"Great-aunt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the blood that takes opinions second-hand. Upon his mother's side he was the grandson of one of the great anti-slavery agitators. The sister of this man, Gray's great-aunt, had stood beside him on the platform when there was danger in it; and after the Negro was freed and enfranchised, she had devoted a long life to the cause of woman suffrage. The mother who bore him died young. She left him to the care of a conservative father, but the blood that came through ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... the spectre. "I am the ghost of that fair maiden whose picture hangs over the mantel-piece in the drawing-room. I should have been your great-great-great-great-great-aunt if I had lived, Henry Hartwick Oglethorpe, for I was the own sister ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... be surprised at how glad we are. It was your mother's father, wasn't it, who fell in love with the Spanish woman while he was in the Embassy at Seville? My family weren't people of public connections, although a great-aunt married Senator Carlinton; but they ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... armour cease, and the long robe bear sway! At least it must be so for the whole space of the succeeding year, if I be married; as yesterday, by the Mosaic law, you evidenced. In what concerneth the breeches, my great-aunt Laurence did long ago tell me, that the breeches were only ordained for the use of the codpiece, and to no other end; which I, upon a no less forcible consequence, give credit to every whit, as well ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... absolutely no attention to the tone of my reply or its curtness. He did not refer to Dorinda again. She might have been my wife or my great-aunt for all he cared. ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... sight and reputation. Her name was Mrs. Conover; she lived down at the fishing village; she was a great-aunt of Mrs. Anderson; and she drank as ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Great-Aunt Victoria Bench was sitting bolt upright on a high chair in the dining-room, tatting. Family portraits, hung far too high all round the room, seemed to have been watching her complacently until the travellers entered, ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... had remained so always. But a proverb says, not in vain, that 'Where the Devil cannot go himself he will send an old woman.' And he sent her to us. It was your father's Aunt, your great-aunt, Petrik. She came once to us and asked me aside if the new mother liked me, and was sorry for me that I was a poor orphan. Said she, 'Who has a step-mother has also a stepfather. Your father doesn't love ...
— The Three Comrades • Kristina Roy
... baby Winnie's sack—the precious little tyke! Ma wore this gown to visit me (they drove the whole way then). And little Edson wore this waist. He never came again. This lavender par'matta was your Great-aunt Jane's—poor dear! Mine was a sprig, with the lilac ground; see, in the corner here. Such goods were high in war times. Ah, that scrap of army blue; Your bright eyes spied it! Yes, dear child, that has its memories, too. They sent him home on furlough once—our soldier brother Ned; But somewhere, ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... the young lady, with a grateful eye-shot, vanished round the corner. But the force of her appeal had been a little blunted; for the young man was not only destitute of sisters, but of any female relative nearer than a great-aunt in Wales. Now he was alone, besides, the spell that he had hitherto obeyed began to weaken; he considered his behaviour with a sneer; and plucking up the spirit of revolt, he started in pursuit. The reader, if he has ever plied the fascinating trade of the noctambulist, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... more than twelve feet square, and the persons most continuously in it, not counting those who are in transit, are the Padrona Angela; the Padrona Angela's daughter, Signorina Rita; the Signorina Rita's temporary suitor; the suitor's mother and cousin; the padrona's great-aunt; a few casual acquaintances of the two families, and somebody's baby: not always the same baby; any baby answers the purpose and adds to the confusion and chatter ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... using a free hand, picking and choosing what she liked best, with due care for the effect of combinations; selecting here and there and modifying, if advisable, a trait of Grandpa or Grandma Foxwell, of Great-Uncle or Great-Aunt Baxter; borrowing qualities lavishly from her own gently born and gently bred mother, and carefully avoiding her respected father's Stock, except, perhaps, to take a dash of his pluck and an ounce of his persistence. Jed Morrill remarked ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Great-Aunt Grantley, who had money to bequeath to the heir, occupied with Hippias the background of the house and shared her candles with him. These two were seldom seen till the dinner hour, for which they were all day preparing, and probably all night remembering, for the Eighteenth Century ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... rubber comforter on the cool green grass, or on the slightly painful gravel, or on the fiercely hot asphalt, summer was to him a season of unsurpassed sensuality, flooding his character with rich productive thought and a passionate adoration for his great-aunt Maud, who was wont to beguile the long sun-stained hours by lying amid cushions among the foliage, humming "The Star-Spangled Banner," while she removed with the point of her nail-scissors caramels and other adhesive ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... her kindly, called her his dawtie, and made her sit down by him on a three-legged creepie, talking to her as if she had been quite a child, while she, capable of high converse as she was, replied in corresponding terms. Her great-aunt was confined to her bed with rheumatism. Supper was preparing, and Annie was not sorry to have a share, for indeed, during the summer, her meals were often scanty enough. While they ate, the old man kept helping her to the best, talking to her ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... I can't, my dear, I can't.... Anyway, nobody will have better china. I've given you six of Aunt Alison's rosy ones; I hope the scout won't break them. And your tablecloths and sheets and towels are all right, thanks to our great-aunt's stores.... And you'll write as often as you can and tell us everything, if you get a nice scout, and all about your rooms, and if cushions would be any use, and oh, my dear, eat as much as ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... infinity of babble, some saying one thing and some another, some proposing to pay neighbouring savages to come in and fight the invaders, others saying it would be cheaper to compromise with a large sum, but the most part agreeing that the wisest thing would be for the Archon and his great-aunt to go out to the fleet in a little boat and persuade the enemy's admiral (as they could surely easily do) that while most human acts were of doubtful responsibility and not really wicked, yet the invasion, and, above all, the impoverishment of the Nepioi was so foul a wrong as ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... fraught with unpleasant possibilities. He could not go home for the Christmas vacation, for his father lived in Drontheim, which is so far away from Christiania that it was scarcely worth while making the journey for a mere two-weeks' holiday. Then, on the other hand, he had an old great-aunt who lived but a few miles from the city. She had, from conscientious motives, he feared, sent him an invitation to pass Christmas with her. But Albert had a poor opinion of Aunt Elsbeth. He thought her a very tedious person. She had a dozen ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... seemed, a self-sacrificing and noble act. She was staying with an aunt—measles or a new baby, or the painters in the house, I forget which, the cause of her banishment. And the aunt, who was really a great-aunt and quite old enough to know better, had been grumbling about her head gardener to a lady who called in blue spectacles and a beady bonnet ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... a man may not marry his father's sister, even though the tie be merely adoptive, or his mother's sister: for they are considered to stand in the relation of ascendants. For the same reason too a man may not marry his great-aunt either paternal or maternal. ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... Bishop Vigors, who was consecrated to the see of Leighlin and Ferns, March 8, 1690. He, I know, was a near relative of the Rev. Urban Vigors. An Urban Vigors of Ballycormack, co. Wexford, also married my great-great-aunt, a Miss Thomas, sister of Vigors Thomas, Esq., of Limerick. I should, equally with your correspondent Y. S. M., wish to know any particulars of the "Vigors" family; and should be delighted to enter into correspondence ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 211, November 12, 1853 • Various
... thanks. Then, lifting his head, he would fling wide his open palms in hospitality, "Thar hit is afore you. Take holt and eat all you're a-mind to!" And turning to his wife, "Marthie! watch their plates!" My great-aunt kept a vigilant eye on us as she walked around the table inviting us to partake, "Hure, have more of the snaps. Holp yourself to the ham meat. Take another piece of cornbread. 'Pon my word, you're pickin' like a wren. Eat hearty!" ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... battles and had escaped with a few scars; and he was carrying his daughter to Louvain, intending to place her in the charge of her great-aunt, Madame de Montrond's half sister, who was head of a convent in that city, a safe and pious shelter, where the child might be reared ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... and strong I was forced to confess myself, after having waded through Latin adjectives and anatomical illustrations enough to make a ghost of Hercules. I devoted two days to researches in genealogical pathology, and was rewarded for my pains by discovering myself to be the possessor of one great-aunt who had died of heart disease at the advanced age of ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... My great-aunt was a tiny little old lady, so tiny that small as I was myself she made me feel clumsy. Her house, too, was in proportion to herself. She received us with the greatest affection, but was so nervously anxious to make us comfortable that I could not but feel strange and shyer ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... "I had a great-aunt," began Rankin with willful irrelevancy, "a very wonderful old woman who taught me most of what I value. She was considered cracked, so maybe that's why I am a freak, and she was as wise as wise! And she had stories that fitted every occasion. One that ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... year ergo. You was all th' one I had then, 'n' yer pappy was erway from home all th' week, 'cept from Sat'day evenin' tell 'fore day Monday monrin'. Melindy White staid wi' me; she was Zekle's great-aunt, 'n' er ole maid, 'n' people did say she was monst'ous cross 'n' crabbed, but she warn't never cross ter me. I mind me of er Sat'day, 'n' I'd be spectin' of yer pappy home. I'd git up at th' fust cock-crow, 'n' go wake Melindy, 'n' she'd grumble ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... rest, from Dublin to Touggourt, where father was stationed. They say it's wild there even now. It was far wilder then, more than twenty-one years ago. He nursed mother himself, scarcely eating or sleeping: not taking off his clothes for weeks. One of his aunts—my great-aunt—told me the story. It came to her from a friend of father's. He never spoke of it. For three months mother wasn't out of danger. Father was her nurse, her doctor, not her husband. But at last she was well again. They had their honeymoon in a tent in the desert. She loved ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... amusing. She was lively, and criticised persons and events cleverly, though with unsparing severity. This was just to my taste, and excited me to the contest, till, from repartee to repartee, we got almost to a dispute. It was my great-aunt Sophia in person, as I afterwards learnt; and just fancy her mixing up her own name in a malicious manner in the conversation, and then asking me if I knew her, and what my opinion of her was! I simply answered: 'I had heard her spoken of; that there had ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... to-day whose fault it was," declared Stanley Clark cheerfully; "the part of the story that interests us is that the family thought that all Great-aunt Judith's children were dead. Here is where Uncle William got his surprise. When he was coming on from Arkansas he stopped over for a day at the town where Aunt Judith had posted her last letter to Grandfather, about sixty years ago. There he learned from the records that she was dead ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... back to Castleman Hall, and to all the scenes of her young ladyhood! If only Lady Dee could have revised this book of Veblen's, how many points she could have given to him! No details had been too minute for the technique of Sylvia's great-aunt—the difference between the swish of the right kind of silk petticoats and the wrong kind; and yet her technique had been broad enough to take in a landscape. "Every girl should have a background," had been one of her maxims, and Sylvia had to have a special ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... cart road led to a clearing where there was a small old house, deserted, and also a small barn. This, as I had yet to learn, was the "Aunt Hannah lot," an appendage of the farm, which had come into grandfather's possession from a sister, my great-aunt of that name. Save a field of oats, the land here was allowed to lie in grass and remain otherwise uncultivated. Beyond this small outlying farm, there was a dense body of woodland, which I did not then attempt to penetrate, but made a circuit to the northward through pasture land and ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... the likeness of a great-aunt of her husband's." (My friend was standing by me, and looking at the picture with sympathetic curiosity.) "See! here is the name on the open page of this Bible, 'Anna Scherer, 1778.' Frau Scherer says there is a tradition ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... discovered to be, was also concerned. My earliest memory, and a very hazy one it is, mixed up with some story or other about a parrot, is of having seen my grandmother, the Duchesse d'Orleans-Penthievre, at Ivry. After that I recollect being at the Chateau of Meudon with my great-aunt, the Duchesse de Bourbon, a tiny little woman; and being taken to see the Princesse Louise de Conde at the Temple, and then I remember seeing Talma act in Charles the Bold, and the great impression his gilt cuirass ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... Miss Hope, a great-aunt of Westmore's. But there is more than that between them—all kinds of subterranean passages." He paused, and began again: "For instance, Dr. Disbrow married the sister ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... instinct of refinement and taste which only needed the chance to show itself. But there was little chance to exercise taste in the old yellow farm-house, and Candace, from training and long habit, was submissive; so she accepted the inevitable, and, as her great-aunt said, "made ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... Tam Elliot,' replied the elder, 'him that was nevvy to auld Sandy o' the Ratten Raa farm that died and left him part money. Aff he went when he got the siller, and a bit later an auld great-aunt left him a bit mair, sae he took a muckle big farm doon sooth, and noo he's at the inn cracking crouse aboot his pedigree beasts and sheep, and swankin' awa as to what he's done syne he left these parts, just as if we didna ken the sort o' man he was, and ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... profits when it was over if they had had any hankering after good society, which they did not happen to have. Her bridal equipage, of course, came from England and was chosen by the Dowager Lady Trebleston, a great-aunt of the groom, who was not at all distinguished for any particular ability to choose a wedding outfit with extraordinary taste or economy, but whose name lent a flavour to the choice, as "Dresden" does to china, or "Cambridge" ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... generally been here before this," said the Imp. "I can remember your great-aunt sleeping in this very bed and being in just the same fuss. I got down and danced about all night, and ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... accounts and made various calculations. It was a wonder to every one who knew them how the Woodyards "could do so much on what they had." As a matter of fact, with the rising scale of living, it required all Conny's practical adroitness to make the household come out nearly even. Thanks to a great-aunt who admired Percy, they had been able to buy this house and alter it over, and with good business judgment it had been done so that the property was now worth nearly a third more than when they took it. But a second man-servant had been ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... week in August, and he was one of a large party in a bungalow on the Lincolnshire coast. It was a tennis, golf, motor-car, motor-boat party, given by his great-aunt, a lady of social pretensions. Ursula was invited to spend ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... laid open by a desperate cutlass slash. He already was in a raging fever, and although the best medical advice in Lewes was procured, he died that very night. As he lay dying his talk was wild and incoherent; but at the very last, as my great-great-great-aunt well remembered, he suddenly grew calm, straightened himself in the bed, and said, with great earnestness: "Sheer up ...
— Our Pirate Hoard - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... her books, many of which were bound in white vellum or parchment. "It is a fancy of John's," she said, "to have all my belongings white. I think he still remembers his Aunt Phoebe. Do you know about your Great-aunt Phoebe?" ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... said Jane, 'you are already assuming all the dignity of my Aunt Marianne, and William's Aunt Marianne—oh! and of little Henry's Great-aunt Marianne. Now,' she added, laughing, 'can you guess ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... plans from the first. For instance, Marion, the central figure in the plot, went away suddenly to nurse a sick great-aunt. William now became so engrossed with Gladys that he talked of very little else. Thus Henry and I would have avoided him at this stage, if possible; it was not possible, however, to avoid him. We saw more of him than ever. I ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... husband to invite Mrs. Goodriche to their house until the chimney should be repaired; but Mr. Fairchild was doubtful whether this message should be delivered, when he heard that Miss Bessy was to remain with her great-aunt. After a little thought, however, he gave the message, stating his difficulty at the ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... like a bird set free from a cage when Aunt Hetty appeared, and she came in the very nick of time, too, for that same day up rolled the stage, and out popped my great-aunt Jessamine (grandmamma's sister) from Philadelphia. The two old ladies had so much to tell one another that they had no need of me. So I went to the Downings', where the club was to hold a meeting, armed with brushes and brooms, taking a practical lesson ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... them," said he, with the slow determination of a man resolved on uttering a repulsive truth. Herbert's mother was a beautiful but penniless orphan of good family, who visited this house some years since in the capacity of companion to our great-aunt. ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... from the duty-visit to Aunt Hannah and said as it were confidentially to Leonora: 'Fred called in while I was there, mother, and stayed for tea.' What could Leonora answer? Who could deny Fred the right to visit his great-aunt and his great-uncle, both rapidly ageing? And of what use to tell John? She desired Ethel's happiness, but from that moment she felt like an accomplice in the furtive wooing, and it seemed to her that she had forfeited both the confidence ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... was, I think, in '88 That Luck or Providence or Fate Assumed the more material state Of Aunt (or Great-Aunt) Alice, And took (the weather being fine And Bill, the eldest, only nine) Three of us by the Brighton line To see the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 26, 1919 • Various
... to me a very curious reminiscence. A dear old great-aunt of mine had purchased my discharge, and had furnished me with money to go home. We were then stationed at Ballincollig, in County Cork, and I had secured a suit of civilian toggery from a Cork tailor. I was waiting ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... and gown;" "Gregory Aglonby, a colonel in the Revolutionary forces;" "Red-haired Edmund, as we call him, because the others are all dark;" "Colonel Everard Buller Aglonby, who represented this county in the House of Burgesses for thirty years, and his wife, who was a Calvert,—a great-aunt, a woman of extraordinary piety, who reduced herself from a condition of affluence to comparative poverty by the manumission of her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... the least disturbed by the unaccountable touch of ill-humor in his tone. "See now! My existence presupposes the existence of the whole universe—does it not? and my function is to paint—and as a painter I have a conception which is altogether genialisch, of your great-aunt or second grandmother as a subject for a picture; therefore, the universe is straining towards that picture through that particular hook or claw which it puts forth in ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... scolding was peculiar to any occasion; it regularly ran on through all the day, like bells on harness, inspiriting the work, whether it were done well or ill." In the annotated volume of the son's memoir which belonged to Edward FitzGerald, the writer added the following detail as to his great-aunt's temper and methods:—"A wench whom Mrs. Tovell had pursued with something weightier than invective—a ladle, I think—whimpered out 'If an angel from Hiv'n were to come mawther'" (Suffolk for girl) "'to missus, she wouldn't give ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... girl. We lived in a little house, in a suburb of Saint-Omer. Our parents led a peaceful, retired life, until they were discovered by an old lady named Madame Cornouiller, who lived at the manor of Montplaisir, twelve miles from town, and proved to be a great-aunt of my mother's. By right of relationship she insisted that our father and mother come to dine every Sunday at Montplaisir, where they were excessively bored. She said that it was the proper thing to have a family dinner on Sunday and that only people of common ...
— Putois - 1907 • Anatole France
... people whom Miss Osborne told of adoring. Of a common world, they were not long strangers. They came together through a whole network of associations. Finally they reached South Carolina and concluded they must be related—something about Katie's grandmother and Miss Osborne's great-aunt—. ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... he took hold of her hand and led her away ... and while he was leading her away, the adventure seemed to come to an end ... the picture dissolved ... and he could not see any more. Once, indeed, he had kissed his dream-woman ... he had kissed her exactly as he had kissed his great-aunt, Miss Clotworthy, who was famous for the fact that she had attended a Sunday School in Belfast as pupil and teacher for fifty-seven years without a break ... and the dream-woman had taken the kiss in the unemotional manner ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... Few men in these degenerate times would care to have so brave a wife. Indeed, some of these Irish dames were quite capable of defending both their rights and their privileges against assailants belonging to what is called the "stronger sex." Sir Jonah Barrington's great-aunt, Mrs. Elizabeth Fitzgerald, and her husband held the castle of Moret against the O'Cahils, who claimed it as having been originally theirs and taken from them by another Elizabeth, the queen of England. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... of Barnum's old museum, through which you could see cities and mountains bathed in sunshine, so, as you drink from the tea-cup, and get on toward the bottom so that it is sufficiently elevated, you can see almost anything glorious that you want to. We had a great-aunt who used to come from town with the pockets of her bombazine dress standing way out with nice things for the children, but she would come in looking black as a thunder cloud until she had got through with her first cup of tea, when she would empty her right pocket ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... instinctively that she had been reared differently than the poor old woman to whom she gave the name of grandmother, but who is reality was but a distant great-aunt. ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... my great-aunt, really. She lives in Little Swithun, right at the back of Dean's Close; and her name is on a brass plate—a very hard name to pronounce, "Miss Lapenotiere, Dancing and Calisthenics"—that's another hard word, but it means things you do with an elastic band to improve your figure. ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch |
