"Effeminacy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... apparent devotion of the troops which accompanied the king to the field. The confident defiance of Don Roderick increased his surprise. When the herald had retired, he turned an eye of suspicion on Count Julian. 'Thou hast represented thy countrymen,' said he, 'as sunk in effeminacy and lost to all generous impulse: yet I find them fighting with the courage and the strength of lions. Thou hast represented thy king as detested by his subjects, and surrounded by secret treason, but I behold his tents whitening the ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... first, called the "Orphan of Chaou," translated by Pere Premare; and the second, entitled an "Heir in Old Age," by the author of the present version. "The Sorrows of Han" is historical, and relates to one of the most interesting periods of the Chinese annals, when the growing effeminacy of the court, and consequent weakness of the government, emboldened the Tartars in their aggressions, and first gave rise to the temporizing and impolitic system of propitiating those barbarians by tribute, which long after ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... making his family happy and distinguished, the father brings it up in luxury and idleness, and this produces a very harmful result. The increasing refinement of modern life and its pleasures leads to effeminacy. It bears upon the whole of society and degenerates into an artificial desire for brilliancy and show, which makes it increasingly difficult to obtain a simple and sober education for the family. Men and women, ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... scarcely experiences without a sense of shame. The poet came to be essentially the man who felt acutely, and anything that was a "feeling" came to have a sort of value of its own as denoting poetic sensitiveness. Hence the excessive softness, the indefiniteness, the languishing and the effeminacy which since the beginning of the nineteenth century have been tolerated in poetry because poetry was supposed to be the proper vehicle for such weakness. It is significant that the most admired poem of Keats begins ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... frankness, "The Wezeet." Observed many of the men had their eyelids blackened, like the women, with Kohel[33], and also their finger-nails and toe-nails dyed dark-red with henna[34]. I confessed I was surprised at this monstrous effeminacy. One of these lady-gentlemen was the son of the powerful Ettanee family; he was brought up to the Church, and of great promise, bidding fair to be future Kady or Archbishop. He put a curious question to me, "How much is the expense of a journey ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... (cheers). I have ever been the decided advocate of many sports and exercises, not only on account of the health and vigour they inspire, but because I feel that they are the best safeguards on a nation's energies, and the best protection against luxury, idleness, debauchery, and effeminacy (cheers). The authority of all history informs us, that the energies of countries flourished whilst manly sports have flourished, and decayed as they died away (cheers). What says Juvenal, when speaking of the ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... Further, a man would seem to be inconstant who fails to persevere in what he has proposed to do. Now this is a mark of "incontinency" in pleasurable matters, and of "effeminacy" or "squeamishness" in unpleasant matters, according to Ethic. vii, 1. Therefore inconstancy does not pertain ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... was this which, taken quite literally, produced the Biographia Dramatica's canard as to Baker's effeminacy (see above). ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... myself, and caught my eye immediately by his remarkable beauty, and by the depth of the mourning which he wore. His features were exquisitely cut, and, in a child, one was not disposed to complain of their effeminacy. His long fair hair was combed—in royal fashion—down his back, a style at that time most unusual; his tightly-fitting jacket and breeches were black, bordered with deep crape; not even a white collar relieved ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... that which is flatly condemned by God, and is in open rebellion against Him. The centreing of the corrupt heart upon its own corruption. Opposition to the pure will of God. Pride, falseness, unscrupulous ambition. Self-seeking, regardless of the means by which its object is obtained. Luxury, effeminacy, and sensuality. The lusts and fleshly passions. Malice, cruelty, and envy. The greed of gain. The love and thraldom of the world. There it is—the running sore of a suffering race. The outflow of the ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... handkerchief from the loom of Barcelona; light pumps and silk stockings complete the robber's array. This dress is picturesque enough, and well adapted to the fine sunshiny weather of the Peninsula; there is a dash of effeminacy about it, however, hardly in keeping with the robber's desperate trade. It must not, however, be supposed that it is every robber who can indulge in all this luxury; there are various grades of thieves, some poor enough, with scarcely ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... to deviation from a primitive type, are we not forced to admit that this peculiarity belongs in great measure to hereditary organization, to that which constitutes the race? With copper-coloured men, as with whites, luxury and effeminacy weaken the physical constitution, and heretofore deformities were more common at Cuzco and Tenochtitlan. Among the Mexicans of the present day, who are all labourers, leading the most simple lives, Montezuma would not have found those dwarfs and humpbacks whom Bernal Diaz saw waiting at his table ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... if not always smooth, susceptible of smoothness. A man's hair is shag. If he tries to make it anything else, he does not mend the matter. Ceasing to be shag, it does not become beauty, but foppishness, effeminacy, Miss Nancy-ism. A man is a brute by the law of his nature. Let him ape a woman, and he does not cease to be brutal, though he does become ridiculous. The only thing for him to do is to be the best kind of ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... attending to their nurture, from which they derive the most superlative of all enjoyments, the heart-felt satisfaction of having done their duty to their God and country, in giving robust, healthy and virtuous citizens to the State. The effeminacy of exotic fashion has not at present extended its pernicious influence so far as to induce them to commit the rearing of their children to mercenary nurses, who are sometimes the very dregs of a people; ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... however, from giving the impression of effeminacy. Quite the contrary. He looked able to do heroic things in real life as well as in the drama. And as their walk and conversation developed, Louise Grayling found the actor ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... points in which our city is worthy of admiration. We cultivate refinement without extravagance and knowledge without effeminacy; wealth we employ more for use than for show, and place the real disgrace of poverty not in owning to the fact but in declining the struggle against it. Our public men have, besides politics, their private affairs to attend to, and our ordinary citizens, though ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... his terrible jaws, intimated a northern descent, to which the extreme purity of his complexion also bore witness. His beauty, however, though he was eminently distinguished both in features and in person, was not liable to the charge of effeminacy. From this it was rescued, both by his strength, and by the air of confidence and self-possession with which the youth seemed to regard the wonders around him, not indicating the stupid and helpless gaze of a mind equally inexperienced, and incapable of receiving instruction, but expressing the bold ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... him with cowardice, merely because he happened to have an effeminate voice. Whenever Cher'ea came to demand the watch-word from the emperor, according to custom, he always gave him either Venus, Adonis, or some such, implying softness and effeminacy. ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... gods grant me to lie at rest by the Appian Way, before I require such feet!" Then, as his sharp eyes noted the flush upon Sergius' face, he added: "Fever, wounds, and death may pardon effeminacy; and, truly, I would beg you to accompany me as you came, were it not that a climb up the Palatine should bring new health to one who could run ten miles with a broken shoulder. Believe me, my friend, ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... triumphs, and the famous reign of good Queen Anne, had ensued forty years of peace, broken only by one inglorious war. The peace did its work: it settled the dynasty, and filled the purse; but men, considering it, whispered of effeminacy and degeneracy, and the like, as men will to the end of time. And when the clouds, long sighted on the political horizon, began to roll up, they looked fearfully abroad and doubted and trembled; and doubted and trembled the more because in home affairs ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... have been trampled down by these fierce Jedburghians, who charged like so many troopers. We were spectators of the combat from an eminence, but peace was soon after restored, which made the older warriors regret the effeminacy of the age, as, regularly, it ought to have lasted till night. Two lives were lost, I mean of horses; indeed, had you seen them, you would rather have wondered that they were able to bear their masters to the scene of action, than that they ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... of a higher, namely, of the spiritual element is essential to its perfection. The high and divine beauty which can be loved without effeminacy, is that which is found in combination with the human will. Beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue. Every natural action is graceful. Every heroic act is also decent, and causes the place and the bystanders to shine. We are ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... *its most congenial soil* in the stern, hardy integrity and patriotism of those Romans, whose incorruptible virtue is the one redeeming feature of the declining days of the Republic and the effeminacy and coarse depravity of the Empire. Seneca's ethical writings(21) are almost Christian, not only in their faithful rebuke of every form of wrong, but in their tender humanity for the poor, the slaves, the victims of oppression, in their universal philanthropy, and in ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... Mauss. He says: "It is difficult to conceive of sympathy, and sympathy only, as the continuous, or even the originally efficient cause of the avoidance." Mr Crawley had called attention to the fact that savages fear womanly characteristics, that is, effeminacy, which is identified with weakness. While noting with great psychological insight the presence of other factors, such as the dislike of the different, he had gone so far as to express the opinion that the fear of effeminacy was probably the chief factor in the Sex Taboo. This is probably ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... brief spaces playful or simply satirical, he always falls back into his habitual vein of meditation. For the ferocious personalities of Churchill, the coarse-fibred friend of his youth, we have a sad strain of lamentation over the growing luxury and effeminacy of the age. It is a continued anticipation of the lines in the 'Task,' which seem to express his most ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... odour of nutmeg and port wine, and a kettle, a decanter, and empty tumblers told tales. Now the Doctor was a hardy and abstemious man, of a water-drinking generation; and his wife's influence had further tended to make him—indulgent as he was—scornful of whatever savoured of effeminacy or dissipation, so his look and tone were sharp, and ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... from one to the other, for the amusement of the spectators. A rhythmical movement of the body in the dance shows more internality than the athletic game, but it is less hardy, is more indicative of luxury and effeminacy. ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... around him. He has a harpsichord in the room. In the corner of one of the apartments is a trunk containing his deceased mother's dresses, carefully folded up and preserved. His fastidiousness, bordering upon effeminacy, is visible in his gait and manner—in his handsome features and small, well-dressed person, especially when he walks abroad and sinks the author and hard student in "the gentleman who sometimes writes for his amusement." He writes always with a crow-quill, speaks slowly and sententiously, ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... indicated by a passage cited above from Manu. But in the epic the greed and capacity of the priest exceeds all imaginable limits. He takes whatever he can get and asks for more. He has, by his own showing, scarcely one estimable trait. Avarice, cupidity, sensuality, gluttony, love of finery, effeminacy, meanness, and pride—everything charged against him by the Buddhist—are his most marked characteristics. He appears, however, to be worse than he always was. For nothing is plainer, from this very epic, than that the priests, although united as a caste, were sharply distinguished in their ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... astonished at the effeminacy engendered by provincial life. His old Bouvard was turning into a blockhead; in short, "he was no longer ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... gestures, move your whole arm. A wrist movement suggests effeminacy. It is important, too, that you train your voice to ring with manliness. Even a squeaky, weak tone can be made to suggest man stuff if the words are spoken crisply, and the sentences are cleanly cut. Do ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... inexhaustible. And what the latter half of the text has to do with us, I will try to show you, while I tell you openly, that the first half of it, about rendering to Caesar the things which are Caesar's, has nothing to do with us, and never need, save through our own cowardice and effeminacy, ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... into a corner, and, rolling himself in a blanket, lay down upon the bed. A habit of early rising, bringing with it, presumably, the proverbial accompaniment of health, wisdom, and pecuniary emoluments, had also brought with it certain ideas of the effeminacy of separate toilettes and ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... exalted in them," and that he wanted "a due mixture of gravity and mildness, which are the chief political virtues and the fruits of reason and education." "He never dreamed that such obstinacy is rather the effect of the weakness and effeminacy of a distempered mind, which breaks out in violent passions like so many tumors." Nor apparently did Shakespeare ever dream of it either, altho he had Plutarch's sage observations before him. It is a pity ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... everything else that may be said to the contrary notwithstanding. The whole expression of my countenance was very feminine, but not soft. It was always the seat of some sentiment or passion, and in its womanly refinement gave to me an appearance of constitutional delicacy and effeminacy, that I certainly did not possess. I was decidedly a very beautiful child, and a child that seemed formed to kindle and return a mother's love, yet the maternal caress never blessed me; but I was abandoned to the tender mercies of a number of he-beings, by many ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... entirely devoid of not only any of the restraints of conscience, but of any of the restraints even of a wholesome personal conceit, than Sludge the Medium. He confesses not only fraud, but things which are to the natural man more difficult to confess even than fraud—effeminacy, futility, physical cowardice. And then, when the last of his loathsome secrets has been told, when he has nothing left either to gain or to conceal, then he rises up into a perfect bankrupt sublimity and ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... This velarium was an awning that was stretched above the heads of the spectators to protect them from the sun. In earlier times the Romans had scouted at this innovation, which they called a piece of Campanian effeminacy. But little by little, increasing luxury reduced the Puritans of Rome to silence, and they willingly accepted a velarium of silk—an homage of Caesar. Nero, who carried everything to excess, went further: he caused a velarium of purple ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... much however with the political as with the moral aspect of the Church that we are at present concerned: and on the latter point Guicciardini may once more be confronted with his illustrious contemporary. In his aphorisms he says:[4] 'No man hates the ambition, avarice, and effeminacy of the priests more than I do; for these vices, odious in themselves, are most unseemly in men who make a profession of living in special dependence on the Deity. Besides, they are so contradictory that they cannot ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... average in resisting pains are soft or effeminate. The mass of men incline to both weaknesses. He that deliberately pursues excessive pleasures, or other pleasures in an excessive way, is said to be abandoned. The intemperate are worse than the incontinent. Sport, in its excess, is effeminacy, as being relaxation from toil. There are two kinds of incontinence: the one proceeding from precipitancy, where a man acts without deliberating at all; the other from feebleness,—where he deliberates, but where the result ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... preserve a man from a certain residue of savage violence and harshness than graceful beauty can secure him against a certain degree of effeminacy and weakness. As it is the effect of the energetic beauty to elevate the mind in a physical and moral point of view and to augment its momentum, it only too often happens that the resistance of the temperament and of the character ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... was the nation: given the particular idolatry, it became possible to decipher the character of the idolaters. Where Moloch was worshipped, the people would naturally be found cruel; where the Paphian Venus, it could not be expected that they should escape the taint of a voluptuous effeminacy. ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... portrait of the Capitol lacks for the completion of Caligula. The man who could be so represented in art had nothing wholly vulgar in him. The brutality of Caracalla, the overblown sensuality of Nero, the effeminacy of Commodus or Heliogabalus are all absent here. This face idealizes the torture of a morbid soul. It is withal so truly beautiful that it might easily be made the poem of high suffering or noble passion. If the bronze were plastic I see how a great sculptor by but few strokes ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... Aristides the Just, of Themistocles with his Spartan virtues, of Brutus, and of the mother of the Gracchi. Greece and Rome rise before her in all their ancient renown. She despises the frivolity of Paris, the effeminacy of the moderns, and her youthful bosom throbs with the desire of being noble in spirit and of achieving great exploits. Thus, when other children of her age were playing with their dolls, she was dreaming of the prostration of nobles and ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... draggled finery of feathers and flounces beneath them, only made the scene more glaringly desolate. Then came the rush and splatter of cabriolets, scattering terror and defilement. The well-mounted English dandy shows his sense by hoisting his parapluie; the French dragoon curls his mustachio at such effeminacy, and braves the liquid bullets in the genuine spirit of Marengo; the old French count picks his elastic steps with the placid and dignified philosophy of the ancien regime; while the Parisian dames, of all ranks, ages, and degrees, trip along, with one leg undraped, exactly in proportion ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various
... desirable that man should act a manly and generous part, not "mannish," so let woman be urged to exercise a dignified and womanly bearing, not womanish. Let her cultivate all the graces and proper accomplishments of her sex, but let not these degenerate into a kind of effeminacy, in which she is satisfied to be the mere plaything or toy of society, content with her outward adornings, and the flattery and fulsome adulation ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... to an evil character." While it is true that the basis for this argument has been modified by our abandonment of the Greek aesthetic theories of "inspiration" and "imitation," Plato's moralistic objection to lyric effeminacy and lyric naturalism is widely shared by many of our contemporaries. They do not find the "New Poetry," lovely as it often is, altogether "manly." They find on the contrary that some of it is what Plato calls "dissolute," i.e. dissolving ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... and to plunge in again that of the next. Half a dozen times, with scarce a pause between, he thus plunged, was tossed and overwhelmed, struggled, escaped, and plunged again. Then he ran for a few moments up and down the bank to dry himself—he counted the use of a towel effeminacy, and dressing again, ran home to finish his simple toilet. If after that he read a chapter of his Bible, it was no more than was required by many a parent of many a boy who got little good of the task; ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... 'Indeed,' he says, 'from my very infancy I had an instinctive dislike of the maudlin way of looking at things,' and he remembers how in his fifth year he had declared that guns were not 'dreadful things.' They were good if put to the proper uses. I do not think that there was ever much real 'effeminacy' to be knocked out of him. It is too harsh a word for the slowness with which a massive and not very flexible character rouses itself to action. His health was good, except for a trifling ailment which made him for some time pass for a delicate child. But the delicacy soon ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... consul, and then he began to exult over the optimates who had so long striven to keep him down. He vaunted his lowly birth, declared that his election was a victory over the pusillanimity and license of the rich, and boldly compared his warlike prowess with the effeminacy of the nobility, whom he determined to persecute as vigorously as they ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... as a bond to-day will be equally serviceable to-morrow; so that apparently their dissolution cannot come from themselves. It is true, a barbarous people, possessed of a beautiful country, may be relaxed in luxury and effeminacy; but such degeneracy has no obvious tendency to weaken their faith in the objects in which their political unity consists, though it may render them defenceless against external attacks. And here indeed lies their real peril ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... personification of the majesty of law, mighty to impose its decrees and mighty to avenge its disregarded sanctions—who, brought near to the city, was worshiped as Jupiter Capitolinus, majestic as the conservator of civil and social order. The charms of art, the graces of song, the effeminacy of festal pleasures were little recked of by the Roman of the Roman period—he who used his ancestral speech in the meanings imposed upon its terms by his fathers. Phoebus Apollo and Pallas Athene were not so much revered by him as was Mars of the visage stern and the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... of Gentlemen. Could you but once convince them, that to be civil at least is not beneath the Character of a Gentleman, nor even tender Affection towards one who would make it reciprocal, betrays any Softness or Effeminacy that the most masculine Disposition need be ashamed of; could you satisfy them of the Generosity of voluntary Civility, and the Greatness of Soul that is conspicuous in Benevolence without immediate Obligations; could you recommend to Peoples Practice the Saying ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... an extremely strong rampart; they enjoyed also a government guided by good laws. For these reasons once, when they were involved in war with the Romans, they offered resistance for a very long time. When they had been subdued, they deteriorated into a state of effeminacy, left the management of the city to their servants and let those servants, as a rule, also carry on their campaigns. Finally they encouraged them to such an extent that the servants possessed both spirit and power, and thought they had a right to freedom. In the course of time ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... in hand. She looked at the lieutenant as he stood before his chief. He was tall and slender as a girl, with an air of languid indolence that was obviously a pose, for it was slipping from him now fast as he talked. His face was strikingly handsome, only saved from effeminacy by a firm chin. He was patently aware of his good looks. But he was also patently in awe of his chief, and the news that he brought was apparently ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... The people of Lydia were noted for the effeminacy of their manners. And Lydian music was ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... As an example, when a bull shows the head of a female and a want of masculine character, he should be rejected. Masculine character in the bull is of the greatest importance to the success of the breeder—effeminacy in the male must be shunned as the most deadly poison. On the other hand, let that female be rejected by the judge in the show-yard, and by the breeder in his selection, that looks as much like a male as ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie
... why or the wherefore of it all, beyond the arrogant assumption of "welt-politik." Every refining trait was subordinated to the exigencies of the gospel of force. Not only the plebeian mass, but the exclusive aristocracy, revelled in the brutish impulse that associated all appeals to reason with effeminacy and invested the sword-slash on the student's cheek with the honor ordinarily ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... all the followers of Islam, they sanction polygamy; and the number of their women, and, probably, the ease and cheerfulness of the seraglio, contrasted with the ceremonial of the exterior, induce them to pass a number of their hours amid their women, and excite habits of effeminacy and indolence. I should pronounce them indolent and unwarlike; but kind and unreserved to foreigners, particularly to Englishmen. They are volatile, generally speaking very ignorant, but by no means deficient in acuteness ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... not unfrequently find the same preponderance as in Fletcher's work of verses with a double ending—which in English verse at least are not in themselves feminine, and need not be taken to constitute, as in Fletcher's case they do, a note of comparative effeminacy or relaxation in tragic style—we do not find the perpetual predominance of those triple terminations so peculiarly and notably dear to that poet; {92} so that even by the test of the metre-mongers who would reduce the whole question at issue to a point which might at once be solved by ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... choir was just then rendering. "Ah, who will take on himself to proscribe that pert mysticism, those fonts of toilet-water which Gounod invented!... There ought indeed to be astonishing penalties for choir masters who allow such musical effeminacy in church. This is, as it was this morning at the Madeleine, when I happened to be present at the interminable funeral of an old banker; they played a military march with violin and violoncello accompaniments, with trumpets and timbrels, a heroic and worldly ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... indeed, he is almost past comfort on the subject. I had a letter the other day from Dr. Shelton Mackenzie, whom I do not know personally, but who is about to publish a 'Living Author Dictionary,' and who, by some association, talked of the effeminacy of 'the American poets,' so I begged him to read your poems on 'Man' and prepare an exception to his position. I wish to write ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... of the Augustan age speak of silk attire with other luxurious customs from the East.[243] The Roman senate, in the reign of Tiberius, decreed that only women should wear silk, on account of its effeminacy. ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... praised the effective disposition of the rockery, and in the bedroom, of which Somerset had vainly endeavoured to defend the entry, she fairly broke forth in admiration. 'How simple and manly!' she cried: 'none of that effeminacy of neatness, which is so detestable in a man!' Hard upon this, telling him, before he had time to reply, that she very well knew her way, and would trouble him no further, she took her leave with an engaging smile, and ascended the ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... Galbraith, if not the warrior his progenitor had been, presented no unmanly appearance. Neither self-indulgence nor effeminacy branded him. In fact, there was in his manner a certain magnetism and warmth of sympathy that the elder man could not boast, and it was because of this asset he had never wanted for friends and probably never would want for them. Through the talisman of charm he would exact from ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... spectacle naturally gratified a prince to whose family the opposition of Parliaments had been so fatal. Politeness was his solitary good quality. The insults which he had suffered in Scotland had taught him to prize it. The effeminacy and apathy of his disposition fitted him to excel in it. The elegance and vivacity of the French manners fascinated him. With the political maxims and the social habits of his favourite people, he adopted their taste in composition, and, when seated on ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... quails vita. When ancient discipline relaxed, luxury succeeded, and language became delicate, brilliant, spangled with conceits. Simplicity was laid aside, and quaint expressions grew into fashion. Does the mind sink into languor, the body moves reluctantly. Is the man softened into effeminacy, you see it in his gait. Is he quick and eager, he walks with alacrity. The powers of the understanding are affected in the same manner. Having laid this down as his principle, Seneca proceeds to describe the soft delicacy of Maecenas, ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... of effeminacy and want of courage in battle seems to be considered as better founded. Plutarch admits it fully. His foppery is matter of ridicule to AEschines, who, at the same time, in rather a remarkable passage in his speech on the Crown, gives us some clue to the popular report ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... ago, wearing a suit of white serge which attracted a little attention from those observers who were able to observe anything except the heat. The coat was shaped delicately; it outlined the wearer, and, fitting him as women's clothes fit women, suggested an effeminacy not an attribute of the tall Corliss. The effeminacy belonged all to the tailor, an artist plying far from Corliss Street, for the coat would have encountered a hundred of its fellows at Trouville or Ostende this very day. Corliss ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... be the judgment of Heaven, was the signal to a revolt. The people rose and ran to arms; and Babylon, which had been so long immersed in idleness and effeminacy, became the theater of a bloody civil war. I was taken from the heart of my statue and placed at the head of a party. Cador flew to Memphis to bring thee back to Babylon. The Prince of Hircania, informed of these fatal events, returned ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... expression, that Mrs. Garman was listening to Mr. Aalbom, the tall assistant master, who was holding forth about the delicacy and effeminacy of the rising generation. Mrs. Aalbom sat by the window, pretending to listen to the Consul, who was describing with great clearness, and in carefully chosen language, how the garden had been arranged in his late father's time. But the lady was in ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... prevented[438] reading a letter which would have undeceived me."—Hawkesworth, Adv., No. 54. "If the problem can be solved, we may be pardoned the inaccuracy of its demonstration."—Booth's Introd., p. 25. "The army must of necessity be the school, not of honour, but effeminacy."—Brown's Estimate, i. 65. "Afraid of the virtue of a nation, in its opposing bad measures."—Ib., i, 73. "The uniting them in various ways, so as to form words, would be easy."—Music of Nature, p. 34. "I might be excused ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the community, Mrs. Cox, for the businesslike way in which you suppressed this diabolical gang. Your method is in pleasing contrast with the ridiculous effeminacy of the previous witnesses. I have no doubt you would treat an adult bushranger ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... usage of fans, the wearing of flowing garments and braided hair, and the discharging of domestic duties which in other countries fall to the lot of women, are probably largely accountable for the charges of effeminacy. ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... taylor's trade having an appearance of effeminacy, has always been, among the rugged English, liable ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... superior to the conscript armies as Cromwell's Ironsides were to the mercenaries of their time. The whole nation from prince to beggar would by this means be transformed, labour would cease to be despised or riches to be worshipped, the reproach of effeminacy would be removed, the horrors of peace mitigated, and the moral equivalent of war discovered. For the first time a true comradeship between class and class would arise, for, as Goethe said, work makes the comrade, and democracy might have a chance of becoming a reality instead of a party ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... graceful dignity of one conscious of gentle birth, and accustomed to mix, on equal terms, with the great and noble. His form happily contrasted and elevated the character of a countenance which required strength and stature to free its uncommon beauty from the charge of effeminacy, being of great height and remarkable muscular power, without the least approach to clumsy and unwieldy bulk: it erred, indeed, rather to the side of leanness than flesh,—at once robust and slender. But the ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... arched brows, that met in a thin, pencilled line, were long, and either dreamy or calmly calculating. A prominent chin and a full mouth, so determined as to suggest cruelty, certainly selfishness, preserved the face from effeminacy at the sacrifice of artistic perfection. Stephen noticed with mingled curiosity and disapproval that the Arab appeared to be vain of his hands, on which he wore two or three rings that might have been bought in Paris, or even given him by European women—for they looked like a woman's rings. ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Part of them escaped my particular Observation, by reason that my whole Attention was fixed on a very fair Youth who rode in the midst of them, and seemed to have been dressed by some Description in a Romance. His Features, Complexion, and Habit had a remarkable Effeminacy, and a certain languishing Vanity appeared in his Air: His Hair, well curl'd and powder'd, hung to a considerable Length on his Shoulders, and was wantonly ty'd, as if by the Hands of his Mistress, in a Scarlet Ribbon, which played like a Streamer behind him: He ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... conquerors of China, whether Khitan, Churche, Mongol, or Manchu, has always been the same. For one or two generations the warlike character and manly habits were maintained; and then the intruders, having adopted Chinese manners, ceremonies, literature, and civilization, sank into more than Chinese effeminacy and degradation. We see the custom of employing only female attendants ascribed in a later chapter (lxxvii.) to the Sung Emperors at Kinsay; and the same was the custom of the later Ming emperors, in whose time the imperial palace was said to contain ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... be specious cowardice; modesty, the disguise of effeminacy; and being wise in everything, to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... these differences. The North was governed by the Romans, never assimilated nor civilised by them. The South eagerly absorbed all the culture of the Imperial City; her religions and her pleasures, her beautiful Temples and great Amphitheatres, finally her morals and effeminacy, till in the II century of our era, anyone living a life of luxurious gaiety was popularly said to have "set sail for Marseilles." To this day the South boasts that it was a very part of Rome, and Rome was not slow to recognise ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... slack, and sitting with the careless air of a sailor. He had a noble broad brow, clear blue eyes, and thick, clustering, brown curls, his countenance being thoroughly bronzed by southern suns and sea air. His features were well formed and refined, without any approach to effeminacy. ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... a noble action, that one nursed in effeminacy (as you all are) should teach the hardy seamen ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... stinging, painful thorn in his flesh, oppressed by the feeling of loneliness in the very midst of a noisy, fraudulent activity, and filled with an ever-increasing detestation of the superfluity and consequent effeminacy of his daily existence, he had created out of the figure of his son a picture ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... and past you, at a fascination, a ghost of fixed purposes that haunts him, from which neither reason nor pity will turn him. I have seen such an eye in men possessed—with devils, or with self: sleek, passionless men, who are too refined to be manly, and measure their grace by their effeminacy; crooked vermin, who swarm up in pious times, being drowned out of their earthly haunts by the spring-tide of religion; and so making a gain of godliness, swim upon the first of the flood, till ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... with false thoughts. The English had not in his time attained the art of correct writing. But his serious compositions exhibit a strength and vigour which could not have been expected from the softness and effeminacy of his other pieces. He wrote an elegy on Oliver Cromwell, which, with all its faults, is nevertheless looked upon as a masterpiece. To understand this copy of verses you are to know that the day Oliver died was remarkable ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... the realm in new incursions, until 850,000 of them were settled in the North and East of England. The Danegelt or tribute, displaying at once the power of the invaders and the cowardice and effeminacy of the Saxon monarchs, rose to a large sum, and two millions[11] of Saxons were powerless to drive the invaders away. In the year 1016, after the weak and wicked reign of the besotted Ethelred, justly surnamed the Unready, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... the world says about him, and yet retain all proper manliness as a part of his literary character. Surely it was from the mistaken impression that this could not be, and that an admission of extreme sensitiveness to criticism exposed Keats to a charge of effeminacy that Lord Houghton attempted to prove, against the evidence of all immediate friends, against the publisher's note to Hyperion, against the | poet's self-chosen epitaph, and against all but one or two of the most self-contained of his letters, that the soul of Keats was so ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... servants are required in India to perform the ordinary functions of one able-bodied servant in the West. The services which a Hindu will demand from his menials are far greater than those of a healthy Westerner. His languid nature and general effeminacy make him entirely dependent upon his servant for most of the activities and amenities of life. Recently the writer heard a Hindu companion in a railway car call his servant at night from an adjoining car to come and turn the shade over the compartment lamp that he ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... was ringing and hearty, and merriment found added expression in the doubling up of his body and the shaking of his hand. His hands were small, with sensitive, tapering fingers, and when playing the fingers acted as if endowed with separate life and intelligence. There was no effeminacy connected with his lovable nature; he was quick to resent meanness or deceit, or wrong-doing of any kind. His anger was exceedingly sharp, and his manner of expressing contempt an astonishing revelation to those who had failed to grasp his ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... Colonial society. Remarkably tall, yet perfectly proportioned, the roughest backwoodsman might have envied his apparent physical strength; polished in manner to a degree which just, and only just, escaped effeminacy, the most spoiled beauty might have been proud of his homage. At present, however, he stood lazily enough, smiling a little at his hostess' vivacity, exchanging a word or two with her husband, or following the ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... their choice wording, their originality in epithet, name, and phrase, were novelties of Milton's own. His English masters were Spenser, Fletcher, and Sylvester, the translator of Du Bartas's La Sepmaine, but nothing of Spenser's prolixity, or Fletcher's effeminacy, or Sylvester's quaintness is found in Milton's pure, energetic diction. He inherited their beauties, but his taste had been tempered to a finer edge by his studies in Greek and Hebrew poetry. He was the last of the Elisabethans, and {154} his style was ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... things, however, could not continue long without producing some evils; and we can hardly be surprised to find that the Imperial capital became a sort of centre of comparative luxury and idleness. Society lost sight, to a great extent, of true morality, and the effeminacy of the people constituted the chief feature of the age. Men were ever ready to carry on sentimental adventures whenever they found opportunities, and the ladies of the time were not disposed to disencourage them altogether. The Court was the focus of society, and the utmost ambition of ladies ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... character, had so humbled, and at the same time so fascinated the mind of France, that the people appeared to have lost all sense of their own dignity, in contemplating that of their Grand Monarch; and the whole reign of Louis XV., remarkable only for weakness and effeminacy, made no other alteration than that of spreading a sort of lethargy over the nation, from which it showed ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... certainty I could descry the tall figure of Agnes, her gipsy hat, and even the peculiar elegance of her walk. Often I went so far as to laugh at myself, and even to tax my recent fears with unmanliness and effeminacy, on recollecting the audible throbbings of my heart, and the nervous palpitations which had besieged me; but these symptoms, whether effeminate or not, began to come back tumultuously under the gloomy ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... point of inferiority in Euripides is the choice of his subjects, which are charged with meanness and effeminacy; while Sophocles and Aeschylus chose for theirs the most dignified and noble passions. He has moreover given very disgraceful pictures of the fair sex, making women the contrivers, the agents, and the instruments ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... Extermination, sir—extermination! On the north side of the North Pole there is another world peopled by giants; ten thousand millions at the very least; every giant of them a hundred feet high. Now about the time you have reduced your universe to complete effeminacy some fool with a pick-axe will break through the thin partition—the mere ice curtain—separating these giants from us, and then they will sweep through and swoop down and swallow you, sir, and the likes of you, with your topsy-turvy civilization, your boasted literature ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... answered, "in which effeminacy gets the better of energy, and cowardice of courage! Let us behave with more boldness, and not be ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... from slavery or hardships is overcome by fear, which is contrary to fortitude. Hence the Philosopher says (Ethic. iii, 7), that "to die in order to escape poverty, lust, or something disagreeable is an act not of fortitude but of cowardice: for to shun hardships is a mark of effeminacy." ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... East brought to Rome immense riches, which laid the foundation of its Oriental extravagance and luxury, and finally undermined the strength of the state. From Greece were introduced learning and refinement, from Asia immorality and effeminacy. The vigor and tone of Roman society are nowhere more forcibly shown than in the length of time it took for its subjugation ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... its mercantile class, it fought not for a dream of dominion, or to beat back encroaching barbarism, but to exterminate a commercial rival. The latter, which it was hard to recruit on account of the growing effeminacy of the city, it was harder still to keep under discipline. It was followed by trains of cooks, and actors, and the viler appendages of oriental luxury, and was learning to be satisfied with such victories as were won by ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... far as it goes; to Cardinal Newman it implied what were to him the irreverent and dangerous heresies of free thought, and therefore in his mouth it was a word of condemnation.[50] "Aesthetic" to many good people has an implication of effeminacy and of trifling which is far from praiseworthy; to artists and critics it may sum up what is most admirable in civilization. If in an argument on abolishing football as an intercollegiate sport you describe a certain ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... succession of these benefits, or as regards the ultimate event of these benefits. A great wrong has been done for ages; for we have all been accustomed to speak of the Byzantine empire with scorn,{B} as chiefly known by its effeminacy; and the greater is the call ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... pace, however, was very slow, for imagining rudeness and brutality to be synonimous with independence, they indulged and prided themselves in an adherence to their original coarseness and despised the manners of the Grecians, as the latter did those of the Persians, for their extreme refinement and effeminacy. Of the drama there is not to be found a trace on the records of Rome till more than three hundred and fifty years after the building of the city. The people had revels and brutal debauches at which rude compositions filled with raillery and gross invective were sung, accompanied ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... popular energy arising from a rough republican simplicity, and something even of republican freedom, with the artificial energy for war of a despotism lodged in a few hands. Of all oriental races, the Affghans had best resisted the effeminacy of oriental usages, and in some respects we may say—of Mahometan institutions. Their strength lay in their manly character; their weakness in their inveterate disunion. But this, though quite incapable of permanent ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... behavior. These were not the only occasions of ill-will against Marius; some haughty speeches, uttered with great arrogance and contempt, gave great offense to the nobility; as, for example, his saying that he had carried off the consulship as a spoil from the effeminacy of the wealthy and high-born citizens, and telling the people that he gloried in wounds he had himself received for them, as much as others did in the monuments of dead men and images of their ancestors. Often speaking ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... and more productive of happiness to be virtuous, not because it was his duty. His writings were very voluminous, and in his tranquil garden he led a peaceful life of study and enjoyment. His followers, and they were numerous, were led into luxury and effeminacy,—as was to be expected from a sceptical and irreligious philosophy, the great principle of which was that whatever is pleasant should be the object of existence. Sir James ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... at our second rule. What, after all, constitutes a "good moral"? We say that no book has a good moral which teaches a child that goodness and effeminacy, laziness and virtue, are convertible terms; no book is good that is "goody," no book is moral that moralizes. The intention may be good, but the teaching is not. Have as much as you will of poetical justice, but beware of making your books mere vehicles for conveying maxims of propriety. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... glance magnetized his audience. The eyes were those of one accustomed to command, of one having authority, and not fearing on occasion to use it. The hair swept carelessly away from the broad forehead and grew rather long behind, yet the length did not suggest, as it often does, effeminacy. He was masculine in everything—look, gesture, speech. Sparing of gesture, sparing of emphasis, careless of mere rhetorical or oratorical art, he had, nevertheless, the secret of the highest art of all, whether in oratory ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... passionate defenders, which a heavy, discontented acquiescence never could produce. What a base and foolish thing is it for any consolidated body of authority to say, or to act as if it said, "I will put my trust not in my own virtue, but in your patience; I will indulge in effeminacy, in indolence, in corruption; I will give way to all my perverse and vicious humours, because you cannot punish me without the hazard ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... Cambridge. Here—I may also say at my suggestion—he was subjected to the wholesome discipline equally of his schoolmates and his masters; in fact, sir, as you are probably aware, the most perfect democracy that we have yet known, in which the mere accidents of wealth, position, luxury, effeminacy, physical degeneration, and over-civilized stimulation, are not recognized. He was put into compulsory cricket, football, and rounders. As an undersized boy he was subjected to that ingenious preparation for future mastership by the pupillary ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... in the library. In spite of his long service there and his great learning, he had to see really ignorant men promoted over his head. I discovered afterwards that the real reason lay in his unbusinesslike methods, and the effeminacy consequent on the delicate way in which he had been nurtured in early life, which made him incapable of developing the energy necessary for his work. On a miserable pittance of fifteen hundred francs a year, he led a weary existence, full of anxiety. With nothing in ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... itself by this age, in its character of censor morum, that effeminacy in a practical sense lies either amongst its full-blown faults, or amongst its lurking tendencies. A rich, a polished, a refined age, may, by mere necessity of inference, be presumed to be a luxurious one; and the usual principle, by which moves the whole trivial philosophy which speculates ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... taylors make a man; an ancient and common saying, originating from the effeminacy of their employment; or, as some have it, from nine taylors having been robbed by one man; according to others, from the speech of a woollendraper, meaning that the custom of nine, taylors would make or enrich one man—A London taylor, rated to furnish half a man to ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... exception to this rule, being somewhat taller. They are almost universally straight and well proportioned; their limbs are clean, but less muscular than those of the whites, and their whole appearance strongly indicative of effeminacy. In walking, they invariable place one foot directly before the other—the toes never verging from a right line with the heel. When traveling in companies, their manner of marching is so peculiar as to have given rise to the expression, "Indian file;" and while proceeding in this way, each carefully ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... been a speculative question among philosophers and wise men, whether foreign commerce is of real advantage to any country; that is, whether the luxury, effeminacy, and corruptions, which are introduced along with it, are counterbalanced by the convenience and wealth which it brings. But the decision of this question is of very little importance to us. We have abundant reason to be convinced, that the spirit of trade which pervades these states, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... "domestic furniture." It is odd to think of Mary going round all the beds in the house, and deftly introducing this "article" between the sheets. Or was it only for the old people: or in chilly weather merely? On these points we must be unsatisfied. The practice, however, points to a certain effeminacy—the average person of our day would not care to have his bed so treated—with invalids the "Hot Water Bottle" has "usurped its place." We find this superannuated instrument in the "antique" dealers' shops, at a good figure—a quaint old world thing, of ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... placed on a level with the Christian virtues. The fine gentlemen of the Chesterfield era speak of fox-hunting pretty much as we speak of prize-fighting and bull-baiting. When all manly exercises had an inseparable taint of coarseness, delicate people naturally mistook effeminacy for refinement. When you can only join in male society on pain of drinking yourself under the table, the safest plan is to retire to tea-tables and small talk. For many years, Walpole's greatest pleasure seems to have been drinking tea with Lady Suffolk, and carefully piecing together bits of scandal ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... Polish Switzerland. On July 31 they arrived in the Austrian capital. Then Chopin first began to enjoy an artistic atmosphere, to live less parochially. His home life, sweet and tranquil as it was, could not fail to hurt him as artist; he was flattered and coddled and doubtless the touch of effeminacy in his person was fostered. In Vienna the life was gayer, freer and infinitely more artistic than in Warsaw. He met every one worth knowing in the artistic world and his letters at that period are positively ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... religion, and it contents him to decline its mysteries without assailing or denouncing them. He is a friend of religious toleration, and that, not only because his philosophy has taught him to look on all forms of faith with an impartial eye, but also from the gentleness and effeminacy of feeling which ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... that valley had she done nothing more than to set that rugged, fearless figure in the heart of America, a perpetual foil to effeminacy and submission to softening luxury, to the arts that seek merely popularity, to drunkenness and other vices which he combated even in that wilderness, to sycophancy and demagogy—a perpetual example of the "vir" and virtue in the noblest ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... fools, depend on't, they are not the fools you take them for: they are aware, that nothing so effectually throws off their guard and disarms the great, as a well-carried affectation of gentlemanly effeminacy, and "a still small voice, like a woman's." We happen to know that some of these people, for this very delicacy of air and manner picked out of the dirt, and carried into high places, who are au naturel, as we may say, when they go ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... a very Bog, compar'd with what it likely was before that destructive Cataclysm, when Men breath'd the pure Paradisian Air, sucking in a more aethereal, nourishing, and baulmy Pabulum, so foully vitiated now, thro' the Intemperance, Luxury, and softer Education and Effeminacy of ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn |
