"Childless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Strange! by the means defeated of the ends, By spirit robbed of power, by warmth of friends, By wealth of followers! without one distress, Sick of herself through very selfishness! Atossa, cursed with every granted prayer, Childless with all her children, wants an heir. To heirs unknown descends th' unguarded store, Or wanders, Heaven-directed, to the poor. Pictures like these, dear Madam, to design, Asks no firm hand, and no unerring line; Some wandering touches, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... in public and in private life would afford me more sincere pleasure than your own. You have every advantage. All you have to do is to go straight ahead, without unnecessarily treading upon other people's toes. I know you will think, if you don't say, 'What impudence it is for this childless old bachelor of sixty years of age to undertake to give me advice! Why don't he mind his own business?' General Jackson once told me that he knew a man in Tennessee who had got rich by minding his own business; but still I urged him, and at last with success, ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... say it unto thee, O Spitama Zoroaster! the man who has a wife is far above him who lives in continence; he who keeps a house is far above him who has none; he who has children is far above the childless man; he who has riches is far above ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... When he is childless will be happier. As for the State, I think our state of Florence Needs no adulterous pilot at its helm. Your life ...
— A Florentine Tragedy—A Fragment • Oscar Wilde
... me you owe her: Childless you had been else, and in the grave Your name extinct; no more Priuli heard of. You may remember, scarce five years are past, Since in your brigantine you sailed to see, The Adriatic wedded by our duke; And I was with you: your unskilful pilot Dashed ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway
... her to kiss the child in passionate fashion, feigning the emotion of a woman who regrets that she is childless. "Yes; indeed one regrets it very much when one sees such a treasure as this sweet girl of yours. Ah! if one could only be sure that God would give one such a charming child—well, at all events, I ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... Katherine, after a moment's silence, "would not my father's brother, of whom I heard you speak, help you? It is dreadful to ask, but he is so near a kinsman, and childless." ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... Liberty stood By the childless charm-stricken bed Where, barren of glory and good, Knowing nought if she would not or would, ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... for the restoration of the Bourbons; the Orleanists for the elevation of the heir of Louis-Philippe. A union of these two branches of the Monarchists is not impossible, since the Count of Chambord, the Bourbon heir, is childless, and his elevation to the throne would be only a postponement of the claims of the House of Orleans. The Revolutionists of all classes have a large majority in the Assembly, but not the requisite constitutional ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... old saw framed in ancient days In memories of men, that high estate, Full grown, brings forth its young, nor childless dies, But that from good success Springs to the race a woe insatiable. But I, apart from all, Hold this my creed alone: Ill deeds along bring forth offspring of ill Like to ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... central sun and light of their being eclipsed in mysterious darkness! Think, (as you are now perusing these pages,) throughout the wide world, how many breaking hearts there are—how loud the wail of suffering humanity, could we but hear it!—those written childless and fatherless, and friendless and homeless!—Bethany-processions pacing with slow and measured step to deposit their earthly all in the cold custody of the tomb! Think of the Marys and Marthas who are now "going to some grave to weep ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... and fruit, O Spitama Zarathustra! who waters ground that is dry, or drains ground that is too wet. Unhappy is the land that has long lain unsown with the seed of the sower and wants a good husbandman, like a well-shapen maiden who has long gone childless and wants a good husband. He who would till the earth, O Spitama Zarathustra! with the left arm and the right, with the right arm and the left, unto him will she bring forth plenty of fruit: even as it ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... rebellion, the memory of the men who gave it to us, the untold blessings it has conferred upon us, the support it has given to constitutional liberty everywhere, the gratitude we owe to Washington, whom Providence, it has been said, left childless, that his country might call him father, will all unite in making that allegiance a pleasure as well as a duty. To be false to such a Government, to palter even with the treason that seeks its downfall, to associate with the wicked men or the madmen who are in arms against it, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... frankness about herself often confused Harmony. Her resentment at her single condition, because it left her childless, brought forth theories that shocked and alarmed the girl. In the atmosphere in which Harmony had been reared single women were always presumed to be thus by choice and to regard with certain tolerance those weaker sisters who had married. Anna, on the contrary, was frankly ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... to have been a cold-hearted, interested, ignorant, disagreeable woman, upon whom the tenderness of Pope's heart in the desolation of his latter days was cast away, not knowing whither to turn, as he drew towards his premature old age, childless and lonely,—like the needle which, approaching within a certain distance of the pole, becomes helpless and useless, and ceasing to tremble, rusts. She seems to have been so totally unworthy of tenderness, that it is an additional proof of the kindness ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... ANTOINE GABRIEL, Duc de (1760-1838), French soldier, was brought up at Chanteloup, under the care of his relative, Etienne Francois, duc de Choiseul, who was childless. The outbreak of the Revolution found him a colonel of dragoons, and throughout those troublous times he was distinguished for his devotion to the royal house. He took part in the attempt of Louis XVI. to escape from Paris on the 20th of June 1791; was arrested with the king, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... Mrs. Furnace took the risk with a cheerful mind. The woman came from Saltash, where she and her mother had driven a thriving trade in cockles and other shellfish, particularly with the Royal Marines; and being a busy spirit and childless, she hit on the notion of turning her old trade to account. Her husband, William John, had tilled Merry-Garden and stocked it with fruits and sallets with no eye but to the sale of them in Saltash market. But the house was handy for pleasure-takers ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... but Charles's wife had left him two sons,—Louis Antoine, known as the Duc d'Angouleme, and Charles Ferdinand, known as the Duc de Berri. The Duc d'Angouleme had married his cousin Marie Therese, daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette. Their union was childless. The Duc de Berri had married Marie Caroline, a princess of Naples. She had two children,—Louise, who when she grew up became Duchess of Parma; and Henri, called variously the Duc de Bordeaux, Henri V., ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... evening we, childless parents, were sitting silently together in the cottage; neither of us had any desire to talk, even had our tears allowed us. We sat gazing into the fire on the hearth. Presently, we heard something rustling outside the door: ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... gray as the snows around him sown. He hovers over a fire of pine, Spicy and cheering; toward the line Of the towering peaks he lifts his eyes. "I'd rather have a boy with shining hair, To bear my name, than all your share Of earth's red gold," he said; And died, a loveless, childless man, Before ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... thinks it means, and Senator Reed gets through thinking what HE thinks it means, understand me, that League of Nations covenant will have as many different meanings as the contested last will and testament of a childless millionaire who has married a telephone operator on his death-bed to spite his ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... for he felt with wonder women's woe in the travail that they have of motherhood and he wondered to look on her face that was a fair face for any man to see but yet was she left after long years a handmaid. Nine twelve bloodflows chiding her childless. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... "Childless art thou? dead thy children? leaving thee to want and dool? Less thy misery than his is, who ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... treachery of the Court of Rome, had inspired her with feelings of devotion towards the last of her household which almost bordered on insanity. And, now that her beloved charge, her innocent victim, her future warrior, had, after all her struggles for his preservation, pined and died; now that she was childless indeed; now that Roman cruelty had won its end in spite of all her patience, all her courage, all her endurance; every noble feeling within her sunk, annihilated at the shock. Her sorrow took the fatal form which irretrievable destroys, in women, all the softer ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... successors: wills they make none: for want of children his next akin inherits; his own brothers, those of his father, or those of his mother. To ancient men, the more they abound in descendants, in relations and affinities, so much the more favour and reverence accrues. From being childless, no ...
— Tacitus on Germany • Tacitus
... many could not be induced to proceed farther than Salamis. It was necessary for Themistocles to use all his art and all his eloquence on this occasion. The oracle at Delphi had told the Athenians that "the divine Salamis would make women childless,"—yet, "when all was lost, a wooden wall should still shelter the Athenians." Themistocles told his countrymen that these words clearly indicated a fleet and a naval victory as the only means of safety. Some however ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... more than this, it would have reached something profoundly natural and perfectly ideal. In patriarchal ages men feel it is enough to have inherited their human patrimony, to have enjoyed it, and to hand it down unimpaired. He who is not childless goes down to his grave in peace. Reason may afterward come to larger vistas and more spiritual aims, but the principle of love and responsibility will not be altered. It will demand that wills be made ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... by two of his affectionate friends—John Worthington who edited his Discourses, and Simon Patrick who delivered the remarkable sermon on the occasion of his funeral.[4] From these sources we learn that John Smith was born at Achurch near Oundle about the year 1618, "of parents who had long been childless and were grown aged." It appears incidentally that his parents were poor, and that Benjamin Whichcote, who was Smith's college Tutor, made "provision for his support and maintenance" in his early student days.[5] He entered Emmanuel College in 1636, and here he came under the profound religious and ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... been built without loss of time and at very little expense. A number of children had been born to the soil, while the natives were as loyal to their master as subjects in the days of feudalism. There was but one thing lacking to fill the cup to overflowing—the ranchero was childless. Possessed with a love of the land so deep as to be almost his religion, he felt the need of ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... poisoned by his uncle Lodovico. Lodovico was imprisoned by the French, and died of grief in a dungeon.[1] One of his sons perished in the same way; the other, after years of misery and exile, was restored in his childless old age to a throne which had been undermined, and when he died, his dynasty was extinct. This was the recompense for the treason of Francesco to the State of Milan. It was for such successes that he passed his life in perfidy, privation, and danger.' ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... astrologer that cast her figure gave no hope of her amendment should this day pass and never a husband. Who would yoke with a colt untamed? O Timothy! it were well nigh to make an old man weep. I am a withered trunk. Better had I been childless than have this proud ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Carrie, at once taking this twinkle-eyed childless father into her confidence. "I'm waiting for my mamma. When she comes she'll give me my supper and put ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... some show of a legitimate "Authority" with whom she could treat. This was as easy to find as it was to the Huguenots in the case of Conde. Chatelherault and Arran, native princes, next heirs to the crown while Mary was childless, could be produced as legitimate "Authority." But to do this implied a change of "Authority," an upsetting of "Authority," which was plain rebellion in the opinion of the Genevan doctors. Knox was ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... how fortuitous the inspiration by which I had chanced on discovery. The delay of a single day, the occurrence of the slightest mishap, might have been fatal not to him only but to the best interests of France; which his death at a time when he was still childless must have plunged into the ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... the likeness to a "colossal clergyman," never seemed to go with any kind of furniture, wall- paper, or indoor company where there were strangers who might pester him. His physical vigour endured, though when nearing sixty he is said to have lamented that he was childless, saying mournfully: "I shall soon not be able to knock a man down, and I have no son to do it for me." {314a} No record remains of his knocking any man down. But, at seventy, he could have walked off with E. J. Trelawny, Shelley's friend, under his arm, ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... distinct but still not to be mistaken for anything else, of two people, a husband and wife, who are living somewhere in a large newly built house. The husband is a man of, I suppose, about forty— the wife is a trifle younger, and they are childless. The husband is an active, well-built man with light, almost golden hair, rather coarse in texture, and with a pointed beard of the same hue. He has fine, clean-cut, muscular hands, and he wears, as I see him, a rough, rather shabby suit of light, homespun cloth. The ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Chester and lords of Mold. Roger de Montalt inherited Hawarden, Coventry, and Castle Rising, and married Julian, daughter of Roger de Clifford, Justiciary of Chester and North Wales, who was captured at the storming of the Castle by Llewelyn, in 1281. Robert de Montalt the last lord, died childless {8} in 1329, when the barony became extinct. He it was who signed the celebrated letter to the Pope in ...
— The Hawarden Visitors' Hand-Book - Revised Edition, 1890 • William Henry Gladstone
... turned for the placid joys of the fireside, the love of devoted and faithful wife, the homage and affection of children, the prattle and playful sports of children's children—homeless, wifeless, childless he stood at the border of the boundless sea, soldier duty pointing the way to far distant, unknown and undesired regions, content to follow that flag to the end of the world, if need be, and owning no higher hope or ambition than to uphold it to ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... pestilence, Te hally Sent-Ruke[43] thea mun call far assistance. Fra paril of drawning Sent Carp keep the mariners: Fra dayng in warfare Sent George guard the soldiers: Sent Job heal the poor, the ague Sent German: For te ease the toothache call te Sent Appolline[44]. Gif that a woman be barren and childless, Te help her herein she must prea te Sent Nicholas. Far wemen in travail call to Sent Magdalen; Far lawliness of mind call to Sent Katherine, Sent Loy save your horse, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... of Children, Ran before the Sheikh a Fellow Crying out, "Oh hear and help me! Pray to Allah from my Clay To raise me up a fresh young Cypress, Who my Childless Eyes may lighten With the Beauty of his Presence." Said the Sheikh, "Be wise, and leave it Wholly in the Hand of Allah, Who, whatever we are after, Understands our Business best." But the Man persisted, ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Jarvie retired from the firm in 1906; and John Arbuckle and his nephew W.A. Jamison continued it as sole owners and partners until Mr. Arbuckle's death in 1912. Mr. Arbuckle died childless and a widower, leaving as his only heirs his two sisters, Mrs. Catherine Arbuckle Jamison and Miss Christina Arbuckle. Mrs. Jamison is the widow of the late Robert Jamison, who had been a prominent drygoods merchant in Pittsburg. William A. Jamison is her eldest and only living son. Following ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... substance, gun-men, the athletic, the diseased, fat crooks, thin crooks, saloon-keepers and policemen, Italians and Slavs, short noses and long (many—many of them), two clergymen, two bankers, sharp-eyed children, married women who were childless, unmarried women who weren't—and all these came trembling and with but the one thought: "Is he going to tell what he knows ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... the following terms: I was born, said he, at Moussol, and come of one of the most considerable families in the city. My father was the eldest of ten brothers that were all alive, and all married, when my grandfather died. All the brothers were childless but my father, and he had never a child but me. He took particular care of my education, and made me learn every thing that was proper for a child ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... requiring military service for unattested single men and childless widowers of military age introduced by PRIME MINISTER. Blandly explained that it is not necessarily compulsory. If this class of citizen who has hitherto held back now likes to come forward and enlist he may do so under the Group ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 • Various
... once an old couple who always prayed for a child, for they had always been childless. No matter how it looked, whether deformed or ugly, they must have a child. So after a short time they saw that their prayers would be answered, and in the course of nature a child was born, but the mother ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... the family—consisting of Mrs. Sherwood and her brother's childless widow; Gussie and Dexie, twin girls of sixteen; Louie, aged thirteen, Georgie ten, Flossie three, and a year-old baby in the arms of black Dinah—arrived in Halifax, ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... "Love, pity, sorrow, anger, and desire Of death and vengeance, all together rend And rack the childless and unhappy sire, Who groans like sea, when wind and waves contend: Towards the dame, with vengeful thoughts afire, He goes, but sees that life is at an end; And, goaded by his rage and hatred hot, Seeks to offend her corse ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... the boy. In entering this compact, the man gives up nothing that he before possessed—he is a man still; while the legal existence of the woman is suspended during marriage, and henceforth she is known but in and through the husband. She is nameless, purseless, childless—though a woman, an heiress, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the Elixir of Life,—the Philosopher's Stone. The wealth, that should have fed the poor, was melted in his crucibles. Within these walls the Eagle of the clouds sucked the blood of the Red Lion, and received the spiritual Love of the Green Dragon, but alas! was childless. In solitude and utter silence did the disciple of the Hermetic Philosophy toil from day to day, from night to night. From the place where thou standest, he gazed at evening upon hills, and vales, and waters spread beneath ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... tooth in her head. And the queen said to her, "Old woman, tell me that which I shall ask thee, for the love of Heaven. Where are the children of the man who has carried me away by violence?" Said the crone, "He has not children." Said the queen, "Woe is me, that I should have come to one who is childless!" Then said the hag, "Thou needest not lament on account of that, for there is a prediction he shall have an heir by thee, and by none other. Moreover, be not sorrowful, for ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... unhappily rendered sie a displeasure as that. Ye were right to apprize me, Glennaquoich; he may look as black as midnight at Martinmas ere Cosmo Comyne Bradwardine shall say he does him wrang. Ah! I have nae male lineage, and I should bear with one I have made childless, though you are aware the blood-wit was made up to your ain satisfaction by assythment, and that I have since expedited letters of slains.—Weel, as I have said, I have no male issue, and yet it is needful that I maintain the honour of my house; and it is on that score I prayed ye for ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... one. (No man ever yet gave his heart to two women.) She was a gentle-spoken, thoughtful woman, with a deep, earnest spirit. But she had a disappointment which grew in intensity as it continued. The desire of her heart had been withheld. She was childless. ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... cannot sleep at night; when she is young, for fear she should be seduced; in her virginity lest she play the harlot; in her marriageable age, lest she should not get married; and when married, lest she should be childless; and when grown ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... heart distraught for him; * Longing abides and with sore pains I brim: I mourn like childless mother, nor can find * One to console me when the light grows dim; Yet when the breezes blow from off thy land, * I feel their freshness shed on heart and limb; And rail mine eyes like water-laden clouds, * While in a tear-sea shed ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... Poulter had been happily married, although childless; also, that his wife had died of a chill caught by walking home, insufficiently clad, from an "All Night" in bleak weather. For all the pain that her absence caused in his life, he looked bravely, confidently forward (sometimes with tears in his eyes) to when they should meet ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... Rachel spoke of this conversation to her husband, she learnt that it was the first time that he had ever talked of those buried hopes. He had often spoken of his wife, but though always fond of children, few who had not read little Una's name beneath her mother's cross, knew that he was a childless father. And yet it was beautiful to see the pleasure he took in the touch of Bessie's infant, and how skilfully and tenderly he would hold it, so that Rachel in full faith averred that the little Alexander was never so happy as with him. The chief alarms came from Mrs Comyn ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Keith lightly, though she had long been a childless widow and had silvery hair. Tall and finely made, with prominent nose and piercing eyes, she was marked by a certain stateliness and a decided manner. She was blunt without rudeness, and though often forceful was seldom arrogant. Careless ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... would like to have carried his inquiries further, but desisted. His heart was full of compassion for this childless old man, doomed to have his choicest memories disturbed by cruel doubts which possibly would never be removed to his ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... the Mosaic law, was to raise seed to a deceased brother, who left a widow childless. The Indian custom looks the very same way; but in this as in their law of blood, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... I know, had not before been formulated—that John Paul assumed the name of Jones in testamentary succession to his brother William Paul, who had preceded him to America; and that William Paul had himself taken the name in testamentary succession to one William Jones, a childless old planter of Middlesex County, Virginia, who bequeathed to the said William Paul an extensive plantation on the Rappahannock, some nine miles below Urbana, at a place called Jones's Wharf, on condition that he call himself Jones. In 1805 this Jones property was owned by members of ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... worry and fret over things that others do toward us, it is often an incentive to them to try to make us trouble. We see a good illustration of this in the life of Hannah. Elkanah had two wives. Peninnah had a number of children, but Hannah was childless. Peninnah took advantage of this to reproach Hannah, and it is said she "provoked her sore, to make her fret" (1 Sam. 1: 6). There are some people who delight in twitting others about some fault or physical defect, or because of lack of ability or something ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... hurriedly in her hand, and put it out of sight. She looked up with a smile of welcome; he was the "apple of her eye," the darling of her life, the Benjamin of her childless old age—the ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... be childless now," he said, "but for your kindness; and you know that words would but mock ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... her hand, instead of putting it into her mouth. But has not this habit of obedience a higher office than this? It is the first yielding of the untrained will to rightful authority, and as such, has an immense significance. The mother who cannot train her daughters and sons to obedience were better childless, for she is but giving to her country elements of weakness, not elements of strength. She is furnishing future inmates for jails, penitentiaries, and prisons, and putting arms into the hands of the enemies of law and order. And yet, how can a woman who has no clear ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... it? Methinks in so plain a case I should be able to convince him. You say he is rich and childless. His annual income is ten times more than this sum. Your brother cannot pay the debt while in prison; whereas, if at liberty, he might slowly and finally discharge it. If his humanity would not yield, his avarice might be ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... childless men who, in furtherance of their own greatness, had cut themselves adrift from the sweet and simple things of life and from the kindly ways of their brethren, and had grown old in unhappy and profitless wisdom, knew that an inscrutable Providence had led them, as it had led three ...
— A Christmas Mystery - The Story of Three Wise Men • William J. Locke
... dead Alfonso was to be replaced by another and greater Alfonso. Scarcely was the Duke of Biselli interred before a new alliance was planned. As early as November, 1500, there was talk of Lucretia's marrying the hereditary Prince of Ferrara, who, since 1497, had been a widower; he was childless, and was just twenty-four years of age. Marino Zorzi, the new Venetian ambassador, first mentioned the project to his signory November 26th. This union, however, had been considered in the Vatican much earlier—in ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... homosexual. Bacon had many friendships with men, but there is no evidence that he was ever in love or cherished any affectionate intimacy with a woman. Women play no part at all in his life. His marriage, which was childless, took place at the mature age of 46; it was effected in a business-like manner, and though he always treated his wife with formal consideration it is probable that he neglected her, and certain that he failed to ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... small cares, and one great grief: that they were childless. But she never troubled her husband with her sorrow, taking care to bear it alone. He had bothers enough in the service; how often did she not hear his voice storming outside! He should have peace at home. One thing only she could not bear without complaining to him: the terrible quarrellings ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... great and stirring event in their tranquil lives, when a maternal uncle, as if to vindicate the fidelity of old romance, did actually return from India to his native land with a large fortune. Mr Elliston, a childless widower, took up his abode at a watering-place, and sent for his eldest niece, Miss Bonderlay. She promptly obeyed the summons, and of course it was generally reported, and with some colouring, that the bulk of the nabob's fortune would be hers if she ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... after all, the best judge for himself. Of course he is; and in time I know I shall be able to thank God he made this choice, but just now—just to-night—it seems to me I come nearer to envying you your childless wifehood than I would ever ...
— The Smart Set - Correspondence & Conversations • Clyde Fitch
... the childless widow of a Common Councilman of London, one morning met the Twins in the village. They greeted her politely and made to escape. But she was in the mood, her most constant mood, to babble. She stopped them, and with a knowing air, and ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... increasing their power. You see, wherever troops are withdrawn they commit murders, and no notice is taken of it. I feel as though my son's life and thousands of other precious lives have been sacrificed for nothing." I could say but little to comfort that poor, broken-hearted, widowed, childless mother. I could only commend her to our Heavenly Father, who alone can console ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... first be drawn about both Sweden and Spain. The former was apparently secure, for Gustavus IV, having nearly ruined his country by persisting in the English alliance, had made way for his uncle, who now ruled as Charles XIII under the protection of Napoleon. The new King, being childless, had selected as his successor Marshal Bernadotte, whose kindly dealings with the Pomeranians had endeared him to all Swedes. The estates of Sweden, remembering that he had married a sister of Joseph Bonaparte's wife, and recalling ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... corridors glittered at last upon the uplands of his mind; the place, for all that its expansion was terminated abruptly by our collapse, is wonderful enough as it stands,—that empty instinctive building of a childless man. His chief architect was a young man named Westminster, whose work he had picked out in the architecture room of the Royal Academy on account of a certain grandiose courage in it, but with him he associated ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... Husband's Nationality? Who Shall Choose the Domicile? Shall the Married Woman Earn Outside the Home? Economic Considerations Involved. Is It Bad Form to Earn After Marriage? Shall Parenthood be Chosen? Some People Have a Right to Marry and Remain Childless. What is the Just Financial Basis of the Household? What Shall be the Accepted Standard of Living? The Need for Full and Mutual Understanding Before Marriage. The Supreme Satisfactions of Successful ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... question of former extension. In the northern groups, as we have seen, there are few young trees or saplings growing up around the old ones to perpetuate the race, and inasmuch as those aged sequoias, so nearly childless, are the only ones commonly known the species, to most observers, seems doomed to speedy extinction, as being nothing more than an expiring remnant, vanquished in the so-called struggle for life by pines and firs that have driven it into its last ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... waters wish to flood the shore, as the gentleman describes the storm, or that it is easier to bear one's grief and the soul leaps over many sufferings when grief finds fellowship, or that Lear has become childless while I am fatherless, as Edgar says, or use similar unnatural expressions with which the speeches of all the characters in ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... swiftness that made him almost feel that he was tasting a new and higher kind of existence. Spiritual things were as real to him as his own identity, and the God in whom he trusted seemed at his side as a familiar friend. Of his mother too he could think without a tear. He was sure that if left childless, she would be comforted and sustained and gently led along her lonely pathway. Had he not been fulfilling her oft-repeated counsel, to fear nothing but sin? Had he not vindicated that love of his native land, which she had taught him should be next to his allegiance to ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... the end of the seventeenth century. Holt, who died in London 5th of March, 1710, was buried there, and a grand monument to his memory may be seen in the church. It was erected by his brother and heir, for, like Bacon, he was childless. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... came to him certain of the Sadducees, they that say that there is no resurrection; and they asked him, saying, "Teacher, Moses wrote unto us, that if a man's brother die, having a wife, and he be childless, his brother should take the wife, and raise up seed unto his brother. There were therefore seven brethren: and the first took a wife, and died childless; and the second; and the third took her; and likewise the seven also left ...
— His Last Week - The Story of the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus • William E. Barton
... complete physical examination before marriage is to determine whether it is possible for both parties to have children. Sometimes expert medical advice and treatment make all the difference between a childless home and one that has the happiness of a well-rounded family. In every marriage children should be an essential feature—the most essential feature in the long run. In many countries sterility is sufficient grounds for divorce. In an ideal civilization ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... Brahmanas,—these all equal not in merit even one- sixteenth part of that which is obtainable by the possession of a son. The merit, O Bhishma, that is acquired by numberless vows and fasts assuredly becomes fruitless in the case of one that is childless. Thou art childless and old and the expounder of false morality. Like the swan in the story, thou shalt now die at the hands of thy relatives. Other men possessed of knowledge have said this of old. I will presently recite it fully in ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... would make me the father of Douglas's children. I cannot, merely because your people are afraid of scandal, take such a revenge on Marian as to refuse her the freedom she has sacrificed so much for. After all, since our marriage has proved a childless one, the only reason for our submitting to be handcuffed to one another, now that our hearts are no longer ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... among men owes its existence to the desire of offspring on the part of childless parents, the adoption of the soul by God springs from pure benevolence and unselfish love, and for this reason presupposes (in the case of adults) the free consent of the adopted. No one can become an adopted son of God ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... all his adventures to the governor's lady, who, being childless, seemed to have made Maude fill the ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... down the proud reason, should delight and comfort the humble heart. I am a lone, puir woman, Robert. Bairns an' husband have gone down to the grave, one by one; an' now, for twenty weary years, I have been childless an' a widow. But trow ye that the puir lone woman wanted a guard, an' a comforter, an' a provider, through a' the lang mirk nichts, an' a' the cauld scarce winters o' these twenty years? No, my bairn—I kent that Himsel' was wi' me. I kent it by the provision He made, an' the care ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... life, the genius in science or art or statesmanship and the hopelessly trivial mind, the youth in a harmonious, beautiful family life and the childhood in an atmosphere of discord, the home full of love from wife and children and the house childless and chilly, the honours of the community and the disappointment of social bankruptcy—they are the great premiums and the great punishments, which are whirled by fate into the crowd of mankind. Even here most of it is relative. We rejoice in four-score years, but if we knew ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... let them hear The truth from you than from a trampling world. If they be in adversity, they'll learn 280 Too soon the scorn of crowds for crownless Princes, And find that all their father's sins are theirs. My boys!—I could have borne it were I childless. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... crown descended to his eldest son Richard I, who dying childless, the right vested in his nephew Arthur, the son of Geoffrey his next brother; but John, the youngest son of king Henry, seised the throne; claiming, as appears from his charters, the crown by hereditary right[g]: that is to say, he was next of kin to the deceased king, being ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... fainting and laboring, the moments, it seemed the very hours, ran by and still he did not waken; and still, with all that noble strength that makes the fields of white men grow and blossom under the negro's unthanked toil, the widow and childless one fought on for this cold lump of ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... and more exacting every day. In her younger years, a posting-house in such a town was a posting-house; and when M. Faragon married her, the heiress of the then owner of the business, he was supposed to have done uncommonly well for himself. Madame Faragon is now a childless widow, and sometimes declares that she will shut the house up and have done with it. Why maintain a business without a profit, simply that there may be an Hotel de la Poste at Colmar? But there are old servants whom she has not the heart to send away; and she has at any rate ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... their death dirges as they sought out the bones of their dead. Men dragged themselves into the posts, wifeless and childless, leaving deep in the wilderness all that they had known to love and give them comfort. Now and then came a woman, and around the black scars of burned cabins and teepees dogs howled mournfully for masters ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... household unlike, indeed, to one of ours; more unlike still to the Oriental harem: that of an elderly childless man, his days menaced, dwelling alone amid a bevy of women of all ages, ranks, and relationships,—the mother, the sister, the cousin, the legitimate wife, the concubine, the favourite, the eldest born, ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... manner suddenly became cold,—so suddenly that she felt assured the reason was not that which a childless wife might have reason to fear. Unable to discover the real cause, she tried to persuade herself that she had been remiss in her duties; examined her innocent conscience to no purpose; and tried very, very hard to please. But he remained unmoved. He ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... rheumatism, and one foot was lame from ingrowing nails,—deviations that, however, did not tend to correct the original angularities of his frame. His wife, on the other hand, had a pretty figure, which still retained—they were childless—the rounded freshness of maidenhood. Her features were irregular, yet not without a certain piquancy of outline; her hair had the two shades sometimes seen in imperfect blondes, and her complexion the sallowness of combined exposure and ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... receive them. They were at once granted the rights of French citizenship without undergoing the forms of naturalization. Many of them rose to eminent positions in war and in diplomacy, became founders of distinguished families, or dying childless, left their hard-won gold to endow free bourses at Douay and Louvain, for poor Irish scholars destined for the service of the church, for which they had fought the good fight, in another sense, on the Shannon and the Boyne. The migration of ecclesiastics was almost as extensive as that of the ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... alike for her sake and for his own,—the object of so much solicitude during his childhood and youth,—I say you can hardly, perhaps, conceive how near such an affection may approach that of a parent; how closely such a graft upon a childless stock may resemble the incorporate ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... upon the glowing embers, and my crutch - emblem of my helplessness - lying upon the hearth at my feet, how solitary I should seem. Yet though I am the sole tenant of this chimney-corner, though I am childless and old, I have no sense of loneliness at this hour; but am the centre of a silent group ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... idle dreams of aged persons the possibility of attaching the young to them in sentimental bonds of strength to insure resistance to every other attachment is the idlest. Positive, practical, experienced though he was, the childless man had permitted this fantasy to get possession of him. He actually brought himself to believe Lael's love of him was of that enduring kind. With no impure purpose, yet selfishly, and to bring her under his ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... for, after all, no man kills more than one. In the position in which you find yourself there are just three ways of getting your daughter married: Either by my help—and you will have none of it! That is one.—Or by finding some old man of sixty, very rich, childless, and anxious to have children; that is difficult, still such men are to be met with. Many old men take up with a Josepha, a Jenny Cadine, why should not one be found who is ready to make a fool of himself under legal formalities? If it were not for ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... weeping said, Condole my wretched fate; A childless mother here you see; A wife without ...
— The Book of Brave Old Ballads • Unknown
... that has children in it, needs 'The Nursery' for their profit and delight: and every childless house needs it for the sweet portraiture ...
— The Nursery, Volume 17, No. 101, May, 1875 • Various
... the heroes of the retreat from Russia. His granddaughter married Count Durrieu of the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. My great-aunt was born in the provinces in 1781, but she was adopted by a childless aunt and uncle who made their home in Paris. He was a wealthy lawyer ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... sentiments toward Miss Merriam were fatherly. He talked to her for half an hour with interest—not the kind that went with his talks during business hours. The next day he brought Mrs. McRamsey down to see her. The old couple were childless—they had only a married daughter living ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... love-hungry eyes. Men are such stupid unfeeling brutes. I am, at least; for I had never read in this dear woman's face until that instant what must have been written there all these years,—the love that might have been given to a husband and children of her own, this lonely, childless woman had given ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... house. As for the inmates, Dr. Ashton was a wealthy man and childless, and he had adopted, or rather undertaken to bring up, the orphan son of his wife's sister. Frank Sydall was the lad's name: he had been a good many months in the house. Then one day came a letter from an Irish peer, the Earl of Kildonan (who had known Dr. Ashton at college), putting it to the doctor ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... act were aroused by the death of all the queen's children, save the Princess Mary, in which he saw the fulfilment of the curse denounced in Leviticus xx, 21: "If a man shall take his brother's wife . . . they shall be childless." Just at this time Henry fell in love with Anne Boleyn, [Sidenote: Anne Boleyn] and this further increased his dissatisfaction with ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... east. The succession of events by which the new arrangement was brought about was engineered principally by Napoleon's ex-marshal Bernadotte. May 28, 1810, Prince Charles Augustus of Augustenburg, whom the Riksdag had selected as heir to the infirm and childless Charles XIII., died, and after a notable contest, Bernadotte was agreed upon unanimously by the four estates (August 21) as the new heir. November 5 the adventuresome Frenchman received the homage of the estates and was adopted by the ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... disorder of the room, and the atmosphere made Grayson gasp. He came out looking white. The first man to arrive thereafter took away the eldest boy, a woman picked the baby girl from the bed, and a childless young couple took up the pallid little fellow on the floor. These were step-children. The baby boy that was left was the woman's own. Nobody came for that, and Grayson went in again and looked at it a long while. So little, so old a human face he had never seen. The brow ...
— 'Hell fer Sartain' and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... On that trial persons were much affected, especially by P. Horatius the father declaring, that he considered his daughter deservedly slain; were it not so, that he would by his authority as a father have inflicted punishment on his son.[40] He then entreated that they would not render childless him whom but a little while ago they had beheld with a fine progeny. During these words the old man, having embraced the youth, pointing to the spoils of the Curiatii fixed up in that place which is now called Pila Horatia, "Romans," said he, "can you bear to see bound ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... say of WASHINGTON that "Providence made him childless, that the nation might call him father?" Somebody ought to say of Lady MACBETH that she was made childless, that no one might call her mother-in-law. Neat thing that! Somebody ought to send it to PUNCHINELLO. By Jove! what a mother-in-law that woman would have made. Or what a landlady; with the ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... was childless, for all his children, his three sons and his daughter, died before him, as a punishment for his having set fire to a field of grain belonging to ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... a childless man. He found you an abandoned orphan. Struck with your beauty, he brought you to his lady, and, though they loved you not, they adopted you, with a view to making your charms useful to them when you should have grown up. The count has amply paid himself to-day for all the expense and trouble you ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... their Cree equivalents and duly rendered to him, but he he only shook his head, as though the change of language had not altered the value of the commodity. But the name of the dead hunter was a curious anomaly-Joe Miller. What a strange antithesis appeared this name beside the presence of the childless father, the fatherless child, and the mateless woman! One service the death of poor Joe Miller conferred on me—the dog-sled that had carried his body had made a track over the snow-covered lake, and we quickly glided along it to ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... was impatient of refusal of her favour. She was also a woman, and that De la Foret should flaunt his devotion to another woman was little to her liking. The woman in her, which had never been blessed with a noble love, was roused. The sourness of a childless, uncompanionable life was stronger for the moment than ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... interests of her reputation every bit as much as in those of my own. For her station in life she was a woman of remarkable qualities and character. She had made an ugly, a repulsive marriage, and she was childless.—More than this it is not seemly I should ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... she was a childless widow who had lately come to live at Sandycliffe in a pretty cottage about half a mile from the Grange, and with whom Margaret had become very intimate—a fair gentle-looking woman who had gone through much trouble, and who wished to devote her life to good works; and as I looked at her now, my own ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... curving, Bow of promise, upper lip! Set them free, with gracious swerving; Let the wing-words float and dip. DUMB ART THOU? O Love immortal, More than words thy speech must be; Childless yet the tender portal Of the home ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... institutions, it is manifest that this function cannot be so delegated. At least we know of no human society in which the birth and rearing of children has not been the essential function of the family. From a sociological point of view the childless family is a failure. While the childless family may be of social utility to the individuals that form it, nevertheless from the point of view of society such a family has failed to perform its most important function and must be considered, ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... life. You think that life owes everything to you, that you pay your way with your beauty. If you didn't die, but married DeWitt, you would go on through life petted and babied, bridge-playing and going out to lectures, childless, incompetent, ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... the time. I have fourteen cousins, all married, and all got boys! The first three wives my father had only produced two daughters, who died before their mothers. You can understand that those six big men took it badly there were no sons. When the third wife died, childless, my father had given up the sea for a while and had invested in a ship-yard at St. John, New Brunswick. It was there that ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... in confusion. This old bachelor, wifeless and childless, spent his pay in drink and gambled away at ecarte whatever money his cognac and absinthe left in his pocket. Despite that, however, he was scrupulously honest ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... But when the days that I have spoken of, shall come, it will be to him a time of retaliation: for it shall then be done unto Antichrist, as he hath done to the church of God: As he hath made women childless, so shall he be made childless; as he has made Zion sit upon the ground, so now must this wicked one come down and sit in the dust; yea, as he has made many churches desolations, so now shall he be also made a desolation. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... exercise her eloquence, and not enough joy to make it her duty to be doleful. At last her poor, meek, fatiguing voice faded out altogether, and her husband mourned her as heartily as she would have bemoaned the demise of the most insignificant neighbor. After her death, being left childless, he had nothing to do but to make money, and he naturally made it. Having taken his primary financial education in New England, he graduated at that great business university, Chicago, and then entered on the public practice of wealth in ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson |
