Her nose he thought a trace too severely perfect in its modelling, but redeemed by a broad and thoughtful brow, a strong yet absolutely feminine chin, and a mouth.... Well, as to her mouth, the young man selected a rosebud to liken it to; which was really quite a poor simile, for her lips were nothing at all like rose-leaves save in colour; but they were well-shapen and wide enough to ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... best I can on the allowance made you by Mr. Tappan. His ideas on modern feminine apparel are ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... whose notions of carpentry were feminine, and who did not care to discuss the matter. But John March, it seemed, would not ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... and listened in open-mouthed amazement, for the young girl who acknowledged in an offhand way that she had performed such tremendous feats of horsemanship was modest, pretty, unaffected, and feminine. ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... had thrashed so well as to lay him up in bed? That incident had damaged two people at least, the unknown vanquished combatant in his bodily welfare, and me in my character as an upstanding man in the fierce feminine estimation of Miss La Heu; but this injury it was my intention to set right; my confession to the girl behind the counter was merely delayed. As I sat with Shakespeare open in my lap, I added to my store of reasoning one little new straw of argument in ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... maidenly qualities of Mercy, are alike pleasing and appropriate. There is a mixture of timidity and frankness in Mercy, which is as sweet in itself as it is artlessly and unconsciously drawn; and in Christiana we discover the very characteristics that can make the most lovely feminine counterpart, suitable to the stern and lofty qualities of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... "queer-looking bird," or, perhaps a "funny-face bird." In George's time, every human male was to be defined, at pleasure, as a "duck"; but "duck" was not spoken with admiring affection, as in its former feminine use to signify a "dear"—on the contrary, "duck" implied the speaker's personal detachment and humorous superiority. An indifferent amusement was what George felt when his mother, with a gentle emphasis, interrupted his interchange of courtesies with the nieces to present him to the queer-looking ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... sandy cove and lay with a reach of the lusty docks between me and either shore. It was early morning. The yellow, dew-laid road down which I came still slumbered undisturbed; the village cows had not been milked, and the pasture slope, rounding with a feminine grace of curve and form, lay asleep, with its sedgy fingers trailing in the water; even the locomotive in the little terminal round-house over the hill was not awake and wheezing. But the creek people ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... habitual contortion of body, or established mode of expression, which never fails to excite mirth if it be pointed out to notice. By premonition of these particularities, I secured our pleasantry.' The feminine characters, Flirtillas, and Cleoras, and Euphelias, and Penthesileas, are, if possible, still more grotesque. Macaulay remarks that he wears the petticoat with as ill a grace as Falstaff himself. The reader, he thinks, will cry out with ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... would not have been taken for brothers. The King was a large man, and my husband a small one: the latter had very effeminate inclinations; he loved dress, was very careful of his complexion, and took great interest in feminine employments and in ceremonies. The King, on the contrary, cared little about dress, loved the chase and shooting, was fond of talking of war, and had all manly tastes and habits. Monsieur behaved well in battle, but never talked of it; he loved women as companions, and was ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... in a pleasant state of feminine satisfaction. Without any sort of presumption or even effort on her part she had attained a high and unquestioned position among her fellow-citizens, and her mind was not set upon maintaining that position by worthy and unoffensive methods of ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... stamped-leather furniture, the La Savonniere carpet, the pictures of sacred subjects, exquisite from an artist's point of view, the plain but tasteful curtains, all left an impression half religious and half feminine but wholly soothing. Indeed, the soft light, the high white statue of the Virgin in a canopied niche, with a perfumed red lamp burning before it, and the wooden prie-dieu with the red-edged prayer-book upon the top of it, made the apartment look more like a private ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... use. She is doing the cathedral towns. I am doing the cathedral towns. Happy thought! Why shouldn't we do them together—we and Aunt Celia? A fellow whose mother and sister are in America must have some feminine society! ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... foliage, representing Spring and Summer, Winter and Autumn being yet to come out of the artist's mild; the portraits of his wife and children; here a clergyman, there a poet; here a woman with the stamp of reality upon her, there a feminine conception which we feel not to have existed. There was an infant Christ, or rather a child Christ, not unbeautiful, but scarcely divine. I love the odor of paint in an artist's room; his palette and all his other tools have a mysterious ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... is more to be had by the humble heart than John possessed or taught. The passive as well as the active; the glen equally with the bare mountain peak; the feminine with the masculine; the power to wait and be still, combined with the swift rush to capture the position; the cross of shame as well as the throne of power. And if thou art the least in the Kingdom of God, all this may be thine, by the Holy Spirit, who introduces ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... distance a woman of commanding presence; but never after he had approached near enough to behold her face. Every thought of artifice—of practised effect—or of haughty pretension, fled before the childlike innocence—the sweet feminine timidity—and the more than cherub loveliness of that countenance, which yet in its lineaments was noble, whilst its expression was purely gentle and confiding. A shade of pensiveness there was about her; but that was in her manners, scarcely ever in her features; ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... brushes, clothes brush, hair brush, pipeclay, button polisher, cleaning paste, and a dozen other things just as interesting and as useful. Out of curiosity I opened a housewife, and my heart was touched with the almost feminine consideration that it indicated; for there, cunningly folded up, were skeins of wool and cotton in many different shades, as well as half a dozen sizes of needles. Surely the War Office is human, and not the strange machine that some of us esteem it, for how else could it provide that ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... Heraclides with a telescope, and calling their attention to the fact that the outline of the peak terminating the cape was such as to present a remarkable resemblance to a human face, unmistakably a feminine countenance, seen in profile, and possessing no small degree of beauty. To my astonishment, this curious human semblance still remained when we had approached so close to the moon that the mountains forming the cape filled ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... torturing a High Priest, each and every one of these is a disturbing feature. No woman, and least of all a young woman such as Ruth Bellairs, can be blamed for being nervous under the stress of such conditions or for displaying a certain amount of feminine unreasonableness. ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... sea. There he was freed from his sins. And he reached the sea in the Dravida land, and visited the holy spot passing under Agastya's name, which was exceedingly sacred and exceptionally pure. And the valiant king visited the feminine sacred spots. Here he listened to the story of that well-known feat which was achieved by Arjuna, chief of all wielders of the bow, and which was beyond the power of human beings to perform. And here he was praised by the highest members of the saintly ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... appearance, radically different from the one of which the Prefect had read us so minute a description. Here the seal was large and black, with the D—— cipher; there it was small and red, with the ducal arms of the S—— family. Here, the address, to the Minister, was diminutive and feminine; there the superscription, to a certain royal personage, was markedly bold and decided; the size alone formed a point of correspondence. But then, the radicalness of these differences, which was excessive; the dirt; ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... Hamilton a fascinating woman?" he said, "I never thought her so. She was somewhat masculine, but symmetrical in figure, so that Sir William called her his Grecian. She was full in person, not fat, but embonpoint. Her carriage often majestic, rather than feminine. Not at all delicate, ill-bred, often very affected, a devil in temper when set on edge. She had beautiful hair and displayed it. Her countenance was agreeable,—fine, hardly beautiful, but the outline excellent. She affected sensibility, ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... by the thought of Aunt Claudia crying in secret. She was a martial little soul in spite of her distinctly feminine type of mind. ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... between the two the flesh is hollowed, not so much with the emaciation of monastic vigils as with the athletic exercise of wrestlings in the throes of prophecy. The face, on the whole, is ugly, but not repellent; and, in spite of its great strength, it shows signs of feminine sensibility. Like the faces of Cicero and Demosthenes, it seems the fit machine for oratory. But the furnaces hidden away behind that skull, beneath that cowl, have made it haggard with a fire not to be found in the serener features of the classic orators. Savonarola was a visionary ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... Elizabeth wore white frocks, and looked very cool and feminine and high-bred. Aunt Elizabeth had a nose like Amy's and the same ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... Churchill's first great presentation of the Eternal Feminine, is throughout a profound study of a fascinating young American woman. It is frankly a ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... that he could arrange an excellent marriage for me. Any of my readers who know how marriages are managed in France and Spain could not be surprised that his liking for me personally prompted this kind thought. Without my knowledge, but with the aid of my cousin's wife and other feminine confederates, he had selected a charming girl, some seventeen years of age, the only daughter of a rich financier, scion of an old French family, whose wife was a Spaniard. During my visit I had met her at times. She was as desirable a partner for life as ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... the man of Cho-sen and his clothes, to describe in a general way to you the weaker sex—not an easy task—and what they wear—a much more difficult task still,—for I have not the good fortune to be conversant with the intricacies of feminine habiliments, and therefore hope to be excused if, in dealing with this part of my subject, I do not always use the proper terms applicable to the different parts that compose it. Relying, then, upon my readers' indulgence in this respect, I shall attempt to give an idea of what a Corean female is ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... perfect, if not a little more so. In her heart of hearts Sibyl felt that she understood her father, and that there were times when she did not quite understand her mother; but, never mind, her mother was the perfection of all feminine beauty and loveliness, and grace and goodness, and her father was the perfection of all masculine goodness and nobility of character. Sibyl in her heart of hearts wished that she had been born ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... again, that beautiful type of feminine character alike as maiden and mother, whose autobiography was given to the world a few years ago, tells how the family at Quarry Bank struck and delighted her. 'We stayed a week with them,' she says, 'and admired the cultivation of mind and refinement of manners which Mrs. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 7: A Sketch • John Morley
... one thing more than another that roused the ire of Freydissa, it was the exhibition of feminine weakness in the shape of tears. She appeared to think that the credit of her sex in reference to firmness and self-command was compromised by such weakness. She herself never wept by any chance, and she was ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... But the casual feminine visitors? Well, the sisters and cousins of an undergraduate seldom seem more passable to his comrades than to himself. Altogether, the instinct of sex is not pandered to in Oxford. It is not, however, as it may once have been, dormant. The modern ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... of the former day, while she had resolved not to blast utterly the happiness of her present husband by revealing the history of the departed one, she had also determined to indulge a certain odd, inconsequent, feminine sentiment of decency, to the small extent to which it could do no harm to any person. At Redrutin she emerged from the railway carriage in the black attire purchased at the shop, having during the transit made the change ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... this place of punishment an evil spirit is seen by Dante, quite other than the "Gran Nemico." The great enemy is obeyed knowingly and willingly; but this spirit—feminine—and called a Siren—is the "Deceitfulness of riches," [Greek: apate ploutou] of the Gospels, winning obedience by guile. This is the Idol of riches, made doubly phantasmal by Dante's seeing her in a dream. She is lovely to look ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... the song came to an end; and then, all at once, there were several feminine voices, talking airily and cheerfully, with now and then a merry burst of laughter, such as you may always hear when three or four young women sit at ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Sammy?' said Miss Brass; for in her mild and feminine lips, Sampson became Sammy, and all ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... Mrs. Kingdon's full powder box. I climbed ladders and felt along cornices. I looked through the pockets of Mrs. Kingdon's gowns—a clever bell-boy it takes to find a woman's pocket, but even the real masculine ones among 'em are half feminine; they've had so much ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... him to the nursery, where thirteen or fourteen mites in gingham rompers were tumbling about on mattresses on the floor. Sophie, alone in the glory of feminine petticoats, was ensconced in the blue-ginghamed arms of a very bored orphan. She was squirming and fighting to get down, and her feminine petticoats were tightly wound about her neck. I took her in my arms, smoothed her clothes, wiped her nose, and invited ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... character unfolding itself by means of one action, as far as possible in one place, and within the limits of one day. It is bound by other formal and conventional rules: of versification—such as the alternation of masculine and feminine pairs of rhymes, and of taste—such as the avoidance of all "doing of deeds" on the stage (e.g., all fighting and dying take place behind the scenes) and the grouping of the fewest possible secondary parts around the ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... little feminine flock gathered about me and received me with such cries of pleasure and warm caresses that, from the first instant, I thought myself lucky to have made this trip. I figured that it would not last long and I believe ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... necessarily thrown into the company of Mike Conlin, who was officiously desirous to place at his disposal the wisdom which had been acquired by long years of intimate association with the feminine element of domestic life, and the duties and practices of housekeeping. When the last load of furniture was on its way to Number Nine, and Jim had stopped at Mike's house to refresh his weary team, Mike saw that his last ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... the great question of our life has been solved, and the brotherhood of man is a reality. But is accomplished at the expense of the sisterhood of women. Why should you not make friends with your neighbour at the theatre or in the train, when you know and he knows that feminine criticism and feminine insight and feminine prejudice will never come between you? Though you become as David and Jonathan, you need never enter his home, nor he yours. All your lives you will meet under the open air, the only roof-tree of the South, ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... was Leta's fault. She has got into a way of coming into my room and putting the last touches to my toilet. I let her, for I am doubtful of myself nowadays after many years' dependence on the best of valets. Her taste is generally beyond dispute, but to-day she had indulged in a feminine vagary that provoked me and ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... had—that to the full. He cared for her the more when once he had her gentle nature under his touch; showed her all those little attentions of which such a mind as his is capable of conceiving—teased her, petted her, laughed like a schoolboy at her feminine whims ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... discovered fourth part, which he suggested "ought to be called America, because Americus discovered it." This professor, like most learned men of his time, wrote in Latin; and in Latin the Italian name Americo is Americus; the feminine form of Americus is America, which was used because it was customary to christen countries with feminine names. As nobody else had yet suggested a name for the vast new lands in the west, the German's christening of 1507 was adopted for the country which should have been called ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... little boys, who, | |ostensibly ignorant of her observation, spat through| |vacant front teeth and turned gorgeous somersaults | |for her admiration. She was happy and the jealous | |green complexion of the feminine part of her world | |bothered her not at all. | | | |And unsuspectingly Ruth came singing across the | |borders of her ain countree to the alien land of | |knowledge and disillusionment. Though she knew she | |came from God, it was gradually borne upon her that | |her girl-mother wandered ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... predecessor, and it was only with a vague perplexity that Mr. Britling found himself transferred from the role of a mountainous objective for pretty little pilgrims to that of a sedulous lover in pursuit of the happiness of one of the most uncertain, intricate, and entrancing of feminine personalities. This was not at all his idea of the proper relations between men and women, but Mrs. Harrowdean had a way of challenging his gallantry. She made him run about for her; she did not demand but she commanded presents and treats ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... than to wake love in the heart of a girl, and would yield him a finer treasure, a richer conquest. Only, pure as snow she must be—pure as the sun himself! Paul Faber was absolutely tyrannous in his notions as to feminine purity. Like the diamond shield of Prince Arthur, Knight of Magnificence, must be the purity that would satisfy this lord of the race who could live without a God! Was he then such a master of purity himself? one so immaculate that in him such ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... even for medley; but proceed we into the interior of the grand and luxurious feminine institution, where their sex is speedily discovered, but for certain reasons concealed by the discoverers. Lectures on the past and what might be done to accomplish female equality, and description of the boundaries, ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... diction, he will discover a fairly pleasing use of the so-called imitative measure. The verse is not nearly so rough as the original; many of the characteristic substitutions are avoided. There is evident a tendency toward the 'rising verse' and the anapestic foot. The feminine ending is frequently used. The verse is, therefore, not strictly imitative in that it retains the Old English system of versification, but rather in that it attempts to suggest the Old English movement by the use of four principal stresses and a varying number of unstressed ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker
... yachting caps worn rakishly on their grey hair, vied with other old ladies in automobile bonnets, who, with opera glasses, searched out the meaning of every passing buoy. Young girls carrying "mesh-bags," that subtle connotation of the feminine character, extracted tooth-picks from them or searched for bits of chewing gum among their over ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... more things than kill a cat; and if emotions, well recognized as feminine, are inimical to feline life, then jealousy would soon leave the whole world catless. Barbara opened the letter, with an indulgent, ...
— Options • O. Henry
... feminine relatives, incline toward eccentricity as they grow older, don't you think. I have an aunt down in Sussex, who is queer. A good sort, too, no end of money, a big place and all that, but odd. She and I get on well together—I am her pet, I suppose I may say—but, by Jove, she ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... and middle-class. In the youth of Dickens, there was a regular set of home-made middle-class jokes about babies, about washing-day, about mothers-in-law, about dinner- parties that were not successes, about curtain lectures, about feminine extravagance in bonnet-buying, about drunken men, about beer, all of them jokes worn threadbare. A similar kind of fun, with local differences, prevails in the States, but is wonderfully mixed up with scriptural and religious jokes. To us sober Britons, whatever ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... uncovered and wreathed in smiling happiness when he saw David propped up against his pillows. Nepapinas rolled him close to the bed and then shuffled out, and as he closed the door, David was sure he heard the subdued whispering of feminine voices down ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... ball took place. The ladies, of course, spent their best efforts in preparation for this event. Needless to say that in these arduous activities, Abramka Stiftik, the ladies' tailor, played a prominent role. He was the one man in Chmyrsk who had any understanding at all for the subtle art of the feminine toilet. Preparations had begun in his shop in August already. Within the last weeks his modest parlour—furnished with six shabby chairs placed about a round table, and a fly-specked mirror on the wall—the atmosphere heavy with a smell of ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... exquisite sensibility both of soul and sense that sympathizes like gossamer sea-moss with every movement of the element in which it floats, but which is rooted on the solid rock of our common sympathies. Wordsworth shows less of this finer feminine fibre of organization than one or two of his contemporaries, notably than Coleridge or Shelley; but he was a masculine thinker, and in his more characteristic poems there is always a kernel of firm conclusion from far-reaching principles that stimulates thought and challenges ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... not crowd behind the sideboard made a rush for the butler's pantry. Feminine shrieks and masculine howls filled the air. Chairs were overturned in the wild rush for safety. No less than three well-dressed women were crawling on their hands and knees toward the only means of ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... eyes droop, as she looked for a moment at us both—a quiet, maidenly look of mere observation. Of course no recognition passed; but there was a merry dimple beside her mouth, as if she quite well knew who we were, and owned to a little harmless feminine curiosity in ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... sounded singularly like the usual answer of British science which had repeated since Bacon that one must not try to know the unknowable, though one was quite powerless to ignore it; but the Virgin carried more conviction, for her feminine lack of interest in all perfections except her own was honester than the formal phrase of science; since nothing was easier than to follow her advice, and turn to Thomas Aquinas, who, unlike modern physicists, answered at once and plainly: "To me," said ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... wholesale and feminine way of leaping directly to a despotically desired ideal result, Bob took the trail to his own camp. Here he found Jack Pollock poring ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... in the feminine comprehends all sorts of intoxicating liquors, many kinds of which the Indians from the earliest times distilled and prepared from rice, sugar-cane, the palm tree, and various flowers and plants. Nothing ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... victim of his experiments had taken refuge. He refitted the shaft to the bow-string, and made as if to follow up his stroke with further chastisement. Instantly there came from the dark interior a chorus of shrill feminine entreaties. He hesitated, seemed to relent, put the shaft into the bundle under his arm, and strode back to rejoin A-ya. He had done enough for the moment. His next step required deep ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... violin which he played. Eugene sang the sonorous tenor, and Abner the bass, like an organ. The youngest son, Richard, small and slender as a girl, so like Madelon that he might have been taken for her had he been dressed in feminine gear, lifted his eager face at her side and raised his piercing, sweet treble, which seemed to pass beyond hearing into fancy. Madelon, her brown throat swelling above her lace tucker, like a bird's, stood ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... no answer, but only indicated with his eyes a feminine figure. It was a young girl of seventeen or eighteen, wearing a Russian dress, with her head bare and a little shawl flung carelessly on one shoulder; not a passenger, but I suppose a sister or daughter of the station-master. She was standing near the carriage window, ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... But I was expected, and I was asked to wait in their little reception-room, where a sunshade and a pair of dainty gloves upon a chair, and a shawl of soft gray precisely folded and lying upon a small table, not to mention the books, papers, and little feminine knicknacks, gave to the room a ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... Leonore came back to life, and succeeded in making a very bewitching toilet despite the absence of her maid. Whether she peeped into any drawers or other places, is left to feminine readers to decide. If she did, she certainly had ample authority ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... visit, took charge of the situation, sent for the doctor, despatched the telegram to us, and with the help of the porter's wife, saw to Adrian. The elder Mrs. Boldero collapsed, a futile mass of sodden hysteria. Much that was fascinating and feminine in Adrian came from this amiable ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... comeliest and most debonair of all her suitors; and she, with an engaging smile, swung a responsive tail at him. Crest she had none, and, of course, her tail could not compare with his in beauty. The higher we get in the natural orders, the more distinctly does decoration become a feminine necessity. Her coat was a pale olive green; her front light orange. Her charm was ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... towards the back of his head, and a pretty good chin, and the pride of life in his ingenuous eye. Quite unaware that he was immature! Quite unaware that the supple curves of his limbs had an almost feminine grace that made older fellows feel paternal! Quite unaware that he had everything to learn, and that all his troubles lay before him! Actually fancying himself a man because he had just taken ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... my impatience to get to him. Old Giuro now raised his voice to the shrillest key imaginable, and, in a way peculiar to these mountaineers, who talk to each other from hill tops half a mile asunder, announced that "our lady" was approaching. Whereupon a great hubbub arose; dogs barked, and feminine voices responded eagerly. Two or three muskets were presently discharged, and the twang of the balls as they passed near gave my nerves rather an unpleasant shock. I did not then know that the Black Mountaineers ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... the flower and took the hand that offered it at the same time, and pressed the latter to his lips; while Lady Assheton, who had been made a little uneasy by Alizon's apparent emotion, and who with true feminine tact immediately detected its cause, called out: "Now, forward—forward to the May-pole! We have interrupted the ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... remarkable woman, pays her a high tribute in The Study of Sociology. After explaining the origin in women of the ability to distinguish quickly the passing feelings of those around, he says: "Ordinarily, this feminine faculty, showing itself in an aptitude for guessing the state of mind through the external signs, ends simply in intuitions formed without assignable reasons; but when, as happens in rare cases, there is joined with it skill in psychological analysis, there results in extremely ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... morning, when I received a letter from Harrisburg, written in a feminine hand. Here ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret • Horatio Alger
... much the fashion, sought after and envied, she was under the special surveillance of pious persons, old maids, retired beauties in one word, all that feminine mounted police, whose eyes, ears, and mouths seem to have assumed the express mission of annoying sensitive hearts while watching over the preservation ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard |
