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Madonna   Listen
noun
Madonna  n.  
1.
My lady; a term of address in Italian formerly used as the equivalent of Madame, but for which Signora is now substituted. Sometimes introduced into English.
2.
((pl. madonnas)) A picture of the Virgin Mary (usually with the babe). "The Italian painters are noted for drawing the Madonnas by their own wives or mistresses."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Madonna" Quotes from Famous Books



... knows he is out of the running. Come over to me and listen whilst I tell you something." She sat down and pulled the suffering child down beside her, who lay across the silken knees like the stricken mother across the knees of the wise Madonna and made no sound or movement whilst she listened to the bitter words of the fortune-teller in the ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest

... finished our coffee we went for a walk—not the two old ladies, who settled down at once to their embroidery frames; one of them showed me her work—really quite beautiful—a church ornament of some kind, a painted Madonna on a ground of white satin; she was covering the whole ground with heavy gold embroidery, so thick ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington

... and a Persian rug made up of blue and cream. The curtains at the windows are of plain blue linen bordered with a narrow blue and white fringe. The lighting-fixtures are of carved wood, pointed in polychrome. The most beautiful thing in the room is a Fifteenth Century painting, the Madonna of Bartolomeo Montagna, which has the place of honor ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe

... to the window and gazed out across the garden. Down by the yew-hedge, where a narrow path of turf wound in and out among beds of tall Madonna lilies and Canterbury bells, the two children were playing a solemn game of follow-my-leader, the blind boy close on his sister's heels, she turning again and again to watch that he came ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... time, instructed by a succession of prophets, we find Woman in as high a position as she has ever occupied, No figure that has ever arisen to greet our eyes has been received with more fervent reverence than that of the Madonna. Heine calls her the Dame du Comptoir of the Catholic church, and this jeer well ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... was rolling around her, the only living thing within hail at that moment, except ourselves. On seeing me safe she did not wait to greet me, as might have been expected; but, calling out to me, 'Ah! can' della Madonna, xe esto il tempo per andar' al' Lido,' ran into the house, and solaced herself with scolding the boatmen for not foreseeing the 'temporale.' Her joy at seeing me again was moderately mixed with ferocity, and gave me the idea of a tigress ...
— Byron • John Nichol

... feelings, in those expressed by the author, as if on purpose for them to read. Undoubtedly they give great relief to solitary young persons, who must have some ideal reflection of themselves, and know not where to look since Protestantism has taken away the crucifix and the Madonna. The recipient of these letters sometimes wonders, after reading through one of them, how it is that his young correspondent has managed to fill so much space with her simple message of admiration ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... with a woman standing in a garden; behind you both is a great expanse of water. She is so like you that I think she must be your mother. She wears her grey hair in Madonna bands; she puts her arms round your neck; as she does so, I see on her left hand one ring—the ring which you are now wearing, and which I am now touching. She, your mother, is bidding you good-bye, she knows that she will never see you again, ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... large, placid, fair and beautiful as a Madonna, rose and looked doubtfully at us ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell

... each of the others. In the bow sat two ladies reading, with pen, ink and paper on a table before them at which was a young girl translating out of French. At the lower end of the room was a lady painting, with exquisite art indeed, a beautiful Madonna; near her another, drawing a landscape out of her own imagination; a third, carving a picture-frame in wood, in the finest manner, a fourth, engraving; and a young girl reading aloud to them; the distance from the ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott

... it was mine. I had no intention of deceiving anybody into the belief that I could do that sort of thing every time, and it ought not to be expected of me. Suppose Raphael's patrons had tried to keep him screwed up to the pitch of the Sistine Madonna, and had refused to buy anything which was not as good as that. In that case I think he would have occupied a much earlier and narrower grave than the one on which Mr. Morris Moore ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton

... another in its stead,—faces and dogs' heads, and men in sledges, and old women in their furs, and pine trees, and cocks and hens, and all sorts of animals, and now and then—very reverently—a Madonna and Child. It was all very rough, for there was no one to teach him anything. But it was all lifelike, and kept the whole troop of children shrieking with laughter, or watching breathless, with wide open, wondering, ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee

... undisciplined tastes, though marked by narrowness, and often by involuntary obedience to vulgar ideals (which, for instance, makes them insensible to all the deep sanctities of beauty that sleep amongst the Italian varieties of the Madonna face), is not without its appropriate truth. Servants and rustics all thrilled in sympathy with the sweet English loveliness of Miss Smith; but all alike acknowledged, with spontaneous looks of homage, the fine presence and finished ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... predecessors (whom I had particularly selected) had already made the most gratifying progress among the bric-a-brac, two intelligent Airdale puppies had chewed satisfactory holes in the Art Nouveau furniture, even the Sistine Madonna had wrenched loose from its supports and considerately annihilated the jewel-studded Oriental lamp in the ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson

... with sumptuous raiment and ornamented with jewels and gems. An inscription furnishes us with an inventory of the jewels worn by an Isis of ancient Cadiz;[68] her ornaments were more brilliant than those of a Spanish madonna. ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont

... is a handkerchief! Are you sufficiently in your right mind to take a bit of advice? This is not the sort of madonna for you; you need a Marchioness of Mondejar—one of those slim creatures, clad in steel, who through love are capable of all the expedients which distress ...
— The Resources of Quinola • Honore de Balzac

... letter flushed her face with expectation. She took it with smiles. She covered it with kisses. When she opened it, a curl from Jack's head fell on to her lap. She pressed it to her heart, and then rose and laid it at the feet of her Madonna. "She must share my joy," she said with a pathetic childishness; "she will understand it." Then, with her arm around Isabel, and the girl's head on his shoulder, they read together Jack's ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr

... CANDIDUM (the Madonna, or White Garden Lily) should be planted before the middle of October, if possible, in groups of three, in well-drained, highly-manured loam. Should they decline, take them up in September and re-plant at once in fresh, rich soil, as they will not ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink

... "Santa Madonna! Thou forgettest, Stefano, that not even the confessor has any trouble with a job in which he has been employed. Not a caratano less than a hundred will buy a stroke of his art. Your blows, for two sequins, leave a man leisure ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper

... The brown wrinkled old men and women, the lithe, slender youths in their suits of black broadcloth—wood gods disguised by cheap tailoring—all had left their work and come many a mile along the dusty roads and across fields to the town for the dear Madonna's sake, and to see the Palio. The country girls had all new dresses for the Ferragosto and they strutted in the Via Cavour like little pigeons pluming themselves in the sunshine. They were nearly ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton

... name?—Mildred Wallace. Tell me what she is like, I hear you say. Of graceful height, willowy and exquisitely molded, not over twenty-four, with the face of a Madonna; wondrous eyes of darkest blue, hair indescribable in its maze of tawny color—in a word, the perfection of womanhood. In half an hour I was her abject slave, and proud in my serfdom. When I returned to the hotel that evening ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa

... daughter Lorle to marry a well to do young peasant, named Balder, who loved her from her childhood. But Lorle rejects him, having lost her heart to a painter, who had stayed in her father's house, and who had taken her as a model for a picture of the Madonna, which adorns the altar of the village church. Lorle's friend Baerbele guesses her secret, and advises her to consult fate, by wreathing secretly a garland of blue-bells and reed grass. This wreath she is to throw into the branches of an oak calling aloud the name of ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley

... effect which he has since never equalled. I own that I regret the loss of the poetry, but you cannot ask a man to keep on being a poet for you; it is hardly for him to choose; yet I compare rather discontentedly in my own mind such impassioned creations as Searle and the painter in "The Madonna of the Future" with "Daisy Miller," of whose slight, thin personality I also feel the indefinable charm, and of the tragedy of whose innocence I recognize the delicate pathos. Looking back to those early stories, where ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... instructor in the Art School of Pratt Institute, Brooklyn. He has done a number of works for the Congressional Library, the Vanderbilt bronze doors of the St. Bartholomew Church of New York, the tympan of the Madonna and Child in the same church, a statue of William Ellery Channing and many others. His beautiful busts of women are said to be unsurpassed even ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James

... anything swell enough for Aunt Amy, because she has everything she wants, so I brought a little picture that always makes me think of her when Bess was a baby'; and he handed her an oval ivory locket, on which was painted a goldenhaired Madonna, with a rosy child folded ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... took me by a quick turn, as if by impulse, into an old church. "There is a lovely Madonna here," he said. "Who painted it?" "Some pupil of Raphael's perhaps." Serafino removed his hat and stood reverently before this beautiful face, so human, so tender. "I have heard you say so much against the Church, the Papacy—I thought you were not in ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters

... volumes of recently-published scientific works. It might have been the room of a business man who was at the same time a priest and a scholar. There were roller maps upon the walls, and two or three engravings, Bougereau's "Virgin of Consolation," the "Madonna dei Ansidei" of Raffaelle, and a "Crucifixion" over the chimneypiece, which had three little statuettes in tinted alabaster—a St. Ignatius at one end, a St. Anthony of Padua at the other; in the middle, the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... to face with the artist. One would then meet a slender, graceful young woman, of gentle presence and with the simplest manners in the world. The dark, liquid eyes look at one with frankness and sincerity; the wide, low brow, from which the dark hair is softly drawn away, is the brow of a madonna. In repose the features might easily belong to one of Raphael's saints. However, they light up genially when ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower

... was a face of a type that fixes you in a moment among a host of characterless faces that fail to draw a second glance, a face to set you thinking. Among a thousand pictures in a gallery, you are strongly impressed by the sublime anguish on the face of some Madonna of Murillo's; by some Beatrice Cenci in which Guido's art portrays the most touching innocence against a background of horror and crime; by the awe and majesty that should encircle a king, caught once and for ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac

... in the streets of Galway-town, When night had let her dusky curtains down, And in a doorway, tall and fair and slight, Framed by an inner beam of golden light, Beheld a maiden of madonna face, Pensive and sad, yet with a nameless grace, Presage, I thought, of the unfolding years, That hide some things that ...
— Sprays of Shamrock • Clinton Scollard

... to represent his 'Personees,' La Mufflaude, la Linaire, l'Euphraise, la Pediculaire, la Crete-de-coq, l'Orobanche, la Cimbalaire, la Velvote, la Digitale, giving plates of snapdragon, foxglove, and Madonna-herb, (the Cimbalaire), and therefore including my entire class of Draconidae, whether open or close throated. But I propose myself to separate from them the flower which, for the present, I have called Monacha, ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... intended as a companion volume to "Child-Life in Art," and is a study of Madonna art as a revelation of motherhood. With the historical and legendary incidents in the life of the Virgin it has nothing to do. These subjects have been discussed comprehensively and finally in Mrs. Jameson's splendid work on ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll

... a case that some one did not consider its expediency as "a match" in the light of dollars and cents. As for heroines, of course I have seen beautiful women, and good as fair. The most beautiful is delicate and pure enough for a type of the Madonna, and has a heart almost as warm and holy. (Very pure blood is in her veins, too, if you care about blood.) But at home they call her Tode for a nickname; all we can do, she will sing, and sing through her nose; and on washing-days she ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis

... Nightingale. The Fire, and the Best Inheritance. Henry of Eichenfels; or, the Kidnapped Boy. Godfrey, the Little Hermit. The Water Pitcher, and the Wooden Cross. The Rose Bush, and the Forest Chapel. The Lamb. The Madonna, the Cherries, and Anselmo. The Canary Bird, the Firefly, the Chapel of Wolfsbuhl, and ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... was! The greatest painters, who followed ideal beauty into heaven itself, and thence brought back to earth the true portrait of the Madonna, never in their delineations even approached that wildly beautiful reality which I saw before me. Neither the verses of the poet nor the palette of the artist could convey any conception of her. She was rather tall, with a form and bearing of a goddess. Her hair, of a soft blonde hue, was ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier

... I left you," answered Nickols, as we all ascended the steps and stood in a group before the door. "I got my books full of sketches of bits of treasures that the war might destroy, and beat it back to civilization. Did the Madonna of the Red Cross you had in tow come across as sentimentally as was threatened?" Nickols' voice was as cordial as the Reverend Goodloe's, but something in me made me resent the question and the manner it ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... bitterly for two days. The vanity for which she did penance whenever her madonna loveliness, consummated by the white robe and veil of her novitiate, tempted her to one of the little mirrors in the pupil's dormitory, was powerless to check the blighting flow. There had been moments ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... On the left hand, as we enter, we see the town of Classis; on the right the palace of Theodoric, its doors and loggie rich with curtains, and its friezes blazing with coloured ornaments. From the city gate of Classis virgins issue, and proceed in a long line until they reach Madonna seated on a throne, with Christ upon her knees, and the three kings in adoration at her feet. From Theodoric's palace door a similar procession of saints and martyrs carry us to Christ surrounded by archangels. Above this double row of saints ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... You miss a lot, I can tell you. She was the prettiest little baggage I've set eyes on for years. And she was not of an iron virtue. But she wouldn't look at a little thing like me. Can't think why. Come, now, don't look so demure. We aren't all plaister saints like you. I'm not, in spite of my Madonna face. Wasn't that the truth? The Marchesa story is for the gallery. But you and I are behind the scenes. Mum's the word. But wasn't that why Carstairs was hanging about the house after everyone else had ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley

... then it would take him 122-214 days to count the eggs of a single turbot. After that, it would take a chartered accountant at least 122-214 days to check his figures. One can gather from this some idea of the enormous industry of men of science. For myself, I could more easily paint the Sistine Madonna or compose a Tenth Symphony than be content to loose myself into this universe of numbers. Pythagoras, I believe, discovered a sort of philosophy in numbers, but even he ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd

... basins glazed green inside, heaped up in stacks and protected from one another by straw. There were hanks of rope, fans of hawks' feathers for blowing the fire, palm-leaf brooms and oil-jars big enough for thieves. There were horns on the walls to keep off the evil eye, prints of the Madonna, some with sprigs of camomile stuck into the frame, a cheapissimo coloured lithograph of S. Giuseppe with the Bambino, and in front of it on a little bracket, in half a tumbler of oil, floated a burning wick. In a corner was the landlord putting his whole soul into the turning about of ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones

... models for men. The reformer's?—a creed by posterity learnt A century after its author is burnt! The poet's?—a laurel that hides the bald brow It hath blighted! The painter's?—Ask Raphael now Which Madonna's authentic! The stateman's?—a name For parties to blacken, or boys to declaim! The soldier's?—three lines on the cold Abbey pavement! Were this all the life of the wise and the brave meant, All it ends in, thrice better, Neaera, it ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith

... mine, look out and see My bride, my bride that is to be! Reach out with mad, impatient hands, And draw aside futurity As one might draw a veil aside— And so unveil her where she stands Madonna-like and glorified— The queen of undiscovered lands Of love, to where she beckons me— My bride—my bride that is ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley

... that a picture should be high-priced in order to be beautiful and good. We have seen things for which hundreds of guineas have been paid, that have not one-hundredth part of the meaning or beauty that is to be found in Linton's woodcut of Rafaelle's Madonna, which may be had for twopence. The head reminds one of the observation made by Hazlitt upon a picture, that it seems as if an unhandsome act would be impossible in its presence. It embodies the ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles

... Rose. She is standing, all emerald and gold, in the middle of the next room. Behind her, a mirror reflects the copper candelabra whose lighted branches surround her with stars. A placidly-smiling Madonna, chaste and cold, dazzling and glorious, she talks to the ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc

... ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS as authoress. So he read many of the short stories therein. She has in many places the touch of DICKENS. All are good; but for pathos, keen observation, and dramatic surprise, "give me," says the Baron, emphatically, "the short story of The Madonna of the Tubs." Admirable! Those who take and act upon the Baron's tip, will do well to ask for Fourteen to One, and see that ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various

... held it, and a toy trombone with a cord and tassels. There were also several photographs of poor people in their Sunday clothes. On the walls hung a photograph of Cardinal Newman, a good copy of a Luini Madonna, two drawings of heads by Burne-Jones, a small painting—signed "G. F. Watts"—of an old tree trunk around which ivy was lovingly growing, and one ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... a rosary, brought to me from the Holy Land. I have had it for a long time, and it has hung on the frame of a photograph of Bellini's lovely Madonna. This little girl has always liked that picture, and she has often spoken to me about it. But she had never mentioned the rosary, which not only is made of dark wood, but is darker still with its ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken

... pink satin, with a white blonde ruche surmounted by a rich blonde veil, with a white rose placed elegantly on one side, and her glossy auburn hair pressed down the sides of a milk-white forehead, in the Madonna style.—Her pelisse was of "violet-des-bois" figured silk, worn with a black velvet pelerine and a handsomely embroidered collar. Her boots were of a colour to match the pelisse; and a massive gold chain round her neck, and a solitary ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees

... wonderful, wonderful picture of radiant womanhood Mrs. Van Blooren had made! Even in her trouble Nan was generous. The woman was beautiful in a way that poor Nan had only dreamed of. The Madonna-like features, calm, perfect. The dark hair, superb in the simplicity of its dressing. She remembered that at the first glance it had suggested to her the sheen of a cloudless summer night. And her gown, and her figure. The gown must have cost—ah, Nan could not appraise its cost. She ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum

... congregation got suddenly rich, and, with wealth, self-conceit and pride entered his heart. He considered it necessary, to preserve his respectability, to separate himself from the humble society he hitherto frequented, and cease to be a member of the Congregation of the Madonna, composed of industrious and virtuous youths who labored honestly for their livelihood. St. Francis, on hearing of this slight on the congregation and insult to Mary, was fired with a holy indignation. He sought the young man, and rang in his ears the prophetic ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... "Madonna!" he said, in the liquid Southern accents of his—he had spent his early life in Italy and the address came naturally to him—"if Frank Doughton were ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace

... Darkness; with Oromasdes or Arimanes, Brahma or Siva, Jehovah or Baal; with Zoroastrian Devs, Persian Genii, guardian angels or attendant demons; with the Virgin Queen of heaven—whether as Selene, Astarte, Hecate, or the Madonna; with the Prince of the powers of this world—with or without his horns ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill

... was only one more big present, and that did not come. Dakie Thayne knew better. He gave her a magnificent copy of the Sistine Madonna, which his father had bought in Italy, and he wrote her that it was to be boxed and sent after her to her home. He did not say that it was magnificent; Leslie wrote that to us afterward, herself. She said it made it seem as if one side of her little home had been ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... the manner of that splendid picture by Leopold Robert. It would add greatly to the effect if the countess would join us in the costume of a peasant from Puzzoli or Sorrento. Our group would then be quite complete, more especially as the countess is quite beautiful enough to represent a madonna." ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... you have known me such a short time. Suppose you should see someone else—" and she glanced at Pilar's pretty, heart-shaped face, and the velvet eyes raised in contemplation of a carved Madonna. ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... figures, sometimes draped, sometimes free, he suspended in a box made of wood, or of cardboard for his smaller work, in whose walls he made an aperture to admit a lighted candle.... He sits moving the light about amidst his assemblage of figures. Every aspect of sublimity of light suitable to a Madonna surrounded with angels, or a heavenly choir, finds its miniature response among the ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay

... not down-dropt nor over-bright, but fed With the clear-pointed flame of chastity, Clear, without heat, undying, tended by Pure vestal thoughts in the translucent fane Of her still spirit [1]; locks not wide-dispread, Madonna-wise on either side her head; Sweet lips whereon perpetually did reign The summer calm of golden charity, Were fixed shadows of thy fixed mood, Revered Isabel, the crown and head, The stately flower of female fortitude, Of perfect wifehood and pure ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... father said, "as ever a man would wish to stick a knife into." She had sat to the painter for all sorts of characters; and the curious who possess any of Gambouge's pictures will see her as Venus, Minerva, Madonna, and in numberless other characters: Portrait of a lady—Griskinissa; Sleeping Nymph—Griskinissa, without a rag of clothes, lying in a forest; Maternal Solicitude—Griskinissa again, with young Master Gambouge, who was by this time the offspring of ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... was one of shy virgin beauty. One could imagine meeting it in the dim aisles of some cathedral, near the shrine of a saint, as an angel or a Madonna; one could imagine it bending over a sick child, lighting with its pure loveliness the home of sorrow; but one could never picture it in a ball-room. It was a face of girlish, saintly purity, of fairest loveliness—a ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)

... month of the Madonna, and on every festa-day you will see at the corners of the streets a little improvised shrine, or it may be only a festooned print of the Madonna hung against the walls of some house or against the back of a chair, and tended by two or three children, who hold out to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various

... eye rose to the vase of snowy pampas plumes and the pictured Madonna and Child above the bookcase, it wandered still higher until it met a silver motto painted on a blue frieze that finished the top of the walls where they met ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... he would have been instantly apprised by her manner that something of vital import had occurred. There was an indefinable change, a subtle metamorphosis, which was conveyed even in her appearance. Her delicate, Madonna-like face had lost its wax-like pallor and was flushed with a faint, exquisite rose; the wooden, slightly vacant expression was gone; she walked with a lissome, conscious grace which he had not before observed, and the slow, ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander

... married three years, and our boy was a year old. He was a fine fellow. Helen lost her Greek look and took on the Madonna expression after he was born. Any woman who is fit to be a mother gains that expression with her first child. My wife was a ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... beside scarlet gladioli, feather-headed spirea, and hardy fuchsia. There were no straight lines, nor any order of planting. The Madonna lilies stood in groups, lifting up on thin, ragged stems their pure and spotless clusters, and overpowering with their heavy scent the fainter fragrance of the mignonette. Tall, green hollyhocks towered higher yet, holding the secret of their loveliness, until these should wither; ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture

... father, hold! You know her—yes, a Jewess In her domestic piety, her soul Large, simple, splendid like a star, her heart Suffused with Syrian sunshine—but no more— The aspect of a Princess of Thuringia, Swan-necked, gold-haired, Madonna-eyed. I love her! If you will quench this passion, take my life! [He falls at his father's feet. FREDERICK, in a paroxysm of rage, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus

... was just opening the door to leave the hut, when a man darted in so suddenly that I was thrown down. With lightning speed he shut the door, and in a distressed tone uttered the name of the Madonna, when a violent blow shattered the door, and the whole opening was filled with the head of a fierce buffalo, whose body was tightly squeezed into the doorway. The stranger seized a gun from the wall, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various

... his soul by doing so, and the Roman martyrologist some day will add his name to the list of saints. [Footnote: Le Normand, vol. i., p. 243.] The jewels and the gold I sent to Paris, together with the statue of the Madonna of Loretto, but I retained a few relics for you, Josephine. See here the most precious one ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... bishop and the abbot— All the monks of high degree, Chanting praise to the Madonna, Came to do him Christian honor! "A furore Normanorum, Libera nos, ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... spiritual Christian of those ages the air of this lower world was not as it is to us, in spite of our nominal faith in the Bible, a blank, empty space from which all spiritual sympathy and life have fled, but, like the atmosphere with which Raphael has surrounded the Sistine Madonna, it was full of sympathizing faces, a great "cloud of witnesses." The holy dead were not gone from earth; the Church visible and invisible were in close, loving, and constant sympathy,—still loving, praying, and watching together, though ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various

... at last; and, as though the one word had broken a charm which held them both paralyzed, she smiled, and the smile lit up the Madonna face and made it as human as ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie

... tears with a murmured sound of somewhat enigmatic intonation. Her thin dark face settled into a repose that had a little grimness in it. She began putting the flowers into a vase that stood between the reproduction of a Giotto Madonna and a Japanese devil-hunt, both results of the study of art taken up during the past winter by her mother's favorite woman's club. Mrs. Emery watched the process in the contemplative relief which follows an emotional outbreak, ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield

... Literally, 'taking out the blocks to air'. The effigies are made of hard and heavy wood, and I remember once in Concepcion de Paraguay assisting on a sweltering day to carry a Madonna weighing about five ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham

... tiny patch of earth, rimmed close to the edge by ruined walls. The current running landward drew them about the corner, under the madonna's hand, and the gondola came to rest beside the lichens and lizards of ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick

... old New England conscience! If you were all Spanish, you'd look as innocent as a madonna for a week, and if you were my kind of Californian you'd cheek it and make your elders feel that they were impertinent for ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... behind the man carrying the glass, answered that it was "the Repeal of the Union!" The old woman's delight was unbounded! She knelt down on her knees in the middle of the road, as if it had been a picture of the Madonna, and thanked God for having preserved her in her old age to see the Repeal ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... lie in sharp contrast of shadow side by side with sunshine and flowers. Vanno would have liked to spirit her away out of this garden of painted lilies, to a sweet, old-fashioned garden where pure white Madonna lilies lined the quiet paths. If only she had listened to him last night, how different might have been ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... peace and solitude. The bird came forward cautiously, putting one foot slowly in front of the other, then stopped and craned her neck, casting a suspicious look to right and left. Then giving a graceful little jump and shaking out her tail feathers, she hopped up to the Black Madonna. Then she stood stock still a few moments, scrutinising the sleeping watchman and questioning the darkness and silence with eyes and ears alert. At last with a mighty flutter of wings she alighted ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France

... seen there something which takes away all thought of artist or style of painting or work. I have never been able to ask myself what is the color of the eyes of that Madonna, or of her flowing hair, or the tone of the drapery. I see only an expression that inspires the whole figure, gives motion to the hands, life to the eyes, thought to the lips, and soul to the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various

... with grandeur, His with reason bright— Should calm look down, in glory and in light, While Sion's palm beside should point to heaven. And God hath granted this fond prayer of mine: Thou, my Madonna, thou to me wert given, Divinest form ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... carried Stasiek on to the bed in the alcove; his mother laid two copper coins on his eyes and lit the candle in front of the Madonna. ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... virgin grace, Heaven-born thy Jesus seemeth sure, And of a virgin pure. Lady most perfect, when thy sinless face Men look upon, they wish to be A Catholic, Madonna fair, to ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... in vision which describes our Ladies of Sorrow, particularly in the dark admonition of Madonna, to her wicked sister that hateth and tempteth, what root of dark uses may lie in moral convulsions: not the uses hypocritically vaunted by theatrical devotion which affronts the majesty of God, that ever and in all things loves Truth—prefers sincerity that is erring to piety ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... ruins of another world," it is obvious that he believes in a form of evolution, and one in which a controlling intelligence is not very obvious, at all events not in the initial and all-important stage.) Herschel's was a good sneer. It made me put in the simile about Raphael's Madonna, when describing in the "Descent of Man" the manner of formation of the wondrous ball-and-socket ornaments, and I will swear to the truth of this case. (243/3. See "Descent of Man," II., page 141. Darwin says that no one will attribute ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... The three then prowled along the city wall of Monza, till they found a breach wide enough for exit. Afterwards they took a path beside the river Lambro, and stopped for awhile at the church of the Madonna delle Grazie. Here the sisters prayed for assistance from our Lady in their journey, and recited the Salve Regina seven times. Then they resumed their walk along the Lambro, and at a certain point Ottavia fell into the river. In her dying depositions she accused Osio of having pushed ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... down and improved the nest; adding foot-rests to make the climbing easy, peep-holes east and west, a bit of carpet over the bark, and on the rough main trunk, a little picture in blue and gold of Bougereau's Madonna. Zora sat hidden and alone in silent ecstasy. Bles peeped in—there was not room to enter: the girl was staring silently at the Madonna. She seemed to feel rather than hear his ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois

... the subject he had chosen. In a word, he humanized the altar-pieces and the cloister-frescoes upon which he worked. In this way the painters rose above the ancient symbols, and brought heaven down to earth. By drawing Madonna and her son like living human beings, by dramatizing the Christian history, they silently substituted the love of beauty and the interests of actual life for the principles of the Church. The saint or angel became ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... Protestantism towards the Bible in no respect differs from the attitude of mind of Catholicism towards the Church. The mental habit of him who imagines that Balaam's ass spoke, in no respect differs from the mental habit of him who imagines that a Madonna of wood or stone winked; and the one, who says that God's Church makes him believe what he believes, and the other, who says that God's Word makes him believe what he believes, are for the philosopher perfectly ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... the act of receiving the "Stigmata," in repousse work, by no means badly executed. And pasted on the bare wall, immediately above the pillow of the little bed, was a coloured print of the cheapest and vilest description, representing the Madonna with the seven legendary poignards sticking in her bosom, and St. Francis, supported on either side by a friar of his order, kneeling at ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... of execution in this picture, it is unsurpassed. It is in this respect like the most beautiful things ever painted by Raphael,—like the Madonna del Cardellino, whose face has light within, "luce di dentro," as is the expressive Italian phrase,—and is also like another picture that I have seen, attributed to Raphael, in the collection of the late ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... smallest occurrence in the world that it can be fully understood only when the reflection of great cosmic events is recognized in it. Otherwise its inner nature remains just as unintelligible as Raphael's Sistine Madonna would be for one who could see only a small blue speck, while the rest ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner

... each a tiny leaflet. He schooled his face to betray no incredulity when the keepers of the various holy relics recited their virtues, and related the miracles wrought by them. And when Blanka knelt in prayer before a statue of the Madonna, he withdrew respectfully to a distance. It was an earnest petition she offered before the blessed Virgin, a prayer for rescue from her enemies, and for strength to resist every temptation. And she knew not that her rescuer and ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai

... in charge of one of the nurses, a gentle, madonna-faced woman. She was quickly put to bed, and everything done for her that skill and experience could suggest. Hubert Varrick begged permission to sit by her couch and watch ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey

... of all these roses had to yield to that of the Cottage flowers, mignonette, Sweet-William, lemon verbena, Brompton stocks— annuals, biennials, perennials, intermixed—that lined the border, with blue delphiniums and white Madonna lilies ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... reading a story with that title, then he recalled the story vividly, one of the best stories in the world. But this thing before him was not a book as he understood it. He puzzled out the titles of two adjacent cylinders. 'The Heart of Darkness,' he had never heard of before nor 'The Madonna of the Future'—no doubt if they were indeed stories, they were by post ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells

... Chinese warrior who, seated on the back of a dragon, gave battle to an eagle, the symbol relating to man's seeking inspiration from the air. "Ideals in Art" brought forward more or less familiar types: the Madonna and the Child, Joan of Arc, Youth and Beauty, in the figure of a girl, Vanity in the Peacock, with more shadowy intimations in two mystical figures in the background, the tender of the sacred flame and the bearer of the palm for the dead, and the laurel-bearer ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry

... come again," she whispered over her shoulder, as she crept away with a childish twist, hiding her white front from me; "only I shall come sometimes—oh, here they are, Madonna!" ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various

... in black and white," suggested his host. "Her face is her fortune. She's sitting to Brierly—that's my host—for his latest effort. He's painting her as the Madonna or Britannia—I really forget which. A new type, you know. The servants in this house are engaged for their faces. They had a villainous scoundrel of a man-servant—a returned soldier—engaged as Judas Iscariot, who bolted last week with the silver spoons. ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees

... for collections was spreading; the commerce of antiquities flourished in Northern Italy. Petrarch bought medals, and numbered among his artistic treasures a Madonna of Giotto, "whose beauty," he says in his will, "escaped the ignorant and enraptured the masters of the art."[477] This brightening of the land was the result of concurring wills, nor did it pass ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... idly in her lap, looked straight before her, her beautiful eyes fixed upon vacancy, and her mind amply occupied in considering the pros and cons of the situation. Then Sir Eustace took heart of grace; bending down, he kissed the Madonna-like face. Still there was no response. Only very gently she ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard

... tall and very slim, with gracious, sloping shoulders and a long throat, the chin slightly lifted: pale, with great appealing violet eyes under haughty brows, and quantities of yellow-brown hair dressed in some sort of Madonna style. ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... room, master, mistress, and la bella Carolina, entered. Then, we looked round at all the pictures, and I went forward again into another room. Mistress secretly had great fear of meeting with the likeness of that face - we all had; but there was no such thing. The Madonna and Bambino, San Francisco, San Sebastiano, Venus, Santa Caterina, Angels, Brigands, Friars, Temples at Sunset, Battles, White Horses, Forests, Apostles, Doges, all my old acquaintances many times repeated? - yes. Dark, handsome ...
— To be Read at Dusk • Charles Dickens

... left the house, Miriam came in with anxious face to inquire if Joseph had returned. It was a beautiful Oriental face, in whose eyes brooded the light of love and pity, a face of the type which painters have given to the Madonna when they have remembered that the Holy Mother was a Jewess. She was clad in a simple woollen gown, without lace or broidery, her only ornament a silver bracelet. Rachel wept to tell her the lack of news, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... superior he had angered; or Brother Masseo, unable from sheer joy in Christ to articulate anything save "U-u-u," "like a pigeon;" or King Lewis of France falling into the arms of Brother Egidio; or whether they be the Archangel Michael in friendly converse with Brother Peter, or the Madonna handing the divine child for Brother Conrad to kiss, or even the Wolf of Gubbio, converted, and faithfully fulfilling his bargain. There are sentences in the Fioretti such as exist perhaps in no other book in the world, ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... wearily closed his eyes again, before I could answer, and as he did most assuredly bore me, I sat silent, and looked up at the Madonna and Child by Raphael. In the meantime, the valet left the room, and returned shortly with a little ivory book. Mr. Fairlie, after first relieving himself by a gentle sigh, let the book drop open with one hand, and held up the tiny brush ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins

... language in which we speak of anything should be proportioned to the thing spoken of. If you speak of St. Paul's Church, Beckenham, as vast, grand, magnificent, you have no language left wherewith to describe St. Paul's, London. If you call Millais' Huguenots sublime or divine, what becomes of the Madonna St. Sisto of Raphael? If you describe Longfellow's poetry as the feeblest possible trash, the coarsest and most unparliamentary language could alone express your ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith

... Conte d'Ugenta. A murmur ran round the room. A sudden flood of light burst through the windows, lit up the gleaming gold backgrounds of the triptychs, and played over the sorrowfully patient brow of the Siennese Madonna and the glittering steel scales on the Princess ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... she clasped those two strong and slender hands—the hands of the brave Englishman who had just risked his life in order to save Pierre from the guillotine—and she kissed them as fervently as she kissed the feet of the Madonna when she knelt before her ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... What city was ever so celebrated for honest and valiant men, in all classes, or for beautiful girls? There is but one class of those: Beauty is above all ranks; the true Madonna, the patroness and bestower of felicity, the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... pastoral age, of milking the cows. The lady was so-called from the social obligations entailed on the prosperous woman, of "loaf-giving," or dispensing charity to the less fortunate. As dame, madame, madonna, in the old days of aristocracy, she bore equal rank with the lord and master, and carried down to our better democratic age the co-partnership of civic ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller



Words linked to "Madonna" :   vocaliser, Mary, vocalizer, vocalist, Madonna lily, Jewess



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