"Femininity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... instantly, and all overt signs of strength of character vanished in her usual expression of sweet, reserved femininity. "Bring him to-morrow," said she. "A little late, please. I want others to be there, so that I can study him unobserved." She laughed. "This is a serious matter for me. My time is short, and my list of possible eligibles less extended than I could wish." And with a ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... on one side. Then I went into a milliner's store, carrying it in my hand, and made a woman curl a long white feather over the crown, which gave the whole affair a touch of the beehive, stamping it with beautiful femininity. ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... got into a heap of social trickery since Ellen came, never having troubled my head before about the comparative numbers of young ladies and young gentlemen. To Ellen it is quite new to be of such importance by the mere fact of her femininity. She thought she was coming wofully down in the world when she came out, and finds herself better received than ever she was in her life before. And the class are not in education inferior, though they are in money. They are decent well-to-do people: six grocers, one draper, ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... magnificent finish, the best of which Dayak handicraft is capable. He made altogether a splendid subject for the camera, but his family proved less satisfactory. I had to wait an hour and a half before his womenfolk were ready, femininity apparently being alike in this regard in all races. When they finally emerged from the house in great array (which showed Malay influence) they were a ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... her sex possessed her to the exclusion of everything outside. Her eyes were soft and filled with the desire of love, her lips sweet and tremulous. She had suddenly created a new atmosphere around her, an atmosphere of bewildering and passionate femininity. ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... "not exactly, I don't!" In the presence of this delicate and graceful femininity, he experienced a sudden, novel distaste for his usual sledge-hammer methods of attack in interrogation. Yet, his duty required that he should continue his questioning. He found himself in fact between the devil and the deep sea—though this particular ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... for a moment be supposed that Mr. Opp was a stranger to the fascinations of femininity. He had been inoculated at a tender age, and it had taken so completely, so tragically, that he had crept back to life with one illusion sadly shattered, and the conviction firm within him that henceforth he was immune. His attitude toward the subject ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... a spurious letter," she said, holding it up. "You would never write such an affair to a male friend. You betrayed a consciousness of my femininity in every line. You preached to me and warned me with the same penful of ink. You write as if you were a commonplace male cynic, and I a woman who was trying to unsex herself by a lot of ridiculous affectations. I wished a genial, jolly ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... new and original motive would have been out of place. It is this extraordinary insight into the human mind which brings us to the feet of the master in reverential awe; and it detracts nothing from his fame that his themes descriptive of average femininity would have been quite different had he written them for the women of this epoch. The world moves rapidly. This motive slips with a series of imperceptible musical glides into the "Siebente-FrauMotiv" (Seventh Wife Motive): Bluebeard enters well ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... was hideous, for the sake of hearing a contradiction or a series of saving clauses. She never spoke of it to any one. She had grown up with it, and as it was beyond doubt, so was it outside discussion. All her femininity seemed to be concentrated, all her vanity centred, on her hair. It was her one pride, perhaps her one hope. Women have been loved for their voices. Catrina's voice was musical enough, but it was deep and strong. ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... in Bramble County. If she was amused by the frantic efforts of each suitor to outwit the other she was too tactful to display her emotion. Perhaps she was more highly entertained by the manner in which Tinkletown femininity paired ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... the frame and limbs of the youth, the greatest attraction lay in his countenance. His features were classical in their regularity, excepting the nose, which was just enough aquiline to give character to his face, and take away the femininity which otherwise ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... blue eyes caught her dark ones, and his glance was lowered in confusion. Womanlike, Jerkline Jo took him in at a glance, and something within her responded to the appeal that his handsome manhood made to femininity. ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... Gen- der is mental, not material. The seed within itself is 508:15 the pure thought emanating from divine Mind. The feminine gender is not yet ex- pressed in the text. Gender means simply kind or sort, 508:18 and does not necessarily refer either to masculinity or femininity. The word is not confined to sexuality, and grammars always recognize a neuter gender, neither 508:21 male nor female. The Mind or intelligence of produc- tion names the female gender last in the ascending ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... so clearly exhibit the inherent femininity of her nature as in the delight with which, at the bottom of her heart, she recalls moments when she has been swept off her feet. She may sigh ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... to her feet. She was tall and straight as a willow. Her rough canvas skirt was divided. Her buckskin shirt was fringed and beaded. She made a picture of active purpose that belied her femininity. In a moment she was in the saddle of the pony which had been dozing a few yards away. Her rifle was slung upon one shoulder, and her paper-covered book was thrust within the fastenings of her shirt. She was hot in pursuit of the small black-tailed deer which her ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... of the cave men has masculine assurance dared issue such an ultimatum to femininity as that just sent by an organization of students of Tulane University known as "Our Future Wives" club. The club has as its purpose the dictation of the dress selection of every woman. It is an organization of young men who have developed the stern purpose ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... charming. All her femininity had returned, and both the young men felt the influence of ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... Then she turned away again and knitted her brows. Palmerston glanced covertly now and then at her profile, unwillingly aware of its beauty. She was handsome, strikingly, distinguishedly handsome, he said to himself; but there was something lacking. It must be femininity, since he felt the lack and was masculine. He smiled to think how much alike they must appear—he and this very gentlemanly young woman beside him. He thought of her soft felt hat and the cut of her dark-blue coat, and there arose in him ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... that enormous sale to which its merits entitle it. It is altogether a charming book—it reads like a woman's letters, so full is it of confidence couched in the artless, easy, unpretentious language of femininity. The style is so unconscious that at times it really seems as if, attired in wrapper and slippers, the fair narrator were lolling back in an easy-chair talking these interesting things into ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... is one of the mistakes of unwise femininity. All dyes containing either mercury or lead are very dangerous. But why should women dye their hair? Goodness only knows. One might as well ask why women fib about their age, or why women shop three hours just to buy a pair of dress shields. There are some questions of life which we are destined ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... she said. "I like it, too." Then, with a sudden feeling of friendship, an odd sense of intimacy, a quick impulse of common femininity, she added: ...
— A Reversion To Type • Josephine Daskam
... exclaimed Anguish. "Beats any novel written, I declare. Begad, old man, I don't blame you for hunting down this wonderful bit of femininity. With a curiosity and an admiration that had been sharpened so keenly as yours, I'd go to the end of the world myself to have ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... said Sundown, anxious to assert himself in view of the presence of so much femininity and a correspondingly seeming lack of vital interest in anything ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... deeply enough to know that the heart in you is the woman in man. You have derided your femininity, where you have suspected it; whereas, you should have known its power, cherished and utilized it, for it is the hidden well-spring of Intuition and Imagination. What can the brain accomplish without these ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... them long after the world has been eased of their presence, the fever of their prayers and hopes. It was the other way with this dim little old woman. During the whole of her life she had never done anything. She was one of those faint whispers of femininity who missed the ears of mankind and who faded into the sigh of widowhood without attracting the least attention. She was simply the "relic" of William J. Mosely, who at the time of his death was the richest man in Jordantown. And by the same token, after his death, Sarah became the richest ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... problems solve themselves, as most problems will. She was a wee girl, preserving on the threshold of sun-ripened womanhood the soft and pathetic graces of a docile child. Her scarlet dress left her warm arms bare and did not trespass on the slender throat; she had all the charm of intrinsic femininity which comes to fruit so early in the climate of Mozambique and fades so soon. It was this, no doubt, that had taken Scott and held him; gaunt, harsh, direct in his purposes as he was quick in his strength, with ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... he's wild with rage to think it could hev happened. You see, it couldn't hev happened if I hedn't sloped the boys off to the gol-lof-links, an' if Stewart hedn't rid out on the mesa after us. It's my fault. I've hed too much femininity around fer my old haid. Gene cussed me—he cussed me sure scandalous. But now we've got to face ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... his soul grinned. Then he sighed. Youth had been very sweet to him, all manifestations of femininity in a woman very dear. There were four long windows in the dining-room, but the roof of the verandah, the thick vines springing from pillar to pillar, the lilac-trees and willows just beyond, chastened ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... this intimacy between Camillo and Rita grew to love he never knew. The truth is that he enjoyed passing the hours at her side; she was his spiritual nurse, almost a sister,—but most of all she was a woman, and beautiful. The aroma of femininity: this is what he yearned for in her, and about her, seeking to incorporate it into himself. They read the same books, they went together to the theatre or for walks. He taught her cards and chess, and they ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... dear fellow, is the green carnation in the garden of femininity. Every woman blooms for her lover. It is the lack of lovers that produces the artificial—hence votes for women. What does the woman being carried off under the arm of conquering man care for yellow banners or speeches from the tops of ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... of course. His artist's eyes had been far too interested in a certain rare quality of delicate femininity in the girl's face and figure, and his ear too quick to appreciate the music of her cultured voice, that he should not be able to recall such pleasant memories later. Indeed, during those fleeting moments on the threshold of the theater, he had garnered ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... woman staying in a house full of men would find life as depressing as I do cooped up here under precisely opposite circumstances," he thought, as he made his way through the little churchyard. "It cannot be the atmosphere of femininity that bores me, however, for Mrs. de Tracy has a strongly masculine flavour and Miss Smeardon is as nearly neuter as a ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and faced the Baroness. They might indeed have represented the opposite poles in femininity. From the tips of her perfectly manicured fingers to the crown of her admirably coiffured hair, the Baroness stood for all that was elegant and refined in the innermost circles of her sex. Agnes would have looked more in place ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... at him in playful reproach, a gay irresponsible specimen of femininity, who would ignore a man's treason because he chanced to be a charming partner ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... Atherton sitting near her own. "Yes, the bride of Richard Harrington MUST be perfectly happy, if bride indeed there were." She was beginning to feel some doubt upon this point, for strain her eyes as she might, she had not been able to detect the least signs of femininity in the passing carriage, and hope whispered that the brightest dream she had ever ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... me? I can't fix my hair and Aunt Maria is so mad at me she said I can just fix it myself. The plaits won't come right at all. Will you help me, please?" She asserted her femininity by adding new sweetness to her voice as she ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... make eyes at me now, so what will it be when I get as old as the rest of you girls?"—this a trifle maliciously, for every one of them was at least twenty, and that seemed rather passee to this bit of femininity of sweet sixteen. ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... why should a woman with her graceful carriage and pretty vivacity have been cursed with such an ill-assorted lot of features! Especially when certain boorish young husbands have expressed an admiration for pink-and-white effects in femininity. ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... much, certainly, but it persisted. The impression, defective as I give it, had been pleasing; an impression of warm femininity, of graceful motion. It had had the quality, besides, of the unexpected and the fugitive, and the advantage of a sylvan background. Anyhow, it pursued him. He went on to his journey's end; stopped before the great gilded grille, with its multiplicity of scrolls and flourishes, its ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... insignificance of the deceased might only be likened to the secondary position of a man at his own wedding. It was all fuss and mortuary feathers, mourning rings and mulled wine in the one case, just as in the other it is entirely a show of bride and blushes, flounces and femininity. [Footnote A: In writing of the customs connected with old-time English funerals, Misson says: "The relations and chief mourners are in a chamber apart, with their more intimate friends; and the rest of the guests are dispersed ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... watch-tower, this man's incorrigible weakness presents itself as intrinsically more dangerous to the race than any unscrupulous strength. The voluptuous femininity of his insidious eloquence lends itself, as Nietzsche saw, to every ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... emotion, just as are the mother's curses or beatings of her child because it has fallen and hurt itself. But observe that the prevalence of emotion is so thoroughly a feminine condition that it is clearly noticeable only where femininity itself is explicit— therefore, always weaker among masculine women, and in the single individual most powerful when femininity is most fully developed. It grows in the child, remains at a constant level when woman becomes completely woman, and decreases when, in advanced age, the differences in ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... a squeal, she hurled herself on him, throwing her arms around his neck. Dark staggered back, overwhelmed by marsuits, an abundance of wriggling femininity and a babble of happy and-completely unintelligible words gushed ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... "My giving you the right of way doesn't insure you a thoroughfare for yourself—there are others, you know. Billy Neilson has had sighing swains about I her, I imagine, since she could walk and talk. She is a wonderfully fascinating little bit of femininity, and she has a heart of pure gold. All is, I envy the man who wins it—for the man who ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... what those uncounted thousands of gray-eyed girls must conceive as his attitude towards them that hurt. Why, it was almost as though he had put a matrimonial advertisement in the newspapers. When he pictured himself looked upon as assuming to be a connoisseur of a certain type of femininity he felt as keenly disgraced as if he had set ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... where Mrs. Hollis reveled in a riot of pastry. A little behind him strutted Mr. Moseley, sending search-lights of scrutiny over the crowd in order to discover the academy boys who might be wasting their time upon unlettered femininity. ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... to depend on her own resolute spirit. But she displayed something more than that. It was recklessness that was bravado. In the eyes of the State chairman, friend of Thornton, and accustomed to a milder form of femininity, it was impudence. Yet her beauty made its appeal to him. The old man lunged toward her, but the ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... unutterable contempt for all femininity, the Senior Surgeon proceeded up the steps between ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... his large nose, from either side of which his sharp eyes looked disapprovingly at Joanna. He admired her, but she maddened him by refusing to see the obvious side of her femininity. ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... condition is due, it makes a great difference in the life of the individual and of the social body as a whole that each unit has fixed his ideal of conduct upon an illimitable consciousness of personal importance, instead of upon perfectly defined ideals in particular matters. It makes for femininity in ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... elbow of Madame de Tencin steps a figure of different type, a woman not accustomed to please by brilliance of mind or vivacity of speech, but by sheer femininity of face and form. Tall, slender, yet with figure divinely proportioned, this beautiful girl, Haidee, or Mademoiselle Aisse, reputed to be of Turkish or Circassian birth, and possessed of a history as strange as her own personality is attractive, would seem certainly ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... H. E. Anti-, still lives, but is dying fast. Belongs to the moss-back half of femininity. Has serious objection to use of her head, except for decorative purposes. Was not averse to press notices and looked with envy on the achievements of the suffragettes in this direction. Being denied high office in their ranks because of lack of adequate ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... early time there were no Sunday magazines—no literary magazines at all except the Atlantic, and Harpers, and a few fashion periodicals. Probably there were news-stands, but it is hard to imagine what they must have looked like without the gay pictorial cover-femininity that to-day pleases and elevates the public and makes author and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... situations for deserving girls; a man, so please you, who had gone into the holes and corners of the Continent of Europe in search of Truth, who had come face to face with human nature naked and unashamed, who had run the gamut of femininity from our rare princess Joanna to the murderer's widow of Prague; a man who ought to have had so sensitive a perception that the most subtle and elusive harmonies of woman were as familiar to him as their providential love of babies or their ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... With his elbows spread out he was twisting the ends of his long moustaches, very masculine and perplexed, enveloped in the atmosphere of femininity as in a cloud, suspecting pitfalls, and ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... woman broke again into one of the maddening and mysterious laughs of femininity. Then she composed her features, and replied with equal dignity: "Well, if it comes to that, why ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... brown hair was becomingly arranged about the bright, smiling face. She chose to be very gracious to her husband's life-long friend, giving him a small, plump hand in a welcoming grip, establishing him in an instant, by some sleight of femininity which King did not plumb, as a hearthside intimate most affectionately regarded. His first two impressions of her, arriving almost but not quite simultaneously, were of youthful prettiness ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... the nursery. No indeed, I believe they are in some ways just as capable as I am. If Miss Francis had been one of those wellgroomed, efficient ladies who have earned their place in the business world without at the same time sacrificing femininity, I'm sure I would not have suffered such a pang for my ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... HAD had forgotten it in those five years of self-exile, of healthy independence, and of contiguity to Nature in her unaffected simplicity. All had been familiar with the garish, extravagant, and dazzling femininity of the Californian towns and cities, but never had they known anything approaching the ideal grace of this type of exalted, even if artificial, womanhood. And although in the fierce freedom of their little republic they had laughed to scorn such artificiality, ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... hair brush; the nose was straight and delicate; the mouth, now set with deep thought, firm and sweet, while the chin carried out this look of decision, and would have been almost too square but for the coquettish little cleft which gave it the needed touch of femininity. ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... thoroughfare. Tungku Aminah led the van, strutting along with an arrogant and truculent swagger most laughable to see. She was dressed for the occasion after the fashion of the Malay warrior. Her body was encased in a short-sleeved, tight-fitting fighting jacket, which only served to emphasise the femininity of her bust. She wore striped silk breeches reaching to the middle of her shins; a silk sarong was folded short about her waist; and her thick hair was tucked away beneath a head handkerchief twisted into a peak in the manner called tanjak. At her belt she carried ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... marked signs of masculinity, and even brutishness of attack, as denoting, and it must be said here, a factitious notion of power. Power in painting does not come from muscularity of arm; it comes naturally from the intellect. There are a great many male painters showing too many signs of femininity in their appreciation and the conception of art in painting. Art is neither male nor female. Nevertheless, it is pleasing to find women artists such as I wish to take up here, keeping to the charm of their own feminine perceptions and feminine powers of expression. ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... there was much to be said for Yossel's taste either. When after seventy-five years of celibacy the fascinations of the other sex began to tell upon him, he might at least have succumbed to a less matriarchal form of femininity. But perhaps his grandmother had fascinations of another order. Perhaps she had money. He put the question ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... interrupting, ignoring, the tiny bit of femininity nestled close, "Uncle Billy, where's papa ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... hairdressing. Rhinestones glittered in lieu of the real diamonds that once were worn by the queens of the mining camps. Dancing girls, newly rich cooks, poverty-stricken prospectors' wives suddenly beaming with wealth, nineteenth-century vamps, gambling hall habitues,—all were represented among the femininity of Ohadi as they laughed and giggled at the outlandish costumes they wore and ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... odorous, but it is full of human possibilities. One midnight, two ladies started a scrap. A Special Constable, raw and without experience of militant femininity, blew his police-whistle. The whole slum-district turned out, dressed or half-dressed, like a fevered anthill. It took the regular police half-an-hour to clear the streets, the original cause of tumult vanishing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various
... outset, be it confessed that it was a study that attracted him prodigiously. And this notwithstanding the fact that, bookish and studious as were his ways, and in despite of his years, it was far from his habit to waste consideration on femininity. ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... himself faced by invincible femininity, with the possession of which he would not have credited Brinnaria. At first he was irritated. As he missed sale after sale he became more and more aggravated. But he kept his temper, held his tongue and waited for Brinnaria's mood to alter. Her sentimentality gradually waned as ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... amused, Percival was profoundly annoyed. The incident on the train had been pretty enough in its way, but it was closed. As it stood, it had been rather artistic and satisfying. A wild, unknown bit of femininity dashing into his life for ten throbbing minutes, then vanishing into the sunset, was one thing, and this very tangible young person in clothes of the wrong cut and color, addressing him in terms of easy familiarity, was ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... to his sound constitution to pull him through the fever; so perhaps there is not much reason that she should betray any anxiety. Oh, yes, she was very brave about it—and—and business-like. At the same time I confess to a sort of prejudice in favor of feminine women. I think a little touch of femininity might improve Miss Burgoyne, for example. However, she knows she is in possession; and if Linn pulls through all right, there she ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... and very sketchy analysis of German femininity in the war, I reiterate views expressed on previous visits to Germany, that German women are not standing the anxiety of the war as well as those ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... noting that the spread of feminism will reinforce the action of sexual selection in keeping down the numbers of this "intermediate sex." In the past, women who lacked femininity or maternal instinct have often married because the pressure of public opinion and economic conditions made it uncomfortable for any woman to remain unmarried. And they have had children because they could not help it, transmitting to their daughters their own lack of maternal instinct. Under ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... majority of the greatest modern plays. Notice Nora Helmer, Mrs. Alving, Hedda Gabler; notice Magda and Camille; notice Mrs. Tanqueray, Mrs. Ebbsmith, Iris, and Letty,—to cite only a few examples. Furthermore, since women are by nature comparatively inattentive, the femininity of the modern theatre audience forces the dramatist to employ the elementary technical tricks of repetition and parallelism, in order to keep his play clear, though much of it be unattended to. Eugene Scribe, who knew the theatre, used ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... him, for the world suddenly shrank to five feet two of femininity, and he heard a gay, impersonal ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... boatswain of my acquaintance applied descriptively to his captain—what prevents them from 'coming on deck and playing hell with the ship' generally, is that something in them precise and mysterious, acting both as restraint and as inspiration; their femininity in short which they think they can get rid of by trying hard, but can't, and never will. Therefore we may conclude that, for all their enterprises, the world is and remains safe enough. Feeling, in my character of a lover of peace, soothed by that conclusion I prepared myself ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... retreat with head bowed, his humility seemed to call only for the sympathy always denied him. With maidenly modesty she gathered her work to tighter compass, but no other restraint did she feel in the presence of the man her friends accused of unthinkable crimes. The inheritance of her femininity assured her that she was in no danger. Koppy had always liked her—she knew that also by virtue of that inheritance; and every woman loves the strong thing that bends to her—loves, but ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... harm; they lived so completely on the surface of things that they impressed one as incapable even of a doubtful thought. One reason why Geraldine was the only one who had yet definitely attracted a male admirer might lie in the fact that there was no air of femininity about the girls, nothing whatever to touch the most susceptible imagination; a parcel of schoolboys would have been as provocative. And this notwithstanding that they talked incessantly of love-making, of flirtations, of the making and breaking of matches; ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... for with all her ingenuous mannerisms, my lady was about the deepest and least fathomable bit of femininity I have ever met—besides being the possessor of a devil of a temper. After some more banter, which I instigated to become somewhat acquainted with my prospective partner, ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... see that they were no longer the same beings we had previously known, that in their long flights in heat and cold and rain and wind and dust they had shaken off some ancient weakness that was theirs, that without loss of femininity they had become more like ourselves in the sense that they were more self-centred and ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... in such deadly earnest his efforts to make reparation for what he considered his inexcusable short-sightedness and neglect, would have been funny, for, like most men when confronted by some problem involving femininity, he was utterly at a loss how to set about "his ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... she did not speak, because she could not. Like many women, she fought desperately against the tears which seemed a badge of her femininity. She sat down in a chair, dropped her face upon her folded arms, and bit her lips until they were sore. Kent took a step toward her, reconsidered, and went over to the window, where he stood staring moodily out until she began speaking. ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... women to be strong—having long since abandoned his earlier ideal of the supine adorant—but not too strong. Certainly not stronger than himself. He had met a good many "strong" women in the last twelve years, swathed, more often than not, in disarming femininity. A man hadn't a chance with them, man's strength as a rule being all on the outside. Women grew up and men didn't. That was ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... word," said Mrs. Ogilvie; "but I make a point of being absolutely ignorant with regard to gold mines. I consider it positively wrong of a woman to mix herself up in such masculine matters. All the sweet femininity of character must depart if such knowledge is ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... "Dick, you're harboring the wrong idea. It's the girls who are not constant. Though they were all nice little bits of femininity," Greg added reminiscently in a tone ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock
... the women of the age thronged her apartments to learn the secret of her life. Moreover, her long and intimate associations with the most remarkable men of the century had not failed to impart to her, in addition to her exquisite femininity, the wisdom of a sage and the polish of a man of ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... plays seem to be drawn into her presence by the sweetness of her music, even as Orpheus drew Eurydice from among the demons. Then excuse thy intrusion with some well-timed phrase. Elizabeth is great, but she hath a weakness for judicious flattery the which, in truth, doth not ill accord with her femininity. Then, if she receive thee graciously, throw thyself upon ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... portrait of the regular, lively and delicately beautiful features which belonged to a type differing in every essential from the cold, classic loveliness of the statue, yet vastly more appealing in its sheer femininity. ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... apparently concern either you or me very much. I don't consider Dawn as a passing stranger. I think her especially honest and especially beautiful, and it worries me to think she has thus erred. Her action was unwomanly, if you like, but peculiarly feminine, with the unavoidable hysterical femininity engendered in women by their subjected environment. Are you quite sure you consider Dawn merely a passing stranger not worth consideration?" I asked, looking him fair in the eyes; and the quick lowering of them and the ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... elevation," observed Miss Hendy, "in stamping on eternal marble the femininity of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... honors of his victorious entry fresh upon him, inclined his handsome head and begged that he might present himself to the daughter of an old and cherished friend of cadet days, and seated himself by her side with hardly a glance at the array of surrounding femininity and launched into reminiscence of "Billy Ray" as he was always called, ana it was some little time before she ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... taken, which is considered characteristic of woman. Man begins to have all the feelings of woman—or all the feelings which he attributed to woman. He becomes more feminine than woman ever was, and worships his own femininity, calling it the highest. In short, he begins to exhibit all signs of sexual complexity. He begins to imagine he really is half female. And certainly woman seems very male. So the hermaphrodite fallacy ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... rim down some way to even increase the shade; but Janet fitted that which was frank, open, and aboveboard. And so she used the black for contrast rather than obscurity—besides which there was another sort of contrast, for a soldier hat on Janet was a striking foil for her utter femininity. And its romantic pretense (so different from the dark gypsy-like romantic) was such an arrant little piece of make-believe that it had the effect of playful candor, acknowledging how impossible a man she would make; and while it was, strikingly, a pure case of art ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... children; hence the comparative infrequency of viraginity. The congenital viragint will always remain somewhat masculine in her tastes and ideas, but her inclinations and desires having been turned toward femininity early in life, she will escape the horrors of complete viraginity or gynandry. The victim of effemination, however, is saved by no such accidental forethought. The ignorant mother fosters feminine inclinations and desires in her effeminate ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... of femininity, weakness, need of protection, of fear even, disappeared. The illusion was no longer possible! Miss Urania was an ordinary mistress, in no wise justifying the cerebral curiosity she had at first ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... breeding of ostriches, "the birds with the golden feathers." Ask any man who raises these ungainly birds and he will tell you that with luck they are far better than the proverbial goose who laid the eighteen-karat eggs. The combination of F's—femininity, fashion and feathers—has been productive of many fortunes. The business is inclined to be fickle because it depends upon the female temperament. The ostrich feather, however, is always more or less in fashion. With the outbreak of the war there was a tremendous ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... instinct, or the intense sex-vanity of the male"; and in our brief attempt to make a first study of womanhood in the light of Mendelism, we have seen good reason to understand why masculine characters may come to the surface in the female whose femininity has worn thin. Several of the lower animals definitely show us ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... victorious in that time of the "raining" and reigning influence of such things: and somehow one succumbs a little even now to her as the Queen of that bevy of fair, frail, and occasionally rather ferocious ladies of the Fronde feminine. (The femininity was perhaps most evident in Madame de Chevreuse, and the ferocity in Madame de Montbazon.) Did not Madame de Longueville—did not they all—figuratively speaking, draw that great philosopher Victor Cousin[152] up in a basket two centuries after her death, even as had been ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... the committee of awards made a special journey to St. Louis, a month after the committee was appointed, and in company with Miss Egan, a member of the committee, waited upon the director of exhibits and asked that the World's Fair light, for femininity, might be thrown on the 144 groups of exhibits, that woman's work, "in whole or in part," might have a juror appointed by the board of lady managers ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... and mainly owing to the unnatural relation of the sexes, which has unduly emphasised certain qualities of excessive femininity, sex-feeling has been at once over-accentuated and under-disciplined. Thus, an extreme outward sex-attraction has come to veil but thinly a deep inward sex-antipathy, until it seems almost impossible ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... very little with women—he had theories about them. Small men, with midget minds, know femininity much better than do the great ones. Traveling salesmen, with checkered vests, gauge women as ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... passes and looks at us. Volpatte gives me a jog with his elbow and swallows her with his eyes, then points out to me two other women farther away who are coming up, and with beaming eye he certifies that the town is rich in femininity—"Old man, they are plump!" A moment ago Paradis had a certain timidity to overcome before he could approach a cluster of cakes of luxurious lodging, and touch and eat them; and every minute we are obliged to halt in the middle of ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... I can picture her sitting there within the narrow walls of her little room. Boy's ragged garb. All possible femininity stripped from her. Yet, within her, the woman's instincts were struggling. She sewed a great deal, she since has told me, there in the cloistered dimness. Making little dresses of silk and bits of finery given her surreptitiously by the neighbor women. Gazing ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... furniture was all French. Every available space seemed occupied with costly knick-knacks and curios. Photographs of beautiful women, men in court dress and uniform, nearly all of them signed, were scattered about on every available inch of space, and there was also that subtle air of femininity about the apartment, to which he was unaccustomed, and which went to his head like wine. It was evident that only privileged visitors were received there, for apart from the air of intimacy which seemed somehow to pervade the place, ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... enormous pomposity at my side, adjusted his tunic with a purely feminine gesture expressive at once of pride and nervousness. Gradually my vision gained in focus. The station has a good many people in it. The number increases momently. A great many are girls. I am in a new world—a world of chic femininity. My eyes devour the inimitable details of costume, the inexpressible nuances of pose, the indescribable demarche of the midinette. They hold themselves differently. They have even a little bold color here and there on skirt or blouse or hat. They are not talking about La Guerre. Incredible. ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... grim valor of man (who nearest approaches to godhood in time of war) that they will have lost the disposition to tear from him the few compensations the new era of peace can offer. If that is the case, if women at the end of the war are soft, completely rehabilitated in that femininity, or femaleness, which was their original endowment from Nature, the whole great movement will subside, and the work must begin over again by unborn women and their accumulated grievances some ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... quite reasonably attract his attention. Indeed, she would find favor in the eyes of any young man, let alone one who had such cause as Viscount Medenham to be interested in her appearance. In her amazingly lovely face the haughty beauty of an aristocrat was softened by a touch of that piquant femininity which the well-bred American girl seems to bring from Paris with her clothes. A mass of dark brown hair framed a forehead, nose, and mouth of almost Grecian regularity, while her firmly modeled chin, slightly more pronounced in ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... moments. For the individuality of the house must have been his. Wanda had found it there when she came back from the school in Dresden, too young to have a marked individuality of her own. The difference she brought to the house was a certain brightness and a sort of experimental femininity, which reigned supreme until her English governess came back again to live as a companion with her pupil. Wanda moved the furniture, turned the house round on its staid basis, and made a hundred experiments in domestic economy ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman |
