"Womanliness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the farm, and the meeting with its homely folk, soon restored her equanimity. She at once warmed to Ma, whose gentle practical disposition displayed such a wealth of true womanliness as to be quite irresistible, and, in the confidence of her bedchamber, which she shared with Rosebud, she imparted her favorable impressions. She assured the girl she no longer wondered that she, Rosebud, ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... any such matter is going on in a family, I have observed that every feminine instinct is in a state of fluttering vitality,—every woman, old or young, is alive with womanliness to the tips of her fingers; and it becomes us of the other sex, however consciously respected, to walk softly, and put forth our sentiments discreetly and with due reverence for the mysterious powers that reign in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... experimentally say for three years in a bad district, such as between Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood. I believe the people would look handsomer and happier than they are at present after the second year. Given Beauty for our standard and first goal, Goodness, Mercy, Courage, Manliness, and Womanliness, and good looks, would surely follow, and the Creator might be trusted for ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... spirit, when he was near her, when he touched her hand, nor even in that supreme moment when he crushed her close to his unquiet heart and pressed that hot kiss on her lips. It was the sheer flesh and blood womanliness of her that made his heart beat faster, the sweet curve of her lips, the willowy grace of her body, the odd little gestures of her hands, the melody of her voice and the gray pools of her eyes, eyes full of queer gleams and curious twinkles—all ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... that Mary was going to make ducks and drakes of his money and her own. And then he did not exactly like the looks of the thing, either; he feared that his wife was growing successful as a business person at the risk of losing her womanliness. But as time went on, and he found there was no fear of that, he accepted the situation philosophically. He gave up his collection of engravings, having become more interested in one of coins and medals, which took up most of his leisure time. He often went to the city in ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... told his young wife, if he had confided to her pure soul the secret that burdened his, child as she was, she would have understood and pitied and forgiven him; the very suffering would have given her added womanliness and gained his respect, and through that bitter knowledge, honestly told and generously received, a new and better Fay would have risen to win her ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... she was occupying at Naples; but her wishes had made her willingly deaf to any false ring in the assurances given her by Greville, and she resented not only the abandonment, but the deceit which she, justly or unjustly, conceived to have been practised, while her womanliness revolted from the cold-blooded advice given by him to accept the situation. The conflict was so sharp that for a time both he and Hamilton expected she would return to England; but Greville had not labored in vain at what he was ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... above, we have produced soldiers whose valor has reached world-wide reputation, poets, artists, teachers and professional men and women of recognized ability. There are hordes of others pursuing the humbler walks of life eager to acquire by education a higher ideal of manliness and womanliness, and to learn the ways of advanced civilization and approved citizenship. These achievements have been wrought by us under the most adverse conditions. We have wearily toiled by day and by night; have made bricks without straw; helped ourselves and taken ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... child you are, Polly. I should n't have thought you 'd mind things like that," said Fanny, beginning to understand that there may be a good deal of womanliness even in a ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... press the upper extremities of the thighs out laterally in females more than in males. Hence the former can stand less long with comfort than the latter. Miss C——, however, believed in doing her work in a man's way, infected by the not uncommon notion that womanliness means manliness. Moreover, she would not, or could not, make any more allowance for the periodicity of her organization than for the shape of her skeleton. When about twenty years of age, perhaps a year or so older, she applied to me for advice in consequence of neuralgia, back-ache, ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... woman. Her features were delicately shaped, her eyes rather deep-set. She had a long, graceful neck, and resting upon her throat, fastened by a thin platinum chain, was a single sapphire. There was about her just that same delicate femininity, that exquisite aroma of womanliness and tender sexuality which had impressed him so much upon their first meeting. She was more wonderful even than his dreams, this rather tired woman of fashion whose coming had been so surprising. He would ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... from any sense of inherited or conventional superiority or inferiority, as devoid of the brutality of condescension as of the meanness of toadyism, she combines in a strangely attractive way the charm of eternal womanliness with the latest aroma of a progressive century. It is, doubtless, this quality that M. Bourget has in view when he speaks of the incomparable delicacy of the American girl, or M. Paul Blouet when he asserts that "you find in the American ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... womanly to the core of her nature, in spite of her work in Brandywine's millinery department, it was impossible to doubt while he kissed her. There were times, indeed, when the exaltation of Gabriella's womanliness seemed to have left her without a will of her own; when, in a divine submission to love, she appeared to exist only for the laudable purpose of ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... there is none of this dynamic force. Womanliness, above all, and sympathy, poets ascribe to their mothers. [Footnote: See Beattie, The Minstrel; Wordsworth, The Prelude; Cowper, Lines on his Mother's Picture; Swinburne, Ode to his Mother; J. G. Holland, Kathrina; William Vaughan Moody, The Daguerreotype; Anna Hempstead Branch, ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... drawn back from an exquisite forehead. The dark brown eyes were the girl's chief charm. They danced and sparkled in impish mischief, and had a way of shooting sudden glances which made themselves felt as keenly as arrows. And crowning it all was a sweet grace and womanliness which was good to see. From that hour my ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... same, the little woman was kind-hearted and conscientious, but she was not always pleasant. She wanted the grace and sweetness known genetically as womanliness, as do most women who hold the doctrine of feminine moral supremacy, with base man, tyrant, enemy and inferior, holding down the superior being by force of brute strength and responsible for all her faults. And she wanted ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... rested upon the filmiest of black stuffs, exquisite as cobweb, through which were revealed the long perfect arms, and the tender curves of neck and shoulder. From this gracious figure was exhaled invisible radiations—the luxurious sense of refined womanliness. How gross and earthly, how fatally commonplace and prosaic seemed everyone about her. The violently high spirits of the other girls, their scramblings for flowers and shriekings at snakes, their too obvious blushes ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... must be admitted here, that this is due partly to {381} its splendid rendering under Schuch's genial conductorship, and to the interpreters of the two principal roles in the drama. Frau Wittich as Penelope is the very incarnation of womanliness and queenliness, and no singer could be a truer and nobler Odysseus than Karl Scheidemantel. Whosoever had the advantage of hearing these two great singers in these roles, must for ever identify them with the ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... always count on her never-flagging sympathy; that he had a friend at home who would always stand by him. Their common fate drove them into each other's arms like frightened birds at the approach of a storm. All the womanliness in her,—however little it may be appreciated now-a-days,—which is after all nothing but a memory of the great mother, the force of nature which is woman's endowment, was roused. It fell on the children like the warm glow of a fire at eventide; it fell on the ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... voice grew more bitter as he continued to recall the past. "Had you been a plain woman you would likely have found some attractions at your home; but the love of adulation and the greed of excitement and false flattery seem now to be so necessary to you that your true womanliness has been killed." ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... there a strong emotion that man or woman experiences that is not allied to madness? Still her mind was not clear enough to reflect the past. But if she never recalled that entirely, not the less were her love and tenderness—all womanliness—entire ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... nation because it makes the negro clean its boots and then proves the moral and physical inferiority of the negro by the fact that he is a shoeblack; but we ourselves throw the whole drudgery of creation on one sex, and then imply that no female of any womanliness or delicacy would initiate any effort in that direction. There are no limits to male hypocrisy in this matter. No doubt there are moments when man's sexual immunities are made acutely humiliating to him. When the terrible moment of birth arrives, its supreme ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... not alone, for the loving Christ was hers. Ever since the old Coyote Valley camp-meeting a new friendship, a new happiness, had come into her life. No one who knew her could doubt it. It had added to the natural frankness of her modest, unsophisticated nature a staunchness of character, a womanliness, and a nobility of soul that gave her the admiration and respect of all true hearts. Yet how few knew her! Like earth's rarest flowers, Jane Reed's life blossomed in this hidden dell unknown to the great world. She had the love of Christ in her ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... which the study of foreign languages now occupies in the education of women. The Italians of the Renaissance did not think that an acquaintance with the classics, that scientific knowledge destroyed the charm of womanliness, nor that the education of women should be less advanced than that of men. This opinion, like so many others prevalent in society is of Teutonic origin. The loving dominion of the mother in the family ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... yawning for transfusion. He was merely a man ready to begin life again before it was too late. This girl had not the beauty he had demanded as his prerogative in woman, but she had individuality, brains, and all womanliness. Her shyness and pride were her greatest charms to him: he would be the first and the last to get behind the barriers. Such ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... see that he is wanting to get rid of you, that he is only too glad of the excuse? Great God! have you no touch of womanliness in you, no sense ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... were Billy and his "old gal," whom I recognised at once as the woman who had so vehemently ill-used him in the court that memorable evening weeks ago. She was a sad spectacle, more than half drunk, with every trace of tenderness and womanliness ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... class. It is said that men whose characters form a contrast are more likely to draw towards each other than those whose characters are similar. May the same principle not operate between man and the lower animals? Was it not the gentleness, tenderness, womanliness, softness of Manuela which caused her to dote upon and delight in her steed, though it was a huge, high stepping, arch-necked, rearing, plunging animal—something between an Irish hunter and ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... brother's hair, and an old, almost obliterated almanac that had been used by her father;" and with these tokens of the unswerving love and fidelity she had always borne to parent and brother, she was laid away to rest, leaving the memory of a noble woman, great in wisdom, and greater in womanliness, without which, in woman, wisdom is unhallowed.—S.A. CHAPIN, ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... return to such pleasures always filled her with strange delight. The color was bright in her cheeks, and her half-forgotten girlishness came back in the place of the gravity and dignity that had brought of late a sedate young womanliness to her manner. The two new friends in the stern of the boat were greatly attracted to her, and merry laughter rang out now and then. Nan was so brave and handsome, so willing to be pleased, and so grateful to them for this little festivity, ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... of masters who were reluctant to fee a married man. Is it to be wondered that these lads who could be faithful unto death drank soddenly on their one free day, that these girls, starved of opportunities for womanliness, of which they could make as much as the finest lady, sometimes woke after a Muckley to wish that they might wake no more? Our three brushed shoulders with the devils that had been let loose, but hardly saw them; they heard them, but ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... very words called up in his mind sharp winter days; the pungent moth-bally smell of his mother's fur-coated bosom when she had kissed him good-bye that day he left for Chicago; comfort; womanliness. A mink coat. ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... corresponded regularly for many years, and in her letters discusses the debatable points in her books, and enlarges upon her own character and temperament. Chief among her ambitions at this time was that of being 'every inch a woman,' and she was a firm believer in the fashionable theory that true womanliness was incompatible with learning. 'I dropped the study of chemistry,' she tells her friend, 'though urged to it by, a favourite preceptor, lest I should be less the woman. Seduced by taste and a thousand arguments to ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... him at the door and showed him into the living-room. Mrs. Duncan, plump, motherly, lovable in the mature womanliness of forty, greeted him cordially. She was sorry Edith was out; Edith had a tennis engagement. She was apparently deeply interested in the young man who was to be her coachman. Dave had never been in a home like this, and his eyes, unaccustomed to comfortable furnishings, ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... ruddy skin, plentiful white hair and beard, evoked an image of the magnificently fierce old men he chants in his book. But he wasn't fierce, his voice was a tenor of agreeable timbre, and he was gentle, even to womanliness. Indeed, he was like a receptive, lovable old woman, the kind he celebrates so often. He never smoked, his only drink was water. I doubt if he ever drank spirits. His old friends say "No," although he is a terrible ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... preservation, and really a pretty and lovable- looking woman. I think I never saw anything sweeter than her smile of recognition, given to some of her friends in the gallery—to the little Indian Princess in especial. There is much in her face of pure womanliness and simple goodness; yet it is by no means wanting in animated intelligence. In short, after seeing her, I can well understand the loving loyalty of her people, and can heartily join in their prayer of 'God ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... given, and in a word; for what has doubtless struck you as strange and terrible in my mother's last hours,—explanations which I am sure you will be glad to accept, as it is not natural for one so blooming in her womanliness to wish to hamper her youth with dark thoughts, or to nurse suspicions contrary to her own ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... of thing that happened to ladies in the days when true womanliness consisted in knowing nothing accurately, and always taking advice. Efforts to improve themselves in some such way were common enough among marriageable maidens, and their mothers helped them to the best of their ability with equally happy hints. Because small ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... over, this seemed enough. The books read were historical stories, biographies, and the like, taken from the mill library by special permission. The boys were generally the readers, while the girls were encouraged by their motherly landlady to repair and keep their clothes in order, a branch of womanliness apt to be much neglected by factory operatives, who often marry and enter upon family duties without even knowing how to ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... of qualities in comparison with which beauty is deceitful and favour is vain—qualities which are calculated to wear well. Queen Adelaide's goodness and kindness, her unselfish, unassuming womanliness and devout resignation to sorrow and suffering, did more than gain and keep the heart of her bluff, eccentric sailor-prince. They secured for her the respectful regard of the nation among whom she dwelt, whether as Queen or Queen-dowager. The Archbishop of Canterbury could say of her, after her ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... in the furthest smoke, The hag that gave these three abortions birth, Unmotherly mother and unwomanly Woman, that near turns motherhood to shame, Womanliness ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... With unaffected womanliness she rearranged her slightly disordered hair as he drew up beside her. "I thought you were in yonder ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... question her like that? And it was not that she had been awed by the rank and majesty in which this Marquise moved; she, Kora—who had laughed in the face of a Princess whose betrothed was seen in Kora's carriage! No; it was not the rank, it was the gentle, yet slightly imperious womanliness, back of which could be felt a fund of sympathy new and strange to her; it appealed to her as the reasoning of a man would appeal; and man was the only compelling ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... was the same Angel as of old, except that Freckles was constantly in her thoughts. The anxiety and responsibility that she felt for his condition had bred in her a touch of womanliness and authority that was new. That morning she arose early and hovered near Freckles' door. She had been allowed to remain with him constantly, for the nurses and surgeons had learned, with his returning ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... regretted that Lucia still thought faithfully of Percy—not at all as of one who might yet have any renewed connection with her life, but as of one dead. The poor child, in spite of her premature womanliness, was full of romantic fancies; while Percy was near her she had made him a hero; now since his disappearance, she had found it natural enough to build him a temple and put in it the statue of a god. ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... Muller neither saw nor foresaw such things. But Doctor McCall did. "If I had had such a mother I should not have been what I am," he thought. It was a curious fancy to have about a young girl. But she seemed to embody all the womanliness that had been lacking in his life. Of course she was nothing to him. She was to be that prig Muller's wife, and he was quite satisfied that she should be. If he married, Maria Muller would be his wife. Yet, oddly enough, he felt to-night, for the first time, the necessity ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... he said positively. "I am not talking of that kind. It is womanliness and gentleness, ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... Juliet" was produced at the Empire Theater May 8, 1899, and was a distinguished artistic success. Miss Adams's Juliet was appealing, romantic, lovely. It touched the chords of all her gentle womanliness and gave the character, so far as the American stage was concerned, a new ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... dinstinction and pleasingness that were rarely overlooked. Her daily sojourn in the City, among the bread-winners, had made her large-hearted and generously tolerant, without hurting in any degree her own innate womanliness and charm. ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... marvel to meet a shy girl in these days of loud-voiced, smoking, tailor-made women! A man may appreciate the society of a twentieth-century damsel whom he designates as a "rattling good sort," but he wants a womanly woman for his wife. Elma was womanliness personified—a sweet pink-and- white, softly-curved creature, whose eyes regarded the masculine creature with an unspoken tribute of homage. "You are so big!" they seemed to say; "I am so little! Oh, please be kind to me!" Inspired by that look, Geoffrey was ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... this, yet it was better she be buoyed up by all possible hope, so ventured upon no answer. There was that in the Queen's face as she gazed down upon us that made me doubt her womanliness; doubt if behind that countenance of wild beauty there did not lurk a soul as savage and untamed as any among her barbarous followers. What but a spirit of insatiate cruelty could animate and control such fierce ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... then a slight swelling quiver of her throat; and he became alive to its graceful contour, and to how full and pulsating it was, how nobly it set into the curve of her shoulder. Here in her quivering throat was the weakness of her, the evidence of her sex, the womanliness that belied the mountaineer stride and the grasp of strong brown hands on a rifle. It had an effect on Jean totally inexplicable to him, both in the strange warmth that stole over him and in the utterance he could not ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... her private audiences that this great woman's tact, womanliness, fascination and charm as a hostess appeared. Taking her guest by the hand, she would ask in the most solicitous way whether we were not tired with our journey to the palace; she would deplore the heat in summer or the cold in winter; she would express her anxiety lest ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... think I don't amount to much, anyway. Perhaps I don't. I came out here because I fell out with a girl I thought I loved. She acted like a fool, and I made up my mind all women were fools. But that wife of Blizzer's has shown me more about true womanliness than all the girls I ever knew, and I'm going back ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... the house. At the sight of her pure face, with its tender gray eyes and faultless features, a strong revulsion seized me, and I found it difficult not to raise my arms in protest between her beauty and winning womanliness and the subtile and treacherous-hearted being who glided so smoothly toward her. But the movement, had I made it, would have been in vain. At the sight of each other's faces a lovely smile arose on the daughter's lips, while on the mother's flashed a look ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... housewife, who has to make the weekly earnings cover, if possible, the week's expenses. If you wish to soften and to purify the man, you must first soften and purify the woman, or at least encourage her not to lose what womanliness she has left, amid sights, and sounds, and habits which tend continually to destroy her womanhood. You must encourage her, I say, to remember always that she is a woman still, and let her teach— as none can teach like her—true manfulness to her ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... moved as he had never been moved before by kindliness and womanliness. "Thank you.... Thank you," he said, tremulously. "I—you don't know what this means to me. You've—you've put a new face on ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... herself assiduously to understanding and to making known the aspirations of our country, especially in introducing the labors and achievements of our women to their sisters in France, of whom we also have much to learn; for simple, homely virtues and the charm of womanliness may still be studied with advantage on the cherished soil ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... to follow such advice by bringing forward those qualities of colonial womanhood which have made for the refinement, the intellectuality, the spirit, the aggressiveness, and withal the genuine womanliness of the present-day American woman. As the book is not intended for scholars alone, the author has felt free when he had not original source material before him to quote now and then from the studies of writers on other phases of colonial life—such as the valuable books by Dr. Philip Alexander ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... over Peter with the perfume of wallflowers which blew in on the wind—a sweetness almost as poignant as that of fresias. Half unconsciously he had been wishing to see his mother—perhaps not even to speak, but just to see her placid face in its kind womanliness. It was almost as if his wish had been whispered to her telepathically and she had answered it. She made a charming picture, too, he thought, in the shadowy room where the pale, moving curtains in the dimness were ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... the Old Lady's past—a perfect resemblance in every respect save one; the face which the Old Lady remembered had been weak, with all its charm; but this girl's face possessed a fine, dominant strength compact of sweetness and womanliness. As she passed by the Old Lady's hiding place she laughed at something one of the children said; and oh, but the Old Lady knew that laughter well. She had heard it before under that ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... by his smile from bending to kiss him, poor Lady Valleys fidgeted from head to foot. A sudden impulse of sheer womanliness caused a tear ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... taught our children. The spirit which Jesus revealed in his life upon earth is exemplified in the lives of many of his followers who joyously spend themselves in the service of others. Men who set the standard for manliness, and women whose character and lives are the best definition of womanliness, are as much a revelation of God's work and power as a constellation of stars or ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... becomingly clad in their warm winter furs, made a picture good to look upon. Natalie had ripened wonderfully since her marriage, and added to her rich dark beauty there was now an elusive sweetness, a warmth and womanliness which had been lacking before. As for Eliza, she had never appeared more sparkling, more freshly wholesome and saucy than on ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... theirs. We should like to sit with them at their humble table, to join in the good old hymns, and finally to kneel among them while the gentle old man said the evening prayer. We would not notice their homely clothes, coarse hands and simple, unscholarly language, for their real manliness and womanliness would win ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the church Dan had heard, and had already learned to think somewhat lightly of the kind of people who commonly make them. But this young woman—so wholesome, so good to look at in her sweet seriousness, so strong in her womanliness and withal so useful in what she called her ministry—this woman was—well, ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... mother of Washington as an excellent woman of business; and to possess such a quality as capacity for business is not only compatible with true womanliness, but is in a measure essential to the comfort and wellbeing of every properly-governed family. Habits of business do not relate to trade merely, but apply to all the practical affairs of life—to everything that has to be arranged, to be organised, to be provided for, to be done. ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... who would not have been considered forward and ill-mannered to an almost intolerable degree by her great-grandmother. But that the girls of to-day are any the less womanly, in all that is sweet and essential in womanliness, than any generation of their ancestors, I for one do not believe. Nor do I believe that in another generation, when they will perhaps, as a matter of course, possess all the social precocity (as it seems to us) of the American girl of to-day, they will thereby ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... have suddenly settled round Marguerite's shoulders; though her cheeks glowed with fire, she felt chilled and numbed. Oh, Armand! will you ever know the terrible sacrifice of pride, of dignity, of womanliness a devoted sister is ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... came to town. Her Camille—a character in which she was not excelled by the great Bernhardt herself—had a remarkable vogue in the early eighties. She imparted to its impersonation the subtle charm of her own sweet womanliness, which served to excuse Armand's infatuation and as far as possible lifted the play out of its unwholesome atmosphere of French immorality to the plane of romantic devotion and self-sacrifice. Her Camille seemed a victim ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... been carried overseas to America and the British dominions, probably began with the striking history of Mary Queen of Scots. Her brilliancy and boldness and beauty, and especially the pathos of her end, have made us see only her intense womanliness, which in her own day was the first thing that any one observed in her. So, too, with Charles I., romantic figure and knightly gentleman. One regrets his death upon the scaffold, even though his execution was necessary ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... day, and to tell thee all that passes within my household and my heart. Thine Honourable Mother says it is not seemly to send communication from mine hand to thine. She says it was a thing unheard of in her girlhood, and that we younger generations have passed the limits of all modesty and womanliness. She wishes me to have the writer or thy brother send thee the news of thine household; but that I will not permit. It must come from me, thy wife. Each one of these strokes will come to thee bearing my message. Thou wilt ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... sob of joy and pain. Sight of his face then blinded Joan with her tears. But when he caught her to him, in a violence that was a terrible renunciation, she gave her embrace, her arms, her lips without the vestige of a lie, with all of womanliness and sweetness and love and passion. He let her go and turned away, and in that instant Joan had a final divination that this strange man could rise once to heights as supreme as the depths of his soul ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... it noiselessly together—that is, Sarah Walker did, with deft womanliness—carried it darkly along the hall to No. 27, and deposited it in Peters' bed, where it lay like a freshly opened oyster. We then returned hand in hand to my room, where we looked out of the window ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... such high degree of womanliness in her, and such tenderness, and what love! Lord! I did not know how to appreciate my happiness then. We would return after the theatre, and have a little supper together. It was never dull where she was, toujours gaie, toujours aimante. Yes, and I had never imagined what ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... should be wise and thoughtful. It should never tend to pamper weakness, to encourage dependence, to make people timid, to debilitate manliness and womanliness, to make parasites of those who turn to us with their burdens and needs. We must take care that our helping does not dwarf any life which we ought rather to stimulate to noble and beautiful growth. God ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... age, which had left her form as straight and slender as one of her own forest pines, forgetting to place its customary burden upon her graceful shoulders, had touched her countenance with a loving hand. With all her womanliness, there was, nevertheless, a certain firmness in the finely- moulded chin that gave evidence of a line of ancestry that had never been too deferential to those ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... her eyes indifferently away. Bradley, a little irritated, he knew not why, at the scrutiny of this tall, handsome, gentlemanly-looking woman, who, however, in spite of her broad shoulders and narrow hips possessed a refined muliebrity superior to mere womanliness of outline, turned slightly towards Sir Robert. "Lady Canterbridge, Frank's cousin," explained Sir Robert, hesitatingly, as if conscious of some vague awkwardness. Bradley and Lady Canterbridge both bowed,—possibly the latter's ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... of the Vatican, which she describes as winking at the Italian tricolor. She often took the step from the sublime to the ridiculous: but to take this step one must reach the sublime. Elizabeth Barrett contrived to assert, what still needs but then urgently needed assertion, the fact that womanliness, whether in life or poetry, was a positive thing, and not the negative of manliness. Her verse at its best was quite as strong as Browning's own, and very nearly as clever. The difference between their natures was a difference ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... shall be, soon. And let me tell you that this girl whom you visit with your ignorant contempt is as good and pure as you are, Aline. She has wit and talent which have placed her where she is and shall carry her a deal farther. And she has the womanliness to be guided by natural instincts in ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... I wish I could be of some use," he said eagerly. He liked Cicely, and he was surprised at the sudden womanliness that had come into her manner. For the hour, they met, not as man and child, but ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... love addressed to other women must be, as I have hinted, a mere pose. It may be that his wife read his verses, and that his picture of her was calculated to soothe her feelings when reading some other parts of his work. If she did read them, she found only one perfect figure of womanliness in her husband's poems, and that figure herself. But on the whole one is inclined to think that Immanuel's braggartism as to his many love affairs is only another aspect of the Renaissance habit, which is exemplified so completely ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... profound practical wisdom which, notwithstanding the puerilities and small femininities which abound in some of the published writings of England's royal family, makes their pages still worth the reading, and lets us into the secret of the true womanliness which, despite all blemishes and foibles, Victoria, Empress Queen of England, has instilled into the mind of her daughter Victoria, Empress Dowager of Germany. There is hope for womankind, when ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... the carping necessity (which takes the physical form of a pressure deep down in the throat) for the sympathy of that one person whose presence is different from the presence of other people. And failing that particular woman another can, in a certain degree, by her mere womanliness, stay the pressure of ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... Faversham, and she has released me from my engagement with such grace, dignity, and sweet womanliness that I wonder how I could have railed ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... I celebrated my silver wedding two years ago, and certainly belonged to the same feminine genre, which I value and place as high above all others as Simonides von Amorgos preferred the beelike woman to every other of her sex: I mean the kind whose womanliness and gentle charm touch the heart before one ever thinks ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... these Nannie did not as yet yield their meed of credit. It is a sad but well-known fact that the home agencies for regeneration are the last to receive recognition and gratitude. So it was that while Nannie was dimly conscious that she owed something to Constance's womanliness, she refused to dwell upon the beauty and tenderness of Steve's conduct toward her. His uniform courtesy, gentleness, and forbearance, though the most powerful factors in her dissatisfaction with self and embryonic yearnings toward a more conscientious, nobler life, were as yet utterly ignored by ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... dignified grace. The young lady looked gay and pleased, and there was a subdued light in her black eyes which almost softened them into sweetness. The quick restless manner in which she had indulged at times since she came to Farnwood seemed melting into a becoming womanliness, Altogether, ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... interference, pleasure at his protecting care, annoyance at what he considered gross negligence on the doctor's part, and a sneaking pride, in defiance of his insinuations, over the thought that Kemp had trusted to her womanliness as a safeguard against any chance annoyance. She also felt ashamed at ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... theatre, where a first performance was taking place that evening. It was a theatre where free farcical pieces were produced, and on its walls were posted huge portraits of its "star," a carroty wench with a long flat figure, destitute of all womanliness, and seemingly symbolical of perversity. Passers-by stopped to gaze at the bills, the vilest remarks were heard, and Mathieu remembered that the Seguins and Santerre were inside the house, laughing at the piece, which was of so filthy a nature that the spectators at the ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... than that. But, being neither a hero of ballad nor of old romance, he knew only that here was a girl different from the silken ladies who had ascended the stairs. Here was an air almost of frank boyishness, a smile of pleasant friendliness, with just enough of flushing cheek to show womanliness and ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... prototype of the higher unfoldment of woman beyond her time. She stands for the point in human development when womanliness asserts itself and begins to revolt and to throw off the yoke of sensualism and of tyranny. Her revolt was not an overt act, or a criticism of the proceedings of the king. It was merely exercising her own judgment as to her own proceeding. She did not ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... authority was of the highest. A European specialist, whose name was known and reverenced upon two continents, had come to New York and had been consulted. Interested more than common by the boy's fair face and the sweet womanliness of the mother, the surgeon had given extra attention to Hallam, and his decision had been as reluctantly reached as ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... the other side. You might cram a woman's head with all the wisdom of the ages, and while it would frighten every man who came near her into hysterics, it wouldn't keep her from going down abjectly before some man who had sense enough to know that higher education does not rob a woman of her womanliness. Depend upon it, Ruth, when it does, she would have been unwomanly and masculine if she hadn't been able to read. And it is the man who marries a woman of brains who is going to get the most out of ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... history of Jinnie's lonely little life—of how during those first fifteen years no kindly soul had given her counsel, and now his heart glowed with thanksgiving as he realized that she was growing in faith and womanliness. He wanted Jinnie to give credit where credit was ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... was born at Newark, New Jersey, on the twenty-sixth of November, 1874. She has published three volumes of verse, of which perhaps the best known is The Joy of Life (1909). At present she is engaged in war work, where her high faith, serene womanliness, and overflowing humour ought to make her, in the finest sense of the word, efficient. Her short poem on the war is a good ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... certain slender effect of her figure, emphasised now by the long folds of the black gown she wore, carried it almost superbly. She conveyed something of the impression of a queen in exile. But she had lost none of her womanliness; rather, the contrary. Adversity had softened her, as well as deepened her. Presley saw that very clearly. Hilma had arrived now at her perfect maturity; she had known great love and she had known great grief, and the woman ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... to the German spirit through all the changes in her life, with the same determination which made it possible, in her strenuous labors, to retain her gentle womanliness. Just before she died she desired to hear one of ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... a clever actress, Miss Vernon," said Bertram; "but I am inclined to think there is a latent depth of character, a womanliness in you that our gay butterflies ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... said to have become almost a monomaniac upon this point, and so bitter was her ire at thus being balked in her plans, so keen her hatred of the innocent girl who had been the cause of it, that she abandoned herself to the wildest schemes, casting all honor and womanliness to the winds, and bending all her energies toward the destruction of the happiness of the newly wedded couple. She resolved to begin operations by making an ally of ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... lilies, as the paso came nearer, were only white, waxen candles after all, but in their light the image of the Virgin gained a womanliness and beauty extraordinary. Her gorgeous trailing robe of gold-embroidered velvet, her under gown of satin scintillating with diamonds, her blazing crown of jewels, the sparkling rings on her delicate fingers, her necklaces, her bracelets, were such as the Mother of Christ never dreamed ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the Honourable John Ruffin. Pollyooly was at hand, and she was intelligent. No later than the next morning he began to talk to her of Flossie—her beauty, her charm, her sympathetic nature, her womanliness, and her intelligence. ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... frail and gentle as he stood there pleading in the pale moonlight, that Selah could have taken him to her bosom then and there and fondled him as one would pet a sick child, for pure womanliness; but the devil in her blood kept her from doing it, and she answered haughtily, instead: 'Ronald, if you wanted to marry me, you ought to have asked me for my own sake. Now that you've asked me for another's, you can't expect me to give ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... depend not upon the education of the few, but of the whole. Every improvement in the status of woman in the matter of education has been an improvement to the whole race. Women have by education thus far become more womanly, not less. The same prophecies of ruin to womanliness were made against her education on general subjects that are now made against her ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... of the closing door she had glanced up, and then, at the sight of the king, she sprang to her feet and ran towards him, her hands out, her blue eyes bedimmed with tears, her whole beautiful figure softening into womanliness and humility. ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... here, when we had no home and no money, and Uncle Geoffrey was so generous? And then there was Dot and mother so ailing." And at the thought of all our helplessness, and Uncle Geoffrey's goodness a great tear rolled down my cheek. It was very babyish and undignified; but, after all, no assumption of womanliness would have helped me so much. Deborah's grim mouth relaxed; under her severe exterior, and with her sharp tongue, there beat a very kind heart, and Dot was ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... old-fashioned faith of New England,—some gentle, pure, loving soul! Shall I confess it, Johns?—the little glimpse of your lost Rachel gave me an idea of the tenderness and depth of devotion and charming womanliness of many of those whom I had counted stiff and utterly repulsive, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... of pie was served on a huge china plate that had been packed over the mountains with much trouble and when every inch of room was needed for the bare necessities. Thus tenacious were the women in coming to this raw country to preserve their womanliness. I might have thought I was being favored had not Mrs. Davis frankly informed me that her few pieces of china were shunned by her men-folks on the plea ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... to his with just a tinge of lofty scorn, tempered only by the womanliness of those melting lashes. "And you can think of THAT?" she murmured, gazing across at him half in tears. "O Alan, for my part I can think of nothing now but the truths of life and the magnitude of the issues. Our hearts against the ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... life only from the side that amuses and entertains. Some day, when she realizes, as it comes to us all to do, that care and sorrow bring their own sustaining power, she will not dally among the petty things of life; the wilful waywardness will turn to winning womanliness." ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... Elizabeth Stoddard, Justin McCarthy, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Ole Bull, P. T. Barnum, Elizabeth Cady Stanton—these were but a part of the brilliant company which delighted to gather on Sunday evening and enjoy the sweetness and womanliness of Alice, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... ladies are at home," and refined custom requires it. But to express the graces and endowments of a woman, it is her womanliness that is emphasized. "She is a gracious, sweet-tempered, kindly woman." The same distinction applies to the use of the term "gentleman," ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... I might perhaps have the courage and the womanliness to give it back to you. [JOHN has a brief dream.] Will you never hold it up against me in the future ...
— What Every Woman Knows • James M. Barrie
... Klea—while he spoke them with quivering lips—had attempted with the exertion of all her strength, which was by no means contemptible, to wrench her hands from his grasp, he forced her—angry as he still was, but nevertheless with due regard for her womanliness—forced her by a gentle and yet irresistible pressure on her arms to bend before him, and compelled her slowly to sink ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... surprise, Roger took my part. "Let the girl alone," he told Alicia. "If she doesn't love Sinclair, she was right in refusing him. I, for one, am glad that she has got enough truth and womanliness in her to ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... which may be supposed especially to interest Americans and English, Rachel is not less excellent. The sad grace, the tender resignation, the poetic enthusiasm, the petulant caprice, the wilful, lovely womanliness of the lovely queen, are made tragically real by her representation. Perhaps it is not the Mary of Mignet nor of history. But Mary Queen of Scots is one of the characters which the imagination has chosen ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... Clairville's latent womanliness sprang to the surface as she jumped off the bed and enfolded her friend in ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... Theodora was loyal to him, soothing him, cheering him up and bearing his ill-temper with a gentleness which surprised even herself, ministering to his comfort and content to an unmeasured degree, and at the same time gaining a quiet womanliness which she ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... her face alight with love. Anthony Dexter looked long at the perfect features, the warm, sweet, tempting mouth, the great, trusting eyes, and the brown hair that waved so softly back from her face; the all-pervading and abiding womanliness. There was strength as well as beauty; ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... healthy, though their work has been done only recently by women. I would make the influence of an occupation on woman's health—considering first and as most important her primary biological function as a potential mother—the test of its womanliness. But the health of women will never be protected while we are content to accept the valuations and suffer the defilements of ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... be keeping apace with just a little bit of the world's progress, and, best of all, teaching oneself how to live wisely and well. There never was—to my way of thinking—a brainless, silly woman who was beautiful. It takes the light of intellect, the splendor of sweet womanliness, the glory of kindness, unselfishness and goodness to complete a perfect picture of ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... brilliant spirit. Every instinct of the coquette, jealous of her own power and wretched from the sterile suffering of wounded pride, resented bitterly the unpardonable ease which he had appeared to enjoy in her society. Now, however, that he appealed to her womanliness by a humble surrender, her better, more generous nature asserted itself. Some of the old affection she had long felt for him revived. Where there had once been love, a kind of desperate fidelity still lingered, and, although ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... careless with the delicate rose of maidenliness, which, once faded, no summer shining can ever woo back to freshness, and with the unsullied jewel of personal reputation which all the wealth of kings can never buy back again, once lost. See to it that you preserve that modesty and womanliness without which the prettiest girl in the world is no better than a bit of scentless lawn in a milliner's window, as compared to the white rose in the garden, around which the honey bees gather. See to it that you lock up the unsullied splendor ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... ministry of ennoblement! We reap a harvest of insignificance from the seeds of sorrow sown in our hearts. We let our cares dishonour us. The little cares rasp and fret and sting the manliness and the womanliness and the godlikeness out of us. And the great cares crush us earthward till there is scarcely a sweet word left in our lips or a noble thought in our heart. A man cannot save his soul in the day of trouble. He cannot by himself make good the wear and tear of anxieties and ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth |
