"Womanly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The finest movements of the human heart, the utmost grandeur of which the soul is capable, are essentially comprised in the actions and speeches of Caelica and Camena. Shakspeare, who seems to have had a peculiar delight in contemplating womanly perfection, whom for his many sweet images of female excellence all women are in an especial manner bound to love, has not raised the ideal of the female character higher than Lord Brooke, in these two women, has done. But ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... strung heroically, and educated according to the notions of her caste and church, purely and religiously. True it is, that one can scarcely call that education which teaches woman everything except herself,—except the things that relate to her own peculiar womanly destiny, and, on plea of the holiness of ignorance, sends her without one word of just counsel into the temptations of life. Incredible as it may seem, Virginie de Frontignac had never read a romance or work of fiction of which love was the staple; the rgime of the convent in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... homage indirectly to myself, in paying it to this young lady." As for Lucy, my jealous watchfulness could not detect the smallest alteration in her deportment, so far as simplicity and nature were concerned. She appeared in a trifling degree more womanly, perhaps, than when I saw her last, being now in her twentieth year; but the attentions she received made no visible change in her manners. I had become lost in the scene, and was standing in a musing attitude, my side face towards the box, when ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... had heard her father argue to her mother, Queen Victoria, for the Union and against slavery. She discussed current matters of world politics with the strength of a statesman; yet nothing could be more womanly in the highest sense. On my saying that I hoped to see the day when Germany, Great Britain, and the United States would stand together in guarding the peace of the world, she threw up her hands and replied, "Heaven grant it; but you forget Japan." The funeral at Potsdam dwells in my mind ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... with her congratulations, though it had annoyed him, it had hardly made him unhappy. When she called him Romeo and spoke of herself as Rosaline, he took her remark as indicating some petulance rather than an enduring love. That had been womanly and he could forgive it. He had his other great and solid happiness to support him. Then he had believed that she would soon marry, if not Silverbridge, then some other fitting young nobleman, and ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... in the character of a May queen, Alice, that you should almost hide your beautiful hair in ribbons and flowers. A stiff bouquet in a silver holder is simply an impediment, and does not give a particle of true womanly grace. That necklace of pearls, if half hidden among soft laces, would be charming; but banding the uncovered neck and half-exposed chest, it looks bald, inharmonious, and out of place. White, with a superfluity ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... the daughter of American Methodism, anticipated the parent Church in utilizing the womanly gifts and services of deaconesses as members of her aggressive forces, and furnished it a very ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... a lovely face," she said, handing it back. "A lovely face—better than lovely—womanly. One feels the spirit back of it. When you are lonely again, think what a gift such a mother has been. What a privilege to follow in her footsteps—carry out her hopes ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... one attendant from Paris to Madrid, fleeing from Richelieu, remaining day and night on her horse, attracting perilous admiration by the womanly loveliness which no male attire could obscure. From Spain she went to England, organizing there the French exiles into a strength which frightened Richelieu; thence to Holland, to conspire nearer home; back to Paris, on the minister's death, to form the faction of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... 'Her womanly charm gave place now to her masculine grip. She eulogised me in the language of a seasoned reviewer on the staff of a long-established journal—wordy perhaps, but sound. I revered and loved her. I wished I could give her my undivided ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... would probably have seen much more of Cecilia at her own home; and the admiration and esteem with which she already inspired him might have ripened into much warmer feeling, had he thus been brought into clearer comprehension of the soft and womanly heart, and ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... I had from Yeates what time Margery was pouring the wine and oil of womanly sympathy into Richard's woundings; and I may confess that whilst the ear was listening to the hunter's tale, the eye was taking note of these her tender ministrations, and the heart was setting them down ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... her friend, the vicar's wife, came in for a morning call. She thought that Mrs. Wrottesley's brown merino dress and bonnet, and constraining mantle which rendered all movements of the arms impossible, looked very decorous and womanly compared with the soles of a pair of brown leather shoes, and the foreshortened figure of five feet eight of slender young womanhood stretched in strenuous devotion to her strange occupation ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... delightfully fresh and unspoiled girl," I reflected, as I wended my way homeward through the still moonlight; "so true-hearted, and genuine, and unaffected. And still beneath all that sweet, womanly tranquillity there are strong slumbering forces, which some day will startle some phlegmatic countryman of hers, who takes her to be as submissive as ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... don't take my idea, father. It is funny, because it assumes so much. It does not realize that womanly modesty is the great obstacle to its success, and that if it was as well endowed with that quality as the average of American women, it would promptly cease ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... There was such womanly impatience in her last words that, involuntarily, I smiled; happily it was beginning to grow ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... etc. But the heroine of Fielding's time—a time which made merry over a lady's misadventures in horsemanship, and subjected her to such atrocities as those of Lord Fellamar—required to be strongly moulded; and Sophia Western is pure and womanly, in spite of her unfavourable surroundings. She is a charming example—the first of her race—of an unsentimentalised flesh-and-blood heroine; and Time has hated no jot of her frank vitality or her healthy beauty. Her descendants ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... love of peace and ease which had been filtered into her soul with the air of a Southern land. She had found it easier to get on with Mrs. Harrington than she at first anticipated. Her nature, which was essentially womanly, had in reality long craved for the intimate sympathy and intercourse which only another woman could supply. There was something indolent and restful in the very atmosphere of the house that supplied a distinct want in the motherless girl's life. There were a number of vague possibilities ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... too, and wus so womanly and quiet and deep. I s'pose it wus bein' always with her mother that made her seem older and more thoughtful than girls usially are. It seemed as if her great dark eyes wus full of wisdom beyend—fur beyend—her years, ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... gladly have escaped out of sight, but at the sound of her name Edward came forward to greet the Indian girl. Olly, with many muttered protestations against the rudeness shown to her young mahs'r, lifted the trap-door, and vanished down cellar. The pale life-weary young man was alone with the sweet womanly savage. ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... English literature there are undoubtedly greater names than Mrs. Oliphant's, but surely none that will shine with a tenderer and purer radiance. Mrs. Oliphant was an indefatigable worker and had the spirit of true knighthood beating in her womanly bosom. Of her autobiography the Philadelphia Ledger says: "The volume is unique in interest and a most valuable and helpful story of a noble and honorable life. Mrs. Coghill has the best equipment as an editor: discretion, taste, a word of connection wherever needed, no ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... offered to M'liss when her conversion became known, the master had preferred that of Mrs. Morpher, a womanly and kind-hearted specimen of Southwestern efflorescence, known in her maidenhood as the "Per-ra-rie Rose." By a steady system of struggle and self-sacrifice, she had at last subjugated her naturally careless ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... the last of the visitors. For by this time Mere had accumulated so many absolutely unforgivable grievances against her absolutely impossible husband that she felt qualified for that crown of comfortable martyrhood, that womanly ideal, "a wife in name only"—and only that "for the ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... to fasten her collar and complete the minutiae of her dress with that careful neatness which was an instinct with Christian, as it is with all womanly women, though how this poor motherless girl had ever learned womanliness at all was a marvel. She answered chiefly in soft monosyllables to the perpetual stream of Mrs. Ferguson's talk, till at last the good soul could ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... so full of these maternal and womanly visions that the sudden slight rigidity of Mrs. Maitland's face ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... privately informed me, had been united to the Mary of his early love, and under her sweet womanly influence had lost much of the misanthropy which had annoyed his friends in ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... easy-going, irresponsible way of the young girl so attractive to men? It does not make for domestic happiness; and why, Oh why, do some of our best men marry such odd little sticks of pin-head women, with a brain similar in caliber to a second-rate butterfly, while the most intelligent, unselfish, and womanly women are left unmated? I am going to ask about this the first morning I am in heaven, if so be we are allowed to ask about the things which troubled us while on our mortal journey. I have never been able to find ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... Petruchio, 'I will win the wager better yet, and show more signs of her new-built virtue and obedience.' Katharine now entering with the two ladies, he continued: 'See where she comes, and brings your froward wives as prisoners to her womanly persuasion. Katharine, that cap of yours does not become you; off with that bauble, and throw it under foot.' Katharine instantly took off her cap, and threw it down. 'Lord!' said Hortensio's wife, 'may I never have a ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of the situation. And his resolve had need to be very keen, for just then Eve did a thing which might have wrecked it. She rose and came straight towards him; her pretty, distressed face was raised to his, still, in spite of its womanly anguish, with some of the pleading of a frightened child, who runs instinctively in its extremity to the person whom it knows best; and she gave him her two little trembling hands, which he held ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... remarkable for a certain strange fascination of melody—a quality for which Coleridge, who was not unreasonably proud of his musical gift, is said to have especially prized them; and they are noteworthy also as perhaps the fullest expression of the almost womanly softness of Coleridge's nature. To describe their tone as effeminate would be unfair and untrue, for effeminacy in the work of a male hand would necessarily imply something of falsity of sentiment, and from this they are entirely free. But it must certainly be admitted that for a man's ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... Malling sought refuge in the consolation of her own ability to help her son. He must never know want, or suffer the least privation. She could and would give him everything he needed. Besides, after all, she argued with womanly feeling, now perhaps she could persuade him to look after the farm for her; to stay by her side. He should be in no way dependent. She would install him as manager at a comfortable salary. The idea pleased her beyond measure, ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... again her own bright womanly little self, eager and delighted in the thought of doing something or anything ...
— Miss Mouse and Her Boys • Mrs. Molesworth
... magical arts, and of foretelling events by his knowledge of astrology. In the Thebaid he was so far honoured that at the bidding of the priests one of the sacred trees spoke to him, as had been their custom from of old with favourites, and in a clear and rather womanly voice addressed him as ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... flye? I haue done no harme. But I remember now I am in this earthly world: where to do harme Is often laudable, to do good sometime Accounted dangerous folly. Why then (alas) Do I put vp that womanly defence, To say I haue done no harme? What are ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... existence on the model of the Boy Scout movement is the organization of Camp-Fire Girls. It is designed to meet the demand for companionship in a wholesome, pleasant way, and by its incentives to healthy activity and womanly virtue it helps ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... pathetic was not lacking. But the hearty corporal reminded his better half that her parents, in his interests, had once been asked for her hand under similar circumstances, and the tears disappeared. Tears are womanly; and I have since seen them shed, under less provocation, by fairer-skinned women than this ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... contemptuously surprised at having trembled at all? What! he had not made the slightest attempt at courtship, not even pressed a kiss on her finger-tips. The young fellow's bearish indifference, of which she had assuredly been conscious, must have hurt her budding womanly feelings. ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... together," he said, and beamed down on her, and because her heart was really a kind little heart and a womanly one, she smiled up at him and tried to be as fine and friendly as she would have wanted ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... her. Then she said, 'Lead him to the cross.' This cross was in front of the church close by. So they led him there. Then she mounted, and he never budged, any more than if he had been tied. Then she turned toward the door of the church and said, in her soft womanly voice, 'You, priests and people of the Church, make processions and pray to God for us!' Then she spurred away, under her standard, with her little ax in her hand, crying 'Forward—march!' One of her brothers, who came ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... angel bending o'er the dying who die in righteousness, she stood," when she and Lennard met with a sudden surprise. The wounded man opened his great dark eyes that showed like deep shadows on the dead white of his skin; he saw that clear, exquisite face with all the divine fulness of womanly tenderness shining sweetly from the kind eyes, and he smiled—a very beautiful smile. He could speak very low, and the awe-stricken ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... counted it to be a month ere his family would have wind of the altered position of his affairs, possibly a year to the day of his making the dear woman his own in the eyes of the world. She was dear past computation, womanly, yet quite unlike the womanish woman, unlike the semi-males courteously called dashing, unlike the sentimental. His present passion for her lineaments, declared her surpassingly beautiful, though his critical taste was rather for the white statue that gave ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... with the fundamentals of all morality. The person who adopts that attitude as an act of surrender to earthly love is a sensualist. It is a form of sensualism rampant in women; and men encourage it by bestowing upon it the names of womanly virtues. To adopt a similar attitude in spiritual matters seems to me sensualism none the less. And what a hot-bed for that sort of sensualism the Church has always ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... time, the resolution of which he had spoken to Hallin seemed to himself unshaken. He recognised and adored the womanly growth and deepening which had taken place in her; he saw that she wished to show him kindness. But he thought he could trust himself now and henceforward not to force upon her a renewed suit for which there was in his eyes ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... work, daily work, had left its impress on them all. Some (their luncheon bills did not exceed ten cents) looked, with their thin fingers and arms, like human attachments to typewriting machines. There was a something not in the least mannish, but still not appealingly womanly, in these self-reliant, quiet business beings. Was it a sort of neuter gender, a sexless being that was there in course of development? Somehow, they did not strike one as beings who would bear and suckle and nurse children. Was this severe struggle and necessity of existence ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... should it? The reason of things seemed to be something which his mind could neither grasp nor even inquire into. She was troubled, and he—well, it made him unhappy. She said go and work, work for the children. Ah, yes, her thoughts were for the children, womanly, unselfish thoughts just such as a good mother should have. So he went, full of a fresh enthusiasm for his ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... in general style of composition, the three pictures show many points of dissimilarity when we come to a closer study of the figures. Considered as a type of womanly beauty, the Belle Jardiniere is perhaps the most commonplace of the three Virgins, or, to put it negatively, the least attractive. She is distinctly of the peasant class, gentle, amiable, and entirely unassuming. The Madonna in the Meadow is a maturer woman, more dignified, ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... water, another is preparing the swaddling-clothes, a third is busy with some service, a fourth with another, and, while each is attending to her own duty, another woman is holding the little child in her arms and making her laugh by smiling at her, with a womanly grace truly worthy of such a work; besides many other expressions that are in each figure. In the third, which is above the first, is the Madonna ascending the steps of the Temple, with a building which recedes from the eye correctly enough, in addition to a nude figure that ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... strength and the advantages of his boyish training in the gymnasium to regard the trial with equanimity. Still, the girls he had known in the East would never have set two men to fight, never—it was not womanly. Good girls were by nature peacemakers. There must be something in Loo, he argued, almost— vulgar, and he shrank from the word. To lessen the sting of his disappointment, he pictured her to himself and strove ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... refined and graceful, often witty, sometimes judicious, they wrote what they saw, thought, and felt in their habitual language, without proposing any model to themselves, without any intention to prove that women could write as well as men, without affecting manly views or suppressing womanly ones. One may say, at least with regard to the women of the seventeenth century, that their writings were but a charming accident of their more charming lives, like the petals which the wind shakes from the rose in its bloom. And it is but a twin fact ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... length, after a pause, she found words to say: "Sir, I am a Christian, and would rather go back to my own friends." At the same tune, it was remarked by every one that she had not lost the feelings of womanly modesty; even after having lived so long among naked blacks, she seemed acutely to feel the singularity of her position, dressed only in a couple of shirts, in the midst of a ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... had also Womanly Deities: such as were Venus, 7. the Goddess of Loves, and Pleasures, with her little son Cupid, 8. Habuerant etiam Muliebria Numina; qualia fuerunt Venus, 7. Dea Amorum, & Voluptatum, cum filiolo Cupidine, ...
— The Orbis Pictus • John Amos Comenius
... the tea. He then proceeded slowly to arrange the bed with a care and solicitude that were almost womanly, forgetting nothing, as if he wished to ensure to his master refreshing and unbroken slumbers ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... disguise; and certainly their 'regulation dresses,' all cut after one fashion, and of one sombre hue, did seem a little nun-like, and perhaps rather alarming. But the following passage—which, from the amusing mixture which it exhibits of strong good sense and half-indignant womanly feeling, our readers will, we are sure, relish—may serve to show that some of the ladies who wore the questionable dress, liked it quite as ill as the most zealous member of the Reformation Society could have done, and were very excellent Protestants under its cover. The authoress of ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... drink what he called "clean caup out." "This love," he said, "is but a bairnly matter for a brisk young fellow like yourself, Master Jenkin. And if ye must needs have a whimsy, though I think it would be safer to venture on a staid womanly body, why, here be as bonny lasses in London as this Peg-a-Ramsay. You need not sigh sae deeply, for it is very true—there is as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it. Now wherefore should you, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... assertions to the most profound sources, presents them in her acute analyses and philosophical arguments, and draws practical applications from them. She is sincere in her convictions, and able in her arguments; she sets up a high standard of womanly excellence for noblesse oblige, and teaches ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... longer the property of the Osbornes,—though happily not one of these errors is in itself important. To our thinking, too, in the character that he draws of our heroine, Macaulay hardly appears to be sufficiently aware of the sympathetic womanly nature of Dorothy, and the dignity of her disposition; so that he is persuaded to speak of her too constantly from the position of a man of the world praising with patronizing emphasis the pretty qualities of a school-girl. But we must ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... Geoffrey Bingham to his sorrow and his hope. It was strong and pure and sweet as the keen sea breath, and looking on it one must know that beneath this fair cloak lay a wit as fair. And yet it was all womanly; here was not the hard sexless stamp of the "cultured" female. She who owned it was capable of many things. She could love and she could suffer, and if need be, she could dare or die. It was to be read upon that lovely brow and face, and in the depths of those grey eyes—that ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... goodness, having in the Bible their express sanction, with a great promise and an awful warning for the future, and the embodiment of holiness, love, and help, in Christ. This has been the religion of a multitude of faithful souls, manly men and womanly women, who did not concern themselves with any elaborate theology, but went along their daily way, strong in obedience to duty, trustful in a divine guidance, and with serene hope for what may come after death. Their souls have been nurtured on whatever was most vital and most tender ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... of girlish faces, in which Christian and womanly graces are dawning. I feel the warmth of pure young hearts beginning to swell ...
— A Story of One Short Life, 1783 to 1818 - [Samuel John Mills] • Elisabeth G. Stryker
... of her voice, clear and vibrant, yet soft, gentle and womanly, there came silence from below, and after a moment every face was upturned to hers. Gradually her voice rose in pitch. Its gentle tone was gone now—it became forceful, commanding. Then again she flung out her arms with a ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... mother in her early childhood; and as a natural consequence in her bringing-up, she had felt the influence of the relaxed notions which loosened the hold of religion upon France during the Revolution. Piety is a womanly virtue which women alone can really instil; and the Marquise, a child of the eighteenth century, had adopted her father's creed of philosophism, and practised no religious observances. A priest, to her way of thinking, was a civil servant of very doubtful utility. ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... have journeyed over more of the wide lands of America than myself, old and feeble as I seem. But little use is there for a horse among the hills and woods of York—that is, as York was, but as I greatly fear York is no longer—as for woollen covering and cow's milk, I covet no such womanly fashions! The beasts of the field give me food and raiment. No, I crave no cloth better than the skin of a deer, nor any ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... kindness itself; his gesture almost womanly in its gentleness as he rose to meet me, and anxiously ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... a slender, graceful, womanly shape came noiselessly in and appeared by the lieutenant's side, quivering, shaking in an agony of shame and misery and nervousness, the lonely patient threw himself over towards the wall, and burying his distorted face in his arms, burst into a passion of tears, the attendant ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... whose poetry we have loved, and whose moral lessons, I trust, have not been entirely thrown away upon us. I go to the deliverance of one of those oppressed nations whose history I have often recited to you, and in whose destiny you have from time to time expressed a womanly sympathy. While it is probable, therefore, that my MOTIVES may not be misunderstood by you, or even other dear friends of the Excelsior, it is by no means impossible that the celerity and unexpectedness ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... degree from Jerusalem that we do not find the least allusion to it either in the Talmud or in Jewish tradition. Certain it is that Greek was very little studied at Jerusalem, that Greek studies were considered as dangerous, and even servile, that they were regarded, at the best, as a mere womanly accomplishment.[5] The study of the Law was the only one accounted liberal and worthy of a thoughtful man.[6] Questioned as to the time when it would be proper to teach children "Greek wisdom," a learned rabbi had answered, "At the time when it is neither day nor night; since it is written ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... street, are full of native humour and originality and give genuine glimpses of low life in old Amsterdam. His songs show that Brederoo had a real poetic gift. They reveal, beneath the rough and at times coarse and licentious exterior, a nature of fine susceptibilities and almost womanly tenderness. Joost van den Vondel was born in the same year as Brederoo, 1587, but his career was very different. Vondel survived till 1679, and during the whole of his long life his pen was never idle. His dramas and poems (in the edition of Van Lennep) ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... had been hopeless misery, with all her womanly and religious instincts outraged, and the probability of worse in future. Jellicoe, his wife, and O'Leary had no pity, and her mother very little, and no principle; and she had no hope, except that release might come by some crippling accident. Workhouse ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... rise and call Crossthwaite from the next room where he was writing? Was it from the womanly tact and delicacy which feared lest my excited feelings might lead me on to some too daring expression, and give me the pain of a rebuff, however gentle; or was it that she wished him, as well as me, to hear the memorable words which followed, to which she seemed to have been all along ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... sympathetic understanding with which his imagination endowed her. How perfectly her face expressed the goodness and gentleness of her soul! What a companion she would make to a man! What a lover! What a wife! Always soft, exquisite, tender, womanly to the innermost fibre of her being, and perfect in unselfishness as all womanly women are. How easy it would be to work if she were somewhere within call, ready to fly to him at a word! How glorious ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... tremendous magnitude of their genius. Each is a Colossus. Each creates a whole world of characters, from kings and princes and ladies to servants and maids and peasants. But how vastly divergent the angle of approach! Anna Karenina may have all the subtle womanly charm of an Olivia or a Portia, but how different her trials. Shakespeare could not have treated Anna's problems at all. Anna could not have appeared in his pages except as a sinning Gertrude, the mother ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... there were the groves of pine, darkly green, below the hills, with their deep solitudes for prayer and meditation between the vast gnarled trunks; and the group of the two noble women before him—severely simple—was a vision of love and womanly grace and spiritual need; the younger one, all pleading and pain, clinging to the elder who closely enfolded her, her face strong in the strength of love. It was not like any life that he had ever seen—this holy man, whose personal life had been ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... establish an influence over Mrs. Phillips that should be for the poor lady's good; and, as she felt instinctively, for poor Phillips's also. It was not an unpleasing face. Underneath the paint, it was kind and womanly. Joan was sure he would like it better clean. A few months' attention to diet would make a decent figure of her and improve her wind. Joan watched her spreading the butter a quarter of an inch thick upon her toast and restrained with difficulty the impulse to take it away ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... midst of a desert for that matter, I could not withhold one thought from your happiness, for love has transformed me, adapted life itself to a new purpose. I have been "called," and I have no will to resist, because my heart tells me there is goodness in the purpose, a little necklace of womanly virtues for me. When I think of pain, and sorrow, my eyes are holden, I can see only the fair form of love sanctified, and I can hear only your voice calling me to fulfil a destiny which you yourself do not understand. ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... different way. And there's the oldest one—the wife of the naval officer, I'm not sure but you would like her the best of the three. She's a ripper in looks,—tall, you know, with lots of go and energy, and yet as sweet and womanly as can be; you'd like her very much, ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... life by a deed which, in her own estimation and that of her whole nation, entitled her to an immortal dwelling in the Elysian fields. The only feeling, therefore, that I can conceive as checking for a moment her exultation would be the natural womanly horror at the sight of blood and physical suffering, the expression of which seems to me not only natural to her, as of the "feminine gender," but not altogether superfluous to reconcile an English audience to so unfeminine a proceeding as stabbing a ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... crimes of their beloved son; the aged parents of Dr. Johnson, who had come to witness, with saddened hearts, the doom of their darling boy; the young wife of Newton Edwards, who in the moment of her husband's ruin had, with true womanly devotion, forgotten his past acts of cruelty and harshness, and now, with aching heart and tear-stained eyes, was waiting, with fear and trembling, to hear the dreaded judgment pronounced upon the man whom she had sworn to "love and cherish" through ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... soft and womanly. He had a full but sleepy eye, a slightly aquiline nose an extremely short upper-lip, a broad cheek, and a rounded chin. In character he was weak, irresolute, wanting in physical courage, yet, as so often happens with weak characters, harsh, ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... perjure herself on such a subject? Miss Stisted writes with an unconcealed animus, and is not so much concerned in defending the purity of her uncle's Protestantism as in vilifying her aunt and the faith to which she belonged. It may be noted too that Miss Stisted has no word of womanly sympathy for the wife who loved her husband with a love passing the love of women, and who was bowed down by her awful sorrow. On the contrary, with revolting heartlessness and irreverence, she jeers at her aunt's grief and the last offices of the dead. We may agree with the doctrines of ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... then, if we are to live manly, womanly lives, that there is some plan, or may be some purpose in our being born, in our little struggle of a few years, in our being thwarted, in our succeeding, in our being sick or well, in our being rich or ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... than the reward? Napoleon is not a magnanimous man; he lacks true chivalry, and he would delight, perhaps, to scorn the august lady who humbles herself so painfully, and who thereby affords him a triumph. There is a voice in my heart, warning me against this plan; it is repugnant to my womanly feelings that my noble queen is suddenly to descend into the petty affairs of politics. I am afraid your beauty, your understanding, your grace, are to be abused to fascinate your enemy, and to wrest from him by persuasion what is the sacred right and property of ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... things at the period at which our narrative has opened. Maria Heywood had now been three years an occupant of the cottage, and within that time solitude and habits of reflection had greatly matured her mind, as years had given every womanly grace to her person. The past had also tended much to form her character, upon which the development of physical beauty so often depends. At her first debut into society at Charleston, in her fourteenth year—an age that would have been considered ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... self-sufficiency of each individual, men and women alike. Margaret Fuller is a good example of the effect of this philosophy, because her history afterward showed that she was constituted like other human beings, was dependent upon human relationship, and was not only a very noble, but also a very womanly creature. Her marriage, her Italian life, and her tragic death light up with the splendor of reality the earlier and unhappy period of her life. This woman had been driven into her vagaries by the lack of something which she did not know existed, and which she sought blindly ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... had an instant's womanly fright: she had fled from Lochleven Castle in the Douglas livery, and without either the leisure or the opportunity for taking women's clothes with her. But she could not remain attired as a man; so she explained her uneasiness to Mary Seyton, who responded by opening ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... admiration that during the heyday of her earning powers she had always trusted to his generosity, and had never tried to hold any of her earnings back. Prison and drink had destroyed all that was honest in her, all that was womanly. So a drop of acid will eat out the heart of the freshest and loveliest rose. She became a very evil thing—full of evil knowledge. There was even a certain danger in her—not much—nothing definite—but ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... who desires to secure justice and mercy for some poor peons of our district of Altar, I venture to address you, to whom womanly compassion must belong as does ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... home there was a singing at her heart, a certainty of joys undreamt of hitherto, the tenderest, sweetest, most womanly joys—her own house, her own husband, her own children—perhaps; it all lay ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... my power, my lord," she said confidently; and her eyes glistened with womanly pride as she added: ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... The fine face of Judith sufficiently proved the latter circumstance; and if the conscious March fancied that he had never seen in it a stronger display of contempt—a feeling in which the beauty was apt to indulge—than while she was looking at him, it certainly seldom exhibited more of a womanly softness and sensibility, than when her speaking blue eyes were turned on ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... up wise and good, and I find that not only do they think of nothing except their own selfish ends, but they behave ill to one of the gentlest, kindest, and best of men—one who is as wise and learned as he is modest and womanly at heart. It makes mine sore, my son, at such a time as this, for there is nothing better nor greater than wisdom, my boy, and he who possesses it leads a double life whose pleasures are without end. But I am in no mood to scold and reproach ...
— The King's Sons • George Manville Fenn
... sagaciously. "He can not come too soon," she said; then to Constance, with a mingling of womanly tact and genuine kindliness, "my child, you had better drive home soon. If Mrs. Lamotte wishes, or will permit, I will stay to-night. It will be better, believe me, Mrs. Lamotte, than to share a watch with any servant; and I ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... The waiting-room was so bare, so cold, so grey, so like a sepulchre. What could Sheela Dempsey with all her womanly understanding, with all her quick intuition, know of the things that happened beside her? How could she have ears for the crashing down of the pillars of the building that Martin Cosgrave had raised up in his soul? How could she have eyes ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... impudicum nisi dominationi expediret). This means that Agrippina was a lady of irreproachable life; for if there is one thing which stands out clearly in the history of this remarkable woman, it is that both her rise and her fall depended upon causes of such a nature that not even her womanly charms could have increased her power or retarded her ruin. All hearts were therefore filled with hope when they saw this respectable, active, and energetic woman take her place at the side of Claudius the weakling, for she brought back the memory of the most venerated personages ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... and despised parent. Chance had thrown in her way an opportunity for which she had watched for years. Mona Macdonald had visited the advocate at his dwelling, and her presence had stirred not only the womanly curiosity of the lynx-eyed Babet Blais, but her malicious jealousy of one whom she could never but regard as a hateful and favored rival. So, overhearing them in earnest conversation in the library, she, with the unrestrained enjoyment of a low, untutored nature, stole to the door, that ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... virtue, in the eye of Heaven, is as much a manly as a womanly grace. By virtue in this place I mean chastity, and to be superior to temptation; my Clarissa out of the question. Nor ask thou, shall the man be guilty, yet expect the woman to be guiltless, and ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... wonder, then, that she mistook herself for an inspired person? It was easy to understand her popularity with her fellow-men. Her eyes were as soft and clear as those of a child, her hair waved prettily off her low, serene brow, her figure was plump and womanly, and when her voice trembled with emotion (which in her was a shallow well very near the surface) the charmingest pink colour came and went in her cheeks. On such occasions more than one member of the various brotherhoods thought what a cosy wife she would make, if removed from the public arena ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... I clasped her hand, looking up into her face. She had grown more womanly in these last seven months, and far more beautiful; and, looking in her face, I ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... of petty moral officialdom. The two methods of moralization are radically antagonistic. There can be no doubt which of them we ought to pursue if we really desire to breed a firmly-fibred, clean-minded, and self-reliant race of manly men and womanly women. ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... womanly instincts, and knowing nothing of her son's prowess, was giving all her care to the ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... Marsuppini in S. Croce. The bust he made of Marietta di Palla degli Strozzi enables us to compare his style in portraiture with that of Mino.[107] It would be hard to find elsewhere a more captivating combination of womanly sweetness and dignity. We feel, in looking at these products of the best age of Italian sculpture, that the artists who conceived them were, in the truest sense of the word, gentle. None but men courteous and unaffected could have carved a face like that of Marietta ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... high tan boots, she was neat and womanly; yet it was not this that attracted him so much as her profile. From the straight brow, down over the high, fine nose and the firm lips to the firmer chin, ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... prepared not to dislike Mrs. Arbuthnot, whose parted hair and mild expression seemed very decent and womanly, but she certainly had habits that were difficult to like. Her habit of instantly echoing any offer made her of food and drink, of throwing the offer back on one, as it were, was not somehow what one expected of her. "Will you have some more tea?" was surely a question to which ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... must make themselves into a sort of family to face it. Where is the coming man who shall communicate this art of clubbing, which has not yet even been admitted into the feminine dialect? Mr. Mercer is doing for the women who wish to go out in the world that which womanly gratitude can but lightly repay.[F] Where is the kindly, honest-hearted Mr. Mercer who shall further a like enterprise here,—a provision of quarters for those who can pay reasonably and who do not wish to go away? This would be a genuine Stay-at-home Club, a Can't-get-away ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... of what we are wont to call dear, womanly feeling, as when the 'Forlorn,' out in ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... London with my sister for a prolonged visit," said Robert Turold hurriedly. "She needs womanly training and other advantages which I, in my preoccupations, have been unable to bestow upon her. It is greatly to her advantage ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... of the house a group awaited Jean's coming, rather silently, he thought. Wide-eyed children were there, very shy and watchful. The dark face of his sister corresponded with the image of her in his memory. She appeared taller, more womanly, as she embraced him. "Oh, Jean, Jean, I'm glad you've come!" she cried, and pressed him close. Jean felt in her a woman's anxiety for the present as well as affection for the past. He remembered his aunt Mary, though he had not seen her for years. ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... hind quarters to her admirer's nose and elevates her tail high in the air. Her attitude of refusal is equivalent, that is to say, to that which in the human race is typified by the classical example of womanly modesty in the Medicean Venus, who withdraws the pelvis, at the same time holding one hand to guard the pubes, the other to guard the breasts.[9] The essential expression in each case is that of defence ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... her up, and Northforeland is only waiting for your cousin's engagement to be able to go over decently. Shall I ask her to Buckenthorpe?—come, now, as an apology for my rudeness to your cousin?" She was very womanly now in spite of her high collar, her straight back, and her tightly-fitting jacket, as she stood there smiling. Suddenly, her smile faded; she drew her breath ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... the presence of many cherished relics— such as the timepiece which was the last gift of the Queen and the Prince, and a picture said to have been painted by both representing Italian peasants praying beside a roadside calvary. There are numerous tokens of womanly tastes in the gay, bright fashion of the Duchess's time, among them a gorgeously tinted inlaid table from the first Exhibition, and elaborate specimens of Berlin woolwork, offerings from friends of the mistress of the house and from the ladies of her suite. In one of the simply furnished ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... her usual dress of darkish stuff, and there was no bow at her neck; but through her hair she had run a streak of crimson ribbon. This tribute to the unusual transformed and glorified her. She seemed to Ethan taller, fuller, more womanly in shape and motion. She stood aside, smiling silently, while he entered, and then moved away from him with something soft and flowing in her gait. She set the lamp on the table, and he saw that it was carefully laid for supper, with fresh doughnuts, ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... cultured, thoughtful men, and every other sort. Yet men have often been befooled in their leaders. He drew women. Here is a great test. Men may be deceived in a man. But woman, true strong woman, pure womanly woman, because of her keen discernment into spirit and motive, cannot be deceived, when true ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... within her, or to find any expression which might represent her distress. He could not realise that the childish mind that had power to converse for trivial things had, as yet, no word for the not-trivial; that the blind womanly emotion on which he had trodden had as yet no counterpart in womanly thought, which might have formed excuses for his conduct, or at least have comprehended its simplicity. He only felt uneasily that her former cause of contention with him, her determination, ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... sunk back in a crumpled heap, and mademoiselle was leaning over him in womanly sympathy; but the guards thrust her aside, and held up the dying man once more to hear, if he could, his sentence. The tumult sank away, and once more there was silence. La Valentinois sat still, watching the prisoners behind her fan; and then De Mouchy, in a speech ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... again with her surprises of gladness. She who, leaning upon my arm as we walked, silently conveyed to me such a sense of evenness, firmness, dignity; she whose child-like love was turning into the womanly affection for a father; she who was complete in herself, as every good child is, not suggesting to your thoughts what you would have a child be, but filling out the orb of your ideal beauty, still partly in outline; her seat, her place at the table, at prayers, ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... away. Young Gulick had soon decided that Susan was the stronger—therefore, the less "womanly"—of the two girls, and must be the evil influence over her whom he had appeared just in time to save. When he said this to Etta, she protested—not very vigorously, because she wished him to think her really almost innocent. She wasn't quite easy in her mind as to whether she had been loyal ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... my dear," Miss Twinkleton would say, "who for months lived alone, at inns, wearing a blue surtout, a buff waistcoat, and grey- -" Here horror chokes the utterance of Miss Twinkleton. "Then she was in the vault in ANOTHER disguise, not more womanly, at that awful scene when poor Mr. Jasper was driven mad, so that he confessed all sorts of nonsense, for, my dear, all the Close believes that it WAS nonsense, and that Mr. Jasper was reduced to insanity by persecution. And ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... how it works; I won't touch the thing," Mrs. Farnam declared. "She's something of a sport, but I'm a womanly woman, except when ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... eyes, after the Lanning manner. Yet Jasper saw, and his heart was sick. The face was a little too full; the square bone of the chin was rounded with flesh; and, above all, the mouth had never changed. It was the mouth of the child, soft—too womanly ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... stewardship. I feel deeply grateful to my poor uncle, and also to you, for your kind wishes in my regard, but, believe me, I am quite content for matters to stand just as they are, so far as I am concerned." Then breaking down, May broke out into a regular womanly fit ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... him. Not a feeble-minded damsel, who, if she had not fainted, would have fled away, gasping and in tears. No timidity or prudery or underbred doubts about this thorough creature. She knew she was in her right womanly place, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... wife of Zeus. She was worshipped as the queen of heaven and was regarded as a model of womanly virtue. Argos was the chief centre of the worship ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... plodding, sentimental maedchens give any pleasure to the vehement creature, whose playfellow from babyhood had been a man—and such a man! Use did no good, but rather, as the childish activity and power of play and the sense of novelty passed, the growth of the womanly soul made the heart-hunger and solitude worse, and spirit and health came ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... among the Quakers, and though now, and for many years, a staunch Presbyterian, she still retained a tincture of the calm efficient gentleness of mind and manner that belongs so inexplicably to them. More womanly sweetness than was in Mr. Ringgan's blue eye, a woman need not wish to have; and perhaps his sister's had not so much. There was no want of it in her heart, nor in her manner, but the many and singular excellences ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... and his angels." He did not represent religion as a mysterious affair, the mere business of the priesthood, limited to the temple and the Sabbath, and the ceremonies thereof; it was the business of every day,—a great manly and womanly life. ...
— Two Christmas Celebrations • Theodore Parker
... together with the features and the eyes, completed as fine a specimen of physical and mental health as ever it has been my fortune to meet; there was something so full of purpose and resolve—something so wholesome, too, about the character—something so womanly—I might almost say manly, and would, but for the petty prejudice maybe occasioned by the trivial fact of a locket having dropped from her bosom as she knelt; and that trinket still dangles in my memory even as it then dangled and dropped back to its concealment ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... white face as she spoke. After that there was silence for some time; but presently the Queen began to fan Beatrix again, and mechanically smoothed the coverlet. There are certain things which a womanly woman would do for her worst enemy almost unconsciously, and Eleanor was far from hating her rival. Strong and unthwarted from her childhood, and disappointed in her marriage, she had grown to look upon herself as a being above laws of heaven or earth, and answerable to no ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... equal those of Raphael or Leonardo, and a lock of hair lying across her breast is so exquisitely painted that it seems to move with her breath. The features are of the large-eyed regular Greek type, womanly dignity is in every line, but it is an essentially pagan face—the Christian soul has never dawned in those eyes! With this before us, we cannot doubt that Greek art found its expression as much in colour as in form and that the same religion ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... takes precedence even of its predecessor, and, in both, Mrs. Lee Hentz has achieved a triumph of no ordinary kind. It is not that old associations bias our judgment, for though from the appearance, years since, of the famous 'Mob Cap' in this paper, we formed an exalted opinion of the womanly and literary excellence of the writer, our feelings have, in the interim, had quite sufficient leisure to cool; yet, after the lapse of years, we have continued to maintain the same literary devotion to this best of our female ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... which saved women from working in the mines, and I have heard him tell how he had seen them toiling, naked to the waist, with short petticoats barely reaching to their knees, rough, foul-tongued, brutalised out of all womanly decency and grace; and how he had seen little children working there too, babies of three and four set to watch a door, and falling asleep at their work to be roused by curse and kick to the unfair toil. The ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... looking upon the scene, his velvety and luminous eyes glistening in the light like a deer's eyes, and yet I knew the barbaric devil that lurked in his breast and belied all the softness and tenderness, almost womanly, of his face and form. And I noticed the boyish face of Harrison,—a good face once, but now a demon's,—convulsed with passion as he told the new-comers of the hell-ship they were in and shrieked curses upon the head ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... admitted that her beauty was the deciding element. "She is too lovely to be left to a fanatic's designs. She has matured in body, grown more womanly, since we rode the trail together; may it not be that her mind, maturing even more rapidly, has come to perceive the crumbling edge of the abyss before it stands and turns to science as the only rescuer? No matter what her past deceptions have ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... shone forth so radiantly in this Kansas girl's countenance. Although born in Jersey City, Ella had moved with her parents to the west at an early age and she had grown up in the open country where a man's a man and women lead clean sweet womanly lives. Out in the pure air of God's green places and amid kindly, simple, big hearted folks, little Ella had blossomed and thrived, the pride of the whole country, and as she had grown to womanhood there ...
— A Parody Outline of History • Donald Ogden Stewart
... and the other an apprentice to a straw-bonnet maker; but they were, nevertheless, in some sort remarkable people. The sister was reputed in Barchester to be a model of female beauty of the strong and robuster cast, and had also a better reputation as being a girl of good character and honest, womanly conduct. Both of her beauty and of her reputation her brother was exceedingly proud, and he was the more so when he learnt that she had been asked in marriage by a decent ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... terrace filled with roses, myrtles and orange trees, while the green boxes surrounding them replace the old battlements. In this quarter of the old domain, I have not interfered with any of these womanly fancies. ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... blessed solace of rest and calm that he so needed. It is thus that Edward Devrient, the great German actor, and one of Mendelssohn's most intimate friends, describes her: "Cecile was one of those sweet womanly natures whose gentle simplicity, whose mere presence, soothed and pleased. She was slight, with features of striking beauty and delicacy; her hair was between brown and gold, but the transcendent lustre of her great blue eyes, and the brilliant roses ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... and the protuberance of her bust in conclusion, by way of reasserting her satisfaction with the results of her action, there was a touch of plaintiveness in her confession which suggested the womanly author of "Hints on Culture and Hygiene," rather than the man-hater. This was lost on Selma, who was fain to sympathize purely ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... figure showed in the doorway—a figure cloaked womanly, but topped with face of Aladdin. Trousered Angelica, with a cry, darted forth from the shadow. To Mistress Vandeleur's eyes she was as truly man as was Mistress Vandeleur to hers. Thus confronted, Mistress Vandeleur shrank ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... offering him a refuge from the Jews, and quaintly setting forth the writer's belief that Jesus was God or else His Son. She had been present, also, when the charge was made against Ahulah, and had comforted that unfortunate in womanly ways. "Surely," she had said, "if the Master who does not love you can forgive, how much more readily must your husband who does!" Whereupon Ahulah had become her slave, tending her ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... hair. The nervous sensibility of her profession had awakened her face, and now the brown eyes laughed with the spiritual maliciousness with which we willingly endow the features of a good fairy. The hips were womanly, the ankle was only a touch of stocking, and the whole house rose to a man and roared when coquettishly lifting the ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... encouraged the licentiousness of the court, and even the worst vices of her sons, that she might make them subservient to her designs. All her passions were subordinate to her calculations of policy, and every womanly virtue was suppressed by the desire of wielding a government ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... same rigid forms. Her countenance is full of stern melancholy—the natural character of one whose feelings and habits are at variance; whose strong passions may have flung her out of the pale of society, but whose womanly sympathies still remain unchanged. She is artfully pleading for the life of the youth, by contemptuously noting his insignificance; but she commands while she soothes. She is evidently the mistress or the wife of the chief, in whoso ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... bringing bullets and canisters of powder, and, what was more urgently needed at present, pannikins of steaming hot coffee. The latter, I ascertained, came from the factor's house, and I had no doubt that it was due to the womanly forethought ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... hurried dressing to drive it from her mind; but it returned persistently. She went, at last, to her looking-glass and looked into it with a terror of herself. Never was ugliness so hateful as the beauty she saw there. For there could be no doubt about this, at least; except for the softening into womanly traits, and for a slightly fairer complexion, the picture her glass showed her was a faithful copy of that other, which she had seen for the first time last night. What beauty her mother had ever possessed ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... me. A nobler countenance I never saw. Loving-kindness beamed from every line of his face. It seemed as if he would repay himself for the late arduous combat, by indulging in all the gentleness of a womanly heart. But when the talk ceased for a moment, he seemed to fall into a reverie. Then the exquisite curves of the upper lip vanished. The lip was lengthened and compressed at the same moment. You could have told that, within the ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... is, you—on to the rocks, as hard as they can. A man that is not Christ's slave has a far worse slavery in submitting to these tyrant sins that have tempted him with the notion of how fine it is to break through these old-womanly restraints and conventional fads of a narrow morality, and to have his fling, and do as he likes and follow nature. Ay, some of you have been doing that, and could write a far better commentary than any preacher ever wrote, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... anything of these matters, Antony Watteau paints that delicate life of Paris so excellently, with so much spirit, partly [27] because, after all, he looks down upon it or despises it. To persuade myself of that, is my womanly satisfaction for his preference—his apparent preference—for a world so different from mine. Those coquetries, those vain and perishable graces, can be rendered so perfectly, only through an intimate understanding of ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... put her on the train and taken his leave, that Rebecca was, in her sad dignity and gravity, more beautiful than he had ever seen her,—all-beautiful and all-womanly. But in that moment's speech with her he had looked into her eyes and they were still those of a child; there was no knowledge of the world in their shining depths, no experience of men or women, no passion, nor ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... echelons of light clouds, through which the moon waded, now radiating, carrying with her an aureole of tawny transparent brown, and now flooding the whole vast with clear vapory light-green, through which, as through an illuminated veil, she moved with measur'd womanly motion. Then, another trip, the heavens would be absolutely clear, and Luna in all her effulgence. The big Dipper in the north, with the double star in the handle much plainer than common. Then the sheeny track of light in the water, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... her own would lave her father's fevered brow, and administer the cooling draught. To her it was sacrilege to permit any but herself to nurse him; and she felt that it was a privilege to stand day and night by his bed, and hold his hand, and anticipate all his wants. Her womanly instincts were strong, and she heard with horror the suggestion to take ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic |
