"Wooing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... won fair lady. Fine feathers make fine birds. Fine words butter no parsnips. Fire and water are good servants, but bad masters. Grasp all, lose all. Half a loaf is better than no bread. Handsome is as handsome does. Happy is the wooing that is not long in doing. He that goes a-borrowing goes a-sorrowing. Hiders are good finders. Home is home though it be ever so homely. Honesty is the best policy. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. It is an ill wind that blows nobody good. It is never too late to learn. It is ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... Rudolph. As may be supposed, the knight and the maiden frequently met, and ere long it became evident that Rudolph's passion was returned. The worthy chaplain, who loved the youth as a son, did not seek to interfere with the course of his wooing, and so in due ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... couteau de chasse by his side, with a small cane hanging to his button, and a pair of Italian greyhounds at his heels; and he must have impressed Tresham prodigiously; for I observe no other instance in which he has noted down costume so carefully. Little Puddock, too, was hovering near, and his wooing made uncomfortable by Aunt Becky's renewed severity, as well as by the splendour of 'Mr. Redheels,' who was expending his small talk and fleuerets upon Gertrude. Cluffe, moreover, who was pretty well in favour with Aunt Rebecca, and had been happy and prosperous, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... an end to the evening's enjoyment in the very middle of Jack Hopkins' song (with a chorus) of "The King, God bless him," carolled forth by Jack to a novel air compounded of the "Bay of Biscay" and "A Frog he would a-wooing go"—when poor, discomfited Bob (after turning pale at the voice of his dreaded landlady, shrilly calling out, "Mr. Saw-yer! Mr. Saw-yer!") turned reproachfully on the over-boisterous Jack Hopkins, with, "I ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... This had been a well-known signal in old times when Wildeve had used to come secretly wooing to Mistover. She at once knew that Wildeve was outside, but before she could consider what to do her husband came in from upstairs. Eustacia's face burnt crimson at the unexpected collision of incidents, and filled it with an animation that it ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... foam, but dancing on again And rolling pebbles in their chattering flow. 'Twas Love's own nook, As forest nightingale and urban Procne undertook To bear true witness; hovering, the gleaming grass above And tender violets; wooing ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... Frank's wooing seemed to prosper. The other young sparks, who had haunted Glenby, faded away after his advent. Betty treated him with most encouraging sweetness; Sara smiled on him; I stood in the background, like a benevolent god of the machine, ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... his comrade. "You are of opinion that the young lady's consent may not be so soon won as asked. Fear not for that, mine host. I have a winning way with me, when opportunity serves; and it shall serve with Ellen Langton. I will have no rivals in my wooing." ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... been under that window before in his life, had never seen the Signorina Juliet, daughter of Capulet the pizzicarole who lived above, but that he was merely accompanying his friend Romeo, who loved Juliet the daughter of the drochiere who lived a story below, and who was now wooing her softly two or three windows away. A shriek was his response as the wrathful head disappeared, while the lying Romeo laughed wickedly and the Leatherstonepaughs immoderately, in spite of themselves, to see Juliet, daughter of the drochiere, electrically abstracted ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... withheld. The old intrigues were still on foot. Israel soon discovered, that though rejoiced to welcome the return of the prodigal son—so some called him—his father still remained inflexibly determined against the match, and still inexplicably countermined his wooing. With a dolorous heart he mildly yielded to what seemed his fatality; and more intrepid in facing peril for himself, than in endangering others by maintaining his rights (for he was now one-and-twenty), resolved once more to retreat, and quit his ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... drays, choked turnpikes, and a whirl Of wheels, and roar of voices, and confusion, Here taverns wooing to a pint of "purl," There mails fast flying off; ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of war, deliverance from a domestic happiness which wounds his pride. By faithful endurance and an innocent fraud, she fulfils the apparently impossible conditions on which the Count had promised to acknowledge her as his wife. Love appears here in humble guise: the wooing is on the woman's side; it is striving, unaided by a reciprocal inclination, to overcome the prejudices of birth. But as soon as Helena is united to the Count by a sacred bond, though by him considered an oppressive chain, her error becomes her virtue.—She affects ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... strength of the master's hand, so loyal was he to his principle of contrast, that he cuts the melodious idyl short with a twang of the guitar-strings, and strikes up a tavern ballad on Lucrezia. The irony which ruled his art demanded this inversion of proprieties. Cynthia wooing Endymion shows us woman in her frailty; Lucrece violated by Tarquin is woman in her dignity. The ironical poet had to adorn the first story with his choicest flowers of style and feeling, to burlesque the second ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... such a smile as Malvolio casts upon Olivia. The manner in which, little by little, he ventured upon a familiar footing, was exceedingly funny; but when, in a moment of confident response to his wooing, he clasped her round the waist and imprinted a chaste kiss upon the brushy part of the broom, disguised by the sheet, the house resounded with roars of laughter. The subject, however, was deaf to all of the noise. He was absorbed in his courtship, and he continued to hug ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... he was ruthlessly carrying out a project which would ruin them. Under these circumstances he looked for no more than tolerance. He now owned frankly to himself that he was in love with Sheila. He had made little progress with his wooing, nor did he expect to make more just then. His blunt assertiveness covered a natural shyness where women were concerned, and he had about as much idea of the fine points of the game as a logger has of cabinet-making. Still, he was drawn to her by a desire which he was unable to resist. ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... shouldered on the right than the left side: but, if Anne always loved him, as is now proved, and the princess Elizabeth sought his affection after the Queen's decease, he could not have been the hideous dwarf at which dogs howl. Nay, so far from there being an atom of truth in that famous wooing scene which provokes from ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... towards wooing fortune was in the line of Kaffir trading. I hired myself to a trader, whose shop was in the Gaika Reserve, close to the kraal of the celebrated Chief Sandile, not far from Tembani. Sandile, who possessed enormous influence with his powerful and war-like tribe, was a man ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... half bashfully—to some deep-bosomed girl in the ripe fullness of womanhood who had not heard nature's imperious command, she must have listened thus, in silence; less attentive to their pleading than to the inner voice, guarding herself by distance against too ardent a wooing, whilst she awaited ... Chapdelaine were not drawn to her by any charm of gracious speech, but by her sheer comeliness, and the transparent honest heart dwelling in her bosom; when they spoke to her of love she was true to herself, steadfast and serene, ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... served; and though green, never suffer from the colic:—whereas, we mortals must forage all round for our food: we cram our insides; and are loaded down with odious sacks and intestines. Plants make love and multiply; but excel us in all amorous enticements, wooing and winning by soft pollens and essences. Plants abide in one place, and live: we must travel or die. Plants flourish without us: ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... England The weighty and the trivial contended Their hearts are eaten up by property Unanimous verdicts from a jury of temporary impressions We do not see clearly when we are trying to deceive Well, sir, we must sell our opium Won't do to be taking in reefs on a lee-shore Wooing a good man ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... That whether dreams be on them, or they wake, Send evermore sweet incense to the heavens. Sun-crested mountains, softened into grace By the blue tints of distance, lend new charms To verdant swarded valleys, in whose lap As in a mother's bosom, waters lie And ripple to the wooing of the winds. The very clouds that scan the blue of heaven, Fused sometimes by the sunshine as with soul, Or flaked by the light fancies of the gale, Form to the vision labyrinths of grace And beauty, that melt into ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... far, not so much from lack of inclination (for who can deny the fascination of the Sex?) as for lack of time and opportunity; for when, as a young gentleman of means and great expectations, I should have been writing sonnets to the eyebrow of some "ladye fayre," or surreptitiously wooing some farmer's daughter, in common with my kind, I was hearkening to the plaint of some Greek or Roman lover, or chuckling ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... this arduous wooing continue. We are not accurately informed respecting Temple's movements during that time. But he seems to have led a rambling life, sometimes on the Continent, sometimes in Ireland, sometimes in London. He made himself master of the French ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... those of another band grasp her by the arm, and almost tear her asunder in the effort to hold her back. These last are her brothers and her friends; the others are—her enemies? As you please to call them. They are her future husband and his kinsmen, who have come to aid him in his wooing. ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... or demanded his banishment and she had acquiesced, with a heartlessness that was beyond belief. He had been mistaken as to the extent of her regard for him; he had misjudged the progress of his wooing; he awoke to the truth that her heart was impregnable and that he had not so much as approached the ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... the camp; and among the many good men and women who came to visit and aid the prisoners was a young woman, the daughter of a well-known resident of Chicago. She met the Texan, and a result as natural as the union of hydrogen and oxygen followed. But since Adam courted Eve, who ever heard of wooing going on in a prison? "It is not exactly the thing," said Colonel De Land; "had you not better pay your addresses at the lady's house, like a gentleman?" A guard accompanied the prisoner; but it was shrewdly guessed that he stayed outside, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... Medon, from the wooers proud? Com'st thou to bid the handmaids of my lord To cease their tasks, and make for them good cheer? Ill fare their wooing, and their gathering here! Would God that here this hour they all might take Their last, their latest meal! Who day by day Make here your muster, to devour and waste The substance of my son: have ye not heard When children at your fathers' knee the deeds And ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... mother could not perceive,—a certain atmosphere about the charming girl which was a continual repression to him. In the end, he determined to win her, win her entirely, heart and hand; therefore he did not wish to embarrass his subsequent wooing by having to surmount at the outset the barrier of a premature "no." And, as yet, his jealousy of Captain Hyde was superficial and intermitting; it had not entered his mind that an English officer could possibly be an actual rival to ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... friend Hurlstone! Again an unexpected pleasure," he said, extending his white hands. "And again you find me wooing the Muse, in, I fear, hesitating numbers." He pointed to the sheet of paper before him, which showed some attempts at versification. "But I confess to a singular fascination in the exercise of poetic composition, in instants of leisure like this—a ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... "From wooing a fair and most beautiful maid," said the soldier, most honestly; though perhaps he told the truth as being the thing least likely to be believed ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... intend to marry, Harry should be regarded as his son. Then at last had come the fellowship, and he had been proud of his heir, thinking that in some way he had won the fellowship himself, as he had paid the bills. But now all was altered, and he was to go forth to his wooing again. ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... everlasting gates of life and summer are thrown open wide; and on the ocean, tranquil and verdant as a savannah, the unknown lady from the dreadful vision and I myself are floating—she upon a fairy pinnace, and I upon an English three- decker. Both of us are wooing gales of festal happiness within the domain of our common country, within that ancient watery park, within the pathless chase of ocean, where England takes her pleasure as a huntress through winter and summer, from the rising to the setting sun. Ah, what a wilderness ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... tenderly it wrapped the earth in a great white coverlet, hushing the troubled notes of the savage storm music into plaintive echoes of a lullaby. As it grew light a world of magic beauty greeted my eyes. Winter was King, but withal a tender monarch wooing as his handmaidens the beauties of early spring. The great Camellia trees gave lavishly of their waxen flowers, brocading the snow in crimson. Young bamboo swinging low under the burden, edged its covering of white down with a lacy fringe of ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... they have not been rendered unnatural by domestication—every act of sexual union is preceded by a process of courtship. There is a sound physiological reason for this courtship, for in the act of wooing and being wooed the psychic excitement gradually generated in the brains of the two partners acts as a stimulant to arouse into full activity the mechanism which ensures sexual union and aids ultimate impregnation. Such courtship is thus ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... Gil Blas. Pilgrim's Progress. Tale of a Tub. Gulliver. Vicar of Wakefield. Robinson Crusoe. Arabian Nights. Decameron. Wilhelm Meister. Vathek. Corinne. Minister's Wooing. Undine. Sintram. Thisdolf. Peter Schlemihl. Sense and Sensibility. Pride and Prejudice. Anastasius. Amber Witch. Mary Powell. Household of Sir T. More. Cruise of the Midge. Guy Mannering. Antiquary. Bride of Lammermoor. Legend of Montrose. ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley
... thoroughly Oriental theories, too, for the wooing of Chance, who (for Chance is very real and personal to him), he declares, presides over the fortune ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... loyal men, and had proved it by abandoning all for the cherished cause—many of them spending weary months in loathsome dungeons. Yet on hearing of the triumph of this faction, which promises to restore the Union by conciliating and wooing back the rebels, over one-half of them yielded, and gave that consent which neither danger nor suffering had been able to force from them! Thus were over twenty recruits from one room of one prison, obtained for the rebel army by the triumphs of ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... moral bravery behind the warrior eyes that was enough in itself and she really fell in love at first sight, as men said. But the secret police of Russia were at her elbow, too, hinting that only one course could save her from extradition and Siberian mines. At any rate she listened to the Rajah's wooing; and the knowledge that he had a wife at home already, a little past her prime perhaps and therefore handicapped in case of rivalry, but never-the-less a prior wife, seems to have given her no pause. The fact that the first wife was childless ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... picture she was as she sat there, my own Bessie! and what a strange place it was to rest on, those church steps! Behind us lay the Woolsey woods, with their wooing fragrance of pine and soft rushes of scented air; and the lakes were in the distance, lying very calm in the cloud-shadows and seeming to wait for us to come. But to-day Bessie would nothing of lakes or ledges: she would sit on the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... this method of wooing was that, in his class, it was untraditional. And this had some weight with him, for he had been brought up rigidly in the practices and customs of an exclusive caste. On the other hand, he had never thought of plunging rashly into love-phrases, from the first. He wished to establish a ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... sunshine! Gone the rosy hours! Gone love's early wooing! Gone the healthful powers! Come and cool the hectic, Chill the fevered glow, Pale the crimson flushing, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... avowed their inclination so openly, and Ethan, for a moment, had the illusion that he was a free man, wooing the girl he meant to marry. He looked at her hair and longed to touch it again, and to tell her that it smelt of the woods; but he had never learned to ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... me that she did not then wish to be my wife; so that the old intercourse went on—she cordial and polite as ever, I never for one moment doubting that the day would come when my roof tree would shelter her, and we should smile together over our fireside at my long and indefatigable wooing. ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... wedded under considerable delusions. I do not think he deceived her, indeed, nor do I suspect him of mercenariness in their union; but no doubt he played up to her requirements in the half ingenuous way that was and still is the quality of most wooing, and presented himself as a very brisk and orthodox young man. I wonder why nearly all love-making has to be fraudulent. Afterwards he must have disappointed her cruelly by letting one aspect after another of his careless, sceptical, ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... changed partners without invitation or permission. Thoughts fell in love at sight, married in a measure, and joined hands without previous courtship. An incongruity is the wedding of two thoughts which have had no reasonable courtship, and marriages without wooing are apt to lead to domestic discord, even to the breaking up of an ancient, time-honoured family. Among the wedded couples were certain similes hitherto inviolable in their bachelorhood and spinsterhood, and held in great respect. ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... the same way. In Margaret's presence something came over me, a kind of dryness in the throat, that made me dumb. I have known divinity students stricken in the same way, just as they were giving out their first text. It is no aid in getting a kirk or wooing a woman. ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... distraite maiden who greeted the visiting swain that night and one so inattentive to his wooing that his silences became long, under discouragement, and his temper sullen. Earlier than was his custom he bade her good-night ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... chief is at her feet; She does not heed him wooing so— She hears the dark, wild waters flow; She waits her lover, tall and fleet, From far gold fields of Idaho, Beyond the beaming hills ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... something infinitely better than itself. But there is a fascination in the mere sound of articulated breath; of consonants that resist with the firmness of a maid of honor, or half or wholly yield to the wooing lips; of vowels that flow and murmur, each after its kind; the peremptory b and p, the brittle k, the vibrating r, the insinuating s, the feathery f, the velvety v, the bell-voiced m, the tranquil broad a, the penetrating e, the cooing u, the emotional o, and the beautiful combinations ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... to have set himself the task of pleasing her to-night—of making her forget, mayhap, the wooing of the several suitors who had hung round her to-day. He talked to her—always in that mysterious, muffled voice, with the quaint rolling of the r's and the foreign intonation of the vowels—he talked ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... For the devils carry a great liking to those that are out of debt. I have sore felt the experience thereof in mine own particular; for now the lecherous varlets are always wooing me, courting me, and making much of me, which they never did when I was all to pieces. The soul of one in debt is insipid, dry, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... more filial than he could have wished. The fact is, that my father, notwithstanding the reputation he has of being in general but little respectful or reverent toward women, treats this one woman with such respect and consideration that not even Amadis, in the most devoted period of his wooing, showed greater toward Oriana. Not a single word that might shock the ear, no indelicate or inopportune compliment, no coarse jest, of the kind the Andalusians permit themselves so frequently to employ, does he ever indulge in. Hardly does ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... should have been so silly as to go a-wooing. Infirm and tottering as he is, it was the height of insanity. Down he dropped on his bended knees before the object of his love; out he poured his touching addresses, lisped in the blandest, most persuasive ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... renounce. But not thereby was he condemned to a foolish or base alliance. Women innumerable might be met, charming, sensible, good, no unfit objects of his wooing; in all modesty he might hope for what the world calls happiness. But, put it at the best, he would be doing as other men do, taking a wife for his solace, for the defeat of his assailing blood. It ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... Mrs. Button was plump and comely; her fair curls unfaded, and still full and glossy; her blue eyes capable of languishing into moist appreciation of a woful heart-history, or sparkling rapturously at the news of a triumphant wooing; her little fat hands were swift and graceful, and her complexion so infantine in its clear white and pink as to lead many to believe and some—I need not say of which gender—to practise clandestinely upon the story that she had bathed her face in warm milk, night and morning, ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... "and puny are thy wishes! Because thou didst by thy foolish wooing send the beautiful Eurydice swiftly down to the Shades and break the heart of Orpheus, whose music is the music of the Immortals, the bees that thou hast treasured have left their hives empty and silent. So little are the bees! so great, O Aristaeus, ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... boys from the hamlet came wooing over the downs and hung round the hut—preferably on the warm nights; but she hid herself and was ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... exquisite of her sex? How was that possible? What quality of his, personal, psychical, had such magnetic force? What sort of being was he in Marcella's eyes? Reflective men must often enough marvel at the success of whiskered and trousered mortals in wooing the women of their desire, for only by a specific imagination can a person of one sex assume the emotions of the other. Godwin had neither that endowment nor the peculiar self-esteem which makes love-winning a matter of course ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... nodding of that finger of light—a happy, snapping, crap-shooting finger that seemed to say: "Come on, you men," like a dice-player wooing the bones—led us to believe that our lights had been seen. This was the fact, for immediately the coming vessel flashed on its green and red side-lights and we saw it was headed for ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... and happier couple than Ascher and his wife. "Wild" Ascher was one of those intrepid, venturesome spirits, to whom no obstacle is so great that it cannot be surmounted. And the success which crowned his long, persistent wooing was often cited as striking testimony to his indomitable will. Gudule was famous throughout the Ghetto as "the girl with the wonderful eyes," eyes—so the saying ran—into which no man could look and think of evil. During the earlier years of their married life those unfathomable ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... is heard, The wooing ring-dove in the shade; On thy soft breath, the new-fledged bird Takes wing, ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... of old the Sun, our sire, Came wooing the mother of men, Earth, that was virginal then, Vestal fire to his fire. Silent her bosom and coy, But the strong god sued and pressed; And born of their starry nuptial joy Are all ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... side-look, gallant advance, timid retrocession, impassioned declaration, supercilious rejection, piteous supplication, softening hesitation; worldly goods oblation, gracious acceptation; frantic jubilation, maidenly resignation. Petting, wooing, billing, cooing. Jealous accusation, sharp recrimination, manly expostulation, shrewish aggravation; angry threat, summary dismissal. Fuming on one side, pouting on the other. Reaction, approximation, ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... was called "The Wooing of Winifred." It was written by an author whose name I forget; produced by the well-known and (as his press agent has often told us) popular actor-manager, Mr. Levinski; and played by (among others) that very charming young man, Prosper Vane—known locally as Alfred Briggs until he took ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... only for a few months. Flocks of green pigeons come in April to feed on the young fruit of the wild fig- trees, which is also eaten by a large species of bat in the evenings. The pretty little black weaver, with yellow shoulders, appears to enjoy life intensely after assuming his wooing dress. A hearty breakfast is eaten in the mornings and then come the hours for making merry. A select party of three or four perch on the bushes which skirt a small grassy plain, and cheer themselves with the music of their own quiet and self-complacent song. A playful performance on the wind ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... children, who are all taller than their father, and take mighty good care that he shall not forget it. But in the quiet, peaceful days that pass now, each as like the other as so many Scotch tups, I can hardly get the young folks to believe that even here we have had our romance, when Jim and I went a-wooing, and the man with the cat's whiskers came ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... being directed to his cozen. He says that many ladies in Spain, after they are found to be with child, do never stir out of their beds or chambers till they are brought to bed: so ceremonious they are in that point also. He tells me of their wooing by serenades at the window, and that their friends do always make the match; but yet that they have opportunities to meet at masse at church, and there they make love: that the Court there hath no dancing, nor visits at night to see the King ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... and friend and brother, In this fast fading year: Mother, and sire, and child, Young man and maiden mild, Come gather here; And let your hearts grow fonder, As memory shall ponder Each past unbroken vow. Old loves and younger wooing, Are sweet in the renewing, ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... from this hall to the wars of Troy. And since he went a host of ills has beset me. Ah, would that he were here to watch over my life! The lords of all the islands around—Dulichium and Same and Zacynthus; and the lords of the land of Ithaka, have come here and are wooing me against my will. They devour the substance of this house and ...
— The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy • Padriac Colum
... fires, powerful like mailed soldiers, full of blessings like the prayers of our fathers, who hold together like the spokes of chariot-wheels, who glance forward like victorious heroes, who scatter ghrita like wooing youths, who chant beautifully like singers, intoning a hymn of praise, who are swift like the best of horses, who are bounteous like lords of chariots on a suit, who are hastening on like water with downward floods, who are like ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... The wooing harmony had changed to a blast of war; the conductor's baton had become a bayonet; the soft wind instrument barked the rifle's tone; its notes were bullets that hissed and screamed; tinkling cymbals sounded the wild blare ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... public dance halls, the skating resorts, the crowded public beaches, etc. They regard themselves as connoisseurs in women and think they know when a girl is "ripe"; they are ready to spend money and utilize flattery, gifts and bold wooing, according to their nature and the way they size ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... to Dulcinea, went by; and Elena looked down at him, as she had seen those sisters look at passers-by. Gerardo caught her eye, and glances passed between them, and Gerardo's gondolier, bending from the poop, said to his master, "O master! methinks that gentle maiden is better worth your wooing than Dulcinea." Gerardo pretended to pay no heed to these words; but after rowing a little way, he bade the man turn, and they went slowly back beneath the window. This time Elena, thinking to play the game which her ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... one must weep, it shall not be you," he said. In the evening George Sand came in a carriage to the door and asked for Madame Musset; the latter came out, and after a short interview gave her consent to her son's departure. Chopin's unsuccessful wooing of Miss Wodzinska and her marriage with Count Skarbek in this year (1837) may not have been without effect on the composer. His heart being left bruised and empty was as it were sensitised (if I may use this photographic term) ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Steenie, for I never yet had the luck or ill-luck to fall in love, and certainly you'll allow that nobody ought to think of marriage until he's really in love. So I'll wish you all success, old boy, and mind you write and tell me how the wooing gets on!" O Maurice! Maurice! Then, by-and-by, the young officer sailed, and Adelais heard of his going, and her heart died within her for greatness of sorrow and pain, yet still she held her peace, and lived her life in patience. And so for two whole years ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... that the Reformation had the effect of wooing the finny tribe back to their old haunts. At all events, whatever may have been the cause, it is the fact that there is not at present a less plentiful supply in this spot than there is in any other ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... think that the success of his wooing would mean the end of his labours. Rose would never become the independent, perfect woman of my dreams, capable of preserving her personal life in the midst of love and in all circumstances. Alas, my ambition had soared too high! Henceforth, I ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... told me about this second wooing of his wife—and it was droll. There seemed nothing funny about it to him. He said that after being introduced to Mrs. Blood, and recognizing her in an instant after all those years, as she did him, they sat down on ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... Gallic girl I've won. It is really awful fun, For her prejudice was strong as was that of Lady ANNE To the ugly crookback, DICK. But my wooing there was quick. Platonic? Oh! of course. That is always Bruin's plan. A flirtation means no harm, When you wish not to corrupt or betray, ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Volume 101, October 31, 1891 • Various
... Jasher, who was beginning to give up her pursuit of Braddock, for it was no use wooing a man whose interests centered entirely ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... sound we really must listen. That is to say, we must read carefully, with our faculties on the watch. We must read slowly and perseveringly. A classic has to be wooed and is worth the wooing. Further, we must disdain no assistance. I am not in favour of studying criticism of classics before the classics themselves. My notion is to study the work and the biography of a classical writer together, and then to read criticism afterwards. I think that in reprints ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... of these stories may have been primarily akin to the heroine of the "Sleeping Beauty" tales, but no special significance appears now to be attributable to her isolation. The original idea seems to have been best preserved in the two legends of the wooing of Brynhild by Sigurd, in the first of which he awakens her from her magic sleep, while in the second he gains her hand (for Gunnar) by a daring and difficult ride—for "him only would she have who should ride through the flaming fire ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... to resist the insidious temptations of the bad demon; there is also a stern stability of vice often found in the unfortunate outlaw, which disregards, for a time, the voice of conscience, and spurns the whispered wooing of the good principle, "charm it never so wisely;" yet the real confessions of the hearts of those individuals would show traces enough of the agency of the unseen power to prove their want of title to an exception from the general rule which includes all the sons of Adam. We find, also, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... The Wooing of Winifred. It was written by an author whose name I forget; produced by the well-known and (as his press-agent has often told us) popular actor-manager, Mr. Levinski; and played by (among others) that very ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... a long stride in his wooing. He took her out sleighing on the last remnant of the snow,—very thin and bumpy,—and utilized the occasion to put his arm around her waist. She cried "Laisse-moi tranquille, Jean!" boxed his ears, and said she thought he must be out ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... revel. The servants bearing away the dishes began to tread the rushes on tiptoe, and a dozen frowns rebuked any clatter. Through the hush, the gleeman began to sing the "Romance of King Offa," the king who married a wood nymph for dear love's sake. It began with the wooing and the winning, out in the leafy greenwood amid bird-voices and murmuring brooks; but before long the enmity of the queen-mother entered, with jarring discords, to send the lovers through bitter trials. Lord and page, man and maid ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... sheepish as people detect him on their late return from the theatre. [Footnote: The love-making scenes in Goldoni's comedy of Il Bugiarda are photographically faithful to present usage in Venice.] Or, if the friends do not take this course in their courtship (for they are both engaged in the wooing), they decide that Todaro, after walking back and forth a sufficient number of times in the street where the Biondina lives, shall write her a tender letter, to demand if she be disposed to correspond his love. This billet ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... they are not good enough for him. He expects that Luck will suddenly bestow on him a ready-made position or a gorgeous chance suitable to the high opinions he holds of his own capacities. After a time people tire of giving him any openings at all. In wooing the Goddess of Luck he has neglected ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... a false pride and a true ambition; to this is appended 'The Marriage of Geraint,' of Arthur's court, and a member of the great order of the Round Table. Next follows 'Geraint and Enid,'—Enid, the gentle and timid, whom Geraint had married after wooing the haughty Lynette,—a tale of pure and loyal womanhood, darkened for awhile by the clouds of jealousy and suspicion, yet closing happily long after the "spiteful whispers" had died down, and Geraint, assured of Enid's fealty, had ruled his kingdom ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... as if somebody tried to remove a splinter from my flesh with a fork. As the blue waves of light had stirred up within me a tender feeling for Aniela,—although it was no merit of hers,—so now the wooing of such a man as Kromitzki threw cold water upon the nascent affections. I know that ape Kromitzki, and do not like him. He comes from Austrian Silesia, where it seems they had owned estates. In Rome he used to say that his family had borne the title of count already in the fifteenth century, ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... blossom, flower,—were as the realities of stilly life, which seemed to say, in the expressive language of flowers—"put aside from us our glassy veils, remove our crystal shrines, that we may nod kisses to the wooing zephyrs." ...
— The Royal Guide to Wax Flower Modelling • Emma Peachey
... Treaty of Bretigny, if her dower were Normandy, Maine, Anjou, not without a good sum of money. The French Court, on the other hand, offered him her hand with Aquitaine and the money, an offer rejected instantly; and Henry made ready for a rough wooing in arms. In 1415 he crossed to Harfleur, and while parties still fought in France, after a long and exhausting siege, took the place; thence he rode northward for Calais, feeling his army too much reduced to attempt more. The Armagnacs, who had gathered at Rouen, also pushed fast to the north, and ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... clicking of castanets; blending, at this lofty height, in a faint but general concert. 'Enjoy the moment' is the creed of the gay and amorous Andalusian, and at no time does he practice it more zealously than on the balmy nights of summer, wooing his mistress with the dance, the ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... ignore her. She rewarded Mr. Coventry accordingly, and made Henry Little's heart die within him. His agony became intolerable. What a position was his! Set there, with a chisel in his hand, to copy the woman he loved, while another wooed her before his face, and she smiled at his wooing! ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... sweet young English girl, who had left her southern home to pay a visit to her uncle, the old village-pastor; the bridegroom, a stout sailor, home from sea for a short while at his native village. And after a six weeks' happy wooing, a happy wedding took the two away, far from the heathery hills and the mountain lochs; far from the ...
— Wilton School - or, Harry Campbell's Revenge • Fred E. Weatherly
... such as we spake of before. But howsoever these things are thus in men's depraved judgments, and affections, yet truth, which only doth judge itself, teacheth that the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making, or wooing of it, the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature. The first creature of God, in the works of the days, was the light of the sense; the last, was ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... wooing of a peascod instead of her." (Shakesp.)—The efficacy of peascods in the concerns of sweethearts is not yet forgotten among our rustic vulgar. The kitchen-maid, when she shells green peas, never omits, when she finds one having nine peas, to lay it on the lintel of the kitchen door; ...
— Notes & Queries,No. 31., Saturday, June 1, 1850 • Various
... came back redder than ever. "You see we are neither of us young," said Mr Proctor; and he stood by the table turning over the books nervously, without looking at her, which was certainly an odd commencement for a wooing. ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... saying when the impetuous lover would have stopped his wooing in this cyclone-like fashion hut for an alarming interruption. He had been smitten profoundly, and the urgency of the case impelled him to an ardor which could not have found expression under any other conditions; but, all the time the frightened maiden was striving to free her imprisoned ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... happiness would wait on and reward the decisive word. But she was held back by an unconquerable indecision, a refusal (as it seemed) of her whole being to be committed to the pledge. She had not resented the confidence of his wooing—she had given him some cause to be confident; she pitied and even hated the distress into which her doubt threw him. Yet she could do no more than say "I don't know yet." He moved ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... thing, Euan, and endures neither plaguing nor wooing easily. How I have gained her I do not know.... Perhaps because I am aging very fast these days, and she hath a heart as tender as ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... of wooing, inopportune, fatal as any method he possibly could have found, moreover a cruel, unseemly thing to do, here and with her situated thus. ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... to say is, you are on the map. You have a sporting chance. Whereas George... Well, just go over to England and try wooing an earl's daughter whom you have only met once—and then without an introduction; whose brother's hat you have smashed beyond repair; whose family wishes her to marry some other man: who wants to marry some other man herself—and ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... his Lyrics from Elizabethan Song Books, p. 202, gives a version, "The Marriage of the Frog and the Mouse," from T. Ravenscroft's Melismata, 1611. The nursery rhyme of the frog who would a-wooing go is clearly a variant of this, and has thus a sure pedigree of three hundred years; cf. "Frog husband" in my List of Incidents, or notes to "The Well of ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... who concerned themselves in the affair of Marguerite's health and spirits, Mr. Raleigh was the only one who might have solved their mystery. Perhaps the thought of wooing the child whose mother he had once loved was sufficiently repugnant to him to overcome the tenderness which every one was forced to feel for so beautiful a creation. I have not said that Marguerite was this, before, because, until brought ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... time, Scott married Catie. To put the case more accurately, albeit in less lovely phrase, Scott was married by Catie. From start to finish, Catie was the active force in whatever wooing achieved itself, the active force which swept down on and annexed a ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... means, who, to tell the truth, gained more by trickery than he did in the legitimate and honorable exercise of his profession. He was a tall, bilious-faced widower; the father of two children; and had lately been seeking to better his fortunes by a rich marriage. But somehow or other his wooing did not seem to thrive well, and, with perhaps one exception, the lawyer's prospects in the matrimonial way ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... displaying her charms to the busy throng beneath with all the coquetry she could summon, to her aid, darting quick glances at youths and maidens, and by covert smiles bringing even the middle-aged man of business to her feet. The air is also influenced by her wooing, and is inclined to be less severe than some hours earlier. Floods of light are radiating King Square, giving even to its leafless trees a charm of softness and effect. Pedestrians are going to and fro, while several ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... taught and arranged by him—and "spoken their pieces," he arose, and, fixing his eyes on her, began Othello's defense before the Duke and Council. Here, as on the previous occasion, she felt herself personally alluded to in his account of his wooing. Desdemona, for some occult reason, vicariously appeared for her in the unwarrantable picture of his passion, and to this was added the absurd consciousness which she could not put aside that the audience, following with enthusiasm ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Paternal, as if blessing—with a grace, Such as, in strength and greatness, ever charms, As wooing the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... far off, and yet so near! It came to her in that hush'd grove, It warbled while the wooing throve, It sang the ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... wave, Most invitingly, to save; Wooing to her arms of love, Strangers who would freemen prove? That's the land to which I cling, Of her glories I can sing, On her altar nobly swear Higher still ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... many persons do in England, I allowed them to haunt the tower, in return for which they kept the mice down, and I could not find that they did me any kind of damage. I got quite to like their "to-whitting" and "to-wooing" more than the monotonous "cooing" of the pigeons which never did sound ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... loving breeze, Setting nature all a-quiver, Rustling through the trees! And the brook in rippling measure Laughs for very love, While the poplars, in their pleasure, Wave their arms above! River, river, little river, May thy loving prosper ever. Heaven speed thee, poplar tree, May thy wooing happy be! ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... beside himself about Miss Carpenter and that they toasted her twenty times over and raved about her until one o'clock in the morning." Sir Walter seemed to have acted in his courtship on the old north-country adage, "Happy is the wooing that is not long a-doing," for he was married to her three months afterwards. The whole details are carefully preserved in local tradition. The River Irthing runs through Gilsland, and at the foot of the cliffs, which rise go feet above the river, were the Sulphur Wells. ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... Then he fully recovered his senses, to find, to his great joy, that Dick also had been rescued, and was then lying senseless on a couch in the same room. Then, somehow, the young woman had disappeared, and rising to his feet, he had devoted himself to the task of wooing back Dick Chichester's senses. This, however, had proved a far more difficult task than he had at first anticipated; and it was not until the golden quality of the light streaming in through the closed jalousies proclaimed the near approach of sunset that Dick manifested ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... to me; though never so dear, hard to come by, yet I had it: the poor fellow was so fond at last, that I think if I would I might have had one of his eyes out of his head. A third suitor was a merchant of Rome, and his manner of wooing was with [5186]exquisite music, costly banquets, poems, &c. I held him off till at length he protested, promised, and swore pro virginitate regno me donaturum, I should have all he had, house, goods, and lauds, pro concubitu solo; [5187]neither was there ever any ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior |
