"Womanhood" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... whose silver hair was the bright symbol of a life unstained, except by such spots as are inseparable from human nature, he had no need of a babe to protect him by its purity, nor of a grown person to stand between him and his own soul. Nevertheless, either Manhood must converse with Age, or Womanhood must soothe him with gentle cares, or Infancy must sport around his chair, or his thoughts will stray into the misty region of the past, and the old man be chill and sad. Wine will not always cheer him. Such might have been the case with Mr. Smith, when, through the brilliant ...
— Fancy's Show-Box (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... piled high in careful carelessness. The gown was cerise in color, and from her forearm hung a great fan of green plumes. In all the hotels and theaters of New York one could hardly have come upon a figure that night more striking in its finished and fresh young womanhood. Larry trembled all over; his heart tried to throb madly ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... Devereux, hesitating an instant, as a bird pauses before taking wing, and then laughingly running between the lines to where Olivia faced her in mock abjection. To the charm of the girl in the woodland was added now the dignity of beautiful womanhood, and my heart leaped at the thought that I had ever spoken to her, that I was there because she had taunted me ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... frequently cannot account for even to themselves; or that, as Debray had guessed, she had experienced some secret agitation that she would not acknowledge to any one. Being a man who knew that the former of these symptoms was one of the inherent penalties of womanhood, he did not then press his inquiries, but waited for a more appropriate opportunity when he should again interrogate her, or receive an avowal proprio motu. At the door of her apartment the baroness met Mademoiselle Cornelie, her confidential ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... about as fresh as is a dried prune. They had jumped from childhood into full-blown womanhood (or thought they had), thereby missing the very best and sweetest part ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... the glass for a moment. The ludicrous, the dissonant, the incongruous, are not excluded from the Exhibition: they cannot be excluded from any complete picture of its Opening. The Queen, we will say, was here by Right Divine, by right of Womanhood, by Universal Suffrage—any how you please. The ceremonial could not have spared her. But in inaugurating the first grand cosmopolitan Olympiad of Industry, ought not Industry to have had some representation, some vital recognition, in her share of the pageant? If ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... doughnut to take the place of the "cup of cold water" given in His name. It is this Christ in deeds that has brought from our humble ranks the modern Florence Nightingales and taken to the gory horrors of the battlefields the white, uplifting influences of pure womanhood. It is this Christ in deeds that made Sir Arthur Stanley say, when thanking our General for $10,000 donated for more ambulances: "I thank you for the money, but much more for the men; they are quite ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... Editha's smooth brown head was indeed to be seen threading its way between the noisy groups. They agreed that it was time they heard from the shield-maiden. For her to take advantage of her womanhood, and turn the forecastle into a woman's-house, and forbid their approach, was something unheard-of ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... compassion the Blessed One accomplished His infinite wisdom in His divine promise, ordaining that womanhood shall be raised ...
— Buddhist Psalms • Shinran Shonin
... fortune will consist in the labour of her hands, and in her ability to assist him in his home. But between these there is a middle class of men, who, by reason of their education, are peculiarly susceptible to the charms of womanhood, but who literally cannot marry for love, because their earnings will do no more than support themselves. As to this special young man, it must be confessed that his earnings should have done much more than that; but not the less did he find himself in a ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... Dyck and Michael, the three from Virginia turned round and faced them. As Dyck came forward, Sheila flushed and trembled. She was no longer a young girl, but her slim straightness and the soft lines of her figure, gave her a dignity and charm which made her young womanhood distinguished—for she was now twenty-five, and had a carriage of which a princess might have been proud. Yet it was plain that the entrance of Dyck at this moment was disturbing. It was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Barren held him mute. To him woman was all that was glorious and good. The pitiless loneliness of his life had placed them next to angels in his code of things, and before him now he saw all that he had ever dreamed of in the love and loyalty of womanhood and of wifehood. ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... thou done, O womanhood of France, Mother and daughter, sister, sweetheart, wife, What hast thou done, amid this fateful strife, To prove the pride of thine inheritance. In this fair land of freedom and romance? I hear thy voice with tears and courage rife,— Smiling against the ...
— The Red Flower - Poems Written in War Time • Henry Van Dyke
... could doubt the reverence of Emerson for womanhood. In a lecture read to the "Woman's Rights Convention" in 1855, he takes bold, and what would then have been considered somewhat advanced, ground in the controversy then and since dividing the community. This is the way in ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Samaritan this time, and a woman, and an openly bad life. The Samaritans were hated by Jew and Gentile alike as belonging to neither, ground between the two opposing social national millstones. Womanhood was debased and held down in the way all too familiar always and everywhere. And a moral ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... "blessed one," is here applied to ideal womanhood and must not be confused with Makaria of p. 103, ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... her clear, gray eyes and passed on; a smaller and not very youthful portion of Paris had turned and followed her with small advantage to itself and happily no fear to her. For even in her young womanhood she kept her child's loving knowledge of that great city; she even had an innocent camaraderie with street sweepers, kiosk keepers, and lemonade venders, and the sternness of conciergedom melted before her. In this wholesome, practical child's experience she naturally ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... her conscience; this belief that blinded her to all suspicion and filled her with a soil of mystic intoxication wherein she opened the secret floodgates of her heart and let loose all her pent-up tenderness, and let the sweetest flowers of her womanhood blossom out resplendently. ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... it seems, had attained the age of womanhood, when, by the decease of their surviving parent, a man of high moral rectitude, but a stern disciplinarian, they were left in possession of a comfortable independence, fully equal to their moderate wants. They had been governed with such an iron rule, and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... that awaited Miss Anthony her years of young womanhood had given preparation. Her father, though a man of wealth, made it a matter of conscience to train his girls, as well as his boys, to self-support. Accordingly Susan chose the profession of teacher, and made her first essay during a summer vacation in a school her father had established ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... peopled it with 'Michael Sadler, Lord Bentinck, and Sir Henry Halford.' She and Emily were constant companions, and there is evidence that they shared a common world of fancy from very early days to mature womanhood. 'The Gondal Chronicles' seem to have amused them for many years, and to have branched out into innumerable books, written in the 'tiny writing' of which Mr. Clement Shorter has given us facsimiles. 'I am now engaged in writing the fourth volume of Solala Vernon's ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... according to your power, any woman of whatever rank. Believe me, every virtue of the higher phases of manly character begins in this;—in truth and modesty before the face of all maidens; in truth and pity, or truth and reverence, to all womanhood. ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... Beverley sat facing the stairs, the grim lines hardened to implacability about his mouth, his eyes fixed in a stare that had in it something brutal. He was seeing again that slim, straight figure of womanhood standing in his path, with arms outstretched, and white, determined ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... portrays at the opening the three norns or fates weaving and measuring the thread of destiny. It is the beginning of the end. The perfect pair, Siegfried and Brunhild, appear in all the glory of their life, splendid ideals of manhood and womanhood. But Siegfried goes out into the world to achieve deeds of prowess. He gives her the Nibelungen ring to keep as a pledge of his love till his return. Meanwhile Alberich also has begotten a son, Hagan, to achieve for ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... gratitude—it was no mercenary consideration as to his income or position that made her grateful. She thanked him for his love—that treasure which she had never expected to possess; she thanked him because he had taken her by the hand, and led her out of the ranks of lonely dependent womanhood, and seated her upon a throne, on the steps whereof he was content to kneel. Whether the throne were a rushen chair in some rustic cottage, or a gilded fauteuil in a palace, she cared very little. It was the subject's devotion that was ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... the room. He hated scenes, and during his lifetime he had been forced into a great many. He was unutterably relieved when Faith stopped crying and put her handkerchief away. Something of the childishness in her face seemed to have deepened to womanhood as, for a moment, she raised her brown eyes ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... are sighing for goodness usually go away sorrowful when they learn what it costs. But life ever is putting to us just such tests as the wise teacher put to the rich young man. You say you desire character, the perfection of manhood or womanhood above all other things; do you desire this enough to pay for it your ease, your coveted fame, your cherished gold, perhaps your present good name and peace of mind? Is the search for character a passion or ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... woman, by asserting her moral and spiritual equality with the man, there seems to have been no suspicion that she was the true complement of the man, not merely by softening him, but by strengthening him; that true manhood can be no more developed without the influence of the woman, than true womanhood without the influence of the man. There is no trace among the Egyptian celibates of that chivalrous woman-worship which our Gothic forefathers brought with them into the West, which shed a softening and ennobling light round the mediaeval convent life, and ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... would have wished Jack Churchill's girl to grow—spirited and proud, with the fine spirit and gracious pride of pure womanhood, loyal and loving, with the loyalty and love of a frank and unspoiled nature; true to her heart's core, hating falsehood and sham—as crystal-clear a mirror of maidenhood as ever man looked into and saw himself reflected back in such a halo as made him ashamed of not being more worthy ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of heart or mind, break the bonds that held me down,—no steady perseverance of purpose win me a way out of darkness into light? No, for I was a woman, an ugly woman, whose girlhood had gone by without affection, and whose womanhood was passing without love,—a woman, poor and dependent on others for daily bread, and yet so bound by conventional duties to those around her that to break from them into independence would be to outrage all the prejudices of those ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... hours; he played billiards with her; he was her faithful attendant at afternoon tea; he gave himself up to the study of her character, which, to his charmed eyes, seemed the perfection of pure and placid womanhood. There might, perhaps, be some lack of passion and of force in this nature, a marked absence of that impulsive feeling which is a charm in some women: but this want was atoned for by sweetness of character, and Mr. Hammond argued ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... been convinced before, of the nearness of those supernatural beings who guarded her so closely, who warned her of danger, who inspired her with courage, and yet never robbed her for one moment of the grace and beauty and crown of her pure womanhood? ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... was to be her mother's comforter; and with the utmost sweetness and unselfishness she put aside her own longings for her brother, and strove to make up for his loss. So Fern bloomed in her poor home like some lovely flower in a cottage garden, growing up to womanhood in those rooms ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... of irradiated Alps began to tremble over her dimly, as from moment to moment their intimacy warmed, and Beauchamp saw the young face vanishing out of this flower of womanhood. He did not see it appearing or present, but vanishing like the faint ray in the rosier. Nay, the blot of her faithlessness underwent a transformation: it affected him somewhat as the patch cunningly laid on near a liquid dimple in fair cheeks ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... clocks there were candles marked in lengths and sand flowing through narrow orifices, water dripping into jars, and posts stuck in the ground with marks for the shadow to divide the day. The ancient ones related womanhood to the moon and understood that time was vital in ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... communities are the boys and girls who are growing into manhood and womanhood. We should spare neither expense nor energy in fitting them physically, mentally and spiritually for the great problems which will ...
— Dramatized Rhythm Plays - Mother Goose and Traditional • John N. Richards
... their parts, several of them were respectively ready to take her to a circus-matinee, or to drive in Central Park, on that very day: and her prompt acceptance of these signal evidences of a disinterested friendship for womanhood without a natural protector could not be more simply indicated to those who now freely offered such friendship, than by her dropping her fork twice at the public breakfast table, or sending the waiter back three times with the boiled eggs to ...
— Punchinello Vol. 2, No. 28, October 8, 1870 • Various
... eye to avert danger, protect his master, and quickly anticipate his every wish. The service of this period completed his education, and at twenty-one he was knighted with imposing ceremonies. After partaking of the sacrament, he took vows to speak the truth, defend the weak, honor womanhood, and use his sword for the defense ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... and back lasted usually six months or at the most seven. Now when Gerardo had been some six months away, Messer Pietro, noticing how fair his daughter was, and how she had grown into womanhood, looked about him for a husband for her. When he had found a youth suitable in birth and wealth and years, he called for Elena, and told her that the day had been appointed for her marriage. She, alas! knew not ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... calm face and quivering heart, given him an opening. That was a concession to her essential womanhood and a cowardice on her part; and, lest she turn utterly traitor to herself, she faced him again, cool, quiet, and ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... to break the precious treasures, one after another, before her eyes. The plan worked admirably. She immediately left her nest, and ran to the rescue of the china, and the excitement brought her back to her sense of the proprieties of womanhood. ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... space between two breaths have lives been lost, souls smirched, the unlimited history of the future turned. And never was a greater stake upon the saving of time than in this strait—which is the peril of spotless womanhood." ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... terror?—that sudden suffusion of red over thy face and neck—and even now, that paleness like death! Thy heart, thy heart—why does it throb, and why do thy knees totter? Alas! it is even so; the Endymion of thy dreams, as beautiful as even thou thyself in thy purple dawn of womanhood,—he from whom thou now shrinkest, yet whom thou dreadest not to meet, is approaching, and bears in his beauty the charm that ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... so as to bring into fine relief the shapely curves of her beautiful form. I would be willing to swear that hers is a lovely character—different from the rest of her sex. She is one by herself—a peerless creature—a very pearl of womanhood—a being fit for Paradise. Her face tells me that she is modest, pure, amiable, and refined. Her manners must be charming, her conversation fresh, ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... weigh and doubt and peck at flaws, Or waste my pity when some fool Provokes her measureless ridicule. Strong-minded is she? Better so Than dulness set for sale or show, A household folly, capped and belled In fashion's dance of puppets held, Or poor pretence of womanhood, Whose formal, flavorless platitude Is warranted from all offence Of robust meaning's violence. Give me the wine of thought whose head Sparkles along the page I read,— Electric words in which I find The tonic of the northwest wind; The wisdom which itself allies To sweet ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... words, "Appreciate Time." Under the first four alphabets (there are five in all) comes the date, "September 19, 1823," and in the lower corner another date, "October 24," when the square was completed, with the name of the child who wrought it, long since grown to womanhood, and now nearly forty years dead, but there recorded, in pink silk cross stitch, as ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... hearts in question had been much more influenced by the suspicion that she cared for them than by the thought that they cared for her. She did not know the lamentable, vulgar fact that any woman can be a flirt if she only degrade her womanhood to flattery. Men do not want to love so much as to be loved. Such is, moreover, their sublime vanity that they are ready to believe any one who tells them, however subtly—mesdames, you cannot be too subtle for a man's ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... us most strikingly how it takes hold of him with an ever-increasing firmness of grasp, and shakes the whole fabric of his delicate organisation with fearful violence. The object of Chopin's passion, the being whom he worshipped and in whom he saw the realisation of his ideal of womanhood, was Constantia Gladkowska, a pupil at the Warsaw Conservatorium, of whom the reader will learn more in the course of this ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... remorseful judgment told him, insulted by them. He could not, even that morning, have told how he felt about Lydia, or whether he had any feeling at all, save a proper gratitude for her tenderness to his father. But he had found her in his path, when his hurt soul was crying out to all fostering womanhood to save him from the ravening claw of woman's cruelty. She had felt his need, and they had looked at each other with eyes that pierced defences. And then, incarnate sympathy, tender youth, she had rested in his arms, and in the generosity of her giving and the exquisiteness of the gift, he had ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... reasonable, normal, wholesome, a belief that it was her duty to publicly display intensive evidences of her affliction, determined a lasting and potent influence in this girl's life which was to alloy her young womanhood—disturbing factors, all, which before twelve caused much emotional disequilibrium. She now lived with her uncle in New York City and her summers were spent in Canada. The sense of fitness was so strong that ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... for the vision of Beatrice, weaving about her all the poetic fancies of his youth. He must have seen her many times, but no words passed {22} between them till nine years had sped and he chanced to come upon her in all the radiance of her womanhood. She was "between two gentle ladies who were older than she; and passing by in the street, she turned her eyes towards that place where I stood very timidly, and in her ineffable courtesy saluted me so graciously that I seemed then to see the heights ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... land, who rule the nation as they mould the characters and guide the actions of their sons, live according to God's holy ordinances, and each, secure and happy in the exclusive love of the father of her children, sheds the warm light of true womanhood, unperverted and unpolluted, upon all within her pure and wholesome family circle. These are not the cheerless, crushed, and ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... early womanhood to the end, Edith Sichel led a double life, though in a sense very different from that in which this ambiguous phrase is generally employed. "She was known to the reading public as a writer of books and of papers in ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... and evil words, Classidas and his captains hurrying to the walls to carry on the fierce exchange of abuse. To be called dairy-maid and peronnelle was a light matter, but some of the terms used were so cruel that, according to some accounts, she betrayed her womanhood by tears, not prepared apparently for the use of such foul weapons against her. The Journal du Siege declares, however, that she was "aucunement yree" (angry), but answered that they lied, and rode ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... promise you that you shall sleep soundly in her embrace. Your bride is Death, and I have chosen to bring her to you with my own hand, that all here may see how the daughter of Natas can avenge an insult to her womanhood. ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... follow its flights." Thus was I moved in spirit And wrought, a happy slave, Striving to make the best Of the gifts the high gods gave, Fashioning out of the marble, —And I knew my work was good— The arms and the breasts and the thighs And the glory of womanhood. ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson
... Reale. Zorn had a place of honour among the boiling and bubbling Secessionists; indeed, his work filled a large room. And what work! Such a giant's revel of energy. Such landscapes, riotous, sinister, and lovely. Such women! Here we pause for breath. Zorn's conception of womanhood has given offence to many idealists, who do not realise that once upon a time our forebears were furry and indulged in arboreal habits. Zorn can paint a lady; he has signed ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... complexions, lustrous black eyes, abundant woolly hair plainly reveal their Hamatic lineage. To pass through the Bowery or lower Broadway in the great metropolis at an hour when the shop and factory girl is hurrying to or from her work, one is struck by the beauty of Jewish womanhood. King David's successful campaigns placed Solomon over large dominions of Moabitish and Canaanitish peoples; and for the stability of his kingdom, Solomon took wives out of all of these nationalities; and Solomon's ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... member of Congress, and William Fessenden, then United States Senator from Maine. Mr. and Mrs. Brackett opened this school in October, 1867, with nineteen earnest students. Since then it has become a power for good, a factor in the development of actual Christian manhood and womanhood. For a number of years it was the only graded school for Negroes in the State of West Virginia, and had to supply many of the first teachers and ministers in West Virginia and even in the adjacent portions of Maryland and Virginia. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... had been to the sons of Eli. There are still such homes as David's, although their inmates do well to draw down the veil of secrecy over them with loyal hands, and never blazon abroad the grief and anxiety which rend their hearts. In one home a fair, bright girl mars the beauty of her early womanhood by a flippant disregard of her mother's wishes, and by an exaltation of her own pleasure-loving disposition as the one law of her life. In another, a mere child, hasty and uncontrolled in temper, is ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... as the spirit of obedience, the spirit of Jesus, the spirit of Mary, is so rare. As one looks into the social development of the Christian era, one feels that the life and example of S. Mary has been of immense influence in the development of the ideal of womanhood. The rise of woman from a wholly subordinate and inferior condition to a condition of complete equality with man has owed more to S. Mary than to any other factor. I am not concerned with political equality; ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... pride of Maria Theresa's womanhood. Hastily approaching Josepha, and stretching her arms toward her, she said: "If Joseph has no mercy in his obdurate heart, I at least will not witness such humiliation on the part of his wife. Rise, my daughter, and take shelter under my ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... In her scant calico dress, with the furrows of age already settling about her mouth, and her pale brown hair strained in thin peaks back from her forehead, she might have stood as the world-type of toil-worn womanhood, for she was of the stuff of martyrs, and the dignity of their high resolve was her one outward grace. Life had been revealed to her as something to be endured rather than enjoyed, and the softer adornments of her sex had ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... after the stirring acts of heroism described above, are significant of greater things—self-sacrificing generosity, unswerving loyalty, and a compassionate desire to atone, in some practical and helpful way, for their share in the disaster brought on innocent and helpless womanhood. ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... present death I beg; and one thing more, That womanhood denies my tongue to tell: O, keep me from their worse than killing lust, And tumble me into some loathsome pit, Where never man's eye may behold my body: Do this, ...
— The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... other speeches afterwards. Fired by the example of his friend, Major Beaufort distinguished himself by an harangue overflowing with gallantry and adorned throughout with amiable allusions to the greatest power of all, the power of Youth, Beauty, and Womanhood. The political perspicuity of the address was perhaps somewhat obscured by its being chivalrously pointed towards those fair beings who brighten our existence and lengthen our griefs. Without the Ladies, the speaker found, we may be politicians, ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the book from the gentleman's hand, and drew a little farther off on the bench. She was not the kind of young woman to yield tremblingly to the first whisper of an unauthorised love. It was all very well to admire Francesca, upon strictly aesthetic grounds, as the perfection of erring womanhood, beautiful even in her guilt. Francesca had lived so long ago—in days so entirely mediaeval, that one could afford to regard her with indulgent pity. But it was not to be supposed that a modern duke's daughter was going to follow that unfortunate young woman's example, ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... earthliness has unkindly overgrown; for an English maiden in her teens, though very seldom so pretty as our own damsels, possesses, to say the truth, a certain charm of half-blossom, and delicately folded leaves, and tender womanhood, shielded by maidenly reserves, with which, somehow or other, our American girls often fail to adorn themselves during an appreciable moment. It is a pity that the English violet should grow into such an outrageously developed peony as I have attempted ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... more beautiful than ever—the interval having served merely to enhance her charm and strengthen the yearning of his heart—she seemed in the same view still further removed from his sphere. More reserved, more dignified, in the reserve of developed womanhood, her cession was ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... all bounds of reason and decency. One of them preached the dissolution of all social and domestic ties; the other advocated systematic murder. To think of a young girl calmly tracking printers' errors all along the sort of abominable sentences I remembered was intolerable to my sentiment of womanhood. Mr. X, after giving me ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... coincide with the tradition of Roman women even in early times; but we must remember that at all periods of Roman history the woman whose memory survives is apt to be the woman who is not the ideal matron, but one who forces herself into notice by violating the traditions of womanhood. The typical matron would assuredly never dream of playing a part in history; her influence was behind the scenes, and therefore proportionally powerful. The legendary mother of Coriolanus (the Volumnia of Shakespeare), Cornelia the ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... And it was only when I saw by the papers that my letters had been useless that I decided to humiliate myself in this way. Do you think I would so degrade my womanhood for the sake of anything on God's earth, but one ... my child? [To MARION.] Do you think I could do anything but loathe him!... [With ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The Moth and the Flame • Clyde Fitch
... and looked at him, and did not speak. In that moment all the anger which was due to him from all womanhood was silently discharged at him, like a black bolt of silent electricity. But Miss Pinnegar, the engine of wrath, felt she ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... completed, and doing well in his studies, but keenly regretting that the war was ended without his participation. The white-haired soldier also found his daughter, Edith, now fifteen years of age, budding into a beautiful womanhood, and bearing so strong a resemblance to her mother that he gazed at her with mixed ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... devoted youngsters. And the friendship of these simple people opened her eyes to the great problems of humanity, and as she worked among them and knew life as it was, the hard little bud of her girlhood blossomed into the great soft rose of womanhood. ...
— Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch • Alice Caldwell Hegan
... weaker power, and her success will be against the nature of things. Her dishonor lay in her attempt, not in its relinquishment. But we shall fail, not because of mechanics and mathematics, but because our manhood and womanhood weighed in the balance are found wanting. There are few who will not share in the sin. There are none who will not share in the shame. Wives, would you hold back your husbands? Mothers, would you keep your sons? From what? for what? ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... that a chivalrous man may offer to her talent or wit, so long as it is expressed in a hearty spirit of good comradeship, and with a clear and unmistakable deference to her self-respecting dignity; but a well-bred woman will resent as an insult to her womanhood any quasi-sentimental overtures from a man who has not the right ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... in the moonlight in her long white night-dress, and as I looked at that pure beautiful face with the eyes closed in prayer, with its frame of glorious hair, I knew that never had I seen anything so lovely as this child companion of mine just budding into womanhood; and the one word "Angel" seemed to express the sum of my thoughts regarding this dear one who had come into my life and who had transformed so ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte
... This second glimpse of her, however, caused an odd fluttering about my heart. I could not get her out of my thoughts for days. She quite interfered with my studies. I tried to think of her as a mere child, but it would not do; she had improved in beauty, and was tending toward womanhood; and then I myself was but little better than a stripling. However, I did not attempt to seek after her, or even to find out who she was, but returned doggedly to my books. By degrees she faded from my thoughts, or if she did cross ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... set down. But even as they came the picture of Naomi's face came before me, and they departed with the swiftness of lightning. For I have found this to be true: a true love ever destroys baser and poorer loves. Let a man love truly a true, pure woman, and all womanhood is sacred to him. And because I loved Naomi truly no other love ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... that from time to time, when she was first able to listen, her mother read aloud to her. In fact, her first poems were made before she, herself, could write them down. The speculation as to what she will do when she grows to womanhood is a common one. Is it important? A childhood filled with beauty is ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... of unbroken domestic felicity, three beloved daughters having been reared to womanhood in the enjoyment of the Christian's hope, and two of them happily wedded, Mr. Thome and his wife were overwhelmed with sorrow by the sudden death, on the last day of April, 1869, of their second daughter, Mrs. Maria E. Murphy, wife of Mr. Thos. Murphy, ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... seek'st no foreign land: 'Tis not the clod beneath our feet we name Our country. Each heaven-sanctioned tie the same, Laws, manners, language, faith, ancestral blood, 5 Domestic honour, awe of womanhood:— With kindling pride thou wilt rejoice to see Britain with elbow-room and doubly free! Go seek thy countrymen! and if one scar Still linger of that fratricidal war, 10 Look to the maid who brings thee from afar; Be thou the olive-leaf and she the dove, And say, I greet thee ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... parents. In the case of the girl's pregnancy, marriage is more assured, and her father builds or gives her a house. The olag is no longer for her. In her case it has served its ultimate purpose — it has announced her puberty and proved her powers of womanhood. In the case of a desire of marriage before the girl is pregnant she usually sleeps in the olag, as in the past, and the young man spends most of his nights with her. It is customary for the couple to take their meals with the parents of the girl, ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... that womanhood is under shameful tyranny in the shops and mills. I want to destroy this tyranny. They (the Feminists) want to destroy womanhood.' They do this by attempting to drive women into the world and turn them away from the home. This is what ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... before he could in any measure atone for the unhappy years of her loveless childhood. He would have kept her a little girl all her life, had he been able; but here she was springing up into the beauty of a glorious womanhood before his very eyes. So he sighed as he thought of his lost opportunities, then abruptly asked, ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... my countrywomen to devote themselves from this hour to the education, elevation, and enfranchisement of their own sex. If the same amount of devotion and self-sacrifice could be given in this direction now poured out on the churches, another generation would give us a nobler type of womanhood than any yet molded by ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... little eating-house in which the railroad men snatched their meals as they went through, the widow opened a book and newsstand. Her home was on the floor above the stand, and it was there she brought her little girls to womanhood. Good-looking, harum-scarum Dave Cable saw Frances Coleman one evening as he dropped in to purchase a newspaper. It was at the end of June, in 1876, and the country was in the throes of excitement over the ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... present time at that interesting period when her friends and relatives, having just discovered the unexpected fact that she was grown up, subjected her to mildly severe criticism, while believing that to have reached womanhood at all showed a considerable amount of talent on her part. They were, they said, under no misapprehension about Jane; in moments of extreme candour, touched with responsibility, they had even been ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... sight of all this helpless though secretly critical womanhood disposed attentively about him invariably, through association of ideas, brought to his mind every similar and abortive attempt he had made in this direction. When he opened the book to read aloud to them, ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... burning on the table, for it was night, shed its light on the comely features and matronly figure of the elder lady, as she busily plied her needle, while it showed that those of Hannah, a fair and interesting-looking girl just growing into womanhood, were unusually pale. Every now and then she unconsciously let her work drop on her lap while, with her eyes turned towards the window and lips apart, she seemed to be listening for some sound which her mother's ear had ...
— The Voyage of the "Steadfast" - The Young Missionaries in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... and she grew to beautiful young womanhood, and more than one pair of eyes looked toward her as the one they would like to woo and win, or, as they thought of it, be able by abundant or valuable gifts to purchase her from her uncle. Up to this ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... eclat and no inconvenience in undertaking the office of her guardian and chaperone—the rather as she had no daughters of her own with whom Frances's beauty or wealth could interfere; for as the young heiress grew into womanhood, the charms of her person were quite remarkable enough to have excited the jealousy of her cousins, if she had had any; or to make her own fortune, if she had not possessed one already. She was, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... I care what he thinks, beyond the mere loss of his good opinion as regards my telling the truth or not? I cannot tell. But I am very miserable! Oh, how unhappy this last year has been! I have passed out of childhood into old age. I have had no youth—no womanhood; the hopes of womanhood have closed for me—for I shall never marry; and I anticipate cares and sorrows just as if I were an old woman, and with the same fearful spirit. I am weary of this continual call upon me for strength. I could bear up for papa; because ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... born and raised in the south. Believing the southern to be the highest type of civilization this continent has seen, the young ladies are trained according to the southern ideas of delicacy, refinement, womanhood, religion, and propriety; hence we offer a first-class female college for the south ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... he affirmed quietly. "And because men are what they are, and you are you, it's quite probable you'll fail to achieve the triumph of your womanhood." He paused, then added: "You're not one of those who would count the world well lost for love, you know—except on the impulse of ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... not, I saw none; but after some moments of pause a figure rose erect out of the ring and hobbled toward the boy. I made out an old woman, an old wreck of womanhood, a scant-haired, blue-lipped ruin of what had once been woman. I heard her snivel and sniff and wheeze her "Lord ha' mercy" as she went by, slippering forward on her miserable feet, hugging to her wasted sides what remnant of gown she ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... more thoughtfully tender, and more charitable as concerns the effects upon women of certain inevitable conditions as to which the layman is ignorant or indifferent. But the very fulness of the husband's appreciation of a woman's drawbacks and little moral ailments, the outcome of her womanhood, becomes dangerous when he ventures to be her medical caretaker. What he coolly decides in another's case, he cannot in hers. How can he see her suffer and not give her of the abundance of relief in his hands? She is quick ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... the summers, and each year she had seemed taller, statelier, further from him. When she graduated her father took her abroad for two years; then she came home, a lovely, high-bred girl, dimpling on the threshold of womanhood; and Jeffrey Miller was face to face with two bitter facts. One was that he loved her—not with the boy-and-girl love of long ago, but with the love of a man for the one woman in the world; and the other was that she was as far beyond his reach ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... be another Life of Lincoln? There is always a new class of students and a new enrolment of citizens. Every year many thousands of young people pass from the Grammar to the High School grade of our public schools. Other thousands are growing up into manhood and womanhood. These are of a different constituency from their fathers and grandfathers who remember the civil war and were ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... respectfully at the door while I went in alone. The sight I saw has never left me. Go where I will, I see ever before me that pure young face, with its weary look hushed in the repose of death. It haunts me, it accuses me. It asks me where is the noble womanhood that might have blossomed from this sweet bud, had it not been for my pusillanimity and love of life? But when I try to answer, I am stopped by that image of death, with its sealed lips and closed eyes never to open again—never, never, whatever my ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... Sah-luma seriously—"I love Myself! I see naught that contents me more than my own Personality,—and with all my heart I admire the miracle and beauty of my own existence! There is nothing even in the completest fairness of womanhood that satisfies me so much as the contemplation of my own genius,— realizing as I do its wondrous power and perfect charm! The life of a poet such as I am is a perpetual marvel!—the whole Universe ministers to my needs,—Humanity becomes the ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... God be, never Christ or Thor Beheld or blessed a nobler wife, whose love Was found through proof of purity by fire More like our northern stars and snows and suns, And sane in strong sufficiency of soul As womanhood by godhead from the womb ...
— Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Merrifield, not contradictory, but recognising what wide fields had been opened to womanhood, dwelling on such being the work of Christianity, which had always tended to repress the power of brute animal strength and jealousy, and to give preponderance to the force of character and the just influence of sweet homely affection. Exceptional flashes, even in heathen lands, and still ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... resistance; he drew her to him until, as in that day by a foothill river somewhere in the sunny past, her lips met his and returned their caress. He cared now for nothing—nothing in the whole world but this quivering womanhood within his arms.... ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... who had to do to instruct me, have ever been bringing Stories of the notable things I have said and the Womanly manner of my behaving my self upon such and such an Occasion. This has been my State, till I came towards Years of Womanhood; and ever since I grew towards the Age of Fifteen, I have been abused after another Manner. Now, forsooth, I am so killing, no one can safely speak to me. Our House is frequented by Men of Sense, and I love to ask Questions when I fall into such Conversation; but I am cut ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... suffused with warmth, became alive with a wonderful fire, her whole being had a simple tragedy. Once again, and perhaps for the last time, she had renewed the splendour of her young womanhood. The vital warmth of a great idea had given an expression to her face which had long been ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... because life refuses so much that one had hoped for—do you wonder that they often choose the second alternative? Does it seem to you so astonishing that girls, who think more than they used to, who feel that there is nothing to be ashamed of in the divine impulse of their creative womanhood, should rather take what they can get than accept that cruel, cramped attitude of sheer repression which has been all too often their only choice in the past? Is it really fair to say to them that their moral standards are going down, that they have no sense now of morality or self-respect? ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... daughter were unhappy. It was nothing to him if the sea roared and the house shook as he sat poring at nights over his parchments in the dead artist's studio. He had other things to occupy his mind than Nature's brutality or the feelings of womanhood. ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... were none but squirrels and bluejays and occasionally Katy John to cast admiring eyes upon her, it had pleased her for a week to wear her best, and wander about the beaches and among the dusky trunks of giant fir, a picture of blooming, well-groomed womanhood. She took off the dress and threw it on the bed with a resentful rush of feeling. The treadmill gaped for her again. But not for long. She was through with that. She was glad that Charlie's prospects pleased him. He could not call on her to help ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... child, if you could only hear Goliath talk on this subject your heart would ache for many a day. Think of that poor child growing up to womanhood in such surroundings; spending her days in a dirty, bare studio, with only rough, dissipated men for her companions—though to do them justice they treated her with respect and kindness. Somehow she picked up a desultory education among them. One broken-down ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... above you, and you must own it: a higher class of animal—a finer tissue. However, stick to me, and neither this haughty goddess, dashing piece of womanhood, Juno-wife of mine (Juno was a goddess, you know), nor anybody else shall hurt you. But all this wants looking into, I perceive. What with one thing and another, I see that my work is well cut ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... immortal, Rei? How then can I be in danger, who am immortal, and not to be harmed of men? Death hath no part in me. Speak not to me of dangers, who, alas! can never die till everything is done; but tell me of that faithless Wanderer, whom I must love with all the womanhood that shuts my spirit in, and all my spirit that is clothed in womanhood. For, Rei, the Gods, withholding Death, have in wrath cursed me with love to torment my deathlessness. Oh, when I saw him standing where now thou standest, ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... that his own attitude toward that girl had been at fault? He had gone to see her regarding her somewhat lightly. As a gentleman he should regard no woman with disrespect. Her womanhood should be honored by him even if she chose to dishonor it herself. If he had gone to see Gila with a different attitude toward her, expecting high, fine things of her, rather than merely to be amused by one whom he scarcely regarded seriously, ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... burdensome to their father as to Connie, and Fairy and Prudence lived in a state of perpetual anguish until the twins fell asleep at night well satisfied but worn out with the day's activities. The twins were bordering closely to the first stage of grown-up womanhood, but on the first of April they swore they would always be young! The tricks were more dignified, more carefully planned and scientifically executed than in the days of their rollicking girlhood,—but they were all the more heart-breaking ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... Story of Jacob and Rachel The Courting of Rebekah How Ruth Courted Boaz No Sympathy or Sentiment A Masculine Ideal of Womanhood Not the Christian Ideal of Love Unchivalrous Slaughter of Women Four More Bible Stories Abishag the Shunammite ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... answered, "Weep not for me. That which is fated must be; and grief is easy to those who do naught but grieve. Full of sorrow was my youth, and full of sorrow my womanhood. Full of sorrow was my youth for Bellerophon the slayer of the Chimaera, whom my father drove away by treason; and full of sorrow my womanhood, for thy treacherous father and for thee; and full of sorrow my old age will be (for I see my fate in dreams), when the sons of the Swan shall carry ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... maid had just entered her eleventh year; but her important station at the theatre, as it seemed to her, with the benefits which she felt to accrue from her pious application of her small earnings, had given an air of womanhood her steps and to her behaviour. You would have taken her to have been at least five years older. Till latterly she had merely been employed in choruses, or where children were wanted to fill up the scene. But the manager, observing a diligence and adroitness in her above her age, had for some ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... with the gravity of a middle-aged woman, and five minutes later chattering away with them like a young girl. I should have put her down as absolutely heartwhole and as never having experienced the slightest real care or trouble, as never having quite recognized that she had grown into womanhood. Well, something has occurred to alter all that. She has received a blow of some sort, and though she may soon get over it she will never be quite the same as she was before. If one wasn't so weighed down with ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... to tell me a plain, consecutive tale of her misadventures; but she continued instead to pour forth the most extraordinary mixture of the correct school miss and the poor untutored little piece of womanhood in a false position—of engrafted pedantry and ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had learned the wisdom and kindness of silence. She knew that this annual autumnal gypsying held for him the keenest delight and, in another and baffling phase, a poignancy on which, as she had grown to womanhood, it had seemed impious to allow her imagination to play. She watched him now with the pity that was woven into her love for him: his tall figure and the slightly stooped shoulders; the round felt hat that crowned his thick, close-cut hair, the dejection that seemed expressed in so many trifles at ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... skull—Mrs. Becker—was that right? Like a flash there came to him out of the darkness a picture of the scene beside the fire—of Mrs. Becker and the colonel, of the woman's golden head resting on her husband's shoulder, her sweet blue eyes filled with all the truth and glory of womanhood as she had looked up into his grizzled face. And then there took its place the scene beside the fire in the factor's room. He saw the woman's flushed cheeks as she listened to the low voice of Bucky Nome, he saw again what looked like yielding softness in her ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... crumbling church, a garden full of dead leaves, an old dog growing mangy in his kennel and the wind-swept cathedral of the woodlands. The soul of France was born there in the humble body of a peasant-girl; yes, and more than the soul of France—the gallantry of all womanhood. God must be fond of His peasants; I think they will be His aristocracy ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson |
