"Womanish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... removal of obstacles from her path, in order that she may become the "true woman." As it is desirable that man should act a manly and generous part, not "mannish," so let woman be urged to exercise a dignified and womanly bearing, not womanish. Let her cultivate all the graces and proper accomplishments of her sex, but let not these degenerate into a kind of effeminacy, in which she is satisfied to be the mere plaything or toy of society, content with her outward adornings, and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... maudlin Alexander, Blubbering because he had no job in hand, Acting the hypocrite, or else the gander, With Sam, whose grief we all can understand? His crying was not womanish, nor plann'd For exhibition; but his heart o'erswelled With its own agony, when he the grand, Natural arrangements for a jump beheld. And measuring the cascade, ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... to be borne in upon him that womanish whims needed delicate handling. And why not yield this once? It would please her. And he could have ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... brutal Mowbray, do I think thee insufferable, Jack. Our poor friend is already a peg too low; and here thou art letting him down lower and lower still. This soothing of him in his dejected moments, and joining thy womanish tears with his, is not the way; I am sure it is not. If our Lovelace were here, he'd tell ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... you too a sharer in their womanish fears, Suffolk?" cried Henry. "I thought you had been made of stouter stuff. If there is danger, I shall be the first to encounter it. Come," he added, snatching a torch from an arquebusier. And, drawing his dag, he hurried up the steep steps, while Suffolk followed ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Marsh. Through the window he saw Tom Brangwen, who was best man, coming up the garden path most elegant in cut-away coat and white slip and spats, with Ursula laughing on his arm. Tom Brangwen was handsome, with his womanish colouring and dark eyes and black close-cut moustache. But there was something subtly coarse and suggestive about him for all his beauty; his strange, bestial nostrils opened so hard and wide, and his well-shaped head almost disquieting in its nakedness, rather bald ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... for shame and shawing and warning and example before the congregation, and I wad say to the minister, 'Lift voice against them and spare not!' And I wad be there the day and in my seat, though my heart o' flesh was like to break!" His hand fell again heavily upon the board. "Sae weak and womanish is thae time we live in!" He flashed at his great-nephew. "Sae poetical! It wasna sae when the Malignants drove us and we fled to the hills and were fed on the muirs with the word of the Lord! It wasna sae in ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... very womanish," said the colonel, as she gave him his task. "Or is this yours? It is not like that of those verses on Malvern hills that you copied out for me, the only thing you ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... how the wood-cutter gloried in his axe, and the gardener scorned to be ashamed of his spade. It was not very well written, this poetry of labour, but the pluck of the sentiment redeemed what was weak or wordy in the expression. The martial and the patriotic pieces, on the other hand, were tearful, womanish productions one and all. The poet had passed under the Caudine Forks; he sang for an army visiting the tomb of its old renown, with arms reversed; and sang not of victory, but of death. There was a number in the hawker's collection called "Conscrits Francais," which may rank among the most dissuasive ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... showed me that she wore a rich black gown with fluffy stuff over it, and a bit of a sparkle in the way of diamonds like a band across her parted hair. The face was deceiving, now lighted up by one of the old smiles, now hard set as one who had suffered much for her years. But there was nothing over-womanish in her talk, and we two thrashed it out there, just the same as if Ken's Island wasn't full of devils, and the lives of me and my men worth what a spin of the coin might buy ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... years old, and began to look a little womanish, for I was mighty grave and humble, very mannerly, and as I had often heard the ladies say I was pretty, and would be a very handsome woman, so you may be sure that hearing them say so made me not a little proud. ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... was the origin of the war with the Amazons; and it seems to have been carried on in no feeble or womanish spirit, for they never could have encamped in the city nor have fought a battle close to the Pnyx and the Museum unless they had conquered the rest of the country, so as to be able to approach the city safely. It is hard to believe, as Hellanikus relates, that they crossed the Cimmerian Bosphorus ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... slopes of Libanus. It was dedicated to a shameful goddess, the goddess Aphrodite. A school of wickedness was this place for all such profligate persons as had ruined their bodies by excessive luxury. The men there were soft and womanish—men no longer; the dignity of their sex they rejected; with impure lust they thought to honour the deity. Criminal intercourse with women, secret pollutions, disgraceful and nameless deeds, were practised in the temple, where there was no restraining law, ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... opposition, just, kind, grim, to the height of inspired genius, the grandest character his faith had yet produced—undeterred by those ominous voices (of aged women and the like) which are apt to beset all great actions, yielded readily to the womanish endearments of Charles, his filial words and fond touching of the hands, the face, aged at fifty-five—just this portion of his conduct let us hope being exclusive of his precise share [124] in the "conspiracy." And the opportune death in Paris of the Huguenot Queen of Navarre only stirred question ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... the fifth act comes the news of the rising of Julius Vindex. Like a true coward Nero makes light of the distant danger; but when the rumours fly thick and fast he gives way to womanish passionateness, idly upbraiding the gods instead of consulting for his own safety. His despair and terror when he perceives the inevitable doom are powerfully rendered. The fear of the after-world ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... bathing here from boats with steps, like those at Malta, is sensible enough. Fine bold swimmers struck out well beside me in the water while I had my morning dip from the yawl. As for the epicene bathing—masculine women and womanish males who partake of "sea-bathing by machinery"—separate machines, but that is ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... proper form, and in meet and seemly sort, that Gisippus gave her to Titus. And others, peradventure, will say that 'twas by one to whom such office belonged not that she was bestowed in marriage. Nay, but this is but vain and womanish querulousness, and comes of scant consideration. Know we not, then, that Fortune varies according to circumstances her methods and her means of disposing events to their predetermined ends? What matters it to me, if it be ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... her as she walked away; his hands in his pockets, a flush on his handsome face. How her coming had glorified and transformed the place! No womanish nonsense, too, about this going of his!—though she knew well that it meant fighting. Only a kindling of the eyes—a few questions as practical as they were eager—and then that fluttering of the soft breath which he had noticed as she ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in this house love one another. Our friends are old proved friends. Boris has been orderly to my husband for a very long time. We do not share any of his too-modern ideas, and there were many discussions on the duty of soldiers at the time of the massacres. I reproached him with being as womanish as we were in going down on his knees to the general behind Natacha and me, when it became necessary to kill all those poor moujiks of Presnia. It was not his role. A soldier is a soldier. My husband raised him roughly and ordered him, for his pains, to march ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... will come and see me again, she promised, and then I shall talk with her more. I couldn't get at her through the people yesterday. She is very nice, gentle-looking, cheerful, respectable sort of—single-womanish person (decidedly single) of the olden type; very small, slim, quiet, with the nearest approach to a poky bonnet possible in this sinful generation. I, in my confusion, did not glance at her petticoats, but, judging a priori, I should ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... matters which I engaged to prove in IV:xviii., whereby it is plain that the law against the slaughtering of animals is founded rather on vain superstition and womanish pity than on sound reason. The rational quest of what is useful to us further teaches us the necessity of associating ourselves with our fellow men, but - not with beasts, or things, whose nature is different from our own; we have the same rights in respect to them as they have in respect to ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... combat betwixt sixty champions, of which the Douglas's equerry told us yesterday? It were a sight for a minstrel to witness. But out upon these womanish eyes of mine—they could never see swords cross each other without being dazzled. But see—look yonder, May Catharine—look yonder! That flying messenger certainly brings news ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... journeyman bootmaker, who aspired to be a preacher. I never could approve of Reuben Locke, though Aunt Agatha spoke well of him; he was such a weak, pale-faced young man; and I think a man, to be one, ought to have some spirit in him, and not possess only the womanish virtues. ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various
... passing in her mind. From his father he had inherited a kind of womanish intuition. A pleasant-tempered man Bernard Darcy had always been called, but it was that delicate tact, the intuitive knowledge of what ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... and with desire Unhallowed, burning, to her ear addressed Dishonest words: 'Her favour was his life, His heaven; her frown his woe, his night, his death.' With turgid phrase thus wove in flattery's loom, He on her womanish nature won, and age Suspicionless, and ruined and forsook: For he a chosen villain was at heart, And capable of deeds that durst not seek Repentance. Soon her father saw her shame; His heart grew stone; he drove her forth to want ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... nid-nodded her head, Lapp'd in a turban fancy-bred, Just like a love-apple huge and red, Some Mussul-womanish mystery; But whatever she meant To represent, She talked like the Muse ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... a brother under my command Like her, a face as womanish as hers, But with a spirit that hath much out-grown The ...
— The Maids Tragedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... those accompaniments of permanence, fidelity, and mutual service, which are commonly held to belong only to l'union legale, in one or two strata of French society. She was capable of sentiment; she had hidden veins of womanish weakness; but at the same time the little creature's prevailing temper was one of remarkable coolness and audacity. She judged for herself; she had read for herself, observed for herself. Such a temper had hitherto preserved her from adventures; but, upon occasion, it might as easily land ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the sins of its fathers; or to manage its temper so judiciously that the child will not have, as it grows up, to throw off all that its mother, its first instructor, directly or indirectly taught, and unless the mind have uncommon vigour, womanish follies will stick to the character throughout life. The weakness of the mother will be visited on the children! And whilst women are educated to rely on their husbands for judgment, this must ever be the consequence, for ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... inadvertently, without design. The rosy hue of her complexion made the carnation even of a beautiful woman's face look chalky or crimson by the side of hers. At the same time there was a something in the colour of her skin that made me understand better the womanish appearance of Zurbaran and Ribera, a warm glow which I had never seen in Nature before. Her heavy, bluish-black hair hung down, after the fashion of the day, in little curls over her forehead and fell in thick ringlets upon her shoulders. Her eyebrows were exquisitely pencilled, ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... confidential views on the questions in which he took so deep an interest. One final remark must be hazarded about the most remarkable point after all in General Gordon's personality. I refer to his voice. It was singularly sweet, and for a man modulated in a very low tone, but there was nothing womanish about it, as was the case with his able contemporary Sir Bartle Frere, whose voice was distinctly feminine in its timbre. I know of no other way to describe it than to say that it seemed to me to express the thorough and transparent goodness ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... specially, although the soft-voiced man with the small, womanish hands spoke to him often, and always kindly. Jim never forgot that he had called him friend. The memory of it stayed with him, like the kiss of a first love that lingers long after love is dead. Most of the men were afraid of him, so fierce was his temper, and so easily ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... voice develops a bright quality in the normal speaking-voice. Try the following, and any other selections you choose, in a falsetto voice. A man's falsetto voice is extremely high and womanish, so men should not practise in falsetto ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... Thou sangest in my ears? Nothing whereof sunk into my heart, so as to do it. For she wished, and I remember in private with great anxiety warned me, "not to commit fornication; but especially never to defile another man's wife." These seemed to me womanish advices, which I should blush to obey. But they were Thine, and I knew it not: and I thought Thou wert silent and that it was she who spake; by whom Thou wert not silent unto me; and in her wast despised by me, her son, the son of Thy handmaid, ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... be who it is; for Romans now 80 Have thews and limbs like to their ancestors; But, woe the while! our fathers' minds are dead, And we are govern'd with our mothers' spirits; Our yoke and sufferance show us womanish. ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... seemed to him peculiarly womanish and silly. What on earth did it matter, anyway? But he had patience with her, knowing how sorely better men than he were tried by ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... region of love and mind all the forces which in action he had abdicated. He had not enough vital sap to live by his own substance. He was as ivy: it was needful for him to cling. He was never so rich as when he gave himself. His was a womanish soul with its eternal need of loving and being loved. He was born for Christophe, and Christophe for him. Such are the aristocratic and charming friends who are the escorts of the great artists and seem to have come ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... eyes, but now he saw nothing of it; before his mental vision loomed—exclusively—the figure of a slim and strangely handsome young man, having jet black hair, lustreless, a face of uniform ivory hue, long dark eyes wherein lurked lambent fires, and a womanish grace expressed in his whole bearing and emphasised by his long white hands. Upon a finger of the left hand gleamed a strange ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... future husband of Isabella; but Sir Thomas, aware of danger on this head, early impressed them with some notion of consanguinity, and intimated the impossibility of their union. This prohibition, settling on a womanish fancy, might naturally have been expected to operate in a manner the reverse of his intention. Yet we do not find from history that Isabella ever cherished for him any other sentiments than those arising from a ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... into a latticed enclosure, is admitted one by one behind a curtain into the presence. At eight he leaves the throne, and goes either to count his money, or look at his horses. If he hunts, he thinks it undignified to carry his bow, and womanish to keep it strung, a boy carries it behind him; and when game gets up, he asks you (or the Bishop, who seems to have gone hunting with him) what you would wish him to aim at; strings his bow, and then (says Sidonius) never misses ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... history, and he too was "broken" like the wretched soldier whom I did not stay to see. He has been rehabilitated, however, by an age which does not fear the imputation of paradox, and a marble statue of him ornaments the street in front of his house. To interpret him according to this image—a womanish figure in a long robe and a turban, with big bare arms and a dramatic pose—would be to think of him as a kind of truculent sultana. He wore the dress of his period, but his spirit was very modern; he was a Vanderbilt or a Rothschild of the fifteenth century. He supplied the ungrateful Charles ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... before all the assaults, light, brilliant, and varied, of the accomplished secretary, whose smile of contempt at the unconquerable personage before him and his "devout imaginations" is often mingled with that same exasperation which drove Mary to the womanish refuge of tears. But no one could move him. And at last the day, or rather night, of the ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... plump, thick-set man of thirty-eight in evening dress. There was nothing distinctive about him except, perhaps, his hair, which was of a decided reddish hue. He was light of complexion; his mouth was small and of a rather womanish appearance, due to the full red lips. He was well groomed, well fed, in all ways he was a typical city-bred man. He might have been a broker, though he did not carry the ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... may advance that Christianity is the "corn of wheat" which has been dead for 1800 years, but at length will bear fruit; and that Mahometanism is the manly religion, and existing Christianity the womanish. ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... on one of the seats as soon as I had pulled her out of the water, expecting her to faint, or do some other womanish thing. She brushed the water from her eyes, and bending down so that she could look under the foresail, she caught a glimpse of ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... believe he is a Jew?" said le Bourdon, smiling; willing to commence a discourse, though still determined not to betray a womanish curiosity. ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... is brought prominently before us, that superstition's chief victims are those persons who greedily covet temporal advantages; they it is, who (especially when they are in danger, and cannot help themselves) are wont with prayers and womanish tears to implore help from God: upbraiding reason as blind, because she cannot show a sure path to the shadows they pursue, and rejecting human wisdom as vain; but believing the phantoms of imagination, dreams, ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... of course, a lesser celebration on Christmas Eve when we hung our stockings. There were six of them, from mother's long one to father's short one. Ours, although built on womanish lines, lacked the greater length and they were, consequently, inferior for the purpose of our greed; but father's were woefully short, as if fashioned to the measure of his small expectancy. Even a candy cane came peeping from ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... unusually bright, and she didn't linger after she had said, "Good-bye Leander." As for my father,—he was an old North Carolinian, born and reared among the Cherokee Indians at the base of the Great Smoky Mountains, and with him, and all other men of his type, any yielding to "womanish" feelings was looked on as almost disgraceful. His farewell words were few, and concise, and spoken in his ordinary tone and manner, he then turned on his ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... terrified when I think of the future that awaits Breslau; it fills me with wonder and sadness. In her compositions there is nothing womanish, commonplace, or disproportioned. She will attract attention at the Salon, for, in addition to her treatment of it, the subject itself will ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... the stockbroker, as he went to his own room, "you are a pack of silly women altogether; and your fine friend Hawkehurst is more womanish than the silliest of ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... sight. Myself, I am inclined to think it was because he knew him to be hunted, knew him to be the object of a murderous conspiracy, and loathed most thoroughly the vulgar rogue who was his treacherous enemy. But Captain Kettle scouts the idea that he was stirred by any such feeble, womanish motives. Kettle was a poet himself, and with the kinship of species he felt the poetic fire glowing out from the person of this Mr. Hamilton. At least, so he says; and if he has deceived himself on the matter, which, from an outsider's point ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... with their oily black hair all done up in a knot behind and held by a comb. It does look so womanish." ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... god's great altar Must be the last far coping of our work'— It should inaugurate the broad main stair'— 'Or end it'—'It must stand toward the East!' But here a grave contemptuous youth cries out 'Womanish babblers, how can we build god's altar Ere we divine its foreordained true shape?' Then one 'It is a pedestal for deeds'— ''Tis more and should be hewn like the king's brow'— 'It has the nature of a woman's bosom'— ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... that a man was a fool who couldn't keep a secret from his wife—that there was something womanish about him. I found out. Those three days waiting for the buggy were about the longest I ever spent in my life. It made me scotty with every one and everything; and poor Mary had to suffer for it. I put in the time patching up the harness and mending the stockyard and the roof, ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... our Kings motion, and we shall not seeme To worst eies womanish, though we change thus soone Never so great ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... of Lady Macbeth evidently is to wish that no womanish tenderness, or conscientious remorse, may hinder her purpose from proceeding to effect; but neither this, nor indeed any other sense, is expressed by the present reading, and, therefore, it cannot be doubted that Shakespeare ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... struggled back into camp. The battle, the half-dressed wounds, the nerve-racking journey, the watching the slow approach of death and the accepting the fact of the loss of a valued friend: all these were enough to wreck the vitality of a man. With an almost womanish tenderness, Carew had brought his friend back to the tent, and made him over to the care of Paddy who gave up all things else, for the sake of his little Canuck. All that afternoon and night, Weldon lay passive, inert, while Paddy bathed ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... Now although he had sometimes put on women's clothes, and had been wrapt in some embroidered garments to them belonging, and done a great many other things, in order to make the company mistake him for a woman; yet did he, by way of reproach, object the like womanish behavior to Cherea. But when Cherea received the watchword from him, he had indignation at it, but had greater indignation at the delivery of it to others, as being laughed at by those that received it; insomuch that his fellow tribunes made him the subject of their drollery; for they ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... edge may grow dull out of love for the other, else they cannot unite to form a point. Let the love of two be the untroubled unity of the man and of the woman of purest essence, so that the man shall admit nothing womanish, and the woman nothing mannish into her being; else they will become a puzzling confusion, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... told you that secret. I was with Teague the Smith when he discovered it. . . . But he discovered it too late; and, besides, he was a dreamer, and used it only to make crosses and charms and womanish ornaments." ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... world of men. And in that world he had known the only reality to be that if you didn't cut the other fellow's throat first he would cut yours. There wasn't any other reality. He had heard impractical, womanish men say there was, and try to prove it, only to have their economic throats cut considerably more promptly than any others. He had done his little indirect share of the throat-cutting always. He was not denying the need to do ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... the addition of a tartan kilt, which she told me she had adopted from a picture representing a highlander, as the most feminine military dress. What would the Gordons and MacDonalds say to this? The "garb of old Gaul," chosen as a womanish attire!—Her father is a Portuguese, named Gonsalvez de Almeida, and possesses a farm on the Rio do Pex, in the parish of San Jose, in the Certa[)o], about forty leagues inland from Cachoeira. Her mother was also a Portuguese; ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... soft, uncertain little fingers almost unmanned me. I drew her toward me and lifted her on my knee. Under pretense of kissing her I hid my face for a second or two in her clustering fair curls, while I forced back the womanish tears that involuntarily filled my eyes. My poor little darling! I wonder now how I maintained my set composure before the innocent thoughtfulness of her gravely questioning gaze! I had fancied she might possibly ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... of her mind. The game—in those profounder, rarer aspects which alone dignify it—is not for women. I believe that the game of cards to teach them philosophy under defeat, respect for the inevitable and a cheerful manipulation of such trifling good fortune as may befall—instead of that wild, womanish demand for all or nothing—has yet to be invented. I predict of this game, moreover, if ever it be found, that it will be a game at which two, at least, must play. Rarely have I known a woman, however rigid her integrity otherwise, who would not brazenly amend or even repeal utterly those decrees ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... praised, my uncle has often jested at, the womanish softness of my face. There have been moments when I have seen that face in the glass, and known it not, but started in wild affright, and fancied that I beheld a demon; perhaps in that moment this change was over it. Slowly Isora gazed upon ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... slender. In spite of a straight, high-bridged nose and thin lips, his face indicated weakness. His dark-gray eyes had in them either a great deal of worry or undisguised fear. As he took the chair pointed out to him, he was being catalogued by Bristow as showing too much uncertainty, even a womanish timidity. Bristow noticed also that his thick, soft blond hair was carefully parted and brushed, and that his fingers were ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... diamond; another sparkled in his cravat. His dark hair was sleek and well brushed; his bristly little moustache was clipped in the latest fashion. He was not large. His hands, as he made a gesture toward Quade, were of womanish whiteness. Casually, on the street or in a Pullman, Aldous would have taken him for a gentleman. Now, as he stared through the narrow slit between the bottom of the curtain and the sill, he knew that he was looking upon one of the most dangerous men in all the West. Quade was a villain. ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... feeling his sense of the interest I had taken in his fate. I never felt in a more melancholy mood than when I rode from his solitary prison." This is a good illustration of Irving's tender-heartedness; but considering Burr's whole character, it is altogether a womanish case of misplaced sympathy with the cool slayer of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... loaf, naturally watched for any peculiar symptoms of genius in his children which might designate one of the various paths to wealth and fame, by which it would be most easy for the individual to ascend. Now it did occur that when Nicholas was yet in womanish attire, he showed a great partiality to a burning-glass, with which he contrived to do much mischief. He would burn the dog's nose as he slept in the sun before the door. His mother's gown showed proofs of his genius by sundry little round ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... steps under the watchful side glance. It worked. One of Pete's slim, womanish hands fluttered up in a movement ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... syllable in the Canon of the Mass,[16] though this may be a natural defect of the tongue, or an accident, and is not a sin. Again, there is no priest who does not confess that he was distracted, or failed to read his Preparatoria, or other old-womanish trifles of the kind. There was one who, even when he was at the altar celebrating, called a priest three times and confessed that something had happened. Indeed, I have seen these endless jests of the devil taken by many so seriously that they almost lost ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... fortify him against them. Intentionally to expose him to temptation in order to prove his strength, is devilish; and, on the other hand, to guard him against the chance of dangerous temptation, to wrap him in cotton (as the proverb says), is womanish, ridiculous, fruitless, and much more dangerous; for temptation comes not alone from without, but quite as often from within, and secret inclination seeks and creates for itself the opportunity for its gratification, ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... short, such as formerly were fastened to Midas, as a punishment for his affront to the god Pan. For I am now in a humour to act awhile the sophist, yet not of that sort who undertake the drudgery of tyrannizing over school boys, and teach a more than womanish knack of brawling; but in imitation of those ancient ones, who to avoid the scandalous epithet of wise, preferred this title of sophists; the task of these was to celebrate the worth of gods and heroes. Prepare therefore to be entertained with a panegyrick, yet not upon Hercules, ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... like those that are always with their wives, there still was place for unextinguished desire. When he had thus established a proper regard to modesty and decorum with respect to marriage, he was equally studious to drive from that state the vain and womanish passion of jealousy; by making it quite as reputable to have children in common with persons of merit, as to avoid all offensive freedom in their own behaviour to their wives. He laughed at those who revenge with wars and bloodshed the communication ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... Dr. Harlowe, the excellent and beloved physician. When I called him by name, as he stood by the bed, counting my languid pulse, the good man turned aside his head to hide the womanish tears that moistened his cheeks. Then looking down on me with a benignant smile, he said, smoothing my hair on my forehead, as if I were ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... Her face was crimson by this with maidenly shame; but she made no effort to hide or avert it. For the good of humanity, this question must be settled once for all; and no womanish reserve should make her shrink from settling it. Happier maidens in ages to come, when society had reconstructed itself on the broad basis of freedom, would never have to go through what she was going through that moment. They would be spared the quivering ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... remembering what she had said in praise of its object. She had said that if he could be the means of finding their father for those two poor women, she should think it the greatest thing that ever was; and more to be glad of than if he could restore him to his creditors. Pinney had laughed at this womanish view of it; he had said that in either case it would be business, and nothing else; but now his heart warmed with acceptance of it as the only right view. He pledged himself to it in anticipative requital ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... the children of this earth,—were most of them painfully conceited, selfish in aim and limited in thought,—moreover, that they were often so empty of all true inspiration, that they were actually able to hate and envy one another with a sort of womanish spite and temper,—that novelists, professing to be in sympathy with the heart of humanity, were no sooner brought into contact one with another, than they plainly showed by look, voice, and manner, the contempt they entertained for each other's work,—that ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... of him what she could. Why, Mrs. Jewkes, said I, is all this fishing about for something, where there is nothing, if there be an end of your watchments, as you call them? Nothing, said she, but womanish curiosity, I'll assure you; for one is naturally led to find out matters, where there is such privacy intended. Well, said I, pray let me know what he has said; and then I'll give you an answer to your curiosity. I don't care, said she, whether you do or not for I have ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... rather severe sarcasm with a friend who belonged to "the Nightshade family," one of those individuals who thrive on darkness. He wrote: "People of New England, are you not ashamed of yourselves? Away with your old womanish fears, your shivering, your timidity, your garrulousness.... Sustain your sons by bold, inspiring, patriotic words and acts; act like men.... This army, this government must be sustained. It ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... pleasant little retreat reminded him of Madeleine! For a moment he was overpowered, and dropped into a chair, covering his eyes with his hands; perhaps because he could not bear the sight of objects which called up such agonizing recollections; perhaps because his eyes were dim with too womanish a moisture. ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... pledge, you know!" says Semyon in a thin womanish little voice, sighing deeply, and not taking his eyes off the string of bread rings. "Hand over the rouble you borrowed, and then ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... of one kind or another. Yes, men are of the cat tribe! Tabby cats—the soft, fattish kind, without any manlike qualities, that seemed to be by far the greater proportion of all the men one saw about in buses and in the streets and met in business; tabby cats—sloppy, old-womanish creatures. Cheshire cats—the kind that grinned out of vacuous minds and that never could speak to a woman without grinning; the unattached men at the boarding house invariably were of the Cheshire-cat cats. Tomcats—the beastly ones with lecherous ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... 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" ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... began putting on uniforms. Instantly they appeared in public in their grotesque burlesques of the official garb of aviators, elevator boys, bus conductors, train guards, and so on, their deplorable deficiency in design was unescapably revealed. A man, save he be fat, i.e., of womanish contours, usually looks better in uniform than in mufti; the tight lines set off his figure. But a woman is at once given away: she look like a dumbbell run over by an express train. Below the neck by the bow and below the waist astern there are two masses that simply refuse ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... Your womanish outburst of despairing tears over, a hot fever of restlessness besets you. The space is narrow for disquiet such as yours,—you hunt up and down the strip of floor like a caged beast. No way out,—no way out!—Face to face with lingering death, ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... account of all, and desired her not to be faint-hearted, she turned to the simpering master of ceremonies to tell him of her "dear delightful freak;" there was a glad smile on her lip, and a glowing crimson on her cheek, but still there was a glistening moisture in her fine eyes, that told of soft and womanish feeling. ...
— Ellen Duncan; And The Proctor's Daughter - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... said the Queen; "say rather the demand of a set of robbers, impatient to divide the spoil they have seized. To such a demand, and sent by the mouth of a traitor, whose scalp, but for my womanish mercy, should long since have stood on the city gates, Mary of ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... laugh at all our womanish fears upon the occasion of the storm, telling me it was nothing but what was very ordinary in those seas, but that they had harbours on every coast so near that they were seldom in danger of being lost ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... however dainty, nor a strong life blown out by a girl's caprice! Riders went clanking past. I did not turn. Let those that honoured dishonour doff hats to that company of loose women and dissolute men! Hortense was welcome to the womanish men and the mannish women, to her dandified lieutenant and foreign adventuresses and grand ambassadors, who bought English honour with the smiles of evil women. Coming to a high stone wall, I saw two riders galloping across the open field ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... of his praying—how under the cover of his cant about saving souls he scatters his old-womanish scandals ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... demanded Frank, who took an instant dislike to this softly smiling fellow with the womanish voice and gentle ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... many, sir," said I—"some bad enough, too; and, I confess, I have been less womanish and weak beholding them than I felt this morning, witnessing your kindness ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... angry with my nephew for years, you know that, and you know my nature," he said sharply, all the more so to hide his feelings. "When I wrote that letter I meant every word of it, and as many more of the same kind, but some womanish weakness afterwards possessed me, and on the day that I heard of his death, I had a letter written to him, containing the check for ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... made her constant stand upon their helmets? Under my shield thou hast fought as securely As the young eaglet covered with the wings Of her fierce dam, learns how and where to prey. All that is manly in thee I call mine; But what is weak and womanish, thine own. And what I gave, since thou art proud, ungrateful, Presuming to contend with him to whom Submission is due, I will take from thee. Look therefore for extremities and expect not I will correct thee as ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... me. It came by post from New York in a hair-pin box, and done up in about a thousand papers-at least there were six—so I suppose Russell sent to some one in the city to do it for him; but the whole thing was awfully womanish. The address was in the most correct, copy-book-y handwriting, every point turned just so, every loop according to rule. But it came just in the nick of time, and saved me and your money. Bless your heart, how ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... only say again," replied the governess, "that you do not look at the whole of the case. You have given me a home, when it is no easy matter for such as I am to earn one, with my old-womanish ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... at last broke into a hearty laugh,—"I was too great a coward, John, to wear them with becoming dignity. If that was wearing the breeches, I am sure I disgraced them with my worse than womanish fears. I will never ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... she have understood this fact, it would have brought her some little comfort; for, to all her other troubles,—strange to say!—there was added the womanish and old-maiden-like misery arising from a sense of unseemliness in her attire. Thus, she was fain to shrink deeper into herself, as it were, as if in the hope of making people suppose that here was only a cloak and hood, threadbare and woefully ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... I said in turn, and sized him up. I didn't like his face; it was the undeniable face of a liar—small, uncertain eyes, set together close like those of a fox, a thin nose, a narrow, womanish chin that accorded with his girlish actions of coaxing, and a ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... fortunately died before it attained to man's estate. Number two was very intelligent and endowed with every talent, but even as a boy exhibited perverse tendencies. He was very handsome, had soft, dark hair, and a delicate, womanish complexion. His mother dressed him in velvet, and idolized him. He never did anything useful, but went about in fine company and spent large sums of money. In his fortieth year he died suddenly, a physical and moral wreck. The announcement of the death gave a stroke as the ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... or Mr Georgie, never Pillson to the whole of Riseholme) was not an obtrusively masculine sort of person. Such masculinity as he was possessed of was boyish rather than adult, and the most important ingredients in his nature were womanish. He had, in common with the rest of Riseholme, strong artistic tastes, and in addition to playing the piano, made charming little water-colour sketches, many of which he framed at his own expense and gave to friends, with slightly sentimental titles, neatly printed in ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... night. The old men and the women remained behind, crying loudly, so that the terrible wailing sounded sadly over the sea. Even to the mere spectator it was a tragic moment when the tribe was thus orphaned of its best men, and one could not help being revolted by the whole proceeding. It was not womanish pity for the men who were taken off to work, but regret for the consequent disappearance of immemorial forms of tribal life. Next day the beach was empty. Old men and women crossed over to the yam-fields, the ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... something womanish in the knock, Marcia thought, as she hastened to answer it, and she wondered, hurriedly smoothing her shining hair, if it could be the aunts come to make their fortnightly-afternoon penance visit. She gave a hasty glance into the parlor hoping all was right, and ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... this gloomy world! In what a shadow, or deep pit of darkness, Doth womanish and fearful mankind live! Let worthy minds ne'er stagger in distrust To suffer death or shame ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... inadmissible. The idea embodied by the artist should be that which Bishop Taylor has painted in words:—"By the cross stood the holy Virgin Mother, upon whom old Simeon's prophecy was now verified; for now she felt a sword passing through her very soul. She stood without clamour and womanish noises sad, silent, and with a modest grief, deep as the waters of the abyss, but smooth as the face of a pool; full of love, and patience, and sorrow, and hope!" To suppose that this noble creature lost ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... carved shell of hollow pearl, almost translucent with the light divine des tous deux within. For ottomans you could have piles of Scott, Moore, Byron, Shelley, and Keats; and for food and drink, you could have stringed instruments, and easel, palette, and brush. How contemptible are womanish tastes in a man!" Again he waited vainly for a reply. The pallid fingers of Althea were pulling in pieces a half-faded flower, upon which her lustrous eyes were ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... of contempt at such womanish weakness, ran to his assistance. He straightened the Easterner out and placed his folded coat under his head. "He'll come around in a minute," he muttered. He glanced toward the gulch and then back to the shaft. "Can't leave that lay-out," ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... a great affinity in me with the Hindoo genius—that mind, vast, imaginative, loving, dreamy, and speculative, but destitute of ambition, personality, and will. Pantheistic disinterestedness, the effacement of the self in the great whole, womanish gentleness, a horror of slaughter, antipathy to action—these are all present in my nature, in the nature at least which has been developed by years and circumstances. Still the West has also had its part in me. What I have found difficult is to keep up a prejudice in favor of any ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a very foolish, womanish question, seeing that he was holding letters in his hand; ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... upright Alonzo, the diligent Freneda, the steadfast Las Vargas, and others who join them when the good party are in power. But there sits the hollow-eyed Toledan, with brazen front and deep fire-glance, muttering between his teeth about womanish softness, ill-timed concession, and that women can ride trained steeds, well enough, but are themselves bad masters of the horse, and the like pleasantries, which, in former times, I have been compelled to hear from ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... of these bickerings; so womanish! Every creature whose rival I could possibly become is my enemy. I don't blame them. What chance have they while I am present? Women who agree about nothing else make common cause against one who surpasses them. They are like prairie wolves that run in packs to ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... the literal, matter-of-fact, unimaginative nature of his understanding, and because he was not subject to prejudices or illusions of any kind. Words may be said to "bear a charmed life, that must not yield to one of woman born"—with womanish weaknesses and confused apprehensions. But this charm was broken in the case of Mr. Tooke, whose mind was the reverse of effeminate—hard, unbending, concrete, physical, half-savage—and who saw language stripped of the clothing ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... Tom o' the Gleam, that handsome ruffian was more likely to rob a man of gold than accept it as a gift from him. Then involuntarily, his thoughts reverted to the "kiddie." He recalled the look in Tom's wild eyes, and the almost womanish tremble of tenderness in his rough voice, when he had spoken of this little child of his on whom he openly admitted he had ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... dressed high in front in the fashion first set for the women by the Grand Monarque's loose-wife; and as he passed under the candles I saw that it was graying slightly. His face, high-browed, long-nosed, double-chinned, with the eyes womanish for bigness and marked with brows that might have been penciled by the hair-dresser, I had seen before; but lacking this present sight of it, the orders on his breast would have named him the ranking general ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde |
