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More "Effeminate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with neighboring nations about commercial privileges, no local strife which cannot be settled by Arete. The poet has as nearly as possible succeeded in eliminating the negative element out of this society. An unwarlike folk, but not effeminate, happy in peace, with a childlike delight in play, which is the starting-point of art, and remains its substrate, according to Schiller; truly idyllic it must be regarded, a land on the way between nature and civilization, ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... babies were going on, was chiefly divided between the pen and the baby. I have fed them and put them to sleep hundreds of times, though there were servants to whom the task might have been transferred. Yet, I have not been effeminate; I have not been idle; I have not been a waster of time; but I should have been all these if I had disliked babies, and had liked the porter pot ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... thousands of them— millions supplied their place. The only thing, in fact, that can protect one during the night (nothing can during the day) is a net of gauze hung over the bed; but as this was looked upon by the young men as somewhat effeminate, it was seldom resorted to. The best thing for their destruction, we found, was to fill our rooms with smoke, either by burning damp moss or by letting off large puffs of gunpowder, and then throwing the doors and windows open to allow them ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... narrative, with a general truth as to the course of events, a greater amount of error as to particulars than we should have expected. The Sung Emperor Tu Tsong, a debauched and effeminate prince, to whom Polo seems to refer, had died in 1274, leaving young children only. Chaohien, the second son, a boy of four years of age, was put on the throne, with his grandmother Siechi, as regent. The approach of Bayan caused the greatest alarm; ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... suggested that I could not love such a 'scrap of a woman as Belle Upton was; and if she was in love with me, it was without a cause.' I have paid her some attention, but only to please mother and Helen. She's too effeminate, if she is so very aristocratic-not half so handsome as 'ma belle Juive.' Oh! those dreamy eyes! They haunt me day and night. I believe I ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... wooden donkey, so contrived that it would kick when hit in the true spot. What a joy to observe the tendency of all these diversions! How characteristic of a high-spirited people that nowhere could be found any amusement appealing to the mere mind, or calculated to effeminate by ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... Would I could not! But wherefore waste I precious hours with thee! Thou art her darling mischief, her chief engine, Antony's other fate. Go, tell thy queen, Ventidius is arrived, to end her charms. Let your Egyptian timbrels play alone, Nor mix effeminate sounds with Roman trumpets, You dare not fight for Antony; go pray And keep your cowards' holiday ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... filled with admiration, and yet you know the Rebu several times drove back their forces, and man for man are more than a match for their soldiers. Our people are taller than they by half a head. We have not so much luxury, nor did we want it. All this must make people effeminate." ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... noisy and intractable lot of natives I had ever seen, wearing only a girdle of leaves around their waists, and all armed with Snider carbines and short stabbing knives made from cutlasses broken in halves. But, although they bullied the weak and effeminate Strong's Islanders, they were yet very obedient to their white masters, to whom they were all more or less related through the native wives whom the traders had married. The women were very tall and handsome, and ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... lingered in the Scottish Highlands, that it was unlucky for a clansman to learn any handicraft engaged in by Lowlanders. If a Highland youth left his native mountains and engaged in mercantile or mechanical pursuits, his friends thought he turned effeminate. For warfare he became unsuited, either as a leader or follower. The prowess of his ancestors forsook him, he became incapable of handling the bow or spear skilfully, and, what was worse, he carried ill luck with himself and to ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... he was in constant though not direct communication. He studied them—their nature and their functions. But this tall, stately man, in his abominable garment which reached barely to his knees, with the white, effeminate forehead and unintelligible language, who was he? Was he a Philistine? a cruel Roman, or perhaps a Spaniard—one of those that murdered the famous Abrabanel family, and drove his ancestor ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... The manners of the wrestling-ground and of the stage are sometimes odious; but let us see the actor or the wrestler walking simple and upright, and we praise him. Let him use a befitting neatness, not verging toward the effeminate, but just avoiding a rustic harshness. The same measure is to be taken with your clothes as with other matters in which ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... humour which cannot last. It breeds weakness, anarchy, and at last ruin to society. And then the effeminate and luxurious, terrified for their money and their comfort, fly from an unwholesome tenderness to an unwholesome indignation; break out into a panic of selfish rage; and become, as cowards are apt to do, blindly and wantonly cruel; and those who fancied God too indulgent ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... A very conceited, effeminate, and absurd man coming into a room where she was one evening, and beginning to comb his hair, she exclaimed, "La! what's that! Look there! ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... airmen call, for some mysterious reason, the anti-aircraft guns employed by their enemies, sometimes referring to a big howitzer which made its appearance late in the war as "Cuthbert." The names sound a little effeminate, redolent somehow of high teas and the dancing floor, rather than the field of battle. Perhaps this was why the British soldiers adopted them as an expression of contempt for the enemy's batteries. But contempt was hardly ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... relaxations. The grim Scots divines, whose "damnatory creed" Louis objected to so strongly, in their studies, we read, reserved a corner for rod and gun. In his library there was never a sign of sporting tools, not even a golf-club. He was not effeminate; in fact, if "the man had been dowered with better health, we would have lost the author," says one speaker of him; but he simply never let go the pen, and, doubtless, his singleness of purpose, his want of toil-resting ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • E. Blantyre Simpson
... authorities at home. Hannibal, on the contrary, saw his plans thwarted and finally wrecked by the sordid merchant-nobles of the city he strove so hard to save. He had not, like Alexander, to lead picked troops against effeminate Asiatics. He had to mould his little army out of raw and barbarous levies. He had no reinforcements to fall back on. With a motley army of Libyans, Gauls, and Spaniards he had to encounter a nation in arms—a nation of the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... open nostrils, so perpetually a-quiver. The soft, sparse, forked beard which closely followed the line of the lower jaw and pointed chin. The moustache, lightly shading the upper lip, while wholly exposing the fretful and rather sensuous mouth. The long, effeminate, and restless hands. The tall, slight figure. The clothes, of a material and pattern fondly supposed by their wearer to present the last word of English fashion in relation to foreign travel, the colour of them accurately matched to the pale, brown hair and beard.—So much for ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... FRIBBLE. An effeminate fop; a name borrowed from a celebrated character of that kind, in the farce of Miss in her Teens, written by ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... observe what a number of imbracings, how many thousand kisses, and other toyisch actions are used, before this couple can leave one another! Nevertheless the reason of necessity, doth forsooth conquer in a vigilant husband these effeminate passions. ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... and gentleman were walking on the sands at Coney Island beach. The lady was very handsomely attired, and by her side walked a young man, a perfect type in appearance of an effeminate dude. Three rough-looking men had been following the lady and gentleman at a distance, and when the latter stopped at a remote part of the beach far from any hotel the three men held a consultation, and one of them uttered the declaration with ...
— Cad Metti, The Female Detective Strategist - Dudie Dunne Again in the Field • Harlan Page Halsey
... Anglo-Saxons in particular, have always at the back of their minds a notion that there is something effeminate about the sense for beauty. That is reserved for decadent Southern nations. Tu regere imperio populos, Romane memento they would say, if they knew the tag; and translate it "Britain rules the waves"! But history gives the lie to this ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... me these tremendous questions with an effeminate lisp, and harangued on them with small feeble gesticulations of pale dirty ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in Round the Town. Notably an effeminate but substantial stock-broker, who looks like a stock-jobber's maiden-aunt in disguise. Another important personage is a representative of the Navy, whose figure suggests as an appropriate greeting, "Hip, hip, hip, hooray!" Both these characters are well-played, and although subordinate parts, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various
... that fellow Naaman," said he, "after what he'd seen and felt, going back and bowing himself down in the house of Rimmon, because his effeminate scoundrel of a master did it. I wonder Elisha took the trouble to heal him. How ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... first thaw, black coat, white vest, and all. No tropics or sub-tropics for him. He can stand our climate and our company with a certain condescending tolerance so long as we keep the temperature not too much above zero, but grows contemptuous when Fahrenheit grows effeminate and forty. Nothing for it then but to cool off his thin and unprotected legs and toes in the snows of Canada. "The white North hath his" heart. Our winter is his summer. There is nothing in his anatomy to explain this idiosyncrasy. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... miserable and detested condition of living in slavery; no long descent having as yet invested the Assyrian with a right, nor any other title being for him pretended than a strong hand; the foolish and effeminate son of a tyrannous and hated mother could very ill hold so many great princes and nations his vassals, with a power less mastering, and a mind less industrious, than his father and mother had ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... East, while the first illuminators were the monks of Ireland. Ladies were the spinners, weavers, surgeons, and readers of the day; they were great at interpreting dreams, and dearly loved flowers. The gentlemen looked upon reading as an occupation quite as effeminate as sewing, war and hunting being the two main employments of the lords of creation, and gambling the chief amusement. Priests and monks were the exceptions to this rule, until Henry First introduced a taste for somewhat more liberal ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... old man, "and doubtless his adventure is of a nature in line with thy puerile and effeminate teachings. Had he followed my training, without thy accurst priestly interference, he had made an iron-barred nest in Torn for many of the doves of thy damned English nobility. An' thou leave him not alone, he will soon be seeking service in the household ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... last mundane poets were more brilliant than those of Christianity. Avienus possessed charming elegance and rather effeminate grace. It should be noted that he (with Prudentius) was the sole lyric poet after Horace. Ausonius had sensibility and remarkable descriptive talent; Claudian, rhetorician in verse, rose sometimes to veritable eloquence and maintained ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... my distance; And if to the front I again should go, 'Twon't be with his assistance. He deems me a troublesome GRANDY, oh' In political harness not handy, oh! I am out of a job, while BALFOUR is a nob, That lank and effeminate dandy, oh! Well, a prodigal son may be "sandy." oh! I am off for a soda-and-brandy, oh! And a "tub" at my Club, where I'm sure of a snub From the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 16, 1892 • Various
... paid the more heed to these petitions because local malcontents "got at" the soldiery in the taverns, and brought home to them their grievances, namely, poor pay, insufficient allowance for food at its enhanced prices, and the severities of discipline exercised by "effeminate puppies" drawn from aristocratic circles. In particular they circulated a pamphlet—"The Soldiers' Friend: or Considerations on the late pretended Augmentation of the Subsistence of the Private Soldiers"—pointing out the close connection ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... do to call Stevenson effeminate, even if he was feminine. He had a courage that outmatched his physique. Once in a cafe in France, a Frenchman made the remark that the English were a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... and hoofs and wheels beats to the topmost stories of the palaces towering overhead in their stony grandiosity. Everywhere in the structures dating after the Gothic period there is want of sensibility; the art of the Renaissance was not moulded here in the moods of a refined and effeminate patriciate, such as in Venice tempered it to beauty; but it renders in marble the prepotence of a commercialized nobility, and makes good in that form the right of the city to be called Genoa the Proud. Perhaps ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... man,—I should say not more than four or five and twenty—very quiet mannered and delicate—or rather effeminate looking, as I thought—for he wore his hair quite long over his shoulders, in the foreign way, and had a clear, soft complexion, almost like a woman's. Though he appeared to be a gentleman, he always kept out of the way of making acquaintances ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... willingly have spent more time in their company; but my fate or fortune was to be accomplished, and I went on board the frigate, where I presented my introductory letters to the nobleman who commanded her. I expected to have seen an effeminate young man, much too refined to learn his business; but I was mistaken. Lord Edward was a sailor every inch of him: he knew a ship from stem to stern, understood the characters of seamen, and gained their confidence. He ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... porch, as she stood eagerly pointing up the mountain-road. Mostyn saw a tall man of middle age, smooth-shaven, with long yellow hair falling on his broad shoulders, easily striding down the incline. He had blue eyes and delicate, rather effeminate features. He wore a broad-brimmed felt hat, dark trousers, and a black frock-coat without a vest. Reaching the store, he took off his hat, brushed back his hair from a high pink forehead, and with bows and smiles to the people on all sides, he cried ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... affecting catastrophe. Even the Egyptian Alexas acquires some respectability, from his patriotic attachment to the interests of his country, and from his skill as a wily courtier. He expresses, by a beautiful image, the effeminate attachment to life, appropriated to his character ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... called was that of a young Banian, as yellow as an orange, with loose flowing robes and an effeminate air, who had lately landed from India, and who complained of having been cheated by one of ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... taunt this worthinesse, 120 Of which remaine such liuing monuments Ingrauen in the eyes and hearts of men. Although the oppression of distressed Rome And our owne ouerthrow, might well drawe forth, Distilling teares from faynting cowards eyes, Yet should no weake effeminate passion sease Vpon that man, the greatnesse of whose minde And not his Fortune made him term'd the Great. Pom. Oh I did neuer tast mine Honours sweete Nor now can iudge of this my sharpest sowre. 130 Fifty eight yeares in Fortunes sweete soft lap Haue I beene luld a sleepe with pleasant ...
— The Tragedy Of Caesar's Revenge • Anonymous
... of that, and evidently Deb knew it. Sitting her own dancing chestnut, how her beautiful eyes glowed! She gloried in the ring of breathless witnesses to the prowess of her knight. Many a time did she scoff and scowl at the dandyisms which she deemed effeminate; this was one of the moments which showed the man as she desired him. Through those fine fingers, with the polished filbert nails, the shortened reins were drawn and held as by clamps of steel; ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... present were secure. From a loop-hole near the summit of the kiosk, I perceived a vast crowd, in furious agitation, surrounding and assaulting a gay palace that overhung the river. Presently, from an upper window of this place, there descended an effeminate-looking person, by means of a string made of the turbans of his attendants. A boat was at hand, in which he escaped to the opposite ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... time young Irving was developing as one of the most interesting youth of the city. His manners were soft without being effeminate, his form finely molded, and his countenance singularly beautiful. To this might be added the general opinion that he was considerably gifted in the use of the pen. Yet with all these promising features, the future ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... much accounted of. It was reckoned effeminate to require more than two meals a day, though, just as in the verdurer's lodge at home, there was a barrel of ale on tap with drinking horns beside it in the hall, and on a small round table in the window a loaf of bread, to which city luxury added a cheese, and a jug containing sack, with ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Ctesias depicted or invented, an effeminate debauchee, sunk in luxury and sloth, who at the last was driven to take up arms, and, after a prolonged but ineffectual resistance, avoided capture by suicide, cannot be identified. Asurbanipal (A[)s]ur-b[a]ni-apli), the son of Esarhaddon and grandson of Sennacherib, who ascended the throne ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... toys of wealth; you have them. You want to shine; I am guiding you into the paths of power, I kiss very dirty hands to secure your advancement, and you will get on. A little while yet and you will lack nothing of what can charm man or woman. Though effeminate in your caprices, your intellect is manly. I have dreamed all things of you; I forgive you all. You have only to speak to have your ephemeral passions gratified. I have aggrandized your life by introducing into it ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... disobeyed, he wrote to him, from the depths of Poland, April 4, 1807, this reproachful letter, which is a real reprimand: "Your quarrels with the Queen have become public. Show, then, in private life some of that paternal and effeminate character which you display in matters of government, and in business the same rigor you exercise in your household. You treat a young woman as we treat a regiment.... You have an excellent and most virtuous wife and you make her unhappy. Let her dance as much as she pleases; she ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... tenderest youth Prince Louis Napoleon has despised the habits of an effeminate life. Although his mother allowed him a considerable sum for his amusements, these were the last things he thought of. All this money was spent in acts of beneficence, in founding schools or houses of refuge, in printing his military or political works, or in making scientific experiments. ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... parents a taste for Oriental things, and his study looked like a costly tent, while his bedroom was furnished with the simplicity of a convent cell. The Count of Monte-Cristo had taught his son to be strict to himself and not become effeminate in any way. Nice pictures and statues were in the parlors, the bookcase was filled with selected volumes and he spent many hours each day in serious studies. Spero was a master in all physical accomplishments. ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... indulgent and shrugs his shoulders. "For instance," says he, "this Gerald Webb seems to be one of those highly sensitive, delicately organized persons; somewhat effeminate in fact. He ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... which I have a right to suppose it. But, surely, to have an exclusive pleasure in poetry, not being yourself a poet;—to turn away from all effort, and to dwell wholly on the images of another's vision,—is an unworthy and effeminate thing. A jeweller may devote his whole time to jewels unblamed; but the mere amateur, who grounds his taste on no chemical or geological idea, cannot claim the same exemption from despect. How shall he fully enjoy Wordsworth, who has never ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... pig-tail, teaze the hair, thin it of some of its lively inmates, braid it up for him, and retire. The women always wear two braided pig-tails, and it is by this they are most readily distinguished from their effeminate-looking partners, who wear only one.* [Ermann (Travels in Siberia, ii. p. 204) mentions the Buraet women as wearing two tails, and fillets with jewels, and the men as having one queue only.] When in full dress, the ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... admirers of each other's productions. In June, 1817, "Lalla Rookh" was just from the press, and Irving writes to Brevoort: "Moore's new poem is just out. I have not sent it to you, for it is dear and worthless. It is written in the most effeminate taste, and fit only to delight boarding-school girls and lads of nineteen just in their first loves. Moore should have kept to songs and epigrammatic conceits. His stream of intellect is too small to bear expansion—it spreads into mere surface." ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... soul, so that his music became ten times lovelier, and people listening on that shore went mad with sick delight. 'Can any strains be nobler?' demanded Shaping. Krag grinned and said, 'You are naturally effeminate. Now let me try.' Then he stood behind Swaylone, and shot ugly discords fast into his head. His instrument was so cracked, that never since has it played right. From that time forth Swaylone could utter only distorted music; yet it called to folk more than the other sort. ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... how kings and queens became the foster-fathers and nursing- mothers of the Church; how the great chiefs, each a little king in himself, scorned and derided the whole scheme as altogether weak and effeminate; how the bulk of the people were sullen and suspicious, and often broke out into heathen mutiny; how kings rose and kings fell, just as they took one or the other side; and how, finally, after a contest which had lasted altogether more than three centuries, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... decadent poets with their effeminate rhythms and their absurdities of speech.[238] He can mock the archaizer who goes to Accius and Pacuvius for his inspiration.[239] He can give an admirable summary of the genius of Lucilius ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... Turkish Ambassador, was a fair, pale man of fifty, who had spiritual features, quiet blue eyes, and a pleasant smile. His hands were delicately made and very white, but not effeminate. He had been educated partly in England, and spoke English without difficulty and almost without accent, as Logotheti did. He came forward to meet Margaret as she entered the room, and he greeted her warmly, thanking her ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... Ilongot is peculiar and rather unlike that of any other Philippine people. The men are small, with long bodies and very short legs, weak, effeminate faces, occasionally bearded. The hair is worn long, but usually coiled upon the head and held by a rattan net. The color of the Ilongot is brown and a little lighter than that of Malayans exposed to ...
— The Negrito and Allied Types in the Philippines and The Ilongot or Ibilao of Luzon • David P. Barrows
... hard at the Count, and noted with sarcastic amusement the other's appearance—so foppish, so effeminate to English eyes; particularly did he gaze with scorn at the Count's yellow silk socks, which matched his lemon-coloured tie and silk pocket handkerchief. Fancy starting for a long night journey in such a "get-up." Well! ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... flowerets of Paradise; of assemblies of saints seated, arrayed in pure pink, and blue and lilac, in an atmosphere of liquid gold, in glory. And thus Fra Angelico worked on, content with the dearly purchased science of his masters, placid, beatic, effeminate, in an aesthetical paradise of his own, a paradise of sloth and sweetness, a paradise for weak souls, weak hearts, and weak eyes; patiently repeating the same fleshless angels, the same boneless saints, the same bloodless virgins; happy in smoothing the unmixed, unshaded tints of ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... "This effeminate son would know," replied Gosford, a sneer in the epithet, "but no other. Marshall wrote the testament in his own hand, without witnesses, as he had the legal right to do under the laws of Virginia. The ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... saw that he was handsome in an effeminate sort of way, with a slight lady-like sort of figure, a blond mustache, so light in color as to be almost invisible at a distance, and fine girlish eyes of a light blue. As he saw me in turn he gave me a good-morning in a cheery tone, and I returned ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... and the exterior graces of his person were such, that nature perhaps never formed anything more complete: His face was extremely handsome; and yet it was a manly face, neither inanimate nor effeminate; each feature having its beauty and peculiar delicacy: He had a wonderful genius for every sort of exercise, an engaging aspect, and an air of grandeur: in a word, he possessed every personal advantage; but then he was greatly deficient in mental accomplishments. He ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... was not a good loser. "I hope you're satisfied," he snarled. He pointed at the four beds in a row. I felt guiltily conscious of them. At the moment they appeared so unnecessarily clean and warm and soft. The silk coverlets at the foot of each struck me as being disgracefully effeminate. ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... throat rose statuesque. The almond-shaped eyes, black as night, gleamed strangely beneath the low, smooth brow. The lank black hair appeared lustreless by comparison. His lips were very red. In his whole appearance there was something repellently effeminate. ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... the bay without opposition, having passed the fortified island of Corregidor at its entrance without a shot being fired to prevent them. And the same effects caused but a feeble resistance to be opposed to their arms, and the speedy surrender of Manilla by its priest-ridden and effeminate defenders. ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... instant longer, the Skimmer held the member of the effeminate Cornbury imprisoned; and then, raising his cap with a courtesy that appeared more in deference to himself than his companion, he turned on his heel, and with a firm but quick step ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... connected the domain of Wyndfell Hall with the outside world, and, as he stood there in the gathering twilight, he looked a romantic figure. Tall and well-built, he took, perhaps, an almost excessive care over his dress. Yet there was nothing effeminate or ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... to human nature, a craving desire for luxurious enjoyment and sudden wealth, which renders those who seek them dependent on those who supply them; to substitute for republican simplicity and economical habits a sickly appetite for effeminate indulgence and an imitation of that reckless extravagance which impoverished and enslaved the industrious people of foreign lands, and at last to fix upon us, instead of those equal political rights the acquisition of which was alike the object and supposed reward of our Revolutionary struggle, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Martin van Buren • Martin van Buren
... father. Cyril had very little affection for him, and was only too glad to spend most of his holidays with us in Scotland. They never really got on together at all. Cyril thought him a bear, and he thought Cyril effeminate. He was effeminate, I suppose, in some things, though he was a very good rider and a capital fencer. In fact he got the foils before he left Eton. But he was very languid in his manner, and not a ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... life had gone. A great historical novel dealing with this time,—one not unworthy, it is said, of Scott,—remains to be translated. Then, by way of reaction, came another half-cycle (roughly) of reunion: an unwarlike period of timid politics and a super-refined effeminate court; it was, says Professor Harper Parker, "a great age of calligraphy, belles lettres, fans, chess, wine-bibbing and poetry-making." Then, early in the fourth century, China split up again: crafty ladylike Chinese houses ruling in the South; and in the north a wild medley ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... to get into the palace, and having with his own eyes seen Sardanapalus in the midst of his infamous seraglio; enraged at such a spectacle, and not able to endure that so many brave men should be subject to a prince more soft and effeminate than the women themselves, immediately formed a conspiracy against him. Belesis, governor of Babylon, and several others, entered into it. On the first rumour of this revolt, the king hid himself in the inmost part of his palace. Being obliged afterwards to take the field with some forces ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... tire me?" asked Antonia, opening her big brown eyes in astonishment. "I travelled first-class from London, and drove out here in a landau; the whole journey was nothing short of effeminate. When I was in Paris I rose at four in the morning, and worked at my easel standing for five hours at a stretch; that was something like work. No, I'm not the least tired, thank you, and I don't want to be bothered tidying myself, for I may as well ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... lived at leisure for seven years' space with the sons of Frey. At last he left them and betook himself to Hakon, the tyrant of Denmark, because when stationed at Upsala, at the time of the sacrifices, he was disgusted by the effeminate gestures and the clapping of the mimes on the stage, and by the unmanly clatter of the bells. Hence it is clear how far he kept his soul from lasciviousness, not even enduring to look upon it. Thus ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... Silvia bound to the tree by the pool, Tirsi's account of the court, the description of Silvia at the spring—one of the most elaborate in the piece—the account of her escape from the wolves, last but not least that description of Silvia finding the unconscious Aminta, so full of subtle and effeminate seduction, prophetic of a later age ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... don't know. Some day I'll learn, I guess," sighed Fatty Ben Rusk, who knew perfectly that with a doctor father, a religious mother, and an effeminate taste for reading he could never be a ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... She possessed a powerful will, a shrill voice and a vigorous frame, and was afflicted with a short, violent temper. She was decidedly a masculine woman. We know not which is the more disagreeable of the two—a masculine woman or an effeminate man. ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... ouer those inflanked wals, but he became an open marke to a whole showre of arrowes. This disaduantage, together with the womens dismay, & decrease of victuals, forced a surrender to those Rakehels mercy, who, nothing guilty of that effeminate vertue, spoyled their goods, imprisoned their bodies, and were rather by Gods gracious prouidence, then any want of will, purpose, or attempt, restrayned from murdering the ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... expected of him? After paying homage to virtue is he not discharged from all that he owes to it? What more would they have him do? Must he practice it himself? He has no part to play, he is not a comedian."—The sciences, the fine arts, the arts of luxury, philosophy, literature, all this serve only to effeminate and distract the mind; all that is only made for the small crowd of brilliant and noisy insects buzzing around the summits of society and sucking away all public substance.—As regards the sciences, but one is important, that of our duties, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... loss of two young children. Edouard, though delicate from his birth, had nevertheless passed the trying years of infancy and early adolescence; he was them nearly fourteen. With a sweet and rather effeminate expression, blue eyes and a pleasant smile, he was a striking likeness of his mother. His father's affection exaggerated the dangers which threatened the boy, and in his eyes the slightest indisposition became a serious malady; his mother shared these fears, and in consequence of ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... children were gone out into the world. And the world had need of them. Its rank and miasmatic civilization,—its hotbeds of sin and misery,—its civil corruptions and its social lies,—its reeling, rotten principalities,—its sickly atmosphere of effeminate luxury, wherein neither justice nor judgment lived, and the solitary virtues left mere effete shadows of philanthropy and cowardly impulses called love and mercy,—needed a new race, stony and strong, unshrinking in conquest and reformation, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... effort to extirpate the Shanbâh banditti. The people, however, enjoy complete liberty. The Touaricks, though a nation of chiefs and princes, are in every sense and view a nation of freemen, and have none of those odious and effeminate vices which so darkly stain the Mahometans of the North Coast, or the Negro countries of Negroland. Every man is a tower of strength for himself, and his desert hut or tent, situate in vast solitudes, is his own inviolable home ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... spouting about, His flatulent madness and malice; When SLUDGE, after years of dogmatical doubt, Finds Faith's Wonderland worthy of Alice; When POPINJAY airs his effeminate Art, And DOBBS sputters dirt in choice diction, Ye gods, there'd be joy in Church, Forum, and Mart, If the fools would "retire ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 5, 1891 • Various
... in the room there was Mr. Blank who was head teacher. Said he was a Bachelor of Arts. I suppose he was a great man since he was a graduate from Imperial University and had such a title. He talked in a strangely effeminate voice like a woman. But what surprised me most was that he wore a flannel shirt. However thin it might be, flannel is flannel and must have been pretty warm at that time of the year. What painstaking dress is required which will be becoming to a B.A.! And it was ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... the least effeminate, Mr. Wyse this morning looked rather like a modern Troubadour. He had a velveteen coat on, a soft, fluffy, mushy tie which looked as if made of Shirley poppies, very neat knickerbockers, brown stockings with blobs, ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... the reedy voice, a pale, fat, and effeminate face, and an insidious and cowardly expression, was dressed in a singular manner. He had on his head a red handkerchief, which allowed two locks of white hair to be seen plastered on his temples; the ends of the handkerchief formed ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... the elegant and effeminate clubman in this species of corsair, with broad shoulders, a skin the color of blister, with very red lips, and who rolled a little in his walk; who seemed to be stifled in his black dress-coat, but who still retained ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... which still disappointed me, because from Raphael I asked and expected more. I wished to feel his hand on my soul with a stronger grasp; these were too passionless in their serenity, and almost effeminate in their tenderness. ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... scarlet walking-suit, over which he wore a long scarlet mantle. A gold cross was suspended from his neck by a massive chain of gold. He was delicately featured, with a little pointed beard, tiny mustachios, and long, fair hair that fell in waves about his effeminate face. He had the whitest of hands, very delicately veined in blue, and it was—as I soon observed—his habit to carry them raised, so that the blood might not flow into them to coarsen their beauty. Attached ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... fortune is rapid. Such is the case when, either on merit or demerit, great patronage is bestowed. Henry's violin had often charmed, to a welcome forgetfulness of his insignificance, an effeminate lord; or warmed with ideas of honour the head of a duke, whose heart could never be taught to feel its manly glow. Princes had flown to the arms of their favourite fair ones with more rapturous ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... character, he is made to resemble the typical figure of Christ. So in this fresco by Correggio, he is a beautiful youth, with the curling hair, the oval face and the regular features we associate with the person of Jesus. Though the beardless face is so refined, there is nothing weak or effeminate about it. The whole figure is indeed very manly. The head is well set on a full throat and the shoulders are broad. Rising to his feet St. John would be a tall, athletic young man, capable of lending a strong hand at his father's fishing-nets. The union of strength and refinement ...
— Correggio - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... like Montreal, had inflamed their imagination by the ballads and legends of the Roberts and the Godfreys of old; who had trained themselves from youth to manage the barb, and bear, through the heats of summer, the weight of arms; and who, passing into am effeminate and distracted land, had only to exhibit bravery in order to command wealth. It was considered no disgrace for some powerful chieftain to collect together a band of these hardy aliens,—to subsist amidst ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Venetian art of a century in which such presentments of youth in its flower abounded. There is something androgynous, in the true sense of the word, in the union of the strength and pride of lusty youth with a grace which is almost feminine in its suavity, yet not offensively effeminate. It should be noted that a delight in portraying the fresh comeliness, the elastic beauty of form proper to the youth just passing into the man was common to many Venetian painters at this stage, and coloured their art as it had coloured ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... of the tailor is stereotyped from generation to generation; his goose is a perennial pun; and his habitual melancholy is derived to this day from the flatulent diet on which he will persist in living—cabbage. He is effeminate, cowardly, dishonest—a mere fraction of a man both in soul and body. He is represented by the thinnest fellow in the company; his starved person and frightened look are the unfailing signals for a laugh; and he is never spoken to but in ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... that effeminacy is not opposed to perseverance. For a gloss on 1 Cor. 6:9, 10, "Nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor liers with mankind," expounds the text thus: "Effeminate—i.e. obscene, given to unnatural vice." But this is opposed to chastity. Therefore effeminacy is not a vice opposed ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... shame, that they, who to live well Entered so fair, should turn aside to tread Paths indirect, or in the mid way faint! But still I see the tenour of Man's woe Holds on the same, from Woman to begin. From Man's effeminate slackness it begins, Said the Angel, who should better hold his place By wisdom, and superiour gifts received. But now prepare thee for another scene. He looked, and saw wide territory spread Before him, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... her own apartments, lay the queen-mother, dying, but listening eagerly for the rush of footsteps overhead, hoping and praying that Henri—the hitherto effeminate Henri who played with his sword as he would with a battledore, and who painted himself like a woman, and put rings in his ears—would not prejudice himself at this time in the eyes of Rome by slaying the leader of the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... andhe for it; but on all other occasions the well-dressed American leads him—leads the world, for that matter. When a Frenchman attires himself in his fanciest regalia he merely succeeds in looking effeminate; whereas a German, under similar circumstances, bears a wadded-in, bulged-out, stuffed-up appearance. I never saw a German in Germany whose hat was not too small for him—just as I never saw a Japanese in Occidental garb whose ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... youth he would have slain the witch-doctor without the slightest compunction; but civilization had had its softening effect upon him even as it does upon the nations and races which it touches, though it had not yet gone far enough with Tarzan to render him either cowardly or effeminate. He saw an old man suffering and dying, and he stooped and felt of his wounds and stanched the ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... be wondrous content with the person and qualifications of her knight, who in future story will be read of thus: Elmedorus was tall and perfectly well made, his face oval, and features regularly handsome, but not effeminate; his complexion sentimentally brown, with not much colour; his teeth fine, and forehead agreeably low, round which his black hair curled naturally and beautifully. His eyes were black too, but had nothing of fierce or insolent; on the contrary, a certain melancholy ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... discussion arose on the Postal Report, the Conservatives being opposed to erecting pillar-boxes in Pretoria on the ground that they were extravagant and effeminate. ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... services, and despising his person, refused to admit him to her presence; and for the love of this lady who had so unkindly treated him, the noble Orsino, forsaking the sports of the field and all manly exercises in which he used to delight, passed his hours in ignoble sloth, listening to the effeminate sounds of soft music, gentle airs, and passionate love-songs; and neglecting the company of the wise and learned lords with whom he used to associate, he was now all day long conversing with young Cesario. Unmeet companion no doubt his grave courtiers thought Cesario was for ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... out a quarter of an hour, when the most effeminate of the party said he was thirsty. We now, doubtless, would have laughed at him, had we not all experienced ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... his glossy hair was tinged with chestnut, while Bertha's shone with unmingled gold; but, like Bertha's, his recreant locks had a strong tendency to curl, and lay in rich clusters upon his brow, distressing him by a propensity which he deemed effeminate. His mouth was as ripely red as hers, but somewhat larger, firmer, and less bland in its character. His eyebrows, too, were more darkly traced, supplying a want only too obvious in her countenance. The resemblance, however, ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... gold all set with jewels. Her camorra, too, was open, and in her girdle there were gems for all to see. There were but a half-dozen men in the room. Two of these had a venerable air—they may have been traders journeying to Milan—whilst a third, who sat apart, was a slender, effeminate-looking youth. The remaining three were fellows of rough aspect, and when one of them—a black-browed ruffian—raised his eyes and fastened them upon the riches that Madonna Paola with such indifference displayed, I knew what ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... all, taking care of their purity, and to restrain themselves from all evil. For it is good to be cut off from the lusts that are in the world; because every such lust warreth against the spirit: and neither fornicators, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, shall inherit the kingdom of God; nor they who do such things as are foolish ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... Clyde Fitch emphasized this to a remarkable degree. Personally no two men could have been more opposite. One was the product of democracy, buoyant and self-made, while the other represented an intellectual, almost effeminate, aristocracy. Yet nearly from the start Frohman perceived the bigness of vision and the profound understanding that lurked behind Fitch's ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... smallish man, with a suggestion of something dapper about him even in his present unkempt disorder; he might have been handsome, in a weakly effeminate way, had not Nature or some mishap given his face a twist that skewed it all to one side, drawing all of his features out of focus, like a reflection viewed in a flawed mirror. He was no heavier than the woman and hardly ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... pitiable object. There are occasions in almost every man's life when to know how to cook, to sew, to "keep the house," to wash, starch, and iron, would be valuable knowledge. Such knowledge is no more unmasculine and effeminate than that of the ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... possibility for them of a new progress, and give to that ancient and highly endowed race another chance in history. What they want is evidently moral power, for they have all intellectual ability. The effeminate quality which has made them slaves of tyrants during two thousand years will be taken out of them, and a virile strength substituted, when they come to see God as law and love,—perfect law and perfect love,—and to see that communion with him comes, not from ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... to the days of the M'Gregor, and fancied that it was Die Vernon riding up the mountain side, gaily chatting as she went with the handsome cavalier who walked by her stirrup, and who might have been Frank Osbaldistone, only that he was too manly-looking for Scott's somewhat effeminate hero. How beautifully moulded was the form which her dark-green habit set off to such advantage; how fairy-like the foot that pressed the clumsy stirrup; how slender the fingers that grasped the rein! She had discarded the heavy riding-hat ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... Cavendish Square, was not quite such a great man as she had supposed in the ignorant faith of her girlhood. She had discovered that his greatness was at best a kind of lap-dog or tame cat distinction; that he was better known as the caressed and petted adviser of patrician dowagers and effeminate old gentlemen, of fashionable beauties and hysterical matrons, than as one of the lights of his profession. He was a clever specialist, who had made his fortune by half-a-dozen prescriptions as harmless as Morrison's ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... you know it," declared Harding. "I suppose you think just because I do nothing but build railroads and things that I've grown effeminate since you tackled me the last time. ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... magnanimity, and in which, notwithstanding, a keener eye cannot fail to detect the hidden purpose of the writer to sap the foundations of moral principle, and the veneration for whatever ought to be held sacred by man; while all this sentimentality is only to bribe to his purpose the effeminate soft-heartedness of his contemporaries [Footnote: The author it is supposed alludes to Kotzebue.—TRANS.]. On the other hand, if any person were to undertake the moral vindication of poor Aristophanes, who has such a bad name, and whose licentiousness in particular passages, is to ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... Bozzy at the table? I declare I think, of all the polite men of that age, Joshua Reynolds was the finest gentleman. And they were good, as well as witty and wise, those dear old friends of the past. Their minds were not debauched by excess, or effeminate with luxury. They toiled their noble day's labour: they rested, and took their kindly pleasure: they cheered their holiday meetings with generous wit and hearty interchange of thought: they were no prudes, but no blush need follow their conversation: they were ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... It was formerly thought effeminate not to hunt Jews; then not to roast heretics; then not to bait bears and bulls; then not to fight cocks, and to throw sticks at them. All these evidences of manhood became gradually looked upon as no such evidences at all, but things fit only for manhood to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... Canadian labourer, old fur cap with ears, and moccasins. At his feet stood a small tin pail with a cover. His face was pale and singularly well-cut. His hair was black and very smooth and shiny; a very slight moustache gave character to an otherwise effeminate countenance and his eyes were blue, very light blue indeed and mild in their expression. We smiled involuntarily as the conductor departed. The man ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... knew—father, friend, comrade, adviser—standard of men and morals—all and more was his beloved uncle. No thought of his heart but he had given him, and never once had he been misunderstood. He could put his arm about his uncle's neck as he would about his mother's and not be thought effeminate or childish. And the courtesy and dignity and fairness with which he had been treated; and the respect St. George showed him—and he only a boy: compelling his older men friends to do the same. Never letting him feel that any foolish act of ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the compliments of an expert. She thought that men were capable of feeling only the effect of a gown, without understanding the ingenious details of it. Some men who knew gowns disgusted her by their effeminate air. She was resigned to the appreciation of women only, and these had in their appreciation narrowness of mind, malignity, and envy. The artistic admiration of Dechartre astonished and pleased her. She received agreeably the praise he ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... we dream of another sphere, we recover ourselves, our torpid nature is roused by noble passions, our blood circulates more healthily. The unhappy man forgets his tears in weeping for another. The happy man is calmed, the secure made provident. Effeminate natures are steeled, savages made man, and, as the supreme triumph of nature, men of all clanks, zones, and conditions, emancipated from the chains of conventionality and fashion, fraternize here in a universal sympathy, forget the world, and come nearer to their heavenly destination. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... should venture to approach. This threat deterred not Artavan de Hautlieu. He approached the entrance, when the doors, like those of the great entrance to the Castle, made themselves instantly accessible to him. A guard-room of the same effeminate soldiers received him, nor could the strictest examination have discovered to him whether it was sleep or death which arrested the eyes that seemed to look upon and prohibit his advance. Unheeding the presence of these ghastly ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... test of historical evidence. It has been shown in another chapter that between the first and the sixth centuries, Ceylon had undergone all the miseries of frequent invasions: that in the vicissitudes of time the great dynasty of Wijayo had expired, and the throne had fallen into the hands of an effeminate and powerless race, utterly unable to contend with the energetic Malabars, who acquired an established footing in the northern parts of the island. The south, too wild and uncultivated to attract these restless plunderers, and too rugged and inaccessible to be overrun by them, was divided into ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... was Burke's next impression, as he espied the effeminate figure of Craig, strolling along the sidewalk close to the ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... was a slim, well-clad gentleman with a pointed and slightly effeminate grey beard, unimpeachable gloves, and formal but agreeable manners. He was the type of the over-civilized, as Professor Chadd was of the uncivilized pedant. His formality and agreeableness did him some credit ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... the new enemy, appears. She comes from the extreme East, this wild dancer, with odorous hair, provocative glance and effeminate voice; she stands in a magnificent chariot drawn by four horses; she scatters violet and rose leaves; they are her weapons; their insidious perfumes destroy courage and will, and the army, headed by the virtues, speaks ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... regard me as her victim. She seized every opportunity of pointing out to me the way in which we should have to steer, both in public and private life. When she wrote to me she never employed the effeminate style of the Kana,[42] but wrote, oh! so magnificently! The great interest which she took in me induced me to pay frequent visits to her; and, by making her my tutor, I learned how to compose ordinary Chinese poems. However, though I do ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... impostor. There is no internal evidence in Shakespeare's play to prove that Rosalind was an actress. She might have appeared in private theatricals at the palace, but even that is doubtful. Consequently when she donned men's clothes it became evident to her that many men are effeminate in gesture and those that are do not ordinarily affect mannish movements. Her most obvious concealment was to be natural—quite herself. This, I think, is one of the most interesting and well-thought-out points of ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... inadequate to the importance of his conquests. Two engagements, [481] the one near the Hellespont, the other in the narrow defiles of Cilicia, decided the fate of his Syrian competitor; and the troops of Europe asserted their usual ascendant over the effeminate natives of Asia. [49] The battle of Lyons, where one hundred and fifty thousand Romans [50] were engaged, was equally fatal to Albinus. The valor of the British army maintained, indeed, a sharp and doubtful contest, with the hardy discipline ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... destruction art thou preparing for the Trojan nation! Even now Pallas is fitting her helmet, and her shield, and her chariot, and her fury. In vain, looking fierce through the patronage of Venus, will you comb your hair, and run divisions upon the effeminate lyre with songs pleasing to women. In vain will you escape the spears that disturb the nuptial bed, and the point of the Cretan dart, and the din [of battle], and Ajax swift in the pursuit. Nevertheless, alas! the time will come, though late, ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... populace forgot its orgy of blood to acclaim a violinist. And what a violinist! He was one of the most effeminate and grotesque individuals in the world. I can see him yet, strutting along with his long hair, his ample rear, and his shoes with their little quarter-heels, which gave him the appearance of a fat cook dressed up in men's clothes ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... vanquished competitors; they have ceased to compete at all. The military vices, too, of civilisation seem to decline just as its military strength augments. Somehow or other civilisation does not make men effeminate or unwarlike now as it once did. There is an improvement in our fibre—moral, if not physical. In ancient times city people could not be got to fight—seemingly could not fight; they lost their mental courage, perhaps their bodily nerve. But ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... you are effeminate. Eve ate the apple for that identical reason. Yet what you say is odd, because—do you know?—I once had a friend who was by way of being a ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... strong and sympathetic, companionable men. Too much care cannot be exercised in choosing assistants. Beware of effeminate men, men who are morbid in sex matters. An alert leader can spot a 'crooked' man by his actions, his glances, and by his choice of favorites. Deal with a man of this type firmly, promptly, and quietly. Let him suddenly be 'called home by circumstances which he could not control.'" The leader ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... effeminate in appearance, not strong and sturdy, nor had he the look of self-reliance and calm power which characterized our hero, who was his cousin. He was smooth, deceitful, and vain, running to dissipation, as ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... Sergius was effeminate and unwarlike, very young both in years and in mind, excessively jealous and insolent to all men, luxurious in his habits, and inflated with pride. However, after he had become the accepted husband of the niece of Antonina, ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius
... to his will, so Kate imagined him tall, broad, and brawny, indefatigable in his undertakings; the next, his mother was telling of such thoughtfulness, such kindness, such loving care that Kate's mental picture shifted to a neat, exacting little man, purely effeminate as men ever can be; but whatever she thought, some right instinct prevented her from making a comment or ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... a singular man for a boss; small of frame, with features almost effeminate, and with anything but a robust constitution, he did a prodigious amount ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... zeal of every knowing man Opprest with hills of tyranny, cast on virtue By the light fancies of fools, thus transported. Cannot but vent the Aetna of his fires, T'inflame best bosoms with much worthier love Than of these outward and effeminate shades; That these vain joys, in which their wills consume Such powers of wit and soul as are of force To raise their beings to eternity, May be converted on works fitting men: And, for the practice of a forced look, An antic gesture, or a fustian phrase, Study the native frame of a true heart, An ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... cool room, and into the presence of a man who seemed, in some respects, the most remarkable figure he had yet seen in this little city of strange people. A strong, clear, olive complexion; features that were faultless (unless a woman-like delicacy, that was yet not effeminate, was a fault); hair en queue, the handsomer for its premature streakings of gray; a tall, well knit form, attired in cloth, linen and leather of the utmost fineness; manners Castilian, with a gravity almost oriental,—made him one of those rare masculine figures which, on the public promenade, ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... rehearsals proceeded I saw another side of Rostand’s character; the energy and endurance hidden in his almost effeminate frame astonished us all. He almost lived at the theatre, drilling each actor, designing each costume, ordering the setting of each scene. There was not a dress that he did not copy from some old print, or a passade that he did not indicate to the humblest member of the troop. The marvellous ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... and clean and wore such beautiful clothes and brushed his hair so nicely; whereas she detested Oliver, who, even at an afternoon party, looked as if he had just come out of a rabbit-hole. Besides, Marmaduke danced beautifully; Oliver couldn't and wouldn't, disdaining such effeminate sports. His great joy was to put out a sly leg and send Doggie and his partner sprawling. Once the Dean caught him at it, and called him a horrid little beast, and threatened him with neck and crop expulsion if ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... industrious, and modest youth could not easily be so happily united in another as they were in Jonathan, albeit his handsome expressive face bore the impress of traits which were perhaps a little too soft, and almost effeminate, and his diminutive and weak but elegant bodily frame bespoke a tender intellectual spirit. When he reflected further that the two children had always been together, and how evident had been their mutual liking for each other, he was really puzzled to understand ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... Hippolyta, for Miss EVELYN HOPE never began to look like a leader of Amazons. Miss CHRISTINE SILVER'S Titania had a certain domestic sweetness, but even a queen of fairies might be a little more queenly. Mr. DENNIS NEILSON-TERRY as Oberon was a curiously effeminate figure for those who recalled the manly bearing of his mother in the same part. Of the two bemused Athenian lovers, Mr. SWINLEY, as Lysander, bore himself as bravely as could ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 18, 1914 • Various
... Mr. Desmond, cautiously evading a reply: "what I want to know is—what you see in Ryde. He is tall, certainly, but he is fat and effeminate, ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... fragile materials with the rest of mankind, and often making use of the authority of the law, not to suppress crimes, but to enrich themselves by the pillage of those who commit them; for capital punishments are rare in China, the effeminate genius of the nation, and their strong attachment to lucre, disposing them rather to make use of fines; and hence arises no inconsiderable profit to those who compose their tribunals: Consequently prohibitions of all kinds, particularly such ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... Mars, some ten days away. Suspicious interplanetary passengers were aboard: Miko and Moa, a brother and a sister of Mars; Sir Arthur Coniston, a mysterious Englishman; Ob Hahn, a Venus mystic. And small, effeminate George Prince and his sister, Anita. Love, I think, was born instantly between Anita and me. I found all too soon that Miko, the sinister giant from ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... interval entered the young man whom I call "king of the profligates." The Comte Henri de Marsay, who has great beauty of an effeminate kind, entered the box with an epigram in his eyes, a smile upon his lips, and an air of satisfaction over his whole countenance. He first greeted my mother, Mme. d'Espard, and the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, the Comte d'Esgrignon, ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... comparison in China and in Hindostan. Notice, in particular, the puny Chinese, who live in southern China, on quite a large proportion of shell-fish, compared with the Chinese of the interior. Extend your observations to Hindostan. Do not talk of the effeminate habits and weak constitutions of the rice and curry eaters there—bad as the admixture of rice and curry may be—for that is to compare the Hindoo with other nations; but compare Hindoo with Hindoo, which is the only fair way. Compare the porters of the Mediterranean, both of Asia and Europe, ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... a cold-blooded, highly schooled person, absolutely devoid of sentiment. His face was stony, his eyes were cool, even his linen partook of his own unruffled calm. He seemed by no means effeminate, yet he was one of those immaculate beings upon whom one can scarcely imagine a speck of dust or a bead of perspiration. His hair—what was left of it—was parted to a nicety, his clothes were faultless, and he had an ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... enduring winter's cold and summer's heat and every kind of toil, who was so schooled to curtail his needs that with the scantiest of means he never lacked sufficiency—is it credible that such a man could have made others irreverent or lawless, or licentious, or effeminate in face of toil? Was he not rather the saving of many through the passion for virtue which he roused in them, and the hope he infused that through careful management of themselves they might grow to be truly beautiful and good—not indeed that he ever undertook to be a teacher ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... womankind, he was disconsolate, bewildered, derided in that new rude world; while Alex, accustomed to fight his way among rude brothers, instantly found his level, and even extended a protecting hand to his cousin, who requited it with little gratitude. Soon overcoming his effeminate habits, he grew expert and dexterous, and was equal to Alex in all but main bodily strength; but the spirit of rivalry once excited, had never died away, and with a real friendship and esteem for each other, their names or rather their ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... therein; but although some of them were very zealous to put his advice in practice, and were in a manner filled with pleasure at it, and thought death to be a good thing, yet had those that were most effeminate a commiseration for their wives and families; and when these men were especially moved by the prospect of their own certain death, they looked wistfully at one another, and by the tears that were in their eyes declared their dissent from his opinion. When Eleazar saw these people in such fear, and ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... l. 30, squall.]—probably, poor effeminate creature. Taylor, the water-poet, describes the rich foolish ...
— Kemps Nine Daies Wonder - Performed in a Daunce from London to Norwich • William Kemp
... was always exquisitely clean and orderly, both about his person and the books and things that belonged to him in his rooms, where there was an atmosphere of almost feminine refinement, though their occupant was by no means effeminate in his thoughts or bearing. We understood that he had left Italy in consequence of some political difficulty, and we knew that he had still relations there. One day, as we were engaged with our lesson at his lodgings, he took some leaves ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... well as she did this evening, moved by one of the thousand vagrant impulses that lent such varying colour to her character. Her humour was more subdued, her gaiety was restrained within the limits of an almost conventional decorum. She helped the men with a graciousness that was wholly effeminate, and the diggers responded ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... not prone to indulge in effeminate demonstration, but I am not ashamed to confess that when I gazed on the weather-beaten though ruddy countenance of my old companion, and observed the eager glance of his bright blue eyes, I was quite overcome, and rushed violently ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... peasant is, from necessity, industrious, the upper classes, particularly the nobles, are effeminate, indolent, decadent, and servile. Their amusements are cock-fighting, dancing, shadow plays, and gambling, and they lead an utterly worthless existence which the Dutch do nothing to discourage. Their Mohammedanism is decadent and has none of the ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... "You are too effeminate," she said, leaning against the fence, and shading her eyes with her fan, as she glanced around in the staring moonlight. "Civilization has taken away your legs. A man ought to be able to trust to his feet all day, and ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... make-up. As for Roswell Palmer and Frank Mansley, their excellent home training, not denying credit to the grim old miner for his wise counsel, had held them free from the bad habits which too often make boys effeminate and weak and old before their time. Gifted by nature with the best of constitutions, they had strengthened rather than undermined them. Neither had known an hour's illness throughout the long, laborious journey, ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... bronze the tables weight, Amber on pipes from Stamboul glows, And, joy of souls effeminate, Phials of crystal scents enclose. Combs of all sizes, files of steel, Scissors both straight and curved as well, Of thirty different sorts, lo! brushes Both for the nails and for the tushes. Rousseau, I would remark in passing,(12) ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... him a cup in silence. He refused it with a wave of the arm and a smile which seemed to say, "That is rather for your effeminate generation." ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... nearer. Behind him came four or five supporters, in cloth white as his. Behind them came a ruck of Syrian youths, effeminate, vicious. Came a croud of donkey-boys, impish, black. The wrestler walked more slowly as he approached to pass the iron doors. And Shane was startled into a sudden smile at the sight of his face—a girl's face, with a girl's eyes. And in his hand was a rose. ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... hands at the new washstand with the elegant fittings, that had all made their appearance with her. Levin smiled at his own thoughts, and shook his head disapprovingly at those thoughts; a feeling akin to remorse fretted him. There was something shameful, effeminate, Capuan, as he called it to himself, in his present mode of life. "It's not right to go on like this," he thought. "It'll soon be three months, and I'm doing next to nothing. Today, almost for the first time, I set to work seriously, and what happened? I did nothing but begin and throw ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... utensils into working order before turning out to the warehouse. Pate Brown used to make fun of me about my scanty hirsute appendages, and many a time caused me to blush before sundry members of the Druids when he emphatically declared that I was one of those effeminate individuals who shaved, not because they had whiskers, but because they hadn't. This was in September, and a more open year for the respective chances of the clubs in the Cup had, ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... of this lady who had so unkindly treated him, the noble Orsino, forsaking the sports of the field, and all manly exercises in which he used to delight, passed his hours in ignoble sloth, listening to the effeminate sounds of soft music, gentle airs, and passionate love-songs; and neglecting the company of the wise and learned lords with whom he used to associate, he was now all day long conversing with young Cesario. Unmeet companion no doubt his grave courtiers thought Cesario was for their once noble master, ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... temptations by the way that I fear you will be led astray and forget your errand. For the people whom you will see in the country through which you have to pass, do nothing but amuse themselves. They are very idle, gay and effeminate, and I fear that they will lead you astray. Your path is beset with dangers. I will mention one or two things which you must be ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... observation, that the more solicitous any people are about dress, the more effeminate they are. I attribute it entirely to this idle adventitious passion for finery, that these people are become so over and above careful of their persons; they are for ever, and on every occasion, putting one another on their guard against catching ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... stuff full of Marquess and My Lady, that their own manners are as gross as they make it their boast to show their morals. Hence, some two or three pegs higher, and not more, are such very very fine scoundrels as the Pelhams, &c.; shallow, watery-brained, ill-taught, effeminate dandies—animals destitute apparently of one touch of real manhood, or of real passion—cold, systematic, deliberate debauchees, withal—seducers, God wot! and duellists, and, above all, philosophers! ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 397, Saturday, November 7, 1829. • Various
... how the apostle words it: 'Nay, ye do wrong, and defraud, and that your brethren. Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived, neither fornicators, nor idolators, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God' (1 Cor 6:8-10; ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Parliament were the shopkeepers, small farmers and landowners, with a considerable number of men of high rank; as a rule they were Puritans (S378). The King's party nicknamed them "Roundheads," because, despising the long locks and effeminate ringlets worn by the Cavaliers, they cut their hair short so that it showed the shape of the head.[2] Essex and Fairfax were the first leaders of the "Roundheads"; ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... excuses for the old contempt of the study of Natural History. I have said, too, it may be hoped, enough to show that contempt to be now ill-founded. But still, there are those who regard it as a mere amusement, and that as a somewhat effeminate one; and think that it can at best help to while away a leisure hour harmlessly, and perhaps usefully, as a substitute for coarser sports, or for the reading of novels. Those, however, who have followed it out, especially on the sea- shore, know better. They can tell from experience, that over and ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... point of some interest to ascertain from whence the Burmah nation originally came: that they are not aborigines, I think most certain. They are surrounded by the Cochin Chinese, the Chinese, and the Hindoos, all races of inferior stature and effeminate in person, with little or no beard. Now the Burmahs are a very powerful race, very muscular in their limbs, possessing great strength and energy: generally speaking, I should say, that they are rather taller than Europeans. They have the high cheek bones of the Tatar, but not the small ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... urchins of natives, whom they teach to read and write their own language—the English tongue being forbidden; and when these children return to their families, they are despised by them, as being effeminate ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... sparkling, changing from blue to brown—that the lawyer's glance lingered upon the other's features, seeking some resemblance in them, also. To his surprise he found absolutely none, the high, blue-veined forehead beneath the chestnut hair, the straight, delicate nose; the sensitive, almost effeminate curve of the mouth, must have descended from the "worthless drab" whom he had beheld in the severe white light of Fletcher's scorn. For the first time it occurred to Carraway that the illumination had ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... not spy me afar off. No! He would rather I kept my distance; And if to the front I again should go, 'Twon't be with his assistance. He deems me a troublesome GRANDY, oh' In political harness not handy, oh! I am out of a job, while BALFOUR is a nob, That lank and effeminate dandy, oh! Well, a prodigal son may be "sandy." oh! I am off for a soda-and-brandy, oh! And a "tub" at my Club, where I'm sure of a snub From the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 16, 1892 • Various
... objects as to prevent them prosecuting their voyage. Thus, what the powers of oratory could not effect, nor the arguments of sound and deliberate reason accomplish, was achieved in a moment by the administration of a small quantity of spirituous liquid, giving bravery to the coward, and daring to the effeminate. ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... glaringly, what would have been the result of giving all human affairs into female hands. Such an extraordinary and deplorable situation would have "feminized" the world. We should have all become "effeminate." ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... not a fierce countenance, being smooth, large-eyed, and disposed to be effeminate and plump, while when my uncle busied himself over the terrible wound with the knife, and must have given the man excruciating pain, he did not even wince, but kept gazing hard at his surgeon who tortured him, as if proud ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... intelligence: to the body belong sensations, to the soul appetites, to the intelligence principles." To be impressed by the senses is peculiar to animals; to be pulled by the strings of desire belongs to effeminate men, and to men like Phalaris or Nero; to be guided only by intelligence belongs to atheists and traitors, and "men who do their impure deeds when they have shut the doors.... There remains that which is peculiar to the good man, ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... human nature; elevating and enervating the mind at the same time; flattering alternately the noblest sentiments and the most grovelling propensities; intoxicating with exalted hopes, and nursing with effeminate concessions. Thus it has produced, in pellmell confusion, utopians and egotists, sceptics and fanatics, enthusiasts and incredulous scoffers, different offspring of the same period, but all enraptured with the age and with themselves, indulging together ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... side, was conscious of one point of superiority. Beside this rather dismal, rather effeminate man, who recoiled from a worm, who grew giddy on the castle wall, who bore so helplessly the weight of his misfortunes, she felt herself a head and shoulders taller in cheerful and sterling courage. She could walk head in air along the most precarious rafter; her hand feared ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to Temple on July 28, 1763:—'My departure fills me with a kind of gloom that quite overshadows my mind. I could almost weep to think of leaving dear London, and the calm retirement of the Inner Temple. This is very effeminate and very young, but I cannot help it.' Letters ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... them before? Somebody wrote a vile review of them once, and gave the idea of a very puerile, ridiculous, apron-stringy attempt at poetry. Whoever wrote that notice ought to be shot, for the books are charming pure and homely and householdy, yet not effeminate. Critics may sneer as much as they choose: it is such love as Vaughan's that Honorias value. Because a woman's nature is not proof against deterioration, because a large and long-continued infusion of gross blood, and perhaps even the monotonous pressure of rough, pitiless, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... more would they have him do? Must he practice it himself? He has no part to play, he is not a comedian."—The sciences, the fine arts, the arts of luxury, philosophy, literature, all this serve only to effeminate and distract the mind; all that is only made for the small crowd of brilliant and noisy insects buzzing around the summits of society and sucking away all public substance.—As regards the sciences, but one is important, that of our duties, and, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... desired. The wise Solomon, too, delighted in this kind of fare; for we learn that, at his table, every day were served the wild ox, the roebuck, and the stag. Xenophon informs us, in his History, that Cyrus, king of Persia, ordered that venison should never be wanting at his repasts; and of the effeminate Greeks it was the delight. The Romans, also, were devoted admirers of the flesh of the deer; and our own kings and princes, from the Great Alfred down to the Prince Consort, have hunted, although, it must be confessed, under vastly different circumstances, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... Even the Egyptian Alexas acquires some respectability, from his patriotic attachment to the interests of his country, and from his skill as a wily courtier. He expresses, by a beautiful image, the effeminate attachment to life, appropriated ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... damned Radical' like my father. Cyril had very little affection for him, and was only too glad to spend most of his holidays with us in Scotland. They never really got on together at all. Cyril thought him a bear, and he thought Cyril effeminate. He was effeminate, I suppose, in some things, though he was a very good rider and a capital fencer. In fact he got the foils before he left Eton. But he was very languid in his manner, and not a little vain of his good looks, and had a strong objection to football. The two things that really gave ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... and Stapleton and Major Gascoigne, in a room above-stairs. There were at least a dozen others present, some also at play, others merely lounging. Of the latter was his Grace of Wharton. He was a slender, graceful gentleman, whose face, if slightly effeminate and markedly dissipated, was nevertheless of considerable beauty. He was very splendid in a suit of green camlett and silver lace, and he wore ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... heedless gayety, which contrasted so horribly with his position. For the rest, he was unanimously conceded to be kind, generous, humane, lenient toward the weak, while with the strong he loved to display a vigor truly athletic which his somewhat effeminate features were far from indicating. He boasted that he had never been without money, and had no enemies. That was his sole reply to the charges of theft and assassination. ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... persisted in justifying 'naughtiness' upon general principles. He was rather inclined to be indolent, and his mother regrets that he is not so persevering as Frederick (Gibbs). His great temptation, he says himself, in his childhood was to be 'effeminate and lazy,' and 'to justify these vices by intellectual and religious excuses.' A great deal of this, he adds, has been 'knocked out of him'; he cannot call himself a sluggard or a hypocrite, nor has he acted like a coward. 'Indeed,' ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... "Five or six of the men you met to-night were loath to come. When I pinned them down to their reason, it was I thought: they regard you as an effeminate being, ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... before; and this I charge thee, on thy duty as a wife, Whatever happens, not to speak to me, No, not a word!" and Enid was aghast; And forth they rode, but scarce three paces on, When crying out, "Effeminate as I am, I will not fight my way with gilded arms All shall be iron;" he loosed a mighty purse, Hung at his belt, and hurl'd it toward the squire. So the last sight that Enid had of home Was all the marble threshold ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... city a delicate, sickly lad, so feeble in frame that, at his mother's wish, he kept away from the gymnasium, lest the severe exercises there required should do him more harm than good. His delicate clothing and effeminate habits were derided by his playmates, who nicknamed him Batalus, after, we are told, a spindle-shanked flute-player. We do not know, however, just ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... gluttony. So scandalously debauched a people as that of Venice is to be met with nowhere else. High, low, men, women, clergy, and laity, are all alike. The ruling nobility are no less afraid of one another than they are of the people; and, for that reason, politically enervate their own body by the same effeminate luxury by which they corrupt their subjects. They are impoverished by every means which can be invented; and they are kept in a perpetual terror by the horrors of a state inquisition. Here you see a people deprived of all rational freedom, and tyrannized over by ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... a humour which cannot last. It breeds weakness, anarchy, and at last ruin to society. And then the effeminate and luxurious, terrified for their money and their comfort, fly from an unwholesome tenderness to an unwholesome indignation; break out into a panic of selfish rage; and become, as cowards are apt to do, blindly and wantonly cruel; and those who fancied God too indulgent ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... Fiorsen made her take cover beneath her sunshade. She could see his patent-leathered feet, and well-turned, peg-top-trousered legs go by with the gait of a man whose waist is corseted. The certainty that he wore those prerogatives of womanhood increased her dislike. How dare men be so effeminate? Yet someone had told her that he was a good rider, a good fencer, and very strong. She drew a breath of relief when he was past, and, for fear he might turn and come back, closed her little book and slipped away. But her figure and her ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... in festivity at Carlsruhe, among all our new fashionable friends there, I bade good-by for ever to my dear old father. I had begged my husband to take me by way of Heidelberg to his old castle in the Vosges; but I found an amount of determination, under that effeminate appearance and manner, for which I was not prepared, and he refused my first request so decidedly that I dared not urge it. 'Henceforth, Anna,' said he, 'you will move in a different sphere of life; and ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... is still cheap, and comfortable. If I might be so bold as to criticise what you, my Elder Brother, may be responsible for, I'd suggest that the place to sleep on might be made a shade softer.—Yes, we are becoming effeminate, I know—we were becoming so alas, as far back as "the 45," when The M'Lean found his son with a snowball for a pillow; still, we must go with the times, and even if the berths must be hard, at least let them be level. Please ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... this effeminate cant about maintaining order and decorum, by the suppression of the public exhibitions of manly exercises. To them the individual Englishman owes his superiority to the individual of every other country, in courage, strength, and ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... extraordinary. Luxurious as he was to the root, and effeminate; hating as he did cold water, cold food, the cold shoulder; one and all of these shuddering things he had schooled himself to bear without a blink. He grew even to take a stern pleasure in the bitterness they cost him, as he turned ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... took a great fancy to me, used to carry me off to her little nest on Hampstead Heath, and lend me all her books. At Hampstead, too, I foregathered with Sydney Dobell, a strangely beautiful soul, with (what seemed to me then) very effeminate manners. Dobell's mouth was ever full of very pretty Latinity, for the most part Virgilian. He was fond of quoting, as an example of perfect expression, sound conveying absolute sense of the thing described, the ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... his Knowledge, 'twould his Love. As to his Person, 'tis not to advise; All Women see not with the self-same Eyes. In that you might your own Opinion use, Your Heart wou'd teach you; but were I to chuse, He shou'd not be Effeminate or Proud, (I hate the Man that is by Pride subdu'd). In us I Grant a little Pride may be, Much less a Crime (and may with Sense agree) A Gift alone for our own Sex design'd, To awe the loose Opinions of Mankind; Who ...
— The Pleasures of a Single Life, or, The Miseries Of Matrimony • Anonymous
... case, you can imagine the astonishment and gratification I have experienced here this evening at the intelligence and forwardness manifested by so many effeminate intellects. (A flattered ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... counsels of Mme. Campan. Mistress of Charles Grandet before his father's death. Towards the close of 1819, a prey to suspicion, she must needs sacrifice her happiness for the time being, so she made a weary journey with her husband into Scotland. She made her lover effeminate and materialistic, advising with him about everything. He returned from the Indies in 1827, when she quickly brought about his engagement with Mlle. d'Aubrion. ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... marsh; I shivered on the brink of a river while the sportsmen crossed it, and trembled at the sight of a five-bar gate. When the sport and danger were over, I was still equally disconcerted; for I was effeminate, though not delicate, and could only join a feeble whispering voice in ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... now that they speak. The merchant, elaborately dressed, varnished pumps upon his effeminate feet, every hair taught its curve and direction, the lunette perched upon no nose to speak of, and the wavering, vacillating eye, which has no higher regard than his own miniature figure. Above rises the vagabond, straight, athletic and courageous, ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... them? Heroes in the fields of Venus. Heroes at a drinking-bout. Effeminate striplings, relaxed both in mind and body. But how am I running on, forgetful. Ah, when one is grown old, and conversing with an Andreas, it is easy to forget everything else. My lord, I sought you with a request, a ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... heroes are apt to be loud and aggressive, the quiet man who thinks more than he talks is adjudged effeminate. Harte was always modest, and boasting was foreign to his nature; so he was thought devoid of spirit and strength. But occasion brought out the unsuspected. There had been a long and trying Indian ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... it as the most severe punishment that could have been inflicted on him, and would willingly have given a part of his wages rather than this disgrace had happened; for there is a pride amongst "Old Voyagers," which makes them consider the state of being frost-bitten as effeminate, and only excusable in a "Pork-eater," or one newly come into the country. I was greatly fatigued, and suffered acute pains in the knees and legs, both of which were much swollen when we halted a little ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... me from being on any intimate terms with young people of the other sex, I had several little girl-friends one of whom more particularly has left a profound impression upon me. From an early age I preferred the society of girls to boys, and the latter did not like me, as I was too effeminate for them. We could not play together, as they called me "Mademoiselle," and teased me in a variety of ways. On the other hand, I got on very well with girls of my own age, and they found me very sensible and steady. ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... occur, nevertheless they are exercised in military tactics and in hunting, lest perchance they should become effeminate and unprepared for any emergency. Besides, there are four kingdoms in the island, which are very envious of their prosperity, for this reason that the people desire to live after the manner of the inhabitants of the City of ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells
... [Footnote: China, about which we have heard a great deal of late years, has been several times invaded by the warrior hordes of Tartary. But at each time, unto the second and third generations, the vanquishers have taken the effeminate manners, the costume and the usages of the vanquished, and so many conquests have only resulted in converting millions of Tartars ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... famished-looking oxen, some swine of singularly active habits, and plenty of poultry. The old saddles are tied on with twine; one side of the bridle is a worn-out strap and the other a rope. They wear boots, but never two of one pair, and never blacked, of course, but no stockings. They think it quite effeminate to sleep under a roof, except during the severest months of the year. There is a married daughter across the river, just the same hard, loveless, moral, hard-working being as her mother. Each morning, ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... no longer mention that we walked back in a single day, it makes me so furious to see doubt in the face of the hearer. Men were men in those old times. Think of one of the puerile organisms in this effeminate age attempting ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... excluded two or three Englishmen who spoke with an accent suggestive of an effeminate character, and had a fearsome habit of walking on the Sabbath, and poor "Moossy," the French master at the Seminary, who was a quantity not worth considering, the foreign element in Muirtown during the classical days consisted of the Count. ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... apartments, lay the queen-mother, dying, but listening eagerly for the rush of footsteps overhead, hoping and praying that Henri—the hitherto effeminate Henri who played with his sword as he would with a battledore, and who painted himself like a woman, and put rings in his ears—would not prejudice himself at this time in the eyes of Rome by slaying the leader of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... folio by Pope's publisher, Lawton Gilliver of Fleet Street, and has a frontispiece engraved by Gerard Vandergucht. This depicts a wide-skirted, effeminate-looking personage, carrying a long cane with a head fantastically carved, and surrounded by various objects of art. In the background rises what is apparently intended for the temple of a formal garden; and behind this again, a winged ass capers skittishly upon the ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... youthful years, been able to show the measure, not the tendency of his genius, as well as his aversion for all that is artificial, superficial, insipid, and effeminate; and he had proved that the two great characteristics of his ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... disgraceful defeat. In any case that sequence of second prizes must have filled him with chagrin, but to be beaten thus repeatedly by such a fellow as Bruno Chilvers was humiliation intolerable. A fopling, a mincer of effeminate English, a rote-repeater of academic catchwords—bah! The by-examinations of the year had whispered presage, but Peak always felt that he was not putting forth his strength; when the serious trial came he would ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... from being effeminate. He was found of aesthetics and anaesthetics, and his chief interests in life were ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... and shame, that they, who to live well Entered so fair, should turn aside to tread Paths indirect, or in the mid way faint! But still I see the tenour of Man's woe Holds on the same, from Woman to begin. From Man's effeminate slackness it begins, Said the Angel, who should better hold his place By wisdom, and superiour gifts received. But now prepare thee for another scene. He looked, and saw wide territory spread Before him, towns, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... down their arms and remained quiet, and they observed peace in this way for a space of three years. But the people themselves, being exceedingly vexed, began to abuse their leader Rodolphus without restraint, and going to him constantly they called him cowardly and effeminate, and railed at him in a most unruly manner, taunting him with certain other names besides. And Rodolphus, being quite unable to bear the insult, marched against the Lombards, who were doing no wrong, without charging against them any fault ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... brought him up, and with many tears tried to prevent his going there. Again, it often happens that important business makes it necessary to part from friends: the man who tries to baulk it, because he thinks that he cannot endure the separation, is of a weak and effeminate nature, and on that very account makes but a poor friend. There are, of course, limits to what you ought to expect from a friend and to what you should allow him to demand of you. And these you must take into calculation in ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... abominable filthiness, as they do. Again, a man might ask out of what commonwealth Plato did banish them? in sooth, thence where he himself alloweth community of women: so as, belike, this banishment grew not for effeminate wantonness, sith little should poetical sonnets be hurtful, when a man might have what woman he listed. But I honour philosophical instructions, and bless the wits which bred them: so as they be not abused, which is likewise ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... up, and saw a small, effeminate personage, magnificently attired, and wearing the broad, blue band of the order of St. Louis. He recognized the king's brother, the ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... cared for, showed when he exposed the palms the callouses of ax handling. And his face was likable, she decided, full of character, intensely masculine. In her heart every woman despises any hint of the effeminate in man. Even though she may decry what she is pleased to term the brute in man, whenever he discards the dominant, overmastering characteristics of the male she will have none of him. Miss Hazel Weir was ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... once meant foolish, ignorant, weak, effeminate. It has now come to mean exact, fine, finished, exciting admiration on account of skill or exactness; as nice proportions, nice workmanship, a nice distinction in philosophy. It is loosely and colloquially used in application to what ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... of the house" was seesawing himself backward and forward in his squeaky boots, speaking in a pompous manner, and with an effort to swell an effeminate voice to a bass key, resulting in something between a croak and a squeal. Julia sat down and cried in mortification and disgust. Mr. Anderson understood this to be acquiescence, and turned and went ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... tall slim fellow, about 5 Feet 7 inches high, wears a blue Surtout Coat with metal Buttons, and his Hat commonly flopt before, and an old laced Waistcoat, has short curled black Hair; when he speaks he seems jaw-fallen and very effeminate, is about 35 Years of Age, walks much like a Foot-pad, and has a comely Woman with him whom he calls his Wife.——John Cassady, a middling siz'd Fellow much pock-broken, square-shoulder'd, wears a Wig upon the yellow ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 5: Some Strange and Curious Punishments • Henry M. Brooks
... before him, he would have been less appalled: with supernatural beings he was in constant though not direct communication. He studied them—their nature and their functions. But this tall, stately man, in his abominable garment which reached barely to his knees, with the white, effeminate forehead and unintelligible language, who was he? Was he a Philistine? a cruel Roman, or perhaps a Spaniard—one of those that murdered the famous Abrabanel family, and drove his ancestor Todros out ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... consistency. She was reported as calling a hat a "hot," a rat a "rot," of teaching her little sister to read from the primer, "Is the cot on the mot?" Pronunciation became a test of character. The soft "r" and the hard "a" were taken as proofs of effeminate hypocrisy. ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... a few observations on these curious people. Generally, the Tanelkums are reckoned amongst the most effeminate and civilised of the Tuaricks of the north; and, indeed, such appears to be their character, as developed in our transactions with them. Some of them have more the manners of merchants than camel-drivers; and the mercantile character always tames men in the desert. Throughout their ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... emerged from the elevator, below, he paused before leaving the hotel to mop his perspiring brow with a large, soiled handkerchief. The perfume of hyacinths seemed to have pursued him, bringing with it a memory of the handsome, effeminate ivory face of the man above. He was recalled to his senses by the voice ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... from the glass of later centuries, the first impression from the thirteenth-century windows ought to be disappointment. You should find them too effeminate, too soft, too small, and above all not particularly religious. Indeed, except for the nominal subjects of the legends, one sees nothing religious about them; the medallions, when studied with the binocle, turn out to ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... into that fatal conversation? I hardly remember. We talked first of the neighbourhood, then swayed away to books, then to people. Yes, that was how it came about. The Professor was speaking of a man whom we both knew in town, a curiously effeminate man, whose every thought and feeling seemed that of a woman. I said I disliked him, and condemned him for his woman's demeanour, his woman's mind; but the Professor thereupon joined issue ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... facing the enemies of my country. These are my statues; these are the honours I boast of. Not left me by inheritance as theirs; but earned by toil, by abstinence, by valour; amidst clouds of dust, and seas of blood: scenes of action, where those effeminate Patricians, who endeavour, by indirect means, to depreciate me in your esteem, have never ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... in the East, while the first illuminators were the monks of Ireland. Ladies were the spinners, weavers, surgeons, and readers of the day; they were great at interpreting dreams, and dearly loved flowers. The gentlemen looked upon reading as an occupation quite as effeminate as sewing, war and hunting being the two main employments of the lords of creation, and gambling the chief amusement. Priests and monks were the exceptions to this rule, until Henry First introduced a taste for somewhat more liberal education. Even more respectful ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... wrestle with a race whose religion was one of blood, and whose beatitude was to be in proportion to the slaughter they made while on earth. The Northman hated Christianity as a rival religion, and despised it as an effeminate one. He was the soldier of Odin, the elect of Valhalla; and he felt that the offering most acceptable to his sanguinary gods was the blood of those religionists who denied their existence and execrated their revelation. The points of attack, therefore, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... peace it had been selfish and stern. The lust of rule became stronger as its arm became weaker. The degradation of slavery and the heavy hand of the tax-gatherer were extending even to Wales. The barbarian invader found the effeminate, luxurious empire an easy prey. In 410 Alaric and his host of Goths appeared before the city of Rome itself; and a horde of barbarians, thirsting for blood and spoil, surged into it. The fall of the great city was a shock to the whole world; the end of the world must ...
— A Short History of Wales • Owen M. Edwards
... apocryphal ring to it. The statement (first made in The Poetical Register, 1719) that he was "Son of an Eminent Attorney of the City of London" sounds like something manufactured out of whole cloth by a compiler who in fact had no idea whose son Baker was. The Biographia Dramatica had "heard" that the effeminate Maiden in Tunbridge-Walks ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... necessarily effected in a situation, where a scanty subsistence could only be earned by a life of extreme temperance and toil, and where it was often to be sought, sword in hand, from an enemy far superior in numbers. Whatever may have been the vices of the Spaniards, they cannot have been those of effeminate sloth. Thus a sober, hardy, and independent race was gradually formed, prepared to assert their ancient inheritance, and to lay the foundations of far more liberal and equitable forms of government, than were known ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... equally indistinct belief that "the Professor" has very little furniture in his upper story. How far either of them is wrong our space does not permit us to say. Both have a supreme contempt for students, regarding them as effeminate cumberers of the ground. In the presence of Bill, "the Professor" does not appear to advantage. Being entirely unable to compete with him in a war of words, he is usually forced to betake himself to dancing; which, compared with ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... dear father, that Parysatis told me her brother Xerxes was effeminate and capricious, and had a new idol with every change of the moon. Some fairer face would soon find favour in his sight; and I should perhaps be shut up with hundreds of forgotten favourites, in the old harem, among silly women ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... to call Stevenson effeminate, even if he was feminine. He had a courage that outmatched his physique. Once in a cafe in France, a Frenchman made the remark that the English were a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... none but those whose courage is unquestionable, can venture to be effeminate. It was only in the field that the Lacedemonians were accustomed to use perfumes and curl ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in these somewhat fragmentary observations, was to protest against the reasoning which would divest punishment of its proper and distinctive character, which, spreading about weak and effeminate scruples, would paralyse the arm which bears the sword of justice. One writer would impugn the right of society to put its arch-criminals to death; another controverts its right to inflict any penalty whatever, which has not for its direct object the reformation ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... sun; and as she came up the slope she leapt from rock to rock in a heavy pair of boys' high boots. There was nothing of the singer about her now, nor of the filmy-clad barefooted dancer; the jagged edge of old Pinal would permit of nothing so effeminate. Yet, over the rocks as on the smooth trails, she had a grace that was all her own, for those hillsides ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... sewing-silk—may be an expression of their patriotism and their religion. A noble-hearted woman puts a noble meaning into even the commonplace details of life. The women of America can, if they choose, hold back their country from following in the wake of old, corrupt, worn-out, effeminate European society, and make America the leader of the world in all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... pink, girlish cheeks, gratified vanity danced in her violet eyes, and as she piquantly bowed her acknowledgments, this great breath of praise seemed to transfigure and possess her. A very young actor who represented the giddy world in a straw hat and with an effeminate manner was alternately petted and girded at by her during the opening exposition of the plot, until the statement that a "dark destiny" obliged her to follow her uncle in an emigrant train across the plains closed the act, apparently extinguished him, and left ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... Yonson, a man of the heavy Scandinavian type, ceased chafing me, and arose awkwardly to his feet. The man who had spoken to him was clearly a Cockney, with the clean lines and weakly pretty, almost effeminate, face of the man who has absorbed the sound of Bow Bells with his mother's milk. A draggled muslin cap on his head and a dirty gunny-sack about his slim hips proclaimed him cook of the decidedly dirty ship's galley in which I ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... for gain but merely for the sexual appetite, puts up with a peevish and unsympathetic wife, as Philippides, the comic poet, ridiculed the orator, Stratocles, 'You scarce can kiss her if she turns her back on you.' If, however, we ought to give the name of love to this passion, then is it an effeminate and bastard love, and like at Cynosarges,[67] taking us to the woman's side of the house: or rather as they say there is a genuine mountain eagle, which Homer called 'black, and a bird of prey,' and there are other kinds of spurious eagles, which catch fish and lazy birds in marshes, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... danger, had tended to prolong the state of weakness into which it had sunk. If the hero of the dynasty who had conquered Egypt had not ventured to measure his strength with the Median princes, and if he had courted the friendship not only of the warlike Cyaxares but of the effeminate Astyages, it would not be prudent for Nabonidus to come into collision with the victorious new-comers from the heart of Iran. Chaldsea doubtless was right in avoiding hostilities, at all events so long as she had to bear the brunt of them ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... jardiniere, saying: "You are fond of hyacinths and tuberoses; their perfume overpowered me for a moment. I fear you think me very effeminate." ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... wages shel be sich ez they and the employers shel mutually agree; but that the negroes may not become luxurious and effeminate, wich two things is vices wich goes to sap the simplicity and strength uv a people, the sum shel never exceed $5 per month, but not less than enuff in all cases to buy him one soot uv close per annum, wich the employer ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... Everybody, however, knows that, at the Papal Court, the time and money of the public are not frittered away in parties and fetes and dances. Everybody knows too that women are not admitted to the Vatican, and therefore the habits of the court are not effeminate, while the whole of its time is spent in transacting state affairs; and the due course of justice is not disturbed by certain feminine passions." After this statement, startling to any one with ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... rottennesse, whose course of life cannot by any meanes, by counsell, restraint of Lawes, or punishment, nor hope of praise, profet, or eturnall glory, be kept within any bounds, who is degenerate cleane from his naturall feeding, to effeminate nicenesse, and cloying his body with excesse of meate, drinke, sleepe &c. and to whom nothing is so pleasant and so much desired as the causes of his owne death, as idlenesse, lust, &c. may liue to that ...
— A New Orchard And Garden • William Lawson
... going at once," said the more handsomely dressed visitor in a thin and effeminate voice. "What can a man do when the boys pelt him with dirt from a safe hiding-place, but take ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... is true, and a little effeminate also, that is, lacking energy, letting himself be carried away by goodness and tenderness. This weakness made him commit a fault before his departure for America. I have kept it from you until this moment, but you ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... not think they were. The vast continent then thrown open to the advance of civilisation, may be divided into two portions,—the south and the north. The former was inhabited by a harmless effeminate race, who enjoyed many of the refinements of civilisation; their knowledge of the arts, for instance, as shown to us in the ruins of their cities, was considerable; they possessed extensive buildings in a bold and ornate style of architecture; they ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... this challenge, it must be remembered that red blood is a traditionary sign of courage: Thus Macbeth calls one of his frighted soldiers, a lilly liver'd Lown; again in this play, Cowards are said to have livers as white as milk; and an effeminate and timorous man is termed ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... their centres. The mediaeval architects often put another square abacus above all, as represented by the shaded portion of Fig. LXVII., and some massy conditions of this form, elaborately ornamented, are very beautiful; but it is apt to become rigid and effeminate, as assuredly it is in the original Corinthian, which is thoroughly mean and meagre in its upper ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... after having washed himself leisurely, proceeded to discharges his devotions, looking around all the while with a certain self-satisfied composure, before returning to his cell. His appearance was puny, undergrown, and effeminate, and his small, narrow, and elongated head markedly prognathous, but he exercised over some of his companions a passionate, if unnatural, fascination which, I have been told by one who was present at the trial, betrayed itself ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... five o'clock on the evening of the day of Sheil's speech, Lord Ballindine and his friend, Walter Blake, were lounging on different sofas in a room at Morrison's Hotel, before they went up to dress for dinner. Walter Blake was an effeminate-looking, slight-made man, about thirty or thirty-three years of age; good looking, and gentlemanlike, but presenting quite a contrast in his appearance to his friend Lord Ballindine. He had a cold quiet grey ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... read much; but, nevertheless, such great men are sometimes more likely to imitate some predecessor at a critical moment, or to adopt some bold yet inefficient suggestion from another, than to originate an adequate one themselves. He is a scholar, an invalid, refined and philosophical—but effeminate. ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... "We effeminate women of the nineteenth century are afraid of broken heads," said Fanny. "But Mary Damer seems quite to enjoy your accident, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... no luxury—they lived in houses built of rough materials—they lived at public tables—fed on black broth, and despised every thing effeminate or luxurious."—Whelpley's Lectures, p. 167. "Government is the agent. Society is the principal."—Wayland's Moral Science, 1st Ed., p. 377. "The essentials of speech were anciently supposed to be sufficiently designated by the Noun and the Verb, to which was subsequently added, the Conjunction"—Bullions, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... want to embark on a correspondence with him," Uncle Henry exclaimed petulantly. "I know the man by reputation. A bigoted Ritualist. A Romanizer of the worst type. He'll only fill your head with a lot of effeminate nonsense, and that at a time when it's particularly necessary for you to concentrate upon your work. Don't forget that this is your last year of school. I advise you to make the most ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... and in motion which is like to it. The manners of the wrestling-ground and of the stage are sometimes odious; but let us see the actor or the wrestler walking simple and upright, and we praise him. Let him use a befitting neatness, not verging toward the effeminate, but just avoiding a rustic harshness. The same measure is to be taken with your clothes as with other matters in which a middle course ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... traveler, worker, is "well girded,"—his chiton is drawn high, but the deliberate old gentleman who parades the Agora, discussing poetry or statecraft, has his chiton falling almost to a trailing length. Only occasionally short sleeves were added to this very simple garment; they are considered effeminate, and are not esteemed. If one's arms get cold, one can protect them by pulling up the skirt, and wrapping the arms in ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... pallid, slender man of about thirty-five or seven years of age, with delicate, effeminate features, and hair thickly sprinkled with gray. His fingers, white and taper as a woman's, were covered with rings. His dress was careless, but that of a gentleman. Glancing at him even thus furtively, I could not help observing the worn lines about his temples, the ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... stream. Much time was given to sports, rough, hearty, manly sports, with a spice of danger, and these, with an occasional adventurous dash into the wilderness, kept them sound and strong and brave, both in body and mind. There was nothing languid or effeminate about the Virginian planter. He was a robust man, quite ready to fight or work when the time came, and well fitted to deal with affairs when he was needed. He was a free-handed, hospitable, generous being, ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... honor, was revolted by such a state of things. As he looked around the company, there was not a man or woman to be seen of whom he had not already heard some risque story or covert insinuation, and, though he was no strait-laced Puritan, a sort of disdain for these effeminate courtiers and a horror of these beautiful ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... was there seen a more brilliant chivalry than that collected round the gallant Prince Henry! There was not a man in his army but had lacquered boots and fresh white kid-gloves at morning and evening parade. The fantastic and effeminate but brave and faithful troops were numbered off into different legions: there was the Fleur-d'Orange regiment; the Eau-de-Rose battalion; the Violet-Pomatum volunteers; the Eau-de-Cologne cavalry—according to the different scents which they affected. Most ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... You're effeminate; you're a boulevardier. It would do you good to be pitched in a gale about the coast of Skye. A fellow of your temperament has no business in these ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... anything, below the ordinary height; but then, he was all compact, and under his swart, tattooed skin, the muscles worked like steel rods. Hair, crisp and coal-black, curled over shaggy brows, and ambushed small, intense eyes, always on the glare. In short, he was none of your effeminate barbarians. ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... Schehati again: and had Jane overheard the remark it would not have offended her; for, though she held a masculine woman only one degree less in abhorrence than an effeminate man, she would have taken Schehati's compound noun as a tribute to the fact that she was well-groomed and independent, knowing her own mind, and, when she started out to go to a place, reaching it in the shortest possible time, without fidget, fuss, or flurry. ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... knew that he was looking upon one of the most dangerous men in all the West. Quade was a villain. Culver Rann, quiet and cool and suave, was a devil. Behind his depravity worked the brain which Quade lacked, and a nerve which, in spite of that almost effeminate immaculateness, had been ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... at her house in Mount Street, and frequently met Lord Drumone's fair-haired and rather effeminate son there, Peggy's mother never dreamed they were in love. Both were extremely careful to conceal it, and in their ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... friendship that every one owes to himself is to be found; not a false friendship, that makes us embrace glory, knowledge, riches, and the like, with a principal and immoderate affection, as members of our being; nor an indiscreet and effeminate friendship, wherein it happens, as with ivy, that it decays and ruins the walls it embraces; but a sound and regular friendship, equally useful and pleasant. He who knows the duties of this friendship ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... Madame Guillotine. There was fever in the air, fever in the blood, and the passions held high carnival. In solitude, danger depresses all save the very strongest, but the mob (ever the symbol of weakness) is made up of women—it is an effeminate thing. It laughs hysterically at death and cries, "On with the dance!" Women represent the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... by the utter uselessness of the Bashi-Bazouks. The very sight of them excites my ire. I never saw such a useless, expensive set. I hate (there is no other word for it) these Arabs; and I like the Blacks—patient, enduring, and friendly, as much as the Arab is cowardly, cruel, and effeminate. All the misery is due to these Arab and Circassian Pashas and authorities. I would not stay a day here for these wretched creatures, but I would give my life for ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... in favour of German opera; my choice was determined by the tremendous impression made on me by the two figures of Sassaroli and Weber. The Italian male-soprano, a huge pot-bellied giant, horrified me with his high effeminate voice, his astonishing volubility, and his incessant screeching laughter. In spite of his boundless good-nature and amiability, particularly to my family, I took an uncanny dislike to him. On account of this dreadful person, the sound of Italian, either spoken or sung, seemed ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... of Wales, the late Duke of Argyll, the Marquis of Lorn, and the other chief fashionable people of the day. This fete was memorable, for it was said to have cost L.60,000. Brummell was not altogether effeminate; he could both shoot and ride, but he liked neither: he was never a Melton man. He said that he could not bear to have his tops and leathers splashed by the greasy galloping farmers. The Duke of Rutland raised a corps of volunteers on the renewal ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... summary way, and James Mill, as we shall see, gave a more explicit statement. But such men as Ricardo and Malthus had no systematic philosophy, though a certain philosophy was congenial to their methods. Desire to reach a solid groundwork of fact, hearty aversion to mere word-juggling, and to effeminate sentimentalism, respect for science and indifference to, if not contempt for, poetry, resolution to approve no laws or institutions which could not be supported on plain grounds of utility, and to accept ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... sectarian signs on their foreheads. The only trinket they do not completely despise is an expensive necklace; but even this is not common. Contrary to all expectations, the Mahrattis, with all their little effeminate ways, are the bravest tribe of India, gallant and experienced soldiers, a fact which has been demonstrated by centuries of fighting; but Bengal has never as yet produced a single soldier out of its sixty-five million ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... him much as some knight mounted upon a barb and arrayed in damascened steel would have respected an adversary equally well horsed and equipped at a tournament in the Middle Ages. But for the time he had grown effeminate amid the delights of Capua. The friendship of such a woman as the Baronne de Nucingen is of a kind that sets a man abjuring egoism in ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... room for doubt that she will give great satisfaction in the "Comedy of Errors." Mr. Robson has never liked female roles, but his falsetto voice, his slender figure, his smooth, rosy face, and his graceful, effeminate manners qualify him to a remarkable degree for the impersonation of feminine characters. Moreover, his long residence in Paris has given him a thorough appreciation and elaborate knowledge of those characteristics, which must be understood ere one can delineate and ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... for ever from our minds, my countrymen, all such unworthy ideas of the K—g, his Ministry, and Parliament. Let us not suppose, that all are become luxurious, effeminate and unreasonable, on the other side the water, as many designing persons would insinuate. Let us presume, what is in fact true, that the spirit of liberty is as ardent as ever among the body of the nation, ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... dispute with neighboring nations about commercial privileges, no local strife which cannot be settled by Arete. The poet has as nearly as possible succeeded in eliminating the negative element out of this society. An unwarlike folk, but not effeminate, happy in peace, with a childlike delight in play, which is the starting-point of art, and remains its substrate, according to Schiller; truly idyllic it must be regarded, a land on the way between nature and civilization, where life is a perpetual holiday, and ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... propose to make Rebecca Sharp Mrs. Sedley. The parents at home had acquiesced in the arrangement, though, between ourselves, old Mr. Sedley had a feeling very much akin to contempt for his son. He said he was vain, selfish, lazy, and effeminate. He could not endure his airs as a man of fashion, and laughed heartily at his pompous braggadocio stories. "I shall leave the fellow half my property," he said; "and he will have, besides, plenty ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... melancholy that preyed upon him could be discerned in his languid posture and feeble frame; it was depicted on his brow and white face; he looked like some plant bleached by darkness. There was a kind of effeminate grace about him; the fancies peculiar to wealthy invalids were also noticeable. His hands were soft and white, like a pretty woman's; he wore his fair hair, now grown scanty, curled about his temples with a ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... Norman nose, and the short, slender figure in its mantle and doublet of black velvet furred with ermine, rich under tunic of white satin, tight-fitting hose of silk, and dark brown hair hanging bushy to the shoulders, would have been almost effeminate but for the massively majestic forehead and the fierce black eyes—brilliant, compelling, stern, proud—that flashed forth the mighty ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... the Laestrigons. Hercules, after he had cleansed the Augean stable, and performed all the other labours enjoined him by Euristheus, found himself a slave to the softnesses of the heart; and he, who wore a club and a lion's skin in the cause of virtue, condescended to the most effeminate employments to gratify a criminal weakness. Hannibal, who vanquished mighty nations, was himself overcome by the love of pleasure; and he who despised cold, and want, and danger, and death on the Alps, was conquered and undone by ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... although I do not recognise him in any one of Charlotte's novels, and he certainly has no place among the three famous curates of Shirley. He would seem to have been the only man, other than her father and brother, whom Emily was known to tolerate. We know that the girls considered him effeminate, and they called him 'Celia Amelia,' under which name he frequently appears in Charlotte's letters to Ellen Nussey. That he was good-natured seems to be indisputable. There is one story of his walking to Bradford to post valentines to the incumbent's daughters, when he found they ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... aversion to seeing so gentle a creature thrown even for an hour upon her own resources, though in situations which scarcely seemed to admit of any occasion for taxing those resources; and often I have felt anger towards myself for what appeared to be an irrational or effeminate timidity, and have struggled with my own mind upon occasions like the present, when I knew that I could not have acknowledged my tremors to a friend without something like shame, and a fear to excite his ridicule. No; if in anything I ran into excess, it was in this very point ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... hybrid type of Araucans, Pehu-enches, and Aucas. They were Ando-Peruvians, of an olive tint, of medium stature and massive form, with a low forehead, almost circular face, thin lips, high cheekbones, effeminate features, and cold expression. As a whole, they are about the least interesting of the Indians. However, it was their herds Glenarvan wanted, not themselves. As long as he could get beef and horses, ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... John a reposeful spirit. He was content to be lowly. He knew how to trust. His spirit was gentle. He was of a deeply spiritual nature. Yet we must not think of him as weak or effeminate. Perhaps painters have helped to give this impression of him; but it is one that is not only untrue, but dishonoring. John was a man of noble strength. In his soul, under his quietness and sweetness of spirit, dwelt a mighty energy. But he was ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... and the Ephesian sinners? (of Paul we will speak anon.) These Ephesian sinners, they were men dead in sins; men that walked according to the dictates and motions of the devil; worshippers of Diana, that effeminate goddess; men far off from God, aliens and strangers to all good things; such as were far off from that, as I said, and, consequently, in a most deplorable condition. As the Jerusalem sinners were of the highest sort among the Jews, so these Ephesian sinners were of the highest sort among the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and quarrel. You may judge how miserably poor they are, when you are told they can not afford even to cultivate the favorite art of modern Italy; the art best suited to the genius of a soft and effeminate people. There is, I was told, but one pianoforte in the whole town, and that is owned by a Florentine lady who has ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... not! But wherefore waste I precious hours with thee! Thou art her darling mischief, her chief engine, Antony's other fate. Go, tell thy queen, Ventidius is arrived, to end her charms. Let your Egyptian timbrels play alone, Nor mix effeminate sounds with Roman trumpets, You dare not fight for Antony; go pray And keep your cowards' holiday in temples. [Exeunt ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... the main feature of which was the citadel of Carlisle in sugar, the company all besieging it with sugar-plums. It would, indeed, as Walpole declared, be impossible to relate all the Caligulisms of this effeminate, absurd prince. But buffoonery and eccentricity were the order of the day. 'A ridiculous thing happened,' Horace writes, 'when the princess saw company after her confinement. The new-born babe was shown in a mighty pretty cradle, designed by Kent, under a canopy in the great drawing-room. ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... and sewing-silk—may be an expression of their patriotism and their religion. A noble-hearted woman puts a noble meaning into even the commonplace details of life. The women of America can, if they choose, hold back their country from following in the wake of old, corrupt, worn-out, effeminate European society, and make America the leader of the world in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... cried,) "have devoured your manhood? What filth did you tread upon at some crossroads, in the dark? Not even by the boy could you do your duty but, weak and effeminate, you are worn out like a cart-horse at a hill, you have lost both labor and sweat! Not content with getting yourself into trouble, you have stirred up the wrath of the gods against me {and I will make you smart ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... ben Nazir! Shall a lousy Damascene trick me out of keeping my oath? You are in my safekeeping until you tread on British soil again, and my honour is concerned in it! No doubt that effeminate schemer of schemes would like to display you at the mejlis as his booty, but you are mine! Did you think you are ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... In his versification he discards rhyme almost entirely, and metre as generally understood. And in his treatment of certain passions and appetites, and of unadulterated human nature, he is at war with what he considered the conventions of an effeminate society, in which, however, he adopts a mode of utterance which many people consider equally objectionable, overlooking, as he does, the existence through all the processes of nature of a principle of reserve and concealment. Amid much that is prosaic and rhetorical, however, it remains ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... shrugs his shoulders. "For instance," says he, "this Gerald Webb seems to be one of those highly sensitive, delicately organized persons; somewhat effeminate in fact. He needs considerate, ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... together, and occupied the entire pavement, so that it was impossible to precede them without getting into the carriage-way, thus greatly obstructing and inconveniencing all other passengers. Lounging at a funeral pace, and leaving not the smallest opening, it was evident that 325 these effeminate animals had purposely united themselves for public annoyance. Sir Felix, irritated by this palpable outrage on decorum, stepped forward, with hasty determined stride, and coming unexpectedly and irresistibly in contact, broke at once the concatenated barrier, to the great amusement ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... eight or ten years of age; but a young man is accounted very effeminate who reaches his twentieth year without having undergone the operation. Marsden told one of the chiefs, King George, as he was called, that he must not tattoo his nephew Racow,[W] who was a very fine-looking youth, with a dignified, ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... about thirty years old, blonde, a little effeminate, wistful. A curious appurtenance in the military household of so vigorous a general). "Natacha, there is not an hour that I can call truly good if I spend it away ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... of signal and disgraceful defeat. In any case that sequence of second prizes must have filled him with chagrin, but to be beaten thus repeatedly by such a fellow as Bruno Chilvers was humiliation intolerable. A fopling, a mincer of effeminate English, a rote-repeater of academic catchwords—bah! The by-examinations of the year had whispered presage, but Peak always felt that he was not putting forth his strength; when the serious trial came he would show what was really ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... very well," objected the cure, "that there are good works, good authors. However, if it were only those persons of different sexes united in a bewitching apartment, decorated rouge, those lights, those effeminate voices, all this must, in the long-run, engender a certain mental libertinage, give rise to immodest thoughts and impure temptations. Such, at any rate, is the opinion of all the Fathers. Finally," he added, suddenly assuming ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... Gray was born in London on the twenty-sixth of December, 1716, and received his education at Cambridge, where he lived most of his quiet life and where he died in 1771. He was a small and graceful man with handsome features and rather an effeminate appearance, always dressed with extreme care. The greater part of his life was spent in neatly furnished rooms among his books, for he was a hard student, and became noted as one of the first scholars of his time. Among his ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... motioned his companion to a place beside him. Johnson obeyed without a word. Slight as was the act, perhaps no other incident of their singular companionship indicated as completely the dominance of this careless, half-effeminate, but self-possessed boy over this doggedly self-willed, abnormally ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... of those wounds which I have received by facing the enemies of my country. These are my statues; these are the honours I boast of. Not left me by inheritance as theirs; but earned by toil, by abstinence, by valour; amidst clouds of dust, and seas of blood: scenes of action, where those effeminate Patricians, who endeavour, by indirect means, to depreciate me in your esteem, have never dared to ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... more grace and beauty in a Pas de trois, and would not proceed till he had resolved this question by a chain of metaphysical reasoning without end. Not so Mr. Godwin. That is best to him, which he can do best. He does not waste himself in vain aspirations and effeminate sympathies. He is blind, deaf, insensible to all but the trump of Fame. Plays, operas, painting, music, ball-rooms, wealth, fashion, titles, lords, ladies, touch him not—all these are no more to him than to the magician ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... in this painting to place before you. Several of the artists here assembled may serve as warnings to you: the Venetians went astray as soon as they made colouring the principal object of attraction, and so by degrees they sank in sensuality. The effeminate Correggio proceeded in this career at a more rapid rate, until he had cast aside every restraint of modesty and morality, and gave himself up to unbridled voluptuousness.[12] Michael Angelo set up the antique ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... the palace, and having with his own eyes seen Sardanapalus in the midst of his infamous seraglio; enraged at such a spectacle, and not able to endure that so many brave men should be subject to a prince more soft and effeminate than the women themselves, immediately formed a conspiracy against him. Belesis, governor of Babylon, and several others, entered into it. On the first rumour of this revolt, the king hid himself in the inmost part of his palace. Being obliged afterwards to take the field with some forces ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... the loss of two young children. Edouard, though delicate from his birth, had nevertheless passed the trying years of infancy and early adolescence; he was them nearly fourteen. With a sweet and rather effeminate expression, blue eyes and a pleasant smile, he was a striking likeness of his mother. His father's affection exaggerated the dangers which threatened the boy, and in his eyes the slightest indisposition became ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... provided with women. Beautiful girls from all parts of Asia, black-eyed Armenians, dazzlingly fair maidens from the Caucasus, delicate girls from the shores of the Ganges, luxurious Babylonian women, golden-haired Persians and the effeminate daughters of the Median plains; indeed many of the noblest Achaemenidae had given him ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the palace, Yussuf took his station where the ten beeldars on duty were collected together. He observed, however, that they were different from himself, very slight young men, and dressed in a very superior style. He felt some contempt for their effeminate appearance contrasted with his own muscular frame, but could not keep his eyes off their handsome and stylish dress. Meanwhile the chief of the beeldars perceived him, and knowing that he did not belong to the ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... not effeminate; he was not the puerile, shiftless creature the foregoing sentences may have led you to suspect. He was simply a weakling in the strong grasp of circumstance. He could not help himself; to save his life, he could not be anything ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... Manesse MS., presented by the German Emperor Frederic to the library at Heidelberg, from which it had been taken by the French during the wars of the Revolution. But the Parisian gout is less intent on such matters than on flimsy and effeminate specialities. A copy of a book, it does not signify how valuable intrinsically it may be, is worth nothing in the eyes of Monsieur and Monsieur d'Angleterre son ami, unless it is in a particular vesture, with a ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... again: and had Jane overheard the remark it would not have offended her; for, though she held a masculine woman only one degree less in abhorrence than an effeminate man, she would have taken Schehati's compound noun as a tribute to the fact that she was well-groomed and independent, knowing her own mind, and, when she started out to go to a place, reaching ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... and there was not one among them that might not have served as a model for a Hercules. Their huge bodies presented an appearance of massiveness and immense strength; and the enormous muscles had even more than the prominence we find in some statues, but so seldom meet with in men of these effeminate times. These particulars were the more easily noted, as their style of costume, in the daytime at least, approached very closely to nudity. But their size was as nothing to their appetites; and deep and vasty as their internal accommodations must have been, ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... was often at her house in Mount Street, and frequently met Lord Drumone's fair-haired and rather effeminate son there, Peggy's mother never dreamed they were in love. Both were extremely careful to conceal it, and in their efforts they had ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... more than eighteen years of age, and nature had denied his charming face the distinctive sign of his sex for not the slightest down was visible on his chin, though a little delicate pencilling darkened his upper lip: His slightly effeminate style of beauty, the graceful curves of his figure, his expression, sometimes coaxing, sometimes saucy, reminding one of a page, gave him the appearance of a charming young scapegrace destined to inspire sudden passions and wayward fancies. ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... Petersburgh have observed that, among the lower orders of the people in Russia, milk in the breasts of men is much more frequent than among the more southern nations: yet the Russians have never been deemed weak and effeminate. There is among the varieties of the human species a race of men whose breasts at the age of puberty acquire a considerable bulk. Lozano did not belong to that race; and he often repeated to us his conviction, that it was only the irritation of the nipple, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... ancient amphorae leaned Against the wall, like ships careened. There was dusky blue of Wedgewood ware, The carved, white figures fluttering there Like leaves adrift upon the air. Classic in touch, but emasculate, The Greek soul grown effeminate. The factory of Sevres had lent Elegant boxes with ornament Culled from gardens where fountains splashed And golden carp in the shadows flashed, Nuzzling for crumbs under lily-pads, Which ladies threw as the last of fads. Eggshell trays where ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... noteworthy deeds among them, he went into the land of the Swedes, where he lived at leisure for seven years' space with the sons of Frey. At last he left them and betook himself to Hakon, the tyrant of Denmark, because when stationed at Upsala, at the time of the sacrifices, he was disgusted by the effeminate gestures and the clapping of the mimes on the stage, and by the unmanly clatter of the bells. Hence it is clear how far he kept his soul from lasciviousness, not even enduring to look upon it. Thus does ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... no hero known to fame, Not dead to glory e'er indulged the flame; Though beauty's smiles might charm a fleeting hour, The heart, unsway'd, repelled their lasting power. A warrior Chief to trembling love a prey? What! weep for woman one inglorious day? Canst thou for love's effeminate control, Barter the glory of a warrior's soul? Although a hundred damsels might be gained, The hero's heart shall still be free, unchained. Thou art our leader, and thy place the field Where soldiers love to fight with spear and shield; And what hast thou ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... as he came in. Even the Spangler Sisters ceased their coquettish poses and stared curiously at the tall figure. Bobby stood with his hands in his pockets gazing gloomily at the effeminate and childish tree. Cherokee put down his pack and looked wonderingly about the room. Perhaps he fancied that a bevy of eager children were being herded somewhere, to be loosed upon his entrance. He went up to Bobby and extended ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... having washed himself leisurely, proceeded to discharges his devotions, looking around all the while with a certain self-satisfied composure, before returning to his cell. His appearance was puny, undergrown, and effeminate, and his small, narrow, and elongated head markedly prognathous, but he exercised over some of his companions a passionate, if unnatural, fascination which, I have been told by one who was present at the trial, betrayed itself shamelessly in their attitude and the glances they exchanged ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... weak, it is true, and a little effeminate also, that is, lacking energy, letting himself be carried away by goodness and tenderness. This weakness made him commit a fault before his departure for America. I have kept it from you until this moment, but you ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... his person, refused to admit him to her presence; and for the love of this lady who had so unkindly treated him the noble Orsino, forsaking the sports of the field and all manly exercises in which he used to delight, passed his hours in ignoble sloth, listening to the effeminate sounds of soft music, gentle airs, and passionate love-songs; and neglecting the company of the wise and learned lords with whom he used to associate, he was now all day long conversing with young Cesario. Unmeet companion no doubt his grave courtiers thought Cesario was for their once ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... generations of art. Spite of its complications, many an offshoot can be followed up directly to the parent stock. Taking, for example, the mediaeval architecture of Spain, the brilliant 'Moresco,' we find it to be a combination of the vigorous Gothic of the North with the beautiful though effeminate Saracenic—the exotic of the South. And of these latter, each is traceable, though by different lines, to the same great prototype, the Roman. For when Rome was divided, the Dome fell to the inheritance ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... dans son vin[Fr]. Adj. weak, feeble, debile|; impotent &c. 158; relaxed, unnerved, &c. v.; sapless, strengthless[obs3], powerless; weakly, unstrung, flaccid, adynamic[obs3], asthenic[obs3]; nervous. soft, effeminate, feminate[obs3], womanly. frail, fragile, shattery[obs3]; flimsy, unsubstantial, insubstantial, gimcrack, gingerbread; rickety, creaky, creaking, cranky; craichy[obs3]; drooping, tottering &c. v.. broken, lame, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... aid in their development than the bracing intercourse of a great English classical school. Even the selfish are there forced into accommodating themselves to a public standard of generosity, and the effeminate in conforming to a rule of manliness. I was myself at two public schools, and I think with gratitude of the benefits which I reaped from both; as also I think with gratitude of that guardian in whose quiet household ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... sentimentalism), but sometimes even philosophers, nay, even the severest of all, the Stoics, that have brought in moral fanaticism instead of a sober but wise moral discipline, although the fanaticism of the latter was more heroic, that of the former of an insipid, effeminate character; and we may, without hypocrisy, say of the moral teaching of the Gospel, that it first, by the purity of its moral principle, and at the same time by its suitability to the limitations of finite beings, brought all the good conduct of men under the discipline of a duty plainly set before ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... death, in cruelty, And plague such peasants [204] as resist in [205] me The power of Heaven's eternal majesty.— Theridamas, Techelles, and Casane, [206] Ransack the tents and the pavilions Of these proud Turks, and take their concubines, Making them bury this effeminate brat; For not a common soldier shall defile His manly fingers with so faint a boy: Then bring those Turkish harlots to my tent, And I'll dispose them as it likes me ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... disown him. Drake had no objection to being disowned, so he could teach the Spaniards to be more careful how they handled Englishmen. What came of it will be the subject of the next lecture. Father Parsons said the Protestant traders of England had grown effeminate and dared not fight. In the ashes of their own smoking cities the Spaniards had to learn that Father Parsons had misread his countrymen. If Drake had been given to heroics he might have left Virgil's lines inscribed above the broken arms ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... Pompey was pursuing his victories over the effeminate people of Asia, a still more brilliant career in the West marked the rising fortunes of Julius Caesar. I need not dwell on the steps by which he arose to become the formidable rival of the conqueror of the East. He bears the most august name of antiquity. ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... did my brother pretend to have any experimental proofs of it. The ground he went upon was a mere a priori one, viz., that I had always been tied to the apron string of women or girls; which amounted at most to this—that, by training and the natural tendency of circumstances, I ought to be effeminate; that is, there was reason to expect beforehand that I should be so; but, then, the more merit in me, if, in spite of such reasonable presumptions, I really were not. In fact, my brother soon learned, by a daily experience, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... there came into the ward a young man, not more than twenty years of age, and singularly effeminate in his appearance. He wore a loose calico dressing-gown, and embroidered slippers. His manners were gentle, and he seemed greatly distressed by all the misery that surrounded him. Never in his brief existence had this young man prescribed for a patient, till he entered the Hospitals ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... an ostentatious stress laid upon the size and costliness, or even the mere singularity, of the work. Etruscan art cannot imitate without exaggerating; the chaste in its hands becomes harsh, the graceful effeminate, the terrible hideous, and the voluptuous obscene; and these features become more prominent, the more the original stimulus falls into the background and Etruscan art finds itself left to its own resources. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... severities. We must gaze steadily upon the appalling fearfulness of sin, and upon its terrific issues. At all costs we must get rid of the spurious gentleness that holds compromise with uncleanness, that effeminate affection which is destitute of holy fire. We must seek the love which burns everlastingly against all sin; we must seek the gentleness which can fiercely grip a poisonous growth and tear it out to its last ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... embark on a correspondence with him," Uncle Henry exclaimed petulantly. "I know the man by reputation. A bigoted Ritualist. A Romanizer of the worst type. He'll only fill your head with a lot of effeminate nonsense, and that at a time when it's particularly necessary for you to concentrate upon your work. Don't forget that this is your last year of school. I advise you to make the most ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... face," Ideala answered, dreamily—"a face for a bust in white marble; a face from out of the long ago—not Greek, but Roman —of the time when men were passing from a strong, simple, manly, into a luxuriously effeminate, self-indulgent stage; the face of a man who is midway between the two extremes, and a prey to the desires of both. I wish I ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... which I am told; for such deeds, I think, are not apt to proceed from every man, but from one who has a brave spirit and manly vigour, whereas Telines is said by the dwellers in Sicily to have been on the contrary a man of effeminate character and rather ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... to a jardiniere, saying: "You are fond of hyacinths and tuberoses; their perfume overpowered me for a moment. I fear you think me very effeminate." ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... moccasins. At his feet stood a small tin pail with a cover. His face was pale and singularly well-cut. His hair was black and very smooth and shiny; a very slight moustache gave character to an otherwise effeminate countenance and his eyes were blue, very light blue indeed and mild in their expression. We smiled involuntarily as the conductor departed. The man was ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... now overrun all the Persian provinces except distant Iran and India. These countries were peopled of by warlike tribes of a very different stamp from the effeminate Persians. Alexander might well have been content to leave them undisturbed, but the man could never rest while there were still conquests to be made. Long marches and much hard fighting were necessary to ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... arms, and who, in the midst of continual wars, had become every day more unwarlike, were astonished to meet an enemy that made the field of battle, not a pompous tournament, but a scene of blood, and sought, at the hazard of their own lives, the death of their enemy. Their effeminate troops were dispersed every where on the approach of the French army: their best fortified cities opened their gates: kingdoms and states were in an instant overturned; and through the whole length of Italy, which the French penetrated without resistance, they ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... strange about the perversity with which the church has emphasized the least attractive aspects of its master's person. The preachers have scolded men for not coming to church, and when they did come they offered them pictures of an emaciated, effeminate being for their adoration. With them the painters have conspired to set on canvas and in church window representations from the reality of which we would turn with repulsion or on which we ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... this time, theatrical amusements were so much in vogue; the first is, that after a long eclipse of gallantry during the rage of the civil war, people returned to it with double ardour; the next is, that women were then introduced on the stage, their parts formerly being supplied by boys, or effeminate young men, of which the famous Kynaston possessed the capital parts. When any art is carried to perfection, it seldom happens, that at that particular period, the profits arising from it are high; and at this time the advantages ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... to menace death to any who should venture to approach. This threat deterred not Artavan de Hautlieu. He approached the entrance, when the doors, like those of the great entrance to the Castle, made themselves instantly accessible to him. A guard-room of the same effeminate soldiers received him, nor could the strictest examination have discovered to him whether it was sleep or death which arrested the eyes that seemed to look upon and prohibit his advance. Unheeding the presence of these ghastly sentinels, Artavan pressed forward into an inner apartment, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... he muttered softly, as he threw off the robes and sat up. "I've run across country, played quarter three seasons hand-running, and hardened myself in all manner of ways; and then I pilgrim it into this God-forsaken land and find myself an effeminate Athenian without the simplest rudiments of manhood!" He hunched up to the fire and rolled a cigarette. "Oh, I'm not whining. I can take my medicine all right, all right; but I'm just decently ashamed of myself, that's all. Here I am, on top of a dirty thirty miles, as knocked up and ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... singer had finished, a gipsy youth with a chocolate complexion got up and executed a tango and a negro dance; he twisted himself in and out, thrust his abdomen forward and his arms back. He wound up with effeminate undulations of his hips and a most complicated intertwining of arms ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... the body, and Gnulemah stood in the doorway. Balder's first impulse was to motion her away from a spectacle so unsuited to her eyes. But though the shadow made her face inscrutable, the lines of her figure spoke, and not of weak timidity or effeminate consternation. Womanly she was,—instinct with that tender, sensitive power, the marvellous gift of God to woman only, which almost moves the sick man to bless his sickness. A holy gift,—surely the immediate influx of Christ's ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... grasp, so that she was like a feather in the air, poised on one of his stubborn fingers; when he kissed her each hair of his beard seemed like a pale, taut wire, so stiff and resolute was it. Her Uncle Ivan was a flabby, effeminate creature in comparison. Then, as she had grown older, she had realised that he was a dangerous man, dangerous to women, who loved and feared and hated him. Vera said that he had great power over them ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... come to attack them were no braver, nor better armed than those whom they had defeated at Marathon, but that they had the same bows and arrows, the same embroidered robes and gold ornaments on their effeminate bodies, while we, they said, have arms and bodies such as we had then, and greater confidence because of our victories. We also fight, not merely as other Greeks do, in defence of our city and ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... vein'd, as to represent the shapes and images of beasts, birds, trees, and many other pretty resemblances. Lastly, of the whitest part of the old wood, found commonly in doating birches, is made the grounds of our effeminate farin'd gallants sweet powder; and of the quite consum'd and rotten (such as we find reduc'd to a kind of reddish earth in superannuated hollow-trees) is gotten the best mould for the raising of divers seedlings of the rarest plants and ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... Sylvan, savage Way Devious, obvious, impervious, trivial Worm Vermicular Whale Cutaceous Wife Uxorious Word Verbal, verbose Weak Hebdomadal Wall Mural Will Voluntary, spontaneous Winter Brumal Wound Vulnerary West Occidental War Martial Women Feminine, female, effeminate Year Annual, anniversary, ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... in the Scottish Highlands, that it was unlucky for a clansman to learn any handicraft engaged in by Lowlanders. If a Highland youth left his native mountains and engaged in mercantile or mechanical pursuits, his friends thought he turned effeminate. For warfare he became unsuited, either as a leader or follower. The prowess of his ancestors forsook him, he became incapable of handling the bow or spear skilfully, and, what was worse, he carried ill luck with himself and to his companions ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... mere boy, frail-looking and slightly built, but with a handsome, rather effeminate-looking face, tried to ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... public processions, as must have employed the people almost constantly from one end of the year to the other. This continual dissipation must have been a great enemy to industry; and the people must have been idle and effeminate. I think it would be no difficult matter to prove, that there is very little difference, in point of character, between the antient and modern inhabitants of Rome; and that the great figure which this empire made of old, was not so much owing to the intrinsic virtue of its citizens, as to ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... in 281 with a force of 20,000 infantry, 3,000 cavalry, and 20 elephants. He at once set about compelling the effeminate Greeks to prepare for their own defence. Places of amusement were closed; the people were forced to perform military duty; disturbers of the public safety were put to death; and other reforms were made which the dangers of the ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... no cause," said Corisande. "But, when I hear of young nobles, the natural leaders of the land, going over to the Roman Catholic Church, I confess I lose heart and patience. It seems so unpatriotic, so effeminate." ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... to Racine, the god of the classicists, wrote for strong souls; for English hearts which were what Italian hearts were about 1500, emerging from that sublime Middle Age questi tempi della virtu sconosciutta." Racine, on the contrary, wrote for a slavish and effeminate court. The author disclaims any wish to impose Shakspere on the Italians. The day will come, he hopes, when they will have a national tragedy of their own; but to have that, they will do better to follow in the footprints ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... father's implication in the affair—was there foundation for it, more foundation than the hasty thought of a daughter still labouring under the effects of a great shock? He thought of Sloane, effeminate, shrill of voice, a trembling wreck, long ago a self-confessed ineffective in the battle of life—he, a murderer; he, capable of forceful action of ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... and boyish, with a fat, round face. When he laughed he showed a fine set of big, sensual teeth. His eyes were jolly, flighty, insincere. Weakness was written all over him, from a derby hat sitting back rakishly on his forehead to the small, effeminate boot that fitted so neatly his small effeminate foot. He had a small hand and his little sensual face had not a rough feature on it. It was set off by a pudgy, half-formed dab of a nose that let his breath in and out when his mouth happened to be ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... the impersonation of an age That never shall return. His soul of fire Was kindled by the breath of the rude time He lived in. Now a gentler race succeeds, Shuddering at blood; the effeminate cavalier, Turning his eyes from the reproachful past, And from the hopeless future, gives to ease, And love, ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... have been. For the causes which forced Greek sculpture along the line leading to Praxiteles and Lysippus were not yet at work; and had other forces, say, a preference for stone work instead of clay and bronze work, a habit of Persian or Gaulish garments, of Lydian effeminate life instead of Dorian athleticism, supervened, had satraps ordered rock-reliefs of battles instead of burghers ordering brazen images of boxers and runners, Praxiteles and Lysippus might have remained in mente Dei, if, ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... so that his music became ten times lovelier, and people listening on that shore went mad with sick delight. 'Can any strains be nobler?' demanded Shaping. Krag grinned and said, 'You are naturally effeminate. Now let me try.' Then he stood behind Swaylone, and shot ugly discords fast into his head. His instrument was so cracked, that never since has it played right. From that time forth Swaylone could utter only distorted music; yet it called to folk more than the other sort. Many men crossed ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... this young man, Besso?' exclaimed the Invisible, starting up, and himself exhibiting a youthful countenance; fair, almost effeminate, no beard, a slight moustache, his features too delicate, but his brow finely arched, and his blue eye ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... with supernatural beings he was in constant though not direct communication. He studied them—their nature and their functions. But this tall, stately man, in his abominable garment which reached barely to his knees, with the white, effeminate forehead and unintelligible language, who was he? Was he a Philistine? a cruel Roman, or perhaps a Spaniard—one of those that murdered the famous Abrabanel family, and drove his ancestor ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... contravert thy purpose ill-conceived, And with such freedom as the laws, O King! Of consultation and debate allow. 40 Hear patient. Thou hast been thyself the first Who e'er reproach'd me in the public ear As one effeminate and slow to fight; How truly, let both young and old decide. The son of wily Saturn hath to thee 45 Given, and refused; he placed thee high in power, Gave thee to sway the sceptre o'er us all, But courage gave thee not, his ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... followers of Christ have done him far less than justice in insisting upon one aspect of his character disproportionately with another. They speak of him as the "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild "; they tend to describe him as almost or wholly effeminate; and the representations of him in art, with small, feminine and conspicuously un-Jewish features, with long feminine hair and the hands of a consumptive woman, join with sacred poetry in furthering this impression. Nothing can be truer than that he was tender, and that ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... clock on the marble mantel struck the hour, the count stopped before his young visitor, and looked searchingly at his mild and effeminate farce. ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... Heaven, my lords, he might be found! Inquire at London 'mongst the taverns there, For there, they say, he daily doth frequent, With unrestrained loose companions; Even such, they say, as stand in narrow lanes, (p. 342) And beat our watch, and rob our passengers; While he, young, wanton, and effeminate boy, Takes on the point of honour to support So ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... and the latter were ignorant of music. But the Quakers would argue, that if music had any effect in the civilization, this effect would be seen in the manners, and not in the morals of mankind. Musical Italians are esteemed a soft and effeminate, but they are generally reputed a depraved people. Music, in short, though it breathes soft influences, cannot yet breathe morality into the mind. It may do to soften savages, but a christian community, in the opinion of the Quakers, can admit of no better ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... mother. The younger son had scarcely told his ninth year; and the soft, auburn ringlets, descending half-way down the shoulders; the rich and delicate bloom that exhibits at once the hardy health and the gentle fostering; the large deep-blue eyes; the flexile and almost effeminate contour of the harmonious features; altogether made such an ideal of childlike beauty as Lawrence had loved to paint or Chantrey model. And the daintiest cares of a mother, who, as yet, has her darling all to herself—her toy, her plaything—were visible in the large falling ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... German standards—even, perhaps a celebrated seducer, a soldier with a future—but the mere sight of him suffices to paralyse an American esophagus. Besides, there is the smell of chocolate, sweet, sickly, effeminate, and at two in the afternoon! Again, there is the music of Grieg, clammy, clinging, creepy. Away to the Mathaeserbraeu, two long blocks by taxi! From the Munich of Berlinish decadence and Prussian epaulettes to the Munich of honest Bavarians! ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... catch-as-catch-can, and you know it," declared Harding. "I suppose you think just because I do nothing but build railroads and things that I've grown effeminate since you tackled me the last time. Come on; ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... "and doubtless his adventure is of a nature in line with thy puerile and effeminate teachings. Had he followed my training, without thy accurst priestly interference, he had made an iron-barred nest in Torn for many of the doves of thy damned English nobility. An' thou leave him not alone, he will soon be seeking service in ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... childhood, and received him most cordially. I must describe him fully, as he played no small part in my little drama. He was, I should think, nearly thirty years of age, small in person but elegantly made, with a very handsome but rather effeminate face. His address and manners were perfect. He was very witty, and apparently very amiable. His deportment towards our sex was certainly most fascinating—so tender and so respectful. I certainly never had before seen so polished a man. He sang well, and played upon several instruments; ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... him at Cambridge as a pensioner of Peterhouse, and the two students went through their terms together, though the poet at the time took no degree. There was probably little enough in common between the shy, fastidious, slightly effeminate pensioner of Peterhouse, and a scholar of Jesus, whose chief friend and comrade was a man like Hall; and no close intimacy between the two men, if they had come across each other, would have been very likely to arise. But it does not appear that they could have ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... old dictionary. But their Goth and Vandal had the fortune to be grafted on a Roman stock; ours has the disadvantage to be founded on the Dutch[4]. We are full of monosyllables, and those clogged with consonants, and our pronunciation is effeminate; all which are enemies to a sounding language. It is true, that to supply our poverty, we have trafficked with our neighbour nations; by which means we abound as much in words, as Amsterdam does in religions; but ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... I saw that he was handsome in an effeminate sort of way, with a slight lady-like sort of figure, a blond mustache, so light in color as to be almost invisible at a distance, and fine girlish eyes of a light blue. As he saw me in turn he gave me a good-morning in a cheery tone, ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... drift into that fatal conversation? I hardly remember. We talked first of the neighbourhood, then swayed away to books, then to people. Yes, that was how it came about. The Professor was speaking of a man whom we both knew in town, a curiously effeminate man, whose every thought and feeling seemed that of a woman. I said I disliked him, and condemned him for his woman's demeanour, his woman's mind; but the Professor thereupon joined ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... (both through the state of his wardrobe and his dread of effeminate comfort), settled his bony shoulders against the rough stonework, and his heels upon a groyne, and gave his subordinate a nod, which meant, "Make no fuss, but out with it." Cadman, a short square fellow with crafty eyes, began ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... elegant and effeminate clubman in this species of corsair, with broad shoulders, a skin the color of blister, with very red lips, and who rolled a little in his walk; who seemed to be stifled in his black dress-coat, but who still retained his distinguished manners, the bearing of a ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... the Peace, would be incredible elsewhere; and yet it is this lawlessness which has come to be accepted as part and parcel of what is called "policy" in China because in the fifty years preceding the establishment of the Republic a weak and effeminate mandarinate consistently sought safety in surrenders. It is this lawlessness which must at all costs be suppressed if we are to have a happy future. The Chinese people have so far contented themselves by pacific retaliation and have not exploded into rage; but those ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... clan, with whom he was at war, gave orders for a snow-ball to lay under his head in the night; whereupon, his followers objected, saying, "Now we despair of victory, since our leader has become so effeminate he ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... turning out to the warehouse. Pate Brown used to make fun of me about my scanty hirsute appendages, and many a time caused me to blush before sundry members of the Druids when he emphatically declared that I was one of those effeminate individuals who shaved, not because they had whiskers, but because they hadn't. This was in September, and a more open year for the respective chances of the clubs in the Cup had, ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... excellent man in his way, was very far from meeting the requirements of the "Prince Charmant" fit to be mated to a princess so gay and so brilliant as Charlotte of Hohenzollern. His appearance is effeminate, his manner finicky and old-maidish to a degree. He is neither stalwart nor good-looking; he excels neither as a dancer nor as a rider, nor yet as an athlete, and he gives one at first sight the impression of being an artist or a composer, rather than a son of that ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... his conduct is more difficult to uncover and because he is more difficult to conquer than the liar. Dishonesty is, however, a specially feminine characteristic, and in men occurs only when they are effeminate. Real manliness and dishonesty are concepts which can not be united. Hence, the popular proverb says, "Women always tell the truth, but not the whole truth.'' And this is more accurate than the accusation of many writers, that women lie. I do not believe that the ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... particular, the puny Chinese, who live in southern China, on quite a large proportion of shell-fish, compared with the Chinese of the interior. Extend your observations to Hindostan. Do not talk of the effeminate habits and weak constitutions of the rice and curry eaters there—bad as the admixture of rice and curry may be—for that is to compare the Hindoo with other nations; but compare Hindoo with Hindoo, which ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... of the world, a courtier, more or less a man of affairs, employed by Edward III. in foreign business of state: you cannot mistake him for an effeminate or sentimental man! He does not anywhere, so far as I remember, say that ever he cried over a flower, but he shows a delight in some flowers so delicate and deep that it must have a source profounder than that of most people's tears. When we go back I will read you what he says about the daisy; ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... dependent upon others for what you can yourself supply; and keep down as much as you can the standard of your wants, for in this lies a great secret of manliness, true wealth, and happiness; as, on the other hand, the multiplication of our wants makes us effeminate and slavish, ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... the unsettled state of the Border counties, and the fierce and sometimes treacherous nature of the inhabitants, made travelling there upon the King's business a matter of some difficulty and danger. There was no fear of Gaston's growing effeminate or turning into a mere pleasure hunter; and he soon made himself of great value to his master, not only by his undaunted bravery, but by his success in diplomatic negotiation — a success by no means expected by himself, and a surprise to ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... as Bebe, alias Betsy, but I soon found that, whatever it might be, it wasn't this. It is capitally acted by all, but especially, on "the Spear Side," by Mr. WEEDON GROSSMITH and F. KERR, the former as an effeminate Earl, and the latter as a manly Viscount. But, even from a burlesque point of view, Mr. ELLIOT overdoes the Frenchman, a part which belongs to a stage-family of Frenchmen, of which, in former times, ALFRED WIGAN was the best representative; and, later, Mons. MARIUS, who, as the French sporting nobleman, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 29, 1893 • Various
... Greeks indulge in it to excess; and effeminate dances, or extraordinary gesticulation, were deemed indecent in men of character and wisdom. Indeed, Herodotus tells a story of Hippoclides, the Athenian, who had been preferred before all the nobles of Greece, as a husband for ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... we are moving about: it is always—'Well, I must write to-morrow—well, I must write when this is settled—well, I must write when I arrive at such a place;'—and, meanwhile, time slips on, till perhaps we get ashamed of writing at all. I heard a great man say once, that 'Men must have something effeminate about them to be good correspondents;' and 'faith, I think it's true enough on ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... carried in a splendid litter, robed with precious stuffs, curled and farded, passed through the streets of the city, with its guard of mummers and Corybants. These last, "with hair greasy from pomade, pale faces, and a loose and effeminate walk, held out bowls ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... Anthony as a cold-blooded, highly schooled person, absolutely devoid of sentiment. His face was stony, his eyes were cool, even his linen partook of his own unruffled calm. He seemed by no means effeminate, yet he was one of those immaculate beings upon whom one can scarcely imagine a speck of dust or a bead of perspiration. His hair—what was left of it—was parted to a nicety, his clothes were faultless, and he had an air ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... there was not a man who loved hunting better than Bertie. Though he was incorrigibly lazy, and inconceivably effeminate in every one of his habits; though he suggested a portable lounging-chair as an improvement at battues, so that you might shoot sitting; drove to every breakfast and garden party in the season in his brougham with the blinds down ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... propose," said the third demon who came forward, "is involved in the general cultivation of music, which I contend would render men effeminate, indolent, voluptuous, and finally vicious and corrupt, so that whole nations might eventually be kept out of heaven and secured for hell through ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... frank and manly. There was an ease and freedom about him that contrasted favorably with the effeminate appearance and affected manners of the jeunesse doree. His voice, too, was a pleasant voice, and gave a value to all he said. A sunny smile lighted up his fair-complexioned face, the face old ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... me of such unconscionable vanity!" she said, properly offended. Then, "Anyhow, a man has no business to know about such things," she continued, with rising indignation. "I believe Felix Kennaston is as good a judge of chiffons as any woman. That's effeminate, I think, and catty and absurd. I don't believe I ever liked him—not really, that is. Now, what would Billy care about sunbeams and backgrounds, I'd like to know! He'd never even notice them. Billy is a man. Why, that's just what father said yesterday!" Margaret cried, and afterward ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... recollections of the pretty little playful torment, who through the vista of years assumed the air of a tricksy elf rather than the little vixen he used to think her. His curiosity had been further stimulated by the sight of his rival, Narcisse, whose effeminate ornaments, small stature, and seat on horseback filled Sir Marmaduke's pupil with inquisitive disdain as to the woman who ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... influence on the sentiments and conduct of men. Women, the fruitful source of half our joys, and perhaps of more than half our sorrows, give an elegance to our manner, and a relish to our pleasures. They soothe our afflictions, and soften our cares. Too much of their company will render us effeminate, and infallibly stamp upon us many signatures of the female nature. A rough and unpolished behavior, as well as slovenliness of person, will certainly be the consequence of an almost constant exclusion from it. By spending a reasonable portion of our time in the company of women, ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... enemy, appears. She comes from the extreme East, this wild dancer, with odorous hair, provocative glance and effeminate voice; she stands in a magnificent chariot drawn by four horses; she scatters violet and rose leaves; they are her weapons; their insidious perfumes destroy courage and will, and the army, headed by the virtues, speaks of surrender. But suddenly Sobriety ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... if not mischief-maker and liar, in the world!)—she is soon to be married to young Trescott—a clover lad who sniffles, plays on the flute, wears whisker and imperial on the most cream-colored and effeminate face you ever saw! A good fellow, nevertheless, but a silly! She is a good fellow, too, rather the cleverest of the twain, and perhaps the oldest. The match, if match it really is to be, none of the wisest for that very reason. The damsel, now-a-days, who marries a lad ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... to Florence see outside the Florence Club effeminate elegants in English-made suits of blue serge, and brown boots, and they sigh to think that such specimens of humanity are the representatives of a noble race. Disguise it as you may, poor Italy is sadly decadent. Her glory has passed, her ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... an effeminate-looking boy, tall and slender, with a face entirely destitute of color such as would indicate abounding spirits and good health; but it was no wonder, everyone knew how he was being made such a "sissy" of ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson
... Enarean (Vol. ix., p.101.).—A. C. M. has no other authority for calling the cassock and girdle of the clergy "effeminate," or "a relique of the ancient priestly predilection for female attire," than the contrast to the close-fitting skin-tight fashion adopted by modern European tailors; the same might be said of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 232, April 8, 1854 • Various
... tent. The blankets and knapsacks are at night used to eke out the appointments for sleep,—the first to soften the floor to the bones of the sleepers, the second to serve for pillows. These, especially the former, are looked upon by the genuine soldier as effeminate; while the greenhorn bitterly complains of them as a very ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... him neatly darning his own woolen socks. Instead of betraying shame at being detected in that effeminate pastime he proudly explained that he'd learned to do a bit of stitching in the army. He hasn't many possessions, but he's very neat in his arrangement of them. A good soldier, he solemnly told me, always had to be a bit of an old maid. "And you were a grand soldier, Terry, ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... inferior worth; I say, may be; for I cannot recollect any one instance in which I have a right to suppose it. But, surely, to have an exclusive pleasure in poetry, not being yourself a poet;—to turn away from all effort, and to dwell wholly on the images of another's vision,—is an unworthy and effeminate thing. A jeweller may devote his whole time to jewels unblamed; but the mere amateur, who grounds his taste on no chemical or geological idea, cannot claim the same exemption from despect. How shall he fully enjoy Wordsworth, who has never ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... and he wears the pointed beard which we see so often in the portraits by Rubens' scholar, Van Dyck. The great flapping hat, worn alike by men and women, slightly cocked to one side, is the perfection of picturesque head gear. Equally picturesque, and not in the slightest degree effeminate on a man like Rubens, is the falling collar of pointed mechlin, just seen above the cloak draped ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... from all that he owes to it? What more would they have him do? Must he practice it himself? He has no part to play, he is not a comedian."—The sciences, the fine arts, the arts of luxury, philosophy, literature, all this serve only to effeminate and distract the mind; all that is only made for the small crowd of brilliant and noisy insects buzzing around the summits of society and sucking away all public substance.—As regards the sciences, but one is important, that of our duties, and, without so many subtleties ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... by no means so diversified as those of boys. It would be considered a trifle too effeminate were the little men to amuse themselves with their sisters' game of Chucks—an enchanting amusement, played with a large-sized marble and four octagonal pieces of chalk. Beds, another girlish game, is also played on the pavement—a piece of broken pot, china or earthenware, being kicked from one ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... Die Vernon riding up the mountain side, gaily chatting as she went with the handsome cavalier who walked by her stirrup, and who might have been Frank Osbaldistone, only that he was too manly-looking for Scott's somewhat effeminate hero. How beautifully moulded was the form which her dark-green habit set off to such advantage; how fairy-like the foot that pressed the clumsy stirrup; how slender the fingers that grasped the rein! She had discarded the ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... thought a great deal about myself. Often I entertained the effeminate notion that people were talking about me, when I ought to have known that they could easily find some more interesting topic of conversation. I always went to extremes. I was up on a mountain of enthusiasm or down in the slough of ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... is out of the question to fix the period of the general transformation which ultimately turned the Rome of the Barons into the Rome of Napoleon's time, and converted the high-handed men of Sciarra Colonna's age into the effeminate fops of 1800, when a gentleman of noble lineage, having received a box on the ear from another at high noon in the Corso, willingly followed the advice of his confessor, who counselled him to bear the ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... is the national festival of Spain. The rigid Britons have had their fling at it for many years. The effeminate badaud of Paris has declaimed against its barbarity. Even the aristocracy of Spain has begun to suspect it of vulgarity and to withdraw from the arena the light of its noble countenance. But the Spanish people still ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... would find a people really debased in morals, we must go to those whose material prosperity breeds corruption and gives to all the means of satisfying their evil passions. The orgies of the Babylonians under their last king, of the effeminate Persians later on, of the Roman patricians during the empire, need no more than mention. The cause of the immorality prevailing at these several epochs is well known, and has been told very plainly by conscientious historians, ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... stranger, staring at Coronado as a Lombard or Frankish warrior might have stared at an effeminate and ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... consolation, and he asks it of nature, thought, religion, in a hundred forms which a rich and varied imagination continually suggests, but all of them connected by one central point, the recollection of the dead. This work he prosecutes, not in vain effeminate complaint, but in a manly recognition of the fruit and profit even of baffled love, in noble suggestions of the future, in heart-soothing and heart-chastening thoughts of what the dead was and of what he is, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Sultan, of the Persian Sophy, and of all those who are wealthy enough to purchase and maintain such precious merchandise. These maidens are very honourably and virtuously instructed to fondle and caress men; are taught dances of a very polite and effeminate kind; and how to heighten by the most voluptuous artifices the pleasures of their disdainful masters for whom they are designed. These unhappy creatures repeat their lesson to their mothers, in the same manner as little girls among us repeat their ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... think they were. The vast continent then thrown open to the advance of civilisation, may be divided into two portions, the south and the north. The former was inhabited by a harmless effeminate race, who enjoyed many of the refinements of civilisation; their knowledge of the arts, for instance, as shewn to us in the ruins of their cities, was considerable; they possessed extensive buildings in a bold and ornate style of architecture; they made a lavish use of the precious ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... manhood was to be confined to those who could drain great tankards of ale or to peasants whose hands were hard with holding the plough. He disdains the implied charge of prudery, and indeed his language is what could not have been used by an effeminate or a coward. No braver man ever held a pen. Wood says {32} that "his deportment was affable, his gait erect, bespeaking courage and undauntedness," and he himself tells us that "he did not neglect daily practice with ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... and systematic efforts to convert their women into Amazons devoid of all feminine qualities except such as were absolutely necessary for the perpetuation of the species. One of the avowed objects of making girls dance naked in the presence of men was to destroy what they considered as effeminate modesty. The law which forbade husbands to associate with their wives in the daytime prevented the growth of any sentimental, sympathetic attachment between husband and wife. Even maternal feeling was suppressed, as far as possible, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... face of glory and her pleasant voice, O fortunate youth, now recognize, And how much nobler than effeminate sloth Are manhood's tested energies. Take heed, O generous champion, take heed, If thou thy name by worthy thought or deed, From Time's all-sweeping current couldst redeem; Take heed, and lift thy heart to high desires! The amphitheatre's applause, the public voice, Now summon thee to deeds illustrious; ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... suit of light gray material with a soft felt hat to match, appeared in the doorway of the Inn. His eyes, like his hair and mustache, were dark brown. His hands were long and slender and delicate as a woman's, yet there was nothing effeminate in his appearance. His strong, sensitive features and roving, piercing eyes and alert carriage indicated courage ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... a manly young lad, of soldierly bearing, too, despite his effeminate dress; he turned and himself guided me through the many intricate halls and passages until we reached a door which he pointed out as Serigny's, where, with polite speeches, he ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... up his fox-shooting, not because in itself is a terrible crime, like fishing for salmon with herring roe, but for reasons which most of his countrymen would consider effeminate and absurd, he took to making expeditions, still in company with Juliette, for Madame stretched Continental conventions in his case, in search of certain rare flowers which grew upon the lower slopes of these Alps. ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... more serious view of the affair, and, having sandbagged the cellar windows, posted notices stating that, in the event of shelling, customers could continue business in the cellar. And this was in a nation that we have always looked upon as effeminate and excitable! ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... as she did this evening, moved by one of the thousand vagrant impulses that lent such varying colour to her character. Her humour was more subdued, her gaiety was restrained within the limits of an almost conventional decorum. She helped the men with a graciousness that was wholly effeminate, and the diggers responded ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... to the effect of war on the race. Thus we find a distinguished American zoologist, Chancellor Starr Jordan, constantly proclaiming that the effect of war in reversing selection is a great overshadowing truth of history; warlike nations, he declares, become effeminate, while peaceful nations generate a fiercely militant spirit.[1] Another distinguished American scientist, Professor Ripley, in his great work, The Races of Europe, likewise concludes that "standing armies tend to overload succeeding generations with inferior types of men." A cautious English ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... out my suits of velvet, and had neither visit nor letter from my father, I was in tolerable bliss. Julia's kisses were showered on me for almost anything I said or did, but her admiration of heroism and daring was so fervent that I was in no greater danger of becoming effeminate than Achilles when he wore girl's clothes. She was seventeen, an age bewitching for boys to look up to and men to look down on. The puzzle of the school was how to account for her close relationship to old Rippenger. Such an apple on such a crab-tree seemed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... It is the case of a Tartar degenerated into a Chinaman. [Footnote: China, about which we have heard a great deal of late years, has been several times invaded by the warrior hordes of Tartary. But at each time, unto the second and third generations, the vanquishers have taken the effeminate manners, the costume and the usages of the vanquished, and so many conquests have only resulted in converting millions of ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... having ever had experience of that most miserable and detested condition of living in slavery; no long descent having as yet invested the Assyrian with a right, nor any other title being for him pretended than a strong hand; the foolish and effeminate son of a tyrannous and hated mother could very ill hold so many great princes and nations his vassals, with a power less mastering, and a mind less industrious, than his father and ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... But no man except her father had made to her on the subject the compliments of an expert. She thought that men were capable of feeling only the effect of a gown, without understanding the ingenious details of it. Some men who knew gowns disgusted her by their effeminate air. She was resigned to the appreciation of women only, and these had in their appreciation narrowness of mind, malignity, and envy. The artistic admiration of Dechartre astonished and pleased her. She received agreeably the praise he ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... termination than Italian. The spire which surmounts the central crossing is, without question, a reminiscence of much that has been accepted as good Gothic form in the great central-towered English churches. Up to a certain point this can hardly be denied; but this rather weak, effeminate spire, which forms such an unusual attribute of a French cathedral, more than qualifies its right to a place in the first rank of spires. As for the rest of the exterior, it is a melange of nearly every known architectural style. Undeniably ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... demanded this immaculate youth, in a soft, rather effeminate voice that made Halstead regard him with a ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... membership, it could produce cases of conversion to which nothing parallel could, be found in the whole history of heathendom. Paul could say to it—"Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God, and such were some of you but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... person for their lovers. And no boy used in those days to anoint himself below the navel; so that their bodies wore the appearance of blooming health. Nor used he to go to his lover, having made up his voice in an effeminate tone, prostituting himself with his eyes. Nor used it to be allowed when one was dining to take the head of the radish, or to snatch from their seniors dill or parsley, or to eat fish, or to giggle, or to keep ...
— The Clouds • Aristophanes
... employments and honours from him, from the tyrant of your country; you, the brave, the noble-minded, the virtuous Messalla; you, whom I remember, my son-in-law Brutus has frequently extolled as the most promising youth in Rome, tutored by philosophy, trained up in arms, scorning all those soft, effeminate pleasures that reconcile men to an easy and indolent servitude, fit for all the roughest tasks of honour and virtue, fit to live or to die a ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... considered the 121st Mikado of the race of Jimmu Tenno, the members of which have reigned uninterruptedly in Japan for nearly two thousand years, with varying fates and with varying power—now as wise lawgivers and mighty warriors, now for long periods as weak and effeminate rulers, emperors only in seeming, to whom almost divine homage was paid, but who were carefully freed from the burden of government and from all actual power. In comparison with this race, whose first ancestor lived during the first century ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... least interested in either of the men, the dark, handsome, saturnine Vladimir, or the fair-haired, pretty, effeminate youth to whom he was ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... favour of German opera; my choice was determined by the tremendous impression made on me by the two figures of Sassaroli and Weber. The Italian male-soprano, a huge pot-bellied giant, horrified me with his high effeminate voice, his astonishing volubility, and his incessant screeching laughter. In spite of his boundless good-nature and amiability, particularly to my family, I took an uncanny dislike to him. On account of this dreadful person, the sound of Italian, either spoken or sung, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... diffusive, prohibitory. There are, however, about forty words ending in ate, which, without difference of form, are either verbs or adjectives; as, aggregate, animate, appropriate, articulate, aspirate, associate, complicate, confederate, consummate, deliberate, desolate, effeminate, elate, incarnate, intimate, legitimate, moderate, ordinate, precipitate, prostrate, regenerate, reprobate, separate, sophisticate, subordinate. This class of adjectives seems to be lessening. The participials in ed, are superseding some of them, at least in popular practice: as, contaminated, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... stood behind him, and breathed thoughts into his soul, so that his music became ten times lovelier, and people listening on that shore went mad with sick delight. 'Can any strains be nobler?' demanded Shaping. Krag grinned and said, 'You are naturally effeminate. Now let me try.' Then he stood behind Swaylone, and shot ugly discords fast into his head. His instrument was so cracked, that never since has it played right. From that time forth Swaylone could utter only distorted music; yet ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... by some magnetic spell, they all turned their heads toward the platform where Lysia had just silently made her appearance,— and springing from their seats they broke into a boisterous shout of acclamation and welcome. One young man whose flushed face had all the joyous, wanton, effeminate beauty of a pictured Dionysius, reeled forward, goblet in hand, and tossing the wine in air so that it splashed down again at his feet, staining his white garments as it fell with a stain as of ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... an attenuated and rather effeminate person, exquisitely dressed and powdered, and not without a suspicion of rouge upon his hollow cheeks or of Vandyke brown upon his delicately penciled eyebrows. He, like Lord Bramber, presented the wreck of manly beauty; but whereas Bramber suggested a three-master of goodly bulk ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... mouth, and the knobs upon the skull, are brought out with scrupulous fidelity. The Saite school was, in fact, divided into two parties. One sought inspiration in the past, and, by a return to the methods of the old Memphite school, endeavoured to put fresh life into the effeminate style of the day. This it accomplished, and so successfully, that its works are sometimes mistaken for the best productions of the Fourth and Fifth Dynasties. The other, without too openly departing from established tradition, preferred ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... at night, a damsel of discreet port, demurely go behind a young man, unplait his pig-tail, teaze the hair, thin it of some of its lively inmates, braid it up for him, and retire. The women always wear two braided pig-tails, and it is by this they are most readily distinguished from their effeminate-looking partners, who wear only one.* [Ermann (Travels in Siberia, ii. p. 204) mentions the Buraet women as wearing two tails, and fillets with jewels, and the men as having one queue only.] When in full dress, the woman's costume is extremely ornamental and picturesque; ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... excellence, because they have produced Homer and Dante? Assuredly not. We cannot even admit, as a general proposition, that the languages of the south are always the smoothest and most melodious, and the northern ones harsh, and not adapted for music. The liquid, smooth, and effeminate language of modern Italy is totally different from the strong, energetic, and harsh Latin used by the ancient Romans. The Arabic will be immediately admitted, by any who has heard a page of it read, to be extremely uncouth and disagreeable. The Russian, on the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... Shakespeare's play to prove that Rosalind was an actress. She might have appeared in private theatricals at the palace, but even that is doubtful. Consequently when she donned men's clothes it became evident to her that many men are effeminate in gesture and those that are do not ordinarily affect mannish movements. Her most obvious concealment was to be natural—quite herself. This, I think, is one of the most interesting and well-thought-out points of ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... primly closed and drawn.[417] The Italian cicisbeo in the seventeenth century was a cavalier servente, who attended a married lady. Such men practiced extravagances and affectations, and are generally described as effeminate.[418] ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... gross as they make it their boast to show their morals. Hence, some two or three pegs higher, and not more, are such very very fine scoundrels as the Pelhams, &c.; shallow, watery-brained, ill-taught, effeminate dandies—animals destitute apparently of one touch of real manhood, or of real passion—cold, systematic, deliberate debauchees, withal—seducers, God wot! and duellists, and, above all, philosophers! How could any human being ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 397, Saturday, November 7, 1829. • Various
... said, and the man overlooked the inflection which, as plainly as words, was intended to convey the impression that his ways were effeminate. "If every man used up his time gentling his string he'd never have a day off to work at ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... And it happens that the less a man believes in the soul—that is to say in his conscious immortality, personal and concrete—the more he will exaggerate the worth of this poor transitory life. This is the source from which springs all that effeminate, sentimental ebullition against war. True, a man ought not to wish to die, but the death to be renounced is the death of the soul. "Whosoever will save his life shall lose it," says the Gospel; but it does not say "whosoever will save ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... can be followed up directly to the parent stock. Taking, for example, the mediaeval architecture of Spain, the brilliant 'Moresco,' we find it to be a combination of the vigorous Gothic of the North with the beautiful though effeminate Saracenic—the exotic of the South. And of these latter, each is traceable, though by different lines, to the same great prototype, the Roman. For when Rome was divided, the Dome fell to the inheritance ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... necessary lest the brain be too early over-strained, and lest, in consequence of such precocious and excessive action, the foundation for a morbid excitation of the whole nervous system be laid, which may easily lead to effeminate and voluptuous reveries, and to brooding over obscene representations. The excessive reading of novels, whose exciting pages delight in painting the love of the sexes for each other and its sensual phases, may lead to this, and then the mischief ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... Riley. "Five or six of the men you met to-night were loath to come. When I pinned them down to their reason, it was I thought: they regard you as an effeminate being, a sissy." ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... the house of the Moon and exaltation of Jupiter, and its native will be of fair but pale complexion, round face, grey or mild blue eyes, weak voice, the upper part of the body large, slender arms, small feet, and an effeminate constitution. It governs the breast and the stomach, and reigns over Scotland, Holland, Zealand, Burgundy, Africa, Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, Constantinople, New York, etc. It is a feminine ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... and wind up their monotonous and useless day at their earthly paradise, the opera, where they gossiped and flirted to their hearts' content. In consequence of this manner of life, the men have become effeminate, and the women have little left of that characteristic grace and beauty that once so distinguished ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... dissimilar than the first and second lieutenants of the corvette. He had a smooth face with pink cheeks, whiskers curled to a nicety, and hair carefully brushed. His figure was slight and refined, and he wore lilac kid gloves, his appearance being certainly somewhat effeminate; indeed, he looked as if he had just come ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the most dangerous men in all the West. Quade was a villain. Culver Rann, quiet and cool and suave, was a devil. Behind his depravity worked the brain which Quade lacked, and a nerve which, in spite of that almost effeminate immaculateness, had been ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... week-end tiff with Spain. Yet there are those who prate of national honor and of war as insuring prosperity. From the leader of a newborn national party we hear that without a periodic war America would become effeminate and weak, her aggressive commercial life timid and corrupt, and within a few brief years the great Republic would sink to a fourth-rate power. Up, brave Americans, and man the guns! Awake, sons of freedom, and sweep the seas! Fourteen years without ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... overflowing little heart would impel him to the most active pity; and he liberally gave away whatever he had by him and thought he could dispense with. The Father, who, as above indicated, never could approve or even endure such unreasonable giving-up of one's feelings to effeminate impressions, was apt to intervene on these occasions, even with manual punishment,—unless the Mother were at hand to plead the ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... feet and hoofs and wheels beats to the topmost stories of the palaces towering overhead in their stony grandiosity. Everywhere in the structures dating after the Gothic period there is want of sensibility; the art of the Renaissance was not moulded here in the moods of a refined and effeminate patriciate, such as in Venice tempered it to beauty; but it renders in marble the prepotence of a commercialized nobility, and makes good in that form the right of the city to be called Genoa the Proud. Perhaps she would not wish to be called proud ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... perhaps not above four hours in bed—(for we were no go-to-beds with the lamb, though we anticipated the lark ofttimes in her rising—we liked a parting cup at midnight, as all young men did before these effeminate times, and to have our friends about us—we were not constellated under Aquarius, that watery sign, and therefore incapable of Bacchus, cold, washy, bloodless—we were none of your Basilian water-sponges, nor had taken our degrees at Mount Ague—we were right toping ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... Hickling Prescott tell us that, in the course of the seven centuries of the Moslem domination in Spain, the Moors had become soft and effeminate, that "the canker of peace" had sapped, if it had not destroyed, the virile qualities of the race, that luxury and learning had dried up at their source those primitive virtues of courage and hardihood which had been the leading characteristics ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... strong relief. Contrasted with the unkempt, slovenly, ragged, and dirty bushmen with whom he mostly comes in contact, he is the very essence of foppery. Yet, as we are afterwards to learn, he is anything but the idle, effeminate coxcomb, whose appearance he so assiduously cultivates. Here is a photograph of ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... seen the Campanile, and Byron's house and Balbi's the geographer, and the palaces of all the ancient dukes and doges of Venice, and we have seen their effeminate descendants airing their nobility in fashionable French attire in the Grand Square of St. Mark, and eating ices and drinking cheap wines, instead of wearing gallant coats of mail and destroying fleets and armies as their great ancestors ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... had had enough of the seal-hunt it took him all the next day to cleanse the clothes he had worn from the smell of the fat, and he felt himself to be effeminate in the fastidiousness that made ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... was found in the PF. of a young Englishman, who died on his passage from Leghorn to the Levant. He had bought one of the Sporades] He was accompanied by a lady [who might have been] supposed to be his wife, & an effeminate looking youth, to whom he shewed an [attachment] so [singular] excessive an attachment as to give rise to the suspicion, that she was a woman—At his death this suspicion was confirmed;...object speedily found a refuge ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... and to actually regenerate the human system— all this is known; known as fully and clearly as any human knowledge need be known; it is written in dozens of popular books and pamphlets. And why should this divine voice, which cries to man, tending to sink into effeminate barbarism through his own hasty and partial civilisation: "It is not too late. For your bodies, as for your spirits, there is an upward, as well as a downward path. You, or if not you, at least the children whom you have brought into the world, for whom you toil, for whom you hoard, for ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... smiles indulgent and shrugs his shoulders. "For instance," says he, "this Gerald Webb seems to be one of those highly sensitive, delicately organized persons; somewhat effeminate in fact. He needs considerate, ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... time when he or his children will wear this crown! I feel that I hate him as my father hated me because I was his heir, and because the sight of me always reminded him of his death! Yes, I hate him! The effeminate boy will disturb the great work which I am endeavoring to perform. Under his weak hands, this Prussia, which I would make great and powerful, will fail to pieces, and all my battles and conquests will be in vain. He will not know how ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... she put a heavy penalty of raillery upon his swelling pride and vanity, sarcasm that tried the paternal patience as well as his own. Wesley, however, had a large fund of the philosophy that comes from a high estimate of one's self. He was well favored in looks and build, though somewhat effeminate, with his small hands and carefully shod feet. He would have been called a "dude" had the word been known in its present significance; as it was, he was regarded as a coxcomb by the derisive group hostile to the father's social pretensions. He was the first of the golden youth of ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... cannot bear the air and the smell of the room. The sight of drunken people upsets him; and as to beating anyone before him, you musn't dare to do it. Then he won't enter the service; his health is delicate, forsooth! Bah! What an effeminate creature!—and all because his head is full of Voltaire!" The old man particularly disliked Voltaire, and also the "infidel" Diderot, although he had never read a word of their works. Reading was ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... Strassburg (in a case reported by Hoche[59]) would walk about in the evening in a long cloak, and when he met ladies would suddenly throw his cloak back under a street lamp, or igniting a red-fire match, and thus exhibit his organs. There was an evident effort—on the part of a weak, vain, and effeminate man—to produce a maximum of emotional effect. The attempt to heighten the emotional shock is also seen in the fact that the exhibitionist frequently chooses a church as the scene of his exploits, not during service, for he always avoids a concourse of people, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the Mexican and Peruvian on the one hand and the Chilian on the other. The latter has developed a chopped and incomplete pronunciation, although it betrays the energetic and virile character of the Chileno in contrast to the more effeminate Peruvian. ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... (she cried,) "have devoured your manhood? What filth did you tread upon at some crossroads, in the dark? Not even by the boy could you do your duty but, weak and effeminate, you are worn out like a cart-horse at a hill, you have lost both labor and sweat! Not content with getting yourself into trouble, you have stirred up the wrath of the gods against me {and I will make you smart for it."} She then led ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... Whether for safety or facility, it is advisable to shiver the wind out of a sail before furling or reefing it. This is done either by collecting the sail together, or by bracing it bye, so that the wind may strike its leech and shiver it. A very effeminate captain was accustomed to order, "Sheevar the meezen taus'le, and let the fore-topmast staysail lie ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... unprepossessing an aspect, he sent for him in private, and asked him on oath respecting the morals and character of his master. He was obliged to confess the whole truth; and Mahomet asked, in surprise, "How can the English allow this cowardly tyrant to misuse them? Are they effeminate and servile?" ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... with consummate bravery; and Washington beheld with admiration those who, in camp or on the march, had appeared to him to have an almost effeminate regard for personal ease and convenience, now exposing themselves to imminent death, with a courage that kindled with the thickening horrors. In the vain hope of inspiriting the men to drive off the enemy from ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... heroic line Of Romanoff, bare him Feodor, who reigned After his father's death. One only son, Dmitri, the last blossom of his strength, And a mere infant when his father died, Was born of Marfa, of Nagori's line. Czar Feodor, a youth, alike effeminate In mind and body, left the reins of power To his chief equerry, Boris Godunow, Who ruled his master with most crafty skill. Feodor was childless, and his barren bride Denied all prospect of an heir. Thus, when The wily Boiar, by his fawning arts, Had ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... intended rider met fully the gaze of the spectator. It was a countenance of singular loveliness and power. The lips and the moulding of the chin resembled the eager and impassioned tenderness of the shape of Antinous; but instead of the effeminate sullenness of the eye, and the narrow smoothness of the forehead, shone an expression of profound and piercing thought. On each side of the clear and open brow descended, even to the shoulders, the clustering locks of golden hair; while the eyes, large and yet ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... that they were brothers. The other two were considerably younger—they seemed to Nehal Singh almost boys, though in all probability they were his own age. One especially interested him. He was a good-looking young fellow, with pleasant if somewhat effeminate features and a healthy skin bronzed with the Indian sun. He sat directly opposite where Nehal Singh stood in the shadow, and when he shifted his cards, as he often did in a restless, uneasy way, ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... contrast with the old days of household economies, the days of the ox-chain, the sickle, and the leach-tub. All of these, some happily and some unhappily, have been swept away by the besom of Progress. But in any case life was too serious in those days for effeminate luxury, or for aught but proper pride in defending the country, and in work well done. And it is just this stern life which must be lived, sooner or later, not only in the wilds of Athabasca, but in facing ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... seek nor like to be dependent upon others for what you can yourself supply; and keep down as much as you can the standard of your wants, for in this lies a great secret of manliness, true wealth, and happiness; as, on the other hand, the multiplication of our wants makes us effeminate and slavish, as well ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... belong to the deportment of a Northern people; but upon more familiar acquaintance, the vices of the social system to which they belong will be found to have infected them with their own peculiar taint; and haughty overbearing irritability, effeminate indolence, reckless extravagance, and a union of profligacy and cruelty, which is the immediate result of their irresponsible power over their dependents, are some of the less pleasing traits which acquaintance developes in a Southern character. ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... at the same time running together in strange complexity and their capitals diminishing and disappearing. Some of their conditions, which, in their rich striation, resemble crystals of beryl, are very massy and grand; others, meagre, harsh, or effeminate in themselves, are redeemed by richness and boldness of decoration; and I have long had it in my mind to reason out the entire harmony of this French Flamboyant system, and fix its types and possible power. ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... she lingered in the quiet rooms, while Letty raced along the passages, Anna said to herself that this Spartan simplicity, this absence of every luxury that could still further soften an already languid and effeminate soul, was beautiful. Here, as in the whitewashed praying-places of the Puritans, if there were any beauty and any glory it must all come from within, be all of the spirit, be only the beauty of a clean life and the glory of kind thoughts. She pictured herself waking up in one of those ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... years ago, the Cubo Sama then being, beholding the sceptre of Japan in the hands of a Dairy, who was cowardly and effeminate, revolted from him, and got possession of the regal dignity. His design was to have reduced the whole estate under his own dominion; but he was only able to make himself master of Meaco, where the emperor kept his court, and of the provinces depending ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... orchestra for the first time, and a piece of Mr. Handel satisfactorily performed; and a not unpleasing instance of Harry's humility and regard for his elder brother was, that he could even hold George's love of music in respect at a time when fiddling was voted effeminate and unmanly in England, and Britons were, every day, called upon by the patriotic prints to sneer at the frivolous accomplishments of your Squallinis, Monsieurs, and the like. Nobody in Britain is proud of his ignorance now. There is no conceit ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... quarrel all day. When Manaswi remonstrated, saying that he wanted nothing better than to appear before the world with her as his wife, but that he really did not know what her father might do to him, she threw out a cutting sarcasm upon his effeminate appearance during the hours of light. She then told him of an unfortunate young woman in an old nursery tale who had unconsciously married a fiend that became a fine handsome man at night when no eye could see him, and utter ugliness by day when good looks show to advantage. And lastly, when ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... with the young girls who gazed at him in adoration, and the women who petted him, and it was a considerable source of worry to him that he might appear effeminate, because of his blue eyes and golden hair, and fresh, clear complexion, when in reality he was as manly as the plainest of hard-sinewed warriors, though the indulgence of a slightly aesthetic manner and way of speech, learnt at het University, increased ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... was obliged to admit that all the virtues of a good, industrious, and modest youth could not easily be so happily united in another as they were in Jonathan, albeit his handsome expressive face bore the impress of traits which were perhaps a little too soft, and almost effeminate, and his diminutive and weak but elegant bodily frame bespoke a tender intellectual spirit. When he reflected further that the two children had always been together, and how evident had been their mutual ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... same time, the magnificent and princely leader, who was to be thereafter his great rival, was reaping that rich crop of glory, the seeds of which had been sown already by the wronged Lucullus, in the broad kingdoms of the effeminate East. ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... but was a white man, descended from Europeans. Moreover, the anatomists of St. Petersburgh have observed that, among the lower orders of the people in Russia, milk in the breasts of men is much more frequent than among the more southern nations: yet the Russians have never been deemed weak and effeminate. There is among the varieties of the human species a race of men whose breasts at the age of puberty acquire a considerable bulk. Lozano did not belong to that race; and he often repeated to us his conviction, that it was only the irritation of the nipple, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... on July 28, 1763:—'My departure fills me with a kind of gloom that quite overshadows my mind. I could almost weep to think of leaving dear London, and the calm retirement of the Inner Temple. This is very effeminate and very young, but I cannot help it.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... to listen to Lycomedes, who had brought him up, and with many tears tried to prevent his going there. Again, it often happens that important business makes it necessary to part from friends: the man who tries to baulk it, because he thinks that he cannot endure the separation, is of a weak and effeminate nature, and on that very account makes but a poor friend. There are, of course, limits to what you ought to expect from a friend and to what you should allow him to demand of you. And these you must take into ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... of a mantel, scarcely able to stand, and his countenance totally disfigured from the blows he had received, and from the mud and missiles which the rabble had flung at his head, the luxurious and effeminate prince turned away in disgust, uttered the name of God, and said to the priests in a tone of mingled pity and contempt, 'Take him hence, and bring him not back into my presence in such a deplorable state.' The guards took Jesus into the outer court, and procured some water in a basin, ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... bloodthirstily disapproved Horatio Hood's effeminate remarks, such as "Tee hee!" and "Oh, you naughty man," but when he heard that this molly-coddle had shared in the glory of making moving pictures he went proudly forth with him and Tom. He had no chance to speak to Mrs. ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... dissolution, seemed to menace death to any who should venture to approach. This threat deterred not Artavan de Hautlieu. He approached the entrance, when the doors, like those of the great entrance to the Castle, made themselves instantly accessible to him. A guard-room of the same effeminate soldiers received him, nor could the strictest examination have discovered to him whether it was sleep or death which arrested the eyes that seemed to look upon and prohibit his advance. Unheeding the presence of these ghastly sentinels, Artavan pressed forward into an inner apartment, where ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... trained to war by long struggles with Gauls, Spaniards, and Africans, and were superior to all other troops in discipline, experience, and valor. She now naturally turned her eyes toward the East, whose effeminate nations seemed to offer an ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... perfumed, and he had continually in his hand a gold snuff-box set with diamonds. His voice was naturally hoarse and loud, but with infinite industry he had brought himself to a pronunciation shrill, piping, and effeminate. His conversion was larded with foreign phrases and foreign oaths, and every thing he said was ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... going to his seat where he watches the birds, upset and overthrow it with levers, turning every thing upside down; and commit his crowns to the winds and storms; for doing this, I shall gnaw him most. And some of you going along the city, track out this effeminate stranger, who brings this new disease upon women, and pollutes our beds. And if you catch him, convey him hither bound; that meeting with a judgment of stoning he may die, having seen a bitter revelry of Bacchus ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... rough work in Pope. His Muse was on a peace-establishment, and grew somewhat effeminate by long ease and indulgence. He lived in the smiles of fortune, and basked in the favour of the great. In his smooth and polished verse we meet with no prodigies of nature, but with miracles of wit; the thunders of his ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... There are occasions in almost every man's life when to know how to cook, to sew, to "keep the house," to wash, starch, and iron, would be valuable knowledge. Such knowledge is no more unmasculine and effeminate than that of the ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... for you," he called, in a high, almost falsetto voice. "I thought you would have eight or nine. Blessed hot, isn't it?" He had a smart though somewhat effeminate manner, and Cowperwood at once wrote him down as an ass. Berenice took the mail with an engaging smile. She sauntered past him reading, without so much as a glance. Presently he heard ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... Eugene, whom Burgess contemplates moist-eyed with enthusiasm. He is a strange, shy youth of eighteen, slight, effeminate, with a delicate childish voice, and a hunted, tormented expression and shrinking manner that show the painful sensitiveness that very swift and acute apprehensiveness produces in youth, before the character has grown to its full strength. Yet everything ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... loves to be dependent—place her in danger and she naturally flies to her brother, her father, or her husband. I am aware that to all these things there are exceptions—there are unwomanly women as there are effeminate men, but the fewness of the exceptions only proves the general truth. England had her masculine Elizabeth, but ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... many of them that neither Chrysippus' nor Didymus' volumes are large enough to contain them. I would only desire you to consider this, that if so great doctors may be allowed this liberty, you may the more reasonably pardon even me also, a raw, effeminate divine, if I quote not everything so exactly as I should. And so at last I return to Paul. "Ye willingly," says he, "suffer my foolishness," and again, "Take me as a fool," and further, "I speak it not after ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... down. Never have these wandering eyes of mine looked upon a figure more pathetic. For an instant I stood there, swaying upon my feet as though from sickness, staring at him incredulously. His thin, pale, effeminate face was rendered wonderfully piteous by the depth of suffering so plainly revealed within the great, black, appealing eyes. So peculiarly delicate were the features, so slender the fragile form, about which a frayed and rusty robe clung loosely, that for ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... ago Mrs. Crane made the acquaintance of some new people, whom she hastened to describe and present to her dearest friend. One of them was a young gentleman, of fair, effeminate beauty and manners, and extreme youth. In fact, he had but just been emancipated from the strictest discipline of stern tutors. This fortunate youth was the sole heir of a wealthy and indulgent step-father, who had followed the remains of a second 'dear departed' ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... about that Donohue," a rangy scout of the high school was saying to a companion wearing glasses, and looking a bit effeminate, though evidently quite fond of sport; "he acts as though he might be as cool as a cucumber. Those Harmony fellows in the crowd will do their level best to faze him, if ever he gets in a tight corner, and lots of things are liable to ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton
... sometimes even philosophers, nay, even the severest of all, the Stoics, that have brought in moral fanaticism instead of a sober but wise moral discipline, although the fanaticism of the latter was more heroic, that of the former of an insipid, effeminate character; and we may, without hypocrisy, say of the moral teaching of the Gospel, that it first, by the purity of its moral principle, and at the same time by its suitability to the limitations of finite beings, brought ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... indeed, he was not only blind, but like a picture, without either life or motion. Nor were they allowed to take food at home first, and then attend the public tables, for every one had an eye upon those who did not eat and drink like the rest, and reproached them with being dainty and effeminate. ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... of all forms of corruption—against Christians.... These stealthy worms, which under the cover of night, mist and duplicity, crept upon every individual, sucking him dry of all earnest interest in real things, of all instinct for reality—this cowardly, effeminate and sugar-coated gang gradually alienated all "souls," step by step, from that colossal edifice, turning against it all the meritorious, manly and noble natures that had found in the cause of Rome their own cause, their own serious purpose, their own pride. The ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... came nearer I saw that he was handsome in an effeminate sort of way, with a slight lady-like sort of figure, a blond mustache, so light in color as to be almost invisible at a distance, and fine girlish eyes of a light blue. As he saw me in turn he gave me a good-morning ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... perfectly fresh. Richard II is certainly not represented in story as resembling any such epicures, or capriccioso's, as these [76]. It may, however, be fairly presumed, that good living was not wanting among the luxuries of that effeminate and dissipated reign. ...
— The Forme of Cury • Samuel Pegge
... friend into the deep forest and he usually carries a large pack-basket, with a full supply of quart cans of salmon, tomatoes, peaches, etc. As in duty bound, I admonish him kindly, but firmly, on the folly of loading his young shoulders with such effeminate luxuries; often, I fear, hurting his young feelings by brusque advice. But at night, when the campfire burns brightly and he begins to fish out his tins, the heart of the Old Woodsman relents, and I make amends by allowing ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... a meal much accounted of. It was reckoned effeminate to require more than two meals a day, though, just as in the verdurer's lodge at home, there was a barrel of ale on tap with drinking horns beside it in the hall, and on a small round table in the window a loaf of bread, to ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... no harm that our effeminate nobles have taken a love for military appearance during the visit of Sargon, for the Assyrians will have a better opinion touching Egypt. Our most worthy viceroy, enlightened by the gods, as is evident, has divined that just now it is necessary to rattle our swords when we have with ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... queen dowager of Babylon, [for she is distinguished from his queen, Daniel 5:10, 13,] seems to have been the famous Nitocris, who fortified Babylon against the Medes and Persians, and, in all probability governed under Baltasar, who seems to be a weak and effeminate prince. ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... droive us to foighting, 'Tis ourselves who will lead 'em a dance, Till, loike the Cork bhoys, they're deloighting, Back again to their homes to advance! No longer in beating such rebels We'll take than in baiting a bull. How they'll squake, in effeminate trebles, When Ulster's battalions are full! Ri fol didder ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 18, 1892 • Various
... discontent at seeing his orders disobeyed, he wrote to him, from the depths of Poland, April 4, 1807, this reproachful letter, which is a real reprimand: "Your quarrels with the Queen have become public. Show, then, in private life some of that paternal and effeminate character which you display in matters of government, and in business the same rigor you exercise in your household. You treat a young woman as we treat a regiment.... You have an excellent and most ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... halted, and, seating himself on a log, motioned his companion to a place beside him. Johnson obeyed without a word. Slight as was the act, perhaps no other incident of their singular companionship indicated as completely the dominance of this careless, half-effeminate, but self-possessed boy over this doggedly self-willed, ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... mundane poets were more brilliant than those of Christianity. Avienus possessed charming elegance and rather effeminate grace. It should be noted that he (with Prudentius) was the sole lyric poet after Horace. Ausonius had sensibility and remarkable descriptive talent; Claudian, rhetorician in verse, rose sometimes to veritable eloquence and maintained a continual brilliance which is fatiguing because it is ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... now cow; made throughout the Rhone Valley. Fat, golden-yellow and "relished by financiers" according to Victor Meusy. Between Brie and Pont l'Eveque but more delicate than either, though not effeminate. Alpin and Riola are similar. The best is still turned out at Mont d'Or, with runners-up in St. Cyr ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... Dame was a very homely, hard-featured lady, deaf, and extremely fat and heavy, one of the old uncultivated rustic gentry who had lagged far behind the general civilisation of the country, and regarded all refinements as effeminate French vanities. She believed, likewise, all that was said against Queen Mary, whom she looked on as barely restrained from plunging a dagger into Elizabeth's heart, and letting Parma's hell-hounds loose upon Tixall. To have such a guest imposed ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... exterior graces of his person were such, that nature perhaps never formed anything more complete: His face was extremely handsome; and yet it was a manly face, neither inanimate nor effeminate; each feature having its beauty and peculiar delicacy: He had a wonderful genius for every sort of exercise, an engaging aspect, and an air of grandeur: in a word, he possessed every personal advantage; but then he was greatly ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... endurable, And Annie better still, There is a grace in Charlotte, In Eleanor a state, An elegance in Isabel, A haughtiness in Kate; And Sarah is sedate and neat, And Ellen innocent and sweet Matilda has a sickly sound, Fit for a nurse's trade; Sophie is effeminate, And Esther sage and staid; Elizabeth's a matchless name, Fit for a queen to wear In castle, cottage, hut, or hall— A name beyond compare; And Bess, and Bessie follow well, But Betsy is detestable. Maria is too forward, And Gertrude is too gruff, Yet, coupled with ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... even in the East, while the first illuminators were the monks of Ireland. Ladies were the spinners, weavers, surgeons, and readers of the day; they were great at interpreting dreams, and dearly loved flowers. The gentlemen looked upon reading as an occupation quite as effeminate as sewing, war and hunting being the two main employments of the lords of creation, and gambling the chief amusement. Priests and monks were the exceptions to this rule, until Henry First introduced a taste for somewhat more liberal education. Even more respectful ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... avoiding her gaze. There could be no doubt that the two faces thus confronting one another belonged to brother and sister, yet of the two his was the more effeminate, and its very beauty (he was an excessively handsome lad, albeit diminutively built) seemed to oppose itself to hers and caricature it, being so like yet so ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... himself, save in those tragic portraits of himself and of his wife, of which there are three here in the Pitti (188, 280, 1176). He has been called the faultless painter, and indeed he seems to be incapable of fault, to be really a little effeminate, a little vague, bewildered by the sculpture of Michelangelo, the confusion of art in Florence, the advent of the colourists, of whom here in Tuscany he is perhaps the chief. It is no intellectual passion you find in that soft, troubled work, where from every picture Lucrezia ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... of Astarte the prostitution of women, and of effeminate men, played the same part that child murder did in the worship of Baal. "This practice," says Dr. Doellinger,[11128] "so widely spread in the world of old, the delusion that no service more acceptable could be rendered a deity than that of unchastity, was deeply ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... of Knowledge and Character is duly impressed upon us. Of the value of Freedom we are told so much that we have come to regard it as an end in itself instead of only a means, or necessary condition. But Beauty we are half-inclined to connect with the effeminate. Poetry, Music, and Literature are under suspicion with the average English schoolboy, whose love of manliness he will share with nothing else. Yet love of Beauty persists in spite of all discouragement, and will not be suppressed. Natural Beauty, especially, insists on a place in our affections, ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... probable that the use of the Parasol passed to Rome, where it seems to have been commonly used by women, while it was the custom even for effeminate men to defend themselves from the heat by means of the Umbraculum, formed of skin or leather, and capable of being lowered at will. We find frequent reference to the Umbrella in the Roman Classics, and it appears that it was, not unlikely, a post of honour ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... never occur, nevertheless they are exercised in military tactics and in hunting, lest perchance they should become effeminate and unprepared for any emergency. Besides, there are four kingdoms in the island, which are very envious of their prosperity, for this reason that the people desire to live after the manner of the inhabitants of the City of the Sun, and to be under their rule ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells
... other forms in the picture it is not always easy to identify yourself at first, especially at a distance, and every morning on my way to work, unless I deliberately avert my face, I am mortified to discover that the unpleasant-looking man, with the rather effeminate, swinging gait, whom I see mincing along through the crowd, is none other ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... That descendant, however effeminate, of the ancient union between Song and Drama, when, after long obscurity and dethronement, it regained a punier sceptre, though a gaudier purple, by the banks of the Etrurian Arno, or amidst the lagunes of Venice, had chosen all its primary inspirations from ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... law of irony: Zeno, a fatalist by theory, makes his disciples heroes; Epicurus, the upholder of liberty, makes his disciples languid and effeminate. The ideal pursued is the decisive point; the stoical ideal is duty, whereas the Epicureans make an ideal out of an interest. Two tendencies, two systems of morals, two worlds. In the same way the Jansenists, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... festival of Spain. The rigid Britons have had their fling at it for many years. The effeminate badaud of Paris has declaimed against its barbarity. Even the aristocracy of Spain has begun to suspect it of vulgarity and to withdraw from the arena the light of its noble countenance. But the Spanish people ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... visit the different islands under his authority, and even caused letters to be written to the tributary kings of these islands to prepare for his reception. When every thing was in readiness, he sailed over to the kingdom of Komar, the king of which, and all his courtiers, were a set of effeminate creatures, who did nothing all day long but view their faces in mirrors, and pick their teeth. The Mehrage landed his troops without delay, and immediately invested the palace, in which the king was made prisoner, all his ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... seems to have been political rather than theological. He hated the friars and the church's alliance with Carlism. That the last rites were administered to him shows that he died a professing Catholic. In appearance Espronceda was handsome, if somewhat too effeminate-looking to suggest the fire-eater. He never cultivated slovenliness of attire like most members of the Romantic school; on the contrary, he was the leading representative in Spain of dandyism. To sum up, Espronceda's was a tempestuous and ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... We of the lower, the middle, or the upper-middle classes had come to believe that too many of the young men of our nobility had grown effeminate in idleness and selfish pleasure indulged in on the borderland of a kind of aristocratic Bohemia, but, behold! they were fighting and dying with the bravest. We had thought too many of their young women (as thoughtless ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... Christ have done him far less than justice in insisting upon one aspect of his character disproportionately with another. They speak of him as the "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild "; they tend to describe him as almost or wholly effeminate; and the representations of him in art, with small, feminine and conspicuously un-Jewish features, with long feminine hair and the hands of a consumptive woman, join with sacred poetry in furthering this impression. Nothing can ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... [v]effeminate little creature!" cried Oliver, losing his temper. "And I'm through with you. Go sit up ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... Scotch, and Irish alike, but no comparison can be made between the martial value of a regiment recruited amongst the Gurkhas of Nepal or the warlike races of northern India, and of one recruited from the effeminate peoples ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... stage-performers there, both in word and in deed, he put him to death. [426 A.D.] Thus Valentinian took over the power of the West. But Placidia, his mother, had reared this emperor and educated him in an altogether effeminate manner, and in consequence he was filled with wickedness from childhood. For he associated mostly with sorcerers and those who busy themselves with the stars, and, being an extraordinarily zealous pursuer of love affairs with other men's wives, he conducted himself in a most ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius
... such unconscionable vanity!" she said, properly offended. Then, "Anyhow, a man has no business to know about such things," she continued, with rising indignation. "I believe Felix Kennaston is as good a judge of chiffons as any woman. That's effeminate, I think, and catty and absurd. I don't believe I ever liked him—not really, that is. Now, what would Billy care about sunbeams and backgrounds, I'd like to know! He'd never even notice them. Billy ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... the Promaucians, which signifies free-dancers[56], had been given them on account of their fondness for every kind of amusement, and their peculiar attachment to dancing; yet the love of pleasure had not rendered them effeminate. With the assistance of their allies, they drew together a formidable army and fought the Peruvians with such heroic valour as to defeat them in a battle, which, according to Garcilasso, was continued during three ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... one, Who finds within me a nobility, That spurns the idle pratings of the great, And their mean boast of what their fathers were, While they themselves are fools effeminate, The scorn of all who know the worth of mind ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... like a leader of Amazons. Miss CHRISTINE SILVER'S Titania had a certain domestic sweetness, but even a queen of fairies might be a little more queenly. Mr. DENNIS NEILSON-TERRY as Oberon was a curiously effeminate figure for those who recalled the manly bearing of his mother in the same part. Of the two bemused Athenian lovers, Mr. SWINLEY, as Lysander, bore himself as bravely as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 18, 1914 • Various
... above-stairs. There were at least a dozen others present, some also at play, others merely lounging. Of the latter was his Grace of Wharton. He was a slender, graceful gentleman, whose face, if slightly effeminate and markedly dissipated, was nevertheless of considerable beauty. He was very splendid in a suit of green camlett and silver lace, and he wore a flaxen ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... would seem insipid. This analysis, in which every wife would find some one of her own sufferings, would require a volume to express them all; a fruitless, hopeless volume by its very nature, the merit of which would consist in faintest tints and delicate shadings which critics would declare to be effeminate and diffuse. Besides, what man could rightly approach, unless he bore another heart within his heart, those solemn and touching elegies which certain women carry with them to their tomb; melancholies, misunderstood even by those who cause them; sighs unheeded, devotions unrewarded,—on earth at ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... power, and the enterprise of the state are all embodied in him. And as the king-god is far above the landlord-god in power, he is infinitely removed from him in character also. The chief gods of Sidon and Tyre have nothing luxurious or effeminate about them. They are strict and awful beings, and must not be incautiously approached. They retain their primitive character as sources of life, but they are destroyers of life as well. Pure and holy themselves, they require purity and holiness ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... passionate stir in his heart and rise in yearning for he knew not what. He looked round at the guests who sat or stood in little groups, and he felt again that he had not been wise to come. There were several persons there who were not well spoken of, luxurious and effeminate men, whom Linus knew only by repute; but at that moment his host came up and spoke so gently and courteously to Linus, asking him whether he was pleased with the unseen music, that Linus grew ashamed ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
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