"Effeminate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... like,—having duly had a Tutor of that nation, and strange adventures with him on the grand tour and elsewhere;—but does not much practise writing, when it can be helped. His children, I have heard, he expressly did not teach to read or write, seeing no benefit in that effeminate art, but left them to pick it up as they could. His Princess, all rightly ennobled now,—whom he would not but marry, though sent on the grand tour to avoid it,—was the daughter of one Fos an Apothecary at Dessau; and is still a ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... enough regret in the tone to show that he was making a considerable sacrifice. A little delicacy means more when it comes from a strong man, than when it is the natural expression of an over-refined and somewhat effeminate character. And Orsino was rapidly developing a strength of which other people were conscious. Maria Consuelo was pleased, though she, too, was perhaps sorry to give ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... a money-making country, and money-making is an effeminate pursuit, therefore all sedentary and spoony sins, like covetousness, slander, bigotry, and self-conceit, are to be cockered and plastered over, while the more masculine vices, and no- vices also, are mercilessly hunted down by your cold-blooded, ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... would not have been taken for brothers. The King was a large man, and my husband a small one: the latter had very effeminate inclinations; he loved dress, was very careful of his complexion, and took great interest in feminine employments and in ceremonies. The King, on the contrary, cared little about dress, loved the chase and shooting, was fond of talking of war, and had all manly tastes and ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... ye enter not into temptation."(1207) St. Paul not only warns the faithful in general terms: "He that thinketh himself to stand, let him take heed lest he fall;"(1208) but expressly designates certain mortal sins as a bar to Heaven: "Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor liers with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor railers, nor extortioners, shall ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... ever so many trills and quavers upon his harpsichord, and their guest watched him, wondering, perhaps, that a gentleman of George's condition could set himself to such an effeminate business. Then the Colonel took out his watch, saying that his Excellency's coach would be here almost immediately, and asking leave to retire to his apartment, and put himself in a fit condition to appear ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the utter uselessness of the Bashi-Bazouks. The very sight of them excites my ire. I never saw such a useless, expensive set. I hate (there is no other word for it) these Arabs; and I like the Blacks—patient, enduring, and friendly, as much as the Arab is cowardly, cruel, and effeminate. All the misery is due to these Arab and Circassian Pashas and authorities. I would not stay a day here for these wretched creatures, but I would give my life ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... the true significance of the affair for Orde came out. Since the fight, Gerald's customary lassitude of manner seemed quite to have left him. His eye was bright, a colour mounted beneath the pale olive of his skin, the almost effeminate beauty of his countenance had animated. He looked across at Orde several times, hesitated, and ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... powerful influence on the sentiments and conduct of men. Women, the fruitful source of half our joys, and perhaps of more than half our sorrows, give an elegance to our manner, and a relish to our pleasures. They soothe our afflictions, and soften our cares. Too much of their company will render us effeminate, and infallibly stamp upon us many signatures of the female nature. A rough and unpolished behavior, as well as slovenliness of person, will certainly be the consequence of an almost constant exclusion from it. By spending a reasonable portion of our time in the company of ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... gracefulness in receiving was clearly of a piece with the rest of him. He was tall, slim and alert, with the quick, soft movements of some wild animal. His face, brown with sunburn and pink with brisk-going blood, was exceedingly handsome in a boyish and almost effeminate manner, and though he was only eighteen months younger than his cousin, he looked as if nine or ten years might have divided ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... me from being on any intimate terms with young people of the other sex, I had several little girl-friends one of whom more particularly has left a profound impression upon me. From an early age I preferred the society of girls to boys, and the latter did not like me, as I was too effeminate for them. We could not play together, as they called me "Mademoiselle," and teased me in a variety of ways. On the other hand, I got on very well with girls of my own age, and they found me very sensible and steady. I ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... entered the young man whom I call "king of the profligates." The Comte Henri de Marsay, who has great beauty of an effeminate kind, entered the box with an epigram in his eyes, a smile upon his lips, and an air of satisfaction over his whole countenance. He first greeted my mother, Mme. d'Espard, and the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... new names, as you very well hint. Some of them I have heard calling to one another, as I have sat at White's and St. James's, by the names of Betty, Nelly, and so forth. You see them accost each other with effeminate airs: they have their signs and tokens like freemasons: they rail at women-kind; receive visits on their beds in gowns, and do a thousand other unintelligible prettinesses that I cannot tell what to make of. I therefore heartily desire ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... melody—a quality for which Coleridge, who was not unreasonably proud of his musical gift, is said to have especially prized them; and they are noteworthy also as perhaps the fullest expression of the almost womanly softness of Coleridge's nature. To describe their tone as effeminate would be unfair and untrue, for effeminacy in the work of a male hand would necessarily imply something of falsity of sentiment, and from this they are entirely free. But it must certainly be admitted that for a man's description of his wooing the ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... down-stairs and my staid and stiff things were in their place. It is queer, isn't it, the difference in the atmosphere made by a man and by a woman. A man dares not surround himself with pale and pretty colors and delicate and dainty things, lest he be called effeminate—perhaps that's why men take women into their lives, so that they may have the things which they crave without having their ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... Fatima, that she would never mention the subject to her again. Finding her thus inexorable, I fell into a settled melancholy, and my health was visibly declining. The Europeans consider the natives of Hindostan to be feeble and effeminate; but the soul, that which distinguishes man from brutes, acts with an intensity and constancy of purpose of which they ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... a man of medium stature, slender but very graceful, with almost effeminate hands and feet—the former scrupulously kept, the latter neatly shod—and with a certain air of fragility; very soft blue eyes with sleepy lids; a classically correct nose; short upper lip; rosy, moist lips. ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... at her; he gazes at the fire instead, and talks with the hurry of a nervous man. The handsome face is a very effeminate face, and not even the light, carefully trained, carefully waxed mustache can hide the weak, irresolute mouth, the delicate, characterless chin. While he talks carelessly and quickly, while his slim white fingers loop and unloop his watch-chain, in the ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... the glass of later centuries, the first impression from the thirteenth-century windows ought to be disappointment. You should find them too effeminate, too soft, too small, and above all not particularly religious. Indeed, except for the nominal subjects of the legends, one sees nothing religious about them; the medallions, when studied with the binocle, turn out to be less religious than decorative. ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... week-end tiff with Spain. Yet there are those who prate of national honor and of war as insuring prosperity. From the leader of a newborn national party we hear that without a periodic war America would become effeminate and weak, her aggressive commercial life timid and corrupt, and within a few brief years the great Republic would sink to a fourth-rate power. Up, brave Americans, and man the guns! Awake, sons of freedom, and sweep the seas! Fourteen years without a war; our beloved land is ruined. You men ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... Mr. Dalton?" demanded this immaculate youth, in a soft, rather effeminate voice that made Halstead regard him with a look ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... present, compared with the pictures now bequeathed to us, but an unfinished and truncated image of Humanity. Here, again, the semi-barbaric age described by Bede rendered the delineation more vivid. In ages of effeminate civilisation the Christian emotions, even more than those inherent in unassisted human nature, lose that ardour which belongs to them when in a healthy condition—an ardour which especially reveals itself during that great crisis, a nation's conversion, when, beside ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... own bed with his mother sitting by his side, her hand clasped in his. If Dick had been told a week earlier that he would ever go to sleep clinging to his mother's hand, he would have scouted the idea with indignation and scorn; and he remembered the act later with a blush as something shamefully effeminate or infantile, betraying a weakness in ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... stood in the doorway. Balder's first impulse was to motion her away from a spectacle so unsuited to her eyes. But though the shadow made her face inscrutable, the lines of her figure spoke, and not of weak timidity or effeminate consternation. Womanly she was,—instinct with that tender, sensitive power, the marvellous gift of God to woman only, which almost moves the sick man to bless his sickness. A holy gift,—surely the immediate influx of Christ's ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... of the guards, which displayed his well-knit form to great advantage. The star on his breast, and the crape which he wore on his arm, announced a prince of the royal house; his beautifully-formed and handsome features wore an expression of almost effeminate tenderness. The glance of his large blue eyes was so soft and mild, that those who observed him long, were involuntarily touched with an inexplicable feeling of pity for this noble-looking youth. His broad ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... Khu-en-aten, as the authorities here render the hieroglyphics." She indicated a fragment of a coloured relief labelled: "Portion of a painted stone tablet with a portrait figure of Amen-hetep IV," and we stopped to look at the frail, effeminate figure of the great king, with his large cranium, his queer, pointed chin and the Aten rays stretching out their weird ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... last mundane poets were more brilliant than those of Christianity. Avienus possessed charming elegance and rather effeminate grace. It should be noted that he (with Prudentius) was the sole lyric poet after Horace. Ausonius had sensibility and remarkable descriptive talent; Claudian, rhetorician in verse, rose sometimes to veritable eloquence and maintained a continual brilliance which is ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... that hardships which the site does not enforce, shall be enforced by the laws; and that the example of those wise nations be imitated, who, inhabiting most fruitful and delightful countries, and such as were likely to rear a listless and effeminate race, unfit for all manly exercises, in order to obviate the mischief wrought by the amenity and relaxing influence of the soil and climate, subjected all who were to serve as soldiers to the severest training; whence it came that better soldiers were raised ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... spirits had stood before him, he would have been less appalled: with supernatural beings he was in constant though not direct communication. He studied them—their nature and their functions. But this tall, stately man, in his abominable garment which reached barely to his knees, with the white, effeminate forehead and unintelligible language, who was he? Was he a Philistine? a cruel Roman, or perhaps a Spaniard—one of those that murdered the famous Abrabanel family, and drove his ancestor Todros ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... a political weapon, was a recognizable subspecies in England at least to 1700. The anonymous author, for instance, of A Satyr Against Common-Wealths (1684) contended in his preface that it is "as disagreeable to see a Satyr Cloath'd in soft and effeminate Language, as to see a Woman scold and vent her self in Billingsgate Rhetorick in a gentile and advantageous Garb." But as Harte certainly realized, The Dunciad differed greatly from unvarnished abuse, and thus required ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... relations of life (730,231)[29]; but one cannot excuse his thoroughly pagan views on death, for a man must renounce piety altogether, if he does not at least wish to die like a Christian. Now, through the whole of his book his only conception of death is a cowardly and effeminate one. ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... never a thought of his to show any tender feelings. His susceptibilities would have been much offended could he have been presented with the idea that he had a soft place anywhere in his heart. This reluctance to be supposed effeminate was a characteristic of the age which caused many acts of injustice to be committed in order that the reputation for stern, slashing, devil-may-careness should be established, and many a fine fellow did violence ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... made it difficult to manage a child who persisted in justifying 'naughtiness' upon general principles. He was rather inclined to be indolent, and his mother regrets that he is not so persevering as Frederick (Gibbs). His great temptation, he says himself, in his childhood was to be 'effeminate and lazy,' and 'to justify these vices by intellectual and religious excuses.' A great deal of this, he adds, has been 'knocked out of him'; he cannot call himself a sluggard or a hypocrite, nor has ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... you mean. There is a kind of pity for the people now in vogue which is most effeminate. It is a sugared sort of Robespierre talk about "The poor but virtuous People." To address such stuff to the people is not to give them anything, but to take away what they have. Suppose you could give them oceans of tea ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... liquors: though, when taken in excess, and without nourishing food, they themselves produce, temporarily at least, some of the more disagreeable consequences incident to the use of ardent spirits. In general, however, none but persons possessing great mobility of the nervous system, or enfeebled or effeminate constitutions, are injuriously affected by the moderate use of tea and coffee ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... son, an effeminate fellow," his father, Andrei Nikolaevitch, was wont to say of him:—"but, on the other hand, he likes to go to God's church.... And ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... and Langton, and Goldsmith, and poor Bozzy at the table? I declare I think, of all the polite men of that age, Joshua Reynolds was the finest gentleman. And they were good, as well as witty and wise, those dear old friends of the past. Their minds were not debauched by excess, or effeminate with luxury. They toiled their noble day's labour: they rested, and took their kindly pleasure: they cheered their holiday meetings with generous wit and hearty interchange of thought: they were no prudes, but ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Laestrigons. Hercules, after he had cleansed the Augean stable, and performed all the other labours enjoined him by Euristheus, found himself a slave to the softnesses of the heart; and he, who wore a club and a lion's skin in the cause of virtue, condescended to the most effeminate employments to gratify a criminal weakness. Hannibal, who vanquished mighty nations, was himself overcome by the love of pleasure; and he who despised cold, and want, and danger, and death on the Alps, was conquered and undone by the dissolute ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... is from the men of the Second year that the leaders are to be selected, and at this time in Saul's Cardillac seemed to have no rival. He combined, to an admirable degree, the man of the world and the sportsman; he had an air that was beyond rubies. He was elegant without being effeminate, arrogant without being conceited, indifferent without being blase. He had learnt, at Eton, and at the knee of a rich and charming mother, that to be crude was the unforgivable sin. He worshipped the god of good manners and would have made an admirable ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... were. The vast continent then thrown open to the advance of civilisation, may be divided into two portions, the south and the north. The former was inhabited by a harmless effeminate race, who enjoyed many of the refinements of civilisation; their knowledge of the arts, for instance, as shewn to us in the ruins of their cities, was considerable; they possessed extensive buildings ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... of her father's implication in the affair—was there foundation for it, more foundation than the hasty thought of a daughter still labouring under the effects of a great shock? He thought of Sloane, effeminate, shrill of voice, a trembling wreck, long ago a self-confessed ineffective in the battle of life—he, a murderer; he, capable of forceful action of any ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... times there seems to be undue mannerism, though every hand has its particular expression, each varying expression of the enjoyment or pain which the sense of touch can bring. And yet there was nothing effeminate or false about the painter's work: on all sides a sort of virile pride was apparent, an atmosphere of superb passionate motion, absolute concern for truth, direct study from life, conscientiousness, veritable realism, corrected ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... could not have followed what we venture to believe the suggestions of his heart, in relation to his predecessor, because a policy had been established which made it dangerous to be merciful, and a state of public feeling which made it effeminate to pardon. First make it safe to permit a man's life, before you pronounce it ignoble to authorize his death. Strip mercy of ruin to its author, before you affirm upon a judicial punishment of death (as then it was) cruelty in the adviser or ignobility in the approver. Escaping from ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... they all turned their heads toward the platform where Lysia had just silently made her appearance,— and springing from their seats they broke into a boisterous shout of acclamation and welcome. One young man whose flushed face had all the joyous, wanton, effeminate beauty of a pictured Dionysius, reeled forward, goblet in hand, and tossing the wine in air so that it splashed down again at his feet, staining his white garments as it fell with a stain as of blood, he ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... FRIBBLE. An effeminate fop; a name borrowed from a celebrated character of that kind, in the farce of Miss in her Teens, ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... which they had bestowed on the Protector. A fickle multitude might crowd to shout and scoff round the gibbeted remains of the greatest Prince and Soldier of the age. But when the Dutch cannon startled an effeminate tyrant in his own palace, when the conquests which had been won by the armies of Cromwell were sold to pamper the harlots of Charles, when Englishmen were sent to fight under foreign banners, against ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... her enthralled for a time. To Chopin, music was both a medicine and a disease, torment and solace. But that he would have lived his life differently in any way had he been a painter, a poet, an architect, a man of affairs, or an idler, with the same effeminate nature, the same elegance of manner, the same disease, the same women about him, I can find no reason to believe. Is it not the man and the environment rather than the music that makes such a life what ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... nostrils, so perpetually a-quiver. The soft, sparse, forked beard which closely followed the line of the lower jaw and pointed chin. The moustache, lightly shading the upper lip, while wholly exposing the fretful and rather sensuous mouth. The long, effeminate, and restless hands. The tall, slight figure. The clothes, of a material and pattern fondly supposed by their wearer to present the last word of English fashion in relation to foreign travel, the colour of them accurately matched to the pale, brown hair and beard.—So much ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... woman—and you have proved not one thing against her—a decent woman will keep him up to the mark and stop him getting slack. She'll make him responsible and manly, for much as I like Rickie, I always find him a little effeminate. And, really,"—his voice grew sharper, for he was irritated by Ansell's conceit, "and, really, you talk as if you were mixed up in the affair. They pay a civil visit to your rooms, and you see nothing but dark plots ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... same from the Arctic Ocean to Fuegia." The tribes differ somewhat, some being devoted to hunting, according to the ancient, uncivilised way, others take to the tilling of the ground. One tribe may be warlike, another will be more effeminate, while both sexes appear to have a liking for athletic exercises. The following descriptive passage is borrowed ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... graces of his person were such, that nature perhaps never formed anything more complete: His face was extremely handsome; and yet it was a manly face, neither inanimate nor effeminate; each feature having its beauty and peculiar delicacy: He had a wonderful genius for every sort of exercise, an engaging aspect, and an air of grandeur: in a word, he possessed every personal advantage; but then he was greatly deficient in mental accomplishments. ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... the evening of the day of Sheil's speech, Lord Ballindine and his friend, Walter Blake, were lounging on different sofas in a room at Morrison's Hotel, before they went up to dress for dinner. Walter Blake was an effeminate-looking, slight-made man, about thirty or thirty-three years of age; good looking, and gentlemanlike, but presenting quite a contrast in his appearance to his friend Lord Ballindine. He had a cold ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... Whence I, with either bard, close to the side That rose, pass'd forth beyond. "Remember," next We heard, "those noblest creatures of the clouds, How they their twofold bosoms overgorg'd Oppos'd in fight to Theseus: call to mind The Hebrews, how effeminate they stoop'd To ease their thirst; whence Gideon's ranks were thinn'd, As he to Midian march'd adown ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... Religion out of the Question for the present. It was asked in the Reign of Charles the 2d of England, HOW shall we turn the Minds of the People from an Attention to their Liberties? The Answer was, by making them extravagant, luxurious, effeminate. Hutchinson advisd the Abridgment of what our People called English Liberties, by the same Means. We shall never subdue them, said Bernard, but by eradicating their Manners & the Principles of their Education. Will the judicious Citizens ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... impoverish; decimate; extenuate; reduce in strength, reduce the strength of; mettre de l'eau dans son vin[Fr]. Adj. weak, feeble, debile|; impotent &c. 158; relaxed, unnerved, &c. v.; sapless, strengthless[obs3], powerless; weakly, unstrung, flaccid, adynamic[obs3], asthenic[obs3]; nervous. soft, effeminate, feminate[obs3], womanly. frail, fragile, shattery[obs3]; flimsy, unsubstantial, insubstantial, gimcrack, gingerbread; rickety, creaky, creaking, cranky; craichy[obs3]; drooping, tottering &c. v.. broken, lame, withered, shattered, shaken, crazy, shaky; palsied &c. 158; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... The difference between them is more one of period than of temperament. Paolo Veronese represented the opulence of a rich, strong society, full of noble life, while Tiepolo's lot was cast among effeminate men and frivolous women, and full of the modern spirit himself, he adapts his genius to his time and devotes himself to satisfy the theatrical, sentimental vein of the Venice of the decadence. Full of enthusiasm for his work, he was ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... fained that they were forsaken, and seemed to flie and go awaie from them, whom dearely they did affect, and then was there running one after another with loud laughters, and effeminate criengs out, their faire tresses spredding downe ouer their snowie shoulders like threeds of gold, bound in laces of greene silke: Some loose after a Nymphish maner, others bounde vp in attyres of golde set with pearle. Afterwards comming neere togither, they would stowpe downe, ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... so effeminate! for shame, leave off. Visus, your objects I must needs say, are admirable, if the house and instrument be answerable. Let's hear therefore in brief ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... there is nothing left for them but to starve, intrigue, and quarrel. You may judge how miserably poor they are, when you are told they can not afford even to cultivate the favorite art of modern Italy; the art best suited to the genius of a soft and effeminate people. There is, I was told, but one pianoforte in the whole town, and that is owned by a Florentine lady who has recently come to ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... glaringly, what would have been the result of giving all human affairs into female hands. Such an extraordinary and deplorable situation would have "feminized" the world. We should have all become "effeminate." ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... who have undergone castration become fat and sometimes take on certain masculine characters. Male human eunuchs have a high-pitched voice, a narrow chest; they remain beardless or nearly so, and have an effeminate character, often intriguing. In both sexes there is a tendency to neurosis and degeneration. It is a mistake to qualify the peculiarities of the male eunuch in the terms of female peculiarities; there is only a relative tendency. The eunuch is ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... Pickle, my boy; quite the nobleman, I might say, and I am not at all surprised that you helped that poor lad to escape. A little effeminate, but certainly a very nice lad. But I have been thinking about them ever since I came on board this afternoon, and I can't quite make out that Count. What's he doing here, my boy? On some mission, and connected with some jealousy and a stop being put to his cruise. ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... herself, while his complexion was much more delicate. In fact, she considered that it was much too good a complexion for one of the male sex, but admitted inwardly that its possessor was anything but effeminate, when he had such a heavy jaw, such a firm chin, and such set lips. Lambert, indeed, at first sight did indeed look so amiable, as to appear for the moment quite weak; but danger always stiffened him into a dangerous adversary, and his face when aroused was most unpleasantly fierce. ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... both as King and husband, and in his discontent at seeing his orders disobeyed, he wrote to him, from the depths of Poland, April 4, 1807, this reproachful letter, which is a real reprimand: "Your quarrels with the Queen have become public. Show, then, in private life some of that paternal and effeminate character which you display in matters of government, and in business the same rigor you exercise in your household. You treat a young woman as we treat a regiment.... You have an excellent and most virtuous wife and you make her unhappy. Let her dance as much as she pleases; she is young. My ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... donkey, so contrived that it would kick when hit in the true spot. What a joy to observe the tendency of all these diversions! How characteristic of a high-spirited people that nowhere could be found any amusement appealing to the mere mind, or calculated to effeminate by encouraging a love ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... her take cover beneath her sunshade. She could see his patent-leathered feet, and well-turned, peg-top-trousered legs go by with the gait of a man whose waist is corseted. The certainty that he wore those prerogatives of womanhood increased her dislike. How dare men be so effeminate? Yet someone had told her that he was a good rider, a good fencer, and very strong. She drew a breath of relief when he was past, and, for fear he might turn and come back, closed her little book and slipped away. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... young and quite unknown poet, "without the slightest hesitation we name Mr. Robert Browning at once with Shelley, Coleridge, Wordsworth." His plays even (which are commonly said to have "fallen flat") were certainly not failures. There is something effeminate, undignified, and certainly uncritical, in this confusion as to what is and what is not failure in literature. So enthusiastic was the applause he encountered, indeed, that had his not been too strong a nature to be thwarted by adulation any more than by contemptuous neglect, ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... lighter nature altogether, was perhaps of more flippant disposition than his chum, and had less stamina about him. Not that he was lacking in courage, or in dash, or in that elan which the French generally have displayed so magnificently in this conflict, only Jules was, perhaps, just a trifle effeminate, and giggles seemed to come almost naturally from him. Now, as he lay close to the ragged edge of the opening through which he had been forcibly dragged by Stuart and Henri, and as he spluttered and blew dirt which had introduced itself into ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... companionship for Clotilde. And now, when Charles was not at his mother's, where he scarcely ever lived at present, he was to be found at the house of Felicite, or that of some other relative, prettily dressed, laden with toys, living like the effeminate little dauphin of an ancient and ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... were the officers easy to distinguish from the men. A shade cleaner, perhaps; but they, too, were rough-bearded, hard bitten by long exposure and responsibility. How different from the exquisites of popular fancy! Gone the beauties of effeminate adornment. Gone the studied insolence of puppyhood—that arrogance of bearing traditional with the British officer in times of peace. These were the men who had been eyes and ears to French's magnificent cavalry, who had ridden unflinchingly to the relief ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... Not more effeminate Sardanapalus, than he. And, at intervals, he was the victim of unaccountable vagaries; haunted by specters, and beckoned to by ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... in London on the twenty-sixth of December, 1716, and received his education at Cambridge, where he lived most of his quiet life and where he died in 1771. He was a small and graceful man with handsome features and rather an effeminate appearance, always dressed with extreme care. The greater part of his life was spent in neatly furnished rooms among his books, for he was a hard student, and became noted as one of the first scholars of his time. Among his friends he was witty and entertaining, but among strangers, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Anastacio in his ringlets was an ineffectual, colourless, effeminate person, a perfect contrast to his ugly, barrel- shaped, badly-dressed but robust-minded neighbour, Gandara. Yet he too had a taste in animals which distinguished him among his fellow- landowners, and even reminded one ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... that they had despised always!—the luxurious life of the dwellers in the plains, and the effeminate customs of the Medes—a branch of their own race who had conquered and intermarried with the Turanian, or Finnish tribes; and adopted much of their creed, as well as of their morals, throughout their vast but short-lived Median Empire. 'Soft countries,' said Cyrus himself—so runs the tale—'gave ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... be compared with his? They were effected over a rabble of effeminate, undisciplined barbarians; else his progress would hardly have been so rapid: witness his father Philip, who was much longer occupied in subduing the comparatively insignificant territory of the warlike and civilized Greeks, notwithstanding ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately
... hath it," says the Talmud. "Light griefs do speak," says Seneca, "while sorrow's tongue is bound." "The wringing of the hands and knocking of the breast," says Dr. South, "or the wishing of one's self unborn: all are but the ceremonies of sorrow, the pomp and ostentation of an effeminate grief, which speak not so much the greatness of the misery as the ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... him in the gross sense, and placed all their happiness in corporeal pleasure. When Paul was at Athens, he had conferences with the Epicurean philosophers. (Acts 17:18) The word Epicurean is used, at present, for an indolent, effeminate, and voluptuous person, who only consults ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... sick of the excitement, the fashionable chatter, the mongering of low gossips. She loathed the sight of the effeminate young fops who tried to win her smiles by presenting themselves for a polite call each morning, polished and furbelowed, and rubbed sleek and smooth with Catanian pumice. Her mother disgusted her so utterly that she began to entertain the most unfilial feeling toward the worthy woman. Cornelia ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... before; and this I charge thee, on thy duty as a wife, Whatever happens, not to speak to me, No, not a word!" and Enid was aghast; And forth they rode, but scarce three paces on, When crying out, "Effeminate as I am, I will not fight my way with gilded arms All shall be iron;" he loosed a mighty purse, Hung at his belt, and hurl'd it toward the squire. So the last sight that Enid had of home Was all the marble threshold flashing, strown With gold and scatter'd coinage, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... bearing the penalty of the [transcriber's note: the text appears to read "sins" but it is unclear] and excesses of their parents, especially their fathers, whilst the great majority are reaping the fruits of their own immorality in a dwarfed and ill-formed body, and effeminate appearance, ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... Charles IV., King of Bohemia, was now emperor. It will be remembered that by marrying Mary, the eldest daughter of Louis, King of Hungary and Poland, he received Hungary as the dower of his bride. By intrigue he also succeeded in deposing his effeminate and dissolute brother, Wenceslaus, from the throne of Bohemia, and succeeded, by a new election, in placing the crown upon his own brow. Thus Sigismond wielded a three-fold scepter. He was Emperor of Germany, and King of ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... assistance of the Netherlands, urging the point with much fervid eloquence and solid argument. Henry for a moment had seemed impressed, but such a vigorous proceeding was of course entirely beyond his strength, and he had sunk back into his effeminate languor so soon as the bold bishop's ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... receive therefrom the reward of their unrighteousness. Unreasonable brutes, Peter calls them, as though they had within them not a spark of anything that smacked of spirit, performed no spiritual duty that they should do, but lived like the fool, and became effeminate through a carnal life. But in that he says they are naturally born to be taken and destroyed, it may be understood in a two-fold manner: first, as of those that take and destroy, such as the wolf, lion, bear, the sparrow-hawk and eagle,—so these grasp ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... way. He would sooner be bestial than Byronic, he would sooner shock by his frankness than inflame by his suggestion. And this in the interest of health and longevity, not in the interest of a prurient and effeminate "art." In these poems Whitman for a moment emphasizes sex, the need of sex, and the power of sex. "All were lacking if sex were lacking." He says to men and women, Here is where you live after all, here is the seat of empire. You are at the top of your condition when you are ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... spent in festivity at Carlsruhe, among all our new fashionable friends there, I bade good-by for ever to my dear old father. I had begged my husband to take me by way of Heidelberg to his old castle in the Vosges; but I found an amount of determination, under that effeminate appearance and manner, for which I was not prepared, and he refused my first request so decidedly that I dared not urge it. 'Henceforth, Anna,' said he, 'you will move in a different sphere of life; and though it is possible that you may have the power of showing favour to your ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... impulses, but they were all, she had to admit, inefficient—failures. There was Miss Livingstone, the fiery, emotional old maid who couldn't tell the truth; old Mr. Smith, a lawyer without clients, who read Shakespeare and Dryden all day long in his dusty office; Bobbie Jones, the effeminate drug clerk, who wrote free verse and "movie" scenarios, and tended the ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... are most of them? Heroes in the fields of Venus. Heroes at a drinking-bout. Effeminate striplings, relaxed both in mind and body. But how am I running on, forgetful. Ah, when one is grown old, and conversing with an Andreas, it is easy to forget everything else. My lord, I sought you with a request, a request, ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... at the sacrifice of king Swetaketu), Agni will derive great gratification from the fat of all creatures dwelling in the Khandava woods (to be burnt down) by the might of this one's arms. This mighty hero, vanquishing all the effeminate monarchs of the earth, will, with his brothers perform three great sacrifices. In prowess, O Kunti, he will be even as Jamadagnya or Vishnu. The foremost of all men endued with prowess, he will achieve great fame. He will gratify in battle (by his heroism) Sankara, the god of gods (Mahadeva), ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... could spell phthisis and Constantinople, our hero was reading Virgil and Shakespeare, and was learning to think for himself. The knowledge obtained from Billy Little the boy tried to impart to Rita. Tom held learning and books to be effeminate and wasteful of time; but Rita drank in Dic's teaching, with now and then a helpful draught from Billy Little, and the result soon began to show upon ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... under Sadasheo Rao Bhao, he had 70,000 regular and irregular cavalry and only 15,000 infantry, of whom 9000 were hired sepoys under a Muhammadan leader. The Marathas were at their best in attacking the slow-moving and effeminate Mughal armies, while during their period of national ascendancy under the Peshwa there was no strong military power in India which could oppose their forays. When they were by the skill of their opponents at length brought to a set battle, their fighting qualities usually proved to ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... method chosen for the punishment of these saintly innocents Nero gave one more proof of the close connection between effeminate aestheticism and sanguinary callousness. As in old days, "on that opprobrious hill," the temple of Chemosh had stood close by that of Moloch, so now we find the spoliarium beside the fornices—Lust hard by Hate. The carnificina of Tiberius, at Capreae, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... this: that could the Sakai look into some of our houses and palaces he would make haste to return to his own forest and if he were obliged or knew how to write his impressions he would certainly commence: "The men of the West are effeminate, lazy and indolent". ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... and fondness of life, sent him this answer, that as for that, it had been before, and was now, in his own power; giving him to understand that the disgrace could be avoided by death; which the faint-hearted man not having the spirit for, and made effeminate by I know not what hopes, allowed himself to appear as a part of his own spoils. After these were carried four hundred crowns, all made of gold, sent from the cities by their respective deputations to Aemilius, in honor of his victory. Then he himself came, seated ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... soldier who accepted the purple at York, how great the change to the effeminate emperor of the Bosphorus, in silken robes stiffened with threads of gold, a diadem of sapphires and pearls, and false hair stained of various tints; his steps stealthily guarded by mysterious eunuchs flitting through the ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... the gospel to many Indian tribes; and, secondly, great conquests may be effected for the glory of the king, by the seizure of provinces rich in silver mines, and defended only by a few indolent and effeminate Spaniards. The Sieur de la Salle, pursues the memorial, binds himself to accomplish this enterprise within one year after his arrival on the spot; and he asks for this purpose only one vessel and two hundred men, with ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... souls; for English hearts which were what Italian hearts were about 1500, emerging from that sublime Middle Age questi tempi della virtu sconosciutta." Racine, on the contrary, wrote for a slavish and effeminate court. The author disclaims any wish to impose Shakspere on the Italians. The day will come, he hopes, when they will have a national tragedy of their own; but to have that, they will do better to follow in the footprints of Shakspere than, like Alfieri, in the footprints of Racine. In spite of ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... roving eye. No doubt a handsome man, by German standards—even, perhaps a celebrated seducer, a soldier with a future—but the mere sight of him suffices to paralyse an American esophagus. Besides, there is the smell of chocolate, sweet, sickly, effeminate, and at two in the afternoon! Again, there is the music of Grieg, clammy, clinging, creepy. Away to the Mathaeserbraeu, two long blocks by taxi! From the Munich of Berlinish decadence and Prussian epaulettes to the Munich of honest Bavarians! From chocolate and macaroons to pretzels and white ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... intuition, so to say, of the spiritual value in a material fact. During that unhappy agitation for the revision of our creed, I have heard him, touching the future state of unbaptised infants, utter sentiments of a heterodoxy that was positively effeminate in its sentimentality—sentiments which I shall not pain you by repeating. He has often referred, moreover, with the same disordered sentimentality, to the sad fate of our father—about whose present estate no churchman can have any doubt. And then about our belief ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... and atmosphere of Venice, are radiant on the canvas of Titian, Tintoretto, and Paul Veronese; Michel Angelo has embodied the soul of his era and the loftiest spirit of his country; Salvator typified the half-savage picturesqueness, Neapolitan Claude the atmospheric enchantments, Carlo Dolce the effeminate grace, Titian the voluptuous energy, Guido the placid self-possession, and Raphael and Correggio the religious sentiment of Italy; Watteau put on canvas the fete champetre; the peasant-life of Spain is pictured by Murillo, her asceticism ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... in the midst of a heavy drizzling mist; on, however, the lady went, in the lightest marching order. The doctor enquired why she did not clothe herself during the rain; but it appeared that she did not consider it proper for a chief to appear effeminate. The men, in admiration of her pedestrian powers, every now and then remarked: "Manenko is a soldier." Some of the people in her train carried shields composed of reeds, of a square form, five feet long and three broad. With these, and armed with broadswords and quivers full ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... in Round the Town. Notably an effeminate but substantial stock-broker, who looks like a stock-jobber's maiden-aunt in disguise. Another important personage is a representative of the Navy, whose figure suggests as an appropriate greeting, "Hip, hip, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various
... was pursuing his victories over the effeminate people of Asia, a still more brilliant career in the West marked the rising fortunes of Julius Caesar. I need not dwell on the steps by which he arose to become the formidable rival of the conqueror of the East. He ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... it happens. Yet the stiffest female stoicism seems separated from it only by a sheet of paper or a sheet of steel. It indicates no surrender, far less any sympathy. The most rigid and ruthless woman can begin to cry, just as the most effeminate man can grow a beard. It is a separate sexual power, and proves nothing one way or the other about force of character. But to young men ignorant of women, like Arthur Inglewood, to see Diana Duke crying was like seeing a motor-car shedding ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... Enobarbus, and is hardly redeemed by his affecting catastrophe. Even the Egyptian Alexas acquires some respectability, from his patriotic attachment to the interests of his country, and from his skill as a wily courtier. He expresses, by a beautiful image, the effeminate attachment to life, appropriated to ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... himself knew—father, friend, comrade, adviser—standard of men and morals—all and more was his beloved uncle. No thought of his heart but he had given him, and never once had he been misunderstood. He could put his arm about his uncle's neck as he would about his mother's and not be thought effeminate or childish. And the courtesy and dignity and fairness with which he had been treated; and the respect St. George showed him—and he only a boy: compelling his older men friends to do the same. Never letting him feel that any foolish act ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Paris a veritable Alsatia, where paid assassins who stabbed from behind and mignons who struck to the face, were part of the train of every prince. The king's minions with their insolent bearing, their extravagant and effeminate dress, their hair powdered and curled, their neck-ruffles so broad that their heads resembled the head of John the Baptist on a charger,—gambling, blaspheming swashbucklers—were hateful alike to Huguenot and Catholic. ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... sich ez they and the employers shel mutually agree; but that the negroes may not become luxurious and effeminate, wich two things is vices wich goes to sap the simplicity and strength uv a people, the sum shel never exceed $5 per month, but not less than enuff in all cases to buy him one soot uv close per annum, wich the employer shel ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... previous life, he was obliged to admit that all the virtues of a good, industrious, and modest youth could not easily be so happily united in another as they were in Jonathan, albeit his handsome expressive face bore the impress of traits which were perhaps a little too soft, and almost effeminate, and his diminutive and weak but elegant bodily frame bespoke a tender intellectual spirit. When he reflected further that the two children had always been together, and how evident had been their mutual liking for each other, he ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... in his rounds of leave-taking, approached those near to Alexander. When he reached the latter he hesitated a moment, having recognized the person who had come to his assistance in need, and a flush of embarrassment suffused his gentle, almost effeminate, countenance. But Alexander, bending down quickly, pressed a kiss on the man's cheek, saying heartily: "Farewell, and good luck go with you! Believe me, I ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... similar name, under whom he had been compelled to serve through scenes of crime. Yet, in spite of my unconscious desire to connect these two together, I found it simply impossible to associate this rather soft-spoken, effeminate dandy with that bloody villain, many of whose deeds were so familiar to me. The distinction was too apparent. Beyond all doubt this fellow concealed beneath his smiles a nature entirely different from the one he now so carefully exhibited. He could hate fiercely, and nourish revenge, ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... with thine admonitions as vainly as [thou mightest] a billow.[79] Never let it enter your thoughts that I, affrighted by the purpose of Jupiter, shall become womanish, and shall importune the object whom I greatly loathe, with effeminate upliftings of my hands, to release me from these shackles: I want much ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... with neighboring nations about commercial privileges, no local strife which cannot be settled by Arete. The poet has as nearly as possible succeeded in eliminating the negative element out of this society. An unwarlike folk, but not effeminate, happy in peace, with a childlike delight in play, which is the starting-point of art, and remains its substrate, according to Schiller; truly idyllic it must be regarded, a land on the way between nature and civilization, where life is a perpetual ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... peculiar beauty, an exceptional physiognomy, which had, if we may venture so to speak, neither age nor sex. It was not the bold and masculine air of a descendant of a race of magnates, who know nothing but drinking, hunting, and making war; neither was it the effeminate loveliness of a cherub couleur de rose. It was more like the ideal creations with which the poetry of the Middle Ages adorned the Christian temples: a beautiful angel, with a form pure and slight as a young god of Olympus, with a face like that of a majestic woman filled with a divine ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... at the same time running together in strange complexity and their capitals diminishing and disappearing. Some of their conditions, which, in their rich striation, resemble crystals of beryl, are very massy and grand; others, meagre, harsh, or effeminate in themselves, are redeemed by richness and boldness of decoration; and I have long had it in my mind to reason out the entire harmony of this French Flamboyant system, and fix its types and possible power. But this inquiry is foreign altogether ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... a host, in perpetual feud. The asylum of nations, ungratefully rejecting the principles of equality, to which it has owed a career of prosperity unexampled in history, will find in arrested commerce, depressed credit, checked manufactures, an effeminate and selfish, however brilliant, governing class, and an impoverished and imbruted industrial population, the consequences of turning back upon its path of advance. The condition of the most unfortunate aristocracies of the Old World ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... particulars of his person: a face of perfect oval very regular in feature; large light blue eyes shaded by beautifully arched brows; nose good and of the Roman type; complexion fair, mouth something small and effeminate, forehead high and full. He was possessed of the inimitable reserve and bearing that mark the royal-born, and that despite his genial frankness. On this occasion he wore his usual light-coloured peruke with the natural hair combed over the front, ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... finds within me a nobility, That spurns the idle pratings of the great, And their mean boast of what their fathers were, While they themselves are fools effeminate, The scorn of all who know the ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... wife shall be a strumpet, and yourself by consequence a cuckold. The goddess, whom you shall not find propitious nor favourable unto you, is Minerva, a most redoubtable and dreadful virgin, a powerful and fulminating goddess, an enemy to cuckolds and effeminate youngsters, to cuckold-makers and adulterers. The god is Jupiter, a terrible and thunder-striking god from heaven. And withal it is to be remarked, that, conform to the doctrine of the ancient Etrurians, the ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... bronze-colored class: gracefully formed, with effeminate features, small hands and feet, long fingers, intelligent minds, courteous and polished manners. Such are the Mpongwe of the Gaboon, the Angolese, the Fanti of the Gold Coast, and most probably the Haoussa of the Niger, a tribe with which ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... years of the fifteenth century, offers in many important respects a contrast to his contemporaries Ghiberti and Donatello, and still more to their immediate followers. He made his art as true to life as it is possible to be, without the rugged realism of Donatello or the somewhat effeminate graces of Ghiberti. The charm of his work is never impaired by scientific mannerism—that stumbling-block to critics like De Stendhal in the art of Florence; nor does it suffer from the picturesqueness of a sentimental style. How to render ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... by Cardan, that some birch-roots are so very extravagantly vein'd, as to represent the shapes and images of beasts, birds, trees, and many other pretty resemblances. Lastly, of the whitest part of the old wood, found commonly in doating birches, is made the grounds of our effeminate farin'd gallants sweet powder; and of the quite consum'd and rotten (such as we find reduc'd to a kind of reddish earth in superannuated hollow-trees) is gotten the best mould for the raising of divers seedlings of the rarest plants and flowers; to say nothing ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... born three years later than Sterne, had entered a year after him at Cambridge as a pensioner of Peterhouse, and the two students went through their terms together, though the poet at the time took no degree. There was probably little enough in common between the shy, fastidious, slightly effeminate pensioner of Peterhouse, and a scholar of Jesus, whose chief friend and comrade was a man like Hall; and no close intimacy between the two men, if they had come across each other, would have been very likely to arise. But ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... Jasper was dark and effeminate in appearance, not strong and sturdy, nor had he the look of self-reliance and calm power which characterized our hero, who was his cousin. He was smooth, deceitful, and vain, running to dissipation, as far as he ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... country clearly, and it seems a mistake or an anomaly that woman is not at the top and leading in all departments, compelling the other sex to play second fiddle, as she so frequently has done for a brief time in isolated cases in the past; not that the man is effeminate, but that the woman seems so nearly his match and equal, and so often proves even his superior. In no other nation, during times of popular excitement and insurrection or revolution, do women emerge so conspicuously, often in the front ranks, the most furious and ungovernable of any. I think ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... ago, the Cubo Sama then being, beholding the sceptre of Japan in the hands of a Dairy, who was cowardly and effeminate, revolted from him, and got possession of the regal dignity. His design was to have reduced the whole estate under his own dominion; but he was only able to make himself master of Meaco, where the emperor kept his court, and of the provinces depending ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... that the Homeric poems could have suffered by this change, had written copies been preserved. If Chaucer's poetry, for instance, had not been written, it could only have come down to us in a softened form, more like the effeminate version of Dryden, than the rough, quaint, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... the Ephesian sinners? (of Paul we will speak anon.) These Ephesian sinners, they were men dead in sins; men that walked according to the dictates and motions of the devil; worshippers of Diana, that effeminate goddess; men far off from God, aliens and strangers to all good things; such as were far off from that, as I said, and, consequently, in a most deplorable condition. As the Jerusalem sinners were of the highest sort among the Jews, so these ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... serious view of the affair, and, having sandbagged the cellar windows, posted notices stating that, in the event of shelling, customers could continue business in the cellar. And this was in a nation that we have always looked upon as effeminate ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... instinct are inherent in English, Scotch, and Irish alike, but no comparison can be made between the martial value of a regiment recruited amongst the Gurkhas of Nepal or the warlike races of northern India, and of one recruited from the effeminate peoples ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... indulgent and shrugs his shoulders. "For instance," says he, "this Gerald Webb seems to be one of those highly sensitive, delicately organized persons; somewhat effeminate in fact. ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... and every kind of toil, who was so schooled to curtail his needs that with the scantiest of means he never lacked sufficiency—is it credible that such a man could have made others irreverent or lawless, or licentious, or effeminate in face of toil? Was he not rather the saving of many through the passion for virtue which he roused in them, and the hope he infused that through careful management of themselves they might grow to be truly beautiful and good—not indeed that he ever undertook ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... notwithstanding, a keener eye cannot fail to detect the hidden purpose of the writer to sap the foundations of moral principle, and the veneration for whatever ought to be held sacred by man; while all this sentimentality is only to bribe to his purpose the effeminate soft-heartedness of his contemporaries [Footnote: The author it is supposed alludes to Kotzebue.—TRANS.]. On the other hand, if any person were to undertake the moral vindication of poor Aristophanes, who has such a bad name, and whose licentiousness in particular ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... were not unfrequently attended by considerable peril, as the unsettled state of the Border counties, and the fierce and sometimes treacherous nature of the inhabitants, made travelling there upon the King's business a matter of some difficulty and danger. There was no fear of Gaston's growing effeminate or turning into a mere pleasure hunter; and he soon made himself of great value to his master, not only by his undaunted bravery, but by his success in diplomatic negotiation — a success by no means expected by himself, and a surprise ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... blankets and knapsacks are at night used to eke out the appointments for sleep,—the first to soften the floor to the bones of the sleepers, the second to serve for pillows. These, especially the former, are looked upon by the genuine soldier as effeminate; while the greenhorn bitterly complains of them as a very satire on ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... always know where these young gentlemen are to be found when they are required to grace a rich man's feast. They are generally accompanied by a guardian, and usually nothing very serious takes place, for they know their value, and money will not always buy their expensive favors. They are very effeminate, luxuriously dressed and perfumed, and they seldom go on foot. There are, however, lower ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... tall and elegant, although slight form of Clarendon. The latter was very fair, and what we are accustomed to call English-looking. His hair almost, but not quite, flaxen, hung in thick curls over his forehead, and would have given an effeminate expression to the face, were it not for the peculiar flash ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... becomes. What I wish is that people would apply the same sort of seriousness to talk that they apply to golf and bridge; that they should desire to improve their game, brood over their mistakes, try to do better. Why is it that so many people would think it priggish and effeminate to try to improve their talk, and yet think it manly and rational to try to shoot better? Of course it must be done with a natural zest and enjoyment, or it is useless. What a ghastly picture one gets of the old-fashioned talkers and wits, committing a number of subjects to memory, turning over ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... fellow Naaman," said he, "after what he'd seen and felt, going back and bowing himself down in the house of Rimmon, because his effeminate scoundrel of a master did it. I wonder Elisha took the trouble to heal him. How ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... was often at her house in Mount Street, and frequently met Lord Drumone's fair-haired and rather effeminate son there, Peggy's mother never dreamed they were in love. Both were extremely careful to conceal it, and in their ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... visitor's feet sank into the carpet as into banked moss. Beautiful furniture stood about. Pictures by eminent artists graced the walls. Statuettes, vases, busts, choice antiques, were everywhere. It was the room of a wealthy connoisseur, of an aesthete whose delicacy of taste bordered upon the effeminate. The doctor stared hard at the Count without permitting the latter to observe that he did so. With his hands thrust deep in the sack-like pockets of his inverness he drifted from treasure to treasure—uninvited, ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... eminent respectability and an equal of the Le Grande family?' I mildly suggested that I could not love such a 'scrap of a woman as Belle Upton was; and if she was in love with me, it was without a cause.' I have paid her some attention, but only to please mother and Helen. She's too effeminate, if she is so very aristocratic-not half so handsome as 'ma belle Juive.' Oh! those dreamy eyes! They haunt me day and night. I believe ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... composition is morbid and unsatisfactory to a degree. These belong to the later period of his life, when he was in poor health. He is a woman's composer. In his strongest moments there is always an effeminate element. In this respect he is exactly opposite to Schumann and Beethoven, whose works, however delicate and refined, have always a manly strength. Chopin made the most important modifications in the current way of treating the piano. In this ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... magnetic eyes, the handsome, clear-cut features, above all, that slow and alluring smile, appealed to the husband of the wilful Pat rather as evidences of Oriental, half-effeminate devilry than as passports to decent society. Oxford had veneered him, but scratch the veneer and one found the sandal-wood of the East, perfumed, seductive, appealing, but something to be shunned as brittle ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... twenty-five other passengers, among them being Prof. Wm. Miller, the wrestler, whose name and fame are well known to athletes the world over, and who in company with his wife was bound for Australia. Sir Jas. Willoughby, an effeminate-looking Englishman of the dude variety, whose weakness for cigarettes and champagne soon became known to us, and who was doing a bit of a tour for his own pleasure; Major General Strange, of the English army, a tall, awkward-looking man, with eagle eyes, gray beard and a bronzed complexion, who had ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... more luxurious than the Lombards, with the costly stuffs, the rich jewelry, and the perfumes of Byzantium; and held a great annual fair at the imperial city of Pavia, where they sold the Franks the manufactures of the polished and effeminate Greeks, and whence in return they carried back to the East the grain, wine, wool, iron, lumber, and excellent ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... forefathers were for countless generations reared in the stern precepts of the virile religion of the North. Whilst we may with justice deplore the excessive militarism of the Kaiser Wilhelm and his followers, we cannot rightly agree with those effeminate preachers of universal brotherhood who deny the virtue of that manly strength which maintains our great North European family in its position of undisputed superiority over the rest of mankind, and which in its purest form is today the bulwark of Old England. It is ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... Greeks themselves knew almost nothing more of the history of their famed Oriental forerunners. The current fables told of a first King Ninus and his wonderful queen Semiramis; of Sennacherib the conqueror; of the effeminate Sardanapalus, who neglected the warlike ways of his ancestors but perished gloriously at the last, with Nineveh itself, in a self-imposed holocaust. And that was all. How much of this was history, how much myth, no man could say; and for all any one suspected to ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... out poison as the first men did By tasting and then suffering, if I must. Sometimes my bush burns, and sometimes it is A leafless wilding shivering by the wall; But I have known when winter barberries Pricked the effeminate palate with surprise Of savor whose mere harshness ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... unconcerned, and after having washed himself leisurely, proceeded to discharges his devotions, looking around all the while with a certain self-satisfied composure, before returning to his cell. His appearance was puny, undergrown, and effeminate, and his small, narrow, and elongated head markedly prognathous, but he exercised over some of his companions a passionate, if unnatural, fascination which, I have been told by one who was present ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... out before him. He stood upon its border. He wanted to step into it. But something within him, something that seemed obscure, hesitated, was perhaps afraid. In his restless mood, in his strong excitement, he wanted to crush that thing down, to stifle its voice. Caution seemed to him almost effeminate just then. He remembered how one day Charmian had said to him, after an argument about psychology: "Really, Mr. Heath, whatever you may say, your strongest instinct is a selfish ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... (Facfur, Emperor of Southern China), meaning of title; his effeminate diversions; decay of his palace. Faizabad in Badakhshan. Fakanur. Fakata. Fakhruddin Ahmad, Prince of Hormuz. Falconers, Kublai's. Falcons, of Kerman, Saker and Lanner; peregrine; Kublai's. Famine, horrors. Fanchan, P'ingchang, title of a second class ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... theatre in Yedo; and the theatre called after him Saruwakaza, in the street Saruwakacho, remains even unto this day. But since the time of O-Kuni, women have been—at least until very recently-excluded from the Japanese stage; their parts, as among the old Greeks, being taken by men or boys so effeminate in appearance and so skilful in acting that the keenest observer ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... throat rose statuesque. The almond-shaped eyes, black as night, gleamed strangely beneath the low, smooth brow. The lank black hair appeared lustreless by comparison. His lips were very red. In his whole appearance there was something repellently effeminate. ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... asked Antonia, opening her big brown eyes in astonishment. "I travelled first-class from London, and drove out here in a landau; the whole journey was nothing short of effeminate. When I was in Paris I rose at four in the morning, and worked at my easel standing for five hours at a stretch; that was something like work. No, I'm not the least tired, thank you, and I don't want to be bothered tidying myself, for I may as well say frankly ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... Here we barricaded ourselves, and, for the present were secure. From a loop-hole near the summit of the kiosk, I perceived a vast crowd, in furious agitation, surrounding and assaulting a gay palace that overhung the river. Presently, from an upper window of this place, there descended an effeminate-looking person, by means of a string made of the turbans of his attendants. A boat was at hand, in which he escaped to the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... not prone to indulge in effeminate demonstration, but I am not ashamed to confess that when I gazed on the weather-beaten though ruddy countenance of my old companion, and observed the eager glance of his bright blue eyes, I was quite overcome, and rushed violently into his arms. I may also ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... always represented robed in a long flowing garment; his lyre, to the tones of which he appears to be singing, is suspended by a band across the chest; his head is encircled by a wreath of laurel, and his long hair, streaming down over his shoulders, gives him a somewhat effeminate appearance. ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... of which they devoted a considerable portion of Sunday morning. They might then be seen in groups, combing and brushing each other's hair, which hung down very long behind, and then tying up the tails with a bit of blue cotton tape. The captain was a young man, tall and slight, with a very effeminate air, and as unlike his first lieutenant as he well could be. Still his countenance was not bad, and he smiled in a pleasant way ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... our Amazon went, in the very lightest marching order, and at a pace that few of the men could keep up with. Being on ox-back, I kept pretty close to our leader, and asked her why she did not clothe herself during the rain, and learned that it is not considered proper for a chief to appear effeminate. He or she must always wear the appearance of robust youth, and bear vicissitudes without wincing. My men, in admiration of her pedestrian powers, every now and then remarked, "Manenko is a soldier;" and thoroughly wet and cold, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... the end of the porch, as she stood eagerly pointing up the mountain-road. Mostyn saw a tall man of middle age, smooth-shaven, with long yellow hair falling on his broad shoulders, easily striding down the incline. He had blue eyes and delicate, rather effeminate features. He wore a broad-brimmed felt hat, dark trousers, and a black frock-coat without a vest. Reaching the store, he took off his hat, brushed back his hair from a high pink forehead, and with bows and smiles to the people on all sides, ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... our effeminate nobles have taken a love for military appearance during the visit of Sargon, for the Assyrians will have a better opinion touching Egypt. Our most worthy viceroy, enlightened by the gods, as is evident, has divined that ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... the clang of bolts and the rattle of chains, and then a weird cry from Williams. A voice responded that brought Enid, trembling and livid, into the hall. A young man with a dark, exceedingly handsome face and somewhat effeminate mouth stood there, with eyes for nothing but the shining flower-decked casket on the trestles. He seemed beside himself with rage and grief; he might have been a falsely imprisoned convict face to face ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White |
