"Wifely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cheerful home. One of the poems that he sends to his publisher about this time, he speaks of as being copied by her. He had always the highest regard for her literary judgments and opinions; and this little incident shows that she was already associating herself in a wifely fashion with his aims as ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... memories of those memorable days. The dramatic framework of "Fidelio" is weak, its construction faulty. Only one ethical idea is presented in it with real vividness, but it is an idea which is peculiarly dear to the German heart—the saving power of woman's love. "Fidelio" is a tale of wifely devotion, and Beethoven bent all his energies to a glorification of his heroine's love and fidelity. To represent the character faithfully has been the highest ambition of German singers for a century. In that time not many more than a dozen have achieved high distinction ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... and ex-M.P.'s, A Knight, a Baronet, a Brigadier? Is it not wonderful to be with these, To watch, and after in the wifely ear Whisper, "This morning I exchanged some words With old Sir Somebody, who thought of Tanks; I saw the Chairman of the Board of Birds; I said, 'How are you?' and he ...
— Punch, Volume 156, January 22, 1919. • Various
... early Buddhist legends; and the Buddhist quality of gentleness has not disappeared in the history.[25] Rama, however, is far from a perfect character. His wife Sita is possessed of much womanly grace and every wifely virtue; and the sorrowful story of the warrior-god and his faithful spouse has appealed to deep sympathies in the human breast. The worship of Rama has seldom, if ever, degenerated into lasciviousness. In spite, however, of the charm thrown around the life of Rama and ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... they were Christian or heathen, savage or civilized. And there is the affectation of the maternal passion with women who are never by any chance seen with their children, but who speak of them as if they were never out of their sight; the affectation of wifely adoration with women who are to be met about the world with every man of their acquaintance rather than with their lawful husbands; the affectation of asceticism in women who lead a thoroughly self-enjoying life from end to end; and the affectation of political fervor in those who would not give ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... time Mr. Gladstone had got to the Bill, he had exhausted a good deal of his stock of voice, and yet he seemed to be less dependent than usual on the mysterious compound which Mrs. Gladstone mixes with her own wifely hand for those solemn occasions. It appeared that both she and her husband had somewhat dreaded the ordeal. The bottle which Mr. Gladstone usually brings with him is about the size of those small, stunted little jars in which, in the days of our youth, the ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... childbirth; but such a function is so generally attributed to some goddess that we can only suppose that she rose to eminence through local conditions unknown to us. The most interesting point about her is that she came to be the representative of the respectable Greek matron, jealous of her wifely rights, holding herself aloof from love affairs, a home person, entitled to respect for the decency of her life, ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... witness to the universal appreciation of this function of married life. But if John nurses hurt feelings whenever Mary punctures his vanity by suggesting that he presents to the world a less than perfect front, Mary may soon lose courage and relinquish her wifely job of husband improvement. Or the ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... not in the least in love with life; I might be, p'raps, if I had a wife To care for me in a wifely way, Or a neighbour or two to say good-day, Or a chum To come And give me the news in a friendly talk, Or share a duet or a meal or a walk. But all alone in the world am I, And I sit in a cave, And try to behave As a good ...
— The Flamp, The Ameliorator, and The Schoolboy's Apprentice • E. V. Lucas
... said, had no conception of wifely duties and affection. He had a great deal to say on the subject of wifely duty. It was part of her duty as a wife to be entirely satisfied with his society, and to be completely happy in the pleasure it afforded her. It was her wifely duty not to talk about her ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... strong traits of feminine virtue and wifely fidelity. Philippo has little distinctiveness except in his extreme susceptibility to jealousy—a fault which was exaggerated by the author to set off the opposite qualities of Philomela. The story has no little merit in regard to the construction and ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... painstaking and scrupulous care. They were healing nicely, and the healing process made Finn as stiff and sore as though he had had rheumatics in every joint in his body. So he crept painfully into the den again, and lay down to sleep once more, while Warrigal, with a friendly, wifely look at ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... she would not be his slave, she had a hard time of it. He began by insisting that she should learn science, that she might assist him in his experiments. She knew that she had no taste for it, that it was no part of her wifely duty, and she did what suited her better—followed the hounds. It was a picture to see her riding across country. She could take a fence with a sound hunter like a bird. And so it happened that, after a time, they went their own ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... long eyed this supercilious beauty. Even now he did not hesitate to glance at her, and she was conscious of it. With a specially conjured show of indifference, she turned her pretty face wholly away. It was not wifely modesty at all. By so much ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... is your licentiousness that drives your wives to a deed so abhorrent to their every wifely, womanly and maternal instinct—a deed which ruins the health of their bodies, prostitutes their souls, and makes marriage, maternity and womanhood itself degrading and loathsome. No terms can sufficiently characterize the cruelty, meanness and disgusting selfishness of ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... not have changed, say her defenders, into the perfidious, wicked, and cruel creature she is said to have become as soon as she stepped into power. "During the reign of Henry II., she wisely avoided all danger; faithful to her wifely duties, she gave no cause for scandal, and, realizing that she was not strong enough to overcome her all-powerful rival, she bided her time. She was loved and respected by everyone for her personal qualities and her ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... north window, and tinkled upon the tin roof of the conservatory, and Mabel, though aware of her brother's habitual disregard of wind and weather, could not but sympathize with the wifely concern evinced by the sober physiognomy and unsettled demeanor of one generally so calm. She observed, now, that her sister-in-law was arrayed more richly than usual, and her attire was always handsome ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... her darling, she had left his matrimonial future largely to his father. Frequently her conscience smote her for her neglect of old Hector, but she smoothed it by promising herself to devote more time to him, more study to his masculine needs for wifely devotion, as soon as Elizabeth ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... order. Still, Sir Harry being a bachelor, and extremely untidy, his den, as he called it, was in a state of pleasing muddle, which oftentimes drew forth rebukes from Lucy. She was resolved to train her Harry into better ways when she had the wifely right to correct him, but, as she frequently remarked, it would be the thirteenth labour of Hercules to cleanse this ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... that moment. It was not until much later that I found out that Mrs. Morton never disputed her husband's will, even in trifles; that he ordered the plan of her life as well as his own; that her passionate love for her children was restrained in order that her wifely and social duties should be carried out; that she was so perfectly obedient to him, not from fear, but from an excess of womanly devotion, that she seldom even contested an opinion. My fate was very nearly sealed at that moment, but a hasty impulse prompted me to speak. Looking Mr. Morton full ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... adored her; if you had been alone and moderately circumstanced, she would have continued being so lovable that after ten years your face flushes with painful memory as you speak of it. I've always thought her abandoned as to wifely and motherly instinct. What you say proves she was a lovable girl, ruined by society, through the medium of ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... with all its past treasures of affection and happiness, for ever behind her, and going forward, in loving hope and trust, no doubt, yet still in uncertainty of what the hidden future held in store for her of weal and woe, to meet her wifely destiny. As she came down into her great hall she was welcomed with fervent acclamations, but for once she was absorbed in herself, and the usual frank, gracious response was not accorded to the tribute. Her eyes were fixed on the ground; ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... aggravated by another fear, as yet barely on the level of consciousness; the fear of unwillingly involving Gannett in the trammels of her dependence. To look upon him as the instrument of her liberation; to resist in herself the least tendency to a wifely taking possession of his future; had seemed to Lydia the one way of maintaining the dignity of their relation. Her view had not changed, but she was aware of a growing inability to keep her thoughts fixed on the essential point—the point of parting with Gannett. ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... form, My fancy sees, by love refined, A warmer and a dearer charm By wedlock's mystic hands entwined, - A golden coil of wifely cares That years have forged, the loving joy That guards the curly-headed boy Asleep ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... tears, With wifely fears Immixed—I held my breath, My boy! As down the street The drums did beat That led you ...
— Soldier Songs and Love Songs • A.H. Laidlaw
... should not set until she had cursed him, and gazes into its searing glow until her sight is again dead. Moral: it is sinful to love the loveliness of outward things; from the soul must come salvation. As if she had never learned the truth, she returns to her wifely love for Arcesius. The story is as false to nature as it is sacrilegious; its trumpery theatricalism is as great a hindrance to a possible return of Biblical opera as the disgusting celebration of necrophilism in Richard ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the greeting she intended to give Richard. She had never been cold or shy in her demeanor with him, nor had she ever been quite demonstrative; but now she meant to put her arms around his neck in a wifely fashion, and recompense him so far as she could for all the injustice he was to suffer. When he came to learn of the hateful slander that had lifted its head during his absence, he should already be in possession of ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... lord, and deck a house of mourning with flowers, and make a parade of happiness in a countenance wan with secret torture. And with this sense of responsibility for the honor of both, with the magnificent immolation of self, the young Marquise unconsciously acquired a wifely dignity, a consciousness of virtue which became her safeguard amid ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... a titter swept over the gathering. Mrs. Hornblower, though fond of flaunting her wifely subjection in the faces of her acquaintances, never failed to get her own way in any domestic crisis where she had taken the trouble to form a preference. And on the other hand, poor Susan Fitzgerald, for all her blustering defiance of the tyrant sex, could in reality be overawed and browbeaten ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... had seemed to begin by bracing herself to stand against him, now seemed to have braced herself to stand with him—perhaps a more commendable wifely attitude. I mean that the discipline incident to a life of success which was not without its rigors had become to her almost a second nature. The order of the day was cooeperation, team-work; in the grand advance she was no straggler, no malingerer. It was a matter of pride to keep step ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... things in a "Fair" for a good cause and come in contact with a crowd of strangers in the process among people who would consider "keeping a shop," unless from dire necessity, a very questionable proceeding. It is thought most virtuous and wifely for a woman married to a minister of the church to give her time and strength gratuitously in multitudinous religious helps to the organization which usually counts on getting the service of two first-class people for a second-or third-class salary for one. But for the wife of such a minister, ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... speech. The rules of the Hunt require one to look up at one's wife—chiefly to find out what she is after and to wonder how long she will inflict herself. And when one is hearing afar the cry of the pack, no true sportsman is diverted from the chase by ruddy, wifely cheeks, and beaming, wifely eyes, and an eager, wifely heart. So when Laura his wife came into the office of the young Judge she found his heart out with the Primrose Hunt and only his handsome figure and his judicial mind accessible to her. "Oh, Tom," ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... this Griseldis through her wit *Couth all the feat* of wifely homeliness, *knew all the duties* But eke, when that the case required it, The common profit coulde she redress: There n'as discord, rancour, nor heaviness In all the land, that she could not appease, And wisely bring them all in rest ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... wife. 'Made marriages by friends' are dangerous. 'I had as lief another should take measure by his back of my apparel as appoint what wife I shall have by his mind.' He prefers in a wife 'beauty before riches, and virtue before blood.' He holds to the radical English doctrine of wifely submission; there is no swerving from the position that the man is the woman's 'earthly master,'[2] but in taming a wife no violence is to be employed. Wives are to be subdued with kindness. 'If their husbands with great threatenings, with jars, with ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... be your first wifely undertaking to cure me?" he said, laughing.—"It takes time to put thoughts into action," said ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... marriage precisely what I have always longed for? During all these seven years have I not been bewailing my bachelorhood, and wishing for an Ethel to cheer my solitary fireside with her gracious presence, to be interested in my work and hopes, to interest me in her wifely and maternal ways and aspirations? And when at last all these things were offered me, why did I shrink ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... followed him; Being so bold in wifely purity, So holy by her love; and so upheld, She ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... and other slighting allusions to Constanze in other biographies, there exists absolutely no supporting evidence. But for the highest praise of her wifely devotion, her patience and unchanging love, and for her lofty admiration of Mozart, both as man and musician, there is a ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... love one face from out the thousands, 100 (Were she Jethro's daughter, white and wifely, Were she but the Ethiopian bondslave), He would envy yon dumb patient camel, Keeping a reserve of scanty water Meant to save his own life in the desert; Ready in the desert to deliver (Kneeling down to let his breast be opened) Hoard and life ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... are all the false efforts of a mind accustomed only hitherto to the shadows of the imagination, vivid enough to throw the every-day substances of life into shadow, but never as yet brought into direct contact with their own correspondent realities. She evinces no womanly life, no wifely joy, at the return of her husband, no pleased terror at the thought of his past dangers, whilst Macbeth ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... pretty, old-fashioned expression of wifely pride and womanly tenderness in the fine old lady, who forgot her own gifts, and felt only humility and gratitude to the man who had found in her a comrade in intellectual pursuits, as well as a helpmeet at home and a gentle prop for his ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... impulse to caution the child, motherly instinct toward uttering comforting assurance and wifely loyalty to her husband's safety, the poor woman, stammering incoherently, looked ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... was sitting up in hers—at any rate I often thought I heard her footstep; and when I came home late after a wearisome journey, if she did not run to welcome me, it was not because she was wanting in wifely gratitude—Laura has no lack of that—but because she did not wish to betray her happiness till the great day of our reconciliation should ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... "Oh, do your wifely duty, whatever it is," he said.... "It was a mistake, the whole thing. You've done more than your duty, child, ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... the loveliness of domestic life; and as I remembered her, I felt as I ever feel, that there is not a woman who, as a representative of my own sex, I would sooner show to the world as the embodiment of all domestic beauty and wifely care and motherly fidelity. I only wish that they and you might know her as I know her. I only wish that you might see in her, as I see in her, the very best possible illustration of the power of guiding and guarding all the sanctity ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... of the proudest-souled of women, wifely rendered, how superlatively charming! (36) and by contrast, how little welcome is such ministration where the wife is but a slave—when present, barely noticed; or if lacking, what fell pains and ...
— Hiero • Xenophon
... had your consent to be near Schlegel, she would certainly not refuse to return to her wifely duties as soon as he was dead. It is possible that at first she might not be able to hide her grief from you; then it would be your task to help her win ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... himself completely on the Contessina's side, but the certificates of two doctors whom she had recently seen had enabled him to conclude that her own declarations were accurate. And gliding over the question of wifely obedience, on which he had previously laid stress, he had skilfully set forth the reasons which made a dissolution of the marriage desirable. No hope of reconciliation could be entertained, so it was certain that both parties were constantly exposed to ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... her husband was forgetting both honor and duty to linger by her side. One day, while he lay asleep before her, she, in an outburst of wifely love, poured out her heart, and ended her confession by declaring that since Geraint neglected everything for her sake only, she must be an ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... armour on in a twinkling. "Of course, you two men will be against me. When did two men ever disagree upon the subject of wifely duties? However, I shall read in spite of you. Do you know, Mr. North, that when I married I made a special agreement with Captain Frere that I was not to be asked to sew on ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... reflected in Leonora; probably every German householder either longs to possess her or believes that he does possess her. Consequently, just as Mozart's "Don Giovanni" became the playground of the Italian prima donna, so has "Fidelio" become the playground of that terrible apparition, the Wifely Woman Artist, the singer with no voice, nor beauty, nor manners, but with a high character for correct morality, and a pressure of sentimentality that would move a traction-engine. I remember seeing it played a few years ago, and can never forget a Leonora of sixteen stones, steadily singing ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... came a change. It seemed to her that Robert's manner toward her was not the same. For no apparent cause, he gradually grew more cold and distant. At first she thought she herself might be to blame and she carefully watched her own actions and attitude to see if she was neglectful in any way of wifely duties and devotion. But she had nothing with which to reproach herself. She managed his household and entertained his friends. When they were alone she played and sang for him. But, for some reason that she could not explain, she seemed gradually ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... be there, and hoped fervently that she might not prove so strenuous a charge as Abraham. Moreover, he hoped that she would not so absorb Blossy's attention as to preclude a wifely ministering to his aching feet and the application of "St. Jerushy Ile" to his lame and ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... he retired from active business. In his declining years he removed to Covington, Ky., near Cincinnati. Mrs. Grant was a true helpmate, a woman of refinement of nature, of controlling religious faith, being from her youth an active member of the Methodist Church, of strong wifely and maternal instincts. Her life was centred in her home and family. Both these parents lived to rejoice in the high achievement and station ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen
... same, my heart was sore. The glamour of calling her my very own was somewhat obscured by the bridal adornment being shorn. But it made no difference in her sweetness to me. Together we went along the path through the wood, she keeping equal step with me in wifely way. ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... tabita; ewe, cow; lioness, tigress; vixen. gynecaeum[obs3]. estrogen, oestrogen. consanguinity &c. 166[female relatives], paternity &c. 11. lesbian, dyke[slang]. V. feminize. Adj. female, she-; feminine, womanly, ladylike, matronly, maidenly, wifely; womanish, effeminate, unmanly; gynecic[obs3], gynaecic[obs3]. Pron. she, her, hers.' Phr. "a perfect woman nobly planned" [Wordsworth]; "a lovely lady garmented in white" [Shelley]; das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan [Ger][Goethe]; "earth's noblest thing, a woman perfected" [Lowell]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... thee down, my bride, and spin, And fold thy hair more wifely yet, The church hath purged our love from sin, Now art thou joined to homely kin, The salten ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... scarcely find water for their cattle. The comfort and solid bourgeois elegance of the Dutch home lost its material equipment in the Great Trek, when the long wagon journey reduced household furniture to its lowest terms. House-wifely habits and order vanished in the semi-nomadic life which followed.[77] The gregarious instinct, bred by the closely-packed population of little Holland, was transformed to a love of solitude, which in all lands characterizes ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... reserved and discreet, she never expressed her feelings with any vivacity. She was kind and generous, simple and astute at the same time; her gayety was gentle, her wit without malice. Though well-informed, she made no parade of her acquirements, fearing to be accused of pedantry. Her wifely devotion had won the Emperor's affection, and her unfailing gentleness had attracted all his friends. In this estimate I am confirmed by my recollections, and I am not inspired by any partiality, by what ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... kitchen, and through the window at the trees just shimmering into green and the skyey intervals over them. This was the pictured landscape she had worked on, framed by these wide, low windows, for all the years she had lived here, doing her wifely duties soberly, and her motherly ones with ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... it may be for six months, or possibly six years, but that matters not. It is her army home—Brass Button's home—and however discouraging its condition may be, for his sake she pluckily, and with wifely pride, performs miracles, always making the ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... them. Mr. Rymer was 'in the City'; Mrs. Rymer, who had two little girls, lived only for domestic peace—she had been in better circumstances, but did not repine, and forgot all worldly ambition in the happy discharge of her wifely and maternal duties. 'A charming family!' was Miss Shepperson's mental comment when, at their invitation, she had called one Sunday afternoon soon after they were settled in the house; and, on the way home to her lodgings, she sighed once or twice, thinking of Mrs. Rymer's ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... squarely faced the meaning of the day. His thoughts traversed the whole track of Dent's life—one straight track upward. No deviations, no pitfalls there, no rising and falling. And now early marriage and safety from so many problems; with work and honors and wifely love and children: work and rest and duty to the end. Dent had called him into his room that morning after he was dressed for his wedding and had started to thank him for his love and care and guardianship and then had broken ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... of tranquillity and soft resignation. A pile of children's garments lay by her side, but the article in her busy hands appeared to be an under-shirt of his own. None but she ever reinforced the buttons on his linen. Such was her wifely rule, and he considered that there was no sense in it. She was working by the light of a single lamp on the table, the splendid chandelier being out of action. Her economy in the use of electricity was incurable, and he considered that there was ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... beauty, her conscience had long ago been pricked by her mother-in-law's spindle, and her whole moral sense infected with the belief that to keep house wisely was the end and aim of wifely duty. She reverenced Simeon for his learning and dignity, and felt proud that so simple a person as herself should have been chosen in marriage by a professor of Harmouth. On that she had existed for two years, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... Every wifely feeling outraged, his spouse replied loudly from the extreme end of the inner lane, telling her husband, and every duck, goose, and swan in the vicinity, what she thought of ...
— Blue-Bird Weather • Robert W. Chambers
... being a model of wifely jealousy, kept Fred to herself, and Barrie was my companion. This was delightful. No such good thing had come to me since making her acquaintance. On the way up the quaint, steep street, there came a shower of rain, and I had to shelter her with my umbrella. It was an umbrella ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... to anyone; Irene, whose opinion he secretly respected and perhaps for that reason never solicited, had only been into the room on rare occasions, in discharge of some wifely duty. She was not asked to look at the pictures, and she never did. To Soames this was another grievance. He hated that pride of hers, and secretly ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... at least there would not have been had Althea been his wife. But she was not yet his wife, and he treated her—this was the fact that the week was driving home—as though she were, and as though with wifely tolerance she perfectly understood his admiring pretty young women who looked like muses and played the violin. She was not yet his wife; this was the fact, she repeated it over her hidden misery, that Gerald did not enough realise. She was ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Helen," said he, "methinks thine is the harder part this day. God strengthen thy wifely heart, for God, methinks, shall yet bring him to thine embrace!" So saying, Sir Benedict mounted and rode to the head of his lances, where flew his banner. "Unbar the gates!" he cried. And presently the great ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... a wifely ideal, And find that my tastes are so far from concise That, to marry completely, no fewer than ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... in the kitchen was done, Mrs. Sanford came in and sat awhile by the fire with the children, looking very wifely in her dark dress and white apron, her round, smiling face glowing with love and pride-the gloating look of a mother seeing her children in the ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... dear feet rest With signs of royal rank impressed; None, till my kingly brother gain His old hereditary reign, Till o'er his limbs and noble head The consecrating drops be shed. How blest is Janak's daughter, true To every wifely duty, who Cleaves faithful to her husband's side Whose realm is girt by Ocean's tide! This mountain too above the rest E'en as the King of Hills is blest,— Whose shades Kakutstha's scion hold As Nandan charms the Lord of ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... amounted to "a canine thirst for fame," as he himself wrote General Washington. Though Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Morris differed so widely respecting the Marquis's genius, Mr. Morris still clung to his opinion, so that Madame de Lafayette, with wifely jealousy and feminine intuition, perceiving something of his mental attitude toward her husband, received him but coldly when he called with Calvert to pay his respects at the hotel on the Quai du Louvre. So marked was the disapproval of her manner, that Mr. Morris, ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... with no reservation or affectation of feminine delicacy. She despised such false sentiments. The consequence is, that her letters contain the unreserved expression of her feelings. Those written before she had cause to doubt her lover are full of wifely devotion and tenderness; those written from the time she was forced to question his sincerity, through the gradual realization of his faithlessness, until the bitter end, are the most pathetic and heart-rending that have ever been ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... the lady of his choice was nearly as esthetic in face and form, as gentle and spirituelle as himself. She never humiliated him by cackle, nor led him a merry chase after society's baubles. Her only wish was to please him and to do her wifely duty. They pooled their weaknesses, and it need not be stated that this, the only love in the life of Mendelssohn, made not the slightest impress on his art, save to subdue it. The passing years brought domestic responsibilities, and the every-day ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... fragrant flowers, the music sweet as lover's sighs and the sapphire sea, the sunset sky and Zephyrus' musky wing are dreams; the blistered lips and poor bruised bosom, the womanly pride humbled in the dust and wifely honor wounded unto death—these alone are real! With an involuntary cry of rage and shame, a cry that is half a prayer and half a curse—a cry that rings and reverberates through the great sleepy house ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... convictions alone which had turned Crystal away from him: he felt that he could have won her love through her submission once she was his wife, now he found that he would have to win her love first and her wifely submission would ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... may deem said camp to be, Wolfville itse'f offers plenty proof on this head. Thar's Dave Tutt: Whatever is Dave, I'd like for to inquire, prior to Tucson Jennie runnin' her wifely brand on to him an' redoocin' him to domesticity? No, thar's nothin' so evil about Dave neither, an' yet he has his little ways. For one thing, Dave's about as extemporaneous a prop'sition as ever sets in a saddle, an' thar's times when you give Dave licker an' convince him it's ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... It was wifely but not right in Catherine to repeat this strict confidence in strictest confidence to her neighbor, Mrs. Bainbridge, over the fence next morning before breakfast. At breakfast Mrs. Bainbridge spoke of artillery reinforcing the post, and her husband giggled girlishly ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... little he had in his possession were not assisted by his family. His wife, thanks and perhaps blame to the wifely sense of dependence upon her husband, had fallen back upon him entirely after what he had said about his intention as to the future of the family, and she not only accepted his assurances as bearing upon the material requirements of several mouths from day to ...
— All He Knew - A Story • John Habberton
... that she should feel a little wifely jealousy at having his sister forced in, even to their closest confidence; her face was overclouded for an instant, but she subdued ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... wifely sympathy, being devoid of those psychic powers that distinguished Aunt Bell. Tenderly she hovered about Allan the morning he began to write the first of the three ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... them when he had wet his feet. Socks were more important to a man than mere ideals, any day, more important, that is, as concerned his conjugal relations. Scott could make up his ideals to suit himself. His socks must be prepared for him by wifely hands. ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... tables and enjoy creams, ices, and salads: it is the perfection of a garden party. Marcia is in rather aesthetic attire, but it is becoming, and she is brimful of delight, though she wishes Floyd were here to see. She has a misgiving that he does not mean to rate Jasper Wilmarth very highly, and her wifely devotion resents it, for she is devoted. Jasper Wilmarth is both pleased and interested in the puppet he can move hither and thither to his liking, and occasionally to his service. He is gratified ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... man grinned worse than ever, and appeared to be in imminent peril of extending his torn mouth into the region of his ear. Diane listened to the horrible suggestion without misgiving, merely remarking in true wifely fashion— ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... gained time for a reply by pouring Sansome another drink, "He's more sense left than I thought," he said to himself; and aloud: "All you want is to get her out to Jake's. She'll go simply as a matter of wifely duty, and all that. Don't worry. Once she's there, it's your affair; and unless I mistake my man, I believe you'll know how to manage the situation"—he winked slyly—"she's really mad about you, but, like most women, she's hemmed ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... joys on her, and, making her supply the place at once of son and daughter, they bred her up in all the refinements and accomplishments in which the free citizens of Germany took the lead in the middle and latter part of the fifteenth century. To aid her aunt in all house-wifely arts, to prepare dainty food and varied liquors, and to spin, weave, and broider, was only a part of Christina's training; her uncle likewise set great store by her sweet Italian voice, and caused her to ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... nothing. He was neither surprised nor insulted. On the contrary, the smile on his face was as though he had received a compliment. These wifely animadversions, probably oft-heard, by no means interfered with his ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... Sophy was at an unnatural pitch, all day long she exerted herself, as she had not done for weeks and months, to entertain and keep her husband at her side, and all day long her pretty wifely triumph was bright and unbroken. The very servants took a delight in ministering to it, and Madame was not missed in a single item of the household routine. But about midnight there was a great and sudden change. Bells were frantically rung, ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... in lieu of a practice, see some queer things, and being in the confidence of our patients, know of many strange and incomprehensible families. The one at Richmond Road was a case in point. I had gradually seen how young Mrs. Courtenay had tired of her wifely duties, until, by slow degrees, she had cast off the shackles altogether—until she now thought more of her new frocks, smart suppers at the Carlton, first-nights and "shows" in Mayfair than she did of the poor suffering old man whom she had not so long ago vowed ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... find the fellow, swearing he would have him arrested. He became morose and gloomy, for all the arts by which Mrs. Garrison persuaded him that Nita looked up to him with admiration and reverence that would speedily develop into wifely love were now proved to be machinations. He knew that Nita feared him, shrank from him and was very far from loving him, and he believed that despite her denials and fears and protestations she loved young Latrobe. He wrote angrily, reproachfully ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... harboured too eager a love of the brandy-shop. A model husband, he had spared no pains in her correction. He had flogged her without mercy and without result. His one design was to make his wife obey him, which, as the Scriptures say, all wives should do. But the lust of brandy overcame wifely obedience, and Brinsden, hoping for the best, was constrained to cut a hole in her skull. The next day she was as impudent as ever, until Matthias rose yet more fiercely in his wrath, and the shrew perished. Then was Thomas Pureney's opportunity, and the Sunday following the ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... Until her husband and her foe Have left the lodge and gone from sight. Then with a tearless eye and bright, She gazes madly round the place Where every comfort bears the trace Of wifely labor wrought with pain, Of woman's love that lives in vain. Here moccasins lie with bead-work gay; Here on the wall the breezes sway The music-breathing flute, Whose lips are dry and mute, While ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... better calm the dread of my wifely reader by at once assuring her that I shall not harrow her feelings with any account of culinary blunders. The moon was in the beginning of her second quarter, and my cook's brain tolerably undisturbed. Lady Bernard offered ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... in the East, some years ago, it was my fortune to be summoned as a physician into a harem. With curious and not unwilling step I obeyed the summons. While examining the patient, nearly a dozen Syrian girls—a grave Turk's wifely crowd, a result and illustration of Mohammedan female education—pressed around the divan with eyes and ears intent to see and hear a Western Hakim's medical examination. As I looked upon their well-developed forms, their brown ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... that her husband was nervous and irritable, and with wifely protective instinct she attributed his condition to overwork. She did not take up the challenge which he in a manner flung down. She seldom argued with him now; she cast about in her mind for a safe topic of ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... and picked up her sewing. She stitched quietly, wistfully, for some time. Then she looked up at him—a long look of reproach, and sombre accusation, and wifely tenderness. He turned his ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... he was an upright man, so surely was he hard, stern, and inflexible. But for three years the moan and the murmur had never been out of her heart; she had rebelled against her husband as against a tyrant, with a hidden, sullen rebellion, which tore up the old landmarks of wifely duty and affection, and poisoned the fountains whence gentlest love and reverence had once ...
— Lizzie Leigh • Elizabeth Gaskell
... me stronger," said the wife with wifely pride, "Toil I shall not feel nor languor when my lord is ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... Las Vegas forgot Roy, and Dale and Helen, the camp chores to be done, and everything else except themselves. Helen's first wifely duty was to insist that she should and could and would help her husband with the work of cleaning up after the sumptuous supper. Before they had finished a sound startled them. It came from Roy, evidently high on the darkening ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... front" and side curls, shake out her rumpled draperies, and rise from an instant's searching of the Scriptures with features expressive of the very acme of Christian peace and benediction. "Mrs. General" was a pet-name the lady had won from a wifely and lovable trait that prompted her to aggrandize her placid lord above his deserts. Him she ever addressed (in public), and of him she ever spoke, as "the general," irrespective of the fact that the rank was ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... Emmy had grown in his eyes suddenly younger. He could not have imagined her so cordial, so youthful, so interested in everything that met her gaze. Finally, he found her quieter, more amenable, more truly wifely than her sister. It was an important point in Alf's eyes. You had to take into account—if you were a man of common sense—relative circumstances. Devil was all very well in courtship; but mischief in a girl became contrariness in a domestic termagant. That was an idea that ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... marriage, Chaucer wrote "The Parliament of Fowls," and in memory of Blanche's death "The Book of the Duchess." Chaucer seems to have had a true reverence and affection for the sweet household virtues and the wifely truth of this lady. The remembrance of her may perhaps have first suggested to him the image of Griselda. These two poems, connected as they were with the royal family, confirmed Chaucer's reputation as a writer of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... her slaves, in language in which, on exciting occasions, oaths were not spared. The two immediate grandmothers were, in the best sense, superior women. The maternal one (Amy Williams before marriage) was a Friend, or Quakeress, of sweet, sensible character, house-wifely proclivities, and deeply intuitive and spiritual. The other (Hannah Brush,) was an equally noble, perhaps stronger character, lived to be very old, had quite a family of sons, was a natural lady, was in early life a school-mistress, and had great solidity of mind. W. W. himself makes much of ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... between her chair and the small settee where Garrison was seated, took the place at his side, and shyly laid her hand upon his own. It was a natural, wifely thing to do. Garrison recognized her perfect acting. A tingle of strange, lawless joy ran through his veins; nevertheless, he still faced Robinson, for his anger ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... but one opinion: that when deprived of a rather superior and high-minded wife and the steadying influence of home and children, he would go completely "to the dogs," whither he seemed to be hurrying when Susanna's wifely courage failed. That he had done precisely the opposite and the unexpected thing, shows us perhaps that men are not on the whole as capable of estimating the forces of their fellow men as is God the maker of men, who probably expects ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a great name, or a high position. You had none of these things. So I came to the rescue.' And that there might be no mistake about it, that he might not attribute what she said only to the exasperation of a woman wounded and humiliated in her wifely pride and her blind maternal devotion, she recalled the details of his election, and reminded him of his famous remark about Madame Astier's veils that smelt of tobacco, though he never smoked, 'a remark, my dear, that has done more ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... must remark also, that in Lady Macbeth's reflections on her husband's character, and on that milkiness of nature, which she fears "may impede him from the golden round," there is no indication of female scorn: there is exceeding pride, but no egotism in the sentiment or the expression;—no want of wifely and womanly respect and love for him, but on the contrary, a sort of unconsciousness of her own mental superiority, which she betrays rather than asserts, as interesting in itself as it is ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... was not like his wife. He was not a man in whom the moral sense was uppermost. He was governed by impulse and she by fixed moral and religious principles. He drank and she abhorred the habit. She tried first moral suasion to induce him to abandon the habit, and once, in a moment of wifely and motherly indignation, she broke up one of his drinking parties in her house by trying the efficacy of a little physical suasion. She turned the company out of doors and smashed the bottles of liquor. This was not the kind of woman whom ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... each other. Throughout the earth marriage is the reparation of ruined families—the short path, and the most natural one, too. Ruth was poor kin, but she turned from the harvest stubble that made her beautiful feet bleed, to crawl to the feet of old Boaz and find wifely rest, and her wisdom of choice we sing in the psalms of King David, and hear in the proverbs of King Solomon, sons ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... you doing here so early?" demanded Nora, from the porch swing. "You can't have your dinner yet. It's only four o'clock. When you're invited to six o'clock dinner you mustn't arrive two hours beforehand. Didn't you know that?" This wifely counsel was accompanied by a teasing smile that ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... face from out the thousands, (Were she Jethro's daughter, white and wifely, Were she but the AEthiopian bondslave,) He would envy yon dumb patient camel, Keeping a reserve of scanty water Meant to save his own life in the desert; Ready in the desert to deliver (Kneeling ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... charge, at once set to work to assist her mother in household matters. She was one of those dear little earnest creatures who of their own accord act in a motherly and wifely way from their early years. To look at little Grace's serious thoroughgoing face, when she chanced to pause in the midst of work, and meditate what was to be done next, one might imagine that the entire care of the household had suddenly ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... from the time she won his heart, She sweetly played her wifely part— Contented with her lot! And tho' the little knightly horde Came faster than they could afford The ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... old to feel charmed and touched by the compliment. And he was not a thoughtless or churlish husband; he knew how to repay such a wifely compliment, and it was a pleasant sight to see the aged companions standing hand in hand before the handsome suits which Dolores had spread out for ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... of the Menagier's book is concerned, however, not with the theoretical niceties of wifely submission, but with his creature comforts. His instructions as to how to make a husband comfortable positively palpitate with life; and at the same time there is something indescribably homely and touching about them; they tell more about the real life of a burgess's wife than ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... with her experience, and to be welcome—not to interfere every minute, and tease her; she loves her daughter-in-law almost as much as she does her son, and she is happy because he bids fair to be an immortal painter, and, above all, a gentleman; and she, a wifely wife, a motherly mother, and, above ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... be staggered and gasped, and she had to support him to a seat. She rang the bell for aid, then kneeled, and took his throbbing temples to her wifely bosom. ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... the period were effeminate and emotional, the women seem to have sunk to a lower stage of morals than in any other era, and sexual morality and wifely fidelity to have been abnormally bad and lightly esteemed. The story of Ariwara Narihira, prince, poet, painter and Don Juan, and of Taka and her rise to power (see p. 238) has already been told; and it is to be noted that the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... forced out into the open country with it all the contented young women in their late twenties and early thirties, who may not have been feeling rebellious at all. And the wives of forty-five also, to compete all over again for their own husbands. For "poaching" on the wifely preserves has become the ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... she cried, with true wifely penitence. "I see it all and I love you for it, better than ever before." She squeezed his arm tightly and squeezed her eyelids vainly. "But you must never do it again," she cautioned, tenderly. He laughed again, that unwilling thief ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... Lizzie deliberately frustrated this house-wifely ambition. She flounced and muttered when other hands than her own were laid upon her icebox. She turned on rushing faucets, rattled dishes in her pan. Yet Mrs. Salisbury felt that she must personally superintend these matters, because ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... way of speaking. Was she not a hypocrite? Had she not many, many times concealed with look and voice an inward state which was equivalent to infidelity? Was not her whole life a pretence, an affectation of wifely virtues? But the hypocrisy was involuntary; her nature had no power to extirpate its causes and put in their place the ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... chided me for giving so great an entertainment," said the Earl. "She is very quaint in her play at wifely scolding. Truth is, I am an uxorious husband, and before we leave town would see her a last time all regal and blazing with her newest jewels; reigning over my hospitalities like a Queen. 'Tis a childish thing, no doubt, ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... legend of Wastin, we may observe how much narrower and less likely to be infringed is the taboo imposed on him than that imposed on the youth of Blaensawdde. Yet the lady of the Van Pool, whatever her practice, had in theory some relics of old-fashioned wifely duty. She did not object to the chastisement which the laws of Wales allowed a husband to bestow. A husband was permitted to beat his wife for three causes; and if on any other occasion he raised his hand against her, she had her remedy in the shape of a sarad, or fine, to be paid ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... fifteen years, and then they had married each other, and both of them looked fifteen years younger. The Judge was actually merry, and Ruth, in spite of her supposed "docility," had quite reversed the situation. It was the Judge who was now docile, and even admiringly obedient to all Ruth's wifely advices ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... Hindu and Mohammadan custom. They are kept in leading-strings from the cradle to the grave; their intellect is rarely cultivated, their affections suffer atrophy from constant repression. Yet Mr. Banerjea draws more than one picture of wifely devotion, and the instinctive good sense which is one of the secrets of feminine influence. Women seldom fail to rise to the occasion when opportunity is vouchsafed them. The late Maharani Surnomoyi of Cossimbazar managed her enormous estates with acumen; and her charities were ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... would interest me," Therese insisted, with a little wifely resentment that her husband should have a knowledge of ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... too," said she. "Mike's stronger for a man nor even I am for a woman"—a glow of wifely pride passing over her face; "and as to good looks, it's him as is got the good looks, not me. But none on us can't make it out about the chavo. He's so weak and sick he don't look as if he belonged to Boswells' breed ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... for it it was not there. All that he had said was, "Leam has left home, Josephine, and we must go back at once." Of course she had not asked questions, she said with a pleasant little assumption of wifely submission. Her search in her husband's pockets was only what might have been expected from the average woman, but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... returned Mrs. Bradley, indifferently, and with more than even conventionally polite wifely deprecation; "I wish ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... scolds them both and threatens Gunto with a taste of the death-bearing slivers if he abuses Tana further, and Tana, for her part, is compelled to promise better attention to her wifely duties. ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... letter continued, "will not remember that she had consented to marry me after a reasonable time should have elapsed since the death of her husband. Part of her dementia was that she had never cared for me, when the truth of the matter was nothing but her wifely loyalty kept her from running away with me, even before Stephen ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... her merit, and by jealousy of a gentle, useless sister. She, who is entirely honest, sees the brainless Bianca, whom no amount of schooling will make even passably honest, preferred before her. Lastly, she is humbled into the state of submissive wifely falsehood by a boor who cares only for his own will, her flesh, and her money. In a page and a half of melancholy claptrap broken Katharina ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield |
