"Wifely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... heathen, savage or civilized. And there is the affectation of the maternal passion with women who are never by any chance seen with their children, but who speak of them as if they were never out of their sight; the affectation of wifely adoration with women who are to be met about the world with every man of their acquaintance rather than with their lawful husbands; the affectation of asceticism in women who lead a thoroughly self-enjoying life from end to end; and the affectation ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... until much later that I found out that Mrs. Morton never disputed her husband's will, even in trifles; that he ordered the plan of her life as well as his own; that her passionate love for her children was restrained in order that her wifely and social duties should be carried out; that she was so perfectly obedient to him, not from fear, but from an excess of womanly devotion, that she seldom even contested an opinion. My fate was very nearly sealed at that moment, but a hasty ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... of this function of married life. But if John nurses hurt feelings whenever Mary punctures his vanity by suggesting that he presents to the world a less than perfect front, Mary may soon lose courage and relinquish her wifely job of husband improvement. Or the combination ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... to having been somewhat put about. "My dear Belviso," I said, "Virginia is liable to impulse, it may be admitted; but she is never likely to forget what wifely duty involves. I was not a cruel husband to her, and left her through no fault of my own. I will answer for her that she will ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... face from out the thousands, 100 (Were she Jethro's daughter, white and wifely, Were she but the Ethiopian bondslave), He would envy yon dumb patient camel, Keeping a reserve of scanty water Meant to save his own life in the desert; Ready in the desert to deliver (Kneeling down to let his breast be opened) Hoard ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... certainly as he was an upright man, so surely was he hard, stern, and inflexible. But for three years the moan and the murmur had never been out of her heart; she had rebelled against her husband as against a tyrant, with a hidden, sullen rebellion, which tore up the old landmarks of wifely duty and affection, and poisoned the fountains whence gentlest love and reverence had once been ...
— Lizzie Leigh • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Harman," he said, speaking with much intensity in a low earnest voice. "You don't seem to be remembering where you are. You come and you tell me you're going to do this and that. Don't you know, Lady Harman, that it's your wifely duty to obey, to do as I say, to behave as I wish?" He brought out a lean index finger to emphasize his remarks. "And I am going to make you ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... protested, in wifely fashion. "I'm sure, Van Riper," she began, "you've no need to fly in such a huff if I so much as speak of folks who have some conceit of being genteel. It's only proper pride of Mr. Dolph to have a country house, and—" (her voice faltering ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... of mean-got gain And hates of inward stain, Fair Lady? For aye shall name and fame be sold, And place be hugged for the sake of gold, And smirch-robed Justice feebly scold At Crime all money-bold, Fair Lady? Shall self-wrapt husbands aye forget Kiss-pardons for the daily fret Wherewith sweet wifely eyes are wet — Blind to lips kiss-wise set — Fair Lady? Shall lovers higgle, heart for heart, Till wooing grows a trading mart Where much for little, and all for part, Make love a cheapening art, Fair Lady? Shall woman scorch for ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... is weak, its construction faulty. Only one ethical idea is presented in it with real vividness, but it is an idea which is peculiarly dear to the German heart—the saving power of woman's love. "Fidelio" is a tale of wifely devotion, and Beethoven bent all his energies to a glorification of his heroine's love and fidelity. To represent the character faithfully has been the highest ambition of German singers for a century. In ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... of wifely jealousy, kept Fred to herself, and Barrie was my companion. This was delightful. No such good thing had come to me since making her acquaintance. On the way up the quaint, steep street, there came a shower of rain, and I had to shelter her with my umbrella. It ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... be excused many things that persons prouder and more reticent might properly avoid; besides, the domestic habits of the south admit of very close relationship between the mistress and her servants, unknown to other regions even of our own country. I could only smile an answer to this wifely enthusiasm, but it seemed to me genuine and so sincere, that all my sympathy went with it. As for the maid, she lay perfectly still, listening, and apparently half asleep, for she had gathered the bed clothes around her, and ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... beauty, and the dignity of her presence. But her manner suggested to me that her life had certainly not brought content to Cynthia; and I gathered from her brother Ernest that the radiant brightness of nature which had characterised her youth had not survived her assumption of wifely and maternal cares. Others might regard this change as part of a natural and inevitable process. In my eyes also it was inevitable and natural, but not as the result of the passage of time. For me ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... them. Mr. Rymer was 'in the City'; Mrs. Rymer, who had two little girls, lived only for domestic peace—she had been in better circumstances, but did not repine, and forgot all worldly ambition in the happy discharge of her wifely and maternal duties. 'A charming family!' was Miss Shepperson's mental comment when, at their invitation, she had called one Sunday afternoon soon after they were settled in the house; and, on the way home to her lodgings, she sighed once or twice, thinking of Mrs. Rymer's blissful ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... reminded of the way in which, in our frequent absence from home and children, wifely letters have cheered and interested us, depicting with motherly tenderness the gifts the children had brought her on her birthday, or other occasion, with a fulness of detail that showed alike the pleasure of the writer and her ...
— Separation and Service - or Thoughts on Numbers VI, VII. • James Hudson Taylor
... dear; forgive me!" she cried, with true wifely penitence. "I see it all and I love you for it, better than ever before." She squeezed his arm tightly and squeezed her eyelids vainly. "But you must never do it again," she cautioned, tenderly. He laughed again, that ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... Edith that her husband was nervous and irritable, and with wifely protective instinct she attributed his condition to overwork. She did not take up the challenge which he in a manner flung down. She seldom argued with him now; she cast about in her mind for a safe topic of conversation, and, by ill-luck, hit upon the one least calculated ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... theatre, and Emmy had grown in his eyes suddenly younger. He could not have imagined her so cordial, so youthful, so interested in everything that met her gaze. Finally, he found her quieter, more amenable, more truly wifely than her sister. It was an important point in Alf's eyes. You had to take into account—if you were a man of common sense—relative circumstances. Devil was all very well in courtship; but mischief in a girl became contrariness ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... kind and generous, simple and astute at the same time; her gayety was gentle, her wit without malice. Though well-informed, she made no parade of her acquirements, fearing to be accused of pedantry. Her wifely devotion had won the Emperor's affection, and her unfailing gentleness had attracted all his friends. In this estimate I am confirmed by my recollections, and I am not inspired by any partiality, by what has happened, ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... lit his pipe and peacefully rubbed an ankle with a stockinged toe. He reposed in the state of matrimony like a lump of unblended suet in a pudding. This was his level Elysium—to sit at ease vicariously girdling the world in print amid the wifely splashing of suds and the agreeable smells of breakfast dishes departed and dinner ones to come. Many ideas were far from his mind; but the furthest one was the thought of ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... girl next takes the word, addressing himself mostly to the bride. Now that she is united to the man of her choice, she should always comply with her wifely duties. She must make blankets for her husband, and be industrious, make tesvino and iskiate, pinole, tortillas, gather herbs, etc., that her husband may always have something to eat and not go hungry. He names all the herbs singly. She must also help him, in her way, ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... heathen faithfulness even to death; and where the teaching of Christianity had not forbidden the taking away of life by one's own hand, perhaps wifely love could not go higher. Yet Christian women have endured a yet more fearful ordeal to their tender affection, watching, supporting, and finding unfailing fortitude to uphold the sufferer in agonies that must have rent ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of wifely incredulity, and then let it die away as she recognized that he was really troubled and sad in his mind. She bent over to kiss him lightly on the brow, and tiptoed her ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... least in love with life; I might be, p'raps, if I had a wife To care for me in a wifely way, Or a neighbour or two to say good-day, Or a chum To come And give me the news in a friendly talk, Or share a duet or a meal or a walk. But all alone in the world am I, And I sit in a cave, And try to behave As a good Flamp should, with philosophy. I shan't last long, for the cave is damp, ...
— The Flamp, The Ameliorator, and The Schoolboy's Apprentice • E. V. Lucas
... Lizzie deliberately frustrated this house-wifely ambition. She flounced and muttered when other hands than her own were laid upon her icebox. She turned on rushing faucets, rattled dishes in her pan. Yet Mrs. Salisbury felt that she must personally ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... them to anyone; Irene, whose opinion he secretly respected and perhaps for that reason never solicited, had only been into the room on rare occasions, in discharge of some wifely duty. She was not asked to look at the pictures, and she never did. To Soames this was another grievance. He hated that pride of hers, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Titles 63 to 73 are about women and marriage. The views expressed run to both extremes of approval and disapproval. No one of the writers has apparently any notion of conjugal affection. In some cases under the tyrannical Roman emperors of the first century women showed extreme wifely devotion.[1202] Roman tombstones (not unimpeachable witnesses) testify to conjugal affection between spouses.[1203] In the Icelandic sagas women show heroic devotion to their husbands, although they make their husbands much trouble ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... to interfere with her," he replied, with a sneer. "You have given her such perfect lessons of disobedience and obstinacy that it will take me all my time in the future to drill her into proper wifely shape. But to-night I am not going to interfere with her. She has told me plainly that she means to do just as she likes and that you have given her leave to defy me. Public opinion, it seems, is all in her favour too. So I have just brought your dutiful daughter back ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... radiant future. And though she wore the mocking face and talked the mocking words of the woman who expected such a man to "eat out of her hand," she knew that never out of her hand would he eat save that which she should give him in honourable and wifely service. She knew that. She was exquisitely anxious that I should know it too. Floodgates of relief were expressed when she saw that I knew it. Not that I, personally, counted a scrap. What she craved was a decent human soul's justification ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... one's husband unworried by one's domestic difficulties. "Domestic difficulties" meant, apparently, anything disagreeable that happened to one. Not only her mother, but all the matrons of her acquaintance had concentrated on the extreme desirability of this wifely virtue. "It pays! It pays!" Mrs. Emery had often thus chanted the praises of this quality in her daughter's presence. "I've noticed ever so many times that men who have to worry about domestic machinery and their children don't get on so well. Their minds are distracted. ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... or whatever the enemy might be, Mr. Johnstone was the phylactery. She herself could give no grounds for her conviction beyond his wife's anxiety for his health and well-being. I myself never observed it in a woman, and if I had, should have set it down to ordinary wifely concern. But Kirstie assures me, first, that it was not ordinary, and, secondly, that it was not at all wifely—that Mrs. Johnstone's care of her husband had less of the ministering unselfishness of a woman in love than of the eager concern of a gambler with his stake. The girl ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Gladstone had got to the Bill, he had exhausted a good deal of his stock of voice, and yet he seemed to be less dependent than usual on the mysterious compound which Mrs. Gladstone mixes with her own wifely hand for those solemn occasions. It appeared that both she and her husband had somewhat dreaded the ordeal. The bottle which Mr. Gladstone usually brings with him is about the size of those small, stunted little jars in which, in the days of our youth, the young buck kept his ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... well pleased with herself as a wife, and she knew that her husband was pleased with her. Moreover, she had not the slightest intention of permitting anything to interfere with her wifely duties as she ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... life; in the yearning pain with which the first dread of possible disappointment dawns and darkens over her, and the meek humility of her repentance on the one faint betrayal—wrung from her by momentary anguish—of that disappointment; in the tender wifely patience, reticence, forbearance, with which she hides from all, the heart-gnawings of shattered and expiring hope; the sense which she can no longer veil from her own deepest consciousness that in Mr Casaubon there is no help or stay for her and the unwearied though ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... to fashion a wifely ideal, And find that my tastes are so far from concise That, to marry completely, no ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... too eager a love of the brandy-shop. A model husband, he had spared no pains in her correction. He had flogged her without mercy and without result. His one design was to make his wife obey him, which, as the Scriptures say, all wives should do. But the lust of brandy overcame wifely obedience, and Brinsden, hoping for the best, was constrained to cut a hole in her skull. The next day she was as impudent as ever, until Matthias rose yet more fiercely in his wrath, and the shrew perished. Then was Thomas Pureney's opportunity, ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... stay is indefinite, that it may be for six months, or possibly six years, but that matters not. It is her army home—Brass Button's home—and however discouraging its condition may be, for his sake she pluckily, and with wifely pride, performs miracles, always making ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... for? During all these seven years have I not been bewailing my bachelorhood, and wishing for an Ethel to cheer my solitary fireside with her gracious presence, to be interested in my work and hopes, to interest me in her wifely and maternal ways and aspirations? And when at last all these things were offered me, why did I shrink back and ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... his pipe a-going, he strolled back into the wide passage and scanned the horizon once more. Judith Browne did not like to see her husband in this mood. She knew well how vain every exercise of her wifely arts of diversion would prove when he once fell into this train of black thoughts; but she could not refrain from essaying the hopeless task by holding up her apron of homespun cloth full of cotton rolls, ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... it through his half-closed eyes, like an artist "sighting" a landscape, saw apparently that it was in drawing, and next brought his vision to bear on the back premises of his own dwelling, where he saw there was no wifely ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... and less likely to be infringed is the taboo imposed on him than that imposed on the youth of Blaensawdde. Yet the lady of the Van Pool, whatever her practice, had in theory some relics of old-fashioned wifely duty. She did not object to the chastisement which the laws of Wales allowed a husband to bestow. A husband was permitted to beat his wife for three causes; and if on any other occasion he raised his hand against her, she had her remedy in the shape of a sarad, ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... the look on her quiet face—such a look as she might have worn if he had struck her—penetrated the storm-cloud of his anger. He remembered her years of wifely patience and faithful service, "—a foolish woman. A Sark wife should know which side of her bread the butter is on. ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... I believe, about this time that the First Consul conceived a strong passion for a very intelligent and handsome young woman, Madame D. Madame Bonaparte, suspecting this intrigue, showed jealousy; and her husband did all he could to allay her wifely suspicions. Before going to the chamber of his mistress he would wait until every one was asleep in the chateau; and he even carried his precautions so far as to go from his room to hers in his night-dress, without shoes or slippers. Once I found that day ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... she should feel a little wifely jealousy at having his sister forced in, even to their closest confidence; her face was overclouded for an instant, but she subdued the ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... wifely solicitude she asked concerning Paul. She explained that for a week she had been a prisoner in the chateau, and, since the mobilization, of her husband save that he was with his regiment in Paris she had ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... of course he won't until he's had enough of your beauty. That's all he wants, your beauty—and you'll be fool enough to let him have it FOR NOTHING. I'm sure I wish you joy with the selfish wretch and with your new- fangled ideas of wifely devotion. This will kill Peter. You'll have his death on your conscience. Think that over, now that you're so fond of thinking. Ten thousand dollars right now would save his life. Think that over, too, when your own father ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... no affair of mine or yours. It was made up of wifely and womanly jealousy; knowledge of old age and sunken cheeks; deep mistrust born of the text that says even little babies' hearts are as bad as they make them; rancorous hatred of Mrs. Larkyn, and the tenets of the creed of the Colonel's ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... who torments her kitty, slaps her sister, and runs away when her mother tells her not to go out of the yard. But the house-wifely little girl who tends the baby, washes the cups, and goes to school early with a sunshiny face and kiss all round, she, now, is a neighbour worth having, and I'd put a good mark against her name if I ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... a daddy, too," said she. "Mike's stronger for a man nor even I am for a woman"—a glow of wifely pride passing over her face; "and as to good looks, it's him as is got the good looks, not me. But none on us can't make it out about the chavo. He's so weak and sick he don't look as if he belonged to ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... it very well," she replied; "I gave a most realistic exhibition of wifely concern, and the car had just come to take me to the station when your second ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various
... Then, with true wifely instinct she sought to cheer him up with pleasing prattle of a new bonnet he had promised her. "Ah! darling," he sighed, absently picking up the fire-poker and turning it in his hands, "let us change ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... consider their husbands as their lords, in the feudal meaning of the term—it was held a moral obligation to perform jigai, by way of protest, against disgraceful behaviour upon the part of a husband who would not listen to advice or reproof. The ideal of wifely duty which impelled such sacrifice still survives; and more than one recent example might be cited of a generous life thus laid down in rebuke of some moral wrong. Perhaps the most touching instance occurred in 1892, at the time of the district elections in Nagano ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... O! gape Earth, or may the Sire of might Hurl me with lightning to the Shades amain, Pale shades of Erebus and abysmal Night, Ere, wifely modesty, thy name I stain, Or dare thy sacred precepts to profane. Nay, he whose love first linked us long ago, Took all my love, and he shall still retain And guard it with him in the grave below." She spake, and o'er her lap ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... to some extent, not bad looking—in the evening, anyway. Your idea of keeping household accounts is atrocious, but, on the other hand, you look rather nice in a hammock on a hot summer day. But that is all I can say for you. You have not given me the wifely devotion I expected. Only last week, when I came home feeling miserable, you sat at the piano playing extracts from some beastly revue, when a true wife would have been singing "Parted" or even "Roses of Picardy." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... Menagier's book is concerned, however, not with the theoretical niceties of wifely submission, but with his creature comforts. His instructions as to how to make a husband comfortable positively palpitate with life; and at the same time there is something indescribably homely and touching ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... wed A man she can approve: And since besides her bounty I'm fairest in the county (For so I've heard it said, Though I don't vouch for this), Her promised pounds may move Some honest man to see My virtues and my beauties; Perhaps the rising grazier, 440 Or temperance publican, May claim my wifely duties. Meanwhile I wait their leisure And grace-bestowing pleasure, I wait the happy man; But if I hold my head And pitch my expectations Just higher than their level, They must fall back on patience: I may not mean to wed, 450 ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... can only suppose that she rose to eminence through local conditions unknown to us. The most interesting point about her is that she came to be the representative of the respectable Greek matron, jealous of her wifely rights, holding herself aloof from love affairs, a home person, entitled to respect for the decency of her life, but without great ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... he, "methinks thine is the harder part this day. God strengthen thy wifely heart, for God, methinks, shall yet bring him to thine embrace!" So saying, Sir Benedict mounted and rode to the head of his lances, where flew his banner. "Unbar the gates!" he cried. And presently the great gates of Belsaye town swung ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... kindnesses to me. Thus, out of the bitter and greedy desire of a repentant heart, begging thy pardon for any wrong that ever in my life I did thee, I commend these my requests to thy wonted and undeserved kind wifely and lovely consideration, my body to God's disposing and my love (soul?) ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... seemed to begin by bracing herself to stand against him, now seemed to have braced herself to stand with him—perhaps a more commendable wifely attitude. I mean that the discipline incident to a life of success which was not without its rigors had become to her almost a second nature. The order of the day was cooeperation, team-work; in the grand advance she was no straggler, no ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... loves liberty as a good husband loves his wife; that is also how he loves the land of his birth; at all events, England has a kind of wifely embrace for the home-coming Briton, especially if he comes home ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... BRUTALITY.—Husbands! It is your licentiousness that drives your wives to a deed so abhorrent to their every wifely, womanly and maternal instinct—a deed which ruins the health of their bodies, prostitutes their souls, and makes marriage, maternity and womanhood itself degrading and loathsome. No terms can sufficiently characterize the cruelty, meanness and disgusting selfishness of your conduct ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... declining years he removed to Covington, Ky., near Cincinnati. Mrs. Grant was a true helpmate, a woman of refinement of nature, of controlling religious faith, being from her youth an active member of the Methodist Church, of strong wifely and maternal instincts. Her life was centred in her home and family. Both these parents lived to rejoice in the high achievement and station of their ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen
... bright enough to learn without being taught by a woman that I am your mither? If a great man like yoursel' dinna ken that, learn it now and ne'er forget it. Ance a woman is the wife of any man, she becomes wife to all men for having had the wifely experience she kens! Ance a man-child has beaten his way to life under the heart of a woman, she is mither to all men, for the hearts of mithers are everywhere the same. Bless ye, ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... at an unnatural pitch, all day long she exerted herself, as she had not done for weeks and months, to entertain and keep her husband at her side, and all day long her pretty wifely triumph was bright and unbroken. The very servants took a delight in ministering to it, and Madame was not missed in a single item of the household routine. But about midnight there was a great and sudden change. Bells were frantically rung, lights flew about the house, and there ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... learning one of my wifely duties: not to keep my husband waiting." They went out, and Pottinger, standing by the horses, touched his hat and grew red with joy at ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... her darling, she had left his matrimonial future largely to his father. Frequently her conscience smote her for her neglect of old Hector, but she smoothed it by promising herself to devote more time to him, more study to his masculine needs for wifely devotion, as soon as Elizabeth ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... mercenary, by trying to love each other. Throughout the earth marriage is the reparation of ruined families—the short path, and the most natural one, too. Ruth was poor kin, but she turned from the harvest stubble that made her beautiful feet bleed, to crawl to the feet of old Boaz and find wifely rest, and her wisdom of choice we sing in the psalms of King David, and hear in the proverbs of King ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... and the fragrant flowers, the music sweet as lover's sighs and the sapphire sea, the sunset sky and Zephyrus' musky wing are dreams; the blistered lips and poor bruised bosom, the womanly pride humbled in the dust and wifely honor wounded unto death—these alone are real! With an involuntary cry of rage and shame, a cry that is half a prayer and half a curse—a cry that rings and reverberates through the great sleepy house like a maniac's shriek heard at midnight among the tombs—she flings herself ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... of drays, turning in his claim toward the payment—a transaction which made Flaxen laugh for joy, for she had not felt certain before that he would remain in St. Peter. She was getting about the house now, looking very wifely in her long, warm wraps, her slow motions contrasting strongly with the old restless, springing steps ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... were saying, Ulyana? If you're right, then it's all up with me! See here! I have only one joy, one consolation, and I should have to give it up. Is that easy? Is it? I'm not made of stone that I can look at such wifely doings through my fingers! Your foolish words have entered my ears and wrenched my heart. If I believed you, then—God keep me from it—I should soon do some violence! One can't vouch for himself as to what may happen. Maybe the devil will jog my elbow. ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... shapes of surprising definiteness. Many of her opinions, such as those on church government and the character of Archbishop Laud, seemed too decided under every alteration to have been arrived at otherwise than by a wifely receptiveness. And there was much to encourage trust in her husband's authority. He had some agreeable virtues, some striking advantages, and the failings that were imputed to him all leaned ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... of Love himself, it is, to be sure, difficult to recognise any very deeply penitent spirit. He mildly wards off the reproach, sheltering himself behind his defender, the "lady in green," who afterwards proves to be herself that type of womanly and wifely fidelity unto death, the true and brave Alcestis. And even in the body of the poem one is struck by a certain perfunctoriness, not to say flippancy, in the way in which its moral is reproduced. The wrathful invective against the various classical ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... happiness in a countenance wan with secret torture. And with this sense of responsibility for the honor of both, with the magnificent immolation of self, the young Marquise unconsciously acquired a wifely dignity, a consciousness of virtue which became her safeguard ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... old school, which means, according to my experience, a person who likes to spend a long time getting at a joke or telling a story. He was a long time telling this, with the aid of Mrs. Lunt, who put in her corrections now and then, in a gentle, wifely way all her own, and which helped, instead ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... of PLAPPER!—or rather of Mrs. PLAPPER, as her husband is out. She has taken me in! Charming rooms—not actually facing the sea, but with capital view of it round corner from bow-window. PLAPPER is an optician—wonder whether it is weak eyes, or wifely duty, that makes Mrs. P. wear blue spectacles? Everything arranged—terms most reasonable—now to recover luggage. Stop; better ask address—or I might never be able to find my optician again—like Mrs. Barrett Browning and her lost Bower! "You've only got to use PLAPPER'S ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... "Oh, do your wifely duty, whatever it is," he said.... "It was a mistake, the whole thing. You've done more than your duty, child, but—oh, you'd better ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... make me stronger," said the wife with wifely pride, "Toil I shall not feel nor languor when my lord is ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... and he had evidently enjoyed her society too, but she had never dreamed of this—that he would want her as a wife; she would sooner have thought of looking up to him in a daughterly way—but as he had said he wanted a wifely affection from her, could she—could she give it? For a brief space her brain seemed in a whirl; she saw nothing, heard nothing that was going on about her—could think of nothing but this surprising, astonishing offer, and could not decide whether she could ever accept it or not. ...
— Elsie at the World's Fair • Martha Finley
... Behold!" and she took his hand and placed it upon her shapely head, and then bent herself slowly down till one knee for an instant touched the ground—"Behold! in token of submission do I bow me to my lord! Behold!" and she kissed him on the lips, "in token of my wifely love do I kiss my lord. Behold!" and she laid her hand upon his heart, "by the sin I sinned, by my lonely centuries of waiting wherewith it was wiped out, by the great love wherewith I love, and by the Spirit—the Eternal Thing that doth beget all life, from whom it ebbs, to whom it doth ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... delicacy. She despised such false sentiments. The consequence is, that her letters contain the unreserved expression of her feelings. Those written before she had cause to doubt her lover are full of wifely devotion and tenderness; those written from the time she was forced to question his sincerity, through the gradual realization of his faithlessness, until the bitter end, are the most pathetic and heart-rending that have ever been given to the world. They are the cry of a human ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... She knew him good and true and blameless in all his life, except for this wrong, if it were a wrong; and it was only when her nerves tingled intolerably with some chance renewal of the pain she had suffered, that she shared her anguish with him in true wifely fashion. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... before and after being a mother, one is a human being; and neither the motherly nor the wifely destination can overbalance or replace the human, but must become its means, not ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... you are wrong, Gottley," Mr. Caldwell chimed in, and then he proceeded to argue the question. The old doctor, being in a hurry, said little in reply, and when he had gone Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed, with wifely tact— ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... the wing he inhabited was in fairly good order. Still, Sir Harry being a bachelor, and extremely untidy, his den, as he called it, was in a state of pleasing muddle, which oftentimes drew forth rebukes from Lucy. She was resolved to train her Harry into better ways when she had the wifely right to correct him, but, as she frequently remarked, it would be the thirteenth labour of Hercules to cleanse this ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... Artemisia thought an heap of stones (Although they were the wonder of that age) A worthless grave, wherein to rest the bones Of her dear lord, but with bold courage She drank his heart, and made her lovely breast His tomb, and failed not of wifely faith, Of promis'd love and of her bound behest, Until she ended had her days by death. Ulysses' wife (such was her steadfastness) Abode his slow return whole twenty years: And spent her youthful days in pensiveness, Bathing her widow's bed with ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... had been deferred until the beginning of the week, or humility had shown more prominently among her mother's virtues, the kirk would have been saved a painful scandal, and Sandy Whamond might have retained his eldership. Yet it was a foolish but wifely pride in her husband's official position that turned Bell Dundas' head—a wild ambition to beat ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... gained time for a reply by pouring Sansome another drink, "He's more sense left than I thought," he said to himself; and aloud: "All you want is to get her out to Jake's. She'll go simply as a matter of wifely duty, and all that. Don't worry. Once she's there, it's your affair; and unless I mistake my man, I believe you'll know how to manage the situation"—he winked slyly—"she's really mad about you, but, like most women, she's hemmed in by convention. Boldly break ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... slighting allusions to Constanze in other biographies, there exists absolutely no supporting evidence. But for the highest praise of her wifely devotion, her patience and unchanging love, and for her lofty admiration of Mozart, both as man and musician, there is a ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... feels it for Jacob, since Jacob didn't live to feel it for himself. It involves a subtle element of wifely devotion which I guess you're too young, or too inexperienced, to understand. She was glad old Jacob was gone, so that she could make his confession with impunity. She was willing to make any atonement within her power, since it was too late to ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... go to-morrow, then," was the unhesitating response. Not made with interest or feeling; but promptly, as the dictate of wifely duty. ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... to be as good and faithful a father to her as I know how to be: but you are her mother, and will do a mother's part by her, I know. Then, there are wifely duties which you would not wish to ...
— Elsie's Kith and Kin • Martha Finley
... wifely respect was not generally shared in the paint business. At least Mr. Schwirtz did not soon get his ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... of the period were effeminate and emotional, the women seem to have sunk to a lower stage of morals than in any other era, and sexual morality and wifely fidelity to have been abnormally bad and lightly esteemed. The story of Ariwara Narihira, prince, poet, painter and Don Juan, and of Taka and her rise to power (see p. 238) has already been told; and it is to be noted that the Fujiwara working for the control of the Throne through Imperial consorts ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... worse than ever, and appeared to be in imminent peril of extending his torn mouth into the region of his ear. Diane listened to the horrible suggestion without misgiving, merely remarking in true wifely fashion— ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... fairy tinkle, and many a cottar and many a shepherd turned over with a comfortable feeling: "This is the Sabbath morn; I need not rise so soon to-day." But all their wives remembered, and turned them out with wifely elbow. ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... herself as a woman, to mistrust these masked approaches. She did not see them, in fact. She thought him sympathetic—the first expressively sympathetic person she had ever met. She was so innocent that she could not understand the fury of the German woman. For, as you may imagine, the wifely penetration was not to be deceived for any great length of time—the more so that the wife was older than the husband. The man with the peculiar cowardice of respectability never said a word in Flora's defence. He stood by and heard her reviled ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... timely help she had enjoyed, she might have been driven to a like means of getting money if her child had been in want. Another thing that urged her against Perigal was that she constantly noticed how negligently many of the married women of her acquaintance interpreted their wifely duties, and, in most cases, to husbands who had dowered their mates with affection and worldly goods. She reflected that, by all the laws of justice, Perigal should have appreciated to the full the treasure of love and passion which she had poured ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... her form, My fancy sees, by love refined, A warmer and a dearer charm By wedlock's mystic hands entwined, - A golden coil of wifely cares That years have forged, the loving joy That guards the curly-headed boy ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... their cattle. The comfort and solid bourgeois elegance of the Dutch home lost its material equipment in the Great Trek, when the long wagon journey reduced household furniture to its lowest terms. House-wifely habits and order vanished in the semi-nomadic life which followed.[77] The gregarious instinct, bred by the closely-packed population of little Holland, was transformed to a love of solitude, which in all lands characterizes the people of a ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... too old to feel charmed and touched by the compliment. And he was not a thoughtless or churlish husband; he knew how to repay such a wifely compliment, and it was a pleasant sight to see the aged companions standing hand in hand before the handsome suits which Dolores had spread out for her ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... she goat, Nanny goat, tabita; ewe, cow; lioness, tigress; vixen. gynecaeum[obs3]. estrogen, oestrogen. consanguinity &c. 166[female relatives], paternity &c. 11. lesbian, dyke[slang]. V. feminize. Adj. female, she-; feminine, womanly, ladylike, matronly, maidenly, wifely; womanish, effeminate, unmanly; gynecic[obs3], gynaecic[obs3]. Pron. she, her, hers.' Phr. "a perfect woman nobly planned" [Wordsworth]; "a lovely lady garmented in white" [Shelley]; das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan [Ger][Goethe]; "earth's noblest thing, a woman perfected" [Lowell]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... to gratify my lightest wish, she left no wifely duty unfulfilled. Always near me, if I breathed her name, but vanishing when I grew silent, as if her task were done. Always smiling a cheerful farewell when I went, a quiet welcome when I came. I missed the April face that once watched me go, the warm ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... said that every man fell in love with her, and she, on her part, did not restrain her passion. There was no one to advise, no one to check, no one to help her to keep in the path of wifely fidelity. Reports of liaisons were made to the Duke by his Chamberlain from time to time, but these were couched in words which concealed his own part therein. He and the Duchess were accustomed to be much alone together. He was a musician and a linguist, ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... this period—obedience to him who would so gladly have obeyed her smallest wish had she but expressed it! She never knew that Philip had any painful association with the particular point on the sea-shore that she instinctively avoided, both from a consciousness of wifely duty, and also because the sight of it brought ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... have known of his guilt all along—otherwise she would never have told that senseless lie about the scullery door being open. Hence his confession could not surprise her. She would receive it in the right, loving, wifely attitude, telling him that he was making too much of a little, that it was splendid of him to confess, and generally ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... had been unwilling to recall his previous opinions so far as to range himself completely on the Contessina's side, but the certificates of two doctors whom she had recently seen had enabled him to conclude that her own declarations were accurate. And gliding over the question of wifely obedience, on which he had previously laid stress, he had skilfully set forth the reasons which made a dissolution of the marriage desirable. No hope of reconciliation could be entertained, so it was certain that both parties were ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... three days, outside their walks and boatings on the lake, in whatever wifely offices to her man still remained to her—marking his new socks and khaki shirts, furnishing a small medicine chest, and packing a tin of special delicacies, meat lozenges, chocolate, various much advertised food tabloids, and his favourite biscuits. Sarratt laughed over them, but had not the ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... placed here, sir?" Count Lenkenstein inquired of Wilfrid. But Wilfrid's attention was frozen by the sight of Vittoria's lover. A wifely call of "Adalbert" from above quieted ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... be your first wifely undertaking to cure me?" he said, laughing.—"It takes time to put thoughts into action," said Faith, blushing.—"Not ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... afraid that Mrs. Wilkins had seen her disappointment in her face, and tried, with wifely zeal, to defend her lord from even a disparaging thought. Wishing to atone for this transgression she was about to sing the praises of the wooden-faced Elisha, but was spared any polite fibs by the appearance of a small girl ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... very brilliant," returned Mrs. Bradley, indifferently, and with more than even conventionally polite wifely deprecation; "I ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... for her, she was sitting up in hers—at any rate I often thought I heard her footstep; and when I came home late after a wearisome journey, if she did not run to welcome me, it was not because she was wanting in wifely gratitude—Laura has no lack of that—but because she did not wish to betray her happiness till the great day of our reconciliation should come. (LAURA ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... accomplishing the object of some other king (that is hostile to me). One should never appear deceitfully before a king; nor before a Brahmana; nor before one's wife when that wife is possessed of every wifely virtue. Those who appear in deceitful guise before these three very soon meet with destruction. The power of kings consists in their sovereignty. The power of Brahmanas conversant with the Vedas is in the Vedas. Women wield a high power in consequence of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... all that he had was hers, including his life and blood, but now that he has fallen she must not thwart his wishes, and loyally share the fate of him who was the father of her son, who had given her unparalleled glory, and been so merciful to Francis himself. If she elected to be at all wifely and cling to her husband in his misfortune, then he would assert the sovereign, and as readily gore her as he would Napoleon if, in his patriarchal wisdom, he judged national interests were at stake. His spirit-crushing rhetoric had a real ultra-monarchical ring about ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... dawned held Claremore as a possibility. And such was my capacity for joy that my appetite would depart completely when I heard my mother say, questioningly and with proper wifely respect— ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... his lectures, and relieved him of all business which she felt herself competent to undertake. Indeed, her conduct as a wife was nothing short of heroic; and it is probable that but for her devoted and more than wifely help, and her rare practical ability, the greatest of her husband's works would never have seen the light. He was by nature unmethodical and disorderly, and she supplied him with method and orderliness. His temperament ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... this: that he believed that it was his political convictions alone which had turned Crystal away from him: he felt that he could have won her love through her submission once she was his wife, now he found that he would have to win her love first and her wifely submission would ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... shared it? If she had shared it, would that have proved her to be a fallen woman? Why should she not have entertained an affection for Termonde, which, while it in no wise interfered with her fidelity to her wifely duties, made ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... its rosy glory, trumped up this story about Sarah's consent to save his reputation. But Sarah never did anything of the kind, as her subsequent actions prove. It isn't human nature; it isn't wifely nature; and although Sarah was a little gay-hearted herself, she wasn't going to stand any such nonsense—to speak lightly—from Abraham, and when she discovered his intimacy with the hired girl she quietly called him into the tent, and in less than ten seconds she made his life a ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... been surprised to see that he made severe personal remarks in his journal, for in the three months that I knew him I never heard an unkind word; he was always courteous, gentle, and retiring. Mrs. Hawthorne said she took a wifely pride in his having no small vices. Mr. Hawthorne said to Miss S., 'I have yet to find the first fault in ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... hours. They were born disgusting. It is so disgraceful for a women to be anything more than just simply a wife to this sort of Adolphe, that a certain Caroline had long ago insisted upon the suppression of the modern thee and thou and all other insignia of the wifely dignity. Society had been for five or six years accustomed to this sort of thing, and supposed Madame and Monsieur completely separated, and all the more so as it had noticed the accession of a ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... Where he may win distinction; give to him Fair, pressed-down measures of life's sweetest joys. Pass her, O maiden, with a pure, proud face, If she puts out a poor, polluted palm; But lay thy hand in his on bridal day, And swear to cling to him with wifely love And tender reverence. Trust him who led A sister woman ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... without a word. The old man smiled almost amiably to see him go; and the old woman, who had been in a state of nervous trepidation all day, glanced at her husband with a look in which wifely devotion and admiration were almost ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... for she had no power just then to speak in a wifely manner. It was not easy to respect a man in a panic ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... warn my hearers not to forestall this woman in their judgments. She was not a manlike female. No better wife ever guided her husband anonymously by her intuitions, or assisted him by her learning. In the farm house and in the palace she was as wifely and retiring as any of the excellent women who have been the wives of American statesmen. Every one knew her abilities and her stupendous acquirements, and she felt them herself, but, notwithstanding, she never would consent to write a line for publication and avow it as her own, and never ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller |
