"Womanly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a good example of the effect of this philosophy, because her history afterward showed that she was constituted like other human beings, was dependent upon human relationship, and was not only a very noble, but also a very womanly creature. Her marriage, her Italian life, and her tragic death light up with the splendor of reality the earlier and unhappy period of her life. This woman had been driven into her vagaries by the lack of something which she did not know existed, and which she sought blindly in metaphysics. ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... the party at Colonnade Manor. Thanks to Mrs. Taylor, the coachman and the little girl of twelve—quite a womanly, precocious, little thing, by-the-way—all went off very well. Some curious person, uninitiated in similar domestic mysteries, may wish to know how things were managed at such a trying crisis. Well, in the first place, Mrs. Taylor congratulated ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... an actress, and what a hopelessly womanly woman, still mourning the providential demise of an impossible brother ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... a girl of twenty instead of a woman of thirty-seven, as Andy afterwards told me she was. She had the figure and movements of a girl, and the impulsiveness and expression too—a womanly girl; but sometimes I fancied there was something very childish about her face and talk. After tea she and the Boss sat on one side of the fire and Andy and I on the other—Andy a little behind me at the corner of ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... as seemed most expedient by interviews, letters or return postals. Every woman personally solicited her neighbor, her doctor, her grocer, her laundrywagon driver, the postman and even the man who collected the garbage. It was essentially a womanly campaign, emphasizing the home interests and engaging the cooperation of home makers. The association published and sold 3,000 copies of The Washington Women's Cook Book, compiled by the suffragists and edited by Miss Linda Jennings of LaConner. ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... womanly girls, but Uncle Pennyman and Mr. Haines called us children, and treated us as such; and Bessie was just writing to me about her father's telling her she must begin to think of serious things, when my uncle remarked to me that the time was ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... in a pair of gray eyes when they were lifted; the beating of a girl's heart near him; the springtime grace of a girl's sweet youth in its contrast with the voluptuous summer of Rhaetian types of beauty; the warm rose that spread upwards from a girl's childlike dimples to the womanly arch of her brows; all these charms and more which rendered one girl a hundred times adorable, took hold of him, and made him not an Emperor, but a ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... empty pew, her face alight, her eyes, beneath the curving hat-brim, swimming with tears.... She nodded as he saw her, and smiled, the promise of their future together curving the sweet lips into gracious, womanly lines. Behind her, on guard as usual, and gay in a gorgeous garment of black-and-white checks, white waistcoat and flaming scarlet buttonhole, sat Dollops, faithfully watching while Cleek assisted at the ceremony ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... canisters of powder, and, what was more urgently needed at present, pannikins of steaming hot coffee. The latter, I ascertained, came from the factor's house, and I had no doubt that it was due to the womanly forethought of Flora and ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... taken hold of me, The beautiful lady moved, and unto Statius Said, in her womanly ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... did, except on those occasions of ceremony that demanded a partner. Her countenance, across which an unworthy thought had never left a trace, was an index, too, to the purity, high principles and womanly self- respect that controlled all her acts, and, in these particulars was the very reverse of the feverish, half-hoydenish half-affected expression of ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... for exhibition; I don't mean that—I should say not—but she did do it for calls to her family, in the woods or in the house when there were no guests about; and she often whistled softly over her work. Perhaps you don't think that's a womanly thing to do—but it's better, from my point of view—it's sporting. For Mother's got something of a temper—you'd know anybody with so much grit must have a temper—and lots of times when she wanted to be angry, suddenly ...
— The Whistling Mother • Grace S. Richmond
... away her tears with the little wisp of lace, annoyed with herself at betraying her indignation in that womanly way. She knew him, alas! too well. She mistrusted him, for she was well aware of how cleverly he had once conspired with Lady Heyburn, and with what ingenuity she herself had been drawn into the disgraceful ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... of the store reading postal cards. Not a soul was in sight. She managed to get down over the steps, though something with the strength of tarred ship-ropes was drawing her back; and then, looking over her shoulder with her whole brave, womanly heart in her swimming eyes, she put out her hand and said, "Come ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... or shadow or blemish. It does not seem possible for her to be otherwise than good. And yet, within this goodness, there is an hereditary character intrenched, capable, under necessity, of all heroism—a fearless and a potent soul. And, besides all this, she is a woman, womanly; a being not harsh and angular in character, but soft ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... Yet, as he turned to go, she looked after him with mute questioning in her eyes. She had a feeling that he was keeping something from her, and—perhaps it was merely the natural result of womanly curiosity baffled—she was vaguely hurt that he did not see fit to tell her whither ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the means you used. But do you suppose you are any the less dear to me, because you don't understand how to act on your own responsibility? No, no; only lean on me; I will advise you and direct you. I should not be a man if this womanly helplessness did not just give you a double attractiveness in my eyes. You must not think anymore about the hard things I said in my first moment of consternation, when I thought everything was going to overwhelm ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... in the family, and the drama of The Distaff Side centers chiefly in her and her two suitors who represent such different things. But if the plot belongs to Alex, the honors of the play go to her mother—for seldom has a modern playwright drawn so warm and womanly and endearing a character as Evie. The family life of these people is extraordinarily human, but it is Evie that it revolves around, Evie ...
— Why the Chimes Rang: A Play in One Act • Elizabeth Apthorp McFadden
... youthful and excellent sir, I have myself marvelled thereat betimes, but, since alive am I, now do I declare unto you that she for whom I sigh is the fairest, gentlest, noblest, most glorious and most womanly of all women ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... in conformity with the true womanly character of my mother," said he. "There is nothing so insipid and tiresome as a woman who gives up the graces and muses to excite herself ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... effect of this was to clarify his vision, as we shall likewise learn. The lost arrow that he sent after this valuable treasure had been his Lohengrin, which he had to sacrifice in order to discover the track of the "true womanly" which Goethe was the first to long for ardently, and which music had revealed as it were the sound of a bell in the dark forest. This alone can explain why the masculine egoism, even in so noble a form as our idealism had hitherto assumed, was forced ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... suffering the gravest insult at the hands of her husband, but forced to dissemble, and to hide the pain his neglect gave her from the eyes of the curious world. Nor was her position altogether an easy one even now. It is true that her womanly revenge was gratified by the instant dismissal of the Duchess of Valentinois, who, if she retained the greater part of her ill-gotten wealth, owed it to the joint influence of Lorraine and Guise, whose younger brother, the Duke of Aumale, had married Diana's ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... residence in Rome gave me frequent opportunities of familiar intercourse with Mrs. Somerville, whose European celebrity, the result of her successful devotion to the highest scientific studies, enhanced the charm of her domestic virtues, her tender womanly character, and perfect modesty and ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... humour and originality and give genuine glimpses of low life in old Amsterdam. His songs show that Brederoo had a real poetic gift. They reveal, beneath the rough and at times coarse and licentious exterior, a nature of fine susceptibilities and almost womanly tenderness. Joost van den Vondel was born in the same year as Brederoo, 1587, but his career was very different. Vondel survived till 1679, and during the whole of his long life his pen was never idle. ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... not understand half his words; but as with an almost womanly tenderness he placed a silken cushion beneath her head, she nestled down, smiling into his eyes with the gratitude of a child that neither questions nor doubts. To her he appeared like a being from another world—a world or which she ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... relation, then ladies must make themselves into a sort of family to face it. Where is the coming man who shall communicate this art of clubbing, which has not yet even been admitted into the feminine dialect? Mr. Mercer is doing for the women who wish to go out in the world that which womanly gratitude can but lightly repay.[F] Where is the kindly, honest-hearted Mr. Mercer who shall further a like enterprise here,—a provision of quarters for those who can pay reasonably and who do not wish to go away? This would ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... was doing. There was a hook and line attached to the pole, and with womanly dexterity she was fastening the hook to the extreme end of the rod. Soon she reached up, and gently struck at my legs. After a few attempts the hook caught in my trousers, a little below my right knee. Then there was a slight pull, a long scratch down my leg, and the hook was stopped by the ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... the force of this direct, womanly logic: in its clear light how pitiful were the excuses he had framed for himself! He felt sure that many, even of the best of men, might have erred in the same way; but this was an argument which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... to do hospital nursing all my life," she said. "It may be good womanly work, but I want to be a human being with a heart, and not a machine called Duty. How I hate and despise my surroundings! I'll make an end of them one of these days. Sooner or later it must ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... man who wants to abolish sex. He believes in spirit. He is timid and womanly, his mind is pure and inexpressibly shocked at the carnal desires which disfigure the otherwise fair picture of humanity. Love, marriage, procreation, cannot these be purged from the base and degrading obsessions ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... back gaze for gaze, as if he would read her secret written in cypher on her soul. He saw that she meant what she said. A word from him, and their experiment was at an end. She would go. It seemed to him that never had her beauty been so gentle, so womanly. ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... and curly hair, always so cheerful, always so good-humoured, always so unconscious of his own attractiveness, that wherever he went, everybody was sure to trust and to idolise him. Ay, and to love him too sometimes, but not as Adelais Cameron did, when her full womanly soul awoke first to the living intensity of passion, and she found in him the one god at whose feet to cast all her new wealth of tenderness and homage. Never before had Maurice Gray been so beloved, ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... replied Warham. "Fanny is a true woman if ever there was one." With a certain defiance, "And Lorella—she was a sweet, womanly girl!" ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... hours of the anxious night that followed he went from one bed to the other, tending the occupants with that gentleness, almost womanly, which a sailor possesses in no ordinary degree. For Queenie there were no apprehensions, save dread of a chill from the wetting she received; the child was tranquil, and appeared to have ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... instant's womanly fright: she had fled from Lochleven Castle in the Douglas livery, and without either the leisure or the opportunity for taking women's clothes with her. But she could not remain attired as a man; so she explained her uneasiness to Mary Seyton, who responded by opening ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... represented—even by Raffaelle himself—as a dwarf Hercules, with all the gladiatorial muscles already visible in stunted rotundity. Giotto probably felt he had not power enough to give dignity to a child of three years old, and intended the womanly form to be rather typical of the Virgin's advanced mind, than an ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... and Mary, a vessel engaged in carrying coals to Ipswich. Shrewdly suspecting one of his apprentices, a clever, active lad, to be other than what he seemed, he taxed him with the deception. Taken unawares, the lad burst into womanly tears and confessed himself to be the runaway daughter of a north-country widow. Disgrace had driven her to sea. [Footnote: Naval Chronicle, vol. xxx. ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... his large sorrowful eyes towards her, and was silent. She might be a Christian. The Saviour had said that children were of the kingdom of heaven. But she was no longer a very little child, but uncommonly womanly for her age. He suddenly remembered some unchristian peculiarities that were certainly growing upon her. She must be looked after, and placed where she would be under the right kind of influence. Her small hand was now laid caressingly ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... ordinary person. Seldom have I seen so graceful a figure, so womanly a presence, and so beautiful a face. She was a blonde, golden-haired, blue-eyed, and would no doubt have had the perfect complexion which goes with such colouring, had not her recent experience left her drawn and haggard. Her sufferings were physical as well as mental, ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... tempers of the children, were talked over, and Cherry was now and then drawn into home reminiscences, and descriptions of the ways of her former school. There was no fear of spoiling her—notice from her superiors was natural to her, and she had the lady-likeness of womanly goodness, so as never to go beyond her own place. She had had many trials too, and Margaret learned the true history of them, as she won Cherry's confidence, and entered into them, feeling their likeness, ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... we do it together," he said, and beamed down on her, and because her heart was really a kind little heart and a womanly one, she smiled up at him and tried to be as fine and friendly as she would have wanted ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... maturity is approached, put an efficient restraint on the like sports of girlhood? Have not women even a greater regard for appearances than men? and will there not consequently arise in them even a stronger check to whatever is rough or boisterous? How absurd is the supposition that the womanly instincts would not assert themselves but for the ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... her family, trusting that the young woman would be of great service to her in the management of her little realm, and would repay her kindness by sisterly love and sympathy. Luckharde however was of a vain and frivolous disposition, and had little love for household affairs, or womanly duties. ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... womanly view of the subject seemed to come to her. After all, he was the father of her child; the poor little baby that had mercifully followed its mother into the Great Unseen. She had loved him once, by her own showing. I made the most of this ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... cheeks, she determined to begin her lone, young widowhood by instantly writing to him and bidding him hope. In this epistle, all the nobility of her true heart and nature blazed forth so transcendently, and with such fierce, womanly fervor, that the moment it reached the hands of the young soldier the light was re-kindled within him, and he at once set about procuring his discharge, or rather realizing the means of effecting his release from the bonds into which he had allowed ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... been written of the composer himself, and "The Heroica" could easily have been inspired by his wife, instead of by the Arthur legends, for she is a knightly soul, combining to a most unusual degree the artistic temperament, womanly tenderness and charm, with a chivalrous sort of courage, ...
— Edward MacDowell • Elizabeth Fry Page
... carry it on are truly "the lowest in the meanest task," for they have undertaken not only the superintendence of menial work (so called), but the work itself, in teaching by example and instruction the womanly industries of home. They have no society, until lately no regular Liturgical worship, and of necessity a very infrequent celebration of the Holy Communion; and they have undergone the trial which arose very naturally out of the ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... blue masses of her hair. The nervous sensibility of her profession had awakened her face, and now the brown eyes laughed with the spiritual maliciousness with which we willingly endow the features of a good fairy. The hips were womanly, the ankle was only a touch of stocking, and the whole house rose to a man and roared when coquettishly lifting the ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... rather cut up at not finding a Desborough. She was invited down here, but SHE'S rather independent, you know, so she allowed I could take care of myself, while she went off to stay with the old Dowager Lady Mistowe, who thinks maw a very proper womanly person. I made maw mad by telling her that's just what old Lady Mistowe would say of her cook—for I can't stand these people's patronage. However, I shouldn't wonder if I was invited here as a ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... passions with an intensity that affected all her audience. She had a genius for dress and drapery. In her peplum she might have been taken for an antique statue, and she knew how to endue herself with the most incomparable womanly charm in all her parts, even the most savage ones. If she had committed murder you would have loved the murderess, and, strangely enough, this extraordinary woman was never ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... Narka Larik is a better woman morally than Anna Karenina, intellectually she is the superior of Katia, and she is quite worthy to stand by the side of these two illustrious countrywomen of hers as the exponent of all that is true and womanly ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... boarding- school. The young men and young women learned to respect each other, not merely for physical, but for intellectual and moral qualities; so there came a healthful emulation in study, the men becoming more manly and the women more womanly; and never, so far as I have heard, did any of the evil consequences follow which some of ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... features of the great religious ideals that underlay this primitive rite. His Hera had neither the warlike nor the intellectual and spiritual characteristics of the Attic Athena; but she was the goddess of womanly grace and beauty in the bride, and embodied that perfection of physical form which Argive art sought also in its athletic figures, and which was in a sense a part of the religion that found expression in the great athletic games. Some gods—Apollo, for example—seem ...
— Religion and Art in Ancient Greece • Ernest Arthur Gardner
... no reproof; but Maggie took his words as such, and for the first time in her life began to think that possibly her manner was not always as womanly as might be. At all events, she was not like the gentle Rose, whom she instantly invested with every possible grace and beauty, wishing that she herself was like her instead of the wild madcap she was. Then, thinking that her conduct required ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... with scornful silence laid them on the table, or with flippant sentimentality pretended to exalt us to the clouds, above man, the ballot and the work of life, that we consider no position more dignified and womanly than on an even platform with man worthy to lay the corner-stone of a republic ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Wilcox would explain and then, "You should be more womanly, dear; men like a womanly woman." And Vera's eyes would sparkle maliciously, for men undoubtedly did ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... defeat. I glanced back, half tempted to endeavor a sudden leap; yet she was fully prepared, and I hesitated. Would she actually shoot me down? Could it be possible the girl would take my life? I could scarcely conceive of such a probability, she seemed so womanly in every way, so light-hearted, and yet there was no laugh now in her eyes, no lack of determination in the ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... regularity, otherwise than these were taught by that amiable dancer whose kisses seemed always to keep the taste of paint and her embraces somewhat artificial in the curving of her arms. Ruys, her father, was enraptured each time that he came to see his daughter, to find her more grown, womanly, knowing how to enter, to walk, and to leave a room with that pretty courtesy which caused all Mme. Belin's pupils to long for the trailing rustle of ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... there was a claw-footed table, which also had the look of an old friend; and on it a dainty porringer, filled with cuttings of fragrant sweetbriar. This was some womanly conceit, I said to myself; and then I laughed, though the laugh set a pair of wolf's jaws at work on my shoulder. For you must know that I had lived the full half of King David's span of three-score and ten years, and more, and what womanly softness had fallen to my ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... flanks of surpassing elegance, her feet that stay modestly in bed, her satin face, her lustrous features, her heart devoid of bitterness? Ah! wooden-heads, what will you say when you find that this merry lass springs from the heart of France, agrees with all that is womanly in nature, has been saluted with a polite Ave! by the angels in the person of their spokesman, Mercury, and finally, is the clearest quintessence of Art. In this work are to be met with necessity, ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... lady," Archie said hotly. "No such thought ever entered my mind. I should as soon doubt the holy Virgin herself as to deem you capable of aught but what was sweet and womanly. The matter seemed to me simple enough. You had saved my life at great peril to yourself, and it seemed but natural to me that in your trouble, having none others to befriend you, your thoughts should turn to one who had sworn to be to the end of his life your ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... eyes before, while their gaze was fixed intently, not on the company, but on the dark tapestry which draped the wall. So transformed and so ethereal was her expression, that Alleyne, in his loftiest dream of archangel or of seraph, had never pictured so sweet, so womanly, and yet so wise a face. Glancing at Du Guesclin, Alleyne saw that he also was watching his wife closely, and from the twitching of his features, and the beads upon his brick-colored brow, it was easy to see ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... outset of this laudable occupation, a disagreeable fact thrust itself impudently in my face, and even shook its fist at me in insolent defiance. There was no getting over it—I was undeniably a woman—and, what was worse, rather a womanly woman. I am aware, of course, that this depends. If you should ask that stately lily, radiant with beauty, from the crown of the head to the sole of her foot, surrounded by her kind, and cherished and admired as one of ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... did not indeed abate the sprightly activity of his mind or body, but it sobered his spirit and, in one day, made him more of a man than several years of ordinary life could have accomplished. The most visible result was a manly consideration of, and a womanly tenderness towards, his mother, which went a long way to calm Mrs Bright's ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... left the room, closing the door behind her as she went. She did not want to be obliged to go over the details of the story which she had heard; she had made her statement, one which she knew must startle and horrify her son, with his high ideals of womanly purity, and she left him to review the situation in silence. It was several hours before the rector left ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... being just what their material forms stand for. That is, a woman believes that she will be a purified woman through all eternity, that the woman is permanent, real, immortal, and that she will continue on, as a woman, with her womanly traits of character greatly expanded. While man thinks that as a man he is real, permanent, and immortal; that he will continue his existence as a man through all eternity, and that he will always be known as a man, and always look upon woman as woman. Any ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... the fact that the female characters of the play were represented by shrill-voiced lads or half-shaven men. Imagine an actor having to invest such representatives with all the girlish passion of a Juliet, the womanly tenderness of a Desdemona, or the pitiable anguish of a distraught Ophelia, and you cannot but realize how difficult under such circumstances great acting must have been. In fact, while we are awe-struck by the wonderful intellectuality of the best dramas of the Elizabethan period, we cannot ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... first reading it, was a very decided feeling in my own case; but, on reading it a second time, when surprise had subsided, I felt it less, and yet I fear that you may have, in this, gone a hair's breadth too far. Mignon, before her end, had begun to appear more womanly and softer, and thus to have become more interesting in herself; the repulsive heterogeneity of her nature had relaxed, and with this relaxation some of her impetuosity had likewise disappeared. Her last song, especially, melts one's heart to the most intense sympathy. Hence ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... peculiar power a character so strong could be so subjected, she dared not ask. Hour after hour, as they journeyed deeper and deeper into the mountain wilds, she watched and waited for some sign that her companion's mood would make it safe for her to approach him. Meanwhile, she exercised all her womanly tact to lead him to forget his distasteful position, and so to make his uncongenial task as pleasant ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... and deep, dark, thoughtful eyes. When he was first taken into the sitting-room, the picture of the smiling girl over the fireplace instantly attracted his gaze, and, putting out his arms, he cooed to it. This completed the conquest of Miss Ludington, whose womanly heart had gone out to the winsome child ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... But she did not begin her writing at once. Rose had taken up the cookery book again, and was bending puzzled brows over it. Rhoda watched her for a moment, her eyes full of admiration. Miss Desborough was pretty, but there was not a soft line in her face. Rose looked a child still for all her womanly height. Rhoda said to herself that she must be much younger than her brother. It was easy to see that they were brother and sister. Rose had just the same straight brow she had noticed in him yesterday, and her eyebrows, like his, ...
— Miss Merivale's Mistake • Mrs. Henry Clarke
... Sheridan, a girl that had as sweet and womanly a mother as Whitewater ever boasted, lead you around by the nose on her suffrage string. A girl with her raising and both of her grandmothers women that lived and died genteel, to go traipsing around in her low heels in men's offices and addressing ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... somewhat striking; his moustache and hair raven black; and his eyes, denied the attributes of military keenness by reason of the largeness and darkness of their aspect, acquired thereby a softness of expression that was in part womanly. His mouth as far as it could be seen reproduced this characteristic, which might have been called weakness, or goodness, according to the mental attitude of the observer. It was large but well formed, and showed an unimpaired line of teeth within. His dress at present was a heather-coloured ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... very proud of the womanly way in which she acquitted herself at this time, her diligence, utter unselfishness, patience, and thoughtfulness for others, and did not withhold the meed of well earned praise; this with his advice and sympathy did much to enable her to persevere ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... justify their existence was still in the nature of a novelty. Even in the fuller light of experience, Maugham could hardly have bettered his study of an impulsive and exigent woman, rising at the outset to the height of a bold and womanly choice in defiance of social prejudice and family tradition, and then relapsing under the disillusions of marriage into the weakest failings of her class, rising again, from a self-torturing neurotic into a kind of Niobe at ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... survive all the caprices of time. They have proved themselves worthy of the best womanhood, and, in their posterity, will leave no race which shall be unworthy of the cause which is lost, or of the mothers, sisters and wives, who have taught such noble lessons of virtuous effort, and womanly endurance. ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... the doctor, seeing the look in his patient's face; "but you mustn't agitate her now. And now, my good women"—turning to the others—"I think she can get along with her young friend here, whom I happen to know is a womanly young girl, and ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... with all her rich cargo of truth and freedom on the voyage over the sea of Time,—if no sound of the news-boy's cry must mix with the echoes of solemn courts, and no reflection of wasting fires in which life and treasure melt can flash through their windows, and no deeds of manly heroism or womanly patriotism are to have applause before God and Christ in the temple,—if nothing but some preexisting scheme of salvation, distinct from all living activity, must absorb the mind,—then I totally misunderstand and am quite out of my ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... characters enriched by it. "The women of the eighteenth century loved with their minds and not with their hearts," said the Abbe Galiani. The very absence of the qualities so essential to the highest womanly character, according to the old poetic types, added to their success. To be simple and true is to forget often to consider effects. Spontaneity is not apt to be discriminating, and the emotions are not safe guides to worldly distinction. It is not the artist ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... he wondered. He had never heard it, but he would call her Helen—Helen, the ancient synonym of womanly beauty, but the loveliest Helen, he believed, that ever set poet-lover piping ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... imperative way which came charmingly from those sweet womanly lips. The grey horse upon which I had come to the camp was waiting beside that of the hussar, so we were soon in the saddle. When we were clear of the huts my ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of my beauty, I might say of your valor, than which there is to woman no stronger object of admiration. To pay homage to valor is womanly on the part of our sex. And never in my life have I felt, though I have seen some brave men, that I was paying homage to greatness with so much honor to myself. I have read in the newspapers that our nation, like a sinking ship, was by you saved ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... looked after,—and indulged in the dangerous combination of sentiment with the highest maternal instincts. It was this quality which caused Jenny to recognize in him a certain boyishness that required her womanly care, and even induced her to offer to accompany him to the cross-roads when the time for his departure arrived. With her superior knowledge of woodcraft and the locality, she would have kept him from being lost. I wot not but that she would have protected him from bears or wolves, but ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... comely damsel," he said to himself as he opened his snuff-box and took a pinch. "But the important point is: Is she also a NICE DAMSEL? One thing she has in her favour—and that is that she appears only just to have left school, and not to have had time to become womanly in the worser sense. At present, therefore, she is like a child. Everything in her is simple, and she says just what she thinks, and laughs merely when she feels inclined. Such a damsel might be made into anything—or she might be turned ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... frozen and made rigid with intellect. The finest movements of the human heart, the utmost grandeur of which the soul is capable, are essentially comprised in the actions and speeches of Caelica and Camena. Shakspeare, who seems to have had a peculiar delight in contemplating womanly perfection, whom for his many sweet images of female excellence all women are in an especial manner bound to love, has not raised the ideal of the female character higher than Lord Brooke, in these two women, has done. But it requires a ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... was womanly in some things—so he was, and we men should all be much better if we had a touch of their feeling, sentiment, earnestness, and constancy; but in all the best qualities of man ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... moons too many to be numbered, He yet waited by the canyon—she called across the years, And the soul within the river, though centuries had slumbered, Woke to sob a song of womanly tears. ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... difficult and expensive to make, the ladies have generally resolved to hold a fancy bazaar, and to devote the proceeds to this admirable purpose; and I learn with no less pleasure that her Majesty the Queen, in a graceful and womanly sense of the excellence of this design, has consented that the bazaar shall be held under her royal patronage. I can only say, that if you do not find something very noble in your books after this, you are much duller students than I take you to be. The ladies—the single ladies, at least—however ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... remarkable one way or the other; but Gelsomina, the jailer's daughter, born in an inferior position, reared in a sterner school of discipline and struggle, is a beautiful and consistent creation, constantly showing masculine energy and endurance, yet losing nothing of womanly charm. Ruth, in "The Wept of the Wish-ton-Wish," Hetty Hutter, the weak-minded and sound-hearted girl, in "The Deerslayer," Mabel Dunham, and the young Indian woman, "Dew of June," in "The Pathfinder," are further cases in point. No one can read the books in which these women are represented and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... strength of patient womanhood: For this I love her great soul more than all, That, being bound, like us, with earthly thrall, She walks so bright and heaven-like therein,— Too wise, too meek, too womanly, to sin. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... female but not yet womanly. The newly-awakened instincts clamour at first for a hearing; later they learn to wait in silence, to efface themselves, to die, even," answered ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... had I deserved to be so blessed by such confessions?—how had I deserved to be so cursed with the removal of my beloved in the hour of her making them, But upon this subject I cannot bear to dilate. Let me say only, that in Ligeia's more than womanly abandonment to a love, alas! all unmerited, all unworthily bestowed, I at length recognized the principle of her longing with so wildly earnest a desire for the life which was now fleeing so rapidly away. It is this ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... development of freedom merely, but the promise of that higher, finer, purer civilization which is to redeem the world, the lack of which makes men tyrants and women slaves. You cannot be unconscious of the fact that a new race of women is born into the world, who, while they lack no womanly attribute, are the peers of any man in intellect and aspiration. It will be impossible long to deny to such women that equality before the law granted to the lowest creature that crawls, if he happens to be a man; denied to the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... be the matter with him, she wondered. When she questioned him in a friendly manner and only elicited evasive replies, she guessed that he was ashamed of his sufferings, and that they were aggravated, rendered well-nigh incurable, by the very secrecy in which he buried them. Thereupon womanly compassion awoke within her, and she felt increasing affection for that tall, pale fellow with feverish eyes, who was consumed by grievous torments which he would confess to none. No doubt she questioned Guillaume respecting her brother's sadness, and he must have confided some of the truth ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... conviction of the steadfastness, nay, of the stubbornness, of his heart. She had been told that men were not usually like that. When first he had become sweet to her, she had not thought that he would have been like that. Was it not almost unmanly,—or rather was it not womanly? And yet he,—strong and masterful as he was,—could he have aught of a woman's weakness about him? Could she have dreamed that it would be so from the first, she thought that from the very first she could ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... sceptre, and in the self-same moment the womanly heart beneath his robe yearned pityingly toward the doomed prisoner, and the tears came into his eyes. He opened his lips to speak, but the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... woman sitting in darkness, without love to shelter her head or hope to illumine her solitude, because the heaven-born instincts kindling in her nature germs of holy affections, which God implanted in her womanly bosom, having been stifled by social necessities, now burn sullenly to waste like sepulchral lamps among the ancients; every nun defrauded of her unreturning May-time by wicked kinsmen, whom God will judge; every captive in every dungeon; all that are betrayed, and all that ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... dignity and graciousness of manner, the same sweet womanly face, and the same depths of love and ready sympathy in her clear, calm eyes. She was dressed in mourning, and at her throat was the brooch containing the locks of the children's hair. Jack noticed it at once, and saw, too, that the little silver ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... melody. The "Passion Flowers" and other poems of Julia Ward Howe are full of ardor and earnestness. Mrs. Sigourney's metrical writings are cherished by a large class of readers. Hannah F. Gould has written many pretty and fanciful poems, and Grace Greenwood's "Ariadne" is a fine burst of womanly pride and indignation. Among many other equally well known and honored names, there are those of Elizabeth F. Ellet, Emma C. Embury, Sarah J. Hale, Anna Mowatt Ritchie, Ann S. Stephens, Sarah H. Whitman, Catharine A. Warfield, and Eleanor Lee, ("Two Sisters of the West") Alice and ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... and of a round and extremely well-proportioned form; which, on this occasion, was set off to the best advantage by a dress of rich blue silk. Her hair was dark; her features were pleasing and regular; and there was a look of earnest, womanly softness in her hazel eyes, that found its way at once to the heart and confidence of all on whom ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... flowre; Jentill as fawcoun Or hawke of the towre: With solace and gladnes, Moche mirthe and no madness, All good and no badness, So joyously, So maydenly, So womanly, Her demenyng In every thynge, Far, far passynge That I can endyght, Or suffyce to wryghte, Of mirry Margaret, As mydsomer flowre, Jentyll as fawcoun Or hawke of the towre: As pacient and as styll, ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... dear; it's right and womanly to feel grief at losing Gladys; but since it has to be, I want you to conquer that grief, and not let it ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... mustang, untrammeled by her short gray riding-habit, free as the wind itself that blew through the folds of her flannel blouse, with her brown hair half-loosed beneath her slouched felt hat, she seemed to Dick a more beautiful and womanly figure than the stiff buckramed simulation of man's angularity and precision he had seen in the parks. Perhaps one day she detected this consciousness too plainly in his persistent eyes. Up to that moment she had ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... and subtle instinct; a peculiar faculty that cannot be analyzed by reason, a faculty that men do not possess, and one in which they do not generally believe. At this all-important period, this eventful crisis in your life, this womanly instinct guides and saves you. You can feel in a moment the presence or influence of a base, sensual, and unworthy nature. An electric-like thrill animates you, and you are naturally repulsed from him. When your suitor is a man of incongruous ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... disease, or obliquity of unknown nature, to which the vague name of antipathy had been attached. Euthymia kept an eye upon her, partly in the fear that over-excitement would produce some mental injury, and partly from anxiety lest she should compromise her womanly dignity in her desire to get at the truth of a very ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... such a fair way to win the home, but not heaven I trust for a long time yet. Let us think of the home first. While I would not for the world wish you to do a thing which the strictest womanly delicacy did not permit, there are some things which we can do that are very proper indeed. Mr. Arnold has an eye for beauty as well as yourself, and he is accustomed to see ladies well dressed. He ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... looked indifferent. But, with the womanly and courtierlike quickness and tact habitual to her, Anna Pavlovna wished both to rebuke him (for daring to speak he had done of a man recommended to the Empress) and at the same time to console ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... trying to understand the mystery of the birth of Love. But they were only children; they did not really understand. Passion was sweeping them off their feet, because a common danger had bound them irrevocably to one another. The womanly instinct to save and to protect had given the young girl strength to bear a difficult part, and now she loved him for the dangers from which she had rescued him, and he loved her because she had risked her life ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... laugh shook you. You saw all that he could never see: inside the room the great ladies and latest American countesses, eager to help, forgetful of self, full of wonderful, womanly sympathy; and outside, the Place de la Concorde, the gardens of the Tuileries, the trees of the Champs-Elysees, the sun setting behind the gilded dome of the Invalides. All these were lost to him, and yet as he sat in the darkness, because he could not tell an N from an M, he laughed, and laughed ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... woman oft says, with any of men will she mate be, Save wi' my own very self, ask her though Jupiter deign! Says she: but womanly words that are spoken to desireful lover Ought to be written on wind ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... upwards ["Das Ewig-Weibliche zicht uns hinan" ("The Eternal-Womanly draws us upwards").— Goethe's "Faust"] by rehearsing the chorus and orchestra would have afforded me great pleasure—and would probably have succeeded. ["Gelangen" and "gelingen"—untranslatable little ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... whom I had never seen before, lifted up her eyes and looked archly at me, and then I saw that the eyes were Estella's eyes. But she was so much changed, was so much more beautiful, so much more womanly, in all things winning admiration, had made such wonderful advance, that I seemed to have made none. I fancied, as I looked at her, that I slipped hopelessly back into the coarse and common boy again. O the sense of distance and disparity that came ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... greatest success with the gentlemen of the Poughkeepsie. Her youth, beauty, and modesty, told largely in her favor; and the simple, womanly affection she unconsciously betrayed in behalf of Harry, touched the heart of every observer. When the intelligence of her aunt's fate reached her, the sorrow she manifested was so profound and natural, that every one sympathized ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... oblivion of things at hand, made the prettiest work that could be in face and manner. A sweeter shyness than that of the girl who had nothing to hide watched all doors that led to her secret; a fairer reserve than mere timidity kept back what belonged to one man alone. A certain womanly veil over the girlish face but made the beautiful life changes more beautiful still. If anything, she looked younger than she ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... replied, with much feeling; "and I should think the girl who bears it might have all the sweet, womanly graces you long to find ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... Ambassador's statement that she was "the gentlest and kindest" of queens; or to an English eye-witness who writes that at her coronation the people all applauded her for being "so fayre a Ladye, of so goodly a stature and so womanly a countenance, and in especial ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... shrunk from publicity. Her womanly diffidence, her enfeebled health, the shame of her disease, all made her wish to hide herself and her want from His eye, and to hide herself and her treasure from men. She would fain steal away unnoticed, as she hoped she had ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... Think of her mournfully, Gently and humanly; Not of the stains of her, All that remains of her Now is pure womanly. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... garden hose, or of mountain cataracts? That is the sort of question which Elizabeth Barrett's extreme love of the extreme was always tempting people to ask. Yet the question, as asked, does her a heavy historical injustice; we remember all the lines in her work which were weak enough to be called "womanly," we forget the multitude of strong lines that are strong enough to be called "manly"; lines that Kingsley or Henley would have jumped for joy to print in proof of their manliness. She had one of the peculiar talents of true rhetoric, that of a powerful concentration. As ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton |
