"Half-sister" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... brilliant son. A few hours before he had learnt that his mother had transmitted to him the terrible, perhaps the fatal taint of inherited alcoholism; and now he had just proved beyond doubt that Vane's half-sister—for she was that in blood if not in law—was what she had just so frankly, so defiantly even, admitted ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... Viscount Hatton, who died without issue in 1760. His half-sister Anne married Daniel Finch, second Earl of Nottingham, and Lord Hatton was therefore uncle to ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... who was a devout Catholic, came often from her place in the neighbourhood to see her half-sister, Mother Superior at the Convent of St. Ursula-of-the-Lake. Mary Grant's only knowledge of the world outside the convent had been given her by Lady MacMillan, with whom when a schoolgirl she had sometimes spent a few days, and might have stopped longer if ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... retire at 50, the rest of his long life of 90 years being spent in the simple country pleasures, especially angling, which he so charmingly describes. He was twice m., first to Rachel Floud, a descendant of Archbishop Cranmer, and second to Ann Ken, half-sister of the author of the Evening Hymn. His first book was a Life of Dr. Donne (1640), followed by Lives of Sir Henry Wotton (1651), Richard Hooker (1662), George Herbert (1670), and Bishop Sanderson (1678). All of these, classics in their kind, short, but simple and striking, were coll. into ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... hung from the ceiling of a small outhouse close at hand, and Ringfield had already taken one, lighted it, and was a quarter of a mile along the road; Poussette, fearing this, made such insane haste, "raw haste, half-sister to Delay," that the blanketing of the horse and the other preliminaries took more time than usual, and he had hardly driven out of the gate when Father Rielle, who had changed his mind, also left the kitchen ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... Dr. Norman Macleod gives a glimpse of the circumstances and the circle. He preached to the Queen, and she thanked him for the comfort he gave her. Lady Augusta Bruce talked to him of "that noble, loving woman, the Duchess of Kent, and of the Queen's grief." He found the Queen's half-sister "an admirable woman" and Prince Alfred "a ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... man wailed his miserable assent. His half-sister's reproachful eyes distracted him; the mention of her defenseless position before the world touched his sorest feeling. It was almost more than he could stand, He was upon the verge of hysterical breakdown, when ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... places,[FN165] saying in herself, "By Allah, methinks Queen Nur al-Huda hath sent a Satan to torment me, and he hath tricked me this trick! I beg Allah Almighty, deliver me from her and preserve me from her wrath, for, O Lord, if she deal thus abominably with her half-sister, beating and hanging her, dear as she is to her sire, how will she do with a stranger like myself, against whom she is incensed?"—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... she's your half-sister. Forgive me that I made her so," and the poor mother wept over the heartless girl. "But go on," she whispered. "See where 'Lina is now," and Hugh read on, learning that old Mother Richards had returned home, that Anna had written a sweet, sisterly note, welcoming ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... Warwick the melancholy event was rendered doubly conducive to the purposes of his ambition. In the first place it enabled him to bind to his interests the marquis of Dorset married to the half-sister of the young duke of Suffolk, by procuring a renewal of the ducal title in his behalf, and next authorized him by a kind of precedent to claim for ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... keep as a pledge of his love till his return. Meanwhile Alberich also has begotten a son, Hagan, to achieve for him the possession of the ring. He is partly of the Gibichung race, and works through Gunther and Gutrune, half-brother and half-sister to him. They beguile Siegfried to them, give him a magic draught which makes him forget Brunhild and fall in love with Gutrune. Under this same spell, he offers to bring Brunhild for wife to Gunther. Now is Valhalla full of sorrow and despair. The gods fear the end. Wotan murmurs, ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... it." Rousseau, Voltaire, and other authors cause the time to fly, until their spirits are damped by a letter arriving from Shelley's solicitor, requiring his return to England. While in Switzerland Mary received some letters from Fanny, her half-sister; these letters are interesting, showing a sweet, gentle disposition, very affectionate to both Shelley and Mary. One letter asks Mary questions about Lord Byron. There are also details as to the unfortunate state of the finances of Godwin, who seemed ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... to my half-sister-in-law, Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael. It was at the house where she now lives that the famous Miss Beaufain (as she was then) put the Earl of Mainridge in his place, at the reception which her father gave the English visitor in 1840. ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... I've orders to box your ears, and send you in?' added Berenger, as he lifted his half-sister from her perilous position, speaking, as he did so, without a shade of foreign accent, though with much more rapid utterance than was usual in England. She clung to him without much alarm, and retaliated by an endeavour to box his ears, while ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... something that, till this hour, I have hidden from all, for it is my shame. This Swanhild is my daughter, and therefore I have loved her and put away her evil deeds, and she is half-sister to thee, Gudruda. See, then, how sore is my straight, who must avenge daughter ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... VI was succeeded in 1553 by his half-sister Mary, who had been brought up in the Catholic faith and held firmly to it. Her ardent hope of bringing her kingdom back once more to her religion did not seem altogether ill-founded, for the majority of the people were still Catholics at heart, and ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... from prominent men or women, their opponents were put to the rack, burnt, or their heads sent flying. In this country no leading Protestant's life or property was safe. Even Elizabeth, during the reign of her half-sister, Mary, was obliged to make believe that her religious faith was Roman in harmony with that of the Queen. It was either adoption, deception, or execution, and the future queen outwitted all their traps and inventions until Mary passed on, and Elizabeth ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... Mrs. Liddell was first attacked with fever they had just renewed their acquaintance with a Miss Payne, whom they had met in Rome and at Berlin. She was not unknown in society, for she came of a good old county family, and was half-sister of the Bertie whose name has already appeared ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... some consideration, that he has got a Grandmother who might be useful. Chilvern, deferentially, proposes an Aunt of his own, but does not, as it were, press her upon us, on account of some infirmities of temper. I've got a half-sister who was a widow about the time I was born, and if she's ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand
... brother—for drifting away from the waster's life he had been leading to spend more and more of his time in that house where he found a peaceful, homelike kindliness he had never known in his own—the young half-sister smiled sarcastically. Oh, these men, these men! Just as she and mama had always said! Either scamps like Tonet, or puddingheads, like the Rector. Men! She would have none of them! And the Cabanal could never make out why she refused every boy who proposed to her! She would never have one ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... by; now it was Archibald Carlyle. The old firm were brothers-in-law—the first Mrs. Carlyle having been Mr. Davidson's sister. She had died and left one child. The second Mrs. Carlyle died when her son was born—Archibald; and his half-sister reared him, loved him and ruled him. She bore for him all the authority of a mother; the boy had known no other, and, when a little child he had called her Mamma Corny. Mamma Corny had done her duty by him, that was undoubted; but Mamma Corny had never relaxed her rule; with an iron ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... know that she is the daughter of the Countess Dagenfeld, my father's wedded wife—although never acknowledged as such—because she was not of royal birth. There is no bar-sinister on Louise's shield; she is truly and honorably my half-sister." ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... Anne, or Jane, was one of the four daughters of Amedee the Great, by a second marriage, and half-sister of his successor Edward count of Savoy. (Anderson's Tables, p. 650. See ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... necessary to do much more than call attention to the fact. I may, however, notice the close relationship in which Brutus stood to the other persons with whom we have had to deal. He was nephew of Cato, whose half-sister Servilia was wife of Lucullus[289]. Cato was tutor to Lucullus' son, with Cicero for a sort of adviser: while Hortensius had married a divorced wife of Cato. All of them were of the Senatorial party, and Cato and Brutus lived to be present, with Cicero, during ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... should make it pay. While he lived in it, he paid tariff for his rooms and all that he had. His sister also did the same, and all her suite. Indeed, the working expenses were at present paid by Madame the Countess of Castel del Monte, who was a half-sister of Count Nicholas, and much younger. The husband of Madame was dead some years. She had been married when no more than a girl to an Italian of thrice her age. He, dying in the second year of their marriage, had left her free to please herself as to what she ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... Bjoern Hindrickson's wife was a half-sister of Jan's mother, so that Jan was actually related to the richest people in the parish, and he had a right to call Hindrickson and his wife uncle and aunt. But heretofore he had never claimed kinship with ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... the reason, why, by the Athenian laws, one might marry a half-sister by the father, but not by the mother? Plainly this: The manners of the Athenians were so reserved, that a man was never permitted to approach the women's apartment, even in the same family, unless where he visited his ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... dream, that low dim-lighted room With that dark periwigged phantom of Dean Swift Writing, beside a fire, to one he loved,— Beautiful Catherine Barton, once the light Of Newton's house, and his half-sister's child? Yes, Catherine Barton, I am brave enough To face this pale, unhappy, wistful ghost Of our departed friendship. It was I Savage and mad, a snarling kennel of sins, "Your Holiness," as you called me, with that smile Which even your ghost would quietly turn on me— Who ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... mammy's name was Dorcas. He come fum Vajinny, but my mammy was borned an raised in Wilmington. My name was Josephine Anderson fore I married Willie Jones. I had two half-brothers youngern me, John Henry an Ed, an a half-sister, Elsie. De boys had to mind de calves an sheeps, an Elsie nursed de missus' baby. I done de cookin, mosly, an helped my ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... it—I knew it!" she cried out. "It's always that-a-way. My ole mudder she had that ha'nt fer ten years, and it was her half-sister that brung her up from three years ole! She'll jes' have ter ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... nicely adapted to exact description, but it was sufficiently curious to give Manuel's thoughts a new turn, although it did not seem, even so, to make them happy thoughts. Certainly it was not with any appearance of merriment that Manuel returned to his half-sister Math, who ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... Across some tree of knowledge, fair With fruitage new, none else shall share: Sated with wavering in the Void, It backward climbs, so best employed, 90 And, where no proof is nor can be, Seeks refuge with Analogy; Truth's soft half-sister, she may tell Where lurks, seld-sought, the other's well, With metaphysic midges sore, My Thought seeks comfort at her door, And, at her feet a suppliant cast, Evokes a spectre of the past. Not such as shook the knees of Saul, But winsome, golden-gay withal,— 100 Two fishes in a globe of glass, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... generic notion, therefore—a fairy; that Thought, which whencesoever acquired, and held howsoever, enables you to deal to your satisfaction with proposed fairies, acknowledging THIS one frankly;—THIS, but for a half-sister; shutting the door upon ANOTHER. You may distinguish these terms at your pleasure, by sundry denominations: for example, you may call them Elements of the notion—a fairy—or circumscriptive Lines of such a notion, or indispensable Fairy-marks, or elfin Criteria, or by any other name ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... it," he said. "I was sure you were Agnes' daughter, for you are the living image of what she was when I last saw her. Child, you don't know me, but I am your Uncle Robert. Your mother was my half-sister." ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... savages on our borders, the Swedes, even the English, who have already cast covetous eyes upon this rich port. While his private life—" the man's stern face grew rather tender—"has not been very happy. It is said that he left a half-sister in Holland, the one creature he ever loved or who knew his kindlier side. A few months ago her husband died and she dared the voyage with her little daughter that they might make their home with the governor. But the vessel was lost at sea and she was drowned. ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... to take every advantage of a certain physical delicacy. This was also the view taken of him by his half-brothers, and by two out of his three step-sisters. But the three who really loved him, his mother, his nurse, and his eldest half-sister, Betty, were convinced that the child was either possessed of a curious, uncanny gift of—was it second sight?—as his old nurse entirely and his mother half, believed, or, as Dr. O'Farrell asserted, some abnormal development of his subconscious self. All three were ruefully aware that ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... Abraham, with a craft not unnatural in an Oriental, but certainly far from commendable, resolved to dissemble his relationship towards Sarah, and to represent her as not his wife, but his sister. She was, in point of fact, his half-sister, as he afterwards pleaded to Abimelech (Gen. xx. 12), being the daughter of Terah by a secondary wife, and married to her half-brother "Say, I pray thee," he said, "thou art my sister, that it may be well ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... One of these was Leonora's only sister, Beatrice of Aragon, who in that same year passed through Ferrara on her way to join her husband, Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, and whose presence, we are told by the diarist, gave great pleasure to both duke and duchess. The other Beatrice was Ercole's half-sister, the elder daughter of Niccolo III., who had long been the ornament of her father's court, when she had been known as the Queen of Feasts, and it had become a common proverb that to see Madonna Beatrice ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... the big D) with the sword of the Spirit, and precious little else in the way of weapons of offence or defence. But we couldn't get on without the spiritual brotherhood, whatever became of our special creeds. There is a genius for religion, just as there is for painting or sculpture. It is half-sister to the genius for music, and has some of the features which remind us of earthly love. But it lifts us all by its mere presence. To see a good man and hear his voice once a week would be reason enough for building churches and pulpits. The Master stopped ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... numbers to the vicinity of the English fort at Niagara. Brant was there at this time, and during his sojourn he saw a wedding performed according to the sacred rites of the Anglican Church. He had lost his first wife, the mother of Isaac and Christiana, and had married her half-sister, Susanna; but she also had died childless, and Brant had taken to his tent the daughter of a Mohawk chief, whom he now decided to wed after the manner of the white people. His third bride, who was about twenty-one years of age at the time of her marriage, is known ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... the young doctor, and leaning heavily on his arm, "what hurts me most, is not the money. I am not avaricious. But why should he take my child away from me? Why should he pass over her own mother, and intrust her to her half-sister? A woman whom I do not know, who has not distinguished herself by any services or good actions, so far as I know. I shall not submit. I shall contest the will. The law must support the right of the mother. What do you ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... Harriet's side of the case now; we need to know how she enjoyed the month, but there is no way to inform ourselves; there seems to be a strange absence of documents and letters and diaries on that side. Shelley kept a diary, the approaching Mary Godwin kept a diary, her father kept one, her half-sister by marriage, adoption, and the dispensation of God kept one, and the entire tribe and all its friends wrote and received letters, and the letters were kept and are producible when this biography needs them; but there are only three or four scraps of Harriet's writing, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... about a man named Brown, who married the half-sister of a man named Adams, who afterward married Brown's mother, and sold Brown a house he had got from Brown's grandfather, in trade for half a grist-mill, which the other half of was owned by Adams's half-sister's first husband, who left all his property ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... memory went back to those old loveless days at Arundel, when for her there had been no chastening, no rebuke, only cold, lifeless apathy. That was not love. And she thought also of her half-sister Alesia, whom she had visited once since her marriage, and who brought up her children on the principle of no contradiction and unlimited indulgence; and remembering how discontented and hard to please this discipline had made them, she began to see ...
— The Well in the Desert - An Old Legend of the House of Arundel • Emily Sarah Holt
... married his half-sister Parysatis, a high-spirited but unscrupulous woman, by whom he had two sons, destined to be known in history. The eldest was Artaxerxes, a youth of but little character; and the second, Cyrus, who inherited the decided qualities of his mother. In order to distinguish him from Cyrus ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... his father died, and his half-brother Theodore became the Czar. But Theodore reigned only a short time, and Peter succeeded him at the age of ten (1682), the government remaining in the hands of his half-sister, Sophia, a woman of great ability and intelligence, but intriguing and unscrupulous. She was aided by Prince Galitzin, the ablest statesman of Russia, who held the great office of chancellor. This prince, it would seem, with the aid of the general of the Streltzi (the ancient imperial ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... doctrines such as those which she and her brother share? Thank God, you have never been in the way of hearing of such things. It breaks my heart when I think of what my own darlings will be sure to hear some of these days,—should their half-brother and half-sister still be left alive. But, Amaldina, pray do not have her for one of your bridesmaids." Lady Amaldina, remembering that her cousin was very handsome, and also that there might be a difficulty in making up the twenty titled virgins, gave her ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... Theodosius, by his first wife, had two sons,— Arcadius, who afterwards reigned in the east, and Honorius, whose western reign was so much illustrated by Stilicho. By a second wife, daughter to Valentinian the First, Theodosius had a daughter, (half-sister, therefore, to Honorius,) whose son was Valentinian the Third.] in whose descendant, of the third generation, the empire, properly speaking, expired. For the seven shadows who succeeded, from Avitus and Majorian to Julius Nepos and Romulus Augustulus, were in no proper sense Roman emperors,—they ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... and resolutely barred it from his mind. But with all his resolution, it only seemed to wait at a little distance, as if constantly seeking an opportunity to return. What if Dr. Deane were his own father? In that case Martha would be his half-sister, and the stain of illegitimacy would rest on her, not on him! There was ruin and despair in the supposition; but, on the other hand, he asked himself why should the fact of his love throw his mother into a swoon? Among the healthy, ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... miserable truth, your majesty. Do you not remember to have heard that the natural son of Charles of Bavaria had died, not long ago, of leprosy which he had contracted during a journey to the East? Well, his tender and self-sacrificing half-sister volunteered to nurse him, and was with him until he died. Your majesty, no doubt, will look upon this as something very fine and Christian-like. I, on the contrary, would have found it more honorable, if the princess had advised us of the legacy ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... father! I believed he would be hanged if he was caught. I believe so still. The last time I saw him he seemed sane, except for a feeling of irritation against me and against Carrie, who, it seems, is my half-sister. But he attacked me suddenly, knocked me on the head, and tried to drown me. There, now you know as much as I do. Can you wonder now that I was obliged to cut myself off from my friends, with such a burden as that ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... king's band was playing, old hags were chanting meles, and several of the royal family, and of the "upper ten thousand" were there, taking leave of the Governess of Hawaii, the Princess Keelikolani, the late king's half-sister. The throng and excitement were so great, that we were outside the reef before I got a good view of this lady, the largest and the richest woman on the islands. Her size and appearance are most unfortunate, but she is ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird |
