Diccionario ingles.comDiccionario ingles.com
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Virile   /vˈɪrəl/   Listen
Virile

adjective
1.
Characterized by energy and vigor.  "A new and virile leadership"
2.
Characteristic of a man.  Synonyms: male, manful, manlike, manly.  "Manly sports"
3.
(of a male) capable of copulation.  Synonym: potent.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Virile" Quotes from Famous Books



... word "male" was first presented to the Legislature. The movement did not gain much impetus until the Nashville League was organized in the fall of this year and Chattanooga and Morrison soon followed. On Jan. 10-12, 1912, the association with its five virile infant leagues met in Nashville and plans for state-wide organization began. Miss Sarah Barnwell Elliott, an eminent writer, was unanimously chosen president. In October, 1913, the State convention met in Morristown and eight leagues answered the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various

... virile nurture Of the teeming primordial ground, For the splendid gospel of color, The rapt revelations of sound; For the morning-blue above us And the rusted gold of the fern, For the chickadee's call to ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various

... enjoyed times of direct refreshment from an inward Source of Life, but {xxx} they were, most of them, at the same time, devoted Humanists. They shared with enthusiasm the rediscovery of those treasures which human Reason had produced, and they rose to a more virile confidence in the sphere and capacity of Reason than had prevailed in Christian circles since the days of the early Greek Fathers. They took a variety of roads to their conclusion, but in one way or another they all proclaimed that deep in the central nature of man—an inalienable ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... audibly. Then he mechanically began to refill his pipe. He wanted to speak, but there seemed to be nothing adequate to say. Two men, virile, thrilling with the ripe, red blood of perfect manhood, friends, ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum

... his calculating eye still on Garrison, then proceeded with much forensic ability and virile imagination to lay the full beauties ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson

... continued until the swain remembering his manhood, vehemently, with loud shouts, threats, and virile blasphemies, such as became the occasion, bade young Caddies under penalties put them down. Whereupon young Caddies, remembering his manners, did put them down politely and very carefully, and conveniently near for a resumption of their embraces, and having hesitated above them for a ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells

... finish with Jimmy Botts, Jean Choyinsky, and the rest of the lads that went out over the world to glory and cash a few years later, a generation of prizefighters that only San Francisco, raw and virile and yeasty and young, could ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... Horus and Set. The Egyptians showed great admiration of masculine beauty, and it would seem that they never regarded homosexuality as punishable or even reprehensible. It is notable, also, that Egyptian women were sometimes of very virile type, and Hirschfeld considers that intermediate sexual types were specially widespread among ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... enthusiasm and questions, and the conversation began on a natural footing. He looked at Rantoul, aware of the social change that had taken place in him. The old aggressiveness, the look of the wolf, had gone; about him was an enthusiastic urbanity. He seemed clean cut, virile, overflowing with vitality, only it was a different vitality, the snap and decision of a man-of-affairs, not the untamed outrush ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson

... explain why the lions aren't ruling the planet. The trouble is, it would defeat itself in the beginning. It would have too bitterly stressed the struggle for existence. Conflict and struggle make civilizations virile, but they do not by themselves make civilizations. Mutual aid and support are needed for that. There the felines are lacking. They do not co-operate well; they have small group-devotion. Their lordliness, their strong self-regard, and their coolness of heart, have somehow ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.

... hand—a woman's soft and delicate fingers, yet clasping his with an almost virile strength and friendliness. She left him with just that feeling about her—that she was expansive, in her heart, her sympathies, even her brain and peculiar gifts of apprehension. She left him, ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... pair of sensitive, virile hands, lean and brown, with the short, well-kept nails that any violinist needs must have—the contradictory hands which had aroused her interest on the ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler

... cigarettes and several cigarette ends. Now and then he took his flute from his lips, replaced it with a lighted cigarette, smoked for a moment, then swiftly renewed his strange love-song, playing with a virile vigor as well as with airy daintiness and elaborate grace. Of his companions, one played a violin, held upright by the left hand, with its end resting on his stockinged foot; the second a species of large guitar; the third ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens

... He was different from any person she had ever seen. Face and head belonged to some antique type of virile beauty; eyes, hair, and skin seemed all of one golden brown. He walked as if his very steps were joyous, and his whole personality seemed to radiate an atmosphere of firm content. The girl's face was puzzled as she studied him. This look of simple ...
— Daphne, An Autumn Pastoral • Margaret Pollock Sherwood

... generosity in the interpretation of conduct to which all men have a right, and which he needs most who most widely transcends the ordinary standards or most resolutely breaks with traditionary rules. That so virile a character as Swift should have been attractive to women is not wonderful, but we think Mr. Forster has gone far towards proving that he was capable of winning the deep and lasting affection of men also. Perhaps it may not always be safe to trust implicitly the fine phrases of his correspondents; ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... is His touch, Who holds the pruning knife. We are redeemed through sorrow, and the thorn That pierces is His kiss, As through the grave of grief we are re-born And out of the abyss. The blood of nations is the precious seed Wherewith He plants our gates And from the victory of the virile deed ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... audiences precious gifts, he also learned much from them. For thirty years his lecturing trips to the West brought him, more widely than any New England man of letters, into contact with the new, virile America of the great Mississippi valley. Unlike many of his friends, he was not repelled by the "Jacksonism of the West"; he rated it a wholesome, vivifying force in our national thought and life. The "Journal" reveals the essential soundness of his ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry

... went hot and cold. The idea was absolutely novel to him; evidently as a boy he had not understood his own prayers or his own people. All his imagination was inflamed. He conjured up a Zion built up by such virile hands as Sir Asher's, and peopled by such beautiful mothers as his daughter: the great Empire that would spring from the unity and liberty of a race which even under dispersion and oppression was one of the most potent peoples on the planet. And thus, ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... more self-conscious moments, he shambled when he walked. Only moderately tall, clothed in ill-cut garments which he wore as uneasily as possible, his immature young figure was not one to call out much admiration on the score of its virility. Indeed, the one really virile thing about Scott Brenton was his hair, which sprang out strongly from his scalp, fine, but thick and just a little wavy where it lay across his crown. His head was well-shaped, only that it was a bit too high above the ears, the brow a bit too salient; ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... romance, is composed. Grafting and soldering take badly on works of this nature, which should gush forth in a single stream and so remain. The thing once done, do not change your mind, do not touch it up. The book once published, the sex of the work, whether virile or not, has been recognized and proclaimed; when the child has once uttered his first cry he is born, there he is, he is made so, neither father nor mother can do anything, he belongs to the air and to the ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... a curse," I remarked. "Show me a clever newspaper man and I'll show you a failure. There is nothing in it but the glory—and little of that. We contrive and scheme and run about all day getting a story. And then we write it at fever heat, searching our souls for words that are cleancut and virile. And then we turn it in, and what is it? What have we to show for our day's work? An ephemeral thing, lacking the first breath of life; a thing that is dead before it is born. Why, any cub reporter, if he were to put into some other profession the same amount of nerve, and tact, and ingenuity ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber

... Rios, in his notes to the Codex Vaticanus, published in Kingsborough's great work, assigns the sign, cohuatl, the serpent, to "il membro virile, il maggio augurio di tutti gli altri." It is distinctly so shown on the 75th plate of the Codex. De la Serna states that in his day some of the Mexican conjurors used a wand, around which was fastened a living serpent. Manual de Ministros, ...
— Nagualism - A Study in Native American Folk-lore and History • Daniel G. Brinton

... iron hot," he said. "Black Steve's a dangerous man and we know something about the Metis temper. Drummond, of course, is hardly a Metis, but he has a drop of Indian blood that must be reckoned on. It's a remarkably virile strain." ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss

... existence, wreathed with love and roses, became a fairy tale. Since the day he rode towards us at Kanopus and offered me the first bouquet, with his sunny glance wooing my love, his image has stood before my soul as the embodiment of the virile strength which conquers everything, and the bright, undimmed joy which renders the whole world happy. And now—now? Do you remember the dull dreamer whom we left ere he set forth for Paraetonium? But no, no, a thousand times no, he must not remain ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... real religion of the front is the philosophy of Mahomet. Life will end only when Death has been decreed by Fate, and the Boches are the unbelievers. After all, Islam in its great days was a virile faith, the faith of a ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan

... future let him create such leadership in his own spiritual image from the plastic idealism of boyhood. Let the hero-worship age, without a word of compulsion or advice, make its choice with him present as a sample of what the minister can be, and tomorrow there will be no lack of virile high-class men in pulpit and parish. As a rule the ideals that carry men into the ministry are born, not in later youth nor in maturity, but in the period covered by the early high-school years; and ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben

... true, she wrote to disciples near and far long, tender letters of spiritual counsel—analyses of the religious life tranquilly penetrating as those of an earlier time. But her political correspondence grew in bulk. It is tense, nervous, virile. It breathes a vibrating passion, a solemn force, that are the index of a breaking heart. Not for one moment did Catherine relax her energies. From 1376, when she went to Avignon, she led, with one or two brief intermissions only, the life of a busy woman of affairs. But within ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa

... threw Herr Bismarck into hysterical frenzy! He determined upon resisting the heresy with all the virile courage of his ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel

... twenty) families worth while when they see how their group is strengthening its position. If a race comes to find no instinctive pleasure in children it will probably be swept away by others more virile. One man will live where another will starve; prudence and ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland

... of Mrs. Anglin made a thorough tour of the beautiful, old house. She saw its ancient arras hangings, and panellings of carved oak, and heard all the traditions, and looked at the portraits—many so wonderfully like Tristram, for they were a strong, virile race—and her heart ached, and swelled with pride, alternately. And, last of all, she stood under the portrait that had been painted by Sargent, of her husband at his coming of age, and that master ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn

... supposed, in saying this, to be leaving out of sight the virile exercise of logical and rational faculties; but that is another side of education; and the grave deficiency which I detect in the old theory was that practically all the powers and devices of education were devoted to what was called fortifying the mind and making it into a perfect ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various

... in society on the island now," Mr. Price pursued, "formed of representatives of old English houses that once brought men of notable size and virile into the world, but are now only equal to the production of curious survivals, tending surely to extinction like the elephant, and by an ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... stones, habitations, canals, pottery, mummies, cenotes, or wells, &c. The northernmost point where any monument in stone is encountered is at Quemada, in the State of Zacatecas, which seems to mark the limit of the stronger civilisation of Southern Mexico, in contrast to the less virile civilisation which seems to be indicated by the clay and adobe structures of the northern part of Mexico and of the adjoining territory embodied at the present day in Arizona, California, and New ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... essentially a man's room, rugged, uncouth, virile, full of the odours of tobacco, of leather, of rusty iron; the bare floor hollowed by the grind of hob-nailed boots, the walls marred by the friction of heavy things of metal. Strangely enough, Annixter's clothes were disposed of on the single chair with the precision of an old maid. Thus ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... and nothing could disturb the clearness of her gaze: nothing in his Christian soul seemed to escape her. He felt that. Under the seduction of the woman's eyes upon him he was conscious of a virile desire, clear and cold, Which stirred in him brutally, indiscreetly. There was no evil in the brutality of it. She took possession of him: not like a coquette, whose desire is to seduce without caring whom she seduces. Had she been a coquette she would have gone ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... are your own answer to the question; you are the product of an age which has not seen fit to bestow the gift you ask, and who can say that you are not splendid specimens of mankind? No! No! any system which can produce the virile, splendid type of men we have before us today, is good enough for me, and," she added, drawing up her shoulders in perfect imitation of the Premier when he was about to be facetious, "if it is good enough for me—it is ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung

... vigilant Providence, of a future paradise where all these sufferings of the world would receive compensation, had long seemed necessary to the wretchedness of mankind; but what a trap lay in it, what a pretext for the tyrannical grinding down of nations; and how far more virile it would be to undeceive the nations, however brutally, and give them courage to live the real life, even if it were in tears. If they were already turning aside from Christianity was not this because they needed a more human ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... was so impressed and fired with emulation that I, too, declared for wanting to be "a finder-out of things," and Father would repeat it and laugh heartily. It is a joy to think of him as he was then, virile in body, full fleshed, active, leading in walking and skating and swimming—what a flood of memories! What an interest he took in all the things I did, and how often a most active part. One day in May I had gone out with our one shot of shad net, ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs

... teach and redeem them,—to sacrifice his life, if need be, in the work of enlightenment. They seem to have thought even of women and children as hardly partaking of Reason; their ideally good man was virtuous in a strictly virile way,[801] and it never occurred to them that training in goodness must begin from the earliest years, and be gradually developed with infinite sympathy and tenderness. If a man is to learn that there is something within him which partakes of God, and which ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... He had a sudden vision of Hartley Parrish, one of his long, black Partagas thrust at an aggressive angle from a corner of his mouth, virile, battling, strong. ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine

... eccentric about Laurence. What she was and what she did was masked, as it were, by a feminine and even fragile appearance. Her heart was full of extreme sensibility, though her head contained a stoical firmness and the virile gift of resolution. Her clear-seeing eyes knew not how to weep; but no one would have imagined that the delicate white wrist with its tracery of blue veins could defy that of the boldest horseman. Her hand, so noble, so flexible, could handle gun or pistol with the ease of a ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac

... They numbered men enough to build without calling in their neighbors, and immediately put up a cabin on the north fork of the Sangamon River. The family thus housed and sheltered, one more bit of filial work remained for Abraham before assuming his virile independence. With the assistance of John Hanks he plowed fifteen acres, and split, from the tall walnut-trees of the primeval forest, enough rails to surround them with a fence. Little did either dream, while engaged in this work, ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... what I have said to minimize the disadvantages and discouragements under which we are to-day doing our work. My only plea is for the hopeful and optimistic outlook which, I maintain, is richly justified by the progress that has already been made and by the virile character of the forces that are operating in the ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley

... are of greatest significance to us as a nation, though we can not here enter into a discussion of the grave potentialities involved in the absorption by our nation of a virile, prolific, though not highly ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen

... and civil labour. We do not even demand that society shall immediately so reconstruct itself that every woman may be again a child-bearer (deep and over-mastering as lies the hunger for motherhood in every virile woman's heart!); neither do we demand that the children whom we bear shall again be put exclusively into our hands to train. This, we know, cannot be. The past material conditions of life have gone for ever; no will of man can recall them; but ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner

... When the virile figure of Theodore Roosevelt swung down the national highway, Bok was one of thousands of young men who felt strongly the attraction of his personality. Colonel Roosevelt was only five years the senior of the editor; he spoke, therefore, as one of his own years. The energy with which ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)

... Phoebe's unconscious rival, I tried to embody, not the sensuous intoxicating power of an Emma Hamilton, but those more exquisite and spiritual influences which many women have exercised over some of the strongest and most virile of men. Fenwick indeed possesses the painter's susceptibility to beauty. Beauty comes to him and beguiles him, but it is a beauty akin to that of Michel Angelo's 'Muse and dominant Lady, spirit-wed'—which yet, for all its purity, is not, as Fenwick's ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... her: from Charlotte, from Ellen Nussey, from the servants at the Parsonage. Even of her outward and visible presence we have a clearer image. The lines are fewer, but they are more vivid. You see her tall and slender, in her rough clothes, tramping the moors with the form and the step of a virile adolescent. Shirley, the "bete fauve", is Emily civilized. You see her head carried high and crowned with its long, dark hair, coiled simply, caught up with a comb. You see her face, honey-pale, her slightly high, slightly aquiline nose; her beautiful eyes, dark-grey, luminous; ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair

... of the tempter? All the strong virile blood rushed through his veins, and he only made a feeble fight to subdue it. He did not really want to put ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... Virile as the mountains that he has neighbored with; clean as the snows that have blinded his eyes, and made beautiful the valleys; subdued to love of God through the height and the might of all that he sees, with a vigor ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger

... well!" he replied. "If then you wish to keep your vow of eclecticism, you should be willing to express certain virile ideas on the subject of love which I will communicate to you, and I will not grudge you the benefit of them, if benefit there be; I wish to bequeath my property to you, but this will be all that you ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac

... encounters in our mid-western and western cities, is very unlike the hideous and repulsive figure conjured up by sensational cartoonists. He is much more likely to be a very attractive sort of man. Here are some characteristics of the type: figure robust, sturdy, and virile; dress rough but not unclean; speech forthright, deliberate, and bold; features intelligent, frank, and free from signs of alcoholic dissipation; movements slow and leisurely as of one averse to over-exertion. There are thousands of "wobblies" to whom the specifications of this ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... that they are effeminate would be incorrect. In some things, from our point of view, they undoubtedly are; in others they are extremely virile. ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready

... He was leaning on the back of her tall chair, a long, virile figure with a hawk-nosed, bearded face that was sternly handsome. He thrust back the crisp dark hair that clustered about his brow, and fetched ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini

... of crushing disappointments, Gordon committed suicide. His dramatic end awakened sympathy and gave an additional interest to his writings. It was soon found that in the city and the bush many of his spirited racing ballads were well known. The virile, athletic tone of his verse, which taught "How a man should uphold the sports of his land And strike his best with a strong right hand And take his strokes in return" — and the practical philosophy, summed up in the well-known quatrain — "Life is mostly froth and bubble, Two things ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens

... upper story-commanded so good a view therein that it placed him under a surveillance akin to that designed by Mr. Bentham's reformatory Panopticon, sat Arabella Crane. Whatever her real feelings towards Jasper Losely (and what those feelings were no virile pen can presume authoritatively to define; for lived there ever a man who thoroughly understood a woman?), or whatever in earlier life might have been their reciprocated vows of eternal love,—not only from the day that Jasper, on his return to his native shores, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... a tortured glance towards his playmates, and then dropped his eyes to the snow at his feet. Presently he turned to the trunk of one of the great maple-trees that lined the curb. He made a pretence of closely examining the rough and virile bark. To his mind, this familiar street of Whilomville seemed in grow dark in the thick shadow of shame. The trees and the houses ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane

... new principle of distress and illusion. In destroying worldliness this religion avoided imposture. The clearing it made in the soul was soon overgrown again by the inexorable Indian jungle; but had a virile intellect been at hand, it would have been free to raise something solid and rational in the space so happily swept clean of ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... that. It was his virile joy in fundamentals. He loved his golden-eared Guernseys and his black Berkshires and his White Wyandottes—not because of their choiceness but because they were cows and pigs and chickens; and he kept a pair of pussy cats, half a dozen dogs, and as many horses, ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey

... the white mystery of Louis the Ninth and the black mystery of Louis the Eleventh. This is the very real historical mystery; the more realistic is our study of medieval things, the more puzzled we shall be about the peculiar creeping paralysis which affected things so virile and so full of hope. There was a growth of moral morbidity as well as social inefficiency, especially in the governing classes; for even to the end the guildsmen and the peasants remained much more vigorous. ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton

... were leaving Belgium, the King recalled to us his trip to the United States and the vivid and strong impression your powerful and virile civilization left upon his mind. Our faith in your fairness, our confidence in your justice, in your spirit of generosity and sympathy, all these have ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... blighted mind, and saw his future turn to decay before his manhood was well begun. Where was the old buoyant spirit he had brought with him into the fight? Gone forever, and in its place he found his maimed and trembling hands, and limbs weakened by starvation as by long fever. His virile youth was wasted in the slow struggle, his energy was sapped drop by drop; and at the last he saw himself burned out like the battle-fields, where the armies had closed and opened, leaving an impoverished and ruined soil. He had given himself for four years, and ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... of a football family. In a way this might be compared with the military spirit which allows a family to state proudly that "we have always been Army (or Navy) people." And who shall say that the clash and conflict of this game, invented and played only by thoroughly virile men, are not productive of precisely those qualities of which the race may, some day, well stand in need. If by the passing down from father to son and from brother to brother of a spirit of cheerful ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards

... picture of herself, stooping from place and power, to bind up the wounds of the people, in which she had once delighted, was to her now a mere flimsy vulgarity. She had been shown other ideals—other ways—and her pulses were still swaying under the audacity—the virile inventive force of the showman. Everything she had once desired looked flat to her; everything she was not to have, glowed and shone. Poverty, adventure, passion, the joys of self-realisation—these she gave up. She would become Lady Maxwell, make ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... ascertained for ever, and shall, at no time hereafter, be questioned or questionable.' 3rd. That we are determined to make use of any powers we have, or may have at any time in the future, to work for our own advancement, and for the creation of a prosperous, virile, and independent nation. ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard

... of their elders. A single example may suffice. No man of letters has given a nobler witness to the truth of his patriotism than Colonel Patrice Mahon, known in letters as Art Roe. His novels, which dealt largely with modern Russian life, in relation with the French army, were virile and elevated productions, but he was a man of fifty at the time of his heroic death at the head of his troops, in the battle of Wisembach (August 22, 1914), and his tone was not that of such young men as Camille Violand and Marcel Drouet. To read again the "Pingot et moi" of Art Roe ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse

... matter..." and the painter stepped back to look at his sketch. "Yes, a virile mask, energetic, just what I wanted—inasmuch as nobody knows anything about William ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet

... evident that those who to-day advocate the introduction into Presbyterian worship of responses and prescribed forms can find no support for such a practice, however they might limit it, in Knox's Book of Common Order, or in the practice of our Scottish ancestors in this so virile and vigorous period of the Church's history. Just as little support, too, can those find who would impose upon the ministry of the Church the use of set forms from which no deviation is to be allowed either in the conduct of public worship or in the administration of the Sacraments. ...
— Presbyterian Worship - Its Spirit, Method and History • Robert Johnston

... his own account of himself he used the word "tramp" with a shocking lack of pride—led him inevitably into the far Northwest. Men were doing things up there. The country fairly seethed with the activity of live, virile men who were taking the first staunch grip upon the tricky wheel of fortune and were turning it to their own account. Every man was building; no man complained of conditions, for conditions were so new and so ready to hand ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon

... signs of evil living had vanished from the face, and so also had its expression of ultra refinement and sensitiveness, while in the eyes no longer shone that winning, caressing look which had been a magnet for the hearts of women. This man held his head high, his eyes were keen, penetrating, virile, and in his countenance the doctor read sincerity, forcefulness, determination. "'As he thinketh in his heart, so is he'," Dr. Annister mused as he leaned forward to listen to what the ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly

... of the reproductive principle seems to be further indicated by his surname, Ce acatl. This means One Reed, and is the name of a day in the calendar. But in the Nahuatl language, the word acatl, reed, cornstalk, is also applied to the virile member; and it has been suggested that this is the real signification of the word when applied to the hero-god. The suggestion is plausible, but the word does not seem to have been so construed by the early writers. If such an understanding had been current, it could scarcely have escaped ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton

... symphonic poem, "The Crusaders," a dramatic overture, "Francesca da Rimini," a sacred oratorio, "The Inheritance Divine," a suite for orchestra, a fantasy for piano and orchestra (written for Rafael Joseffy), a one-act musical extravaganza, a three-act lyric drama, and a virile symphony. The suite is called "Souvenir de Baden-Baden." It is a series of highly elaborated trifles of much gaiety, and includes a lively "Morning Promenade," a dreamy "Siesta," a "Conversationshaus Ball," and a quaint "Serenade Orientale" that shows the influence ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes

... created, before pines grew upon earth, the words they sing were set to the sagas of vast space, rhythmic runes of unremembered ages taught by the great winds of the world to these patriarchs that seem to tell them over and over lest they forget. They tower virid and virile. They stretch wide arms over the pasture people in benediction and sheltering love, but they are not of them. The reading of the deep riddle of the universe has made them prophets and seers and they dwell alone in their dignity. I may make my home beneath their sheltering ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... useless from the beginning. The sister-in-law of this girl knew who and what he was and had been. There was no hope for him. To let himself drift; to evoke in her, sometimes by hazard, at times with intent, the delicate response—faint echo—pale shadow of the virile emotions she evoked in him, that, too, was useless. He knew it, yet curious to try, intent on developing communication through those exquisite and impalpable lines that threaded the mystery from him to her—from her ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers

... in rebirth to the more advantageous spot on the earth, and a different set of souls come into possession of the abandoned environment. The valley of the Nile, that was once the home of an energetic people with a flourishing civilization would not now serve such a purpose. The center of virile civilization has shifted to central and northern Europe because only that environment, in full touch with the great commercial stream of the economic world, can serve the purpose. As the world is today what could a pushing, energetic, up-to-date group ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers

... some difficulty in the part for which he had cast himself. He had expected to condescend upon an elderly inept and give him sharp instructions; instead he found himself faced with a jovial, virile figure which certainly did not suggest incompetence. It has been mentioned already that he had always great difficulty in looking any one in the face, and this difficulty was intensified when he found himself confronted ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan

... Oh, virile, radiant one, El Sol! Oh, Maka Ina! bounteous mother earth, the day of joining hand in hand passed by. The joy is with us yet; renewed each year, when March is three weeks gone. Look, then, ye wanderers in the woods! Seek ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson

... the lip of flower, of dust upon the moth wing, of the throat of young girl, or brow of young boy, of the sudden flight of bird, the soft going of light clouds in a windless sky. These were the gentle stimulants to his most virile expression. Nor did his pictures ever contain more; they never struggled beyond the quality of legend, at least as I know them. He knew the loveliness in a profile, he saw always the evanescences of light upon light and purposeless things. The action or ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley

... qualities. This superiority may be claimed for the Greek soldiers at Marathon and Platae, where the Persian army was actually Persian. The Asiatic soldier, forced into service and flogged into battle, was indeed no match for the virile and warlike Greek. But at Salamis it was literally a case of Greek meeting Greek, except in the case of the Phoenicians—who had the reputation of being the finest seafighters in the world—and it is not easy ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott

... were proclaimed in the hands—strong, tenacious, virile hands; small, fine, delicate hands; hands with the powerful and purposeful thumb of the West; hands with the supple artistic fingers and delicate finger-nails ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren

... making of many slaves and charlatans," he said. "One mourns the fact, but must be honest. It has too often scourged the only really precious members of society from the temple of life. It has cast the brave and clean and virile into outer darkness, and exalted the staple of humanity, which is never brave, or virile, and seldom really clean. A hideous wave submerges everything that matters. The proud, the beautiful—the only beings that ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts

... Marignan. Like Monsieur de Turenne, he had only a slight moustache, and a chin-tuft; his cheeks had a bluish look; but whatever may have been said of him, this good gentleman was by no means disfigured thereby, nor did he inspire any fear on that account. He only looked the more virile, and if it made him look a little fierce, it had not the effect of making the women dislike him. Bernard de Montragoux was a very fine man, tall, broad across the shoulders, moderately stout, and well favoured; albeit of a rustic habit, smacking of the woods rather than of drawing-rooms and assemblies. ...
— The Seven Wives Of Bluebeard - 1920 • Anatole France

... breeds of men. The Soudanese are of many tribes, but two main races can be clearly distinguished: the aboriginal natives, and the Arab settlers. The indigenous inhabitants of the country were negroes as black as coal. Strong, virile, and simple-minded savages, they lived as we may imagine prehistoric men—hunting, fighting, marrying, and dying, with no ideas beyond the gratification of their physical desires, and no fears save those engendered by ghosts, witchcraft, the worship of ancestors, and other ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill

... where they fit."[7] As it is in action through life, so it is in writing; the conclusions arrived at by reason are apt to be more valuable than those which we accept on authority. The reasoned literary style is more virile than that based on the dictionary. A judgment arrived at by argument sticks in the memory, while it is necessary for the user of the dictionary constantly to invoke authority, so that the writer who reasons out the meaning of words may constantly accelerate his pace, for the doubt and decision ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes

... and received her with an unaffectedly cordial welcome. Her guest could not look at her, however, without a feeling of astonishment. Attired in a long brown petticoat, and a vest which concealed her figure, she wore a manly virile aspect, according thoroughly with the character of the life ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams

... note, before Hugh could get it. Could anything have happened to her? Marishka wanted her—the sound of a voice, the touch of a feminine hand, her airs and graces—the foibles of a child perhaps, but intensely virile in their childishness and intensely human. It seemed that even Yeva was to ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs

... morning of that Pass! And have you seen these? [Reading from the newspaper] "We will have no truck with the jargon of the degenerate who vilifies his country at such a moment. The Member for Toulmin has earned for himself the contempt of all virile patriots." [He takes up a second journal] "There is a certain type of public man who, even at his own expense, cannot resist the itch to advertise himself. We would, at moments of national crisis, muzzle such persons, as we muzzle dogs that we suspect of incipient rabies . . . ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... compulsory until after four children instead of two, the state where ordinary people will have room to get out and exercise instead of being spectators, this state of Alaska, I say, is the only state that should be considered when we select a fine, virile American male as the father of America's Child of the Year. I would dare to go farther and say we should also provide the female, Mother America of 1995, except that our President, my fellow Alaskan, has generously ...
— Mother America • Sam McClatchie

... did it matter, now? He had come out to their camp, many miles away from the Station, post-haste to save her child, and for that she was thankful. All memory of the doctor's bad manners was forgotten when she saw him enter the tent with her husband, a strong virile being, from his keen eyes and locked lips to his brisk tread;—God's own agent to cure her babe; a blessed healer of the sick, to whom the mysteries of the human frame were revealed; who could ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi

... development until the pioneer farmers had settled down to the new life. The third cause was immunity from the danger of foreign invasion, which eliminated the military reasons for maintaining a numerous, virile, and progressive rural population. ...
— The Rural Life Problem of the United States - Notes of an Irish Observer • Horace Curzon Plunkett

... terrible," is the phrase forever recurring in "War and Peace"; and the gaiety of war was everywhere in Cassel, transforming the lifeless little town into a romantic stage-setting full of the flash of arms and the virile animation of ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton

... differentiates civilized from uncivilized countries—prosperous from poverty—stricken peoples—is that the average man in the one is five or six times as productive as the other. It is also a fact that the chief cause for the large percentage of the unemployed in England (perhaps the most virile nation in the world), is that the workmen of England, more than in any other civilized country, are deliberately restricting their output because they are possessed by the fallacy that it is against ...
— The Principles of Scientific Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor

... vigor, courage, stamina of the race? After a time do we just live, or try to live, on literature warmed over, on pretty coloring and drawing instead of painting that stirs the soul to the heroic facts and tragedies of life? Where did this virile, blood-full, throbbing Russian literature come from; this Russian painting of Verestchagin, that smites us like a sword with the consciousness of the tremendous meaning of existence? Is there a barbaric force left in the world that we have been daintily trying to cover ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... advantage. The relations were irregular, and were harrowed by the temperaments of each. Sand was masculine, energetic, restless, and by nature—for which she was surely not thoroughly to blame—a voluptuary. Chopin, while not the whining mooncalf some have painted him, was never of truly virile character. He was a man whose genius was as limited in scope as a diamond's lustre, even while it had the brilliance, the firmness, and the solitariness of that jewel. And, most of all, he was that most pathetic of wretches, a sick man. He was drifting down the current of that stream which ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes

... support from facts in the last century, is apparent merely from naming over the chief poets. Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Mrs. Browning, Rossetti, all publish their ill-health through their verse. Even Browning, in whose verse, if anywhere, one would expect to find the virile poet, shows Sordello turned to poetry by the fact of his physical weakness.[Footnote: So nearly ubiquitous has ill-health been among modern poets, that Max Nordau, in his widely read indictment of art, Degeneration, was able to make out a plausible ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... virile virtue-voice, Whose whisper hushed Earth's Hum, were we not proud To have him cross the sea to speak aloud And, with a finger raised, hush battle noise, And lift all lands to Justice's equipoise? Oh, such his truth to ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle

... virilis[Lat]; have cut one's eyeteeth, have sown one's mild oats. Adj. adolescent, pubescent, of age; of full age, of ripe age; out of one's teens, grown up, mature, full grown, in one's prime, middle-aged, manly, virile, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... was irritated. All this clamor of fear annoyed and disturbed him. This was not the scene he had planned in his drink-inspired reveries. There had been a time when Joyce had admired the virile force of him, when she had let herself be kind to him under the impression she was influencing him for his good. He had misunderstood the reaction of her mind and supposed that if he could get her away from the influence of her ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine

... the strongest terms they censure the abdication of the Swiss soul at the time when Belgium was being invaded, noting with pain the absence of any national and public protest. But now there is a change of spirit. "We have a young and virile movement, the movement of those who are not satisfied with the mere existence of Switzerland, but who desire that Switzerland should prove herself worthy to exist, by her moral greatness and by helping to bring salvation to other peoples" ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland

... of Harald Kaas had been laid out, the face shaved, and the eyes closed, the distortion was less apparent. They could trace signs of suffering, but the expression was still virile. It seemed a handsome face to ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... little of the technical organization of industrial life which their written constitution demands. They listen eagerly to the appeal for the 'solidarity' of their class. In the dignifying of vagabondage through their crude but virile song and verse, in the bitter vilification of the jail turnkey and county sheriff, in their condemnation of the church and its formal social work, they find the vindication of their hobo status which they desire. They cannot sustain a live organization unless they have a strike or free-speech ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... themselves homes; and others there be who rent rooms. Walt Whitman was essentially a citizen of the world: the world was his home and mankind were his friends. There was a quality in the man peculiarly universal: a strong, virile poise that asked for nothing, but ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard

... words, just as they do with other "Miscellaneous" authors. The wily Ts'in ruler, in order to secure this clever envoy for his own service, sent two bands of female musicians as a present to the Tartar king, so as to make him less virile; 140 years later the cunning ruler of Ts'i did much the same thing in order to prevent the Duke of Lu from growing too strong; and the immediate consequence was that Confucius left his fickle master in disgust. Ki-chah, Prince of ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker

... perhaps, been such an absence of complexity in genius of a high order as there was in Dickens's character. But though there was no complexity, there were two very different aspects—acute sensibility was not incompatible with a virile and buoyant spirit. And so Dickens's associations with the country which he loved best and knew most intimately were, on the one side, those of a dreamy childhood, on the other, of a lusty zest in outdoor life and the rustic ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin

... indeed true countrymen. Little wonder that they overran the empire of the city-loving Romans, and finally sacked Rome itself. How hairy and hardy and virile they were! In the same way is the more fresh and vigorous blood of the country always making eruptions into the city. The Goths and Vandals from the woods and the farms,—what would Rome do without them, after all? The city rapidly uses men up; families ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs

... in it. I do not refer to the Monroe Doctrine that made the elder sister the zealous defender of the younger ones. I speak of the radiant example of your republican virtue, your industrial initiative, your economic development, your scientific advances, your ardent and virile activity that has reenforced our faith in right, in liberty, in justice, in the republic, and has animated us—as a noble and victorious example does animate—in our dark days of ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root

... to win every hard-fought battle in spite of the often superior numbers of the Opposition. That Jefferson was able in the face of this victorious and discouraging army to form a great party out of the rag-tag and bobtail element, animating his policy of decentralization into a virile and indelible Americanism, proved him to be a man of genius. History shows us few men so contemptible in character, so low in tone; and no man has given his biographers so difficult a task. But those who despise him most who ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... jabbered in French, Cree, and Chipewyan chiefly, but when they wanted to swear, they felt the inadequacy of these mellifluous or lisping tongues, and fell back on virile Saxon, whose tang, projectivity, and wealth of vile epithet evidently supplied a long-felt want in the Great Lone Land of the Dog ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton

... during the conflagration. There was, O king, a great Rishi known by the name of Mandapala, conversant with all the shastras, of rigid vows, devoted to asceticism, and the foremost of all virtuous persons. Following in the wake of Rishis that had drawn up their virile fluid, that ascetic, O monarch, with every sense under complete control, devoted himself to study and virtue. Having reached the opposite shores of asceticism, O Bharata, he left his human form and went to the region of the Pitris. But going thither he failed to obtain the (expected) fruit of his ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... companion without any depression, with hardly any sorrow. They thought of him when they were successful, referred to him as a model, found an incentive in his memory,—that was all. Their grief over his loss was virile and invigorating. ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux

... The Perfect Little Lady, which will discuss "The Highest Type of Man," the editor of The Brain Pan will throw open his columns to all those with views on "The Most Attractive Girl." For the start he has secured the services of "Virile Englishman," who will put aside her knitting to take up the pen in obedience to his commands. The Perfect Little Lady's first letter will be contributed by "Sweet Seventeen," who has studied her subject by diligent attendance ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various

... the operation succeeds, the young girl is declared 'bonne a marier.'" MM. Hanoteau and Letourneau state that among the Kabyles of Algeria a similar measurement is made of the male sex. In Kabylia, where the attainment of the virile state brings on the necessity of paying taxes and bearing arms, families not infrequently endeavour to conceal the puberty of their young men. If such deceit is suspected, recourse is had to the test of neck-measurement. Here again, ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... family. There are sixteen women in the group, representing fifty-six persons, most of whom are children in school. Think what it means to those children to have mothers who are vitally interested in seeing them grow up to be strong, virile men and women. "Knowledge makes Power," aye, the knowledge of the mothers of today makes for the powerful citizens ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various

... Washington, a monument to President McKinley for Toledo, Ohio, a "Lord Baltimore" for Maryland and some very excellent statues on the facade of the Masonic Building, San Francisco. His work in the Court of the Ages has added greatly to the interest of that Court and is forceful, virile work. ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James

... off his head at her leisure with his own "fauchion." The decency of this arrangement is easily apparent; it obviated the necessity for wanton allurements on the part of Judith and amorous advances on the side of the Commander-in-Chief. Incidentally it is more reasonable to assume that so virile a warrior would yield to nothing short of intoxication than that he would be persuaded, while still remaining sober, to take a brief rest (on the ground of temporary indisposition) and so go like a lamb to the slaughter, as he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various

... judging him at all. At the same time, though he held in general that a man of sense has always warrant enough in his sense for doing the particular thing he prefers, he could scarcely help asking himself whether, in the exercise of a virile freedom, it had been absolutely indispensable Nick should work such domestic woe. He admitted indeed that that was an anomalous figure for Nick, the worker of domestic woe. Then he saw that his aunt's grievance—there came a ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... newspaper; for ethical authority its editorials might be compared only to the Herald's; for disinterested principle the Sun alone could compare with it; it had all the lively enterprise and virile, restless energy of the Tribune; all the gay, inconsequent, and frothy sparkle of the Evening Post; all the risky popularity of the Outlook. It was a very, very great New York daily. What on earth ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers

... contemporaries, without putting in jeopardy her peace of mind, her honor, nay even her social existence; and she finds the energy required for such an act of submission in the firmness of her understanding and in the virile habits which her education has given her. It may be said that she has learned by the use of her independence to surrender it without a struggle and without a murmur when the time comes for making the sacrifice. But no American ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... stood, an armed camp of a nation, enamored of war, and completely civilized in all external things. Ts'u, her strongest rival, stretching southward to the Yangtse and beyond, had had to deal with barbarians less virile than the Huns; and besides, dwelling as Ts'u did among the mountains and forests of romance, she had some heart in her for poetry and mysticism, whereas Ts'in's was all for sheer fighting. Laotse probably had been ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... take the offensive against the Portuguese; and still later to defeat them. King Henry, brother of Queen Isabella, had in fact taken possession of the treasures of that town. During her entire life, whether in time of war or in time of peace, the Marchioness de Moia displayed virile resolution, and it was due to her counsels that many great deeds were done in Castile. The wife of Pedro Arias, being niece of this marchioness, and inspired by courage equal to that of her aunt, spoke to her husband on his departure ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt

... these cheery projects go astray, though in precisely what manner I have no very clear idea. But the end came at a gathering where the Prince played psychic music, and a chance union of hands between hero and heroine transmuted the former from "a dilettante" and "polished ladies' man" to "a virile male filled with the blasting vehemence of primary passions." Incidentally it proved altogether too much both for the Professor and his inoculated rabbits, all of whom expired on the spot. Just about here that most pertinent question became more acute than ever. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 19, 1917 • Various

... officiumque virile Defendat, neu quid medios intercinat actus, Quod non proposito conducat, et haereat apte. Ille bonis faveatque, et concilietur amicis, Et regat iratos, et amet peccare timentes. Ille dapes laudet mensae brevis; ille salubrem Justitiam, legesque, et apertis otia portis. Ille tegat commissa, deosque ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... as a rule more virile, more active, more dominant, and perhaps more greedy than are the pure-bred Egyptians. In the days before the English protectorate they held many important positions among the ruling classes of Egypt. They lined their pockets well, plundering those in their power with the ruthlessness characteristic ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens

... ladies, doted on his conducting technique. His slim, youthful, virile figure was held erect, his feet remained still as if nailed to the floor, while his arms went through a series of sensuously compelling, always graceful motions. The view from the back was enhanced by the fact that the tailor who cut his morning and evening coats was almost ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower

... ears, is a little sulky still—most men are so in these affairs—seldom generous in love. To pretend to be so is only to encroach on woman's sweet and noble prerogative, and to assume her great virtue. No man could keep it up long; he would naturally fall into his virile sulks. So Horace does not at once open his arms that his Lydia may fall into them—but stands hesitatingly, rather foolish, his hands behind him, and puts forward the supposition If—that graceless peace-maker. Lydia, on the contrary—all love, all generosity, is in his arms at ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various

... are weak and its sinews soft, but yet its grasp is firm. It knows not yet the union of male and female, and yet its virile member may be excited;—showing the perfection of its physical essence. All day long it will cry without its throat becoming hoarse;—showing the ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze

... she dreamed that Drene could be such a man, such a friend, never had she imagined there was in him such kindness, such patience, such gentleness, such comprehension, such virile sense and sympathy. ...
— Between Friends • Robert W. Chambers

... to the blood; of the pleasures preferring those that are mild and without violence—the love of gain and the pursuit of money; hence, there was absence of soul. Another phase was the cultivation of the body, the body and its beauty uniquely cared for by virile treatment and a rigid regime which is the guardian of life—not weakly adored as by women who kill themselves by excessive self-love." M. Saint-Amand continues, after quoting the above: "At all seasons of the year, Diana plunges into a cold bath on rising. As soon as day breaks, ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme

... rather affecting the blouse,—not that he wore that antique garment, but that he was in rough costume unbrushed and stained, with thick shoes and coarse stockings, and a workman's cap. But of all who gathered round the table at which M. Lebeau presided, he had the most distinguished exterior,—a virile honest exterior, a massive open forehead, intelligent eyes, a handsome clear-cut incisive profile, and solid jaw. The expression of the face was stern, but not mean,—an expression which might have become an ancient baron as well as a modern workman; in it plenty of haughtiness and of will, and ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... novel is, to me, that it is strong, virile, instinct with vital thought. There are blemishes in it, too, which no one will be likely to overlook. Several chapters read like the reports of a clinic in a medical journal, so extremely minute and circumstantial are the accounts ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... to do things, it would seem, in rather a strident way, to blow a trumpet, or wave a flag, or command an army, or reform a department of state, or control a railroad. Hugh had neither the power nor the will to write a virile book or a powerful story, or to take imagination captive. He did not wish to head a revolt against anything in particular. The day of the old, grim, sinister tyrannies, he felt, in the western corner of the world, was over, and the kind of tyranny that vexed his spirit was a far more secret and ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... fair and serious experiment, in which he took his part loyally, at founding in France the 'Conservative Republic' of M. Thiers, he thought that outlook for the future completely and hopelessly closed; and as it was neither in the traditions of Netherlandish liberty nor in his own virile and courageous temper to acquiesce in the domination of a political oligarchy ready, like Carrier and the Jacobins of 1792, to 'make France one vast cemetery rather than not regenerate it after their own minds!' M. Cornelis ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... of humor in them. The legend on the banner had annoyed him. Its blatant message had penetrated the armor of youth, high spirits, and abounding good health. It expressed his own case, with a crude vigor. The "unemployed" genius who railed at society in that virile line must have felt as he, Dick Royson, had begun to feel during the past fortnight, and the knowledge that this was so was exceedingly distasteful. It was monstrous that he should rate himself on a par with those slouching wastrels. The mere notion brought its own confutation. ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy

... air he breathes, and from which he never escapes, is sufficient to weaken him mentally and physically, so that he becomes unable to compete with the fresh virile life from the country hastening on to London Town to ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London

... his latent strength and brilliancy had revived, exquisitely virile; and the new canvas on which he began now to work blossomed swiftly ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... was a Hamlet also of French extraction in the skill and school of the actor, but as much more deeply derived than the Hamlet of Mme. Bernhardt as the large imagination of Charles Fechter transcended in its virile range the effect of her subtlest womanish intuition. His was the first blond Hamlet known to our stage, and hers was also blond, if a reddish-yellow wig may stand for a complexion; and it was of the quality of his ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... man; David—"What a man he is!" she was forced to admit as he stood, head uplifted in the white glare under the chandelier, the brilliant light shining upon his dark hair, and his eyes glowing like stars. His lithe figure, perfect in poise and balance, of virile strength that was toil-proof, wore the look of the outdoor life. His smile banished everything that was ordinary from his face and transmuted it into a glowing personality. His eyes, serious with that insight of the observer who knows what ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... form in Fig. 15 bears much the same relation to that of Fig. 14 as did the clearly outlined projectile of Fig. 10 to the indeterminate cloud of Fig. 8. We could hardly have a more marked contrast than that between the inchoate flaccidity of the nebulosity in Fig. 14 and the virile vigour of the splendid spire of highly developed devotion which leaps into being before us in Fig. 15. This is no uncertain half-formed sentiment; it is the outrush into manifestation of a grand emotion rooted deep in the knowledge of fact. The man who feels such devotion as this is one who ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant

... "Knock out my brains with apples, Brown, if I don't become a convert myself, if Keesh holds fast, true blue, for two years!" Mr. Brown never lost an opportunity, so he clinched the matter on the spot with a virile hand-grip, and thenceforth the conduct of Keesh was to determine the ultimate abiding-place ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London

... This is a strong, virile novel with the lumber industry for its central theme and a love story full of interest ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest

... attended to politics was supposed to be in his favour. He had the reputation of being the most learned man in the States, and reputation itself often suffices to give a man dignity of manner. He, too, spoke through his nose, but the peculiar twang coming from a man would be supposed to be virile and incisive. From a woman, Lord Silverbridge thought it to be unbearable. But as to Isabel, had she been born within the confines of some lordly park in Hertfordshire, she could not have been more completely ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... be added that we may find a curiously inconsistent proof of the excessive importance attached to sexual function by a society which systematically tries to depreciate sex, in the disgrace which is attributed to the lack of "virile" potency. Although civilized life offers immense scope for the activities of sexually impotent persons, the impotent man is made to feel that, while he need not be greatly concerned if he suffers from nervous disturbances of digestion, if ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... longer even attempting to fight. He was bringing to bear upon her all his virile strength, all his spite, all his fears, all the threats expressed in his furious gestures and on his features, which were both ridiculous ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc

... vile, stamps ill-livers in Morocco with the seal we learn to recognise in the Western world. For the Moslem death has no sting, and hell no victory. Faith, whether it be in One God, in a Trinity, in Christ, Mohammed, or Buddha, is surely the most precious of all possessions, so it be as virile and living a thing as it ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan



Words linked to "Virile" :   strong, impotent, masculine, potent, virility



Copyright © 2024 Diccionario ingles.com