"Motherhood" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... smothered with blessings from the two poor widows and Joseph. As to the newspaper, it ceased to exist at the end of two months, just as Finot had predicted. Philippe's crime had, therefore, so far as the world knew, no consequences. But Agathe's motherhood had received a deadly wound. Her belief in her son once shaken, she lived in perpetual fear, mingled with some satisfactions, as she saw her worst ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... tyrant like a wave Went over Italy, thou then didst save The seed of just men on the weltering surge. Here, still by discord and foul servitude Untainted, thou a hero brood dost raise, Powerful and prudent. Due to thee their praise Of maiden pure, of teeming motherhood! Thou wonder of the world, Rome's loyal heir, Thou pride and strong support of Italy, Dial of princes, school of all things wise! Thou like Arcturus steadfast in the skies, With tardy sense guidest thy kingdom fair, Bearing alone ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... motherhood became to the poor woman a passion which assumed the intensity that women put into their guilty affections. By a species of occult communion, the secret of which is in the hearts of mothers, the child comprehended the peril that threatened ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... to be exact—to start my story. At that time my brother died, leaving me his two children. Halsey was eleven then, and Gertrude was seven. All the responsibilities of maternity were thrust upon me suddenly; to perfect the profession of motherhood requires precisely as many years as the child has lived, like the man who started to carry the calf and ended by walking along with the bull on his shoulders. However, I did the best I could. When ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... was a good woman, told him that the world was very wicked; and with the blind desire for her son's lasting innocence, which is the most touching instinct of loving motherhood, she entreated him to lead a spotless life. When Marcello, in the excusable curiosity of budding youth, asked his stepfather what that awful wickedness was against which he was so often warned, Corbario told him true stories of men who had betrayed their country ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... to him, and he felt her arms strained about him, as if she could not hold him near enough to her. It seemed to him as if she was striving to draw him into the very heart of her motherhood; but she knew how deep the gulf was between her and him, and shuddered ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... Congregational preaching had become, for he said he hoped and expected to see women at the bar and in the pulpit, although he believed they would always be exceptional cases. He preached mainly on the motherhood of God, and his whole sermon was a tribute to womanhood.... I rejoice at the ideal womanhood of purity which he put before the girls. I wish some one would preach purity to ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... her, partly because of the pity I felt for her on account of his treatment, and partly because I sincerely admired the beauty of her character. In consequence of that friendship, I undertook to watch over her entry into motherhood." ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... the men who had power over her fate (as all Arab women are defenceless, unless they choose death instead of life), appealed to the latent motherhood that slept in the heart of Sanda, as in the heart of every normal girl: appealed to the romance in her: appealed to the sympathy born of her own love for Stanton, which seemed as hopeless as Ourieda's love for Manoeel Valdez. Would Manoeel come in answer to one of ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... underneath it the pure gold of character. She seized the helm of the family ship with a heroic hand. She sailed steadily through a sea of troubles that often threatened to overwhelm her; the unaccustomed task of motherhood with its hundred trials, her brother's gloom and despair, the new conditions of the rough country—even the irony of a fate that had set her at hard, uncongenial toil in the very place where she had sought culture. ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... time, without speech, he watched her deft hands bringing law and order out of the unruly mass of curling fibres. She was good to look upon, swaying there to her task, strong-limbed, deep-chested, and with hips made for motherhood. And the bronze of her face was golden in the flickering light, her hair blue-black, her ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... in Good Housekeeping, beginning with the September number; Dr. Dale's articles on Moral Prophylaxis, in the JOURNAL OF NURSING since the July number; Instructing Children in the Origin of Life, Elisabeth Robinson Scovil, in October JOURNAL OF NURSING; Leaflets and pamphlets published by American Motherhood, 188 Main Street, Cooperstown, New York; Publications of the American Association of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis, New York City, JOURNAL ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery
... stresses the point that it is not mere knowledge of physiology that will meet the case. He considers that the most important thing of all is to establish in the minds of the children noble ideals with regard to infanthood and motherhood. Lessons in connection with the care of all birds and animals for their young, with the love and devotion of parents for their young, with all that is beautiful and tender connected with the homes of animals and birds, would establish a kind of reverence ...
— Venereal Diseases in New Zealand (1922) • Committee Of The Board Of Health
... prepared to believe that the bearing of children may, and ought, to become as free from danger and long disability, to the civilized woman, as it is to the savage; nor is it improbable that, as society advances towards its right organization, motherhood will occupy a less space of woman's life than it has hitherto done. But still, unless the human species is to come to an end altogether—a consummation which can hardly be desired by even the most ardent advocate of "women's rights"—somebody must be good enough to take the trouble and responsibility ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... unimaginative, kindly little lives, I daresay. Not much interested in one another, ill educated, gossipy, brutish, superstitious, but surprised perhaps into sudden passions of love, and still more surprised perhaps by the joys of fatherhood and motherhood; with children of all ages growing up, pretty and engaging and dirty and amusing and naughty, fading one by one into dull and sober age, and into decrepitude, and the churchyard at ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Paradise are not reserved for women, I am willing to take a back seat with them. It seems to me that every man who had a mother should have a proper regard for womanhood. My own mother was a combination of all the best elements of the high character that belong to true wife and motherhood. Her devotion and friendship were as eternal as the very stars of heaven, and no misfortune could dwarf her generous impulses or curdle the milk of human kindness in her good heart. Her memory has been an altar, a guiding star, a divinity, in the darkest hour when regrets were ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... read the recorded words of some of the world's greatest minds in tribute to motherhood. The following talk, quoting some of these, should be an impressive lesson to the young and to the mothers ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... For look how from their wondrous bodies comes Increase: who knoweth where such power ends? They are in league with the great Motherhood Who brings the seasons forth in the open world; And if to them She hands, unseen by us, Their marvellous bringing forth of children, what Spirit of Her great dreadful mountain-spell, Wherein the rocks have purpose against us, Sealed up in watchful quiet stone, ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... remember, my dear aunt, the good Lady Culham, who was our Dorsetshire neighbour, and tried hard to mend my ways at Carteron? This poor Duchess—for so she called herself—was just such another. A woman made for comfort, housewifery, and motherhood, and by no means for racing about Europe in charge of a disreputable parent. I could picture her settled equably on a garden seat with a lapdog and needlework, blinking happily over green lawns and mildly ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... say not therefore I deny the birth, The Virgin's motherhood, the resurrection, Who know not how mine own soul came to earth, Nor what shall follow death. Man's imperfection May bound not even in thought the height and girth Of God's omnipotence; neath his direction We may approach his essence, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... the joy of married life, of fatherhood and motherhood; it destroys social life, club life, business life, and religious life. It robs a man of friendships and makes his days long, gloomy periods, instead of rapidly-passing epochs of joy and happiness. It throws around its victim a chilling atmosphere as does the iceberg, or ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... these myriads of tiny ships. Under a sky of cloud and stars they grope out to the great waters and the great winds—little sloops of life, on whose voyaging the future hangs. They go forth blind, feeling their way. Mothers, and you who will be mothers, and you who have missed motherhood, give them their chance, bless them with a gem—light their lanterns ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... arch-feminine ideal of the Christ Himself—that night on the Mount of Olives, when all Earth's struggle and anguish passed through Him, clothing itself with His pity and tenderness, before it reached the eye of the Father. What ineffable Motherhood!" ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... Vanity Fair is the best known and most popular. It is a remarkable picture of a thoroughly hard, selfish woman whom even motherhood did not soften; but it is something more than the chronicle of Becky Sharp's fortunes. It is a panoramic sketch of many phases of London life; it is the free giving out by a great master of fiction of his ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... Her brooding motherhood is strong; A trembling joy her bosom stirs, Her thoughts are white-robed worshippers, ...
— A Christmas Faggot • Alfred Gurney
... afford to do without them; but to-day, if it were left to my decision, whether the education of the race should be placed in the hands of the school teacher or the mothers and there was no other alternative, I should, by all means, decide for the education of the race through its motherhood rather than through ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... people, both men and women, loved a life of virginity, and in chastity emulated the dwellers in Heaven. But above all there was a vast band of women that were virgins who despised the thought of motherhood, and spurned this flowery world with contempt, ever showing by their thoughts, their deeds, and their bearing, that they desired rather to be united to that Spouse Who is in Heaven. What state is there to-day, what township ...
— The Chronicle of the Canons Regular of Mount St. Agnes • Thomas a Kempis
... familiarity with Archie and his disgusting weakness. It was her young cousin, the stone mason, and all that the discovery of him as a person, as well as her relationship to him and his claim upon her property, had meant. It was, of course, the influence of creative motherhood upon her. But it was more than all these combined that had started the belated growth of her soul, now that she was twenty-five, married, and had a child. It was an unknown power within her, like this mighty passionate wind, germinating late and unexpectedly ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... motherhood, if this thought of each one for himself prevails, what will become of us, a nation that depends upon its worship of the ancestors for its only practical religion? The loosening of the family bonds, the greater liberty of the single ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... sorrowing sisters of Bethany. He had a tender regard for little children, and when mothers brought their infants to Him He welcomed them with gracious encouragement, and, taking the little ones in His arms, blessed them, thus consecrating for all time both childhood and motherhood. Throughout His life there are indications of His deep reverence and affection for her who was His mother, and with His latest breath he confided her to the ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... out all her soul's influence upon the forming body of her child in the divinest love ever manifested on earth. Its birth and manifestation are of the immortal spirit, and create in her offspring some consciousness of, some desire for immortality. Of all earthly phenomena this of motherhood is the most marvelous, and naturally the least understood, and the most slightingly regarded. Its universality reduces ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... business of our life, marriage, our natural instincts alone are brought into play. Marriage—clothe the naked fact in what flowers of rhetoric we will- -has to do with the purely animal part of our being. The man is drawn towards it by his primeval desires; the woman by her inborn craving towards motherhood." ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... plain, barren since time began. Yet do I dream of motherhood, when man One day at last shall look upon my charms And give me towns, like ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... But Gertrude has set her heart on his doing a female figure; it seems that folk have twitted him with never having produced one. She has long been on the look-out for a model for him. It is odd to see this pale, demure, diaphanous creature, not the more earthly for approaching motherhood, scanning the girls of our village with the eyes of ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... know for myself what she must have suffered I love best to think of her as she was that day—my sweet, beautiful, timid angel—standing up for one brief moment, not only against Aunt Bridget, but against the cruelty of all the ages, in the divine right of her outraged motherhood. ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... Here, too, are primitive man and woman, bearing their burdens, symbolized by their progeny, into the unknown future, ready to meet whatever be the call of earth. The woman suggests the overwhelming instincts of motherhood. ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... away hastily to seek comfort and counsel in some other direction. With the selfish absorption of young motherhood she entirely disregarded Clovis's obvious anxiety about the asparagus sauce. Before she had gone a yard, however, the click of the side gate caused her to pull up sharp. Miss Gilpet, from the Villa ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... estate of fatherhood and motherhood God has given the special distinction above all estates that are beneath it that He not simply commands us to love our parents, but to honor them. For with respect to brothers, sisters, and our neighbors in ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... behind him as he fainted out of life, tempered the burning heat of the Sun of Death, and laid him to sleep in the cool twilight of her glorious shadow. In the stead of trouble about a wilful, thoughtless girl, he found repose and protection and motherhood in ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... distance, and one of the sweetest stories in the world is associated with it. For it was there that the young bride Mary visited her older cousin Elizabeth,—you remember the exquisite picture of the "Visitation" by Albertinelli in the Uffizi at Florence,—and the joy of coming motherhood in these two women's hearts spoke from each to each like a bell and its echo. Would the birth of Jesus, the character of Jesus, have been possible unless there had been the virginal and expectant soul of such a woman as Mary, ready to welcome His coming with her song? ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... flesh and blood, The heaven thy motherhood, The live lips, the live eyes, that lived on thee; The hands that clove with sweet Blind clutch to thine, the feet That felt on earth their first way to thy knee; The little laughter of mouths milk-fed, Now open again to feed ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... was not properly clothed, and her feet soon ached with cold, and she drew her breath through her teeth to prevent the utterance of moans of pain. She was never free now from the feeling of guardianship which is the delight and the haunting uneasiness of motherhood. "I must be warm," she thought, "for ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... north, from inland, from the island, from the Cariboo country, are gathered as guests to the feast. During these days of rejoicing, the girl is placed in a high seat, an exalted position, for is she not marriageable? And does not marriage mean motherhood? And does not motherhood mean a vaster nation of brave sons and of gentle daughters, who, in their turn, will give us sons ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... meaning. The circumstance was a light to the obstacles that beset a child's mind, and a lamp to parents in training that mind. Never was there a mother more fitted than mine, for the glorious responsibilities of motherhood. Very highly educated, she added Latin to her other accomplishments, in order that she might teach the language to me. She had married a second time, and my step-father, a wise and large- hearted man, one of the best men I ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... far beyond the time of motherhood were suckling infants, while all the young women seemed well provided with children. Girls of five or six were playing games with sleeping infants strapped to their backs, and even boys were impressed into ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... jump to this conclusion. Writing on his novels, Mr. W. E. Henley called him "the great optimist." The Kreutzer Sonata is the work of a profound pessimist. Concluding What To Do, Tolstoi wrote a noble passage on the sacredness of motherhood. Now all that is changed. Motherhood must go too. It will take time, for the old Adam is strong in us. But go it must, and when we have all brought our bodies under, no more children will be born. The race will expire, having perfected its imitation of Christ, ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... subjects. Seeing in that one of the most serious and interesting parts of life, he was aggrieved that it should be looked upon as ridiculous or shameful. No one speaks of maternity with his tongue in his cheek; and Whitman made a bold push to set the sanctity of fatherhood beside the sanctity of motherhood, and introduce this also among the things that can be spoken of without either a blush or a wink. But the Philistines have been too strong; and, to say truth, Whitman had rather played the fool. We may be thoroughly conscious that his end ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... stick in his hand, his face aglow with health and exercise and kindling at the sight of his wife. She hung on his arm, and, with his hand laid tenderly on hers, he asked her how she fared. She answered briefly, but with a little flush, her eyes raised to his. She was within a few weeks of motherhood. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Australia and New Zealand can vote, and help make the laws. Are the labor conditions better there than they are in England, where the suffragettes are making such a heroic struggle? Does there exist a greater motherhood, happier and freer children than in England? Is woman there no longer considered a mere sex commodity? Has she emancipated herself from the Puritanical double standard of morality for men and women? Certainly none but the ordinary ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... it means very different things to different people; but that is only because evil always takes advantage of ambiguity. I know it is praised with high professions of idealism and benevolence; with silver-tongued rhetoric about purer motherhood and a happier posterity. But that is only because evil is always flattered, as the Furies were called "The Gracious Ones." I know that it numbers many disciples whose intentions are entirely innocent and humane; and ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... existence without bringing himself into perilous proximity to subjects more profound and sacred than the occasion warrants. Life need not be barren of mystery and miracle to any one of us; but they shall be such tender mysteries and instructive miracles as the devotion of motherhood, and the blooming of spring. We are too close to Infinite love and wisdom to play pranks before it, and provoke comparison between our paltry juggleries and its omnipotence ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... a mother should give her daughter adequate information so that she should not be frightened at the first appearance of the menstrual flow, nor take any risks at this period. Menstruation is the sign of the possibility of motherhood. If properly taught this fact, every girl will be glad she menstruates and will want to be careful during the period. On account of lack of early instruction, many a girl obtains wrong ideas regarding this function and it produces in ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... Madonna di Custonaci sat over the altar with the Child at her breast smiling down upon our little circle and giving her blessing to Berto and Giuseppina who, with the sanction of their relations and friends, were taking the first step on the path that leads to motherhood. ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... when it wasn't any too clean and could glory in its musky and animal-like odors as well as the satin-shine of the light on its well-soaped little ribs, must now stand aside before the reservations of sex. It makes me feel that I've reached still another divide on the continent of motherhood. ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... young woman, meantime? Let me tell the truth: motherhood became her so well that she was brazen from the very beginning. No delicacy, no pretty shame, no shrinking—she gloried in the growing fact. When she was brought to bed she made a quick recovery; ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... into joy; and this was based on His resurrection to which they should be witnesses. He compared their then present and prospective state to that of a woman in travail, who in the after joy of blessed motherhood forgets her anguish. The happiness that awaited them would be beyond the power of man to take away; and thenceforth they should ask not of Christ alone, but of the Father in Christ's name; "And," said the Lord, ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... God, one Scripture, one Church. Eternal Progress of the Soul. Communion of Prophets and Saints. Fatherhood and Motherhood of God; Brotherhood of Man and Sisterhood of Woman. Harmony of Knowledge and Holiness, Love and Work; Yoga and Asceticism in their highest development. Loyalty ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... the whole, pleased with her experiment in vicarious motherhood. Dick instinctively resented the fact that Nancy had taken Collier Pratt's daughter into her home and heart, but the child herself was a delight to him, and he spent hours romping with her and telling her stories, loading her with toys and sweetmeats, and taking ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... the debt to the generations that follow. A certain percentage of the mothers die in childbirth—evidence that they are God's handiwork is found in the fact they so willingly enter the valley of the shadow of death to attain to motherhood. Many a boy has been won back to rectitude by the sorrows of a parent; we are not infrequently healed by the stripes that fall on others. In fact, great wrongs are seldom righted without the shedding of innocent blood—one dies and a multitude are saved. ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... the depths of his eyes. For the soul of a Frenchman demands the help of women, and the love of women, however strong his courage or his self-reliance. The beauty of life is to him a feminine thing, holding the spirit of motherhood, romantic love and comradeship more intimate and tender than between man and man. Only duty ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... Wild is the Wild, and motherhood is motherhood, at all times fiercely protective whether in the Wild or out of it; and the time was to come when the she-wolf, for her grey cub's sake, would venture the left fork, and the lair in the ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... is our conviction that had the women of the countries of Europe, with their deep instinct of motherhood and desire for the conservation of life, possessed a voice in the councils of their governments, this deplorable war would never have been allowed to occur; therefore, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... had ever loved, for the happiness she had once received from him. Oh! you need not be astonished at so horrible a conspiracy; it frequently takes place. Many women are more lovers than mothers, though the majority are more mothers than wives. The two sentiments, love and motherhood, developed as they are by our manners and customs, often struggle together in the hearts of women; one or other must succumb when they are not of equal strength; when they are, they produce some exceptional women, the glory ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... over the dead calf, licking the blood from its wounds and caressing and nosing it, trying in her dumb way to bring it back to life, she was a pathetic picture of wild motherhood, fighting and ready to fight to the end if ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... noble, true, and chivalrous, you will not allow the sweet impulses of young and tender womanhood to be punished with the ban of felony. To you, women of France, I appeal in the name of your childhood, your girlhood, your motherhood; take her to your hearts, she is worthy of it, worthier now for having blushed before you, worthier than any heroine in the great roll ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... denied her. The other of these women was reconciled because she could see reflected in the actions of that child the traits of a breed of strangers. And yet both these women can still find it in them to forgive her for all that she has done and all that she may ever do. That's motherhood, I suppose." ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... had no such social or legal position as either of these cases indicate, although here again personal testimony brings to light notable exceptions of the social behavior of individuals in certain localities, where this type, that is, the colored offspring of white motherhood, was regarded as a separate class, above ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... of social conditions: "We have been too prudish. Because we have been unwilling to teach school children the evils of violating sex hygiene, we have been unsuccessful in combating evils justly attributable to ignorance on the part of girls as to the duties and dangers of motherhood." This point of view is shared by so many men and women that a national body was organized in 1905 to promote the teaching of sex hygiene,—the Society for Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis. This society has its headquarters ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... it back to the weeping parents and went her way. "What a splendid creature," said the doctor to himself as he looked after her. "She has eyes like Fate, and the face of Motherhood Incarnate. A great woman, if ever I saw one, but different ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... be looked upon without admiration. I remember well the sweet dignity of her aspect, her "regal beauty," as Mr. Phillips truly styles it, and the charm of her serene and noble presence, which made her the type of a perfect motherhood. Her character corresponded to the promise of her gracious aspect. She was one of the fondest of mothers, but not thoughtlessly indulgent to the boy from whom she hoped and expected more than she thought it wise to let him know. The story used to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... ideal for a woman is that she should be a good wife and a good mother. It is not necessary to say this in direct words to every small girl, but she ought to be so educated, so guided, as to instinctively realise that wifehood and motherhood is the flower and perfection of her being. This is the hope and ideal that should sanctify her lessons and sweeten the right and proper discipline of life. All learning, all handicraft, and all artistic training should take their place as a preparation to this end. ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... thought of things totally different—of Hender, of the little girls, who would regret her absence from the workroom, and it was not without surprise that she caught herself wishing suddenly they were her own children. The wish was only momentary, but it was the first time a desire for motherhood had ever ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... muster. As the chaise drew up alongside the battery, he did indeed cast one wild look around and behind him, but only to catch a bewitching smile from the Mayoress—a young and extremely good-looking woman, with that soft brilliance of complexion which sometimes marks the early days of motherhood. And Captain Pond, with the Doctor and Second Lieutenant Clogg at his elbow, was standing hat in hand by the carriage-step; and the weather was perfect, and every face in the crowd and along the line of the Die-hards ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... is affronted when a man avers that for him the glory of woman lies in her power of attraction, in her capacity for motherhood, and in unswerving allegiance to the ethics which are special to ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... what you'd call sick," Lily tried to reassure herself; "he's a reg'lar rascal!" she ended, tenderly; her eyes—those curious amber eyes, through which sometimes a tigress looks!—looked now at Maurice in passionate motherhood. ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... shall not rape my riches, and curse me and go away; Making a bawd of my bounty, fouling the hand that gave— Till I rise in my wrath and I sweep on their path and I stamp them into a grave. Dreaming of men who will bless me, of women esteeming me good, Of children born in my borders, of radiant motherhood; Of cities leaping to stature, of fame like a flag unfurled, As I pour the tide of my riches in the ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... thousands. It would be the uprising of the women; the first upward step from sheer wage-slavery; the first advance toward the ideal of that coming woman, who should be a man in her freedom and her strength and her power, and yet woman of woman in her love and her motherhood and wife-hood. Industry, so Sally knew, was taking the young girls by the million, overworking them, sapping them of body and soul, and casting them out unfit to bear children, untrained to keep house, ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... firm, thick-skinned faces in which lines came slowly, and were few but strong. Faces, they were, of men who have lived in absolute sobriety and sanity, untorn by any temptation to live otherwise; faces of women to whom motherhood ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... selfish brute just to think such things when he had so dear and loving a wife as Billy, and so fine and splendid a baby as Bertram, Jr. He told himself, too, that very likely when they were back in their own house again, and when motherhood was not so new to her, Billy would not be so absorbed in the baby. She would return to her old interest in her husband, her music, her friends, and her own personal appearance. Meanwhile there was always, of course, for him, his painting. So he would paint, accepting gladly what ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... absolution for this separation which she would never have asked for herself. She had no conception that she was as disagreeable to Graslin as Graslin was repulsive to her. This secret divorce made her both sad and joyful. She had always looked to motherhood for an interest in life; but up to this time (1828) the couple had had no ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... she utters the cry of Africa's heart in America. "It would be more merciful to strangle the little things at birth.... This white Christian nation has set its curse upon the most beautiful, ... the most holy thing on earth ... motherhood." ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... temperament. He had married at the age of thirty-eight, nine years ago. His wife was now twenty-eight. She was one of those women who can be got at only through their feelings—never through their reason. In her a passionate longing for motherhood had absorbed every other wish. She had money of her own and had gone to spend a year in Europe. When she left, Kellson experienced a deep sense of relief; a whole year's freedom seemed endless at the beginning, ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... these days I believe it is going to be discovered that the atmosphere and the encompassing radiance and sweetness of Heaven are composed of the dear sighs and loving aspirations of earthly motherhood. If it turns out otherwise, rest assured Heaven will not have reached its perfect point of evolution. Why is it, then, that mothers will—will—will—try, so mistakenly, to extirpate the jewel of honest, manly savagery from the breasts of their boys? I wonder if they know that when ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... that I would not live. Grief, shame, and despair for the time rendered me insane, else I, who had been religiously reared, with a feeling of horror for the suicide's end, would never have dared to meditate taking the life that belonged to God. I was not so bereft of sense, however, but that my motherhood inspired me to make an effort to provide for my little one, and I wrote an earnest appeal to my old schoolmate and friend, Edith Allandale, who, I knew, would shortly be in Rome, asking her to take the child and rear her ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... was the cry of the famished motherhood of a dying race. She put her soft cheek on Molly's shoulder and she could no longer see the sun, for her eyes were tear-blinded. Kut-le, standing on the other side of the camp, looked at the picture with deepening eyes; then he crossed and put his hand ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... of the image of Divine Maternity, which so many illustrious painters have vied with one another to represent; something which should remind him, indeed, but only by contrast, of that sacred image of sinless motherhood, whose infant was to redeem the world. Here, there was the taint of deepest sin in the most sacred quality of human life, working such effect, that the world was only the darker for this woman's beauty, and the more lost for the infant ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... punishment. The tender little creature grew as a blossom grows from bud to fairest bloom. His mother flowered as he, and spent her days in noble cherishing of him and tender care. Such motherhood and wifehood as were hers were as fair statues raised ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the opportunity of being in the open every day, and of this opportunity she should avail herself. Why some women are ashamed of pregnancy is hard for normal-minded people to understand, for the praise of motherhood has been sung by the greatest poets and its glory depicted by the greatest ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... Infant into the temple in the pride of young motherhood, the venerable Simeon foretold that a sword would pierce through her own soul also. Often perhaps had she wondered, in happy days, what this mysterious prediction might mean. But now she knew, for the sword was smiting her, stab ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... the picture of Victorian mourning and compared it to the mourning of to-day, as different indeed as was the conception of motherhood to-day. ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... the Epeirae are displayed to even better purpose in the industrial business of motherhood than in the art of the chase. The silk bag, the nest, in which the Banded Epeira houses her eggs, is a much greater marvel than the bird's nest. In shape, it is an inverted balloon, nearly the size of a Pigeon's egg. The top tapers like a pear and is cut short and ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... that ring in the consciousness of a girl who gives for the first time her whole heart to her lover; the chanted prayers to her Maker, that rise with every muted throb of the young wife's heart which is beating for two in anticipation of her first motherhood—who shall dare ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... its mother when she brings home game for it to feed on, the baby Coyote becomes one of the cutest, dearest little rascals on earth. And when the nine that made up Coyotito's brood had reached this stage, it did not require the glamour of motherhood to make them ...
— Johnny Bear - And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted • E. T. Seton
... for a moment the God you do not serve, and then for a moment the mammon you do serve. The God you do not serve is the Father of Lights, the Source of love, the Maker of man and woman, the Head of the great family, the Father of fatherhood and motherhood; the Life-giver who would die to preserve His children, but would rather slay them than they should live the servants of evil; the God who can neither think nor do nor endure any thing mean or unfair; the God of poetry and music ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... others of kindred nature, how many of the stricken and bereaved women of our country might find at once a home and an object in life! Motherless hearts might be made glad in a better and higher motherhood; and the stock of earthly life that seemed cut off at the root, and dead past recovery, may be grafted upon with a shoot from the tree of life which is in the Paradise ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... they took their fill of the delight of young fatherhood and motherhood. After its morning bath Bartley was called in, and allowed to revere the baby's mottled and dimpled back as it lay face downward on the nurse's lap, feebly wiggling its arms and legs, and responding with ineffectual little sighs and gurgles to her acceptable rubbings with warm flannel. When ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... where the need for it ceased. Just because nature is elsewhere parsimonious, she seems frequently extravagant; yet that extravagance is the cheapest means of attaining the necessary end. Thus, when woman's passion is no longer required for the function of motherhood, its impulsion may yet be counted on for the psychological explanation of ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... the sovereign—her husband—to have in the management and the control of her own children, as long as her mother-in-law, the late Archduchess Sophia, was alive. It was only after the demise of the archduchess that Empress Elizabeth first realized in their full measure the joys of motherhood. ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... given to her motherhood an unusual thoughtfulness and seriousness. How close to God she must have lived! How deep and tender her love must have been! How pure and clean her heart must have been kept! How sweet and patient she must have been ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... generations from the divine fountain of life and light, our Father the Sun. I dreamt of Golden Star, and the days when I loved her in timid silence, for she was the fairest of all our race, and so, as it seemed to me, destined to no less a lot than the motherhood of a long line of Incas, in whom should live and grow to ever greater splendour the glories of the race that owned no ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... with one hand she rocked the wicker cradle beside her, where a boy of four years was tossing. Her hazel eyes were full of kindly light, the whole face eloquent with that patient, limitless tenderness, which is the magic chrism of maternity, wherewith Lucina and Cuba abundantly anoint Motherhood. The blessed and infallible nepenthe for all childhood's ills and aches, mother touch, mother songs, soon held soothing sway; and when the woman laid the sleeping babe on her own bed, and covered her with a shawl, she saw her husband leaning ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... everything, made the virgin for love; but with the first child her bosom loses form, her beauty its freshness. Woman is made for motherhood. Man would perhaps abandon her, disgusted by the loss of beauty; but his child clings to him and weeps. Behold the family, the human law; everything that departs from this law ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... bloomed, like garden spots of God. There were no beggars in the streets; there were no unemployed, For each man owned his plot of ground, and laboured and enjoyed. Sweet children grew like garden flowers; all strong and fair to see; And when I marvelled at the sight, thus spake a Voice to me: 'All Motherhood is now an art; the greatest art on earth; And nowhere is there known the crime of one unwelcome birth From rights of parentage the sick and sinful are debarred; For Matron Science keeps our house, and at the door stands guard. We know the cure for darkness ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... his fellowmen, and, as a certain consequence, more unable to bear the little crosses and contradictions of daily life; and as Lucia, having brought one and another child safely into the world, settled down into motherhood, he became less and less attentive to her, and more and more attentive to that self which was fast becoming the ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... child was born. What these experiences must have meant to her we are able to guess from a glimpse into her private journal in which she had many years before recorded her profoundest feeling about marriage and motherhood. ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... the poor woman, "if he was only old enough to go to school!" The wish was not entirely unmotherly, as motherhood goes in these days, for it is not an unusual thing for mothers to send their babes off to kindergarten as soon as they begin to babble, in order to be relieved of the responsibility of their care. But ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... that general, indescribable quality of womanliness—that quality which men have ever praised and ever will praise. Those noble words of Judge Sewall at the open grave of his mother are an epitome of the patience, the love, the sacrifice, and the nobility of motherhood: "Jany. 4th, 1700-1.... Nathan Bricket taking in hand to fill the grave, I said, Forbear a little, and suffer me to say that amidst our bereaving sorrows we have the comfort of beholding this saint put ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... in all ages of the world, and maternity has been deified by all creeds: from the savage who bowed before the female symbol of motherhood, to the philosophic Comtist who adores woman "in the past, the present, and the future," as mother, wife, and daughter, the worship of the female element in nature has run side by side with that of the male; the worship is one and the same in all religions, and runs in an unbroken ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... principle in the Deity should be concealed. Women were already deposed from their former exalted position as heads of families and as leaders of consanguine communities. All their rightful prerogatives had been usurped. The highest development in Nature had become the slave of man's appetites, and motherhood, which had hitherto been accepted as the most exalted function either in heaven or on the earth, trailed ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... mother of his foe, He will not speak to her in hate; My boy will never stoop so low As motherhood to desecrate. But she shall know what once I knew— Eyes that are glorious to see, The light of manhood ...
— Over Here • Edgar A. Guest
... and the similarity of their civilizations, was our rival by necessity, our ill-wisher because of the past. The idea that we were bound to the mother country by ties of gratitude or affection he always combated. He denied her motherhood as a historical proposition, and demanded to know of Senator Butler, of South Carolina, who was moved to eloquence over America's debt to England for a language and a literature, whether he was duly grateful also for English criticism of our institutions, ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown |
