"Effeminacy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all a fallacy. Man, in the midst of all his effeminacy, is still male and nothing but male. And woman, though she harangue in Parliament or patrol the streets with a helmet on her head, is still completely female. They are only playing each other's roles, because the poles have swung ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... the worst wars that can be waged. Hounded on by its mercantile class, it fought not for a dream of dominion, or to beat back encroaching barbarism, but to exterminate a commercial rival. The latter, which it was hard to recruit on account of the growing effeminacy of the city, it was harder still to keep under discipline. It was followed by trains of cooks, and actors, and the viler appendages of oriental luxury, and was learning to be satisfied with such victories as ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... has to do with us, I will try to show you, while I tell you openly, that the first half of it, about rendering to Caesar the things which are Caesar's, has nothing to do with us, and never need, save through our own cowardice and effeminacy, or folly. ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... of China, whether Khitan, Churche, Mongol, or Manchu, has always been the same. For one or two generations the warlike character and manly habits were maintained; and then the intruders, having adopted Chinese manners, ceremonies, literature, and civilization, sank into more than Chinese effeminacy and degradation. We see the custom of employing only female attendants ascribed in a later chapter (lxxvii.) to the Sung Emperors at Kinsay; and the same was the custom of the later Ming emperors, in whose ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... in his appraisement, with a touch of scorn, the clean-shaven face and general neatness of the other, but as against this effeminacy he offset the steady-eyed fearlessness of gaze and the smooth power of shoulders and torso ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... works, without particular apprehension on the side of the drama. Hence its reasoning is much less interesting than its panegyric on the simplicity, robust courage, and manliness of the Genevese, and its invective against the effeminacy and frivolity of the Parisian. One of the most significant episodes in the discussion is the lengthy criticism on the immortal Misanthrope of Moliere. Rousseau admits it for the masterpiece of the ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... Caesar.] For the opprobrium east on Caesar's effeminacy, see Suetonius, Julius Caesar, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... inscrutable eyes and trying to analyze the elusive quality of their regard. They were unlike any eyes that he had met with. It were folly to count their possessor a negligible quantity. Nevertheless, it was difficult, because of the fellow's scented effeminacy, to believe that women could find him attractive. But Harley, wise in worldly lore, perceived that the mystery surrounding Ormuz Khan must make a strong appeal to a certain type of female mind. He was forced to admit that some women, indeed many, would be as clay in ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... The fine gentlemen of the Chesterfield era speak of fox-hunting pretty much as we speak of prize-fighting and bull-baiting. When all manly exercises had an inseparable taint of coarseness, delicate people naturally mistook effeminacy for refinement. When you can only join in male society on pain of drinking yourself under the table, the safest plan is to retire to tea-tables and small talk. For many years, Walpole's greatest pleasure ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... of the Spanish nobles found but little favor in the eyes of the sovereigns. They saw that it caused a competition in expense ruinous to cavaliers of moderate fortune; and they feared that a softness and effeminacy might thus be introduced, incompatible with the stern nature of the war. They signified their disapprobation to several of the principal noblemen, and recommended a more sober and soldier-like display while in ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... my acquaintance, and opens the door to let me in, there enter unseen by my side Arrogance, Folly, Vainglory, Effeminacy, Insolence, Deceit, and a goodly company more. These possess his soul; he begins to admire mean things, pursues what he should abhor, reveres me amid my bodyguard of the insinuating vices which I have begotten, ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... everything else that may be said to the contrary notwithstanding. The whole expression of my countenance was very feminine, but not soft. It was always the seat of some sentiment or passion, and in its womanly refinement gave to me an appearance of constitutional delicacy and effeminacy, that I certainly did not possess. I was decidedly a very beautiful child, and a child that seemed formed to kindle and return a mother's love, yet the maternal caress never blessed me; but I was abandoned to the tender mercies of a number of he-beings, by many ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... been always a tolerable pedestrian, declined the accommodation, and obviously rose in his guide's opinion by showing that he did not fear wetting his feet. Indeed he was anxious, so far as he could without affectation, to remove the opinion which Evan seemed to entertain of the effeminacy of the Lowlanders, and particularly ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... to be succeeded by another; still I fancied that at last to a certainty I could descry the tall figure of Agnes, her gipsy hat, and even the peculiar elegance of her walk. Often I went so far as to laugh at myself, and even to tax my recent fears with unmanliness and effeminacy, on recollecting the audible throbbings of my heart, and the nervous palpitations which had besieged me; but these symptoms, whether effeminate or not, began to come back tumultuously under the gloomy doubts that succeeded almost before I had uttered this self-reproach. ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... he was also a good man, a man of virtue and humanity. There is no character without some speck, some imperfection; and I think the greatest defect in his was an affectation in delicacy, or rather effeminacy, and a visible fastidiousness, or contempt and disdain of his inferiours in science. He also had, in some degree, that weakness which disgusted Voltaire so much in Mr. Congreve: though he seemed to value others ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... absolved from any claims for pity which she might once have had upon him. Even the noblest of men, except the two or three in the history of the race who have shown themselves to be possessed of a certain divine effeminacy, instinctively feel that a disappointment in passion is an absolution ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... strength to the indolence and languor of his nature as this did. In his old world he would have lounged listlessly through fashionable seasons, and in an atmosphere that encouraged his profound negligence of everything; and his natural listlessness would have glided from refinement to effeminacy, and from ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... perceive," he said, rising and taking up his hat; "and, indeed, I don't know that I can blame a hardy woodsman for laughing at the idea of one of our in-door and tender professional men, like myself, sleeping on floors and benches. I am afraid we deserve it for our effeminacy. Yes, yes, a good joke, truly! and a good laughter-moving joke is an excellent thing to go to bed upon, they say," he added, as with a merry, gleeful look, he bowed himself out ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... assaults, Tongue-batteries, she surceas'd not day nor night To storm me over-watch't, and wearied out. At times when men seek most repose and rest, I yielded, and unlock'd her all my heart, Who with a grain of manhood well resolv'd Might easily have shook off all her snares: But foul effeminacy held me yok't 410 Her Bond-slave; O indignity, O blot To Honour and Religion! servil mind Rewarded well with servil punishment! The base degree to which I now am fall'n, These rags, this grinding, is not yet so base As was my former servitude, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... old woman—for so he had characterized her—during the process of selection and installation. The present room, although far more luxurious than any that Phineas McPhail had slept in for years, formed a striking contrast with that remembered nest of effeminacy. ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... grace and rhythm and harmony is closely allied to an evil character." While it is true that the basis for this argument has been modified by our abandonment of the Greek aesthetic theories of "inspiration" and "imitation," Plato's moralistic objection to lyric effeminacy and lyric naturalism is widely shared by many of our contemporaries. They do not find the "New Poetry," lovely as it often is, altogether "manly." They find on the contrary that some of it is what ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... world. With this idea always before him, it is no wonder that such a typical Roman as M. Porcius Cato should look with disdain upon the fine arts in all their forms, and should regard a love for the beautiful, whether in literature or art, as synonymous with effeminacy. Mummius, also, who destroyed Corinth, is said to have been so little aware of the value of the artistic treasures which he carried away, as to stipulate with the carriers who undertook to transport them to Rome, that if any of the works of art were lost they should ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... the clergy, the most shameless rapacity is especially prominent, and so glaring, that, notwithstanding some exaggerations and errors that may be pointed out in the Chronicles, he still appears in the same light. Effeminacy, drunkenness, gluttony, dissoluteness, and unnatural crimes were the distinguishing characteristics of his court. He was himself an example of incontinence." This is a nice character to travel with down the page of history. He quarrelled with his brothers, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... I should explain, was but one remove above a smock-frock farmer, took a different line. He had unsavoury proverbs in which he put deep faith. "Muck was the mother of money," and also "Muck was the farmer's nosegay." He viewed it as an absolute effeminacy to object to its odorous savours; and as to the poor people, "they were an ungrateful lot, and had a great deal too much done for them," the small farmer's usual creed. Mr. Alison could do as he liked, of course, but his lease had five years yet to run, and he would not ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... voice, expressed a high opinion of their merits. She praised the effective disposition of the rockery, and in the bedroom, of which Somerset had vainly endeavoured to defend the entry, she fairly broke forth in admiration. 'How simple and manly!' she cried: 'none of that effeminacy of neatness, which is so detestable in a man!' Hard upon this, telling him, before he had time to reply, that she very well knew her way, and would trouble him no further, she took her leave with an engaging smile, ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... to their nurture, from which they derive the most superlative of all enjoyments, the heart-felt satisfaction of having done their duty to their God and country, in giving robust, healthy and virtuous citizens to the State. The effeminacy of exotic fashion has not at present extended its pernicious influence so far as to induce them to commit the rearing of their children to mercenary nurses, who are sometimes the very dregs of a people; and whose vicious habits of taking a drop of the good ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... Lat. Americanus, from Lat. America, a continent noted for the effeminacy and voluptuousness of its inhabitants.] A person devoted to luxury ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... certainly relieved himself from any imputation of effeminacy by the conspicuous part he took in the long-distance rides between Berlin and Vienna, and by his magnificent horsemanship, yet he does not convey to people the impression of manliness that constitutes so distinguishing a characteristic of his ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... would at any rate have exercised a careful discrimination between those elements of the Greek training which would strengthen the young mind by giving it a wider range of vision and a new gallery of noble lives and those which would lead to mere display, to effeminacy, nay (who could tell?) to positive depravity. But this could not be the point of view of society as a whole. If the elegant Roman was to be half a Greek, he must learn during the tender and impressionable age to move his ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... alone. The first glance magnetized his audience. The eyes were those of one accustomed to command, of one having authority, and not fearing on occasion to use it. The hair swept carelessly away from the broad forehead and grew rather long behind, yet the length did not suggest, as it often does, effeminacy. He was masculine in everything—look, gesture, speech. Sparing of gesture, sparing of emphasis, careless of mere rhetorical or oratorical art, he had nevertheless the secret of the highest art of all, whether in oratory or whatever else—he ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... the period. He visited the pleasure-resorts, the theatres, the opera; he saw with the eyes of an ascetic and a soldier, and wondered why the Western conception of the worth of life differed so little from the Far-Eastern conception of folly and of effeminacy. He saw fashionable balls, and exposures de rigueur intolerable to the Far-Eastern sense of modesty, —artistically calculated to suggest what would cause a Japanese woman to die of shame; and he wondered at criticisms he ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... north side of the North Pole there is another world peopled by giants; ten thousand millions at the very least; every giant of them a hundred feet high. Now about the time you have reduced your universe to complete effeminacy some fool with a pick-axe will break through the thin partition—the mere ice curtain—separating these giants from us, and then they will sweep through and swoop down and swallow you, sir, and the likes of you, with your topsy-turvy civilization, your boasted literature ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... the great empire, all that was pernicious in its domestic institutions appeared more strongly. Under the influence of governments at once dependent and tyrannical, which purchased, by cringing to their enemies, the power of trampling on their subjects, the Romans sunk into the lowest state of effeminacy and debasement. Falsehood, cowardice, sloth, conscious and unrepining degradation, formed the national character. Such a character is totally incompatible with the stronger passions. Love, in particular, which, in the modern sense of the word, implies protection and ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... be nothing wanting to establish a perfect despotism in that house, but a few regiments of troops under the command of the crown.] It has actually taken place in Asia, where similar conquests have been made; and even without the ordinary opiates of effeminacy, or a servile weakness, founded on luxury, it has surprised the Tartar on his wain, in the rear of his herds. Among this people, in the heart of a great continent, bold and enterprising warriors arose; they ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... surprize, there was the greatest scramble to get their holyday dresses out of the guard-house, which, when put on, had more the appearance of being intended for the stage than the field of battle. Their quilted petticoats, sattin boots, and their fans, had a mixture of clumsiness and effeminacy that ill accorded with the ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... them," and that he wanted "a due mixture of gravity and mildness, which are the chief political virtues and the fruits of reason and education." "He never dreamed that such obstinacy is rather the effect of the weakness and effeminacy of a distempered mind, which breaks out in violent passions like so many tumors." Nor apparently did Shakespeare ever dream of it either, altho he had Plutarch's sage observations before him. It is a pity ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... understood him perfectly, I dared not trust myself to reply to him in that language. Then he tried German, speaking it with a kind of soft lisp that I thought charming. But, before the end of the evening, I became a little tired of the affected softness and effeminacy of his manners, and the exaggerated compliments he paid me, which had the effect of making all the company turn round and look at me. Madame Rupprecht was, however, pleased with the precise thing that displeased me. She liked either Sophie or me to create a sensation; of course she would ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... exertions. His mother, who was as weak as himself, begged of her husband not to tease their darling, and he was at last obliged to give way to her importunities, when Antony again sunk into his former destructive effeminacy. The strength of his body declined, in proportion as his mind ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... flower, a sup of water from an earthen cup, or the summer time, would recognize in Tolstoy his faithful disciple, the only one, perhaps, who survives in this barbaric silence, where American comfort, a mixture of effeminacy and indigence, has made one forget the real purpose ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... of France and his men of war had not succeeded in conquering it, but they had been charmed with such an abode; they had displayed in their campaign knightly qualities more brilliant and more masterful than the studied duplicity and elegant effeminacy of the Italians of the fifteenth century, and, after the battle of Fornovo, they returned to France justly proud and foolishly confident, notwithstanding ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... as already hinted, this intercourse did not consist in evening flirtations, with the eating of indigestible food at unseasonable hours, and the dancing of "the German." It was carried on out-of-doors in the brightest sunlight; it brooked no effeminacy; its amusements were athletic games, or dramatic entertainments, such as have hardly since been equalled. Its arena was a town whose streets were filled with statues and adorned with buildings, merely to behold which was in itself an education. The participators ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... statement impressed him as self-demonstrative. Brown's volumes are an essay upon the depravity of the times. He does not deny it humanitarianism, and a still lingering sense of freedom, but it is steeped in corruption and displays nothing so much as a luxurious and selfish effeminacy. He condemns the universities out of hand, in phrases which Gibbon and Adam Smith would not have rejected. He deplores the decay of taste and learning. Men trifle with Hume's gay impieties, and could not, if they would, appreciate the great works of Bishop Warburton. Politics ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... almost past comfort on the subject. I had a letter the other day from Dr. Shelton Mackenzie, whom I do not know personally, but who is about to publish a 'Living Author Dictionary,' and who, by some association, talked of the effeminacy of 'the American poets,' so I begged him to read your poems on 'Man' and prepare an exception to his position. I wish to write ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... creatur'" he addressed was a well-built young fellow of seventeen, with no more effeminacy in his appearance than is visible in a lad balanced by nature just on that edge of life where we rest for a short space uneasily, bidding good-bye to boyhood so eagerly, before stepping boldly forward, and with flushed ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... coaches, while, in the summer, the latter stood but little chance in the competition, but were almost entirely deserted. To this result the comfortable cabins of the coasters, designed for passengers (spacious and satisfactory for those times, however the refined effeminacy of the present generation might sneer at them), and the good fare they furnished, not a little contributed. The Calypso was one of the finest of the line of packets to which she belonged, and provided with every convenience that could be desired. ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... and the man came. The story is half legendary—differently told by different authors. Herodotus has one tale, Xenophon another. The first, at least, had ample means of information. Astyages is the old shah of the Median Empire, then at the height of its seeming might and splendour and effeminacy. He has married his daughter, the Princess Mandane, to Cambyses, seemingly a vassal-king or prince of the pure Persian blood. One night the old man is troubled with a dream. He sees a vine spring from his daughter, which overshadows all Asia. He sends for the Magi to interpret; and they tell ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... etc. Scott says here: "Hardihood was in every respect so essential to the character of a Highlander, that the reproach of effeminacy was the most bitter which could be thrown upon him. Yet it was sometimes hazarded on what we might presume to think slight grounds. It is reported of old Sir Ewen Cameron of Lochiel, when upwards ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... of the monitors. He didn't wish to ask questions, but would like to know what they all found so attractive in Maltby. Then, too, they all oiled their hair. No previous Sixth had ever been guilty of this effeminacy, or of wearing lavender kid gloves on Sundays. He repeated, 'What ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... soil was that field of battle where our ancestors defeated their enemies in so decisive a manner that they never fought again. We also would assuredly have saved the fatherland, for we have, we believe, marrow in our bones, and remain uncorrupted by modern luxury and effeminacy. But no one can escape the decrees of Providence. Oh, farewell, then, our father and king! Heaven grant you more faithful generals and more sagacious ministers for the remainder of your states! You are not omniscient, and you were sometimes obliged to follow them ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... of Westminster, constable of Windsor Castle, and chief justice in eyre of the parks and forests. "The doting and gloating king" had taught Somerset Latin; he attempted to teach Buckingham divinity, and called him ever by the name of "Steenie." And never was there such a mixture of finery, effeminacy, insolence, and sycophancy in any royal minion before or since. Beau Brummell never equalled him in dress, Wolsey in magnificence, Mazarin in peculation, Walpole in corruption, Jeffries in insolence, or Norfolk in pride. He was the constant companion of the king, to whose vices he pandered, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... these members of Parliament had at this time passed the age of twenty-one, and the latter was of extremely youthful appearance. Small of stature and slight in frame, his delicate aspect was redeemed from effeminacy by a head of classic contour, a penetrating and melodious voice, an address which always won attention. His superior social endowments were fully recognized by the companions of his leisure; nor was his influence lessened by the fact, that by the death of his father and uncle he had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... has but so much of dignity as befits the minister of the Church which is the hamlet's centre; enough to suggest the old Athenian boast of beauty without extravagance, and study without effeminacy; enough to show that dwellings where not this life but another is the prevailing thought and care, yet need not lack the graces of culture, ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... shook a little. There was in his manner that hint of affection which made him so many friends, the warmth that suggested a woman's sympathy, but not effeminacy. ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... [thou thimble] The taylor's trade having an appearance of effeminacy, has always been, among the rugged English, liable ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... little attention from those observers who were able to observe anything except the heat. The coat was shaped delicately; it outlined the wearer, and, fitting him as women's clothes fit women, suggested an effeminacy not an attribute of the tall Corliss. The effeminacy belonged all to the tailor, an artist plying far from Corliss Street, for the coat would have encountered a hundred of its fellows at Trouville or Ostende this very day. Corliss Street is the Avenue du Bois ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... top of such triumphs, and the famous reign of good Queen Anne, had ensued forty years of peace, broken only by one inglorious war. The peace did its work: it settled the dynasty, and filled the purse; but men, considering it, whispered of effeminacy and degeneracy, and the like, as men will to the end of time. And when the clouds, long sighted on the political horizon, began to roll up, they looked fearfully abroad and doubted and trembled; and doubted and trembled the more ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... eyes, Than that my lord thro' me should suffer shame. Am I so bold, and could I so stand by, And see my dear lord wounded in the strife, Or maybe pierced to death before mine eyes, And yet not dare to tell him what I think, And how men slur him, saying all his force Is melted into mere effeminacy? O me, I fear that I ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... position of an employee in the library. In spite of his long service there and his great learning, he had to see really ignorant men promoted over his head. I discovered afterwards that the real reason lay in his unbusinesslike methods, and the effeminacy consequent on the delicate way in which he had been nurtured in early life, which made him incapable of developing the energy necessary for his work. On a miserable pittance of fifteen hundred francs a year, he led a weary existence, full of anxiety. With nothing ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... brave man, and endued with most excellent qualities, which causd him to be admird by the people, and acceptable to the souldiers, because he was a warlike man, enduring all kind of travell and paines, despising all delicate food, and all kinde of effeminacy, which gaind him the love of all the armies: neverthelesse his fiercenesse and cruelty were such, and so hideous, having upon many particular occasions put to death a great part of the people of Rome, and all those of Alexandria, that he grew odious to the world, and began to be feard by ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... of coach was heathen Greek. Who ever saw, but upon extraordinary occasions, Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Francis Drake ride in a coach? They made small use of coaches; there were but few in those times; and they were deadly foes to sloth and effeminacy. It is in the memory of many when, in the whole kingdom, there was not one! It is a doubtful question whether the devil brought tobacco into England in a coach, for both appeared at the same time." According to Stow, coaches were introduced here 1564, by Guilliam ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... of inferiority in Euripides is the choice of his subjects, which are charged with meanness and effeminacy; while Sophocles and Aeschylus chose for theirs the most dignified and noble passions. He has moreover given very disgraceful pictures of the fair sex, making women the contrivers, the agents, and the instruments of the most impure and ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... for an instance of what the industry we have recommended, would questionless in less than half an age, produce of wonders, by introduction, if not of quite different, yet of better kinds, and such variety for pulchritude and sweetness; that when by some princely example, our late pride, effeminacy, and luxury, (which has to our vast charges, excluded all the ornaments of timber, &c. to give place to hangings, embroideries, and foreign leather) shall be put out of countenance, we may hope to see a new face of things, for ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... by reason that my whole Attention was fixed on a very fair Youth who rode in the midst of them, and seemed to have been dressed by some Description in a Romance. His Features, Complexion, and Habit had a remarkable Effeminacy, and a certain languishing Vanity appeared in his Air: His Hair, well curl'd and powder'd, hung to a considerable Length on his Shoulders, and was wantonly ty'd, as if by the Hands of his Mistress, in a Scarlet Ribbon, which played like a Streamer behind him: He had a Coat and Wastecoat of blue ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... kind, and is still a little tenacious on this point. He often rails against the universal use of carriages, and quotes the words of honest Nashe to that effect. "It was thought," says Nashe, in his Quaternio, "a kind of solecism, and to savour of effeminacy, for a young gentleman in the flourishing time of his age to creep into a coach, and to shroud himself from wind and weather: our great delight was to outbrave the blustering Boreas upon a great horse; to arm and prepare ourselves ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... such a fight—promoters, backers, spectators—it is the actual fighter who holds the strongest and most honourable position. His conscience gave him no concern upon the subject. Endurance and courage are virtues, not vices, and brutality is, at least, better than effeminacy. ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... specimens of it so rarely found their way in to the fresh, vigorous, hard-working Colonial society. Remarkably tall, yet perfectly proportioned, the roughest backwoodsman might have envied his apparent physical strength; polished in manner to a degree which just, and only just, escaped effeminacy, the most spoiled beauty might have been proud of his homage. At present, however, he stood lazily enough, smiling a little at his hostess' vivacity, exchanging a word or two with her husband, or following the direction of her eyes along the road. At last a cloud of dust appeared. ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... apparel as taught by Friends, not as a form or a rule of society, but as a principle; often quoting from some one who said that "the adornment of a vain and foolish world, would feed a starving one." He opposed extravagant fashions and all luxury of habit and life, as calculated to produce effeminacy and degrading sensuality, and as a bestowal of idolatrous attention upon that body which he would often say "was here ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... one can be civil and polite if he sets himself to be so. Some suppose that it is unworthy of a robust character to be gentle in demeanor, that it indicates a certain amount of effeminacy, and that strength and gruffness go together. We hear men spoken of sometimes approvingly as "rough diamonds." But history tells us that the noblest and strongest have been the most tender and courteous. ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... told that the object of Lycurgus was to root out the luxury and effeminacy existent in Sparta, a moment's reflection tells us that effeminacy and luxury could not have existed. A tribe of fierce warriors, in a city unfortified—shut in by rocks—harassed by constant war—gaining city after city from foes more civilized, stubborn to bear, and slow ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in the veins on the hands and temples, the occasional quiver of the upper lip! His was the frame above all others the most alive to pleasure—deep-chested, compact, sinewy, but thin to leanness—delicate in its texture and extremities, almost to effeminacy. The indifference of the posture, the very habit of the dress —not slovenly, indeed, but easy, loose, careless—seemed to speak of the man's manner of thought and ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Commodus, about 192 A. D., illustrate curiously the fact that, even if a people be immoral, cruel, and base in many ways, their existence as an independent state may be continued long, if military requirements be understood, and if the military forces be preserved from the influence of the effeminacy of the nation as a whole. In Rome, the army was able to maintain a condition of considerable manliness, relatively to the people at large, and thus preserve internal order and keep the barbarians at bay for nearly ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... before I was sufficiently cool and collected to have a good look at Garcia, when I found him to be a tall, well-shaped, and swarthy young fellow, about five years my senior. He was handsome, but there was a sinister look about his dark eyes, and, in spite of his effeminacy, his lithe limbs betokened great strength. An instinctive feeling of dislike, though, kept growing upon me, although there was a pleasant smile, and a display of regular white teeth, which he turned upon ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... the soul be no longer harrowed? Moralists and preachers do not deal after this tender fashion with moral, or even physical consequences, resulting from other evils. Why should they spare these? Why refuse to look their own effeminacy in the face,—their own gaudy and overweening encouragement of what they dare not contemplate in its results? Is a murder in the streets worth attending to,—a single wounded man worth carrying to the hospital,—and are all the murders, and massacres, and fields of wounded, and the madness, ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... stood in, all were destitute of what is called (with dainty vagueness) personal effects; and it was earnestly mooted, on the other side, whether we had not time to call upon the way and pack a satchel? But the Stennis boys exclaimed upon our effeminacy. They had come from London, it appeared, a week before with nothing but greatcoats and tooth-brushes. No baggage—there was the secret of existence. It was expensive, to be sure; for every time you had to comb your hair, a barber must be paid, and every time you changed your linen, one shirt must ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... fancy early remonstrated against this chilling confinement of the noblest, the most aspiring, and most expansive of all the Arts. . . . It was not till the commotion of Europe broke the chain of indolence and insipid effeminacy that the stronger passions of readers required again to be stimulated and exercised and soothed, and that the minor charms of correctness were sacrificed to the ardent efforts of uncontrolled and unfearing genius. The authors of this class began to look back ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... amid blood and tears. Our task, instead of being bloody and barbarous, would have been holy, perfect, artistic, and surely success would have crowned our efforts. But no intelligence would support me, I encountered fear or effeminacy among the enlightened classes, selfishness among the rich, simplicity among the youth, and only in the mountains, in the waste places, among the outcasts, have I found my men. But no matter now! If we can't get a finished statue, rounded ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... July 31 they arrived in the Austrian capital. Then Chopin first began to enjoy an artistic atmosphere, to live less parochially. His home life, sweet and tranquil as it was, could not fail to hurt him as artist; he was flattered and coddled and doubtless the touch of effeminacy in his person was fostered. In Vienna the life was gayer, freer and infinitely more artistic than in Warsaw. He met every one worth knowing in the artistic world and his letters at that period are positively brimming over with gossip and pen pictures of the people he knew. The ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... not to attack the Friars Minor openly, but to have recourse to artifice; to induce them to receive into their society nobles, learned men, and youths. Nobles, in order by their means to introduce effeminacy in which they had been brought up; learned men, who, proud of their learning, should have a contempt for humility; and youths, who, being weak and delicate, would greatly relax in ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... bad Westphalian road, of sleeping on straw for one night, of travelling in winter when the snow lay on the ground, as if he had gone on an expedition to the North Pole or to the source of the Nile. This kind of valetudinarian effeminacy, this habit of coddling himself, appears in all parts of his conduct. He loved fame, but not with the love of an exalted and generous mind. He loved it as an end, not at all as a means; as a personal luxury, not at all as an instrument of advantage to others. He scraped it together and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... moment Dick Welford had seen Socola bowing and smiling before Jennie Barton he had hated the man. He hated foreigners on general principles, anyhow. This kind of foreigner he particularly loathed—the slender, nervous type which suggested over-refinement to the point of effeminacy. He had always hated slender, effeminate-looking men of the native breed. This one was doubly offensive because he was an Italian. How any woman with true womanly instincts could tolerate such a spider was more than ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... me most was, that I had contradicted myself so openly and fully. After the severe principles I had just so publicly asserted, after the austere maxims I had so loudly preached, and my violent invectives against books, which breathed nothing but effeminacy and love, could anything be less expected or more extraordinary, than to see me, with my own hand, write my name in the list of authors of those books I had so severely censured? I felt this incoherence in all its extent. I reproached myself with it, I blushed at ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... Lablanche had finished the "Al Idea," from Figaro. 'Mauvaise honte,' he had none; indeed I am not sure that he had any kind of shame whatever, except possibly when detected with a coat that bore any appearance of newness, or if overpersuaded to wear gloves, which he ever considered as a special effeminacy. ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... long-bladed spears. In this case the uncivilized have the advantage over us, but I believe that with half their training Englishmen would beat the Bushmen. Our present form of civilization does not necessarily produce effeminacy, though it unquestionably increases the beauty, courage, and physical powers of the race. When at Kolobeng I took notes of the different numbers of elephants killed in the course of the season by the various parties which ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... consideration, to be specious cowardice; modesty, the disguise of effeminacy; and being wise in everything, to be good ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... act a manly and generous part, not "mannish," so let woman be urged to exercise a dignified and womanly bearing, not womanish. Let her cultivate all the graces and proper accomplishments of her sex, but let not these degenerate into a kind of effeminacy, in which she is satisfied to be the mere plaything or toy of society, content with her outward adornings, and the flattery and fulsome adulation ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... they mispronounce the dawn-clearance). The natives of India, Hindus (pagans) and Hindis (Moslems), unlike Europeans, accustom themselves to evacuate twice a day, evening as well as morning. This may, perhaps, partly account for their mildness and effeminacy; for:— ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... more degenerate race. They are continually crying, "Oh, it never was so in my day!" They point to tea, and stoves in churches, and the universal use of umbrellas, parasols, cork-soled shoes, warming-pans, and carriages, as incontestible proofs of the rapidly-increasing effeminacy of mankind. But between these old veterans and their children, there are the men of the middle ages, who have, more or less, become corrupted with modern ways and indulgences; have, more or less, introduced modern furniture, modern hours, modern education, and tastes, and books; and have, more ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... never should act, it ought to be put out of all doubt. As an example, when a bull shows the head of a female and a want of masculine character, he should be rejected. Masculine character in the bull is of the greatest importance to the success of the breeder—effeminacy in the male must be shunned as the most deadly poison. On the other hand, let that female be rejected by the judge in the show-yard, and by the breeder in his selection, that looks as much like a male as a female. However ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie
... ignorance, 'why, to eat and drink, and look on.'" Mr. Petalengro goes on to say: "It would seem to us that the more rude energy a man has in his composition the more a woman will be made to take her position as helpmate. It is always a mark of great civilisation and the effeminacy of a people when women obtain the undue mastery of men." And he farther goes on to say: "We were just having a romp with Esmeralda and her two brothers as we were packing up our things, and a merry laugh, when some men appeared at the fence near our camping-ground. We little ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... woman first awaking to the consciousness that she can no more hold up her head amongst her kind: but that a youth should experience a similar sense of degradation and loss, they would regard as a degree of silliness and effeminacy below contempt, if not beyond belief. But there is a sense of personal purity belonging to the man as well as to the woman; and although I dare not say that in the most refined of masculine natures it asserts itself with the awful majesty with which it makes its presence ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... about the country and committed many violences upon the inhabitants. These mercenaries had attained to such a height of luxury, according to the old English writers, that they combed their hair once a day, bathed themselves once a week, changed their clothes frequently; and by all these arts of effeminacy, as well as by their military character, had rendered themselves so agreeable to the fair sex that they debauched the wives and daughters of the English and dishonored many families. But what most provoked the inhabitants was that, instead of defending them ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... a clown, and I do not believe there will be ten out of the hundred who will not become precisely to that degree clownish. I am not battling for the luxuries of life, but I am for its decencies. I would not turn boys into Sybarites, but neither would I let them riot into Satyrs. The effeminacy of a false aristocracy is no nearer the heights of true manhood than the clumsiness of the clod, but I think it is just as near. I would have college rooms, college entrances, and all college domains cleanly and attractive. I would, in the first ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... without assailing or denouncing them. He is a friend of religious toleration, and that, not only because his philosophy has taught him to look on all forms of faith with an impartial eye, but also from the gentleness and effeminacy of feeling which ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... whose life had been spent among the noble and the gay. His features exhibited even feminine regularity. An oval face, a straight and well-formed nose, dark hazel eyes, a complexion just sufficiently tinged with brown to save it from the charge of effeminacy, a short upper lip, curved upward like that of a Grecian statue, and slightly shaded by small mustachios of light brown, joined to a profusion of long curled locks of the same colour, which fell down on each side of his face, contributed to form such a countenance as limners ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... races had yielded to the enervating influences of their settled life. Some of these had indeed been tamed, but more had been degraded. The English were degenerating into clownishness, the Franks into effeminacy; and though Christianity continually raised up most brilliant lights—now on the throne, now in the cathedral, now in the cloister—yet the mass of the people lay sluggish, dull, inert, selfish, ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... alters in hue as childhood matures to man; the complexion was dazzlingly clear and fair. Nevertheless, there was something so hard in the lip, so bold, though not open, in the brow, that the girlishness of complexion, and even of outline, could not leave, on the whole, an impression of effeminacy. All the hereditary keenness and intelligence were stamped upon his face at that moment; but the expression had also a large share of the very irony and malice which he had conveyed to his caricature. The drawing itself was wonderfully vigorous and distinct; showing great ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... earthly things as dross, he clothed himself in rags, and ate and drank only what chanty gave him. His shelter was the Coliseum or the doorways or desert places of Rome. He washed not, neither did he yield to the effeminacy of the comb; his hair and nails grew to what length Nature wished: in short (for some of the additional details are better fancied than described), he so utterly neglected his person that he became an object of avoidance to many or all. But his neglected body was after ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... preserve a man from a certain residue of savage violence and harshness than graceful beauty can secure him against a certain degree of effeminacy and weakness. As it is the effect of the energetic beauty to elevate the mind in a physical and moral point of view and to augment its momentum, it only too often happens that the resistance of the temperament and of the character diminishes the aptitude to receive impressions, that the delicate ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... Effeminacy was the chief cause of the ruin of the Roman legions: those formidable soldiers, who had borne the casque, buckler, and cuirass in the times of the Scipios under the burning sun of Africa, found them too heavy in the cool climates of Germany ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... negligence, and often disfigured with false thoughts. The English had not in his time attained the art of correct writing. But his serious compositions exhibit a strength and vigour which could not have been expected from the softness and effeminacy of his other pieces. He wrote an elegy on Oliver Cromwell, which, with all its faults, is nevertheless looked upon as a masterpiece. To understand this copy of verses you are to know that the day Oliver died was remarkable for a great storm. ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... much however with the political as with the moral aspect of the Church that we are at present concerned: and on the latter point Guicciardini may once more be confronted with his illustrious contemporary. In his aphorisms he says:[4] 'No man hates the ambition, avarice, and effeminacy of the priests more than I do; for these vices, odious in themselves, are most unseemly in men who make a profession of living in special dependence on the Deity. Besides, they are so contradictory that they cannot be combined except in a very extraordinary ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... statues is grave and serious, but lacks strength and determination. Indeed, there is something about the whole countenance that is a little womanish, though his character certainly presents no appearance of effeminacy. He died after a reign of fifty-four years, according to his own reckoning, having practically exercised the sovereign power for about thirty-two of the fifty-four. His age at his death must ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... rule. What, after all, constitutes a "good moral"? We say that no book has a good moral which teaches a child that goodness and effeminacy, laziness and virtue, are convertible terms; no book is good that is "goody," no book is moral that moralizes. The intention may be good, but the teaching is not. Have as much as you will of poetical justice, but beware of making ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... unfortunate campaign, in which he lost his army in the mountains of Pisidia, and owed his deliverance to the generosity of the sultan. But the most singular feature in the character of Manuel, is the contrast and vicissitude of labor and sloth, of hardiness and effeminacy. In war he seemed ignorant of peace, in peace he appeared incapable of war. In the field he slept in the sun or in the snow, tired in the longest marches the strength of his men and horses, and shared with a ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... man; an ancient and common saying, originating from the effeminacy of their employment; or, as some have it, from nine taylors having been robbed by one man; according to others, from the speech of a woollendraper, meaning that the custom of nine, taylors would make or enrich one man—A London taylor, rated to furnish half a man to the Trained Bands, asking how ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... measures. The people of Lydia were noted for the effeminacy of their manners. And Lydian music was ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... turning him into ridicule, and impeaching him with cowardice, merely because he happened to have an effeminate voice. Whenever Cher'ea came to demand the watch-word from the emperor, according to custom, he always gave him either Venus, Adonis, or some such, implying softness and effeminacy. ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... age, apparently about one-and-twenty; but in character and appearance they were widely different. Beverly was, in countenance and manner, curiously like his sister, except that the features were bolder and more strongly marked. Arthur, on the contrary, was delicate in feature almost to effeminacy. His brow was pale and lofty, and above the auburn locks were massed like a golden coronet. His eyes were very large and blue, with a peculiar softness and sadness that suited well the expression of thoughtfulness and repose about his lips. He was taller than his friend, and although well-formed ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... extremely humble, if we admit that a French army was held in check for two months by men wanting in energy. The assassinations which occur in the streets of Rome, prove rather the inefficiency of the police than the effeminacy of the citizens. I find, from an official return, that in 1853 the Roman tribunals punished 609 crimes against property, and 1,344 against the person. These figures do not indicate a faultless people, but they prove little inclination for base theft, and look rather like ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... against Horton for the second fight, on the same memorable day, awaking me (a lodger at the inn in the next room) by a loud remonstrance to the waiter against the abomination of his towels, which had been laid in lavender. Cribb was a coal-heaver—and was much more discomfited by this odoriferous effeminacy of fine linen, than by his adversary Horton, whom, he "finished in style," though with some reluctance; for I recollect that he said, "he disliked hurting him, he looked so pretty,"—Horton being a very ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... into a corner, and, rolling himself in a blanket, lay down upon the bed. A habit of early rising, bringing with it, presumably, the proverbial accompaniment of health, wisdom, and pecuniary emoluments, had also brought with it certain ideas of the effeminacy of separate toilettes and the virtue ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... offered to the public in which the kindness and providence of God have been set forth by more striking examples, or the machinations of priestcraft been more truly and lucidly exposed, or the dangers which result to a nation when it abandons itself to effeminacy, and a rage for what is novel and fashionable, than ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... was the nation: given the particular idolatry, it became possible to decipher the character of the idolaters. Where Moloch was worshipped, the people would naturally be found cruel; where the Paphian Venus, it could not be expected that they should escape the taint of a voluptuous effeminacy. ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... expression in the doubling up of his body and the shaking of his hand. His hands were small, with sensitive, tapering fingers, and when playing the fingers acted as if endowed with separate life and intelligence. There was no effeminacy connected with his lovable nature; he was quick to resent meanness or deceit, or wrong-doing of any kind. His anger was exceedingly sharp, and his manner of expressing contempt an astonishing revelation to those who had failed to grasp his ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... never made any country too cold for its inhabitants. In cold climates, she has made exercise, and even fatigue habitual to them, not only from the necessity of their situation, but from choice; their natural diversions being all of the athletic or violent kind. But the softness and effeminacy of modern manners, has both deprived us of our natural defence against the diseases most incident to our climate, and subjected us to all the inconveniencies of a ...
— A Lecture on the Preservation of Health • Thomas Garnett, M.D.
... of their far and sunny land and the girls they had left behind them. He had been reared in a stern and more northern school, but he had learned long since that a love of innocent pleasure was no sign of effeminacy or corruption. ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... as they might regard a set of dangerously gesticulating automata, or, if they seek to get at the inner motivation, making the most horrible mistakes. Often all that the poor man can think of in the rich man is a cowardly greediness for safety, luxury, and effeminacy, and a boundless affectation. What he is, is not a human being, but a pocket-book, a bank-account. And a similar greediness, turned by disappointment into envy, is all that many rich men can see in the state of mind of the dissatisfied poor. And, if the rich ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... translated by Pere Premare; and the second, entitled an "Heir in Old Age," by the author of the present version. "The Sorrows of Han" is historical, and relates to one of the most interesting periods of the Chinese annals, when the growing effeminacy of the court, and consequent weakness of the government, emboldened the Tartars in their aggressions, and first gave rise to the temporizing and impolitic system of propitiating those barbarians by tribute, which long after produced the downfall of the empire and the establishment ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... rule, being somewhat taller. They are almost universally straight and well proportioned; their limbs are clean, but less muscular than those of the whites, and their whole appearance strongly indicative of effeminacy. In walking, they invariable place one foot directly before the other—the toes never verging from a right line with the heel. When traveling in companies, their manner of marching is so peculiar as to have given rise to the expression, "Indian file;" ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... daughters of men of this stamp—and not half their effeminacy and baseness, as the honest rough old soldier Ammianus Marcellinus describes it, has been told here—the news brought from Egypt ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... the prince who, according to Orderic Vital (Hist. Eccl. vii.) introduced the long turned-up boots called "pigaces" which were one sign of effeminacy among the dandies of the Red King's Court, where men wore long hair, shaved off in front, wide sleeves, and the narrow and flowing robes which were a very characteristic change from the short tunic of the Conqueror's ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... 645) system, various administrative organs were created in accordance with Tang models, and a polity at once imposing and elaborate came into existence. But when the capital was overtaken by an era of literary effeminacy and luxurious abandonment, the Imperial exchequer fell into such a state of exhaustion that administrative posts began to be treated as State assets and bought and sold like commercial chattels, the discharge of the functions connected with them becoming illusory, and the constant ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... secured rest for the country during these years of national union told on the growth of material prosperity. Commerce sprang into a wider life. Its extension is seen in the complaint that men learned fierceness from the Saxon of Germany, effeminacy from the Fleming, and drunkenness from the Dane. The laws of AEthelred which provide for the protection and regulation of foreign trade only recognize a state of things which grew up under Eadgar. "Men of the Empire," traders of Lower Lorraine and the Rhine-land, ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... making his family happy and distinguished, the father brings it up in luxury and idleness, and this produces a very harmful result. The increasing refinement of modern life and its pleasures leads to effeminacy. It bears upon the whole of society and degenerates into an artificial desire for brilliancy and show, which makes it increasingly difficult to obtain a simple and sober education for the family. Men and women, especially the latter, do their best to eclipse ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... love; and Juliet and Desdemona are originals. It is true, the scholar had the softer soul, but the master had the kinder. Friendship is both a virtue and a passion essentially; love is passion only in its nature, and is not a virtue but by accident: good-nature makes friendship, but effeminacy love. Shakspeare had an universal mind, which comprehended all characters and passions; Fletcher, a more confined and limited: for though he treated love in perfection, yet honour, ambition, revenge, and generally all the stronger passions, he either touched not, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... contrary. A regiment of soldiers presents no bad school wherein to study character. Soldiers have leisure, too, to play with children, as well as with 'women and dogs,' for which the proverb has made them famed. And I have never observed that effeminacy was at all the marked companion of fondness for little children. This fondness manifestly arises from a compassionate feeling towards creatures that are helpless, and that must be innocent. For my own part, how many days, how many months, all put together, have I spent with ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... the struggle for supremacy was terminated by Saladin the Great, who killed the Caliph of Cairo with his mace, and rendered the Caliph of Bagdad undisputed chief of all Moslems; and, from that time, the Abassides, though sunk in effeminacy, and much given to sensual indulgences, continued to exercise their vague ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... poets of the Augustan age speak of silk attire with other luxurious customs from the East.[243] The Roman senate, in the reign of Tiberius, decreed that only women should wear silk, on account of its effeminacy. ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... with the troops under their command. The Vizier at the same time warned the Princes who remained at Issessara to hold themselves in readiness against the day on which he should come to complete his revenge, and to free the State from a tyrant who was sunk in effeminacy. ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... small man, for Arizona, and his delicate hands were almost as white as a woman's; but the lines in his face were graven deep, without effeminacy, and his slender neck was muscled like a wrestler's. In dress he was not unlike the men about him—Texas boots, a broad sombrero, and a canvas coat to turn the rain,—but his manner was that of another world, a sombre, scholarly repose such as you would look for in the reference room of ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... Povy, whose office as a member of the Tangier Commission brought him into continual contact with the court, and whose love of gossip made him observant of all that passed around him, in telling of "the horrid effeminacy of the king," said that "upon any falling out between my Lady Castlemaine's nurse and her woman, my lady hath often said she would make the king make them friends, and they would be friends and be quiet—which the king had ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... stinging, painful thorn in his flesh, oppressed by the feeling of loneliness in the very midst of a noisy, fraudulent activity, and filled with an ever-increasing detestation of the superfluity and consequent effeminacy of his daily existence, he had created out of the figure of his son a ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... rudeness, and who indeed often awoke us in no gentle fashion from that legendary and self-complacent dreaming in which we—I by inventing, and my companions by sympathizing- -were too readily absorbed. Thus we learned once more, that, instead of sinking into effeminacy and fantastic delights, there was reason rather for hardening ourselves, in order either to bear or to ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... tall, but very slightly built; his eyes long, sleepy, of a violet blue; features small and delicately cut, with a complexion so soft and bright that his silky, chestnut mustache hardly saved the face from effeminacy; his hands and feet would have satisfied the Pacha of Tebelen at once as to his purity of race; indeed, though Charley was not disposed to undervalue any of his own bodily advantages, I imagine he considered his extremities as his strong point. His manner was very fascinating, and, with women, ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... without a sense of shame. The poet came to be essentially the man who felt acutely, and anything that was a "feeling" came to have a sort of value of its own as denoting poetic sensitiveness. Hence the excessive softness, the indefiniteness, the languishing and the effeminacy which since the beginning of the nineteenth century have been tolerated in poetry because poetry was supposed to be the proper vehicle for such weakness. It is significant that the most admired poem of Keats begins with a sentiment which ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... retained the obedience, gradually lost the esteem, of his subjects. The dress and manners, which, towards the decline of life, he chose to affect, served only to degrade him in the eyes of mankind. The Asiatic pomp, which had been adopted by the pride of Diocletian, assumed an air of softness and effeminacy in the person of Constantine. He is represented with false hair of various colors, laboriously arranged by the skilful artists to the times; a diadem of a new and more expensive fashion; a profusion of gems and pearls, of collars and bracelets, and a variegated flowing robe ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... after period, may have screened the audience, by an awning, from the sun; but luxury was scarcely ever carried so far by the Greeks. Such a state of things appears very uncomfortable to us; but the Greeks had nothing of effeminacy about them; and we must not forget, too, the mildness of their climate. When a storm or a shower came on, the play was of course interrupted, and the spectators sought shelter in the lofty colonnade which ran ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... idleness is quite shut out from our lives, all the sins of wantonness, softness, and effeminacy are prevented; and there is but little ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... rather than governed it, for thirty-seven years. The career of his life is said to have been cruel in the beginning, wretched in the middle, and disgraceful in the end. Thus, in the murder to which he gave his concurrence he was cruel, base in his flight and effeminacy, miserable ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... robust frame was not in the least affected by the cold, scolded me, as if my shivering had been a paltry effeminacy, saying, 'Why do you shiver?' Sir William Scott,[1360] of the Commons, told me, that when he complained of a headach in the post-chaise, as they were travelling together to Scotland, Johnson treated him in the same manner: 'At your age, Sir, I had no head-ach.' It is not ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... gift he can only attribute to the inspiration of the place, which appears to be dedicated to the nymphs. Starting again from the philosophical basis which has been laid down, he proceeds to show how many advantages the non-lover has over the lover. The one encourages softness and effeminacy and exclusiveness; he cannot endure any superiority in his beloved; he will train him in luxury, he will keep him out of society, he will deprive him of parents, friends, money, knowledge, and of every other good, that he may have him all to himself. ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... not such a thing to his name." Kirsty's tone betrayed her thankfulness that her brother was free from the effeminacy of a night-shirt; but noting the dismay and confusion on Mrs. Murray's face, she suggested, hesitatingly, "He might have one of my own, but I am thinking it will be small for ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... his accession has yet to be decided by the electing voice of the Senabawdee, in whose judgment he may be ineligible, by reason of certain physical, mental, or moral disabilities,—as extreme youth, effeminacy, imbecility, intemperance, profligacy. Nevertheless, the election is popularly expected to result in the choice of the eldest son of the queen, though an interregnum or a regency is a contingency ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... called Stelle; men amusing themselves at a game called Pallamajo, something like our cricket, only that they throw the ball with a hollow stick, not with the hand, but it requires no small corporal strength; and I know not why our English people have such a notion of Italian effeminacy: games of very strong exertion are in use among them; and I have not yet felt one hot day since I ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... laughing at him as if he would burst his stays. I knew, of course, that he wore those feminine additions to the toilet, because within the last hour I had seen him take them off and put them on again; and the effeminacy of that trick, which was of course merely national and professional, and not in the least to be charged against him personally, added to the disgust I felt at him and at Brunow, and at the whole Austrian nation, and at myself, and at ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... nation is best distinguishable by the general tone of its poetry, has been frequently remarked, and is a truth which does not admit of controversy; the soft songs of the Persian, and the bold and warlike ditties of the Dane are emblems of the effeminacy of the one, and the reckless heroism of the other.—In most instances the writer in the selection of pieces for this little work has been guided by a desire of exhibiting what is most characteristic of the people to whose literature it belongs. At the ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... on, and are fitted without hardly lifting a hand themselves till they put the finishing touch to hair and moustache at the glasses and dressing-tables that are fixed round the pillars—sounds like effeminacy, but it is not, for it is far more tiring for a man to be dressed here by two skilful servants than it is to dash into his clothes at home by himself. If you were to dress here without help you might as well have dropped ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... which seemed to be the judgment of Heaven, was the signal to a revolt. The people rose and ran to arms; and Babylon, which had been so long immersed in idleness and effeminacy, became the theater of a bloody civil war. I was taken from the heart of my statue and placed at the head of a party. Cador flew to Memphis to bring thee back to Babylon. The Prince of Hircania, informed of ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... Emperor would not go forth to war. The soldiers, enraged, began to gather in angry groups, rebuking one another for their over-patience in submitting to be ruled by such a coward. "How? Are we men, and have we swords in our hands, and shall we any longer bear with such disgraceful effeminacy, by which the might of this great Empire is sapped, so that every barbarian who chooses may carve out ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... prove it. But with all the intrepid effeminacy of your true dandy, he still continued his Cologne-water baths, and sported his lace-bordered handkerchiefs in the very teeth of a tempest. Alas, Selvagee! there was no getting ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... said, within few days, that he would willingly give L10,000 of his estate that he was well secured of the rest, such apprehensions he hath of the sequel of things, as giving all over for lost. He tells me, speaking of the horrid effeminacy of the King, that the King hath taken ten times more care and pains in making friends between my Lady Castlemayne and Mrs. Stewart, when they have fallen out, than ever he did to save his kingdom; nay, that upon any falling out between my Lady Castlemayne's nurse and her woman, my Lady ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Fabius (?), not being able to endure his son's effeminacy, desired to throw himself ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... how debased and sensual our tastes have become. The saying of Burke (so unworthy of a great man), that vice loses half its evil by losing all its grossness, is practically acted upon, and voluptuous and seductive figures, recommended only by a soft effeminacy, swarm our shop-windows and defile our drawing-rooms. It is impossible to over-state the extent to which they minister to, and increase the foul sins of, a corrupt and luxurious age. A school of artists who attempt to bring back the popular taste to the severe draperies and pure ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... our strength and self-importance miraculously increase, and the whole frame begins to glow. The warmth and vigour thus acquired are inexpressibly delightful. As we re-enter the house, we are proud of our intrepidity and vigour, and pity the effeminacy of our less enterprising friends, who, though huddled together round the fire, like flies upon a sunny wall, still complain of cold, and instead of the bloom of health and animation, exhibit pale and pinched ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... great; and although these fellows dress like fools, and look like fools, depend on't, they are not the fools you take them for: they are aware, that nothing so effectually throws off their guard and disarms the great, as a well-carried affectation of gentlemanly effeminacy, and "a still small voice, like a woman's." We happen to know that some of these people, for this very delicacy of air and manner picked out of the dirt, and carried into high places, who are au naturel, as we may say, when they go home, and have laid aside the wigs, silk waistcoats, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... Walsingham: "abhorring the rough, brutal, swearing, grog-drinking, tobacco-chewing, race of sea-officers, the Bens and the Mirvans of former times, Captain Jemmison, resolving, I suppose, to avoid their faults, went into the contrary extreme of refinement and effeminacy. A superlative coxcomb, and an epicure more from fashion than taste, he gloried in descanting, with technical precision, on the merits of dishes and of cooks. His table, even on shipboard, was to be equalled in elegance ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... inequalities of man. She retires to the solitude of her loved chamber window, and reads of Aristides the Just, of Themistocles with his Spartan virtues, of Brutus, and of the mother of the Gracchi. Greece and Rome rise before her in all their ancient renown. She despises the frivolity of Paris, the effeminacy of the moderns, and her youthful bosom throbs with the desire of being noble in spirit and of achieving great exploits. Thus, when other children of her age were playing with their dolls, she was dreaming of the prostration of nobles and of the ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... were passably good—the nose perhaps rather too projecting; but his teeth were unexceptionable. He had a clear complexion, with a good fresh colour in his cheeks, which were still covered with the down of youth, but without imparting the slightest appearance of effeminacy. A foraging-cap of gray woven horse-hair, with a preposterous shade projecting out in front, covered his head; a loose blouse enveloped the upper, whilst checkered inexpressibles enclosed the lower man. Unlike his companion, he wore his hair, which was rather dark, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various |
