"Virginity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... immaculate to the age of fifty-five. The state of virginity could not be laid to her charge as an offence against society, for it had not been voluntary. In her youth she was rather distinguished for sensibility. Her aunt's known riches gave the niece the reputation of a great fortune, an attraction to which she ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... thing, and might place your confidence upon Him alone, and believe, that Christ's righteousness may become your righteousness; when those men hear this, they revolt at it, stumble and vex themselves, and say, "How? do you mean to say that virginity, and masses, and the like good works, amount to nothing? It is the devil that bids you say that!" For they cannot understand, in this matter, that their claims are not good; they think they have done well in the sight of God; quote passages to prove it from the Scriptures, and say, God ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... it was that souls might go to hell, and yet that it was good that they should go; how it was that our Saviour was born of His blessed Mother without any breaking of her virginity; how it is that all things subsist in God; in what manner it is that God comes into the species of the bread. But he could not tell me how these things were so, nor what it was that was shewed him.... [There follow a few confused ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson
... she had gone. Some thought that she had gone on a journey to a villa which she possessed in Sicilia, others thought that she was living a life of retirement in a lonely dwelling on the Sabine Hills, preparatory to devoting her virginity to the ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... vainly seeking to put into her life those interests which make the Woman, and finding herself forced to be still unmarried, she fortified her virtue by stern religious practices. She had recourse to religion, the great consoler of oppressed virginity. A confessor had, for the last three years, directed Mademoiselle Cormon rather stupidly in the path of maceration; he advised the use of scourging, which, if modern medical science is to be believed, produces an effect ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... judicious minds must appreciate the value of that system of education and liberty, which we demand for young girls, in the name of reason and nature. The prejudice which we in France entertain in favor of the virginity of brides is the most silly of all those which still survive among us. The Orientals take their brides without distressing themselves about the past and lock them up in order to be more certain about the ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... concepta" was chanted, he would exclaim with emotion that the words embodied his devoutest aspirations. He had frequent interviews with doctors of divinity on the subject, and instructed many bishops to urge upon the pope the necessity of proclaiming the virginity of the Virgin's mother. Could he secure this darling object of his ambition, he professed himself ready to make a pilgrimage on foot to Rome. The pilgrimage was never made, for it may well be imagined ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... that by Gloriana, the Faerie Queene, the poet intended the person of Elizabeth in her regnant grandeur: Britomartis represents her chastity. Not content with these impersonations, Spenser introduces a third: it is Belphoebe, the abstraction of virginity; a character for which, however, he designs a dual interpretation. Belphoebe is also another representation of the Church; in describing her he rises to great splendor ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... women—"The normal life is denied to you, not by your fault, or because you do not need it, but because we have unfortunately been obliged to sacrifice in war the men who should have been your mates: and we now invite you in the interests of morality to accept as your lot perpetual virginity"—it is not difficult to imagine their reply: "What is this morality in whose interests you ask so huge a sacrifice? Is it worth such a price? Is the whole community willing to pay it, or is it exacted from us alone? And on what, in the end, ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... vindicated his character, when nobody knew he had one, and explained his motives, because his auditors could not understand his acts. Then there was a maiden speech, so inaudible that it was doubted whether, after all, the young orator really did lose his virginity. In the end, up started the Premier, who, having nothing to say, was manly, and candid, and liberal; gave credit to his adversaries and took credit to himself, and then the motion ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... conditions, nothing is more certain than the equality of women with men in all questions of sexual morality. In proof of this it is necessary only to recall the facts we have noted. We find little or no importance attached to virginity, which in itself indicates the absence of any conception of the woman as property. Thus no bride-price is claimed from the husband, who renders service in proof of his fitness as a lover, not to gain possession of the bride. The girl is frequently the wooer, and, in certain cases, she or ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... are governed no longer by their own will, but by that of their rule and superior. In like manner, according to the testimony of the apostle, those virgins do better who, contemning the world and spurning its enticements, vow and maintain virginity in monasteries, than those who place their necks beneath the matrimonial burden. For thus St. Paul says, 1 Cor. 7:28: "He that giveth her in marriage doeth well; but he that giveth her not in marriage doeth better." Also, concerning a widow, he continues: "She ...
— The Confutatio Pontificia • Anonymous
... enough parathyroid meant a great deal to the Organism as a whole, as well as to the vegetative apparatus. For states of tension and relaxation, activity and inactivity in the nerves and viscera would be determined by these variations in the ratio between the variants. The vegetative apparatus in its virginity, say in the new-born infant, may be said to have its development primarily determined by the reaction potentials of the endocrine part of it, that is the latent power of each gland to secrete at a minimum or a maximum, and the ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... origin of that multitude of singular institutions which retards the progress of population. Anthropophagy, the castration of males, the infibulation of females, late marriages, the consecration of virginity, the approbation of celibacy, the punishments exercised against girls who become mothers at too early an age," he enumerates as such checks. Malthus, in his Essay on Population, commenting on this statement, notes that the bounds to the ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... the priest who scratched his ear, quite dumbfounded by the lamentations, profound wisdom, controversies and intelligence that this virginity secreted. ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... acted sinfully destroys his sin by acting virtuously afterwards and by penances. By calling a thief a thief, one incurs the sin of theft. By calling a person a thief who, however, is not a thief one incurs a sin just double the sin of theft. The maiden who suffers her virginity to be deflowered incurs three-fourths of the sin of Brahmanicide, while the man that deflowers her incurs a sin equal to a fourth part of that of Brahmanicide. By slandering Brahmanas or by striking them, one sinks in infamy for a hundred years. By killing ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... thing that walks by night, Blue meagre hag, or stubborn, unlaid ghost That breaks his magic chains at curfew time, No goblin, or swart faery of the mine, Hath hurtful power o'er true virginity." ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... bones which nothing could stop; just as her mother enjoyed the confidence of a Royal master, and now and again Florinda herself was a Princess, but chiefly when drunk. Thus deserted, pretty into the bargain, with tragic eyes and the lips of a child, she talked more about virginity than women mostly do; and had lost it only the night before, or cherished it beyond the heart in her breast, according to the man she talked to. But did she always talk to men? No, she had her confidante: Mother Stuart. Stuart, as the lady would point out, is the ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... Apollo, who immediately became invisible when an alarm was raised. It was also said that many persons found large heaps of gold in their houses without knowing from whence they came. All Paris was in alarm. No man thought himself secure of his goods, no maiden of her virginity, or wife of her chastity, while these Rosicrucians were abroad. In the midst of the commotion, a second placard was ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... this wreckage had not touched her. There was no stain, no crumpled leaf. She was a fresh wonder, even after this, out of a chrysalis. It was this amazing newness, this virginity of blossom from which one could ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... it as low, earthly, carnal, and sensual. It was at this time that Christianity entered into the world, and while it added fresh dignity and significance to the marriage relationship, it at the same time shed a splendour and a glory upon the other state. The virginity of the mother of Our Lord—the solitary life of John the Baptist—the pure and solitary youth of Christ Himself—had thrown upon celibacy a meaning and dignity which it did not possess before. No marvel therefore, that to ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... heaven's sake." This doctrine is too high for flesh and blood, but Origen and other early Christians practised it literally. We may be sure that those who trample on manhood have no real respect for womanhood. Hence the Romish Church has always praised up virginity, which is simply an abnegation of sex. Cruden shrinks from the literal sense of Christ's words, and says that the "eunuchs" he refers to are those who "upon some religious motive do abstain from marriage and the use of all carnal pleasures; that they ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... concentrating itself into this latter vocation, and I cannot see why he should not achieve something very good. He has a beautiful statue, already finished, of Goethe's Margaret, pulling a flower to pieces to discover whether Faust loves her; a very type of virginity and simplicity. The statue of Cleopatra, now only fourteen days advanced in the clay, is as wide a step from the little maidenly Margaret as any artist could take; it is a grand subject, and he is conceiving it with depth and power, and working it out ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... it not don in pride, or in presumption. Som say no evil thing that walks by night In fog, or fire, by lake, or moorish fen, Blew meager Hag, or stubborn unlaid ghost, That breaks his magick chains at curfeu time, No goblin, or swart faery of the mine, Hath hurtfull power o're true virginity. Do ye beleeve me yet, or shall I call Antiquity from the old Schools of Greece To testifie the arms of Chastity? 440 Hence had the huntress Dian her dred bow Fair silver-shafted Queen for ever chaste, Wherwith she ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... The latter was written with a view to drawing the attention of the public to the wretched lot of the women and girls of the lower classes, who were reduced to prostitution by the lowness of their wages. Their virginity is an object of traffic," we are told, "quoted on the exchange of infamy." The sixteenth Bulletin was simply an appeal for revolt. George Sand was looking ahead to what ought to take place, in case the elections did not lead to the triumph of social truth. "The people," she hoped, "would know ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... when their education is finished, and their beauty and wisdom call forth the admiration of all who approach them, the industrious, prudent old woman does indeed offer them to a very wise, very just king. And when this very wise, very just king has taken their virginity from them, and seeks other loves, he will probably bestow them (I have forgotten the end of this particular story, but it is the invariable destiny of all the heroines of these marvellous legends) on his viziers. And these viziers ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... may find certain analogies between these adepts of "virginal virginity," or of "the great garden of the Tsar"—for both these names were applied to them—and the adamites or aryanists; for eager minds seeking supreme salvation are apt to meet upon the great road ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... particularly were they complicated by the identification of the man Jesus with the theological Christ, by materialistic expectations of his second coming, by materialistic inventions about his "miraculous" begetting, and by the morbid speculations about virginity and the like that arose out of such grossness. They were still further complicated by the idea of the textual inspiration of the scriptures, which presently swamped thought in textual interpretation. That swamping came very early in the development of Christianity. The writer of ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... conjuration, the angel himself had strangled her with his own hands, twisting her neck so horribly that her tongue hung out of her mouth. And thus she died before his very face. The cause was, as he, poor father, had heard afterwards, that she had suffered a young student to kiss her, and so the pure virginity of her soul was lost. Now if the gracious Prince knew of any such pure virgin, who besides must be brave and courageous as an amazon, matters would proceed easily, they would make an end of the demon Sidonia without the least difficulty. He had the clothes ready, all ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... inevitable to his age, to the swift passage of that young idealism: after forty, the nebulous became a need for sensuous reality. Certain phases of Mina, as well, were utterly those of a child—she had the eluding sweetness, the flower-like indifference, of Helena, of a temperamental virginity so absolute that it was incapable of understanding or communicating an emotional fever. But, in the degree of her genius, she was above, superior to, experience; it was not, for her, necessary; she was not changed by it, but changed it into ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... experience can never be repeated. The first love, the first sunrise, the first South Sea island, are memories apart and touched a virginity of sense. On the 28th of July 1888 the moon was an hour down by four in the morning. In the east a radiating centre of brightness told of the day; and beneath, on the skyline, the morning bank was already building, black as ink. We have all read of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... one of merely regal power. Even far away in Derbyshire—even in the little country manor from which the girl came, the aroma of that tremendous presence penetrated—of the woman whom men loved to hail as the Virgin Queen, even though they might question her virginity; the woman—"our Eliza," as the priest had named her just now—who had made so shrewd an act of faith in her people that they had responded with an unreserved act of love. It was this woman, then, whom she was about to see; the sister of Mary and Edward, the daughter of Henry and Anne ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... seduced by any Don Juanic or other Byronic unvirtuous revelry. The physical ills that this contrivance must cause are necessarily without number, as the instrument is not as lightly constructed as our modern stem pessaries; but to the Oriental who can replace a woman at any time and who prizes the virginity, continence, and chastity of his slaves, even if enforced, more than their health or their lives, these are matters of secondary importance. In the Soudan there are no divorce courts, hence the probable necessity of the apparatus, and, as the woman is not obliged to wear it unless ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... stay with them for ever; and there, in the secrecy of her own heart, and before the alter of our Holy Mother, she made promises that shared in the merits of vows. When free, she would give herself to the love of God and the preparation for eternity in some secluded retreat of religion and virginity. ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... matured; and from the everlasting and nameless [Footnote: "Nameless city."—The true name of Rome it was a point of religion to conceal; and, in fact, it was never revealed.] city was a man produced— capable of taming her indomitable nature, and of forcing her to immolate her wild virginity to the state best fitted for the destined "Mother of empires." Peace, then, rhetoricians, false threnodists of false liberty! hollow chanters over the ashes of a hollow republic! Without Csar, we affirm a thousand times that there would have been no perfect Rome; and, but for Rome, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... supplications can cause no effect. In vain were the silver ornaments and fine clothes displayed before her; she refused to take food and wept bitterly, not with the conventional tears of the Chinese girl bewailing her virginity and begging that she may not be torn from the shelter of her maiden home, but with a real horror of the fate ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... imaginative. She loved her dreams, and she often raised, as it were, a radiance of rainbows about some boy of her acquaintance, but the brightness vanished the instant the boy made advances. She had an almost fierce virginity of spirit in spite of her loving heart. She did not wish to touch her butterflies of life. She used to walk between her aunt and Maria when they were coming out of church, so that no boy would ask leave to go home with her. She clung to the girls in her class for protection ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... And the virginity of Mary was hidden from the Prince of this World, and her bringing forth, and likewise the death of the Lord; three mysteries of shouting, which were wrought in silence of God. How, then, was He manifested to the world? A star shone forth from heaven above all other ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... no Irvin Cobb, no Casey at the bat. Mr. Smith is an infinitely close and acute observer of sophisticated social life, tinged with a faint and agreeable refined sadness, by an aura of shyness which amounts to a spiritual virginity. He comes to us trailing clouds of glory from the heaven of pure and unfettered speculation which is our home. He is an elf of utter simplicity and infinite candour. He is a flicker of absolute Mind. His little book is as precious and as disturbing ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... may speak out my mind, and say as how if there was a slave between us two, when Goodenough was alive, it wasn't me; and I don't think as it was pretty in Miss Browning to give herself such airs on her virginity when there was four widows in the room,—who've had six honest men among 'em for husbands. No offence, Miss Airy!' addressing an unfortunate little spinster, who found herself the sole representative ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... flatboat-men in company with whom I had floated down the great river. Five years previously, heartsick and utterly careless of life, I had plunged into the trackless wilderness stretching in almost unbroken virginity to north and east, desiring merely to be left alone, that I might in solitude fight out my first grim battle with despair, saying to myself in all bitterness of soul that never again would I turn face to southward or enter the boundaries of Louisiana Province. During those years, ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... that place. The sect came to be called Paulicians. They rejected the real divinity of Christ and placed themselves in opposition to very much else which belonged to the earliest Christian tradition, as in their rejection of the Old Testament and the perpetual virginity of the Lord's Mother. Armenia became the headquarters of a large and prosperous sect, towards which emperors alternately were persecuting or favourable. Nicephorus I. (802-11) was friendly to it, but his successor put it down with relentless ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... vowed to virginity, like you are ... I really don't care if I never see Major Armstrong again ... though he certainly is rather a darling ... very good-looking ... and, d'you know, he's almost a Pro-Boer, though the Boers ambushed him.... Says this war's a ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... chastity that is proper to religious, and it is more correctly called virginity. This is the natural state of spirits who have no bodies; cultivated in the frail flesh of children of Adam, it is the most delicate flower imaginable. Considering the incessant struggle it supposes in those who take such a vow against the spirit within us that is so strong, ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... verse of the first chapter of St. Matthew, together with the fifty-fifth and fifty-sixth verses of the thirteenth of the same gospel, could never be brought to an acknowledgment of the perpetual virginity of the new queen of heaven. Their philosophical tendencies were soon indicated by their actions. While their leader was tormented in an African oasis, many of them emigrated to the Euphrates, and established the Chaldean Church. Under their auspices the college of Edessa ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... woman To mingle wonderfully, that the twain Become a moment of one blazing flame Infinitely upward towering, far beyond The boundless fate of spirit in the world. But in the way to this are maladies And anguish; and as a perilous bridge Over the uncontrolled demanding world, Virginity, passionate self-possessing, Must build itself supreme, unbreakable. —I leave thee: as thou mayst, be comforted By prophecy of what I mean in life. Against thee is not Heaven, and thou must Endure the hatred men will ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... she recollected Dame Idonea's gossiping information—that brave Sir Robert, the flower of the House of Darcy, had only entered the Order of St. John, when fair Alda Braithwayte, in the strong enthusiasm of the Franciscan preaching, had pleaded a vow of virginity against all suitors, and had finally become a Sister of the Poor Clares. And after all his wars and wanderings, the regulations of his Order had ended by bringing the Hospitalier in his old age into the immediate ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... age, and, during the whole ceremony, her countenance, which was pleasing, bore the evident marks of inward satisfaction and holy veneration. The nuns, who before had been standing round the chapel, each holding a burning taper, now tenderly embraced their intended sister, and placed the crown of virginity upon her temples, when an anathema, was with great solemnity, pronounced against all who should attempt to make her break her vows. The impressive ceremony which thus excludes youth and beauty in a cloister, closes with the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... that finally bound the people in the thralldom of superstition and plunged the world into the darkness of spiritual night. One who is free from such influences can scarcely read without feelings of disgust the elaborate treatises of these church fathers wherein they extol the virtues of virginity as forming a new order of life, as an evidence of divinity, as making virgins while in this world "equal to the angels of God," and as a certain surety of special rewards in heaven. From this false standard proceeded at length the celibacy of the clergy and monkery with all their attendant evils. ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith
... on an aspen sprig, Weeps all the night her lost virginity, And sings her sad tale to the merry twig, That dances at such joyful mysery. Never lets sweet rest invade her eye; But leaning on a thorn her dainty chest, For fear soft sleep should steal into her breast, Expresses in her song grief not ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... after they should. Ay, ay indeed, doubtless they were well advised to tarry so long! Christ's faith! I should know the truth of what I swear; there is never a woman in my neighbourhood whose husband had her virginity; and well I know how many and what manner of tricks our married dames play their husbands; and yet this booby would fain teach me to know women as if I were but ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... a virgin in whom not even the least unchaste desire ever arose? And I tell you, moreover, that such freshness and flower of youth besides being maintained in her by natural causes, it may possibly be that it was ordained by the Divine Power to prove to the world the virginity and perpetual purity of the Mother. It was not necessary in the Son; but rather the contrary; wishing to show that the Son of God took upon himself a true human body subject to all the ills of man, excepting only sin; he did not allow the divine ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... been accused of setting up a similar ideal. This is a gross calumny. For while Catharism made chastity a sine qua non of salvation, and denounced marriage as something infamous and criminal, the Church merely counsels virginity to an elite body of men and women in whom she recognizes the marks of a special vocation, according to the teaching of the Savior, "He that can take, let him take it." Qui potest capiare capiat.[1] ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... removed from the peritoneal cavity. This had undoubtedly found entrance through the old appendicitis wound; the hairpin had evidently been straightened for the purpose. Both wounds now speedily closed. Gynecological examination showed no disease and established the fact of virginity. Thorough neurological examination showed that the girl was not of nervous type and that there was no evidence whatever of organic disease. There was complaint of frequent headaches, but no signs of acute suffering from these were ever witnessed and by this time no reports of subjective ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... evidently it is the celibate state of life that should be adopted, since it is a more perfect state than that of marriage; and the church, maintaining the doctrine of the Apostle on this point, has condemned as heretics those who teach that the married state is as perfect as that of virginity. But, if all should aspire to perfection, if all are free to choose the kind of life that will better insure the attaining of that perfection, then all are not obliged to embrace the celibate state, since our perfection consists in ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... looked at the returned envelope, I felt like standing uncovered, as in the presence of genius, a genius before which Mediums One, Two and Three paled. Nothing could excel the unsullied virginity of the seals, or of the gummed spaces between them. I felt that I must proceed with the utmost caution. With a very sharp penknife I then began to cut the edge of the envelope at one end. Scarcely had the knife been ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... another gentleman that overtook me, we came at night to Stamford, to the sign of the Virginity (or the Maidenhead) where I delivered a letter from the Lord Sanquhar; which caused Master Bates and his wife, being the master and mistress of the house, to make me and the gentleman that was with ...
— The Pennyles Pilgrimage - Or The Money-lesse Perambulation of John Taylor • John Taylor
... a man delivered his maiden speech without creating the slightest impression of any kind, good or bad, so that when he sits down it is, as Mr. Disraeli put it, hardly certain whether he has lost his Parliamentary virginity or not; and a little later on the same man has the whole House trembling with anxiety and expectation when he rises to take part in a great debate. On the whole, it is probable that the chances of the future are rather in favor ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... Satires of Filelfo, and the Hermaphroditus of Panormitano afforded reading-matter to both sexes. This was the age in which the learned and erudite Lorenzo Valla—of whom more anon—wrote his famous indictment of virginity, condemning it as against nature with arguments of a most insidious logic. This was the age in which Casa, Archbishop of Benevento, wrote a most singular work of erotic philosophy, which, coming from a churchman's pen, will leave you cold with horror should you ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... arrival, at an adversary's sword-point behind a potting-shed near the Petit Trianon. Rumour whispered that it was on account of a woman that he fought and lost, but this last blow of Providence's hatchet was spared his girl bride, innocent, secure in her supreme purity and innate virginity. If evil tongues had even mentioned the word "woman" to her, she would not have known what ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... later developments of belief and practice that gathered around Christian asceticism which placed woman and her special functions under a cloud of suspicion from which she is not even yet entirely freed. Celibacy became exalted; virginity was a positive virtue; chastity, instead of a healthful antecedent to parenthood, became an end in itself; and monasteries and convents multiplied throughout Christendom. Something of shame and guilt gathered around conception and birth, ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... its expression a proud virginity; an ascetic sternness moulded the small, delicate lips. Letty's countenance could never ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... John, starting to his feet. 'What ca' ye a spot?—Wuman, dinna drive me mad to hear ye lichtlie the glory o' virginity.' ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... Athens! Matrons, turn incontinent; Obedience fail in children; slaves and fools Pluck the grave wrinkled senate from the bench, And minister in their steads. To general filths Convert o' th' instant green virginity! Do't in your parents' eyes. Bankrupts, hold fast; Rather than render back, out with your knives, And cut your trusters' throats! Bound servants, steal: Large-handed robbers your grave masters are, And pill by law. Maid, to thy master's ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... excellent, Whose virtue above all other doth abound; Wherefore in thee grace shall be found: For thou shalt conceive upon this ground The Second Person of God on throne; He will be born of thee alone, Without sin tho shalt him see. Thy grace and thy goodness will never be gone But ever to live in virginity. ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... emitted a most peculiar chuckle. She seemed for one moment to acknowledge the terrible side of life which is concerned with the emotions, the private lives, of the sexes, and then to sheer off from it with all possible speed into the shades of her own shivering virginity. She was made so uncomfortable by the turn the conversation had taken, that she plunged her head into the cupboard, and endeavored to abstract some very obscure ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... as a sacrifice, by surrendering herself to some man. Similarly happened in the Serapeum of Memphis; in Armenia, in honor of the goddess Anaitis; in Cyprus; in Tyrus and Sidon, in honor of Astarte or Aphrodite. The festivals of Isis among the Egyptians served similar customs. This sacrifice of virginity was demanded in order to atone with the goddess for the exclusive surrender of woman to one man in marriage:—"Not that she may wilt in the arms of a single man is woman arrayed by nature with all the charms ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... ministered unto by angels. 4 The high priest orders all virgins of fourteen years old to quit the temple and endeavour to be married. 5 Mary refuses, 6 having vowed her virginity to the Lord. 7 The high-priest commands a meeting of the chief persons of Jerusalem, 11 who seek the Lord for counsel in the matter. 13 A voice from the mercy-seat. 15 The high-priest obeys it by ordering ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... certain Tapestry for presentation to Kaiser Heinrich on his entry into Cologne after his last campaign on the turbaned Danube. The subject was again her beloved Siegfried slaying the Dragon on Drachenfels. Whenever Aunt Lisbeth indulged in any bitter virginity, and was overmatched by Margarita's frank maidenhood, she hung out this tapestry as a flag of truce. They were working it in bits, not having contrivances to do it in a piece. Margarita took Siegfried and Aunt Lisbeth ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and learning, after thou wert wounded." Concerning this journey to Poictiers I knew nothing, but I was more concerned to hear what the Maid had said about Elliot and me. For seeing that the Maid herself was vowed (as men deemed) to virginity, it passed into my mind that she might think holy matrimony but a low estate, and might try to set my mistress's heart on following her own example. And then, I thought, but foolishly, Elliot's love for me might be weaker than her love ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... shell, Stained by thy tears and hollowed by thy sighs, Recalls thee still to mind—dost thou regard, From some tumultuous covert of this woodland, Thy whilom sphere and palace? Nun of the skies, In coy virginity of pulse, thy hands Repelled me when I sought to win thy lair, Fraternal, with no thoughts but humorous ones; And in thy chill revulsion, through thy skies, At my advance thy crystal home would fade, A ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... fondness for men—"I warrant ye," cries the captain, "we shall find means to persuade you to be fond; and I advise you to yield to gentle ones, for you may be assured that it is not in your power, by any struggles whatever, to preserve your virginity two hours longer. It will be your interest to consent; for the squire will be much kinder to you if he enjoys you willingly than by force." At which words she began to call aloud for assistance (for it was now ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... hath taken vengeance for thee of thine enemies, even of the children of Ammon. And she said unto her father, Let this thing be done for me: let me alone two months, that I may go up and down upon the mountains, and bewail my virginity, I and ...
— The Dore Gallery of Bible Illustrations, Complete • Anonymous
... paid in numerous ways. Baal was originally the god of the sun, and ruler of nature. Some suppose that Baal was the same god as Moloch, to whom human sacrifices were offered, and whose worship also consisted principally of purifications, mutilations, perpetual virginity, and ordeals by fire. Bullocks, and even children, were sacrificed ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... constitutionally vicious, it was imposible for her not to disclose. Mr. Booby shews likewise the utmost ignorance of human nature, in thinking to gain his ends with a young and innocent girl by the force of money. All young girls are taught to put a value on their virginity, and unless debauched by their own sex, they never will part with it, but to those they like. None but well-disciplin'd ladies of the town are to be gained upon by meer money; and Mr. Booby, by the whole of his conduct, appears to be nothing but a downright Covent-garden rake. He ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... imagination that he hated—he was positively revolted at the thought that she should know that the sort of thing that he did existed in the world. So he would stick out in an agitated way against the accusation of ever having done anything. He wanted to preserve the virginity of his wife's thoughts. He told me that himself during the long walks we had at the last—while the girl was on the way ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... expect to take absolutely no thought for the morrow, as is said in the Gospel, but only not to take too much thought for it; one cannot give away all to the poor, but one must give away a certain definite part; one need not aim at virginity, but one must avoid debauchery; one need not forsake wife and children, but one must not give too great a place to them in ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... O Thou that be Haunter, Urania's progeny, Who hurriest soft virginity To man, O Hymenaeus Hymen, ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... as to give to love my virginity. But the result of this was that all my senses were united in the idea of love; there was the cause of my unhappiness. For not being able to think of anything but women, I could not help turning ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... sure who had to contrive honourable life for her, and the one to whom she had yearly prayed must remain in his own place, veiled by the smoke of the red fires, a survival and a link like the remembrance of her virginity. ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... Hymen; Condition of the Hymen as a Proof of Virginity; the Bladder; Vagina; Uterus; Respiratory Movements of the Uterus; ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... revenge!—All women gather and go; crowds storm all stairs, force out all women: the female Insurrectionary Force, according to Camille, resembles the English Naval one; there is a universal 'Press of women.' Robust Dames of the Halle, slim Mantua-makers, assiduous, risen with the dawn; ancient Virginity tripping to matins; the Housemaid, with early broom; all must go. Rouse ye, O women; the laggard men will not act; they say, we ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... open as the Caucasian maiden's, but black and sparkling; very small hands with tapering fingers, and very small feet encased in white mitten-socks; her black hair glossy as polished jet, dressed in the style betokening virginity, and decked with a garland of blossoms. Her robe of pure white silk folds over her bosom from right to left, and is bound at the waist by the gold-embroidered girdle, which is supported by a lesser band of scarlet silken crape, and is tied into huge ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... impossible to him, either because it depends on another's decision, as when, for instance, a man vows to enter a monastery, the monks of which refuse to receive him: or on account of some defect arising, for instance when a woman vows virginity, and afterwards is deflowered; or when a man vows to give a sum of money, and afterwards loses it. Therefore a ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... never serve our turn, Declared 'twas better far to wed than burn. There's danger in assembling fire and tow; 30 I grant 'em that; and what it means you know. The same apostle, too, has elsewhere own'd No precept for virginity he found: 'Tis but a counsel—and we women still Take which we like, the ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... fangle. She is a nonconformist in a close stomacher and ruff of Geneva print,[55] and her purity consists much in her linnen. She has heard of the rag of Rome, and thinks it a very sluttish religion, and rails at the whore of Babylon for a very naughty woman. She has left her virginity as a relick of popery, and marries in her tribe without a ring. Her devotion at the church is much in the turning up of her eye; and turning down the leaf in her book, when she hears named chapter and verse. When she comes home, she commends the sermon for ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... blessing to marriage, did not, in its innocence, fathom these commercial traditions. Consequently it tried to sanctify them too, with grotesque results. The slave- dealer having always asked more money for virginity, the Church, instead of detecting the money-changer and driving him out of the temple, took him for a sentimental and chivalrous lover, and, helped by its only half-discarded doctrine of celibacy, gave virginity a ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... What charming women of the provinces have since developed into a Eugenie Grandet, a Madame de Mortsauf, a Madame Claes! . . . What was wanting to Balzac in the hell of life, whose every spiral he descended, was virginity in love and ingenuousness in poetry. He always lost himself in the difficult places of style; and himself wept over the lack. When he wrote the Search for the Absolute, he was in quest of the ideal; but the ideal is that which one had inside one's ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... the Supreme Being, and of absolute Truth, and employed by the Church in its adornments for the festival of our Lord and the Virgin because it signifies Goodness, Virginity, Charity, and is the splendour, the emblem of Divine Wisdom when it is enhanced to the pure radiance ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... she, "virginity I never will lay down For gold, nor yet for silver, for castle, nor for town; But I will be your leman for the heads of certain peers— And I ask but ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... order to possess him. Imagine courses of instruction for women and feminine science without men,—that is, learned women, and men not KNOWING them as learned. Oh, no! No education, no instruction can change woman as long as her highest ideal shall be marriage and not virginity, freedom from sensuality. Until that time she will remain a serf. One need only imagine, forgetting the universality of the case, the conditions in which our young girls are brought up, to avoid astonishment at the debauchery of the women of our upper classes. ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... "but it is evident that passion already lifts her breasts. Her simplicity is betrayed by incipient orgasms prowling for an outlet. This, she fancies, is love. It is fortunate she is a virgin. Still, I must not rely too greatly on that. For virginity is an insidious bed fellow for a maiden. Forefingers and phallic shadows have ravished her in dreams. And if she is a virgin in spirit as well as body, she is still ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... occupy at the time of the legislation. By force of necessity it would have checked the depletion of soils; but by preventing territorial transfer it would have robbed the negroes and their masters of all advantages afforded by the virginity of unoccupied lands. Serfdom could hardly be seriously considered by the citizens of a new and sparsely settled country such as ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... tenderness; when in the midst of the pleasure which she expressed at the sight of him, he reproached her after the following manner: 'Glaphyra,' says he, 'thou hast made good the old saying, That women are not to be trusted. Was not I the husband of thy virginity? Have I not children by thee? How couldst thou forget our loves so far as to enter into a second marriage, and after that into a third, nay to take for thy husband a man who has so shamefully crept into the bed of his brother? ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... singular are the cases in which a votary marries. We know from the Code that this sometimes took place; but the votary seems to have been expected, though married, to keep her vow of virginity. In one case we read that a woman first devotes her daughter, ullilsi, then marries her, and declares at the same time that she is vowed, ellit, and that no one ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... her standing before the home of a man who had taken her with him out of pity and then had turned her away in scorn, and she stood for hours weeping outside his window. Frederick had by no means fully sloughed the skin of the conventional German youth. The old hackneyed ideal of virginity was in his eyes still surrounded by a sacred aureole; but no matter how often he discovered Mara in evil things, no matter how often he rejected her in his imagination, or tried with all the moral strength of his being to destroy ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... and cold and dark I were to meet one I know! Over the corn the wind whispered or whistled a name. The waves dashed in a short little beat against the shore. It is only the sea that is as Nature made it; the land in a thousand ways is robbed of its virginity by human hands, but the sea now is as it was thousands of years ago. A thick fog rose up. The birches bent their heads and went to sleep. But I can hear the grass grow and the ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... he sometimes put rubber bands around his penis; numerous homosexual fancies, he was a woman, he had a vagina, there was a maiden head in his forehead which was operated on to cause him to lose semen; different people made immoral proposals or had designs on his virginity. These people he all identified directly or indirectly with his father. Finally there was an idea that his mother's marriage with his father was not right, that he was not his father's son, and that his father was inimical to him. He talked of killing different persons whom ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... devoted to the continuance of the race, mourns over the violation of her laws by man, unburdens herself of all her scientific lore in a confession to her chaplain Genius, and sends him forth to encourage the lover's party with a bold discourse against the crime of virginity. The triumph of ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... therein (Ecclesiasticus xlii. 9, etc., as quoted, or rather misquoted, in the Talmud), 'A daughter is a false treasure to her father: because of anxiety for her he cannot sleep at night; when she is young, for fear she should be seduced; in her virginity lest she play the harlot; in her marriageable age, lest she should not get married; and when married, lest she should be childless; and when grown ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... less rare than is supposed, of wiping the slate clean of memories, and beginning all over again: a certain virginity of soul that makes each new kiss the first kiss, each new love the only love. This gift was Vernon's, and he had cultivated it so earnestly, so delicately, that except in certain moods when he lost his temper, and with it ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... these matters with the wisest of kings. Father, if you are led by me you will not consult them in regard to the pious Orberosia. When they have given their opinion you will not be a bit farther on than before. Virginity is not less difficult to prove than to keep. Pliny tells us in his history that its signs are either imaginary or very uncertain.* One who bears upon her the fourteen signs of corruption may yet be pure in the eyes of the angels, and, ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France |
