"Portionless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... perhaps, just now, that I am the protector of the portionless; for the well portioned,[86] I'm in the habit {of being so} ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... her no compensation for her sorrows, you might at least respect her; but no, the most virtuous of women cannot escape calumny. This is our fate in its double aspect. Open prostitution and shame; secret prostitution and unhappiness. As for the poor, portionless girls, they may die or go mad, without a soul to pity them. Beauty and virtue are not marketable in the bazaar where souls and bodies are bought and sold—in the den of selfishness which you call society. Why not disinherit daughters? ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... thought of her mind—to her own aggrandizement, by means of some great and splendid marriage, which should set her as far above the heiress of Ditton-in-the-Dale, as the rich heiress now stood in the world's eye above the portionless and dependent sister. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... not for a moment conceive that there would be any difficulty with the uncle. How should there be? Was he not a baronet with ten thousand a year coming to him? Had he not everything which fathers want for portionless daughters, and uncles for dependant nieces? Might he not well inform the doctor that he had something to tell him for ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... answered the bashful maiden; "but, alas! how can the humble, obscure, portionless Flora become the wife of the rich, powerful and honored Count of Riverola? There is an inseparable gulf ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... deed had to be done; Swithin was to be made legally hers. Selfishness in a conjuncture of this sort was excusable, and even obligatory. Taking brighter views, she hoped that upon the whole this yoking of the young fellow with her, a portionless woman and his senior, would not greatly endanger his career. In such a mood night overtook her, and she went to bed conjecturing that Swithin had by this time arrived in the parish, was perhaps even at that moment passing ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... and whose depths were past all sounding, Mistress Damaris Sedley held her small head high and went her graceful way, moving as one enchanted over the thorny floor of the court. She had great charm. Once it had been said beneath a royal commissioner's breath that here in this portionless girl was a twin sorceress to the ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... back on his friends, and, glancing anxiously at intervals all around, as if in fear of a surprise, gobbles up his cabbage, wipes out his bowl, and then returns to companionship or disappears. The idea of sharing his portion with those who are portionless occurs to him only as the idea of a robber to the mind ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... then that an idea—a low-minded idea occurred to Lord Rufford. While all this was going on he had of course made various inquiries about this branch of the Trefoil family and had learned that Arabella was altogether portionless. He was told too that Lady Augustus was much harassed by impecuniosity. Might it be possible to offer a recompense? "If I could do anything else, Lady Augustus; but really I am not a marrying man." Then Lady Augustus wept bitterly; but while she was weeping, a low-minded ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... of trade had two hostile elements against them. The feudal lords used to pillage them legally by extorting heavy taxes and forced loans whenever their treasuries were empty. The portionless brothers and relatives of the feudal lords, to whom no employments save war, adventure, and piracy were open, pillaged them illegally. Along the coasts especially, piracy was considered not only a legitimate, but a genteel, profession. So in order to protect themselves, ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... her position the more difficult because of her grandmother's graciousness. She so evidently thought herself conferring a favour on a portionless and unattractive girl, that it became hard to say an ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... child is portionless," resumed the earl, with a suppressed sigh. "The thought that it may be an embarrassing thing for her, were I to die before she is settled in life, crosses my mind when I am in a serious mood. That she will marry well, there is little ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Mr. Bury at finding that a very modest amount of personal property was all that his runaway wife could hope to receive from her relatives,—that she was utterly portionless, her father having more than exhausted the patrimony of a younger son. He had supposed, from Zelma's apparently honorable position in the household of her uncle, that she was, if not an heiress, at least respectably dowered. Had he been better informed, it is doubtful whether, improvident and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... of broth, and at once they began zealously rivalling each other in their attentions to the ailing girl. Raymonde, holding out the cup in a pretty way, and assuming the coaxing airs of an expert nurse, especially insisted that Marie should accept the bouillon; and Gerard, glancing at this portionless girl, could not help finding her charming, already expert in the business of life, and quite ready to manage a household with a firm hand without ceasing to be amiable. Berthaud was no doubt right, this was the wife ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... a portionless girl, as Maude is, it was a great blow to me when I found her fixing her heart upon a younger son. How cross and unjust it made me I couldn't conceal: mothers are mothers. I wanted her to take a fancy to Hartledon, dear fellow, and I suppose ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... men saith that when Zeus and the other gods made division of the earth among them, not yet was island Rhodes apparent in the open sea, but in the briny depths lay hid. And for that Helios was otherwhere, none drew a lot for him; so they left him portionless of land, that holy god. And when he spake thereof Zeus would cast lots afresh; but he suffered him not, for that he said that beneath the hoary sea he saw a certain land waxing from its root in earth, that should bring forth food for many men, and rejoice in flocks. ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... to him,—Ellinor became an heiress. Her poor brother died, and all of the estate that did not pass in the male line devolved on her. That fortune made a gulf between us almost as wide as her marriage. For Ellinor poor and portionless, in spite of her rank, I could have worked, striven, slaved; but Ellinor Rich! it would have crushed me. This was a comfort. But still, still the past,—that perpetual aching sense of something that had seemed the essential of life withdrawn from life evermore, evermore! What was left ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... these poor dumb serfs have been scattered over the portionless earth, how often they look towards this fortress and lift up their voices with cries for night to come; the horses, ruffled and shivering, with their tails to the wind, as they snap their frosted fodder, or paw through ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen
... still entertained hopes that one of the elderly Indian bachelors, who came to pass their declining years in Lancia, would ask her hand in marriage; and these hopes were founded on the fact that these gentlemen frequently contracted alliances with the daughters of distinguished people in the place, portionless as they generally were. ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... with wealth is considered in Europe at the present day not only just, proper and quite as it should be, but rather comme il faut than otherwise. Let the case be reversed, and a man of fortune permit himself the caprice of marrying a portionless girl, and society cries out ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... education; his father, the correspondent, for years, in several foreign countries successively, of a conspicuous London journal, had died just after this, leaving his mother and her two other children, portionless girls, to subsist on a very small income in a very dull German town. The young man's beginnings in London were difficult, and he had aggravated them by his dislike of journalism. His father's connection with it would have helped him, but he was (insanely, most of his friends ...
— Nona Vincent • Henry James
... would mourn and scold because there is no store of linen, no piece of silver plate, no little round sum in money with the poor child. But what does it matter? We have enough for three. It is wicked indeed for parents to live so that they leave their daughter portionless, but it is no fault of the child's. Let them say what they like, it is a reason the more that she should want a roof over her head and a husband ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... home as master, and felt a momentary shyness take possession of him before his own new importance. He had been able during his absence to keep Hunsdon so much in the background, and to be so thoroughly the natural, portionless, Maurice Leigh. He jumped out of the carriage, however, and was too much occupied in helping his father, to think, for the next few minutes, of his own sensations at all. Then he discovered what he had not before thought ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... portionless girl, yes. Robert Grame," she went on rapidly with impassioned earnestness, "when you marry, it must be with someone who can help you; whose income will compensate for the deficiency of yours. Look ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... is an allegory of the parts of the soul. The noble captain and the ship and the true pilot in Book VI are a figure of the relation of the people to the philosophers in the State which has been described. Other figures, such as the dog, or the marriage of the portionless maiden, or the drones and wasps in the eighth and ninth books, also form links of connexion in long passages, or are ...
— The Republic • Plato
... right to the property which they have earned together, while the husband, who is the offender, still retains the sole possession and control of the estate. She, the innocent party, goes out childless and portionless by decree of law, and he, the criminal, retains the home and children by favor of the game law. A drunkard takes his wife's clothing to pay his rum bills, and the court declares that the action is legal because the wife ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... previously married them to princes of high rank. Cordiella was, however, at last made choice of for a wife by a French prince, who, it seems, knew better than the old king how much more to be relied upon was unpretending and honest truth than empty and extravagant profession. He married the portionless Cordiella, and took her with him to ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... eat, drink, and be happy, removed from the more profane looks and soft speeches of the younger part of the creation. Then there are the hoi polloi of outcasts, younger sons of younger brothers, tutors, governesses, portionless cousins, and curates, all formed in phalanx round the side-tables, whose primitive habits and simple tastes are evinced by their all eating off the same plate and drinking from nearly the same wine-glass,—too happy if some better-off acquaintance at the long table invites them to ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... hold fast a place, it was thought most natural and proper that he should choose a wife from the class which seems set apart from the rest of womankind like the choice flowers of a conservatory, on whom no rude breath must blow. The youthful, but nearly portionless, daughter of a poor Earl seemed the very bride decreed by some ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... nothing of! But once you are married to a man like Mr. Barton, who is there can frighten you? And as to being poor," and Mrs. St. John Deloraine explained her generous views as to arrangements on her part, which would leave Margaret far from portionless. ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... ornament of the Court," whose suit she rejected for that of the young and handsome Colonel Churchill. A single trait suffices to prove the lady's attractiveness—the avaricious John Churchill wooed and wedded her although all along he knew Sarah to be altogether portionless. ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... with eleven seasons' experience, and growing seedy and desperate, clings to him as the drowning cling to straws. She is the daughter of a peer, but there are five younger sisters, all plain and all portionless. Her elder sister, who chaperones her to-night, is the wife of a rich and retired manufacturer, Lady Portia Hampton. The rich and retired manufacturer has purchased Drexel Court, and it is Lady Portia's painful duty to try and marry her ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... 1795 were 'The Partition of the Earth', wherein Zeus takes pity on the portionless poet by giving him a perpetual entree to the celestial court; the mildly humorous 'Deeds of the Philosopher', a bit of persiflage on the art of proving what everybody knows, and also several pieces ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas |
