"Maternal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... outcast one so nearly connected with him in blood, and so interesting in person and disposition. He thought it his duty, therefore, to keep open the slender and oblique communication with the boy's maternal grandfather, as that which might, at some future period, lead to a closer connexion. Yet the correspondence could not, in other respects, be agreeable to a man of spirit like Mr. Gray. His own letters were as short as possible, merely rendering ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... compliment, no doubt, in classical phrase, to bespoken of as "matre pulchra filia pulchrior"—the fairer daughter of a fair mother, but, after all, it is a greater compliment to the daughter than to the mother. I don't know that maternal affection, the purest sentiment on earth, is ever quite pleased that the daughter is taller and fairer and more winning in her ways than the mother is, or ever was [laughter]; and I do know that there comes a time when the daughter leaves the mother and cleaves to a closer affection. And ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... shop." Moore used to say playfully, that he was called, in order to dignify his occupation, "a provision merchant." When on his way to Bannow in 1835 to spend a few days with his friend Thomas Boyse,—a genuine gentleman of the good old school,—he records his visit to the house of his maternal grandfather. "Nothing," he says, "could be more humble and mean than the little low house that remains to tell of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... Shih-fei by style and Yue-ts'un by nickname, who had taken up his quarters in the Gourd temple next door. This Chia Yue-ts'un was originally a denizen of Hu-Chow, and was also of literary and official parentage, but as he was born of the youngest stock, and the possessions of his paternal and maternal ancestors were completely exhausted, and his parents and relatives were dead, he remained the sole and only survivor; and, as he found his residence in his native place of no avail, he therefore entered the capital in search of that reputation, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... the poor baby rested on her mother's bosom. Was the heart of the murderess softened by the divine influence of maternal love? The hands that held the child trembled a little. For the first time it seemed to cost her an effort to compose herself, before she could ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... IN INDIA, &c.—A Lady residing within an hour's drive westward of Hyde Park, and in a most healthy and cheerful situation, is desirous of taking the entire charge of a little girl, to share with her only child (about a year and a half old) her maternal care and affection, together with the strictest attention to mental training. Terms, including every possible expense except medical attendance, 100l. per annum. If required, the most unexceptionable ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 184, May 7, 1853 • Various
... visited during their seven years' tour of Europe; a like screen was in the hall. In this library was the author's plain, shining, English walnut writing-table and chair, whose first owner was Richard Fenimore, Cooper's maternal grandfather, of Rancocus, New Jersey; many of Cooper's works were written upon it. On the opposite side of the hall was the author's bedchamber. It is interesting to learn from Mr. Keese that the large north bed-rooms, ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... apparently legal agent for Edwin, while Edwin's maternal uncle, John Jasper (aged about sixteen when the male parents died), was Edwin's "trustee," as well as his uncle and devoted friend. Rosa's little fortune was an annuity producing 250 pounds a-year: Edwin succeeded to his father's share in ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... himself very disagreeable at home with his silly talk and his hatred of the King and the Queen. In a conversation he had with his mother he flung away all disguise and also hurled some unpleasant and extremely unvarnished truths full in the maternal face." ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... Arthur, and reputed one of the nine worthy, and first and chief of the Christian men. And many noble volumes be made of him and of his noble knights in French, which I have seen and read beyond the sea, which be not had in our maternal tongue. But in Welsh be many and also in French, and some in English but nowhere nigh all. Wherefore, such as have late been drawn out briefly into English I have after the simple conning that God hath sent to me, under the favour and correction of all noble lords and ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... he had need to say commodious, and for insidious hinsidious, and felt confident he spoke with accent wondrous fine, when aspirating hinsidious to the full of his lungs. I understand that his mother, his uncle Liber, his maternal grand-parents all spoke thus. He being sent into Syria, everyone's ears were rested, hearing these words spoken smoothly and slightly, nor after that did folk fear such words from him, when on a sudden is brought the nauseous news that th' Ionian waves, after Arrius' arrival thither, no longer ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... Arthur, and reputed one of the nine worthy, and first and chief of the Christian men; and many noble volumes be made of him and of his noble knights in French, which I have seen and read beyond the sea, which be not had in our maternal tongue, but in Welsh be many, and also in French, and some in English, but nowhere nigh all. Wherefore such as have lately been drawn out briefly into English, I have, after the simple cunning that God hath sent to me, under the favour and correction ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... hid behind a spreading wood, An ancient Pict-built mansion stood, I spied, among an angel brood, A female pair; Sweet shone their high maternal ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... henceforward made up the melancholy routine of the life of the "holy widow." Love for her child for a long time kept her from taking the veil, but at length, by prayer and fasting, she emancipated herself from this maternal weakness of the flesh, and was rapturously received by the Ursulines of Tours. Yet in spite of the vagaries of her devout mind, Madame de l'Incarnation possessed a singular aptness for practical affairs. Several of her early years had been spent in the house of her brother-in-law, ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... more maternal, than this letter from the Empress? "Your letter moved me deeply; I see your grief is ever fresh and I perceive this better by my own sufferings. We have lost what was most worthy to be loved; my tears flow as they did the first ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... around Whose lofty summit veiling clouds arise Of the earth's immemorial sacrifice To Brahma in whose breath all lives and dies; O Hierarch enrobed in timeless snows, First-born of Asia whose maternal throes Seem changed now to a million human woes, Holy thou art and still! Be so, nor sound One sigh of all ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice
... old woman of the cottage received home truths instead of tea and sugar from Mavis Dale, who, with all her maternal feelings aroused, rushed off straightway to hunt for the neglectful father. She found him at the Barradine Arms, and demanded his permission to take away the child. Veale, although sadly bemused, at once said that he could refuse ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... paper), I came across the following statement in the new edition of Chambers' Encyclopaedia, art. Deformities (by Prof. A. Hare): "In an increasing proportion of cases which are carefully investigated, it appears that maternal impressions, the result of shock or unpleasant experiences, may have a considerable influence in producing deformities in the offspring." In consequence of this I sent the case which had been furnished me, and which is certainly about as well attested and conclusive as anything can be. ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... would be willing to initiate the woman of Walpi in the rites of the Mamzrau. She complied, and thus the observance of the ceremonial called the Mamzrauti came to Walpi. I can not tell how it came to the other villages. This Mamzrau-monwi had no children, and hence my maternal ancestor's sister became chief, and her tiponi (badge of office) came to me. Some of the other Awatobi women knew how to bring rain, and such of them as were willing to teach their songs were spared and went to different ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... coffee and recollections of Cynthia's joyful aberrations at such periods caused a breaking up of the maternal conclave. The babies were borne away to simmer between blankets until called for. The women unpacked baskets, brooded over teapots, and kept up an harmonious clack as the table was spread with pyramids of cake, regiments of pies, quagmires of jelly, snow-banks of bread, and gold mines of butter; ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... a very nice baby—big for her few months of life. I'm very proud to be her godmother." Danvers watched as she pulled the fleecy covering around the sleeping child. With the act a maternal look came into her lovely face, unconscious as she was of scrutiny, and a thrill of ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... her affection for Zillah was very manifest, and as the days passed it increased. She seemed to cling to the young girl as though her loving nature needed something on which to expend its love; as though there was a maternal instinct which craved to be satisfied, and sought such satisfaction in her. Zillah returned her tender affection with a fondness which would have satisfied the most exigeant nature. She herself had never known the sweetness of a mother's care, and it seemed as though she had suddenly found out all ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... and nobody thinks any harm of it when you marry the girl. You could do it now because I know you've got money. From all I can hear she's just the sort of girl that would go with you.' The son sat silent, listening to these maternal councils. He did believe that Marie would go off with him, were he to propose the scheme to her. Her own father had almost alluded to such a proceeding,—had certainly hinted that it was feasible,—but at the same time had very clearly stated that in such case the ardent lover would ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... human trait; but, as a physician, I have been led to believe that "mother loyalty" is of almost equal or even greater value. All mothers love their children more or less, but only a few mothers possess that superb loyalty which is able to rise above human sympathy and maternal love, which qualifies the mother to stand smilingly by the side of the crib and watch her little one in a fit of anger—yelling at the top of its voice—and yet never touch the child, allow the little fellow to come to himself, to wake up to the fact that all his ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... these eight years of maternal devotion! But the poor bruised heart was not conscious of its delirium. I thought that some months passed at a distance and in silence would heal the wound, and make his friendship again calm and his ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... Bradshaw—that was the long and short of it. And Sally knew, said Laetitia, how detestable mamma could be when she tried. If it wasn't for papa, Julius Bradshaw would simply be said not-at-home to, and have to leave a card and go. But she was going to go her own way and not be dictated to, maternal authority or no. Perhaps the speaker felt that Sally was mentally taking exception to universal revolt, for a flavour of excuse or ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... not already seen the same thing with the Leaf-cutters, this would be the place to enlarge upon the useless tasks undertaken by the insect when, with its ovaries apparently depleted, it goes on spending its strength with no maternal object in view and for the sole pleasure of work. I have come across several reeds stopped up with flock though containing nothing at all, or else furnished with one, two or three cells devoid of provisions or eggs. The ever-imperious instinct ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... satyr, the affectionate glow of the domestic habitue, the rare exalted passion of the lover, the cold, clear attraction of the intellectual platonist, the will to possession of the sex-maniac, the will to voluptuous cruelty of the sex-pervert, the maternal instinct, the race-instinct, the instinct towards fetish-worship, the instinct towards art, towards nature, towards the ultimate mystery—all these things have been called "love" that we should follow them and pursue them; all these things have been called "love" ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... be so maternal. It's cloying to the male. Be discreet, Susan. You will talk as though you had weaned me but a year or two, and still wanted me ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... 27. "If a man, kinless of paternal relatives, fight and slay a man, and then if he have maternal relatives, let them pay a third of the 'wer'; his guild-brethren a third part; for a third let him flee. If he have no maternal relatives, let his guild-brethren pay half, ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... to drip from Dolly's eyes. "You can't do that," she said, a maternal firmness coming into her voice. "Why, Goosie, what would they think of you ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... all under his sway. He would undertake any sort of trouble to assist those whom he thought deserved assistance. He was a handsome man, strikingly like a gentleman, with highly courteous manners, which resembled those of his maternal uncle, the famous Lord Castlereagh, as I was told by the Minister at Rio. Nevertheless he must have inherited much in his appearance from Charles II., for Dr. Wallich gave me a collection of photographs which ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... and talked as if he, and not his sister, were the important human personage. So fraternal feeling is tender feeling, existing between members of the same family, or the love that we conceive ought to be present. Is such love instinctive, as is the maternal love? If it is, that instinct is very much weaker, and hostile feeling, indifference, rivalry, may easily replace it. We rarely conceive of a mortal world where so intense a love as that of the mother will be the common feeling; all we dare hope for is a world ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... There was a situation that fairly bristled with opportunities for blundering. She might, with this grown-up son of her husband's whom she had hardly seen, have shown herself shy, embarrassed, at a loss how to take him. She might have tried to be archly maternal with him or elder-sisterly. But she played up none of these sentimental possibilities, seemed, indeed, serenely unaware of them. She treated him just as she had always treated Mary—as a contemporary. From the beginning she had no trouble making him talk. For one thing her ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... of nature, for instance, than that the mother should educate her child? yet we felicitate ourselves upon the establishment of infant-schools, which is in direct opposition to it. Nay, we interfere with the maternal instinct before the child is born, by furnishing, in cases where there is no necessity, the mother with baby-linen for her unborn child. Now, that in too many instances a lamentable necessity may exist for this, I allow; but why should such charity be obtruded? Why should so many excellent ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... gasped with blue lips flecked with foam as her eyes (suddenly bereft of their colour in the sunlight) shed tears born of the intolerable anguish of the maternal function, and her body writhed and twisted as though her frame had been severed ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... religion and great personal piety, for the unselfish performance of whatever duty lay before her, and for entire self-abnegation she is unsurpassed, and the chroniclers of the time all bear witness to her exalted character." Her solicitude for the nation was truly maternal. She set herself to combat, with zeal and energy, the abuses which had crept into the practice of religion, taking a prominent part—with her royal husband as the interpreter of her southern speech—in many councils summoned at her ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... hardly shows otherwise than in their sensual brutality. She succeeds best with simple, vegetative natures of elemental instincts and eruptive passions, like the women of the Eifel, whose life of hardship, unhappiness in love, and maternal sorrows she knows how to represent with telling power. From the collection entitled Forces of Nature (1905) we have taken the story of a mother who for blind love of her son becomes an incendiary—a ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... what would have happened had the work come first, but I should have had the children. I know that. I had always wanted them. Even my hospital experience, which rent the veil of life for me, and showed it often terrible, could not change that fundamental thing we call the maternal instinct.... I would forfeit every part of success that has come to me rather than lose any part, even the smallest, of my family life. It is on the foundation of my home that I ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... said the church-man, who stood in the relation of maternal uncle to the youth, "who suffer their passions to have the mastery of them. You must learn, therefore, to be their tyrant, for if you be not, be well assured that they will be yours—and merciless tyrants they are to the wretches who become ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... fool, Pierre?" said his mother, sharply. "Thou'rt ready enough with excuses, I'll warrant, for thy own purposes: invent one now. It matters not, so that thou bring her here." And Pierre, reassured by this maternal carte blanche for the best lie he could think of, raced away, first tucking securely into a niche of the stone basin the little pot with a red carnation in it which he had brought for his contribution to the ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... thought instantly of Marion and his mother, and he had felt that two women would grieve for him. Tonight he thought of Marion and cast the thought away with a curse and a sneer. As for his mother—would his mother care so very much? Had he given her any reason for caring, beyond the natural maternal instinct which is in all motherhood? He did not know. If he could be sure that his mother would grieve for him—but he did not know. Perhaps she had grieved over him in the past until she had worn out all ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... and part of a wet summer, John Clare went to Mr. Merrishaw's school at Glinton, during short intervals of hard labour in the fields. At the end of this period a curious accident seemed to give a sudden turn to his prospects in life. A maternal uncle, called Morris Stimson, one day made his appearance at Helpston, having been previously on a visit to his father and sisters at Castor. Uncle Morris was looked upon as a very grand personage, he holding the post of footman to a lawyer ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... groups in the Agora, upon the steps of the temples and along the porticoes. At every street corner one might have encountered women leading by the hand little children, whose uneven walk ill suited the maternal anxiety and impatience. Maidens were hastening to the fountains, all with urns gracefully balanced upon their heads, or sustained by their white arms as with natural handles, so as to procure early the necessary water provision for the household, and thus obtain leisure at the hour when the nuptial ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... and her eyelids flickered ominously. The servant's veiled meaning was quite plain to her. Brave, hardy as this girl of the prairie was, the fear that was ever in her heart had suddenly assumed the proportions of a crushing reality. She loved her uncle with an affection that was almost maternal. It was the love of a strong, resolute nature for one of a kindly but weak disposition. She loved the gray-headed old man, whose affection had made her life one long, long day of happiness, with a tenderness which no recently-acquired faults of his could alienate. He—and now ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... us much about his mother—a Frenchman is apt to regard his father simply as a necessary though often inconvenient appendage, possibly absorbing the idea from the maternal side of the house—but his mother is his solace, comforter and friend. The mother of Corot was intelligent, industrious, tactful; sturdy in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... delight to be occupied among the models and casts, which for the first time she regarded with the wistful interest of a soul struggling to receive ideas of beauty vaguely discerned yet ever eluding her. That brightness in her mother's mind which might have descended to the second Avice with the maternal face and form, had been dimmed by admixture with the mediocrity of her father's, and by one who remembered like Pierston the dual organization the opposites could be ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... years. The very hawk, whose food is plunder, thrusts her still weak and tender young ones out of the nest, that they may not become accustomed to soft repose. She strikes the lingerers with her wings; she forces her callow young to fly, that they may prove to be such in the future as her maternal fondness can be proud of. Do you therefore, lofty by nature, and stimulated yet more by the love of fame, study to leave such sons behind you as your fathers have left in ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... greeted the boys warmly. His eyes sparkled out of a cheery, bearded face. Look at him well. An Harrovian of the Harrovians this. His grandfathers on the maternal and paternal side had been friends at Harrow in Byron's time. The Rev. Septimus wore rather a shabby coat and a terrible hat, but the consummate Caterpillar, who respected pedigrees, regarded him with pride and veneration. He came up from his obscure West Country vicarage to town just once ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... carriage rolled away she burst into a flood of tears. She did not know whether she was glad or sorry; but, somehow, she had faith in Aneta. Was she never going to see Maggie again? She was not quite without maternal love for her only child, but she cared very much more for Bo-peep, and quite felt that Maggie would be a most troublesome inmate ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... daughter and his wife. In the marriage of an heiress with her inferior or her equal, such exchange often required and allowed: but as they continued to diverge from the regal stem, the sons of Louis the Fat were insensibly confounded with their maternal ancestors; and the new Courtenays might deserve to forfeit the honors of their birth, which a motive of interest had tempted them to renounce. 3. The shame was far more permanent than the reward, and a momentary blaze was ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... "An Apology for the Church of England in Canada, by a Protestant of the Established Church of England," the writer thus refers to this controversy:—"Our Methodist brethren have disturbed the peace of their maternal Church by the clamour of enthusiasm and the madness of resentment; but they are the wayward children of passion, and we hope that yet the chastening hand of reason will sober down the wildness of that ferment," etc. Kingston, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... prosperity I thought myself happy in the idea of being so nearly related to you by adoption, I still think it more so now I see you in adversity. Thank heaven and your adoption for my comfortable situation! your maternal conduct was amply displayed in teaching me all the necessary female arts; and I am happy in the reflection, that I can make use of my knowledge for your sake. With health and courage, I fear not being able to procure for us both at least a ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... deceivers and lovelorn damsels when she went to the sewing-circle. The bitterness of her tears was greatly sweetened by the consideration that in any case no one could pity her. She took such consolation from this thought that she faced her mother unflinchingly at tea, and baffled the maternal inquest on her "redness of eyes" by the ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... Magee wanted to add his tears to those of the girl. This frail and lovely damsel in distress owning as her maternal parent a heavy unnecessary—person! The older woman also had yellow hair, but it was the sort that suggests the white enamel pallor of a drug store, with the soda-fountain fizzing and the bottles of perfume ranged in an odorous row. Mamma! ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... the equipment of my own fair countrywomen—in a word, the veritable bustle. Among the belles of Axim, there is a reason for the excrescence which does not exist elsewhere; for the little children ride astride of the maternal bustle, which thus becomes as useful, as it is unquestionably ornamental. Fashion, however, has evidently more to do with the matter than convenience; for old wrinkled grandams wear these beautiful anomalies, and little girls of eight years old display protuberances that might excite the envy ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... little ones to sleep with improvised tales of wonderful fascination. For their sakes he becomes a sculptor and moulds in bread-crumb most marvellous pigs with four matches for legs. They it is who know best the almost feminine tenderness, the wellnigh maternal love, of which that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... rather mystified, and the stout mother rather distracted by maternal anxiety, the whole party deposit themselves in the Margate boat, and after having congratulated himself on having secured very comfortable seats, the stout father sallies to the chimney to look for his luggage, which ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... life was a failure, and lamented somewhat that she had so wrecked it. She was not hard of heart; and sometimes she thought of Daniel Granger with a remorseful pang, that cams upon her sharply in the midst of her maternal joys; thought of all that he had done for love of her—the sublime patience wherewith he had endured her coldness, the generous eagerness he had shown in the indulgence of her caprices; in a word, the wealth of wasted love he had lavished ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... one, long gone to God, who never ran and played with the others. I can see her still, with the pleasure lighting up her little, thin face, where she sat sedately, her scarlet shoes to the blaze and her doll clasped to a tenderly maternal breast. ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... the effects of a serious wound received in the trenches, was completely dominated by his old schoolmistress, who had gone out to nurse him, and the struggle between her fierce maternal hunger to hold him at her side and his desire for freedom from her obsessing influence, makes a story of singular strength and interest, with an unusual climax of dramatic intensity. Side by side with this more sombre theme there runs a ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... alarmed that they thought the end had come, peacefully and suddenly. But the widow rallied and, in spite of her daughter's protests, insisted on continuing with her work. Marvelling at her determination, touched by this pathetic exhibition of maternal devotion, Virginia would sit silently for hours, her eyes filled with tears, watching the dear, tired fingers swiftly and ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... she desired. Yet, with all this, she had scarcely a tincture of obstinacy. She carefully watched symptoms as they rose, and the success of her experiments; and governed herself accordingly. While I thus enumerate her more than maternal qualities, it is impossible not to feel a pang at the recollection ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... teacher of extensive reputation and most excellent qualities, and did his best to raise the standard of the place. From him, and from her mother as well, the young Clara inherited her innate musical taste. But the maternal influence was not of long duration, for domestic troubles soon caused the separation of Wieck and his wife, the latter marrying the father of Woldemar Bargiel, while the former also entered into a second union, with Clementine ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... had this rainy day seen at Heartsease Farm? Where the twins of evil names had been left to their new life, and their maternal grandfather had so coolly turned his back upon them, while they satisfied their material little souls with such cookies as they had ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... of the Colony and the outside world. For no mammal bringing forth but one young a year can stand, when their young are just born and are entirely helpless, being attacked by huge steel-protected steamers carrying hundreds of men with modern rifles or even clubs. Advantage is also taken of the maternal instinct to get the mothers as well as the young "fat," if the latter is not obtainable in sufficient quantities. Meanwhile the poor scattered people of the northern shores of Newfoundland are being absolutely ruined and driven out. They need the ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... plodding charwoman, that have made me ashamed, as Wordsworth stood rebuked before the 'leech-gatherer, upon the lonely moor.' Let England look to it. These women, mothers of men, are abandoning her shores for foreign lands. When good and dutiful children desert the maternal home, what provocation must they have had ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... her population drawn from all nationalities to learn from her lips the sacred lessons of independent self-rule, she has sent it forth as freely to the westward to build co-equal States in the beauty of her own image, whilst four millions of her children still abide in growing happiness under her maternal care. Verily, it was the spirit of prophecy which said, two hundred years ago, "God will bless ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... them, and this was only effected by an alarming sacrifice of their morality; Hickory and Wan Lee instantly became Pirates, and at once elected Polly as their Queen. The royal duties, which seemed to be purely maternal, consisted in putting the Pirates to bed after a day of rapine and bloodshed, and in feeding them with liquorice water through a quill in a small bottle. Limited as her functions were, Polly performed them with inimitable gravity and unquestioned sincerity. ...
— The Queen of the Pirate Isle • Bret Harte
... the great merit of the Dutch animal-painters, and of Potter above all, that they have not only depicted animals, but have revealed, and told in the poetry of color, the delicate, attentive, almost maternal love with which this Dutch agricultural people cherish their cattle. Potter's animals interpret the poetry of rural life. By them he has expressed the silence and the peace of the meadows, the pleasure of solitude, the sweetness of repose, and the satisfaction of patient toil. ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... many suitors for her hand: she gave a preference to William Murray Nairn, her maternal cousin, who had been Baron Nairn, barring the attainder of the title on account of the Jacobitism of the last Baron. The marriage was celebrated in June 1806. At this period, Mr Nairn was Assistant Inspector-General of Barracks in Scotland, and ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... out of her hand and looked up. There is often something maternal even in a girlish love, and Mary's hard experience had wrought her nature to an impressibility very different from that hard slight thing which we call girlishness. At Fred's last words she felt an ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... herself with grim jocoseness the "alma mater" of her students, but if she be a mother at all she is one of a very heroic and Spartan cast, who conceals her maternal affection with remarkable success. The only signs of interest which she ever designs to evince towards her alumni are upon those not infrequent occasions when guineas are to be demanded from them. Then one is surprised to find how carefully ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... charming adventure," he pursued with a suavely personal nod, "beginning with the blow-out of the taxicab tire that made us five minutes late for this evening's boat. We were bound up the Sound, you understand, to spend a fortnight with a maternal aunt. And our luggage is well on its way there now. So when we missed the boat there was nothing for it but go by train. We taxied back here through that abominable storm, booked for Boston by the eleven ten, and ducked across the way to dine at the Biltmore. ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... silent on the score of Waring's reply to her irate lord, for if Sam did mean to be impertinent, as he unquestionably could be, the colonel she knew would be merciless in his discipline and social amenities would be at instant end. Waring had covered her with maternal triumph and Margaret with bliss unutterable by leading the ante-Lenten german with the elder daughter and making her brief stay a month of infinite joy. The Rounds were ordered on to Texas, and Margaret's ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... of Reuilly consisted of two farms and of a house of some pretension, inhabited formerly by the maternal family of M. de Camors. He had never before seen this property when he reached it on the evening of a beautiful summer day. A long and gloomy avenue of elms, interlacing their thick branches, led to the dwelling-house, which ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... not also to be pitied? This was the second time within twenty years that a thunderbolt had fallen on her in the full sunlight of happiness. And yet now, as on the day following her husband's death, she found in her heart the robust energy and heroic maternal constancy which enable one to rise above every misfortune. It was in a firm voice that she ordered her servant to go in search of the nearest furniture dealer, no matter which, provided he would pay cash. And when the man arrived she showed him through the rooms with ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... former should repose itself upon her who is "the mother of us all," and in whom, as the "body of Christ," shall "all the families of the earth be blessed." As her loving and confiding daughter, the family should live under her government and discipline, listen to her maternal voice, and be led by her maternal hand. The minister in his pastoral functions, is the representative of the church in each of the families of his flock; and should, therefore, be received, loved, ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... him of the cows of a distant country where I had lived, that had the maternal instinct so strong that they refused to yield their milk when deprived of their young. They "held it back," as the saying is, and were in a sullen rage, and in a few days their fountains dried up, and there was no more milk until calving-time came ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... and their eyes met. She cast her arms about her mother's neck, laid her cheek upon it for a moment, and then, feeling the maternal tear, lifted her lips, ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... my hand," said Stratton, looking at the stiff, formal, handsome old body; half amused, half pleased, by the maternal "my dear." ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... signers of the Declaration of Independence, Thornton, Taylor, and Smith were natives of Ireland; McKean, Read, and Rutledge were of Irish parentage; Lynch and Carroll were grandsons of Irishmen; Whipple and Hancock were of Irish descent on the maternal side; and O'Hart (Irish Pedigrees) declares that Robert Treat Paine was a great-grandson of Henry O'Neill, hereditary prince of Ulster, who "changed his name to that of one of his maternal ancestors so as to save his estates". ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... bread. The father is by turns occupied in war and the chase, or sunk in total indolence, while the mother is oppressed by the toils of her laborious bondage, and has but little time to devote to her maternal cares. The infant is fastened to a board, cushioned with soft moss, by thongs of leather, and is generally hung on the branch of a tree, or, in traveling, carried on the mother's back.[273] When able to move, ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... picture of facts; it is but a faint, a very faint and imperfect sketch of reality which defies exaggeration. Cases of such depravity, on the part of mothers, I with much pleasure confess to be comparatively rare. Maternal affection is the preventive. But what, let me ask, can be hoped of the children of such parents? What are their characters likely to become under such tuition? With such examples before their eyes, need they leave their homes to seek ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... composed. "Take Mr. Penny's overcoat," she brusquely directed a servant. He had never seen a more delectable supper than the one awaiting him; and he tasted most of what found its way to his plate—he owed that to the maternal solicitude secretly regarding him, hastily masked as he met his mother's gaze. Sitting later in accustomed formality the dulness of a species of relief folded him. The minor sounds of his home, the deliberate loudness of an old clock, the minute warring of his mother's bone needles, ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... and produced, without any visible symptom, the most excruciating pain," was his chief affliction, followed by intervals of languor and debility. The saving of his life during these dangerous years Gibbon unhesitatingly ascribes to the more than maternal care of his aunt, Catherine Porten, on writing whose name for the first time in his Memoirs, "he felt a tear of gratitude trickling down his cheek." "If there be any," he continues, "as I trust there are some, who rejoice that I live, to that dear and excellent woman they must hold themselves ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... Nature by devices which she is unable to distinguish from the reality. I shall never forget the daughter of Marzin, the carpenter in the High Street, who, losing her senses owing to a suppression of the maternal sentiment, took a log of wood, dressed it up in rags, placed on the top of it a sort of baby's cap, and passed the day in fondling, rocking, hugging, and kissing this artificial infant. When it was placed in the cradle beside her of an evening, she was quiet all night. There are some instincts ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... stay-at-home animal; I do not see her straying abroad during the summer. Later, in the autumn, when the Pompili have disappeared, She wanders about; turning gipsy, she takes the open air with her numerous family, which she carries on her back. Apart from these maternal strolls, she does not appear to me to leave her castle; and the Pompilus, I should think, has no great chance of meeting her outside. The problem, we perceive, is becoming complicated: the huntress cannot make her way into the burrow, where she would risk sudden death; ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... of clans being connected with one another, such connection being called by the Khasis iateh kur. Whenever such connection exists, intermarriage is strictly prohibited, and is considered to be sang. There is no custom of hypergamy. A Khasi cannot marry his maternal uncle's daughter during the lifetime of the maternal uncle. This is probably due to the fact that the maternal uncle, or kni, in a Khasi household is regarded more in the light of a father than of an uncle. His children, however, would belong to the clan of his wife, and there ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... it should remind me of what I say of others who do the same: that the frequent amorous glances they cast upon their work witness that their hearts pant with self-love, and that even the disdainful severity wherewith they scourge them are but the dandlings and caressings of maternal love; as Aristotle, whose valuing and undervaluing himself often spring from the same air of arrogance. My own excuse is, that I ought in this to have more liberty than others, forasmuch as I write specifically of myself and of my writings, as I do of my other actions; that my theme turns ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... said the king, paying no heed to this maternal duel, but patting the top of his sceptre as if it had been the hilt of a sword which he was about to draw, "is, where ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... Childhood Conflicts with Prominent Reference to the Urinary System: with some General Considerations on Urinary Symptoms in the Psychoneuroses and Psychoses. C. Macfie Campbell. The Hound of Heaven. Thomas Vernon Moore. A Lace Creation Revealing an Incest Fantasy. Arrah B. Evarts. Nephew and Maternal Uncle: A Motive of Early Literature in the Light of Freudian Psychology. Albert ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... it? A sublime and divine mystery is accomplished. Such a being costs nature the most vigilant maternal care; yet man, who would cure you, can think of nothing better than to offer you lips which belong to him in order to teach you how ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... my children to my wife; I never doubted her maternal tenderness for them. I above all recommend to her to make them good christians, and honest people; to make them consider the grandeurs of this world (if they be condemned to possess them) only as dangerous and perishable possessions, and to ...
— Historical Epochs of the French Revolution • H. Goudemetz
... man brought with him a cowskin; and the maternal apprehensions of his wife, who knew his severe and determined disposition, were now awakened to such a degree as to overcome the feeling of deference, if not fear, with which the authority of her liege lord had always ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... that I was a free man, to follow my own fancy, I still was too curious to sec what kind of a person was my unknown father to deviate either from my route or my maternal instructions, and in a fortnight's time I ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... him with an expression of maternal love and severity, which pierced externals more keenly than an X-ray. "No," said she, "I do not think it is foolish. You look too well to be natural. You look this minute as young in your face as you did when I had you ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... his mother, maternal fondness coming out in support of her husband, "you should be glad your father can allow ye the opportunity. Eh, but it's a grand thing a gude education! You may rise ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... University—the University of Virginia is always "The University"; but who, it had seemed at a certain dark season, must give up this long-cherished hope for lack of the wherewithal. Mary, being four years older than her brother and quite twenty, had long felt a maternal obligation to administer his affairs. If he did not go to the university, like his father and grandfather before him, it would be because she had failed in her duty. At this particular phase of the domestic problem there had appeared, in a certain churchly ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... mothers, whose mutual friendship acquired new strength at the sight of their children, alike the offspring of unhappy love. They delighted to place their infants together in the same bath, to nurse them in the same cradle, and sometimes changed the maternal bosom at which they received nourishment, as if to blend with the ties of friendship that instinctive ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... melon described by Sageret[909] perhaps did thus originate; for the two main branches, which arose from two cotyledon-buds, produced very different fruit,—on the one branch like that of the paternal variety, and on the other branch to a certain extent like that of the maternal ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... much, therefore, that she should now allude to her maternal solicitude because it happened to suit her purpose. She felt herself growing hard and callous and bitter under the strain of the early struggle to succeed, handicapped as she was; and because of one or two ugly experiences that came in the path of such a warfare. She was losing heart also, and ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... I had last written home; and I knew that by this time the dear soul would be fretting her heart out with anxiety on my account. I was therefore growing every day more eager and determined to find a way of deliverance, if only that the maternal anxiety ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... fairy Benigna, casting on them all a look of maternal affection, again gently waved her powerful ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... old tastes. His mother, Mrs. Goddard of Madison Square, was not needlessly alarmed. She told her friends that Paul always had been a butterfly, sipping at many pretty arts. She included among these fine arts, girls. Paul's devotion to golf and a certain rich young woman gave her fine maternal satisfaction. "He stays away from that odious Bohemian crowd, and as long as he does that I am satisfied. Paul is too much of a gentleman ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... writers—as has been very truly remarked by Giraud Teulon,—starting from different facts and different general ideas, and following different methods, have come to the same conclusion. To Bachofen we owe the notion of the maternal family and the maternal succession; to Morgan—the system of kinship, Malayan and Turanian, and a highly gifted sketch of the main phases of human evolution; to MacLennan—the law of exogeny; and to Fison and Howitt—the cuadro, or scheme, ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... berries as they follow fast, And blackthorn bushes with their infant race 110 Of blushing rose-blooms; beeches, to lovers dear, And weeping willow trees; all swift or slow, As their huge boughs or lighter dress permit, Have circled in his throne, and Earth herself Has sent from her maternal breast a growth 115 Of starlike flowers and herbs of odour sweet, To pave the temple that his poesy Has framed, while near his feet grim lions couch, And kids, fearless from love, creep near his lair. Even the blind ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... of deep, engrossing, maternal anxiety, that the lovely interrogator received in reply to this question, might have startled one whose mind had been more accustomed to muse on the depravity of human nature than the spotless being who received it; but to Gertrude it ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... she said, giving him a gentle push. She was shyly aware of a lapse into unhabitual emotion and of some closer approach to the maternal relation fostered by his growing resemblance to ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... letter to a near relation, which she had, during her illness, with much difficulty, written; and in which, with the strongest maternal tenderness, she described my deplorable situation, and intreated his interest to procure me some preferment. Yet so sunk was I by misfortune, that a fortnight elapsed before I had the courage or spirit to attempt delivering this letter. I was then compelled ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... later the knowledge that she herself was to become a mother was forced upon her attention, and was a little irksome. Of necessity her new interests would be interrupted. Though she did not question that she would perform maternal duties fitly and fully, they seemed to her less peculiarly adapted to her than concerns of the intellect and the spirit. However, the possession of a little daughter was more precious to her than she had expected, and the consciousness that the tiny doll which ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... the first lecture I ever attended, and it struck my infant intelligence that they ought to be preserved. And I too might be a poet if I lived in the country, in constant communion with Nature, abandoning my soul to her maternal caress. But alas, the stir, the scramble, the mad whirl of city life, the debasing contact with low material minds, the daily study of Prices Current, make even of me a muckworm. Still, I might work up a brook or two after I get to the woods, or expatiate on a seven-pound trout: my ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... degree, proud, haughty, and subject to fits of Byronic despair and morbid gloom. For these traits we must look back to the Norman Conquest from which he traced his descent in an unbroken line, while, on the side of his maternal grandmother, he was the seventh in descent from Pocahontas, the Indian maiden who ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... young, as also his wife, leaving three children—two girls and a boy. Frances was then but two years and a half old. At the wish of her grandfather, General Duncan Campbell, she was taken to England, and reared as a ward of Chancery, under the guardianship of a maternal aunt. She grew to be very tall in person, erect, and of a commanding figure; large eyes, and magnificent head, with a face somewhat masculine, but well formed, and decidedly handsome. Her brother was sent to India, at the age of fifteen, as a ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... shrewd woman, nor a clever one, but she was kindly in the main, tolerant and maternal. She liked young people, gave gay little parties to which she wore her outlandish clothes of all colors and all cuts, lavished gifts on the girls she liked, and was anxious to see Wallie married to a good steady girl and settled down. Between her ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the situation. Thatcher was now a man of vast possibilities. In all maternal daughters of Eve there is the slightest bit of the chaperone and match-maker. It is the last way of reviving ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... present vengeance. She was surprised and pained when one of the guests interrupted her, and, justifying the treatment she had received at Venice, declared himself her natural son. The lady instantly recognized him, and in the sudden revulsion of maternal feeling, begged him to take an antidote. This he not only refused to do, but continued his dying reproaches, till his mother, losing her self-command, drew her poniard and ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... said to have occurred in the midst of this scene of confusion and terror, which strikingly illustrates the strength of the maternal instinct, even among brutes. It happened that there was a young elephant, and also its mother, in the same division of Pyrrhus's army. The former, though young, was sufficiently grown to serve as ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... tenderness, and hide them while they go to feed. The bleating of the fawn at once recalls the mother to its side. The hunter often imitates this with success, using either his own voice, or a "call," made out of a cane-joint. An anecdote, told by Parry, illustrates this maternal fondness:—"The mother, finding her young one could not swim as fast as herself, was observed to stop repeatedly, so as to allow, the fawn to come up with her; and, having landed first, stood watching it with trembling ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... twenty-one, there being sons between,—and it began to be desirable that they should be married. Since Ralph had been in town the Eardham mansion in Cavendish Square had been opened to him with almost maternal kindness. He had accepted the kindness; but being fully alive to the purposes of matronly intrigue, had had his little jokes in reference to the young ladies. He liked young ladies generally, but was well aware that a young man is not obliged to offer his hand ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... once went to see Alfonso, to be quite certain whether his wounds were fatal or not; and an the next morning, to divert any suspicion that might be turned towards themselves, they arrested Alfonso's maternal uncle, Francesco Gazella, who had come to Rome in his nephew's company. Gazella was found guilty on the evidence of false ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... concealed, as of the Golden-Crowned Thrush, called, for this reason, the Oven-Bird,—the Meadow-Lark, with its burrowed gallery among the grass,—and the Kingfisher, which mines four feet into the earth. But most of the rarer nests would hardly be discovered, only that the maternal instinct seems sometimes so overloaded by Nature as to defeat itself, and the bird flies and chirps in agony, when she might pass unnoticed by keeping still. The most marked exception which I have noticed is the Red Thrush, which, in this respect, as in others, has the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... Florent found themselves alone at the end of the garden, in a corner planted with a few fruit trees. Seated on the ground, they talked somewhat seriously together. The good woman advised Florent with an affectionate and quite maternal kindness. She asked him endless questions about his life, and his intentions for the future, and begged him to remember that he might always count upon her, if ever he thought that she could in the slightest degree contribute to his ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... martyrs, some whose affection would have led them even to sacrifice their own lives, to preserve their husbands; but here, agreeable to Scripture language, a mother proves, indeed, a monster in nature! Neither conjugal nor maternal affection could impress the heart ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... parvenues. If it be a disgrace for a woman to work then is this nation in a very bad way, for few of us are the sons or daughters "of an hundred earls"—can go back more than a generation or two without finding a maternal ancestor blithely swinging the useful sad-iron or taking a vigorous fall out of the wash-tub. The parents of some of the wealthiest people of Kansas City, the bon-ton of the town, smelled of laundry soap, the curry-comb or night-soil cart. Some made themselves useful as hash- ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann |
