"Womanish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for me as any that can perplex you. I can't treat this question any more as I have done. I don't see my way at all. Now I am going to be as direct and straightforward as a man, and not beat around the bush with any womanish finesse. There is a gentleman in this city who, if he knew I was in town to-night, would call, and I might not be able to prevent him from making a formal proposal. He is a man whom I respect and like very much, and I fear I have been too ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... shall be decided without the oath of the parties to the suit, and the presiding judges shall not permit either of them to use an oath for the sake of persuading, nor to call down curses on himself and his race, nor to use unseemly supplications or womanish laments. But they shall ever be teaching and learning what is just in auspicious words; and he who does otherwise shall be supposed to speak beside the point, and the judges shall again bring him back to the question at ...
— Laws • Plato
... a begging note, and now I am wondering to myself whether you will think me very childish or womanish, or silly enough to be both together (I know your thoughts upon certain parallel subjects), if I go on to do my begging fully. I hear that you are going to Mr. Wordsworth's—to Rydal Mount—and I want you to ask for yourself, and then to send to me in a letter—by ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... said the Queen; "say rather the demand of a set of robbers, impatient to divide the spoil they have seized. To such a demand, and sent by the mouth of a traitor, whose scalp, but for my womanish mercy, should long since have stood on the city gates, Mary of Scotland ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... fancy that I do not understand. I understand perfectly, on the contrary. Only do you try not to dislike writing when you write, or not to write when you dislike it ... that, I ask of you, dear dearest—and forgive me for all this over-writing and teazing and vexing which is foolish and womanish in the bad sense. It is a way of meeting, ... the meeting in letters, ... and next to receiving a letter from you, I like to write one to you ... and, so, revolt from thinking it lawful for you to dislike.... Well! the Goddess ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... I had caught a glimpse of a head too pretty to belong to any other than the redoubted Colonel de Hamal. What a very finished, highly polished little pate it was! What a figure, so trim and natty! What womanish feet and hands! How daintily he held a glass to one of his optics! with what admiration he gazed upon the Cleopatra! and then, how engagingly he tittered and whispered a friend at his elbow! Oh, the man of sense! Oh, the refined gentleman of superior taste and tact! I observed him ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... is in these matters, Miles—somehow, I scarce know why myself, but somehow I feel bloody womanish this evening." ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... not so much on account of what he has done already as for that which he inevitably will do. Your Lucien is not a poet, he has the poetic temper; he dreams, he does not think; he spends himself in emotion, he does not create. He is, in fact—permit me to say it —a womanish creature that loves to shine, the Frenchman's great failing. Lucien will always sacrifice his best friend for the pleasure of displaying his own wit. He would not hesitate to sign a pact with the Devil ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... his son, who stood before him in an attitude so respectful yet so firm. Something seemed to strike him in the pale, delicate, womanish features; perhaps he saw therein the wife who had died when Nathanael was born, and whose death, people said, had chilled the father's heart strangely against ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... Mass,[16] though this may be a natural defect of the tongue, or an accident, and is not a sin. Again, there is no priest who does not confess that he was distracted, or failed to read his Preparatoria, or other old-womanish trifles of the kind. There was one who, even when he was at the altar celebrating, called a priest three times and confessed that something had happened. Indeed, I have seen these endless jests ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... the wanting of them. They looked very womanish. I'm a deal more purpose-like without them. Then I went to a first-class tailor-man and he fit me out with the suit I'm wearing. He said it was 'the correct thing for land or water.' What dost thou ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... in their stead the laws of men and the decrees of the Fathers. There are now not a few persons who preach and read about Christ with the object of moving the human affections to sympathise with Christ, to indignation against the Jews, and other childish and womanish absurdities ...
— Concerning Christian Liberty - With Letter Of Martin Luther To Pope Leo X. • Martin Luther
... hard. Her face was crimson by this with maidenly shame; but she made no effort to hide or avert it. For the good of humanity, this question must be settled once for all; and no womanish reserve should make her shrink from settling it. Happier maidens in ages to come, when society had reconstructed itself on the broad basis of freedom, would never have to go through what she was going through that moment. They would be spared ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... preacher. I never could approve of Reuben Locke, though Aunt Agatha spoke well of him; he was such a weak, pale-faced young man; and I think a man, to be one, ought to have some spirit in him, and not possess only the womanish virtues. ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various
... is brought prominently before us, that superstition's chief victims are those persons who greedily covet temporal advantages; they it is, who (especially when they are in danger, and cannot help themselves) are wont with Prayers and womanish tears to implore help from God: upbraiding Reason as blind, because she cannot show a sure path to the shadows they pursue, and rejecting human wisdom as vain; but believing the phantoms of imagination, dreams, and other childish absurdities, to be the very ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part I] • Benedict de Spinoza
... be as a veil, to adorn and cover them. The reason whereof nature hath hid in the complexion of a woman, which is more humid than the complexion of a man; so that, if a man should take him to this womanish ornament, he should but against nature transform himself (in so far) into ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... disentangle one clear wish Not of her sex, she sought; And womanish to womanish Discerned ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... your child!—Brother, help me, save me!" "My daughter, my darling child!" cried the despairing mother, wringing her hands and weeping bitterly. "My dearest sister Anne, what can I do for you?" inquired the young man, whose stern features were melted into mere womanish tenderness. "Daughter," interrupted the priest, " God is good; he can and will forgive you if you heartily turn to him, with a sincere desire to atone for your fault." All this took place in less time than it has taken in the recital. My brother-in-law seemed completely ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... where need requireth to bring the body to temperance. For no other good, they say, can it do to ourselves, and then to our neighbour can it do none at all. And therefore they condemn it for superstitious folly. Now, heaviness of heart and weeping for our sins, this they reckon shame almost, and womanish childishness—howbeit, God be thanked, their women wax there now so mannish that they are not so childish, nor so poor of spirit, but what they can sin on as men do and be neither afraid nor ashamed nor weep for ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... cost that then, as now, it is "the thinking bayonet" which conquers. The English King was slain and every man of his chosen troops with him. A monk who wrote the history of the period of the Conquest, says that "the vices of the Saxons had made them effeminate and womanish, wherefore it came to pass that, running against Duke William, they lost themselves and their country with one, and that an easy and light, battle." Doubtless the English had fallen off in many ways from what hey had been generations earlier; but the record at Hastings shows ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... those with him shall throw open the side gate, when Sepa and the five hundred chosen men who are in waiting shall pour in and cast themselves upon the sleeping legionaries, putting them to the sword. Why, the thing is easy so thou rest true to thyself, and let no womanish fears creep into thy heart. What is this dagger's thrust? It is nothing, and yet upon it hang the destinies of Egypt ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... pleasure in filling it with idealised heads, of which the originals had place in her own warm affections. Christal was there, with her gracefully-turned throat, and the singular charm of her black eyes and fair hair. Lyle, too, with his delicate, womanish, but yet handsome face. Nor was Mrs. Gwynne forgotten—Olive made great use of her well-outlined form, and her majestic sweep of drapery. There was one only of the group who had not been ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... women. I believe that the game of cards to teach them philosophy under defeat, respect for the inevitable and a cheerful manipulation of such trifling good fortune as may befall—instead of that wild, womanish demand for all or nothing—has yet to be invented. I predict of this game, moreover, if ever it be found, that it will be a game at which two, at least, must play. Rarely have I known a woman, however rigid her integrity otherwise, ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... have dulled your spirits. Later, there will be less sparkle in your eye. What! Do not the English wear pajamas? Does not the sex that is bifurcated by day keep by night to its manly bifurcation? Is not each separate leg swathed in complete divorcement from its fellow? Or, womanish, do they rest in the common dormitory of a shirt de nuit? The Englishman does wear pajamas, but the word with him takes on an Icelandic meaning. They are built to the prescription of an Esquimo. They are woolly, fuzzy and the width of a finger ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... remarkable extent, with all those accompaniments of permanence, fidelity, and mutual service, which are commonly held to belong only to l'union legale, in one or two strata of French society. She was capable of sentiment; she had hidden veins of womanish weakness; but at the same time the little creature's prevailing temper was one of remarkable coolness and audacity. She judged for herself; she had read for herself, observed for herself. Such a temper had hitherto preserved her from adventures; but, upon ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fashion first set for the women by the Grand Monarque's loose-wife; and as he passed under the candles I saw that it was graying slightly. His face, high-browed, long-nosed, double-chinned, with the eyes womanish for bigness and marked with brows that might have been penciled by the hair-dresser, I had seen before; but lacking this present sight of it, the orders on his breast would have named him the ranking general of the army in the field—Lord Charles Cornwallis. ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... were scourged in Etruria to the music of the flute, to go headlong into punishing with a desire and zest for it, and to delight in punishing, and then afterwards to be sorry at it—for the first is savage, and the last womanish—but we should without either sorrow or pleasure chastise at the dictates of reason, giving anger no ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... gun in pledge, you know!" says Semyon in a thin womanish little voice, sighing deeply, and not taking his eyes off the string of bread rings. "Hand over the rouble you borrowed, and ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... out to the cemetery instead of coming across that dreadful ocean. Oh, just to have one adventure before I go home!" she continued with a long sigh, "a real adventure with a real man in it—not a horrid, womanish Frenchman or a stolid, conceited Britisher, but a nice, safe ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... who it is; for Romans now 80 Have thews and limbs like to their ancestors; But, woe the while! our fathers' minds are dead, And we are govern'd with our mothers' spirits; Our yoke and sufferance show us womanish. ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... sight. Myself, I am inclined to think it was because he knew him to be hunted, knew him to be the object of a murderous conspiracy, and loathed most thoroughly the vulgar rogue who was his treacherous enemy. But Captain Kettle scouts the idea that he was stirred by any such feeble, womanish motives. Kettle was a poet himself, and with the kinship of species he felt the poetic fire glowing out from the person of this Mr. Hamilton. At least, so he says; and if he has deceived himself on the matter, which, from an outsider's point of view, seems likely, I am sure ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... world! In what a shadow, or deep pit of darkness, Doth womanish and fearful mankind live! Let worthy minds ne'er stagger in distrust To suffer death or ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... final remark must be hazarded about the most remarkable point after all in General Gordon's personality. I refer to his voice. It was singularly sweet, and for a man modulated in a very low tone, but there was nothing womanish about it, as was the case with his able contemporary Sir Bartle Frere, whose voice was distinctly feminine in its timbre. I know of no other way to describe it than to say that it seemed to me to express the thorough and transparent goodness of the speaker, and the exquisite gentleness ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... to betray a womanish fear that he might be getting influenza, as she knew that nothing would annoy him so ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... be content with John. When the fatal day came, the anxiety of the lady's spirits occasioned such an effervescence of blood, as threw her into, so violent a fever, that her life was despaired of, till a letter came from Mr. Dryden, reproving her for her womanish credulity, and assuring her, that her child was well, which recovered her spirits, and in six weeks after she received an ecclaircissement-of the whole affair. Mr. Dryden, either thro' fear of being reckoned superstitious, or thinking it a science beneath his study, was extremely cautious ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... womanhood. But short her bloom—her happiness was short. One saw her loveliness, and with desire Unhallowed, burning, to her ear addressed Dishonest words: 'Her favour was his life, His heaven; her frown his woe, his night, his death.' With turgid phrase thus wove in flattery's loom, He on her womanish nature won, and age Suspicionless, and ruined and forsook: For he a chosen villain was at heart, And capable of deeds that durst not seek Repentance. Soon her father saw her shame; His heart grew stone; he drove her forth to want And wintry winds, and ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... effectual aid, In contests of each kind he overcame. But thou, whom I encircle with my power, Guard vigilant, and even bid thee forth To combat with the Trojans, thou, thy limbs 965 Feel'st wearied with the toils of war, or worse, Indulgest womanish and heartless fear. Henceforth thou art not worthy to be deem'd Son of Oenides, Tydeus famed in arms. To whom thus valiant Diomede replied. 970 I know thee well, oh Goddess sprung from Jove! And therefore willing shall, and plain, reply. Me neither ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... Our friends are old proved friends. Boris has been orderly to my husband for a very long time. We do not share any of his too-modern ideas, and there were many discussions on the duty of soldiers at the time of the massacres. I reproached him with being as womanish as we were in going down on his knees to the general behind Natacha and me, when it became necessary to kill all those poor moujiks of Presnia. It was not his role. A soldier is a soldier. My husband raised him roughly and ordered him, for his pains, ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... inquiries, drew such a delightful picture of Minon-Minette that Grimace determined to spare no pains to bring about the marriage, and accordingly Fluet was presented at court. But though the young man was pleasant and handsome, the princess thought him rather womanish in some ways, and displayed her opinion so openly as to draw upon herself and Aveline the anger of the fairy, who declared that Minon-Minette should never know happiness till she had found a bridge without an arch and ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... The Acholi, in Uganda, think it beneath masculine dignity to wear anything.[1478] The Vanyoro men are generally clothed in skins. The women, until marriage, wear nothing; after marriage, bark cloth. The Bari men never wear anything. They think it womanish to do so. The unmarried women wear a pendant of fringe behind and five or six iron bars six inches long, the whole three and a half inches broad, in front. Married women wear a fringe in front and ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... foolish rheum. [Aside. Turning dispiteous torture out of door! I must be brief; lest resolution drop Out at mine eyes, in tender womanish tears. Can you not read it? is it ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... of Libanus. It was dedicated to a shameful goddess, the goddess Aphrodite. A school of wickedness was this place for all such profligate persons as had ruined their bodies by excessive luxury. The men there were soft and womanish—men no longer; the dignity of their sex they rejected; with impure lust they thought to honour the deity. Criminal intercourse with women, secret pollutions, disgraceful and nameless deeds, were practised in the temple, where there was no restraining law, ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... the first See, that is to Peter: thou shalt recognise on the altar the unbloody sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Christ: thou shalt beseech the blessed martyrs and all the saints to intercede with Christ on thy behalf: thou shalt restrain womanish apostates from unnatural vice and public incest: thou shalt do many things that thou art undoing, and wish undone much that thou art doing. Furthermore, I promise and undertake to show, when opportunity offers, that the Synods of other ages, and notably ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... heroine like her in all my life before, and the one object of my future career will be to catch her finally in the meshes of a romance. Romance will come into her life some time. She is not at all of an unsentimental nature—only fractious—new-womanish, perhaps; but none the less lovable, and Cupid will have a shot at her when she least expects it; and when it does come, I'll be on hand to report the attempted assassination for the delectation of the Herring, Beemer, ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... than he seems. The giant with the rough voice and the boisterous ways is generally due for a stormy passage west of the Rockies; but the silent man with the gentle manners receives respect. Traditions live of desperadoes with exteriors of womanish calm and the action of devils. And Donnegan sipping his morning coffee fitted into the picture which rumor had painted. The three looked at one another, declared that they had not come to fight for a house but to rent one, that the real estate agent could ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... he said, also mimicking a fussy, womanish manner. "But I never get into the spirit of the thing until near Christmas Day. Then I run round and try to do everything ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... warm fire, we began to feel the sudden reaction which necessarily followed twenty-four hours of such exposure, suffering, and anxiety. Our overstrained nerves gave way all at once, and in ten minutes I could hardly raise a cup of coffee to my lips. Ashamed of such womanish weakness, I tried to conceal it from the Americans, and I presume they do not know to this day that Dodd and I nearly fainted several times within the first twenty minutes, from the suddenness of the change from 50 deg. below zero to 70 deg. ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... necessity he was Christina's special attendant, Mr. Thayer being Dolly's. Many girls would not have relished such an arrangement, Lawrence knew; his sisters would not. And Dolly was in an acme of delight. Lawrence watched her whenever they came near each other, and marvelled at the sweet, childish-womanish face. It was in a ripple of pleasure; the brown, considerate eyes were sparkling, roving with quick, watchful glances over everything, and losing as few as possible of the details of the way. Talking to Mr. Thayer now and then, ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... They need not have feared that their work of defence would be impeded by her waitings and tears. There was not a cry; there was not a tear. Those who dared to look in her face saw that the fires of vengeance were consuming all that was womanish in Deesha's nature. She was the soldier to whom, under Dessalines, the successful defence of Le Zephyr was mainly owing. Dessalines gave the orders, and superintended the arrangements, which she, with a frantic courage, executed. From that hour to the day when she and her husband expired in tortures, ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... set in a strong line that was good to see. There were the patient, fearless lines of a soldier in the boy's face, and rugged strength in spite of his unusual beauty of countenance. It is not often one sees a face like Michael's. There was nothing womanish in his looks. It was rather the completeness of strength and courage combined with mighty modelling and perfection of coloring, that made men turn and look after him and look again, as though they had seen a ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... age, in whom Adrian instantly recognised Walter de Montreal. This celebrated knight was scarcely of the personal appearance which might have corresponded with the terror his name generally excited. His face was handsome, almost to the extreme of womanish delicacy. His fair hair waved long and freely over a white and unwrinkled forehead: the life of a camp and the suns of Italy had but little embrowned his clear and healthful complexion, which retained much of the bloom of youth. His features were aquiline and regular; his eyes, of a light hazel, ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... What I call womanish. But perhaps it's for the better. We have such a lot of Jacks. There's dirty Jack, and Jack the nigger, and Jack Misery,—that's poor Jack Brien;—and a lot more. Perhaps you wouldn't like not another ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... Brahmana? This, however, surpriseth me greatly that though thou leadest the Pandavas away from the path of the wise, they yet regard thee as honest. Or, perhaps, this is scarcely a matter of surprise in respect of those that have thee, O Bharata, womanish in disposition and bent down with age, for their ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... was overpowered, and dropped into a chair, covering his eyes with his hands; perhaps because he could not bear the sight of objects which called up such agonizing recollections; perhaps because his eyes were dim with too womanish a moisture. ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... worse than womanish," exclaimed his lady. "Shake them off, and be yourself. Who is to prove that the confession proceeds not from the Countess? Not she herself; since no one will believe her. Not Lord Roos; for he will be equally discredited. Not Diego; for his testimony would be valueless. The ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... and so patient, withal, that he had just then finished a sitting of three whole days to Sir Thomas Lawrence, for a portrait of his hand,—a beautiful hand, it must be acknowledged, though undecided and womanish, as if he had never quite made up his mind whether to keep ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... too a sharer in their womanish fears, Suffolk?" cried Henry. "I thought you had been made of stouter stuff. If there is danger, I shall be the first to encounter it. Come," he added, snatching a torch from an arquebusier. And, drawing his dag, he hurried up the steep steps, while Suffolk followed his example, and three ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... womanish," said Sybil, "but it is wise: for what should make us unhappy if not the sense of impending, yet ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... word, may have a spice and volupty, may have passion's cling and such like decency, so that they can incite with ticklings, I do not say boys, but bearded ones whose stiffened limbs amort lack pliancy in movement. You, because of many thousand kisses you have read, think me womanish. I will paedicate ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... folly! The idea of taking advantage of it at this late hour won't hold good in law. How contemptibly silly! men feeling fatherly after they have made property of their own children! Poor, conscientious fools, how they whine at times, never thinking how they would let their womanish feelings cheat their creditors. There's no honour ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... mother, Edith, implored, and was laughed down by Charley, who declared she could swim, and that she did not think Uncle Martyn would have been so old-womanish. Metelill was so tender and caressing with her frightened mother that I thought here at last was submission, and with a good grace. But after a turn on the esplanade among the pupils, back came Metelill in a hurry to say, "Dear mother, will ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a delicate, feeble boy; not good at work; womanish in his ways; inclined to go in for petty bullying, until a boy showed fight, when he discovered himself to be an arrant coward. Four or five years later I met him at the university. His greeting was cool. My next affair was with a boy who was ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... me. It came by post from New York in a hair-pin box, and done up in about a thousand papers-at least there were six—so I suppose Russell sent to some one in the city to do it for him; but the whole thing was awfully womanish. The address was in the most correct, copy-book-y handwriting, every point turned just so, every loop according to rule. But it came just in the nick of time, and saved me and your money. Bless your heart, how are ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... peculiarly womanish and silly. What on earth did it matter, anyway? But he had patience with her, knowing how sorely better men than he were tried by ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... a plump, thick-set man of thirty-eight in evening dress. There was nothing distinctive about him except, perhaps, his hair, which was of a decided reddish hue. He was light of complexion; his mouth was small and of a rather womanish appearance, due to the full red lips. He was well groomed, well fed, in all ways he was a typical city-bred man. He might have been a broker, though he did not carry the air of any ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... life, inasmuch as it teaches us to hate no man, neither to despise, to deride, to envy, or to be angry with any. Further, as it tells us that each should be content with his own, and helpful to his neighbour, not from any womanish pity, favour, or superstition, but solely by the guidance of reason, according as the time and occasion demand, as I will ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... not always procure for a man one penny loaf, naturally watched for any peculiar symptoms of genius in his children which might designate one of the various paths to wealth and fame, by which it would be most easy for the individual to ascend. Now it did occur that when Nicholas was yet in womanish attire, he showed a great partiality to a burning-glass, with which he contrived to do much mischief. He would burn the dog's nose as he slept in the sun before the door. His mother's gown showed proofs of his genius by sundry little ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... "Good-bye Leander." As for my father,—he was an old North Carolinian, born and reared among the Cherokee Indians at the base of the Great Smoky Mountains, and with him, and all other men of his type, any yielding to "womanish" feelings was looked on as almost disgraceful. His farewell words were few, and concise, and spoken in his ordinary tone and manner, he then turned on his ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... to be the only day left to me now for my writing. There are no idlers in the neighborhood of Casa Grande. The days are becoming incredibly long, but they still seem over-short for all there is to do. The men are much too busy on the land to give material thought to any thing so womanish as a kitchen-garden. So I have my own garden to see to. And sometimes I work there until I'm almost ready to drop. On a couple of nights, recently, when it came watering-time, even these endless evenings had slipped into such darkness that I could scarcely see ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... come and see me again, she promised, and then I shall talk with her more. I couldn't get at her through the people yesterday. She is very nice, gentle-looking, cheerful, respectable sort of—single-womanish person (decidedly single) of the olden type; very small, slim, quiet, with the nearest approach to a poky bonnet possible in this sinful generation. I, in my confusion, did not glance at her petticoats, but, judging a priori, I should predicate a natural ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... and the drab lounge was drawn a little into the room, and the bureau stood corner-ways, with a bottle of cologne upon it, which John had bought, and a pot of pomade Andy had made, and two little pink and white mats Melinda had crocheted, the room was very presentable. Great, womanish Andy was sure Ethelyn would be pleased, and rubbed his hands jubilantly over the result of his labors, while Melinda was certainly pardonable for feeling that in return for what she had done for Richard's wife she might venture to suggest that the huge box, ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... the minstrel, With womanish hair and ring, Yet heavy was his hand on sword, Though light ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... at me, made no answer and walked on in the same direction. I did not want to be left behind. I wanted to give Varvara Petrovna my version. I could have forgiven him if he had simply with his womanish faint-heartedness believed Liputin, but now it was clear that he had thought of it all himself long before, and that Liputin had only confirmed his suspicions and poured oil on the flames. He had not hesitated to suspect the girl from the very first day, before ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... do take possession of my bosome. Reade heere yong Arthur. How now foolish rheume? Turning dispitious torture out of doore? I must be breefe, least resolution drop Out at mine eyes, in tender womanish teares. Can you not reade it? Is it not faire writ? Ar. Too fairely Hubert, for so foule effect, Must you with hot Irons, burne out both mine eyes? ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... suit the sound to European capacity,—showing that in this, likewise, he possessed a genuine American element of character. Lafayette thought much of him, used his pen freely, and listened to his advice. The Marquis, warm-hearted, honest, but endowed with little judgment and a womanish vanity, was trying to make himself the Washington of a French federative republic, and felt happy in having secured the experienced services of Mr. Paine. He wrote to his great master,—"'Common Sense' is writing a book for you, and there you ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... him cowed, because in his long life he had known it to be the only reality in the world of men. And in that world he had known the only reality to be that if you didn't cut the other fellow's throat first he would cut yours. There wasn't any other reality. He had heard impractical, womanish men say there was, and try to prove it, only to have their economic throats cut considerably more promptly than any others. He had done his little indirect share of the throat-cutting always. He was not denying the need to do it. ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... look. The feeling I had first had in respect to it never came back again in its first force; and when I looked at it with the refreshment of rest in my own heart, and the brightness of the clean-washed earth and heaven about it and above it, I could afford to smile at the womanish foreboding and chill ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... was "broken" like the wretched soldier whom I did not stay to see. He has been rehabilitated, however, by an age which does not fear the imputation of paradox, and a marble statue of him ornaments the street in front of his house. To interpret him according to this image—a womanish figure in a long robe and a turban, with big bare arms and a dramatic pose—would be to think of him as a kind of truculent sultana. He wore the dress of his period, but his spirit was very modern; he was a Vanderbilt or a Rothschild of the fifteenth century. He supplied ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... down so suddenly, the rail almost broke. I thought the truth was, that he had heart trouble, himself. He stopped up, choked on things, flopped around, and turned so white. I suppose he thought it was womanish, and a sign of weakness, and so he didn't tell, but I bet anything ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... very foolish, womanish question, seeing that he was holding letters in his hand; ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... a womanish aggrievement at his having left her to undo her own things. And the rooms were horrible—the meagre appliances—the course cotton sheets, the awful Reckitt's-blue colouring of the painted walls. And then the dreadful noise ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... novel into chapel to read, not out of any respect for some people's old-womanish twaddle about the sacredness of the place,—but because some of the blues might see you.—Yale Lit. ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... Bounteous, who lends at the ordinary Interest, to give Men of less Fortune Opportunities of making greater Advantages. He conceals, under a rough Air and distant Behaviour, a bleeding Compassion and womanish Tenderness. This is governed by the most exact Circumspection, that there is no Industry wanting in the Person whom he is to serve, and that he is guilty of no improper Expences. This I know of Tom, but who dare say it of so known a Tory? The same Care I was forced ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... silent. Her little womanish airs of the last few months, the quaint effort of dignity with which it seemed to have pleased her to add all that was possible to her years, had wholly departed. She was a child again, with frightened eyes and ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... heard of his praying—how under the cover of his cant about saving souls he scatters his old-womanish ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... wilderness is not to be undone by fickle fingers, however dainty, nor a strong life blown out by a girl's caprice! Riders went clanking past. I did not turn. Let those that honoured dishonour doff hats to that company of loose women and dissolute men! Hortense was welcome to the womanish men and the mannish women, to her dandified lieutenant and foreign adventuresses and grand ambassadors, who bought English honour with the smiles of evil women. Coming to a high stone wall, I saw two riders galloping across the open field for ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... Anne drove out of his head by begging him, in moving terms of self-reproach, to forgive her her weakness. She had regained her composure as abruptly, if not as completely, as she had lost it; and would have had him believe that the passion he had witnessed was less deep than it seemed, and rather a womanish need of tears than a proof of suffering. A minute later she was quietly preparing the evening meal, while he, with a sick heart, raised the shutters and lighted the lamp. As he looked up from the latter task, he found her eyes fixed upon him, with a peculiar intentness: ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... by my brother Alfred, now a handsome, self-confident man of six-and-twenty—a thorough contrast to my fragile, nervous, ineffectual self. I believe I was held to have a sort of half- womanish, half-ghostly beauty; for the portrait-painters, who are thick as weeds at Geneva, had often asked me to sit to them, and I had been the model of a dying minstrel in a fancy picture. But I thoroughly disliked my own physique and nothing but the belief that it was a condition of poetic ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... in the awful mysteries of medical science, and by no means the sort of man to whom one would have imagined Philip Sheldon appealing for help, when he found his own skill at fault. But then it must be remembered that Mr. Sheldon had only summoned the stranger in compliance with what he considered a womanish whim. ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... younger by some years, Oskatell was generally considered by the world as the future husband of Isabella; but Sir Thomas, aware of danger on this head, early impressed them with some notion of consanguinity, and intimated the impossibility of their union. This prohibition, settling on a womanish fancy, might naturally have been expected to operate in a manner the reverse of his intention. Yet we do not find from history that Isabella ever cherished for him any other sentiments than those ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... before the congregation, and I wad say to the minister, 'Lift voice against them and spare not!' And I wad be there the day and in my seat, though my heart o' flesh was like to break!" His hand fell again heavily upon the board. "Sae weak and womanish is thae time we live in!" He flashed at his great-nephew. "Sae poetical! It wasna sae when the Malignants drove us and we fled to the hills and were fed on the muirs with the word of the Lord! It wasna sae in the time when Gawin Elliot that Glenfernie draws frae was hanged for gieing ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... sixty champions, of which the Douglas's equerry told us yesterday? It were a sight for a minstrel to witness. But out upon these womanish eyes of mine—they could never see swords cross each other without being dazzled. But see—look yonder, May Catharine—look yonder! That flying messenger certainly brings news ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... of a tartan kilt, which she told me she had adopted from a picture representing a highlander, as the most feminine military dress. What would the Gordons and MacDonalds say to this? The "garb of old Gaul," chosen as a womanish attire!—Her father is a Portuguese, named Gonsalvez de Almeida, and possesses a farm on the Rio do Pex, in the parish of San Jose, in the Certa[)o], about forty leagues inland from Cachoeira. Her mother was also a Portuguese; yet the young ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... send that nephew of yours to learn a few things in the army," the General said to Monsieur Joseph, when they at last rose and left the dining-room. "He will grow up nothing but an ignorant, womanish baby, if you keep him down here ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... brother under my command Like her, a face as womanish as hers, But with a spirit that hath much out-grown The number ...
— The Maids Tragedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... said. "The question calls him straight to mind. A lean-locked, womanish countenance; sickly, yet never sick; timid, yet most obdurate; more sly than politic. An ignis fatuus, sir, in a world of soldiers." His eye wandered.... "'Twas a marvellous sanative air, crisp and pure; but for him, one draught and outer ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... tongue, despite the warning sent her through her uncle, had that face much as a leaden winter landscape pretends to be the country radiant in colour. She belonged to the order of the variable animals—a woman indeed!—womanish enough in that. There are men who love women—the idea of woman. Woman is their shepherdess of sheep. He loved freedom, loathed the subjection of a partnership; could undergo it only in adoration of an ineffable ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the weeping girl, and said in a tone of vexation: "This then must be the return that I get for all my indulgence, That at the close of the day this most irksome of all things should happen! For there is naught I can tolerate less than womanish weeping, Violent outcries, which only involve in disorder and passion, What with a little of sense had been more smoothly adjusted. Settle the thing for yourselves: I'm going to bed; I've no patience Longer to be a spectator of these your marvellous doings." Quickly he turned as ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... the altar, or stooped at painful labour through the stifling days, which did not show a gleam. Stupid, vacant, vicious, morose, pretty, sparkling, whatever the face might be, there was that expectation to redeem or enhance it, to make it human, to make it womanish. There was, or there would be, some day, any day, a lover outside—to whom it would be the face of ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... and tumult and wonder and homage in the city was for Signa; princes seemed almost like his servants, the king like his henchman! Bruno was proud, under his stern, calm, lofty bearing, which would not change, and would not let him smile, or seem so womanish-weak as to be glad for ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... your indolence and feebleness of mind, waiting the one upon the other, you hesitate, relying, I presume, on the protection of the Immortals, who have so many times preserved this republic in its greatest dangers. The aid of the Gods is not gained by prayers or womanish supplication. To those who watch, who act, who take counsel, wisely, all things turn out successful. Yield yourselves up to idleness and sloth, and in vain you shall implore the Gods—they ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... and varied, of the accomplished secretary, whose smile of contempt at the unconquerable personage before him and his "devout imaginations" is often mingled with that same exasperation which drove Mary to the womanish refuge of tears. But no one could move him. And at last the day, or rather night, of ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... which Weldon had struggled back into camp. The battle, the half-dressed wounds, the nerve-racking journey, the watching the slow approach of death and the accepting the fact of the loss of a valued friend: all these were enough to wreck the vitality of a man. With an almost womanish tenderness, Carew had brought his friend back to the tent, and made him over to the care of Paddy who gave up all things else, for the sake of his little Canuck. All that afternoon and night, Weldon ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... why women were always so absurdly afraid of the doctor's eye. As if the doctor would care! Moreover, the room was being tidied for the doctor, not for the invalid! The invalid didn't matter! When she came to him with a bowl of water, soap, and a towel, he loathed the womanish scheme of being ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... a womanish vein in the man that he should press me in this fashion for a useless answer. I began to see his weakness as well as his obvious strength. I waited till he asked ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... be answered by his friend's listening silence, would have told himself that it was the face of a guilty priest who heard confessions of those whom he had not power to absolve but that he felt again in memory the gaze of its dark womanish eyes. ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... He might easily have felled her to the ground with one stroke, but he contented himself with merely warding off the blows she aimed at him. From his great height and strength, he was easily able to do this, and she struck at him with her little womanish arms as ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... her womanish enthusiasm had overshot her mark. The laws were strong, but this wild savage's nature was as untamed and fearless as any beast of the field. It was her tone of triumph ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... to fetch her in the morning, he would find her to appearance dead; that then she would be borne, as the manner in that country was, uncovered, on a bier, to be buried in the family vault; that if she could put off womanish fear, and consent to this terrible trial, in forty-two hours after swallowing the liquid (such was its certain operation) she would be sure to awake, as from a dream; and before she should awake, he would let her husband know their drift, and he ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... crushed the letter in her hand. All pretence of incredulity was gone. She began to walk stormily up and down. Doris sank back in her chair, watching her, conscious of the most strangely mingled feelings, a touch of womanish triumph indeed, a pleasing sense of retribution, but, welling up through it, something profound and tender. If he should ever write such a letter to a stranger, ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... makes M. Portius Cato say this: The help of the gods is not obtained by idle vows and womanish complaints; 'tis by vigilance, labour, and repeated endeavours that all things succeed according to our wishes and designs. If a man in time of need and danger is negligent, heartless, and lazy, in vain he implores the gods; they are ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... demanded Frank, who took an instant dislike to this softly smiling fellow with the womanish voice and gentle ways. "What do ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... sin of the father on the son, innocent, I think you called him, then he deserves what his own hand deals out to himself. But we have talked too much already. I ask you to remember your oath, for I have told you this so that you will not bring ridicule upon me by a womanish appeal to my own men, who would but laugh at you in any case and think me a dotard in allowing women overmuch to say in the camp. Get you back to your women, for we move camp instantly. Even if I were to relent, as you term it, the time is past, for Wilhelm is either dangling from the walls ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... Alexander, Blubbering because he had no job in hand, Acting the hypocrite, or else the gander, With Sam, whose grief we all can understand? His crying was not womanish, nor plann'd For exhibition; but his heart o'erswelled With its own agony, when he the grand, Natural arrangements for a jump beheld. And measuring the cascade, ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... tremendous opposites. Such, in their way, are the two halves of this story, rightly looked at; on the Italian side rugged adventure, strong passion, blasphemy, vice, penitence, pure ice, holy snow, soaring direct at heaven. On the Dutch side, all on a humble scale and womanish, but ever green. And as a pathway parts the ice towers of Grindelwald, aspiring to the sky, from its little sunny braes, so here is but ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... "You are very womanish. If the whole affair were coolly examined and discussed, I feel assured it would turn out that there is no danger of your dying ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... angry with my nephew for years, you know that, and you know my nature," he said sharply, all the more so to hide his feelings. "When I wrote that letter I meant every word of it, and as many more of the same kind, but some womanish weakness afterwards possessed me, and on the day that I heard of his death, I had a letter written to him, containing the ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... enough to cure a dozen weak women. She's always too weak to exercise, lies in bed two days out of three, reads and sometimes writes a letter or two. But before Christmas comes (you know she is mighty cunning with her fingers; she can sew and embroider and make all sorts of pretty, womanish things) she works so hard making presents that she's just clear done out for the next two months and won't leave her room for weeks. That's about all she does from one year's end to another, but complain of her sickness, and of late years criticize the rest of us and dictate ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... woman's religion, invented by women and womanish men for themselves. The Church's one foundation is not Christ, as is commonly said, it is woman; and calling the Madonna the Queen of Heaven is only a poetical way of acknowledging that women are the main support ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... would deplore the misfortune of the university as well as of the whole of Christendom, in that sophists had usurped the place of theologians, and slanderers the seat of Christian doctors. As for the silly letter prefixed to the decree, the reformer wrote, it is a feeble production full of womanish fury: "He pretends to the sole possession of wisdom. He contemns us. He is a Manichaean, a Montanist; he is mad. Let him be compelled by fire and flame." Who could refrain from derisive laughter at the unmanly and truly ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... brother, I was never mistress of my thoughts. His boisterous, negligent, contemptuous manners awed, irritated, embarrassed me. To say any thing which implied censure of his morals or his prudence would be only raising a storm wrhich my womanish spirit could not withstand. In answer to his expostulations, I only repeated, "Impossible! ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... very week before she died," Mrs. Hunt's voice dropped, "and you can believe, Maria Otway, that if I had it to do over again, the purple frock would have gone in the fire before she should ever have worn it. Poor little darling, the girls made fun of it because it was so ugly and old-womanish. I could have spared her feelings and I didn't. I have that purple frock now," she went on. "I kept it to remind me not to hurt the feelings of one of His little ones when there was no need to." The tears were ...
— Little Maid Marian • Amy E. Blanchard |
